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LETTER LXXVI.: Dr. Wight and Dr. Trail: Folly of the War with the Colonies: Dr. Reid and Dr. Beattie. - David Hume, Letters of David Hume to William Strahan [1756]

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Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).

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LETTER LXXVI.

Dr. Wight and Dr. Trail: Folly of the War with the Colonies: Dr. Reid and Dr. Beattie.

  • Edinburgh,

26 of Octr., 1775.

Dear Sir

I have often regreted the Interruption of our Correspondence1 : But when you ceas’d to be a speculative Politician and became a practical one2 , I coud no longer expect you woud be so communicative or impartial as formerly on that head; and my object with regard to Authorship, was, for a time, at an End. The Reason of the present Trouble is of a different kind: Dr. Trail3 , the Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, is dead; and Dr. Wight, the present Professor of Church History, is a Candidate for the Office: The Place is filled by a Vote of the Professors: You are understood to have great Influence with Wilson, the Professor of Astronomy4 : And I interest myself extremely in Dr. Wight's success5 :. These are my Reasons for writing to you. But I must also tell you my Reasons for interesting myself so much in Dr. Wight's Behalf. He is a particular Friend of mine: He is very much connected with all mine and your particular Friends in the Church6 : He is a very gentleman-like agreeable Man: And above all, he is (without which I shoud not interest myself for him) a very sound and orthodox Divine. The case of Dr. Trail, (his predecessor, as I hope) was somewhat particular with regard to Orthodoxy: He was very laudably a declar’d Enemy to all Heretics, Socinians, Arians, Anti-trinitarians, Arminians, Erastians, Sabellians, Pelagians, Semi-pelagians: In short, of every Sect, whose Name terminated in ian7 , except Presbyterian, to whom he had a declar’d and passionate Attachment. He said, that it signify’d nothing to pick out a little straggling Absurdity, here and there, from the System; while the whole immense Chaos, sufficient to over-whelm Heaven and Earth, still remain’d entire, and must still remain. But in Prosecution of these Views (which one cannot much blame) he mix’d a little of the Acrimony of his own Temper; and, perhaps undesignedly, sent away all the Students of Divinity very zealous Bigots, which had a very bad Effect on the Clergy of that Neighbourhood8 . Now, I shall answer for Dr. Wight, that his Pupils shall have all the Orthodoxy, without the Bigotry, instill’d into them by his Predecessor. I believe Dr. Robertson will write you on the same Subject; and I beg you woud not lose any time in applying to Mr. Wilson, in case he shoud take any other Engagements, tho we do not yet hear of any other Candidate.

I must, before we part, have a little Stroke of Politics with you, notwithstanding my Resolution to the contrary. We hear that some of the Ministers have propos’d in Council, that both Fleet and Army be withdrawn from America, and these Colonists be left entirely to themselves9 . I wish I had been a Member of His Majesty's Cabinet Council, that I might have seconded this Opinion. I shoud have said, that this Measure only anticipates the necessary Course of Events a few Years; that a forced and every day more precarious Monopoly of about 6 or 700,000 Pounds a year of Manufactures10 , was not worth contending for; that we shoud preserve the greater part of this Trade even if the Ports of America were open to all Nations; that it was very likely, in our method of proceeding, that we shoud be disappointed in our Scheme of conquering the Colonies11 ; and that we ought to think beforehand how we were to govern them, after they were conquer’d. Arbitrary Power can extend its oppressive Arm to the Antipodes; but a limited Government can never long be upheld at a distance, even where no Disgusts have interven’d12 : Much less, where such violent Animosities have taken place. We must, therefore, annul all the Charters13 ; abolish every democratical Power in every Colony; repeal the Habeas Corpus Act with regard to them; invest every Governor with full discretionary or arbitrary Powers; confiscate the Estates of all the chief Planters14 ; and hang three fourths of their Clergy15 . To execute such Acts of destructive Violence twenty thousand Men will not be sufficient; nor thirty thousand to maintain them, in so wide and disjointed a Territory16 . And who are to pay so great an Army? The Colonists cannot at any time, much less after reducing them to such a State of Desolation: We ought not, and indeed cannot, in the over-loaded or rather over-whelm’d and totally ruin’d State of our Finances17 . Let us, therefore, lay aside all Anger; shake hands, and part Friends18 . Or if we retain any anger, let it only be against ourselves for our past Folly; and against that wicked Madman, Pitt; who has reducd us to our present Condition19 . Dixi20 .

But we must not part, without my also saying something as an Author. I have not yet thrown up so much all Memory of that Character. There is a short Advertisement21 , which I wish I had prefix’d to the second Volume of the Essays and Treatises in the last Edition. I send you a Copy of it. Please to enquire at the Warehouse, if any considerable Number of that Edition remain on hands; and if there do, I beg the favour of you, that you woud throw off an equal Number of this Advertisement, and give out no more Copies without prefixing it to the second volume. It is a compleat Answer to Dr. Reid22 and to that bigotted silly Fellow, Beattie23 .

I believe that I have formerly mention’d to you, that no new Editions shoud be made of any of my Writings, without mentioning it to me; I shall still have some Corrections to make. By Calculation, or rather Conjecture from former Sales, the last Edition of my History shoud be nearly sold off: Pray inform yourself whether it be not so: And how many remain on hand24 .

I am with great Sincerity Dear Sir Your affectionate humble Servant

David Hume.

[William Strahan to David Hume.]

[1]Note 1. This interruption had lasted for more than a year and a half. When Hume resumed it he was already some way advanced in an illness which at first, he says, gave him no alarm, but which in ten months more was to carry him off.

[2]Note 2. Strahan had been elected for Malmesbury in the Parliament that met on Nov. 29, 1774. Parl. Hist. xviii. 24. One cause of the interruption of the correspondence might have been want of time on his side. In one of his earlier letters he said:—‘I have borrowed two hours from my pillow to write to you.’ M. S. R. S. E.

[3]Note 3. Hume, in writing from Paris on June 22, 1764, mentions a Dr. Trail as ‘our chaplain’—chaplain to the Embassy, that is to say. Burton's Hume, ii. 204. Horace Walpole mentions the same clergyman in a letter to Conway on Jan. 22, 1756. ‘Your brother [Lord Hertford] has got a sixth infanta; at the christening t’other night Mr. Trail had got through two prayers before anybody found out that the child was not brought down stairs.’ Letters, ii. 499.

[4]Note 4. Dugald Stewart, in his Life of Thomas Reid (ed. 1811, p. 426), speaking of the appointment of that philosopher to the chair at Glasgow University vacated by Adam Smith, says:—‘The Wilsons (both father and son) were formed to attach his heart by the similarity of their scientific pursuits, and an entire sympathy with his views and sentiments.’ In a note (p. 528) Stewart adds:—‘Alexander Wilson, M.D., and Patrick Wilson were well known over Europe by their observations on the Solar Spots.’

[5]Note 5. Dr. A. Carlyle, writing of Dr. Wight's appointment in 1762 to the chair of Church History at Glasgow, says:—‘As he was my near relation, his advancement, in which I had a chief hand, was very pleasing; and as he was the most agreeable of all men, his coming near me promised much enjoyment.’ Carlyle's Auto. p. 424. See Ib. p. 395.

[6]Note 6. ‘Hume took much to the company of the younger clergy, not from a wish to bring them over to his opinions, for he never attempted to overturn any man's principles, but they best understood his notions, and could furnish him with literary conversation. Robertson and John Home and Bannatine and I lived all in the country, and came only periodically to the town. Blair and Jardine both lived in it, and suppers being the only fashionable meal at that time, we dined where we best could, and by cadies [errand boys] assembled our friends to meet us in a tavern by nine o’clock; and a fine time it was when we could collect David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Lord Elibank, and Drs. Blair and Jardine, on an hour's warning. I remember one night that David Hume came rather late to us, and directly pulled a large key from his pocket, which he laid on the table. This, he said, was given him by his maid Peggy (much more like a man than a woman) that she might not sit up for him, for she said, when the honest fellows came in from the country, he never returned home till after one o’clock. This intimacy of the young clergy with David Hume enraged the zealots on the opposite side, who little knew how impossible it was for him, had he been willing, to shake their principles.’ Carlyle's Auto. p. 274.

[7]Note 7. Hume wrote to his friend, Dr. Clephane, on Sept. 3, 1757:—‘I am charmed to find you so punctual a correspondent. I always knew you to be a good friend, though I was afraid that I had lost you, and that you had joined that great multitude who abused me, and reproached me with Paganism, and Jacobitism, and many other wretched isms, of which I am only guilty of a part.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 38.

[8]Note 8. Dr. Traill was unlike the Professor under whom Dr. A. Carlyle studied at Edinburgh; of whom he writes:—‘There was one advantage attending the lectures of a dull professor—viz., that he could form no school, and the students were left entirely to themselves, and naturally formed opinions far more liberal than those they got from the Professor. This was the answer I gave to Patrick, Lord Elibank, when he asked me one day, many years afterwards, what could be the reason that the young clergymen of that period so far surpassed their predecessors of his early days in useful accomplishments and liberality of mind—viz., that the Professor of Theology was dull, and Dutch, and prolix.’ Carlyle's Auto. p. 56.

[9]Note 9. Parliament had met on Oct. 26. Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. 14:—‘The Parliament grants whatever is asked; and yet a great alteration has happened in the Administration. The Duke of Grafton has changed sides, and was turned out last Friday.’ After mentioning other changes he continues:—‘The town is impatient to see whether this change of men implies any change of measures. I do not see why it should, for none of the new Ministers have ever inclined to the Americans.’ Letters, vi. 280. There was no yielding in the King, who on Oct. 15 had written to Lord North:—‘Every means of distressing America must meet with my concurrence, as it tends to bringing them to feel the necessity of returning to their duty.’ Corres. of George III with Lord North, i. 274.

[10]Note 10. Hume is speaking of the trade in English manufactures only. The elder Pitt, on Jan. 14, 1766, said:—‘I will be bold to affirm, that the profits to Great Britain from the trade of the Colonies through all its branches is two millions a year. This is the fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war. The estates that were rented at £2000 a year threescore years ago are at £3000 at present. Those estates sold then for from fifteen to eighteen years’ purchase; the same may be now sold for thirty. You owe this to America.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 105. A writer in the Gent. Mag. for 1768, p. 514, who signs himself F. B. (Benjamin Franklin, I suspect), gives the declared exports from England, exclusive of Scotland and Ireland, to America as £2,072,000 a year, and the imports as £1,081,000. He considers however that the exports really amounted to £3,000,000. It was the object of the writer to make these as large as possible. (In 1886 the exports from the United Kingdom amounted to £37,600,000, and the imports to £81,600,000. Whitaker's Almanac, p. 517.)

Great Britain, among other restrictions, would not allow the Americans to erect steel furnaces, or to export from one province to another, whether by land or by water, hats or woollen goods of their own make. She assumed to herself the exclusive right of supplying them with all goods from Europe. Smith's Wealth of Nations, ed. 1811, ii. 424, 426. Sir John Pringle, in a postcript to a letter to Hume, dated London, July 8, 1775, told him that a sensible man from the Colonies had complained of the trouble the Americans were put to in being forced ‘at all times (even in time of war) to come with their cargo of wine taken up in Spain or Portugal to the Isle of Wight, or other English ports, unload it and put it again on board, before they could carry it home. The porters at such places could only gain while the Provincials were unnecessarily the sufferers.’ Sir John had written at the bottom of his letter:—‘Burn the enclosed P.S.’ M. S. R. S. E. Adam Smith condemns such a system as this in the following words:—‘To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is however a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. Such statesmen, and such statesmen only, are capable of fancying that they will find some advantage in employing the blood and treasure of their fellow-citizens to found and maintain such an empire.’ Wealth of Nations, ii. 471.

[11]Note 11. ‘We most carefully distinguish between the effects of the colony trade and those of the monopoly of that trade. The former are always and necessarily beneficial; the latter always and necessarily hurtful.... If the colony trade ... is advantageous to Great Britain, it is not by means of the monopoly, but in spite of the monopoly.’ Wealth of Nations, ed. 1811, ii. 462, 464. Mr. E. J. Payne in his History of European Colonies, p. 127, says:—‘The immediate effect of the independence of America was felt in its destroying the Navigation Act, and opening the commerce of the United States to the world. The shipping of the United States increased fivefold in twenty years; the trade with England increased in the same proportion.’

[12]Note 12. Burke, on March 22 of this year, in his speech on Conciliation with America, had said:—‘Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening Government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, “So far shalt thou go, and no farther.” Who are you, that you should fret and rage, and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive Empire; and it happens in all the forms into which Empire can be thrown.’ Payne's Burke, i. 183.

[13]Note 13. The Charter Governments were Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The charter of Massachusetts, which had been adjudged to be forfeited in 1684, was restored by William III with its privileges greatly maimed. Bancroft's History of the United States, ed. 1860, ii. 127; iii. 80. New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia were Royal Colonies. Maryland and Pennsylvania with Delaware were Proprietary Governments. Encyclo. Britan., ninth ed. xxiii. 730. ‘The Charter Colonies in which the Governors were chosen annually by popular election, and the Proprietary Governments had no dependence on the executive government of England, and they transacted their business with it through agents of their own, resident in England.’ Payne's European Colonies, p. 106. In Massachusetts however, after 1684, the Governor was appointed by the King. Bancroft's History, iii. 80.

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.

[14]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.

[15]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.

[16]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.

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

[18]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.

[19]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.

[20]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.

[21]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.’

[22]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.

[23]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.”’

[24]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.