Editing Social contract (section)

===Consent of the governed===
An early critic of social contract theory was [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]]'s friend, the philosopher [[David Hume]], who in 1742 published an essay "Of Civil Liberty". The second part of this essay, entitled "Of the Original Contract",<ref name="Hume">{{cite book|author=Hume, David|title= Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Part II, Essay XII, Of The Original Contract}}</ref> stresses that the concept of a "social contract" is a convenient fiction: {{blockquote|As no party, in the present age can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of principles annexed to its political or practical one; we accordingly find that each of the factions into which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions which it pursues. ... The one party [defenders of the absolute and divine right of kings, or Tories], by tracing up government to the DEITY, endeavor to render it so sacred and inviolate that it must be little less than sacrilege, however tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it in the smallest article. The other party [the Whigs, or believers in constitutional monarchy], by founding government altogether on the consent of the PEOPLE suppose that there is a kind of original contract by which the subjects have tacitly reserved the power of resisting their sovereign, whenever they find themselves aggrieved by that authority with which they have for certain purposes voluntarily entrusted him. |David Hume, "On Civil Liberty" [II.XII.1]<ref name="Hume"/>}}

Hume argued that [[consent of the governed]] was the ideal foundation on which a government should rest, but that it had not actually occurred this way in general. {{blockquote|My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only contend that it has very seldom had place in any degree and never almost in its full extent. And that therefore some other foundation of government must also be admitted. |Ibid II.XII.20}}