Is Justification of the Existence of Government a Useful Question?

To contemplate justification for the existence of something is to contemplate whether it is just for a human either to aim to bring that thing into original existence or to annihilate the thing as extant. If the something is government, then, either way, the action is farfetched and hard to imagine. I contend that it is not intelligible to wrestle with the question of the justification for the existence of government. The existence of government is an unalterable reality. Like mortality, it is something to be managed, but not something to be justified. We are still very much in the period of history of Hume’s adage: “liberty is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence.” I explain what Hume meant by the adage. It makes little sense for liberty-lovers to ponder whether a government-free or anarchic society would be desirable. The spirit of Hume, Smith, and Burke is to make government better (which will generally mean making it smaller). Also, I remark on how I read Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society.