CONSENT AND ORIGINAL CONTRACT 59
remains in a country. Specifically, he says that the option of fleeing or leaving is not a
viable option for the vast majority of people, as many lack the financial means.
Indeed, Hume (1987: 475) writes that “we may as well assert, that a man, by
remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was
carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment
he leaves her”. So, there is a clear distinction between the thoughts of Locke and
Hume with regards to the consent of citizens to a social contract. Where Locke seeks
to ground consent to the current government in simple activities such as merely
remaining in the country or walking down state funded roads, Hume’s view seems
more accurate in its criticism of this claim. For Hume, true consent only exists if it is
a voluntary choice on the part of the citizens and thus, surely it is more accurate to
say that leaving one’s country is simply not a viable option for the majority of the
population, nor is abstaining from using many state funded services. Thus, as citizens
do not have a realistic choice to do otherwise, seeking to ground tacit consent in the
idea that individuals simply live in a state (as Locke does), does not by itself provide
evidence of the true, voluntary consent of citizens (the kind which amounts to a social
contract kind of framework). For this convincing criticism of Locke, Hume should be
applauded.
Interestingly, Hume (1987: 470) also argues that the original contract, the only
contract which he admits was at least partly founded on consent, is too ancient to
carry any real authority for him. To dispute this would be to postulate that its nature
binds further generations to the promises of their ancestors. What Hume is refuting
here is that any binding nature from the original contract persists beyond the
generation that entered into it. An obvious response to this, however, is to highlight
that once citizens reach adulthood everyone has a right to vote for the government–
essentially renewing the binding nature of the contract for each new generation. But,
again we can question how much choice the population truly has. For it could be said
that the voting population is only presented with a limited number of genuine
contenders. Then if an elected political party which a number of individuals have not
voted for comes to power, these individuals are again presented with either the choice
of ‘consenting’ (in the loosest possible sense of the word), or leaving the state or