  Having clarified convention, Hume deploys it to illuminate property, justice, promising, and government. In each case, Hume offers a broadly conventionalist account (see the entry on Hume’s moral philosophy for details). For instance, property emerges from the state of nature through a social convention “to bestow stability on the possession of those external goods, and leave every one in the peaceable enjoyment of what he may acquire by his fortune and industry” (Treatise, p. 489). This convention makes it the case that certain goods are “owned” by certain people, who enjoy exclusive rights to their use or dispensation. Similarly, Hume argues that the obligation to keep one’s promises is intelligible only with reference to convention that, when one employs a certain “form of words” (e.g., “I promise to \(j\)”), one thereby expresses a resolution to \(j\) and subjects oneself to penalty if one does not \(j\).