This article argues that David Hume's essay 'Of the Liberty of the Press' points to significant elements of his conception of the public realm and, in particular, his thoughts on the nature and importance of political discourse. Hume saw the opposition of interests as both a key constitutional support and a potential source of faction and fanaticism. His account of politeness suggests an important means through which a free press might improve the quality of public discourse such that the educative (...) facet of discourse and, what I have termed, its messy facet, could be united towards maintaining the constitutional balance, the latter by providing a forum for the opposition of interests and the former by deflating factional bigotry. (shrink)

Max Skjönsberg's The Persistence of Party: Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain is a rich, detailed, and nuanced study of eighteenth-century ideas about party politics and the British political contexts that both inspired and were affected by their development. The study is ambitious in scope and extensively researched. With David Hume and Edmund Burke as its principal protagonists, the book is organised chronologically and centered on analyses of writings by Paul de Rapin-Thoyras, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, Hume, (...) John Brown, and Burke to illustrate the centrality of party, as a concept, to political debate in the eighteenth... (shrink)