In a collection of Memorandums found among Hume's papers is entered:—‘The Charter Governments in America, almost entirely independent of England.’ Burton's Hume , i. 127. In his History , viii. 330, he says:—‘King James recalled the Charters by which the liberties of the Colonies were secured; and he sent over Governors invested with absolute power.’ The Charter of Connecticut was hidden in the hollow of an oak, where it was kept till James's tyranny was overpast. Bancroft's History , ii. 432.

Note 14. So devoted were the planters of Virginia to the cause of freedom, that at a meeting of delegates held on August 1, 1775, ‘they resolved from the first of the following November not to purchase any more slaves from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place.’ Ann. Reg. 1775, i. 13. This blow was struck not at the slave-trade, but at British Commerce. It was of men such as these that Johnson said:—‘How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?’ Boswell's Johnson , iii. 201. At the same meeting it was resolved that there should be no exportation of tobacco or any other goods to England.

Note 15. Burke, in the Ann. Reg. for 1775, i. 16, mentions ‘a very ill-timed proclamation’ issued on August 4 of this year by the Governor of Massachusetts Bay, ‘for the encouragement of piety and virtue etc.’ ‘The people of that province had always been scoffed at for a pharisaical attention to outward forms, and to the appearances of religious piety and virtue.... In this proclamation hypocrisy being inserted among the immoralities against which the people were warned, it seemed as if an act of state were turned into a libel on the people; and this insult exasperated greatly the rage of minds already sufficiently discontented.’ The clergy, no doubt, would not only catch the flame but spread it.

The Bishop of Peterborough, preaching before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel on Feb. 16, 1776, described ‘the distresses and persecutions of the American episcopal clergy.’ Gent. Mag. 1776, p. 171.

Note 16. The King in his speech on opening Parliament on Oct. 26, speaking of the increase in the land forces, said:—‘I have also the satisfaction to inform you, that I have received the most friendly offers of foreign assistance.’ Parl. Hist. xviii. 696. Horace Walpole writing the next day describes this statement as a falsehood. ‘They talk of foreign Powers offering them troops; is begging being offered? and if those foreign Powers are not Russia, but little Hesse, etc., are those foreign Powers ?’ Letters , vi. 275. He is partly in error however, as there is no mention of Powers. It was from Russia that the King hoped to get troops. Burke ends a letter to the Duke of Richmond, dated Sept. 26, 1775, by saying:—‘I beg pardon for this long and unmanaged letter. I am on thorns. I cannot, at my ease, see Russian barbarism let loose to waste the most beautiful object that ever appeared upon this globe.’ Burke's Corres. ii. 75.

Gibbon wrote to Holroyd on Oct. 14:—‘When the Russians arrive (if they refresh themselves in England or Ireland) will you go and see their camp? We have great hopes of getting a body of these Barbarians. In consequence of some very plain advances King George, with his own hand, wrote a very polite letter to sister Kitty [Empress Catherine II] requesting her friendly assistance. Full powers and instructions were sent to Gunning [our Ambassador at St. Petersburg] to agree for any force between five and twenty thousand men, carte blanche for the terms; on condition, however, that they should serve, not as auxiliaries, but as mercenaries.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , ii. 139. No man knew better than Gibbon the character of these savage mercenaries whom the King hoped to pour in a devastating flood over our settlements. He had investigated the causes of ‘the abject slavery’ in which the Russians lived. Ib. v. 531. Yet in Parliament he gave his constant support to the Ministry. ‘I took my seat,’ he says, ‘at the beginning of the memorable contest between Great Britain and America, and supported with many a sincere and silent vote the rights, though not perhaps the interest, of the mother-country.’ Ib. i. 220. The Prussians in the wars of Napoleon, after having experienced the French in their country as enemies and the Russians as allies, used to say:—‘Better the French as enemies than the Russians as friends.’ George III, it should seem, was acting more in sorrow than in anger. In his Speech from the Throne he said:—‘When the unhappy and deluded multitude, against whom this force will be directed, shall become sensible of their error, I shall be ready to receive the misled with tenderness and mercy.’ Parl. Hist. xviii. 696. The Russians, however, were not to be had. On Nov. 3, the King wrote to Lord North:—‘The letter of the Empress is a clear refusal, and not in so genteel a manner as I should have thought might have been expected from her. She has not had the civility to answer in her own hand, and has thrown out some expressions that may be civil to a Russian ear, but certainly not to more civilised ones.’ George III's Corres. i. 282. On Nov. 11, the King mentions a contract with a Lieut.-Colonel Scheither who is to raise troops in Germany at ten pounds per man. ‘He need not go far for recruits,’ he adds, ‘as the moment he acts openly he may have as many Hessians and Brunswickers as he pleases.’ Ib. p. 292. On Jan. 18, 1776, Gibbon wrote:—‘You know we have got eighteen thousand Germans from Hesse, Brunswick, and Hesse Darmstadt. I think our meeting [of Parliament] will be lively; a spirited minority and a desponding majority. The higher people are placed, the more gloomy are their countenances, the more melancholy their language. You may call this cowardice, but I fear it arises from their knowledge (a late knowledge) of the difficulty and magnitude of the business.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , ii. 142. Eleven days later he wrote:—‘I much fear that our Leaders have not a genius which can act at the distance of three thousand miles. You know that a large draught of Guards are just going to America; poor dear creatures!’ Ib. p. 143.

Note 17. The three per cent. consols were at 88 on Oct. 26. Gent. Mag. 1775, p. 504. See ante , p. 179, n. 15.

Note 18. Hume had written twenty-one years earlier:—‘Speculative reasoners, during that age [the age of James I], raised many objections to the planting of those remote colonies; and foretold that, after draining their mother-country of inhabitants, they would soon shake off her yoke, and erect an independent government in America. But time has shown that the views entertained by those who encouraged such generous undertakings were more just and solid. A mild Government and great naval force have preserved, and may still preserve during some time, the dominion of England over her colonies.’ History of England , vi. 188. In a fine passage in the first edition of this same volume of his History, which he afterwards had the shame of suppressing, he said:—‘The seeds of many a noble state have been sown in climates kept desolate by the wild manners of the ancient inhabitants; and an asylum secured in that solitary world for liberty and science, if ever the spreading of unlimited empire, or the inroad of barbarous nations, should again extinguish them in this turbulent and restless hemisphere.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 74.

Boswell wrote on June 19 of this year:—‘Yesterday I met Mr. Hume. He said it was all over in America; we could not subdue the colonists, and another gun should not be fired, were it not for decency's sake; he meant in order to keep up an appearance of power. But I think the lives of our fellow-subjects should not be thrown away for such decency. He said we may do very well without America, and he was for withdrawing our troops altogether, and letting the Canadians fall upon our colonists. I do not think he makes our right to tax at all clear.’ Letters of Boswell , p. 204.

On Nov. 9 Walpole wrote:—‘I think this country undone, almost beyond redemption. Victory in any war but a civil one fascinates mankind with a vision of glory. What should we gain by triumph itself? Would America laid waste, deluged with blood, plundered, enslaved, replace America flourishing, rich, and free? Do we want to reign over it, as the Spaniards over Peru, depopulated? Are desolate regions preferable to commercial cities? But if the Provincials conquer, are they, like lovers, to kiss and be friends? Who are the heroes, where are the statesmen, that shall restore us to the position in which we stood two years ago?’ Letters , vi. 279.

Adam Smith, who shared most of Hume's thoughts, after showing that ‘under the present system of management Great Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies,’ continues:—‘To propose that she should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to make peace and war as they might think proper, would be to propose such a measure as never was, and never will be adopted by any nation in the world.... The most visionary enthusiasts would scarce be capable of proposing such a measure, with any serious hopes at least of its ever being adopted. If it was adopted however, Great Britain would not only be immediately freed from the whole annual expense of the peace establishments of the colonies, but might settle with them such a treaty of commerce as would effectually secure to her a free trade, more advantageous to the great body of the people, though less so to the merchants, than the monopoly which she at present enjoys. By thus parting good friends, the natural affection of the colonies to the mother country, which perhaps our late dissensions have well-night extinguished, would quickly revive. It might dispose them not only to respect for whole centuries together that treaty of commerce which they had concluded with us at parting, but to favour us in war as well as in trade, and instead of turbulent and factious subjects to become our most faithful, affectionate, and generous allies.’ Wealth of Nations , ed. 1811, ii. 475. A few pages further on he continues:—‘The persons who now govern the resolutions of what they call their continental congress feel in themselves at this moment a degree of importance which perhaps the greatest subjects in Europe scarce feel. From shopkeepers, tradesmen, and attorneys they are become statesmen and legislators, and are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves, will become, and which indeed seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world.’ Ib. p. 485.

More than five years earlier than the date of Hume's letter, on May 6, 1770, Horace Walpole had written:—‘The tocsin seems to be sounded to America. I have many visions about that country, and fancy I see twenty empires and republics forming upon vast scales over all that continent, which is growing too mighty to be kept in subjection to half a dozen exhausted nations in Europe. As the latter sinks and the others rise, they who live between the eras will be a sort of Noahs, witnesses to the period of the old world and origin of the new. I entertain myself with the idea of a future senate in California and Virginia, where their future patriots will harangue on the austere and incorruptible virtue of the ancient English! will tell their auditors of our disinterestedness and scorn of bribes and pensions, and make us blush in our graves at their ridiculous panegyrics. Who knows but even our Indian usurpations and villanies may become topics of praise to American schoolboys? As I believe our virtues are extremely like those of our predecessors the Romans, so I am sure our luxury and extravagance are too.’ Letters , v. 235.

Patrick Henry had ended his brief but noble speech before the Convention of Delegates on March 28 of this year, 1775, by saying:—‘It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!’ American Orations , i. 23. A letter written to Franklin, who had returned to America, by a Mrs. Greene of Warwick, Rhode Island, in the following July, shows by the use of the one word ‘home’ how strong was the tie which had bound the Colonies to the Old Country. She writes:—’do come and see us, certain! Don’t think of going home [i. e. to England] again. Do sit down and enjoy the remainder of your days in peace.’ Letters to Benjamin Franklin , p. 67.

Note 19. When Hume calls Lord Chatham a madman he is no doubt referring to the miserable state of health into which that statesman had fallen eight years earlier. Hume wrote to the Countess de Boufflers on June 19, 1767:—‘You ask the present state of our politics. Why, in a word, we are all in confusion. This, you’ll say, is telling you nothing new; for when were we otherwise? But we are in greater confusion than usual; because of the strange condition of Lord Chatham, who was regarded as our first minister. The public here, as well as with you, believe him wholly mad; but I am assured it is not so. He is only fallen into extreme low spirits and into nervous disorders, which render him totally unfit for business, make him shun all company, and, as I am told, set him weeping like a child upon the least accident. Is not this a melancholy situation for so lofty and vehement a spirit as his? And is it not even an addition to his unhappiness that he retains his senses?’ Hume's Private Corres. p. 243. Horace Walpole had written on April 5 of the same year:—‘There is a misfortune not so easily to be surmounted, the state of Lord Chatham's health, who now does not only not see the Ministers, but even does not receive letters. The world, on the report of the Opposition, believe his head disordered, and there is so far a kind of colour for this rumour, that he has lately taken Dr. Addington, a physician in vogue, who originally was a mad doctor.’ Letters , v. 45. On Sept. 9 he wrote:—‘For Lord Chatham, he is really or intentionally mad—but I still doubt which of the two.’ Ib. p. 63. Junius, in a letter signed Correggio, dated Sept. 16 of this same year, describes him as ‘a lunatic brandishing a crutch, or bawling through a grate, or writing with desperate charcoal a letter to North America.’ Letters of Junius , ed. 1812, ii. 474.

In charging Chatham with having reduced his country to its present condition Hume, I believe, is thinking of the effects of the great war of conquests carried on under his Ministry. ‘The fine inscription on the monument of Lord Chatham in Guildhall records,’ says Lord Macaulay, ‘the general opinion of the citizens of London, that under his administration commerce had been “united with and made to flourish by war.”’ Essays , ed. 1874, ii. 193. Before long it was found that commerce can no more be made to flourish by war than by any other form of robbery. Adam Smith, after stating that ‘the last war, which was undertaken altogether on account of the colonies, cost Great Britain upwards of ninety millions,’ continues:—‘The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only. It has hitherto been, not an empire, but the project of an empire; not a gold mine, but the project of a gold mine; a project which has cost, which continues to cost, and which, if pursued in the same way as it has been hitherto, is likely to cost immense expense, without being likely to bring any profit; for the effects of the monopoly of the colony trade, it has been shown, are to the great body of the people mere loss instead of profit. It is surely now time that our rulers should either realise this golden dream, in which they have been indulging themselves perhaps as well as the people, or that they should awake from it themselves, and endeavour to awaken the people.’ Wealth of Nations , ed. 1811, iii. 446-8. In another passage, speaking of the sums which England had laid out upon the defence of her colonies, he says:—‘The late war [the war in which under Pitt England made her greatest conquests] was altogether a colony quarrel; and the whole expense of it, in whatever part of the world it might have been laid out, whether in Germany or the East Indies, ought justly to be stated to the account of the colonies. It amounted to more than ninety millions sterling.’ Ib. ii. 474.

Burke, in his Speech on American Taxation on April 19, 1774; after describing how by the old and wise policy England had never meddled with the taxation of America, continues:—‘This nation never thought of departing from that choice until the period immediately on the close of the last war. Then a scheme of government new in many things seemed to have been adopted.’ After telling how twenty new regiments were raised, he continues:—‘When this huge increase of military establishment was resolved on, a revenue was to be found to support so great a burthen. Country gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, and the great resisters of a standing armed force, would not have entered with much alacrity into the vote for so large and so expensive an army, if they had been very sure that they were to continue to pay for it. But hopes of another kind were held out to them; and, in particular, I well remember that Mr. Townshend, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle them by playing before their eyes the image of a revenue to be raised in America.’ Payne's Burke's Select Works , i. 121. In an earlier speech, after describing Chatham as ‘a being before whom “thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers (waving his hand all this time over the Treasury Bench, which he sat behind) all veil their faces with their wings,”’ apostrophising him, he exclaimed, ‘Doom not to perdition that vast public debt, a mass seventy millions of which thou hast employed in rearing a pedestal for thy own statue.’ Chatham Corres. iii. 145.

In the Protest of some of the Peers on the Cyder Bill (March 30, 1763) mention is made of ‘the great load of taxes which have been found necessary in support of a just, prosperous, and glorious war.’ Parl. Hist. xv. 1314. A tax on the Colonies had not yet been proposed, and it had been found necessary to increase ‘the odious excise’ by including cyder under it. George Johnstone wrote to Hume on March 22 [1763]:—‘We are in a bustle here. I am just going to the House of Commons. The subject is a tax on wine and cyder.... Pitt has pay’d Grenville so severely that whenever he now rises there is a general laugh. He imitated his manner so perfectly both in his words and gesture that the original is sure to call the picture to our mind.... The Opposition have raised the cry of No excise, and Liberty and the Constitution, and Oh my country against the mode of collecting the cyder duty.’ M. S. R. S. E. Pitt had attacked the laws of excise as odious. ‘Mr. Grenville contended that the tax was unavoidable.... “Where,” he asked, “can you lay another tax of equal efficiency?” And he repeated several times, “Tell me where you can lay another tax—tell me where?” Upon which Mr. Pitt, in the words of a song at that time popular, replied in a musical tone, “Gentle shepherd, tell me where.” The effect on the house was irresistible, and settled on Mr. Grenville the appellation of “the gentle shepherd.”’ Chatham Corres. ii. 216.

Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. 9, 1775, a fortnight after the date of Hume's letter:—‘I probably have little time to be witness to the humiliations that are approaching. Father Paul's Esto perpetua! was more the prayer of a good man than of a wise one. Countries are but great families, that rise from obscurity to dignity and then degenerate. This little island, that for many centuries was but a merchant, married a great fortune in the last war, got a title, grew insolent and extravagant, despised its original counter, quarrelled with its factors, kicked its plebeian wife out of doors, and thought, by putting on an old red coat, to hector her relations out of the rest of her fortune, which remained in their hands as trustees. Europe, that was jealous of this upstart captain's sudden rise, encouraged him in his folly, in hopes of seeing him quite undone. End of volume the first. The second part is in the press.’ Letters , vi. 279.

‘It must be owned,’ writes Lord Macaulay, ‘that the expense of the war never entered into Pitt's consideration. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the cost of his victories increased the pleasure with which he contemplated them.... He was proud of the sacrifices and efforts which his eloquence and his success had induced his countrymen to make. The price at which he purchased faithful service and complete victory, though far smaller than that which his son, the most profuse and incapable of war ministers, paid for treachery, defeat, and shame, was long and severely felt by the nation.’ Macaulay's Essays , ed. 1874, ii. 194.

Note 20. Hume spoke in vain; the nation was not with him. Burke, writing a month earlier of the ruin of the country, ‘which, if I am not quite visionary, is approaching with the greatest rapidity,’ continues:—‘I am sensible of the shocking indifference and neutrality of a great part of the nation. But a speculative despair is unpardonable, where it is our duty to act.... The people are not answerable for their present supine acquiescence; indeed they are not. God and nature never made them to think or to act without guidance and direction. They have obeyed the only impulse they have received.’ Burke's Corres. ii. 71-2. On Feb. 2 of the year before, describing ‘the supineness of the public,’ he had said:—‘Any remarkable highway robbery at Hounslow Heath would make more conversation than all the disturbances of America.’ Ib. i. 453.

Dr. Burton gives a letter by Hume, written a day later than the one in the text, which seems to be in answer to a request to join in one of the Loyal Addresses to the Crown on the revolt of the Colonies. He says:—‘Here is Lord Home teasing me for an address from the Merse [Hume's native district], and I have constantly refused him. Besides, I am an American in my principles, and wish we would let them alone to govern or misgovern themselves, as they think proper: the affair is of no consequence, or of little consequence to us. If the County of Renfrew think it indispensably necessary for them to interpose in public matters, I wish they would advise the King, first to punish those insolent rascals in London and Middlesex, who daily insult him and the whole legislature, before he thinks of America. Ask him, how he can expect that a form of government will maintain an authority at three thousand miles’ distance, when it cannot make itself be respected, or even be treated with common decency, at home. Tell him, that Lord North, though in appearance a worthy gentleman, has not a head for these great operations; and that if fifty thousand men and twenty millions of money were intrusted to such a lukewarm coward as Gage, they never could produce any effect. These are objects worthy of the respectable county of Renfrew; not mauling the poor infatuated Americans in the other hemisphere.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 478. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was far behind Hume in political wisdom. Dr. Blair, writing in the summer of 1776, says of that body:—‘We have sent a dutiful and loyal Address. A violent debate was expected upon it. However it did not follow. The factious were afraid to show themselves; though the words unnatural and dangerous rebellion went very ill down with them.’ M. S. R. S. E.

Horace Walpole, writing from Paris on Oct. 10, about his return to England, says:—‘I am not impatient to be in a frantic country that is stabbing itself in every vein. The delirium still lasts; though, I believe, kept up by the quacks that caused it. Is it credible that five or six of the great trading towns have presented addresses against the Americans? I have no doubt but those addresses are procured by those boobies the country gentlemen, their members, and bought of the Aldermen; but is it not amazing that the merchants and manufacturers do not duck such tools in a horse-pond?’ Letters , vi. 266. On Oct. 28, two days after the date of Hume's letter, he wrote from London:—‘At my return I found everything in great confusion. The Ministers had only provoked and united—not intimidated, wounded, or divided America. Errors in or neglect of execution have rendered everything much worse; and at this instant they are not sure that the King has a foot of dominion left on that continent.... The Ministers say that it will take sixty thousand men to re-conquer America. They will as soon have sixty thousand armies. Whether they can get any Russians is not even yet certain.... Distress and difficulties increase every day, and genius does not increase in proportion.’ Ib. p. 277.

Note 21. Hume here uses Advertisement in the same sense as the French Avertissement , which is defined by Littré, Préface mise à la tête d’un livre. Johnson, in speaking of the Lives of the Poets , says:—‘My purpose was only to have allotted to every poet an Advertisement, like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character.’ Boswell's Johnson , iv. 35. In this Advertisement, which is placed at the beginning of An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding , Hume, speaking of his Treatise of Human Nature , says that ‘he had projected it before he left College,’ and that ‘sensible of his error in going to the press too early, he cast the whole anew in the following pieces.... Yet several writers, who have honoured the author's Philosophy with answers, have taken care to direct all their batteries against that juvenile work, which the Author never acknowledged, and have affected to triumph in any advantage which they imagined they had obtained over it; a practice very contrary to all rules of candour and fair dealing, and a strong instance of those polemical artifices which a bigoted zeal thinks itself authorised to employ. Henceforth the Author desires that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.’ In a review of Hume's Life in the Ann. Reg. 1776, ii. 28, Beattie is reproached with obtaining a pension by levelling all his arguments against Hume's ‘juvenile production.’

Note 22. Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind was meant as a refutation of Hume's philosophy. Nevertheless in his anxiety not to misrepresent the meaning of his adversary, and in his reliance on his candour, he asked leave, through their common friend Dr. Blair, to submit his reasonings to his examination. ‘I wish,’ wrote Hume in reply, ‘that the parsons would confine themselves to their old occupation of worrying one another, and leave philosophers to argue with temper, moderation, and good manners.’ When however he had read part of the manuscript, he wrote to the author in terms of high praise of its philosophy, and added:—‘As I was desirous to be of some use to you, I kept a watchful eye all along over your style; but it is really so correct, and so good English, that I found not anything worth the remarking. There is only one passage in this chapter, where you make use of the phrase hinder to do , instead of hinder from doing , which is the English one.’ Stewart's Life of Reid , pp. 417, 418.

Note 23. Strahan wrote to Hume on June 3, 1776, when the philosopher was near his end:—‘Even your enemies relent, and I will venture to say, wish your recovery. Creech of Edinburgh writes me that he had just then (May 29) received a letter from Dr. Beattie in which was the following paragraph:—‘I am sincerely sorry to hear of Mr. Hume's bad health. There will be several things in this Edition which I am pretty sure would not offend him, if he were to see them, which I heartily which he may. The Essay is corrected in almost every page—superfluities retrenched—inaccuracies corrected—and many harsh expressions softened.” Does not this look like repentance?’ Beattie, in his Preface, mentions Hume's ‘Advertisement to a new edition of his Essays , in which he seems to disown his Treatise of Human Nature , and desires that those Essays , as then published, may be considered as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.... He certainly merits praise for thus publicly disowning, though late, his Treatise of Human Nature ... In consequence of his Advertisement, I thought it right to mitigate in this edition some of the censures that more especially refer to that work.’ Forbes's Life of Beattie , ed. 1824, p. 231. Hume perhaps would never have made the idle attempt to have one of his greatest works suppressed, as it were, nearly forty years after its publication, had he foreseen that it would lead to his being partially absolved and publicly praised by Dr. Beattie. When three years after their author's death the Dialogues on Natural Religion were published, Beattie felt himself an injured man. In a letter to Mrs. Montagu he says:—’during the last years of Mr. Hume's life his friends gave out that he regretted his having dealt so much in metaphysics, and that he never would write any more. He was at pains to disavow his Treatise of Human Nature in an Advertisement which he published about half a year before his death. All this, with what I then heard of his bad health, made my heart relent towards him; as you would no doubt perceive by the preface to my quarto book. But immediately after his death, I heard that he had left behind him two manuscripts,’etc. Beattie concludes with the following anecdote, which he had from Dr. Gregory:—‘Mr. Hume was boasting to the doctor that among his disciples in Edinburgh he had the honour to reckon many of the fair sex. “Now, tell me,” said the doctor, “whether, if you had a wife or a daughter, you would wish them to be your disciples. Think well before you answer me; for I assure you, that whatever your answer is, I will not conceal it.” Mr. Hume with a smile, and some hesitation, made this reply:—“No; I believe scepticism may be too sturdy a virtue for a woman.”’ Life of Beattie , ed. 1824, p. 264. The knowledge that the answer would not be concealed would not have been an inducement to Hume to avow his real sentiments.

A writer in the Gent. Mag. for 1777, p. 159, records the following anecdote:—‘Of Beattie's Essay on Truth Mr. Hume is reported to have said, “Truth! there is no truth in it; it is a horrible large lie in octavo.”’

Note 24. Strahan replied that about 400 copies of the History were left in stock, and that he intended ‘to put it to press again the ensuing summer.’ M. S. R. S. E. The next edition was published in 1778.

Note 1. Johnson in his Taxation no Tyranny , published in the spring of this year, had said:—’The Americans had no thought of resisting the Stamp Act, till they were encouraged and incited by European intelligence from men whom they thought their friends, but who were friends only to themselves. On the original contrivers of mischief let an insulted nation pour out its vengeance. With whatever design they have inflamed this pernicious contest, they are themselves equally detestable. If they wish success to the colonies, they are traitors to this country; if they wish their defeat, they are traitors at once to America and England. To them, and them only, must be imputed the interruption of commerce and the miseries of war, the sorrow of those that shall be ruined and the blood of those that shall fall.’ Johnson's Works , vi. 260.

Note 2. ‘The war [of 1756] began in every part of the world with events disastrous to England, and even more shameful than disastrous ... The nation was in a state of angry and sullen despondency, almost unparalleled in history ... At this time appeared Brown's Estimate , a book now remembered only by the allusions in Cowper's Table Talk and in Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace. It was universally read, admired, and believed. The author fully convinced his readers that they were a race of cowards and scoundrels; that nothing could save them; that they were on the point of being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly deserved their fate. Such were the speculations to which ready credence was given at the outset of the most glorious war in which England had ever been engaged.’ Macaulay's Essays , ed. 1874, ii. 179.

The following extracts from Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Friends show the despondency into which at that period had fallen a man versed in affairs of state:—‘Oct. 13, 1756. I wish well to my species in general, and to my country in particular; and therefore lament the havock that is already made, and likely to be made, of the former, and the inevitable ruin which I see approaching by great strides to the latter.’ Misc. Works , iv. 211. ‘Nov. 26, 1756. I now quietly behold the storm from the shore, and shall only be involved, but without particular blame, in the common ruin. That moment, you perceive, if you combine all circumstances, cannot be very remote. On the contrary, it is so near, that were Machiavel at the head of our affairs, he could not retrieve them; and therefore it is very indifferent to me, what minister shall give us the last coup de grace. ’ Ib. p. 191. ‘Christmas Day, 1757. [After alluding to ‘three plans’ which he had suggested.] This, at least, I am sure of, that they are our last convulsive struggles, for at this rate we cannot possibly live through the year 1759.’ Ib. p. 205.

Note 3. This mixed metaphor of the British Lion and leeway recalls the time of which Ovid sang—

‘Nat lupus inter oves; fulvos vehit unda leones.’ Meta. i. 304.

Note 4. Horace Walpole, describing the attack on the Court in this debate, said:—‘Mr. Conway in a better speech than ever was made exposed all their outrages and blunders; and Charles Fox told Lord North that not Alexander nor Cæsar had ever conquered so much as he had lost in one campaign. Even his Lordship's friends, nay the Scotch, taunt him in public with his laziness.’ Letters , vi. 278.

Note 5. The King in his Speech from the Throne said that he had sent Hanoverian troops to Gibraltar and Minorca to replace the British forces that had been despatched to America. This measure was attacked as unconstitutional not only by the regular Opposition, but by several members who called themselves Independent ; belonging, as they did, to that powerful party which in the last two reigns had as strongly opposed the Court as in the present reign they supported it. Ann. Reg. 1776, i. 64.

Note 6. Johnson, in his Taxation no Tyranny , with his hatred of slavery had written:—‘It has been proposed that the slaves should be set free, an act which surely the lovers of liberty cannot but commend. If they are furnished with firearms for defence, and utensils for husbandry, and settled in some simple form of government within the country, they may be more grateful and honest than their masters.’ Works , vi. 260. In the mouths of the Ministers and their supporters this would have been an idle threat; for theirs was the party which upheld not only slavery but the slave-trade.

Note 1. There was a quarto edition in one volume in 1758.

Note 2. The editions of 1760, 1764, 1768, 1770, 1772.

Note 3. Hume had written ‘careful of correctness,’ but had scored ‘careful’ out. Johnson in his Dictionary gives an example from Granville of anxious followed not by for or about but by of —‘anxious of neglect.’ Hume's anxiety was for correctness of style.

Note 4. See ante , p. 215, n. 2.

Note 5. Rousseau, according to Hume's previous statement. See ante , p. 200.

Note 6. ‘ The History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover. By James Macpherson, Esq.; 2 vols. quarto. £2 2 s. Cadell.’ Gent. Mag. 1775, p. 192. Horace Walpole, writing on April 14, 1775, said:—‘For Macpherson, I stopped dead short in the first volume; never was such a heap of insignificant trash and lies. One instance shall suffice: in a letter from a spy to James II there is a blank for a name; a note without the smallest ground to build the conjecture on says, “probably the Earl of Devonshire.” Pretty well! Yet not content, the honest gentleman says in the index, “The Earl of Devonshire is suspected of favouring the excluded family.” Can you suspect such a worthy person of forgery? could he forge Ossian?’ Letters , vi. 202. Macpherson had published an Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland , which soon reached a third edition. To this work Gibbon pays one of his stately compliments, some years after he had been warned by Hume that the author of Ossian was a literary forger. He says:—‘In the dark and doubtful paths of Caledonian antiquity I have chosen for my guides two learned and ingenious Highlanders, whom their birth and education had peculiarly qualified for that office. See ... and Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland , by James Macpherson, Esq.’ Decline and Fall , ed. 1807, iv. 244.

Note 7. Strahan had most people with him in the belief that America would be subdued. Horace Walpole wrote from Paris on Sept. 6, 1775:—‘You may judge whether they do not stare at all we are doing! They will not believe me when I tell them that the American War is fashionable , for one is forced to use that word to convey to them an idea of the majority.’ Letters , vi. 248. Burke wrote on Sept. 24:—‘I confess that from every information which I receive ... the real fact is, that the generality of the people of England are now led away by the misrepresentations and arts of the Ministry, the Court, and their abettors; so that the violent measures towards America are fairly adopted and countenanced by a majority of individuals of all ranks, professions, or occupations in this country.... I am indeed more and more convinced that it behoves us as honest and honourable men to take the step of a protestation after Parliament has met. It is unusual. It would doubtless occasion much speculation. It would have some effect upon the public at large, when they see men of high rank and fortune, of known principles and of undoubted abilities, stepping forwards in so extraordinary a manner to face a torrent, not merely of ministerial or Court power, but also of almost general opinion.’ Burke's Corres. ii. 68.

Note 8. Genoa ceded Corsica to France in 1768. In 1769 Pascal Paoli left the island and sought a refuge in England. Voltaire in his chapter on Corsica, in his Siècle de Louis XV , written at all events as late as 1774, speaks as if the conquest of the country were complete. He says:—‘Ainsi donc, en cédant la vaine et fatale souveraineté d‘un pays qui lui était à charge, Gênes faisait en effet un bon marché, et le roi de France en faisait un meilleur, puisqu‘il était assez puissant pour se faire obéir dans la Corse, pour la policer, pour la peupler, pour l‘enrichir, en y faisant fleurir l‘agriculture et le commerce ... Il restait à savoir si les hommes ont le droit de vendre d‘autres hommes; mais c‘est une question qu‘on n‘examina jamais dans aucun traité.’ Œuvres de Voltaire , xix. 365.

Note 9. See ante , p. 288.

Note 10. Hume wrote to Adam Smith on Feb. 8, 1776:—‘The Duke of Buccleugh tells me that you are very zealous in American affairs. My notion is that the matter is not so important as is commonly imagined. If I be mistaken, I shall probably correct my error when I see you, or read you. [ The Wealth of Nations was on the eve of publication.] Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our manufactures.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 483. See ante , p. 292, n. 10, for the restrictions placed on American trade in the hope of benefiting the trade of England. By one of ‘the principal dispositions of the Navigation Act,’ writes Adam Smith, ‘all ships, of which the owners, masters, and three-fourths of the mariners are not British subjects are prohibited, upon pain of forfeiting ship and cargo, from trading to the British settlements and plantations.’ Wealth of Nations , ed. 1811, ii. 252. He considered ‘the regulations of this famous act,’ though some of them ‘may have proceeded from national animosity, as wise as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom.’ Ib. p. 254. If America became free this exclusive navigation would of course at once be lost to England, but Hume had little fear of the consequence. Thirty-three years earlier, in his Essay entitled Of the Jealousy of Trade , he had written:—‘I shall venture to acknowledge that, not only as a man but as a British subject, I pray for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy, and even France itself.’ Essays and Treatises , ed. 1770, ii. 111.

Note 11. See ante , p. 128, n. 16.

Note 12. Horace Walpole, writing a fortnight later to Mason the poet, said:—‘What shall I say more? talk politics? no; we think too much alike. England was, Scotland is—indeed by the blunders the latter has made one sees its Irish origin,—but I had rather talk of anything else. I see nothing but ruin, whatever shall happen; and what idle solicitude is that of childless old people, who are anxious about the first fifty years after their death, and do not reflect that in the eternity to follow, fifty or five hundred years are a moment, and that all countries fall sooner or later.’ Letters , vi. 284. See ante , p. 179, n. 15.

Note 13. Dr. William Hunter, the famous physician, had taken his Doctor's degree at Glasgow. Perhaps it was already known that he intended to make a munificent bequest to the University. Knight's Biog. Dict. iii. 526. Dr. James Baillie was elected. Dr. Wight succeeded Baillie in 1778. Caldwell Papers , ii. 260.

Note 1. Hume had written to Adam Smith three days earlier:—‘By all accounts you intend to settle with us this spring; yet we hear no more of it. What is the reason? Your chamber in my house is always unoccupied. I am always at home. I expect you to land here. I have been, am, and shall be probably in an indifferent state of health. I weighed myself t‘other day, and find I have fallen five complete stones. If you delay much longer, I shall probably disappear altogether.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 483.

Note 2. In the letter from which the extract in the last note is taken Hume said:—‘I am as lazy a correspondent as you, yet my anxiety about you makes me write. By all accounts your book has been printed long ago; yet it has never been so much as advertised. What is the reason? If you wait till the fate of America be decided, you may wait long.’ So early as 1770 Smith seems to have thought of publishing his great work, for Hume wrote to him on Feb. 6 of that year, hearing that he was going up to London:—‘How can you so much as entertain a thought of publishing a book full of reason, sense, and learning to those wicked abandoned madmen?’ Burton's Hume , ii. 433. It is announced in the London Chronicle for Saturday, March 9, ‘This day was published elegantly printed in 2 vols. 4to. price £1 16s. in boards, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. By Adam Smith, LL.D. & F.R.S. Formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell in the Strand.’ Adam Smith, it will be noticed, here gives the full additions to his name. When seventeen years earlier he was publishing his Theory of Moral Sentiments , he wrote to Strahan:—‘In the titles both of the Theory and Dissertation call me simply Adam Smith, without any addition either before or behind.’ Original Letters of Adam Smith, published in the New York Evening Post , April 30, 1887.

In the Gentleman's Magazine the publication of the Wealth of Nations passed unnoticed. In the Annual Register (1776, ii. 241) it is indeed reviewed; but while sixteen pages are given in the same number to Watson's Reign of Philip II , for it little more than two can be spared.

Note 3. Gibbon wrote to Holroyd on Jan. 18 of this year:—‘We proceed triumphantly with the Roman Empire , and shall certainly make our appearance before the end of next month.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , ii. 142. In the London Chronicle for Tuesday, Feb. 20, it is announced as ‘published this day, elegantly printed in quarto, price one guinea in boards.’ Horace Walpole had received his copy before Feb. 14. Letters , vi. 307. Writing to Mason on Feb. 18, he said:—‘Lo, there is just appeared a truly classic work; a history, not majestic like Livy, nor compressed like Tacitus; not stamped with character like Clarendon; perhaps not so deep as Robertson's Scotland , but a thousand degrees above his Charles ; not pointed like Voltaire, but as accurate as he is inexact; modest as he is tranchant , and sly as Montesquieu without being so recherché. The style is as smooth as a Flemish picture, and the muscles are concealed and only for natural uses, not exaggerated like Michael Angelo's to show the painter's skill in anatomy; nor composed of the limbs of clowns of different nations, like Dr. Johnson's heterogeneous monsters. This book is Mr. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is son of a foolish Alderman, is a Member of Parliament, and called a whimsical one, because he votes variously as his opinion leads him; and his first production was in French, in which language he shines too. I know him a little, never suspected the extent of his talents, for he is perfectly modest, or I want penetration, which I know too, but I intend to know him a great deal more.’ Ib. 310. Five years later Walpole described how Gibbon had quarrelled with him, because he would not give him incense enough about his second volume. He continues:—‘I well knew his vanity, even about his ridiculous face and person, but thought he had too much sense to avow it so palpably. The History is admirably written ... but the style is far less sedulously enamelled than the first volume, and there is flattery to the Scots that would choke anything but Scots, who can gobble feathers as readily as thistles. David Hume and Adam Smith are legislators and sages, but the homage is intended for his patron, Lord Loughborough. So much for literature and its fops.’ Ib.. vii. 505.

Gibbon, after describing ‘a valiant tribe of Caledonia, the Attacotti, who are accused by an eye-witness of delighting in the taste of human flesh,’ continues:—‘If in the neighbourhood of the commercial and literary town of Glasgow a race of cannibals has really existed, we may contemplate in the period of the Scottish history the opposite extremes of savage and civilised life. Such reflections tend to enlarge the circle of our ideas, and to encourage the pleasing hope that New Zealand may produce in some future age the Hume of the Southern Hemisphere.’ Decline and Fall , ed. 1807, iv. 249. On p. 122 of the same volume, referring to the Wealth of Nations , he says:—‘This I am proud to quote as the work of a sage and a friend.’

Note 4. The first edition was in quarto, each volume containing as much as two volumes of the octavo edition.

Note 5. On March 18 Hume wrote to his brother historian that letter of which Gibbon said that ‘it overpaid the labour of ten years.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , i. 224. See ante , p. 258, n. 8.

Note 1. Gibbon, speaking of the publication of the first volume of his History , says:—‘After the perilous adventure had been declined by my friend, Mr. Elmsly, I agreed upon easy terms with Mr. Thomas Cadell, a respectable bookseller, and Mr. William Strahan an eminent printer; and they undertook the care and risk of the publication, which derived more credit from the name of the shop than from that of the author. So moderate were our hopes that the original impression had been stinted to five hundred, till the number was doubled by the prophetic taste of Mr. Strahan.... I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work, without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand; and the bookseller's property was twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin. My book was on every table, and almost on every toilette.’ Misc. Works , i. 222. The preface to the third edition is dated May 1, 1777. Cadell and Strahan were publishing for Johnson, Blackstone, Hume, Robertson, Adam Smith, and Blair, as well as for Gibbon.

Note 2. Hume's wish that ‘something of the contents’ should be added at the head of the margin is scarcely reasonable; as the side marginal entries are numerous, often two or three on a page. In the third edition (perhaps also in the second edition, a copy of which I have not been able to find) his advice about the notes is followed. They are transferred to the foot of each page.

Note 3. Gibbon, in the Journal that he kept when he was serving with the militia, entered on Nov. 2, 1761:—‘I read Hume's History of England to the Reign of Henry VII , just published, ingenious but superficial.’ Misc. Works , i. 139. He was but twenty-four years old when he made this entry. The superficiality was not in any way removed by all Hume's laborious revisions. The author of the Decline and Fall would have found still more to condemn, though perhaps still more to admire, than had been discovered by the young officer of militia in his quarters at Devizes.

Note 4. ‘March 2. About nine at night a fire broke out in the warehouse of Messieurs Cox and Bigg, Printers, in the Savoy, and notwithstanding every possible effort to stop its progress, the warehouse, the printing-office, and the dwelling-houses of the two partners were in a short time consumed, together with two warehouses filled with books belonging to Mr. Cadell, and Mr. Elmsly of the Strand.’ Ann. Reg. 1776, i. 124.

Note 5. Hume wrote to Adam Smith on April 1, 1776:—‘Euge! Belle! Dear Mr. Smith,—I am much pleased with your performance, and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much expectation, by yourself, by your friends, and by the public, that I trembled for its appearance, but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 486. Hume's ‘trembling’ may have been not only that of a friend, but almost of a parent. ‘In the Essays on Political Economy ,’ writes Mackintosh, ‘it is very evident that Hume was the true master of Smith.’ Mackintosh's Life , ii. 248.

Boswell, who had arrived in London from Scotland on March 15, and who called on Johnson the next day, records:—‘I mentioned Dr. Adam Smith's book on The Wealth of Nations , which was just published, and that Sir John Pringle had observed to me, that Dr. Smith, who had never been in trade, could not be expected to write well on that subject any more than a lawyer upon physic. Johnson. “He is mistaken, Sir: a man who has never been engaged in trade himself may undoubtedly write well upon trade, and there is nothing which requires more to be illustrated by philosophy than trade does.”’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 430. On April 28 Boswell wrote to his friend Temple:—‘Murphy says he has read thirty pages of Smith's Wealth , but says he shall read no more. Smith too is now of our Club. It has lost its select merit.’ Letters of Boswell , p. 233. Boswell, in a note to the Tour to the Hebrides , somewhat condescendingly says:—‘I value the greatest part of the Wealth of Nations. ’ Boswell's Johnson , v. 30, n. 3.

Adam Smith wrote to Strahan on Nov. 13, 1776:—‘I have received 300 pounds of the copy money of the first edition of my book. But as I got a good number of copies to make presents of from Mr. Cadell, I do not exactly know what balance may be due to me.’ On Oct. 26, 1780, he wrote:—‘I had almost forgot I was the author of the inquiry concerning the Wealth of Nations, but some time ago I received a letter from a friend in Denmark telling me that it had been translated into Danish.’ Smith goes on to ask Cadell to send three copies of the second edition to Denmark, and continues:—‘At our final settlement, I shall debit myself with these three Books. I suspect I am now almost your only customer for my own book. Let me know, however, how matters go on in this respect.’ Original Letters of Adam Smith in the New York Evening Post , April 30, 1887.

Romilly, writing from London on Aug. 20, 1790, a few weeks after Adam Smith's death, says:—‘I have been surprised, and I own a little indignant, to observe how little impression his death has made here. Scarce any notice has been taken of it, while for above a year together, after the death of Dr. Johnson, nothing was to be heard of but panegyrics of him. Lives, Letters , and Anecdotes , and even at this moment there are two more Lives of him about to start into existence.’ Life of Romilly , ed. 1840, i. 404. One of these Lives no doubt was Boswell's, and the other, perhaps, Murphy's. One of Gibbon's correspondents, writing from Madrid in 1792, told him that ‘the Wealth of Nations had been condemned by the Inquisition, on account of “the lowness of its style and the looseness of the morals which it inculcates.” Nevertheless the Court had permitted an extract from it to be published.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , ii. 479.

Dugald Stewart, in a note which he added in 1810 to his Life of Adam Smith (p. 130), says:—‘By way of explanation of what is hinted at in the foot-note, p. 77, I think it proper for me now to add, that at the period when this Memoir was read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, it was not unusual, even among men of some talents and information, to confound studiously the speculative doctrines of Political Economy with those discussions concerning the first principles of Government which happened unfortunately at that time to agitate the public mind. The doctrine of a Free Trade was itself represented as of a revolutionary tendency; and some who had formerly prided themselves on their intimacy with Mr. Smith, and on their zeal for the propagation of his liberal system, began to call in question the expediency of subjecting to the disputations of philosophers, the arcana of State Policy, and the unfathomable wisdom of the feudal ages.’

Lord Cockburn, in his Memorials , p. 45, writing of Edinburgh in the closing years of last century, says:—‘The middle aged seemed to me to know little about the founder of the science [of Political Economy], except that he had recently been a Commissioner of Customs, and had written a sensible book. The young, by which I mean the liberal young of Edinburgh, lived upon him. With Hume, Robertson, Millar, Montesquieu, Ferguson, and De Lolme he supplied them with most of their mental food.’ Cockburn adds that when Dugald Stewart in the winter of 1801–2 gave his first course of lectures on Political Economy, ‘the mere term “Political Economy” made most people start. They thought that it included questions touching the constitution of governments; and not a few hoped to catch Stewart in dangerous propositions. It was not unusual to see a smile on the faces of some when they heard subjects discoursed upon, seemingly beneath the dignity of his Academical Chair. The word Corn sounded strangely in the moral class, and Drawbacks seemed a profanation of Stewart's voice.’ Ib. p. 174.

Note 6. See post , p. 327, n. 14.

Note 7. Strahan must have given Gibbon a copy of a part of this letter, for a long extract from it is published in Gibbon's Misc. Works , ii. 161. Answering Hume on April 12, Strahan wrote:—‘What you say of Mr. Gibbon's and Dr. Smith's books is exactly just. The former is the most popular work; but the sale of the latter, though not near so rapid, has been more than I could have expected from a work that requires much thought and reflection (qualities that do not abound among modern readers) to peruse to any purpose 1 ....’

If this Ministry cannot land the number of men you mention in America, or very near that number, which from the great difficulty of procuring transports for that purpose, I am afraid they will not; and if the army there is not able to make a very considerable impression this summer, we shall be in the most awkward and disagreeable situation that can be conceived. Delay amounts to Defeat ; and the expense of a single campaign in the unhappy contest is beyond all conception enormous. Besides, if things do not go well with us there this summer, it will throw us into such confusion at home as nearly to overset (not the Ministry only, that is often of little consequence) but the Government itself. So that our rulers have now much at stake which I hope they will not fail to keep in view. I am hopeful, and upon that hope rests my chief dependence, that the Colonists, tired of the total stoppage of all trade and improvements, and weary of the anarchy under which they now groan, will do half the work for us.’ M. S. R. S. E.

The Wealth of Nations reached its sixth edition by the year 1791, and its ninth by the end of the century. The first two editions were in two volumes quarto, and the numerous succeeding ones at first in three volumes, and later on in four volumes octavo. It was not till 1839 that an edition in one volume was published. Lowndes's Bib. Man. ed. 1871, p. 2417, and Brit. Mus. Cata.

Note 1. Hume had finished his far too brief Autobiography two days earlier.

Note 2. Sometime in the spring of this year Dr. Black, Hume's physician, sent Adam Smith the following letter:—‘I write at present chiefly to acquaint you with the state of your friend David Hume's health, which is so bad that I am quite melancholy upon it, and as I hear that you intend a visit to this country soon, I wish, if possible, to hasten your coming, that he may have the comfort of your company so much the sooner. He has been declining several years, and this in a slow and gradual manner, until about a twelvemonth ago, since which the progress of his disorder has been more rapid.... His mother, he says, had precisely the same constitution with himself, and died of this very disorder; which has made him give up any hopes of his getting the better of it.... Do not however say much on this subject to any one else; as he does not like to have it spoke of, and has been very shy and slow in acquainting me fully with the state of his health.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 488. Hume's friends urged him to go to London, partly in the belief that the journey would do him good, and partly to get fresh medical advice. Black however had not thought well of the journey. On April 12, Hume wrote to John Home the dramatist:—’dr. Black (God bless him) tells me that nothing is so improper for me as leaving my own house, jolting about on the road, or lying in inconvenient inns, and that I shall die with much more tranquillity in St. David [? David's] Street than anywhere else. Besides, where can I expect spiritual assistance so consolatory? When are you to be down? Bring Smith with you.’ Caldwell Papers , i. 35. ‘He set out,’ he said ‘merely to please his friends.’ Works of John Home , i. 169. Meanwhile Adam Smith had started for Scotland, with Home. At Morpeth ‘they would have passed Hume, if they had not seen his servant, Colin, standing at the gate of an inn.’ Ib. 168. Leaving Smith to continue his journey alone, Home turned back, and accompanied his friend first to London, then to Bath, and afterwards to Edinburgh. They travelled in a post-chaise, by such easy stages that Hume took eleven days in going from Edinburgh to London. On Thursday, April 25, Home records in an interesting diary 1 which he kept of the journey:—‘Left Darlington about nine o‘clock, and came to Northallerton 2 . The same delightful weather. A shower fell that laid the dust, and made our journey to Boroughbridge more pleasant. Mr. Hume continues very easy, and has a tolerable appetite; tastes nothing liquid but water, and sups upon an egg. He assured me that he never possessed his faculties more perfectly; that he never was more sensible of the beauties of any classic author than he was at present, nor loved more to read. When I am not in the room with him he reads continually. The postboys can scarcely be persuaded to drive only five miles an hour, and their horses are of the same way of thinking. The other travellers, as they pass, look into the chaise, and laugh at our slow pace. This evening the post-boy from North Allerton, who had required a good deal of threatening to make him drive as slow as we desired, had no sooner taken his departure to go home than he set off at full speed. “ Pour se dédommager ,” said David.’ Ib. p. 171. Home says that they arrived in London on Wednesday, April 31 ( sic ). Wednesday was May 1. Hume describing his journey to Dr. Blair, says of Home's turning back to keep him company:—‘Never was there a more friendly action, nor better placed; for what between conversation and gaming (not to mention sometimes squabbling), I did not pass a languid moment.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 505. The ‘gaming’ was picquet. ‘Mr. David,’ writes Home, ‘was very keen about his cardplaying.’ Home's Works , i. 169.

Henry Mackenzie describes Home as ‘a man of infinite pleasantry as well as great talents, whose conversation, perhaps beyond that of any other of the set, possessed the charm of easy natural attractive humour. His playful vivacity often amused itself in a sort of mock contest with the infantile (if I may use such a phrase when speaking of such a man) simplicity of David Hume, who himself enjoyed the discovery of the joke which had before excited the laugh of his companions around him.’ Home's Works , i. 14. He was a good companion for a sick man; for Dr. Robertson used jokingly to say that ‘he invested his friends with a sort of supernatural privilege above the ordinary humiliating circumstances of mortality. “He never,” said the Doctor, “would allow that a friend was sick till he heard of his death.”’ Ib. p. 7. His kindness is shown in the following anecdote:—‘The lady John Home had married not being very remarkable for her personal attractions, David Hume, it is said, asked him “how he could ever think of such a woman?” Home, who was a man of great goodness and simplicity of character, replied, “Ah, David! if I had not, who else would have taken her?”’ Caldwell Papers , ii. 179.

This Diary was published by Henry Mackenzie in the Appendix to his Life of Home. By a narrow edge of paper left between pages 180 and 181, it is easy to see that there has been a suppression. If the manuscript is still in existence, it would be interesting to see what the passage is that has been suppressed.

Johnson had passed a night here less than three years earlier. Writing to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 12, 1773, he said:—‘We dined at York, and went on to Northallerton, a place of which I know nothing but that it afforded us a lodging on Monday night, and about two hundred and seventy years ago gave birth to Roger Ascham.’ Piazzi Letters , i. 105.

Note 3. ‘Newcastle, Wednesday, 24th April. Mr. Hume not quite so well in the morning—says that he had set out merely to please his friends; that he would go on to please them; that Ferguson and Andrew Stuart (about whom we had been talking) were answerable for shortening his life one week a-piece; for, says he, you will allow Xenophon to be good authority; and he lays it down, that suppose a man is dying, nobody has a right to kill him. He set out in this vein, and continued all the stage in his cheerful and talking humour.’ Home's Works , i. 169.

Sir Walter Scott, who in his fourth year had been taken to Bath for his health, and had stayed there about a year (about 1775), says:—‘My residence at Bath is marked by very pleasing recollections. The venerable John Home was then at the watering-place, and paid much attention to my aunt and to me.’ Lockhart's Scott , ed. 1839, i. 30.

Note 1. Brewer Street, Golden Square, where he had lodged in March, 1769 ( ante , p. 203, n. 8).

Note 2. Hume wrote to Dr. Blair from Bath on May 13:—‘You have frequently heard me complain of my physical friends, that they allowed me to die in the midst of them without so much as giving a Greek name to my disorder; a consolation which was the least I had reason to expect from them. Dr. Black, hearing this complaint, told me that I should be satisfied in that particular, and that my disorder was a hemorrhage, a word which it was easy to decompose into [ww][ sic ] and [ww]. But Sir John Pringle says, that I have no hemorrhage, but a spincture [ sic ] in the colon, which it will be easy to cure. This disorder, as it both contained two Greek appellations and was remediable, I was much inclined to prefer; when, behold! Dr. Gustard tells me that he sees no symptoms of the former disorder, and as to the latter, he never met with it and scarcely ever heard of it.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 504. Dr. Norman Moore, the Warden of the College of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, has kindly furnished me with the following note on this passage:—

’Hume seems to have had a cancerous growth in the large intestine, followed by a secondary cancerous growth in the liver.

‘The word sphincter is used for a circle of muscular fibres closing an orifice, but as this term is inapplicable to a diseased structure, I think Hume's word spincture is written for stricture. A new growth (cancer) of the colon would be certain to cause a stricture or narrowing of the intestine, and is frequently followed by one or more tumours in the liver. The natural history of new growths of this kind and the sequence of primary cancer of the intestine and secondary cancer of the liver was imperfectly known in Hume's time; but it is probable that John Hunter had some insight into the matter, for Charles Bernard, in Queen Anne's time, had already noticed the occasional recurrence of cancer after operation; the first step in the observation of the natural history of cancer. Hume's age, the duration of his illness, and the interval between Hunter's observation of the disease in his liver and his death, are all consistent with the opinion that he died of cancer of the intestine, followed by secondary cancer of the liver.’

Note 3. See ante , p. 175, n. 2.

Note 4. Miss Elliot, I suppose, is the ‘Peggy Elliot’ formerly of Lisle Street ( ante , p. 94, n. 8), with whom Hume used to lodge.

Note 1. ‘Dr. Gusthard was the son of a minister of Edinburgh; being of good ability and a winning address he had come into very good business.’ Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 534. Hume's employment of a Scotch physician both in London and Bath calls to mind ‘the pleasant manner’ in which Garrick maintained to Boswell the nationality of the Scotch. ‘Come, come, don‘t deny it; they are really national. Why, now, the Adams are as liberal-minded men as any in the world; but I don‘t know how it is, all their workmen are Scotch. You are, to be sure, wonderfully free from that nationality; but so it happens that you employ the only Scotch shoe-black in London.’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 325.

Note 2. See ante , p. 188, n. 11.

Note 3. Clarendon, in his account of the second Battle of Newbury, fought on Oct. 27, 1644, between Charles I and the Earl of Manchester's army, tells how ‘the right wing of the enemy's horse advanced under the hill of Speen, with one hundred musketeers in the van, and came into the open field, where a good body of the King's horse stood, which at first received them in some disorder.’ History of the Rebellion , ed. 1826, iv. 584.

Note 4. Basil, sixth Earl of Denbigh, born 1719. Horace Walpole wrote on May 19, 1756:—‘My Lord Denbigh is going to marry a fortune, I forget her name; my Lord Gower asked him how long the honey-moon would last. He replied, “Don‘t tell me of the honeymoon; it is harvest-moon with me.”’ Letters , iii. 13. On Jan. 22, 1761, Walpole wrote:—‘Lord Denbigh is made Master of the harriers, with two thousand a year. Lord Temple asked it, and Newcastle and Hardwicke gave into it for fear of Denbigh's brutality in the House of Lords.’ Ib. p. 373. For an instance of his brutality, see ante , p. 106, n. 1. It was his father who asked his kinsman, Henry Fielding the novelist, ‘how it was that he spelled his name “Fielding,” and not “Feilding,” like the head of the house? “I cannot tell, my Lord,” said he, “except it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to spell.”’ Thackeray's English Humourists , ed. 1858, p. 282.

Note 5. John Home.

Note 6. John, fourth Earl of Sandwich, at this time First Lord of the Admiralty. See Boswell's Life of Johnson , iii. 383, for the murder of his mistress, Miss Ray, in 1779, by the Rev. Mr. Hackman.

Note 7. Constantine John, second Baron Mulgrave, a junior Lord of the Admiralty. When a Captain in the Navy he had commanded an expedition for the discovery of a North-East Passage. Wraxall ( Memoirs , ed. 1815, ii. 125) says that ‘he possessed two distinct voices; the one strong and hoarse, the other weak and querulous. So extraordinary a circumstance probably gave rise to a story of his having fallen into a ditch in a dark night, and calling for aid in his shrill voice. A countryman coming up was about to assist him; but Lord Mulgrave addressing him in a hoarse voice, the peasant exclaimed, “Oh! if there are two of you in the ditch, you may help each other out of it.”’

Note 8. Perhaps Henry Bankes, M.P. for Corfe Castle, one of the Commissioners of Customs. He died on Sept. 23 of this year. Gent. Mag. 1776, p. 436.

Note 9. Lord Denbigh and Lord Sandwich were each 57 years old. Mr. Bankes, if this was Henry Bankes, was still older, as his father had been dead 62 years. Lord Mulgrave was only 32.

Note 10. They were fishing in

‘The trout of the Kennet have long been celebrated for their size and flavour; Fuller speaks of them in his Worthies. The editor of the Magna Britannia mentions the trout of the Kennet as being of a prodigious size, and speaks of one 45 inches in length taken at Newbury.’ Lysons’ Berkshire , p. 195. Fuller speaks of them as follows:—‘Trouts. This is a pleasant and wholesom Fish, as whose feeding is pure and cleanly, in the swiftest streams, and on the hardest gravell. Good and great of this kind are found in the River of Kennet, nigh Hungerford, though not so big as that which Gesner affirmes taken in the Leman-lake, being three cubits in length.’ Fuller's Worthies , ed. 1662, i. 81.

Note 11. ‘When I left school,’ says Lord Eldon, ‘in 1766 to go to Oxford, I came up from Newcastle to London in a coach, then denominated on account of its quick travelling, as travelling was then estimated, a fly; being, as well as I remember, nevertheless three or four days and nights on the road.’ Life of Lord Eldon , ed. 1846, i. 39. In Chamberlayne's Present State of Great Britain , 1710, p. 281, there is the following account of the Flying Coaches as they were in the beginning of the century:—‘Besides this excellent Convenience of conveying Letters and Men on Horse-back, there is of late an admirable Commodiousness both for Men and Women of better Quality, to travel from London to almost any Town of England , and to almost all the Villages near this great City, and that is by Stage-Coaches, wherein one may be transported to any Place, sheltered from foul Weather and foul Ways; and this is not only at a low Price, as about a Shilling for every five Miles, but with such speed as that the Posts in some Foreign Countries make not more Miles in a Day; for the Stage-Coaches, called Flying Coaches, make 50 or 60 Miles in a Day, as from London to Oxford or Cambridge ; sometimes 70, 80, and 100 Miles, as Southampton, Bury, Cirencester, Norwich, &c.’

Note 12. For a description of this fish, see F. Buckland's Natural History of British Fishes , p. 104.

Note 13. Johnson, on April 30, 1773, said that he had not read Hume's History. Boswell's Johnson , ii. 236. If Dr. Thomas Campbell's Diary can be taken as genuine (see Ib. ii. 338, n. 2), he said on April 5, 1775, that ‘he defied any one to produce a classical book written in Scotland since Buchanan. Robertson, he said, used pretty words, but he liked Hume better; and neither of them would he allow to be more to Clarendon than a rat to a cat.’ Ib. v. 57, n. 3. Had Hume arrived at Bath a few days earlier he might have met Johnson and Boswell, who had been there on a visit to the Thrales. Ib. iii. 45.

Note 14. Horace Walpole wrote to Mann on April 17:—‘You need not be too impatient for events. The army that was to overrun the Atlantic continent is not half set out yet; but it will be time enough to go into winter-quarters. What we have heard lately thence is not very promising. The Congress, that was said to be squabbling, seems to act with harmony and spirit; and Quebec is not thought to be so safe as it was a month ago. However, that is the business of the Ministers; nobody else troubles his head about the matter. Few people knew much of America before; and now that all communication is cut off, and the Administration does not think itself bound to chant its own disappointments, or the praises of the enemy, we forget it as much as if Columbus had not routed it out of the ocean.’ Letters , vi. 327. On May 17 he wrote:—‘As I knew no more than the newspapers would tell you, I did not announce to you the retreat of the King's army from Boston. Great pains were taken, and no wonder, to soften this disgrace.... The American war begins to lose its popularity.’ Ib. p. 336. Two years later, on May 31, 1778, he wrote to Mason:—‘Lord Sandwich has run the gauntlet in the Lords for all the lies he has told all the winter about the fleet, and does not retire; but I am sick of repeating what you must be sick of reading. An invasion will have some dignity; but to see a great country gambol at the eve of ruin like a puppy on a precipice! Oh! one cannot buffoon like Lucian when one wants to speak daggers like Tacitus, and couch them in a sentence without descending to details.’ Ib. vii. 72.

Burke, writing on April 22, 1776, shows that the public could be as careless even as Ministers of the affairs of the nation. The trial of the Duchess of Kingston for bigamy had been going on. ‘All affairs totally suspended with all sorts of people. We forgot, for a while, war and taxes, and everything else; though the budget will be opened on Wednesday.’ Burke's Corres. ii. 102. On May 4 he writes of General Howe's retreat to Halifax:—‘In that nook of penury and cold the proud conqueror of America is obliged to look for refuge.’ Ib. p. 103. On May 30 he writes:—‘The party is at present very high; but it is the glory of the Tories that they always flourish in the decay, and perhaps by the decay, of the glory of their country. Our session is over, and I can hardly believe by the tranquillity of everything about me that we are a people who have just lost an empire. But it is so. The present nursery revolution, I think, engages as much of our attention. [There had been a change of Governor, Sub-governor, Preceptor, and Sub-preceptor to the Prince of Wales and Prince Frederick].’ Ib. p. 107.

On Nov. 8, soon after the opening of Parliament, Mr. Luttrell moved an Address to the King for the removal of Lord Sandwich from office. He said ‘that the absolute management of the maritime power of the British empire was too important a trust to be committed to a bonvivant of Lord Sandwich's levity of disposition and known depravity of conduct, especially now the piping hours of jubilee and dalliance were at end.’ Lord Mulgrave defended his chief. ‘The British nation,’ he said, ‘had never known a First Commissioner of the Admiralty equal to the present in capacity and meritorious services.’ The motion was negatived without a division. Parl. Hist. xviii. 1449-54. The absence of a division is accounted for by ‘the partial secession’ from the House of a great number of the Opposition. Being over-whelmed in the divisions on which they had ventured, they contented themselves with ‘attending the House in the morning upon private business; as soon as a public question was introduced they took a formal leave of the Speaker, and immediately withdrew.’ Ann. Reg. 1777, i. 48.

Lord Sandwich, according to the reports in the London Chronicle , took part in the debates on May 9, 10, and 16. He could easily have gone up to town and returned between the 10th and the 16th. Lord Denbigh was in the House of Lords on the 16th. Boswell this same spring left London for Bath—nearly twice the distance of Speen Hill—on a visit of pleasure on April 26, and was back again by May 1. Boswell's Johnson , iii. 45, 51.

Note 1. ‘They may say what they will,’ wrote Horace Walpole nearly ten years earlier, ‘but it does one ten times more good to leave Bath than to go to it.’ Letters , v. 19.

Note 2. Hume's courage had not grown with increase of days and prosperity, as the following extracts from his letters show. Writing in 1754 of the first volume of his History of England under the Stuarts , he says:—‘A few Christians only (and but a few) think I speak like a Libertine in religion; be assured I am tolerably reserved on this head. Elliot tells me that you had entertained apprehensions of my discretion: what I had done to forfeit with you the character of prudence I cannot tell, but you will see little or no occasion for any such imputation in this work. I composed it ad populum , as well as ad clerum , and thought that scepticism was not in its place in an historical production.’ Burton's Hume , i. 397. In this very volume of his History (ch. lix), speaking of the trial of Charles I, he says:—‘If ever on any occasion it were laudable to conceal truth from the populace, it must be confessed that the doctrine of resistance affords such an example; and that all speculative reasoners ought to observe, with regard to this principle, the same cautious silence which the laws in every species of government have ever prescribed to themselves. Government is instituted in order to restrain the fury and injustice of the people; and being always founded on opinion, not on force, it is dangerous to weaken by these speculations the reverence which the multitude owe to authority, and to instruct them beforehand that the case can ever happen when they may be freed from their duty of allegiance.’ Ed. 1802, vii. 148.

In 1761, writing to Dr. Blair about a sermon by a Dr. Campbell in which he was attacked, he says:—‘I could wish your friend had not denominated me an infidel writer on account of ten or twelve pages which seem to him to have that tendency, while I have wrote so many volumes on history, literature, politics, trade, morals, which in that particular at least are entirely inoffensive. Is a man to be called a drunkard, because he has been seen fuddled once in his lifetime?’ Burton's Hume , ii. 116. Dr. Burton hereupon quotes the following anecdote by Lord Charlemont:—‘One day that Hume visited me in London, he came into my room laughing, and apparently well pleased. “What has put you into this good humour, Hume?” said I. ‘Why man,” replied he, “I have just now had the best thing said to me I ever heard. I was complaining in a company where I spent the morning, that I was very ill-treated by the world; that I had written many volumes, throughout the whole of which there were but a few pages that contained any reprehensible matter, and yet for those few pages I was abused and torn to pieces. “You put me in mind,” said an honest fellow in the company, “of an acquaintance of mine, a notary public, who having been condemned to be hanged for forgery, lamented the hardness of his case; that after having written many thousand inoffensive sheets he should be hanged for one line.”’ Memoirs of Charlemont , ed. 1812, i. 232.

Though Hume wrote his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion at least as early as the year 1751 (Burton's Hume , i. 328), he had not courage to publish them in the remaining quarter of a century that he lived. To the full violence of the attack made by Johnson on Bolingbroke—about its justice I say nothing—he was himself exposed. Johnson would not have hesitated to say of him:—'sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.’ Boswell's Johnson , i. 268. Hume withdrew also from publication at the last moment his Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul , ( ante , p. 232, n. 8).

In 1762 he wrote to Millar:—‘I give you full authority to contradict the report that I am writing or intend to write an ecclesiastical history; I have no such intention; and I believe never shall. I am beginning to love peace very much, and resolve to be more cautious than formerly in creating myself enemies.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 130. In an undated letter, believed to be written to Dr. Trail, speaking of his philosophical writings he says:—‘I wish I had always confined myself to the more easy parts of erudition.’ M. S. R. S. E. Yet when Lord Charlemont asked him ‘whether he thought that, if his opinions were universally to take place, mankind would not be rendered more unhappy than they now were; and whether he did not suppose that the curb of religion was necessary to human nature; “The objections,” answered he, “are not without weight; but error never can produce good, and truth ought to take place of all considerations.”’ Memoirs of Charlemont , i. 232.

Landor thus introduces him in his Dialogue between Alfieri and Metastasio :—

’ Metastasio. “Hume was thought a free-thinker: was he one?”

‘ Alfieri. “Quite the contrary. A narrow ribbon tied him, neck and heels, to the hinder quarters of a broken throne. If you mean religion, I believe he was addicted to no formulary. His life was indolently and innocently Epicurean.”’ Landor's Works , ed. 1876, v. 132. See ante , p. 217, n. 3, for his cowardly advice to a young clergyman.

Note 3. In his Autobiography he says:—‘Though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I knew that I could have but few years to enjoy it.’ He speaks of his ‘love of literary fame’ as his ‘ruling-passion.’

Note 4. Sir James Mackintosh, writing in the year 1811, says:—‘Perhaps the name of no man of letters in Great Britain, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was better known throughout Europe than that of Mr. Hume.’ Speaking of his philosophical works Mackintosh continues:—‘They may be regarded as the cause, either directly or indirectly, of almost all the metaphysical writings in Europe for seventy years; during the whole of that period Mr. Hume filled the schools of Europe with his disciples or his antagonists.’ Life of Mackintosh , ii. 168.

Note 5. Hume at first wrote:—‘It is probable that my Prepossessions lead me into this way of thinking.’

Note 6. The ten volumes are the eight of his History and the two of his Essays.

Note 7. Gibbon had sent Hume ‘the agreeable present’ of the first volume of his Decline and Fall. Gibbon's Misc. Works , i. 224.

Note 8. See ante , p. 94, n. 8.

Note 9. See post , p. 358.

Note 10. Hume had written to Adam Smith on May 3:—‘You will find among my papers a very inoffensive paper called “my own Life,” which I composed a few days before I left Edinburgh; when I thought, as did all my friends, that my life was despaired of. There can be no objection that the small piece should be sent to Messrs. Strahan and Cadell, and the proprietors of my other works, to be prefixed to any future edition of them.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 493.

Note 11. ‘“Believe me, Demea,” replied Cleanthes, “your friend Philo from the beginning has been amusing himself at both our expense; and it must be confessed that the injudicious reasoning of our vulgar theology has given him but too just a handle of ridicule. The total infirmity of human reason, the absolute incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature, the great and universal misery, and still greater wickedness of men; these are strange topics, surely, to be so fondly cherished by orthodox divines and doctors. In ages of stupidity and ignorance, indeed, these principles may safely be espoused; and perhaps no views of things are more proper to promote superstition than such as encourage the blind amazement, the diffidence, and the melancholy of mankind.” ... “I must confess,” replied Philo, “that I am less cautious on the subject of Natural Religion than on any other; both because I know that I can never on that head corrupt the principles of any man of common sense; and because no one, I am confident, in whose eyes I appear a man of common sense, will ever mistake my intentions. You, in particular, Cleanthes, with whom I live in unreserved intimacy; you are sensible that notwithstanding the freedom of my conversation, and my love of singular arguments, no one has a deeper sense of religion impressed on his mind, or pays more profound adoration to the Divine Being, as he discovers himself to reason, in the inexplicable contrivance and artifice of nature. A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker; and no man can be so hardened in absurd systems as at all times to reject it.”’ Hume's Philosophical Works , ed. 1854, ii. 520, 522.

Note 12. Millar, it should seem, had had no fear of publishing sceptical works. Hume writing to him on May 20, 1757, said:—‘When Bailie Hamilton [the Edinburgh bookseller] was in London, he wrote me that the stop in the sale of my History proceeded from some strokes of irreligion, which had raised the cry of the clergy against me. This gave me occasion to remark to you that the Bailie's complaint must have proceeded from his own misconduct; that the cause he assigned could never have produced that effect; that it was rather likely to increase the sale according to all past experience; that you had offered (as I heard) a large sum for Bolingbroke's Works , trusting to this consequence.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 24. It is stated in Knight's Cyclo. of Biog. iv. 69, that ‘Mallet refused the bookseller's offer of £3000 for Bolingbroke's Works , and then published them on his own account.’ According to Nichols ‘they were published with success very inadequate to our Editor's expectation.’ Lit. Anec. ii. 370.

Note 13. Blackstone, only seven years earlier, had said:—‘All affronts to Christianity, or endeavours to depreciate its efficacy, are highly deserving of human punishment.... About the close of the last century, the civil liberties to which we were then restored being used as a cloak of maliciousness, and the most horrid doctrines subversive of all religion being publicly avowed both in discourse and writings, it was found necessary again for the civil power to interpose, by not admitting those miscreants to the privileges of society who maintained such principles as destroyed all moral obligation. To this end it was enacted by statute 9 & 10 William III. c. 32, that if any person educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of divine authority, he shall upon the first offence be rendered incapable to hold any office or place of trust; and for the second, be rendered incapable of bringing any action, being guardian, executor, legatee, or purchaser of lands, and shall suffer three years’ imprisonment without bail.’ Blackstone's Commentaries , 1st ed. iv. 44. Under the penalties of this bad Act fell those who denied any of the persons of the Trinity to be God. In 1813 an Act was passed to relieve Unitarians from the operations of this statute. Penny Cyclo. ed. 1835, iv. 508.

On Sept. 30, 1773, Boswell records:—‘I asked Dr. Johnson if it was not strange that government should permit so many infidel writings to pass without censure. Johnson. “Sir, it is mighty foolish. It is for want of knowing their own power. The present family on the throne came to the crown against the will of nine-tenths of the people. Whether those nine-tenths were right or wrong, it is not our business now to inquire. But such being the situation of the Royal Family, they were glad to encourage all who would be their friends. Now you know every bad man is a Whig; every man who has loose notions. The Church was all against this family. They were, as I say, glad to encourage any friends; and therefore since their accession there is no instance of any man being kept back on account of his bad principles; and hence this inundation of impiety.” I observed that Mr. Hume, some of whose writings were very unfavourable to religion, was however a Tory. Johnson. “Sir, Hume is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not upon a principle of duty; for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist.”’ Boswell's Johnson , v. 271. ‘Hobbes's politics,’ wrote Hume, ‘are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage licentiousness. Though an enemy to religion, he partakes nothing of the spirit of scepticism; but is as positive and dogmatical as if human reason, and his reason in particular, could attain a thorough conviction in these subjects.’ Hist. of England , ed. 1802, vii. 346.

Note 14. Hume, in his will, dated Jan. 4, 1776, after leaving to Adam Smith full power over all his papers except the Dialogues , which he desired him to publish, continues:—‘Though I can trust to that intimate and sincere friendship, which has ever subsisted between us, for his faithful execution of this part of my will, yet, as a small recompense of his pains in correcting and publishing this work, I leave him two hundred pounds, to be paid immediately after the publication of it.’ Hume's Philosophical Works , ed. 1854, i. xxxi.

On May 3 of this year, in what he called ‘an ostensible letter’ which Smith could produce as his justification for whatever course he might take, he wrote to him:—‘After reflecting more maturely on that article of my will by which I left you the disposal of all my papers, with a request that you should publish my Dialogues concerning Natural Religion , I have become sensible that both on account of the nature of the work and of your situation 1 it may be improper to hurry on that publication. I therefore take the present opportunity of qualifying that friendly request. I am content to leave it entirely to your discretion, at what time you will publish that piece, or whether you will publish it at all.’ Later on, seeing Smith's unwillingness to publish the work, he added a codicil to his will dated Aug. 7, in which he says:—‘In my later will and disposition I made some destinations with regard to my manuscripts: All these I now retract, and leave my manuscripts to the care of Mr. William Strahan, of London, Member of Parliament, trusting to the friendship that has long subsisted between us for his careful and faithful execution of my intentions. I desire that my Dialogues concerning Natural Religion may be printed and published any time within two years after my death.’ In ‘a new paragraph appended’ to the codicil he says:—‘I do ordain that if my Dialogues , from whatever cause, be not published within two years and a-half after my death, as also the account of my life, the property shall return to my nephew, David, whose duty in publishing them, as the last request of his uncle, must be approved of by all the world.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 491–4.

As Adam Smith had been relieved from the trust of publication, he steadily refused to accept payment of the legacy. It was in vain that Hume's brother, ‘the sole executor and universal legatee,’ ‘urged such pleas as this, “My brother, knowing your liberal way of thinking, laid on you something as an equivalent, not imagining you would refuse a small gratuity from the funds it was to come from, as a testimony of his friendship.”’ Ib. p. 490. There can be no question that had Adam Smith set the wishes of his dead friend before his own delicate sense of honour, he would have accepted the legacy. In the will the bequest follows two of the same amount to Dr. Adam Ferguson and D‘Alembert. To neither of these friends, I feel sure, was he so strongly attached as to the author of the Wealth of Nations.

Adam Smith three years earlier had made Hume his literary executor. He wrote to him on April 16, 1773:—‘I have left the care of all my literary papers to you.’ M. S. R. S. E.

Adam Smith was in hopes of receiving some appointment under Government.

Note 15. Hume in his unostensible letter to Adam Smith, of the same date as his ostensible one, said:—‘I think your scruples groundless. Was Mallet anywise hurt by his publication of Lord Bolingbroke? He received an office afterwards from the present King and Lord Bute, the most prudish men in the world; and he always justified himself by his sacred regard to the will of a dead friend.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 491. On Feb. 8, 1763, Mallet was appointed Keeper of the Book of Entries for Ships in the Port of London. Gent. Mag. 1763, p. 98. He was left moreover in the enjoyment of ‘a considerable pension’ which had been bestowed on him in the previous reign, for the vilest of services. ‘He was employed to turn the public vengeance upon Byng, and wrote a letter of accusation under the character of a Plain Man. The paper was with great industry circulated and dispersed.’ Johnson's Works , viii. 467. Adam Smith, if, as is likely, he had heard of Johnson's stinging sarcasm against Mallet, by which the name of that ‘beggarly Scot’ chiefly lives, might well have questioned Hume's assertion that the editor of Bolingbroke's Works had suffered nothing by their publication.

Note 16. See ante , p. 279, n. 5.

Note 1. ‘Sensibly obliged’ is one of Hume's Gallicisms. Sensibly even in the sense of judiciously or reasonably is given by Johnson in his Dictionary as ‘low language.’

Note 2. Hume must have found reason to substitute for this codicil that of August 7 ( post , p. 345).

Note 3. In his will he showed his anxiety, not only for the publication of the Dialogues , but also for the general suppression of his other manuscripts. In this he was unlike Johnson, who, when he was asked by Boswell ‘whether it would be improper to publish his letters after his death,’ replied, ‘Nay, Sir, when I am dead, you may do as you will.’ Boswell's Johnson , ii. 60.

Note 4. On June 15 he wrote to Mr. Crawford:—‘The true cause of my distemper is now discovered. It lies in my liver, not in my bowels. You ask me how I know thus; I answer, John Hunter, the greatest anatomist in Europe, felt it with his fingers, and I myself can now feel it. The devil's in it if this do not convince you. Even St. Thomas, the infidel apostle, desired no better authority than the testimony of his fingers.... They tell me that motion and exercise are my best remedies, and here I believe them, and shall put the recipe in practice. The same remedy wou’d serve you. Will you meet me positively, and as a man of honour, this day month, the 15th July at Coventry, the most central town in England, and let us wander during the autumn throughout every corner of that kingdom and of the principality of Wales?’ Morrison Autographs , ii. 319.

Note 5. On his way back he sent the following note, written in his own hand and dated Doncaster, June 27:—‘Mr. John Hume, alias Home, alias The Home, alias the late Lord Conservator, alias the late minister of the Gospel at Athelstaneford, has calculated matters so as to arrive infallibly with his friend in St. David's Street on Wednesday evening. He has asked several of Dr. Blair's friends to dine with him there on Thursday, being the 4th of July, and begs the favour of the Doctor to make one of the number.’ Home's Works, , i. 161. Home had held the office of Conservator of Scots Privileges at Campvere. ‘He represented the Dutch ecclesiastical establishment there in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, to which that establishment had long had the privilege of sending a member.’ Ib. pp. 52, 59, 60.

On the day on which the old Epicurean gathered his old friends once more, and perhaps for the last time, round his friendly board in Edinburgh, far away at Philadelphia, on the other side of the broad Atlantic, the curtain had risen on one of the noblest scenes in the great drama of the world. For it was on this very fourth of July that the long-suffering and greatly wronged Colonies put forth their Declaration of Independence:—‘We, the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States. ... And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.’ Ann. Reg. 1776, i. 264. The news of this great deed must have reached Hume five or six days before his death. It is reported in the London Chronicle of Aug. 17. Upon him it would have come with no surprise. The London politicians had not his foresight. General Conway had written to him so late as June 16:—‘I think by the late Quebec news it look's [ sic ] as if your friends, the Americans, did not think their cause worth fighting for; if so, we shall at last have peace on easy terms; and they must take the consequences.’ M. S. R. S. E.

Note 1. On leaves 89-90, 147-8, 251-4 in the edition of 1773, there are long passages which are not found in the edition of 1778. The first is about the meeting of the clergy at St. Andrews; the second, about Philip IV of Spain and the Earl of Bristol; and the third about Charles the First's message to the House of Commons as delivered by Secretary Coke.

Note 2. In the Council held at Ferrara and Florence in 1438, fifteen years before the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, when the Greek Church sought union with the Latin in the hope of receiving assistance against the common enemy of the faith, ‘the single or double procession of the Holy Ghost’ was one of the four questions which for nine months was agitated between the two Churches. ‘On the substance of the doctrine the controversy was equal and endless; reason is confounded by the procession of a deity; the gospel which lay on the altar was silent.... The danger and relief of Constantinople might excuse some prudent and pious dissimulation; and it was insinuated that the obstinate heretics who should resist the consent of the East and West would be abandoned in a hostile land to the revenge or justice of the Roman pontiff.... It was agreed (I must entreat the attention of the reader) that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, as from one principle and one substance, that he proceeds by the Son, being of the same nature and substance, and that he proceeds from the Father and the Son by one spiration and production. It is less difficult to understand the articles of the preliminary treaty; that the Pope should defray all the expenses of the Greeks in their return home; that he should annually maintain two gallies and three hundred soldiers for the defence of Constantinople,’ etc. Gibbon's Decline and Fall , ed. 1807, xii. 88-92. Voltaire, describing the capture of the city, says:—‘On s‘occupait toujours de controverses, et les Turcs étaient aux portes.’ Œuvres de Voltaire , xiv. 408.

Note 3. Strahan replied on Aug. 1:—‘This will be a very correct edition, and I will take care it shall be printed accurately and neatly; and what is very encouraging, your History sells better of late years than before; for the late edition will be gone some time before this can be finished. In short, I see clearly, your reputation is gradually rising in the public esteem.—A flattering circumstance this, even in the decline of life; and when by the unalterable course of nature, nothing will soon be left of us but a Name. —By the bye, does not this almost universal solicitude to live after we close our eyes to this present scene, mean something 1 ?—I hope, I almost believe it does. Else why are we on a variety of occasions, so much interested in what is to pass after our deaths? And do we not, in most of our labours, regard posterity, and look forward to times long posterior to our existence here? You yourself are a living evidence of the truth of what I am now saying.

‘I sincerely congratulate you on your retaining your spirits, which people seldom do in the midst of so much pain as you have lately suffered... There is yet little news of importance from’ other side the Atlantic; but the period cannot be very distant when the fate of America, or rather our fate with regard to America must be determined.—I wish, and still hope and expect this foolish quarrel may end happily.’ M.S.R.S.E.

• ‘It must be so—Plato, thou reason'st well!—
• Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
• This longing after immortality?
• Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
• Of falling into nought? why shrinks the soul
• Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
• ’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
• ’Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,
• And intimates eternity to man.’

Gibbon in his Autobiography , speaking of an author's regard for ‘the fair testimonies of private and public esteem,’ says:—‘Even his moral sympathy may be gratified by the idea that one day his mind will be familiar to the grandchildren of those who are yet unborn.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works , i. 273.

Note 1. See Hume's Philosophical Works , ed. 1854, iv. 364.

Note 2. See ib. p. 237.

Note 3. The agreement most likely is about the price to be paid for Robertson's History of America , which was published the following year.

Note 1. ‘Upon the whole then it seems undeniable that there is such a sentiment in human nature as benevolence; that nothing can bestow more merit on any human creature than the possession of it in an eminent degree; and that a part, at least, of its merit arises from its tendency to promote the interests of our species, and bestow happiness on human society.’ Essays and Treatises , ed. 1770, iv. 30. The correction was made. See Philosophical Works , ed. 1854, iv. 243.

Note 2. Writing to his brother on Aug. 6, Hume said:—’dr. Black says I shall not die of a dropsy, as I imagined, but of inanition and weakness. He cannot however fix with any probability the time, otherwise he would frankly tell me.... In spite of Dr. Black's caution, I venture to foretel that I shall be yours cordially and sincerely till the month of October next.’ Home's Works , i. 65. Dr. Joseph Black, the eminent chemist, was Professor of Medicine and Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. ‘Adam Smith used to say that “no man had less nonsense in his head than Dr. Black.”’ Dict. of Nat. Biog. v. III. By Black, Smith was attended in his last illness. Stewart's Life of Adam Smith , p. 118. Boswell, writing to Temple on June 19, 1775, says:—‘I have not begun to read, but my resolution is lively, and I trust I shall have it in my power soon to give you an account of my studies: all that I can say for myself at present is, that I attend, along with John Swinton and others, a course of lectures and experiments by Dr. Black, Professor of Chemistry,—a study which Dr. Johnson recommends much.’ Letters of Boswell , p. 206. Lord Cockburn describes Black as ‘a striking and beautiful person; tall, very thin, and cadaverously pale; his hair carefully powdered, though there was little of it except what was collected into a long thin queue; his eyes dark, clear, and large, like deep pools of pure water. He wore black speckless clothes, silk stockings and silver buckles. The general frame and air were feeble and slender. The wildest boy respected Black. No lad could be irreverent towards a man so pale, so gentle, so elegant, and so illustrious. So he glided like a spirit, through our rather mischievous sportiveness, unharmed. He died seated, with a bowl of milk on his knee, of which his ceasing to live did not spill a drop.’ Cockburn's Memorials of his Time , p. 50. See Quarterly Review , No. 71, p. 197, for an account of him by Sir Walter Scott. Scott says that he owed his life to him. ‘I was,’ he writes, ‘an uncommonly healthy child, but had nearly died in consequence of my first nurse being ill of a consumption, a circumstance which she chose to conceal, though to do so was murder to both herself and me. She went privately to consult Dr. Black, who put my father on his guard. The woman was dismissed, and I was consigned to a healthy peasant, who is still [in 1808] alive to boast of her laddie being what she calls a grand gentleman. ’ Lockhart's Scott , i. 19.

Note 3. On Aug. 20 Hume wrote to his old friend the Countess de Boufflers:—‘Though I am certainly within a few weeks, dear Madam, and perhaps within a few days of my own death, I could not forbear being struck with the death of the Prince of Conti, so great a loss in every particular. My reflection carried me immediately to your situation in this melancholy incident. What a difference to you in your whole plan of life! Pray write me some particulars; but in such terms that you need not care in case of decease into whose hands your letter may fall.

‘My distemper is a diarrhœa, or disorder in my bowels, which has been gradually undermining me these two years, but within these six months has been visibly hastening me to my end. I see death approach gradually, without any anxiety or regret. I salute you, with great affection and regard, for the last time.— David Hume. ’ Hume's Private Corres. , p. 285.

Adam Smith wrote to Hume on Aug. 22, 1776:—‘You have in a declining state of health, under an exhausting disease, for more than two years together, now looked at the approach, or what you at least believed to be the approach of Death with a steady cheerfulness such as very few men have been able to maintain for a few hours, though otherwise in the most perfect health.’ He mentions in a letter of the same date a matter trifling in itself, but one which shows how the habit of ‘rigid frugality,’ by which Hume in his youth had ‘supplied his deficiency of fortune,’ clung to him to the end. ‘I have this moment,’ Smith writes, ‘received your Letter of the 15 inst. You had, in order to save me the sum of one penny sterling, sent it by the carrier instead of the Post; and (if you have not mistaken the date) it has lain at his quarters these eight days, and was, I presume, very likely to lie there for ever.’ Hume added a postscript to his answer of August 23, written in his nephew's hand:— ‘It was a strange blunder to send your Letter by the carrier.’ M. S. R. S. E. See post , p. 364, n. 4, for this answer.

Note 4. Hume's friends, I am persuaded, would have maintained that there was something not unsuitable to his disposition, in his long train of corrections thus ending with ‘the sentiment of benevolence.’

There were among them however those to whom his Philosophical Pieces were objects of suspicion and dislike. When, shortly before he died, he took leave of the widow of his old friend, Baron Mure, ‘and gave her as a parting present a complete copy of his History , she thanked him, and added in her native dialect, which both she and the historian spoke in great purity, “O David, that's a book you may weel be proud o‘; but before ye dee, ye should burn a’ your wee bookies.” To which, raising himself on his couch, he replied with some vehemence, half offended, half in joke, “What for should I burn a’ my wee bookies?” But feeling too weak for further discussion, he shook her hand and bade her farewell.’ Caldwell Papers , i. 40.

Note 1. In the Gentleman's Magazine for Sept. 1776 (p. 435) Hume's death has the briefest notice possible:—‘Aug. 25, David Hume, Esq.; Edinburgh.’

Note 2. The two Essays were no doubt those On Suicide and The Immortality of the Soul , which Hume had printed but suppressed in 1755 ( ante , pp. 230, 233). Strahan, post , p. 355, n. 1, describes them as ‘the two Essays that were formerly printed but not published.’ They had been ‘sealed up’ and directed by Hume to Strahan ( post , p. 363). ‘The one in my brother's hand below the first cover’ was most likely a duplicate of the Essay on the Origin of Government , of which Strahan had already received a copy ( ante , p. 331).

Note 3. See ante , p. 326, n. 11.

Note 4. See ante , end of Autobiography.

Note 5. Dr. Burton thus writes of John Home:—‘There was apparently but one point in which the two brothers differed; and it was a subject on which Hume seems to have been at war with all his clan. The Laird of Ninewells, notwithstanding all the lustre that had now gathered round the name of Hume , would not adopt it in place of that of Home , which his fathers had borne. He was a simple, single-hearted man, moderate in all his views and wishes, and neither ambitious of distinction nor of wealth. He passed his life as a retired country gentleman; and while Europe was full of his brother's name, he was so averse to notoriety, that he is known to have objected to the domestic events of births, marriages, and deaths in his family obtaining the usual publicity through the newspapers.’ Dr. Burton adds in a foot-note:—‘An early acquaintance with this characteristic might have saved me some fruitless investigations.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 398.

On his brother's marriage in 1751, Hume wrote to one of their female-relations:—‘Our friend at last plucked up a resolution, and has ventured on that dangerous encounter. He went off on Monday morning; and this is the first action of his life wherein he has engaged himself, without being able to compute exactly the consequences. But what arithmetic will serve to fix the proportion between good and bad wives, and rate the different classes of each? Sir Isaac Newton himself, who could measure the courses of the planets, and weigh the earth as in a pair of scales,—even he had not algebra enough to reduce that amiable part of our species to a just equation; and they are the only heavenly bodies whose orbits are as yet uncertain.’ Home's Works , i. 104.

The Laird of Ninewells seems to have clung to the Scotch spelling of his correspondent's name as much as he did to Home. He addresses this letter to ‘William Strachan, Esq., Member of Parliament, att the Strand, London.’

Note 1. Hume, writing to Adam Smith on April 12, 1759, says:—‘Charles Townsend, who passes for the cleverest fellow in England, is so taken with the performance [Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments ], that he said to Oswald he would put the Duke of Buccleugh under the author's care, and would make it worth his while to accept of that charge.’ Stewart's Life of Adam Smith , ed. 1811, p. 58. In the beginning of 1764 Adam Smith accepted the charge of accompanying the young nobleman on his travels. Ib. p. 63. He returned in October 1766. Ib. p. 73. He was now staying at the Duke's house at Dalkeith.

.Note 2. The draft of this letter so far as the end of the last paragraph but one is among the Hume papers belonging to the Royal Society. The letter itself, which is in the possession of Mr. W. C. Ford of Washington, United States, was published, with some other of Adam Smith's letters, in the New York Evening Post of April 30, 1887. I have to thank my friend Professor Thorold Rogers for drawing my attention to this publication. The few words in which the letter as printed differs from the draft I have enclosed in brackets.

Strahan had written to John Home from Wincklo, near Ringwood, on Sept. 9, 1776, when he had not seen the manuscript:—‘You will see [in my letters to your brother] that I there promise to fulfil his intentions most exactly; a promise I shall most assuredly perform.’ On Sept. 16 he replied to Adam Smith from Southampton:— ‘All that I can say just now is that I shall do nothing precipitately... I will give the Dialogues a very attentive perusal before I consult anybody. I own I did not expect to hear they were so very exceptionable, as in one of his late letters to me he tells me there is nothing in them worse than what I have already published , or words to that effect... You see by his leaving the Dialogues ultimately to his nephew, in case of any accident to me, his extreme solicitude that they should not be suppressed.’ M. S. R. S. E.

Note 1. Adam Smith wrote to Strahan on Nov. 13:—‘The enclosed is the small addition which I propose to make to the account which our late invaluable friend left of his own life.’ New York Evening Post , April 30, 1887.

Note 2. In a note on Boswell's Life of Johnson , iii. 103, I have shown that Burke and Goldsmith, as well as Boswell's correspondent Sir Alexander Dick, use mutual friend instead of common friend.

Note 1. Hume writing to Millar so early as July 21, 1757, said:— ‘I must beg the Favor of you, that you would burn all my Letters, which do not treat of Business; that is, I may say all of them.... I own to you, that it would be very disagreeable to me, if by any accident these Letters should fall into idle People's hands, and be honoured with a publication.’ M. S. R. S. E.

Note 2. ‘To my friend Dr. Adam Smith, late Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, I leave all my manuscripts without exception, desiring him to publish my Dialogues on Natural Religion , which are comprehended in this present bequest; but to publish no other papers which he suspects not to have been written within these five years, but to destroy them all at his leisure.’ Hume's Philosophical Works , ed. 1854, i. xxxi. It is clear that this desire that his papers should be destroyed did not apply to his letters; for there was no reason why he should have exempted from destruction those written in the last five years. In the codicil to his will, dated Aug. 7, he says:—‘I desire that my brother may suppress all my other manuscripts’ except the Dialogues and the two Essays (ante , p. 346, n. 2). There can be no doubt, however, that he would not have sanctioned the publication of his letters.

Note 3. ‘One of the passages of Pope's life which seems to deserve some inquiry was a publication of letters between him and many of his friends, which falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious bookseller of no good fame, were by him printed and sold.’ Johnson's Works , viii. 281.

Note 4. It is not impossible that some of his letters may have contained loose writing. In one to Lord Advocate Dundas, dated Nov. 20, 1754, referring to the expulsion from the Advocates’ Library of three French works for their indecency ( ante, Autobiography ), he says:—‘By the bye, Bussi Rabutin contains no bawdy at all, though if it did, I see not that it would be a whit the worse. For I know not a more agreeable subject both for books and conversation, if executed with decency and ingenuity. I can presume, without intending the least offence, that as the glass circulates at your Lordship's table, this topic of conversation will sometimes steal in, provided always there be no ministers present. And even some of these reverend gentlemen I have seen not to dislike the subject.’ Arniston Memoirs , ed. 1887, p. 158.

Note 5. ‘of swift's general habits of thinking, if his letters can be supposed to afford any evidence, he was not a man to be either loved or envied. He seems to have wasted life in discontent, by the rage of neglected pride, and the languishment of unsatisfied desire. He is querulous and fastidious, arrogant and malignant; he scarcely speaks of himself but with indignant lamentations, or of others but with insolent superiority when he is gay, and with angry contempt when he is gloomy. From the letters that pass between him and Pope it might be inferred that they, with Arbuthnot and Gay, had engrossed all the understanding and virtue of mankind; that their merits filled the world; or that there was no hope of more. They show the age involved in darkness, and shade the picture with sullen emulation.’ Johnson's Works , viii. 225. Cowper writing on April 20, 1777, says:—‘I once thought Swift's letters the best that could be written; but I like Gray's better. His humour, or his wit, or whatever it is to be called, is never ill-natured or offensive, and yet, I think, equally poignant with the Dean's.’ Cowper's Works , xv. 38.

Note 6. Adam Smith was born at Kirkaldy on June 5, 1723. After his return from France in 1766 he settled there, living in great retirement for nearly ten years. ‘At length (in the beginning of 1776) he accounted to the world for his long retreat, by the publication of his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. ’ Dugald Stewart's Life of Adam Smith , ed. 1811, i. 75. Writing to Hume from Kirkaldy on June 7, 1767, he says:—‘My Business here is Study, in which I have been very deeply engaged for about a Month past. My Amusements are long solitary walks by the sea-side. You may judge how I spend my time. I feel myself, however, extremely happy, comfortable, and contented. I never was perhaps more so in my life.’ M. S. R. S. E. Hume, on his return to Edinburgh in 1769, wrote to him from his house in James's Court:—‘I am glad to have come within sight of you, and to have a view of Kirkaldy from my windows.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 429.

In 1778 Smith was appointed a Commissioner of Customs, and removed to Edinburgh, where he spent the last twelve years of his life. Stewart's Life , p. 105.

Thirty-eight years after he had left the quiet little town, another great Scotchman, Thomas Carlyle, came to pass two years there as schoolmaster. His description enables us to picture to ourselves the scene of Adam Smith's sea-side walks. ‘The beach of Kirkcaldy in summer twilights, a mile of the smoothest sand, with one long wave coming on gently, steadily, and breaking in gradual explosion into harmless melodious white, at your hand all the way; the break of it rushing along like a mane of foam, beautifully sounding and advancing, ran from south to north, from the West Burn to Kirkcaldy harbour, through the whole mile's distance. This was a favourite scene, beautiful to me still, in the far away.’ Reminiscences by T. Carlyle , i. 104. Little perhaps of this beauty caught the eye of the absent-minded philosopher; who ‘when walking in the street had a manner of talking and laughing to himself, which often excited the surprise of the passengers. He used himself to mention the ejaculation of an old market-woman, “Hegh, Sirs!” shaking her head as she uttered it; to which her companion answered, having echoed the compassionate sigh, “and he is well put on, too!” expressing their surprise that a decided lunatic, who from his dress appeared to be a gentleman, should be permitted to walk abroad.’ Quarterly Review , No. 71, p. 200. In this Review , which is by Scott, some other curious stories are told of the same nature.

Note 1. The whole of the above paragraph is scored through. I do not know whether this letter was sent.

Note 1. Strahan replied on Feb. 13:—‘As for Mr. Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion , I am not yet determined whether I shall publish them or not. I have all possible regard to the will of the deceased: But as that can be as well fulfilled by you as by me, and as the publication will probably make some noise in the world, and its tendency be considered in different lights by different men, I am inclined to think it had better be made by you. From you some will conclude it comes with propriety as done in obedience to the last request of your Uncle ; as he himself expresses it; from me it might be suspected to proceed from motives of interest. But in this matter I hope you will do me the justice to believe I put interest wholly out of the question. However, you shall not, at any rate, be kept long in suspense, as you shall soon have my final resolution. The two Essays that were formerly printed, but not published, I think with all your Uncle's other friends whom I know, should never appear again in print.’ M. S. R. S. E. For these two Essays, see ante , p. 230, and p. 346, n. 2.

Note 2. ‘David Hume [the nephew of the historian] was born on 27th February, 1757, and died on 27th July, 1838. He was successively sheriff of the counties of Berwick and Linlithgow. He was professor of Scots law in the University of Edinburgh, and a principal Clerk of Session. He resigned these offices on his being appointed a Baron of the Scottish Exchequer. His works are of great authority in the practical departments of the law. While he taught in the University, his students zealously collected notes of his lectures; and as he refused to permit any version of them to be published, the well-preserved collections of these notes have been considered valuable treasuries of legal wisdom. In 1790 he published Commentaries on the law of Scotland respecting trials for crimes ; and in 1797 Commentaries on the law of Scotland respecting the description and punishment of crimes. ... Few literary reputations have been more unlike each other than those of the two David Humes, uncle and nephew. The former hated legal details and the jargon of technical phraseology; to the latter they were the breath of his literary life.... On one point only did they agree—their political opinions.... Baron Hume was a supporter of all those parts of the criminal law of Scotland,—in his day not a few,—which put the subject at the mercy of the Crown and of the Judges.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 401. ‘I remember,’ wrote Sir Walter Scott in 1826, ‘the late Lord Melville defending, in a manner that defied refutation, the Scots law against sedition, and I have lived to see these repealed by what our friend Baron Hume calls “a bill for the better encouragement of sedition and treason.” It will last my day probably; at least I shall be too old to be shot, and have only the honourable chance of being hanged for incivisme. ’ Lockhart's Life of Scott , viii. 297. For an instance of the cruel severity of the Scotch law of sedition, see Boswell's Johnson , iv. 125, n. 2. Lord Cockburn in his Memorials , p. 163, while he admits the usefulness of Hume's Commentaries ‘for ordinary practice,’ denies that ‘it is a great work of original thought... The proceedings of the savage old Scotch Privy Council are held up by him as judicial precedents, even in political cases.’ As an enlightened exposition of law ‘there is no book that has worse stood the test of time. There is scarcely one of his favourite points that the legislature, with the cordial assent of the public and of lawyers, has not put down.’ In the Speculative Society, about the year 1799, ‘Hume tried to bear down the younger members, who led by Brougham, Jeffrey, Horner,...were as defying in their Whiggism as their opponents in their Toryism... Being supposed to have applied some offensive imputation to the junior party, it was arranged (by lot, I believe) that Jeffrey should require an explanation. This was given; but still they were bound over to keep the peace.’ Ib. p. 74.

Scott when a student at Edinburgh attended Hume's classes, and ‘copied over his lectures twice with his own hand.’ He could ‘never sufficiently admire,’ he says, ‘the penetration and clearness of conception’ which they exhibited. He speaks of Hume ‘as an architect to the law of Scotland.’ The second copy of the lectures, ‘being fairly finished and bound into volumes was presented by Scott to his father. The old gentleman was highly gratified with this performance, not only as a satisfactory proof of his son's assiduous attention to the law professor, but inasmuch as the lectures afforded himself “very pleasant reading for leisure hours.” [He was a Writer to the Signet].’ Lockhart's Life of Scott , i. 81, 249.

Hume ten days before his death wrote to his nephew:—‘I doubt not but my name would have procured you friends and credit in the course of your life, especially if my brother had allowed you to carry it, for who will know it in the present disguise? But as he is totally obstinate on this head, I believe we had better let him alone. I have frequently told him, that it is lucky for him he sees few things in a wrong light, for where he does he is totally incurable.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 509. The nephew, as the signature to his letter shows, unlike the Feildings, Earls of Denbigh, who were of the same family as Fielding the novelist, was not slow in throwing off the disguise, and in becoming known as a Hume instead of remaining insignificant as a Home. See ante , p. 9, n. 10.

Note 3. Professor John Millar, in whose house David Hume was living in his student days at Glasgow, was the author of some historical works. ‘Let me venture strongly to recommend to you the books of Professor Millar,’ wrote Mackintosh to Professor Smyth of Cambridge,—‘his excellent treatise On Ranks , and even his tedious and unequal work On the English Government , which contains at least an excellent half-volume of original matter.’ Mackintosh's Life , i. 412.

Dr. J. H. Burton gives an interesting but mutilated letter, written by Hume to his nephew on Dec. 8, 1775. He writes:—‘Mr. Millar complains only of one thing, which [is not the] usual complaint of tutors against their pupils; to wit, that he is afraid you [apply too] close, and may hurt your health by too assiduous study.... When I was [of your] age, I was inclined to give in to excesses of the same kind; and I remember [an anecdote] told me by a friend, the present Lord Pitfour. A man was riding with [great] violence, and running his horse quite out of wind. He stopt a moment to [ask when] he might reach a particular place. In two hours, replied the countryman, [if you] will go slower; in four if you be in such a hurry.’ Millar, it should seem, had been trying to give his pupil's mind something of a Whiggish cast, for Hume continues:—‘I cannot but agree with Mr. Millar, that the republican form of government is by far the best. The ancient republics were somewhat ferocious and torn by bloody factions; but they were still much preferable to the monarchies or [aristocracies] which seem to have been quite intolerable. Modern manners have corrected this abuse; and all the republics in Europe, without exception, are so well governed that one is at a loss to which we should give the preference. But what is this general subject of speculation to our purpose?’ After a passage which is greatly mutilated Hume continues:—‘[One] great advantage of a commonwealth over our mixed monarchy is, that it [would consid]erably abridge our liberty; which is growing to such an extreme as to be incom[patible wi]th all. Such fools are they who perpetually cry out for liberty; [and think to] augment it by shaking off the monarchy.’ Burton's Hume , ii. 481.

It was Professor Millar who was Sir Walter Scott's authority for the famous, but untrue story, of the ‘classical dialogue between the two great teachers of philosophy,’ Dr. Johnson and Adam Smith. Boswell's Johnson , v. 369, n. 5.

Note 1. Adam Smith had sent the account by post ( ante , p. 350).

Note 2. Strahan's letter to the dying philosopher is preserved among the Hume Papers at Edinburgh, and is printed in Burton's Hume , ii. 512. It is as follows:—

’ My dear Sir ,

’Last Friday I received your affectionate farewell, and therefore melancholy letter, which disabled me from sending an immediate answer to it, as I now do, in hopes this may yet find you, not much oppressed with pain, in the land of the living. I need not tell you, that your corrections are all duly attended to, as every particular shall be that you desire or order. Nor shall I now trouble you with a long letter.

Only permit me to ask you a question or two, to which I am prompted, you will believe me, not from a foolish or fruitless curiosity, but from an earnest desire to learn the sentiments of a man, who had spent a long life in philosophic inquiries, and who, upon the extreme verge of it, seems, even in that awful and critical period, to possess all the powers of his mind in their full vigour and in unabated tranquillity.

I am more particularly led to give you this trouble, from a passage in one of your late letters, wherein you say, It is an idle thing in us to be concerned about anything that shall happen after our death; yet this , you added, is natural to all men. Now I would eagerly ask, if it is natural to all men , to be interested in futurity, does not this strongly indicate that our existence will be protracted beyond this life?

Do you now believe, or suspect, that all the powers and faculties of your own mind, which you have cultivated with so much care and success, will cease and be extinguished with your vital breath?

Our soul, or immaterial part of us, some say, is able, when on the brink of dissolution, to take a glimpse of futurity; and for that reason I earnestly wish to have your last thoughts on this important subject.

I know you will kindly excuse this singular application; and believe that I wish you, living or dying, every happiness that our nature is capable of enjoying, either here or hereafter; being, with the most sincere esteem and affection, my dear sir, faithfully yours.

See ante , note at end of Autobiography for what Johnson said on Boswell's assertion that he ‘had reason to believe that the thought of annihilation gave Hume no pain.’ See also ante , p. 115 n. 1, for Boswell's regret for Hume's ‘unlucky principles.’

Note 1. Strahan wrote to John Home on March 3, to defend himself for making a separate publication of Hume's Life :—‘Your brother,’ he writes, ‘only desires it may be prefixed to the first edition of his Works printed after his death. So it shall.’ He points out that the purchasers of former editions ought to have the right of buying it separately. As regards the Letters which he had proposed to publish, he had consulted Adam Smith, ‘who judged this to be highly improper;’ and so he had instantly dropped all thoughts of it. ‘Dr. Smith,’ he says, ‘so far from objecting to the separate publication, has written a few lines by way of Preface to the Life. ’

He adds that he had declined to publish the Dialogues on Natural Religion ; but that he thought ‘they might be published with more propriety by Home's son, in obedience to the last request of his Uncle , as David Hume himself expressed it.’ He goes on to say:—‘The two Essays formerly printed, but at that time suppressed, I am clearly of opinion, and so are [sic] every one of your Brother's friends whom I know, should never more see the light. I hope you will concur in this sentiment, and think no more of them; for besides that the subjects of them are singularly unpopular, we do not think them equal to his other Works.’ M. S. R. S. E.

Note 1. See ante , p. 345.

Note 2. His uncles on the mother's side, for Hume had only one brother. His only sister died unmarried.

Note 3. The Dialogues were not published till 1779, so that the young man, it should seem, yielded to his father's advice. For the publication of the Essays see ante , p. 232, n. 8.

Note 4. This copy, thus hurriedly taken, is the one mentioned in the following letter:—

’ Edinburgh , 15 of Aug. 1776.

’ My dear Smith ,

’I have ordered a new Copy of my Dialogues to be made besides that which will be sent to Mr. Strahan, and to be kept by my Nephew. If you will permit me, I shall order a third Copy to be made, and consigned to your (sic). It will bind you to nothing, but will serve as a Security. On revising them (which I have not done these 15 Years) I find that nothing can be more cautiously and more artfully written. You had certainly forgotten them. Will you permit me to leave you the Property of the Copy, in case they should not be published in five years after my Decease? Be so good as to write me an answer soon. My State of Health does not permit me to wait Months for it.

It was this letter, for which the dying man required a speedy answer, that, to save Adam Smith ‘the sum of one penny sterling,’ he sent by the carrier ( ante , p. 344, n. 3).

Dr. Blair wrote to Strahan on Aug. 3, 1779:—‘As to D. Hume's Dialogues , I am surprised that though they have now been published for some time, they have made so little noise. They are exceedingly elegant. They bring together some of his most exceptionable reasonings, but the principles themselves were all in his former works.’ Rosebery MSS.

Note 5. See ante , p. 2, n. 2.

Note 6. Hume's Autobiography was published separately this year in a small duodecimo volume, with Adam Smith's Letter as a Supplement. It is mentioned in the Gent. Mag. for March.

Note 1. The Queen's House was Buckingham House, which had been bought by George III for Queen Charlotte. Horace Walpole wrote on May 25, 1762:—‘The King and Queen are settled for good and all at Buckingham House, and are stripping the other palaces to furnish it.’ Letters , iii. 508. It was there that Johnson had his interview with the King. Boswell's Johnson , ii. 33. That the King was there on the day on which Hutton says that he saw him is proved by one of his letters to Lord North, with its date curiously minute according to his custom:—‘Queen's House, October 31st, 1776, 2 min. pt. 5 p.m.’ George III's Corres. ii. 37. The old house, which has been pulled down for the new palace, ‘with its little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales,’ is described in Dodsley's London and its Environs , ii. 39, and the Gent. Mag. 1762, p. 221.

Note 2. The King and Queen.

Note 3. Letter.

Note 4. See ante , p. 112.

Note 5. See ante , p. 289. Hutton had misread the letter.

Note 6. See ante , p. 188, n. 11.

Note 7. Miss Burney in her Diary thus describes the Court life at Kew:—‘July 28, 1786. As there are no early prayers, the Queen rises later; and as there is no form or ceremony here of any sort, her dress is plain, and the hour for the second toilette extremely uncertain. The Royal Family are here always in so very retired a way, that they live as the simplest country gentlefolks.’ Mme. D‘Arblay's Diary , iii. 37. It was here that the King was tended in his attack of madness in 1788. Ib. iv. 334. It was in the Gardens that, one day walking with his medical attendants, he caught sight of Miss Burney, and, on her running away, gave her chase. When he came up to her, he kissed her on the cheek, and presently pulling a paper out of his pocket-book showed her the list of the state officers whom he intended to appoint. ‘I shall be much better served (he said); and when once I get away, I shall rule with a rod of iron.’ Ib. iv. 407.

Note 1. For letter marked A see ante , p. 112 (Letter xxxvi).

For letter marked B p. 143.

For letter marked C p. 287.

For letter marked D p. 319.

For letter marked E p. 328.

For letter marked F p. 337.

For letter marked G p. 339.

For letter marked I p. 359, n. 2.

For letter marked K p. 345.

For L, the character of the Princess Dowager, see ante , p. 237, n. 6.

That part of the Letter marked C which deals with the American War, with the omission of the attack on Pitt, is published in the London Chronicle of June 14, 1777. Strahan, no doubt, had had it inserted. ‘It may perhaps contribute,’ it is stated, ‘to open the eyes of the nation, which so many have conspired to blind.’

Note 2. Monday was November 4.

Note 3. At ‘21 min. pt. 4 p. m.’ of the day on which the letters were read the King wrote to Lord North:—‘Nothing can have been better planned, nor with more alacity executed, than the taking of the city of New York, and I trust the rebell army will soon be dispersed.’ George III's Corres. ii. 39. Hume's advice, ‘let us therefore lay aside all anger, shake hands, and part friends,’ moved him no more than Old John of Gaunt's dying words moved Richard.

Note 4. The Princes of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Note 5. It is pleasant to contrast with the letter of the simple Moravian one written by ‘the Great Commoner’ to the King, three weeks before he was made Earl of Chatham.

’ Sire ,

’Penetrated with the deepest sense of your Majesty's boundless goodness to me, and with a heart overflowing with duty and zeal for the honour and the happiness of the most gracious and benign Sovereign, I shall hasten to London as fast as I possibly can; wishing that I could change infirmity into wings of expectation, the sooner to be permitted to lay at your Majesty's feet the poor but sincere offering of the little services of

• ’Your Majesty's
• Most dutiful subject,
• and devoted servant,