David Hume on Emoluments

The top-five-all-time-philosopher David Hume did not actually interpret the Emolument Clauses of the United States Constitution, which will not surprise you when you recall that he died two months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hume did, however, leave us a little evidence of the usage of “emoluments”  from one of the eighteenth century’s most literate and astute pens:

 

The opposition between [Edward I’s] maxims with regard to the nobility and to the ecclesiastics, leads us to conjecture, that it was only by chance he passed the beneficial statute of mortmain, and that his sole object was to maintain the number of knights’ fees, and to prevent the superiors from being defrauded of the profits of wardship, marriage, livery, and other emoluments arising from the feudal tenures.

The History of England, Vol. 1, Ch. 18.

Hume pretty clearly was using “emoluments” here because he took it to be a term of great breadth – enough breadth to sweep in all the many ways a feudal lord benefited at the expense of his vassals. 

The Morgan Lewis white paper, written for Trump, seeks to demonstrate that he would not violate the Emoluments Clause in maintaining his manifold business entanglements with representatives of foreign states and business entities owned in whole or part by foreign states. None of these, in the view of the white paper could give rise to “emoluments” in the eighteenth century sense. Instead the word, as then used, covered only “a payment or other benefit received as a consequence of discharging the duties of an office.” 

Hume would not have thought the Morgan Lewis lawyers understood the meaning of the word. But, then, what did Hume know about eighteenth century English?