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LETTER XXXVI.: Hume in Edinburgh: Tempests brewing in Public Affairs. - David Hume, Letters of David Hume to William Strahan [1756]Edition used:Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).
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LETTER XXXVI.Hume in Edinburgh: Tempests brewing in Public Affairs.DearSirI never enjoyed myself better, nor was in better spirits, than since I came down here1. . I live as I please, spend my time according to my fancy, keep a plentiful table for myself and my friends2. , amuse myself with reading and society, and find the generality of the people disposed to respect me more on account of my having been well receiv’d in greater and more renowned places3. : But tho’ all this makes my time slide away easily, it is impossible for me to forget that a man who is in his 59TH Year has not many more years to live4. , and that it is time for him, if he has common Sense, to have done with all Ambition. My Ambition was always moderate and confind entirely to Letters5. ; but it has been my Misfortune to write in the Language of the most stupid and factious Barbarians in the World6. ; and it is long since I have renounced all desire of their Approbation, which indeed coud no longer give me either pleasure or Vanity. As to my Notion of public Affairs, I think there are very dangerous Tempests brewing, and the Scene thickens every moment7. . The Government has, no doubt, great Resources, if they employ them with Prudence and Vigour and Unanimity. But have we any reason to think they will do so? The Parliament will certainly be [MS. torn.]∗∗∗ by the Populace every day next winter8. . If they bear it, they degrade ∗∗∗ and draw on ∗∗∗. If they punish, they will still more enrage the Faction, and give a Pretence for the Cry that Liberty is violated9. . Are we sure, that the popular Discontent may not reach the Army, who have a Pretence for Discontents of their own10. . The General in chief is a weak man, and fond of low popularity11. : It is true, you have a very honest Chancellor12. and a very courageous Chief Justice13. , who will be a great Ressource in difficult times. But is it certain that Lord Bute will abstain from tampering and trying some more of his pretty Experiments14. ? What if he take it in his head to open the Door to Pitt and his Myrmidons, who will, no doubt, chain the King for ever, and render him a mere Cypher15 . Our Government has become an absolute Chimera: So much Liberty is incompatible with human Society: And it will be happy, if we can escape from it, without falling into a military Government, such as Algiers or Tunis16 . The Matter will only be worse, if there be no shooting or hanging next Winter17 : This Frenzy of the people, so epidemical and so much without a Cause, admits only of one Remedy, which however is a dangerous one, and requires more vigour than has appeard in any minister of late18 . I have a very good Opinion of the Duke of Grafton but his Youth deprives him of Experience and still more of Authority19 . I dare [not ve]nture to play the Prophet, but think you are in great Danger. I see ∗ low: Have the People sense enough to see their Danger, and to withdraw from that precarious Security. If they coud see it in time, and catch the Alarm, it woud be a great Ressource to Government: But this is more than can reasonably be expected from them. You say I am of a disponding Character: On the contrary, I am of a very sanguine Disposition. Notwithstanding my Age, I hope to see a public Bankruptcy20. , the total Revolt of America21. , the Expulsion of the English from the East Indies22. , the Diminution of London to less than a half23. , and the Restoration of the Government to the King24. , Nobility, and Gentry of this Realm. To adorn the Scene, I hope also that some hundreds of Patriots25. will make their Exit at Tyburn, and improve English Eloquence by their dying Speeches26. . I think, indeed, that no body of common Sense coud at present take the Road of Faction and Popularity, who woud not upon occasion have joind Catiline's Conspiracy27. ; and I have no better opinion of the Gentleman you call my Friend28. . Pray have you seen Lord Stormont since he came home29. ? Did he enquire after you? I think, if you throw off the Errata as it is printed, it will do very well. It is not long for 8 Volumes30. ; and they are not all Errors of the Press. You mention nothing of the small Edition of my Essays, whence I conclude it is not going forward31. . I am Dear Sir Yours sincerely and beg the continuation of your Friendship, tho’ it shoud be our Lot not to pass much of our time together. I wish much to see you possessd of some Farms in this Country32. , where there is great Unanimity at present, and a Desire to support Government33. . D. H.
25 of Oct., 1769. [1.]Note 1. By Conway's resignation (Jan. 20, 1768), Hume lost his office. ‘I returned to Edinburgh in 1769,’ he writes in his Autobiography, ‘very opulent, for I possessed a revenue of £1000 a year, healthy, and though somewhat stricken in years, with the prospect of enjoying long my ease, and of seeing the increase of my reputation.’ He had stayed on in London till the summer of 1769. Writing on Dec. 23, 1768 to the Countess de Boufflers to apologise for not paying a visit to Paris, he said:—‘The truth is, I have, and ever had, a prodigious reluctance to change my place of abode.’ Private Corres. p. 263. On March 28, 1769, he wrote to Dr. Blair at Edinburgh:—‘I intend to visit you soon, and for good and all. Indeed I know not what detains me here, except that it is so much a matter of indifference where I live; and I am amused with looking on the scene, which really begins to be interesting.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 424. It was during this stay in London that he called on Boswell in Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly. ‘I am really the great man now,’ wrote Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple, on May 14, 1768. ‘I have had David Hume in the forenoon, and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon of the same day visiting me…. David Hume came on purpose the other day to tell me that the Duke of Bedford was very fond of my book, and had recommended it to the Duchess. David is really amiable; I always regret to him his unlucky principles, and he smiles at my faith; but I have a hope which he has not, or pretends not to have. So who has the best of it, my reverend friend?’ Letters of Boswell, p. 151. On Aug. 20, 1769, Hume wrote to Adam Smith from Edinburgh:—‘ I am glad to have come within sight of you, and to have a view of Kirkaldy from my windows; but as I wish also to be within speaking terms of you, I wish we could concert measures for that purpose. I am mortally sick at sea, and regard with horror and a kind of hydrophobia the great gulf [The Firth of Forth] that lies between us.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 429. In Humphry Clinker (letter of Aug. 8), Matthew Bramble's sufferings are described in his sail across this ‘great gulf’ of seven miles. ‘I am much of the honest Highlander's mind (said he) after he had made such a passage as this: his friend told him he was much indebted to Providence. “Certainly (said Donald), but by my saul, mon, I'se ne‘er trouble Providence again, so long as the brig of Stirling stands.”’ [2.]Note 2. On Oct. 16, 1769, nine days earlier than the date of the letter in the text, Hume had written to Sir Gilbert Elliot:—‘I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old house in James's Court, which is very cheerful, and even elegant, but too small to display my great talents for cookery, the science to which I intend to addict the remaining years of my life! I have just now lying on the table before me a receipt for making soupe à la reine, copied with my own hand; for beef and cabbage (a charming dish), and old mutton and old claret nobody excels me. I make also sheep-head broth in a manner that Mr. Keith speaks of it for eight days after; and the Duc de Nivernois1 would bind himself apprentice to my lass2 to learn it.’ Stewart's Robertson, p. 361. Gibbon wrote to Holroyd at Edinburgh on Aug. 7, 1773:—‘You tell me of a long list of dukes, lords, and chieftains of renown to whom you are introduced; were I with you, I should prefer one David to them all. When you are at Edinburgh, I hope you will not fail to visit the stye of that fattest of Epicurus's hogs, and inform yourself whether there remains no hope of its recovering the use of its right paw.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works, ii. 110. [3.]Note 3. Hume enjoyed also the advantage of having been sought by a man of ‘the decorum and piety of Lord Hertford.’ Writing on Sept. 1, 1763, soon after his appointment as his Lordship's Secretary, he says:—‘Elliot said to me that my situation was, taking all its circumstances, the most wonderful event in the world. I was now a person clean and white as the driven snow; and that were I to be proposed for the see of Lambeth no objection could henceforth be made to me.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 159. [4.]Note 4. Gibbon, in his fifty-second year, wrote:—‘This day may possibly be my last; but the laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular, still allow about fifteen years7 .’ He lived about five more. Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 274. [5.]Note 5. Hume writing of his twenty-fourth year, says in his Autobiography:—‘I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvement of my talents in literature.’ [6.]Note 6. Hume just two years earlier, wrote to dissuade Gibbon from composing in French:—‘Let the French triumph in the present diffusion of their tongue. Our solid and increasing establishments in America, where we need less dread the inundation of Barbarians, promise a superior stability and duration to the English language.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 204. Franklin, writing to Hume from Coventry on Sept. 27, 1760, says:—‘I hope with you that we shall always in America make the best English of this Island our standard, and I believe it will be so. I assure you it often gives me pleasure to reflect how greatly the audience (if I may so term it) of a good English writer will, in another century or two, be increased by the increase of English people in our colonies.’ Life of Franklin, ed. by J. Bigelow, i. 412. Franklin's reflections would have been far less pleasurable could he have foreseen the meanness of this vast audience of the future. He was honest enough to think that each man has some right to enjoy the fruits of his own labour. He would have been the last man to rob English writers of their fairly-earned reward by refusing them a copy-right. Once, when upholding in Congress a law of libel, he said that he was willing to give up his right of throwing dirt at other people, would other people give up their right of throwing dirt at him. In like manner he would have urged the Americans to give up their right of robbing Englishmen, when he saw that Englishmen were willing to give up their right of robbing Americans. I speak with some feeling, for 1 have learnt that Messrs. Harper of New York are ‘reprinting’ my edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. [7.]Note 7. Wilkes had withdrawn to France in 1763. By not appearing to the indictments which were laid against him, towards the end of 1764, he was outlawed.An exile from his country, distrest in his circumstances, and in a great measure abandoned by his friends, he seemed not only totally ruined, but also nearly forgottenAnn. Reg. 1769, i. 58. Had the pardon for which in 1766 he sued from the prime-minister, the Duke of Grafton, been granted, he might have sunk altogether into oblivion. Had he been offered the bribe of a pension or a place, he would have ceased to bea Wilkitemany years earlier than he did. He was however treated, not only with neglect, but with some indignity. In December, 1767, he published a letter to the Duke of Grafton in which he accused him and Chatham of being the tools of Bute. The public attention and pity were once more roused. ‘They began to think his suffering out of measure, and to reflect that he was at any rate a victim to the popular causeIb. p. 59. In defiance of his sentence of outlawry, he returned to England on the dissolution of Parliament, and in March, 1768, stood for the City of London. He was unsuccessful, rather, it seems, through the cowardice than the ill-will of the electors. He at once set up for the County of Middlesex, and was returned by a great majority. The Londoners flocked to Brentford to hear the declaration of the poll.There has not been so great a defection of the inhabitants from London and Westminster to ten miles distance in one day, since the Lifeguardmanprophecy of the earthquake which was to destroy both those cities in the year 1750Ib. 1768, i. 86. Strahan, describing these transactions in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, dated April 1, 1768, saysDuring the continuance of the poll for London he appeared every day on the hustings, though he was more than once arrested there at the instance of his private creditors. But he found bail for his appearance, braved it out to the last, and was attended by a considerable mob every day. When he found the poll going against him, he publicly gave out he would stand for Middlesex. There he was likely to stand a better chance, an incredible number of petty freeholders of that County from Wapping, and its environs, immediately declared for him, and on the day of election, he carried it with ease, and with very little disturbance at Brentford; though the whole road thither was lined with a mob who insulted every one who would not join in the Cry of Wilkes and Liberty. This success immediately reached London, and occasioned such an intoxication in the mob—men, women, and children—that they spread themselves from Hyde Park Corner to Wapping, and broke everybodywindows who refused to illuminate their houses; among the rest, those of the Mansion House of the Lord Mayor, who happened that night to sleep in the Country, were quite demolished; and though a party of soldiers were at length sent for by the Mayoress from the Tower, they, when they came (so general was the infatuation) seemed more disposed to assist the mob than to disperse them. You will not easily believe it, but it is true, that the Dukes of Grafton and Northumberland, and many others of the first nobility, nay some of the Royal Family itself (viz. the Princess Amelia and the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland) were mean enough to submit to illuminate their windows upon this infamous occasion, in obedience to the orders of a paltry Mob, which a dozen of their footmen might easily have dispersed. If you ask me why was not Wilkes secured on his arrival, and before he had acquired his present consequence?—the answer is plain, the Ministry were part of them timid, and part of them secretly his friends. The outlawry, says the present Attorney General De Grey cannot be defended, because of some informalities in the passing of it; and his predecessor Norton who did pass it, is in opposition. The Duke of Grafton, though then in Town, is now at Newmarket, the Chancellor at Bath, the rest electioneering in different parts of the country, or skulking in town; but not one of them disposed to prevent this insult to their Master or to issue orders for a party of the Guards (and a small one would have been sufficient) to clear the streets. [8.]Note 8. Sir James Macdonald wrote to Hume on May 18, 1765:—‘The silk-weavers got a bill passed in the House of Commons to prevent more effectually the importation of foreign silks, which the Duke of Bedford threw out in the House of Lords. The next day above ten thousand of these people came down to the House, desiring redress, with drums beating and colours flying. They attacked the Duke of Bedford in his chariot, and threw so large a stone at him that, if he had not put up his hand and saved his head by having his thumb cut to the bone, he must have been killed. He behaved with great resolution and got free of them, since which time he has remained blockaded in his own house, and defended by the troops. Yesterday the same number of weavers assembled again at the House of Lords, where the horse and foot guards were to secure the entry for the Peers. The mob were ranged before the soldiers, and their colours were playing in the faces of his Majestytroops. The degree of security with which these people commit felony seems to me the most formidable circumstance in the whole…. It is really serious to see the legislature of this country intimidated by such a rabble, and to see the House of Lords send for Justice Fielding, to hear him prove for how many reasons he ought not to do his duty. The Duke of Bedford is still in danger of his life if he goes out of his house.’ Letters of Eminent Persons to David Hume, p. 55. [9.]Note 9. Boswell records the following conversation on April 10, 1783BOswell. “This has been a very factious reign, owing to the too great indulgence of Government.” Johnson. “I think so, Sir. What at first was lenity, grew timidity. Yet this is reasoning a posteriori, and may not be just. Supposing a few had at first been punished, I believe faction would have been crushed; but it might have been said that it was a sanguinary reign. A man cannot tell a priori what will be best for Government to doBoswell's Johnson, iv. 200. [10.]Note 10. Theirpretencehad some foundation. Dr. Brocklesby, Physician to the Army, the friend of Johnson and Burke, in his Œconomical and Medical Observations reviewed in the Gent. Mag. for 1763, pp. 602, 634, saysthat more than eight times as many soldiers fall by fever as by battleThe military hospitals ‘sweep off the men like a perpetual pestilence….A cruel parsimony frequently devotes many lives to destruction…. Soldiers frequently contract inveterate rheumatisms and lose the use of their limbs merely for want of an addition to their clothing…. As it is frequently fit that the sick should be kept upon half diet, his unexpended pay should always come into his own pocket, which at present is seldom the case. He might then be able to procure shoes and stockings, the want of which frequently occasions a relapse in weakly men.’ Dr. Franklin, describing on May 14, 1768, the riot in St. GeorgeFields in which the soldiers shot six people dead, continues:—'several of the soldiers are imprisoned. If they are not hanged, it is feared there will be more and greater mobs; and if they are, that no soldier will assist in suppressing any mob hereafter. The prospect either way is gloomy. It is said the English soldiers English as distinguished from the Scotch cannot be confided in to act against these mobs, being suspected as rather inclined to favour and join themThe soldiers who had fired on the mob belonged to a Scotch regiment. FranklinMemoirs (ed. 1833), iii. 310. [11.]Note 11. The Marquis of Granby was Commander in Chief from Aug. 1766 to Jan. 1770. His popularity is shown by the number of taverns that still bear his sign.It was cruel,’ wrote Lord Chesterfield on his appointment,to put a boy he was 45 years old over the head of old LigonierLetters to his Son, iv. 248. Junius, who had attacked him in his life-time, after his death wrote:—‘His mistakes in public conduct did not arise from want of sentiment or want of judgment, but in general from the difficulty of saying No to the bad people who surrounded him.’ Chatham Corres. iii. 478. Horace Walpole writing of the division on the address of Thanks on Jan. 9, 1770, says:—‘The most serious part is the defection of Lord Granby the Commander-in-Chief; for though he has sunk his character by so many changes, a schism in the army would be very unpleasant, especially as there are men bad enough to look towards rougher divisions than parliamentaryLetters, v. 214. [12.]Note 12. Charles Pratt, first Earl Camden, was Lord Chancellor from July, 1766, till his dismissal by the Duke of Grafton in Jan., 1770. In the London Chronicle of Oct. 26, 1769 (the day after the date of Hume's letter), the following paragraph appearedYesterday the Lord Chancellor was done at Jonathanupon the ratio of sixty to forty guineas that he resigns before Christmas; and at night his Lordship was done at Arthurupon the ratio of three to one that he resigns before Saturday sennight.’ [13.]Note 13. Hume wrote of Lord Mansfield on July 5, 1768:—‘Lord Mansfield said to me that it was impossible for him to condemn Wilkes to the pillory, because the Attorney-General did not demand it. Yesterday he represented to the Spanish Ambassador that moderate sentence as a refinement in politics, which reduced the scoundrel the sooner to obscurity. It would be a strange cause which he could not find plausible reasons to justifyBurton's Hume, ii. 415. Horace Walpole, writing on Nov. 13, 1766, saysLord Mansfield was reduced to make a speech against prerogative—yes, yes; and then was so cowed by Lord Camden, and the very sight of Lord Chatham, that he explained away half he had saidLetters, v. 28. On Dec. 18, 1770, Walpole wrote:—‘If we having nothing else to do after the holidays, we are to amuse ourselves with worrying Lord Mansfield, who between irregularities in his Court, timidity, and want of judgment, has lowered himself to be the object of hatred to many, and of contempt to everybody.’ Ib. p. 270. In the Memoirs of George III, iv. 187, Walpole speaks of hispusillanimityandabject spiritsStrahan writing to Hume on Jan 13, 1770, after mentioning that Mansfieldnephew, Lord Stormont, had called on him, continuesI took that opportunity of lamenting his Unclewant of courage; which if joined to his great abilities might at this juncture be of such eminent service to this country. He said nobody acted more strictly up to the plan of conduct he prescribed to himself. I replied, I was no judge of that; but I was certain his allowing Wilkes to insult him upon the Bench, and his deigning to vindicate himself against the accusations of that scoundrel, could not be consistent with any plan whatever. At least to me it was wholly incomprehensible. There was no answering this. And I chose not to push the matter further. You will probably think I pushed it too far. Perhaps I might, but it came naturally into the conversationM. S. R. S. E. [14.]Note 14. Lord Butetraining and character suited an experimenter. Johnson described him as ‘a theoretical statesman—a book-minister.’ Boswell's Johnson, ii. 353. Lord Shelburne wrote of him:—‘He panted for the Treasury, having a notion that the King and he understood it from what they had read about revenue and funds while they were at KewFitzmauriceShelburne, i. 141. Hisproject of Government,’ as Burke termed it, is described in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, PayneBurke, i. 12—14. Though he resigned office in April, 1763, his influence was long felt and perhaps still longer dreaded. Mr. Grenville, the Prime Minister, on May 22, 1765, in the name of the Cabinet offered to the King certain points as indispensably necessary for carrying on the public business. The first of these wasthat the King's Ministers should be authorised to declare that Lord Bute is to have nothing to do in His MajestyCouncils or Government, in any manner or shape whateverGrenville Papers, iii. 41. To this the King assented. Ib. p. 185. In the following November Jenkinson (afterwards first Earl of Liverpool)owned to Mr. Grenville that the intercourse in writing between His Majesty and Lord Bute always continued, telling him that he knew that the King wrote him a journal every day of what passed, and as minute a one as if, said he, “your boy at school was directed by you to write his journal to you Ib. p. 220. Hume wrote on Aug. 13, 1767, when he was still an Under-Secretary of State:—‘I am told that Lord Townshend openly ascribes his own promotion [to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland] entirely to the friendship of Lord Bute. Charles Fitzroy lately in a great meeting proposed Lord Bute's health in a bumper. It will be a surprise to you certainly if that noble Lord should again come into fashion, and openly avow his share of influence, and be openly courted by all the world.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 407. [15]Note 15. Hume wrote on March 28, 1769:—‘I am well assured that Lord Chatham will, after the holidays, creep out from his retreat and appear on the scene.
I know not if I cite Virgil exactly1 , but I am sure I apply him right. The villain is to thunder against the violation of the Bill of Rights in not allowing the county of Middlesex the choice of its member! Think of the impudence of that fellow, and his quackery—and his cunning—and his audaciousness; and judge of the influence he will have over such a deluded multitude.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 422. [16]Note 16. Burke, in Present Discontents (p. 45), written at the end of 1769, says:—‘Good men look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation. Their hands are tied behind them. They are despoiled of all the power which might enable them to reconcile the strength of Government with the rights of the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion than from established servitude. In the meantime, the voice of law is not to be heard. Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The military arm is the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution what you please, it is the sword that governs. The civil power, like every other that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance it receives.’ [17]Note 17. The ‘shooting’ and the ‘hanging,’ fortunately for liberty, were not sure to be on the same side. Professor Dicey points out that ‘the position of a soldier may be, both in theory and practice, a difficult one. He may, as it has been well said1 , be liable to be shot by a court-martial if he disobeys an order, and to be hanged by a judge and jury if he obeys it.’ Law of the Constitution, ed. 1886, p. 311. Hume, in the midst of the riots of the previous year, writing to a French lady, had expressed himself with much more calmness than he now did:—‘London, 24th May, 1768. There have been this spring in London a good many French gentlemen, who have seen the nation in a strange situation, and have admired at our oddity. The elections have put us into a ferment; and the riots of the populace have been frequent; but as these mutinies were founded on nothing, and had no connexion with any higher order of the state, they have done but little mischief, and seem now entirely dispersed.’ Private Corres. p. 262. Dr. Blair wrote to Hume from Edinburgh on March 11, 1769:—‘John [Bull] seems to have lost altogether the little sense he had; and I do suspect blood must be drawn from him before he settles. We look on the distant scene with calmness; procul a Jove, procul a fulmine; but to live in the midst of it I would really think disagreeable.’ M. S. R. S. E. [18]Note 18. Burke describes how ‘the nation had been in a great ferment during the whole summer—the like had scarcely been ever remembered.’ After giving the opinions of each party he continues:— ‘The minds of all men were occupied on the one side and the other with these considerations, and great expectations were formed concerning the manner in which these great points would be handled in the Speech from the Throne. The Speech began by taking notice of a distemper that had broke out among the horned cattle.... No notice whatsoever was taken of the great domestic movements, which had brought on, or followed, the petitions. The public were much surprised at the silence concerning the petitions, and at the solemn mention of the horned cattle, which filled the place of that important business. It became even a subject of too general ridicule.’ Ann. Reg. 1770, pp. 58–9. [19]Note 19. The Duke was thirty-four years old. Horace Walpole wrote on June 16, 1768:—‘What can one say of the Duke of Grafton, but that his whole conduct is childish, insolent, inconstant, and absurd—nay, ruinous? Because we are not in confusion enough, he makes everything as bad as possible, neglecting on one hand, and taking no precaution on the other. I neither see how it is possible for him to remain Minister, nor whom to put in his place. No government, no police, London and Middlesex distracted, the Colonies in rebellion, Ireland ready to be so, and France arrogant and on the point of being hostile! ... the Duke of Grafton, like an apprentice, thinking the world should be postponed to a whore and a horse-race.’ Letters, v. 106. Junius, in his Letter of April 10, 1769, describes the Duke as ‘a singular instance of youth without spirit.’ Hume had written on July 22 of the year before, when the Duke was in power:—‘I fancy the Ministry will remain; though surely their late remissness, or ignorance, or pusillanimity, ought to make them ashamed to show their faces, were it even at Newmarket.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 417. When the Duke resigned Walpole wrote:—‘A very bad temper; no conduct, and obstinacy always ill-placed, have put an end to his Grace's administration.’ Letters, v. 223. [20.]Note 20. It is probable that a man who boasted of his ‘rigid frugality’ and enjoyed his opulence had before this sold out the stock, for the rise of which he had been so anxious (ante, p. 42). In his last illness ‘he maintained that the national debt must be the ruin of Britain.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 497. Thirty-three years earlier, in 1737, so prosperous had been the country that Sir John Barnard brought in a bill to reduce the interest of the National Debt from four to three per cent. Sir Robert Walpole opposed it, chiefly through ‘fear of disobliging the moneyed men in the House of Commons.’ Though the Bill at first was supported by a great majority (220 to 157), yet Walpole ‘by making use of all his oratory to persuade and all his Exchequer knowledge to puzzle’ got it thrown out by a majority nearly as great. The Debt at that time amounted to almost fifty million pounds. Lord Hervey's Memoirs, ii. 325–330. [21.]Note 21. March, 1765. Stamp Act passed. Ann. Reg. 1765, i. 38. March, 1766. Stamp Act repealed. Ib. 1766, i. 46. June, 1767. Tea duties established. Parl. Hist. xvi. 376. Sept. 1768. Convention met at Boston. Ann. Reg. 1768, i. 73. Sept. 1768. Troops sent from England to support the Government arrived on the day the Convention broke up. Ib. p. 74. March, 1770. ‘Terrible engagement between the soldiery and the towns-people of Boston; four persons killed on the spot.’ Ib. 1770, i. 99. Dec. 1773. Tea thrown into the sea at Boston. Ib. 1774, i. 49. Sept. 1774. General Congress met at Philadelphia. Ib. 1775, i. 23. April, 1775. ‘First blood drawn at Lexington.’ Ib. i. 126. June, 1775. Battle of Bunker's Hill. Ib. i. 134. [22.]Note 22. Burke, after telling of the peace made with Hyder Ali on April 3, 1769, continues:—‘The consequences of this unfortunate war in the Carnatic were not confined to the East Indies; the alarm was caught at home, where the distance of the object and the uncertain knowledge of the danger, having full room to operate upon the imagination, multiplied the fears of the people concerned in a most amazing degree. India stock fell above 60 per cent. in a few days.’ Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 52. It was not till nearly a month after the date of Hume's letter that certain news of the peace was received. Gent. Mag. 1769, p. 557. Horace Walpole wrote on July 19, 1769:—‘The East India Company is all faction and gaming. Such fortunes are made and lost every day as are past belief. Our history will appear a gigantic lie hereafter, when we are shrunk again to our own little island. People trudge to the other end of the town to vote who shall govern empires at the other end of the world.’ Letters, v. 177. [23.]Note 23. Hume wished for the diminution of London because he dreaded its power, exerted as it was at this time against the combination of Court and Parliament. ‘The Common-Council was,’ to use Johnson's phrase, ‘too inflammable.’ Boswell's Johnson, ii. 164. Johnson in 1775 ‘owned that London was too large; but added, “It is nonsense to say the head is too big for the body. It would be as much too big, though the body were ever so large; that is to say, though the country were ever so extensive. It has no similarity to a head connected with a body.”’ Ib. ii. 356. In 1778 ‘he laughed at querulous declamations against the age, on account of luxury—increase of London,’ etc. Ib. iii. 226. A line in Horace Walpole's Letter of July 19, 1769 (Letters, v. 177), shows why the power of London had so often been dreaded. ‘London,’ he says, ‘for the first time in its life, has not dictated to England.’ [24.]Note 24. ‘Hall, the author of Crazy Tales, said he could not bear David Hume for being such a monarchical dog. “Is it not shocking,” said he, “that a fellow who does not believe in God should believe in a King?”’ Boswelliana, p. 210. ‘“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “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. 272. [25.]Note 25. Hume wrote to the Countess de Boufflers on June 19, 1767:—‘You know that ministerial falls are very light accidents in this country; a fallen minister immediately rises a patriot, and perhaps mounts up to greater consideration than before.’ Private Corres. p. 246. Lord Hervey writing of the year 1727 says:—‘Both Whigs and Tories were subdivided into two parties; the Tories into Jacobites and what were called Hanover Tories; the Whigs in to patriots and courtiers, which was in plain English “Whigs in place” and “Whigs out of place.”’ Lord Hervey's Memoirs, i. 5. Johnson in the fourth edition of his Dictionary, published in 1773, introduced a second definition of patriot:—‘It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.’ In 1775 ‘he suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm at which many will start:—“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”’ Boswell's Johnson, ii. 348. [26.]Note 26. Had Hume's wish been gratified, he would scarcely have been satisfied with the result; for according to Johnson, ‘Mr. Wilkes and the freeholders of Middlesex might all sink into non-existence without any other effect, than that there would be room made for a new rabble and a new retailer of sedition and obscenity. The cause of our country would suffer little; the rabble, whencesoever they come, will be always patriots, and always supporters of the Bill of Rights.’ Johnson's Works, vi. 169. [27.]Note 27. In the debate of March 19, 1770, on the Remonstrance from the City, ‘Lord Barington said it was so far from being an act of the City of London, that it could not properly be said to be the act of the poor people to whom it was once read, but of a set of Catilines only, who had no view but to draw all men from law and allegiance. Mr. Beckford, the Lord Mayor, was stung by this keen reproach; and to recriminate said that there were people out of the City who were ready to cut throats, and had an army at hand for that purpose.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 899. [28.]Note 28. Who this friend was I have not been able to ascertain. [29.]Note 29. When Lord Stormont, in 1779, was made Secretary of State, Horace Walpole wrote:—‘He has a fair character, and is a friend of General Conway; but he is a Scot and Lord Mansfield's nephew, which the people mind much more than his character.’ Letters, vii. 266. His ‘return home’ was perhaps from a visit to Italy in 1768. On May 12 of that year Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann at Florence:—‘I am much obliged to Lord Stormont for his kind thoughts, and am glad you are together. You will be a comfort to him, and it must be very much so to you at this time, to have a rational man to talk with instead of old fools and young ones, boys and travelling governors.’ Ib. v. 100. [30.]Note 30. An edition of Hume's History in 8 vols. 4to. was published by Cadell in 1770. [31.]Note 31. An edition in 4 vols. small 8vo. was published by T. Cadell, London, and A. Kincaid and A. Donaldson, Edinburgh, in 1770. [32.]Note 32. Sir Gilbert Elliot wrote from Minto on July 11, 1768, to Hume at London:—‘Farming, I find, is very expensive—day's wages now at a shilling.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 416. ‘In 1756,’ says Ramsay of Ochtertyre, ‘a labourer's wages were generally sixpence a day in summer.’ Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 211. [33.]Note 33. ‘April 25, 1768. Extract of a letter from Edinburgh:— “A number of apprentice boys, amounting to several hundreds, assembled here, and carried on their shoulders a figure which they called Mr. Wilkes. After parading the streets, and shouting Wilkes and Liberty, they carried him to the Grassmarket, where they chaired the mock hero on the stone where the common gallows is usually fixed at executions. After making a fire they committed the effigy to the flames.”’ Ann. Reg. 1768, i. 99. Burke, after mentioning how few Addresses in support of the Ministers were obtained in England in the summer of 1769, continues:—‘It was invidiously observed that Scotland was much more ready in expressing the most perfect satisfaction in the conduct and character of the Ministers. Addresses, which filled the Gazette for several weeks, came from every town and from almost every village in that part of the kingdom.’ Ib. 1770, i. 57. [2.]Note 2. On Oct. 16, 1769, nine days earlier than the date of the letter in the text, Hume had written to Sir Gilbert Elliot:—‘I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old house in James's Court, which is very cheerful, and even elegant, but too small to display my great talents for cookery, the science to which I intend to addict the remaining years of my life! I have just now lying on the table before me a receipt for making soupe à la reine, copied with my own hand; for beef and cabbage (a charming dish), and old mutton and old claret nobody excels me. I make also sheep-head broth in a manner that Mr. Keith speaks of it for eight days after; and the Duc de Nivernois1 would bind himself apprentice to my lass2 to learn it.’ Stewart's Robertson, p. 361. Gibbon wrote to Holroyd at Edinburgh on Aug. 7, 1773:—‘You tell me of a long list of dukes, lords, and chieftains of renown to whom you are introduced; were I with you, I should prefer one David to them all. When you are at Edinburgh, I hope you will not fail to visit the stye of that fattest of Epicurus's hogs, and inform yourself whether there remains no hope of its recovering the use of its right paw.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works, ii. 110. [4.]Note 4. Gibbon, in his fifty-second year, wrote:—‘This day may possibly be my last; but the laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular, still allow about fifteen years7 .’ He lived about five more. Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 274. [15]Note 15. Hume wrote on March 28, 1769:—‘I am well assured that Lord Chatham will, after the holidays, creep out from his retreat and appear on the scene.
I know not if I cite Virgil exactly1 , but I am sure I apply him right. The villain is to thunder against the violation of the Bill of Rights in not allowing the county of Middlesex the choice of its member! Think of the impudence of that fellow, and his quackery—and his cunning—and his audaciousness; and judge of the influence he will have over such a deluded multitude.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 422. [17]Note 17. The ‘shooting’ and the ‘hanging,’ fortunately for liberty, were not sure to be on the same side. Professor Dicey points out that ‘the position of a soldier may be, both in theory and practice, a difficult one. He may, as it has been well said1 , be liable to be shot by a court-martial if he disobeys an order, and to be hanged by a judge and jury if he obeys it.’ Law of the Constitution, ed. 1886, p. 311. Hume, in the midst of the riots of the previous year, writing to a French lady, had expressed himself with much more calmness than he now did:—‘London, 24th May, 1768. There have been this spring in London a good many French gentlemen, who have seen the nation in a strange situation, and have admired at our oddity. The elections have put us into a ferment; and the riots of the populace have been frequent; but as these mutinies were founded on nothing, and had no connexion with any higher order of the state, they have done but little mischief, and seem now entirely dispersed.’ Private Corres. p. 262. Dr. Blair wrote to Hume from Edinburgh on March 11, 1769:—‘John [Bull] seems to have lost altogether the little sense he had; and I do suspect blood must be drawn from him before he settles. We look on the distant scene with calmness; procul a Jove, procul a fulmine; but to live in the midst of it I would really think disagreeable.’ M. S. R. S. E. [26.]Note 26. Had Hume's wish been gratified, he would scarcely have been satisfied with the result; for according to Johnson, ‘Mr. Wilkes and the freeholders of Middlesex might all sink into non-existence without any other effect, than that there would be room made for a new rabble and a new retailer of sedition and obscenity. The cause of our country would suffer little; the rabble, whencesoever they come, will be always patriots, and always supporters of the Bill of Rights.’ Johnson's Works, vi. 169. [1]The Duc de Nivernois had been ambassador in England in 1762. Walpole's Letters, iv. 17. Walpole calls him ‘a namby-pamby kind of pedant, with a peevish petite santé.’ Ib. v. 131. [2]‘Formerly a common name in Scotland for a cook-maid.’ Note by Stewart. [1]Perhaps it was these fires which caused the conflagration by which this most interesting house was burnt down in 1857. [1]Mr. Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland, was his pupil. [2]Post, Letter of Feb. 11, 1776, note 1. [3]Dr. A. Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 437. [4]Ante, p. 76, n. 5. [5]Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, i. 221. [6]Boswell's Johnson, v. 395. [7]According to the tables drawn up by Dr. William Ogle on the basis of the death-rates of 1871–80 the laws of probability allow a man of Gibbon's age about eighteen years. Whitaker's Almanack, p. 346.
Georgics, iii. 437. [1]Burke, in the Ann. Reg. for 1761 (i. 47), had said that ‘under Mr. Pitt for the first time administration and popularity were seen united.’ [1]Professor Dicey is perhaps quoting Lord Hervey's words. See Memoirs of Lord Hervey, ii. 135, 142. [1]Lucretius, ii. 1. |
