Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary: A Critical Edition [2] 0199284075, 9780199284078

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T H E C LA R E N D O N E D I T I O N O F T H E W O R K S O F DAV I D H U M E Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

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THE CLARENDON EDITION OF THE WO R K S O F DAV I D H U M E General Editors of the Philosophical Works Tom L. Beauchamp  David Fate Norton  M. A. Stewart

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DAVID HUME

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary A CRITICAL EDITION EDITED BY TO M  L .  BE AUCHAMP MA R K  A .  B OX associate editor MI C HA E L SI LV ERTHORNE contributin g editors J.  A .  W.  G UNN F.  DAV I D HARVEY VO LU ME 2

CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2021 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2021 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940458 ISBN 978–0–19–928407–8 Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books Limited Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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To the Memory of David Fate Norton Consummate Hume Scholar

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CO N T EN T S O F VOLUME 1 Abbreviations and Short Titles  A Chronological Table of Hume’s Lifetime  A Table of the Editions of Hume’s Essays from 1741 to 1777  A Note on the Texts 

xv xix xxiv xxvii

WITHDRAWN E SS AYS L A S T PUBL ISHE D IN 1 7 4 2 1 Of Essay‑Writing  2 Of Moral Prejudices  3 Of the Middle Station of Life  4 A Character of Sir Robert Walpole 

3 7 11 15

W ITHDRAWN E SSAYS LA S T P UB L I S HE D BE TWE E N 1 7 6 0 A ND 1 7 6 8 1 Of Impudence and Modesty  2 Of Love and Marriage  3 Of the Study of History  4 Of Avarice 

19 22 26 30

E SSAYS, MORAL , POL I T I C A L , A ND L ITE RARY—PA RT 1 1 Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion  2 Of the Liberty of the Press  3 That Politics may be reduced to a Science  4 Of the First Principles of Government  5 Of the Origin of Government  6 Of the Independency of Parliament  7 Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic 

35 38 41 51 54 57 61

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viii

Contents of Volume 1

8 Of Parties in General  9 Of the Parties of Great Britain  10 Of Superstition and Enthusiasm  11 Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature  12 Of Civil Liberty  13 Of Eloquence  14 Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences  15 The Epicurean  16 The Stoic  17 The Platonist  18 The Sceptic  19 Of Polygamy and Divorces  20 Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing  21 Of National Characters  22 Of Tragedy  23 Of the Standard of Taste 

65 71 77 81 86 92 101 119 125 132 135 150 157 161 174 181

E SSAYS, MORAL, P O L I T I C A L , AND L ITE RARY — PA RT 2 1 Of Commerce  2 Of Refinement in the Arts  3 Of Money  4 Of Interest  5 Of the Balance of Trade  6 Of the Jealousy of Trade  7 Of the Balance of Power  8 Of Taxes  9 Of Public Credit  10 Of Some Remarkable Customs  11 Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations  12 Of the Original Contract  13 Of Passive Obedience  14 Of the Coalition of Parties  15 Of the Protestant Succession  16 Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth 

199 209 218 228 237 249 252 258 262 273 279 332 347 350 356 363

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Contents of Volume 2

The Index to Hume’s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects  A History of Hume’s Essays  1. Hume’s Early Life and Aspirations  2. A History of the Editions  3. Printers, Booksellers, and Intellectual Property  4. Hume’s Instruction for an Addition to the 1777 ETSS  A Bibliographical Schema of the Editions  European Book Translations of the Essays  Editorial Appendix of Emendations and Substantive Variants  Appendix 1: The ‘Scotticisms’ Insert in Political Discourses  Appendix 2: The Dedication ‘To the Reverend Mr. Hume’ in Four Dissertations  Appendix 3: Facsimile Reproductions  1. A Manuscript Fragment of ‘Populousness of Ancient Nations’  2. Title-Pages of Hume’s Essays (1741, 1752, 1757, 1772)  3. An Advertisement of the 1741 Essays, Moral and Political  4. The Craftsman’s Appropriation of ‘British Government’  5. ‘Queries and Answers relating to Sir Robert Walpole’s Character’  6. The Engraved Portrait of Hume in Essays and Treatises on   Several Subjects (1768) 

ix 375 401 401 404 436 444 446 496 502 689 695 701 701 702 708 709 710 713

CO N T EN T S O F VOLUME 2 Abbreviations and Short Titlesxi Editors’ Annotations  Glossary  Biographical Appendix  Catalogue of Hume’s References  Reference List Editors’ Index to Volumes 1 and 2 

714 1149 1170 1183 1202 1271

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A B B R E V I AT I O N S AN D S HORT TITLES Abstract An Abstract of . . . A Treatise of Human Nature c. century or centuries Cat. Catalogue of Hume’s References Dialogues Dialogues concerning Natural Religion DP A Dissertation on the Passions EHU An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding EPM An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals ESTC English Short-Title Catalogue ETSS Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects Further Letters Further Letters of David Hume (ed. Waldmann) Letters Letters of David Hume (ed. Greig) New Letters New Letters of David Hume (ed. Klibansky and Mossner) NHR The Natural History of Religion THN A Treatise of Human Nature The following short titles are used when citing Hume’s Essays:

W IT H D R AWN E SSAYS L A ST P UBLIS HED IN 1742 Essay Writing Moral Prejudices Middle Station Walpole

Of Essay-Writing Of Moral Prejudices Of the Middle Station of Life A Character of Sir Robert Walpole

W IT H D R AWN E SSAYS LAS T P UBLIS HED BE T WE E N 1760 AND 1768 Impudence and Modesty Love and Marriage Study of History Avarice

Of Impudence and Modesty Of Love and Marriage Of the Study of History Of Avarice

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xii

Abbreviations and Short Titles

E SSAYS, MO R A L , P OLITICAL, AND L I T E R A RY —PART 1 Delicacy of Taste Liberty of the Press Politics First Principles of Government Origin of Government Independency of Parliament British Government Parties in General Parties of Great Britain Superstition and Enthusiasm Dignity or Meanness Civil Liberty Eloquence Rise and Progress Epicurean Stoic Platonist Sceptic Polygamy and Divorces Simplicity and Refinement National Characters Tragedy Standard of Taste

Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion Of the Liberty of the Press That Politics may be reduced to a Science Of the First Principles of Government Of the Origin of Government Of the Independency of Parliament Whether the British Government Inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic Of Parties in General Of the Parties of Great Britain Of Superstition and Enthusiasm Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature Of Civil Liberty Of Eloquence Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences The Epicurean The Stoic The Platonist The Sceptic Of Polygamy and Divorces Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing Of National Characters Of Tragedy Of the Standard of Taste

E SSAYS, MO R A L , P OLITICAL, AND L I T E R A RY —PART 2 Commerce Refinement in the Arts Money Interest Balance of Trade

Of Commerce Of Refinement in the Arts Of Money Of Interest Of the Balance of Trade

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Abbreviations and Short Titles

Jealousy of Trade Balance of Power Taxes Public Credit Remarkable Customs Populousness Original Contract Passive Obedience Coalition of Parties Protestant Succession Perfect Commonwealth

xiii

Of the Jealousy of Trade Of the Balance of Power Of Taxes Of Public Credit Of Some Remarkable Customs Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations Of the Original Contract Of Passive Obedience Of the Coalition of Parties Of the Protestant Succession Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth

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ED I TO R S ’ A N NOTATIONS Plan of the Annotations The objective of the annotations is to provide information about, but as a rule not to interpret, the essays. There are inescapable uncertainties over where to draw the lines between interpretation, explanation, and fact, but our goal is to aid readers in their interpretations rather than to submit our own. The diversity of the audience who will consult these annotations means that unavoidably some annotations will be elementary for some readers and recondite for others. An annotation that seems pedantic to one reader will be apposite to another. Annotations for each essay are prefaced by a head-note with information on its composition, publishing history, intellectual history, and reception. Each annotation serves one or more of seven purposes: 1. The meaning of terms or phrases. Occasionally archaic, obsolete, or potentially puzzling terms and phrases requiring explanation are more efficiently handled in an annotation than in the Glossary. 2. Translation. French, Italian, Latin, and Greek quotations supplied by Hume are translated. 3. Amplification of a self-reference. A few annotations identify a passage to which Hume refers in his text (a cross-reference). 4. Information on related material written by Hume. Relevant materials in Hume’s other works or correspondence are identified. Information on significant textual variants is also supplied. The apparatus of variant readings is located in the Editorial Appendix of Emendations and Substantive Variants, cited in the annotations as ‘variants’. Both the annotations and variants in the apparatus are linked to the per­ tin­ent passages in Hume’s writings by locator numbers referring to page and line numbers in the critical text. 5. Information on passages in which authors or works are named. Hume’s often less than precise references are given in full (bk., ch., sect., verse, and the like) and explained as needed. Occasionally annotations explain, summarize, or paraphrase a context or the content of a work that Hume identifies or to which he alludes. 6. Identification of passages in which authors or works are unnamed. Annotations occasionally identify (or suggest) unnamed authors to whom Hume alludes. Full names and titles are often found in the Biographical Appendix, the Reference List, or the Catalogue of Hume’s References. 7. Information on the intellectual context. Many annotations point to the intellectual roots or background of Hume’s writings. The goal is often to indicate the relevance of literature from Hume’s time or before. In many instances we have preferred to quote rather than to paraphrase sources to preserve the original articulations of the material available to Hume and his

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r­ eaders. Quotations from Hume’s memoranda are from our transcriptions of the MS, but we supply a page-number citation to Mossner’s readily available version. Further information on Hume’s sources is provided in the Catalogue of Hume’s References.

References and Forms of Reference Citations in the annotations to published materials are keyed to entries in the Reference List. Normally citations consist of an author’s name and a short title corresponding to the appropriate entry in the List. Page numbers are given when needed for clarity or specificity; otherwise, divisions in the work (books, parts, chapters, sections, essays, epistles, and the like) are provided. Titles marked with the symbol º are those listed in Hume Library. Locators to the left of each lemma are page and line numbers in the critical text (e.g. 7.1  a Set of Men lately sprung up]). However, references within the annotations to the contents of the essays are to short titles and paragraph numbers (e.g.  ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 1–2). Citations to the Editorial Appendix of Emendations and Substantive Variants are to the short title ‘variants’, with add­ ition­al indications of location only as needed. Usually the locator in the lemma will suffice to direct readers to the pertinent location in the apparatus.

Sources of Translated Materials Translations quoted by the editors are usually from the published translations spe­ ci­fied in the Reference List. Translations from Hume’s day or before have been preferred, but in some cases translations are provided by the editors. For Greek and Latin texts the default practice has been to quote from the Loeb translations, though these may be altered by the editors as seemed necessary. The Loeb editions have provided our standard for citations to division numbers in classical texts as well as for the precise form of titles, for example, whether a title is cited in Latin or English.

W ITH DRAWN E SSAYS L AST P UB L IS HE D IN 1 7 4 2 1. Of Essay-Writing This essay, like ‘Moral Prejudices’ and ‘Middle Station’, appeared only in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742). In a letter of 13 February 1748, Hume wrote of replacing these ‘frivolous & finical’ essays with ‘Original Contract’, ‘Passive Obedience’, and ‘Protestant Succession’ (Letters, 1: 112). Given Hume’s initial intention of publishing essays as weekly papers with the Spectator and Craftsman as models (advt., Essays, Moral and Political, 1741, and 2nd edition, ‘1742’), ‘Essay Writing’ has been taken as the first number of a periodical in which the author establishes a persona to serve as commentator on social modes and developments (Burton, Life, 1: 289; Grose, ‘History of the Editions’, 43). If this hypothesis is

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Editors’ Annotations

c­ orrect, then ‘Essay Writing’ could have been among the MSS mentioned in letters to Kames of 4 June and 1 July 1739, as were ‘Moral Prejudices’ and ‘Love and Marriage’ (New Letters, 5–6). 3.1  The elegant Part of Mankind, who are not immers’d in the animal Life] i.e. not ‘too much occupy’d in providing for the Necessities of Life’ (‘Middle Station’ 2) to be learned or conversible. Hume categorized ‘the plenty or penury in which the people live’ as exercising a ‘moral’ rather than ‘physical’ influence on character (‘National Characters’ 2, 20). Moral influences no less than physical ones are causal: ‘The skin, pores, muscles, and nerves of a day-labourer are different from those of a man of quality: So are his sentiments, actions and manners. The different stations of life influence the whole fabric, external and internal; and these different stations arise necessarily, because uniformly, from the necessary and uniform principles of human nature’ (THN 2.3.1.9). See the Glossary, s.v. ‘quality’. 3.7–9  an Inclination to the easier and more gentle Exercises of the Understanding, to obvious Reflections on human Affairs] Cf. the dichotomy between the easy and obvious philosophy and the accurate and abstruse in EHU 1, adumbrated in ¶ 3 of the introduction to THN. 3.25  Stun’d and worn out with endless Chat] Matthew Prior, Alma 3.524–5 (Literary Works, 1: 514). Hume quotes from Alma in ‘Epicurean’ 6 and discusses it and Prior’s Solomon in THN 2.2.8.18 and his dissertation ‘Of the Passions’ in the  1757 Four Dissertations (DP 4.10). According to John Home, Lord Bathurst told  Hume about the circumstances of the 1718 publication of Alma (Burton, Life, 2: 501). 3.29–30  Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells] Cf. Philocles’s complaint in Shaftesbury’s 1709 Moralists 1.1, that phil­ oso­phy had been immured ‘in Colleges and Cells’, to its detriment and to the ‘real Disadvantage of our modern Conversations’ (Characteristicks, 2: 4–5). 3.31  what we call Belles Lettres became totally barbarous] The context ­suggests that Hume broadens the reference of belles-lettres to equate with what was and still is called literae humaniores, incorporating classical literature, history, and philosophy. 4.6–7  never search’d for that Experience . . . in common Life] Cf. THN, introd., ¶ 10: ‘We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures.’ 4.8  Men of Letters, in this Age] Johnson, Dictionary, s.v. age: ‘A succession or generation of men’. Jean-Baptiste Dubos indicates that in common French usage ‘age’ signified fewer than sixty years (Reflexions 2.12), and Abraham Stanyan refers to a ‘hundred Years’ as ‘above two Ages’ (Account, 50, 209). The theme of making philosophy and learning polite was associated with Shaftesbury and Addison. But Wotton had asserted that already by the 1690s the social effects of ‘the new

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Philosophy’ were discernible: ‘the new Philosophy has introduced so great a Correspondence between Men of Learning and Men of Business; . . . that that Pedantry which formerly was almost universal, is now in a great Measure dis-used.’ The ascendancy of the new philosophy Wotton dated to ‘40 or 50 Years’ before 1694 (Reflections, 353–4, 3). 4.16–17  Ambassador from the Dominions of Learning to those of Conversation] Cf. Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, pref.: ‘My purpose is to discourse of Philosophy, but not in a Philosophical manner; and to raise it to such a pitch, that it shall not be too dry and insipid a Subject to please Gentlemen, nor too mean and trifling to entertain Scholars’ (Conversations, iv). 4.19–20  I shall give Intelligence to the Learned . . . and shall endeavour] an indication of the early date of this essay and, presumably, of Hume’s programme for the periodical paper that he abandoned. 5.2  Women of Sense and Education] Cf. Fontenelle, Entretiens, pref. (Conversations, v–vi). 5.14  a neighbouring Nation] i.e. France. 5.27  books of Gallantry and Devotion] In 29 January 1748, Letters, 1: 110, Hume speaks flippantly of the following romances: Gauthier de Costes de la Calprenède (1614–63), Pharamond, 12 vols. (1661–70); Cassandre, 10 vols. (1644–50); and Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701), Le Grand Cyrus, 10 vols. (1649–53). These all enjoyed English translations and imitations in the 17th century. On the vogue for this genre see Esdaile, List, esp. xxiv–xxv. In a letter speculatively dated March or April 1734, Hume speaks vaguely of ‘the Writings of the French Mysticks, & those of our Fanatics here’ (Letters, 1: 17). Varieties of French mysticism arousing concern in Scotland were Bourignonist and quietist, inspired respectively by Mmes Antoinette Bourignon (1616–80) and Jean-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon (1648–1717). As of 1711 ordinands of the Presbyterian Church had been required to forswear Bourignonist doctrines (see MacEwen, Antoinette Bourignon, 1–25; Bayle, Dictionaire, s.v. Bourignon). Hume would have encountered quietism in the person and publications of his acquaintance, the Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743), secretary of Mme Guyon and secretary, editor, biographer, and dis­ ciple of Fénelon, Mme Guyon’s advocate (see Henderson, Mystics, introd.). In Scotland these intertwined movements bore Jacobite associations. 5.36  Addison’s elegant Discourses of Religion] Johnson would say of Addison, ‘His religion has nothing in it enthusiastick or superstitious: . . . his morality is neither dangerously lax, nor impracticably rigid’ (‘Addison’, Lives, 3: 38). Probably Hume refers to the weekend sermons in the Spectator, the most notable of which D. F. Bond identifies at Spectator, 1: lxiii–lxiv. In the Guardian, Steele and Addison continued the practice of devoting Saturday issues often to religion and morality. Hume’s readily recognizable pattern for the role of mediator between the lives of mind and conversation was Mr. Spectator, as enunciated famously by Addison in

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Editors’ Annotations

Spectator 10: ‘It was said of Socrates, that he brought Philosophy down from Heaven, to inhabit among Men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables, and in Coffee-Houses’ (1: 44). Addison’s allusion is to Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.4.10. 5.37–8  Otway’s Tragedies are rejected for the Rants of Mr. Dryden] According to Addison, Thomas Otway had ‘followed Nature in the Language of his Tragedy, and therefore shines in the Passionate Parts, more than any of our English Poets’ (no. 39, Spectator, 1: 167). Still enjoying stagings in London when Hume wrote this essay were The Orphan (1680, eight in 1739–40) and Venice Preserved (1682, six in 1739–40), the latter of which Dryden himself grudgingly had praised for following nature (‘A Parallel betwixt Painting and Poetry’, Works, 20: 69). For stagings see The London Stage 1660–1800. In the dedication to his 1757 Four Dissertations, Hume complimented John Home on possessing ‘the true theatric genius of Shakespear and Otway’ (5). Pointing to Dryden’s heroes (‘Almanzor’s Rage, and Rants of Maximin’), George Granville said in 1701 that ‘On the crackt Stage the Bedlam Heroes roar’d, | And scarce cou’d speak one reasonable word’ (Upon Unnatural Flights in Poetry, in Spingarn, Critical Essays, 3: 294). Dryden criticized his own heroes on this count in ‘The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy’, ad fin. (Works, 13: 243–7).

2. Of Moral Prejudices This essay, with ‘Essay Writing’ and ‘Middle Station’, appeared only in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742). In a letter of 13 February 1748, Hume wrote of replacing these ‘frivolous & finical’ essays with ‘Original Contract’, ‘Passive Obedience’, and ‘Protestant Succession’ (Letters 1: 112). ‘Moral Prejudices’ and ‘Love and Marriage’ clearly were among the ‘former Papers’ mentioned in a letter to Kames of 1 July 1739 (New Letters, 6–7). 7.1  a Set of Men lately sprung up] If the present distinction between libertines and severe moralists is akin to that made in ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 1–2, the set of irreverent ‘Anti-reformers’ may be identified with people taking their cue from Bernard Mandeville’s claims for the benefits of vice, expounded first in the 1714 version of his Fable of the Bees. A comparable set of men had been deplored in Berkeley’s 1732 Alciphron. See the annotation to ‘Independency of Parliament’ 1 at 57.1 and that on moral sceptics for ‘Study of History’ 7 at 28.24–5. But animadversion against modish egoism was a standard feature of essays written in the manner of Messrs Tatler and Spectator and therefore antedated Mandeville’s notoriety. See e.g. Tatler 183 for 10 June 1710. Warnings like Hume’s that egoism leads to fraud, corruption, and the destruction of a free constitution would likely have been recognized as the rhetoric of the ‘patriot’ Opposition, following the classical precedent of the corruption and decline of the Roman Republic portrayed in Sallust, War with

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Catiline 10–13. Cf. ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 12 and attending annotations at 213.38–9 and 214.1. 7.20  useful Byasses and Instincts] Bias was not necessarily a pejorative word. Johnson defined it as ‘Anything which turns a man to a particular course; or gives the direction to his measures’ (Dictionary) and illustrates this meaning with a sentence slightly altered from Locke, Essay 4.12.4: ‘Morality influences mens lives, and gives a bias to all their actions’. 7.21–2  The Stoics were remarkable for this Folly] One version of Stoicism seems to repudiate what Hume here calls this ‘sullen Pride or Contempt of Mankind’ (cf. ‘Stoic’ 13, where it is called ‘this sullen Apathy’). See the criticisms of the Stoics in ‘Epicurean’ 3–6, and the annotations for ‘Epicurean’ 3 at 119.17–19 and ‘Stoic’ 4 at 126.6 and n. 1. 7.22–3  some of more venerable Characters in latter Times] Supposing this cryptic remark to be an innuendo that Scottish readers of a weekly paper would catch, one might guess that Hume had in mind the dour and doctrinaire Presbyterians of his society. In 1739, such readers might have applied the innuendo to the attempts 23 February 1737–18 May 1738 of the Reverend Presbytery of Edinburgh to veto the magistrates’ call of William Wishart to be a minister in that city. Seven articles of ‘Error’ were charged against Wishart, and the issue sparked a pamphlet battle. Hume’s own conflict with Wishart over the chair of philosophy in the university would not occur until 1745, and prior to that contention Hume could have seen the follower of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson as a reformer who grounded the distinction between morality and immorality in the ‘Natural Affections of our own Hearts’, as Wishart put it in one of the sermons adduced against him (The Certain and Unchangeable Difference, 7). Prominent among Wishart’s antagonists, and therefore candidates as objects of Hume’s innuendo, were the Reverend Messrs George Logan, Neil M‘Vicar, James Walker, John Walker, and George Lindsay. These and other leaders disapproved of Wishart’s espousal of restraint in the church’s and magistrates’ roles as public censor. See [Murray], The Case of Dr. Wishart, . . . Humbly Submitted to the Venerable Assembly of the Church of Scotland. 7.28–9  GOD-like Stroke for the Liberty of Rome] The assassination of Julius Caesar was described in the same language by Robert Nugent in his 1739 Ode on Mr. Pulteney: ‘Tho’ Cato liv’d, tho’ Tully spoke, | Tho’ Brutus dealt the Godlike Stroke, | Yet perish’d Fated Rome’ (st. 7). This stanza would continue to be quoted late into the century. William Pulteney was a firebrand leader of the disaffected Whigs allied with some Tories into what they hoped would be a ‘country party’ opposing the ‘court party’. With Bolingbroke, he was the initial guiding force behind The Craftsman. Hume mentioned Pulteney in a letter to Montesquieu of 10 April 1749 (Letters, 1: 138). Innuendo concerning tyrannicide had for some time been part of the discourse of Opposition to the ‘court party’. See e.g. The Fate of Favourites (1734, reissued 1740, 2nd edn. 1735) and, in defence of Walpole, Aaron

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Hill’s An Enquiry into the Merit of Assassination (1739), which also employed tacit parallels between historical events and present politics. In Discourses 1.10, Machiavelli describes how praise of Brutus functioned as an innuendo against Caesar (¶ 3). 7.29–30  all Men were Fools or Mad] See Plutarch, Lives, ‘Brutus’ 12, where Statilius made this remark when Brutus sounded him out in a theoretical way concerning Caesar’s assassination. Statilius is called an Epicurean by Plutarch, and his remark reflects the Epicurean rejection of politics as a disturbance of inner tranquility. In the next paragraph Hume will adduce a Stoic, a Cynic, and an unnamed philosophic person as arriving at the same humour by a different path. 8.3–4  exprest his Sentiment after such a Manner as I think not proper to repeat] See Plutarch, ‘On Brotherly Love’ 4, where a person reputed to be a ­philosopher says, ‘I account it no momentous or important matter to have sprung from the same loins’ (Moralia, 6: 255). Montaigne refers to this passage in Essais, ‘De l’amitié’. Identified in Potkay, Fate, 76. 8.4–5  When your friend is in Affliction, says Epictetus] Hume paraphrases Epictetus, Encheiridion 16. Epictetus, said Hume in EPM, app. 4.14, ‘has scarcely ever mentioned the sentiment of humanity and compassion, but in order to put his disciples on their guard against it.’ 8.7–8  Diogenes being askt] In a letter of 1 July 1739, Hume said that he had ‘committed some Mistakes . . . by trusting’ his memory’; ‘I have met with the Story of Diogenes in Cicero told in a better way’ (New Letters, 6). In Tusculan Disputations 1.43, Cicero tells the story much as Hume does. Bayle gives a vivid rendition of it in  Dictionaire, s.v. Diogène, n. I.  Other versions appear in Diogenes Laertius, Lives 6.79. 8.15  Eugenius] Eugenius (‘nobly born’) was used as a typifying name, e.g. by Bouhours, Dryden, Addison, and subsequently Sterne. Hume illustrates his point with a Character, the 18th-century descendant of the Theophrastan Character by way of La Bruyère. As in Spectator 17, the taxonomic name Eugenius is given to a figure meant to be morally exemplary, but Addison’s Eugenius exemplifies good nature as meritorious self-imposition as distinguished from natural disposition. 9.34  the Parterre] i.e. the theatre pit. 10.28–9  a Law-suit against her before the Parliament of Paris] At the time the parlement of Paris was one of twelve regional courts of appeal. They were more judicial than legislative in function. 10.33–4  this extraordinary Case] With slightly different details Gayot de Pitaval recounts this custody suit in Causes célèbres, 8: 560–5, where the lawyers’ pleas are epitomized. He says that the case was settled by judicial mediation to avoid publicity, and he no more than Hume knew the outcome or the names of the ­litigants.

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3. Of the Middle Station of Life This essay, like ‘Essay Writing’ and ‘Moral Prejudices’, appeared only in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742). In a letter of 13 February 1748, Hume wrote of replacing these ‘frivolous & finical’ essays with ‘Original Contract’, ‘Passive Obedience’, and ‘Protestant Succession’ (Letters, 1: 112). Possibly ‘Middle Station’ was, like ‘Moral Prejudices’ and ‘Love and Marriage’, among the MSS mentioned in letters to Kames of 4 June 1739 and 1 July 1739 (New Letters, 5–7). A translation, ‘sur la Médiocrité des Conditions’, appeared in Mercure de France (April 1758), no. 1, pp. 7–15 (Malherbe, ‘Hume’s Reception in France’, 57 and n. 63). Omitted is Hume’s sentence in ¶ 5 assessing the capacity of ten French monarchs as well as the whole of ¶ 11. 11.1  the following Fable] This fable appears to be a variation on Houdart de la Motte’s ‘Les deux sources’ (Fables nouvelles 3.7). A longer version with a po­lem­ic­ al­ly Whiggish moral was William Somervile’s The Two Springs, a Fable (1725), repr. in the 15 March 1739/40 issue of The Champion, Henry Fielding’s Opposition paper. 11.17–18  The Great are too much immers’d in Pleasure] Cf. Hume’s complaint to Turgot in a letter of 16 June 1768 that ‘the rich have so many more alluring Appetites to gratify than that for Knowledge, and the poor are occupyed in daily Labour, and Industry’ (Letters, 2: 181). In Dubos, Reflexions 2.9, Hume would have encountered a comparable argument concerning the hindrance posed by poverty and wealth to the cultivation of talent. There is an apparent discrepancy between the judgements in this essay and those at the conclusion of the versions of ‘Parties of Great Britain’ in the two editions of Essays, Moral and Political, volume 1: ‘The slaving Poor are incapable of any Principles: Gentlemen may be converted to true Principles, by Time and Experience: The middling Rank of Men have Curiosity and Knowledge enough to form Principles, but not enough to form true Ones, or correct any Prejudices that they may have imbib’d’ (variants for 76.3). This discussion was removed from ‘Parties of Great Britain’ as of the 1748 edition of the Essays, Moral and Political. That the terms of reference are different in the two essays is evident in the fact that in one the middling rank cannot form true principles while in the other the rank includes philosophers as well as lawyers and doctors. A solution may be in the difference between Scotland, discussed in ‘Middle Station’, and England, discussed in the pertinent passage in ‘Parties of Great Britain’ (variants for 76.3). In Scotland, Hume says, there are the ‘Great’, the gentlemen, and the poor, in which case the middle station equates with the gentlemen who potentially have discernment. In England, Hume says, there are the middling sort between the gentlemen and the poor. It appears from § 2 of Considerations on Patronage that Hutcheson regarded as among the ‘middle Stations’ in Scotland the ‘Lawyers, Attorneys, Physicians, Surgeons,’ the parish ministers, and some of the ‘Scotch Gentry’ (17–19).

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11.22–3  comparing his Situation with that of Persons above or below him] Cf. ‘Sceptic’ 51. 11.24  AGUR’s Prayer] i.e. Proverbs 30. Hume quotes from verses 7–9 in the King James Version. In ‘Hume’s “Rejected” Essays’, 360–1, Norah Smith points out that in quoting Agur’s prayer and in other details Hume follows Spectator 464, where Addison avers that ‘The middle Condition seems to be the most advantageously situated for the gaining of Wisdom. Poverty turns our Thoughts too much upon the supplying of our Wants, and Riches upon enjoying our Superfluities’ (Spectator, 4: 139). The points were common to sermons on Agur’s prayer. Robinson Crusoe’s father had adduced Agur’s prayer in recommending the middle station to his restive son (¶¶ 4–5 of the novel), and one sermon similarly using Agur’s prayer is Cruso, Usefulness (12). The argument in EHU 11.24 involving a footprint in the sand suggests that Hume knew Robinson Crusoe (1719). Daniel Defoe also put the quotation into the mouth of the heroine of his novel Moll Flanders (1722). A muchreprinted sermon on Agur’s prayer from the early 1730s was by James Foster, the dissenting minister complimented in the introductory paragraphs deleted from Hume’s ‘Independency of Parliament’ in 1764 (for which see the variants for 57.1). 11.29  the fullest Security for Virtue] Cf. ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 16 for the argument that the middling sort are the ‘firmest basis of public liberty’ because they are not subject to the temptations of the peasants to acquiesce in tyranny or of the nobility to tyrannize. 12.21  It has been very judiciously remark’d] Several of La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes elaborate on this theme (nos. 14, 223–6, 238, 299), but Tacitus comes closer to Hume’s statement: ‘For services are welcome exactly so long as it seems possible to requite them: when they go much beyond that, the return is hatred instead of gratitude’ (Annals 4.18). Cf. Seneca, Epistles 19.11, and the pertinent paragraph in Hobbes’s Leviathan 1.11. 12.38  I cannot forbear communicating a Remark] A strong candidate for this remark must be Milton’s rejoinder to Salmasius’s invidious comparison of monarchs’ and the people’s abilities to rule. The rabble, Milton conceded, may be incapable and inconstant, but not ‘the middle sort, amongst whom the wisest men and most skilful in affairs are generally found; the rest are most commonly diverted, on the one hand by luxury and wealth, on the other by want and poverty, from achieving excellence, and from the study of laws and government’ (Works, 7: 390, 392–3). Hume had reason for not citing Milton in that the remark occurs in chapter 7 of Pro populo Anglicano defensio, the notorious 1651 defence of regicide. In 1738, Andrew Millar had published both an edition of Milton’s Areopagitica, with a preface by the poet-patriot James Thomson reacting to the bill for licensing plays enacted 21 June 1737, and a collection in folio of Milton’s prose in two volumes. See the mention in ‘Civil Liberty’ 8 of Milton’s prose and the related annotation at 88.28–30.

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13.7–8  the Succession of his present Majesty] George II succeeded his father in 1727. 13.10  the Conqueror] i.e. William I, who in 1066 led the Norman Conquest mentioned earlier in this sentence. See Hist. 1: 225 for Hume’s assessment. The ‘late King William’ is William III, who reigned 1689–1702. 13.10–11  Harry II. Edward I. Edward III. Harry V. and VII. Elisabeth] Hume assesses the capacities of these monarchs at Hist. 1: 371, 2: 140–2, 271–2, 378, 3: 72–4, and 4: 351–3. 13.14–15  since Charles VII . . . omitting Francis II] Charles VII reigned 1422–61. François II reigned one year (1559–60). 13.19  the World governs itself  ] Hume could have seen a version of this statement attributed to Urban VIII in Bayle’s Pensées diverses, § 251: ‘A dominare non bisogna altrimente tanto ingegno, perche il Mondo si governa in cierta maniera da se stesso’ (Miscellaneous Reflections, 2: 503 n.); ‘It’s easy to rule the world, because in a way the world runs itself ’. Bayle’s source was François de La Motte Le Vayer (lettre 140, ‘Du gouvernement politique’, Oeuvres, 7: 150–1). Born Maffeo Barbarini, Urban VIII reigned 1623–44. In Cato’s Letters 48 for 14 October 1721, Thomas Gordon attributed a similar remark to Pius II: ‘Pope Aeneas Sylvius . . . said, that this world did, in a great measure, govern itself. He had many examples before his eyes, how easy it was to govern wretchedly, and yet continue to govern’ (1: 320). Born Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pius II reigned 1458–64. 13.20  critical Times, such as those in which Harry IV. liv’d] The Protestant leader Henri de Navarre managed to end the wars of religion in France by converting to Roman Catholicism upon succeeding Henri III. He issued the Edict of Nantes to protect the Protestants from persecution and resisted the interventionist policies of Philip II of Spain. In the History Hume called the hero of Voltaire’s La Henriade, ‘the most heroic and most amiable prince, that adorns modern story’ (5: 7). 13.33–4  Gustavus Ericson, and Gustavus-Adolphus] respectively Gustav I (1496–1560) and II (1594–1632), kings of Sweden. The former, better known as Gustavus Vasa, expelled the Danes from Sweden and united his nation under a strong hereditary monarchy. Gustav II, another prodigy of statecraft and military acumen, preserved Protestantism in Europe by a bold intervention in the Thirty Years War. He was, Hume wrote, ‘the famed Gustavus, whose heroic genius, se­cond­ed by the wisest policy, made him in a little time the most distinguished monarch of the age, and rendered his country, formerly unknown and neglected, of great weight in the balance of Europe’ (Hist. 5: 219). 13.34  the Czar] i.e. Peter the Great, czar of Russia 1689–1725. Peter I was celebrated for lifting his country out of barbarism, e.g. by Steele in Spectator 139. 13.34–5  Carthage, when it gave Birth to Hannibal] At the time of Hannibal’s birth (247 bc), Carthage, a military and commercial power of long standing rather

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than an intellectual centre, was engaged in the first of the three ‘Punic wars’ against Rome. Despite his acknowledged military genius Hannibal was decisively defeated in the second of these wars at the battle of Zama (202 bc). See the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 8 at 103.17–18. 13.36–7  Spencers, Johnsons, Wallers, Drydens, before it arrive at an Addison or a Pope] As Ben Jonson’s presence in this list suggests Hume’s inclusion of verse drama in the development of English poetry, probably Addison is exalted for his Cato (1713), the first English tragedy to command admiration across the channel. Jonson’s presence and Shakespeare’s absence suggests that Hume is not thinking of untaught ‘native genius’, but of incremental advances in technique that are imitable, allowing progress towards ‘correctness’ in prosody, regularity, and decorum. Edmund Spenser had ‘a sweet and harmonious versification, easy elocution, a fine imagination’ but his work was marred by his romantic medievalism (Hist. 4: 386). Jonson ‘possessed all the [classical] learning which was wanting to Shakespeare and wanted all the genius of which the other was possessed’ (5: 151). Edmund Waller was ‘the first refiner of English versification’ (5: 412) but did not attain the sublime or pathetic (6: 152). John Dryden would be included not for his plays, but for his odes and satires, ‘which discover so great genius, such richness of expression, such pomp and variety of numbers, that they leave us equally full of regret and indignation, on account of the inferiority or rather great absurdity of his other writings’ (6: 543). Alexander Pope, then as now, was regarded as the culminating figure in the line of development from Waller through Dryden. See Blair, Lectures, 2: 333, for a contemporary survey of this development touching on Spenser, Waller, Dryden, and Pope (lect. 38). 14.1  Kouli-Kan] In 1736, Nadir Kuli proclaimed himself shah of Persia upon the death of the infant for whom he had made himself regent. Invading the Mogul Empire, he took Kabul in 1738, defeated the Imperial army in Peshawar, and conquered Delhi. Thirteen stories concerning these and other exploits appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine from 4 (January 1734): 53 to 9 (July 1739): 387. The last story reported on his invasion of the empire. In 7 (January 1737): 6–7, there is an unreliable but colourful summation of his rise. Few issues of the first volume of the Scots Magazine (1739) passed without a brief note on his escapades. 14.1–2  Homer, in so early an Age] Hume touches on this question again at ‘Rise and Progress’ 8, on which see the annotation at 103.13–14. See also the annotation for ‘Civil Liberty’ 1 on ‘experience of three thousand years’ at 86.6–7. 14.7  A Man cannot show a Genius for War] Hume adapts an argument from Dubos, Reflexions 2.1–4, where the author maintains that a poetic genius faces fewer external obstacles than a military one (esp. 2.2). In the War of the Spanish Succession, John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough, led the coalition army to stunning victories, like that at Blenheim. 14.9–10  no one cou’d exert them under greater Disadvantages than that  divine Poet] Hume wrote that it ‘is not strange, that Milton received no

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encouragement after the restoration: It is more to be admired, that he escaped with his life. . . . It was during a state of poverty, blindness, disgrace, danger, and old age, that Milton composed his wonderful poem [Paradise Lost], which not only surpassed all the performances of his cotemporaries, but all the compositions, which had flowed from his pen, during the vigor of his age, and the height of his prosperity’ (Hist. 6: 151–2). 14.11  nam’d to be laureat] The first official appointment as poet laureate was Dryden’s in 1668. The several issues of the first edition of Paradise Lost were ­published in 1667–9. 14.20  Great Poets may challenge the second Place] In EPM 7.27, Hume argues that the talent of poets, ‘being enhanced by its extreme rarity, may exalt the person possessed it, above every character of the age in which he lives’, instancing Virgil’s greater glory over Augustus’s. 14.32–3  as well as to Virtue and Wisdom] Hume’s essay has thus dealt with both of the subjects of Addison’s two discussions of the middle station, the one on virtue, the other on knowledge (Spectator 464 and 287). The latter discussion, like Hume’s, has a special focus on the contribution of the middling sort to the development of the arts and sciences. In no. 464, Addison related his discussion back to the earlier paper: ‘In short, the middle Condition is most eligible to the Man who would improve himself in Virtue; as I have before shown, it is the most advantageous for the gaining of Knowledge’ (4: 139). The thesis of the advantages of a middle station is a version of the praise of the ‘Golden Mean’, given classical expression in the famous stanza of Horace (Odes 2.10.5–8) that Addison used as the epigraph to Spectator 464. The sentiment, which goes back to a proverbial expression among the ancient Greeks, is found in the quotation from the 6th-century poet Phocylides that Aristotle endorses at Politics 1295b33–4: ‘Because of this it was a good prayer of Phocylides, “Many things are best for the middling sort; I desire to be middling in the city”.’

4. A Character of Sir Robert Walpole See the discussion in A History of the Essays for the evolution of this piece from a Character in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742), to a note in ‘Politics’, to its deletion from the collected works in 1770, along with its reproduction in periodicals and the subsequent printed exchange between Hume and an inquirer (pp. 413–14). Volume 2 of the Essays was ‘in the Press’ by 15 December 1741 (advt., Edinburgh Evening Courant, no. 5509), and Walpole resigned from the ministry in February 1742. Hume’s original introductory remarks in the Advertisement to the 1742 Essays indicated that ‘The Character of Sir Robert Walpole was drawn some Months ago, when that Great Man was in the Zenith of his Power’ and go on to say that, ‘at  present, . . . he seems to be upon the Decline’ (variants). At a guess, one may place the composition of the introductory remarks for ‘Walpole’, with the essay

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‘Eloquence’, after the attempt of 13 February 1741 in Parliament to drive the ‘great man’ out of government. One of Walpole’s achievements was to set the tone for political competition in 18th-century Britain. His administration showed a relative toleration for opposition but energetically disposed of offices and pensions to cement support in Parliament. By resisting the efforts of reformers to evict office-holders from the House of Commons, Walpole helped to ensure that parliamentary government would develop as it did with the requirement that ministries be able to deliver majority votes. The management of Parliament was not imposed by formal authority, but created by influence over legislators arising from patronage, or ‘corruption’, depending upon one’s viewpoint. Walpole combined this tactic with the punishment of office holders not supporting crucial government votes. See e.g. Hervey, Some Materials, 171–3, 176–7, 740–3. For these tactics in Scotland see Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole, 2: 104–6. Writing in 1725, a Scottish clergyman assessed Walpole as follows: ‘Sir Robert Walpool has intirely the management, and is absolute as ever any Minister was in England. The disgusts that are common to sole Ministers are great enough against him . . . . He is making a prodigious estate . . . . He hath made himself some way ne­ces­sary to the King . . . . Thus, though he have no relations, no family, and scarce any friends among the great familys and nobility in England, yet, by his interest in the House of Commons, and the necessary dependance upon him every body must have, and his exquisite management, he stands his ground. It’s scarce conceivable hou he getts money to serve all his purposes, and to keep up so many pensions and gifts as are agoing’ (Wodrow, Analecta, 3: 228). In the context of Scotland, Walpole’s control of patronage would have been manifested to Hume in the influence of Archibald Campbell, then earl of Ilay (3rd duke of Argyll after 1742), and his ­coadjutor Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton (Emerson, ‘The “Affair” ’, 6–7). (Ilay is not to be confused with his older brother, the 2nd duke, who was a hero of the Opposition.) 15.6  within these Twenty Years] i.e. since 1721. See the annotation on Walpole for ‘Politics’ 18 at 49.28–9. n. 1  Moderate in the Exercise of Power, not equitable in engrossing it] A complaint from those who might even approve of his policies was that Walpole dominated the ministry rather than served in a coalition of ministers. Replying to a motion in 1741 to remove him from government, Walpole denied being ‘sole and prime minister’, illustrating how the very idea of a prime minister was suspect (English Historical Documents, 7: 128–9). ‘In free Governments, or mixt Monarchies,’ we read in Craftsman 720, ‘the name of a Prime Minister was formerly unknown; for the Administration always used to be divided into different Branches, and every Minister was answerable only for the Business transacted in his own Department’ (19 April 1740). It might not have been obvious to contemporaries who if anyone was prime minister during the succeeding coalition or the ‘broad-bottom administration’ formed in 1744 by the Pelham brothers and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke (English Historical Documents, 7: 4). Nine ministries later, in 1775, Samuel Johnson

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is quoted as saying that ‘There is now no Prime Minister . . . . We are governed by the Cabinet: but there is no one head there, as in Sir Robert Walpole’s time’ (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 2:355). Frederick North, whose ministry extended from 1770 to 1782, denied being prime minister on 21 June 1779, having said, reportedly on 25 May 1778, that the constitution did not authorize ‘that animal called a prime minister’ (Parliamentary History, 20: 925 and 19: 1173). 15.24–5  He would have been esteem’d more worthy of his high Station, had he never possest it] Cf. Tacitus, Histories 1.49: ‘omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset’ (‘all would have agreed that he [the emperor Galba] was equal to the imperial office if he had never held it’). This witticism was frequently quoted, for example, by Francis Bacon in ‘Of Great Place’ (Works, 6: 401). 15.27  more advantageous to his Family than to the Public] Walpole’s brother Horatio and two sons, Edward and Horace, all Members of Parliament, held sinecures for life amongst their government ‘places’. For other examples of nepotism see Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole, 2: 93. 15.29–30  Liberty declin’d, and Learning gone to Ruin] Almost exactly contemporaneous with the appearance of Hume’s character of Walpole was the publication of Pope’s New Dunciad (March 1742, adapted thereafter as book 4 of the Dunciad), in which Walpole figures in an apocalyptic collapse of British civilization (4.599–604). In his 1759 Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, Goldsmith would say, ‘Since the days of a certain prime minister of inglorious memory, the learned have been kept pretty much at a distance’ from the sources of patronage (Collected Works, 1: 311). The controversial subjection of the stage to censorship by the Licensing Act of 1737 is pertinent in so far as Hume, like Goldsmith (ch. 12), considered the contemporary stage as important to polite learning. Both repeat the complaint of numerous Opposition writers insisting that the chief minister’s indifference to literature had distorted official patronage and thereby caused a decline of letters. As it happens, the writings still read today—by Swift, Pope, Gay, Fielding, and Johnson—are hostile to Walpole. Walpole’s son Horace observed in 1780 that people out of power mistook their own low fortunes for that of the nation (Walpole, Correspondence, 25: 6). In 1741, Hume was not being provided for by the managers of patronage. 15.32–3  retire to Houghton Hall] Walpole did retire to his Palladian pile in Norfolk. It was the work of architect James Gibbs and designer William Kent. For some of the disaffected its magnificence symbolized the corruption of the Walpole years. His grandson would sell the paintings to Catherine the Great for the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. variants for 50.29.  moderate Sentiments with regard to this great Man] added to the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, as a post-mortem on Walpole, who had died in 1745. Cf. ‘The Cautious Polititian’s Reasoning’, lines 1–4: ‘W—LP—LE so long the Rudder did adhere to, | that Opposition seem’d a publick Virtue: | ’Gainst him

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to write, dispute, harangue, and vote, | Full Twenty Years the Patriot did denote’ (Caledonian Mercury, no. 3967 (17 March 1746): [3]). variants for 50.29.  the not paying more of our public Debts] added in the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, as a post-mortem on Walpole, who died in 1745. In Some Considerations concerning the Publick Funds (1735), a pamphlet attributed to Walpole, it is argued that the surpluses of the ‘sinking fund’, created at his instigation in 1717 to consolidate the debt at 5 per cent, could and should be used for purposes other than retiring the debt, thus acquiescing in a permanent national debt. See the annotation for ‘Public Credit’ 6 at 263.36–7. For a critical overview of Walpole’s treatment of the Sinking Fund see Grellier, History, for ad 1734–9, and for a favourable assessment of Walpole’s management of the debt see Dickson, Financial Revolution, ch. 9.

WITHDRAWN E SSAYS L A S T P UB L I S HE D BE TWE E N 1 7 6 0 A ND 1 7 6 8 1. Of Impudence and Modesty ‘Impudence and Modesty’ appeared in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741), the 2nd edition (‘1742’), the edition of 1748 consolidating two volumes, and the 1753–6, 1758, and 1760 editions of ETSS, but was dropped in 1764 along with ‘Love and Marriage’ and ‘Study of History’. Evidently referring to these three essays, Hume wrote to Strahan on 7 February 1772 that he had ‘suppress’d these Essays, not because they coud give any Offence, but because . . . they coud neither give Pleasure nor Instruction: They were indeed bad Imitations of the agreeable Triffling of Addison’ (Letters, 2: 257). In Spectator 231, Addison had deplored the mistaking of impudence for good breeding, and his own personal diffidence and modesty were much reputed. But the comparative fortunes of modesty and impudence in the world were more Steele’s topic, and Hume’s essay is reminiscent of Steele’s Tatler 52 and Spectator 20, 154, 206, 484. Hume could have read Henry Fielding’s essay on impudence in the 29 January 1740 issue of the Champion or an earlier one in the Universal Spectator (8 July 1738, repr. Gentleman’s Magazine, 13 (July 1738): 358–9). The allegory in ‘Impudence and Modesty’ 6 was reproduced without attribution in Universal Magazine, 14 (January 1754): 8. Hume’s ‘Allégorie morale’ also was appropriated without attribution in French translation in Journal étranger (February 1755), 231–6. The essay itself appeared later without the allegory in May of 1756 (pp. 27–31), followed by a translation of ‘Politics’ and the Character of Walpole, with the ‘célèbre M.  Hume’ identified at the end (p. 58). As ‘The Origin of Impudence and Modesty’ the allegory was included in the following compilations: the 1771 British Moralist; or, Young Gentleman and Lady’s Polite Preceptor, 2: 34–6; the 1776 Orator, 63–4; and the 1793 Elegant Miscellanies, 198–201. The entire essay

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was reprinted with ‘Avarice’ and ‘Love and Marriage’ in the 1772 compilation, Beauties of the Magazines, 1: 108–26. This collection had another edition in 1775. 19.2–3  the good or bad qualities of men are the causes of their good or bad fortune] Part 2 of EPM 9 takes up this issue, raising the problem case of the comparative fortunes of ‘a sensible knave’ and ‘the honest man’ (¶¶ 22, 25). 19.9–10  besides the satisfaction, which immediately results from it] See EPM 9.20 for an elaboration. According to Hume’s fourfold classification of mental qualities forming personal merit or virtue, benevolence would appear to be immediately agreeable to others and ourselves as well as useful to others and ourselves (EPM 9.12). Modesty is classified as immediately agreeable to others but not to ourselves (EPM 8.8–10, THN 3.3.2.9). 19.12  and adversity, in like manner, to vice and folly] Hume added the phrase ‘in like manner’ for the 2nd edition of Essays, Moral and Political [vol. 1], ‘1742’ (variants). The qualification was prompted by an anonymous critic (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 4). 19.20–1  A decent assurance seems to be the natural attendant of virtue] Cf. EPM 8.10: a ‘generous spirit and self-value, well founded, decently disguised, and courageously supported under distress and calumny, is a great excellency’. Also THN 3.3.2.8. variants for 19.24.  Air very naturally presses into a Vacuum] Hume deleted this paragraph in the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, in response to an objection from an anonymous critic about its ‘Conceit’ (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 4). 20.9–10  Riches naturally gain a man a favourable reception] See THN 2.2.5.1–11 for the role of sympathy in producing a disinterested esteem for the rich. Cf. EPM n. 34. 20.24  the following allegory] An annotator of this essay said that the taste for allegory subsisted in England but not in France (Journal étranger (May 1756), 31). Addison was credited with rehabilitating allegory for polite British readers from its association with the tinker-preacher John Bunyan (see Hume’s contrast of Bunyan and Addison in ‘Standard of Taste’ 8 and its annotation at 183.40). See Spectator 501 and Guardian 152, where Addison speaks of reviving allegory; Spectator 35, where he presents one ‘after Plato’s manner’; and also Spectator 183, where he discusses its pedigree from the ancients through La Fontaine. Hume’s readers would have seen also the allegories in Swift’s Examiner papers. In NHR 5.4, Hume would say that there is ‘no work of genius, that requires a nicer hand, or has been more rarely executed with success’ than allegory. 20.25  Virtue] A less abstruse Humean definition of virtue than Hume’s formula concerning agreeableness and utility is the following: ‘Virtue is, properly, goodnature made steddy and extensive by good principles’ (repr. Elliott, ‘Hume’s “Character” ’, 368). In the context of an argument that good sense is a virtue though

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not obviously a moral quality, Hume subscribes in EPM, app. 4.7, to the following description from Armstrong’s Art of Preserving Health 4.267–8: ‘Virtue (for mere good-nature is a fool) | Is sense and spirit with humanity’.

2. Of Love and Marriage This essay and ‘Moral Prejudices’ clearly were among the ‘former papers’ that Hume had sent to Kames (1 July 1739, New Letters, 6–7). It appeared in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] (1741), 2nd edition (‘1742’), 3rd edition (1748), and the 1753–6, 1758, and 1760 editions of the ETSS. It narrowly missed being dropped for the 1748 edition as being ‘too frivolous for the rest, and not very agreeable neither even in that trifling manner’, as Hume wrote to Adam Smith on 24 September 1752, but Andrew Millar, the bookseller, had ‘made such Protestations against it, & told me how much he had heard them praisd by the best Judges; that the Bowels of a Parent melted, & I preserv’d them alive’ (Letters, 1: 168). ‘De l’amour et du mariage’, attributed by name to Hume, appeared in Journal étranger (December 1755), no. 1, pp. 219–28. Nevertheless, for the 1764 ETSS Hume did withdraw his essay, with ‘Impudence and Modesty’ and ‘Study of History’, for being derivative from Addison’s essays (see 7 February 1772, Letters 2: 257). It would be reprinted with ‘Impudence and Modesty’ and ‘Avarice’ in Beauties of the Magazines, 1: 108–26. The concluding allegory was reprinted as ‘The Origin of Love and Marriage. An Allegory’ and misattributed to William Shenstone in British Moralists, 2: 31–3. 22.17–18  more a friend to truth, than even to them] Hume burlesques a famous remark ascribed to Aristotle: ‘amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas’; ‘Plato is a friend, but truth is a greater friend’. In a less pithy form it may be found in Nicomachean Ethics 1096a11–17, where Aristotle sets out the personal dilemma he faces in criticizing Plato’s theory of Forms: ‘the Forms were introduced by friends of ours’, but ‘piety requires us to honour truth above our friends, though both are dear.’ Aristotle is imitating Plato, who, in proposing to banish the poets in Republic 595c, said with reference to Homer himself: ‘we must not honour a man above truth’. The pithier form of Aristotle’s remark derives almost verbatim from a late Life of Aristotle (that of pseudo-Ammonius), as translated into Latin in the 13th century. See Aristotle, Aristotelis Fragmenta, 438–9, 446–7, and L’éthiqe à Nicomaque, 2.1: 37. 22.21–2  their love of dominion] Cf. Pope, Epistles to Several Persons 2 (To a Lady), lines 207–10: ‘In Men, we various Ruling Passions find, | In Women, two almost divide the kind; | Those, only fix’d, they first and last obey, | The Love of Pleasure, and the Love of Sway’ (Works 3.2: 67). The sentiment was a commonplace, but there is a pattern in Hume’s essays of echoing expressions from Pope’s Epistles. 23.15–16  we are told by modern anecdotes, that some of the Scythian women] Whatever was the modern source for this story, it seems to have refashioned

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details scattered throughout ancient sources. That a matriarchal society existed amongst the Scythians is reported in Pliny, Natural History 6.7. That the Scythians blinded their slaves and that the women consorted with them are reported in Herodotus, Persian Wars 4.1–3. The origin of an Amazonian realm in a splinter Scythian group is recounted in Justin, Epitome 2.4, which records that to preserve their liberty the women crippled and enslaved the male infants whom they did not strangle or send away. Hume could have found most of the sources surveyed in Petit, Traité historique, chs. 4–7. Cf. Montaigne, Essais 3.5 (Œuvres, 843), for a ­similar distortion of the classical sources. 23.22  our Scottish ladies] an indication that Hume thought of his periodical papers as having a Scottish audience. 23.23  their Scythian ancestors] The tradition of the settlement of Scythians in  Scotland may be found in Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.1, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, History, [4].70 (ed. Faletra, 95–6), among others. The question is ­discussed in Salmon, History of Great Britain, 148–52, with references to earlier discussions by Camden, Ussher, and others. 23.34–5  that every thing was carried on with perfect equality] See EPM 3.18–19 for a discussion attributing the measures of equality between the sexes achieved in some societies to ‘the laws of humanity’ rather than to those of justice. 23.37  Plato’s account of the origin of love and marriage] Hume must refer to this tale when in a letter of 1 July 1739 he says, ‘I have committed some Mistakes in former Papers by trusting to my Memory. . . . I suppose that instead of the Hydrogynes, I shou’d have said the Androgynes of Plato’ (New Letters, 7). Plato has Aristophanes tell this fable in Symposium 189c-193d as a jocund panegyric on true love, including, most notably, homosexual love. Hume reduces Aristophanes’s three species to one, the Androgynes, or the male–female beings who, when divided, yield heterosexual males and females. Aristophanes’s other two species, the male–male and female–female beings, become homosexuals when divided.

3. Of the Study of History In a letter of 24 September 1752 (Letters, 1: 168), Hume indicated that Andrew Millar had dissuaded him from withdrawing this essay and ‘Love and Marriage’ for the 1748 edition of Essays, Moral and Political. ‘Study of History’ appeared in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741), the 2nd edition (‘1742’), the edition of 1748 consolidating two volumes, and the 1753–6, 1758, and 1760 editions of the ETSS. It was dropped, with ‘Love and Marriage’ and ‘Impudence and Modesty’, for the 1764 edition. Evidently speaking of these three essays, Hume wrote to Strahan on 7 February 1772 that he had suppressed the essays for being ‘bad Imitations of the agreeable Triffling of Addison’ (2: 257). According to Hume’s Victorian editor T. H. Grose, ‘that they survived so long, is, perhaps, surprising’

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(‘History of the Editions’, 44). However, in 1755–6 the Journal étranger coupled translations of a belletristic essay by Hume with one on political subjects, and ‘De l’étude de l’histoire’ was coupled with ‘Des premiers principes du gouvernement’ (June 1756, pp. 51–8). In Journal étranger (October 1760), 147–55, a different translation was offered. Hume himself might have been surprised by the appearance of ‘Study of History’ in the 1921 World’s Classics English Prose (2: 560–5). 26.4–5  ordinary books of amusement, and . . . serious compositions] evidently the ‘Books of Gallantry and Devotion’ deprecated in ‘Essay Writing’ 8 (for which see the annotation for 5.9). Here Hume identifies the books of amusement as ‘romances and novels’, by which terms he clearly does not mean to signify the nascent distinction between kinds of fiction stressing, respectively, the marvelous and the realistic. The terms did come to signify such contrasting genres by the 1760s, when Hugh Blair discussed them (Lectures, 2: 305–10). But by novel Hume seems to mean either ‘a small tale, generally of love’ (Johnson, Dictionary) or the French nouvelle historique et galante like Marie-Madeleine Motier, comtesse de La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (Paris, 1678), a 1704 edition of which is listed in Hume Library. According to Lord Chesterfield, writing to his son c.1740, a novel ‘is a little gallant history, which must contain a great deal of love, and not exceed one or two volumes.’ It is ‘a kind of abbreviation of a Romance; for a Romance generally consists of twelve volumes, all filled with insipid love nonsense, and most incredible adventures’ (Williams, Novel and Romance, 100). In EPM 2.12, Hume says, ‘The historian exults in displaying the benefits arising from his labours. The writer of romance alleviates or denies the bad consequences ascribed to his manner of ­composition’. 26.26  secret history] i.e. romans-à-clef like The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania (London, 1727) by Eliza Haywood, an object of Pope’s scorn in the Dunciad Variorum 2.149. A copy is listed in the Hume Library. As a title the phrase derives from Procopius’s Secret History of the reign of Justinian (see Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Procopius), which is a sometimes scurrilous attack on the character of Justinian and Theodora and their policies. 27.2  Cato’s sister] The younger Cato’s half-sister, Servilia, mother of Brutus, who, with Cassius and others, assassinated Julius Caesar in 44 bc. Plutarch reports that after defeating Brutus and Cassius at the battle of Pharsalus (48 bc), Caesar gave orders that Brutus, who had fought for Pompey, should not be harmed (Lives, ‘Brutus’ 5). Plutarch alleges that Caesar did so because in his youth he had had a passionate affair with Servilia and had reason to believe that Brutus was his son. Hume comments on another incident between Cato and Caesar involving Servilia in ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 6, on which see the annotation for 211.33. 27.4  the loves of Messalina or Julia] For her debauchery Valeria Messalina, third wife of the emperor Claudius, was pilloried for the ages by Juvenal in Satires 6.115–32; 10.329–45. When she took advantage of Claudius’s absence from Rome

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to flaunt her relations with a nobleman in an ostentatious marriage ceremony, the Imperial freedmen alarmed Claudius over Messalina’s ultimate intentions and had her and her paramour killed (ad 48). See Tacitus, Annals 11.12, 26–38; also Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1576, s.v. Valeria Messal(l)ina. Referring to Julia in the same breath with Messalina suggests that Hume might have in mind Julia Livilla, who was accused by Messalina of adultery with the younger Seneca, banished, and put to death. Earlier she had been banished by her brother, the emperor Caligula, for adultery with her brother-in-law (ad 39) and restored by Claudius. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, 777, s.v. Iulia (5), ‘sometimes called Livilla’. Two other possibilities are the daughter and granddaughter of the emperor Augustus, both named Julia, who were both banished for adultery and scandalous behaviour (ad 2 and ad 8, respectively). See Tacitus, Annals 1.53, and Oxford Classical Dictionary, 776, s.v. Iulia (3) and Iulia (4). 27.5  this city] presumably Edinburgh. Cf. the annotation on ‘Avarice’ 2 for ‘a famous miser in this city’. 27.16  the tenderness of their complexion] Bailey, Dictionarium Britannicum, s.v. complexion: ‘the natural constitution or the temperature of the body, as ­sanguine, phlegmatick or cholerick’. 28.5–7  history . . . affords materials to most of the sciences] In a letter of 12 September 1754 to Jean-Bernard Le Blanc (Letters, 1: 193), Hume says of the first Stuart volume of his History, ‘The philosophical Spirit, which I have so much indulg’d in all my Writings, finds here ample Materials to work upon.’ Cf. EHU 8.7: ‘These records of wars, intrigues, factions, and revolutions, are so many collections of experiments, by which the politician or moral philosopher fixes the principles of his science’. 28.9  for ever children in understanding, were it not for this invention] Hume adopts Cicero’s dictum, ‘Nescire quid ante quam natus sis acciderit id est semper esse puerum’; ‘To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child’ (Orator 34.120). 28.24–5  deny the reality of all moral distinctions] Hume criticizes such moral sceptics in ‘Dignity or Meanness’ 9 as well as EPM 1.2 and app. 2. Readers of ‘Study of History’ would have associated the denial of moral distinctions, justly or not, with Hobbes, Mandeville, and, for a French antecedent, La Rochefoucauld. Addison had deplored the last as an exemplar of those who ‘resolve Virtue and Vice into Constitution’ and ‘endeavour to make no Distinction between Man and Man, or between the Species of Man and that of Brutes’ (Tatler 108). In the preface to his sermons Joseph Butler named Hobbes and La Rochefoucauld as exemplars of moral scepticism (Works, 2: 18–19). In 1745, Hume’s tenet of the artificial virtues would move William Wishart, principal of Edinburgh University, to accuse Hume himself of ‘sapping the Foundations of Morality, by denying the natural and essential Difference betwixt Right and Wrong’ (Hume, Letter from a Gentleman 19).

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28.26–7  the historians have been . . . the true friends of virtue] In ‘Hume’s “Rejected” Essays’, 359–60, Norah Smith suggests that ‘Study of History’ responds to Tatler 117, in which Addison, echoing Bacon’s Advancement 2 (Works, 3: 343–4), recommends ‘fabulous Histories and Fictions’ in superaddition to histories. Unlike history, fiction allows for poetic justice. 28.28–30  Machiavel . . . history of Florence. . . . Politician] Hume contrasts the Machiavelli of the Historie Fiorentine, quoted in ‘Politics’, n. 7, with that of Il Principe, the maxims of which he occasionally criticizes, e.g. ‘Politics’ 10 and n. 6, ‘Civil Liberty’ 1. See the Glossary, s.v. politician/, -s. 28.34  that remark of Horace] Horace, Epistles 1.10.24–5: ‘You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will always come back’. Horace’s remark had become proverbial (Wilson, Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 106). 29.9  Veræ voces] Lucretius, De rerum natura 3.57–8: ‘[O]nly then are the words of truth drawn out from the depth of the heart.’ In the passage of Lucretius it is ­danger and adversity that draw out the truth from a person.

4. Of Avarice This essay from Essays, Moral and Political (1741) survived the purges of Addisonian imitations occurring in the 1748 edition and the 1764 ETSS, only to be omitted as of the 1770 edition. It was soon reprinted with ‘Impudence and Modesty’ and ‘Love and Marriage’ in Beauties of the Magazines (1772), 1: 108–26, a publication opportunistically gleaning what was ‘omitted in the late editions’ of Hume’s works. It also was reprinted without attribution in Alexander Donaldson’s paper, The Edinburgh Advertiser, 22 (28 June–1 July 1774): 1–2. In 1908, it and ‘My Own Life’ would be included in the World’s Classics English Prose from Mandeville to Ruskin, a collection designed ‘to illustrate the development of English prose’ (v). In 1936, a prizewinning Latin translation was published following its recital in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford by a young Robert Browning, the distinguished Byzantinist. 30.3–4  been often compared to the painting for cupolas and cielings] no example found, albeit ‘often compared’, according to Hume. Congreve did remark to Dennis in 1695 that the ‘distance of the Stage requires the Figure represented to be something larger than the Life; and sure a Picture may have Features larger in Proportion, and yet be very like the Original’ (Spingarn, Critical Essays, 3: 247). 30.8–9  when characters are exhibited in theatrical representations] Cf. THN 1.3.10.10 for the application of these factors to tragedy. The ‘want of reality’ allows our spirits to be excited and attention roused agreeably by a horrific spectacle. Conversely, for comedy the mitigating effect of the ‘want in substance’ in theatrical representation must be counterpoised by ‘force of colouring’. In ‘Tragedy’, Hume would associate this understanding of the aesthetics of terror and pity with Fontenelle’s Réflexions sur la poétique (written c.1695) and offer an amendment to

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the theory with unclear implications for comedy. See the annotation for ‘Tragedy’, n. 1. The Treatise and ‘Avarice’, however, antedate the belated publication of the Réflexions in 1742. 30.15–16  Two men in buckram suits became eleven to Sir John Falstaff] See Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV 2.4.190–264. Falstaff here serves as a double example, both of the tendency to heighten stories and of a larger-than-life comic character. In this scene the auditors for his braggadocio, unknown to Falstaff, are the very two men in buckram, Prince Hal and Poins, who were his assailants following the Gadshill robbery. So famous was this scene that it became possible to allude to it simply by mentioning buckram (Ingleby et al., Shakespeare AllusionBook, 1: 491, 514; 2: 214, 241, 275). Hume would quote from the play by memory in his pamphlet in defence of Archibald Stewart (True Account, ¶ 18). THN 2.1.8.6, on the causal relation between vanity and ‘vulgar lying’, seems ap­plic­ able to Falstaff. 30.22–3  An old usurer, says the story] The set piece depicting a miser’s ob­stin­ acy in extremis had a history stretching back through Allan Ramsay’s poem, ‘Mouldy-Mowdiwart: or the Last Speech of a Wretched Miser’ (1724), to 12thcentury exempla concerning usury. Joseph Warton would repeat Hume’s story nearly verbatim without attribution (Essay, 2: 140). 30.28–9  a famous miser in this city] Hume expected the identity of ‘this city’ to be understood, an indication that the original market projected for Hume’s abandoned periodical was Edinburgh. The famous miser remains unidentified. 30.33–31.1  Another noted miser in the north] M. A. Stewart plausibly identifies this miser with Robert Gordon (1665–1732), who, excluding his sister and her family from his will, left £10,300 for the building and maintaining of a hospital in Aberdeen for the education of indigent boys. It was said that he would carry rather than wear gloves so as not to wear them out. See Walker, Robert Gordon, 4–7; Kennedy, Annals, 2: 139–41. 31.7  in old men, or in men of cold tempers] Other than the analysis of avarice as a passion affected, or not affected, by other passions, little in ¶ 3 is original. Cf.  Thomas Gordon’s essay on avarice in his Humourist: ‘But Covetousness alone [amongst vicious passions] is a dry stupid Passion which never abates; it cannot cool, for it is always cool. . . . Avarice is the natural Vice of Old Age; which shews that its Strength lies in the Decay of Life’ (141). The Humourist (1720) first appeared in The Weekly Packet, commencing 1718. 31.16  its predominant inclination] See the annotation for ‘Sceptic’ 2 at 135.16. 31.30–1  There being so little hopes of doing good to the people infected with this vice] more or less the point that Antoine Houdart de la Motte made in lines 28–35 of the fable that Hume paraphrases in ¶ 5. That even normal, nonneurotic avarice is a stubborn passion is the point of ‘Civil Liberty’ 10.

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31.34  the fables of Monsieur de la Motte] Hume refers to ‘L’Avare et Minos’, Fables nouvelles 1.19, by Antoine Houdart de la Motte, on whom see the annotations for ‘Standard of Taste’ 14 at 186.26 (on Don Quixote) and 32 at 194.23. Allan Ramsay (the father and namesake of Hume’s friend, the painter) translated lines 36 onward as ‘The Miser and Minos’. A copy of the Fables nouvelles is in the Hume Library. 31.37–8  the Styx . . . Charon] Once a dead person had received funeral rites, he descended to the underworld and passed into Hades by crossing a river, normally the Styx, ferried by the squalid old ferryman, Charon, on payment of an obol, a small sum. See Virgil, Aeneid 6.295–316, and for a lighter view Aristophanes, Frogs, lines 117–53, and Lucian, Menippus 10. 32.1  each of the judges] Traditionally there were three judges of the dead in the underworld: Minos, son of Zeus by the mortal Europa; his brother Rhadamanthys; and Aeacus. Antoine Houdart de la Motte presents only Minos deliberating. 32.3–5  Prometheus . . . the Danaides . . . Sisyphus] three of the traditional victims of exemplary punishment in classical mythology. Sisyphus cheated death a number of times, but when he finally died, he was condemned in Hades to roll a boulder up a hill forever and never succeed in getting it to the top. See Homer, Odyssey 11.593–600. As punishment for killing their husbands, the Danaids (daughters of Danaus) were condemned to pour water into a leaky vessel (e.g. Horace, Odes 3.11.25–32). For short accounts see Virgil, Aeneid 6.548–627, and Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.455–63. Prometheus was not punished in the underworld but chained to a high rock where his liver was torn by an eagle each day and regrown each night (Hesiod, Theogony, lines 506–16, and the Prometheus Bound (attributed to Aeschylus), lines 1–87). La Motte mentions these three victims of punishment and adds Tantalus and Ixion. 32.12  Damn’d to the mines] Alexander Pope, Epistles to Several Persons 3 (Bathurst), lines 109–10.

E SSAYS, MORAL , P O L I T I C A L , AND L ITE RARY — PA RT 1 1. Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion This essay was the first in Essays, Moral and Political (1741 [vol. 1]), and retained the initial position in the 2nd edition (‘1742’), in the 1748 consolidation of two volumes, and thereafter in all editions of the ETSS. In that position it introduces the essays that for the 1758 ETSS Hume designated (advt., iii) as pt. 1 of Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, i.e. those not from the Political Discourses. ‘De la délicatesse du goût & du sentiment’ appeared in Mercure de France (April 1756), no. 1, pp. 8–15 (coupled with the first paragraph of ‘de la liberté de la Presse, à Londres’ at pages 15–16). In the same month a different translation, ‘Sur la

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­ élicatesse de la passion et du goût’, appeared in Journal étranger (April 1756), 159–66, d followed by ‘Sur la liberté de la Presse’ in its entirety. ‘Delicacy of Taste’ takes its place within the international vogue for sensibility dated c.1730–90 in Britain by some literary historians. A good specimen of the vogue is Hume’s own story of Eugenius (‘Moral Prejudices’ 4). In Letters, 1: 200 (15 October 1754), Hume describes using Alexander Pope’s ‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady’ to test the delicacies of taste and passion of the poet Thomas Blacklock, and it was in terms of an ‘extreme Sensibility of Temper’ that Hume would initially understand Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s erratic behaviour (see e.g. 25 March 1766, Letters, 2: 30). On the British antecedents of the movement the locus classicus is R. S. Crane’s ‘Suggestions toward a Genealogy of the “Man of Feeling” ’, which documents that, alongside the standard derivation of the movement from Shaftesbury’s philosophy by way of Hutcheson’s, a broader source is likely to have been the latitudinarian sermons and writings of the later 1660s. The emphasis on benevolent sensibility and good works intended to counter the Puritan emphasis on doctrine and divine election was adaptable to counter the Hobbist and Mandevillean egoist accounts of human motives. This latter aspect of the movement is more discernible in Hume’s EPM, where the stress is on sentiment and virtue, than in ‘Delicacy of Taste’, where the concern with good taste places it in the context more immediately of discussions of goût by Jean-Baptiste Dubos and predecessors like Boileau and Dominique Bouhours (see the annotation for ‘Standard of Taste’ 14 at 186.19). Neither genealogy, that involving Shaftesbury or the latitudinarians, explains the vogue for sensibilité in France appearing in the late 17th century, and that permutation of the movement is as likely to have influenced Hume as the British one. 35.1  delicacy of passion] Prior discussions in France assessing the role of passion in the conduct of life employed terms like sentimens, délicatesse, and sensibilité. See e.g. the pieces in Recueil de divers écrits, sur l’amour et l’amitié, la politesse, la volupté, les sentimens agréables, l’esprit et le coeur, ed. H.  Cordonnier de Saint Hyacinthe (Paris, 1736), esp. the Marquis de [Charost] on the comparative merits of mind and heart, including a discussion of the delicacies of passion and taste (273–84). With the last, cf. [Antoine Pecquet,] Parallele du coeur, de l’esprit et du bon sens (Paris, 1740). As in ‘Delicacy of Taste’, the procedure was to elaborate a distinction between closely related qualities: politesse and civilité, amour and amitié, esprit and coeur, esprit and bon sens. 35.15–16  Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains] a hedonic assessment repeated by Philo in DNR 10, ¶¶ 18–32. Cf. [Charost], in SaintHyacinthe, Recueil, 284: ‘L’extrême délicatesse dans le sentiment devient souvent un défaut. . . . C’est un malheur d’être né sensible et délicat; on trouve bien des momens ou le coeur est blessé’; ‘Often extreme delicacy of sentiment can be a defect . . . . It is a misfortune to be born sensitive and delicate, so plentiful are occasions to be hurt’.

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35.24  a poem or a picture] The coupling of poetry with painting was a critical commonplace with a long and varied history taking as a point of departure Horace’s phrase, ‘Ut pictura poesis’, ‘As painting, so poetry’ (Ars poetica, line 361), sometimes construed prescriptively. Thus the two arts are coupled in Dryden’s 1698 ‘Parallel betwixt Painting and Poetry’, a survey with a largely Platonic emphasis on ideal imitation of nature (Works, 20: 38–77), and in Dubos’s 1719 Reflexions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture, which features an empiricist emphasis on psychology. 36.2  delicacy of taste is as much to be desired] A variation on this theme will reaffirm the point in ‘Standard of Taste’ 17. In EPM 7.28 delicacy of taste is numbered amongst the virtues that are immediately agreeable to ourselves irrespective of utility. Calling it a ‘talent’ in this essay (¶¶ 2, 3) and in ‘Standard of Taste’ 18 is consistent with Hume’s depreciation of the distinction between talent and virtue (EPM, app. 4; THN 3.3.4). 36.6–7  Philosophers have endeavoured to render happiness entirely in­dependent] Through the 1748 edition the line read, ‘The ancient Philosophers’ (vari­ ants). Cf. the discussion in EPM of ‘that undisturbed philosophical Tranquillity, superior to pain, sorrow, anxiety, and each assault of adverse fortune’ (7.16). Thus Platonists (e.g. Plato’s Socrates, Cudworth) located happiness in the life of mind or spirit rather than material well-being; Stoics (e.g. Epictetus, Lipsius) in virtue and conquest of passion; Sceptics (e.g. Carneades, Montaigne) in intellectual repose by suspension of judgement; and Epicureans (e.g. Lucretius, Saint-Évremond) in ataraxy in living without fear of death and the gods or (much as in the recommended course in ‘Delicacy’) in ‘careless’ cultivated refinement. Hume depicts modern ­versions of these schools in the essays ‘Epicurean’, ‘Stoic’, ‘Platonist’, and ‘Sceptic’. 36.7–8  That degree of perfection is impossible to be attained] Cf. EPM 7.16: ‘These pretensions . . . are, by far, too magnificent for human nature. . . . [T]he nearer we can approach in practice, to this sublime tranquillity and indifference (for we must distinguish it from a stupid insensibility) the more secure enjoyment shall we attain within ourselves’. Also THN 3.2.2.7: ‘We are perfectly secure in the enjoyment’ of the ‘internal satisfaction of our mind’. The point is repeated in ‘Sceptic’ 25 and n. 6. But Hume criticizes the ‘endeavour to confine our pleasures altogether within our own minds’ as potentially exaggerating a ‘predominant inclination’, e.g. to selfishness or indolence (EHU 5.1). 36.13–14  the most expensive luxury can afford.] Until the 1770 ETSS, ¶ 3 was followed by this paragraph (with slight variations): ‘How far the Delicacy of Taste and that of Passion are connected together in the original Frame of the Mind, it is hard to determine. To me there appears to be a very considerable Connexion betwixt them. For we may observe, that Women, who have more delicate Passions than Men, have also a more delicate Taste of the Ornaments of Life, of Dress, Equipage, and the ordinary Decencies of Behaviour. Any Excellency in these hits their Taste much sooner than ours; and when you please their Taste, you soon

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engage their Affections.’ In 1770, the last sentence was omitted, and in 1772, the remainder of the paragraph was omitted (variants). 36.15  Whatever connexion there may be originally] Hume waives for present purposes the psychology of action and judgement in THN, DP 5, and EPM, where the connection ‘in the original Frame of the Mind’ (variants for 36.14) is detailed. THN 2.3.3–4 shows the connection between the delicacies of passion and taste to be that both pertain to passion understood as ‘secondary’ impressions of sentiment (2.1.1.1–2). The present contrast between the delicacies of passion and taste is between propensities to two sorts of passion, a susceptibility to (what normally are) ‘violent’ passions and the influence of (what normally are) ‘calm’ ones associated with taste. (This taxonomy acknowledges exceptions when, e.g., the ‘raptures of poetry and music’ (2.1.1.3) rise to violence.) As reason is not conative, it does not rule over passion; instead, the well-regulated psyche enjoys the rule of calm passions over violent. To cultivate taste is to cultivate aesthetic passions, which are calm enough to be modified by reflection, and collaterally to indispose ourselves for ‘the rougher and more boisterous emotions’ (‘Delicacy of Taste’ 4). This cultivation is parallel to that of moral sensibility and judgement since both arise from sentiment needing regularization. Because Hume did not finish the THN and provide the discussion of criticism intended, the discussion of taste at 2.1.7.7 might seem to suggest that the derivation of taste from a ‘sensation of pleasure’ disallows any influence of judgement about means and ends or causes and effects (cf. DP 2.6). ‘Delicacy of Taste’, with ‘Standard of Taste’, can be seen as a surviving part of the intended discussion in light of Hume’s statement in the THN that ‘In what sense we can talk either of a right or a wrong taste in morals, eloquence, or beauty, shall be consider’d afterwards’ (3.2.8 n. 2). 36.21  the sciences and liberal arts] Hume added ‘Sciences’ to the phrase in the Essays, Moral and Political, 2nd edition of volume 1,‘1742’ (variants). He reacted to the suggestion of an unidentified commentator to substitute ‘Sciences’ for ‘Liberal Arts’ (see Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 3). See the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 29 at 111.13–14. 36.21–2  a fine taste is, in some measure, the same with strong sense] The relation between good taste and strong sense is affirmed in ‘Standard of Taste’ 22, where Hume says, ‘reason, if not a part of taste, is at least requisite to the operations of this latter faculty’. 36.32  But perhaps I have gone too far in saying] Hume indulges in a figure of speech conveying the sense of a mind in action. ‘Correction is a Figure whereby a Man earnestly retracts and recalls what he had said or resolv’d’ (Blackwall, Introduction 2.4.3). This figure of speech forms a sort of crescendo in the treatment of Pyrrhonian scepticism in THN 1.4.7.8, 10. 36.38  Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes] Ovid, Ex Ponto 2.9.47–8: ‘A faithful study of the liberal arts softens the temper and does not allow it to be brutish.’

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Ovid, in exile at Tomis on the coast of the Black Sea, makes an appeal to Cotys, the young king of neighbouring Thrace, whom he claims as a kindred spirit, trained in the liberal arts and a poet. Bacon quotes these lines in Advancement of Learning, bk. 1 ad fin. in illustration of learning as an aid to ‘moral and private virtue’ (Works, 3: 314). Addison uses them as the epigraph to Spectator 215 for 6 November 1711, in which he acknowledges his hope, through his essays, to ‘contribute something to the polishing of Mens Morals’ (Spectator, 2: 341). Swift uses them similarly in Tatler 20 (Saturday–Tuesday, 3–6 March 1710) to head a discussion of ‘Good Manners, or Breeding’ (Prose, 2: 184). 37.2  nothing is so improving to the temper] a point elaborated in ‘Sceptic’ 30, where the quotation from Ovid is paraphrased. The notions of philosophy and good taste as ameliorators of sensibility would be criticized by Hume’s friend Henry Mackenzie, author of the influential novel, The Man of Feeling (1771). Philosophical tranquillity is examined in ‘The Story of La Roche’ (nos. 42–4 for 19, 22, 26 June 1779, The Mirror; pub. independently 1793; repr. in coll. Mirror, 1781). Mackenzie used a character based on Hume as a foil for the protagonist, a pastor whose nondoctrinal, sensibility-centred religion is juxtaposed with the philosopher’s tepid good nature. In the Mirror (nos. 10 for 27 February 1779 and 47 for 6 July 1779), Mackenzie implicitly challenges and moderates Hume’s thesis that delicacy of taste conduces to happiness, and possibly he would have diagnosed Hume’s own youthful psychosomatic troubles, described in a well-known letter to a physician, as due to overcultivation rather than sensibility ([spring 1734?] Letters, 1: 12–18). n. 1  Mons. Fontenelle, Pluralité des Mondes. Soir 6.] Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes. The 6e soir was added in the 1687 edition. Fontenelle uses this analogy between the varying discriminative capacities of clocks and people to illustrate the ability to adjust belief according to degrees of probability. His test case sets reasoned inference against unsophisticated sense experience. A parallel case adduced is the belief that Alexander the Great existed, a belief warranted because it has all the proofs reasonably to be required for such a question. Hume’s select companion evidently is a wise person who ‘proportions his belief to the evidence’ (EHU 10.1.1). Tying with Pope and Shaftesbury as the mostcited contemporary author in the Essays, Fontenelle plainly was a standard author for Hume. ‘That which most particularly distinguishes M. de Fontenelle’, according to his eulogist, the Abbé Trublet, ‘is the union of refined wit [bel-esprit] and the philosophic mind [esprit philosophique], the one and the other in the highest degree’ (Memoirs, 12). 37.25–6  affections being thus confined within a narrow circle] Hume foreshortens the double point that Saint-Évremond had made at the end of ­ ‘L’Amitié sans amitié’: friendship between refined individuals is both qualitatively superior and deeper since channelled. The friendship of those who are not wise is ‘a  savage Friendship, which Reason disowns’. Moreover, ‘when the Soul diffuses it  self undistinguishably upon all Objects, our Affections are so distracted, that they properly fix upon nothing’ (Works, 2: 180–91). Echoes of this theme appear

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in Hume’s letters: ‘I have rusted amid books and study . . . and am more accustomed to a select society than to general companies’ (15 May 1761); ‘My chief Grievance is, that I allowed myself at first to be hurry’d into too great a Variety of Company, and find a Difficulty to withdraw and confine myself to one Society, without which there is no real Enjoyment’ (28 March 1764); ‘[H]aving now contracted the Circle of my Acquaintance, I live tolerably at my Ease’ (6 April 1765, Letters, 1: 345, 431, 499). 37.28  frolic of a bottle companion] Cf. this general point with that of ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 6 and the passages deleted from ‘Rise and Progress’ 41 on ‘hard Drinking; a Remedy worse than the Disease’ (critical apparatus).

2. Of the Liberty of the Press This essay appeared first in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741), in a form significantly different from that it took as of the 1770 ETSS. The revision may reflect Hume’s reaction to the 1768–70 Wilkite agitation and disturbances, about which he complained to Turgot on 16 June 1768: ‘Here is a People thrown into Disorders . . . merely from the Abuse of Liberty, chiefly the Liberty of the Press; without any Grievance, I do not only say, real, but even imaginary; and without any of them being able to tell one Circumstance of Government which they wish to have corrected’ (Letters, 2: 180). The different purport of the first version may be indicated by its selection for reprinting as the preface for the 1754 Scots Magazine. It is offered as a panegyric on the liberty of the press, which is imperative for ‘the preservation of [British] liberties, civil and religious’ (16: iii–vi at iii). A French translation of the first paragraph appeared in Mercure de France (April 1756), no. 1, pp. 15–16, as ‘de la liberté de la Presse, à Londres’ (coupled with ‘De la délicatesse du Goût & du Sentiment’ at pages 8–15). A translation of the entire essay appeared in Journal étranger (April 1756), 167–76, preceded by ‘Sur la délicatesse de la passion et du goût’. Hume is named as the author. 38.7  our political writers] A case in point was the behaviour of the Opposition in using the War of the Austrian Succession as a weapon against the government. See the annotation for ‘Balance of Power’ 16 at 256.21. If the Opposition to Walpole’s ministry agitated for aggressive military action, the Opposition to the Godolphin–Marlborough ministry during the War of the Spanish Succession had been anti-war. The attack on the Duke of Marlborough as a warmonger was led by the Tory propagandist Jonathan Swift. 38.12  Great Britain alone enjoys this peculiar privilege?] Until the 1770 ETSS, this question continued thus: ‘and, Whether the unlimited Exercise of this Liberty be advantageous or prejudicial to the Publick?’ (variants). The three para­ graphs answering this second question were likewise dropped in 1770. 38.14–15  neither wholly monarchical, nor wholly republican] See the annotations for ‘Populousness’ 82 at 303.9 (on republics) and ‘Rise and Progress’ 14 at 105.35.

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38.22  the people fully satisfied] This picture of French absolutism would have seemed more plausible subsequent to the Huguenot diaspora described in Hist. 6: 470–1 (s.v. ad 1685) and prior to the mounting demands from the parlements marking the end of the 1740s. Growing jealousy between king and subjects became more manifest, especially in the latter half of the comparatively mild reign of Louis XV, and calls for a free press were evident in the yet more conciliatory regime of Louis XVI, whose reign began in 1774. Having lived in France in 1734–7, Hume was not one to make much of the arbitrary elements in French government (see ‘Origin of Government’ 7 and its annotation at 56.21–2). 38.25–6  Holland, where there is no magistrate so eminent as to give jealousy] Hume wrote this essay during the second suspension of the stadtholderate (1702–47). As in ‘Rise and Progress’ 6 and ‘Taxes’ 2, ‘Holland’ would be understood to represent the United Provinces as a whole. 38.27  large discretionary powers] Probably this hypothesis is drawn from Sir William Temple’s comments on the modest way of living of Dutch magistrates and the resulting docility of the population in the face of harsh laws, heavy taxes, and other impositions. Temple opined that these were tolerated out of a sense of necessity and because the burdens rested on all citizens alike (Observations, 34, 64–5, 71–2). A disapproving recognition of this same lack of liberty is Salmon, Modern History, 2: 188. Hume must have agreed with Temple (95) that the lynching of the Grand Pensionary John de Witt and his brother Cornelius in 1672 was an aberration. Temple wrote his book on the United Provinces at the end of the first suspension of the stadtholderate (1650–72). 39.7–9  a remark in Tacitus. . . . Nec totam . . . possunt] from the speech of Galba as recorded in Tacitus, Histories 1.16: ‘You are about to assume rule over men who cannot tolerate either complete servitude or complete freedom.’ The elderly emperor Galba is giving advice to Piso, whom he is attempting, unsuccessfully, to appoint as his successor. The previous sentence provides a context relevant to Hume’s point: ‘For it is not the case here [at Rome] as it is for peoples who are ruled by kings, where there is one family of masters and the rest are slaves.’ 39.14  Henriade, liv. 1.] The translator of Voltaire’s poem, John Lockman, rendered the lines relating to Queen Elizabeth as ‘The resty English bear her Yoke with Joy, | A Nation fond of changing, ne’re alike | In Servitude or Liberty at Ease’ (Henriade (1732), 19). Like Voltaire, John Trenchard applied Tacitus, Histories 1.16, to the English (Cato’s Letters 85 for 14 July 1722). 39.24  the dominion of a family] The dynastic principle never became fully established in the Roman imperial government. Each ‘family’ of emperors (e.g. Julio-Claudians, Flavians) rose from the ranks of the aristocracy to seize imperial power and thus, in Hume’s view, incurred the ‘jealousy’ of other aristocratic fam­ ilies. In ‘Civil Liberty’ 12, Hume names Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian as outstandingly evil emperors.

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39.25–6  the republican part of the government prevails in England] Cf. ‘British Government’ 6: ‘The tide has run long, and with some rapidity, to the side of popular government, and is just beginning to turn towards monarchy.’ 39.30  the law has plainly determined] This tenet is in accord with the prin­ ciple of law that what was not expressly forbidden was permitted. The means of establishing this freedom in 1695 illustrates the principle. No statute established the liberty of the press: it was based solely upon a failure in 1695 to renew the Licensing Act of 1662. 39.32  these judges must be his fellow-subjects] i.e. a jury. Until 1671 jurors could be fined or imprisoned for verdicts against the direction of the court. The independence of judges themselves from the monarch had been formally guaranteed in the 1701 Act of Settlement (12 & 13 William III, c. 2). See English Historical Documents, 6: 86–9, 129–34 at 134. 39.34–5  as much liberty, and even, perhaps, licentiousness in Great Britain] Licentiousness replaced ‘Licence’ (variants) in the 2nd edition of volume 1 (‘1742’) at the suggestion of an anonymous critic, who doubted ‘whether the word Licence can be used for the extreme of Liberty’ (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 4). 40.9  be careful to keep the press open] Arguments in favour of the liberty of the press had long been that it prevented the party then in the majority, religious or political, from imposing on others with impunity. The most powerful prudential arguments treating freedom of the press as essential in a nation subject to political divisions were those of Matthew Tindal, which extended the arguments in Milton’s Areopagitica from religious to party differences. See A Letter to a Member of Parliament (1698), repr. in his Four Discourses . . . Of the Liberty of the Press (1709), and epitomized in Reasons against Restraining the Press (1704). With respect to party differences, Tindal’s prime argument was that since no party could count always on being ascendant, any party controlling the press would eventually be ‘scourg’d with Rods of their own providing’ when out of power (Four Discourses, 324; Letter, 29; Reasons, ‘21’ [i.e. 12]). Tindal expresses a country–party or Opposition view, whereas Hume is resolutely neutral in the 1770 version of his essay. Hume mentions Tindal in introductory paragraphs deleted from ‘Independency of Parliament’ for the 1764 ETSS (variants for 57.1). 40.13  those mixed forms of government.] This concluding paragraph was included as of the 1772 ETSS. Until the 1770 ETSS, the essay had concluded instead with three paragraphs favouring the liberty of the press (variants). variants for 40.12.  the Harangues of the popular Demagogues of Athens and Tribunes of Rome] Any Athenian politician might be labelled a ‘demagogue’ (literally, ‘a leader of the people’) since politicians exercised their power to a large extent through their ability to influence the large popular assemblies or councils that constituted the government. But clearly the word is also pejorative. On the Roman office of tribune, see the annotation for ‘Remarkable Customs’ 11 at 276.32.

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Among Roman tribunes who were reported to have incited the people to violence, Hume mentions the Gracchi (for whom see ‘Populousness’ 35 and its annotation for 290.15) and Clodius, for whom see ‘Remarkable Customs’ 13 (with the annotation for 277.21–2) and the annotation to ‘Civil Liberty’, n. 4. variants for 40.12.  a Book or Pamphlet] Those emphasizing the incendiary nature of publications had only to reply that often pamphlets were read aloud in coffee-houses. Charles II attempted to close the coffee-houses in 1675 (English Historical Documents, 6: 482–3). variants for 40.12.  the Force and Energy of Action] For ‘action’ see the annotation for ‘Eloquence’ 7 at 94.25. variants for 40.12.  Before the united Provinces set the Example] The United Provinces were known for their religious toleration, which had its origin in the 16th-century overthrow of Spanish Hapsburg rule and the Inquisition by the Revolt of the Netherlands. Throughout the 17th century toleration was extended normally to all the Protestant sects and at times to Catholics and others. Though it normally excluded free-thinkers such as Spinoza, and was liable to criticism or curtailment at  times by the more rigid members of the Dutch Reformed Church, it allowed nevertheless for numerous sects to coexist in the same country. variants for 40.12.  some small Ferment at present] As this passage appeared in 1741, the ‘present’ to which Hume refers evidently is the era (c.1726–42) of war between Opposition- and Walpole-sponsored papers. variants for 40.12.  the Liberty of the Press . . . must be lost at once] The logic of the claim lies in the role of the press, noted in ¶ 5, in sounding the alarm when other liberties were attacked. Thus any developing assault would be checked by that alarm. Cf. Tindal: ‘In a word, as there’s no Freedom either Civil or Ecclesiastical, but where the liberty of the Press is maintain’d; so wherever that is secur’d, all ­others are safe. That like a faithful Centinel prevents all surprize, and gives timely warning of any approaching Danger’ (Reasons, 14). variants for 40.12.  The general Laws against Sedition and Libelling] So strong were these laws that the courts held the truth of an alleged libel to be no defence against prosecution. See State Law, 15, 25, 31. The defendant’s malicious intent needed not be proven to convict. Until Fox’s Libel Act of 1792, juries formally had the power only to decide questions of fact, e.g. whether the defendant published the work in question and whether putative innuendo referred to the party supposedly injured. Whether the work constituted sedition or libel was a question of law to be decided by the judge. See English Historical Documents, 7: 250–1. However, juries were challenging this constraint, as notably in the 1729 prosecution of the printer of the Craftsman (Williams, Eighteenth-Century Constitution, 397-9). Part of the context of the initial appearance of Hume’s essay in 1741 is the spectacle of two printers for the Craftsman having been convicted of libel in 1731 and 1737, respectively.

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variants for 40.12.  an Imprimatur upon the Press] i.e. implement a licensing act like 14 Charles II, c. 33, which in 1695 had been allowed to lapse. The Blasphemy Act of 1698, still in effect in the 21st century, was invoked against published works rather than prevented their publication. Like Milton in his Areopagitica, Hume points only at prepublication censorship through licensing, as had been administered by the Stationers Company. Imprimatur means ‘let it be printed’.

3. That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science ‘Politics’ first appeared in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741). From the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, until dropped for the 1770 ETSS, a note appeared at the end of ‘Politics’ consisting of the Character of Sir Robert Walpole that originally had been the concluding work in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742). (The character appears in the present edition amongst the withdrawn essays, with bibliographic information to be found above in A History of the Essays, pp. 413–14.) Annotated and coupled with ‘Sur la modestie et sur l’impudence’, ‘Que la politique peut-être réduite en science’ appeared with the Character of Walpole in Journal étranger (mai 1756), 32–59, identified as by the ‘célèbre M. Hume’. n. 1.3  Essay on Man, Book 3.] i.e. epistle 3.303–4 of Alexander Pope’s poem, quoted in a similar context in Federalist 68. Cf. Temple, ‘Of Popular Discontents’: ‘For it may perhaps be concluded, with as much Reason as other Themes of the like Nature, That those are generally the best Governments where the best Men govern; and let the Sort of Scheme be what it will, those are ill Governments where ill Men govern, and are generally employ’d in the Offices of the State’ (Works, 1: 259). Harrington, in contrast, had said in Oceana, prelims., pt. 2, ‘ “Give us good men and they will make us good laws” is the maxim of a demagogue . . . and exceeding fallible. But “give us good orders, and they will make us good men” is the maxim of a legislator and the most infallible in the politics’ (Political Works, 205). In 1738, neo-Harringtonian constitutionalism, as part of ‘country party’ ideology, was ­associated with the Opposition by Aaron Hill in his defence of the Walpole ministry. All species of government are, he said, ‘equally, safe, under a wary and wise Administration: All are, equally, prone to Destruction, under a weak and oppressive Authority’ (Enquiry, 4). 41.15  under Henry III. and under Henry IV.] For the latter, sometimes called Harry by Hume, see the annotations for ‘Middle Station’ 5 at 13.20 and ‘Rise and Progress’ 5 at 102.12–13. Henri IV succeeded in dealing with the warring Catholics and Huguenots, whereas his predecessor Henri III had had only ‘the talents of dissimulation requisite’ to do so but not the ‘vigour, application, and sound judgment’ (Hist. 4: 168, s.v. ad 1575). Hume’s assessment of these two rulers of France is the conventional one passed both by the rulers’ contemporaries and by posterity. However, the best-known work in English that treats Henri III was sympathetic to him. See Davila, Civil Warres, bks. 6–10.

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41.16  Oppression, levity, artifice on the part of the rulers] As of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, Hume omitted ‘Cruelty’ from the front of this list of characteristics (variants). variants for 41.21.  comparing the Reigns of Elisabeth and James] Included with the contrast of the reigns of the Henrys III and IV was one between the reigns of the last Tudor and the first Stuart that was deleted for the 1770 ETSS. The contrast of Elizabeth I and James I was a commonplace of Whig ideology being turned in Walpole’s time against the Whig ministry. See e.g. James Thomson’s Liberty 4 (Britain), lines 922–81. A personified Liberty concedes that under Elizabeth, as under James, ‘uncircumscrib’d the Regal Power, ∣ And wild and vague Prerogative remain’d’ (947–8). Under the patriot queen, however, ‘Peace, Plenty, Justice, Science, Arts’ crowned the reign with laurels, whereas under James, ‘the foolish Discord’ was fomented that ‘tears the Country still, by Party-Rage ∣ And ministerial Clamour kept alive’ (975–7). Cf. the annotations for ‘Coalition’ 13 at 353.40 (on Elizabeth I’s maxims) and 4 at 351.31–2 (on James I). 41.23  foreign as well as domestic] a modifier included as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). 41.24  All absolute governments] Originally included here in parentheses was ‘and such the English Government was, in a great Measure, till the Middle of the last Century’ (variants). At the behest of an anonymous critic (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 4–5), Hume added, for the 2nd edition of volume 1 of Essays, Moral and Political (‘1742’), ‘notwithstanding of the numerous Panegyrics on the antient English Liberty’ (variants). Hume and his critic concur in repudiating a Whig orthodoxy about the Gothic origins of English constitutional liberty. The parenthetical statement was deleted as of the 1772 ETSS. ‘Upon the whole,’ Hume wrote in the appendix on James I’s reign in the History, ‘we must conceive that monarchy, on the accession of the house of Stuart, was possessed of a very extensive authority . . . in the judgment of all, not exactly limited; in the judgment of some, not limitable’ (5: 124–9 at 128). Cf. Hist., 4: 354–61 (app. 3), 6: 447–8 (s.v. ad 1685), 530–4 (s.v. ad 1689). Locating the change from absolute government at ‘the Middle of the last Century’, and stating in ¶ 18 that the Glorious Revolution ‘repaired’ the constitution, Hume dates the constitutional change much earlier than 1688. Hume’s remarks in ‘Passive Obedience’ 6 indicate that Charles I provoked the civil wars because he was unaware that the constitution had changed. Hume wrote to Andrew Millar on 12 April 1755 that though the constitution was ‘very ambiguous & undetermin’d’ during the time of the first two Stuarts, Charles II ‘knew, that he had succeeded to a very limited Monarchy’ (Letters, 1: 217). 42.7–8  almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them, as any which the mathematical sciences afford us] The qualifier ‘almost’ was added as of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, and the qualifier ‘sometimes’ replaced ‘on most Occasions’ as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). See the

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annotation for ‘Standard of Taste’ 9 at 184.9–10 on ‘reasonings a priori’ and THN 1.3.11.2 on the distinction between ‘proof ’ and ‘knowledge’. (‘Knowledge’ is termed ‘demonstration’ when EHU 6 n. 10 repeats the distinction.) ‘There is a general course of nature in human actions,’ Hume said in THN 2.3.1.10, ‘as well as in the operations of the sun and the climate.’ Cf. EHU 8.4–25. 42.9–10  the whole legislative power to the people] Hume gives a more nuanced version of the assemblies of the Roman Republic in ‘Remarkable Customs’ 9–13. There he correctly distinguishes the popular assembly of the comitia tributa from the comitia centuriata, where voting was heavily weighted in favour of aristocratic voters. See the annotation for ‘Remarkable Customs’ 10 at 276.10–11. In ‘Politics’ he seems to think only in terms of the popular assembly, or comitia tributa. Most legislation was passed through this assembly, which also elected the popular tribunes and various lesser magistrates. (The higher magistrates were elected by the aristocratic comitia centuriata, which also had a legislative role.) The comitia tributa was convened by the tribunes and voted by ‘tribes’, which were divisions of the Roman people on a regional basis. After the extensive conquests of the 4th to 2nd centuries, as Hume indicates, there were Roman citizens living throughout Italy and the expanding empire, but only those present in the city of Rome and attending the assemblies were able to vote. The comitia tributa therefore came to be dominated by the four ‘city-tribes’, which were often said to consist of the lowest classes of citizens, who were liable to be swayed by ambitious politicians and demagogues. The political disorders of the last years of the Republic to which Hume alludes are described in various ancient sources familiar to him, including Dio Cassius’s Roman History, the relevant ‘Lives’ of Plutarch, and above all some of the speeches of Cicero that Hume discusses in a letter to Kames of 13 June 1742 (New Letters, 7–9). To what extent the Roman Republic was ever democratic is a disputed matter (see  the annotation for ‘Remarkable Customs’ 11 at 276.29–32 and for ‘Populousness’, n. 97). 42.19  the Campus Martius] The ‘field of Mars’ was an area outside the old boundaries of the city of Rome that contained the meeting-place of the aristocratic comitia centuriata. The popular assembly, comitia tributa, met in the Forum. However, Hume seems here to be using ‘Campus Martius’ as a way of referring to assemblies of the Roman people in general. 42.27  The Venetian aristocracy is] This wording replaced ‘The Venetian Nobility are’ as of the 1760 ETSS (variants). From the formalization of nobility in 1297, the aristocratic government of Venice had been recognized as remarkable for its effective cohesion and longevity. In particular the nobles demonstrated their patriotism by consenting to a system of fines for those who refused to serve the republic in public offices. It was common too for noble younger sons to remain ­single in order to avoid the dissipation of a family’s wealth and thus its capacity for service.

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42.31  the Polish government] Prolonged difficulties in electing a king, both at the death of Jan Sobieski in 1696 and that of Augustus the Strong in 1733, kept the troubles of Polish institutions before the European public. Polish noblemen refused even to attend a diet for more than a stipulated number of weeks, and any protest about proceedings—even from a single noble—might dissolve the gathering. Unanimity was deemed essential as well for their election of a king. These extra­or­ din­ary practices, dating from the early 16th century, are known to history as the liberum veto (meaning the individual right of obstruction belonging to all nobles) and were recorded by all observers. The Historical Register, 18 (1733): 106–29, and 19 (1734): 1–26, 143–76, 257–68, offers a description of the Polish constitution and an account of a rivalry for the throne, both claimants appearing, on different occasions, to have gained the requisite support (nos. 70, 73–5). 43.34  Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy] Hume adopts here the clas­ sic­al tripartite scheme of constitutions, in essence the rule of the one, the few, or the many (though the terms vary widely), which first appeared in the fictional debate in Herodotus, Persian Wars 3.80–2. It was asserted in a 4th-century speech to a popular court in Athens as ‘universally acknowledged that there are in the world three forms of government: autocracy and oligarchy and democracy’ (Aeschines, 1 (Against Timarchus) 4). It received classic expression by Aristotle in book 3 of the Politics as a six-fold scheme, in which the good versions of each of the three forms aim at the common good, whereas the three bad or ‘perverted’ forms do not. The forms are monarchy and tyranny, aristocracy and oligarchy, politeia and democracy (1279a22–1279b10). Cf. also Plato, Statesman 302c–302b, where the good forms are law-abiding, the bad not. Polybius has his own variation: according to the common doctrine, he says, there are three forms—kingship, aristocracy, and democracy— but we should also be aware that there are three inferior forms that are related to them, namely monarchy, oligarchy, and mob rule (Histories 6.3.5–4.6). For Hume’s taxonomy of governments, see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 14 at 105.35. 44.23  Cicero informs us] Cicero, 1 Verrine Orations 1.14.40–2. The most no­tori­ ous of many rapacious provincial governors in the 1st century, Gaius Verres, governor of Sicily 73–70 bc, was successfully prosecuted by Cicero for his conduct in office. In adducing the Verrine Orations, Hume focuses on a major source of information concerning the colonial administration of the Republican period. 44.34  put into the proscription by Mark Anthony] During the political conflicts and civil wars that led to ‘the dissolution of the commonwealth’ and the establishment of Augustus in power, a number of proscriptions occurred of leading citizens who had fallen foul of the current regime. Cicero and Verres were both included by Antony in the proscription of 43 bc, Cicero because of his virulent opposition to Antony expressed in the Philippics and Verres, allegedly, because Antony coveted his collection of fine Corinthian bronzes. Pliny, like Hume, remarks the irony that both prosecutor and defendant were included in the same proscription (Natural History 34.3.6).

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n. 2  Ann. lib. 1. cap. 2.] Tacitus, Annals 1.2: ‘Nor was the state of affairs [after Augustus consolidated his authority] unpopular in the provinces, where administration by the Senate and People had been discredited by the feuds of the magnates, the greed of the officials, against which there was but frail protection and a legal system for ever deranged by force, by favouritism, or (in the last resort) by gold.’ See also ‘Original Contract’ 30 and the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 259. That ‘the Roman yoke became easier upon the provinces’ is disputed in Brunt, ‘Charges of Provincial Maladministration’. n. 3  Sueton. in vita Domit.] Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Domitian’ 8.2, in a chapter detailing the good aspects of the rule of Domitian (ad 81–96) before his cruelty and autocratic habits led to his assassination and the ‘damnation of his memory’ by the Senate (8.23). Notes 2–3 were included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 4.2  Tacit. ann. lib. 3.] Annals 3.40: ‘That it was an unequalled opportunity for regaining their independence, if they would reflect on their own prosperity and on the poverty of Italy, on the unwarlike population of the city and on the feebleness of the armies except for the leavening of foreigners’. This assessment of Italian weakness is not impartial. Tacitus is reporting exhortations made by the leaders of the Gallic revolt of ad 21. Note 4 was included as of the 2nd edition of Essays, Moral and Political, volume 1 (‘1742’), at which time ‘Vespasian’s time’ (variants for 45.3) was corrected to ‘Tiberius’s time’ (¶ 9). n. 5  Lib. 1. cap. 72.] Polybius, Histories 1.72.1–3. The passage occurs in Polybius’s account of the causes of the ‘Truceless War’ (241–37) that Carthage was forced to fight against its own unpaid Libyan mercenaries and other oppressed subjects immediately after the loss of the First Punic War against Rome. This note and the sentence to which it refers were included, like n. 6 on the Persian nobility, as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). See also ‘Balance of Power’ 11 and its annotation. 45.8–9  not content with exacting the half of all the produce of the land] In ‘Hume’s “Early Memoranda” ’ (141), Sakamoto connects this passage with the following from Hume’s memoranda: ‘The Carthaginians took the half of all the Produce in Africa, & impos’d Taxes beside. Polybius. Lib. 1.’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 518). Here and elsewhere we quote from the memoranda rather than from Mossner’s transcription but supply a page-number citation to Mossner’s article. 45.13  Pais conquis] or ‘conquered areas’. A ‘pays’ was an administrative unit of the France of the ancien régime (Grand Robert de la langue Française, 7: 197, s.v. pays, 1.b). For instance, there was a fiscal distinction between the pays d’Etat and the pays d’election, and a legal distinction between the pays coutumiers and the pays de droit ecrit. One kind of administrative unit was pays conquis, which are defined by Robert as ‘annexés depuis Louis XIII’. These seem to be first (perhaps) La Rochelle and

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other reconquered Huguenot territory (1628), then the conquests of contiguous territory under Louis XIII and Richelieu (Picardy, Artois, Rousillon, and other areas), and finally the conquests of Louis XIV in Flanders (Franche-Comté, Strasbourg, etc.). Though by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) France lost many of the territories acquired by Louis XIV, it retained some of them, as well as all of the older conquests. These territories continued to be administered as pays conquis. 45.13–15  Ireland, . . . being, in a good measure, peopled from England] an argument expounded notably in 1698 by William Molyneux to show that Ireland should not be treated by the English Parliament as a conquered land (Case, 19–20). For a sober retrospective from 1779 of the impoverishing restrictions on Ireland, see English Historical Documents, 7: 687–90. 45.17  Corsica] In L’Esprit des lois 2.10.7, Montesquieu would offer the hypothesis that experience showed that republics were more onerous to the peoples over whom they ruled than were monarchies. He and Hume were preceded by the an­onym­ous author of A General Account . . . of Corsica: ‘There is no doubt but the Genoese . . . had given [the Corsicans] sufficient Occasion to revolt from their Obedience. It rarely happens otherwise, where a People have been long under the Government of a foreign State, and subject to the Will of rapacious Viceroys, who have seldom any Thing farther in View, during their Comissions, than to advance their private Fortunes, on the Spoils of their Fellow-creatures. Nor is this any where so bad as under a Republick, such as Genoa, where the Men who commit these Outrages are often at the head of the Legislature at home, and have commonly Interest enough among their Fellow Senators to prevent an Enquiry into their Maladministrations, and to stifle the just Complaints of the Injured and Oppressed’ (7). The example of Corsica was well known at the time owing to its struggle from the early 1730s against Genoa. 45.19  an observation in Machiavel] The whole of this paragraph is a summary of Prince 4, as the beginning of ¶ 11 makes clear. The sentence beginning ‘To satisfy us’ in ¶ 10 does not initiate Hume’s own comment, but reports the distinction that Machiavelli made between the two ways in which a monarch may govern his subjects. n. 6.1  the supposition of Machiavel] Appearing first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants), this erudite note evidently reflects Hume’s study of Greek following the publication of Essays, Moral and Political (‘My Own Life’ 6; Letters, 1: 2). Hume has used the detailed evidence of the ancient Greek historians themselves about the Persian nobility to counter their assumption (accepted uncritically by Machiavelli) that all Persians are ‘slaves’ of their ‘despot’ king (see Cambridge Ancient History, 6: 53–4). n. 6.4–5  Xenophon . . . ὁμότιμοι] Hume refers to the picture of the Persian ‘peers’ (homotimoi, literally ‘held in equal honour’), which emerges from Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, an idealized portrait of Cyrus the Great. By his conquests in the

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­mid-6th century bc Cyrus established the Persian Empire, which lasted until its conquest by Alexander in the late 4th century bc. In Cyropaedia 2.1.3, Xenophon says that ‘though the so-called peers are few, they easily rule the rest of the Persians’, and in 2.1.1–16 describes the education, or ‘manners’ as Hume puts it, of the peers. Cyropaedia 7.5.71–86 puts forward Cyrus’s proposal to retain the peers and their values after Babylon, among the last of the conquests, was taken. n. 6.6–7  in Darius’s time, de exped. Alex. lib. 2] Arrian, Anabasis 2.11.8, names some of ‘the Persians held in honour’ (to¯n entimo¯n Perso¯n) who died at Gaugamela (331 bc), the battle in which Alexander definitively defeated the forces of the last king of the Achaemenid line, Darius III, and subjected the Persian Empire to Macedonian dominion. For the aristocracy of this period see Briant, Cyrus to Alexander, 780–3. n. 6.8  Tygranes] Tigranes commanded the Median contingent in Xerxes’s invasion of Greece of 480–79 bc (Herodotus, Persian Wars 7.62). He was killed in 479 at the battle of Mycale (9.102). Achaemenes was the reputed ancestor of the Persian royal dynasty, who are hence known as the Achaemenids. n. 6.9  Artachæas] Artachaees, ‘the tallest of the Persians . . . with the loudest voice of any man’, directed the cutting of the canal through Mount Athos during  the same invasion, and died shortly after completing it (Herodotus, Persian Wars 7.117). n. 6.10–11  Megabyzus . . . Zopyrus . . . Megabyzus . . . Zopyrus] The first Mega­ byzus took part in the conspiracy of ‘the seven eminent Persians’ against the so-called Magus (or Magi; the circumstances are complex), which established one of the conspirators, Darius I, in power in 522 bc (Herodotus, Persian Wars 3.76–87). Darius recorded the names of the other six in his great inscription at Behistun and recommended to his royal successors to continue to hold their families in honour: ‘Thou who shalt be king hereafter, protect well the lineage (tauma¯) of these men’ (from Briant, Cyrus to Alexander, 130; cf. 108, 352). Megabyzus’s son, Zopyrus, recaptured Babylon, which had revolted from Persia in the early years of Darius’s reign (Herodotus, Persian Wars 3.150–60). Herodotus adds that Darius made Zopyrus satrap (or governor) of Babylon. Zopyrus’s son, also called Megabyzus, who married a daughter of King Xerxes, was one of the six supreme infantry commanders of the Persian army who invaded Greece under Xerxes in 480 bc (Herodotus, Persian Wars 7.82). (Hume is mistaken in saying that he commanded the Persian army at the battle of Marathon in 490.) In 456, this same Megabyzus drove from Egypt an Athenian force that was assisting the Egyptians in their revolt against Persia (Thucydides, History 1.109.2–3). According to Herodotus the son of this Megabyzus, called Zopyrus in his turn, ‘deserted from the Persians to Athens’ (Persian Wars 3.160). This event occurred at an uncertain date, perhaps c.440–30 bc. n. 6.14  Rosaces] Rhosaces, satrap (or governor) of Ionia and Lydia in Asia Minor (now Turkey), was a commander of the Persian forces that suppressed a revolt by

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Egypt in 343 bc for King Artaxerxes III Ochus (wrongly dated as 350/49 in Diodorus, Library 16.47.2). n. 6.16  Spithridates] Spithridates defected from the Persians (Xenophon, Hellenica 3.4.10) and assisted Agesilaus I, king of Sparta, during the latter’s invasion (396–394) of the western fringes of the Persian Empire and his confrontation with Pharnabazus, satrap of Phrygia and son-in-law of King Artaxerxes II. He brought Otys, king of the Paphlagonians, into an alliance with Agesilaus. Otys’s marriage with Spithridates’s daughter was intended to cement the alliance. See Xenophon, Hellenica 4.1.1–15, especially § 6, where Spithridates is said to be ‘inferior in rank to none of all the Persians’. The correct name of the Paphlagonian king is Otys, but Hume’s ‘Cotys’ is found in Henry Dodwell’s 1700 edition of the Hellenica. n. 6.18  Ariæus] Ariaeus was a companion of Cyrus the Younger in his unsuccessful bid to supplant his older brother, Artaxerxes II, who had succeeded to their father, Darius II. Clearchus, a Spartan officer, commanded ‘the Ten Thousand’, the Greek mercenaries who supported Cyrus the Younger. Cyrus was killed in battle at Cunaxa in 401 bc. Ariaeus refused Clearchus’s suggestion to make a bid for the throne himself and returned to his allegiance to Artaxerxes (Xenophon, Anabasis 2.1.1–5 and 2.2.1). Artaxerxes later appointed him satrap of Phrygia. Clearchus and the other Greek generals were subsequently captured and executed by the Persians. Xenophon took over leadership of the Ten Thousand and led them on the epic journey back to Greece recounted in his Anabasis. n. 6.22  Mithridates] also spelled Mithradates. A scion of a local family of dynasts, he was the first to proclaim himself ‘king’ of Pontus in the early 3rd century bc. Polybius says that he ‘claimed to be a descendant of one of those seven Persians who had killed the Magus (see annotation for n. 6.10–11), and that he had preserved in his family the kingdom on the Pontus originally granted to them by Darius’ (Histories 5.43.2). Polybius relates that Mithridates’s daughter, Laodice, was wed to Antiochus I, who from 281 to 261 bc ruled the Seleucid kingdom that was one of the three Hellenistic kingdoms carved out from Alexander’s conquests after his death in 323 bc, ruled by, as Hume puts it, ‘Alexander’s successors’. See annotation for ‘Balance of Power’ 7 at 253.23–5. n. 6.23  Artabazus] Arrian, Anabasis 3.23.7, says that Artabazus and his sons were ‘among the most eminent of the Persians’ (the phrase Hume quotes in Greek, en tois pro¯tois Perso¯n). Artabazus was the son of Pharnabazus, satrap of Phrygia. He remained loyal to Darius III, the last of the Achaemenid kings, and surrendered to Alexander only in 330 bc after the defeat and assassination of Darius. The following year Alexander appointed him satrap of Bactria. n. 6.25  the most eminent Persian families] In 324, at Susa, Alexander staged a marriage of eighty Macedonian officers to, in Arrian’s language, ‘the noblest daughters of the Persians and the Medes’ (Arrian, Anabasis 7.4.6). Diodorus ­similarly calls them ‘the best-born Persian virgins’ (Library 17.107.6). Arrian

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reports in the same chapter that Alexander himself married two Persian royal ladies and gave wedding gifts to ten thousand of his men who had taken ‘Asian wives’. n. 6.29–30  the reason why the Macedonians kept so easily dominion over them] i.e. during the period of the ‘successor kingdoms’ from the conquests of Alexander until the Parthian and Roman conquests of that part of the world (see 253.23–5). 47.16–18  those defects in the original constitution, which produced the tumultuous governments of Athens and Rome] Hume discusses aspects of the Athenian constitution in ‘Remarkable Customs’ 2–8 and of the Roman constitution in ¶¶ 9–13 of that essay as well as in ¶ 5 of the present essay. See the annotations for those passages, especially, for Athens, 274.22, nn. 4.1 and 4.2; and for Rome, 276.10–11, 276.29–32, and 276.32; and 42.9–10. n. 7.5–6  Della Hist. Florentinè, lib. 8.] The bank consisted of the creditors of the state of Genoa, both numerous and formed into an organization that was better governed than was the state itself. Machiavelli’s tribute in History of Florence said, ‘A condition truly strange, and one that philosophers, among the many republics they have dreamed of and observed, never have found: that is, to see within the same wall, for the same citizens, liberty and tyranny, government fit for citizens and corrupt government, justice and discord. That organization alone keeps that city full of ancient and venerable customs, and if it should come about—and with time it surely will come about—that San Giorgio take over that entire city, she would be a republic memorable beyond the Venetian’ (Chief Works, 3: 1423). 47.27  The ages of greatest public spirit] Paragraph 13, with notes 8–10, was added first for the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political. Its first sentence originally read ‘public Virtue’ and changed as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, to ‘public spirit’ (variants). 47.30–48.1  The most illustrious period of the Roman history . . . due balance . . . extent of conquests] The three Punic Wars took place between 264 and 146 bc, during which period Rome became dominant. The authority of the senate and magistrates was countered by that of the tribunes, who were elected by the popular assembly and could if necessary veto acts of the magistrates in the interests of the people. This assessment in its outline goes back to Polybius, Histories 6.11–18 (see also Cambridge Ancient History, 8: 163–74). On this reading of Roman history, extensive conquest and influx of wealth led to the popular disorders described above in ¶ 5. Britain’s constitution was deemed in Hanoverian times to rest upon a more complex version of a balance of king, lords, and commons. Fears that this balance would fail were often expressed in terms of the Roman loss of freedom that ac­com­ pan­ied concentration of wealth and the limited political participation that followed the growth of empire. n. 8  Titi Livii, lib. 40. cap. 43.] Livy, History 40.43.3. Hume paraphrases the activity of the praetor G. Maenius, who in 180 bc was commissioned, with

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a colleague, to investigate the deaths of a large number of citizens, some of them prominent politicians. Poisoning was on senatorial minds at this time. It had been one of the allegations against the adherents of the Bacchic rites that had been banned six years earlier, and the extraordinarily large number of arrests seems to reflect a roundup of suspect persons following the suppression of those rites. Cf.  Hume’s memorandum, ‘Three thousand condemn’d for Poysoning in one Summer. Lib. 40. Cap. 43’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 512). Gibbon disputes Hume’s use of these incidents to discriminate ‘the ages of private and public virtue’, preferring to see them as ‘accidents and prodigies which leave no marks on the manners of a nation’ (Decline and Fall, ch. 44 at 4:529 n). 48.3–4  informations of this nature] i.e. legal complaints. n. 9  Id. lib. 8. cap. 18.] Livy, History 8.18. In the earlier outbreak of 331 bc the poisoners were said to be Roman matrons, and Livy is careful to point out in introducing the story that many historical authorities did not agree that the sickness which afflicted a large number of Roman citizens at that time was due to poisoning. 48.8  two Triumvirates] In the final part of the process (described above in ¶ 5) of the breakdown of the republican constitution, the first triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus was followed by the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. After the assassination of Caesar (44 bc) the second triumvirate was formed by Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus, which in turn broke down into a civil war between Antony and Octavian, from which Octavian emerged as victor, eventually taking the name Augustus. n. 10.2  Corneille] ‘Eagle against eagle, Romans against Romans, strove only for a choice of tyrants.’ Hume here makes a pastiche of phrases from Corneille, Cinna 1.3.177–88. Cinna is giving an account of the fiery speech that he made to his followers to rouse them to revolt against Augustus. He recalls the internecine strife of the civil wars by which Augustus (then Octavian) had seized power. The revolt of Cinna, discounted by modern historians, is based on a moralized narrative in Seneca’s ‘De Clementia’ 1.9. It was reported as fact in such sources as Collier’s enlargement of Moréri’s Dictionary (1701), s.v. Cinna. 48.28–9  the parties, into which our country is at present divided] Appearing in the 1748 edition of Essays, Moral and Political, and disappearing for the 1764 ETSS, was a note identifying the ‘present’ as ‘In 1742’ (variants). The phrase ‘at present’, however, appeared without the note in ‘Politics’ in Essays, Moral and Political, 1 (1741): 42, and this book was listed in the Scots Magazine for June 1741, albeit with an incorrect title. n. 11  Dissertation on Parties, Letter 10.] The sentence in letter 10 has ‘her’ rather than ‘our’ (¶ 7). Bolingbroke was the most prominent figure of what had come to be the body called the Opposition, which at this point cut across Whig-Tory distinctions. His Dissertation upon Parties dates from 1735, but its substance had

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already been serialized in nineteen issues of the Craftsman between October 1733 and December 1734. The phrase ‘greatest geniuses in the nation’ (¶ 18) doubtless refers to Chesterfield; the two Pulteney brothers; probably Bolingbroke himself; and the satirists associated with him in the Scriblerian Club: Swift, Pope, and Gay. Bolingbroke’s attempts against freedom of the press during his time in the Tory ministry are relentlessly enumerated in the 1732 pamphlet, Craftsman’s Doctrine and Practice of the Liberty of the Press, Explained to the Meanest Capacity. 49.28–9  govern triumphantly for a course of twenty years] i.e. 1721–1741, when ‘Politics’ first appeared. Walpole was forced out of government in the next year. During this period he was the chancellor of the exchequer and 1st lord of the treasury, the time seen as his premiership, though until 1730 he led the ministry with his brother-in-law, Charles Townsend. Walpole was the target of an inquiry after his retreat into the House of Lords in 1742. Hume indicates his opposition to ‘the Bill of Pains & Penalties against L. Orford’ in a letter of 14 November 1742 (Letters, 1: 44). On bills of pains and penalties see the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 92.13. 49.37–50.1  repaired by . . . the Revolution and Accession, by which our ancient royal family was sacrificed] The accession of the House of Hanover upon Queen Anne’s death in 1714 ended the rule of the Stuarts in both England and Scotland. The stage was set for this Protestant settlement by the Revolution of 1688 that displaced Anne’s father James II and his male heirs. The epithet ‘our’ suggests a Scottish audience since the Stuarts were indeed anciently royal in Scotland, but had reigned for less than a century in England. 50.15–16  The virtue and good intentions of Cato and Brutus] Cato the Younger and his nephew Marcus Junius Brutus both opposed Caesar. The latter headed the conspiracy that led to Caesar’s assassination. Hume seems to imply (to adapt language from ‘British Government’ 7) that Caesarian dictatorship would have been ‘the easiest death, the true Euthanasia’ of the Roman constitution. In a letter to Francis Hutcheson of 17 September 1739, Hume remarked that ‘Brutus riveted the Chains of Rome faster by his Opposition; but the natural Tendency of his noble Disposition . . . was to establish her Liberty’ (Letters, 1: 35). The examples of Cato and Brutus could be useful for the full range of Opposition propaganda, from Old Whig to Jacobite, but Hume’s reference to ‘patriots’ suggests the ‘patriot’ Opposition associated with Pulteney and Lyttelton. See the annotation for ‘Stoic’, n. 1. 50.28  pro aris & focis] The phrase means ‘for altars and hearths’ or ‘for hearth and home’ and was a standard item in the rhetoric of defence of the Roman ­homeland (e.g. Cicero, In Catilinam 4.11.24; Sallust, War with Catiline 59.5; Livy, History 5.30).

4. Of the First Principles of Government This essay appeared in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741), the 2nd edition (‘1742’), the 1748 consolidation of two volumes, and all editions of the ETSS. Its

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placement following ‘That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science’ may suggest that ‘First Principles of Government’ was offered as an initial step towards that science. ‘Independency of Parliament’, however much it is connected with ‘First Principles of Government’, did not take its place after that essay until the 1764 ETSS as part of a rearrangement attending the withdrawal of ‘Love and Marriage’ and ‘Study of History’. In 1777, a new addition, ‘Origin of Government’, would be placed between ‘First Principles of Government’ and ‘Independency of Parliament’. ‘Des premiers principes du gouvernement’ appeared in Journal étranger ( June 1756), 41–50, coupled with ‘De l’étude de l’histoire’. 51.7  on opinion only] a maxim repeated in ‘British Government’ 5, ‘Origin of Government’ 7, and Hist. 6: 527 (‘the great security for allegiance being merely opinion’). Claims about the dominance in all human relations of opinion may be traced back to Latin and Italian texts of the 16th century. Hume’s immediate source was probably Sir William Temple’s assertion in ‘An Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government’ that opinion was ‘the true Ground and Foundation of all Government, and that which subjects Power to Authority. For Power arising from Strength, is always in those that are governed, who are many: But Authority arising from Opinion, is in those that govern, who are few’ (Works, 1: 95–108 at 97). The ­relation in ¶ 2 of the concept ‘opinion’ to that of ‘interest’ can also be found in Temple’s essay. In the Examiner for 10 May 1711, Temple’s one-time secretary Jonathan Swift would say, ‘Suppose there be nothing but Opinion in the Difference of Blood; every Body knows, that Authority is very much founded on Opinion’ (Prose, 3: 150). 51.9–12  The soldan . . . mamalukes . . . prætorian bands] The sultans of Egypt and the Roman emperors depended upon elite corps of armed men such as the mamelukes in Egypt (an example favoured by Harrington) or praetorians at Rome, whose task was to shield the ruler from his subjects. Equally familiar in this capacity were the janizaries of the Ottoman Empire. The fact that the ruler had, ex hypothesi, no resource but opinion against these troops meant that his authority was ­dependent upon their good will. Often the troops replaced their master, whose only protection was to try to ensure that they—like the Swiss guards of western Europe—were without loyalties save to their employer. On the Praetorian Guard see ‘Original Contract’ 30, 40–2, and the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 17.1. 51.26  the maintenance of public justice] altered to ‘public justice’ from ‘public Right’ as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political. Until 1770 the paragraph ended, with slight variations, as follows: ‘This Passion we may denominate Enthusiasm, or may give it what Appellation we please; but a Politician, who wou’d overlook its Influence on human Affairs, wou’d prove himself to have but a very limited Understanding’ (variants). 51.26–33  There is, indeed, no particular . . . these contradictory appearances.] These three sentences were included as of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political (variants).

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51.29–30  they are apt . . . to neglect all the ties of honour and morality] Cf.  Hume’s reflection on a calumny of Charles II and his brother James: ‘For, besides that [faction] inflames all the passions, it tends much to remove those great restraints, honour and shame; when men find, that no iniquity can lose them the applause of their own party, and no innocence secure them against the calumnies of the opposite’ (Hist. 6: 438, s.v. ad 1683). See also ‘Independency of Parliament’ 2. 52.2  A noted author] i.e. James Harrington, who maintained in his Oceana (1656) and in various minor works that the outcome of the civil wars of the 1640s mirrored a shift in the ownership of land from the kings to a considerable number of individual subjects. Applied as a general rule, this claim presupposed that pol­it­ ical power would not long elude those groups whose ownership of land made them influential. See ‘British Government’ 1. Harrington’s analysis of what political power is as a fact survived in the 18th-century assumption that those who had pol­ it­ical influence, as voters or in other capacities, ought to have a ‘stake in the country’ that ensured their commitment to the nation’s welfare. In referring to ‘property’ and not specifically ‘land’, Hume reflects the contemporary recognition that commercial capital, ownership of the national debt (sometimes called the ‘funded interest’), or offices yielding revenue might also be significant. See ‘Populousness’ 80. 52.3  and most of our political writers] See e.g. the discussion of the comparative power of crown and Commons by ministerial apologist James Pitt (Francis ‘Mother’ Osborne) in London Journal, no. 768 (16 March 1733/4) and Opposition writer John Trenchard in Cato’s Letters 84 (7 July 1722). 53.4–5  the case with the house of commons] Cf. ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 17 and its annotation 51.7. 53.15  tory house of commons in the reign of King William] Possibly Hume follows the testimony of Swift’s 1701 Contests and Dissentions between the Nobles and Commons (Prose, 1: 235) in supposing that the House of Commons of 1698–1701, which was at odds with William III’s anti-French foreign policy, was also at odds with the sentiments of the nation. Whig complaints over Parliament’s imprisonment of Kentish petitioners for support of a war certainly give this impression. See  e.g. Defoe’s 1701 pamphlet (ESTC n035303 and other editions), known as Legion’s Memorial. But given William’s relative unpopularity, it might be that there was a Tory majority in the nation at large, though not a majority in favour of restoring the Stuarts. 53.16  to receive instructions from their constituents] The instructing of Members of Parliament became an issue as soon as the 17th-century House of Commons became sufficiently independent of the crown to make efforts to influence it worthwhile. Instruction at election time was difficult to avoid if candidates were to canvass for votes. The practice of instructing between elections was much more subject to objection, with those politicians in power deeming it unacceptable and, unsurprisingly, those out of office viewing it favourably. A factor that limited

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the legitimacy of instructing was the rather widespread belief—endorsed even by  the republican Algernon Sidney (died 1683) and the author of Craftsman 30 (17 March 1732/3)—that the Member of Parliament was to see to the business of the nation in preference to local concerns. Where national interests were not endangered, there was some readiness to listen to local opinion. Instructing of the Dutch deputies or delegates reflected the fact that the United Provinces were a loose confederacy with representatives acting almost in the manner of ambassadors, as was explained in a ministerial pamphlet of 1740 against instructing MPs (Letter to a Member of Parliament, 2–6). The same was true of the representatives of cities within each province. 53.21–3  the crown has great influence . . . seven years] Hume’s complacency about royal and ministerial influence over elections is evident in ‘Independency of Parliament’. No ministry backed by the sovereign was to lose an election in the course of the century. Following the 1716 Septennial Act (1 George I, stat. 2, c. 38), a parliament might last for seven years, and at the time the practice was to allow for almost the full legal term (English Historical Documents, 7: 150–1). 53.28  though the people, collected in a body like the Roman tribes] i.e. gathered in a popular assembly of all the citizens, who were organized into tribus, or ‘tribes’, for the purposes of voting. Cf. ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 52–3, and the annotations for ‘Politics’ 5 at 42.9–10 and ‘Remarkable Customs’ 10 at 276.10–11. 53.29  when dispersed in small bodies] Cf. ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 52–3. variants for 53.36.  I Shall conclude this Subject with observing] Until its deletion for the 1764 ETSS, this paragraph concluded the essay. variants for 53.36.  the present political Controversy, with regard to Instructions] The ‘present’ controversy arose in connection with city corporations’ attempt to exert pressure on the House of Commons with instructions to pass a bill limiting the number of ‘placemen’ among Members of Parliament. Against instructing members, e.g., was the Daily Gazetteer 938, 944 (6, 13 July 1738) as well as the 1740 ministerial pamphlet cited above. Supporting it, e.g., was the Craftsman 699, 702 (1 and 22 December 1739), repr. Gentleman’s Magazine, 9 (December 1739): 637–8, 647–50. Instructions concerning a place bill are recorded in Scots Magazine, 1 (October 1739): 482–3 (for Edinburgh) and Gentleman’s Magazine, 9 (October 1739): 548–9, and those for 1739–40 are collected in Great-Britain’s Memorial (1741). See Rogers, Whigs and Cities, 240–6. Subsequently, in 1741–2, the groundswell that would induce Walpole to leave government involved a flurry of instructions to members from London, Bristol, Coventry, York, and Edinburgh concerning antiministerial measures. Members were instructed ‘to oppose a standing army in time of peace; to vote for the mitigation of excise laws; for the repeal of septennial parliaments; for the limitation of placemen in the house of commons’, and to examine ‘into the particulars of the public expence’ and ‘redress the grievances of the nation’ (Smollett, Complete History 9.7.16).

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variants for 53.36.  Instructions of Totness] For much of the century Totnes in Devon was a ‘close’ borough controlled by the Bolton family. It had but twenty or so resident voters (Oldfield, Representative History, 3: 302–5). See the annotation for ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 8 at 365.6–7. variants for 53.36.  the Convention. . . . the Excise] Hume refers to the two issues occasioning Walpole’s most damaging defeats. The Convention of Pardo, a controversial agreement with Spain signed 14 January 1738/9, was intended to settle a number of outstanding disputes over commerce. Opinion in the country, especially among certain sectors of the trading interest, much preferred war, and petitions to this effect rained down on Parliament. Though the ministers sought peace, the nations drifted into war in October. Hume’s phrase ‘the Excise’ refers to the 1733 Excise Bill that Walpole was forced to withdraw after a furore.

5. Of the Origin of Government ‘I have writ a new Essay, which I intended to add to the Collection’, Hume wrote to Strahan on 1 March 1774 (Letters, 2: 287). The occasion of this remark was their exchange concerning the House of Lords’ repudiation in 22 February 1774 of the tenet of perpetual copyright. Hume offered the essay as an addition to the ETSS that would allow Strahan to secure a fresh copyright (see A History of the Essays, §  3). Evidently Strahan referred to this essay when on 3 June 1776 he wrote to Hume, ‘I am now hard at work both with your History and Essays [i.e. the posthumous 1777 ETSS], having, with some difficulty, got a good paper to print them on. When shall I have the additional Essay? I suppose that it is to be placed at the end of the former ones’ (Burton, Letters, 102–3). Hume replied from Bath in a letter of 8 June that he had sent it ‘Two posts ago’ (Letters, 2: 324). Placed after ‘First Principles of Government’, it appeared posthumously in the Essays, pt. 1, of the 1777 ETSS (which was published in February 1778). 54.7  the twelve judges] The phrase refers to meetings of the judges from the three courts: the King’s Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. The number was not in fact always twelve. A trial judge doubtful of the proceedings of a trial could refer the result to this body, which acted analogously to a modern appeals court (Baker, Introduction, 160–1). The twelve judges were in the public eye as the House of Lords reviewed the controversial case of Donaldson v. Becket. They gave opinions concerning the case in advance of the Lords’ debate and vote rejecting the claim of perpetual copyright. 54.33–55.1  the primitive and natural duty of justice] The phrase might seem to indicate a change from the tenet in THN 3.2.1 that justice is an artificial virtue, i.e. one arising from convention rather than principles of human nature or reason. But in the THN the ‘laws of nature’, so called in connection with the philosophy of natural law, are mentioned in the context of analysis of the artificial virtue of justice (e.g. 3.2.5.8, where Hume speaks of the ‘invention of the law of nature, concerning

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the stability of possession’). The ‘primitive and natural duty of justice’ need not be instinctual to be natural in the sense that humans by nature enter into conventions. See 3.2.1.19, where Hume explains that the ‘laws of nature’ are artificial in one sense and natural in another, as well as EPM, app. 3.9. Cf. references in EPM 3.33–4 to ‘the natural code’ and to ‘the rules of natural justice’. 55.14  a visible interest in the impartial administration of justice] Cf. THN 3.2.7.6–7, wherein an egoistic dilemma is solved by our making it someone’s immediate interest to compel us to observe the laws of justice. Thereby the ruler makes it our immediate interest to pursue our long-term, ‘remote’ interest. 55.33–4  that men should before-hand be able to discover them] Cf. the account in THN 3.2.2 of how justice and civil society evolve out of experience (esp. ¶ 10). 55.35–6  the first ascendant of one man over multitudes] Cf. THN 3.2.8.2. 56.19–20  The sultan . . . will not be permitted to impose new taxes] This misconception had been displayed in Hume’s ‘Taxes’ (see the annotation at 261.8–11 for ¶ 11 of that essay). La Mottraye had maintained that the sultan had absolute power only over his own officials (Travels, 1: 231–2). Disagreeing with La Mottraye’s analysis, Salmon said, ‘The dominion of the Turkish Emperors being founded in force, they are restrained by no laws or compacts, their power is unlimited, and they look upon their people as well as the country to be their property, and every man’s  life and fortune in the empire to be at their disposal. But a late traveller (Mr.  Motraye) acquaints us, that we ought to make a distinction between those subjects and officers of the Grand Seignior, who, according the the Turkish phrase, eat his bread, and those who have no office under the government: the latter, he assures us, have nothing to fear, either as to their lives or effects, and do not so much as pay any duties to the government: and should the Grand Seignior attempt to tax them or change their antient customs, he would run the hazard of being deposed’ (Modern History, 1: 493). 56.21–2  dangerous to attempt the lives and fortunes] The suggestion is that by and large French government was itself law-abiding and not arbitrary, though not much under the influence of its subjects. Had British opinion been more familiar with the instrument of the lettre de cachet—an executive order by which a person was imprisoned at pleasure—Hume’s statement might have been less confident, but only in the 1780s was it much commented upon, even in France. Hume’s Francophile views were put on the defensive by the barbarity with which subjects of the French king might be treated. Thus he expressed horror at the beheading of the Chevalier de La Barre for blasphemy in 1766. However, he noted with satisfaction that similar horror was felt within France itself (29 August 1766, Letters, 2: 85). Usually Hume’s regard for French civilization reconciled him to the nature of its government. Familiarity with the mode of silencing the protests of the parlements— by dispatching troops who conveyed troublemakers to a distant place of exile—would

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have suggested little personal security for even the more influential members of the state. None of these facts meant strictly that one’s life and property were at the disposal of the king. But see Hume’s appraisal at ‘Civil Liberty’ 13 on taxes. 56.25  whose power, being founded on opinion] See ‘First Principles of Government’ 1 and its annotation at 51.7. 56.26–7  The government, which . . . receives the appellation of free] On the relation between mixed monarchy and free government, see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 14 at 105.35, and cf. ‘Liberty of the Press’ 2.

6. Of the Independency of Parliament This essay must have been completed in the winter or spring of 1741, after the publication of The False Accusers Accused, the pamphlet Hume mentioned in ¶ 4 (omitted as of the 1748 version), and before the listing, under an incorrect title, of Essays, Moral and Political (1741 [vol. 1]) in the June issue that year of the Scots Magazine (3: 280). The pamphlet was advertised for publication 1 April in Edinburgh Evening Courant, no. 539 (31 March 1741), [2]). ‘Independency of Parliament’ appeared in the first edition of volume 1, the second edition (‘1742’), the edition of 1748 consolidating two volumes, and all editions of the ETSS. In two steps, for the 1748 and 1764 permutations (variants for 57.1), Hume removed the opening paragraphs relating the topic directly to free-thinking, Walpole’s ministry, and its opposition, which was reaching a climax when the essay was written. variants for 57.1.  the Conduct of the Court and Country Parties] On ‘Court and Country’ parties see ‘Parties of Great Britain’ and the annotation for ¶ 1 at 71.18. The court party since the Hanovers ascended to the throne was the min­is­ter­ ial Whigs, led by Sir Robert Walpole since 1721. variants for 57.1, n.  Miscellaneous Reflections, Page 107] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 6 (Miscellaneous Reflections) 2.3 at 2: 180. Shaftesbury is revisiting one of his major themes, the value of ridicule as a test of religious truth. variants for 57.1.  establisht and popular Opinions] Walpole was being harried out of government, and the author of False Accusers Accused, a pamphlet mentioned  in the next paragraph, admitted that the Opposition ‘patriots’ were more popular (11). variants for 57.1.  Collins, Tindal, Foster, Hoadley] Hume’s point about the freethinkers’ good manners turns on its head the usual disapprobation of their employment of ridicule as a test of truth, as advocated initially in Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks. Anthony Collins, well known for his resolve to outdo in civility his orthodox tormentors, was also an advocate, like Matthew Tindal, of the use of ridicule. Hume’s notion of good controversialist manners therefore allows for ridiculing tenets and whole professions, as in derision of priestcraft. By contrast it is not good manners to call for opponents’ punishment, as when Steele wished for

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Collins’s death (Guardian 3). Tindal reportedly spoke ‘with great regard’ (Gentleman’s Magazine, 23 (1753): 570) of the reply to his Christianity as Old as Creation by James Foster, the eloquent dissenting preacher complimented in Pope’s Epilogue to the Satires (1.131) as ‘modest Foster’ (Poems, 4: 307). Arguing that intellectual error could not be heresy, Foster was drawn into a protracted dispute with Henry Stebbing (Gentleman’s Magazine, 5 (1735): 339–40, 463–4; 7 (1737): 39–44, 84, 208–12). The figure whose nature and performance fit most uneasily within Hume’s characterization was the Whig Benjamin Hoadly, who had himself responded to Collins. Hoadly’s anonymous and personal attack in the London Journal on his old Tory antagonist Francis Atterbury when the latter was facing an attainder for treason struck many as cowardly (Bennett, Tory Crisis, 266, 273). Hoadly’s sermon favouring radical circumscription of ecclesiastical authority, remarkable in a bishop of the national church, caused the Bangorian controversy (so named because Hoadly was the bishop of Bangor). Undoubtedly it earned the latitudinarian his place in Hume’s list of free-thinkers. In his Discourse concerning Ridicule and Irony, Collins defended the use of ridicule by surveying clerical use of it, adducing the High-Church ridicule of Hoadly. Collins praised the bishop for responding in kind instead of calling on the magistrate (§ 10). Tindal called Hoadly ‘the strenuous Asserter of our religious, as well as civil Rights’ (Christianity as Old as the Creation, 191). variants for 57.1.  Boileau . . . Dacier . . . de Bos . . . Fontenelle, la Motte, Charpentier . . . Perrault] Boileau attacked Charles Perrault, his major opponent in the ‘querelle des anciens et des modernes’, both personally in his tenth satire (1694, lines 452–73) and in his somewhat pedantic remarks directed against Perrault’s ignorance of Greek and his ‘gross blunders’ (‘énormes bévues’) about Homer and Pindar. See the first of the réflexions critiques that Boileau appended to the 1694 re­issue of his translation of “Longinus”. Hume’s phrase ‘even Perrault’ suggests that the famed writer of fairy tales was not altogether civil either. It could be argued that he provoked the quarrel by having his poem in praise of the modern age (‘Le siècle de Louis le Grand’) recited to the Académie when the audience contained Boileau, La Fontaine, and Racine, ‘two or three excessive admirers of antiquity’, as Perrault later put it (préface, Paralelle des anciens et des modernes, 1: [aiiijr]). He then pursued the attack on the ‘superstition criminelle’ (1: [aijv]) over the years of writing the five successive dialogues of the Paralelle (sic, 1688–96), in which he presents a somewhat irascible and prejudiced defender of the ancients in sometimes querulous dialogue with a moderate and open-minded proponent of the moderns (1: 2–5, cf. 4: 13–16). Despite a public reconciliation, Boileau continued to express bitterness to the end of Perrault’s life. François Charpentier, in his attack on Latin in De l’excellence de la langue française (1683), often complains of the incivility of his opponents, and his own work displays the advantages of a position that need say nothing but good of any living person. His more famous fellow modern Fontenelle was the model of urbanity (Digression sur les anciens et les modernes, 1688). In 1711,

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Mme (Anne) Dacier, whose father had been a classical scholar and friend of Boileau, was notably vehement and personal in her attack on Houdart de la Motte for his temerity in publishing an abridged translation of Homer despite his lack of Greek (La Motte’s Iliad, 1713). See her Des causes de la corruption du goust (1714), where she describes his translation thus: ‘Jamais Deïphobus ne fut si horriblement mutilé par Menelas & par Ulysse, qu’Homère l’est par M. de la Motte’ (4); ‘Never was Deïphobus so horribly mangled by Menelaus and Ulysses as Homer is by M. de la Motte’. She continues in this vein for over four hundred pages. In the preface to her own translation of the Iliad (1711), she had been equally passionate in defence of the idiosyncrasies of Homer’s style and the ‘manners’ of his heroes. Her criticisms left La Motte unruffled (see his 1715 reply, Réflexions sur la critique). Jean-Baptiste Dubos maintains a calm and judicious tone until he reaches the ‘querelle’ at the end of vol. 2 of his Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, which in the original edition (1719) had been the culmination of the work, as the preface to the reorganized second edition (1733) makes clear. Then he allows himself some phrases of reproach and a sustained rhetoric of indignation. In 2.35 he speaks of the ‘discours artificieux des contempteurs des anciens’ (‘artifices of the despisers of the ancients’) and ‘ces messieurs habiles dans l’art de falsifier la vérité sans mentir’ (‘these gentle­ men, so dextrous in the art of falsifying the truth without lying’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 372, 373)). He pulls no punches here or in 2.36 when he attacks the common practice of the ‘moderns’ of making confident judgements about the ancient poets, especially Greek poets, on the basis of French prose translations. On the ‘querelle’ see also the annotations for ‘Rise and Progress’ 7 at 102.28–9 and ‘Standard of Taste’ 11 at 185.21–2 and 32 at 194.23. Many of the texts are available in La Querelle, ed. Lecoq. variants for 57.1.  provok’d by the most injurious Treatment] This phrase is changed to ‘provok’d by the most severe Railleries’ for the second edition (‘1742’). Ridicule has now become bad manners. variants for 57.1.  Gentlemen . . . hir’d Scriblers . . . Gazeteer . . . Common Sense . . . The false Accusers accus’d . . . L—d B—e, L—d M—t, Mr. L—n] The low regard in which contemporaries held the polemicists defending the government is here evident. James Pitt (Francis ‘Mother’ Osborne), William Arnall (Francis Walsingham), and Ralph (Raphael) Courteville (R. Freeman) were able writers who did much to create the political vocabulary of the age, but they lacked the deference accorded to Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Marchmont (presumably Bolingbroke’s friend Hugh Hume the 3rd earl rather than his father the 2nd), or George Lyttelton, gentle­men contending with professional writers. The Daily Gazetteer was the major government paper of the late 1730s and early ’40s, whereas Common Sense was an organ of the ‘patriot’ Opposition, written to promote the ambitions of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield, supported by Lyttelton and nameless writers. A letter attacking Hume’s Treatise had been printed in the 5 July 1749 issue. The author of False Accusers Accused charged the Opposition with seditious

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forgeries, lies, and misrepresentations (11). Part of the author’s procedure was to embarrass the Whig Opposition with its association with ‘that Traitor to his Country’, the Tory and sometime Jacobite, Bolingbroke (51). variants for 57.1.  some Papers wrote upon that grand Topic] i.e. Bolingbroke’s Dissertation upon Parties, which Hume cites in n. 1. For a rebuttal similar to Hume’s argument, see James Pitt’s series on the constitution in London Journal (23 February, 16 March 1733–4, 20 July, 24 August, 28 September, 5 and 9 October 1734), nos. 765, 768, 786, 791, 796–7, 799, 805. 57.1  Political writers have established it as a maxim] Readers might have thought of the first paragraph of Machiavelli, Discourses 1.3. See also the 31st of Cato’s Letters (27 May 1721), by Thomas Gordon: ‘Hence it is, that the making of laws supposes all men naturally wicked’ (1: 222). 57.21  as it will always do] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, this parenthetical statement read ‘as it will always do in the present depraved State of Mankind’ (variants). In his 1775 pamphlet, Farmer Refuted, Alexander Hamilton quoted the entirety of ¶¶ 1–2 in arguing that no checks and controls existed to make Members of Parliament attend to the interests of the colonists (Papers, 1: 94–5). 57.33  the authority of all philosophers and politicians, both ancient and modern] It was a major concern of ancient theorists to find ways by which the separate interest of each class or order in a state could be restrained by a blending of the three recognized forms of government—monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—in order to produce ‘mixture’ of powers. See the annotation for ‘Politics’ 8 at 43.34. Ancient Sparta was regarded by some as an ideal mixture of the three forms (cf. Aristotle, Politics 1265b33–42). Polybius interpreted the government of the Roman Republic as a mixture of the three forms (Histories 6.3, 11–18). Aristotle proposed a mixture of oligarchy and democracy to form what he called a ‘polity’. Among moderns Hume could point to Machiavelli, Discourses 1.2–6, and to James Harrington, Oceana (1656). He writes of Oceana as ‘the only valuable model of a commonwealth, that has [as] yet been offered to the public’ (‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 4). In ‘Parties of Great Britain’ 1, Hume describes the British government as ‘our mixed government’. See the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 14 at 105.35. Hume himself does not equate mixed with balanced government, and ‘Independency of Parliament’ 8 indicates that a pure republic could be better balanced than a mixed monarchy. 58.1–3  such a genius as Cicero, or Tacitus, . . . mixed government] Cicero interpreted the Roman government as a mixed constitution (e.g. De re publica 1.45.69–1.47.71 and 2.39.65). His frequently expressed call for a ‘concord of the orders’ tended in the same direction. Tacitus’s reflections on the ‘mixed’ constitution seem to depend upon a single passage, Annals 4.33: ‘For, all nations and cities are govern’d either by the populace, by the nobility, or by single rulers. As to the frame of a state chosen and compacted out of all these three, it is easier applauded

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than accomplish’d; or if accomplish’d, cannot be of long duration’ (Works, 1: 176 in Gordon’s trans.). Gordon comments on this passage in one of his prefatory discourses, ‘The Excellence of a Limited Monarchy, Especially of Our Own’: ‘we are blessed with that form of government which Tacitus mentions as the most perfect, and thinks the hardest to be formed; that happy balance and mixture of interests which comprehends every interest’ (1: 92). 58.12–13  the house of commons . . . commands all the other parts] In the London Journal (23 February 1733/4) ministerial apologist James Pitt had argued that power ‘is already strongly on the Side of the Commons, because the Wealth of the Kingdom is with them, and the sole Power of giving publick Money: The King has no Crown Lands, nor any Money but what he receives from them. This Wealth, and this Power of giving all Public Money, will for ever keep the Balance on the Side of the Commons; and ’tis impossible they should lose their Independency: But the King must infallibly lose his, if the Executive Power of the Laws, and his Legal Right of disposing of all Places of Honour, Profit, and Trust, be taken from him; for then he would have no real Power: In consequence of which, his Share in the Legislature would be really gone; because having no Money but what is given by the other Powers, and being destitute of all real Power himself, he would lie entirely at the Mercy of the other Powers, and tho’ he had a Negative Voice, could never use it’ (no. 765). 58.16–17  the royal assent is little better than a form] The last time a monarch exercised the prerogative to refuse assent to legislation was Queen Anne’s rejection of a Scots-militia bill passed in 1708 in connection with the union of Scotland and England. The monarch’s power to suspend laws was abolished in the Bill of Rights of 1689. Monarchs retained the power to dispense with laws in particular cases, and they could thwart parliaments by proroguing or dissolving them to prompt elections, as the Stuart kings had done. Since 1694 the Triennial Act prevented the monarch from dispensing with parliaments altogether. 58.36–7  the interest of the body is here restrained by that of the in­di­vid­ uals] The distinction is between the corporate interest of the legislature and the interests of the individual members. Through these individuals both the crown and certain peers might have an influence in the votes of the Commons. The king and his ministers had at their disposal pecuniary rewards and honours, while peers could employ what was called their ‘interest’ in a constituency to procure the return of the candidate whom they favoured. The relations of patron and client thus became an integral part of the political process. The same distinction between corporate and individual interests had been conspicuous at the time of the Peerage Bill of 1719, applied then to the House of Lords. See Considerations concerning the Nature and Consequences of the Bill . . . Relating to the Peerage, 21–4. 59.3  the invidious appellations of corruption and dependence] In calling the use of the crown’s resources ‘influence’ rather than ‘corruption’, Hume takes the ministerial side of the great constitutional issue of the time. The ‘patriot’ Opposition

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attempted repeatedly to pass a place bill banishing from the lower house those holding offices or pensions in the gift of the crown. Hume’s analysis contrasts with Montesquieu’s emphasis on a separation of powers. Rather than ‘influence’ or ‘corruption’, Adam Smith employed the neutral word ‘management’ (bk. 5.1, art. 3), explicitly in connection with Parliament but at length in connection with the clergy, who ‘can scarce ever be forced’ but ‘may be managed as easily’ as any other order of men; ‘and the security of the sovereign, as well as the publick tranquillity, seems to depend very much upon the means which he has of managing them; and those means seem to consist altogether in the preferment which he has to bestow upon them’ (Wealth of Nations, 2: 799). Likewise Carlyle referred to Argyll and Lord Milton as political managers for Scotland (Anecdotes and Characters, 21, 137; and see the head-note for ‘Walpole’). n. 1  Dissertation on Parties, throughout.] i.e. Bolingbroke’s Craftsman papers (382–443) collected for independent publication in 1735 as the Dissertation upon Parties. See the Catalogue of Hume’s References and the annotation for ‘Eloquence’ 20 at 99.14. Bolingbroke commences with the subject of corruption at the end of letter 9 (Craftsman 394). Like James Pitt, Hume has his eye on letter 10. Hume calls for compromise on the basis of acceptance of Parliamentary dependence on the court, whereas Bolingbroke had called for compromise on the basis of a settlement of legal powers: ‘If there was a real deficiency of power in the crown, it ought to be supplied, no doubt. . . . [L]imitations ought to be taken off, or new powers to be given. The friends of liberty acknowledge that a balance of the powers, divided among the three parts of the legislature [commons, lords, crown], is essential to our constitution, and necessary to support it. . . . For decency’s sake, therefore, let the debate be put on this issue’ (Political Writings, 96). n. 2.2  As to private bribery] In the History Hume would reiterate his position: ‘Pensions and bribes, though it be difficult entirely to exclude them, are dangerous expedients for government; and cannot be too carefully guarded against, nor too vehemently decried by every one who has a regard to the virtue and liberty of a nation. The influence, however, which the crown acquires from the disposal of places, honours, and preferments, is to be esteemed of a different nature. This engine of power may become too forcible, but it cannot altogether be abolished, without the total destruction of monarchy, and even of all regular authority’ (6: 366). The same point had been made in 1731 by the bishop of London, Thomas Sherlock, who was quoted as saying in the House of Lords, ‘Let Bribery be punished, let Corruption be punished but not by giving so much Strength to one Power of this Constitution, as shall make it able to over bear the rest’ (Gentleman’s Magazine, 1 (April 1731): 160). See also Hume, Hist. 5: 569 n. W, for the use of crown revenues in ‘our present constitution’ to appeal to ‘the private interest and ambition of the members’ of Parliament (s.v. 1640). n. 2.5–7  Polybius justly esteems the pecuniary influence of the senate and censors. . . . lib. 6. cap. 15.] This reference to Polybius was added for the 1753

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Essays, Moral and Political (variants). In the course of his interpretation of the Roman government as a mixed constitution, Polybius argues that a consul in charge of an army (who is a ‘monarchical’ element) depends upon the senate for finance, supplies, and the continuance of his command while on campaign (History 6.15.2–8). It is also the senate that has the right to grant or withhold a triumphal procession, and also finances it. In 17.1–6, Polybius explains that the censors, by the authority of the senate, hand out contracts for public works, lease out public property (‘such as navigable rivers, harbours, gardens, mines, lands, in fact everything that forms part of the Roman dominion’), and, not least, farm out the collection of taxes to the publicani (see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 84 at 304.7). The censors were a pair of very senior magistrates elected for a term of eighteen months every four or five years, whose name derives from their original duty of maintaining the official list (‘census’) of Roman citizens. In ‘Hume’s “Early Memoranda” ’ (140), Sakamoto connects this passage with the following from Hume’s memoranda: ‘Polybius says  that all Money Matters belong’d to the Senate. The [illegible word scored through] Censors levy’d all the Taxes, & farm’d them out to the Roman Knights’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 503–4). 59.29–30  the power, which is too great in one hand, may become too little in another] Cf. Hume’s manuscript notes: ‘There must be a Ballance in all Governments; & the Inconvenience of allowing a single Person to have any Share is that what may be too little for a Ballance in one hand will be too much in another’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 507).

7. Whether the British Government Inclines More to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic ‘British Government’ appeared in the Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741), the 2nd edition (‘1742’), the consolidation of two volumes for 1748, and all editions of the ETSS. See A History of the Essays (pp. 410–11) for its appearance in the Craftsman, Scots Magazine, Gentleman’s Magazine, and London Magazine in October 1741. An annotated translation appeared in Journal étranger (January 1761), 96–108, with Hume identified as the author. 61.1  a violent prejudice against almost every science] The phrase was ‘every art and science’ until the 1758 ETSS (variants). In Scots legal usage a ‘violent prejudice’ was a strong presumption. See Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘violent’, III.11. Jacob, s.v. evidence: ‘And sometimes violent Presumption will be admitted for Evidence, without Witnesses’ (New Law-Dictionary, 3Z2r). 61.6–9  Harrington . . . his general principle . . . his book] Readers would have understood ‘his book’ to refer to Oceana, which was published four years before the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The general argument is given in the 2nd

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preliminaries. James Harrington argued that the feudal system no longer existed that supported a monarchy: ‘For where there is equality of estates, there must be equality of power; and where there is equality of power, there can be no monarchy.’ Hume’s statement of Harrington’s ‘general principle’ is a paraphrase. The crux of the principle can be isolated in passages like ‘an army is a beast that has a great belly, and must be fed; wherefore this will come to what pastures you have, and what pastures you have will come to the balance of property, without which the public sword is but a name or mere spitfrog [i.e. an ineffectual weapon]. Wherefore, to set that which Leviathan [i.e. Hobbes] says of arms and of contracts a little straighter: he that can graze this beast with the great belly . . . may well deride him that imagines he received his power by covenant, or is obliged to any such toy’. Like Milton, Harrington published works in support of a commonwealth right up to the Restoration. As late as 1659 he wrote in the preface to the third book of The Art of Lawgiving: ‘Streams that are stopped may urge their banks; but the course of England into a Commonwealth is both certain and natural’ (Political Works, 201, 165, 660). 61.9  the king was restored] A common solecism from the 17th century to the present has been to speak of Charles II’s restoration, as though Charles had been bereft of a crown. From a republican’s standpoint he was not king until the res­tor­ ation of the monarchy in 1660, if then; from a royalist’s standpoint he had been king since Charles I’s execution in 1649 irrespective of when his coronations occurred in Scotland or England. Thus the Restoration occurred in Charles II’s twelfth regnal year (Cheney, Handbook, 40). In the History Hume refers to Charles as king in advance of the Restoration. 61.10  monarchy has ever since subsisted upon the same footing as before] But see the annotation for ‘Parties of Great Britain’ 8 at 74.34 on the Revolution. 62.1–2  Crassus’s fortune . . . about two millions and a half of our money] The variant readings for this passage and its accompanying note suggest that Hume had difficulty determining the size of Crassus’s fortune and converting it to pounds sterling. According to Plutarch, Lives, ‘Crassus’ 2.2, Crassus turned the 300 talents he began with into a fortune of 7,100 talents. Scholars start from this figure in assessing Crassus’s fortune, and many regard it as not far from the truth. Crassus was regarded by contemporaries as the richest, or at least the most avaricious, man in Rome. Cicero applies the sobriquet ‘Dives’ to him (Letters to Atticus (no. 44 = 2.24 traditional), 1: 214–15). A famous remark attributed to him is that no man could aspire to play a leading role in public life who could not maintain an army out of his own pocket (e.g. Cicero, De officiis 1.8.25). By means of his wealth Crassus was able to make a third in the ‘first triumvirate’ with Pompey, the conqueror of the East, and Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul and future Dictator. Crassus died in battle (53 bc) in the course of a disastrously unsuccessful attempt to rival their military achievements. variants for 62.2, n.  Interest in Rome] As of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, a  note estimating the fortune at £400,000 was replaced by one on the yield the

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f­ ortune (now £1,600,000) would draw with interest rates in Rome. This note itself disappeared as of the 1764 ETSS. Interest rates play an important role in Hume’s attempts to assess ancient economies. See ‘Populousness’ 84 with its annotations and those for nn. 101–8 and for ‘Interest’, nn. 1–4. 62.6  The wealth of the Medici made them masters of Florence] When the  Medici established their control of the republican organs of government in 15th-century Florence (1434), they were one of many rich merchant families in Florence, and perhaps not the richest. Machiavelli says in his History of Florence, ch. 2, that at the time of the Pazzi conspiracy (1478) the Pazzi family were ‘for riches and high position the most imposing of Florentine Families’ (Chief Works, 1386). The Medici’s employment of their banking activities in facilitating their rise to power is assessed in Kent, Rise of the Medici, 71–83, 285–8. 62.17  The civil list] The Civil List Act of 1697 was designed to keep the monarch dependent on Parliament for money, dedicating revenue only for the civil administration and royal households (9 & 10 William III, c. 23). In 1727, Walpole altered the funding to the advantage of George II, who refused to submit his ex­pend­itures to Parliament (English Historical Documents, 7: 14, 293, 298–9; Hervey, Some Materials, 31–5). variants for 62.37, n.  De Retz’s Memoirs.] 2nd pt. (août 1651), Mémoires, 722: ‘Il me disait un jour que l’on ne monte jamais si haut que quand l’on ne sait où l’on va’; ‘He was one day telling me that men never mounted so high as when they did not know whither they went’ (Memoirs, 2: 71). This note disappeared after the 1760 ETSS. Oliver Cromwell was commonly referred to as a usurper (e.g. Craftsman 569 for 2 May 1737; Salmon, Modern History, 2: 206), and Hume would refer to him repeatedly as such in the History. Hume’s language at Hist. 6: 110 indicates that the usurpation was ‘subsequent’ to Charles I’s ‘murder’, that is, presumably, in 1653 when Cromwell seized power by expelling the Rump Parliament. To that extent he can exemplify Hume’s ‘man, possessed of usurped power’ (62.37–8), though he did not rise to power by means of his revenue. De Retz’s quotation of Cromwell did not appear in the version of this essay printed in Craftsman 797 for 10 October 1741. It does appear in Adam Ferguson’s 1767 Essay on the History of Civil Society 3.2. 63.2–3  a legal authority . . . has always some bounds] Cf. ‘Remarkable Customs’ 14: ‘It is a maxim in politics, which we readily admit as undisputed and universal, that a power, however great, when granted by law to an eminent magistrate, is not so dangerous to liberty, as an authority, however inconsiderable, which he acquires from violence and usurpation. For, besides that the law always limits every power which it bestows, the very receiving it as a concession establishes the authority whence it is derived, and preserves the harmony of the constitution.’ 63.13  Such is the nature of novelty] Cf. THN 1.3.14.24 and ‘Tragedy’ 12. 63.18–19  human affairs, are entirely governed by opinion] Cf. ‘First Principles of Government’ 1 and its annotation at 51.7.

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63.22  The clergy have much lost their credit] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the phrase ‘much lost’ read ‘entirely lost’ (variants). The decline in repute of the clergy was much remarked. Speaking of 1728, from a vantage within Walpole’s ministry, Lord Hervey wrote that ‘in the same degree that the credit of the clergy and the profession of churchman decreased they found it necessary to apply to the Government to keep up their authority in order to prevent the decline of the one keeping pace with the decay of the other’ (Some Materials, 92). In a famous 1757–8 jeremiad John Brown decried both the clergy’s loss of influence and Hume’s approval of it (Estimate 2.2). Whatever decline there might have been in the stock of the establishment clergy—possibly in response to that decline—the 1740s saw a dramatic flourishing of revivalist Christianity accompanied in Britain with the rise of Methodism and in New England with the movement called the Great Awakening. 63.25  God’s vicegerent on earth] The expression, along with ‘viceregent’, was one of the code words for expressing the doctrines of the divine right of kings and of passive obedience. Cf. Hume’s comment on the idea in ‘Original Contract’ 3. The term had been applied as late as 1713 to Queen Anne in The Blessings of Peace: ‘Let no Secular Sceptick question Her undoubted Title, as She is the Sole and Immediate Vicegerent of Heaven’ (¶ 1). 63.32  at the revolution, as they are at present] The contrast is between 1688–9, when Mary and her husband William of Orange supplanted her father James II, and the ‘present’ unpopular reign of George II, who unexpectedly had continued Walpole’s ministry over from the reign of his father George I. 63.35–7  some extraordinary convulsion, the power of the crown . . . is rather upon the encrease] Such an ‘extraordinary convulsion’ is pondered in ‘First Principles of Government’ 8. Hume’s moderate position falls between the claims that figured in the famous debate on the subject between Corbyn Morris and Thomas Carte in 1742. The former argued for a strong standing army and sought to disarm opponents by citing the declining power of the crown. His chief arguments looked to the requirement that the House of Commons grant the financial resources of the government and the claim that increasing prosperity was of greatest benefit to those people whose modest means had rendered them independent of outside influence (Letter, 30–49, 55–8). Carte spoke for the Opposition in insisting upon the greatly increased power of the crown. Hume’s argument serves in places to challenge Morris’s strongly ministerial stand, but he published before the appearance of Carte’s A Full Answer to the Letter from a By-Stander (London, 1742). Morris’s Letter is dated 26 February 1741–2. 64.2  death is unavoidable to the political as well as to the animal body] The notion of such a ‘death’, or dissolution into another form of government, derives from the ancient Greeks. In Republic 8–9, Plato explains how polities degenerate from the perfect state through timocracy and oligarchy to democracy and tyranny. In Politics 5.5–12, Aristotle discusses the ways in which revolutions occur

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in the various different forms of government and how they may be prevented. Harrington describes the ‘doctrine of the ancients’ concerning the corruption of states into other forms (Oceana, prelims, ad init.) and then revises it: the ‘corruption of one government (as in natural bodies) is the generation of another’, allowing a monarchy to corrupt, happily, into a republic (2nd pt. of the prelims.). See Political Works, 162, 202. A neo-Harringtonian example with marked affinities to Hume’s essay is Cato’s Letters 84–5 for 7 and 14 July 1722 (esp. 2: 607), in which the Dutch republic is judged to be unsound in comparison with the British monarchy. John Trenchard saw the property of those with an interest in the British monarchy as checking any republican tendency. 64.15–16  we have already had an instance] At Hist. 6: 38 Hume remarks that Cromwell’s ‘power and ambition were too great to brook submission to the empty name of a republic, which stood chiefly by his influence, and was supported by his victories.’ He devotes ch. 61 to the successive stages of Cromwell’s personal rule, commenting, as he describes Cromwell’s rule through major generals in 1655, that ‘All reasonable men . . . concluded, that . . . the nation was for ever subjected to military and despotic government, exercised not in the legal manner of European nations, but according to the maxims of eastern tyranny’ (6: 74). 64.18–19  the house of commons  .  .  .  must be the only legislature] Cf. ‘Independency of Parliament’ 5. 64.23  If it continue itself ] The monarch enjoys the prerogative of dissolving the lower house, though normally in modern times it has been exercised at the prime minister’s prompting. If there were no monarch, a parliament could be expected to perpetuate itself inasmuch as legislators would have little incentive to end their own rule. 64.28  Euthanasia] With Hume’s paraphrase, ‘the easiest death’, cf. the definition of ‘euthanasy’ in Bailey’s 1736 Dictionarium Britannicum as ‘an easy quiet death; an easy passage out of the world’.

8. Of Parties in General This essay appeared in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741), the 2nd edition (‘1742’), the 1748 consolidation of two volumes, and all editions of the ETSS. 65.2–3  Legislators and founders of states, who transmit a system of laws and institutions] It seems unlikely that at the time of writing this essay Hume had seen Bolingbroke’s very similar statement in Idea of a Patriot King (Political Writings, 225). In Discourses 1.10, Machiavelli puts founders of states second only to ‘heads and organizers of religion’ (Chief Works, 1: 220). Montesquieu, like Hume, sees the lawgiver’s function as in effect edificatory (e.g. L’Esprit des lois 5.1; Considérations, ch. 1). They all draw upon a rich tradition of classical writing beginning with Plato, Republic 497a–502c, and Statesman 292c–295e. Aristotle regards the art of legislation as the master art (see e.g. Nicomachean Ethics 1094a18–b11).

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Cf. Politics 1253a29–31: ‘A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors’. 65.18  presume to differ from Lord Bacon] Bacon, Advancement of Learning, bk. 1, speaks of ‘founders and uniters of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil merit’ (Works, 3: 301–2). Thus Bacon finds a place for Theseus, who was thought to have united the small towns of Attica into one state centred on Athens (Thucydides, History 2.15.2) rather than to have founded Athens in the sense in which Romulus supposedly founded the city of Rome, as Hume implies. Hume adapts Bacon’s list of deified benefactors by adding Aesculapius, god of healing, to Bacon’s Bacchus, the god of wine, and Ceres, the goddess of corn. For other instances of this topos, cf. Sprat, History, ep., [iv], and Temple, ‘Of Heroic Virtue’ 1 (Works, 1: 192–3). 66.20–2  Neri and Bianchi . . . Fregosi and Adorni . . . Colonesi and Orsini] The Neri and Bianchi, or ‘Blacks’ and ‘Whites’, were family-based factions within the Guelf party of Florence at the beginning of the 14th century. See Machiavelli, History 2.17. The Fregosi and Adorni were traditional rivals for control of public life in Genoa. These factions, first observed in the 14th century, were still prom­in­ ent early in the 16th century. See Guicciardini, History, bks. 1, 7, 11, 14. The Colonnesi and Orsini were Roman manifestations of the general struggle between Ghibelline and Guelf, or the parties of the emperor and the pope, respectively. The Roman factions dated from the 12th century, clashing last in 1498. See Machiavelli, Prince, chs. 7, 11 (Chief Works, 1: 29–30, 45); Guicciardini, History, bks. 1, 3–4, 6. 66.27  Prasini and Veneti] In the Byzantine Empire (Hume’s ‘Greek empire’) the ‘factions’ of the circus, particularly the ‘Greens’ and ‘Blues’, not only produced the chariot races and theatre shows, but had the formal duty of leading the ac­clam­ ations of the emperor or his representative in the theatre or hippodrome and of voicing popular discontents. They also supported candidates for high office, including emperors, adopted positions on religious questions, and were pervasive throughout the cities of the empire. In the 6th and 7th centuries they were associated with the kind of disturbances to which Hume alludes. Procopius makes much of their baleful influence during the reign of Justinian (527–65) in his Anecdota (see 7.1–42, 9.33, 10.16–23, 17.2–4). In his History of the Wars 1.24, he describes at length the Nika riots of January 532, when the centre of Constantinople was devastated by fire and Justinian almost deposed. See also Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 20 (Reflexions, 269–71); Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 4: 233–42 at ch. 40. But by the late 7th century they were merged with the court and its ceremonial. 66.29  We find in the Roman history] Paragraph 6 and its accompanying note were included as of the 2nd edition of Essays, Moral and Political (‘1742’), vol. 1 (variants). 66.29–30  two tribes, the Pollia and Papiria] The tribes were voting divisions of the Roman people within the popular assembly or comitia tributa (see the

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a­ nnotation for ‘Customs’ 10 at 276.10–11). Pollia and Papiria are two of the rural tribes (as distinct from the four original ‘city’ tribes) into which new citizens from the conquered cities of Italy were incorporated. The people of one such city, Tusculum, had been the earliest of the Latin cities to gain Roman citizenship (381 bc) and were incorporated into the Papirian tribe. According to the story in Livy quoted in the annotation for n. 1, it was proposed that they be savagely punished for taking sides against Rome in a war in Latium (it is not clear which war), but the whole of the comitia tributa rejected the proposal except for the Pollian tribe. Thereafter the Papirian tribe never voted for a candidate for office from the Pollian tribe. Several details of this story, including Livy’s dating of it, puzzle historians. Livy’s assertion, and Hume’s point, that the Papirian tribe would almost never vote for a member of the Pollian tribe cannot be substantiated for lack of evidence (see Oakley, Commentary, 2: 755). Hume noted this topic from Livy in his memoranda: ‘A Faction betwixt two Roman Tribes the Pollia & Papiria continu’d for 300 Years’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 511). n. 1.7–8  Titi Livii, lib. 8.] Livy, History 8.37.9–12: ‘The people of Tusculum, with their wives and children, came to Rome; and the great throng, putting on the sordid raiment of defendants, went about amongst the tribes and clasped the knees of the citizens in supplication. And so it happened that pity was more effective in gaining them remission of their punishment than were their arguments in clearing away the charges. All the tribes rejected the proposal, save only the Pollian, which voted that the grown men should be scourged and put to death, and their wives and children sold at auction under the laws of war. And it seems that the resentment engendered in the Tusculans by so cruel a proposal lasted down to our fathers’ time, and that almost no candidate from the Pollian tribe gained the vote of the Papirian.’ The correct form of the text of the final sentence is uncertain. It had already been much discussed by Hume’s time. n. 1.8  The Castelani and Nicolotti] This sentence was included as of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). As the history of these Venetian factions—the red and black sashes—extends from the 15th century to the 19th, they were extant as Hume wrote. There is reason to suppose that their conflict, always in part ritual, was encouraged as a device for dividing the populace. See Amelot de la Houssaye, History, 45–6; Limojon de Saint-Didier, City, 3: 119. The latter is identified as Hume’s source following this entry in Hume’s memoranda: ‘Castelani & Nicolotti two mobbish Factions at Venice’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 514). 67.13–14  The Guelfs adhered to the pope, the Ghibbellines to the emperor] i.e. to the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, respectively. In Hist. 1: 214–16, Hume himself dates the origin of the conflict to 1076 and the Investiture Controversy. He describes the parties as ‘the most durable and most inveterate factions that ever arose from the mixture of ambition and religious zeal.’ The

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events Hume relates occurred at the end of the 15th century, when the pope was Alexander VI. 67.15–17  Sforza . . . king of France . . . Trivulzio] The events of 1499–1500 recounted here involve the defeat of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan, by Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, his one-time follower, supported by the French troops of Louis XII. See Guicciardini, History, bks. 1, 3–4, which Hume mentions in his letter to Hutcheson of 17 September 1739 (Letters, 1: 33–4). 67.19–20  the blacks and whites] From the death of Muley Ism’l in 1727 until the early 1740s, Morocco was the scene of an intermittent civil war between the im­per­ ial guard of mercenaries from Guinea (blacks) and the local population (whites). It was essentially a war of succession among the late emperor’s sons. Europeans took a close interest in these events. See Windus, Journey, 138–43, 191, 193, for early use of the terms ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’. For eye-witness accounts see Braithwaite, History, 8, 18–19, 207, 350–1, 380–1, and Pellow, History, 163, 218, 226. Occasional reports appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine (e.g. 4 (1734): 222 and 10 (1740): 206). 67.29  the other refuses in the same manner.] Until the 1770 ETSS, this para­ graph concluded thus: ‘Besides, I do not find, that the Whites in Morocco ever impos’d on the Blacks any Necessity of altering their Complexion, or threaten’d them with Inquisitions and penal Laws in case of Obstinacy: Nor have the Blacks been more unreasonable in this Particular. But is a Man’s Opinion, where he is able to form a real Opinion, more at his Disposal than his Complexion? And can one be induc’d by Force or Fear to do more than paint and Disguise in the one Case as well as in the other?’ (variants). 67.37–8  many philosophers . . . grand elixir, or perpetual motion] One of the ‘many philosophers’ is likely to be William Temple, who in ‘Of Popular Discontents’ also refers to ‘the universal Medicine’ to illustrate the impracticability of preventing factions from occurring (Works, 1: 258). ‘Elixir, among the Alchymists, is used . . . for an Universal Medicine, which shall cure all Diseases, called by Way of Excellence the Grand Elixir’. The perpetuum mobile was, ‘in Mechanicks, . . . a Motion which is supplied and renew’d from itself, without the Intervention of any external Cause . . . . To find a perpetual Motion, or so to construct an Engine, &c. which shall have such a Motion, is a famous Problem that has employ’d the Mathematicians of two thousand Years; tho’ none perhaps have prosecuted it with Attention and Earnestness equal to those of the present Age’ (Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. elixir and perpetual). Newton’s second law of motion was sometimes adduced to demonstrate the impossibility of perpetual motion. The Caledonian Mercury for 14 December 1731 reprinted the design of a perpetual-motion machine that had appeared in London papers. 68.6  a seeming tranquillity in such governments] In the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, but in no other permutation of the essay (variants), Hume cited Montesquieu’s Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur

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d­ écadence (1734). Evidently he was thinking of ch. 9: ‘In a despotic state indeed . . . a real division is perpetually kindled. The peasant, the soldier, the merchant, the magistrate, and the grandee have no other conjunction than what arises from the ability of the one to oppress the other, without resistance; and if at any time a union ­happens to be introduced, citizens are not then united, but dead bodies are laid in  the g[r]ave contiguous to each other’ (Reflexions, 150). This chapter qualifies Montesquieu for inclusion amongst the philosophers mentioned earlier in this ­paragraph regarding it as impracticable to prevent factions from forming. 68.7–8  an attempt in England to divide the landed and trading part of the nation] Though Hume’s reference is not necessarily specific, such a divisive argument was noted at the time of Excise controversy in 1733. The issue related to the comparative burdens of taxation, aggravated since 1690 by the costs of war, through excise and land-taxes. Walpole’s defeated Excise Bill, presented as a means to reduce the land-tax, supposedly raised again what Bolingbroke called ‘the invidious Distinction of the landed and trading Interest, which in Reality are always united’ (Craftsman 346). In ‘Taxes’ 10, Hume would favour taxes on commodities and reject the Lockean argument raised in the Craftsman to show the union of the two interests. n. 3.1  I say, in part] Note 3 was included as of the 2nd edition of Essays, Moral and Political (‘1742’), vol. 1 (variants). n. 3.1  a vulgar error] an ‘error’ to be found, e.g., in Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 1 (Letter) 2–3 at 1: 14–15, 18, 20. Cf. Christianity as Old as the Creation, 87, where, before quoting Shaftesbury on the tolerance of the ancients, Matthew Tindal writes, ‘Had the Heathen distinguish’d themselves by Creeds made out of Spite to one another, and mutually persecuted each other about the Worship of their Gods, they would soon have made the Number of their Votaries as few as the Gods they worship’d; but we don’t find . . . they ever quarrell’d about their Gods, tho’ their Gods sometimes quarrell’d, and fought about their Votaries’ (ch. 8). The tolerance of the Romans was often praised by Voltaire, e.g. in his article on tolerance (Dictionnaire philosophique, 401). Hume too attributes tolerance to the Romans in NHR 9.2 and in Hist. 1: 5–6. Gibbon praises the universal spirit of toleration in the Roman Empire (Decline and Fall, 1: 31 at ch. 2) and, in introducing his account of the persecution of the Christians, speaks again of ‘the universal toleration of Polytheism’, ‘the mild indifference of antiquity’, and ‘the Roman princes, who beheld without concern a thousand forms of religion subsisting in peace under their gentle sway’ (2: 76 at ch. 16). n. 3.2  The laws against external superstition] In speaking of laws of this kind that were ‘as ancient as the time of the twelve tables’ (451/0; see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 13 at 105.17–20), Hume appears to refer to the laws composed in archaic style by Cicero in De legibus 2.8.19, which are described as similar to ‘the laws of [King] Numa and our own customs’ (2.10.23), and in particular to this law:

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Separatim nemo habessit deos, neve novos neve advenas, nisi publice adscitos, ‘No one shall have gods to himself, either new gods or alien gods, unless recognized by the State’. This law seems ‘to be in line with the prayer uttered at the beginning of Roman assemblies’ (Dyck, Commentary, 293). In his memoranda Hume cites two passages from Livy referring to incidents of religious intolerance by the Romans: ‘External Superstition punishd by the Romans. Lib. 39. Cap. 16’ and ‘They were very jealous of the establish’d Religion. Lib 40. Cap. 29’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 512). Commenders of Roman toleration such as Voltaire minimize the effect of this law (Essai sur les mœurs, introd. § 50 at 1: 182). In his comment on the Jews and Christians, Hume seems to refer to the suppression of the cults and the expulsion from Rome of the persons of Egyptians, Jews, and perhaps Christians under Tiberius in ad 19 (Tacitus, Annals 2.85; Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Tiberius’ 36) and Claudius (Suetonius, ‘Claudius’ 25.4, date uncertain). The phrase ‘external superstition’ is not Hume’s coinage, but translates Tacitus’s ‘externa superstitio’ in Annals 13.32. Cf. Annals 11.15, where Tacitus recounts how Pomponia Graecina was accused of adhering to a foreign religion, which Lipsius argued in his edition of  Tacitus was Christianity. Tacitus probably refers to the religion of the Jews and Egyptians. n. 3.9–11  Sueton. in vita Claudii. Pliny . . . lib. 30. cap. 1.] Hume alludes to three stages suggested by our sources in the gradual abolition of the Druids, by Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius. Suetonius says that Claudius ‘utterly abolished the cruel and inhuman religion of the Druids among the Gauls, which under Augustus had merely been prohibited to Roman citizens’ (Lives of the Caesars, ‘Claudius’ 25.5). Pliny the Elder, Natural History 30.4.13, is taken to refer to the suppression of the Druid priests in the reign of Tiberius. (The citation to bk. 30, ch. 1, accords with the divisions in editions available to Hume.) In Hist. 1: 6, Hume says, ‘No species of superstition was ever more terrible than that of the Druids . . . and the Romans . . . were at last obliged to abolish it by penal statutes; a violence, which had never in any other instance been practised by those tolerating conquerors.’ In Hist. 1: 8–9 he recounts their final extirpation by Suetonius Paulinus (ad 59). A contrasting view of the Druids as early defenders of British liberty was popular at this time. n. 3.14–15  owing to the imprudent zeal and bigotry of the first propagators of that sect] Shaftesbury suggests this explanation in Characteristicks 1 (Letter) 3 at 1: 18–19 and 6 (Miscellaneous Reflections) 2.2 at 2: 167–72. In his critical examination of the character of the early Christian martyrs (Free Inquiry 5, § 3), Conyers Middleton would cite Henry Dodwell’s pioneering 1682 Dissertationes Cyprianicae 12.2. Cf. Gibbon’s assessessment of the martyrs (Decline and Fall, 2: 109–13 at ch. 16). See also d’Holbach, Le Christianisme dévoilé, 89: among the martyrs ‘il en est plusieurs qui furent plutôt victimes d’un zéle inconsidéré, d’une humeur turbulente, d’un esprit séditieux, que d’un esprit religieux’ (ch. 6), ‘many

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were victims of a thoughtless zeal, a turbulent humour, a seditious spirit, rather than were inspired with religion’. 69.18  There is another cause] Cf. a similar contrast drawn between polytheistic and theistic religions in Hume, NHR 9. 70.3–4  Sects of philosophy, in the ancient world, were more zealous] Cf. ‘Rise and Progress’ 22.

9. Of the Parties of Great Britain This essay appeared in Essays, Moral and Political (1741), the 2nd edition of volume 1 (‘1742’), the 1748 consolidation of volumes 1 and 2, and all editions of the ETSS. Though the point of ¶ 12 is that the opposition between Tory and Whig yet survived, Boswell records Hume as saying on 4 November 1762—during the ministry of George III’s favourite, John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute—that ‘the distinction between Whig and Tory is allmost abolished’ (Private Papers, 1: 126). In his 1770 diagnosis of George III’s supposed misrule, Thoughts on the Present Discontents, Edmund Burke said that the deplorable state of things was ‘the more extraordinary, because the great parties which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be in a manner entirely dissolved’ (Writings and Speeches, 2: 253). George III attempted to obviate party rule by repudiating the first two Georges’ allegiance to the Whigs, but Horace Walpole wrote that the ‘extinction of parties had not waited for, but preceded the dawn of his reign’ (Memoirs, 1: 7). John Brown located the climacteric in the military reverses and ministerial upheavals of 1756–7 that ushered in the elder Pitt’s ‘patriot’ ministry (Thoughts, §§ 11–12). The transition of ‘patriotism’ from an Opposition ideology to a ministerial and court one associated variously with Pitt, Bute, and George III reconfigured British factionalism. Although Hume did not withdraw his essay in light of these developments, he did cut it greatly for the 1770 ETSS, reducing its topicality but leaving it an analysis of the factions of an era shaped by the Jacobite threat. 71.18  Court and Country] Linked as opposed interests, these terms were in use in the 1620s, but their association with party occurred after the restoration of the monarchy with reference to a party appearing in the early 1670s in opposition to various court policies like the Anglo-French alliance (Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 2: 477, 526–7). variants for 71.18, n.  Pro Sextio, cap. 45.] Cicero, Pro Sestio 45.96–8 (Hume’s spelling ‘Sextio’ is a variant reading used in several redactions of this speech). Broadly speaking, ‘optimates’ were politicians of the senatorial persuasion in the politics of the later Roman Republic, whereas ‘populares’ espoused causes popular with the people. ‘Optimates’ is derived from ‘optimus’ (‘best’, both socially and morally), thus exemplifying the linguistic bias in political nomenclature to which Hume points. Hume’s definition of the ‘optimates’ paraphrases Cicero’s in § 96:

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‘those who acted so as to win by their policy the approval of all the best citizens’. When in this note (withdrawn as of the 1770 ETSS) Hume says that he would employ the denominations court and country ‘without intending to express by them an universal blame of the one party, or approbation of the other’, he repudiates Bolingbroke’s identification in the Dissertation upon Parties (letter 4) of ‘court’ with faction and ‘country’ with the national interest: ‘A Country party must be authorized by the voice of the country. . . . A party, thus constituted, is improperly called party. It is the nation’ (Political Writings, 37). 72.3–4  The heads of the factions . . . the inferior members] ‘Interest’ here is identified with place-seeking, a charge commonly brought against parties in general (cf. Halifax, Maxims of Almansor 23, on catching ‘prizes’, Works, 1: 294). The ‘in­fer­ ior members’ might refer either to rank-and-file supporters, whether voters or not, or to those in Parliament who were not ambitious for office. 72.5  by the former.] Until the 1770 ETSS, with slight variations, this paragraph ended thus: ‘I must be understood to mean this of Persons who have any Motive for taking Party on any Side. For, to tell the Truth, the greatest Part are commonly Men who associate themselves they know not why; from Example, from Passion, from Idleness. But still it is requisite there be some Source of Division, either in Principle or Interest; otherwise such Persons wou’d not find Parties, to which they cou’d associate themselves’ (variants). 72.7  priests have been enemies to liberty] For the 1770 ETSS, Hume removed a note here that he had added to the 2nd edition of volume 1 of Essays, Moral and Political: ‘This Proposition is true, notwithstanding, that in the early Times of the English Government, the Clergy were the great and principal Opposers of the Crown: But, at that Time, their Possessions were so immensely great, that they compos’d a considerable Part of the Proprietors of England, and in many Contests were direct Rivals of the Crown’ (variants). This note had been taken nearly verbatim from the suggestion of an anonymous critic (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 6). In Britain attacks on priestcraft had Whig precedents in the writings of Thomas Gordon such as the anticlerical weekly Independent Whig (1720–1), on which he collaborated with John Trenchard. Here one reads that ‘One drop of Priestcraft is enough to contaminate the Ocean’ (no. 22). A similar paper was The Old Whig: or, the Consistent Protestant (1735–8). In conversation with Boswell, Hume would define a clergyman sarcastically as ‘A person appropriated to teach hypocrisy & inculcate vice’ (15 February 1774, Correspondence, 1: 340). 72.14–16  the established clergy . . . dissenters of all kinds] At this point Hume ignores the complication that in Great Britain, as constituted by the union of 1707, there were two national churches and that in Scotland adherents to the ­episcopal polity of the established church of England, as well as secessionist Presbyterians, were Dissenters needing the protections of the act for toleration of February 1712 (10 Anne, c. 7). Papists and antitrinitarians were not protected.

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A similar act for toleration in Scotland had been defeated in the Scots Parliament on 1 June 1703 (Parliamentary History, 6: xvii (app. 1)). n. 1.1–3  Judæi sibi ipsi reges imposuere. . . . Tacit. hist. lib. 5.] This note was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). Tacitus, Histories 5.8: ‘[At that time when the Macedonians were weakened, the Parthians not yet strong, and the Romans far away], the Jews appointed their own kings for themselves. The kings were driven out by the fickleness of the common people, but recovered their power by force of arms, and after perpetrating expulsion of citizens, destruction of cities, assassination of brothers, wives, and parents and other practices that are habitual with kings, they fostered superstition, in that they took upon themselves the dignity of the priesthood as a foundation of their power.’ Tacitus refers in cryptic fashion to the Hasmonean royal line, which had been established by the revolt of the Maccabees against Antiochus IV in 168 bc. It would be more accurate to say that all of them held the position of High Priest, while some, rather scandalously, also took the Hellenistic Greek title of king. 72.21–2  Gustavus Vaza was, perhaps, the only ambitious monarch] Burton connected this passage to a corresponding entry scored through in manuscript notes by Hume (Life, 1: 125): ‘Gustavus Vasa is perhaps the only Instance of a Prince who humbld the Clergy while he aspir’d to arbitrary Power’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 505). Gustav Eriksson Vasa defeated the bishops and led Sweden into the Lutheran faith in the years 1527–9. The church thus ‘depressed’ was consequently replaced by one more amenable to royal direction. The ‘foreign family’ commanding the loyalty of the bishops was that of Christian II of Denmark. See Vertot, History, s.v. 1515 and November–December 1519; Pufendorf, Compleat History, 188–95. 72.27–8  the propensity of priests to the government of a single person] In 1741, but not thereafter, the sentence read, ‘the propensity of Clergymen to despotic Power, and to the Government of a single Person’. ‘Clergymen’ became ‘Priests’ as of 1742, and after the 1770 ETSS the language about ‘despotic Power’ was dropped (variants). 72.28–9  The Presbyterian and Calvinistic clergy in Holland] The Dutch Reformed Church had been divided between strict Calvinists and the more latitudinarian Arminians (or Remonstrants). The former favoured the Orangist programme of centralizing power in the person of the stadtholder. 72.30–1  the Louvestein faction] so called after Loevestein Castle on the banks of the Waal, where in 1619 Maurice of Orange had imprisoned the Arminian, Hugo Grotius. The name Loevestijn Factie was current after 1650, when William II im­prisoned six regents in the castle as part of a coup d’état. Especially conspicuous at the time of the Anglo-Dutch war of the 1670s, the Arminians were republican, inveterate enemies of the house of Orange as well as of England, and a major influence in the politics of the province of Holland. See Stubbe, Further Justification,

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epistle to the reader. The Arminians had been expelled from the Church in 1619 at the Synod of Dordrecht and so were Nonconformists, like the English Presbyterians of Stuart times mentioned in ¶ 6. n. 2.1–2  Populi imperium juxta libertatem . . . Tacit. ann. lib. 6.] This note was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). Tacitus, Annals 6.42: ‘Rule by the people is close to liberty; domination by the few is nearer to the arbitrariness of a king.’ Tacitus is commenting upon the reason why Artabanus, a despotic king of Parthia (ad 10–38), had entrusted the government of the d ­ ependent city of Seleuceia to the local aristocrats rather than to the people, because he felt nearer to them. The aristocrats correspond to the bishops and the people to the Presbyterian clergy. 73.1–2  the great rebellion] This phrase, which replaced ‘the Civil Wars’ as of the 1772 ETSS (variants), was a Tory-like way of referring to the English and Scottish civil wars of 1642–52, the prelude to which Hume describes in this para­ graph. The result was the beheading of the ‘misguided’ prince, King Charles I. Swift complained in his Examiner for 12 April 1711 that according to the Whigs, the hostilities were ‘only a Civil War, and whoever durst call it a Rebellion, was a Jacobite, and Friend to France’ (Prose, 3: 128). 73.11  Necessity . . . constrained him to call a parliament] After ruling without parliament for eleven years, Charles I was constrained in 1640 to call in quick succession what are termed the Short and Long parliaments. The latter would dissolve itself in 1660 (Hist. 5: 269–71, 276, 282–6; 6: 133). 73.27–8  Round-head and Cavalier] In Hist. 5: 362–3 Hume attributes the origin of these party names to terms of abuse arising during the riots of the apprentices in late 1641. Roundheads were parliamentarians, Cavaliers royalists. 73.36  The clergy had concurred with the king’s arbitrary designs] The passage read, ‘The Clergy had concurr’d, in a shameless Manner, with the King’s arbitrary Designs, according to their usual Maxims in such Cases’ (variants) until 1758, when ‘in a shameless Manner’ was dropped. As of 1770 the phrase about clerical maxims was dropped. 73.40  the latter into that of the parliament.] Until the 1770 ETSS, with slight variations, the paragraph ended thus: ‘The Cavaliers being the Court-Party, and the Round-heads the Country-Party, the Union was infallible betwixt the former and the establish’d Prelacy, and betwixt the latter and Presbyterian Nonconformists. This Union is so natural, according to the general Principles of Politics, that it requires some very extraordinary Concurrence of Circumstances to break it’ (variants). 74.8  the nature of these parties] The problem arises from the Whig and Tory parties’ apparently changing their principles according to whether they were in or out of power. For a contemporary analysis see Hervey, Some Materials, 3–6. Court

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and country were more functional labels offering greater constancy. As opposing party names, Whig and Tory originated as opprobrious terms. Whigs advocated the exclusion of Charles II’s brother and heir presumptive James from the throne because of his Roman Catholicism. Tories supported the hereditary succession. ‘The words themselves are but late nicknames,’ explained John Toland, ‘given by each party to the other in King Charles II’s, reign; . . . the Whigs thus insinuating that the Tories were for Popery and Despotick Power; and the Tories, that the Whigs were for Presbytery and a Commonwealth’ (State-Anatomy, 14). For etymologies see State Poems, 2: xxiii–xxiv. 74.10  two parties, during the course of seventy years] This figure dates the parties from c.1671, before the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–81, but 1671 is the year when, in Hume’s judgement, James Stuart declared by his actions that he was a Roman Catholic (Hist. 6: 251). In Hist. 6: 381, Hume dates the parties from 1680, and Swift dated them from about that time in his Examiner for 31 May 1711 (Prose, 3: 163). 74.18  of the different factions.] The phrase was ‘of the two Parties’ until the 1770 ETSS. Until the 1772 ETSS, the paragraph, with slight variations, concluded thus: ‘The Question is, perhaps, in itself, somewhat difficult; but has been render’d more so, by the Prejudices and Violence of Party’ (variants). 74.21  the principles of passive obedience, and indefeasible right] See the head-note for Hume’s ‘Passive Obedience’ and History 5: 563 n. Q , which traces the history of the doctrine in England. In English law an indefeasible right is one that is incapable of being annulled or defeated. In Dissertation upon Parties (letter 9), Bolingbroke disparages an indefeasible right to govern as ‘a right independent of the community, and which vests in every successive prince immediately on the death of his predecessor, and previously to any engagement taken on his part towards the people’ (Political Writings, 83). Hume subjects the notion to analysis in ‘Original Contract’ 3. See also the annotation for ‘Public Credit’ 30 at 270.18 on the kindred tenet of inalienable right. 74.28–9  these absurd principles were found too weak] Until the 1770 ETSS, this sentence read, with slight variations, ‘absurd Principles, sufficient, according to a justly celebrated Author, to shock the common Sense of a Hottentot or Samoiede’ (variants). From the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, through the 1768 ETSS, the quotation had a note citing Bolingbroke’s ‘Dissertation on Parties, Letter 2d.’ 74.34  the revolution] i.e. the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 in which, according to the Convention Parliament, James II effectively abdicated the throne. Tories wanted to avoid the contractarian implications of a deposition, but they acceded to his replacement by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. The settlement of the crown, by general consent, ‘gave such an ascendant to popular principles, as has put the nature of the English constitution beyond all controversy’ (Hume, Hist. 6: 531). See the annotation for ‘Original Contract’ 31 at 341.12 on James’s ‘abdication’.

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variants for 75.21.  the Guelfs and Ghibbellines] See the annotation for ‘Parties in General’ 7 at 67.13–14. variants for 75.21.  the Tories have almost always opposed the Court these fifty Years] Hume seems to look back to the parliament of 1690–5, during much of which William’s ministry was overbalanced by Tories. Thus the Tories could be said to oppose William ‘even when employ’d by him’. variants for 75.21.  Queen Anne . . . at a loss to find the Reason] Anne, a daughter of James II, was a Stuart and English rather than Dutch or German. Additionally she aligned herself at the inception of her reign with the Tory rallying cry, ‘The Church in danger’. The alleged danger was from the Whigs’ courtship of the Dissenters during the reign of William and Mary. Anne was wrongly suspected of wishing to preserve the Stuart line of succession. The ‘four last Years of Queen Anne’ (1710–14) were those of the ministry of the moderate Tory Robert Harley (1st earl of Oxford as of 1711). They correspond with the period of an activist Tory majority in the House of Commons thwarted when George I dissolved Parliament. 75.27–8  subordinate to the interests of liberty.] As of the 1770 ETSS, the remainder of this paragraph together with an additional paragraph were omitted, for which see the apparatus of variant readings. variants for 75.28.  Steps dangerous to Liberty] Doubtless readers would have understood this phrase to allude to the six-month suspension of the 1679 Habeas Corpus Act during the Jacobite uprising in 1715 and to the passing in 1716 of the Septennial Bill, extending the maximum term of Parliament from three to seven years and allowing the Whigs to delay elections at a time unfavourable to them. Both measures were awkward for a Whig ministry to defend. Addison defended the suspension of habeas corpus in Freeholder 16, the seven-year term in 25 and 37. variants for 75.28.  betwixt the Houses of York and Lancaster] a reference to the contentions of 1455–87 that in Tudor times came to be thought of as the Wars of the Roses. Henry Tudor represented himself as uniting the claims of the two houses in his reign as Henry VII. variants for 75.28.  betwixt the Families of Bruce and Baliol] The territorial contention between these families became a dynastic one upon the deaths of Alexander III and his heir. The involvement of English kings (specifically the first three Edwards) made it an aspect of the Scots Wars of Independence (1296–1357). 75.29–31  Some, who will not venture to assert, that the real difference between Whig and Tory was lost at the revolution . . . think, that the difference is now abolished] In passages removed for the 1770 ETSS, Hume identified Bolingbroke as the person who had ‘asserted, that the Real Distinction betwixt Whig and Tory was lost at the Revolution’ (variants for 75.21). Bolingbroke’s Dissertation upon Parties details in letters 1–9 (alternatively Craftsman 382–6, 390–1, 393–4) the claim that the distinction between Whig and Tory became obsolete at the Revolution of 1688. The comparison to the Guelfs and Gibbelines to which Hume

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points (variants) is in letter 6. In the issue for 19 February 1743 of Old England, ‘Jeffrey Broadbottom’ (the Opposition Whig, Lord Chesterfield), would say that he knew ‘no real distinction between’ Whig and Tory (Miscellaneous Works, 2: 162). 75.33–4  attached either to monarchy or liberty.] Omitted at this point in two steps, as of the 1767 and 1770 editions of the ETSS, is an unflattering assessment of Toryism in Hanoverian times (for which see variants for 75.28). variants for 75.34.  few Philosophers, since Mr. Locke has wrote] i.e., as the context indicates, since Locke wrote the Two Treatises of Government, published in November of 1689 with an imprint of 1690. Though Locke wrote it in part or in whole much earlier, he represented it in his preface as offering a rationale for the Revolution of 1688. variants for 75.34.  the Name of Old Whig] Employed as equivalent to ‘true Whig’ in arguments of persuasive definition, this phrase could be invoked against whatever a Whig polemicist currently wanted to designate as apostasy, like Walpolean corruption. An influential formulation of Old-Whig views was Robert Molesworth’s preface to the 2nd edition of his translation of Hotman, Franco-Gallia (1721). Judging from the second issue of Addison’s Old Whig, an Old Whig might be characterized positively during Walpole’s ministry by dedication to constitutionally limited monarchy, parliamentary independence as part of a balance of power in government, and the tenet of ‘reciprocal’ obligation between monarch and people that Hume would rebut in ‘Original Contract’. In ecclesiastical matters an anticlerical individual would be latitudinarian, if not Erastian or disestablishmentarian, and vigilant for the ‘unalienable rights’ to liberty of conscience and freedom of worship (Old Whig, 1: 18, 14, 15). During Anne’s reign, antagonism to the church–state establishment had been the supposed apostasy in the Whigs that drove Swift to the Tories (Examiner for 22 March and 31 May 1711, in Prose, 3: 111, 165–7). 75.38–9  court and country are not our only parties] The Dissenters who supported the court did so as Whigs, and the inferior clergy of the Church of England, who tended to support Opposition policies, were Tories or Jacobites. Many Jacobites were nonjurors and lost their offices. When Hume says that ‘the lower clergy, at least, of the church of England’ sided with the Opposition, he refers to the tension between the court-appointed bishops and the lower clergy. Somerville dated this split at Anne’s accession to the throne in 1702 (History, 81–90). That date suggests the controversies over the three failed Occasional Conformity Bills of 1702–5. One pamphleteer dated the split between ‘the inferior Clergy’ and the bishops as beginning in 1710 or 1712 (Layman’s Letter, 8). In 1710 occurred the divisive trial of the firebrand High-Churchman Henry Sacheverell. The controversy inflamed contentions emerging between the Whig bishops and the High-Church lower house of the Convocation of Canterbury as early as the reign of William III, as Bishop Burnet reported (History, 4: 527). Interrelated controversies flared up in 1712 attending the passage in December 1711 of the Act against Occasional Conformity (Bennett, Tory Crisis, 150–5). The Whig bishops counterattacked by seizing upon two issues

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raised by extremist High-Church claims concerning ‘lay baptism’ and a putative duty of priests to withhold holy communion from those they deemed unfit, e.g. occasional conformers. The issue over baptism pertained to whether baptisms outside the Church of England were valid, calling in question by implication the eligibility for office of even the Lutheran elector of Hanover, who was in line to succeed Queen Anne. Contentions between the bishops in the upper house and the HighChurch members of the lower house culminated alarmingly in the Bangorian controversy and George I’s indefinite prorogation of convocations in 1717. n. 3.1  Some of the opinions delivered in these Essays] This note, included as of the 1758 ETSS (variants), refers to the initial publication of the two Stuart volumes of the History (1754, ‘1757’ [1756]), before Hume began the successive revisions described in ‘My Own Life’: ‘[I]n above a hundred Alterations, which farther Study, Reading, or Reflection engaged me to make in the Reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made all of them invariably to the Tory Side’ (Letters, 1: 5; cf. Hist. 6: 531–4). The recantatory note means that Hume regarded his History from the outset as revising earlier opinions of ‘the public transactions in the last century’. A secondary purpose of the note is a statement of defiance to critics of the Stuart volumes for Tory bias. One reason to add this caveat, rather than simply to revise the offending Whiggish passages, would be to point to them in demonstration that his allegedly Tory understanding of the constitution arose over time upon study, reading, and reflection. It is not obvious precisely to which, if not all, of the political essays appearing in the 1758 collection readers would have taken ‘these Essays’ to refer, but undoubtedly in ‘Parties of Great Britain’ Hume had in mind the Whiggish talk in ¶ 5 of Charles I’s encroachments upon the subjects’ ‘many noble privileges’ as belonging to them by birthright. variants for 76.3.  I Shall conclude this Subject with observing] This concluding paragraph was omitted, in two steps, as of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, and the 1770 ETSS. variants for 76.3.  Tories in Scotland . . . Parties in this country] an indication that in the first publication in 1741 Hume projected his readership to be Scots. Defoe had made much the same assessment of Scots Toryism in a report of 18 November 1710 to Robert Harley, then chancellor of the Exchequer and soon to be earl of Oxford (Letters, 293). variants for 76.3.  Those who favour’d Episcopacy] a circumlocution that Hume substituted for ‘The Episcopalians’ after the 1741 edition at the suggestion of his anonymous critic (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 6). variants for 76.3.  turn’d out of their Churches at the Revolution] a sometimes violent turnover occurring upon the Presbyterian re-establishment as the national church in Scotland in 1690. variants for 76.3.  As violent Things have not commonly so long a Duration] Hume deleted this portion of his concluding paragraph as of the 1748 edition

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apparently at the objection of his anonymous critic, who wrote that ‘though the common party conversation has not for some years turned upon that point so much as it used to do (arising from the many whigs now in Opposition) yet the Jacobite Party seems far from being vanished. witness perhaps 60 Nonjuring Meeting houses in & about our Capital’ (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 7). Johnson, Dictionary, s.v. nonjuror: ‘One who, conceiving James II. unjustly deposed, refuses to swear allegiance to those who have succeeded him.’ Edinburgh would fall to a Jacobite uprising issuing from the highlands in 1745. variants for 76.3.  among the middling Rank] In England the great landed nobles and all of the Hanoverian bishops were Whig, whereas a portion of the rural gentry, much of the lower clergy, and many schoolmasters were Tory. Hume distinguishes between the ‘middling Rank’ and ‘Gentlemen’, but the word ‘gentleman’ was broadening in meaning. In the 1749 novel Tom Jones, Henry Fielding’s narrator refers to the squires Allworthy and Western as gentlemen, as well as to the schoolmaster Partridge, the parson Thwackum, and the philosopher Square. Doubtless the middling rank in England to which Hume refers here consists of tradesmen and artisans. See the annotation for ‘Middle Station’ 2 at 11.17–18. For 1734, Jacob Vanderlint, who equated gentlemen with the gentry like Allworthy and Western, drew up a budget for ‘a Family, in the middling Station of Life, consisting of a Man and his Wife, four Children and a Maidservant’, concluding that £390–£400 was necessary per annum, though few such families had that sum (Money Answers All Things, 104, 140–3).

10. Of Superstition and Enthusiasm Appearing first in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1], 1741), this essay underwent a significant reorganization for the 1748 edition. Hume’s numbered ‘reflections’ were augmented from two to three. The added reflection is that on the comparative relations of superstition and enthusiasm to ‘priestly power’ (¶ 5). 77.1  the corruption of the best things produces the worst] The Latin version, Corruptio optimi pessima, is quoted in NHR 9 n. 9, and an English version appears in NHR 10.1 and 11.1. English iterations had appeared in Bacon’s 1622 Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh (Works, 6.1: 217); Sir John Denham’s 1688 ‘Progress of Learning’ (line 176); Matthew Tindal’s 1698 A Letter to a Member of Parliament, 27; John Dryden’s critical preface to the Fables Ancient and Modern of 1700 (Works, 7: 35); and Swift’s ‘Apology’ for the Tale of a Tub (Works, 1: 3). A distant source may be Aristotle, who asserted that tyranny is the worst of three forms of corruption (or perversion) of the best form of government, which is monarchy (Nicomachean Ethics 1160a31–1160b11, esp. 1160b9: ‘it is the contrary of the best that is worst’). 77.3  superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion] The notion that superstition is a corruption of true religion was a commonplace found

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in e.g. Bacon, ‘Of Superstition’: ‘as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty observances’ (Works, 6.1: 416). In Free-Thinker 96 for 20 February 1718, enthusiasm is included: ‘As to the just Notions, which we ought to entertain of the Supreme Being; Superstition and Enthusiasm equally corrupt them.’ Ἐνθουσιασμός (literally ‘possession by a god’) and its cognates were used of religious and poetic inspiration or possession, as in  Plato’s account of poetic inspiration in Ion 533c9–536d2. Cf. also Phaedrus 243e9–245a8. A correspondent of Erasmus uses the phrase ‘Ἐνθουσιασμῷ Monasteriensi afflatum’ (‘infected with the Münster enthusiasm’) of the places affected by the Anabaptist furore in his own country (Erasmus, Opus epistolarum Erasmi, 11: 75). Thomas Blount defines the English word ‘Enthusiasts’ as ‘a Sect of people that thought themselves inspired, with a Divine spirit, and to have a clear sight of all things they believed’ (Glossographia, 1656). This sect ‘sprung’, he says, from an ‘Anabaptisticall Sect’. Further contemporary definitions are to be found in Tucker, Enthusiasm, 14–17. 77.5  even of a contrary nature] Hume says in his account of the progress of the Reformation that ‘the early reformers’ were ‘inflamed with the highest Enthusiasm in their attacks on ‘the Romish superstition’ and adds that ‘these two species of religion, the superstitious and fanatical, stand in diametrical opposition to each other’ (Hist. 1: xiv–xvi at xiv). His account of ‘the Roman catholic superstition, its genius and spirit’, appears at 1: xvi–xviii. Both passages were excised from later editions. Similarly Hume describes Archbishop Laud’s reforms as superstitious, redolent of Roman Catholicism, and diametrically opposed to ‘the humour of the nation’ that ‘ran at that time into the extreme opposite to superstition’ (Hist. 5: 222–7). It was a commonplace to oppose the enthusiasm of the Protestant Dissenters to the superstition of Roman Catholics, awarding the via media to the Church of England, as in Addison, Spectator 201 for 20 October 1711: ‘Enthusiasm has something in it of Madness, Superstition of Folly. Most of the Sects that fall short of the Church of England, have in them strong Tinctures of Enthusiasm, as the Roman Catholick Religion is one huge overgrown Body of childish and idle Superstitions’ (Spectator, 2: 289). 77.17–18  Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, . . . the true sources of Superstition] In Advancement of Learning 2.13, Bacon speaks of ‘superstition’ as ‘nothing else but a panic terror’, that particularly afflicts the masses in times of danger and hardship (Works, 4: 325, Latin version at 1: 528). In Anatomy, § 3.4.1.2, Burton says that the ‘primum mobile . . . and first mover of all superstition, is the Divell’, who works through ‘innate feare, ignorance, simplicity, Hope and Fear’ (Anatomy, 3: 344, 355). Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan 6.36 and 11.26: ‘And this fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion, and in them that worship or fear that power otherwise than they do, superstition’. Spinoza says: ‘fear is the root from which superstition is born, maintained and nourished’ (Theological-Political Treatise, pref. 4). Etymologically the Greek

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word for superstition, δεισιδαιμονία, is ‘fear of the divine’, as Plutarch says (‘On Superstition’ 2–3): ‘the very name reveals that deisidaimonia is an emotional state, a situation which creates a fear that depresses and overwhelms any man who believes that there are indeed gods but that they are baneful and malicious’ (Moralia 65b–d). Theophrastus says, ‘Superstition would surely seem to be timidity in face of the divine’ (Characters 16.1). Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 1.117 (‘a senseless fear of the gods’ [‘timor inanis deorum’]), and Lucretius, De rerum natura 6.50–67. 78.5–6  Hope, pride, presumption, . . . together with ignorance . . . the true sources of Enthusiasm] Hume’s stress on ‘presumption’, used three times in this paragraph, is reminiscent of his characterization of George Fox: ‘His own breast, he imagined, was full of the same inspiration, which had guided the prophets and apostles themselves’ (Hist. 6: 142–3). Hume avoids the word ‘melancholy’ in connection with enthusiasm, unlike several writers on the subject, though they have a similar reference to ‘presumption’, ‘conceit’, or the like. Henry More roots enthusiasm in melancholy ‘with a proportionable Dosis of Sanguine’, illustrating the latter by the ‘sanguine’ temperament of the visionary Anabaptist, David George, or David Joris (Enthusiasmus triumphatus, §§ 17, 21, 33–9). Locke attributes enthusiasm to ‘Melancholy . . . mixed with Devotion’ and a great ‘conceit’ (Essay 4.19.5). In Trenchard’s Natural History of Superstition the cause of the enthusiast’s belief that his thoughts are directed by God seems to be the predominance of ‘Melancholy, well impregnated with Gall [;] the first gives presumptuous Confidence, and the latter Insolence and Impatience of Contradiction’ (51). Cf. Cato’s Letters 123 for 6 April 1723: ‘Religious Enthusiasm . . . is a flaming conceit that we have great personal interest with the deity. . . . It is great madness, mixed with presumption, to pretend to have the spirit of God’ (Cato’s Letters, 2: 852–3). 78.9  My first reflection is, That superstition is favourable to priestly power] This became the first reflection of three as of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political. Hitherto this statement had not been distinguished as one of the two numbered reflections. It appeared in 1741 (p. 148) in conclusion to the exposition of the first reflection, namely ‘that Religions, which partake of Enthusiasm are, on their first Rise, much more furious and violent than these which partake of Superstition; but in a little Time become more gentle and moderate’ (p. 144). See the apparatus of variant readings. variants for 78.19, n.  By Priests I understand only the Pretenders to Power and Dominion] Omitted after the 1764 ETSS was this note, which, on a straightforward reading, contrasts priests and ‘Clergymen’, who do not seek dominion or claim a sanctity separate from virtue and morals. As of the 2nd edition of the Essays, Moral and Political, vol. 1 (‘1742’), the note stipulated that clergy are ‘set apart, by the Laws’ (variants). In ‘Parties of Great Britain’ 3–4 and the notorious attack on clergymen in ‘National Characters’, n. 2, Hume ignores the distinction. 78.24–5  nothing but philosophy able entirely to conquer these unaccountable terrors] Cf. NHR 15.13, where Hume prescribes ‘opposing one species of

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superstition to another, [so as to] set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.’ variants for 78.27.  Modern Judaism and Popery] Addison’s Spectator 213 for 3 November 1711 brackets the Jewish religion and Roman Catholicism together as ‘Superstitions’ that enjoin a host of superfluous ceremonies as duties—‘Washings, Dresses, Meats, Purgations, and the like’ (Spectator, 2: 332–3). In § 3.4.1.3 of his Anatomy, Burton includes Judaism and ‘Popery’ among the superstitious religions, along with ancient paganism, Islam, and the enthusiastic varieties of Protestantism. variants for 78.27.  the Church of England may justly be said to retain some Mixture of Popish Superstition] For the 2nd edition of Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] ‘1742’), Hume softened this point from his original assertion, ‘the Church of England has a strong mixture’, following the suggestion of an anonymous critic (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 7). Hume describes this aspect of the Church of England briefly, with guarded approval, in Hist. 5: 459–60. Richard Hooker discusses it at length in Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. 4. Hume’s discussion of modern Judaism, Popery, and the Church of England was deleted altogether as of the 1770 ETSS. 78.30–3  The quakers are . . . the only sect, that have never admitted priests amongst them.] The Quakers followed their founder George Fox in holding that each believer possesses an inner light that is Christ speaking in the soul and that there is no need therefore for ministers or sacraments. Cf. Hume, Hist. 6: 145: ‘No priests were admitted in their sect: Every one had received from immediate il­lu­ min­ation a character much superior to the sacerdotal.’ In Lettres philosophiques 2, Voltaire makes his Quaker say, ‘Thanks to the almighty, we are the only people upon earth that have no priests’ (Letters, 13). The authoritative statement of Quaker doctrine through the 19th century was Robert Barclay’s 1676 Theologiæ veræ Christanæ apologia, translated as An Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1678). Barclay stated bluntly: ‘That, which we oppose, is the distinction of Laity and Clergy’ (10th prop., § 26). Both Barclay (1734–98) and the Quakers’ sharpest critic, the alienated Quaker George Keith (c.1639–1716), were Scots. 78.33–4  The independents . . . approach nearest to the quakers] The Independents began as ‘gathered churches’ of like-minded individuals in op­pos­ ition to the parochial organization of the national church. Each congregation elected its own minister and governed itself, though the movement developed wider consultative bodies. Independents formed the backbone of Cromwell’s army. After the settlement of 1690 they were de facto tolerated. See Hume, Hist. 5: 441–3. 78.35  The presbyterians follow after] The Presbyterians developed a form of government by ‘presbyters’, or elders. They rejected bishops, following what they believed to be the practice of the early church. Each church was governed by minister and elders in the Kirk session. The wider bodies—Presbytery, Synod, General Assembly—had equal numbers of ministers and lay elders. On the difference between Presbyterians and Independents, see Hume, Hist. 5: 442. The Revolution

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Settlement with William III in 1690 confirmed the established church in Scotland to be Presbyterian. 79.11–12  the anabaptists in Germany] Anabaptists were so called by their op­pon­ents because they rejected infant baptism and insisted on ‘re-baptizing’ adults. The term ‘Anabaptists’ was applied to a variety of groups who practised adult baptism and was indeed used in the 18th century as a general term of abuse. In their origins in Germany, Anabaptists stressed independent judgement and personal faith, and they had a particular appeal to the poorer people. One group participated unsuccessfully in the Peasants’ War (1525). In 1533, a group attempted to set up a ‘Kingdom of the Saints’ in Münster. During the ensuing two-year siege various excesses occurred that tarnished the name. 79.12  the camisars in France] Even before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 ended the legal assurance of the toleration for Protestants in France, many Huguenots had fled the country. But some remained, subject to persecution. The revolt of the Camisards broke out in the Cévennes mountains in 1702 and was not put down until 1705, after atrocities on both sides. They exhibited the ‘enthusiastic’ phenomena of inspired prophesying, even on the part of children, speaking in tongues, shaking, and convulsions. The revolt was supported by the English government, which was then fighting the War of the Spanish Succession against France. Some of the Camisards found refuge in London, where they were known as ‘the French Prophets’ and were widely deplored, even by other Huguenots, because of their prophesying and eccentric behaviour. Shaftesbury satirized them as enthusiasts in his Characteristicks 1 (Letter) 3 at 1: 19; and Thomas Gordon called them ‘the living Monuments of Enthusiasm’ (Humourist (1741), 6). 79.12–13  the levellers and other fanatics in England] In EPM 3.24, Hume speculates that ‘the levellers, who claimed an equal distribution of property, were a kind of political fanatics, which arose from the religious species, and more openly avowed their pretensions’. Hist. 6: 3 comments briefly on the activities of Levellers, Fifth-monarchy-men, Antinomians, and others after the execution of Charles I. The Leveller movement originated in 1645–6 among radical Members of Parliament. Among their demands were manhood suffrage, a truly representative parliament, and abolition of tithes—in essence a constitutional democracy, but apparently not, despite Hume, ‘an equal distribution of property’. See Frank, Levellers, 201, 245. They obtained influence in the Roundhead army, and their proposals for constitutional reform were discussed in the Putney debates of 1647, but as an organized political movement they were soon suppressed by the Grandees (Hume, Hist. 6: 12). 79.13  the covenanters in Scotland] The making of covenants was characteristic of the Scottish Reformation from the earliest period, and Scots fought under this banner through the conflicts following upon the National Covenant of 1638 (Hume, Hist. 5: 258) and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 with England (Hist. 5: 422–3). Hume highlights some episodes of savagery during the civil wars, e.g. the treatment of prisoners after Philip-Haugh in 1646 (Hist. 5: 478) and the execution

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of Montrose in 1650 (Hist. 6: 20–5). The violent reaction to the Conventicle Act of 1664 was supported by appeal to the Covenant (Hist. 6: 226–8). The Cameronians and others rose in arms in 1679 and were savagely repressed and defeated at Bothwelbridge (cf. Hist. 6: 371–4). Subsequently this party was alone in refusing to accept the accession of the ‘uncovenanted king’, William III, and the Presbyterian settlement for Scotland that followed. Called in Hume’s day the United Societies of the Suffering Remnant of the True Presbyterian Church, they had no minister in 1690–1706 and one only in 1707–43. These Dissenters were vigilant against the threats of Erastianism, witches, and Quakers. 79.26–7  Superstition . . . steals in gradually and insensibly] Cf. Free-Thinker 96 for 20 February 1718: ‘The Operations of Enthusiasm are suddain and violent; but, for the most part, of a short Duration: The Workings of Superstition are in­sinu­at­ing and slow; but, generally, lasting’ (Free-Thinker, 1: 194). Much of what Hume says has precedent in the numbers of this paper on superstition and enthusiasm by Gilbert Burnet, son of the famous historian and Whig bishop of that name. See also nos. 22, 34, 54, 62, 71, 77, 83. 79.33–4  our sectaries . . . are now become very free reasoners] Until the 1758 ETSS, this sentence read that the sectaries had ‘now become our greatest Freethinkers’ (variants). In ‘Independency of Parliament’ he numbered the dissenting preacher James Foster amongst free-thinkers (variants for 57.1). He might have adduced the emergence of a wide reluctance to require credal subscription, as became apparent amongst Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists in the Salters’ Hall debate in 1719 and the related paper war. See Thomas, ‘Non-Subscription Controversy’. 79.34–5  the quakers seem to approach . . . the . . . deists] Early on, the Quakers’ emphasis on the individual’s light of conscience as against creeds and scripture as a rule of faith could prompt accusations that they reduced Christianity to a point tantamount to deism. See e.g. Keith’s 1699 Deism of William Penn, 20, 66–8, 95–6, 104–5, 129, passim. Deism was a 17th- and 18th-century current of opinion emphasizing ‘natural religion’ and de-emphasizing ‘revealed religion’, i.e. emphasizing religion educed from nature rather than from a supernatural revelation, like that provided in scripture. Central texts were John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) and Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730). The words ‘deism’ and ‘deist’ could be used with precision or great looseness. Chambers’s discussion of the word ‘deist’ in his Cyclopædia attempts to capture its broadness in common application: ‘a Class of People, known also under the Denomination of Free-thinkers, whose Character is, not to profess any particular Form, or System of Religion; but only to acknowledge the existence of a God, without rendring him any external Worship, or Service. . . . They complain, . . . that the Minds of Men are ridden, and tyranniz’d by the Necessity impos’d on them of believing inconceivable Mysteries; And contend, that nothing should be requir’d to be assented to, or believed, but what their Reason clearly conceive.’

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79.35–6  the only regular body of deists in the universe, the literati, or the disciples of Confucius in China] Burton (Anatomy, 1: 91–2) gives the credit for applying the name ‘literati’ to the ‘inferiour Magistrates’ of China to Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary whose journals had been recently published under the title De expeditione Christiana apud Sinas. Leibniz wrote several essays on their ‘natural theology’ and the ‘civil cult’ offered by the Confucian literati. See Leibniz, Writings on China, 51, 61, 78–9, and 105: ‘What we call the light of reason in man, they call commandment and law of heaven. . . . To offend Heaven is to act against reason. . . . For me, I find all this quite excellent and quite in accord with natural theology.’ 79.37–8  superstition is an enemy to civil liberty, and enthusiasm a friend] On the latter, cf. Hist. 5: 10: ‘The more he [James I] knew the puritanical clergy [of England], the less favour he bore to them. He had remarked in their Scottish brethren a violent turn towards republicanism, and a zealous attachment to civil liberty: principles nearly allied to that religious enthusiasm with which they were actuated.’ Cf. also ‘Coalition of Parties’ 18. 80.6–8  during the civil wars, the independents and deists . . . were alike passionate for a commonwealth] Elsewhere Hume identified the leaders of the Independents in 1644, before Cromwell’s ‘usurpation’ divided them, as Sir Henry Vane (1613–62), Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes (1608?–69), and Oliver St. John (1598?–1673).The republicans, he says, consisted of the Independents, the Fifthmonarchy-men, and ‘the deists, who had no other object than political liberty, who denied entirely the truth of revelation, and insinuated, that all the various sects, so heated against each other, were alike founded in folly and in error.’ Henry Marten (1602–80), James Chaloner (1603–60), James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Wildman (1621?-93), and Henry Neville ‘were esteemed the heads of this small division’. Bishop Burnet described these same individuals as deists ‘who pretended to little or no religion, and acted only upon the principles of civil liberty’ (History, 1: 123–4). These ‘deists’ might not apply the name to themselves. They could see themselves as pure Protestants, if more secular minded than Independents like Vane, who was ‘a perfect enthusiast’ (Hist. 5: 443; 6: 59, 128). Such a radical Protestant was Henry Neville (1620–94), Harrington’s friend and member of the republican Rota Club (1659–60). Upon re-entering Parliament in 1659 he was charged with atheism, and his Plato redivivus included charges that clergy were parasitic on true religion, corrupted it, and usurped political power (15–19, 154–5). Another was Algernon Sidney (1622–83), who, in the wake of the abortive Rye House Plot, would become a martyr in the eyes of republicans when beheaded for treason for the contents of his Discourses concerning Government (1698), a book Hume would call ‘despicable’ (Hist. 6: 533). 80.8–9  the origin of whig and tory] On the origin of the terms Whig and Tory, see Hist. 6: 381 and ‘Parties of Great Britain’ 7 with its annotation for 74.8. 80.9  the leaders of the whigs . . . deists] A likely candidate to be named by Hume as a deist is Locke’s friend and patron, Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621–83), the 1st

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earl of Shaftesbury, the leader of the Whigs at their origin in the effort to exclude James Stuart from the throne. Burnet reported that Ashley Cooper was, ‘as to religion, a deist at best’ and that he had been ‘of great use’ to Cromwell ‘in withstanding the enthusiasts of that time’ (History, 1: 175–6 for ad 1660). See the famous characterization of him in Dryden’s satire The Medall, lines 276–80. Addison and Steele strove to assure the public that the Whigs were not free-thinkers favouring the Dissenters and subverting the established church. John Somers (1651–1715) was vulnerable to charges of being a deist by association with the philosopher, the 3rd earl of Shaftesbury (Sachse, Lord Somers, 41–2, 203–5). In 1716–17, George I and his Whig ministers openly favoured the Low-Church Erastian bishop Benjamin Hoadly against High-Church activists in the Bangorian controversy, to the point of closing down the Church Convocation. Another Whig leader associated with the 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, James Stanhope (1673–1721), managed, with Hoadly’s ­support, to have the Occasional Conformity Act of 1711 and the Schism Act of 1714 repealed in 1718. See Williams, Stanhope, ch. 14, § 1; Bennett, Tory Crisis, 219–21; and the annotation on ‘court and country’ for ‘Parties of Great Britain’ 12 at 75.38–9. 80.9–10  or profest latitudinarians] The name ‘Latitudinarians’ was applied to members of the Church of England who attached relatively little importance to dogma, religious institutions, and liturgical practice. The Cambridge Platonists— Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth—were often considered latitudinarians, but the term is more frequently applied to a later generation, some taught by the Cambridge Platonists, such as the bishops Edward Stillingfleet, John Tillotson, and Gilbert Burnet, all appointments of William III. See Ogg, England, 234–5. 80.16–17  seems of late to have reconciled the Catholics to that party] Inasmuch as Catholics were heavily involved in the 1715 Jacobite rebellion, Hume’s ‘of late’ must fall between the aftermath, in which the Whig government was not­ ably restrained in the number of executions, and c.1740, by which time the essay probably was written. In the immediate future lay the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. Writing in the reign of George III, ‘William Guthrie’ judged that the Catholic ‘interest in election of members of parliament . . . has for these thirty years past, commonly gone for the court’, i.e. for the court Whig ministries (New . . . Grammar, 125). Making the most of the Jacobite plot in 1722, Walpole levied a fine of £100,000 on Catholic estates in 1723 (Grellier, History, 138–9). Hume may have been aware of the involvement of Catholic nobility in the failed negotiations with Stanhope in 1717 to enable Catholics to take the oaths of allegiance. See [Berington], State and Behaviour of English Catholics, 92–5, for a rosy picture of events, and Duffy, ‘ “Englishmen in Vaine” ’, for a picture that does not resemble a reconciliation. Relative levels of persecution may have receded in the 1730s, in the enforcement if not in the statute, but the assessment by ‘Guthrie’ gives an appearance that what Hume calls a reconciliation may have begun with Walpole’s successors.

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80.18  The molinists] Luis de Molina (1535–1600) was a Spanish Jesuit theologian. ‘Molinism’ is used to describe the doctrines of his 1588 Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis (The Concord of Free Will with the Gifts of Grace), which set out to reconcile human freedom with divine foreknowledge through the notion that God has a knowledge of hypothetical future contingents (scientia conditionata). See Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. Molina, Luis de). Human beings accordingly have the freedom to choose good or evil, while God provides ‘sufficient’ grace to overcome temptation. His position was widely accepted by his fellow Jesuits. 80.18  and jansenists] i.e. the followers of Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), whose Augustinus was published posthumously in 1640. His interpretation of Augustine stressed the total corruption of human nature, God’s provision of ‘efficacious’ and ‘irresistible’ grace to those whom he chooses to save, and the continued need of grace for the fulfilment of his commandments (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. Jansenism). His views were taken up and advanced particularly by Antoine Arnauld, the great controversialist of the movement (De la fréquente communion, 1643) and by Pascal in his Lettres provinciales (1656–7). They were notably adopted by the convent of Port-Royal in Paris, the reforming abbess of which was Arnauld’s sister. The Jansenists were particularly opposed by the Jesuits, who followed Molina, and thus arose what Hume calls a ‘thousand unintelligible disputes’. Louis XIV supported the Jesuits and repressed the Jansenists. In 1709, he closed Port-Royal, and in 1713, at his instigation, Pope Clement XI attempted to put an end to the controversy by the bull Unigenitus. Though Hume here calls the Jansenists enthusiasts, in EPM, ‘A Dialogue’ 55–6, he describes Pascal as superstitious. 80.28  the jansenists preserve alive the small sparks of the love of liberty] Adherents of Jansenism remained in France despite its condemnation in the bull Unigenitus. Indeed in the 1730s a large number of allegedly miraculous cures took place at the tomb of the Jansenist deacon, François de Pâris, in the cemetery of St. Médard in Paris, accompanied by ecstatic convulsions and other extraordinary phenomena. Hume discusses these alleged miracles and the difficulty the Molinists found in refuting them in a note added to the 2nd edition (1750) of Philosophical Essays (EHU 10.27 n. 25). Between the first and second editions Conyers Middleton published A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, which contained an account of the French miracles and supportive testimony that is similar to the account in Hume’s note (223–6). The Jansenists suffered sporadic persecution, but their op­pos­ition to the Jesuits won the support of the Gallican members of the parlements who opposed the power of the pope in France, and contributed to the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1762. See van Kley, Jansenists, 6–36.

11. Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature This essay appeared first in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741), with the title ‘Of the Dignity of Human Nature’ and took its longer title for the 1770 ETSS, when a cluster of deletions from the text also occurred.

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Reporting on the sales of his Essays, Hume wrote to Kames that he had been told, ‘Dr Butler has every where recommended them’ (13 June 1742, New Letters, 10). Certainly ‘Dignity or Meanness’ would have caught Joseph Butler’s attention. 81.7  and poets] Before Mandeville’s 1705 poem, The Grumbling Hive (subsequently part of The Fable of the Bees), the dignity of human nature had been depreciated most famously in the 1675 Satyre against Mankind of John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester. His poems had seen a collected edition as recently as 1739. A rare and forgotten but by no means despicable rejoinder is An Answer to the Satyr against Mankind (1679?), attributed to the orientalist Edward Pococke. From about the same time was Nicolas Boileau’s famous satire 8, translated for a 1679 collection as ‘A Satyr against Man’. 81.19  attended with a splenetic temper] Instead of ‘a splenetic temper’ the text read ‘somewhat of the Misanthrope’ until the 1770 ETSS (variants). Hume’s readers might have thought of Diogenes, Juvenal, and Swift as notable examples of misanthropes who were not enemies of virtue. 81.28  our polite and fashionable moralists] such as ‘Isaac Bickerstaffe’, Mr Spectator, and ‘Nestor Ironside’ (Steele, John Hughes, Addison, George Berkeley et al.). See e.g. Tatler 87, 108; Spectator 158, 210, 312, 537; Guardian 83. Guardian 19 has a Christian Stoic orientation. variants for 81.30.  For the 1770 ETSS a paragraph was deleted that had followed ¶ 2: ‘Women are generally much more flatter’d in their Youth than Men; which may proceed from this Reason, among others, that their chief Point of Honour is consider’d as much more difficult than ours, and requires to be supported by all that decent Pride, which can be instill’d into them’. See Hume’s account in THN 3.2.12 and EPM 4.5–7 of the double standard for the artificial virtue of chastity. The ‘point of honour among men’, namely courage, is also largely artificial (THN 3.2.12.8). One reason to delete this paragraph on inducing virtue by flattery could be its closeness to Mandeville’s notorious tenet that moral virtue is the ‘Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride’ (Enquiry, in Fable of the Bees, 1: 51). 82.14  whether it be a question of comparison] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the phrase was ‘a Question merely of Comparison’ (variants). Sometimes Hume dismisses questions of degree as merely ‘verbal’, or disputes of words (¶ 9). See esp. DNR 12, ¶¶ 6–8. Philo says, however straightforwardly or ironically, that ‘the controversies concerning the degrees of any quality or circumstance’, unlike degrees of ‘quantity or number’, are irremediably ‘involved in perpetual ambiguity’ (12, ¶ 7). THN 1.4.6.7 and 21 indicate that without a ‘fiction’ uniting perceptions into one thing, questions of personal identity are disputes of words involved in questions of degrees of ease of transition according to the relations of causation and resemblance. The verbal dispute over liberty and necessity discussed in EHU 8.22–3 is not a question of degree. In ‘Standard of Taste’ 20, comparison is listed as a necessary part of critical discrimination. ‘The gradation,’ Hume says, ‘from probabilities to proofs is in many cases insensible’ (THN 1.3.12.2),

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yet he does not judge the distinction a dispute of words. Cf. ‘Independency of Parliament’ 8. variants for 82.16.  Leisure, the most valuable Present that cou’d be made to Mortals] The full sentence was removed for the 1770 ETSS. In ‘Rise and Progress’ 6, Hume says that ‘the love of knowledge . . . requires youth, leisure, education, genius, and example’. 83.23  as wise as Tully, or Lord Bacon] i.e. Marcus Tullius Cicero and Francis Bacon, one sage from the ancients, the other from the moderns. Bacon was 1st baron Verulam and viscount St. Albans. 83.37–8  our selfish and vicious principles so much predominant] In 1729, Butler added a preface to his 1726 Fifteen Sermons with the observation that ‘There is a strange affectation in many people of explaining away all particular affections, and representing the whole of life as nothing but one continued exercise of selflove’. In the 11th sermon he called it a characteristic of the age ‘to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards to self-interest, than appears to have been done formerly’ (Works, 2: 18, 156). Hume’s view was that the representations of ‘certain philosophers’ concerning the selfishness of mankind are ‘wide of nature’: ‘So far from thinking, that men have no affection for any thing beyond themselves, I am of opinion, that tho’ it be rare to meet with one, who loves any single person better than himself; yet ’tis as rare to meet with one, in whom all the kind affections, taken together, do not over-ballance all the selfish’ (THN 3.2.2.5). 83.39  as is asserted by some philosophers] In EPM, app. 2.1–4, Hume would distinguish between ‘Superficial reasoners’ who maintain ‘that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy’ and those ‘who maintained the selfish system of morals’, such as Epicurus, Hobbes, and Locke. On this system affections, however sincere, are ‘selflove’ modified ‘into a variety of appearances’. 83.39–40  we ought undoubtedly to entertain a contemptible notion of human nature.] Thus the paragraph ended as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political. Hitherto it ended with these two sentences: ‘I may, perhaps, treat more fully of this Subject in some future Essay. In the mean Time, I shall observe, what has been prov’d beyond Question by several great Moralists of the present Age, that the social Passions are by far the most powerful of any, and that even all the other Passions receive from them their chief Force and Influence. Whoever desires to see this Question treated at large, with the greatest Force of Argument and Eloquence, may consult my Lord Shaftsbury’s Enquiry concerning Virtue’ (quoted here as slightly altered for the Essays, Moral and Political (‘1742’), variants for 84.1). The argument that Hume supplied in the replacement paragraph resembles that in Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks 4 (Inquiry) 2. For the role of the social passions in reinforcing other passions, Hume may be remembering 2.2, § 1 (e.g. Characteristicks, 1: 241–2, 246–52), wherein Shaftesbury shows ‘how much Natural Affection is predominant; . . . how interwoven with our other Passions’ (Characteristicks, 1: 256).

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A Humean account of the tenet might be educed from THN 2.1.11. Other than Shaftesbury, the ‘great Moralists of the present Age’ are those, like Francis Hutcheson and Butler, who rebutted the egoism associated then with Hobbes and Mandeville. Butler had been made dean of St. Paul’s in 1740. 84.1  There is much of a dispute of words in all this controversy] This para­ graph appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 84.14–15  calls not things by their proper names] See the annotation for ‘Standard of Taste’ 3 at 182.10–11 on the ‘very nature of language’. On the love of one’s children see the annotations for ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ 2 at 150.6–7 (on ‘the ties of nature’) and for ‘Stoic’ 15 at 129.19–20. For Hume’s rebuttal in ¶ 9 of egoism, cf. EPM 1.2, 9.22–5, and app. 2. 84.39–40  The virtuous sentiment or passion produces the pleasure] Cf. the refutation of psychological hedonism in EPM, app. 2.12–13. The point that pleasure is an effect rather than a cause of virtuous sentiment seems influenced by Butler’s distinction between our ‘particular appetites and passions’ and ‘the pleasure arising from them’ (Fifteen Sermons 11, in Works, 2: 158). Cf. Works, 2: 33–5 nn. (sermon 1). However attendant pleasure might reinforce benevolent actions, there would be no pleasure were there no particular benevolent passion to gratify. A note in the first of Hume’s Philosophical Essays cites Butler’s sermons directly, saying: ‘It has been prov’d, beyond all Controversy, that even the Passions, commonly esteem’d selfish, carry the Mind beyond Self, directly to the Object; that tho’ the Satisfaction of these Passions gives us Enjoyment, yet the Prospect of this Enjoyment is not the Cause of the Passion, but on the contrary the Passion is antecedent to the Enjoyment, and without the former, the latter could never possibly exist; that the Case is precisely the same with the Passions, denominated benevolent’ (Philosophical Essays, 15–16, deleted in preparation for the 1758 ETSS). Hume credited Butler with this advance, though a similar argument is in Hutcheson, Inquiry 2, § 2.8. The core point had been made by Henry Grove in Spectator 588 for 1 September 1711 (Spectator, 5: 13). 85.11–12  vanity is so closely allied to virtue] Cf. THN 3.3.2.8: ‘But tho’ an over-weaning conceit of our own merit be vicious and disagreeable, nothing can be more laudable, than to have a value for ourselves, where we really have qualities that are valuable. The utility and advantage of any quality to ourselves is a source of virtue, as well as its agreeableness to others; and ’tis certain, that nothing is more useful to us in the conduct of life, than a due degree of pride, which makes us sens­ ible of our own merit, and gives us a confidence and assurance in all our projects and enterprizes. Whatever capacity any one may be endow’d with, ’tis entirely useless to him, if he be not acquainted with it, and form not designs suitable to it. ’Tis requisite on all occasions to know our own force; and were it allowable to err on either side, ’twou’d be more advantageous to over-rate our merit, than to form ideas of it, below its just standard.’ Cf. EPM 9.10 on ‘the love of fame’.

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85.17–18  Nero had the same vanity in driving a chariot] Nero (Roman emperor ad 54–68) outraged upper-class sentiment at Rome by competing as a charioteer and as a musician (singer and lyre player). His chariot racing is recorded  by Tacitus (Annals 14.14) and Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars, ‘Nero’ 22.2). Tacitus suggests his vanity: ‘ “Racing with horses”, he used to observe, “was a royal accomplishment, and had been practiced by the commanders of antiquity: the sport had been celebrated in the praises of poets and devoted to the worship of heaven.” ’ 85.18–19  that Trajan had in governing the empire with justice and ability] Trajan (Roman emperor 98–117) was widely regarded as one of the ‘five good emperors’ (see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 177 at 328.3–8). Citing the Breviarium of Eutropius, Gibbon records that Trajan’s civil administration was so well-regarded by posterity that above ‘two hundred and fifty years’ after his death the senate prayed that the incoming emperor ‘might surpass the felicity of Augustus, and the virtue of Trajan’. As for his vanity, Gibbon, citing the Caesars of Julian, judges that in his conquests of Dacia and Parthia ‘Trajan was ambitious for fame’ (Decline and Fall, 1: 6–7, 82).

12. Of Civil Liberty Originally titled ‘Of Liberty and Despotism’ in Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] 1741), this essay took its present title for the 1758 ETSS. The reason may never be ascertained, but the change in title did occur during what Hume would later call ‘an unnecessary War’ (11 March 1771, Letters, 2: 237). Although Hume sometimes used the word ‘despotism’ in a non-pejorative way, as in ‘Liberty of the Press’ 4, he might regret the old title in the context of the Seven Years War as misleadingly inviting an invidious contrast of French despotism with British liberty. But see the annotations for ¶¶ 3 at 87.7–8 and 13 at 91.14–15 for textual revisions that may ­suggest concern not to seem non-committal between civil liberty and despotism. ‘Sur la liberté & le despotisme’ appeared with annotations in Journal étranger (May 1760), 150–78. The annotator explains that ‘M.  Hume n’entend point par Gouvernement absolu un Gouvernement Despotique’ (170–1). 86.6–7  not as yet had experience of three thousand years] The number is a round figure applied to a prehistory for which there were competing chronologies understood to be conjectural. The figure of three thousand years was used by Hume’s near contemporaries to refer generally to events at the emergence from the ‘fabulous’ ages (e.g. Sprat, History, 118, 338). A figure of around three thousand years also extends back to the remote era in which the Trojan war was supposed to have taken place and the Homeric poems subsequently were composed (Lemprière, Bibliotheca Classica, s.v. Troy, Homerus). In 1735, Blackwell placed Homer ‘two thousand seven hundred Years’ ago (Enquiry, 2). The epics might be thought to be the earliest documents to give us materials for reasoning about human affairs. In the

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preface to his translation of the Iliad, Pope said that by reading the epic we can step ‘almost three thousand Years back into the remotest Antiquity’ (Twickenham Edition, 7: 14). With a somewhat different intention Hume suggested in THN 1.4.7.14 that reasoning on human affairs itself had had only two thousand years to develop: ‘Two thousand years with such long interruptions, and under such mighty discouragements are a small space of time to give any tolerable perfection to the sciences; and perhaps we are still in too early an age of the world to discover any principles, which will bear the examination of the latest posterity.’ In ‘Populousness’ 98, Hume dates  ‘the commencement of real history’ from Thucydides at the end of the 5th  century bc. On the difficulty of discovering ‘general truths in politics’, see ‘Remarkable Customs’ 1 and its annotation at 273.2–3. 86.17  A weak prince, says he] Identified by the annotator for Journal étranger as Machiavelli’s Prince, ch. 23. Chs. 22–3 are about princes like Maximilian I who are, in Hume’s term, ‘weak’ because dependent on others’ understanding. Unable to distinguish between good and bad counsel, they are irresolute before diverse advice from ministers or vulnerable to the power concentrated in a sole (or prime) minister. 86.22  proceeding, in a great measure] Hume added the prepositional phrase for the 2nd edition of Essays, Moral and Political ([vol. 1] ‘1742’), in concession to the objection of an anonymous critic that ‘the cause here assigned of Machiavels Errors seems not sufficient, for there were then instances enough before his time of the contrary of that Position’ (Fieser, ‘Remarks’, 7). 86.26–7  Sejanus . . .; but Fleury] Tacitus’s Annals 4.1–3 outlines Sejanus’s project to supplant Tiberius. In the event Tiberius had Sejanus executed (see Dio, Roman History 57.19–58.14). Hume’s point is that Sejanus might hope to supplant Tiberius under ancient conditions (see the annotation for ‘Liberty of the Press’ 4 at 39.24). In contrast André-Hercule de Fleury, governing within the stability of a modern Bourbon monarchy, could not expect to supplant Louis XV, though the cardinal was the undisputed chief minister for seventeen years until his death in 1743. Louis XIV had famously ruled without a first minister after Cardinal Mazarin’s death in 1661. n. 1.2  Xen. Hiero.] Xenophon, Hiero 9.9 (in Scripta minora): ‘And if commerce too benefits the city in any way’ [Ei de kai emporia o¯phelei ti polin], then it too should be rewarded by the ruler with a prize, in the same way as other activities are that benefit the city such as victory in war or success in athletic and dramatic contests.’ Xenophon’s doubt (‘if ’) concerns whether commerce benefits the city as well as the individual. n. 1.2–3  Plato . . . . de legibus, lib. 4.] Laws 4.705a–b is one of several passages in which Plato argues that trade has deleterious effects. Eventually he makes it clear that citizens of his imaginary state are forbidden to engage in trade (Laws 8.849a–850a, 11.918a–920c). Note 1 was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants).

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87.1  the Italians have kept a profound silence] Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘There is not a Word of Trade in all Matchiavel, which is strange considering that Florence rose only by Trade’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 508). The source of Hume’s memorandum has been identified (Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 8–9) as Nicholas Barbon: ‘Machiavel a Modern Writer, and the best, though he lived in a Government, where the Family of Medicis had advanced themselves to the Sovereignty by their Riches, acquired by Merchandizing, doth not mention Trade, as any way interested in the Affairs of State; for until Trade became necessary to provide Weapons of War, it was always thought Prejudicial to the Growth of Empire, as too much softening the People by Ease and Luxury, which made their Bodies unfit to Endure the Labour and Hardships of War’ (Discourse of Trade, A3v-r). Machiavelli stands guilty along with Guiccardini, Hume’s other major Italian source. An Italian who did not neglect economic factors is Giovanni Botero, author of a 1588 treatise on the Greatnes of Cities. 87.4  the two maritime powers] i.e. England and the United Provinces. 87.6–7  a full comparison of civil liberty and absolute government] The prepositional phrase was ‘of Liberty and Despotism’ until the 1758 ETSS (vari­ ants), when the title of the essay changed. 87.7–8  to show the great advantages of the former above the latter] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, this phrase read, impartially, ‘to have shown the Advantages and Disadvantages of each’, i.e. of liberty and despotism (variants). 87.15  It had been observed by the ancients] Hume paraphrases an in­ter­pret­ ation of ancient cultural history that was attributed by writers such as ‘Mr. Addison and Lord Shaftesbury’ (n. 2) to Longinus, and by Thomas Gordon to Herodotus. For Longinus see the annotations below for ¶ 4 at 87.29–30; for Herodotus, see Thomas Gordon’s misreading of Histories 2.124 in Cato’s Letters 67 for 24 February 1721. It is not clear that ‘the ancients’ in general did identify freedom as a precondition of the arts. More commonly they argued that freedom stimulates courage and military success (e.g. Herodotus, Persian Wars 5.78, 7.139) and that wealth and power, once attained, nourish the development of arts (Isocrates 4 (Panegyricus) 38–50). Eloquence, however, was sometimes associated directly with freedom, for instance by Cicero, who gives the traditional account of the rise of oratory among the Greeks after the expulsion of the tyrants from Syracuse in the 5th century bc and its great flourishing in democratic Athens (Brutus 46–8). Equally conventionally he attributes its decline, after Philip and Alexander conquered the Greek citystates, to the retreat of oratory from the political arena into the rhetorical schools (Brutus 36–7). Oratory was also recognized as flourishing in the later decades of the free Roman Republic, Cicero himself being the most notable of a line of great s­ peakers (see the annotation for ‘Eloquence’ 3 at 92.28). After the establishment of im­per­ial government by Augustus, however, the perception that eloquence had declined became a topic of discussion, but the decline was normally attributed to other

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f­ actors than the loss of freedom, notably the artificiality of the training in declamation in the schools of rhetoric and the luxury, materialism, and decadence of the age. See Seneca, Controversiae 1, pref. 7; Petronius, Satyricon 1–2, 88; Seneca, Epistles 114. One of the three speakers in Tacitus, Dialogue 36–7, 40–1, argues that eloquence had indeed been stimulated by the free but troubled politics of the later years of the republic and that its decline is due to the peace and security of imperial government. For Hume’s own discussion of the political conditions favourable to the arts and sciences, see ‘Rise and Progress’, especially 10, 16, 23. 87.18–19  carried to such perfection by the Greeks] Hume refers to the celebrated cultural achievements of the ancient Greeks in literature, art, philosophy, and history during the period from Homer to Demosthenes and Aristotle. 87.20–2  when the Greeks lost their liberty, . . . the arts . . . declined] Hume refers to the consequences of the battle of Chaeronea in 338 bc, when Philip II of Macedon defeated the Greeks and began the process of incorporating them into the Macedonian Empire. This empire was consolidated and massively extended by the ‘conquests of Alexander’, Philip’s son, in 334–23 bc, through which he gained control of the Persian Empire, sweeping as far east as India. The judgement that ‘the arts declined’ in the following centuries, which came to be known as the ‘Hellenistic’ period, would be given classic expression in Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s history of Greek art, but it is no longer the consensus view about the culture of this time. 87.24–6  Learning was transplanted to Rome . . . and . . . made prodigious shoots for above a century] In Characteristicks 3 (Soliloquy) 2.1 at 1: 116–18, Shaftesbury expresses the view being paraphrased, that the Romans learned the arts and sciences from the Greeks and practised them during the last period of the republic for ‘above a century’ (Hume’s phrase). Shaftesbury quotes the famous lines of Horace about the tardiness of the Romans to learn from the Greeks (Epistles 2.1.156–63), which Hume also partly quotes below in ¶ 7. Velleius Paterculus also singles out this period (Compendium 1.17). The period in question is that following on the defeat of Carthage and the subsequent conquest of Greece by the Roman Republic in the 3rd–2nd centuries bc until the destruction of the republic by Julius Caesar and the establishment of imperial government by Augustus towards the end of the 1st century. It is the period of the ‘Golden Age’ of Roman literature from Terence to Horace, Virgil, and Ovid. 87.26–7  till the decay of liberty produced also the decay of letters, and spread a total barbarism over the world] Hume exaggerates the undoubted decline of Latin literature in the 2nd century ad, just before the presumed date of Longinus. Shaftesbury expresses such a view in Characteristicks 3 (Soliloquy) 2.1 at 1: 116–18. Gibbon too makes a comparable judgement, giving a date for Longinus in the 3rd century ad, as Hume implies, and identifying him with Cassius Longinus, the rhetorician and advisor of the rulers of Palmyra, Odenathus and Zenobia

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(Decline and Fall, 1: 62–4, 326, 331–2). See also the annotations for ‘Rise and Progress’ 44 at 117.1–2 and ‘National Characters’ 24 at 170.3–4. 87.29–30  Longinus thought himself sufficiently justified] The view that Hume paraphrases and attributes to Addison and Shaftesbury arises from an apparently erroneous interpretation of “Longinus”, On the Sublime 44. The Greek text of this passage is corrupt, but it is in dialogue form, and modern editions attribute the passages that assert that the decline of eloquence is due to loss of liberty not to Longinus, but to his unnamed interlocutor (‘a certain philosopher’). On the modern view Longinus himself rejects this theory and ascribes the decline of eloquence to wealth, luxury, and moral decline. However, the speech which ascribes the decline of eloquence to loss of liberty is put into the mouth of Longinus himself in Boileau’s influential French translation (Oeuvres, 3: 154–61) and in the 1739 English translation by William Smith and by Smith’s introductory comment (xxx–xxxi–xxxii, 184–6). It is the same in the Greek text printed in the edition by Zachariah Pearce that is listed in the Hume Library. Gibbon notices the corruption of the text and is more circumspect (Decline and Fall, 1: 63 n. 120 at ch. 2). n. 2  Mr. Addison and Lord Shaftesbury] Addison certainly made the connection between political liberty and the arts, for he argued that freedom produced plenty, the prerequisite for the liberal arts. But he also allowed for some uncertainty about the connection and noted the flourishing of the arts in certain absolute monarchies. For him the most obvious relation between liberty and cultural achievement lay in the manner in which freedom encouraged eloquence. See Spectator 287 for 29 January 1711–12 and Tatler 161 for 20 April 1710. A similar emphasis upon eloquence occurs in Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks 3 (Soliloquy) 2.1–2, where it is presented as ‘the Mother’ of all the other arts (2.2) and freedom is regarded as indispensable to it. Cf. ‘A Letter concerning . . . Design’, Second Characters, 20–4. Arguments of this sort were not common in England and Scotland before the settle­ ment of 1689 if only because the power of the monarchy was still in question. One earlier instance that Hume would have known is Milton’s argument in his 1660  Readie & Easie Way that free commonwealths tended to promote civility (Works, 6: 145). 88.2–3  Ariosto, Tasso, Galileo, more than Raphæl, and Michæl Angelo] The peculiar syntax of this sentence appears also in ‘Liberty of the Press’ 1, ‘Standard of Taste’ 16, and ‘Populousness’, n. 13. In all four cases it had originally read ‘no more’, but in the 1770 and 1772 ETSS, ‘no’ was deleted, possibly to remove a double negative (‘no more . . . were not born’). The Ferrara of Ariosto’s birth was a principality, and Tasso’s birthplace was the kingdom of Naples. Galileo’s Florence was part of a duchy, and the Florence in which Michelangelo was born in 1475, though nominally a republic, was controlled by the Medici family. Cf. ‘British Government’ 2. At fifteen years of age Michelangelo moved into the Palazzo de’ Medici and remained there until Lorenzo de Medici died three years later in 1492. Raphael was born in the duchy of Montefeltro.

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88.4–5  the Lombard school was famous . . . yet the Venetians] The Lombard school refers to the flourishing of the arts in the late 15th century in Milan and northern Italy, which at that time was under the rule of the tyrannical Sforza family. The leading artists were Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci. The republic of Venice (which may be considered to be geographically at the edge of the Lombard plain) had a separate development. A city of shipbuilders, traders, and bankers, Venice was slower to share in the artistic achievements and humanism that characterize the Renaissance in other major Italian cities, though by the 16th century Venice could adduce such artists as Titian, Giorgione, and Tintoretto, as well as the printing house of Aldus Manutius. 88.6  their genius for the arts and sciences] In the 1741 Essays, Moral and Political (vol. 1), the phrase was simply ‘their Genius for the Sciences’ (variants). 88.7–8  Antwerp, not at Amsterdam: Dresden, not Hamburgh] Antwerp had spent much of its history as part of the Spanish Empire, and Dresden had been under the influence of the elector of Saxony. Though deprived both of political independence and of the supposed advantages of Protestantism, these cities had outshone Amsterdam and Hamburg culturally. Dresden, the capital of Saxony, had been rebuilt in baroque style by Augustus the Strong (1694–1733), elector of Saxony. Saxony was in fact Protestant, but Frederick Augustus had converted to Catholicism when he became in addition king of Poland. Dresden was also a major musical centre. Its ‘fortifications, palaces, public buildings, churches, and charitable foundations, and above all, its suburbs are magnificent beyond all expression, . . . . [I]t is the school of Germany, for statuary, painting, enamelling, and carving; not to  mention its mirrors, and founderies for bells, and cannon’ (‘Guthrie’, New . . . Grammar, 358). In his Adrastea Herder would call Dresden ‘ein Deutsches Florenz’ (Werke, 10: 405–6). 88.9–11  in absolute governments, is that of France, which scarcely ever enjoyed any established liberty] Until the 1753 ETSS, this read, ‘in despotic Governments, is that of France, which never enjoy’d any shadow of Liberty’ (vari­ ants). As of the 1764 ETSS, ‘despotic’ changed to ‘absolute’. 88.12  The English are, perhaps, greater philosophers] The phrase was ‘­better’ rather than greater philosophers until the 1760 ETSS. Occurring only in  the 1767 and 1768 ETSS was the following qualifying note: ‘N.B.  This was ­published in 1742’ (variants). (In fact Essays, Moral and Political [vol. 1], was published in 1741.) Cf. Hume’s celebration in the 1739–40 THN of Bacon, Locke, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Butler, for developing the ‘science of man’: ‘So true it is, that however other nations may rival us in poetry, and excel us in some other agreeable arts, the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration and of liberty’ (introd. ¶ 7). In referring to this passage in the Abstract, Hume speaks of these philosophers as ‘founding their accurate disquisitions of human nature entirely upon experience’ (¶ 2). But cf. ‘Middle

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Station’ 8, ‘Rise and Progress’ 20 on Newton, who was not engaged in the ‘science of man’. 88.17  who far excelled the English] a clause included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, with slight variations thereafter (variants). 88.21  Horace’s observation] This observation is from a famous passage that is relevant also to ¶ 4: ‘When Greece was captured, it took its barbarous conqueror captive, and brought the arts into rustic Latium. Thus the rude Saturnian metre went out of use, and refinement put that noxious style out of fashion. But traces of our provincial past survived for many a year, and still live on. For Romans were slow to apply their native intelligence to Greek literature, and it was only in the peaceful times after the Punic wars that they began to ask what they could learn from Sophocles, Thespis, and Aeschylus’ (Horace, Epistles 2.1.156–63). In his ‘First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated’, lines 263–75, Alexander Pope gave these lines of Horace the same application as Hume. 88.26–7  We have no dictionary of our language, and scarcely a tolerable grammar.] Cf. Dryden’s similar language from 1693: ‘[w]e have yet no English Prosodia, not so much as a tolerable Dictionary, or a Grammar; so that our Language is in a manner Barbarous’ (Works, 4: 86). If not for prose, there was consensus that progress had occurred for prosody since Dryden made this appraisal in his Discourse concerning Satire. Johnson’s dictionary would appear in 1755. Hume’s negative judgement on it is recorded by Boswell (19 June 1775, Correspondence, 1: 385). Its predecessors were much less ambitious, though Nathan Bailey’s 1721 dictionary had more entries. 88.27–9  first polite prose . . . the rules of art] i.e. first cultivated prose. The politeness with which Jonathan Swift was associated was in language that was simple and clear, sensitive to etymology, and Anglo-Saxon rather than Latinate or French. Swift’s writings were a standard for idiomatic English and the plain style, particularly for Scots seeking guidance. See e.g. Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric, 4, 38. On the ‘rules of art’ see the annotation for ‘Epicurean’ 2 at 119.11–13. 88.28–30  Sprat, Locke, and even Temple, . . . Bacon, Harrington, and Milton] This list draws on two generations for exemplary writers on ‘Religion, Politics, and Philosophy’. Hume is thinking in terms of the development of a serviceable style, and his criticism presupposes an important place in literary history for Thomas Sprat, John Locke, Sir William Temple, Francis Bacon, James Harrington, and John Milton. Bishop Sprat was celebrated most for his 1667 history of the Royal Society, in which he espoused and exemplified the society’s preferred ‘close, naked, natural’ style as congenial to natural philosophy (History 2.20). Reputedly he contributed to the composition of The Rehearsal, a burlesque play that Hume would mention in Hist. 6: 542. Though disapproving of Sprat morally and pol­it­ ical­ly, Gilbert Burnet allowed that he was ‘justly esteemed a great master of our language, and one of our correctest writers’ (History, 6: 176). Famously Locke’s

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epistemology had implications for meaningful language that were in line with an empiricist programme of intellectual reform (see Essay 3.9–11). Temple’s secretary and editor Swift had written, ‘It is generally believed, that [Temple] has advanced our English Tongue, to as great a Perfection as it can well bear’ (Prose, 1: 258). Hume on the other hand thought that the ‘style of this author, though extremely negligent, and even infected with foreign idioms, is agreeable and interesting’ (Hist. 6: 544). As intellectual father of the Royal Society, Bacon’s figure appeared on a frontispiece to the large-paper issue of Sprat’s famous book. Bacon’s style, according to Sprat, is ‘vigorous, and majestical: the Wit Bold, and Familiar’ (1.12). According to Hume it ‘is stiff and rigid’ (Hist. 5: 153 (app. 4)). Harrington’s style, Hume wrote, ‘wants ease and fluency; but the good matter, which his work contains, makes compensation.’ Milton’s prose writings are ‘disagreeable, though not al­together defective in genius’ (6: 152, 150). They and Harrington’s writings were seminal works in the republican movement within the Whig tradition, easily equal to Locke’s in importance. Near the opposite end of the political spectrum was the High-Church Tory Sprat. In view of the inclusion in this list of Milton, the regicide author of Eikonoklastes, it should be noted that an older Hume made a point of stating that the Eikon Basilike, which he attributed to Charles I rather than to John Gauden, was ‘the best prose composition, which, at the time of its publication, was to be found in the English language’ (Hist. 5: 548, s.v. ad 1649). Like others, Hume saw polite letters in England as beginning with the Renaissance rejection of scholasticism and then being retarded by the licentiousness of the Restoration court. 89.3  It has become an established opinion] John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon made the case in detail in Cato’s Letters 64, 67–8, for 3 and 24 February and 3 March 1721/2, though the idea was much older. 89.6  trace commerce in its progress] The ancient places, from the Phoenician city of Tyre onwards, were indeed at times independent city-states, free from im­per­ial control, and had periods of internal ‘free government’, but such times did not necessarily coincide with their periods of prosperity. While classical Athens might be described as independent and free, as well as prosperous, the two periods of Syracuse’s greatest prosperity seem to have occurred under the tyrants Dionysius I in the early 4th century bc and Hiero II in the mid-3rd century bc (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Syracuse). While Tyre was a great trading city in its days of independence before its conquest by the Babylonians (Ezekiel 27.12–25), it also had extensive trade under the Roman Empire (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Tyre). Some of these places also occur in a list of trading cities in ‘Taxes’ 2 (see the annotation at 258.20). In both passages Hume’s list is very similar to William Temple’s in Observations, as was noted by the annotator for Journal étranger (159 n. 6). Like Hume, Temple refused to assert that trade flourishes only in free countries, citing  examples which show that ‘it may thrive under good Princes and legal Monarchies, as well as under free States’, but not under ‘Arbitrary and Tyrannical Power’ (110).

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89.11–12  the great jealousy entertained of late] See the annotation for ‘Jealousy of Trade’ 7 at 251.25. 89.22–3  more than we commonly dread harm from thunder, or earthquakes] Expecting his readers to recognize this passage as notorious, Edmund Burke alludes to it in his 1777 ‘Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol’ (Writings and Speeches, 3: 299). 89.27–9  Commerce . . . secure, . . . honourable] Generations of writers upon the situation of the Ottoman Empire had made familiar the claim that commerce would not greatly flourish in a state where the insecurity of property discouraged accumulation of wealth. Cf. Gordon, Cato’s Letters 50 for 28 October 1721. Louis XIV’s persecution and the consequent diaspora of the Huguenots probably lent further currency to such ideas. Hume emphasizes instead the ‘manners’ of nations such as France and Spain, where noblemen engaging in commerce might suffer a formal derogation of status. 89.38–9  balance of power . . . internal Police] The phrase ‘balance of power’ pertains here to the management of international affairs, the word ‘police’ to the management of internal affairs. For the latter, cf. Blackstone: ‘By the public police and oeconomy, I mean the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom’ (Commentaries, 4: 162). In ‘Balance of Power’, Hume defines the extent, sum­mar­ ized in ¶ 12 of that essay, to which the ancient world understood the doctrine concerning the maintenance of equilibrium between states. 89.40  We are informed by Sallust] Hume seems to be recalling Sallust, War with Catiline 28.4, which refers to the efforts in 63 bc of an associate of Catiline to recruit, among other desperate or disaffected persons, ‘highwaymen of all sorts, of which there was a great number in that area [Etruria]’. 90.3  would not amount to a regiment] Hume contravenes the popular perception. In his 1728 Street-Robberies, Defoe complained of robbers, amongst whom he had included highwaymen, and Henry Fielding would take up the theme at midcentury. Over a period of two years (September 1748–September 1750), thirteen highwaymen were convicted at the Old Bailey and executed (Fielding, An Enquiry, 78 n.). Seeing what they took to be a crime wave, Hume’s readers related the ­number of highwaymen to the demobilization of troops. 90.3–4  In Cicero’s pleadings for Milo] Cicero, Pro Milone 19.49–50. Cicero is defending Milo, politician and leader of a gang of political thugs, on a charge of murdering Clodius (52 bc), a rival who made use of a similar gang. See also Hume’s comment in a letter to Henry Home of 13 June 1742 in Letters, 1: 40–1. Cf. Hume’s memorandum: ‘There seems to have been a very bad Police in Rome. For Cicero says, that if Milo had waylayd Clodius he wou’d have waited for him in the Neighbourhood, where his Death might have been attributed to Robbers, . . . by ­reason of the commonness of the Accident, and yet Clodius had above 60 Servants with him all arm’d’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 510).

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n. 4 Vide Asc. Ped. in orat. pro Milone.] Hume’s citation means ‘See Asconius Pedianus on the Speech on Behalf of Milo’. Hume refers to Asconius Pedianus, ‘Commentary on the Pro Milone’ 2: ‘Clodius was riding on horseback. He was attended, as was the custom of travellers at that time, by about thirty lightlyequipped slaves armed with swords’ (Cicero, 14: 125). For the 1748 edition of Essays, Moral and Political (variants), Hume added this note and adjusted the number of armed slaves from sixty, as indicated in his memorandum, to thirty, as indicated by Asconius Pedianus. Asconius wrote his commentary on Cicero’s speeches in ad 54–7. It is only partially extant. 90.12–13  and sufficiently accustomed to blood and danger in the frequent tumults excited by that seditious tribune] In 1741, Hume had said instead, ‘and, by the Roman Laws, answerable, upon their own Lives, for the Life of their  Master’ (variants). In ‘Populousness’, n. 30, Hume refers to an incident ­occurring in ad 61 in which the senate decided to enforce the law that when a master was killed all the slaves of the household should be questioned under torture and executed (see the annotation for n. 30 as well as Tacitus, Annals 14.42–3, 13.32). Digest 29.5.1.31 states that when a master is killed during a journey, all the slaves who were accompanying him at the time should be punished in this way. It is not certain whether such a law was in effect when Clodius was killed in 52 bc, suggesting a reason why Hume might remove this passage from the text after the 1741 permutation. 90.16–18  It may now be affirmed of civilized monarchies . . . that they are a government of Laws, not of Men.] The phrase comes from James Harrington. See Oceana, 1st preliminaries; Prerogative of Government 1.2; and Art of Lawgiving, 1, preface, where he argues that only a republic can be ‘a government of laws, and not of men’ (Political Works, 161, 182, 401, 603). Harrington refers to Aristotle and Livy in this context (161). Aristotle had stated that laws should normally be supreme (kurios), not men, whether many men or a few men or one man (e.g. Politics 1282b1–6), though he did not altogether rule out the possibility of absolute kingship, at least theoretically (Politics 1288a18–29). Cf. his discussion of varieties of democracy at 1291b30–1292a38. Livy introduces the newly established Republic after the overthrow of the monarchy (traditional date 509 bc) as ‘a free people, governed by annually elected magistrates, and subject not to men but to the overriding authority of laws’ (History 2.1.1; cf. 2.3.3–4). 90.21–4  near two hundred absolute princes . . . two thousand monarchs or tyrants] This sentence was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). Hume’s high reckoning is possible only because present-day nationstates like Italy, Austria, and Germany were then congeries of principalities. For ‘Germany’ see the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 19 at 167.30. A popular 1770 work of geography put the number of ‘princes’ in Germany as high as three hundred, all deemed arbitrary within their territories (‘Guthrie’, New . . . Grammar, 352). Hume’s political arithmetic exemplifies the contemporary practice of

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­ aking ­estimates using suppositious round figures: 200 years ÷ 20-year reigns = 10 m absolute monarchs × 200 absolute principalities (‘princes’) = 2,000 absolute monarchs. 90.25  Philip II. of Spain] The name was associated for British Protestants with the Inquisition, the Armada, and the persecutions of the reign in England of Philip’s wife ‘Bloody Mary’. 90.26–7  four in twelve amongst the Roman emperors] apparently the twelve Caesars in Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars, from Julius through Domitian. Cf. the annotation for ‘Liberty of the Press’ 4 at 39.24. The reigns of Tiberius and Nero are also damningly described in Tacitus, Annals, bks. 1–6 and 13–16. 90.35–6  will bring these species of civil polity still nearer an equality] In ‘Hume’s “Early Memoranda” ’ (138), Sakamoto connects this passage with the following from Hume’s memoranda: ‘Within the last 2000 Years almost all the Despotic Governments of the World have been improving & the free ones degenerating; so that now they are pretty near a Par’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 507). 91.1  the expensive, unequal, arbitrary, and intricate method of levying them] An elaboration of Hume’s characterization can be found in Smith, Wealth of Nations, 2: 854–5, 900–1 (bk. 5, ch. 2, on the French taille). 91.10  Finançiers] In the first version of the beginning of ‘Taxes’, Hume may be found associating finançiers with the advocacy of taxing necessaries to incite the poor to labour (see the annotation on the variants for 258.1). These were taxfarmers who satisfied the short-term financial needs of the French kings in return for a significant share of the tax owing, which they then collected. In a letter to Montesquieu, Hume later qualified his judgement of tax-farmers by remarking that a state that began by using the practice would learn much about how to collect money. It might then consign the business of collection to public officials (10 April 1749 in Letters, 1: 136–8). Cf. Hist. 5: 135–6 (app. to James I, s.v. finances), where he affirms this judgement. 91.14–15  the difference between that absolute government and our free one] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the predicate for this subject (‘would not appear so considerable as at present’) was ‘would be more nominal than real’ (variants). In 1780, in his famous speech on economical reform, Burke would attribute ‘regularity’ to the French monarchy only after 1774 and the reign of Louis XV (Writings and Speeches, 3: 487). 91.20–1  The Athenians . . . paid near two hundred per cent.] Until the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political, the figure given had been 20 per cent (see the variants). In ‘Hume’s “Early Memoranda” ’ (138), Sakamoto connects this passage with the following from Hume’s memoranda: ‘The Public in Athens pay’d 20 per Cent for Money. Xenophon’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 511).

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n. 5.4  ΞΕΝ. ΠΟΡΟΙ.] Xenophon, Ways and Means 3.9–10 (in Scripta minora). This note was included as of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political (variants), possibly reflecting Hume’s restudy of Greek in 1742 or perhaps his preparation for ‘Populousness’. In Davenant’s 1698 Discourses on the Public Revenues, pt. 1, the passage is rendered as follows: ‘But in the present case no man can possess a more honourable or advantageous revenue, than what he will receive in recompence for his contribution to this public fund; . . . as for the body of the people, if they pay in one Mina apiece, they will in a year’s time very near . . . double their principal money, and be paid in the city, without any hazard or contingency upon the security of the public faith, which is the most certain and most lasting profit’ (‘A Discourse upon the Improving the Revenue of the State of Athens’, Works, 1: 314–15). Hume is wrong to imply that this was an actual practice at Athens. It is merely one of Xenophon’s proposals to increase Athenian revenues (see the annotations to ‘Populousness’, nn. 34, 145, 156). Hume also omits a couple of phrases, one of which makes it clear that in Xenophon’s proposal it is only those who make the minimum contribution of one mina to the capital fund who are to get nearly 200 per cent. The two classes of higher contributors will receive lower rates (20 per cent and 33⅓ per cent, respectively). 91.23–4  the Dutch first introduced the practice of borrowing great sums at low interest] In the early 16th century, both the Hapsburg Netherlands and the revolting provinces developed ways of guaranteeing their bond issues by spreading liability collectively. Such security made investment attractive even at low rates of interest, and the resulting accumulation of capital enabled the States General to consolidate the debt into bonds of 5 per cent in 1649 and 4 per cent in 1655. The last rate was noted by Temple, who said that ‘when they pay off any part of the Principal, Those it belongs to, receive it with tears, Not knowing how to dispose of it to Interest with such safety and ease’ (Observations, 130). In 1723, commercial interest rates dropped in Holland to 2½ per cent (Cambridge Economic History, 5: 357). Nevertheless, 70 per cent of the tax revenue of the province of Holland went towards paying the interest on the Republic’s debt after the War of the Spanish Succession ended (De Vries and van der Woude, First Modern Economy, 680–2, 119). See the annotation for ‘Jealousy of Trade’ 6 at 251.21–2 for the riots that would occur in 1748. An English innovation in the 17th century was to spread the guaranteeing of long-term debt from the province to the nation-state (Tracy, Financial Revolution, 210–11, 222). By one reckoning the allocation of tax rev­ enues in Britain to service its debt would not reach 60 per cent until after the Napoleonic Wars (O’Brien, ‘Finance and Taxation’, 36–7). By another, it spiked to 66 per cent at the end of the American War of Independence (Brewer, Sinews of Power, 116). 91.27–9  In popular governments . . . it is difficult for the state to make use of this remedy] Cf. ‘Public Credit’ 32.

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13. Of Eloquence This essay first appeared in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742), bearing with several others every appearance of being left over from Hume’s abandoned project to produce a weekly paper after ‘the Designs both of the Spectators and Craftsmen’ ([vol. 1], advt., [iii]). Surviving the purge of such essays for the 1748 edition, ‘Eloquence’ was collected into the 1753–6 ETSS and survived the second purge of such essays in 1764, with the deletion in 1770, however, of a long passage between ¶¶ 17 and 18 comparing France and England. The deletion makes the essay less belletristic and more of a piece with ‘Rise and Progress’, the following essay with which it is linked when Hume says that there is ‘something accidental in the first rise and the progress of the arts in any nation’ (‘Eloquence’ 17), i.e. something due to ‘chance’, or ‘secret or unknown causes’ (‘Rise and Progress’ 7; cf. ‘Middle Station’ 10). The reference in ¶ 5 to the defeated motions in both houses of Parliament to remove Walpole from government dates the final draft of this essay after 13 February 1740/1 and evokes the context of the agitation against the minister to which Hume addresses himself directly in the ‘Character of Sir Robert Walpole’ that ended volume 2. That volume appeared in Edinburgh in January 1741/2, and Walpole was forced to step aside 3–11 February. In that politically charged time Hume could hardly have been unaware of the resonance of an essay on eloquence when calls for eloquence tended to be vehicles to decry the alleged deterioration of liberty and culture under Walpole. For examples of such country–party Opposition writings on eloquence, see the letter from York in London Magazine, 10 (October 1741): 490–9 (in which issue Hume’s ‘British Government’ was reprinted as taken from Craftsman 797 of that month), and Cato’s Letters 103, ‘Of Eloquence, Considered Politically’ (17 November 1722). The latter polemic by John Trenchard coincides roughly in time with Walpole’s rise to prominence. Notwithstanding the political resonance, Hume’s ‘Eloquence’ appears to be a contribution to the ‘war of the ancients and moderns’, or querelle des anciens et des modernes. It takes advantage of a topical interest rather than intervenes in party politics and touches on points made by others previously in the querelle. Hume’s relish for eloquence quite apart from current affairs is evident in his 13 June 1742 discussion of it in correspondence with Lord Kames (New Letters, 7–9). Hume’s letter revisits some of the topics of ‘Eloquence’, such as the hindering effects of legal and argumentative complexities and the reorientation necessary for a modern eloquence. The modern who deprecated eloquence in philosophy (THN, introd. 2; EHU 10.2.1) could in other contexts value eloquence highly (‘Tragedy’ 8). An annotated translation of the ‘essai sur l’Éloquence’ appeared in Mercure de France (October 1756), no. 1, pp. 55–69, and no. 2, pp.10–19 (Malherbe, ‘Hume’s Reception in France’, 57 and n. 63). It includes material on French eloquence deleted after 1768 for printings in English. See the critical apparatus at 104.33 for the variant readings on Fléchier, Bourdaloue, and Talon.

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92.15  nations so widely different] Until the 1770 ETSS, the clause continued, ‘that they may almost be esteem’d of a different Species’ (variants). 92.18  we are still . . . much inferior in eloquence] In the querelle of the ancients and moderns, the superiority of the ancients in eloquence was a concession by modernists like Fontenelle in his 1688 Digressions sur les anciens et les modernes (Discourse, 193–6) and William Wotton in his 1694 Reflections (chs. 3–4). Hume restricts ‘eloquence’, however, to oratory in a way that the combatants in the querelle tended not to do. Wotton concluded that in principle moderns could cultivate eloquence but that circumstances were unpropitious (39). See the annotations for ‘Rise and Progress’ 7 at 102.28–9 and n. 5.1. 92.20  some eminent writers] Cicero expresses the view not only that training in philosophy is invaluable preparation for the orator (Orator 3.11–4.19), but also that eloquence involves wisdom, as was understood in archaic Greece before Socrates completed the ‘divorce’ of rhetoric from philosophy (On the Orator 3.14.52–21.90). The ideal orator, in addition to having a good knowledge of history and law and a command of logical reasoning, ‘will be familiar with all the notable and commonly discussed topics in philosophy’, both human and divine (Orator 32.113–34.121). Cicero compares the orator’s role with that of the philosopher and of the poet, remarking that ‘the poet is a close neighbour of the orator’ (On the Orator 1.15.68–16.73). Quintilian insists that the best part of philosophy, which is ethics, was wrongly abandoned by Greek orators to philosophy and should be reclaimed (Orator’s Education 1, pref. 9–18; cf. 10.1.35–6). He discusses the benefits and dangers of studying poetry at 10.1.27–30. 92.22–3  Greece and Rome produced, each of them, but one accomplished orator] Quintilian conveys this judgement of the pre-eminence of Demosthenes among the Greeks at Orator’s Education 10.1.76 (‘by far the greatest and almost a law of oratory in himself ’) and 10.2.24 (‘by far the most perfect of Greeks’). Quintilian contends that only Cicero is comparable among the Romans, saying of his oratory that ‘nothing more beautiful has ever been heard’ and that ‘for posterity Cicero has become not so much the name of a man as a synonym for eloquence itself ’ (10.1.105–12). The Greek Augustan critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that Demosthenes ‘perfected [a certain style of oratory] to the limit of human capacity’ (‘Demosthenes’ 14–15), and Cicero calls him ‘the absolutely perfect orator, with virtually no deficiencies’ (Brutus 9.35). Cicero compares himself to Demosthenes at Orator 29.104 (which Hume partially quotes at the end of this paragraph). Longinus too makes a comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero (On the Sublime 12.4–5). 92.25  these great models of eloquence] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the phrase was ‘those two great Heroes of Eloquence’ (variants). 92.28  Calvus, Cælius, Curio, Hortensius, Cæsar] There are several com­par­ able enumerations of late republican orators (e.g. Tacitus, Dialogue 18 and 25;

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Quintilian, Orator’s Education 10.2.25, 12.10.11–12). But Hume here seems to be adapting the structure of Cicero’s dialogue, Brutus (46 bc), from which he quotes in nn. 1 and 3. Brutus, otherwise known as De claris oratoribus, surveys the varied achievements of Roman orators down to Cicero’s own time with the particular purpose of criticizing the ‘Attic’ school of oratory that had recently come into vogue. The Attic school strove for simplicity of expression and correct and elegant diction. Marcus Caelius Rufus (Brutus 79.273) and Gaius Scribonius Curio (81.280) displayed features of this school, but its purest exponent was Gaius Licinius Calvus (82.283–4). Gaius Julius Caesar, a more powerful speaker than any of these (72.251– 75.262), is credited with ‘the highest degree of purity and elegance’ in his use of Latin, combined with all the other skills of oratory. Cicero then describes the virtues and defects of the contrasting ‘Asianic’ style (‘ornate’, ‘vivid’) of his great rival, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus (92.317, 95.325–7), and implicitly compares it with his own oratory, which emerges as the culmination of the Roman achievement (93.323–4). Thus, as Hume says, these orators ‘rose one above another: But the greatest of that age was inferior to Cicero’ (¶ 3). 93.3  Ita sunt avidæ] Hume’s adaptation of Cicero, Orator 29.104, may be translated, ‘So eager, so insatiable are my ears . . . and they always want to find something boundless and infinite’. Hume has imported aures meas (‘my ears’) into his quotation from the previous sentence in Cicero’s text, with an appropriate change of case, and his edition of Cicero had ‘semper’ (‘always’), though some modern editions adopt the alternative MS reading ‘saepe’ (‘often’). ‘Semper’ is also the reading in Olivetus’s edition of the works of Cicero, a copy of which still survives with Hume’s bookplate (Hume Library, no. 275). Olivetus’s Ciceronis Opera began to appear in 1740, and Orator is in the first volume. Cf. also the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 197. variants for 93.5.  Until the 1770 ETSS, with slight variations, this paragraph began thus: ‘These Circumstances alone are sufficient to make us apprehend the wide Difference betwixt antient and modern Eloquence, and let us see how much the latter is inferior to the former’. 93.5  England alone possesses] ‘Britain’ was changed to ‘England’ for the 1777 ETSS, perhaps because the assessment of Parliamentary eloquence in ¶ 4 extends long before 1707, when Scotland and England united under one parliament to form Great Britain. The deliberative bodies of the Venetian and Dutch republics were comparatively small while the House of Commons numbered 558 after the addition of 45 Scots seats at the union, though the chamber could hold considerably fewer members at one time. 93.16  above half a dozen speakers in the two houses] Partisanship makes it difficult to find the consensus of which Hume speaks concerning who was eloquent. Nevertheless one can draw up a list of speakers of repute for 1741 and identify nominators (in parentheses), some of whom were hostile to the nominee. In the House of Lords: John, 2nd baron Carteret, later earl of Granville (Swift, Le Blanc, Smollett); Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield (Thomson, Le Blanc);

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John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll (Thomson, Pope, Hume in New Letters, 9). In  the House of Commons: William Pulteney, later 1st earl of Bath (Hervey, Chesterfield, Le Blanc); Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House (James Thomson); William Pitt, later 1st earl of Chatham (Smollett, Robert Walpole himself). William Murray, later lord Mansfield, does not qualify because he entered into the Commons after Walpole’s displacement and made his first speech in December 1742. Though denigrated as a Philistine, Walpole was himself a remarkable speaker and was given the pseudonym of ‘M. Tullius Cicero’ in the reports on Parliament appearing in the non-ministerial London Magazine and Scots Magazine (Scots Magazine, 2 (1740): 195). It must be noted that opinion ‘out of doors’ concerning members’ eloquence was shaped by such quasi-fictional debates, notably by Samuel Johnson’s an­onym­ ous ones in the Gentleman’s Magazine (July 1741–March 1744). See Hawkins, Life, s.v. 1740–4. On Chesterfield (‘Castroflet’), Argyll (‘Agryl’), Pulteney (‘Pulnub’), and Walpole (‘the Prime Minister’), see the pre-Johnsonian Parliamentary reports by William Guthrie in Gentleman’s Magazine, 10 (1740): 101–2, 228. These quasifictional reports were a response of the periodical press to the illegality of publishing Parliamentary speeches. 93.24  such spirit and elegance as Mr. Pope] Alexander Pope (died 1744) was still active and often courted by aspiring authors like Hume. He was also known to be hostile to the court and ministry. On Pope’s place in consensus literary history see ‘Middle Station’ 6 and its annotation at 13.36–7. 93.25  We are told] Cf. Temple Stanyan, Grecian History, 2: 243: ‘People flock’d from all Parts of Greece to hear him’ [Demosthenes]. n. 1.1  Ne illud quidem intelligunt] ‘They do not even realize that it is not just  a historical anecdote but really was quite inevitable that when Demosthenes was  to speak, people would flock from all over Greece to hear him. When these Atticists speak, however, they are deserted not only by the spectators, which is bad enough, but even by their client’s own supporters.’ The citation, ‘Cicero, de claris oratoribus’ (On Famous Orators), is to Brutus 84.289, a passage in which Cicero contrasts the excitement generated by Demosthenes with the apathy shown towards the Atticists. 93.28  the court of requests] The phrase referred to the hall in Westminster in which the Tudor court of that name had met until it was abolished. It is described by John Entick as a ‘kind of hall paved with stone, called the Court of Requests, used chiefly by those who attend the parliament to walk in’ (History and Survey of  London, 4: 421–2). Walpole was jostled by a mob in this court as he left Parliament during the clamour over his excise bill in 1733 (Gentleman’s Magazine, 3 (1733): 624). See the plan of Westminster Palace facing p. 20 in Turberville, House of Lords. 93.31  When old Cibber is to act] Colley Cibber retired from the theatre in 1733 but in 1739–45 came out of retirement almost annually. As Poet Laureate he was

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associated with the court and ministry, becoming a conduit for attacks on Walpole, most famously by Pope and Fielding. 93.32–3  our prime minister . . . a motion for his removal or impeachment] Samuel Sandys and Lord Carteret’s twin motions to remove Walpole from government failed, but Walpole’s control of the Commons was slipping, and he would secretly negotiate his own retreat into an earldom and the succession of his ministry by another one agreeable to the Whig oligarchy. 94.1–2  to make use of an Apostrophe] The oath by the spirits (manes) of the dead at Marathon, which comes from Demosthenes 18 (De corona) 208, is not, strictly speaking, an apostrophe (an address), as Hume calls it, but an adjuration, though Longinus notes that it is legitimate to call it an apostrophe (On the Sublime 16.1–2). It is a famous example, frequently analysed in ancient treatises of rhetoric, as Hume indicates (e.g. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 9.2.62). Charles Rollin comments on the passage in language similar to Hume’s. He characterizes the figure as ‘so highly applauded by Longinus’, while Hume says ‘so much celebrated by Quintilian and Longinus’. Both authors say that Demosthenes was ‘justifying’ the battle. And in his paraphrase of the passage Hume uses the words ‘who fought for the same cause in the plains of Marathon and Plataea’, words not found in Demosthenes’s text but that appear in Rollin where he speaks of ‘the great men who had fought for the same cause in the plains of Marathon, at Salamis, and before Plataea’ (Ancient History, 6: 83–4). On Hume’s familiarity with Rollin, see the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 32 at 172.12–15. At Marathon (490 bc) the Athenians defeated the first Persian invasion of Greece. At Plataea (479 bc) a Greek army, with a large Athenian contingent, defeated the second Persian invasion. 94.6–7  such a bold and poetical figure] i.e. prosopopoeia, in which, as Hume says in NHR 3.2, ‘trees, mountains and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature acquire sentiment and passion’. A ‘still more lively and bolder’ version of prosopopoeia, Rollin says, occurs when we ‘address ourselves to inanimate things, or make them speak’ (Method, 2: 162 at 3.3.2.5). Hume’s point about the eloquence needed to bring off this figure echoes Rollin’s discussion and Quintilian, Orator’s Education 9.2. n. 2.6  Cicero, in ver.] Cicero, 2 Verrine Orations 2.5.171. This passage is the culmination of a passionate condemnation of Verres’s crucifixion of C. Galvus, whom Cicero alleged was a Roman citizen. Cicero was prosecuting Verres for his outrageous conduct as governor of Sicily (70 bc). In his quotation Hume writes ‘atrocitate’, as against the alternative reading ‘acerbitate’, which is preferred by modern editors. Olivet printed ‘atrocitate’ (Ciceronis Opera, 2: 473). See the annotation for ¶ 3 at 93.3. 94.20  Should this sentiment even appear to us excessive] In the 1767 ETSS, Hume added this statement that Cicero’s figure might justly strike modern sens­ibil­ ities as ‘excessive’ (variants).

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94.25  The supplosio pedis] ‘Stamping of the foot’ is included among a variety of gestures, tones of voice, and facial expressions that constitute ‘action’ or ‘delivery’ in Cicero, On the Orator 3.59.220, and Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.3.128. In Tatler 66, Lysander argues that no one could ‘be eloquent without Action: For the Deportment of the Body, the Turn of the Eye, and an apt Sound to every Word that is utter’d, must all conspire to make an accomplish’d Speaker’ (Tatler, 1: 453). n. 3.1  Ubi dolor?] Cicero, Brutus 80.278: ‘Where was the indignation? where was the passion that wrings cries and complaints from even the least articulate? No mental anguish, no physical distress: no smiting of the brow, no slapping of the thigh; no stamping of the foot even (which is the least of gestures). You completely failed to stir my emotions; I could hardly keep myself from falling asleep.’ Cicero quotes a passage that he had used himself in a murder trial in rebuttal of Marcus Calidius, an orator whose style he describes (Brutus 274–7) as smooth and clear but incapable of rousing emotion (i.e. as akin to the Atticists). This passage is partially quoted and discussed by Quintilian at Orator’s Education 11.3.123. 94.31  The genius of mankind] A major point in the querelle of the ancients and the moderns was whether the level of human genius had risen, declined, or remained the same since antiquity. In his Digression, Fontenelle had insisted, as Hume does, that the capacities of human nature are the same now as then, inferring that ‘all the Differences’ between the ancients and moderns are ‘caus’d by foreign Circumstances, such as Times, Governments, and the State of Affairs in general’ (Discourse, 185–6). 95.17–18  and Cicero . . . declares] See Pro Murena 28, where Cicero belittles legal learning for the purpose of attacking the lawyer who is prosecuting his client. In the dialogue On the Orator, Cicero has Crassus argue that though an orator does need to learn law in order to practice in the courts, it is attractive, simple, and easy to learn, being based on the old Twelve Tables (1.41.185–46.203). Marcus Antonius replies that knowledge of the law is no more or less necessary to an advocate than a general knowledge of the world (1.55.234–58.250). Hume takes at face value Cicero’s point about the ‘simplicity’ of the law, but a better explanation seems to be the div­ ision of labour in the Roman system between jurisprudent and advocate (Crook, Legal Advocacy, 37–46). A ‘civilian’ is an expert in civil or Roman law. 95.27  the flowers of Parnassus] the mountain north of Delphi that was the home of the muses. ‘Flowers’ are beauties of poetry or prose: ‘anthology’ or ‘florilegium’ in the literal sense, as in the title of Robert Allot’s collection, England’s Parnassus: or the Choicest Flowers of Our Moderne Poets (1600). 95.30–1  plead before the Chancellor] i.e. before the lord high chancellor in the Court of Chancery. Jacob explains that ‘All other Justices in this Kingdom are tied to the strict Rules of the Law, in their Judgments; but the Chancellor hath the King’s absolute Power to moderate the written Law, governing his Judgment by the Law of Nature and Conscience’ (New Law-Dictionary, s.v. chancellor). ‘Equity seems to be the Interposing Law of Reason’, Jacob tells us, ‘exercised by the Lord Chancellor in

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extraordinary Matters, to do equal Justice, and by supplying the Defects of the Law, give remedy in all Cases’ (s.v. equity). 95.36  Westminster-hall] the seat of the chief law courts of Britain in London. A similar point about the constraints on eloquence in ‘Westminster-Hall’ is in Trenchard’s Cato’s Letters 103 (2: 732). 95.37  Among the Athenians, the Areopagites] Lycurgus urges the popular court before which he is speaking to follow the rules for pleading of the Areopagus (Against Leocrates 12). The Areopagus was the ancient aristocratic council of Athens, which had been transformed under the democracy into a legal court with special responsibility for homicide. In imitation of that august court, says Lycurgus, the popular court should not give leeway to speakers who speak exo¯ tou pragmatos (‘outside the point at issue’), which Lycurgus qualifies as, among other things, ‘bringing in all sorts of accusations and slanders’ (11). Aristotle also tells us some of the things that were considered exo¯ tou pragmatos: ‘slander and arousal of pity and indignation and passions of that sort which have nothing to do with the issue, but are directed at swaying the jurors’ (Art of Rhetoric 1.1.4). 95.38  and some have pretended] This language shifting the claim from Hume to others was introduced in the 1758 ETSS (variants). Reference may be to such well-known judgements as those of Quintilian on Lysias on the one hand (‘refined and elegant . . . more like the pure spring than the mighty river’) and Cicero on the other (‘he wells forth like a living flood. . . he sweeps the judge along with his force’), or to general comparisons between the intensity of Demosthenes and the amplitude of Cicero (Orator’s Education 10.1.78, 105–12; cf. “Longinus”, On the Sublime 12.4–6). 95.39–96.1  the judiciary form . . . the deliberative kind] Hume instances two of the three kinds in the traditional threefold division of oratory as judicial, deliberative, and epideictic, which had been formulated as early as Aristotle (e.g. Art of Rhetoric 1359a26–9) and is found in all ancient writers on eloquence. n. 4  Quintil. lib. 6. cap. 1.] Quintilian discusses a variety of actions and devices employed by speakers in their perorations to win the sympathy of the jurors (Orator’s Education 6.1.30–35, including display of pictures in § 32). See also the annotation for ‘Tragedy’ 8 at 176.3. This note was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 96.18–19  to modern eloquence; that is, to good sense, delivered in proper expression] Trenchard had approved only of a restrained eloquence, ‘That which consists of good sense, put into good words’ (no. 103, Cato’s Letters, 2: 732–3). Hume’s expression is reminiscent also of Swift’s well-known reductionist ‘true Definition of Stile’: ‘Proper Words in proper Places’ (‘Letter . . . Orders’, Prose, 9: 65). The obstacle of modern good sense had been adduced by Wotton (ch. 3): because of the humour of the age, ‘when Men have spoken to the Point, in as few Words as the Matter will bear, it is expected they should hold their Tongues’ (Reflections, 38).

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n. 5  Longinus, cap. 15.] “Longinus”, On the Sublime 15.9–11 (esp. ‘we are diverted from the reasoning to the enthralling effect of the image, which by its very brilliance conceals the reality’). ‘Image’ translates phantasia, the pictorial realization of the situation that the speaker, carried away by his own ‘enthusiasm and passion’, first forms for himself, then communicates to his audience (15.1). 96.32–3  communicated those impetuous movements to his audience] Hume’s tenet of sympathy accounts for this phenomenon: ‘Nothing is more capable of infusing any passion into the mind, than eloquence, by which objects are represented in the strongest and most lively colours. The bare opinion of another, especially when enforced with passion, will cause an idea to have an influence upon us, though that idea might otherwise have been entirely neglected’ (DP 6.16; cf. THN 2.3.6.7–8). On ‘movement’ in this sense see the annotation for ‘Tragedy’ 9 at 176.22. 96.35–6  the charms of Cicero’s eloquence] Plutarch relates this anecdote with the emphasis, as in Hume, on the success of Cicero’s eloquence in persuading Caesar to acquit a man whom he had already decided was guilty (Lives, ‘Cicero’ 39.6–7). The speech was Pro Ligario, delivered in 45 bc. This anecdote seems to have been a commonplace of the power of eloquence. It appears in Tatler 70; Dubos, Reflexions 1.12; and Sir William Temple, ‘Of Poetry’, ¶ 7 (though Temple substitutes Labienus for Ligarius, apparently in error). 97.1  Some objections, I own, notwithstanding his vast success] This para­ graph, with its citation of Diodorus, was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 6.4  lib. 12. page 106. ex edit. Rhod.] Diodorus, Library 12.53.2–5. The edition of Diodorus to which Hume refers is that by Rhodoman (1604). Diodorus says that Gorgias, ‘the cleverest speaker of his time, . . . was the first man to formulate the techniques of rhetoric’. When he came on an embassy to Athens from his native city of Leontini in Sicily in 427 bc and addressed the assembly, ‘he astonished the Athenians . . . by the strangeness of his style . . . . He was the first to use the extravagant figures of speech marked by deliberate art: antitheses, and isoko¯la and homoioteleuta and other such things, which found favour at the time because the manner was exotic, but now seem artificial and often appear ridiculous and excessively contrived.’ ‘Antithesis’ refers to balanced contrasting clauses, isoko¯lon (ἰσόκωλον)— Hume’s ἰσόκωλοϛ—to clauses with an equal number of syllables, and homoioteleuton (ὁμοιοτέλευτον) to clauses with parallel (sometimes rhyming) endings. These figures of speech, the ‘Gorgianic’ figures, were often discussed and criticized or elab­ or­ated. See e.g. Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 1410a24–b5, and Quintilian, Orator’s Education 9.3.75–86. The ‘later speakers’ who, in Hume’s words, taught the Athenians ‘a better manner’ presumably include Lysias and Demosthenes, discussed in ¶ 9. 97.8  chaste and austere] Stanyan describes Demosthenes’s style as ‘grave and austere’ (Grecian History, 2: 244). Such a contrast between the eloquence of

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Demosthenes and that of Cicero is found in a number of authors, e.g. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 10.1.105–12, and “Longinus”, On the Sublime 12.4–5. Hume’s invidious comparison of Athenian and Roman audiences precisely reverses that of  Swift (‘Letter . . . Orders’, Prose, 9: 69). Cf. also Quintilian on the polish and refinement not only of the Athenian speakers but also of their audience (Orator’s Education 12.10.14). 97.18  Verres or Catiline] For Verres see the annotation for ‘Tragedy’ 8 at 176.8–9. Catiline was the leader of a ‘conspiracy’ against the Roman government in 63 bc, which Cicero, then consul, played a leading role in suppressing. His four orations against Catiline (In Catilinam) were frequently read in schools, along with Sallust’s War with Catiline. 97.20  a Philip in modern times] Since Hume’s phrase applies to ‘modern times’ generally rather than to 1741 specifically, readers probably would have thought here of Louis XIV, who was accused of aspiring to a ‘universal monarchy’. Though Louis had died in 1715, his legacy shaped attitudes toward France, and Pitt would play Demosthenes to the Bourbon threat. In his 1701 Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome (ch. 2), Swift refers to Philip of Macedon as the Louis XIV ‘of that Age’ (Prose, 1: 208). In his Account of Switzerland, Abraham Stanyan explicitly compares Louis XIV vis-à-vis Switzerland to Philip vis-à-vis Greece (210–11, 215–16). The analogy was still felt in 1744. See the ‘Advertisement to the Reader’ in Several Orations of Demosthenes, Exciting the Athenians to Oppose the Exorbitant Power of Philip, King of Macedon, by George Granville et al.: ‘This Work was first undertaken in the Year 1702, when the first War against France was proclaim’d. The Danger, to which our Country was then exposed, from the growing Power, and ambitious Designs, of Lewis the Fourteenth of France, was thought to bear a near Resemblance to that, which threaten’d the State of Athens, from the like Power and Designs of Philip King of Macedon.’ It was republished in 1744 at ‘a return of the like Conjuncture of Time, when the same causes have again involved the Nation in a War with France.’ 97.20  find a Demosthenes?] Demosthenes’s opposition to Philip was a fashionable topic in the 1730s, particularly among members of the ‘patriot’ Opposition to  Walpole. See e.g. Craftsman 523 (July 1736), a discussion of Demosthenes, Olynthiacs, oration 3, in relation to Walpole’s alleged corrupting influence on Britain (Potkay, Fate, 40), and Akenside’s poem British Philippic. 97.27–8  There is certainly something accidental] Cf. ‘Rise and Progress’ 1–7. 98.2  as Waller’s for poetry] So the sentence was made to read as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political. Hitherto it had read ‘Had such a cultivated Genius as my Lord Bolingbroke arisen during the Civil Wars’ (variants). Edmund Waller was in fact distinguished both as a speaker in Parliament and as a poet. He was credited with advances in English prosody, for which see Dryden’s analysis (Works, 8: 100)

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and its elaboration by Francis Atterbury in his preface to The Second Part of Mr. Waller’s Poems (London, 1690). Gilbert Burnet listed Waller amongst the pro­gen­ itors in 1675 of the Opposition, recording that he ‘was the delight of the house’ for saying ‘the liveliest things of any among them’ and that he was ‘one of the great refiners both of our language and poetry’ (History, 2: 83, s.v. 1675). Though to many he seemed a time-server or turncoat, Waller might be understood more charitably as a ‘trimming’ moderate. In the present context it may be significant that three of Waller’s Hanoverian descendents, the brothers Edmund and Harry with Edmund junior, were associated with the Opposition in Parliament through 1754. 98.8–9  British Archimedeses and Virgils] See the variants for the replacement of ‘British Platos’ in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, with ‘British Plutarchs’, which in its turn was replaced with British Archimedeses in 1770. Obvious candidates for counterparts to Archimedes were Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley. Those for Virgil would need to approximate his status as national poet. Milton would have been a candidate, but Spenser, having naturalized the epic with his Arthurian Faerie Queene and the eclogue with his Shephaerdes Calender, might also have been understood. Speaking of epic in Discourse, ¶ 18, Dryden said that ‘The English have only to boast of Spencer and Milton’ and that Spenser’s ‘Verses are so Numerous, so Various, and so Harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he profestly imitated, has surpass’d him, among the Romans; and only Mr. Waller among the English’ (Works, 4: 14). Blackwall makes a comparison of Spenser’s versification with that of Virgil (Introduction, 48). variants for 98.9.  I Have confest that there is something accidental. . . . the one deriv’d from ancient, the other from modern Times.] Omitted as of the 1770 ETSS are three paragraphs on how ‘Circumstances’ and ‘particular Accidents’ might affect the development of a nation’s eloquence. variants for 98.9.  Flechier and Bourdaloue] For the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, Hume substituted Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet in this phrase for the Jesuit Louis Bourdaloue and removed the praise of Valentin-Esprit Fléchier’s celebrated 1676 eulogium on Turenne. By ‘sermons’ Hume means primarily oraisons funèbres, a genre with no comparable tradition in Britain and for which the three pulpit or­ators were famous. variants for 98.9.  The Pleadings of Patru] What Hume calls the ‘very elegant’ style of Olivier Patru’s legal speeches established the advocate’s reputation as one who had refined and polished the French language. Patru was a grammatical purist praised by Boileau. He was not a successful advocate, however, and the poverty of his later years moved Boileau to purchase his library. The Academicians’ practice of delivering a speech upon induction resulted from the impression made by Patru’s speech of thanks. The peculiar vehemence of Hume’s remark about Patru, the reference to dunces, evoking Pope’s Dunciad (1728), and the fact that Walpole no­tori­ ously judged wits like Addison, Prior, and Congreve to be impractical choices for

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‘places’, suggest that Hume was willing for this passage to be understood as innuendo against Walpole. variants for 98.9.  The Avocat-General, Talon] During the Fronde rebellion against Mazarin’s ascendancy in Louis XIV’s minority, Omer Talon invoked the manes of Henri IV and, sinking to one knee, implored for France the protection of (Saint) Louis IX (4 February 1651). Retz observes that to someone not present the speech might seem laughable, but not to its audience (Mémoires, 582). variants for 98.9.  They are also peculiarly modest] Addison, Spectator 407: ‘Most Foreign Writers who have given any Character of the English Nation . . . allow in general, that the People are naturally Modest. It proceeds perhaps from this our National Virtue, that our Orators are observed to make use of less Gesture or Action than those of other Countries. . . . We meet with the same speaking Statues at our Bars, and in all Publick Places of Debate’ (Spectator, 3: 520–1). variants for 98.9.  Their musical Parts, to use the Expression of a noble Author] It is likely that Hume is thinking of Shaftesbury, Soliloquy 2.3: ‘But let our Authors or Poets complain ever so much of the Genius of our People, ’tis evident, we are not altogether so barbarous or Gothick as they pretend. We are naturally no ill Soil; and have musical Parts which might be cultivated with great Advantage, if these Gentlemen wou’d use the Art of Masters in their Composition’ (Characteristicks, 1: 143–4). Adjacent (2.1) is a discussion of the connection of liberty and the arts that is pertinent here and to which Hume alludes specifically in the preceding essay, ‘Civil Liberty’ 4 and n. 2 (see also the annotations for 87.15–30). 98.24  must submit to the public verdict] Cicero argues the thesis that ‘the orator who is approved by the public must inevitably be approved by the expert’ (Brutus 49.183–54.200). 98.25  upon comparison] Cf. ‘Standard of Taste’ 20. 98.32–4  ancient eloquence, that is, the sublime and passionate, . . . the modern, or the argumentative and rational] The two contrasted styles to which Hume refers correspond to the two styles distinguished by Cicero in his Brutus 9.35 and 55.201: ‘there are two distinct types of good orators . . . one speaks simply and concisely, the other in an elevated, high, and impressive style’. In this passage Cicero, like Hume, ignores the so-called middle style of the usual three-fold scheme of the ancients outlined in Cicero, Orator 75–101, and Quintilian, Orator’s Education 12.10.58–72. As Hume indicates, Demosthenes and Cicero were admired not only for their ability to deploy each style appropriately as the occasion required, but more particularly for their mastery of the grand style that displays passion and sublimity. See Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ‘Demosthenes’ 22, and Quintilian Orator’s Education 10.1.76, 105–7. Longinus distinguishes five characteristics of sublimity (On the Sublime 8), of which the two most important are grandeur of thought and powerful passion (pathos), stressing especially the latter (e.g. 8.4, ‘nothing is so sublime as genuine pathos in the right place’). Hume similarly distinguishes

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ancient rhetoric by the presence of ‘the pathetic’, or ‘that pathetic and sublime’ (‘Eloquence’ 12, 19). To equal the ancients, the moderns must, and perhaps may, develop ‘an Eloquence more commanding and pathetic’ (variants for 98.9). See also Hume’s treatment of Longinus and the sublime at EPM 7.4–7. 98.40  Attic eloquence, that is, calm, elegant, and subtile] This is the language that Cicero (Brutus 9.35), Quintilian (Orator’s Education 10.1.78), and others use in the description of Attic style both in Greek orators, especially Lysias (‘egregie subtilis scriptor atque elegans’, ‘a notably subtle and elegant writer’), and in their Roman imitators, of whom the chief was Calvus (see the annotation on Calvus for ¶ 3 at 92.28). In the tripartite scheme the Attic is a plain style. Cicero says that some regard the ‘plain’ orator as ‘the only true Attic orator’ (Orator 75), but he rejects this view himself, distinguishing in Orator 22–4, 28–9, between the Attic or plain style and the full range of oratorical styles developed by the orators of classical Athens that have an equal claim to be called Attic. These include for example the intensity, passion, and sublimity to which Demosthenes rises. Brutus 26–36 gives a survey of the Attic orators in this wider sense. By Quintilian’s time there was a canon of ten Attic orators in the wider sense. Quintilian gives a short survey of them and discusses the ambiguity of the term ‘Attic’ (Orator’s Education 10.1.76–80, 12.10.20–6. 99.5  eclipsed like a taper] The original of the metaphor was “Longinus”, On  the  Sublime 17.2, and a familiar English version was Dryden, Religio Laici (1682), lines 8–9. 99.14  Lord Bolingbroke’s productions] In 1741–2, this probably would have been understood to refer to the Craftsman papers 382–443, collected and augmented as the Dissertation on Parties (1735), described in one hostile pamphlet as ‘wrote with great Command of Language, and a vast deal of Spirit’ (Historical View, 36). Despite being pardoned in 1725, Henry St. John, 1st viscount Bolingbroke, was denied his seat in the House of Lords since his attainder in 1715 and therefore is distinguished from the ‘half dozen speakers in the two houses’ mentioned in ¶ 4. Bolingbroke, former Tory minister, sometime Jacobite, was the most prominent among the non-Whig voices in the variegated Opposition to Walpole’s Whig ministry. For a ministerial perspective on him see Hervey, Some Materials, 9–10, 263. He  had the esteem of Voltaire, Chesterfield, Swift, and Pope. Hume added the depreciating phrase about his ‘defects’ for the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, prompted doubtless by posthumous publications in 1752 edited by David Mallet (24 September 1752, Letters, 1: 168). The earlier version said without qualification that Bolingbroke’s productions ‘contain a Force and Energy and Sublime, which our Orators scarce ever aim at’ (variants for 99.15). n. 7.3  Suidas in Περικλῆς] This note was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). “Suidas”, Lexicon, s.v. Περικλῆς Ξανθίππου καὶ Ἀγαρίστης (Perikle¯s Xanthippou kai Agariste¯s). This lexicon, now commonly known as ‘the

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Suda’ (see the Catalogue), is a very late (10th century) source for Pericles, the Athenian political leader of the 5th century bc. The transliteration of Hume’s Greek quotation is: Pro¯tos grapton logon en dikasterio¯i eipe, to¯n pro autou schediazonto¯n. SUIDAS in Perikle¯s. This may be translated as ‘[Pericles] was the first man to deliver a written speech in the law courts; previously people had spoken ex tempore.’ This information is generally accepted. 99.32  as a vessel, once impelled by the oars] The simile is borrowed from Cicero, On the Orator 1.33.153. Hume appropriated the simile for his own purpose in THN 1.4.2.22. 100.5–7  recommend many divisions in a public discourse, . . . this formality] For the importance of ‘division’ as a means of organizing a speech, particularly a forensic speech, see the elder Seneca, Controversiae 1.1.13–14, and Quintilian, Orator’s Education 7.1–4. In his chapter on ‘Improvisation’ (ibid. 10.7.7), Quintilian emphasizes that speakers will find it difficult to stick to the point while improvising ‘without a Division; only then, having covered to the best of their ability all the points they intended to make, will they feel they have come safely through to the end.’

14. Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences This essay appeared with volume 2 of Essays, Moral and Political (1742), and thereafter in the 1748 consolidation of the two volumes and all editions of the ETSS. For extensive deletions from the text for the 1770 ETSS, see the variants for 113.2, 21; 114.19; and 116.28. 101.15  What depends upon a few persons] The concept of regularities among large numbers has never been traced to an originator, but cf. The Quintessence of Wit (1566), where Francesco Sansovino records ancient sayings to the effect that it was easier to discern and influence the mind of the multitude than it was to predict the leanings of a single person (nos. 151, 465). For Hume the emphasis on regularity and observability relates to the ‘constant conjunction’ required to experience an ‘internal impression of the mind’ of a connection between causes and effects (THN 1.3.14) and to judge of causes and effects, including those explaining human actions (EHU 4–8). 101.16  chance, or secret and unknown causes] ‘Chance’ is characterized by ­unavailability of observations establishing causation: ‘Though there be no such thing as Chance in the world; our ignorance of the real cause of any event has the same influence on the understanding, and begets a like species of belief or opinion’ (EHU 6.1; cf. THN 1.3.12.1). 102.4  To judge by this rule] Hume’s inference from this rule is repeated in ‘Commerce’ 2: the public good with respect to domestic government ‘depends upon the concurrence of a multitude of causes’, that of foreign policy ‘on accidents and chances, and caprices of a few persons.’

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102.5–6  the foreign and the violent] Until the 1753 ETSS, the phrase was ‘the foreign and the momentary’ (variants). 102.8–9  The depression of the lords, . . . the statutes of alienation] It would be for readers versed in James Harrington’s theory relating power to property that such a shift in the balance of power could appear lawlike. In Oceana (prelims., pt. 2, ¶ 32), Harrington followed Bacon in attributing the change to ‘those several statutes that were made in [Henry VII’s] reign; as that for population, those against retainers, and that for alienations’ (Political Works, 197). The ‘statutes of alienation’ to which Hume refers are the various laws permitting the alienation of land and thus the breakup of estates, especially 4 Henry VII, c. 24, which prohibited entail. Cf. Hume, Hist. 3: 77 and passim (‘his policy consisted in depressing the great’) with Hist. 4: 384–5 (app. 3), where Hume depreciates Bacon’s and Harrington’s analysis, and the letter of 9 August 1757 to Gilbert Elliot of Minto (Letters, 1: 261–2). Following Harrington, James Pitt (as F. Osborne), celebrated the demise of the feudal constitution as ‘sapp’d and undermined by Henry the VIIth, who (having seen the Crown of England disposed at the Pleasure of the Lords that had maintained a War against it near four hundred Years) found out a Way to break a Power which had been so terrible to Kings; and that was, by changing the Tenure of Lands in such a manner, that the Tenants should be obliged only to pay a Rent instead of their Personal Service to their Landlords: And further, a Way was opened for the Lords to alienate their Lands from their Posterity; which was done, that they might be encouraged by an expensive Way of Living, to sell their Lands; and that the Commons, who lived thriftily, might be enabled to purchase them’ (London Journal, 16 March 1733/4). 102.12–13  Harry IV. Cardinal Richlieu, and Louis XIV . . . . Philip II. III. and IV. and Charles II.] Hume lists figures in Spain and France who oversaw the decline of Spanish and rise of French power after the death of ‘Charles Quint.’ (i.e. Charles I of Spain, elected Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V in 1519). ‘Harry IV.’ is Henri IV, king of France, 1589–1610. Upon abdication in 1555, Charles V conferred the throne of Spain on his son, who as Philip II sought to undermine Henri IV’s rule in France. Notwithstanding a civil war, Henri stabilized his nation and successfully fought a war with Spain. Philip II’s legacy to Philip III, a ‘weak prince’, was ‘Revolted or depopulated provinces’ and ‘discontented or indolent inhabitants’ (Hume, Hist. 5: 7, s.v. ad 1603). Under Philip IV, Spain was exhausted in war with nations allied under the League of Avignon, and the reign of Charles II saw Spain so weakened that she was not even consulted about the two partition treaties with which the British, Dutch, and French intended to dismember the dominions. Cardinal Richelieu was prime minister to Henri IV’s successor, Louis XIII, whom Richelieu ‘held in subjection, while he exalted the throne. The people, while they lost their liberties, acquired, by means of his administration, learning, order, discipline, and renown. That confused and inaccurate genius of government, of which France partook in common with other European kingdoms, he changed into a simple monarchy’ (Hist. 5: 182). Ruling without a prime minister, Louis XIV

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subsequently completed the transformation of France into an absolute monarchy and became the terror of Europe while promoting French arts and commerce (6: 216–17). 102.24–5  commerce in Holland] This formula for the rise of the United Provinces owes something to William Temple, who believed the ‘true original and ground of Trade, to be great multitude of people crowded into small compass of Land, whereby all things necessary to life become deer, and all men who have possessions, are induced to Parsimony; but those who have none, are forced to industry and labour, or else to want’ (Observations, 109). The same analysis would appear in  Charles Davenant’s 1695 Essay upon Ways and Means (Works, 1: 73–4). As in ‘Liberty of the Press’ 2 and Hume’s ‘Taxes’ 2, Holland would be understood to stand for the United Provinces as a whole. Cf. ‘Civil Liberty’ 8–9 for the tenet that ‘commerce can never flourish but in a free government’. 102.25–6  study and application have scarcely produced any eminent writers] Until the permutation of this essay in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the phrase read, ‘have not produc’d any eminent Writers’ (variants). The context of this paragraph does not suggest that Hume has in mind a vernacular literature, but that of ¶¶ 46 and 48 may. Such a focus would explain his ignoring Lipsius (1547– 1606), Grotius (1583–1645), and Spinoza (1632–77). 102.28–9  tracing the history of the arts and sciences] The question of the rise and progress of the arts and sciences had been at issue in the querelle of the ancients and moderns. Perrault’s Parallèle des anciens et des modernes (1688–96) had already distinguished the polite arts from the sciences in this regard (2: 27–31), but it was Fontenelle’s 1688 Digression sur les anciens et les modernes (Discourse, 190–1) and Wotton’s 1694 Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, 1694 (chs. 3–4) that made the distinction fundamental, as Hume does in ¶¶ 23–42. In Reflexions 2.33, Jean-Baptiste Dubos argued that although moderns do not reason better than the ancients (contrary to Fontenelle’s opinion), the moderns are more advanced in the sciences because scientific knowledge is cumulative, whereas achievement in poetry and eloquence is not. 103.2–3  The mass . . . from which such refined spirits are extracted] Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. spiritualization: ‘in Chymistry’, spiritualization is ‘the Action of extracting Spirits from natural Bodies’ by heat or distillation. See the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 6 at 162.16–17. n. 1.2  Ovid, Fast. lib. 6.] Fasti 6.5–6. Dubos had quoted this passage in his discussion of genius (Critical Reflections, 2: 13). The citation to ‘lib. 1.’ in the printed texts (see the variants) appears to be a compositor’s error. 103.13–14  why such a particular poet, as Homer . . . existed, at such a place, in such a time] In his copy of the 1748 edition of Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political, Richard Hurd annotated this passage thus: ‘censure of Dr Blackwell’s Inq. into the L & Writings of Homer’ (the Bishop Hurd Library, Hartlebury Castle,

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classmark Eb 1). Thomas Blackwell had accounted for the existence not of Homer, but of his epics, by ‘the united Influence of the happiest Climate, the most natural Manners, the boldest Language, and most expressive Religion . . . applied to so rich a Subject as the War between Greece and Troy’ (Enquiry, 345). Hume could not have been aware of the now widely accepted view, initiated by Milman Parry in the 1930s, that the Iliad and the Odyssey are the product not of ‘a particular poet’, but of a long tradition of oral composition. But most scholars would also argue that a poetic genius who has always been known as Homer played a significant role in the definitive formulation of the poems, with or without the aid of writing, probably in  the latter part of the 8th century bc. See Parry, ed., The Making of Homeric Verse, ix–lxii. 103.17–18  such particular generals, as Fabius and Scipio] Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator, as dictator at Rome in the early years of the Second Punic War (218–02 bc), persuaded the Roman people to adopt a policy of waiting out Hannibal’s invasion of Italy and thus, famously, saved Rome by doing nothing. By contrast, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Maior pursued a more active ­policy in the later stages of the war despite senatorial opposition led by the same Fabius. Scipio took a force to Africa and ended the war by inflicting a decisive defeat on Hannibal at Zama in 202 bc. 103.21  Scit genius] Horace, Epistles 2.2.187–9. As punctuated by Hume, these lines may be translated: ‘The Genius knows, the companion who controls one’s natal star, the god of human nature, mortal with regard to each individual, changeable in countenance, bright or gloomy.’ The reference is to the essential spirit of a man which was deified and honoured with a ritual on the occasion of his birthday. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. genius. 103.28  can be reduced to any general principles.] Until the 1770 ETSS, the paragraph, with slight variations, ended thus: ‘I shall, therefore, proceed to deliver a few Observations on this Subject, which I submit, with entire Deference, to the Censure and Examination of the Learned’ (variants). 103.30–1  the blessing of a free government] This observation makes a concession to the case for a connection between liberty and the arts and sciences that Hume criticized in ‘Civil Liberty’ 4–6: liberty is not permanently necessary but was a precondition. As Swift had said in Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man, ‘Arts and Sciences took their Rise, and flourished only in those few small Territories where the People were free. And although Learning may continue after Liberty is lost, . . . yet it hardly ever began under a Tyranny in any Nation: Because Slavery is of all Things the greatest Clog and Obstacle to Speculation’ (Prose, 2: 18). Hume’s contribution is the claim that the sciences need liberty more than the polite arts (¶ 23). 104.9–10  All general laws are attended with inconveniencies, when applied to particular cases] See THN 3.2.2.22 and esp. 3.3.1.12: ‘But if we examine all the questions, that come before any tribunal of justice, we shall find,

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that, considering each case apart, it wou’d as often be an instance of humanity to decide contrary to the laws of justice as conformable to them. Judges take from a poor man to give to a rich; they bestow on the dissolute the labour of the industrious; and put into the hands of the vicious the means of harming both themselves and others. The whole scheme, however, of law and justice is advantageous to the society and to every individual.’ 104.20–1  Bashaws . . . Cadis] Bashaw, or pasha, was a title of high officials, ­civilian or military, in the Ottoman Empire. Cadis, or qadis, were judges of Islamic law. 104.21  late Czar] Peter the Great’s preference for the summary justice of the Ottomans seems to have applied specifically to civil actions, with the goal of re­du­ cing the great expense of litigation. See Mottley, History, 3: 296–7. n. 2  Tacit. hist. lib. 1.] Tacitus, Histories 1.37. Hume quotes a protest occurring in a speech by the imperial contender, Otho, to the Praetorian Guards. Otho is complaining against the way that Titus Vinius, consular associate of the emperor Galba, has plundered the citizens: ‘he has kept us in subjection as if we were his slaves, but regarded us as expendable because we actually belonged to someone else [i.e. the emperor]’; ‘nunc et subiectos nos habuit tamquam suos et vilis ut alienos’. Hume generalizes the text by using the present tense, habet, instead of the perfect habuit, and omitting the personal pronoun nos. In ‘Balance of Power’ 16, Hume adapts the same passage but leaves it untranslated. Gibbon remembers it rather differently (Decline and Fall, 5: 460 n. 88). 105.11  that supposition seems scarcely to be consistent or rational] Until the 1777 ETSS, with some variations, this conclusion read, ‘in that Supposition there seems to be a manifest Repugnancy’ (variants). 105.17–20  The Roman Consuls . . . decemvirs . . . twelve tables] The two consuls were the annually elected chief magistrates of the Roman Republic. According to the tradition the office was created at the foundation of the Republic in 509 bc. More than fifty years later—451 bc, again according to the traditional account, for which see e.g. Livy, History 3.32–4—in response to social agitation, a ten-man commission of ‘decemviri’ was appointed, ‘to write down statutes’ (legibus scribundis) and thus end the patrician and priestly monopoly of legal knowledge. The Twelve Tables continued to be revered throughout the republican period as the original source of law (see Livy, History 3.34.6), but they were increasingly superseded by the praetor’s edict and the legislation of the assemblies. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. consul, Twelve Tables. 105.35  the advantages of free states] Until the 1772 ETSS, this phrase read, ‘the advantages of Republics’ (variants). In Hume’s taxonomy three sets of alternatives cut across the categories he inherited from the classical and immediate past: (a) barbarous or civilized, (b) pure or mixed, and (c) absolute or free. The kinds of state discussed in the essays might be outlined as follows, drawing from ‘British

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Government’ 3–4; ‘Independency of Parliament’ 4–5; ‘Civil Liberty’ 5, 9–10, 13; ‘Liberty of the Press’ 4; ‘Populousness’ 167; and ‘Rise and Progress’, passim. 1. Republic (‘free’) A. Barbarous (e.g. pre-decemviral Rome, the ‘small republics’ of ancient Germany) B. Civilized (e.g. Venice, the United Provinces) 2. ‘Pure monarchy’ (i.e. not a constitutional monarchy) A. Barbarous: absolute (e.g. the Ottoman Empire) B. Civilized i. absolute (e.g. Bourbon France) ii. pure but not absolute (e.g. China) 3. Mixed monarchy Not foreseeing the development of a ‘free’ mixed monarchy in England, Harrington had cited Poland and modern ‘Germany’ as examples of mixed monarchies. They contrast with the British type that Hume describes. Hume himself contrasts the mixed governments of imperial Rome and Great Britain and calls the former the ‘Roman monarchy’ (‘Liberty of the Press’ 4, ‘Politics’ 9). The post-1688 government that Scotland joined in 1707 to form the Union was reckoned a limited monarchy balancing the regal, noble, and popular interests in the ‘legislative’. For a Whig view see Addison’s Freeholder 51 and 16; for a Tory view see Swift’s Examiner for 22 March 1711 (Prose, 3: 113). Hume’s famous analysis of governance by what was often termed the king in Parliament is in ‘Independency of Parliament’ 5–6. ‘Politics’ 7 presupposes that a monarch is part of the legislature. As a modern free state is one in which the magistrate is restrained by law as well as the people, Bourbon France, with its absolute monarch, does not qualify as free, though in practice it protected life and property to Hume’s satisfaction because every ‘minister or magistrate’ is restrained by general laws (‘Rise and Progress’ 27). A definition of a free government is in ‘Origin of Government’ 7. For the classical taxonomy see the annotation for ‘Politics’ 8 at 43.34. variants for 106.7.  According to the necessary Progress of Things] Omitted as of the 1770 ETSS, this paragraph summarized the argument. 106.38–9  ‘No man,’ said the prince of Condé, ‘is a hero to his Valet de Chambre.’] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the quotation was ‘The greatest Enemies to the Glory of Heroes, says a certain Writer, are their Valet de Chambres’ (variants). Hume’s source of the attribution to Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, is unidentified. A different attribution was Pierre Coste’s in his various editions of Montaigne’s Essais, where he credited Maréchal de Catinat with saying, ‘Il faut être bien heros . . . pour l’être aux yeux de son Valet de chambre’ (3: 25 n. 9); ‘A Man must be a Hero indeed . . . if his Footman think it.’ Montaigne’s statement (‘Du repentir’, ¶ 6) was that ‘Peu d’hommes ont esté admirez par leurs domestiques’; ‘Few Men have been admir’d by their own Domestics’ (Essays, 3: 26). Dubos

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also uses the saying in Critical Reflections 1.20 (1: 124). Later opinion fixed upon Mme Cornuel (died 1694) as the author. Condé was often linked to the subject of heroism, and an anecdote published about him in the year before Hume’s essay appeared had him regretting the familiarity with which presumptuous people treated heroes (London Magazine, 10 (1741): 299). variants for 106.40.  Antigonus, being complimented] Plutarch, ‘Isis and Osiris’, Moralia 360c-d: ‘Hence when a certain Hermodotus proclaimed him in his poems as “child of the sun and a god”, Antigonus said, “My chamber-pot carrier is unaware of it” ’. This anecdote was omitted after the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political. Plutarch also records the saying at ‘Sayings of Kings and Commanders’ in Moralia 182c. This is Antigonus I, ‘the One-eyed’, who fought to retain Alexander’s conquests under his control but was finally defeated by his rivals at the battle of Ipsus (301 bc). Hermodotus is otherwise unknown. 107.1  Sleep and love convinced even Alexander] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Alexander’ 22.3: ‘He used to say that sleep and sexual intercourse, more than anything, made him conscious that he was mortal’, thus derogating from the divine status which he had assumed. But the ‘numberless weaknesses to which he was subject’, which his attendants would have seen, included, according to another biographical tradition, heavy drinking and a homicidal temper. Cf. Dryden, ‘Alexander’s Feast’ passim. 107.15  or at least, what bears them a strong resemblance] a qualification included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 107.18  Greece was a cluster] In ‘Balance of Power’ 1–7, Hume gives a similar account of the independence and mutual emulation of ‘the Grecian republics’ and a similar comparison with the situation of modern Europe. Cf. Shaftesbury, Characteristics 6 (Miscellaneous Reflections) 3.1. Gibbon (Decline and Fall, ch. 53, ad fin.) refers to this passage of Hume in attributing the intellectual stagnation of the Byzantines to ‘their solitary and insulated state’ (6: 114). For ‘in all the pursuits of active and speculative life, the emulation of states and individuals is the most powerful spring of the efforts and improvements of mankind. The cities of ancient Greece were cast in the happy mixture of union and independence, which is repeated on a larger scale, but in a looser form, by the nations of modern Europe’ (4: 178). 107.24  Each city produced its several artists and philosophers] Not every one of the very large number of poleis in ancient Greece produced ‘its several artists and philosophers’. But many, both large and small, did so, and may be said to have contributed to ‘the rise of the arts and sciences’. One may instance, in no particular order, Pindar of Cynoscephalae in Boeotia, Aristotle from Stagira in Macedonia, Democritus of Abdera in Thrace, from the Aegean islands Sappho of Lesbos, Archilochus of Paros, Prodicus of Ceos, Hippocrates of Cos, Pythagoras of Samos. From the eastern mainland there were the reputed founders of philosophy, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, all of Miletus, followed by Heraclitus of Ephesus and Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the reputed ‘father of history’. Seven different Ionian

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cities claimed Homer. Among artists one may mention Apelles of Colophon, Phidias of Athens, and Lysippus of Sicyon. The 5th-century sophists came from various different cities, for example Protagoras from Abdera in Thrace, Hippias from Elis in the Peloponnese, and Gorgias from Leontini in Sicily. In the 5th and 4th centuries there was a large concentration of Athenian-born writers, including Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Menander. 107.33–4  Peripatetic philosophy was alone admitted into all the schools] i.e. Aristotelian philosophy, so called from the peripatoi or ‘covered walking spaces’ in the Lyceum where Aristotle’s school was located. The translation of the bulk of the works of Aristotle in the 12th and 13th centuries contributed to the rise of scholastic philosophy and theology. After St. Thomas Aquinas elaborated a system of theology and philosophy rooted in Aristotle’s philosophy (especially in Aquinas’s Summa Theologica (1273)), Thomism gradually became the most broadly accepted philosophy in the Catholic Church. It was promoted in the 16th century by the Jesuit order and the Council of Trent. The terms and methods of scholasticism were also adopted by some Protestant theologians and were taught in Scottish universities down almost to Hume’s own day (Stewart, ‘Hume’s Intellectual Development’, 11–16). A broad repudiation of ‘the schoolmen’, understood vaguely as Aristotelians and any pedant resembling them in the use of pretentious jargon, was a common feature of Cartesianism, empiricism, and even popular prejudice, as found in Scriblerian satire (e.g. Pope, Dunciad Variorum 4.188–98). Hume’s disapproval of scholasticism is evinced in references to the ‘dreaming and captious philosophy of the schools’ (Hist. 3: 229, s.v. ad 1536) and ‘the scholastic way of talking, rather than thinking’ (THN 1.4.5.23). The ancient philosophical ‘sects’—Stoic, Epicurean, Platonist—had disappeared long before the rise of scholasticism. But for modern permutations see the annotation for ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 3 at 36.6–7. 107.39  Cartesian philosophy] One of the major opponents of Cartesian phil­ oso­phy whom Hume may have in mind is Newton, who argued against ‘vortices’ in Principia (1687), bk. 2, propositions 52–3. John Locke too reacted against the use made of Descartes by Malebranche and in his Essay criticized fundamental Cartesian doctrines such as innate ideas. But Cartesian physics enjoyed a stronger position at Cambridge than did Newtonian in the first decades of the 18th century. Newton’s influence came earlier in Scottish universities than it did in English ones. See Sir David Brewster, Memoirs, 1: 332–5. 108.3–4  Newton’s theory . . . foreigners] Chambers, Cyclopædia (1728), s.v. Newtonian philosophy: ‘Notwithstanding the great Merit of this Philosophy, and the universal Reception it has met with at home, it gains ground very slowly abroad; Newtonianism has scarce two or three Adherents in a Nation; but Cartesianism, Huygenianism, and Leibnitzianism remain still in possession’. Slow no doubt in ­penetrating opinion on the continent, Newton’s theory of colour, that part of his science encountering the strongest resistance in France, seems to have found

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acceptance by 1715. But the spokesman delivering Newton’s eulogy before the Académie des Sciences in 1727 was the unreformed Cartesian, Fontenelle. In the discours préliminaire to the Encylopédie (1751), d’Alembert judged that it was ‘not above twenty Years’ since the French began to replace Cartesianism with Newtonianism (Plan, 96), assigning the honours of first advocacy to Maupertuis’s 1731 Discours on celestial bodies. Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques, with its discussions of Newton and Descartes, appeared in 1734, and the publication of his Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton (1738) brought broad recognition to Newtonian science. The overthrow in French universities of vortex theory by Newtonian attraction has been dated 1740–60 (Brockliss, French Higher Education, 365–6). 108.7  scandalous licentiousness of their stage] The Anglo-French inter­ action to which Hume alludes is described by Blair (Lectures, 2: 543–50). Both endorse the efforts, notably by Steele, to supplant the licentious comedy encouraged by the Restoration court after the suppression of theatres in 1642–60. 108.9  too much love and gallantry] The commonplace characterization of French tragedy as excessively galant had an early expression in remarks in 2.20 of René Rapin’s Reflexions sur la Poétique d’Aristote (1674, trans. the same year by Thomas Rymer). In 1719, Dubos diagnosed the situation thus in Reflexions 1.17– 19: ‘Racine has stuffed his pieces more with love than Corneille; and most of those that succeeded Racine, finding it easier to imitate him in his defects than in his perfections, have gone on in the same bad road, even further than the celebrated poet’ (Critical Reflections, 1: 110). Love, however, had been central also to English heroic plays, and there had been disagreement in France and England over its suitability to tragedy. For a survey of the debate see Hooker’s annotation for Dennis, Critical Works, 1: 438–9 n. 108.13–14  ripen into something more perfect and finished, than what has yet arisen] Hume’s remarks reflect a controversy about the relative states of know­ ledge and advancement in Europe and China. Isaac Vossius had lauded China’s achievements in his Variæ observationes (cited occasionally in ‘Populousness’), as had William Temple in ‘Of Heroick Virtue’, § 2. But the Jesuit Père Louis Daniel Le Comte, whose 1696 Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine Hume cites in NHR 4.3 and n. 6, is generally disparaging. The Chinese astronomers are ‘very unskilful’; China is ‘deficient in excellent mathematicians’; the famed ‘imperial observatory’ is ‘of little worth, as to its ancient machines, and less as to its situation and buildings’ (Memoirs and Remarks, 70, 63–5). Leibniz, who in the preface to his 1697 Novissima sinica (§§ 2–3) says that he aimed to offer a more balanced judgement than Le Comte, concludes that in mathematics, astronomy, the art of reason­ ing, and military science, ‘we are their superiors’, but ‘certainly they surpass us . . . in practical philosophy’, i.e. in ethics and politics (Writings on China, 46–7). In a puff for the translation about to be published of the Description . . . de la Chine by another French Jesuit missionary, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, the writer avers that ‘no Nation ever had more sublime Notions of Moral Virtue’, and printed several edifying

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excerpts in this and subsequent issues (Gentleman’s Magazine, 6 (1736): 470–1). Du Halde’s book has been described as a ‘compendium’ of the Jesuit accounts (Lovell, Great Wall, 274). 108.14–15  But China is one vast empire, speaking one language, . . . and sympathizing in the same manners] Du Halde stresses China’s stability, isolation, and uniformity: ‘China has this Advantage over all other Nations, that for 4000 Years, and upwards, it has been govern’d, almost without Interruption, by its own Native Princes, and with little Deviation either in Attire, Morals, Laws, Customs, or Manners, from the wise Institutions of its first Legislators.’ Moreover the insularity, prejudice, and firmness of the Chinese contribute ‘to the constant Uniformity of their Manners’. The ‘one language’ to which Hume refers must be Mandarin, which, Du Halde explained, served in China rather as Latin did in Europe (General History, 2: 1–2, 388–9). See also the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 11 at 165.22–3. n. 3.3–4  though the Chinese government be a pure monarchy, it is not, properly speaking, absolute] This note appeared first in the 1748 consolidation of the two volumes of Essays, Moral and Political (variants). Temple discusses China’s ‘absolute monarchy’ in ‘Heroick Virtue’, § 2 (Works, 1: 202). Le Comte stresses the absolute power of the emperor in his letter 9, ‘Of the Policy and Government of the Chinese’ (Memoirs and Remarks, 247–315), and Du Halde begins in the same way: ‘There is no Monarchy more absolute than that of China: The Emperor has an absolute Authority, and the Respect which is paid to him is a kind of Adoration’. However, Du Halde also adds that the emperor must be careful to care for the people as ‘the common Father to them all’, attending to their foodsupply and restraining rapacious mandarins; otherwise he will occasion revolts, which have a tendency in China to spread unless promptly quelled (General History, 2: 12, 17–18). Montesquieu, discussing this point, insists that the easiness of revolt does not make the Chinese government any less of a ‘despotic state whose principle is fear’ (Spirit of the Laws, bk. 8, ch. 21 at 1: 125). n. 3.7–8  military discipline has always been much neglected amongst them; and their standing forces are mere militia] In the preface to his Novissima sinica, § 3, Leibniz says that ‘almost in emulation of the higher teachings of Christ . . . they [the Chinese] are averse to war’ (Writings on China, 46). Du Halde reports on the unprofessional nature of Chinese military service, due to the natural effeminacy of the Chinese, ‘the profound Peace they have enjoy’d’, and the bookish and unwarlike character of their education (General History, 2: 74–6). There is a similar passage in Le Comte (Memoirs and Remarks, 312–14). Defoe’s Crusoe was violently contemptuous of this aspect, as of all other aspects, of Chinese society in his ‘Excursion’ on China in The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (173–4). Hume’s note illustrates an apparent readiness to treat a conscript army, enlisted for the duration, as satisfying the condition of a militia as opposed to a professional, standing army. He had described the conscript army of Catherine the Great also as

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a militia (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 507). 108.21  the four parts of the world] i.e. Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. 109.4–6  the blind submission of the ancient philosophers to the several masters in each school] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the phrase was ‘slavish Submission’ (variants). Hume exaggerates the degree to which each school adhered to the doctrines of its founder. The closest approximation perhaps is the reverence of Epicureans for Epicurus (see e.g. Lucretius, De rerum natura 1.62–79, 3.1–30). And while each school had its characteristic tenets, these were developed over time. Thus the Platonic Academy had a sceptical period during the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc, and the Stoicism of Zeno and Chrysippus evolved into the form of Stoicism seen in Seneca. There was also mutual influence, as between Stoicism and Platonism. It is also unclear how long each school survived with its institutions and line of succession intact. Nevertheless individuals did continue to identify themselves as belonging to one or the other philosophical persuasion and to engage in controversy with those of other persuasions, as we see for example in Cicero’s dialogues (on which Hume comments in ¶ 33 below) and in the satires of Lucian (e.g. Menippus 4–5, Icaromenippus 4–9, Philosophies for Sale, passim). In ad 529 the emperor Justinian is reported to have suppressed the philosophical schools of Athens, in particular the still active Platonic Academy (see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 40 at 4: 278–85). 109.7  Even the Eclectics] Hume refers to eclecticism in the sense in which it was understood in the ancient world and is commonly understood today as the ‘selection and amalgamation of elements from different systems of thought’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. eclecticism). 109.13–14  those sects of Stoics and Epicureans, Platonists and Pythagoricians] The absence of the Sceptics from this list of ‘servile’ philosophies may have implications for the status of Hume’s ‘The Sceptic’ vis-à-vis ‘The Epicurean’, ‘The Stoic’, and ‘The Platonist’. One of the defining features of phil­ oso­phy since Bacon’s time, according to Wotton (ch. 26), was freedom from ‘Sects and Parties in Philosophy’ (Reflections, 299–301 at 300). 110.3  The arts of luxury] the arts, that is, of ‘innocent luxury, or a refinement in the arts and conveniencies of life’ (‘Refinement in the Arts’ 19). 110.33–4  in a high political rant] as in jingoistic polemics against Bourbon France. Hume told Jean-Bernard Le Blanc on 12 September 1754 that ‘I abhor, that low Practice, so prevalent in England, of speaking with Malignity of France’ (Letters, 1: 194). 111.13–14  the most considerable branches of science] The sciences that ‘gain the suffrages of the people’—religion, politics, metaphysics, morals—are here set against the ‘polite arts’, not the ‘practical arts’ (‘Civil Liberty’ 7, ‘Parties in General’ 1), like brewing and masonry. There were differing ways of defining and

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contradistinguishing art and science. For Hume a science is characterized by its ability to ‘admit of general truths’ that approach or attain ‘certainty’ (‘Politics’ 8, 4; THN, introd. 10). These truths may differ from ‘rules of art’ (‘Epicurean’ 4, ‘Standard of Taste’ 9) in not having direct reference to practice. The science of anatomy is useful to the painter only indirectly (EHU 1.8, THN 3.3.6). 111.16  Among the arts of conversation] Until the 1770 ETSS this sentence was preceded, with slight variations, with the following sentence, which began ¶ 30: ‘There is a very great Connection among all the Arts, that contribute to Pleasure; and the same Delicacy of Taste, which enables us to make Improvements in one, will not allow the others to remain altogether rude and barbarous’ (variants). n. 4.2  Rousseau] Jean-Baptiste Rousseau’s sonnet, ‘Jadis Matelot renforcé . . .’, lines 13–14. 112.7–8  the arts of conversation] Charles Perrault gives a similar estimation of the ancients in this respect. See Parallèle (3e dialogue), 2: 282–6. He too instances the solecism of putting ‘moy’ first. n. 5.1  It is needless to cite Cicero or Pliny on this head] Note 5 was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). Hume refers to a letter to Lucius Lucceius requesting him to write up Cicero’s achievement in thwarting the conspiracy of Catiline (Letters to his Friends 5.12.1–5) and to Pliny the Younger’s letter (Letters 7.3) asking Tacitus to include in his Histories, which he was then composing, an account of a case in which Pliny had successfully made a daring legal move. In an appendix to the 3e dialogue Perrault printed the letter by Cicero and selections from Pliny. Perrault juxtaposes them with comparable epistles and eulogies by modern French writers to illustrate the superior politeness of modern eloquence (see Paralèlle, 2: 387–95, 369–78, 351–7, 303–6). n. 5.4  lib. 1.] Arrian, Anabasis 1.12.5: ‘No other single man performed such remarkable deeds, whether in number or magnitude, among either Greeks or barbarians. That, I declare, is why I myself have embarked on this history, not judging myself unworthy to make Alexander’s deeds known to men. Whoever I may be, this I know in my favour; I need not write my name, for it is not at all unknown among men, nor my country nor my family nor any office I may have held in my own land. But this I do say that my writings are my country, my family, and my offices, and have been from my youth. That is why I think myself not unworthy of the masters of Greek speech, since my subject Alexander was among the masters of warfare.’ Arrian here indicates that his writings have made him better known even than his senatorial career has. 112.12  Quicunque impudicus] Sallust speaks of the followers of Catiline, who rebelled against the authority of the Roman government in 63 bc: ‘Any lecher, adulterer or glutton who had wasted his patrimony with hand, stomach, or penis’ (War with Catiline 14.2). The text is corrupt, and it has been proposed to emend it to read ‘Quicunque impudicus ganeo aleator’, etc. (‘Any lecher, glutton, or gambler who

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had wasted his patrimony by means of hand, stomach, or penis’). ‘Manu’, ‘by hand’, is taken to refer to gambling. 112.15–16  an expression of Horace. . . . Ovid and Lucretius] Horace, Satires 1.3.107–8: ‘For Helen’s was not the first cunt to be the shameless cause of a war’. The abduction of Helen by Paris was the traditional cause of the Trojan War. For Ovid, Hume has in mind presumably the amoral advice of the Art of Love; for Lucretius, the coarse language of De rerum natura, bk. 5, on the imperfections of women (see Hume’s n. 6 and its annotation below). n. 6.1  This poet (See lib. 4. 1165.)] As the numbering of the lines in this section of Lucretius’s De rerum natura varies in earlier editions, it is difficult to be sure to which lines Hume refers. In Havercamp’s edition of 1725, which is listed in the Hume Library, line 1165 reads, ‘sed tamen esto jam quantovis oris honore’ (De rerum natura, 2: 197). In Creech’s translation the passage beginning with this line reads: ‘Ten thousand such: but grant the sweetest face, | Grant each part lovely, grant each part a Grace, | Yet others equal Beauties do enjoy, | Yet we have lived before without this Toy: | Yet she is base, yet she perfumes to hide | Her natural smell, her Maids on every side | Stand off, and smile, and waggishly deride.’ Cf. lines 1171–6 in the Loeb edition. The whole of 4.1149–91 is relevant to this theme of cures for passion. Like others, Hume was wont to refer to a segment of text by citing only the first line or page number. n. 6.2–3  the original of some of Dr. Swift’s images. . . . Catullus and Phædrus] Until the 1770 permutation, the phrase was ‘beautiful and cleanly Images’ (variants). In a group of what today are called his scatological poems, Swift uses obscenity as a cure for readers’ concupiscence (see the Catalogue of Hume’s References, s.v. Swift). Catullus wrote a number of explicit poems, e.g. 16, 21, 23. In mentioning Phaedrus, Hume may have had in mind such poems as 1.18, 19, and 3.11. 112.17–18  Lord Rochester . . . from the corruptions of that court, in which he lived] As of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the reflection on the Restoration court replaced the simple statement that John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester, ‘was an abandon’d and shameless Profligate’ (variants). He was and still is noted for his artful use of obscenity for poetic shock effect. Cf. Hume, Hist. 6: 543–4: ‘The ancient satyrists often used great liberties in their expressions; but their freedom no more resembles the licentiousness of Rochester, than the nakedness of an Indian does that of a common prostitute.’ 112.19  Juvenal] The obvious reference is to the intensely misogynistic satire 6. 112.27–9  Atticus . . . only a private gentleman] Atticus was not in the order of ‘senators’ but in that of the equites (‘knights’), the class of wealthy men ranking below senators in the Roman system of orders. 112.30–1  Philalethes’s friend] In Greek this allegorical name means ‘friend of truth’ and was probably the most common pseudonym of Hume’s time. It was

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commonly employed as the name of a character in dialogues. Evidently Hume refers to a recognizable author, one likely candidate being Thomas Morgan, who in The Moral Philosopher (1737–40) used the name both as his pseudonym and to identify that speaker in a philosophical dialogue who presented his views. The ‘pitiful’ friend, Theophanes, plays the role of straight man and is allowed little by way of substantive contribution. At one point Philalethes speaks without interruption for some seventy pages (1: 139–208). The Abbé Le Blanc, writing to a friend 13 July 1737, said that The Moral Philosopher was then making quite a noise in London (Monod-Cassidy, Un Voyageur-philosophe, 277). n. 7.2  Tusc. quæst. lib. 5.] Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.5.12. Hume quotes ‘satis esse virtutem’, while modern editions, as well as the Olivetus edition listed in the Hume Library, read ‘satis posse virtutem’. The apparent misquotation does not affect the meaning significantly. Hume’s quotation may be translated: ‘Atticus: It does not seem to me that virtue is sufficient for a happy life. Marcus: But it seemed sufficient to my friend Brutus, and if you don’t mind my saying so, I much prefer his judgement to yours.’ On Olivetus’s edition, see the annotations for ‘Eloquence’ 3 at 93.3 and ‘Populousness’, n. 197. Note 7 was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 113.1–2  Even Cato is treated in somewhat of a cavalier manner in the dialogues de finibus] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the phrase was ‘a very Cavalier-manner’ (variants). Cato the Younger (95–46 bc) was a leading Roman politician who, by committing suicide after the defeat of the republican cause by Julius Caesar at Thapsus in 46 bc, became the symbol of Stoic opposition to despotism. In the dialogue De finibus (45 bc), Cicero presents him as defending the tenets of Stoicism in discussion (bks. 3 and 4). Hume may be thinking of Cicero’s frank exchanges with Cato in such passages as 3.3.10–11 or of 4.1.1–2, in which Cicero presents himself as Cato’s equal. For Hume on Cato see EPM, app. 4.6; ‘Dialogue’ 40; EHU 10.9; ‘Politics’ 19, and the annotation for ‘Stoic’, n. 1. variants for 113.2.  And ’tis remarkable, that Cicero . . . from Hearsay.] This conclusion to ¶ 33 was omitted as of the 1770 ETSS. See Cicero’s De natura deorum and On the Orator. In the former, Cicero has his disputants present the religious views of the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Sceptics and contest each other’s positions to a greater or lesser extent. Cicero concludes the work with a brief comment of his own that the argument of the Stoic ‘seemed closer to a semblance of truth’ (3.40.95). See Middleton, History, 2: 338–57, for a view of one of Hume’s contemporaries that Cicero’s acceptance of the moderate scepticism of the Academics and their criterion of ‘probability’ did not mean that he was, as Hume claims, ‘a great sceptic in matters of religion’. See Hume’s use of Cicero in NHR 12.9, 12.14, 12.22, 12.24 n. 81, 14.7. On the Orator, composed by Cicero in 55 bc, is presented as a dialogue between leading orators of the previous generation, Lucius Licinius Crassus—Cicero’s ‘master and model’ (died c.91 bc)—and Marcus Antonius (died 87 bc), on whom see Oxford Classical Dictionary, 114, 857.

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113.3  One of the most particular details] This paragraph, with notes 8–10, was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 113.4  related by Polybius] Polybius, Histories 18.4–7, describes negotiations in 198/97 bc between Philip V, king of Macedon, and Titus Quinctius Flamininus, the Roman conqueror of Macedonia. Flamininus was accompanied by his Greek allies, which included a representative of the Aetolian League, a federation of powers in central Greece. It is disputed to what extent Polybius’s account of these discussions is accurate, given that classical historians felt at liberty to invent such speeches, but Polybius does insist that ‘the historical author should . . . simply record . . . what was really said, however commonplace’ (Histories 2.56.10). See Walbank, Polybius, 43–6. Hume seems to exaggerate the rudeness of the Aetolian ambassador since the Greek word ληρεῖν (le¯rein), which Hume quotes, may be translated ‘talked nonsense’ rather than ‘talked like a fool or a madman’. n. 8  Lib. 17.] In modern editions of Polybius this passage is Histories 18.4–7, but Gronovius’s edition (Amsterdam, 1670), which is listed in the Hume Library, numbers the passage as 17.4–7. Recent editors assign this passage, and some others, to bk. 18, following a better understanding of the structure of the Histories and assign no surviving fragments to bk. 17. On the numbering of fragments from the lost books of Polybius, see the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 180. n. 9  In vita Flamin.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Titus Flamininus’ 2.2–4. Plutarch speaks of Flamininus as ‘a man of native goodness who relied upon argument more than upon war’ and as one who was ‘ever laying the greatest stress upon what was right and just’, and therefore the right man to be appointed Roman commander at this juncture, in order to win the Greeks as allies against Philip of Macedon by a com­ bin­ation of diplomacy and war.’ 113.18  a Sardonian smile] The Sardonian smile (reported of Philip on this occasion by Polybius, Histories 18.7.6) is so called from the Greek word σαρδάνιος (sardanios), which is first used of a particular kind of smile at Homer, Odyssey 20.302, and appears occasionally thereafter (e.g. Plato, Republic 337a). Pausanias (Description of Greece 10.17.13) supplies an etymology by explaining that it is derived from a bitter-tasting plant (Ranunculus Sardöus) that grows in Sardinia (in Greek, ‘Sardo¯ ’). Cf. Steele, Guardian 10: ‘The Horse-Laugh, or the Sardonic, is made use of with great Success in all kinds of Disputation.’ n. 10  Plutarch. in vita Flamin.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Titus Flamininus’ 17.2, in which Plutarch is illustrating the wit of Flamininus. Plutarch also includes this sally in his ‘Sayings of Kings and Commanders’ at Moralia 197a. variants for 113.21.  ’Tis but a very indifferent Compliment] This paragraph was omitted as of the 1770 ETSS. variants for 113.21, n.  Nihil est] Horace, Odes 2.16.27–40. Hume’s translation is free and somewhat exaggerates the familiarity or disrespect in the lines. A more literal translation might be: ‘No situation is happy in every respect. An early death

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removed swift Achilles, long old age wore Tithonus away, and perhaps time will extend to me what it denies to you. A hundred flocks and herds of Sicilian cattle low around you; a mare fit for a four-horse racing chariot is whinnying for you; woollen garments double-dyed in African purple clothe you; to me frugal Fate, living up to her name, has given a small place in the country, a modest inspiration from the Greek Muse, and an ability to despise the envious mob.’ variants for 113.21, n.  Quem si leges] Phaedrus, Aesopic Fables 3, prologue 31–2: ‘If you read it, I shall be happy; but if not, at least posterity will have something to enjoy.’ variants for 113.21, n.  Ignarosque viæ] Hume quotes lines 41–2 of Virgil’s invocation of Augustus from Georgics 1, and translates lines 40–2. The full quotation begins: ‘da facilem cursum, atque audacibus adnue coeptis, | ignarosque viae’, etc. ‘Grant me a smooth passage, and favour my bold venture, and pitying with me the country people who are ignorant of the way, enter upon thy divine task and learn even now to be invoked in prayers.’ variants for 113.21, n.  Et te, maxime Cæsar] Virgil, Georgics 2.170–2: ‘And you, great Caesar, who have already been victorious on the furthest shores of Asia, now protect the hills of Rome from the unwarlike Indians.’ Virgil and other Roman ­writers frequently apply ‘unwarlike’ and similar epithets to Asiatic troops. Augustus had indeed recently defeated Antony and Cleopatra with their ‘Eastern’ following and pacified the eastern Roman Empire, but at least one ancient commentary expressed Hume’s feeling that ‘unwarlike’ is incongruous in these lines (see Virgil, Georgics, ed. Mynors, 124). 113.22  Cardinal Wolsey] This bold expression figured among the counts of high treason brought against Thomas Wolsey by Parliament. Hume recounts his fall at Hist. 3: 185–6, 193–4. Mentioning this particular charge at n. F, he remarks, ‘this mode of expression is justified by the Latin idiom’ (3: 473 n. F). n. 11  Ibid.] Plutarch quotes this epigram by the contemporary epigrammatist, Alcaeus of Messene (Lives, ‘Titus Flamininus’ 9.2–3). It is for the Macedonians who were killed at the battle of Cynoscephalae (197), and begins ‘Unwept and without graves are we, O traveller, who on this ridge of Thessaly lie dead, in number thirty thousand, subdued by the sword of the Aetolians, and of the Latins whom Titus led from spacious Italy.’ n. 12  Tacit. ann. lib. 3. cap. 64.] Tacitus, Annals 3.64. Livia, widow of Augustus, gave offence because she raised a statue to her late husband on which her own name preceded that of Tiberius, his successor. Tacitus uses the name which Livia took on her adoption into the Julian family by the will of Augustus, namely Julia Augusta. The sentence in ¶ 35 on Livia and its citation of Tacitus were included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political. 113.33  No advantages in this world] Paragraph 36 was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants).

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114.4–5  the modern notions of gallantry] Until the 1770 ETSS this phrase read ‘Gallantry and Honour’. Accordingly, at the end of the paragraph Hume had proposed to examine the question ‘with regard both to Gallantry and Honour’ (vari­ants). Two paragraphs on honour were omitted as of 1770, as noted in annotations below. The wit who most notably adduced ‘galanterie’ as an advance of modernity over the crudity of the ancients was Charles Perrault. See Paralèlle, 2 (1690): 282–90, and 3 (1692): 285–90. Wotton answered him in Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, ch. 4, arguing that modern French gallantry and politeness are often ­artificial and make no advance on the understanding of love displayed by Ovid and Tibullus (ch. 4). For Dubos on gallantry and tragedy, see the annotation to ¶ 20 above at 108.9. For Hume’s observations see EPM 4.17, 9.2, and ‘Dialogue’ 32 and n. 93. n. 13.1  In the Self-Tormentor of Terence] Arriving home from abroad, Clinia sends his slave into town to bring his girlfriend, Antiphila, to him (175–6 and 191). In treating this as evidence of lack of gallantry Hume ignores the situation. Clinia is not on a routine visit but returning from military service abroad, into which he had been driven by his father’s angry criticism of his treating Antiphila as his wife (95–117), despite the fact that she was, so far as anyone knows until the end of the play, foreign, poor, and of low social standing. The situation is more delicate than Hume allows. Incidentally, the young man is at his father’s farm, not in town, and this play, now normally known as Heautontimoroumenos, is one of only two Roman comedies not set in town. n. 14  Lord Shaftesbury, see his Moralists.] See Characteristicks 5 (Moralists) 1.1–2, where Philocles ironically rallies Palemon for ‘unseasonable Conversation, so  opposite to the reigning Genius of Gallantry and Pleasure’. Palemon had ‘acknowledg’d it to be true indeed, what had been observ’d by some late wits; “That Gallantry was of a modern Growth.” And well it might be so . . . without dishonour to the Ancients; who understand Truth and Nature too well to admit so ridiculous an Invention’ (Characteristicks, 2: 4, 9). Against galante conversation Palemon had adduced the dialectic of the Greco-Roman academies. 114.12–13  not merely confined to the satisfaction of the bodily appetite] See THN 2.2.11 for an analysis of the connection between ‘appetite for generation; and a generous kindness’. To say ‘the confinement of the appetite’ arises from ‘reflections on duty and convenience’ is to say that chastity is in that respect an artificial virtue (THN 3.2.12). variants for 114.19, n.  Ariosto Canto 5.] The quotation from Ariosto, Orlando furioso 5.1, was omitted as of the 1770 ETSS: We see the rest of living creatures all, Both birds and beasts that on the earth do dwell, Live most in peace, or if they hap to brall, The male and female stil agreeth well.

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n. 15.1  The frequent mention in ancient authors] Juvenal, Satires 5, esp. lines 24–155; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 14.14.91; Pliny the Younger, Letters 2.6; Lucian, On Salaried Posts in Great Houses 26; Saturnalia 17–18, 22, 32. This note was added as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). This practice of discrimination was often reproved not only by satirists like Juvenal or Lucian, who complain that they are invidiously treated, but also by some more privileged guests such as Pliny the Younger. Though receiving superior service himself (2.6.2), he disapproves of the practice of discrimination of guests (2.6.3), and advises the young friend to whom he is writing not to be ‘taken in by this extravagance under guise of economy which is to be found in certain homes’. It is an ‘example of what to avoid’ (2.6.6). 115.31  a whip, instead of a ring] An early record of the practice is Antony Jenkinson in Hakluyt, Principall Navigations, 345–6, and contemporary ones are Korb, Diary, 2: 213–14, and Mottley, History of the Life of Peter I, 1: 99–100. Later accounts suggest the use both of ring and whip and the gradual disappearance of the latter in response to Peter the Great’s efforts to improve the status of women. n. 16  Relation of three Embassies] See [Miège], Relation, 47–9, 115–23. The Earl of Carlisle was the ambassador, but an attendant, Guy Miège, wrote the account. 116.4  Among every species of animals] Until the 1770 ETSS this sentence began, ‘In all Vegetables, ’tis observable, that the Flower and the Seed are always connected together; and in like Manner, among every species . . .’ (variants). 116.17  any breach of decency?] Omitted at this point for the 1767 ETSS was a paragraph comprised of three sentences on the preferability of select companions and the insipidity of ‘mixt Companies, without the Fair-Sex’. Hume deplores ‘hard Drinking; a Remedy worse than the Disease’ (variants). On ‘the company of a few select companions’, see ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 7. Hume’s phrase ‘the Feast of Reason’ is borrowed from Pope, Imitations of Horace (1733), satire 2.1.128. 116.18–19  the character of the fair sex was considered as altogether domestic] Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.4–43, offers a trenchant statement of this position. Cf. Hume, EPM, ‘Dialogue’ 43–4. 116.22  the Banquet of Xenophon] In this dialogue, now more usually known as the Symposium, Xenophon purports to recount a conversation at a symposium, or drinking-party, in which Socrates participated. See the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 32 at 172.8 on matches of drinking. The piece ends with a description of the erotic tableau that brought the evening to a close (ch. 9). Xenophon was one of the Greek authors who were familiar companions to Hume (Letters, 1: 55).

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116.22  the Dialogues of Lucian] Probably Hume has in mind his Dialogues of the Courtesans. A few days before he died Hume was reading Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead and used them to convey to Adam Smith his own light-hearted approach to his own death, as Smith reports in his letter to William Strahan of 9 November 1776 (Letters, 2: 450–2 at 451). No doubt Hume found congenial Lucian’s criticisms of Greek religion in the Dialogues of the Gods. 116.23–4  Horace . . . Plautus] Horace, Ars Poetica 270–4: ‘But your forefathers praised the rhythm and wit of Plautus. On both counts their admiration was far too generous, in fact it was ignorant—assuming that you and I know how to tell a clever phrase from an awkward one, and can get a feel for the sound of a correct verse with the help of our ears and fingers.’ Cf. also Epistles 2.1.168–76. variants for 116.28.  The point of Honour, or duelling, . . . Honour as distinct from Virtue] These two paragraphs were omitted as of the 1770 ETSS. variants for 116.28.  by some esteemed equally useful for the refining of Manners] Cf. EPM, ‘Dialogue’ 34, for a parallel discussion, and Hist. 3: 169 for Hume’s account of the origin of the custom of duelling. Duelling was claimed to refine manners by ‘curbing insolent and injurious Persons, and . . . preventing Affronts, abusive Language, and the like Provocations, which such Persons are ready to give if not over-awed and restrained’ (Cockburn, History 2.4). See also [Oldmixon], Defense, for the importance of this restraint on soldiers (8). The social utility of duelling was one of Mandeville’s themes, though the physician characteristically took a double perspective on it. See Fable, 1: 219 (remark R), and Female Tatler 52, 84 (2–4 November, 16–18 January 1710). In the latter Mandeville may have been responding to Steele, a prominent opponent of the culture of duelling. See Steele’s 1709 series in the Tatler (nos. 25–6, 28–9, 31, 38–9), as well as Guardian 129, 133 (8, 13 August 1713). variants for 116.28.  Honour’s a sacred Tye, the Law of Kings] Joseph Addison, Cato 2.5. variants for 116.28.  Addison has here been guilty of that Impropriety] Bishop Hurd seems to be contradicting Hume’s criticism of these lines in his notes on Addison’s essay for 15 September 1713 on honour in Guardian 161. See Hurd’s edition of Addison’s Works, 5: 363–5 n. For Addison’s own criticism of ‘Impropriety of Sentiment’, see Guardian 110 (17 July 1713), or, to be more precise, the an­onym­ ous letter reproduced and possibly written by Addison. The letter collects ana­ chron­isms from Dryden’s tragedies. See also Addison’s Spectator 279 (19 June 1712), where one reads, ‘The Sentiments in an Epic Poem are the Thoughts and Behaviour which the Author ascribes to the Persons whom he introduces, and are just when they are conformable to the Characters of the several Persons’ (2: 585). 116.40  about 200 years ago] In a letter to Millar of 20 May 1757, Hume said that the reign of Henry VII (1457–1509) is the period when ‘modern History commences. America was discovered: Commerce extended: The Arts cultivated:

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Printing invented: Religion reform’d: And all the Governments of Europe almost chang’d’ (Letters, 1: 249). In the History he put the process in a rather longer ­perspective, beginning with the diffusion of Greek learning by the capture of Constantinople in 1453 (Hist. 3: 81–2, cf. 5: 149–51, 4: 385–6 (app. 3)). 117.1–2  during the reign of Trajan and his successors] The emperor Trajan ruled ad 98–117. Hume reflects the common view that after about the middle of the 2nd century there are few if any great names in Roman secular literature. Cf. ‘National Characters’ 24 and see its annotation at 170.3–4. See also Dubos, Critical Reflections, 2: 148–9. 117.3  So late as the Emperor Justinian] Justinian was emperor in ad 527–65. With regard to Homer and Virgil as ‘the poets’ in late antiquity, Hume is paraphrasing Justinian, Institutes 1.2.2 (published 533). Dubos gives the same example (Critical Reflections, 2: 362). 117.26  Moliere and Corneille] Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–73) adopted the name of Molière c.1643. He was the celebrated master playwright of comedy during the reign of Louis XIV as Pierre Corneille (1606–84) was of tragedy. 117.30  the Prince of Tyre] Pericles, Prince of Tyre (performed 1606–8), which was included neither in the first folio of Shakespeare’s plays nor in the edition by Pope listed in the Hume Library, is wrongly seen as apprentice work for Othello, the Moor of Venice (performed 1604). Hume’s judgement of Pericles and misplacement of it early in Shakespeare’s career reflect his assessment as a tragedy of what is now recognized as one of the late romances. There are also discrepancies in the text suggesting composite authorship and a corrupt text. 117.30  the Moor] In his Short View the critic Thomas Rymer made a point of attacking ‘The Moor’ because, ‘From all the Tragedies acted on our English Stage, Othello is said to bear the Bell away’ (Critical Works, 131). In a letter of 20 November 1754, Hume calls Shakespeare ‘our great Poet’ (Hilson, ‘More Unpublished Letters’, 324), but shows the narrowing influence of French classicism in his assessment of Shakespeare in Hist. 5: 151 (app. 4). 117.31  Every man in his humour . . . Volpone] Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour was performed first in 1598, Volpone in 1605/6. Hume appears to take his examples from Dryden: ‘Your Ben and Fletcher in their first young flight | Did no Volpone, no Arbaces write, | . . . . | Shakespear’s own Muse he Pericles first bore, | The Prince of Tyre was elder than the Moore’ (‘Epilogue to Circe, Works, 1: 157–8). The symmetry implied in the juxtaposition with Molière and Corneille, as well as the examples adduced, suggests that Hume here primarily regards Jonson as a comic and Shakespeare as a tragic dramatist. The London Stage 1660–1800 lists Volpone as enjoying almost annual stagings between 1662 and 1742. 117.38  all over Germany] For ‘Germany’ see the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 19 at 167.30 and ‘Populousness’, n. 232.

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118.5–10  Had Waller been born in Rome . . . a faint copy of so excellent an original] This counterfactual conditional transports Edmund Waller, the ‘faint copy’ of Augustus’s poet laureate, to the reign of Augustus’s successor Tiberius so as to prompt the invidious comparison with Horace that is not prompted in an English and Stuart context. The extreme assessment of Horace’s influence on Waller appears peculiar to Hume. But Dryden had bracketed the two poets together (‘Defence’, ¶¶ 18–19) as refiners of their respective languages through extra­or­din­ ary care and austerity in diction, so that ‘the Beauty of Expression is often greater than that of thought’ (Works, 11: 212), resulting, Hume would say, in languid urbanity in Waller’s case. Additionally Waller’s noted dexterity with panegyric might suggest Horace’s relation with Augustus. As Rochester said of Waller, ‘He best can turne, enforce, and soften things, | To praise great Conqu’rours, or to flatter Kings’ (‘Allusion’, lines 57–8). Hume’s odd reference to Waller’s ‘first productions’ may refer to those in the authorized collection of 1664, which were deemed superior to those withheld or composed subsequently, like the very unHoratian divine poems. The reference to ‘climate and language’ suggests Dubos’s or Thomas Blackwell’s theory that Hume attacks above. (See the annotations for ¶ 8 at 103.13–14 above and ‘National Characters’ 2 at 161.22). See the discussions of Waller in ‘Middle Station’ 6 and ‘Eloquence’ 17 and their annotations at 13.36–7 and 98.2.

15. The Epicurean ‘Epicurean’ first appeared in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742), along with ‘Stoic’, ‘Platonist’, and ‘Sceptic’. The quartet was included in the 1753–6 ETSS and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. For an indication of when the quartet was composed, see the head-note for ‘Sceptic’. As Les quatre philosophes the quartet supplemented the Essais philosophiques sur l’entendement humain (1758, 2nd edn. 1761), Jean-Bernard Mérian’s translation of Hume’s Philosophical Essays. ‘Les quatre philosophes’, subtitled in the table of contents as ‘de la diversité des sentiments sur les moyens de rendre la vie heureuse, par Mr. D. HUME’, was republished in Dreux du Radier’s Le Temple du bonheur (Bouillon, 1769), 1: 119–32, 132– 43, 143–8, 148–77. Kames’s remark about philosophical dialogues might suggest what Hume had in mind for his monologues: ‘To interweave characters with reason­ing, by adapting to the peculiar character of each speaker a peculiarity not only of thought but of expression, requires the perfection of genius, taste, and judgement’ (Elements, 2: 152). n. 1.1  Or, The man of elegance and pleasure] Hume indicates that he is depicting an Epicureanism stressing the positive pleasures of life. A rival interpretation stressed avoidance of pain, limitation of desires, and frugality, as when Walter Charleton, following Gassendi, referred to ‘the Temperate, Good, and Pious EPICURUS’; ‘you will soon find him’, he says, ‘a great Master of Temperance, Sobriety, Continence, Fortitude and all other Virtues, not a Patron of Impiety, Gluttony, Drunkenness, Luxury and all kinds of Intemperance, as the common people (being

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­ is-inform’d by such learned men as either did not rightly understand, or would not m rightly represent his opinions) generally conceive him to be’ (‘Apologie’, C1v, A3v). Similarly, Sir Thomas Stanley in his widely-read History of Philosophy stressed the elements of sobriety and continence in Epicurus’s ethics (pt. 13, chs. 4–5). This version could adapt Epicureanism to Christianity, as in Isaac Barrow’s sermon 31: ‘A man may be virtuously voluptuous, and a laudable Epicure by doing much good; for to receive good, even in the judgment of Epicurus himself, (the great patron of pleasure) is no-wise so pleasant as to doe it’ (Works, 1: 447). By contrast SaintÉvremond, who had belonged to an Epicurean circle of aristocratic bons viveurs in France, protests, most fully in his Letter to the Modern Leontium, against the exclusively ‘austere’ interpretation of Epicurus and affirms Epicurus’s advocacy of positive pleasures, including sensual ones: ‘I’m of Opinion, that Epicurus was a very wise Philosopher, who, according to different Times and Occasions, loved Pleasure in Repose, or Pleasure in Motion’ (Works, 2: 289), the former being ‘la volupté spirituelle’ and the latter ‘les plaisirs sensuels’. Saint-Évremond offers the same twofold interpretation in ‘A Judgement on the Sciences to which a Gentleman May Apply Himself ’ (Works, 1: 59). In England, Edmund Waller, described by Hume as ‘distinguished . . . by the politeness and elegance of his manners’ (Hist. 5: 412, s.v. ad 1643), was a friend of Saint-Évremond and an Epicurean of this kind. Hume’s Epicurean owes something also to Horace (see the annotation for ¶ 10 at 122.1), who described himself as ‘pinguem et nitidum . . . Epicuri de grege porcum’ (Epistles 1.4.16: ‘a sleek, fat pig . . . from the school of Epicurus’). Unlike Shaftesbury, Hume viewed Horace as an Epicurean (EPM, app. 2.3), describing him as ‘one of the best Moralists of Antiquity’ (17 September 1739, Letters, 1: 33). But even this line of interpretation of Epicurus never abandoned the note of prudence or degenerated into the caricature represented by William Mason’s use of Horace’s lines in his description of Hume himself as ‘the fattest Hog of Epicurus’ sty’ (Heroic Epistle, line 24). n. 1.1  The intention of this and the three following essays] This caveat was included as of the 1748 Essays, Moral and Political (variants), replacing the caveat in the advertisement for volume 2 discussed above in A History of the Essays (p. 414). The advertisement had warned readers that in each of the quartets ‘a certain Character is personated’ (2: iii). For Hume on some philosophical types, see ‘Dignity or Meanness’ 1 and the annotation to ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 3 at 36.6–7. The overall structure of the essays as more or less reciprocal critiques of ethical philosophies is possibly modelled loosely on Cicero’s De finibus bonorum, in which Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics expound their positions and criticize each other (see Hume’s letter to Hutcheson of 17 September 1739, Letters, 1: 35). Hume’s four essays concentrate on the moral aspects of the philosophies and largely ignore other aspects. 119.10  the native enthusiasm] thus shortened as of the 1770 ETSS from ‘Oestrum or native enthusiasm’, which itself had replaced ‘the Oestrum or Verve’ as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants).

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119.11–13  The greatest genius, . . . the rules of art] Cf. Horace, Ars poetica 408–11: ‘The question has been raised whether good poetry is made by nature or by art. Myself, I do not see what study can achieve without a rich natural vein nor what untaught genius can do by itself, so much do they require the help of each other, and amicably work together.’ Pope’s formulation, deriving from René Rapin by way of Dryden, dispels the opposition: ‘Those Rules of old discover’d, not devis’d, | Are Nature still, but Nature Methodiz’d’ (Essay on Criticism, lines 88–9). The rules are drawn from empirical generalizations. Analogously ‘philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected’, according to Hume (EHU 12.25). Like philosophy, the rules of art are fallible and corrigible. In ‘Standard of Taste’ 9, Hume says that the ‘rules of composition’ are nothing more than ‘general observations, concerning what has been universally found to please in all countries and in all ages’ and that in this regard their ‘foundation is the same with that of all the practical sciences, experience’. Cf. THN 2.2.8.18: ‘These rules of art are founded on the qualities of human nature.’ In neo-classical criticism the precept to follow nature was further qualified by a principle of selectivity, la belle nature, which Hume endorses in ‘Simplicity and Refinement’ 2. Additionally, in ‘Essay Writing’ 7, Hume salutes the autonomy of a delicacy of taste ‘unguided by Rules’. 119.17–19  the severe philosophers . . . artificial happiness . . . by reflection] In ¶ 7, Hume’s Epicurean calls Stoics ‘proud and ignorant sages’. In ‘Moral Prejudices’ 2 and EHU 5.1, Hume ridicules some Stoic attitudes, both ancient and modern. In a letter to his friend Michael Ramsey (4 July 1727, Letters, 1: 9–10), the sixteenyear-old Hume presents himself as already preferring the ideal of Epicurean retirement (represented for him by Virgil’s Eclogues) to Stoic self-improvement, about which he is reading in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, bk. 3 (on which see the annotation for ‘Stoic’ 4 at 126.6). In a work published in 1724, Fontenelle made a similar protest against ‘ce misérable bonheur factice’ (‘this wretched artificial happiness’) advocated by ‘les Philosophes rigides’, ‘les fiers Stoicïens’ (‘Du bonheur’, 212, 204–5). Hume’s Sceptic speaks of ‘the artificial arguments of a Seneca or an Epictetus’ (‘Sceptic’ 36). Both the Stoics’ ‘artificial happiness’ and the ‘artificial virtues’ so central to Hume’s moral theory involve reflection, but the former is unsustainable because it is contrary to human nature and dependent on strained argument. The latter are not unnatural; they are conventions learned through ‘a Combination with others’ (Letter from a Gentleman 38 in THN, 1: 430). Unlike the Stoics’ virtue, Hume’s artificial virtues have no existence outside the context of society. 119.19–20  the reward, which Xerxes promised to him, . . . invent a new pleasure] The details of Hume’s version of this frequently repeated story indicate that his source must be Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.7.20. Cicero’s speaker, like Hume’s, argues that philosophy cannot fulfil its promise to provide a happy life: what a reward would we give for such an accomplishment in comparison with the reward that Xerxes was willing to give simply for a new pleasure!

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120.13  The brain separates and refines the spirits] In ¶ 6 the Epicurean quotes from Prior’s Alma. In this poem the conception of the spirits as the c­ onveyors of sensations to the brain is associated with Descartes. This conception, however, was widely held. Last, to enjoy her Sense of Feeling (A thing She much delights to deal in) A thousand little Nerves She sends Quite to our Toes, and Fingers ends; And These in Gratitude again Return their Spirits to the Brain; In which their Figure being printed (As just before, I think, I hinted) Alma inform’d can try the Case, As She had been upon the Place. (1.70–9, Literary Works, 1: 472)

120.34  What foolish figure must it make?] Prior, Alma 1.116–17. Lines 114–17 run, ‘What could the Head perform Alone, | If all Their friendly Aids were gone? | A foolish figure He must make; | Do nothing else, but sleep and ake’ (Literary Works, 1: 473). This comes from a parodic argument by Prior in which the Aristotelian scholastics of Oxford defend themselves against the Cartesians of Cambridge on the nature of the relation of the mind to the body, arguing that the mind must be extended in some sense through the body; otherwise it would have no source of sensations and would be isolated. For Hume on Prior see the annotation to ‘Essay Writing’ 2 at 3.25. n. 2  Dia Voluptas. Lucret.] Lucretius, De rerum natura 2.172. Hume combines several Lucretian phrases in ¶ 8. He joins the phrase ‘dia voluptas’ (‘divine pleasure’) with a common Lucretian epithet for ‘voluptas’, ‘blanda’ (e.g. 2.966), which one might translate as ‘amiable’, and with a reminiscence of a phrase from the first two lines of the poem: ‘divumque hominumque voluptas | alma Venus’ (1.1–2), ‘kindly Venus, the pleasure of gods and men’. 121.15  this bed of roses] In ancient literature a bed of roses symbolizes the height of luxury, e.g. in Cicero’s De finibus bonorum 2.20.65. It also often intimates love. Pseudo-Lucian, e.g., describes a bedroom decked out for love: ‘Over the bed the roses had been strewn in profusion, some of them in their natural state, some plucked apart, and others plaited into garlands’ (Lucius or The Ass 7). Cf. also Horace, Odes 1.5, famously translated by Milton (‘The Fifth Ode of Horace, Lib. I’). 121.24–5  Pleasure . . . beckons her sister, Virtue] Hume’s Epicurean contravenes the tradition that there is an opposition between pleasure and virtue and that one must make the ‘choice of Hercules’ between them. See Shaftesbury, A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules (1713), 6. The passage that Shaftesbury is illustrating, Xenophon’s Memorabilia 2.1.21–34, was a moral text frequently assigned to students of Greek in the Scottish universities.

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It was included under the title Prodici Hercules in a collection of moral pieces in Greek and Latin published by the Foulis Press at the University of Glasgow in 1744. Cf. the annotation for ‘Stoic’ 12 at 128.14 on the temple of wisdom. Lucian uses the choice of Hercules in a similar manner in The Dream, or Lucian’s Career 6–16. 121.26–7  my jovial friends] Epicurus, Vatican Sayings 52: ‘Friendship dances round the world announcing to us all that we should wake up and felicitate one another’ (Long and Sedley, Hellenistic Philosophers, 1: 126). In EHU 11.20, Hume puts into the mouth of ‘Epicurus’ the argument that ‘friendship is the chief joy of  human life, and moderation the only source of tranquillity and happiness.’ ‘Epicurus’ there says that he never attempts to ‘balance between the virtuous and the vicious course of life; but [is] sensible, that, to a well disposed mind, every advantage is on the side of the former’. Cf. Saint-Évremond, ‘Friendship without Friendship’: ‘The whole World affords nothing more precious and valuable than the Friendship of wise Men. That of others, as it is boisterous and disorderly, so it disturbs the Peace of publick Society, and the Pleasures of private Conversations. ’Tis a savage Friendship, which Reason disowns’ (Works, 2: 190). See the annotation for ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 7 at 37.25–6. 121.27–9  shady bowers . . . luxurious repast . . . rose . . . fruit.... nectar] Hume invokes the classical symposium, where friends met to eat, drink, discourse, and sing. This passage is reminiscent of the symposiastic preparations that Horace describes (wine, garlands, fireplace, love, and song) in Odes 4.11–12, 1.20, 1.36, 3.19, 3.28. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. symposium, symposium literature. 122.1  Forgetful of the past, secure of the future] The locus classicus for this theme is Horace, Odes 1.11.8: ‘carpe diem quam minimum credula postero’ (‘Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow’). Cf. Epistles 1.4.13–4: ‘Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum’ (‘Think that every day that dawns is your last. You will be gratefully surprised when another unexpectedly follows it’). 122.6–7  the barbarous dissonance of Bacchus, and of his revellers] Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost 7.30–3: ‘still govern thou my song, | Urania, and fit audience find, though few: | But drive far off the barb’rous dissonance | of Bacchus and his revellers.’ The warning not to drink barbarically is also a commonplace of symposiastic verse (e.g. Horace, Odes 1.18). 122.13  the gentle Damon, strikes the lyre] Damon was a stock name in pastoral literature. One Damon was a love-sick goatherd whom Hume would have encountered in his youthful reading of Virgil, Eclogues 8 (see the annotation for ¶ 3 above at 119.17–19). James Thomson’s Damon was a young Stoic ‘to false philosophy devote’ who is ‘humanized . . . into man’ by the sight of Musidora bathing. See The Seasons, ‘Summer’, lines 980–1037 in the editions of 1730 and 1738. n. 3.1–4  An imitation of the Syrens song in Tasso. . . . Gierusalemme liberata, Canto 14.] Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme liberata, 1581) canto 14, sts. 62–4: ‘You young people, while April and May are cloaking you with

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raiments of flowers and green, etc.’ Hume imitates the song that the witch Armida, in the form of a siren, sings to beguile and distract Rinaldo from martial deeds and glory. An ‘imitation’ in the present sense was a literary kind sufficiently recognized to receive a definition in Johnson’s Dictionary. Such an imitation freely translated and adapted a famous work for application to a new context. The most prominent example for Hume may have been Pope’s Imitations of Horace (1733–8). Thomas Blacklock ‘imitated’ Horace’s first ode and Psalms 1, 104, and 139. 123.14  the charming Cælia] Cælia was a name commonly given to the beloved in poems and songs. In Volpone, Jonson’s eponymous voluptuary molests the innocent Celia with a carpe diem song (3.7.165–83), and George Farquhar’s 1699 Constant Couple features a song beginning, ‘Thus Damon knock’d at Celias’s door, | He sighed, and begged, and wept, and swore’ (act 4). 123.38  even the fabulous shades below] seemingly a reminiscence of the well-known words of Horace, Odes 1.4.16–17: ‘iam te premet nox fabulaeque Manes’ (‘Soon night will cover you and the shades of fable and the unsubstantial house of Pluto’). The ‘shades below’ are the dead of classical fable, called ‘manes’ by the Romans. This paragraph hints at the Epicurean tenet that death ends all and that there is no providence, views intended to free the mind from superstition and anxiety and allow it ease and enjoyment. Hume’s Epicurean denies the dead even a ‘habitation’ with the shades. The Epicurean physics of atoms and void goes unmentioned (see the invocation of Epicurus by Lucretius in De rerum natura 3.1–30).

16. The Stoic ‘Stoic’ was first published in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742), as the second in the quartet of four philosophical characters. The quartet was included in all editions of the ETSS. For an indication of when the quartet was composed, see the head-note for ‘Sceptic’, and for its appearance in French translation see the bibliographic head-note for ‘Epicurean’. n. 1  Or the man of action and virtue.] This description may suggest the younger Cato, the Stoic sage par excellence (see e.g. Seneca, ‘De constantia’ 2.1–3; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.30.74). It may also suggest Brutus the tyrannicide, often paired with Cato. Hume had cited Lucan’s characterization in Civil War 9.562–3 of Cato as ‘durae semper virtutis amator’ (‘ever a lover of stern virtue’) in the epigraph to volume 3 (1740) of the THN. In Hume’s ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 6, Cato is ‘that stern philosopher’, and, at THN 3.3.1.16, Brutus is ‘that renown’d patriot’. Hume compares Cato and Brutus in ‘Politics’ 19. In THN 3.3.4.2 he contrasts Cato with Caesar, taking his cue from Sallust, War with Catiline 53–4. In EPM 6.21 he compares contemporary ‘patriot’ and Shaftesburian discourses of ‘action and virtue’ with ‘the perpetual cant’ of ancient Stoicism and Cynicism and says, ‘In this kingdom, such continued ostentation, of late years, has prevailed among men in active life with regard to public spirit, and among those in speculative

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with regard to benevolence; and so many false pretensions to each have been, no doubt, detected, that men of the world are apt, without any bad intention, to discover a sullen incredulity on the head of those moral endowments, and even sometimes absolutely to deny their existence and reality.’ 125.1–2. the conduct of nature, with regard to man and other animals] Cicero makes a similar comparison and contrast between man and other animals at the beginning of a summary of the Stoic way (De officiis 1.4.11). Cf. Seneca, Epistles 76.9: ‘What quality is best in man? Reason: by virtue of this he precedes the animals and follows the gods. Therefore perfect reason is man’s peculiar good; the rest he shares with animals and plants.’ Epictetus too draws a sharp distinction between men and the other animals on the basis of their functions (Discourses 1.6.12–22). Hume draws his own distinction in THN 3.2.2.2–4 (on which see THN, 2: 902–3). That humans are a species of animal is a premiss in THN 1.3.16, 2.1.12, 3.3.5.3, and EHU 9. 125.11  by the care and vigilance of his parents] Cf. THN 3.2.2.4, 14, 26, and EPM 3.16 on the nuclear family, and see the annotations for ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ 2 at 150.6–9. 125.17  O man] A characteristic locution of Epictetus, used also by Marcus Aurelius, e.g. Epictetus, Encheiridion 29.5: ‘Man, consider first the sort of thing that it [philosophy] is; then take a close look at your own nature to see whether you can carry such a weight.’ See also the annotation for ‘Platonist’ 4 at 133.9 on the lemma, ‘O philosopher!’ 125.24–5  sink thyself below those animals, whose condition thou . . .  wouldest so fondly imitate] According to Plutarch the earliest Stoics, including Zeno and Chrysippus, were influenced by the Cynics to urge men to imitate the animals. Plutarch’s ‘On Stoic Self-Contradictions’ 22 records that Chrysippus, talking of incest, food taboos, and other religious restrictions, said that ‘we should look to the beasts and infer from their behaviour that nothing of this kind is out of place or unnatural’ (Moralia 1045a). 126.6  wouldest thou meanly neglect thy mind] a common Stoic admonition. Cf. Seneca, Epistles 80.2: ‘How many men . . . train their bodies, and how few train their minds!’ Cf. also Epistles 15.2–6. Hume had himself made an attempt to improve his mind and character, making use of Stoic and other classical texts. He describes the ill effects of this course in his letter to an unidentified physician of 1734 (Letters, 1: 13–14): ‘There was another particular, which contributed more than any thing, to waste my Spirits & bring on me this Distemper, which was, that having read many Books of Morality, such as Cicero, Seneca & Plutarch, & being smit with their beautiful Representations of Virtue & Philosophy, I undertook the Improvement of my Temper & Will, along with my Reason & Understanding. I was continually fortifying myself with Reflections against Death, & Poverty, & Shame, & Pain, and all the other Calamities of Life.’ An early letter to Michael Ramsay (4  July 1727, Letters, 1: 10) indicates that Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations 3, de

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a­ egritudine lenienda (‘on alleviating distress’), was among the reading he had used for improving his temper and will. Tusculan Disputations 3.3.6 presents philosophy as the medicine of the mind, a characterization that goes back to Chrysippus (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, 3: 120–2 (nos. 471, 471a)). Some moral philosophy courses in Scottish universities contained lectures ‘On the Duties of a Man to His Own Mind’, as Gershom Carmichael’s did at Glasgow through the first three decades of the 18th century, adapting material from Pufendorf, On the Law of Nature and of Nations 4.9. In the address ‘to the students in universities’ prefaced to his Philosophiae moralis institutio, Hutcheson exhorted them, ‘Animis igitur vestris medeatur Philosophia’, expansively rendered by the anonymous English translator as: ‘Let not philosophy rest in speculation, let it be a medicine for the disorders of the soul ’ (Short Introduction, iv). Cf. also the annotation for ‘Epicurean’ 3 at 119.17–19. 126.35-6 the celestial bodies . . . roll along the ethereal plains.] The imagery (cf. Milton, Paradise Lost 8.15-24) contrasts Hume’s Stoic with the Sceptic, a decided Copernican (‘Sceptic’ 13). ‘Ethereal’ specifies the spheres of the firmament beyond the moon. 126.39–40  we are philosophers . . . we are sages] The difference between the sage and those who have not reached that perfect state was much discussed, e.g. Cicero, De finibus 3.13–14; Seneca, Epistles 72.4–10, 75.8–18. Cicero reports how Zeno famously illustrated the security and invincibility of the sage’s knowledge by clenching his right fist within his left hand: Zeno ‘used to say that that is what knowledge is like and that there is no one who possesses it but the wise man’ (Academica 2.47.145). See Hellenistic Philosophers, 1: 253–59. The implication that reason is the proper guide of life was accepted by modern exponents of Stoicism such as Guillaume Du Vair, who said, ‘the Beginners and movers of our actions, in us, are the Understanding, and the Will’, and ‘Reason . . . should alwaies command in all things’ (Morall Philosophy of the Stoicks, 7, 33). Cf. Antoine Le Grand, Man without Passion, 25–7, and see THN, 2: 868–9, for a survey of the tenet that reason can and ought to be conative rather than the passions. Hume’s critique of this account of practical reasoning is in THN 2.3.3. See also EPM, app. 1. 127.6–7  that labour and attention, requisite to the attainment of thy end] The need of labour in building character is a Stoic commonplace. See e.g. Seneca, Epistles 15.4–8. Like athletic accomplishment, the attainment of peace of mind requires hard work (Epictetus, Encheiridion 29). Cf. Epictetus, Discourses 4.4.43: ‘If . . . the end for which he toils is his own governing principle [to he¯gemonikon], to have it be, and live continually, in accordance with nature, then and then only I call him industrious’. Marcus Aurelius says: ‘When you find yourself, in a morning, averse to rise, have this thought at hand: I arise to the proper business of a man: And shall I be averse to set about that work for which I was born, and for which I was brought into the universe? . . . . Other artificers, who love their respective arts, can even emaciate themselves by their several labours, without due refreshments of bathing or food: but you honour your nature and its purpose much less than the

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Turner does his art of turning, or the dancer does his art, the covetous man his wealth, or the vain man his applause. All these when struck with their several objects, don’t more desire to eat or sleep, than to improve in what they are fond of.  And do social affectionate actions appear to you meaner, and deserving less ­diligence and application?’ (Meditations 5.1, trans. Hutcheson and Moor). Cf. the Stoic poet Persius’s Satires 3.1–6, 52–62. 127.12  Aurora] This Latin word for dawn became a personification of the g­ oddess of the dawn. 127.25–6  while we are every day sensible of our progress] A major aim of Seneca’s Epistles is to encourage moral progress (profectus) in his correspondent, Lucilius, as in the opening of letter 5.1: ‘I view with pleasure and approval the way you keep on at your studies and sacrifice everything to your single-minded desire to make yourself every day a better man’. See 7.8–9, 16.2–3, 32.2–4, and letter 75, which presents moral progress as a process of recovery by stages from moral sickness. Cf. Epictetus, Encheiridion 12–13, 46. Epictetus devotes Discourses 3.12 to aske¯sis or moral training, and 3.2 sets out the kinds of moral exercise required to make progress. Marcus Aurelius often reflects on what progress he may or may not have made through the years (e.g. Communings 2.2–6, 5.31). It was a practice to make a daily self-examination of one’s progress (Horace, Satires 1.4, 133–9; Seneca, ‘De ira’ 3.36). Shaftesbury recorded in notebooks the extensive moral exercises, aske¯mata, which he undertook in the course of his intellectual engagement with Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and others. These notebooks were not published until 1900 (Rand, Life). Daily troubles too are a ‘school of exercise’ (Marcus Aurelius, Communings 10.31). Cf. Seneca, ‘De constantia’ 9.3: ‘he gets a benefit even from injury, for through it he finds a means of putting himself to the test, and makes trial of his virtue’. Cf. also Epictetus, Discourses 1.24. 127.34  In vain do you seek repose from beds of roses] On the metaphor ‘beds of roses’ see the annotation for ‘Epicurean’ 8 at 121.15. To the unsatisfactory consequences of sensual pleasure and indolence, ‘Epicurean’ 9 proposed the solution of social pleasures and love. Against the Epicurean’s remedy the Stoic now proposes a life of activity. Hume’s Platonist will criticize the inadequacy of the Stoic’s programme of self-improvement (¶¶ 3–5), just as Hume’s Epicurean had attacked it from his standpoint (¶¶ 3–7). Hume’s Sceptic will argue that almost all of these ‘medicines of the soul’ are ineffective (¶¶ 36–51). 128.8  the instability of fortune] Seneca, Epistles 72.7–10: ‘Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own’, but the wise man is above fortune, and ‘the happiness that he enjoys is supremely great, is lasting, is his own’. Cf. 44.4–5, 63.1, 98, and ‘De tranquillitate animi’ 11.11. Likewise Epictetus draws a fundamental distinction between ‘what is under our control’ and ‘what is not under our control’ (Encheiridion 1.1; cf. 11). In his letter to Michael Ramsey of 4 July 1727, Hume says, ‘My peace of Mind is not sufficiently confirmed by Philosophy to wtstand the Blows of Fortune’ (Letters, 1: 10).

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128.14  The temple of wisdom is seated on a rock] Hume’s Stoic appropriates for his own purposes images from various sources. The passage is reminiscent of Lucretius’s De rerum natura 2.7–14: ‘But nothing is more delightful than to possess lofty sanctuaries serene [edita . . . templa serena], well fortified by the teachings of the wise, whence you may look down upon others and see them all astray.’ One ­commentator on this much-imitated passage from the Epicurean Lucretius quotes Hume’s sentence (De rerum natura, ed. Merrill, 399). Cf. THN 3.3.2.5 and n., where Hume uses De rerum natura 2.1–4 to illustrate the relation between sympathy and comparison as psychological principles. Robert Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy, 1: 4) quotes a ‘watch-tower’ image from Daniel Heinsius, Dissertatio epistolica (1616): ‘Et tamquam in specula positus (as he said) . . . Stoicus Sapiens, omnia sæcula, præterita praesentiaque videns, uno velut intuitu’ (‘And as if set on a watch-tower [is] the Stoic sage, who sees all centuries, past and present, as in a single glance’). More generally, Seneca speaks of the Stoic goal as ‘that lofty summit which rises so far beyond the reach of any missile as to tower high above all fortune’ (‘De constantia’ 1–2). Finally, The Table of Cebes, a Stoic/Cynic text of the 1st century ad frequently read by students of Greek in Scottish universities in Hume’s day, employs the image of True Education standing upon a rock in a temple enclosure and directing pilgrims in the way of true philosophy (17, 18.1–2). The Foulis brothers included The Table of Cebes in a collection of short moral pieces in Greek and Latin, among them Epictetus’s Encheiridion, published at the University of Glasgow in 1744 (Gaskell, Bibliography, no. 47; Hume Library, no. 430). A similar volume was published at Aberdeen in 1759. 128.17–19  The sage . . . looks down . . . on the errors of mistaken mortals] In Cicero, De finibus 3.8.29, the sage is presented as ‘thinking all human things beneath him . . . , assured that no evil can happen to a wise man’. Cf. De finibus 3.22.75–6. This language is echoed by Hume in NHR 12.22: ‘The Stoics bestowed many magnificent and even impious epithets on their sage; that he alone was rich, free, a king, and equal to the immortal gods.’ See also Seneca, Epistles 53.11–12, and 41.4; also Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.3, 10.15. Cf. Hume’s early letter of 4 July 1727: ‘Greatness and Elevation of Soul is to be found only in Study & contemplation, this can alone teach us to look down upon . . . humane Accidents’ (Letters, 1: 10). 128.30  this sullen Apathy] Apatheia (Ἀπάθεια), or tranquillity of soul, is the goal of the philosophic life and should not be sullen, callous, or ‘indifferent and unactive’ (Sceptic 37). Cf. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.9: ‘to be at the same time impervious to all passions [apathestaton] and yet full of affection [philostorgotaton]’. No distress of mind (aegritudo animi) afflicts the wise man (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.34.82–3). Seneca explains how the wise man can have and lose friends without compromising his self-sufficiency or tranquillity (Epistles 9). This principle of apatheia, which goes back to Chrysippus (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, 3: 35 (no. 144)), was attacked by critics, ancient and modern. In ‘Moral Prejudices’ 3, Hume parodies Epictetus, Encheiridion 16: ‘When your Friend is in Affliction, says

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Epictetus, you may counterfeit a Sympathy with him, if it give him Relief; but take Care not to allow any Compassion to sink into your Heart, or disturb that Tranquillity, which is the Perfection of Wisdom’ (cf. Encheiridion 5, 7, 11, 15). Exponents of Stoicism felt a need to explain and apologize, e.g. Antoine Le Grand in his ‘compendium of Stoic teaching’ (Crane, ‘Suggestions towards a Genealogy’, 199), which was translated into English in 1675 under the title, Man without Passion: or, The Wise Stoick, According to the Sentiments of Seneca: ‘For as these generous Philosophers strip their wise man of all the maladies of his Soul, they allow not that other mens misfortunes should be his miseries . . . . They will have him to be fortune proof; and that that which discomposeth others, should teach him Constancy, and an even temper. . . .  And can we not relieve those that are in misery, unless we mingle our Sighs with their Sobs and Groans, and our Cries with their Tears?’ (277–8). 128.31–2  He feels too strongly the charm of the social affections] The Stoics were among those who stressed the natural inclination of human beings for society and its duties. Cicero, De finibus 3.18.63, speaks of ‘communis hominum inter homines naturalis . . . commendatio’ (‘the natural mutual attraction of human beings to each other’). Marcus Aurelius often refers to our natural membership in society, e.g. 5.16 (‘the good of the rational animal is society’), 8.34, 9.42 (‘man, formed as he is by nature for benefiting others’), 10.2, 11.8. Grotius took up this Stoic ‘sociability’: ‘he greedily affects Society, that is, Community; yet not any but that which is peaceable, and according to the Model of his Understanding, Regular, with those of his own kind; which the Stoicks term οἰκείωσιν, Familiarity’ (Rights of War & Peace, iii). More contemporary with Hume is Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 2 (Sensus Communis) 3.2, and 5 (Moralists) 2.4, which sets human sociability in a scheme of the universal fitness of things (Characteristicks, 2: 54–6, 58–68). Also Butler, Fifteen Sermons 1, ¶ 5; and Hutcheson, ‘On the Natural Sociability of Mankind’ (Logic, Metaphysics and the Natural Sociability of Mankind, 203–8). 128.33–5  bathed in tears, he laments the miseries of human race, . . . can only relieve them by compassion] Hume’s Stoic deviates from ancient Stoic doctrine, which classified compassion as one of the ‘distressing’ states of mind, like envy, grief, and sorrow (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta 3.394, quoted in Long and Sedley, Hellenistic Philosophers, 1: 412E), to be distinguished from the calmer feelings like kindness and sociability (Diogenes, quoted ibid., 1: 412F). Similarly Seneca distinguishes between clemency or mercy (clementia), which is good, and compassion or pity (misericordia), which is bad: ‘Good men will all display mercy and gentleness, but pity they will avoid; for it is the failing of a weak nature that succumbs to others’ ills.’ The good man will help those who need help, but not be moved by their distress: ‘he will bring relief to another’s tears, but will not add his own’ (‘De clementia’ 2.5–6). Cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.16. Seneca ac­know­ ledges that this dispassion appears harsh to many who do not understand the doctrine, and many modern exponents of Stoicism also felt obliged to apologize for it, e.g. Stanhope in the preface to his translation, Epictetus His Morals: ‘[S]ome Rules

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given here, if literally and strictly followed, may seem to threaten the Destruction of all Natural Affection and Charity among Men.’ In sermon 5, ‘Upon Compassion’, Butler makes a point of criticizing the Stoics’ disparagement of this virtue (¶¶ 3, 11). 128.34  of human race, of his country, of his friends] the concentric circles of the Stoic’s sympathy, elaborated in ¶¶ 14–17. See Cicero, De officiis 1.16.50–17.59, and De finibus 3.19.62–20.71. A fundamental statement of the process by which the growing child learns to extend its sympathies is given by Cicero, De finibus 3.5.16– 3.7.25. In the Essays Hume more frequently writes ‘human race’ without the article (‘Dignity or Meanness’ 5, ‘Sceptic’ 13, ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 70, ‘Study of History’ 4) than with it (‘Original Contract’ 3 and twice in ‘Love and Marriage’ 9). 129.8–9  Separate him from his companions] The sentiment that society is a major component of pleasure is a commonplace. See e.g. THN 2.2.5.15 (‘Every pleasure languishes when enjoy’d apart from company’); Seneca, Epistles 6.4 (‘No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it’); and Hutcheson, Inquiry, 227–8 (2.6.2), Essay, 136–7 (5.3), among many others (see THN, 2: 847). Specific reference to the pleasures of the table occurs in Shaftesbury, Inquiry 2.2, § 1, where, in arguing for the superiority of the natural affections over sensual pleasures, the author suggests that the real pleasure of the bon viveur is social and arises from the sharing involved in conviviality (Characteristicks, 1: 238–41, 250–2). 129.19–20  See the triumph of nature in parental affection!] Cf. THN 2.2.12.5: ‘The affection of parents to their young proceeds from a peculiar instinct in animals, as well as in our species.’ Hume’s Sceptic points to the ‘prejudice’ that ‘nature has given all animals in favour of their offspring’ (‘Sceptic’ 10). At EPM 6.16, Hume speaks of ‘the affection of parents, the strongest and most indissoluble bond in nature’. Such sentiments were commonplace from classical times, e.g. Cicero, De finibus 3.19.62. See THN, 2: 858, 897. Hutcheson argues that parental affection is not grounded in self-love, e.g. Inquiry, 143–6 (2.2.9). 129.37  the most distant posterity] The combination of patriotism and concern for posterity is found at Cicero, De finibus 3.19.64. Our duty to our country is the highest of duties in Cicero, De officiis 1.17.57. 129.37–8  It views liberty and laws as the source of human happiness] This aspect of Stoic doctrine, which was by no means exclusive to or universal among the Stoics, was epitomized in the struggle of Cato and others to save the Roman Republic (see the annotation for n. 1 and Seneca, ‘De constantia’ 2). Cicero phrases his post mortem denunciation of Julius Caesar’s domination in De officiis 3.21.83 as ‘the destruction of laws and liberty’. Intermittent opposition to Nero and other emperors in the later years of the 1st century ad was inspired, at least in part, by Stoicism. See e.g. the death of Thrasea Paetus in Tacitus, Annals 16.21–35. Cato’s opposition to ‘tyranny’ inspired Addison’s Cato (1713) and ‘Cato’s Letters’ by Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard, first published in 1720–3 in the London

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Journal and the British Journal. For a contrasting view of the tendency of Stoicism to promote obedience and social peace, see Seneca, Epistles 73.1–11. 130.26–7  Glory is the portion of virtue, the sweet reward of honourable toils] Cicero defines true glory as the approval of good men and says that ‘it gives back to virtue the echo of her voice’ (Tusculan Disputations 3.2.3). He condemns spurious glory at 5.36.103–5. De officiis 2.9.31–14.51 gives a comprehensive account of the means for obtaining genuine glory. Accordingly the glory won by Julius Caesar was spurious (De officiis 1.8.26). Success is irrelevant to the virtue of a good action, says Cato, the exemplar of true glory (Lucan, Civil War 9.566–71). Seneca contrasts the real splendour of the philosophic life with its pale imitation in political prominence (Epistles 21.1–2). 130.35  There surely is a being who presides over the universe] This essay, like ‘Epicurean’ and ‘Platonist’, ends with a brief cosmological statement. With ‘the being who presides’, cf. the phrase in Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.4, 5.25, 7.66, 8.34, which Hutcheson translates as ‘that President in the universe’, ‘the common president of nature’, ‘the President of the universe’, ‘the president nature of the whole’. Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 2.30.75: ‘the universe and all its parts were initially ordered and are at all times governed by the providence of the gods.’ 131.4–5  he gratefully acknowledges the bounty of his creator] Hume’s Stoic treats a person’s existence as a benefit conferred on him by his creator. Consequently all such persons have an obligation to their creator. For con­tem­por­ ary statements of this argument see the annotation at THN, 892–3. Seneca argues: ‘When, at the time of the original creation, they [the gods] set in order the universe, they had regard also for our interests, and took account of man; it cannot be thought, therefore, that they follow their courses and display their work merely for their own sake, for we also are a part of that work. We are indebted, therefore, to the sun and the moon and the rest of the heavenly host for a benefit, because, even though the purposes for which they rise are in their eyes more important, nevertheless in their progress toward these greater things, they do assist us’ (‘De beneficiis’ 6.23.3).

17. The Platonist ‘Platonist’ first appeared in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742), as the third in the quartet of philosophical characters. The quartet was included in all editions of the ETSS. For an indication of when the quartet was composed, see the bibliographic head-note for ‘Sceptic’, and for its appearance in French translation see the head-note for ‘Epicurean’. After describing the predicament of man out of touch with God (¶ 1), Hume’s Platonist reproves Epicureanism (¶ 2) and goes on to criticize at length the Stoic, to whom he expounds his own doctrine (¶¶ 3–7). n. 1  Or, the man of contemplation, and philosophical devotion.] Apart from Plato’s writings, the sentiments of Hume’s Platonist are reminiscent of some ‘Middle Platonist’ texts, such as the Handbook of Platonism of Alcinous and

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Maximus of Tyre’s Orations. Plutarch too belongs to this school. There are echoes of the Cambridge Platonists, as well as of Hume’s acquaintance Andrew Michael (the Chevalier) Ramsay, a disciple of Fénelon. Hume’s Platonist, however, does not accept the views attributed in DNR 3, ¶ 12, to ‘many’ of the Platonists, ‘particularly Plotinus’: ‘many of them . . . expressly declare, that intellect or understanding is not to be ascribed to the Deity, and that our most perfect worship of him consists, not in acts of veneration, reverence, gratitude or love; but in a certain mysterious selfannihilation or total extinction of all our faculties’, tenets incompatible with ‘Platonist’ 6–7. Nor does Hume’s Platonist allude to the theory that Plato was the last philosopher to preserve ‘the ancient Noevian, Revealed religion’, as Ramsay puts it in pt. 2, ch. 1, of his Philosophical Principles (2: 80), or the similar theory of John Smith: ‘the first and most antient wisdom amongst the heathens was indeed a philosophical divinity, or a divine philosophy, which continued for divers ages; but as men grew worse, they began to loath it, which made the truly wise Socrates complain of the sophisters of that age which began then to corrupt and debase it’ (Select Discourses, 256). In ‘Sceptic’ 23 the speaker asserts that the passion involved in ‘Philosophical devotion’ focused upon the abstract god presented by natural religion ‘cannot long actuate the mind, or be of any moment in life.’ He thus contravenes what is said in ‘Platonist’ 6. 132.1–3  all mankind . . . should yet differ so widely] This commonplace concerning the variety and inconstancy of human pursuits, voiced already in archaic Greece by Solon (frags. 13, 33–70, in Greek Elegiac Poetry, 130–3), is found in all the schools of ancient philosophy. The Epicurean Horace asks, ‘How does it happen that no one lives content with the lot that reason has given him or fortune has thrown his way, but praises those who follow different paths?’ (Satires 1.1.1–22). Cf. the story of the town mouse and the country mouse in Horace, Satires 2.6.77–117. It is given a Stoic inflection in Marcus Aurelius, Communings 4.32. For a sceptical variation see Lucian, Charon, 15–21; and cf. Hume, ‘Sceptic’ 3. Plato and the Platonists make a basic contrast between the multiform and unstable temporal world, with its multitudes of unphilosophical inhabitants wandering ‘amid the multi­pli­ci­ties of multifarious things’, and the nature of ‘that which is eternal and unchanging’ (Republic 484b). Maximus of Tyre, a ‘Platonizing sophist’ of the 2nd century ad, devotes Oration 29 to the great variety of more or less unsatisfactory human pursuits and calls for the ‘escape’ of the soul from multiplicity and a determined ascent to God (Oration 10.3, 11.10). 132.5–6  that a man should differ so widely from himself at different times] This language is reminiscent of Pope, Epistles to Several Persons 1 (Cobham), lines 15–22, esp. 19–20: ‘That each from other differs, first confess; ∣ Next, that he varies from himself no less.’ Like Pope, Hume would have seen the sceptic Montaigne’s statements on the variability between and inconsistency within in­di­ vid­uals in Essais 2.2 (‘De l’inconstance’). In his Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion (an edition of which was published by the Foulis brothers in 1745), the

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Cambridge Platonist John Smith says, ‘A wicked man’s life is so distracted by a multiplicity of ends and objects, that it never is, nor can be consistent to itself, nor continue in any composed and settled frame’ (Select Discourses, 240). Such is the theme of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 5 (Moralists) 3.3. 132.10–11  the ignoble pursuits of sensual pleasure or popular applause] These words are hostile characterizations of the Epicurean and the Stoic positions, respectively, as represented in ¶¶ 2–3 below. Plato frequently warns against both pleasure and popularity as goals. For Plato on sensual pleasure, see e.g. Gorgias 492d–495b; Republic 586a–b. For corruption of talented young men by the love of political popularity, see Republic 492a–c, 494a–495c; Gorgias 481d. 132.11–12  The Divinity is a boundless ocean of bliss and glory] In the course of the speech in Plato’s Symposium in which the sage Diotima instructs Socrates about the ascent from particular beauties to the intuition of ‘the beautiful itself ’, Plato speaks of being ‘turned towards the great ocean of beauty’ (to polu pelagos tou kalou) as a stage in this ascent (210d). The phrase was taken up by later Platonic writers. Plutarch cites it in ‘Platonic Questions’ 3.2 (Moralia 1002e). According to Alcinous, as one makes the ascent, one arrives at the ‘ “great ocean of Beauty”, after which one gains an intuition of the Good itself . . . and along with this one also intuits God’ (Handbook of Platonism 10.6). God is the source of all beauty in Maximus of Tyre, Oration 11.11. The Cambridge Platonists apply the metaphor directly to God. John Smith speaks of ‘this unbounded Ocean of the Divine Being’ and of God as ‘the . . . fountain and ocean of light’ (Select Discourses, 202, 255), and Nathaniel Culverwell says, ‘The most that mans Reason can do, is to fill the understanding to the brim, but [it is] faith that throws the soul into the Ocean, and lets it roll and bathe it self in the vastnesse and fulnesse of a Deity’ (Elegant and Learned Discourse, 138). In pt. 1, bk. 4, of his Philosophical Principles, the Chevalier Ramsay says that finite intelligences remain ‘immersed in the immense ocean of light’ until ‘they are no longer able to support its radiant splendours; then they veil their eyes, sally out . . . from the centre, retire to the circumference, and there contemplate the original in the pictures, and enter into society with each other’ (286). 132.21–2  the unsatisfactory nature of all those pleasures, which detain it from its true object] Cf. Plato, Republic 586a–c, esp.: ‘Then those who have no experience of wisdom and virtue . . . are swept downwards . . . and so sway and roam to and fro throughout their lives . . . nor [have] ever been really filled with real things, nor ever tasted stable and pure pleasure’ (586a). Also cf. Cudworth: ‘such sickly and distempered appetites have we about these spiritual things, that hanker after I know not what vain shews of happiness, whilst in the mean time we neglect that which is the onely true food of our souls, that is able solidly to nourish them up to everlasting life’ (Life of Christ, 33). 132.30–133.1  a more haughty personage, . . . assuming the title of a phil­ oso­pher and man of morals] The phrase ‘man of morals’ harks back to ‘Stoic’ 20 and indicates that this ‘haughty personage’ is a Stoic.

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133.9  O philosopher! thy wisdom is vain, and thy virtue unprofitable.] In the rest of this essay (¶¶ 4–7), Hume’s Platonist addresses the Stoic. In some contexts the use of ‘thee’, ‘thou’, ‘thy’, and ‘thyself ’―found in the language of Hume’s Stoic and Platonist but not in that of his Epicurean and Sceptic―connoted con­des­ cend­ing familiarity. As Samuel Johnson says, ‘When we speak to equals or superiours, we say you’ rather than thee or thou (Dictionary, s.v. thou). Thus when the young hero in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones surprises Mr Square in flagrante delicto (5.5), Tom presumes to address the philosopher with ‘thee’ and ‘thou’. A similar example of this usage appears in Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield 1.15 (Collected Works, 4: 80). (See also the annotation for ‘Stoic’ 2 at 125.17 on the phrase, ‘O man’.) The language in the lemma evokes Milton as well as the King James Bible: ‘Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie’ (Paradise Lost 2.565). 133.13–14  a citizen, a son, a friend] Though out of order, citizen, son, and friend refer to the widening circles of sympathy in the Stoic doctrine of oikeio¯sis: family, friends, country. The Platonist is criticizing what the Stoic had said in ‘Stoic’ 13. 133.21  thyself thy own idol] Cf. John Smith: ‘He that will not submit himself to the eternal and uncreated will, but, instead of it, endeavours to set up his own will, makes himself the most real idol in the world’ (Select Discourses, 229). 134.4  Art copies only the outside of nature] For the doctrine that art copies only the ‘outside’, or appearances, of nature, see Plato, Republic 595a–602c, esp. 600e: ‘Shall we then lay it down that all the poets, beginning with Homer, are imitators of images of virtue and of everything else they write about, and that they have no contact with the truth?’ 134.9  an intelligence and a design] For the original version of 1742 the reading was ‘a Mind and a design’ (variants). For the position that mind is prior  to and underlies the motion and order of the universe, see Plato, Laws 10.891e–899d, esp. 892a: ‘As regards soul it is one of the first things and prior to all bodies and . . . it more than anything else is what governs all changes and modi­fi­ca­tions of bodies.’ Hume refers to Laws 10 in a letter to Mure of 30 June 1743 (Letters, 1: 50). 134.13–14  The most perfect happiness, . . . contemplation of the most perfect object] See Republic 583c–585e for the argument that pleasure in things that are immutable, like philosophical contemplation of the Forms, is superior to pleasure in things that are temporal, like physical things. Socrates says, ‘If, then, to be filled with what befits nature is pleasure, then that which is more really filled with real things would more really and truly cause us to enjoy a true pleasure, while that which partakes of the less truly existent would be less truly and surely filled and would partake of a less trustworthy and less true pleasure’ (585e). Cf. also (on contemplation) Alcinous, Handbook 2.2. 134.23–4  never be finished in time, . . . an eternity] The concept of eternity as atemporal is that associated with Plato (Timaeus 37c–38c) and Boethius (Consolation

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of Philosophy 5.6, Of the Trinity 4), in which eternity is defined paradoxically by timeless duration. On this point, in pt. 1, bk. 1 of Philosophical Principles, the Chevalier Ramsay set Boethius against Locke, who, confusing eternity with infinite time, would not admit of a successionless duration (52). Cf. Gay’s apostrophe to Eternity: ‘Thou still shalt Be; still, as thou wert before, | And know no Change, when Time shall be no more’ (‘Thought on Eternity’, lines 7–8).

18. The Sceptic ‘Sceptic’ appeared first in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742), as the last of the quartet of philosophical characters. The quartet was included in all editions of the ETSS. In the 1742 and 1748 versions, the following sentence appeared in ¶ 50: ‘And ’tis observable, in this Kingdom, that long Peace, by producing Security, has much alter’d them [soldiers] in this Particular, and has quite remov’d our Officers from the generous Character of their Profession’ (variants for 147.18). This deleted statement dates the Sceptic’s speech late in the hiatus between the wars of the Spanish Succession and of Jenkyns’s Ear. The complex interrelations that unite the quartet into one work suggest that Hume wrote all of the characters before the latter war began in October 1739. Unlike the other philosophical characters, ‘Sceptic’ provides no note characterizing its speaker, and that speaker is self-consciously not hortatory (¶ 33). For its appearance in French translation see the bibliographic head-note for ‘Epicurean’. 135.10  cannot extend our conception to the variety and extent of nature] Cf. Bacon, Novum organum, bk. 1, aphorisms 10, 45–6 (Works, 4: 48, 55–6). 135.13–14  the methods of attaining happiness] Cf. Hume’s autobiographical letter of March 1734: ‘I found that the moral Philosophy transmitted to us by Antiquity, labour’d under the same Inconvenience that has been found in their nat­ ural Philosophy, of being entirely Hypothetical, & depending more upon Invention than Experience. Every one consulted his Fancy in erecting Schemes of Virtue & of Happiness, without regarding human Nature’ (Letters, 1: 16). 135.16  a predominant inclination] Cf. EHU 5.1: ‘The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvenience, that, though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices, it may only serve, by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more determined resolution, towards that side, which already draws too much, by the biass and propensity of the natural temper.’ Our inclination might lead us to a ‘philosophy like that of Epictetus, and other Stoics, only a more refined system of selfishness’. However, ‘the Academic or Sceptical philosophy’ is unlikely to foster a person’s predominant inclination in these or in any other ways because it affirms nothing and cannot ‘mingle itself with any natural affection or propensity’. In ‘My Own Life’, Hume applied a similar phrase, the ‘ruling Passion’, to his abiding love of literature (Letters, 1: 1, 7), taking his phrase doubtless from Pope, Epistles to Several Persons 1 (Cobham), line 174: ‘Search then the Ruling Passion’. On ‘the

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predominant inclination’, or ‘predominant passion’, as a calm passion that can overrule violent ones, see THN 2.3.4. 135.26–31  the vast variety of inclinations and pursuits . . . the change of inclination] See ‘Platonist’ 1 and its annotations at 132.1–3 and 132.5–6, and cf. ‘Standard of Taste’ 1–2 on the ‘great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world’. 136.26  to a philosopher as to a cunning man] Bailey, Dictionarium Britannicum, s.v. cunning man: ‘a name given to an Astrologer or Fortune-teller’. See the Glossary s.v. cunning man. 136.41–137.1  there is nothing in itself, valuable or despicable, . . . beautiful or deformed] Cf. the sceptical reasoning under examination in ‘Standard of Taste’ 7, and see its annotations for 183.9–29. 137.21  a like prejudice in favour of their offspring] See the annotations for ‘Stoic’ 15 at 129.19–20 and ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ 2 at 150.6–9. 137.36–7  something approaching to principles in mental taste . . . cooks or perfumers.] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, this sentence was followed by the statement that ‘This Subject wou’d require a separate Examination’ (variants for 137.38). Cf. ‘Standard of Taste’ 12 and, on the larger point concerning uniformity of sentiment, the annotations for ¶ 10 at 185.2 and 185.19. 138.1–2  Italian music, . . . a Scotch tune] Italian musicians had been taking up residence in Edinburgh, and Scots composers of the day sometimes emulated, sometimes parodied, the Italian style. Italian and other musicians in London were incorporating fashionable Scots songs in popularized forms. A vogue in London began in the 1680s for what passed as Scots tunes (Johnson, Music and Society, 130–1), the appeal of which Dryden described in the preface to his Fables as ‘natural and pleasing, though not perfect’ (Works, 7: 34). 138.19–20  the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems] i.e. the geocentric system of Ptolemy (Mathe¯matike¯ Syntaxis [Almagest, or Mathematical Collection], bk. 1, 2nd century ad) and the heliocentric system of Nicolaus Copernicus (De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium [On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, 1543]). Hume’s example may have been suggested by Galileo’s contrasting of the ‘natural sciences, whose conclusions are true and necessary and have nothing to do with human will’, with ‘a point of law or of the humanities, in which neither true nor false exists’ (Dialogue, 53–4). That Hume had read Galileo is indicated by Hume, Hist. 5: 153 (app. 4). But cf. ‘Standard of Taste’ 25, where Hume says that those differing about matters of taste ‘must acknowledge a true and decisive standard to exist somewhere, to wit, real existence and matter of fact’. 138.29–30  the qualities of beautiful and deformed, desirable and odious] Cf. THN 2.1.8.2: ‘beauty is such an order and construction of parts, as either by the primary constitution of our nature, by custom, or by caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure

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and satisfaction to the soul. This is the distinguishing character of beauty, and forms all the difference betwixt it and deformity, whose natural tendency is to prod­ uce uneasiness.’ 138.38  inward organs] Cf. the reference to moral sense in ¶ 30 below, and see the annotations for ‘Standard of Taste’ 3 and 13 at 181.29 and 186.10. 139.15–22  Euclid . . . figure.] This discussion of Euclid would be reproduced nearly verbatim in EPM, app. 1.14. The Greek mathematician (fl. 300 bc) treats of the circle in bk. 3 of his Elements. 139.23  The mathematician] Probably Hume’s source is Spectator 409, in which Addison says, ‘One of the most eminent Mathematicians of the Age has assured me, that the greatest Pleasure he took in reading Virgil, was in examining Æneas his Voyage by the Map’ (Spectator, 3: 529). Of famous mathematicians known to Addison, Malebranche was reputed to be confessedly insensible of the qualities of poetry. Aeneas’s ‘voyage’, as recounted in Virgil’s Aeneid, took him from the fallen city of Troy to the river Tiber in Italy, on whose banks the city of Rome would be founded. He made many landfalls on the way, most notably at Carthage. 139.30–1  delicacy of temper] See the annotations for ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 4 at 36.15 and ‘Standard of Taste’ 14 at 186.19. Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the phrase read ‘Sensibility of Temper’ (variants). n. 1.1  Were I not afraid of appearing too philosophical, I should remind my reader] a figure of speech in which ‘we say something [by] saying we will not say it’ (Peacham, Garden of Eloquence, s.v. preteritio). It has several names. n. 1.1–2  that famous doctrine, supposed to be fully proved in modern times] i.e. the doctrine that ‘tastes and colours, and all other sensible qualities’, are impressions of the mind occasioned by objects rather than inherent in them as are the primary qualities of extension, solidity, and motion. Incidental to atomistic physics, the distinction was ancient (e.g. Lucretius, De rerum natura 2.730–841) but ‘in modern times’ was associated with corpuscular natural philosophy and Locke’s epistemology (Locke, Essay 2.8.9–10). Hume’s mixed assessment of this tenet of what he calls the modern philosophy is in THN 1.4.4.2–15. n. 1.3–4  The case is the same with beauty and deformity, virtue and vice] Cf. THN 3.1.1.26: ‘Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind: And this discovery in morals, like that other in physics, is to be regarded as a considerable advancement of the speculative sciences; tho’, like that too, it has little or no influence on practice.’ 140.7–8  a little miss . . . receives as compleat enjoyment] i.e. presupposing that the girl and the orator do not differ in delicacy of passion or taste. Boswell and Johnson misunderstood the point as being that all people had equal sensibilities. But Hume’s Sceptic says in ¶¶ 29–30 that not all sensibilities are equal, as does

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Hume in ‘Delicacy of Taste’. Boswell’s exchanges with Samuel Johnson on the contents of ‘Sceptic’ 18 are typical of a common and strong inclination to identify the speaker with Hume (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 2: 9 (February 1766), 3: 288 (15 April 1778)), notwithstanding Hume’s stepping out of character to speak in his own voice in n. 6 in the essay. 140.26  Philosophical devotion] Hume’s Platonist is described in ‘Platonist’, n. 1, as ‘the man of contemplation, and philosophical devotion.’ Cf. also ‘Platonist’ 6. 140.33  Popular superstitions and observances] Cf. Hume, NHR 8 and THN 1.3.8.4. The normal Christian tenet was that natural religion was insufficient and needed revealed religion, particularly the revelations from the Bible (the Sceptic’s ‘historical ’ account). When Dryden articulated this doctrine in his Religio laici (lines 1–167), he had the poem vetted by an authoritatively orthodox churchman (Works, 2: 98–101, 109–14). Hume’s twist on the theme is that natural religion is psychologically insufficient rather than doctrinally. 140.36  a life of pleasure] ‘Epicurean’ 9, ‘Stoic’ 9, and ‘Platonist’ 2 similarly stress the ultimately unsatisfying nature of merely sensual pleasure. 140.39  such as gaming and hunting] not to mention philosophy itself. See THN 2.3.10.1–10, and also ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 3. 141.2–3  the passions, which pursue external objects, contribute not so much to happiness] See ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 3 for similar reasoning. 141.11–12  the happiest disposition of mind is the virtuous; . . . that which leads to action and employment] an echo of ‘Stoic’, n. 1, ‘the man of action and virtue’. But a heroic virtue is generally unobtainable, as Hume often insists against the Stoic ‘medicine of the mind’ (‘Sceptic’ 28). Cf. ‘Epicurean’ 3–6. 141.24  Proteus-like] Proteus was a sea-deity able to change his shape at will. See Homer, Odyssey 4.414–19, 450–9. 141.33  medicine of the mind] Such is the role envisaged for philosophy in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.3.6. See the annotation for ‘Stoic’ 4 at 126.6. 142.15–16  by what arguments I should endeavour to reform him] Cf. the discussion of the sensible knave’s egoism: ‘I must confess, that, if a man think, that this reasoning much requires an answer, it will be a little difficult to find any, which will to him appear satisfactory and convincing. If his heart rebel not against such pernicious maxims, if he feel no reluctance to the thoughts of villany or baseness, he has indeed lost a considerable motive to virtue’ (EPM 9.22–3). 142.28–9  and proceeds more from its secret, insensible influence, than from its immediate application.] This elaboration on the ‘indirect manner’ was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 142.30  It is certain] Paragraphs 29 and 30 were separated into two as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants).

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142.30–1  attention to the sciences and liberal arts softens and humanizes the temper] This statement paraphrases the lines from Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 2.9.47–8, quoted in ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 5: ‘Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes|emollit mores nec sinit esse feros’; ‘[A] faithful study of the liberal arts softens the temper and does not allow it to be brutish.’ Cf. ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 5. 143.30–2  like Domitian, . . . like William Rufus, . . . like Alexander] Suetonius reports that the Roman emperor Domitian (reigned ad 81–96) spent ‘an hour a day every day’ in the early years of his reign catching flies and stabbing them with a sharp pen (Lives of the Caesars, ‘Domitian’ 3.1). In Hist. 1: 245 (s.v. ad 1100), Hume describes the passion of William Rufus (William II, king of England, 1087–1100) for hunting (‘the sole amusement, and indeed the chief occupation of princes in those rude times, when society was little cultivated, and the arts afforded few objects worthy of attention’), and tells how he met his death by it. Alexander the Great extended his conquests from Greece to northern India. 144.9–10  A consideration . . . which we enter into with difficulty] For a famous example see THN 1.4.7, wherein scepticism signally fails to induce either ataraxy or, happily, any ‘durable movements of passion’. ‘We save ourselves from this total scepticism’, Hume says, ‘only by means of that singular and seemingly trivial property of the fancy, by which we enter with difficulty into remote views of things, and are not able to accompany them with so sensible an impression, as we do those, which are more easy and natural’ (¶ 7). 144.14  a microscope or prospect] The Oxford English Dictionary quotes Hume’s sentence as illustrating the use of ‘prospect’ as short for ‘prospect-glass’, which it identifies with a telescope or spyglass. Dryden called such an implement variously a Prospective or a Perspective. Gulliver had a Pocket Perspective in Lilliput. Robinson Crusoe refers variously to a Prospective Glass and a Perspective. The latter, as the Oxford English Dictionary indicates, could refer to a magnifying glass, a possibility that might fit Hume’s sentence better than a telescope does. It appears that ‘perspective glass’ was originally a general term opposed to ‘looking glass’, or mirror, and that kinds of perspective might be spectacles, magnifying glasses, or telescopes (Van Helden, Invention of the Telescope, 9–16, 30–4). Thomas Jefferson’s perspective glass was designed for viewing maps and etchings. 144.16–17  the artificial arguments of a Seneca or an Epictetus] For an artificial argument from the Stoic moral philosopher Epictetus, see ‘Moral Prejudices’ 3. The form of happiness desiderated by the Stoics Hume calls ‘an artificial happiness’ (‘Epicurean’ 3, and see its annotation at 119.17–19). See also the annotation for ‘Stoic’ 4 at 126.6, and cf. ‘Commerce’ 9. 144.24–5  rendering the mind totally indifferent and unactive] Cf. ‘Stoic’ 13 and the annotation for 128.30 on ‘this sullen Apathy’. n. 2  Plutarch. de ira cohibenda.] Notes 2–3 and 5–6 appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). The specific argument attributed to Plutarch

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does not appear in ‘On the Control of Anger’, but ch. 8 (Moralia 456f–457c) is close. Similar passages occur in Marcus Aurelius, Communings, e.g. 8.15, 12.16; also 11.18. 145.3  All ills arise from the order of the universe] a common theme in Marcus Aurelius, Communings, e.g. 2.1; 2.3; 2.16; 6.42. For ‘vices and imperfections of men’ as a part of the world order, see Communings 5.28; 8.55; 9.42. 145.7  If plagues and earthquakes break not heav’n’s design] Pope, Essay on Man 1.155–6. The text is given as ‘plagues or earthquakes’ in Poems, 3.1: 34–5. The famous thesis of Pope’s theodicy is that ‘All partial Evil’, rightly understood, is ‘universal Good’, so that ‘Whatever Is, is Right’ (1.292–4). For Cesare Borgia see the annotation for ‘Original Contract’ 3 at 333.9, and for Catiline, ‘Eloquence’ 16 at 97.18. 145.10  To one who said] This paragraph with its citation of Plutarch was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 3  Plutarch. Lacon. apophtheg.] Plutarch’s ‘Apophthegmata Laconica’ (‘Sayings of Spartans’), ‘Anaxandridas’ 4: ‘When another person said that a good reputation does a man harm and that anyone who had got rid of it would be happy, [Anaxandridas] said, ‘By your argument, criminals would be happy. For how could a temple-robber or any other criminal care about his reputation?’ (Moralia 217a). Anaxandridas was a Spartan king of the later 6th century bc. 145.12  Man is born to be miserable] A similar sentiment and a similar con­fut­ ation are expressed at Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.23.55–3.25.61. For the con­ fut­ation, which Cicero attributes to the sceptic Carneades, see 3.24.59–3.25.60. Bayle discusses the consolation and confutation at Dictionary, 1: 280, s.v. Amphiaraus, remark K. 145.17  You should always have before your eyes death] Similar advice is in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.34.81–4. It is frequent also in Marcus Aurelius, Communings (e.g. 11.34). 145.25–6  Your sorrow . . . will not change the course of destiny. Very true: And for that very reason I am sorry] Siebert (Moral Animus, 191) identifies this expostulation and reply as a paraphrase of Solon’s rejection of the consolation that lamentation is useless (Diogenes Laertius, Lives 1.63). Bayle discusses it s.v. Foulques, remark F, where Solon is made to say, ‘for that very reason . . . I weep’ (Dictionary, 3: 73). n. 4  Tusc. quæst. lib. 5.] Hume amplifies Tusculan Disputations 5.40.116, where Cicero speaks of Latin, Greek, and ‘those languages, countless in number, which we do not understand’. ‘Punic’ was the form of Phoenician spoken in the Phoenician colonies of North Africa, especially in Carthage, as well as in the Carthaginian dependencies in the western Mediterranean. 145.32  Antipater the Cyreniac] Diogenes Laertius says that Antipater was a pupil of Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school, whose criterion was pleasure (Lives 2.86). The anecdote is told by Cicero at Tusculan Disputations 5.38.112.

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145.35  Nothing can be more destructive, says Fontenelle] Hume’s Sceptic imperfectly summarizes rather than quotes from an exchange in the 5me soir of Entretiens, in which it is said that Alexander the Great would have despaired to know of worlds that he could not conquer and that knowledge of the vortices can cure ambition. See Conversations, 126–7, for this passage and that on the ladies’ bright eyes. n. 5  De exilio.] ‘Mathematicians tell us’ is at Plutarch, ‘On Exile’ 6 (Moralia 601c); ‘To change one’s country’ is at 6 (601b); and ‘Man is not a plant’ is a com­bin­ ation of 5 (600f) and 17 (607e). Note 5 and ¶¶ 47–8 were included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants for 146.8). 146.22–5  Philip . . . Lucian . . . in the infernal regions] See Lucian, Menippus 17, where Menippus, reporting on what he had seen in the Underworld, says: ‘In fact, when I saw Philip of Macedon, I could not control my laughter. He was pointed out to me in a corner, cobbling worn-out sandals for pay!’ The cobbler is Philip II of Macedon, who conquered the Greek city-states in the 4th century bc. He died in 336. Hume treats him as an example of the aspirant to universal monarchy in ‘Eloquence’ 16 (see its annotation at 97.20). For Hume’s fondness for the satirical Lucian’s writings, see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 42 at 116.22. Hume also quotes from Lucian’s Menippus in NHR 13.7. 147.13  We are informed by Thucydides] History 2.53: ‘they resolved to get enjoyments that were quick and gave them pleasure, regarding their lives and property alike as ephemeral. . . . The pleasure of the moment and whatever was in any way conducive to it came to be regarded as good as well as expedient’. 147.16  The same observation is made by Boccace] This sentence was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). Boccaccio, Decameron, ‘First Day’: ‘Others . . . maintained that to carouse and make merry and go about singing and frolicking and satisfy the appetite in everything possible and laugh and scoff at whatsoever befell was a very certain remedy for such an ill’ (Decameron, 1: 10). In ‘Standard of Taste’ 36, Boccaccio is called ‘that agreeable libertine’. 147.18–19  Present pleasure is always of importance] For the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, this sentence replaced the reflection on soldiers quoted above in the bibliographic head-note. In its context that reflection purported to confirm the claim that considerations of mortality and the vanity of human wishes encourage ‘riot and expence’: the effect of a ‘long Peace’ on soldiers had been to make them less ‘generous’. Cf. ‘National Characters’ 5: ‘The uncertainty of their life makes soldiers lavish and generous’. 147.29  the view of human miseries] Lucretius justifies deriving happiness from the contemplation of the miseries of others in the famous lines beginning ‘Suave mari magno’ (De rerum natura 2.1–6): ‘Pleasant it is, when the winds lash the waters out to sea, to watch from shore other people in great distress; not because any man’s troubles are a joy in themselves, but because it is pleasant to view evils you are free from yourself.’

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n. 6.1  The Sceptic, perhaps, carries the matter too far] This note was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 6.10  Every one has known ills; and there is a compensation throughout] Cf. ‘Populousness’ 53 for an application of this tenet. n. 6.36  the entertaining moralists] For further comments on these authors, see e.g. ‘Populousness’, n. 263 (Plutarch, Lucian, Cicero); ‘Rise and Progress’ 42 (Lucian); ‘Civil Liberty’ 4 and ‘Rise and Progress’ 37 and n. 14 (Shaftesbury); ‘Eloquence’ 19 and ‘Arts and Sciences’ 33, and EHU 1.4 (Cicero). 149.39–40  this occupation is one of the most amusing] Cf. THN 1.4.7.12 and 14: ‘A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.’

19. Of Polygamy and Divorces ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ appeared in Essays, Moral and Political, volume 2 (1742); in Essays, Moral and Political, 3rd edn. (1748); and subsequently in all editions of  the ETSS. The 1770 ETSS saw significant deletions. French translations appeared in Le Petit réservoir, 2 (The Hague, 1750): 453–63, 469–73, and Mercure de France (February 1757), 45–61. ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ was ‘the first text translated from Hume’, according to Malherbe (‘Hume’s Reception in France’, 52–3, 57, and n. 63). 150.6–7  all the ties of nature and humanity] so altered in the 1758 ETSS from ‘the Laws of Nature and Humanity’, possibly to avoid confusion. What were deemed laws of nature do not correlate with Hume’s ‘natural’ virtues, but cut across the dichotomy between natural and artificial explained in the Treatise (3.2.1.19) and reformulated in ‘Original Contract’ 33–5. Though the laws of nature governing mating between brute creatures are instinctive, not artificial (‘Polygamy and Divorces’ 7), in the Treatise Hume discusses laws of nature only within the context of the ‘artificial’ virtues. Marriage and chastity are artificial (THN 3.2.12), but parental affection is a ‘natural’ virtue (3.2.5.6). As Hume would say in ‘On the Passions’, ‘The affection of parents to children seems founded on an original instinct. The affection towards other relations’ is not instinctual (DP 3.3 n.). Cf. THN 2.2.12.5: ‘The affection of parents to their young proceeds from a peculiar instinct in animals, as well as in our species.’ 150.8–9  reproach him with injustice or injury] Injustice pertains to marriage because justice, like marriage, is an artificial creation; injury pertains to parenthood. In the Treatise, where he is focused on what qualifies as virtuous, Hume requires more of parents than he does here: ‘We blame a father for neglecting his child. Why? because it shows a want of natural affection, which is the duty of every parent’ (3.2.1.5). A father’s dutiful acts must reflect an affectionate character for them to be virtuous. Cf. ‘Stoic’ 15 with its annotation at 129.19–20 and ‘Sceptic’ 10.

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150.17–18  In Tonquin . . . to marry for the season] Salmon refers to such a custom in Tonquin (the northernmost region of present-day Vietnam), though he does not explicitly name it marriage (Modern History, 1: 64–5). He relies on William Dampier’s Voyages, which calls the women in these temporary unions ‘Misses’ in distinction from ‘Wives’ (Collection of Voyages, 1: 50–2). 150.22  I cannot, at present, recollect my authorities] In De jure naturae et gentium, Pufendorf discusses the Athenian problem case while examining whether polygamy and divorce agree with or are ‘repugnant to the Law of Nature’ (Law 6.1.15–19). A fundamental criterion is whether unions serve the ‘End of Marriage’, i.e. the ‘Propagation of Human Race’ (6.1.11). See Law, 339, 336, and (for the problem case with references to Diogenes, Athenaeus, and Gellius) 341. To the question, ‘Is Polygamy, in any Case, lawful under the Gospel?’, Gilbert Burnet cited natural law: ‘it is to be considered, that Marriage is a Contract founded upon the Laws of Nature, its End being the Propagation of Mankind’ (‘Resolution’, xxix). 150.23–4  the republic of Athens . . . allowed every man to marry two wives] Aulus Gellius says that Euripides is reported to have had two wives at the same time, ‘since that was permitted by a decree passed by the Athenians’ and that this may have been the cause of his widely reputed misogyny (Attic Nights 15.20.6–7). Further details of the content and circumstances of the alleged Athenian law are given by Diogenes Laertius, Lives 2.26, and Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 555d–556b, while attributing a possible bigamy to Socrates. Athenaeus says that because of a ‘scarcity of men’ the Athenians (presumably during the Peloponnesian War) permitted men ‘to have two wives’. Diogenes affirms that, for the same reason, the law permitted an Athenian ‘to marry one Athenian woman and have children by another’, children who would presumably have citizen rights. Scholars vary in their assessment of the reliability of this information. See Harrison, Law, 1: 16–17, and MacDowell, Law, 90. 150.25–6  The poet Euripides] Euripides’s reputation for misogyny began with Aristophanes, as Aulus Gellius also indicates (Attic Nights 15.20.6–7), and became a constant feature of the ancient biographical tradition. 150.30  the History of the Sevarambians] Denis Vairasse d’Allais, History, 32–3. Hume’s summary differs somewhat from the original. In order to obviate disputes among the shipwrecked company, given that there were three hundred men and only seventy-four women, ‘it was resolv’d, That every principal Officer should have a Woman to himself; and that each of them should make his Choice, according to his Rank. The rest we distributed into divers Classes, agreeable to the Condition of the Persons, and regulated the whole thing so well, that every inferior Officer might co-habit with a Woman twice a Week, the common People once, and even the meanest of all every ten Days; keeping still a strict Regard to the Dignity and Age of every Person’ (History, 32). 151.2  one wife in common.] Until the 1770 ETSS, this paragraph ended thus: ‘Cou’d the greatest Legislator, in such Circumstances, have contriv’d Matters with greater Wisdom?’ (variants).

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151.3  The ancient Britons] Cf. Gallic War 5.14, where Caesar says of the Britons: ‘Groups of ten or twelve men have wives together in common, and particularly brothers along with brothers, and fathers with sons; but the children born of the unions belong to the particular house to which the maiden was first conducted.’ Pufendorf finds that the Britons’ form of polygamy, as opposed to that of the Old Testament and of Islam, is ‘repugnant to the Law of Nature’ because ‘the Natural and Regular End of marriage is, the obtaining of Children, whom we may, with certainty, call our own’ (Law, 339). The importance of assuring men that the children they raise are their own is the source, in Hume’s analysis, of the double standard of chastity for men and women (THN 3.2.12). 151.20–1  Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual] e.g. in stipulating the degrees of familial propinquity disallowed for marriage (EPM, ‘Dialogue’ 29, and 4.8–9). Improvements in ‘municipal laws’ occur by ­‘frequent trials and diligent observation’ (‘Rise and Progress’ 11). 151.23–5  All regulations . . . are equally lawful . . . though they are not all . . .  equally useful to society] Cf. Swift, Sentiments, § 2: ‘[A]lthough a Church-ofEngland Man thinks every Species of Government equally lawful; he doth not think them equally expedient’ (Prose, 2: 17). Hume applies something like Swift’s distinction also to the doctrine that ‘founds all lawful government on an original contract, or consent of the people’ (‘Original Contract’ 13–15, 18, 20, 30, 46). 151.39–40  To divide and to govern is an universal maxim] ‘Divisez pour régner’, or ‘Divide et impera’, was a maxim associated with Louis XI and Machiavelli, as well as with Roman and Byzantine diplomacy. 152.2–3  in their domestic affairs rule with an uncontroulable sway.] As of the 1770 ETSS, the following conclusion to ¶ 8 was omitted: ‘An honest Turk, who should come from his Seraglio, where every one trembles before him, wou’d be surpriz’d to see Sylvia in her drawing Room, ador’d by all the Beaus and pretty Fellows about Town, and he wou’d certainly take her for some mighty and despotic Queen, surrounded by her Guard of obsequious Slaves and Eunuchs’ (variants). 152.15  There is no rose] proverbial in several languages (Bohn, Polyglot, 46, 115, 318). variants for 152.17.  Mehemet Effendi the last Turkish Ambassador in France] This anecdote was removed from the essay for the 1770 ETSS. Hume refers not to the late (i.e. recent) ambassador, but to ‘the last’ one and therefore to Çalebi Mehmed Efendi rather than his son Mehmed Said Efendi. This would date the exchange during the father’s embassy in 1720–1 to the regency court of Louis XV. 152.23–4  Solomon . . . with his seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines] See 1 Kings 11.3. 152.25  the vanity of the world] Cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities: all is vanity’ (King James Version). Traditionally the book called ‘Qohelet’, or ‘Ecclesiastes’, was ascribed to Solomon since the author is

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described in 1.1 as ‘the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem’, and in 1.12– 2.11 he recounts his accumulation of wealth, wisdom, and pleasures of life in terms that evoke the luxurious lifestyle of Solomon as portrayed in 1 Kings 11 and elsewhere. See New Oxford Annotated Bible, 945. 152.30–1  Those, who pass the early part of life among slaves] Cf. ‘Populousness’ 6. Paragraph 12 was included as of the 1758 ETSS (variants). 153.4  Tournefort tells us] Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Voyage, 2: 16–17 ­(letter 1). Hume recounts the anecdote fallibly from memory. 153.18  In another country] Salmon attributes foot-binding in China at least partially to the desire of wealthier men to keep the women of their ‘seraglio’ from roaming (Modern History, 1: 36). 153.22  feet or legs.] Until the 1770 ETSS, this sentence was followed by ‘A Spaniard is jealous of the very Thoughts of those who approach his Wife; and, if  possible, will prevent his being dishonour’d, even by the Wantonness of Imagination’ (variants). n. 1  Memoirs de la cour d’ Espagne par Màdame d’Aunoy.] Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, comtesse d’Aulnoy, Mémoires, 1: 4–7. ‘The mother of the late king of Spain’ is Mariana of Austria, who married her uncle Philip IV of Spain in 1649. The late king is their son, Charles II, who succeeded Philip in 1665 and died in 1700. His successor, Philip V, ruled 1700–46, keeping the throne despite the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13) and so was still king when Hume wrote this essay. The incident is said to have taken place at an unidentified town while Mariana was making her progress from Austria to Madrid for the wedding. Though Hume characterizes the Mémoires de la Cour d’Espagne as ‘very good authority’, the book is a compilation of contested reliability. He seems to recount the anecdote from memory and deviates in detail from the book. variants for 154.2.  If a Spanish Lady must not be suppos’d to have Legs] This paragraph, with its citation of the Marquis d’Argens, and the next paragraph quoting Montesquieu, were omitted as of the 1770 ETSS. variants for 154.2, n.  Memoires de Marquis d’Argens.] Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’Argens, attributes the prohibition on asking a man about his wives to jealousy: ‘Leur jalousie va jusque-là’ (Mémoires, 88). He participated in an embassy to Constantinople in 1724. His Mémoires were published in 1735. variants for 154.2.  The author of the Persian letters] Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes 55 (Œuvres complètes, 1: 211). 154.5–6  those voluntary divorces, which were customary among the Greeks and Romans] Hume’s conception of voluntary divorce is appropriate to the Roman situation, where divorce was essentially at the discretion of either party. ‘Marriage was ended by the withdrawal of affectio maritalis by one or both partners. There was no public authority which had to give permission, even receipt of formal

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notice was not legally necessary, though in practice a husband or wife would usually inform the partner orally or in writing or by messenger and one would leave the marital home and recover personal property, and arrangements would be made about return of dowry’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 929). In the law of Athens, which is the only state in ancient Greece for which we are at all well informed about law, a woman passed upon marriage from the authority of her father to that of her husband, and ‘a man could divorce his wife by sending her back to her father’ (928); divorce of a husband by a wife was possible but rare. Hume is correct in so far  as the state was not involved in either Rome or Greece, except with regard to documentation. 154.40–155.1  an absolute impossibility of gratifying it] Cf. THN, introd.: ‘For nothing is more certain, than that despair has almost the same effect upon us with enjoyment, and that we are no sooner acquainted with the impossibility of satisfying any desire, than the desire itself vanishes’ (¶ 9). Hume says, ‘Too much difficulty renders us indifferent’ (‘Tragedy’ 27), a point echoed in Kames, Elements, 1: 64 (2.1.1). 155.3  where principles are . . . contrary in their operation] as in the coexistence in someone of fear and hope in varying degrees (THN 2.3.9.19–21, DP 1.12). Of our ‘violent’ and ‘calm’ passions Hume says that in general ‘both these prin­ ciples operate on the will; and where they are contrary, . . . either of them prevails, according to the general character or present disposition of the person’ (2.3.3.10; cf. DP 5.4). An opposition of passions can cause a ‘new emotion’ that is ‘converted into’ and strengthens ‘the predominant passion’ (2.3.4.5; cf. DP 6.6). See ‘Tragedy’ 10 for the example of the conversion of sorrow and distress into aesthetic pleasure. 155.9  therefore Eloisa had reason] The youthful Heloïse fell in love with her tutor, the celebrated Peter Abelard (1079–1142), who was in holy orders and therefore could not marry. At first Heloïse refused Abelard’s proposal of a secret marriage but later consented. Her uncle had Abelard castrated and Heloïse confined to a convent for the rest of her life. Their extant correspondence dates from this latter period. 155.12  How oft, when prest to marriage] Pope’s epistolary poem ‘Eloisa to Abelard’, 73–6 (Twickenham, 2: 325–6). Pope’s source is reported at 2: 295–6 as John Hughes’s translation of the correspondence, which was published in 1713. 155.22  some common object of pursuit.] At this point, until the 1770 version, there were four sentences on the comparative roles of love and friendship in marriage and the implications for divorce. See the variants. 155.30  under the prospect of an easy separation] Cf. Whole Duty of Man 2.2.6, where Pufendorf argues that ‘too free a Liberty of Divorce might . . . give encouragement to either party to cherish a stubborn Temper’ and that, alternatively, an ‘irremediable State’ would persuade both spouses ‘to accommodate their Humours to one another’.

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155.33  rendering the union entire and total] Cf. EPM 3.1.7: ‘Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions; and has often, in reality, the force ascribed to it.’ 155.34–6  The wife, not secure of her establishment . . . project] As of the 1770 ETSS, this clause replaced one quoting Thomas Parnell, ‘Hesiod, or, the Rise of Woman’, line 76. See the variants. In ‘Simplicity and Refinement’ 10, Hume adduced Parnell as exemplary in his simplicity of style and sentiment. 156.2  Augustus was obliged] The Augustan marriage laws mostly affected the Roman upper classes (‘men of fashion’). By legislation of 18 bc, consolidated and extended in a statute of ad 9 (Lex Papia-Poppaea), penalties were prescribed for men and women who remained unmarried beyond a certain age and against men over twenty-five and women over twenty who remained childless. In addition priv­ il­eges were granted for having children. Adultery of both sexes was penalized by partial loss of property and relegatio (a form of banishment) to an island. See Cambridge Ancient History, 10: 886–93. Hume’s argument about how the liberty of divorce aggravates differences of humour and creates differences of interest appears also in ‘Populousness’, n. 53. 156.4–9  The more ancient laws of Rome . . . other choice or establishment.] This conclusion to ¶ 21, with its citation of Dionysius, was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 2  Lib. 2.] Dionysius, Roman Antiquities 2.25 (quoted by Pufendorf in Law, 345–56). Dionysius is giving an idealized and inaccurate account of the ancient form of marriage known as confarreatio. Hume paraphrases 2.25.4–5, in which Dionysius celebrates the strength of the bond in this type of marriage, as a result of which, he alleges, ‘it is agreed that during the space of five hundred and twenty years no marriage was ever dissolved at Rome’. In fact confarreatio, a religious cere­ mony of marriage involving a cake made of a grain called far, was never widely practised even in early times and by the classical period was confined to certain priests and their parents (Gaius, Institutes 1.112).

20. Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing This essay took on its current title for the 1748 edition of Essays, Moral and Political, having appeared in volume 2 (1742) of that collection as ‘Of Simplicity and Refinement’. Incorporated into the 1753–6 ETSS, it appeared in all the editions of the collection. Taking as a point of departure Locke’s distinction between wit and judgement (Essay 2.11.2), Joseph Addison had famously distinguished between true, false, and mixed wit (Spectator 62–3). He also had used ballads to illustrate the value of simplicity (nos. 70, 74, 85). Hume focuses on the gradations by which a plethora of true wit produces over-refinement and unadorned simplicity becomes insipid. In 1763, Charles Churchill ridiculed what he took to be a Scottish af­fect­ ation of simplicity in his satire Prophecy of Famine: ‘Thence [Scotland] simple bards,

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by simple prudence taught, | To this wise town by simple patrons brought, | In simple manner utter simple lays, | And take, with simple pensions, simple praise’ (lines 135–8). 157.1  Mr. Addison] In Spectator 345 for 5 April 1712, Addison praised the ‘Beauties of Novelty’ and ‘Graces of Nature’ of Milton’s Paradise Lost 8.250–520: ‘They are such as none but a great Genius could have thought of, though, upon the perusal of them, they seem to rise of themselves from the Subject of which he treats. In a Word, though they are natural they are not obvious, which is the true Character of all fine Writing’ (Spectator, 3: 284). A famous formulation of which Hume would have been conscious was Alexander Pope’s couplets defining true wit as ‘Nature to Advantage drest, | What oft was Thought, but ne’er so well Exprest, | Something, whose Truth convinc’d at Sight we find, | That gives us back the Image of our Mind’ (Essay on Criticism, lines 297–10). In Spectator 253 for 20 December 1711, Addison’s critique of Pope’s poem paraphrased the formulation of this point in Nicolas Boileau’s preface to the 1701 Oeuvres diverses: ‘Wit and fine Writing doth not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable Turn’ (Spectator, 2: 483). 157.4  Sentiments, which are merely natural] A tendency of such discussions is to set content against refinement of style, but Hume, with Addison, Bossu, and others, considers that sentiments and not just ‘graces and ornaments’ can be refined or simple. In non-fiction, refinement results from uncommon ‘observations’ and strong, masculine ‘sense’ as well as from elegant language (¶¶ 1–3). ‘Simple thoughts’, says Hugh Blair in his lecture 19, are what the occasion or subject suggests ‘unsought; and what, when once suggested, are easily apprehended by all’ (Lectures, 1: 388). Dennis had said the same thing in 1711 (Critical Works, 2: 32–3). Not merely propositions to be apprehended or examined, ‘sentiments’, whether refined or simple, convey attitudes and purposes (Bossu, Treatise 6.1). They are not the passional ‘impressions of reflexion’ termed sentiments in the Treatise and contrasted with opinion in ‘Standard of Taste’ 7. Rather they are the ‘complex ideas’ referred to when, e.g., Hume’s Platonist speaks of ‘the dignity of sentiments, and all those graces of a mind’ (‘Platonist’ 6). Kames says that ‘Every thought suggested by a passion or emotion, is termed a sentiment’ (Elements, ch. 16). 157.10  la belle nature] a phrase translated by Mandeville’s Cleomenes (Fable, pt. 2, 1st dialogue) as ‘agreeable Nature’ (Fable, 2: 33). The theory of mimesis had to explain the role of art in imitating nature as more than mere accuracy. Hence artists were held to imitate la belle nature, not nature tout simple. Analyses of la belle nature might refer at the same time to embellishing and selecting from nature. Thus both ornamentation of and selection from nature are aspects of refinement. However, it was crucial to remain true to nature. Greek art supplied such excellent examples of refined nature that artists might imitate them without being diverted from nature. Dryden described a neo-Platonic version of the theory (Works, 20: 47–50 esp.) in the preface to his translation of Charles Alphonse Dufresnoy’s De arte graphica.

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A  thoroughgoing empiricist, Alexander Gerard, subscribed to another version (Essay, 114 n.). 157.11–12  The absurd naivety] Until the 1758 ETSS, this expression had a note saying, with one slight variation, ‘A Word which I have borrow’d from the French, and which is much wanted in our Language’ (variants). 157.12  Sancho Pancho] i.e. Sancho Panza, the companion of the protagonist of Don Quixote, called Pancho by Defoe, Pope, and Fielding as well as Hume. ‘Pancho’ is colloquial for ‘panza’, both meaning ‘belly’. Hume would refer to Sancho in ‘Standard of Taste’ 14–15 and in ‘National Characters’ 1 cites Cervantes as a national hero for the Spanish. Clearly Hume shared the consensus judgement that the novel was a modern classic. 157.22  fallentis semita vitæ] Epistles 1.18.103. Horace speaks of the ‘secretum iter et fallentis semita vitae’, ‘the road apart, the path of a life unnoticed’, as an option for living. It is the way of life recommended by the Epicureans. 157.33  a Gothic building] A Gothic revival in building was incipient as Hume wrote, and Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, and Gibbs all designed works in the ‘Gothic’ style. Like ‘simplicity’, the adjective ‘Gothic’ was variable in signification. It could even signify simplicity rather than ornament, and in different polemical contexts the word could be positive or pejorative. Hume’s use is in keeping with that of Dryden, Addison, Shaftesbury, Rollin, and others. Cf. Spectator 62 for 11 May 1711: ‘I look upon these Writers as Goths in Poetry, who, like those in Architecture, not being able to come up to the beautiful Simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have endeavoured to supply its Place with all the Extravagancies of an irregular Fancy’ (Spectator, 1: 268). Addison here condenses a comparison between styles in writing and architecture drawn by La Bruyère in his Caractères (‘Des ouvrages de l’esprit’, no. 15). He applies the term ‘Gothic’ pejoratively to the kind of writing that Hume in his turn deems overrefined, such as that of Martial and Cowley (Spectator 70 for 21 May 1711 and 74 for 25 May 1711). 158.9–10  the just mixture of simplicity and refinement in writing] Aristotle described the ideal for poetic diction as a mixture of plain and exotic to achieve clarity without banality (Poetics 1458a31–4). In Spectator 285 for 26 January 1712, Addison used Aristotle’s tenet to show how Milton had contrived to be ‘both Perspicuous and Sublime’ in Paradise Lost (Spectator, 3: 10). 158.14  a proper medium] Here Hume uses the word ‘medium’ to translate the mean between two extremes, as in Aristotle’s doctrine from Nicomachean Ethics 2.6, though in ‘Populousness’ 152 he would use the word ‘mediocrity’. For the Latin source of the former, cf. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 12.10.79–80: ‘the safest ­[stylistic] route is down the middle [per medium], because both extremes are faults’,  and for the latter, cf. the ‘aurea mediocritas’ of Horace, Odes 2.10.5, the ‘golden mean’.

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158.15–16  the wide distance . . . between Mr. Pope and Lucretius] A natural point of comparison and contrast between Pope and Lucretius would be their respective philosophical poems, An Essay on Man and De rerum natura. In composing his account of the universe Lucretius, as an Epicurean, was obliged to respect the Epicurean ideal of clarity and simplicity of language (cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives 10.13) and in particular its distrust of high poetry. He did so by taking archaic Greek philosophical poetry as his model (particularly that of Empedocles) and by employing such specific didactic techniques as repetition, clear but simple-sounding formulas of transition from subject to subject, and a relatively unsophisticated word order. These features may explain the appearance of ‘simplicity’ that Hume found in his language. His uncommon observations and strong, masculine sense might not suggest simplicity of sentiment. Samuel Johnson concluded in his life of Pope that the Essay on Man was commonplace in sentiment but so exquisite as poetry as to overpower judgement (Lives, 4: 76–7). Whatever Hume made of the sentiments, he did state that Pope’s verses were supreme in English for ‘spirit and elegance’ (‘Eloquence’ 4). In ‘Sceptic’ 39, Pope’s Essay is quoted in order to be summarily refuted. 158.20–1  Corneille and Congreve . . . carry their wit and refinement] Invidious comparisons between Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine were normally at Corneille’s expense. Corneille ‘is the most declamatory of all French Tragedians’, Blair says in lecture 46, and Racine ‘is free of his bombast’ (Lectures, 2: 519). In his life of William Congreve, Johnson was harder than Hume on the playwright’s comedies, whose ‘scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion: his personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted’ (Lives, 3: 71). 158.22–4  Sophocles and Terence . . . seem to have gone out of that medium] In his lecture 46, Blair attributed Sophocles’s success in pathetic scenes to ‘simple expressive language’ free of ‘unnatural refinement’ (Lectures, 2: 511). In lecture 19, Blair quotes lines 127–36 of Terence’s Andria as ‘a beautiful instance of Simplicity of manner in description’, and says in lecture 47 that if Terence ‘fails in any thing, it is in sprightliness and strength’, i.e. in refinement (Lectures, 1: 32, 2: 538). In similar terms Terence was famously described by Julius Caesar as puri sermonis amator, ‘a lover of pure language’ but lacking in the vis comica, or ‘comic vigour’ (quoted in Suetonius, ‘Life of Terence’ 5 in Lives of Illustrious Men). His comedies were read in schools from antiquity until the 19th century as models of simple, everyday Latin for speaking and writing. 158.26  Virgil and Racine . . . lie nearest the center] Virgil and Racine were deemed to set the respective standards for Latin and French poetic language. Hume’s judgement of Virgil as finding the medium between simplicity and refinement accords with the usual comparison of him with Homer, who was deemed an original genius whose flights went both higher and lower than Virgil’s. The article on Virgil in a 1740 reference work repeats the commonplace that Homer excelled in

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invention and Virgil in judgement: ‘Homer was a greater Genius, Virgil the better Artist’ (Biographia classica, 1: 199). In elaboration, Dryden’s 1685 preface to Sylvæ is quoted: Virgil ‘is every where above conceipts of Epigrammatick Wit, and gross Hyperboles: He maintains Majesty in the midst of plainness; he shines, but glares not’ (Works, 3: 7). 158.34  the dissertation on pastorals by Fontenelle] i.e. the traité on eclogues attached to his 1688 Poésies pastorales. Fontenelle sets out to determine the degree that is the medium between the ‘Clownishness’ of Theocritus’s shepherds and the artificial wit of modern pastoral characters (Of Pastorals, 341–50). He finds that the thoughts, or sentiments, should be more refined than those of actual shepherds but the expression simple: ‘Not but that we ought to use both Simplicity and a Countrylike Plainness [naïveté] even in the Thoughts but we ought to take notice that this Simplicity and Country-like Plainness only exclude your excessive Delicacy in the Thoughts, like that of the refin’d Wits in Courts and Cities, and not the Light which Nature and the Passions bestow of themselves’ (2: 349; Poésies pastorales, 106). Pope’s pastorals, which were decidedly at the refined end of the medium, were the focus of a critical disagreement over how true to rustic nature pastorals should be, and his prefatory essay on pastorals appropriates Fontenelle’s points. Fontenelle cheerfully warns readers that his eclogues may not exemplify his conclusions, having been written before he formulated his rule. 159.1  to the toilettes of Paris] The phrase alludes to a practice described as a recent development in 1681 by Pierre Bayle in his Pensees diverses, § 172: ‘The Ladys have bethought ’em of late days, that ’twas more an Air of Quality to dress in Publick and before Company’ (Miscellaneous Reflections, 2: 350–1). Addison ridiculed the imitation of this practice in England in Spectator 45 for 21 April 1711. Johnson, Dictionary, s.v. toilet: ‘A dressing-table.’ 159.1  to the forests of Arcadia] Arcadia is the ‘spiritual landscape’ devised by Virgil as the setting for his Eclogues that would become indispensable to European pastoral poetry (Snell, Discovery, 281). It bears little relation to the mountainous district of Arcadia in the central Peloponnese. A ‘forest’ in Hanoverian English was a ‘wild uncultivated tract of ground interspersed with wood’ (Johnson, Dictionary, s.v. forest). 159.5–7  No criticism can be instructive, which . . . is not full of examples and illustrations] Cf. ‘Standard of Taste’ 2. Hume himself descends not to particulars other than to adduce poets by name. After adducing the didactic poets Pope and Lucretius, Hume continues to supply examples both modern and ancient. For his examples of excesses in refinement and simplicity, he has adduced two writers of tragedies (Corneille and Sophocles) and two of comedies (Congreve and Terence). Virgil’s eclogues set the standard against which modern attempts, like Fontenelle’s, were found wanting. Like pastorals, epigrams raise in acute form the question of an effective mixture of refinement and simplicity (silver-age Martial vs. golden-age

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Catullus). As Martial and Catullus are to Latin, so Cowley and Parnell are to English, exemplifying their different ages. 159.13  It is a certain rule, that wit and passion are entirely incompatible.] As Saint-Évremond said, ‘Une ame touchée sensiblement, ne laisse pas à l’esprit la liberté de penser beaucoup, & moins encore de se divertir dans la varieté de ses conceptions’ (‘Sur les caractéres des tragédies’, Œuvres, 3: 192); ‘The soul, when it is sensibly touch’d, does not afford the Mind an Opportunity to think intensely; much less to ramble and divert it self in the Variety of its Conceptions’ (Works, 2: 26). No man is ‘at leisure to make sentences and similes, when his soul is in an Agony’, said Dryden (‘Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy’, Works, 13: 243). Hume changed ‘inconsistent’ to ‘incompatible’ as of the 1772 ETSS. 159.29–31  an epigram of Martial . . . each word in Catullus] In its article on Catullus, the Biographia classica contrasts his epigrams with those of Martial. The latter endeavoured ‘to surprize . . . by some nipping Word, which is called a Point.’ Catullus wrote after the Hellenistic fashion, ‘which is of a finer Character,’ endeavouring ‘to close a natural Thought within a delicate Turn of Words, and within the Simplicity of a very soft Expression. . . . Judges of a good Taste have always preferred the way of Catullus before that of Martial  ’ (Biographia classica, 1: 185–6). 159.32  run over Cowley once] In his life of Abraham Cowley, Johnson would treat that poet as among the last and ‘undoubtedly the best’ of ‘the metaphysical poets’. If we define wit as that ‘which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that, which he that never found it, wonders how he missed’, then these poets seldom rose to wit. Defining wit formally as ‘a kind of discordia concors’, or ‘harmonious incongruity’, allows them to be deemed witty, albeit sterile with respect to the pathetic and sublime (Lives, 1: 214, 200–1). In Spectator 70 for 21 May 1711, Addison had made a judgement similar to Hume’s: ‘Homer, Virgil, or Milton, so far as the Language of their Poems is understood, will please a Reader of plain common Sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend an Epigram of Martial or a Poem of Cowley’ (Spectator, 1: 297). 159.32–3  Parnel . . . is as fresh as at the first] Thomas Parnell, Irish clergyman and Scriblerian (1679–1718). Blair says in lecture 19, possibly following Hume, ‘that Mr. Parnell is a poet of far greater Simplicity, in his turn of thought, than Mr. Cowley’ (Lectures, 1: 388). Hume quoted Parnell in ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ (see the variants for 155.34). Parnell also wrote the erudite ‘Essay on the Life and Writings of Homer’ prefixed to Pope’s translation of the Iliad. 159.36–8  Terence . . . whose purity and nature] In his life of Terence, Crusius says that the playwright’s ‘strokes of Ridicule’ are not striking, but ‘upon a closer view they appear so just and natural, that we wonder at our own inattention, that could let them escape our observation’ (Lives, 2: 360).

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160.4–5  Seneca abounds with agreeable faults, says Quintilian] Quintilian, Orator’s Education 10.1.130. Quintilian explains (125–31) his concern that Seneca the Younger had had until recently too much influence on students of oratorical style and that, despite his many virtues, he had been a deleterious influence: ‘There are many notable sentiments in him, and there is much that may be read to moral advantage, but there are very many corruptions in his style, and they are all the more pernicious in that they abound with [abundant] attractive faults.’ Hume, accepting a different reading than modern editors accept, writes abundat rather than abundant, thus making Seneca the subject of the sentence rather than his ‘corruptions’. In his lecture 17, Blair says that Seneca ‘has been often, and justly, censured’ for use of antithesis amounting to a mannerism (Lectures, 1: 354). 160.10–11  after learning has made some progress, and after eminent writers have appeared in every species of composition] At the end of his history of the Jacobean age, Hume applies to the history of English literature a causal theory of development from simplicity to ‘degeneracy of style and language’. The ‘Asiatic manner’ was a natural development from which English was not immune (Hist. 5: 149–55, s.v. learning and arts). Upon a revival of learning, like the Renaissance, literature starts with a vitiated taste and must find its way back to simplicity, as the French had done and the English had begun to do. Cf. ‘Civil Liberty’ 8, where it appears that Hume regarded English letters as beginning in Swift and Parnell’s generation what the French had begun in Racine’s. 160.13–14  the Asiatic eloquence degenerated so much from the Attic] This clause was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). Hume’s words seem to point to the development of prose oratory in Greece from the ‘Attic’ style of the classical period to the ‘Asiatic’ of the Hellenistic period. See Cicero, Brutus 13.51: ‘But outside of Greece eloquence was cultivated with great ardour, and the splendid honours awarded to prowess in the art made the name of orator illustrious. For once eloquence set sail from the Piraeus [the port of Athens], it travelled through all the islands and made itself at home in every part of Asia. As a result it became infected with foreign manners, and lost all of what one might call the wholesomeness and sanity of Attic diction, and almost forgot how to speak. This is the origin of the Asiatic orators; they are far from contemptible in respect of fluency and fullness, but they show too little restraint and are too inclined to verbosity.’ Cf. the annotations for ‘Eloquence’ 3 at 92.28 and 19 at 98.40. 160.14–15  the age of Claudius and Nero . . . inferior to that of Augustus] The reign of Augustus (31 bc–ad 14) was made illustrious by the splendours of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, and Livy. Together with the writers of the late republic—Catullus, Lucretius, Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust—they form what in Hume’s day was called the Golden Age of Latin literature (e.g. Ainsworth, Dictionary, xxx–xxxi). The reigns of Claudius (41–54) and Nero (54–68) had such writers as Seneca, Lucan, Petronius, and Phaedrus, who were assigned to a Silver Age of Latin literature extending to Hadrian’s reign. See also the annotation for

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‘National Characters’ 24 at 170.3–4 on the perceived decline of rhetoric in the ­latter period. 160.16  some symptoms of a like degeneracy of taste] Initially, in 1742, this passage read ‘many symptoms’ (variants).

21. Of National Characters This essay first appeared in 1748 in the consolidation of the two volumes of Essays, Moral and Political, and in Three Essays, Moral and Political. In the former appearance a footnote announced that ‘National Characters’, ‘Original Contract’, and ‘Passive Obedience’ were ‘added to this Edition.’ ‘National Characters’ took the place of ‘Protestant Succession’, which was kept back (see the bibliographic headnote for that essay). Thereafter ‘National Characters’ appeared in all editions of the ETSS. A circumstantial case has been made that Hume composed the essay in Turin in 1748 in reaction to the contents of Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois. According to this account, however, Hume’s acquaintance with the contents had to antedate the publication of L’Esprit in folio in October and quarto in November because ‘National Characters’ itself appeared in mid-November in London (Chamley, ‘Conflict’, 286–96). In any case the climatic determinism that Hume criticizes in his essay was a commonplace long before L’Esprit was written. If we view the digression on soldiers and priests as arising from personal experience, it is easy to imagine its reflecting Hume’s military experience in 1746, placing a draft in 1747 in the hiatus between General St. Clair’s excursion to Brittany and his embassy to Vienna and Turin. In 1754–7, the Select Society of Edinburgh would choose national character on three occasions as its topic for discussion, originally on Hume’s intiative (Mossner, Life, 281–2). Montesquieu praised the essay in a letter to Hume of 19 May 1749, noting the major difference between their accounts: ‘you accord a much greater influence to moral causes than to physical causes’ (Burton, Life, 1: 456). Hume’s essay, ‘traduit de l’Anglois, en 1754’ and including the notorious note on Negroes added in 1753 (ESTC T167242), appeared in Mercure de France (January 1756), no. 2, pp. 21–49. Malherbe reports that the translation was by Nicolas-Claude Thierot and revised by Voltaire (‘Hume’s Reception in France’, 57 and n. 63). A response to ‘l’Essai de M. Hume, sur le Caractére des Nations, par M. l’Abbé Regley’, appeared in July (no. 2, pp. 49–59). 161.1  national characters] The issue, similarly phrased, was topical. In his Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains (ch. 22), Montesquieu had said: ‘Il y a dans chaque nation un esprit général’ (Œuvres, 2: 203), and Dubos spoke of ‘le caractère des nations’, translated as ‘the different characters of nations’ (Critical Reflections 2.15, title). Espiard de La Borde chose the title, Essais sur le genie et le caractère des nations (Brussels, 1743), for the first edition of his work and L’Esprit des nations for the edition of 1752 (trans. as The Spirit of Nations, 1753). Hume reverts to the subject several times in his omnibus letter about his journey from The Hague

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to Turin in 1748 in the entourage of General St. Clair (Letters, 1: 114–33). He writes for example from Trent on 8 May that the Stirians and the Tirolians ‘are both Germans subject to the House of Austria; so that it wou’d puzzle a Naturalist or Politician to find the Reason of so great and remarkable a Difference’ between them. He contrasts Nuremberg and Bavaria and makes a general comparison of the  Germans with the French and the English (2, 7 April, Letters, 1: 124–6). Contemporary discussion of the reasons for the diversity of national character was related to the question of why some ages are more favourable to the productions of the arts and sciences than others (see ‘Rise and Progress’) and what social conditions foster different kinds of talent or genius (see ‘Eloquence’). In this respect the question of national character was an aspect of the ‘querelle’ over whether the ancients were superior to the moderns. Hence, for example, the perceived degeneration of the modern Romans had a traditional place in the controversy (e.g. Dubos, Reflexions 2.16) and survives in ‘National Characters’ (¶ 17 and annotation at 166.27). 161.12–14  Cervantes . . . Tycho Brahe] Don Quixote (1605–15) was seen both as out of the Spanish character for gravity and as a modern classic. The title-page of Henry Fielding’s 1742 Joseph Andrews proudly proclaimed the novel to be ‘in Imitation of The Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote.’ Heylyn says that Denmark had been of ‘no great Note for Men of Learning’ and then identifies ‘that renowned Astronomer’, Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), as one of the distinguished few (Cosmography, 427, s.v. Denmark). 161.15  Different reasons are assigned for these national characters] A para­ graph break was introduced here first for the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (vari­ ants). On determining causes in human affairs, see ‘Rise and Progress’ 2–4. In EPM, ‘Dialogue’ 25, Palamedes stresses ‘fashion, vogue, custom, and law’ in connection with national character. The distinction between moral and physical causes had long been a tool in the explanation of human characteristics. See e.g. Dubos’s 1719 Reflexions critiques (2.12–20, with an application to national characters in 2.15), and Montesquieu’s 1721 Lettres Persanes (nos. 113–22) and 1734 Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains (ch. 18), to be amplified in L’Esprit 19.4. 161.16–18  moral causes . . . motives or reasons] Such causes are, in Chambers’s language, ‘Dispositive, Excitative, and Imputative’ (Cyclopædia, s.v. cause). In other words they induce behaviour in free agents. Hence Samuel Clarke contrasts moral motives with physical efficient causes to prove the liberty of will (Demonstration, prop. 10). When Dubos assessed ‘the share which moral causes have in the progress of arts’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 95), he had in mind, for example, whether an artist’s country is at war or peace, how much support the sovereign gives, and whether excellent teachers are available. Finding that moral causes cannot account for the flourishing and the failure to flourish of arts in different times and places, he inferred that physical causes have the priority (2.12–13). Blackwell made a similar distinction, between air and climate on the one hand and education and culture on

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the other, in explaining the genius of Homer (Enquiry, § 1). Hume’s opposition of moral and physical causes in ¶ 2 must accommodate interaction between the two. Conventionally the category of moral causes pertained to those related to human actions as opposed to physical forces. In this light Hume places ‘the plenty or penury in which the people live’ among moral causes, which affect ‘the mind as motives or reasons’. On the other hand he places malnutrition among physical causes, which he enumerates as ‘air, food, or climate’ (¶ 7). In ‘Populousness’ 1–5, Hume follows Montesquieu in including disease among physical causes (Lettres Persanes 113). 161.22  those qualities of the air and climate] To Gibbon, writing in 1788 (Decline and Fall, 7: 219 n. 2), the two great theorists of ‘the influence of climate’ on human behaviour and institutions had been Dubos and Montesquieu. Hume refers to Dubos on this subject at ‘Populousness’ 155 (with n. 217) and 254. Dubos, who devotes Reflexions 2.14–20 to the topic, adduces a passage of Fontenelle’s 1688 Digression sur les anciens et les modernes in which Fontenelle flirts with the theory (2.13; Critical Reflections 2: 110–11), though in fact Fontenelle emphasizes moral causation at the expense of physical. Dubos describes how behaviour is determined physically by our blood, which is affected by the air we breathe. Climate and soil are variables in the quality of air (2.14). In addition to the passage cited below in Hume’s note 9, Sir William Temple employs a theory of climatic determinism in ‘An Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government’ and ‘Some Thoughts upon Reviewing the Essay of Ancient and Modern Learning’ (Works, 1: 95, 97, 303). Other works adhering to the theory included John Arbuthnot, An Essay concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies (6.2, 17–20), and Sir John Chardin, Voyages en Perse (1687). This literature makes use of discussions of classical theories, as in Hippocrates, Airs Waters Places 12–24; Aristotle, Politics 1327b20–36; Polybius, Histories 4.20–1; and Tacitus, Germania 29. 161.30  poverty and hard labour debase the minds] See the annotation for ‘Essay Writing’ 1 at 3.1 on ‘the animal life’. 161.32–4  government . . . oppressive . . . banish all the liberal arts from among them.] Until the 1770 ETSS, this paragraph concluded thus: ‘Instances of this Nature are very frequent in the World’ (variants). Cf. ‘Rise and Progress’ 13, and see the annotations for ‘Civil Liberty’ 4 at 87.15 and n. 2. The commonplace could also be found in Cato’s Letters 71 (31 March 1722) and Blackwell, Enquiry, § 5. n. 1.2  Men. apud Stobæum.] Menander, Principal Fragments (ed. Allinson), 528 (no. 732K). The lines that Hume quotes and translates are among the ‘sententiae’ or aphorisms attributed to Menander found in Johannes Stobaeus, Anthologium 4.12.9. They are all omitted from most recent editions of Menander, including W. G. Arnott’s edition in the Loeb Library. For Hume’s πλάττει (plattei, ‘shape’) most MSS of Stobaeus read πλάττοι (plattoi, ‘were to shape’). Listed in the Hume Library is Leclerc’s translation of Grotius’s edition of Menander (1709), wherein this saying appears as fragment 53 on page 224.

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162.13–14  priests of all religions are the same] an anticlerical commonplace appearing, e.g., in line 99 of Dryden’s satire, Absalom and Achitophel (Works, 2: 38, praised by Hume at Hist. 6: 543), and in the preface for pt. 2 of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (2: 16). George Berkeley puts it into the mouth of a free-thinker in Alciphron 1.3 (Works, 3: 36). 162.16–17  chymists observe, that spirits, when raised to a certain height, are all the same] Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. spirit: ‘the Chymists call Spirits, all the fine subtile, and not aqueous Particles, raised from Bodies by Heat, and reduced into Liquors by Distillation’. Cf. Hume in ‘Rise and Progress’ 8: ‘The mass cannot be altogether insipid, from which such refined spirits are extracted.’ n. 2.1  Though all mankind] This note provoked some delayed reaction. See 1755 and 1760 sermons by Robert Traill, Qualifications and Decorum, which treated the note as a satire (10–11, 16–27), and Alexander Gerard, Influence of the Pastoral Office (3–72). Gerard would be a friendly critic of Hume’s ‘Standard of Taste’ (see the head-note for that essay). For recent attacks on ‘priestcraft’ see Cato’s Letters 135–6 and the annotation for ‘Parties of Great Britain’ 3 at 72.7. In ‘National Characters’, however, Hume does not depend upon anti-papism and the distinction between priests and clergymen that he drew in ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm’ (vari­ants for 78.19, n.), referring instead generically to clergymen. Gerard insists on the distinction between a ‘popish priest’ and a ‘protestant minister’ (38–41 at 40). Robert Wallace drafted but did not publish a rejoinder to Hume’s note (Heinemann, David Hume, 9–16). The clergy of Edinburgh had been more than a little re­spon­ sible for Hume’s failure to obtain the chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh in 1745. n. 2.12  This dissimulation often destroys the candour] a point reiterated by Philo in DNR 12, ¶ 17. n. 2.18–19  that every thing is lawful to the saints, and that they alone have property in their goods] From a description of the Antinomians and Levellers in Hist. 6: 3–4, 12, 546–7 (n. A), it is possible to surmise what theology Hume has in  mind. In the ferment of the 1640s these tenets were attributed to various Nonconformist sects, which were ‘mixt and compounded’ rather than discrete (Edwards, Gangræna, 16). In his simplified taxonomy of sects Richard Baxter attributed to the Familists the tenet ‘that God regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of the heart, and that to the pure all things are pure (even things forbidden)’ (Autobiography, 73). The inapplicability of sin to the ‘saints’ followed from an emphasis on justification by grace and an extreme reaction against a worksrighteousness that was imputed to the Mosaic law. n. 2.28  what Archimedes only wanted] ‘[Give me] somewhere to stand, and I  will move the earth’. This quotation from Archimedes is given by Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics of Aristotle 1110.5. See Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 7, 92.

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n. 2.41  Odium Theologicum] in Hume’s phrase elsewhere, ‘Theological antipathy’ (Hist. 6: 21, on the punishment of Montrose). n. 2.44–6  Revenge is a natural passion . . . their vindictive disposition.] This paragraph was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 2.62  Dion. Hal. lib. 2.] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.21.3. Dionysius may well have derived his information from the Roman polymath and antiquarian Varro (1st century bc), whom he has just cited (2.21.1–2). Hume’s cit­ ation was part of a paragraph added for the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, with an erroneous reference, never corrected, to ‘lib. 1.’ (variants). Though Hume may have reasonably guessed that Dionysius dealt with the religious reforms of Romulus in his first book, Hume’s guessing from memory is less likely than a compositor’s mistake. 163.5  every other animal] Cf. THN 2.1.12.2: ‘’Tis usual with anatomists to join their observations and experiments on human bodies to those on beasts, and from the agreement of these experiments to derive an additional argument for any particular hypothesis. ’Tis indeed certain, that where the structure of parts in brutes is the same as in men, and the operation of these parts also the same, the causes of that operation cannot be different, and that whatever we discover to be true of the one species, may be concluded without hesitation to be certain of the other.’ Also THN 1.3.16.3 and EHU 9.1. n. 3.1  Cæsar (de bello Gallico, lib. 4.) says] Julius Caesar, Gallic War 4.2.2: ‘Moreover the Germans do not import and make use of the horses in which the Gauls so much delight and which they acquire at great expense, but they take their own native horses which are small and ungainly, and by daily training they make them capable of the greatest exertion.’ The reputation of Gallic cavalry is widely attested, e.g. in Strabo, Geography 4.4.2: ‘the best cavalry-force the Romans have comes from these people [the Gauls]’. Apparently an afterthought, note 3 was added as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, with an erroneous citation, never corrected, to ‘lib. 1.’ (variants). If it were not a compositor’s mistake, the error might be explained as a trick of Hume’s memory by the fact that Caesar is describing the German tribe of the Suebi, whose war against him he had already described at length in book 1. n. 3.2  We find in lib. 7.] Caesar, Gallic War 7.65.4–5. ‘Because Caesar recognized that the enemy were superior in cavalry, he sent to Germany across the Rhine to those communities which he had pacified in previous years, and summoned horsemen from them. . . . When they arrived, they were riding less than adequate horses, so he took the horses from the military tribunes, the other Roman horsemen, and the veterans and gave them out to the Germans’. n. 3.7–8  Strabo, lib. 2.] Strabo, Geography 2.3.7: ‘[A]s regards the various arts and faculties and institutions of mankind, most of them, when once men have made a beginning, flourish in any latitude whatsoever and in certain instances in spite of

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the latitude; so that some local characteristics of a people come by nature, others by training and habit. For instance, it was not by nature that the Athenians were fond of letters [philologoi], whereas the Lacedaemonians, and also the Thebans, who are still closer to the Athenians, were not so; . . . . And further, the excellent qualities of horses, cattle, and other animals, are the result, not merely of locality, but of training also.’ The contrast between the quick intelligence of the Athenians and the tardiness of the Spartans was a commonplace, which goes back at least as far as Thucydides (History 1.68). The river Tweed marks the boundary between England and Scotland. 165.5  If on the first establishment of a republic, a Brutus] In the traditional account Lucius Junius Brutus became the first consul of the Roman Republic after effecting the expulsion of the last king, Tarquinius, in 509 bc. As consul Brutus ordered and supervised the execution of his sons for conspiring to restore Tarquinius. See Livy, History 1.56–60, 2.3–5. 165.13–14  fixed moral causes] Hume offers examples of fixed moral causes in n. 2, where circumstances intrinsic to priesthood inflame vices beyond the norm, and in ¶ 25, where ‘an excess of refinement’ is supposed to cause treachery in ­modern Spanish and Italians. 165.15  a maxim in all philosophy] This sentence was included as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). Hume recommended parsimony of principle in THN 2.1.3.7, citing the Aristotelian maxim that nature does nothing in vain (On the Heavens 2.11). Cf. William of Ockham’s principle of parsimony, intended to eliminate unverifiable pseudo-explanations, and the modern permutation of the principle in the first of Newton’s four ‘Rules of reasoning in philosophy’ prefixed to book 3 in the second (1713) and third (1726) editions of Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica: ‘We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances’ (398). 165.18  sympathy or contagion] Cf. THN 2.1.11.2: ‘No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their in­clin­ations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own. This is not only conspicuous in children, who implicitly embrace every opinion propos’d to them; but also in men of the greatest judgment and understanding, who find it very difficult to follow their own reason or inclination, in opposition to that of their friends and daily companions. To this principle we ought to ascribe the great uniformity we may observe in the humours and turn of thinking of those of the same nation; and ’tis much more probable, that this resemblance arises from sympathy, than from any influence of the soil and climate, which, tho’ they continue invariably the same, are not able to preserve the character of a nation the same for a century together.’ See the annotation on this passage for references to climatic determinists at THN, 883. On sympathy as contagion see THN 3.3.3.5.

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165.22–3  Thus the Chinese] On the supposed uniformity of Chinese manners, see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 21 at 108.14–15. To judge from ‘Rise and Progress’ 21, Hume regarded the permeation through all aspects of Chinese society of Confucianism as an effect rather than a cause of the supposed Chinese uniformity. One explanation for the uniformity was that it resulted from self-imposed isolation. In the words of Espiard de La Borde, ‘The Chinese, among whom travelling is forbid, and no Foreigners likewise allowed to settle, have adhered to the same Customs, Laws and Usages during the long Successions of thirty imperial Families’ (Spirit of Nations [1.]1.5). 165.28  Athens and Thebes] In n. 3, Hume cites Strabo, Geography 2.3.7, as authority for this common contrast between the characters of Athens and Thebes. 165.31–2  Plutarch, discoursing of the effects of air] This seems to be a reference to Plutarch, Lives, ‘Themistocles’ 19. Hume refers to the same work on this subject in his memoranda (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 512). Piraeus was the harbour of ancient Athens, whose ‘inhabitants’, as Aristotle said, ‘are more democratic than those who live in the city’ (Politics 1303b2). Cf. Möller on the Piraeus as a ‘world apart’ (‘Classical Greece: Distribution’, 368). 165.35  in Wapping and St. James’s] Wapping was the dock area in the East End of London, while St. James’s was the district around the royal palaces. Cf. Addison, Spectator 403 for 12 June 1712: ‘The inhabitants of St. James’s, notwithstanding they live under the same Laws, and speak the same Language, are a distinct People from those of Cheapside, who are likewise removed from those of the Temple on one side and those of Smithfield on the other by several Climates and Degrees in their way of Thinking and Conversing together.’ 165.40  Languedocians and Gascons] inhabitants of provinces of southern France that are separated from Spain by the Pyrenees mountains. 166.8  the Jews in Europe] Attributing national character preponderantly to ‘Government and Education’ rather than climate, and considering like Hume that characters vary with time, John Toland had argued in 1714 for the naturalization of Jews on the basis of their history of assimilation (Reasons, § 9). Though Hume was unimpressed with Jewish assimilation into host societies, he deplored Edward I’s expulsion of Jews from England (Hist. 2: 76–8). 166.8  the Armenians in the east] Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. Armenians: ‘The Armenians, since the Conquest of their Country by Scha Abas King of Persia, have had no fixed Place of Habitation, but are dispersed in divers Parts of Europe. — Their chief Employment is Merchandise, in which they excel.’ n. 4.1  A small sect] Note 4 was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 166.10  The Jesuits] Hume criticizes the casuistry of the Society of Jesus at Hist. 4: 188. Over the course of 1759–67 the order would be expelled from Portugal,

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France, Spain, Naples, Parma, and Malta, and in 1773 the pope would attempt to suppress the order (Anderson, Europe, 404–6). 166.13  two nations, inhabiting the same country] By Hume’s time the Greeks had been subjects of the Ottoman Empire for four hundred years. Hume’s character types seem to be due to the fact that the Turks left commerce largely in the hands of the Greeks (with the Jews and Armenians), while concentrating themselves on government and warfare (Woodhouse, Greek War, 29). 166.19  colonies] Here, as in the note on Negroes (n. 6), Hume contradicts Dubos, Reflexions 2.15. (See Critical Reflections, 2: 188, on the Africanization of the Portuguese in their colonies on the west coast of Africa, and 2: 198–202, a survey of European colonies.) Dubos argues that the Franks and others degenerated in Egypt during the Crusades; the Portuguese and Dutch in the East Indies; and the Spanish in Flanders, the West Indies, and America. Montesquieu makes the same judgement as Dubos (L’Esprit 14.3). 166.24  ingenuity, industry, and activity of the ancient Greeks] Heylyn says that with reason the ancient Greeks called other peoples barbarians, ‘a Name now most fit for the Græcians themselves, being an unconstant People, destitute of all Learning, and the means to obtain it . . . , riotous and so lazie, that for the most part they endeavour their profit no further than their Belly compels them; and so perfidious withal in all their Dealings, especially towards the Western Christians, that it is grown into a Proverb amongst the Italians, . . . He that trusts to a Greek is sure to be couzened’ (Cosmography, 516, s.v. Greece). A more recent, ‘patriot’ account of the degeneration of the Greeks from their ancient nobility is James Thomson’s 1736 Liberty (2.391–500 at 395–6): modern Greece was ‘in the Kindred Gloom | Of Superstition, and of Slavery, sunk!’ 166.27  the ancient Romans] The contrast perceived between the ancient and the modern Romans was a standard topic in the investigation of the causes of national characters, e.g. Dubos, Reflexions critiques 2.16; Montesquieu, Réflexions sur la sobriété des habitants de Rome comparée a l’intempérance des anciens Romains (1732); Espiard de La Borde, Spirit of Nations [1.]1.5; Thomson, Liberty, pt. 1 (‘Antient and Modern Italy Compared’). n. 5  Titi Livii, lib. 34. cap. 17.] Livy, History 34.17. 6, quoted in the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 246. This note was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 166.31  fifty years ago] If Hume wrote this essay in 1747, fifty years extends back precisely to the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, which ended a war in which Spain, as an ineffectual member of the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV, had been incapable of defending itself or its territory, notably the Spanish Netherlands. However, a round figure like ‘fifty years’ need not be intended as precise and could, if Hume wrote the essay in 1748, simply point back generally to the Nine Years War.

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166.32–3  The Batavians. . . . Their posterity] In Germania 29, Tacitus notes that the Batavi were ‘preeminent among all [the German] tribes for courage’ and that they were exempt from taxation and ‘reserved solely for use in battle’. With a few other tribes, they supplied the Roman emperor’s imperial bodyguard (Speidel, Riding for Caesar, 12–15). The Batavi were the ‘ancestors’ of the inhabitants of Holland, or the Dutch (cf. ‘Populousness’ 173). Dubos explained the change thus: ‘The present inhabitants of the province of Holland, which includes the isle of the Batavians, and a part of the country of the ancient Frieslanders, are intirely addicted to commerce’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 204). But, Dubos argued, the change in occupation and character is due to a physical change in the country. Owing to inundations of the sea, this part of the world that, on Tacitus’s evidence, had been mountainous in classical times, is now flat. Temple also ascribed the change to the modern Dutch devotion to trade, but moreover observed that the United Provinces, like Venice, had money rather than a large populace with which to counter the large forces of neighbours and therefore needed standing armies and ‘Foreign Stipendiary Bands’ (Observations, 91–3, 128). In 1672 the Dutch had hired German soldiers against Louis XIV in ‘the Dutch war’, and again during the War of the Spanish Succession (Kaiser, Politics and War, 180, 191). The French invasion of April 1747 had exposed the republic’s incapacity to conduct even a defensive war prepared in advance with their ‘barrier’ fortresses. That war prompted the following discussion in the British Magazine: ‘Other Countries abound with superfluous People; but this [the United Provinces] wants Men to fill her Civil, Military, and naval Posts. The younger Branches of German Princes generally make their Fortunes in this Service; their Ships are mostly manned with Swedes and Danes, and their Soldiery is composed of divers Nations. A common Soldier receives clear half a Crown per Day and lists himself for what number of Months, or Years, he himself pleases. A Captain has 120 l. per Ann. besides the Advantage of clothing his Company, and ten Crowns for every Man that falls in Battle’ (‘Present State of the Republick’, 510). 167.1–2  that which Cæsar has ascribed to the Gauls] For instance, at Gallic War 6.11–20 Caesar gives a general description of the Gauls, their political factions, the orders of Druids and knights, their rituals including human sacrifice, and ­savage punishments. 167.5–6  before the Roman conquest] See Hume, Hist. 1: 3–6. This sentence concluding ¶ 17 appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants for 167.4). 167.6–8  our ancestors, . . . abject superstition, . . . furious enthusiasm] For the distinction between these kinds of ‘false religion’, see Hume’s ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm’, with the annotations for ¶¶ 1–3. The abject superstition of ‘a few cen­ tur­ies ago’ was in the Middle Ages, while inflammatory enthusiasm characterized the early Reformation (e.g. Hist. 4: 22–4), the Commonwealth, and the Protectorate. 167.8–9  cool indifference with regard to religious matters] An evangelical revival was in fact underway, yet similar assessments issued from the pious and

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l­ibertine alike. ‘Our Magistrates and Governors, far from setting the Example their Station requires, live in an open and avowed Contempt of Religion’, lamented one  pamphleteer (Serious Address, 10–11). The ‘fable of Christianity’ was now exploded, according to Lord Hervey (Some Materials, 92; cf. 410). See the annotations for ‘British Government’ 5 at 63.22 on the clergy and for ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm’ 8–9. 167.13–14  Thus all the Franks] This name was applied by Byzantine Greeks and Turks to all the inhabitants of western Europe indiscriminately. For the Byzantines see Lock, Franks, 8–9; for the Turks, the life of Sir Dudley North, ¶ 189: ‘All European nations, that live among them [the Turks], and have articles for intercourse of trade, are called Franks’ (North, Lives, 2: 101). 167.18–20  mixture of manners and characters . . . the English] The muchremarked English humours were traced to climate in Temple’s ‘Of Poetry’ (Works, 1: 247–9), which was quoted at length on the subject by the author of Guardian 144 (26 August 1713). Congreve attributed the variety of humours in England to the liberty enjoyed by the common people and the grossness of their diet (Spingarn, Critical Essays, 3: 252). Hume found that the manners of the English during Jacobean times ‘were agreeable to the monarchical government, which prevailed; and contained not that strange mixture, which, at present, distinguishes England from all other countries’ (Hist. 5: 132 (app. 4)). 167.28–9  altogether of merchants, as in Holland] Temple said that the opinion that there is a merchant government in Holland is ‘commonly received among Foreigners’. But it is mistaken since all or most of the ministers come from ‘those Families which live upon their Patrimonial Estates’. However, their salaries were small and they lived in a simple manner (Observations, 84, 83, 68–72). A report of 1747 says that ‘In common, the Dutch are looked upon as Merchants and Tradesmen. But I assure you here is a Nobility, who . . . have as considerable a Share in the Government of a free People, as those of most Nations’ (‘Present State of the Republick’, 569). 167.30  Germany] In common usage the word ‘Germany’ referred to the Germanspeaking cities, princedoms, and territories constituting the bulk of the Holy Roman Empire (see e.g. ‘Money’ 10). See the letter of 7 April 1748, where, commenting on the cities and princedoms that he had passed in travelling up the Rhine valley and then sailing down the Danube as far as Vienna, Hume says, ‘Germany is undoubtedly a very fine Country, full of industrious honest People, & were it united it woud be the greatest Power that ever was in the World’ (Letters, 1: 126). 167.33–4  The people in authority are composed of gentry and merchants.] Until the 1760 ETSS, this sentence was ‘The People are compos’d of Gentry and Merchants’ (variants), referring plainly not to the populace, but to those among it with some authority providing the third component in the ‘Mixture of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy’. However, to say that ‘All sects of religion are to be

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found among’ that group is problematic. Inasmuch as those holding office had to be conforming members of the Church of England, Hume evidently acknowledges the extent to which the laws never actually excluded all Protestant Dissenters from government, from local government up even to Parliament (Watts, Dissenters, 1: 482–5; Sedgwick, History of Parliament, 1: 139). The 1711 act against ‘occasional conformity’ (10 Anne, c. 6) had been repealed in 1718, but withstanding attempts at repeal in the 1730s and ostensibly still excluding Dissenters from office were the Corporation Act of 1661 (13 Charles II, st. 2, c. 1) and the two test acts (25 Charles II, c. 2, and 30 Charles II, st. 2, c. 1) passed in 1673 and 1678, respectively. The trimming policy of Whig ministries was to undermine these laws with repeated indemnity acts. The laws would not be repealed until 1828. Of course ‘All sects of religion’, if applied to office holders, does not extend beyond denominations of Protestants. And even the Toleration Act of 1689 (1 William & Mary, c. 18) formally released dissenting ­teachers only from subscribing to those of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England dealing with church government and baptism. Informally William ensured that the act was not enforced against dissenting Protestants. See English Historical Documents, 6: 400–3, 406–8, 375–6, 389–94. Additionally dissenting magnates, including Roman Catholics, might wield considerable power without office, for example through patronage. 168.2–3  beyond the polar circles or between the tropics] Bracketing off the polar and the equatorial zones is a commonplace in these discussions. Contradicting Fontenelle’s Digression on the forces limiting Negroes and Laplanders (Discourse, 183–4), Dubos attributes their supposed lack of achievement to the extreme climates in which they live (Dubos, Critical Reflections, 2: 213). This is a modern ­variant of the claim derived from ancient authors of the superiority of the temperate regions, e.g. Blackwell, Enquiry, 6: ‘the temperate Regions [as opposed to “the rough and Cold” and “the hotter”], lying under the benign Influences of a genial  Sky, have the best chances for a fine perception, and a proportioned Eloquence’ (§ 1). n. 6.1  the Negroes] Until the 1777 ETSS, the sentence read, ‘negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds)’, i.e. kinds of non-white species. The second sentence originally read, ‘There never was a civiliz’d nation of any other complexion than white, . . .’ (variants). The note appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). It received forceful rebuttals in James Beattie’s 1770 Essay (3.2) and 1790–3 Elements of Moral Science (vol. 2, pt. 2, by way of an attack on slavery, something that Hume deplored himself in ‘Populousness’ 6–12). William Dickson, in contrast, rebutted Hume on racism while coupling him with Benjamin Franklin as allies against slavery (Letters on Slavery, 59–85, 150). n. 6.10  they talk of one Negroe] In his 1774 History of Jamaica, Edward Long identified Francis Williams (c.1700–c.1770) as the one negro whom Hume had heard was ‘a man of parts and learning’ (Carretta, Unchained Voices, 75). Born in

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Jamaica of free parents, Williams was brought to England by the Duke of Montagu and educated at a grammar school and at Cambridge. He then returned to Jamaica and set up a school in Spanish Town. It was his custom to compose a Latin verse panegyric on each successive governor of the island. His portrait is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 168.17  The Greeks and Romans, who called all other nations barbarians] The word barbaros originally meant simply ‘non-Greek-speaking’. From the beginning of the classical period the Greeks tended to define the rest of the world as barbaroi (see e.g. Aeschylus, Persians; Herodotus, Persian Wars 1, pref.; Hall, Inventing the Barbarians, 99–100). Aristotle expresses a common Greek belief about the effect of climate: northern peoples are full of spirit but deficient in intellect and skill because of the cold, whereas the inhabitants of Asia conversely have skill and intellect but lack spirit (Politics 1327b18–38). The Greeks, living in a temperate zone, are both spirited and intelligent and therefore have both free government and the ability to rule others. The Romans adapted the term to cover everything that was not Roman (Varro, On the Latin Language 8.64), or, more usually, that which was neither Greek nor Roman, as in Cicero’s description of the kings of Persia and Syria (Cicero, Verrine Orations 2.3.76). See Oxford Classical Dictionary, 233, s.v. barbarian. 168.22–5  It is pretended . . . as we may particularly observe of the languages] Hume’s discussion of languages reflects a contemporary debate. It was a commonplace that, as Chambers says, ‘There is found a constant Resemblance between the Genius or Natural Complexion of each People and the Language they speak’ (s.v. language, Cyclopædia, 2: 429). Cf. Addison, Spectator 135 for 4 August 1711 (Spectator, 2: 35–6). In his Essais on national character, Espiard de la Borde attributes the differences between the languages of southern and northern peoples to climate. He distinguishes between the ‘harsh’ northern tongues and the ‘shrill and clear’ languages of hot, dry lands, and adds an intermediate category of the ‘mellow’ languages of the temperate lands such as France (Spirit of Nations 1.8). Condillac, among others, remarks on the harshness of the northern languages in his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, 219–20 at ch. 5, § 56; the French first edition (1746) is in the Hume Library. 168.29  The Italian is the most liquid] The liquid character of Italian and its suitability for opera had been discussed by Dryden in the preface to his opera, Albion and Albanius (Works, 15: 6–7), drawing on Isaac Vossius’s 1673 De poematum cantu et viribus rhythmi (43–4), which stresses that Italian has not altogether lost the quantitative character of Latin. 169.14  Lord Bacon has observed] In his ‘Colours of Good and Evil’, Francis Bacon said that ‘the nature of some kinds is to be more equal and more indifferent, and not to have very distant degrees, as hath been noted in the warmer climates the people are generally more wise, but in the northern climate, the wits of chief are greater’. Bacon is offering a counter-example to the fallacious maxim, ‘Cujus

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excellentia vel exuperantia melior, id toto genere melius’, ‘That whose excellent or superior state is better, is better in every state’ (Works, 7: 78–9). n. 7  Dr. Berkeley: Minute Philosopher] Berkeley, Alciphron 5.26. Unlike Hume, Berkeley’s character Crito is not directly comparing northern and southern peoples, but ‘the English and some of their neighbours’. He does say that ‘we breathe a grosser and a colder air’ than the ancient Greeks (5.23). Berkeley reflects in 5.25–6 not on Bacon but on Shaftesbury, who as it happens was not making a point about climatic determinism. See Characteristicks 3 (Soliloquy) 3.3 at 1: 172 n. 79. Berkeley was still alive in 1747, and calling him ‘a late writer’ (¶ 24) alludes to the fact that his Siris had appeared as recently as 1744. 169.34–6  the dialogue de Oratoribus . . . Quintilian] Tacitus’s Dialogue on Oratory purports to be set in the 6th year of the reign of the emperor Vespasian (ad 74). Hume may be thinking of such passages in Aper’s speech (16.4–23) as 19.5 or 20.3, where Aper implies that there is nowadays a widespread enthusiasm for oratory and for the new pointed style. Conversely, Messala (28–32) counters that it is a superficial interest and that boys do not get the well-rounded liberal education that speakers used to have as a preparation for oratory; and that is the basic reason why in his view eloquence has declined. Similarly, in Orator’s Education (published in the early 90s) Quintilian urges caution in using the conceits and decadent excesses so popular in modern oratory (12.10.45–8 and 73–6) and warns against excess in training students by the use of fictitious declamations (2.10.3–15). The sentences about Tacitus and Quintilian appeared first for the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 8.1  Sed Cantaber unde Stoicus?] Hume’s version of this passage from Juvenal, Satires 15.108–12, is a paraphrase. The lines may be literally translated: ‘But how could a Cantabrian [a native of further Spain] be a Stoic, especially in the time of old Metellus? Now every country has its own cultural centre, whether Greek or Roman. Eloquent Gaul has taught the British to be lawyers, and Thule [conventionally, the furthest place on earth] is already talking of hiring a rhetorician.’ Quintus Caecilius Metellus conducted the war against Sertorius in Spain from 79–72 bc, while Juvenal wrote early in the 2nd century ad. 170.3–4  the last of the Roman writers, that possessed any degree of genius] In ‘Rise and Progress’ 44, Hume repeats the common judgement that after Juvenal there are no great names in Latin literature. See the annotation for that passage at 117.1–2. 170.6  the late conversion of Muscovy] Peter the Great founded the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg in 1724–5. 170.8  Cardinal Bentivoglio gives the preference] Though the passages that Hume has in mind elude identification, it appears from Guido Bentivoglio’s writings that Hume did not confuse the cardinal with someone else. While serving as papal nuncio in Flanders, Bentivoglio wrote in a letter to Monsignor de Modigliana,

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bishop of Borgo San Sepolcro, 11 August 1607, of his predisposition to love Flanders, confirmed upon his arrival there (Opere, 589–90). Hume’s mention of his appreciation of the ‘candour and sincerity’ of the Flemish is reminiscent of ch. 1.3 in Bentivoglio’s Della relazione delle Provincie Unite di Fiandra (Opere, 4–5), a 1631 copy of which is listed in the Hume Library. 170.14–15  extremes are apt to concur] This maxim is illustrated in ‘Liberty of the Press’ 2. 170.19  Most conquests have gone from north to south] Hume would have encountered both the observation and the counterexample of the Saracens in Temple’s ‘Of Heroick Virtue’ (§ 6). Though the baronet did not attribute northerners’ ferocious character exclusively to physical causes (Works, 1: 229–30), a commentator in 1757 took Hume to be disagreeing with Temple ([Brett], Conjugal Love, 37 n.). A predecessor to Temple in observing this direction of conquests was Bacon (‘Of Vicissitude of Things’, Works, 6: 515). 170.22–4  The Saracens . . . the Roman empire . . . the Turks] The ‘Saracens’ is a ‘Greek and Latin name for the Arabians’, as Gibbon says (Decline and Fall, 7: 488). Hume seems to refer to their emergence from the Arabian peninsula northward in the early 7th century to conquer the Syrian provinces of the Byzantine (‘Roman’) Empire, particularly by the defeat of the emperor Heraclius at the battle of the Yarmuk in ad 636 (cf. Ockley, History, 221–43). Early in the 8th century in central Asia they encountered Turkic peoples who had migrated to this area from their home north of China in the preceding centuries. 170.25  the deserts of Tartary] See the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 38 at 291.7. n. 9  Sir William Temple’s account of the Netherlands.] Temple, Observations, 93–4 (ch. 4). 170.29–30  the Swedes . . . not inferior, in martial courage] In his 1671 Survey,  Temple had himself characterized the Swedes as warlike (Works, 1: 86). The Swedes’ prowess against the Russians, Poles, Danes, and Saxons had startled Europe in the Great Northern War (1700–21), led by their warrior king, ‘Swedish Charles’ (Karl XII, 1682–1718). 171.2–3  The tenth legion of Cæsar] Facing a desperate situation against the Suebi, the most warlike of the German tribes, Caesar rallied his troops by a spurof-the-moment decision to appoint the tenth legion his ‘praetorian cohort’, or body­ guard, mounting them on borrowed horses. Thus he constituted them as an elite troop on which he thereafter relied and that became the forerunner of the Imperial bodyguard (Gallic War 1.40–2, esp. 1.40.15 and 1.42.5, and Speidel, Riding for Caesar, 13). 171.4  the regiment of Picardy] The regiment of Picardy was among the three oldest regular regiments in the French army. François, duc de Guise, formed them

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under the stress of the outbreak of religious civil war in 1560 by amalgamating the many existing bands in order to prevent the latter from falling into the hands of the (Protestant) prince de Condé. They were then augmented ‘promiscuously’ by widescale press-ganging. By 1574, these regiments, including Picardy, had become the first permanent regiments of the French army. See Hanotaux, Histoire, 7: 261–4. The regiment of Picardy in particular continued to play a leading role under Louis XIV and into Hume’s own time. 171.7–15  As a proof . . . bravest of the Dorians.] This paragraph appeared first in their 1748 permutations in the form of a footnote to the penultimate sentence in ¶ 28 (variants). 171.8  the two chief tribes of the Greeks, the Dorians, and Ionians] The socalled ‘tribes’ of the Greeks were divisions of the Greek people distinguished from each other by differences of dialect and religious ritual, whether on the mainland of Greece or in the areas of Greek colonization that Hume surveys. The contrast of Ionians and Dorians that Hume highlights is particularly characteristic of the rivalry between Ionian Athenians and Dorian Spartans in the 5th century which culminated in the Peloponnesian War in 431 bc. According to Thucydides the Spartan general Brasidas, addressing his army of Spartans and allies before the battle of Amphipolis (422 bc), said, ‘Men of the Peloponnese, it is enough for me simply to remind you of the kind of country from which we come, one that has always preserved its freedom by its courage, and that you are Dorians about to fight with Ionians, whom you have always been accustomed to overcome’ (History 5.9.1). Cf. 6.77.1 for the same sentiment in the Greek cities of Sicily during the same war. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Ionians. 171.18–19  the northern regions . . . to strong liquors, . . . southern to love and women] This contrast had been articulated in detail in Jean Bodin’s 1576 Six livres de la république (5.1), an analysis that set the terms in which discussion of climatic determinism would occur. Bodin advocated tailoring forms of government to the people’s humours, which were determined by climate. The contrast is discussed also by Montesquieu, L’Esprit 14.10 and 16.2, respectively. n. 10.1  Lib. 5.] See Diodorus Siculus, Library 5.26.3, for the Gauls’ love of wine, and 5.31.1 for their taciturnity. The sentence, ‘Taciturnity, as a national character, implies unsociableness’ (variants), was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political. n. 10.2–3  Aristotle in his Politics, book 2. chap. 9.] This sentence was included as of the 1758 ETSS (variants). Politics 1269b23–7 does not quite say that ‘the Gauls are the only warlike nation, who are negligent of women’, but rather that ‘the Celts and a few others who openly approve of male homosexuality’ are exceptions to the rule that warlike races ‘fall under the dominion of their wives’ (Complete Works, 2: 2015). Athenaeus mentions the Persians as well as the Celts, and in Greece, the Cretans and the Thebans (Learned Banqueters 13.603a). Diodorus, Library

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5.32.7, and Strabo, Geography 4.4.6, also discuss the Celts in this connection. Hume’s citation changed from book 2, chapter 9, to ‘book ii. chap. 2’ for the 1770 ETSS, but the correct reference must be chapter 9 since it is only there that Aristotle mentions the Keltoi (Hume’s ‘Gauls’). The Loeb edition uses a different numbering scheme in which this chapter comes out as ch. 6. 171.35–6  Nothing so much encourages the passion] This sentence was included for the 1777 ETSS (variants). 172.8  matches of drinking] The reference is to ‘symposia’, at which men met for supper and a convivial evening. In Plato, Symposium 176a–e, the guests agree that they will drink in moderation on this particular evening as many of them were still a bit under the weather from the night before. ‘It has been resolved, then,’ said Eryximachos, ‘that we are to drink only so much as each desires, with no pressure put on anyone [to drink more]’. Hume offers a reductive view of the symposium, ignoring its literary aspects. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. symposium, symposium literature. n. 11  Quint. Cur. lib. 5. cap. 1.] Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander 5.1.37: ‘the Babylonians in particular are devoted to wine and to all that goes with drinking’. This note was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 172.12–15  Cyrus the younger. . . . Darius Hystaspes] The prowess in drinking of Darius I, son of Hystaspes, king of Persia 521–486 bc, is told in Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 10.9 (434d). Athenaeus quotes a line allegedly from Darius’s epitaph—‘I could drink a good deal of wine, and carry it well’—that Hume seems to have in mind. This point is also made by Charles Rollin (Ancient History, 3: 109), quoting the same line of the epitaph from Athenaeus. The same passage of Rollin also has a note reference to his account of Cyrus the Younger (4: 78–9), which tells precisely the story that Hume had told in the previous sentence of how Cyrus sought the aid of various Greek cities, but especially of Sparta, in preparing to usurp the throne of Persia from his older brother, Artaxerxes, on the death of their father in 404 bc. Familiarity with Rollin is evident in Hume’s critical comment in a letter to Adam Smith of 7 April 1759: ‘Besides Rollin is so well wrote with respect to style that with superficial people it passes for sufficient’ (New Letters, 48). See also Hume’s letter to William Robertson in the summer of 1759: ‘The subject [the history of classical Greece] is noble, and Rollin is by no means equal to it’ (Letters, 1: 315). Rollin’s Ancient History is cited in THN 2.3.6.4. See also the annotation for  ‘Eloquence’ 6 at 94.1–2. Darius’s tomb at Naqsh-i Rustam still exists, and the inscription does not refer to the king’s drinking (see Kuhrt, Persian Empire, 2: 500–5). n. 12  Plutarch. Symp. lib. 1. quæst. 4.] Plutarch, ‘Table-Talk’ 1.4.2 (Moralia 620c). The structure and some of the details of Hume’s version also suggest Plutarch’s fuller account of the incident at ‘Life of Artaxerxes’ 6. Plutarch also gives

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the mot itself in ‘Sayings of Kings and Commanders’ (Moralia 173e). This note was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 172.24–5  no people were more jealous than the Muscovites] Heylyn says that ‘It is the fashion of these [Russian] Women to love that Husband best which beateth them most; and to think themselves neither loved nor regarded, unless they be two or three times a day well favouredly swadled’ (Cosmography, 455, s.v. Russia). Cf. ‘Rise and Progress’ 39. Kersey, Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, s.v. to swaddle: ‘to cudgel’. 172.30–1  those finer organs] another direct contradiction of Dubos’s Reflexions (2.17): ‘The finer an organ is, the easier the blood that contributes to its nourishment, is able to change it. Now of all the organs of the human body, those are the most delicate which serve in the functions of the soul’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 216). Cf. the annotations for ¶ 2 at 161.16–18 on moral qualities, ¶ 17 at 166.32–3 on the Batavians, and ¶ 20 at 168.2–3. 172.37–173.1  love . . . is the source of all politeness and refinement] Cf. ‘Rise and Progress’ 37–42, with the annotations.

22. Of Tragedy This essay first appeared in Four Dissertations (1757), the contents of which Hume had ‘kept some Years’, he informed Andrew Millar on 12 June 1755, ‘in order to polish them’ (Letters, 1: 223). Its intended companions were the ‘The Natural History of Religion’, ‘Of the Passions’, and ‘Considerations previous to Geometry & Natural Philosophy’ (1: 223), but, after bibliographic vicissitudes detailed above in A History of the Essays (pp. 429–31), the last dissertation was supplanted, initially by ‘Suicide’ and ‘Immortality of the Soul’, subsequently by ‘Standard of Taste’, an appropriate coupling with ‘Tragedy’. When the four published dissertations were ‘dispersed thro’ different Parts’ (advt., iii) of the 1758 ETSS, the two works of aesthetics were redenominated as essays (18 April 1757, Letters, 1: 247) and placed at the end of the Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, part 1. This arrangement continued in subsequent editions of the ETSS. Separating the dissertation on the passions from ‘Tragedy’ in this way obscures how the latter provides a test case of a tenet explained in the former: under certain circumstances a passion will convert into and amplify a contrary one with which it mixes (Immerwahr, Introduction, xiv–xvii; ‘Hume’s Dissertation’, 230–5). This tenet, which distinguishes Hume from Dubos and Fontenelle, is more salient when ‘Tragedy’ tacitly elaborates upon the discussion in ‘Of the Passions’. Immediately upon its appearance in Four Dissertations in the first week of February 1757, ‘Tragedy’ was appropriated to appear in Universal Magazine, 20, no. 136 (February 1757): 68–72. On p. 95, Four Dissertations is listed among newly published titles. 174.7  it is sure always to be the concluding one] Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and Pericles were regarded as tragedies, happy endings notwithstanding. Adducing

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Racine’s Athalie (1691) and Voltaire’s Merope (1743), Hugh Blair said that in the course of a tragedy ‘there may be sufficient agitation and distress, and many tender emotions raised by the sufferings and dangers of the virtuous, though, in the end, good men are rendered successful’ (Lectures, 2: 494). In Spectator 40 for 16 April 1711, Addison adduced as good English examples Congreve’s Mourning Bride (1697) and Rowe’s Tamerlane (1701), among others. When Dryden referred to ‘that inferior sort of Tragedies, which end with a prosperous event’ (‘Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy’, Works, 13: 233; cf. pref. to Spanish Fryar, Works, 14: 103), he alluded to  Aristotle’s ranking in Poetics 1453a30–35. Commentators cite as examples Euripides’s Helen and Iphigeneia in Tauris and Sophocles’s Philoctetes, though Aristotle may have had in mind plays written in the 4th century bc that are lost to us. 174.14–15  give vent to their sorrow, and relieve their heart] Hume’s lang­ uage echoes the account of the effect of tragedy that extends back through neoclassical criticism to Aristotle’s formulation involving catharsis at Poetics 1449b24–28. 174.18  L’Abbe du Bos, in his reflections on poetry and painting] Hume summarizes Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Reflexions critiques 1.1. Finding Dubos’s ex­plan­ ation, ‘in part, satisfactory’ (¶ 4), he adapts Dubos’s example of gaming tables (1.2), treating gambling as a spectator sport. Dubos’s account of the novelty-craving restlessness of human nature recalls Pascal, Pensées 139 (‘Le Divertissement’), which features the example of gamesters, and Hobbes, Elements of Law 1.7.7, 1.9.18 (also adducing gamesters), 1.9.19. A 1696 statement of the idea was Dennis, Remarks . . . Arthur (Critical Works, 1: 109). Cf. THN 2.3.5.2 and 2.3.10.10. See Thorpe, Aesthetic Theory, 133–45. In ‘Interest’ 11, Hume begins from Dubos’s point in explaining the impulse to make money: ‘There is no craving or demand of the human mind more constant and insatiable than that for exercise and employment.’ 174.30  affects the spectator by sympathy] Recommending clarification of the account of sympathy at the beginning of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Hume wrote to Adam Smith that ‘It is always thought a difficult Problem to account for the Pleasure, receivd from the Tears & Grief & Sympathy of Tragedy; which woud not be the Case, if all Sympathy was agreeable. An Hospital woud be a more entertaining Place than a Ball’ (Letters, 1: 313). For Hume’s account of sympathy see THN 2.1.11.1–7. 175.1  common liars always magnify] THN 1.3.10.5 qualifies this example. Liars no less than poets, who are ‘liars by profession’, must keep within what the critics called the ‘probable’, or verisimilitude (seminally, Rapin, Reflexions sur la Poétique d’Aristote 1.22–4; Aristotle, Poetics 1460a11–b5). In a letter of 1754 to John Home, Hume may be found criticizing a draft of the tragedy Douglas in terms of its probability (Letters, 1: 215–16). n. 1  Reflexions sur la poetique, § 36] Fontenelle, Réflexions sur la poétique, written c.1695 but published in 1742 in °Œuvres. Hume translates the entirety of § 36.

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He had expressed the same idea in the Treatise: ‘A passion, which is disagreeable in real life, may afford the highest entertainment in a tragedy, or epic poem’ (1.3.10.10) because in the case of fiction the passion does not rise to even probable belief. In ‘Avarice’ 1, Hume indicates that the artificiality of theatrics works against comedy, requiring a compensating heightening of colouring by playwrights. A variation related to self-love is found in Pouilly, Theory, ch. 4. 176.3  The epilogues of Cicero] A major purpose of epilogues, or perorations, was to make a strong emotional appeal to the audience. (See Quintilian, Orator’s Education 6.1.) Normally a peroration occupies just the last few paragraphs of a speech, but, as Quintilian remarks (6.1.53–5), Cicero’s 2 Verrine Orations 5, as the concluding speech of the whole series of speeches against Verres, has ‘several quasiepilogues’ in succession. Cicero’s ‘pathetic description of the butchery . . . of the Sicilian captains’, as Hume puts it, is but one. It was particularly well known and is cited by Quintilian on many occasions. 176.8–9  the butchery, made by Verres of the Sicilian captains] See Cicero, 2 Verrine Orations 5.45.117–50.130. Cicero prosecuted Gaius Verres, propraetor of Sicily (73–71 bc), on behalf of the Sicilians. The captains surviving the loss of a fleet to pirates were a threat to Verres as witnesses to his criminal negligence concerning the defence of Syracuse. Discussing with Lord Kames the compatibility of classical eloquence with sound litigation (13 June 1742), Hume says that although Cicero’s reasoning generally is loose, his ‘Orations against Verres . . . are an Exception; tho that Plunderer was so impudent & open in his robberies, that there is the less Merit in his conviction & Condemnation’ (New Letters, 7–8). The Verrine orations were useful to Hume as exemplary denunciations of iniquity (e.g. ‘Eloquence’ 16; EPM, app. 1). 176.22  excite the most delightful movements] Hume imbues the word ‘movement’ with his tenet of sympathetic transmission of passion. Cf. ‘Every movement of the theatre . . . is communicated . . . to the spectators’ (EPM 5.26) and ‘As in strings equally wound up, the motion of one communicates itself to the rest, so all the affections readily pass from one person to another, and beget correspondent movements in every human creature’ (THN 3.3.1.7). Descartes defined passions as psychic events caused by movements of animal spirits in the cavities of the brain (Passions 10, 27). Like others, Hume was wont to use such language in connection with physiology (e.g. ‘Epicurean’ 5; EHU 7.14; THN 1.2.1.5). However, as George Cheyne said in 1733, ‘those who perhaps had Courage or Curiosity enough to doubt of [the existence of animal spirits], . . . to avoid a tedious Way of expressing themselves, have impicitly gone into the common Dialect which is now very convenient’ (English Malady 1.9.1). 176.38  imitation is always of itself agreeable] Herdt (Religion and Faction, 103) sees here a closer relation to Plutarch, ‘Table-Talk’ 5.1 (Moralia 673c–674c), than to Aristotle (cf. Poetics 1448b4–19 and Art of Rhetoric 1371b4–10).

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177.11  the subordinate movement is converted into the predominant] In ‘Of the Passions’, Hume had set out the variables that produce (a) an oscillation of contrary passions in the mind, (b) a mutual cancellation, and (c) a mixture in which one converts into the other (DP 1.21). The pleasure of tragedy is of the third kind, in which the ‘predominant passion swallows up the inferior, and converts it into itself ’ (6.2), i.e. aesthetic delight transforms horror and pity into itself. See also THN 2.3.9.13–17, 2.3.4.2–5. Clearly the reduction of a tragic ‘movement’ to a mixture of only two contrary passions is solely for illustrative purposes. The passions that hitherto had exercised the critical tradition included mixes of pity, admiration, moral approbation and disapprobation, and fear, as well as the response to formal beauty that Hume sees as crucial. Cf. the much simpler discussion in Chambers’s Cyclopædia, s.v. passions in poetry: ‘the greatest Enemies to the Passions, are Passions themselves: They oppose and destroy one another; and if two opposite ones, E. gr. Joy and Sorrow meet in the same Object; they will neither of ’em stand it. ’Tis the Nature of these Habitudes that imposes this Law: The Blood and Spirits cannot move gently and equally, as in a State of Tranquillity, and at the same Time be stopp’d, and suspended with some Violence, occasioned by Admiration. Nor can they be in either of those Situations, while Fear calls ’em from the outer Parts of the Body, to assemble ’em about the Heart; or Rage sends ‘em into the Muscles, and makes ‘em act there with Violence very opposite to the Operations of Fear.’ 177.18  though novelty of itself be agreeable] an ancient idea traceable to Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 1.11.1, 20–1, 24. 177.21–2  artfully to delay informing him] Cf. THN 2.3.4.3: ‘’Tis a common artifice of politicians, when they wou’d affect any person very much by a matter of fact, of which they intend to inform him, first to excite his curiosity; delay as long as possible the satisfying it; and by that means raise his anxiety and impatience to the utmost’. 177.23  This is the artifice practiced by Iago] Judging from Thomas Rymer’s attack in his Short View (‘Whence comes it . . . that this is the top scene, the Scene that raises Othello above all other Tragedies on our Theatres?’), Othello 3.3 was critically esteemed well before 1692 (Critical Works, 149). This scene is that in which ‘curs’d Iago cruelly [we] see | Work up the Noble Moor to Jealousy, | How cunningly the Villain weaves his Sin, | And how the other takes the Poison in’ (Gould’s 1685 The Play-House, lines 26–9). It was among those scenes that Alexander Pope marked with a star in his °Works of Shakespeare to distinguish it for readers as a ‘shining’ achievement (1: xxiii, 6: 528). 178.4–5  Absence . . . complaint among lovers] Hume varies a point made in THN 2.3.4.10 (cf. DP 6.7) in reference to La Rochefoucauld, Maximes 276, a reflection that Hume would have found in different form in Bussy-Rabutin, Histoire amoureuse des Gaules [1665], ‘Maximes d’amour’, pt. 2 (‘Ce que fait l’absence en amour?’, ‘Si l’absence fait vivre ou mourir l’amour?’). That absence makes the heart grow fonder was proverbial in English from at least the 16th century.

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178.9–10  the dolce piccante of the Italians] i.e. agreeably sharp, or piquant, a term that in a literal sense was applied to food and, especially, wine. Hume seems to use it—in a metaphorical sense perhaps reflecting a contemporary colloquial usage—as the equivalent of the oxymoron ‘dolce amaro’, ‘bitter-sweet’, as in Petrarch’s poem of longing for Laura (Rime 129.20–1): ‘a pena vorrei | cangiar questo mio viver dolce amaro’ (‘I would hardly wish to change this bitter-sweet life of mine’ (Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 264–5)). The variant reading ‘dolce peccante’, or sweet sinning, appeared in the posthumous 1777 ETSS and thereafter was duplicated in some editions (variants). 178.13–15  the Iris of Aristides, the Tyndarides of  Nicomachus, the Medea of Timomachus, and the Venus of Apelles] Hume quotes a passage from one of the books (33–5) of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which served as a major source of knowledge of ancient art down to Hume’s own day. The subject of unfinished works of art (‘íl non finito’) had itself been a topic of Renaissance art discussion, as it seems to have been also in the ancient world. The paintings to which Pliny refers in  the passage Hume quotes are by classical Greek painters of enduring reputation: ‘Iris’, the rainbow-messenger of the gods, by Aristeides of Thebes (probably the Younger of that name); ‘the sons of Tyndareos’ (i.e. Castor and Pollux) by Nicomachus; the ‘Medea’ of Timomachus of Byzantium, which portrays Medea pondering the murder of her children, a copy of which possibly survives at Herculaneum; and an unfinished ‘Venus’ by the dying Apelles, who had earlier painted the famous ‘Venus Anadyomene’ (‘Venus rising from the waves’). Cf. the commentary on Pliny, Natural History 35.145, by R.  König, and the references given there. n. 3.5  lib. 35. cap. 11.] In the Loeb (vol. 9) and other modern editions the reference to this passage is Pliny, Natural History 35.40.145. But in older editions the passage appears as 35.11, as Hume cites it. The text of Hume’s quotation does not correspond with that in several older editions, but adopts a reading in the last line which is found in some manuscripts and is preferred by modern editors. See also the annotations for ‘Populousness’, nn. 15.2 and 40. 179.12  Lord Clarendon] Edward Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon, explained that Charles I’s trial and 1649 beheading were ‘so well known’ and fully treated elsewhere that ‘the farther mentioning it in this place would but afflict and grieve the reader, and make the relation itself odious’ (History, 4: 488). Conversely, in his own History Hume consciously dwelt upon Charles I’s demise: ‘I did indeed endeavour to paint the King’s Catastrophé (which was singular & dismal) in as pathetic a manner as I cou’d: And to engage me, needed I any other Motive, than my Interest as a Writer, who desires to please & interest his Readers?’ (3 May 1755, Letters, 1: 222). 179.24–5  that action represented in the Ambitious Stepmother] Hume’s critical stricture applies equally to gruesome events occurring off-stage, not to mention experienced by means of the printed page. In act 5, scene 2, of Nicholas Rowe’s first

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play, The Ambitious Step-Mother, Memnon’s daughter and son-in-law, the rightful heir to the throne of Persia, die violently on-stage, whereupon Memnon runs mad off-stage. Thereafter an attendant reports to the evil queen that ‘on the Marble Wall | A dreadful Mass of Brains, grey Hair, and Blood | Is smear’d in hideous Mixture’, upon which the queen observes that ‘Fierce Despair | Has forc’d a way for the impetuous Soul’ (Works, 1: 113). The play was reprinted often but appears not to have been performed in London more than five times between its initial staging in 1700 and Hume’s composition of ‘Tragedy’ (London Stage 1660–1800). 179.27-8  English theatre abounds too much with such shocking images.] Hume concurs with criticisms that British tragedy was too gruesome, resulting, in  Hume’s diagnosis, in the wrong passion’s being swallowed and converted. In Spectator 20, Addison complained that the butchery in English tragedy ‘exposes us to the Contempt and Ridicule of our Neighbours’ (Spectator, 1: 187, and see 188 n. 1 for French criticism). Cf. Shaftesbury, Soliloquy 2.3 and Miscellaneous Reflections 5.1 for similar criticism (Characteristicks, 1: 142, 2: 251). Hume’s preference for French efforts to assimilate Greek tragic practice and criticism is shown in letters, e.g. 15 October 1754, Letters, 1: 203–4. 179.35  noble courageous despair, or the vice receive its proper punishment] These alternatives were familiar topics from the aesthetics of tragedy. For the first, the sufferer attains heroic stature through adversity, and the audience’s concern is mixed with admiration. As in Othello’s character, it is compatible with flaws that contribute to the catastrophe (see e.g. Dryden, ‘Parallel’, Works, 20: 47–9). Undoubtedly this noble character is related to the ‘grandeur d’âme’ of Corneille’s critical thought and the ‘greatness of mind’ that Hume explores elsewhere, explaining it by the immediate agreeableness of pride and self-esteem to its possessor and its sympathetic transmission to observers (EPM 7.4–8; cf. THN 3.3.2.12). For the second alternative Hume, like Rowe, Fontenelle, Addison, and others, allowed tragedy a poetic justice in which virtue is made to suffer provided that vice does not escape punishment. See Rapin, Reflexions 1.10; Rowe’s introduction to The Ambitious Step-Mother; Spectator 40 and 548; Fontenelle, Réflexions, § 53. Hume’s notion of poetic justice, however, relates to what human nature can convert into delight rather than to the implications for God’s providence that innocence can be made to suffer. Rymer made the relation between ‘Poetical Justice’ and theodicy explicit when he coined the term in Tragedies of the Last Age Consider’d and Examin’d (‘1678’ [’77], passim). 180.1–2  to Ovid, whose fictions . . . are scarcely natural or probable] i.e. primarily to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which often provided subjects for paintings from the Renaissance onward. There are examples by Titian, Correggio, Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Veronese, Caravaggio, Claude Lorrain, Rubens, and Boucher. At least nineteen of Poussin’s works depict scenes from the Metamorphoses. In Spectator 417 for 28 June 1712, Addison distinguished Ovid’s fictions from those of Homer and Virgil as showing ‘how the Imagination may be affected by what is Strange. [Ovid]

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describes a Miracle in every Story, and always gives us the Sight of some new Creature at the end of it. . . . he everywhere entertains us with something we never saw before, and shews Monster after Monster, to the end of the Metamophosis’ (Spectator, 3: 565–6).

23. Of the Standard of Taste ‘Standard of Taste’ was first published in 1757 in Four Dissertations with ‘The Natural History of Religion’, ‘Of the Passions’, and ‘Of Tragedy’. It follows nat­ur­ al­ly from ‘Tragedy’, and the two essays remained contiguous in later collections of the essays (see the bibliographic head-note for ‘Tragedy’). Yet ‘Standard of Taste’ was not originally intended for the 1757 collection; it replaced ‘Suicide’ and ‘Immortality of the Soul’, which Hume withdrew from an earlier version of the book after Millar had already had it printed but not yet put on sale. In 25 January 1772, Hume would recall to Strahan that ‘Mr Millar and I agreed to suppress [the two dissertations] at common Charges, and I wrote a new Essay on the Standard of Taste, to supply their place’ (Letters, 2: 253). Taken at face value, and supposing that Hume’s memory is accurate seventeen years after the event, this sentence indicates that ‘Standard of Taste’ was written, at least made presentable, after the suppression in 1756 and the initial print job recorded 1 April by Emonson. Upon the inclusion of the four dissertations in the ETSS the next year, Hume directed Strahan to place ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Standard of Taste’ among the essays and redenominate them as such (18 April 1757, Letters, 1: 247). The final essay of part 1 was ‘Standard of Taste’, the first ‘Delicacy of Taste’. Thus part 1 begins and ends with an essay on taste. In a letter dated April or May 1755 to Allan Ramsay, who had written a dialogue on the subject of taste, Hume reported on a premium offered by the Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures, and Agriculture. A gold medal would go ‘to the best Discourse on Taste’ (Letters, 1: 221). Offered again in February 1756, the prize was awarded in January 1758 to Alexander Gerard, professor of moral philosophy and logic at Marischal College, Aberdeen. Gerard had entered a version of a work that would be published by Millar and Kincaid in 1759 as An Essay on Taste. The first edition, Nichols informs us, ‘was corrected through’ Bowyer’s press by Hume when he lived at a boarding house in Lisle Street, Leicester Fields, where Nichols ‘frequently visited him’ (Literary Anecdotes, 2: 326 n.). In the 3rd edition (1780), Gerard added a fourth part entitled ‘On the Standard of Taste’ in which he took issue with Jean-Baptiste Dubos and Hume. A copy of the 1759 edition is in the Hume Library. For the influence of Gerard on Hume, see the annotations for ¶ 20 at 189.18–24. Very possibly with Hume’s dissertation in mind, Edmund Burke added an introductory discourse on taste for the 2nd edition of his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It was published in mid-January of 1759 and Gerard’s Essay in May.

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181.1  The great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion] See ‘Platonist’ 1 and its annotation at 132.1–3. 181.19  elegance, propriety, simplicity, spirit] See ‘Simplicity and Refinement’ 1–3 for ‘simplicity’ and the tension in which it coexists with elegance and spirit. A ‘false brilliancy’ is described in ‘Simplicity and Refinement’ 4. 181.29  Those who found morality on sentiment, more than on reason] In his 1745 A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh, Hume put himself in this class along with Francis Hutcheson and ‘all the ancient moralists’ as against Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston (¶ 37). Cf. EPM 1.3–9 and app. 1, ‘Concerning Moral Sentiment’; THN 3.1.1–2, 2.1.7.2. Hutcheson had expounded the concept of a ‘moral sense’ (Inquiry 2, § 1) and in his Essay opposed the aprioristic theories of morality of Clarke and Wollaston (2, §§ 2–3). Hutcheson consciously built upon Shaftesbury’s introduction of a ‘moral Sense of Beauty in Actions and Affections’, as he puts it in his Inquiry (pref., vii). See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 4 (Inquiry) 1.2.3, 1.3.1. ‘Thus we see, after all,’ says Shaftesbury, ‘that ’tis not merely what we call Principle, but a Taste, which governs Men’ (6 (Miscellaneous Reflections) 3.2 at 2: 213). On this account, a moral sentiment is a perception presented to the mind by a moral sense much as bitterness is a perception presented by the gustatory sense. Whether or in what form Hume subscribed to such an account is disputable. In Theory 7, § 3.3, Adam Smith would criticize Hutcheson’s theory and tacitly oppose Hume’s theory to it. The role of sentiment common to morals and aesthetics leads Hume to move without transition between taste and morality in ¶¶ 3–5. Cf. THN, introd.: ‘Morals and criticism regard our taste and sentiment’ (¶ 5). Also EHU 12.33: ‘Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment’. Gerard, like Hutcheson, differs from Shaftesbury in holding that the moral sentiment and good taste are ‘different powers’, i.e. prompted by different ‘internal’ senses (Essay, 189–93 at 193). 181.33–182.1  justice, humanity, magnanimity, prudence, veracity] For the inclusion of magnanimity and prudence in this list of virtues, see Hume’s denial that the distinction between moral virtues and natural abilities or traits is fundamental and that the ancients observed the distinction. See esp. EPM, app. 4.8–15, 20–21, as well as THN 3.3.4.3. 182.10–11  the very nature of language] Cf. EPM 1.10, where in connection with morals Hume emphasizes the consistency of both language and sentiment from person to person: ‘The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly in forming a judgment of this nature; and as every tongue possesses one set of words which are taken in a good sense, and another in the opposite, the least acquaintance with the idiom suffices, without any reasoning, to direct us in collecting and ar­ran­ ging the estimable or blameable qualities of men.’ But in ‘Standard of Taste’ the ‘seeming harmony in morals’ resulting from the very nature of language encounters trouble when we descend to particulars to formulate a ‘steady rule of right’ (¶ 4). Likewise the ‘variety of taste’ is ‘still greater in reality than appearance’ (¶ 2) despite

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the harmony in valuative language for beauty and deformity. The unanimity concerning valuative terms is helpful to the search in the EPM for their common prin­ ciples of value but not to the fixing of a steady rule of right that must in practice accommodate variables. Three variables specified in ‘Standard of Taste’ are misperception and fallible judgement (¶¶ 10–23), varying circumstances and ‘manners’ (¶ 31), and differing ingrained predilections (¶¶ 28–30). Hume refers to the last two as diversities of ‘external situation’ and of ‘the internal frame’ (¶ 28). The difference between agreeing about general terms and fixing norms is illustrated in EPM, ‘Dialogue’ (esp. ¶¶ 26–38). 182.13–14  affix reproach to a term, which in general acceptation is understood in a good sense] ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 21 indicates that Mandeville was one who committed this obvious and gross impropriety. Butler had criticized Hobbes for such an abuse of valuative language (sermon 1, Works, 2: 31 n.). 182.17–22  heroism in Achilles and prudence in Ulysses, . . . his more scrupulous son] Hume contrasts Homer’s savage warrior Achilles and the resourceful but unscrupulous Odysseus (Ulysses) with Telemachus, Odysseus’s ‘more scrupulous son’, as the latter is presented in François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon’s 1699 Télémaque. The prose epic adapted characters and scenes from the Odyssey for the purpose of instructing the dauphin in ethics and politics. Cf. EPM 7.15: ‘The ethics of Homer are, in this particular, very different from those of Fenelon, his  elegant imitator.’ Hume’s acquaintance, the Chevalier Ramsay, summed up Fénelon’s improvements on epic heroism by saying that the archbishop had ‘thrown together, in the Character of his Hero, the Courage of Achilles, the Prudence of Ulysses, and the Piety of Æneas. Telemachus is hot, like the First, without being Brutish; Politick, like the Second, without being Deceitful; Tender, like the Third, without being Effeminate’ (‘Discourse’, xxxiii). From the 17th century onwards, the words Ulysses and Ulyssean might be used to signify craft and deceit (Oxford English Dictionary). The comparative merits of modern and ancient pagan morals and manners had been an issue in the ‘querelle’ of the ancients and moderns, and Hume takes a stand on it in ¶¶ 32–3. 182.25  the Alcoran] The first English translation of the Koran to be made directly from Arabic was published by George Sale in 1734, with a long and sympathetic introductory discourse on the doctrine of Islam that was reprinted separately. A well-known exposition of Islam was that of Adriaan Relant (1705). 182.26  that wild and absurd performance] Until the 1770 ETSS the phrase was simply ‘that wild performance’ (variants). 182.40–183.2  the word charity, . . . be charitable] Until the 1758 ETSS the words were ‘modesty, . . . be modest’ (variants). 183.6  a Standard of Taste; a rule] Apart from philosophical discussion by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, among others, the topic was widely taken up in polite conversation. ‘Of all our favourite Words lately, none has been more in Vogue, nor

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so long held its esteem, as that of Taste’, said ‘Henry Stonecastle’ (15 May 1736, Universal Spectator, 3: 46). For a flurry of publications on the topic in the 1730s, see the facsimile reprints in Gilmore, Early Eighteenth-Century Essays on Taste. In Spectator 409 for 19 June 1712, Addison sought to ‘lay down Rules’ for ‘how we may know whether we are possessed’ of taste and defines it as ‘that Faculty of the Soul, which discerns the Beauties of an Author with Pleasure, and the Imperfections with Dislike’ (Spectator, 3: 527). Hume speaks of a standard for morals, e.g. EPM 5.42: ‘The intercourse of sentiments . . . in society and conversation, makes us form some general unalterable standard, by which one may approve or disapprove of characters and manners.’ 183.9–11  a species of philosophy, which . . . represents the impossibility of ever attaining any standard of taste] Similar views are expounded by ‘Col. Freeman’ in a dialogue by Hume’s friend and portraitist Allan Ramsay in The Investigator. No. CCCXXII (1755). This work, on which Hume congratulated Ramsay in April or May 1755 (Letters, 1: 221), would be given a second edition as ‘A Dialogue on Taste’ in The Investigator (London, 1762). Freeman—to all appearances Ramsay’s spokesman—is at odds with Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Plato and gives a philosophical defence of the proverb that ‘there is no disputing of tastes’ (9–11 at 11). He concludes, ‘Whatever pleases, pleases’ (75–6 at 76). Hume’s Sceptic expresses such a position (‘Sceptic’ 11). 183.12–13  sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself ] Cf. THN 2.3.3.5: ‘A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence, and contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification.When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five foot high. ’Tis impossible, therefore, that this passion can be oppos’d by, or be contradictory to truth and reason; since this contradiction consists in the disagreement of ideas, consider’d as copies, with those objects, which they represent.’ See also 3.1.1.9. From another context is 3.2.8.8: ‘The distinction of moral good and evil is founded on the pleasure or pain, which results from the view of any sentiment, or character; and as that pleasure or pain cannot be unknown to the person who feels it, it follows, that there is just so much vice or virtue in any character, as every one places in it, and that ’tis impossible in this particular we can ever be mistaken.’ Cf. Shaftesbury: ‘let us doubt . . . of every thing about us; we cannot doubt of what passes within our-selves. Our Passions and Affections are known to us. They are certain, whatever the Objects may be, on which they are employ’d’ (Characteristicks 4 (Inquiry) at 1: 272). 183.21–2  a certain conformity or relation between the object and the organs or faculties of the mind] Cf. EPM, app. 1.13: we feel ‘a sentiment of complacency or disgust, according to the nature of the object, and disposition of our organs.’ Also THN 2.1.8.2; 2.1.11.5. Similarly, Hume’s Sceptic argues that the sentiments for beauty, deformity, desirability, or odiousness ‘must depend upon the

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particular fabric or structure of the mind, . . . and produces a sympathy or conformity between the mind and its objects’ (‘Sceptic’ 14). Jean Terrasson, though a Cartesian critic, uses the same language as Hume: ‘Le sentiment du Beau ne naît en nous que de la conformité que les objets se trouvent avoir avec la conformation de nos Organes’ (La philosophie, 121, at 2.1, § 3); ‘The sentiment of beauty arises in us only from the conformity that objects happen to have with the structure of our organs.’ Hume assumes a like account in ¶¶ 11–13. 183.23–4  Beauty is no quality in things themselves] For the analogy between values and ‘secondary qualities’ like sounds and colours, see ¶ 16; THN 3.1.1.26; ‘Sceptic’, n. 1; Hutcheson, Inquiry 1, § 1.17, and Essay 2, § 4 ad finem; Kames, Elements, 1: 259–61 (ch. 3). For confirmation of the view in THN, see Hume’s letter of 16 March 1740 to Hutcheson (Letters, 1: 39–40). THN 3.1.1.26 pointedly does not end in scepticism concerning the reality of secondary qualities or of values. The locus classicus for the distinction between primary and secondary qualities was Locke, Essay 2.8, as 2.9 was for the approach to epistemology through perceptions in the mind. 183.29  the real sweet or real bitter] THN 1.4.4.3: ‘These variations depend’ upon ‘the different complexions and constitutions of men: That seems bitter to one, which is sweet to another.’ The origin of the topos perhaps is Democritus’s assertion, ‘By convention, sweet; by convention, bitter; by convention, hot; by convention, cold; by convention, colour; but in reality, atoms and void’. This quotation is found in Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians 1.135. See Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers, 410, no. 549 (cited as quoted in Sextus, Adversus mathematicos 7.135). 183.31  and the proverb has justly determined] De gustibus non disputandum is a maxim of uncertain origin, probably medieval. EPM 1.5: ‘Truth is disputable; not taste’. Shaftesbury (Characteristicks 5 (Moralists) 2.1), Kames (Elements, ch. 25), and Gerard (Essay, 207) all note that this form of relativism had become proverbial. 183.39  Ogilby and Milton] John Ogilby’s verse translations of Virgil (1649), Aesop (1651), and Homer (Iliad, 1660; Odyssey, 1665) were derided in Dryden’s ‘MacFlecknoe’, lines 98–103 (Works, 2: 56–7), Pope’s Dunciad Variorum 1.258, and Samuel Garth’s Dispensary 5.68 (State Poems, 6: 58–107). In a key to the last work a note explains that Ogilby’s ‘Name will, as long as the English Tongue lives, signify a Poetaster’ (Compleat Key, 17 n.). In his History, Hume says that at times Milton ‘is  the most wonderfully sublime of any poet in any language; Homer and Lucretius and Tasso not excepted.’ Under favourable circumstances Milton would have ‘attained the pinnacle of perfection, and borne away the palm of epic poetry’ (6: 151). 183.40  or Bunyan and Addison] In ‘Simplicity’ 1, Hume takes his definition of fine writing from Addison. From Addison too he may have had his valuation of the writings of the tinker-preacher, John Bunyan. In Whig Examiner 2, Addison wrote

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that he ‘Never yet knew an Author that had not his admirers. Bunyan and Quarles have passed through several editions, and please as many Readers as Dryden and Tillotson’ (Works (1721), 4: 336). As the point of invidious comparison between Ogilby and Milton was epic, that between Bunyan and Addison possibly was allegorical fable, or simply religious edification. Incontestably Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (two pts. 1678, 1684) and Grace Abounding (1666) have shown a more universal and durable appeal than anything by Addison, as is shown by the fact that phrases like ‘Slough of Despond’ and ‘Vanity Fair’ have become practically pro­ verb­ial in English. 184.1  Teneriffe] the highest peak of the Canary Islands, a well-known landmark for sailors. Heylyn says, ‘With truth enough most of our Travellers and Geographers hold it to be the highest in the whole world’ (Cosmography, 934, s.v. African Isles). 184.9–10  reasonings a priori] Hume limits the validity of such reasoning to that which can produce demonstrative certainty in matters of quantity and number. These are algebra, arithmetic, and (in EHU 4.1–2, 12.27, but not in THN 1.3.1.1–5) geometry. Even these are included only in so far as they are ‘pure’ rather than ‘mixed mathematics’ (EHU 4.13). Chambers says that ‘Pure Mathematics consider Quantity, abstractedly; and without any relation to Matter: Mix’d Mathematics consider Quantity as subsisting in material Beings, and as continually interwove’ (Cyclopædia, s.v. mathematics). Amongst the mixed sort were astronomy, mechanics, geography, and chronology. 184.11–12  comparing those habitudes and relations of ideas, which are eternal and immutable] For ‘habitudes’ see the Glossary. The precise meaning of this term in Hume’s sentence is obscured by the variety of potentially applicable definitions. A phrase like ‘habitudes and relations’ might be pleonastic. No def­in­ itions recorded in Chambers’s Cyclopædia can be applied without adjustment to Hume’s peculiar tenets. In Hume’s sentence, however, the context is explicitly a priori, and these habitudes are descried in a way that cannot be falsified by subsequent experience. Demonstrative reasonings on their basis ‘depend entirely on the ideas, which we compare together’ (THN 1.3.1.1), i.e. on their instrinsic features. On the other hand other habitudes can be described a posteriori, as in Hume’s phrase, ‘When we have contracted a habitude and intimacy with any person’ (2.2.4.3). This usage is exemplified in a sentence like Burke’s in Thoughts on the Present Discontents: ‘No foreign habitudes or attachments withdrew him from the cultivation of his power at home’ (Writings and Speeches, 2: 262). 184.12–14  Their foundation . . . is . . . experience; . . . general observations, concerning what has been universally found to please] For the rules of composition see the annotation for ‘Epicurean’ 2 at 119.11–13. Dubos too insists that taste is based on experience (see Reflexions critiques, pt. 2, chs. 21–34). ‘Now if there is any subject,’ he says, ‘in which reason ought to be silent when opposed to experience, ’tis certainly in those questions which may be raised concerning the merit of a poem’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 256).

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184.18  to reduce every expression to geometrical truth and exactness] This language mimics Dubos’s and Mme Dacier’s characterization of Cartesian critics such as Perrault, Fontenelle, Houdart de la Motte, and Jean Terrasson. See  the annotations for ‘Standard of Taste’ 32 at 194.23 and ‘Independency of Parliament’, variants for 57.1 (on the ‘querelle des anciens et des modernes’). In his 1715 Dissertation critique sur l’Iliade, translated into English in 1722, Terrasson proposed ‘to apply Philosophy to the Belles Lettres and Philology’, discovering ‘new and more rational Principles of the Poetick Art, than those hitherto generally receiv’d’ and thereby forming ‘a New System of Poetry’ (introd., Critical Dissertation, 1: xviii). Hearing that Terrasson was preparing such a critique of the Iliad, Anne Dacier, classicist and translator of Homer, commented, ‘A geometer! What a disaster for poetry is a geometer!’ In the event Terrasson reported this remark in his preface (Critical Dissertation, 1: xcv). Dubos similarly characterized modern critics who analyse the classics ‘pursuant to the method of geometricians [géomètres]’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 329). In fact Terrasson did not hold that rules could be formed a priori; he objected that the literary examples from which rules had been educed were limited to the ancients. He maintained that philosophers would not confuse belles-lettres with natural philosophy, ‘knowing that Poetry is particularly design’d to please the Imagination’. Thus they admit ‘in this sort of Writing, Fictions and Figures, and all other necessary Ornaments’ (pref., Critical Dissertation, 1: xliii, xxxvi). 184.28  Ariosto pleases] Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso presented criticism with a problem case of a narrative poem durably admired though glaringly irregular. Dryden’s list of its infractions against the rules of epic focused on the unities of action, time, and place (Discourse concerning . . . Satire, in Works, 4: 13). Hume adds infractions concerning the balance of probable and marvellous and the indecorum of mixing the comic with the heroic. Cf. Dubos’s remarks on Ariosto in Critical Reflections, 1: 243–5. In ‘Middle Station’ 9, Hume rates Ariosto and Tasso as the two greatest Italian poets. ‘Civil Liberty’ 5 implies something similar. There are two copies of Orlando furioso in the Hume Library and one of Ariosto’s Comedie. 185.2  the common sentiments of human nature] Cf. THN 3.2.8 n. 80: ‘In what sense we can talk either of a right or a wrong taste in morals, eloquence, or beauty, shall be consider’d afterwards. In the mean time, it may be observ’d, that there is such an uniformity in the general sentiments of mankind, as to render such questions of but small importance.’ In the EPM 9.5, Hume affirms that ‘some sentiment common to all mankind’ is implicit in the notion of morality. Dubos also works on the supposition ‘that men of all ages and countries resemble one another with respect to the heart’ (Critical Reflections 2.34 at 2: 356–7). 185.19  the durable admiration, which attends those works, that have survived] Dubos had also appealed to the test of time to determine what Hume calls ‘the catholic and universal beauty’: ‘Now if there can be any dispute with respect to the merit and excellence of a poem, it ought to be decided by the impression it has

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made on all men during the course of twenty centuries’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 365). In the ‘querelle des anciens et des modernes’ the test of time was proclaimed by Boileau: ‘Indeed there’s nothing but the Approbation of Posterity that can establish the Merit of Writing’ (‘Réflexion’ 7, Works, 2: 113, commenting on Longinus). The Hume Library lists a 1722 edition of the Oeuvres of Boileau. 185.21–2  The same Homer, who pleased . . . two thousand years ago] The moderns, from Charles Perrault’s 1687 Le siecle de Louis le Grand down to the later stages of the ‘querelle’, were keen to dethrone Homer. The ancients, most prom­in­ ent­ly Boileau in his Réflexions sur Longin and Anne Dacier in the preface to her translation of the Iliad, presented Homer as the great exemplar of poetic genius. One author called him ‘ce génie plus qu’humain’ (Longepierre, Discours sur les anciens, 101), and D’Alembert repeated the common epithet, ‘Prince des Poëtes’ (in Terrasson, La philosophie, xviii). Cf. Pope: ‘Be Homer’s Works your Study, and Delight, | Read them by Day, and meditate by Night, | Thence form your Judgment, thence your Maxims bring, | And trace the Muses upward to their Spring’ (Essay on Criticism, lines 124–7). Notable instances among innumerable ancient encomia of Homer are Quintilian, Orator’s Education 10.1.46–50 (‘does not Homer transcend the limits of human genius?’) and “Longinus”, On the Sublime 9. See also the annotations for ¶¶ 31–2 at 194.9–10 and 194.23. For the centrality of Homer in the ‘querelle’, see Fumaroli, ‘Les Abeilles’, 204–6. 186.10  the internal organs] Hume inherited the language of internal counterparts to physical sensory stimulation. The title for THN 3.1.2 is ‘Moral distinctions deriv’d from a moral sense’, and in 3.1.1.24 he speaks of both internal sense and attending sentiment. Dubos speaks more specifically of ‘that sixth sense we have within us without seeing its organs’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 239; cf. 2: 277). Hutcheson developed the tenet of internal senses, specifically for the perception of beauty in his Inquiry (pref., v–vii, and 1, § 1.8–13). Elaborating Hutcheson’s concept, Gerard analyses seven ‘internal’ or ‘reflex senses’ (Essay, 1–2, and pt. 1). He uses the word ‘sensation’ to refer to both visceral responses and sensory stimulation in defending the propriety of connecting good taste to internal senses (145–8 n. in pt. 3, § 1). These two kinds of sensation are on the same footing inasmuch as they are both involuntary responses and ‘antecedent to Instruction’ and reflection, as Hutcheson says (Inquiry 2, §§ 4.7, 6.8). They differ, however, in that the internal sense of taste can be improved or perverted (Gerard, Essay 2, § 3). In ‘Standard of Taste’, Hume connects sentiments of taste, by analogy with physical taste, directly with the internal organs (¶¶ 12–13). In ¶¶ 16–17, Hume analyses delicacy of taste in terms of ‘the fineness of the organ’ and describes ‘practice’ as the process by which ‘the organ acquires greater perfection’. He speaks of ‘organs of internal sensation’ in the summation of the theory of taste in ¶ 23. Cf. also ‘Epicurean’ 6, ‘Sceptic’ 14, ‘National Characters’ 34. A classical text frequently cited in this context is Cicero, On the Orator 3.50.195: ‘tacito quodam sensu’ (‘[by] a kind of secret sense’). Dubos quotes this passage (Critical Reflections, 2: 243), along with another frequently

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quoted passage from Quintilian (Orator’s Education 6.3.6): ‘We judge by an inward motion, which we know not how to explain’ (‘motu nescio an enarrabili’). 186.19  delicacy of imagination] Called ‘delicacy of taste’ in ¶ 16, this attribute appears to be the same that develops from but salubriously moderates delicacy of passion as an effect of the cultivation of good sense (‘Delicacy of Taste’ 1–6). Among those who put a value on delicacy was Saint-Évremond, for whom it is an essential attribute of ‘personnes de bon goût’, such as Edmund Waller (in the letter ‘A M. le Maréchal de Créqui, qui m’avait demandé en quelle situation était mon esprit’). In all areas of life and art we owe the refinement of our pleasures ‘au goût des Délicats’ (in ‘Sur les plaisirs’). A knowledge of belles-lettres polishes the mind, refines the manners (‘inspire la délicatesse’), and makes us agreeable (in ‘Jugement sur les sciences, où peut s’appliquer un honnête homme’). See Œuvres, 3: 116; 1: 149, 167, and Hope, Saint-Evremond, 87–93. Dominique Bouhours argued that delicacy is an essential quality of the ‘bel esprit’ (Entretiens d’Ariste et Eugène, 239–43) and explores delicacy of thought (Art of Criticism, 110–12). For Fontenelle as a bel esprit see the annotation for ‘Delicacy of Taste’, n. 1. Dubos treats ‘la justesse & la délicatesse du sentiment’ as a prerequisite to good taste (Reflexions critiques 2.22 at 2: 180 or Critical Reflections, 2: 241). Gerard’s treatment is under the heading ‘Of Sensibility of Taste’ (Essay, pt. 2, § 4). On delicacy and sensibility see the head-note for ‘Delicacy of Taste’. Addison discusses the quality in different language in Spectator 409 for 19 June 1712. 186.26  a noted story in Don Quixote] Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, pt. 2, ch. 13. This story had been adapted as a poem, ‘Les gourmets’, in Houdart de la Motte’s Fables nouvelles (4.6), a collection with which Hume appears to have been familiar. See the annotations for ‘Avarice’ 5 at 31.34 and ‘Middle Station’ 1 at 11.1. With respect to the bystanders’ ridicule of the two kinsmen and the application of the tale to critical taste, Hume’s version is closer to La Motte’s than to Cervantes’s. A copy of the Fables nouvelles is in the Hume Library. ‘Simplicity and Refinement’ 2 suggests that Hume had read Cervantes’s picaresque novel. 187.10–11  the literal or metaphorical sense] Through the 1770 ETSS the phrase read ‘natural or metaphorical sense’. The adjective ‘simple’ replaced ‘nat­ ural’ for 1772 and was replaced with ‘literal’ for 1777 (variants). 187.20–1  the other equally dull and languid] The sense of the counterfactual conditional requires ‘the other’ to refer not to one of Sancho’s kinsmen, but to ‘those pretended judges who had condemned them’ for thinking their taste was superior though their judgements had seemingly diverged. 188.9–10  the source of all the finest and most innocent enjoyments] Cf. ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 3. 188.17–18  nothing tends further . . . than practice] Cf. Shaftesbury: ‘Now a Taste or Judgment, ’tis suppos’d, can hardly come ready form’d with us into the World. . . . Use, Practice and Culture must precede the Understanding and Wit of

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such an advanc’d Size and Growth as this’ (Characteristicks 6 (Miscellaneous Reflections) 3.2 at 2: 207–8). Upon this discipline Shaftesbury bases a defence of critics. Dubos debunks critics by overruling their precarious reasonings with the public’s affective experience, which generates ‘confiance dans le sentiment & dans la pratique’ (Reflexions critiques 2.23, ¶ 1). 189.13  obliged to form comparisons] Dubos speaks of ‘that discernment which is called the Taste of Comparison’ (Critical Reflections 2.22 at 2: 245), or ‘ce discernement qu’on appelle goût de comparaison’ (Reflexions critiques, 2: 184), and enlarges on it at 2.29 and 2.31 (Critical Reflections, 2: 293–5, 309–12). True judgement, he says, is ‘natural taste improved by comparisons and experience’ (2.26 at 2: 277), or ‘goût naturel perfectionné par les comparaisons & par l’expérience’ (Reflexions critiques, 2: 208). 189.18–19  The coarsest daubing] Until the 1772 ETSS, this phrase read, ‘The coarsest dawbing of a sign-post’. Dropping the qualifying phrase obscures the simi­ lar­ity with Gerard’s sentence: ‘The daubing of a sign-post, the improbable tales of nurses, the unnatural adventures of chivalry, the harsh numbers of Grubstreet rhyme, the grating notes of a strolling fidler, the coarsest buffoonery, are sufficient to delight them’ (Essay, 94, in pt. 2, § 3). Hume and Gerard were writing their essays at about the same time, and Hume probably saw Gerard’s essay before Gerard saw Hume’s. (See the head-note for this essay.) In the advertisement to his book Gerard took pains to make readers understand that he had begun his book upon the Edinburgh Society’s repetition of its proposal (i.e. February 1756) and entered a  condensed version for the prize (Essay, [vii]). The prize was announced on 22 January 1757 as ‘Not yet determined’ rather than ‘Nothing produced’ or ‘Nothing of sufficient merit produced’ (Scots Magazine, 19 (January): 49). Therefore it is plaus­ ible that Gerard’s submission was the entry of sufficient merit that would win the medal in January 1758 (Scots Magazine, 20: 43). The Edinburgh Society was a subsidiary of the Select Society, and for the latter Hume served on the committee for belles-lettres and criticism with Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Wilkie, and George Wishart (McElroy, Scotland’s Age of Improvement, 48–55). For each prize the Edinburgh Society’s managers elected three judges, who could enlist one expert assessor each (Rules and Orders, 11–12). Circumstantially it seems likely that as a judge or assessor Hume would have read Gerard’s submission. 189.21  The most vulgar ballads] Cf. Gerard, pt. 2, § 5: ‘A very sorry ballad, or the wildest flights of ungoverned fancy, are admired by the vulgar: but nothing inferior to the regular invention and masterly execution of Homer can fully satisfy a perfect taste’ (Essay, 106–7). 189.24  A great inferiority of beauty] Cf. Gerard, pt. 2, § 5: ‘To a taste refined, and by practice qualified for making comparisons, an inferior sort of degree of beauty appears a real and positive blemish’ (Essay, 108). 189.33  mind free from all prejudice] A major point for Dubos is that the judgements of artists and experts are untrustworthy partly owing to their partiality and

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prejudice (Critical Reflections, 2: 267–78). But the judgement of ‘the public’, freed in the fullness of time of these influences, is never deceived ‘because it judges disinterestedly, and likewise by a sensible perception’ (2: 236). The topic is covered at length in 2.21–34. 189.35–6  art . . . must be surveyed in a certain point of view] Cf. THN 3.3.1.15–23 for the analogous correction of sentiment by a ‘standard of merit and demerit’ for moral judgement (¶ 18). ‘The passions do not always follow our corrections’, Hume allows, ‘but these corrections serve sufficiently to regulate our abstract notions, and are alone regarded, when we pronounce in general concerning the degrees of vice and virtue’ (¶ 21). Also EPM 1.9: ‘in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the fine arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection.’ 190.4  endeavour to conciliate their affection] In the study of classical rhet­ oric this practice is known as captatio benevolentiæ, though the term itself is medieval. It is presented as one of the three main functions of a speech in Cicero, On the Orator 2.27.115. See also 2.43.182–2.44.187. As Hume notes, it was regarded as particularly appropriate in the exordium of a speech (Cicero, De inventione 1.20–2; Quintilian, Orator’s Education 4.1). 190.28  It belongs to good sense] Bouhours says, ‘Le vrai bel esprit . . . est insépar­ able du bon sens . . . . Le jugement est comme le fond de la beauté de l’esprit’ (Entretiens, 239); ‘True wit . . . is inseparable from good sense . . . . Judgement is the foundation of the beauty of wit’. Good sense, or bon sens, was much invoked but with varying signification even within the context of criticism. 190.31–2  a mutual relation and correspondence of parts] Cf. Gerard, Essay, pt. 2, § 2: ‘In every art, a just performance consists of various parts, combined into one system, and subservient to one design. But, without the exercise of judgment, we cannot know whether the design is skilfully prosecuted, whether the means are well adjusted to the end, whether every member which is introduced, has a tendency to promote it’ (84). A comparison of these passages of Hume and Gerard may be found in Morpurgo-Tagliabue, Il Gusto, 167–72. 191.14  a just taste without a sound understanding] Cf. ‘Delicacy of Taste’ 4: ‘[W]ith regard to the sciences and liberal arts, a fine taste is, in some measure, the same with strong sense, or at least depends so much upon it, that they are in­sep­ar­ able.’ La Bruyère asserts (Caractères, ‘Des jugements’, § 56) that the ‘difference’ between good sense (le bon sens) and good taste (le bon goût) is that between cause and effect (Œuvres complètes, 361). Gerard says that ‘Good sense is an indispensable ingredient in true taste, which always implies a quick and accurate perception of things as they really are’ (Essay, 83). He discusses good sense (more often calling it judgement), practice (habit, exercise), and comparison as one integrated topic. 191.30–1  Under some or other of these imperfections, the generality of men labour] Hume emphasizes the fewness of qualified judges while Dubos

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emphasizes the ‘desintéressement’ of the ‘public’ as opposed to prejudiced artists and critics (Reflexions critiques 2.21–2, 25–6; Critical Reflections, 2: 235–49, 267–8). But by the public Dubos means ‘such persons only, as have acquired some lights, either by reading or by being conversant with the world’ (Critical Reflections, 2: 245, quoted by Gerard, Essay, pt. 2, § 5 n. 1, from Reflexions critiques 2.22). 192.9–10  real existence and matter of fact] Cf. EHU 12.33: ‘Or if we reason concerning it [beauty, whether moral or natural], and endeavour to fix its standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general taste of mankind, or some such fact, which may be the object of reasoning and enquiry.’ Cf. ‘Sceptic’ 11: ‘nature is more uniform in the sentiments of the mind than in most feelings of the body, and produces a nearer resemblance in the inward than in the outward part of human kind. There is something approaching to principles in mental taste; and critics can reason and dispute more plausibly than cooks or perfumers.’ 192.23–4  liable to the revolutions of chance and fashion] Dubos makes a similar contrast between philosophies and poetry in Critical Reflections 2.34, the title of which is ‘That the reputation of a system of philosophy may be ruined. And that this cannot happen to a poem.’ Hume’s point, which applies to both ‘eloquence and poetry’, appears also in Hist. 6: 153 (on Hobbes) and EHU 1.4, where Hume sets Cicero against Aristotle, La Bruyère against Malebranche, and Addison against Locke. Swift put a similar sentiment into the mouth of Aristotle’s ghost in Gulliver’s Travels 2.8. 192.27–8  Aristotle, and Plato, and Epicurus, and Descartes, may successively yield to each other] The sequence of names here suggests the succession of  medieval Aristotelian scholasticism, Renaissance Platonism, the revival of Epicureanism in the 17th century, and the spread of Descartes’s philosophy. 192.28–30  Terence and Virgil. . . . Cicero] For the virtues (and limitations) of  Terence, see ‘Simplicity and Refinement’ 6 and 10; of Virgil, ‘Simplicity and Refinement’ 6. Despite reservations Hume had a keen relish of Cicero’s oratory (‘Eloquence’ 3; letter to Kames of 13 June 1742, New Letters, 7–9). 192.38  any fine stroke, which is pointed out to them] a point made in similar language by Gerard (Essay, 99–100, in pt. 2, § 4). 193.24  At twenty, Ovid] This point, made with reference to Ovid and Horace at EPM 5.30, is adapted from Jean Antoine du Cerceau’s poem, ‘La valise du poëte’: ‘Selon les ages & les tems | Leur crédit tombe, ou bien augmente. | J’étois pour Ovide à quinze ans, | Mais je suis pour Horace à trente’ (Recueil, 77). An edition of du Cerceau’s poems is in the Hume Library. In the same context Dubos speaks of the preference for La Fontaine in youth, Racine at the age of thirty, and Molière at sixty (Reflexions critiques 1.49 at 1: 392; Critical Reflections, 1: 396–7). 194.9–10  reconcile ourselves to the simplicity of ancient manners] The picture of the ‘simplicity of ancient manners’ to which Hume refers is drawn from Homeric poetry. Hume’s ‘princesses carrying water from the spring’ may allude to

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the daughters of King Celeus of Eleusis in Homeric Hymns 2 (to Demeter) 105–11. Another instance of archaic simplicity might be the king’s daughter Nausicaa and her friends’ washing clothes at Odyssey 6.1–109. An instance of ‘heroes dressing their own victuals’ is Achilles’s preparing supper for his guests at Iliad 9.206–21. Anne Dacier vigorously addressed such criticism of simple Homeric manners in the preface to her translation of the Iliad: ‘Homer every where represents Nature as it was in its Original Simplicity . . . . I own, I have not endeavour’d to soften the Force of his Lineaments, to adapt them to our Age’ (xviii [–xxiii]). Cf. also Pope’s reply, in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, to those critics who found a want of propriety in Homer’s heroes: ‘I would not be so delicate as those modern Criticks, who are shocked at the servile Offices and mean Employments in which we sometimes see the Heroes of Homer engaged. There is a Pleasure in taking a view of that Simplicity, in Opposition to the Luxury of succeeding ages; in beholding Monarchs without their Guards, Princes tending their Flocks, and Princesses drawing Water from the Springs’ (Twickenham, 7: 14). Also see Addison’s Spectator 279 for 19 January 1712 (Spectator, 2: 589). 194.15–16  the Andria of Terence, or Clitia of Machiavel] Terence’s ‘Andria’ (166 bc), a Latin adaptation of Menander’s Greek play of the same name, now lost, revolves around Glycerium, the woman of Andros of the title, who does not appear on the stage but utters one line (473) from the interior of the house which was the backdrop of the stage (‘behind the scenes’). Steele’s sentimental comedy, The Conscious Lovers (1722 and frequently restaged), is based on the ‘Andria’ (Plays, 276). In Machiavelli’s Clizia (1525) the object of the passion of rival lovers does not appear on stage, being forbidden to leave the house (prologue). 194.23  the celebrated controversy concerning ancient and modern learning] In ‘Independency of Parliament’ 3, Hume lists the primary figures on both sides of the controversy. The ‘querelle’ between the ancients and the moderns had been running for at least a century in Italy and England but above all in France (see the annotation for ‘Independency of Parliament’, variants for 57.1). Hume’s language here is coloured by the latest stage of the controversy, which centred on Homer. The chief protagonists were Anne Dacier, who in the preface to her 1711 translation of the Iliad, defended the archaic and simple but noble character of the poems and of their heroes, and Houdart de la Motte, who modernized Homer in his abridged and adapted translation of 1713. The two translators engaged in a controversy with each other. Dacier’s ‘Preface’ and her ‘Life of Homer’ were prefixed to  Ozell’s English translation of the Iliad (London, 1714–19). Terrasson’s 1715 Dissertation critique is an extended attack on what the abbé saw as Homer’s crudity and ignorance of rational principles of composition (trans. into English 1722–5). The prefaces and notes to Pope’s translation of the Iliad (1715–20) and Odyssey (1725–6) reflect the controversy. See e.g. Pope’s ‘Postscript’ (Twickenham, 10: 391–7). Houdart de la Motte’s Reflexions sur la Critique and his Œuvres in eleven volumes are in the Hume Library. The French texts are collected in Lecoq, La Querelle des anciens et des modernes.

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194.31–2  monument more durable than brass] a translation of ‘[exegi] monumentum aere perennius’ (‘[I have built] a monument more durable than bronze’), Horace’s boast (Odes 3.30.1) of the permanence of his achievement in the first three books of the Carmina. 194.36  ruffs and fardingales] Ruffs were elaborate neck linen, and farthingales were hoops around the hips that spread the skirt. Both were fashionable among ‘our ancestors’ in Elizabethan and Jacobean times. 195.2–4  The want of humanity and of decency . . . even sometimes by Homer and the Greek tragedians] Readers could expect Hume to adduce the actions of such characters as Oedipus, Clytemnestra, Orestes, and Electra in ­tragedy, and, in Homer, the frequent savagery of the heroes, including Achilles’s treatment of Hector’s corpse (Iliad 22.395–405, 24.14–21) and sacrifice of twelve Trojan youths on the pyre of Patroclus (23.175–83). For Hume’s readers an obvious example of want of decency would be Hera’s seduction of Zeus in Iliad 14.153–351. Saint-Évremond makes a similar point in ‘Of the Poems of the Ancients’ (Works, 2: 267–8). 195.28–30  The same good sense . . . is not hearkened to in religious matters] Hume’s NHR 4.1–6 supplies examples of the absence of good sense in religious matters among polytheists. Bigotry, Hume maintains, is more endemic to monotheism than to polytheism (§ 9), and in polytheism superstition is less subversive of virtue (§ 10). 196.1  It is essential to the Roman-Catholic religion] a view that figured in the rationale for treating Catholics as less eligible for toleration than Protestant dissenters. The oath of allegiance imposed by the Act for the Relief of Roman Catholics of 1778 stipulated abjuration of the tenets that ‘it is lawful to murder or destroy any person or persons whatsoever, for or under pretence of their being heretics’ and that  excommunicated princes ‘may be deposed or murdered’ (English Historical Documents, 7: 407). Cf. ‘Protestant Succession’ 18, and see its annotation at 361.22. 196.7  Polieucte and Athalia] Corneille’s highly successful play Polyeucte was first staged in 1642. Polyeucte, a Roman soldier, dies a martyr’s death after converting to Christianity and attacking a Roman temple. Racine produced Athalie first in 1691, six years after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Based on a story in the Old Testament (2 Kings 11 and 2 Chronicles 22.10–23.21), the play celebrates the victory of Joad, prophet of Jahweh, over Athaliah, the usurping queen of Judah who worshipped Baal. Hume quotes from Joad’s denunciation of Athaliah at act 3, scene 5, lines 1019–26. Hume’s stress on Joad’s intolerance rather than on Athaliah’s usurp­ ation anticipates the attack which Voltaire would make on Joad in ‘Discours historique et critique à l’occasion de la tragédie des “Guèbres” ’ (Oeuvres complètes, 6: 495–9). Dubos, on the other hand, took no notice of the bigotry that disenchanted Hume: ‘The miracles of our religion have a kind of marvellous sublime, superior to anything we meet with in the fables of paganism. With what success has not

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Corneille treated them in Polieuctes, and Racine in his Athalia?’ (Critical Reflections, 1: 151). Le Theatre de Corneille (1714) is in the Hume Library. 196.17–19  hear Achilles tell Agamemnon . . . or Jupiter threaten Juno] Achilles to Agamemnon at Homer, Iliad 1.225: ‘O Monster, mix’d of Insolence and Fear, | Thou Dog in Forehead, but in Heart a Deer!’ (Pope’s trans. at 1.297–8), literally, ‘You drunken sot, with the eyes of a dog and the courage of a deer!’ The dog was proverbially shameless. Zeus (Jupiter) threatens to beat Hera (Juno) at Iliad 1.560–7 (Pope’s trans. at 1.726–35). 196.25  ridiculous in Petrarch] Hume may have in mind such passages as Canzoniere 23, lines 121–6: ‘The soul that God created noble— | for grace like this could come from no one else— | is similar to her own Creator’s state; | therefore, she never stops forgiving one | who with humility in heart and face, | though he offended countless times, begs mercy.’ Other poems containing such passages are 3, 191–3, and 362, lines 7–11. 196.26–7  Nor is it less ridiculous in . . . Boccace] Boccaccio, Decameron, ‘Fourth Day’: ‘armed, as I hope to be, with God’s aid and yours, gentlest ladies’ (Decameron, 1: 292). The Hume Library has an Italian edition (London, 1725).

E SSAYS, MORAL , P O L I T I C A L , AND L ITE RARY — PA RT 2 1. Of Commerce ‘Commerce’ appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. All twelve items in the 1st  edition of Political Discourses were composed and ready for the press by 22 September 1751 (New Letters, 28–9). ‘Commerce’ was noticed, along with the rest of the Political Discourses, in the Bibliothèque raisonnée, 49 (July–December 1752): 230–1. The Journal Britannique noticed the Political Discourses in its issue 7 for February (1752), 225–6, and in the issues for March and April gave full summaries of ‘Commerce’ and the next nine essays (243–67, 387–411). ‘Commerce’ was also paraphrased in Journal étranger (April 1754), 46–55, to be followed by ‘Of Luxury’ (later ‘Refinement’) in May and ‘Balance of Power’ in August (Robel, ‘Hume’s Political Discourses in France’, 221–2). Political Discourses was announced and several essays summarized in the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen for August 1753 (pp. 906–12). 200.6–7  as in foreign politics, on accidents and chances] a reiteration of the ‘rule’ enunciated in ‘Rise and Progress’ 2–5, for which see the annotation for ¶ 2 of that essay at 101.15. For the role of speculative politicians see ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 1–3.

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200.10–11  discourses on commerce, money, interest, balance of trade] ‘Balance of Trade’ was added to this list and ‘luxury’ dropped as of the 1760 ETSS, the ­edition in which ‘Of Luxury’ was retitled ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’ (variants). n. 1.1  Mons. Melon, in his political essay on commerce] The passage belongs to one of the chapters added in 1736 to Melon’s Essai politique (289) and thus did not appear in Bindon’s 1738 translation of the first edition. A similar inventory had already been attempted for the various ranks of the English popu­la­ tion in the demographic writings of Gregory King, published in part by Charles Davenant, in § 2 of his Essay upon the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers in the Ballance of Trade (1699). A copy of Davenant’s book is listed in Hume Library. An attempt to update King’s inventory for 1750 appears in Postlethwayt’s article on people (Universal Dictionary of Trade, 2 (1755): 438). n. 1.4–5  half of the inhabitants live in cities] In his Essai sur la nature du commerce, pt. 1, ch. 12, Richard Cantillon said that this division was generally assumed and employs it in a calculation. Although the Essai was not published until 1755, Hume could have seen it in a manuscript such as Postlethwayt must have used in plagiarizing its contents. Hume also could have seen Postlethwayt’s paraphrase in the article on cash: ‘Cities are esteemed to contain half the inhabitants of a state’ (Universal Dictionary of Trade, 1 (1751): 464). Postlethwayt here condenses Essai 2.3, but see also 1.12. 201.28–9  The Helotes were the labourers: The Spartans were the soldiers] See the annotations for ‘Populousness’, nn. 33 and 162. 201.36–7  the proportion between soldiers and people] Were Hume himself to have done the computing, he could have extracted this ratio from Melon’s estimation cited in n. 1, depending upon assumptions about the proportion of the total population in the labour force and supposing that France was at the extreme of mobilization in Europe. During the ‘military revolution’ that accompanied the wars of Louis XIV, the wartime size of armies grew far larger than in the previous cen­ tur­ies. Louis XIV had almost 400,000 men under arms in a population of no more than 20 millions and thus approached 2 per cent of the population, but with serious consequences to French society. In estimating ancient populations in ‘Populousness’, Hume makes use of Edmund Halley’s hypothesis that the men of military age would have been a quarter of the total population. See the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 100 at 307.21. Of course only a portion of those would have been on active service at any one time. 201.39  ten legions against the Latins] Hume appears to refer to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 11.23.1–2, which alleges that the Romans raised and maintained ten legions in a critical situation against the Sabines and other neighbouring peoples in 449 bc (7: 77). At this date a legion contained one thousand men. The figure is impossible. A more likely figure is four thousand (Ogilvie, Early Rome, 141). There is also an account of these events in Livy, History 3.41.7–10

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(2: 139). The nature of Roman warfare in the 5th century bc was not understood by Dionysius and Livy, who wrote some four centuries later. It consisted chiefly of ‘a much less intensive pattern of raiding and skirmishing’ (see Cambridge Ancient History, 7.2: 291–4 at 291). Despite the exaggerations, the fact is that a large portion of Roman citizens was engaged in warfare virtually every year in the early history of Rome, and the account of Livy in particular created the ideal of the citizen soldier. Following Livy, Machiavelli thought that the Romans maintained this martial virtue down to the time of Aemilius Paullus (died 160 bc). With this notion in mind he recommended keeping the public rich and the citizens poor (Discourses 1.37, 2.19, 3.16, and esp. 3.25). 201.40  not larger than Yorkshire] See the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 132 at 315.8–10. n. 2  Thucydides, lib. 7.] The text says ‘not less than four myriads’ (Thucydides, History 7.75), a myriad being literally ten thousand but in actual usage signifying vaguely a very large number. See the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 14. The ­figure has been universally rejected, unless possibly it included a large number of slaves. It conflicts strikingly with the most frequent ancient estimate of the total male citizen population of Athens, which was thirty thousand (see the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 140). Hume makes no use of the figure of forty thousand in ‘Populousness’. The ‘expedition against Sicily’ left Athens in 415 bc and ended in disastrous defeat in the battle in the harbour at Syracuse in 413. The narrative occupies Thucydides, History 6–7. n. 3.1  Diod. Sic. lib. 2.] Diodorus, Library 2.5.6. From the 1752 Political Discourses through the 1758 ETSS, this note included an advice to see ‘Populousness’ on this point about Diodorus (see the variants). Hume cites this passage from Diodorus in ‘Populousness’ 108 as one among many in which ‘The facts, delivered by ancient authors, are either so uncertain or so imperfect as to afford us nothing positive in this matter’ (¶ 94). See the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 131, and cf. Hume’s appraisal of Diodorus in ‘Populousness’, n. 115. Dionysius I ruled from 405 to 367 bc. 202.5  Illyricum] Gibbon said, ‘Dalmatia, to which the name of Illyricum more properly belonged, was a long, but narrow tract, between the Save and the Adriatic. The best part of the sea-coast, which still retains its ancient appellation, is a province of the Venetian state, and the seat of the little republic of Ragusa’ (Decline and Fall, 1: 24). n. 4.1–2  Titi Livii, lib. 7. cap. 25. “Adeo . . . luxuriemque.”] Livy, History 7.25.9: ‘so strictly has our growth been limited to the only things for which we strive, —wealth and luxury’ (3: 443). Livy is commenting on the large army of ‘10 legions of citizens alone’ that the Romans ‘are said to have raised’ in 348 bc against invading Gauls, revolting Latins, and Greek pirates, the year following the dictatorship of Lucius Furius Camillus. Again, the number is impossible. Livy frequently

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denigrates the weakness of the native Romans of his own day in contrast with their heroic ancestors. It is the theme also of Sallust (see the annotations for ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 12–13 at 213.38–9, 214.1, and 214.9–10). 202.24–5  with what peculiar laws Sparta was governed] Hume refers to the military organization of Spartan society and its legendary education, as portrayed in Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, and much later in Plutarch, Lives,  ‘Lycurgus’. See the annotations for ‘Balance of Trade’ 25 at 243.32 and ‘Populousness’, n. 162. 203.2–3  A continual succession of wars] Cf. ‘Populousness’ 54–62 on the ­warlike nature of ancient states. n. 5.4  de off. lib. 1.] Cicero, De officiis 1.12.37: ‘One whom we now call a foreigner was called a hostis by our ancestors.’ n. 5.10  treaties . . . preserved by Polybius, lib. 3.] Polybius records three treaties (Histories 3.22–5). The first treaty, which is dated by Polybius to 508 bc, forbids the Romans ‘to buy or take anything’ from Carthaginian territory. The second treaty more explicitly forbids them to ‘plunder, trade, or colonize’ in Carthaginian territory (2: 55, 57). There is some doubt as to the authenticity and precise dates of these treaties, particularly the first (see Cambridge Ancient History, 7.2: 517–37). n. 5.11  the Sallee and Algerine rovers] The coasts of Algeria and Salé, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, were centres for the Barbary pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries. 203.7–8  equality of fortunes among the inhabitants of the ancient republics] a point elaborated in ‘Populousness’ 45–52. 204.18–19  The superfluity, which arises from their labour, is not lost] a point reiterated in ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 7, 22. Cf. Melon, Essai politique, ch. 9: ‘When a State hath the Number of Men necessary for tilling the Land, for War, and for Manufactures, It is of Use, that the Surplus, should employ themselves in works of Luxury. Because, there remaineth only this Employment for them, or they must be Idle’ (Political Essay, 175). 204.35  The more labour . . . is employed beyond mere necessaries] Cf. Robert Wallace’s contrary thesis: ‘Not only among the Romans, but also among the ancients in general, there was a great simplicity of taste and of manners; the great expence arose from food; the generality of the people wanted fewer ornaments, and could support themselves, and maintain families more easily, than the bulk of mankind at present: nor did this arise from scarcity of money, but from the abundance of provisions, and from the customs of the times, which made ornaments much less necessary’ (Dissertation, 119–20, cf. 19–31, 146–7, 159–60). 205.18  convert a city into a kind of fortified camp] Plato describes Sparta, instanced by Hume in ¶¶ 7 and 8 above, as ‘a state [politeia] which is a military camp’ (Laws 666e), organized by its legislator only for warfare (628e).

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206.39  China is represented as one of the most flourishing empires in the world] e.g. by Du Halde: ‘The particular Riches of every Province, and the Facility of transporting Merchandise by means of the Rivers and Canals, have rendered the Empire always very flourishing. As for the foreign Trade it scarcely deserves to be mention’d, for the Chinese, finding among themselves proper Supplies for the Necessaries and Pleasures of Life, seldom trade to any Place far distant from their own Country’ (General History of China, 2: 295). 207.19–20  high price of labour] Cf. ‘Money’ 1. 207.29–31  Lord Bacon . . . common people] See Bacon, Essayes, ‘Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates’ (Works, 6: 447). Wallace’s comment on Hume’s assessment of the English was that ‘Scotland has not hitherto had the happiness to have such wealthy and independent commons’ (Characteristics, 127). 207.40–208.1  owing to the superior riches of the soil] Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘The People commonly live poorest in Countrys, which have the richest nat­ ural Soil’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 510). 208.28  no people, living between the tropics] See the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 20 at 168.2–3. 208.35  Curis acuens mortalia corda.] Virgil, Georgics 1.123: ‘sharpening men’s wits by adversity’. When the Golden Age of Saturn, in which ‘Earth of her own accord gave her gifts,’ yielded to the reign of Jupiter, he made the conditions of life hard for those who work the earth, but ingenuity and industry have enabled them to progress.

2. Of Refinement in the Arts This essay appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. All twelve items in the 1st  edition of Political Discourses were composed and ready for the press by 22 September 1751 (New Letters, 28–9). The review of the Political Discourses in Journal Britannique, 7 (March 1752), devoted several pages to this essay (247–53), and it was summarized, with ‘Commerce’, in Bibliothéque raisonnée, 47 (1752): 231–2. It was fully summarized also in Journal étranger (May 1754), 219–28 (Robel, ‘Hume’s Political Discourses in France’, 221–2). Titled ‘Of Luxury’ when it appeared in Political Discourses, this work took its current title for the 1760 ETSS. The effect of the change perhaps is to announce at the outset Hume’s allegiance, between innocent or blameable luxury, to ‘innocent luxury, or refinement in the arts and conveniences of life’ (¶ 19). It may have seemed worthwhile to Hume to reduce readers’ temptation to assimilate his position to

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Mandeville’s, especially inasmuch as his refutation of Mandeville establishes the indispensability of even ‘vicious luxury’ at the same time as he affirms the difference between innocence and vice (¶¶ 19–21). The same effect would arise from the add­ ition following ¶ 21, exclusively for editions of the ETSS of 1767 and 1768, of the caveat dissociating refinement from prodigality and associating prodigality with idleness (variants for 217.3). 209.4–5  The bounds between the virtue and the vice] Cf. THN 3.2.6.7: ‘[A]ll kinds of vice and virtue run insensibly into each other, and may approach by such imperceptible degrees as will make it very difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to determine when the one ends, and the other begins’. 209.10  a covenant with his eyes] The monk seems to be adapting Job’s principle: ‘I have made a covenant with mine eyes; how then could I think upon a maid?’ (Job 31.1 King James Version). 209.12  small beer or porter] i.e. light beer for the home, porter beer for labourers, like the porter mentioned in ¶ 13 who extravagantly and unpatriotically drinks brandy. Created in 1722 to be less perishable in transportation, porter was among the earliest mass-produced commodities (Mathias, Brewing Industry, xxv, 14). It became important as a source of tax revenue, as Hume notes in ‘Public Credit’ 18. Implicitly much of the viciousness of drinking imported burgundy was premised on the supposition that it was at the expense of sales of beer. 209.13  when they are pursued at the expence of some virtue] The argument that indulgences are vices only when they are pursued at the expense of some virtue had been made against Mandeville by Francis Hutcheson in a letter to the Dublin Weekly Journal (no. 46 for 12 February 1725/6) and republished in a collection in 1729. But Hutcheson does not allow for the word ‘luxury’ to have both good and bad senses: ‘Luxury is the using more curious and expensive Habitation, Dress, Table, Equipage, than the Person’s Wealth will bear, so as to discharge his Duty to his Family, his Friends, his Country, or the Indigent’ (Collected Works, 7: [144–56 at 145]). Hutcheson’s argument had been anticipated by George Blewitt (or Bluet) in his 1725 Enquiry, 38, at § 3 (Stafford, Private Vices, 619, 231). Making the same point in 1734, Vanderlint allowed for the possibilities of both vicious and innocent luxury (Money Answers All Things, 102–3). 209.16  leave ample subject whence to provide] The use of ‘subject’ to mean something like ‘wherewithal’ appears to be from Scots law. Cf. Mitchell, Scotticisms: ‘All his subjects were sold to pay his debts’ (76). See the Glossary, s.v. subject. 209.31  men of severe morals blame even the most innocent luxury] A severe moralist in the republican tradition was Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, e.g. in his 1698 Discourse of Government with Relation to Militia’s [sic], wherein architecture, painting, and sculpture are called a ‘vicious appetite’ (Political Works, 5). One of the most famous severe moralists in Europe was François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai, e.g. in his 1699 Aventures de Télémaque,

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esp. livres 5, 8, 12, 22, wherein the good life is defined as agricultural, dedicated to the production of necessaries, laborious, frugal, and fearless. Furnishings and dress should be regulated and fabrics other than woollens forbidden, as well as effeminate or bacchanalian music. Wine is used for medicinal and ceremonial purposes only. Fénelon’s precepts are summarized by his disciple Ramsay as being ‘that the real Riches of a State lie in retrenching all the false Appetites of Life, and being satisfy’d with Necessaries, and with those Pleasures which are simple and innocent.’ It is also important to have ‘always within the Kingdom a warlike Race of Youth ready to defend it’ (‘Discourse’, xxxvi–xxxviii). See Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 24–7, 64–6, 258–66. Two English examples of severe moralists who have been suggested are John Dennis and William Law (Sekora, Luxury, 120). 210.37  woollen cloth] Woollen fabric was the staple commodity and, from Tudor days, the primary export of England and thus, from the standpoint of political economy, a necessary rather than a luxury. In practice those luxuries provoking ser­ ious reaction were imported goods thought to displace domestic ones. Hence men of all ranks could wear perukes unreproved, but the possession of printed cotton fabrics rather than woollens was illegal in 1721–74. Even afterwards, the rescinding of 7 George I, stat. 1, c. 7, left in place the ban on importing cotton fabrics for the home market. The British campaign against printed cottons lagged behind the French counterpart occurring in 1686–1759. To protect the woollen manufactures, England struggled to prevent exports of unmanufactured wool, destroying the Irish and colonial woollen export industries in 1699. See the abstract of the protectionist laws in Gentleman’s Magazine, 12 (September 1742): 488. English law required the burial of the dead in woollen shrouds (18 Charles II, c. 4; 30 Charles II, stat. 1, c. 3), and the Scots Parliament followed suit in 1707 (c. 94, Acts, 11: 487), rescinding its acts of 1686 (c. 28, Acts, 8: 598) and 1695 ‘for Burying in Scots Linen’ (c. 66, Acts, 9: 461). 210.39  The spirit of the age affects all the arts] Cf. the similar point in EHU 1.9: ‘we may observe, in every art or profession, even those which most concern life or action, that a spirit of accuracy, however acquired, carries all of them nearer their perfection, and renders them more subservient to the interests of society.’ 211.20–1  to the more polished, and, what are commonly denominated, the more luxurious ages] Until the 1760 ETSS this passage read simply ‘to the more polish’d and more luxurious ages’ (variants). 211.33  Cæsar, during Catiline’s conspiracy] Hume paraphrases Plutarch, Lives, ‘Cato the Younger’ 24.1–2 or ‘Brutus’ 5.2–3. He adds that the sentiment that drunkenness is worse than adultery is found not only in admittedly licentious authors such as Petronius and Ovid (e.g. The Art of Love 1.565–630), but also in Seneca. The Stoic moralist asserts in Epistles 108.16 that his ‘stomach is un­acquaint­ed with wine’ but admits that ‘other resolutions have been broken’. Earlier in his life he had been accused of adultery with a member of the imperial household and was banished (ad 41) to Corsica for eight years. For Catiline’s conspiracy see the

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annotation for ‘Eloquence’ 16 at 97.18. For the reputation of Cato the Younger see the annotations for ‘Rise and Progress’ 33 at 113.1–2, ‘Stoic’, n. 1 and ¶ 17 at 129.37–8, and ‘Populousness’ n. 74. 212.15  as we learn from Guicciardin] Francesco Guicciardini’s History of Italy, 1: 137 (bk. 1). Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494, retreated the next year, and died in 1498 still preparing for a second invasion. His successor Louis XII invaded in the following year. Guicciardini does not attribute Charles VIII’s delay to exhaustion of resources, though he does report the topic as being discussed in Louis’s court (2: 101–3, 153–4, 183–4 (bk. 3), 300–1 (bk. 4)). n. 1  The inscription on the Place-de-Vendome says 440,000.] presumably that on the pedestal of the equestrian statue of Louis XIV erected in 1699 and destroyed in 1792. There were inscriptions on the sides of the pedestal for religion, peace, and war. John Law built a house on this square, otherwise known as Place Louis-le-Grand. The Place was the site of the stock market in 1720 when Law’s reorganization of the French economy collapsed. See the annotation for ‘Commerce’ 7 at 201.36–7. Lord Hervey put French regular troops in 1727 at 160,000 supported by ‘a disciplined militia of 60,000’ (Some Materials, 65). In 1742, Corbyn Morris put the ‘regular Forces of France in Time of Peace’ at about 200,000 men, ‘which if there be Occasion are readily augmented to 300,000, or a much greater Number, out of their established Militia’ (Letter, 6). 212.18  a course of wars that lasted near thirty years] The legacy of first minister Jules Cardinal Mazarin to his king, Louis XIV, was the domestic and geopolitical strength to undertake a series of expansionist wars. The War of Devolution (1667–9), the Dutch War (1672–9), the Nine Years War (1688–97), and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–14) make about thirty years of wartime. The cardinal died in 1661, the Sun King in 1715. 213.14  The ancients remarked] Hume paraphrases Nepos’s account of Datames, a Persian general under King Artaxerxes II who was eventually executed for rebellion. See Nepos, De viris illustribus 13 (‘Timotheus’) 4.5–6, and 14 (‘Datames’) 6.8. 213.15–16  And Pyrrhus . . . said] Hume quotes Plutarch, Lives, ‘Pyrrhus’ 16.4–5. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, brought his forces over to Sicily and Italy in support of the city of Tarentum, which was threatened by the Roman expansion. Though he was victorious in the battle at Heraclea (280 bc), he expressed surprise at the order and discipline of the legions. The following year he won his ‘Pyrrhic’ victory against them at Ausculum, when he is said to have remarked, ‘If I win one more battle with the Romans, I shall not have left a single soldier of those who crossed over with me’ (Plutarch, Lives, ‘Pyrrhus’ 21.9). By 275, he was forced to withdraw most of his forces from Italy. 213.24–5  The Italian historians] Among these historians Hume’s account is reminiscent of Machiavelli’s summary description in his History of Florence of the

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state of Italy in 1434 (Chief Works, 3: 1078–9). Machiavelli surveys Italy state by state and makes much the same points about oligarchic Venice, commercial Florence, priest-ridden Rome, and woman-ruled Naples as Hume does. He ends with a general comment on the weakness of Italy at that time due to the prevalent employment of mercenaries. Also cf. Prince, ch. 12, penult and last paragraphs, on mercenaries. If Hume had these passages in mind, he derives 18th-century effeminacy from developments in quattrocento Italy. He will also have encountered Fletcher’s impersonation of an Italian Machiavellian saying, in A Discourse concerning the Affairs of Spain, that ‘Italy is sunk in effeminacy, and drained by the clergy and its own luxury’ (Political Works, 117). 213.27–8  while the Venetian aristocracy was jealous of its subjects] Heylyn tells us that the Venetians’ first of two rules of war ‘was the exempting of their own Citizens from the Wars (not out of Jealousie, but care for their preservation) . . . : the body of their Armies being compounded out of the Provincial Subjects intermixt with Mercenaries.’ The second rule ‘was the entertaining of some neighbouring Prince to be the General of their Forces. . . . And by this course they avoided Faction, and prevented Servitude: Either or both of which might have hapned by employing any of their own Great Ones in the chief Commands, who . . . having a strong Party within the City, and an Army without, might perhaps have made himself their Prince’ (s.v. Venice, Cosmography, 105). 213.36–7  the Asiatic luxury] Until the 1758 ETSS, the phrase was ‘the Grecian and Asiatic luxury’ (variants). 213.38–9  All the Latin classics, whom we peruse] A number of the works that students read in their early years of learning Latin set out the theory that the decline of the Roman Republic was due to the vast increase of wealth that occurred in the 2nd and 1st centuries. Among these were Sallust, War with Catiline 5.8–14.1; Florus, Epitome 1.34.19, 1.47.12; and Velleius Paterculus, Compendium 2.1.1–2. See Stewart, ‘Hume’s Intellectual Development’, 18 and 39, n. 77 (on what may be Hume’s copy of Sallust). Hume refers to all these authors on different occasions. Cicero’s De senectute and De amicitia, two works frequently read in school, are set in what Cicero sees as the golden years of the Republic, the period of the younger Scipio, before the decline began. 214.1  Sallust represents a taste for painting as a vice] Sallust, War with Catiline 11.6: ‘There [in Asia] it was that an army of the Roman people first learned to indulge in women and drink; to admire statues, paintings and chased vases; to steal them from private houses and public places, to pillage shrines, and to desecrate everything both sacred and profane.’ This statement occurs in the middle of one of those ‘preposterous digressions’ (5.8–14.1), as Hume calls them, in Sallust’s narrative, in which Sallust analyses the decline of Rome from its early simplicity due to the deleterious influence of wealth and luxury. Sallust represents Cato as saying much the same thing (52.5). Sallust was himself a notoriously rich man, who had acquired a great deal of wealth by extortion while he governed a province.

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214.9–10  these writers mistook the causes of the disorders] The decline was generally thought to have begun in the middle years of the 2nd century bc as the empire expanded and wealth increased. It was made to explain the loss of free government, the civil wars, and the assumption of autocratic power by Augustus. Hume sets himself firmly against this time-honoured explanation, which was favoured by patriots like Fletcher, e.g. in his Discourse of Government (Political Works, 5–6). Cf.  Dutot, Political Reflections, 259 (ch. 3, art. 7). In a dedicatory poem Charles Arbuthnot reminded George II how Rome fell: ‘With costly Cates she stain’d her Frugal Board, | . . . . | Corruption, Discord, Luxury combin’d, | Down sunk the far-fam’d Mistress of Mankind’ (Arbuthnot, Tables, prelims). 214.24–5  The nobles seem to have preserved their crown elective] See the annotation for ‘Politics’ 6 at 42.31. 214.29–30  though corruption may seem to encrease of late years] See ‘Independency of Parliament’ 6 and its annotations at 58.36–7 and 59.3. 215.6  the ancient barons] Cf. Hist. 1: 437–8, 461–6. Until the 1764 ETSS the phrase was ‘Gothic barons’. 215.12–13  middling rank of men, who are the best and firmest basis of public liberty] A classic statement is Aristotle, Politics 1295b1–1296a21. The argument in Hume’s ¶ 16 seems the best candidate in the essays to have prompted Adam Smith’s claim: ‘commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency upon their superiors. This, though it has been the least observed, is by far the most important of all their effects. Mr. Hume is the only writer who, so far as I know, has hitherto taken notice of it’ (Wealth of Nations, 3.4, ¶ 4). 215.20–1  which threw such a balance of property into the hands of the commons] Cf. ‘First Principles of Government’ 4, 7–8, with related annotation. That a shift in landownership had been crucial to the ascendancy of the House of Commons was known as Harrington’s insight, stated e.g. in Oceana, Prelims 2 (Political Works, 197–8). The identification of commerce as causing the shift in property from nobility to commoners was Whig hindsight. When ‘all the world’ came to acknowledge it may not be datable, but Defoe could argue the point in 1698 in an elliptical and condensed fashion and expect to be understood (Argument, 15–16). 216.16–17  a dish of peas at Christmas] Cf. Bernard Mandeville, Grumbling Hive: ‘The Courtier’s gone, that with his Miss | Supp’d at his House on Christmas Peas; | Spending as much in two Hours stay, | As keeps a Troop of Horse a Day’ (Fable, 1: 33). William Cobbett said in 1829 that ‘Where gardening is carried on upon a royal, or almost royal scale, peas are raised by means of artificial heat, in order to have them here at the same time that they have them in Portugal, which is in the months of December and January’ (English Gardener, 117).

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n. 2  Fable of the Bees.] That vice is advantageous to the public is the theme of Mandeville’s poem, The Grumbling Hive (Fable, 1: 17–37). That the distinction between vice and virtue is an imposition is the theme of Mandeville’s Enquiry (Fable, 1: 39–57). 217.2–3  a contradiction in terms, to talk of a vice] Cf. Hume, EPM 1.10: ‘The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly in forming a judgment of this nature; and as every tongue possesses one set of words which are taken in a good sense, and another in the opposite, the least acquaintance with the idiom suffices, without any reasoning, to direct us in collecting and arranging the estimable or blameable qualities of men.’ Also cf. the second point of the refutation of Mandeville in THN 3.3.1.11: ‘[H]ad not men a natural sentiment of approbation and blame, it cou’d never be excited by politicians; nor wou’d the words laudable and praiseworthy, blameable and odious, be any more intelligible, than if they were a language perfectly unknown to us, as we have already observ’d.’ See ‘Standard of Taste’ 3 and its annotation at 182.10–11. variants for 217.3.  Industry and gain beget this frugality] In only the 1767 and 1768 editions of the ETSS, the penultimate paragraph was this one dissociating prodigality from refinement. Thereafter it was lost or omitted. Its point, however, is elaborated in ‘Interest’ 11–12. Cf. ‘Commerce’ 10, where the lack of industry and gain is said to beget indolence.

3. Of Money This essay appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. All twelve items in the 1st  edition of Political Discourses were composed and ready for the press by 22 September 1751 (New Letters, 28–9). ‘Money’ was republished in Scots Magazine, 24 (January 1762): 33–9, as per­tin­ ent to an ‘uncommon scarcity of current coin in the country, occasioned chiefly by its being carried off by English riders, and by sale of bills on London’ (24: 64). In reaction the banks in Edinburgh and Glasgow had called in a quarter of the credit on each of the accounts of the kind that Hume describes in ‘Balance of Trade’ 26–7. This contraction and loss of specie was part of an exchange crisis that is succinctly analysed in the same issue of the Scots Magazine (24: 94). 218.3  It is none of the wheels of trade: It is the oil] In Some Considerations, Locke had said that the circulation of money turned, or drove, the wheels of trade (Locke on Money, 1: 224, 233). In Querist 461, Berkeley had referred to money instead as the lubricating oil (Works, 6: 143). 218.5–6  the greater or less plenty of money] Cf. Adam Smith’s parallel discussion in bk. 4.1 of Wealth of Nations at 1: 430–1. More often than not, lack of

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‘money’ meant not indigence, but an inadequate supply of the gold, silver, or copper that physically could be transferred from one party to another for transactions. The lack of specie, especially for small sums, could hinder transactions and cause workers to be paid in goods or tokens (Ashton, Economic History, ch. 6). Hence, as Hume reports in ‘Balance of Trade’ 27, the issuing in Glasgow of banknotes ‘so low as ten shillings’, or one-half of a pound sterling and sixpence less than a half-guinea gold coin. 218.7–8  a crown in Harry VII.’s time . . . a pound does at present] There were four crowns to a pound. Henry VII’s reign (1485–1509) is a significant point of comparison in marking the change from the feudal system to a commercial society made possible by the ‘beginning luxury and refinements of the age’, occurring, in Hume’s analysis, largely despite Henry VII’s attempts to control the economy (Hist. 3: 74–80 at 77). See the annotation on Henry VII for ‘Rise and Progress’ 5 at 102.8–9. 218.8  It is only the public] i.e. the body politic, a meaning that survives in expressions like ‘public ownership’ or ‘public prosecutor’. Hume’s essay ‘Public Credit’ is about the national debt. See the Glossary, s.v. public. 218.11–12  all rich and trading countries . . . have employed mercenary troops] Carthage, pre-eminent for the extent and success of its trade throughout the western Mediterranean, was noted for relying heavily on mercenary troops, as  well as conscript subjects under Carthaginian officers, to furnish its armies (Cambridge Ancient History, 7.2: 486–7, 493–6). They came from the many peoples that had been subjugated by Carthage, but particularly from Libya and Numidia, Carthage’s North African ‘neighbours’. Mercenaries are noticed by Herodotus as being employed by Carthage in warfare in Sicily as early as 480 bc (Persian Wars 7.165), and they were still extensively used by them in the 3rd century in the Punic Wars against the Romans (e.g. Livy, History 29.3.13, 4.2). See also the annotation for ‘Balance of Power’ 11 at 254.35, and, for the hiring of mercenaries by the Dutch, the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 17 at 166.32–3. 218.16  Our small army] The ‘small army of 20,000’ refers to the domestic army, which Hume maintains is expensive compared to Hessian mercenaries who did not need to be paid in currency reflecting the British cost of living. A figure of 20,000 was commonly accepted as an approximation and excluded troops stationed outside of Great Britain, for example in Ireland. The author of the 1750 Seasonable and Affecting Observations estimated that the current peacetime army was ‘no less than 20,000 Men . . . when 7000 were judged and found sufficient, after the Peace of Ryswick [1697], during the Reign of King William’ (8). (The army had been reduced to 7,000 by the disbanding bill of 1699 as a result of the standing-army crisis, a reduction forced on William III by the ‘country’ Opposition in a defeat that nearly drove him to abandon the throne.) A rejoinder to that pamphlet numbered the peacetime army at 8,232 in 1714, following the War of the Spanish Succession, and  at 18,867 in 1750, following the War of the Austrian Succession (‘Short

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Discourse’, x–xi). A concomitant to hostility to standing armies was hostility to foreign mercenaries, whether Dutch under William or German under the Hanoverians. 218.17  a French army twice as numerous] Until the 1770 ETSS, this phrase read ‘thrice as numerous’ as 20,000. But see the annotation for ‘Refinement in the Arts’, n. 1, on the size of the peacetime French army. Hume’s point is not that the French peacetime army c.1750 was 60,000 (or 40,000 in 1770), but that 20,000 native British soldiers cost as much in precious metals as thrice (or twice) that number of a domestic army recruited under the conditions of the French cost of living. This comparison did not provide any precise statement about the relative pay scales of the two forces, for other factors would have to be reckoned in. There are estimates, probably exaggerated, that the comparative pay was 5d. for French troops as against 2s. 6d. for British (French Excise, 51). French military pay was complicated because it had three different elements (Present State of the Revenues and Forces . . . of France, 10–11). 218.18  the late war] The War of the Austrian Succession ended in 1748 while Hume was in Turin on a military embassy under Lt.-Gen. James St. Clair. n. 1.1  A private soldier . . . had a denarius a day] Arbuthnot suggested a ­ enarius a day (Tables, 179–80) after the amount was raised by Julius Caesar d (cf.  Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Caesar’ 26), but he admitted that there was controversy as to how to understand this figure. He gave a value for the denarius of 7¾ pence in the table of equivalents beneath plate 24 (following p. 48), or as Hume says, ‘somewhat less than eight pence’. According to the passage of Tacitus that Hume cites below in a different context, the actual pay of a soldier at the beginning of Tiberius’s reign was ‘ten asses a day’ (Annals 1.17). This amount is considerably less than a denarius at the normal rate of sixteen asses to a denarius, but there is an unresolved dispute as to the value of a denarius at this time with respect to soldiers’ pay. Cf. the annotation to n. 6 below. On the whole subject see Webster, Roman Imperial Army, 264–83. n. 1.3  Tacit. ann. lib. 4.] In Annals 4.5, Tacitus surveys the numbers and locations of the legions in the various provinces of the empire in ad 23. n. 1.10  Tacit. ann. lib. 1.] Tacitus, Annals 1.17, comes from the rebel Percennius’s account of the soldiers’ complaints, but such deductions were a fact. For centurions’ receiving only ‘double a common soldier’, see the annotation to ‘Populousness’, n. 57. n. 1.11  So little expensive] Like Hume, Gibbon remarks on the relatively small size of the Roman forces, contrasting them with Louis XIV’s forces: ‘France still feels that extraordinary effort’ (Decline and Fall, 1: 20 n. 71). But a recent study maintains that the forces were still a large burden to the Roman government: ‘The annual cost of the legions, auxilia, and navy in the early 1st century ad may have amounted to more than 400 million sesterces, a large proportion of the empire’s disposable income; a pay raise will have had serious financial implications’ (Campbell, Roman Army, 21).

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n. 1.13  money, after the conquest of Egypt] Cf. the memorandum, ‘After the Conquest of Ægypt by Augustus the Prices of every thing doubl’d in Rome’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 509). See also the annotations to ‘Interest’, n. 1, and ‘Populousness’ 84 at 304.9–1. 219.37–8  as the goldsmiths formerly did in London, or as the bankers do at present in Dublin] From c.1650 to c.1730, London goldsmiths like Edward Backwell provided financial services, facilitated by an informal network of reciprocal credit to honour promissory notes and drawn orders. Some impetus to the cre­ ation of the Bank of England in 1694 came from a desire to remove what was deemed a monopoly of credit by the goldsmith-bankers. The Bank of Scotland was created the following year and the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1727, but the Bank of Ireland would not be created until 1783. An attempt to create an Irish bank had been defeated in 1721. The inflation of paper in Ireland by private bankers issuing notes made banks vulnerable to ‘runs’, with failures peaking in 1755–6 and 1760. n. 2  the bank of Amsterdam] This note appeared first in the 1758 ETSS (vari­ ants). For Hume as for Berkeley, the exemplar of a public bank was that at Amsterdam (1609–1820). On the different functions of banks as then understood, see [Janssen], Discourse, 4–11. Janssen records the presence of major European banks in Germany, Holland, Italy, and Sweden, but mentions none in France. The distinction between public and private banks helps to explain Hume’s otherwise perplexing comments in ‘Balance of Trade’ 22 about the absence of banks in France when he is referring only to public ones. The British national banks were all joint-stock corporations, a circumstance leading Berkeley in Querist 244, 1.216, 222, 226, 3.123, to refuse to call them public (Works, 6: 125, 155–6, 176). As was illustrated with the bursting of the Mississippi Bubble in 1720, the interests of the shareholders—above all those of the directors—might jeopardize those of the public. The bank at Amsterdam, as Janssen explained, was in that class which has ‘no Income, no Adventurers or Sharers in their Profits, for they never make any; they are only great and safe Depositories of Money; for the Conveniency of writing off, or transferring from one Account to another’ (4–5; cf. Some Observations, 7–9). The bank functioned as a receiver of bullion and coin to be held as a rule in deposit rather than used as the basis of loans. Payments from one account into another neither augmented nor diminished the reserves. Thus clipped, worn, and foreign coins were removed from circulation and replaced with notional ‘bank money’ of uniform value. In ‘Hume’s “Early Memoranda” ’ (152), Sakamoto connects this passage with the following from Hume’s memoranda, taken from the ‘Dict. de Com.’, or Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce: ‘There is computed to be 3000 Tun of Gold in the Bank of Amsterdam at 100.000 Florins a Tun’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 510). 220.17  of this subject of paper-credit we shall treat more largely hereafter] See ‘Balance of Trade’ 19–27, also ‘Public Credit’ 8, 12.

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220.19–20  to employ the thoughts of our speculative politicians] Removed at this point for the 1770 ETSS was the following sentence: ‘For to these only I all along address myself. ’Tis enough that I submit to the ridicule sometimes, in this age, attach’d to the character of a philosopher, without adding to it that which belongs to a projector’ (variants). n. 3  Plutarch. Quomodo . . . possit.] ‘How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue’ 7, in Moralia 78f: ‘Anacharsis said that he never saw the Greeks use their money for any other purpose but counting [arithmein]’. Anacharsis was a legendary Scythian prince, supposedly of the 6th century bc, who became for the Greeks an exemplar of the wise barbarian. He was accounted a friend of Solon and one of the Seven Sages. He serves sometimes (as in Plutarch’s passage) as a literary character through whom to satirize aspects of Greek society, as in Lucian’s Anacharsis. Hume was of course well aware of the pervasive use of money in ancient Greece. See e.g. ‘Populousness’ 48, 62, 80, 84. 221.12–13  the high price of commodities . . . follows not immediately upon that encrease] Cf. Cantillon, Essai 2.6: ‘J’estime en général qu’une augmentation d’argent effectif cause dans un État une augmentation proportionnée de consommation, qui produit par degrés l’augmentation des prix’; ‘I consider in general that an increase of actual money causes in a State a corresponding increase of consumption which gradually brings about increased prices’ (Essay, 67). 221.25  to Cadiz] Imports of American gold and silver entered Spain and thence Europe through this Atlantic seaport near the Straits of Gibraltar. Its heyday was 1720–65. Imports to Europe via Portugal were through Lisbon. n. 4.1  Mons. du Tot in his Reflections politiques] The ‘general observation’ about the delay in inflation seems to belong to Hume, not Dutot, who evidently provided only some useful data. Even so, Hume’s use of the source is confusing. Dutot appears never to mention the price of corn in France, specifically records the value of silver in 1683 as 27 livres the mark, and quotes Melon’s claim that it was at that time at 28 livres. As of June 1735 the mark had indeed been valued at 50 livres, according to the author (Political Reflections, 124–5, 132–3, 136, 95). The points of comparison for the value of silver are 1715, when Louis XIV died, and 1683, when his finance minister Colbert died, and a figure of 28 livres the mark is assigned in Dutot to 1715. Hume prefers to use round figures. For the identity of Dutot, see Murphy, ‘The Enigmatic Monsieur Du Tot’, and Velde, ‘Life and Times of Nicolas Dutot’. n. 4.8  Melon, du Tot, and Paris de Verney] Dutot in fact favoured leaving the money alone (Political Reflections, 2). Melon endorsed major past increases and, for his own time, favoured inflationary measures, with the advantage to debtors offered as his reason (Essai politique, 173–4; A Political Essay, 217). Pâris-DuVerney leaned to Melon over Dutot. See his Examen du livre intitulé Réflexions politiques, 1: 29–42, on the issue of inflation.

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n. 4.17  when the clipt money was raised to the old standard] The example not to be imitated was the disruptive recoinage in 1696–8, when John Locke had argued against the proposal in 1695 to reduce the silver content of the coin by 20 per cent. At issue was whether to recoin the money stock so as to bring the circulating coins up to the current standard or down to a standard reflecting the debased silver content of the coins in circulation. 223.15–16  Germany, at present, and what it was three centuries ago] See the annotation on Germany for ‘National Characters’ 19 at 167.30. The Austrian dominions and the Holy Roman Empire converged when the Hapsburg ruler was the elected emperor, or the wife of the emperor as was the case with Maria Theresa. This convergence had been the norm since the 15th century, with the exception of 1740–5, an interruption connected with the War of the Austrian Succession. The contrast of the ‘present’ with ‘three centuries ago’ points back roughly to 1452, when Frederick III became the Holy Roman Emperor and eight years before his son Maximilian was born. n. 5.1  the Emperor Maximilian, the nickname of Pocci-danari] ‘How many and how great soever [Maximilian’s] Resources were, he quickly drain’d them, and therefore he was always in want. This was it got him the Name of Maximilian the Poor, or Massimiliano Pochidinari, among the Italians of his Time’ ([Dubos], History of the League, 17). ‘Pochi Danari’ means ‘little or no money’. Maximilian I was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 to 1519. 223.20  scarcity of money] It was understood that the government of the Holy Roman Empire was chronically in need of money with which to pay troops. As an area with far less trade and industry than Western Europe, it may also have lacked money for purposes of investment, but it is the first concern that is prominent in contemporary documents. Writing c.1733 about Maria Theresa’s father Charles VI in 1725, Lord Hervey said that ‘The Emperor, as he is a prince who has very extensive and scattered territories, a great number of troops, and very little money, is always negotiating for the latter, in order to maintain the two others’ (Some Materials, 56–7). 224.10  If the coin be locked up] Cf. Locke, Some Considerations: ‘that [money] which is not let loose into Trade, is all one whil’st Hoarded up, as if it were not in Being’ (Locke on Money, 1: 294). 224.15  reserve for seed and for maintenance of himself] Hume included the stipulation ‘for seed’ as of the 1772 ETSS (variants). 225.22–3  the prices of all things . . . the discovery of the West Indies] The argument is that the inflationary movement of the 16th century that accompanied the plundering of American gold and extensive mining of American silver was considerably reduced in impact by the growth in industry within much of Europe. This argument accords with the modern understanding of the price revolution, though much of that phase of economic history remains subject to controversy. Hume

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c­ annot have meant that literally the prices of all things came to be inflated, for the cost of money itself—the rate of interest—showed a tendency to fall, as he pointed out in ‘Interest’. Hume treats the significance of the discovery of the New World in Hist. 5: 39. 225.27  their African trade, and by their interlopers] i.e. the triangular trade exporting guns, rum, and other commodities from Europe to West Africa; slaves from thence to America; and sugar, tobacco, and specie to Europe. Cf. ‘Balance of Trade’ 13. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, and the English were all avid participants in the Atlantic slave-trade. In the 1690s, the English Royal African Company was a subcontractor to the Assiento, the coveted contract to supply slaves to the Spanish colonies. From 1713, the South Sea Company held the contract intermittently, acquiring for some time its supply from the Royal African Company. The ‘interlopers’ refers to those slavers operating outside the license of the successive Assiento treaties with Spain, reducing the Assiento to a piece of paper. The Spanish paid for slaves with silver coin or bullion that the British would use in turn for the trade with India. For 1698–1715, the average annual exportation of bullion to India was £398,000 (Nettels, Money Supply, 164). 225.28–9  about six millions a year, of which not above a third goes to the East Indies] Until the two 1754 issues of the Political Discourses, the sum was ‘about seven millions a year, of which not above a tenth part’ goes to the East Indies. Likewise, in the next sentence ‘ten years’ replaced ‘five years’ (variants). See Mazza and Mori, ‘ “Loose Bits of Paper” ’, 17–18. 226.19–20  fallacy of the remark, often to be met with in historians] Which historians Hume had in mind is not obvious, but instances can be cited. Pliny refers with a suggestion of alarm to large sums of money being drawn from Rome to India to pay for luxuries (Natural History 6.26.101, 12.41.84). Tacitus reports that in ad 22 Tiberius mentioned this trading imbalance in a letter to the senate occasioned by a discussion of the effects of increasing luxury (Annals 3.53). Modern historians tend to discount the bad effects of this trade. There is a discussion in Miller, Spice Trade, ch. 13. 226.34–6  China, . . . the civil and military establishment] Emphasis upon the size of the Chinese establishment, civil and military, suggests the source of these comments. See Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, General History, 2: 44, 75, where are recorded a total of over 13,600 mandarins who were civilian administrators and 18,000 mandarins with military commissions. Du Halde discusses Chinese money at 2: 286–95. n. 6  Lib. 2. cap. 15.] Speaking of his own time (2nd century bc), Polybius says that food is produced so abundantly in the Po valley that innkeepers offer an inclusive rate per diem rather than specify the cost of each item (as seems to have been the normal practice at the time elsewhere) and that the rate was as low as ‘half an as per diem’ (Histories 2.15.4–6). A ‘semis’ is a contraction of ‘semi as’, or half an as.

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226.37–8  stated price for a meal at the inns] Until the 1770 ETSS, the phrase was ‘stated club in the inns’ or ‘at the inns’ (variants). The meaning of ‘club’ here is an individual’s share in a joint expense. See the Glossary, s.v. club. 226.38  a semis a head, little more than a farthing!] In ‘Hume’s “Early Memoranda” ’ (152), Sakamoto connects this passage with the following from Hume’s memoranda: ‘The common Reckoning in the Italian Inns in Lombardy only a Semis a head, about a 2 pence farthing. Id. Lib. 2. C. 15. They bargaind only for the head, not for particular Provisions as in Greece, wch Polybius reckons a great Proof of Plenty in Italy that Country’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 518). (Revisions of this memorandum by Hume force conjecture as to the words he scored through. Here as elsewhere we quote from the memoranda rather than from Mossner’s transcription but supply a page-number citation to Mossner’s article.) n. 7  Plin. lib. 33. cap. 11.] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 33.50.143. Hume’s citation of ‘cap. 11’ is correct for editions in Hume’s time. The same dinner service was preceding the Carthaginian envoys from house to house. Presumably this story referred to negotiations in connection with one of the Punic Wars of the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc. Pliny contrasts this frugality with the luxurious expenditure on silver in his own day (1st century ad). As in ‘Balance of Trade’ 22–3, ‘plate’ refers to wrought silver or gold, like tableware, at once utensils and a form of wealth.

4. Of Interest This essay appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. All twelve items in the 1st  edition of Political Discourses were composed and ready for the press by 22 September 1751 (New Letters, 28–9). 228.8  Batavia and Jamaica . . . Portugal] Batavia (present-day Jakarta) was founded in 1619 as a centre for the Dutch East India Company. It is not clear what Hume’s source of information was, but cf. the similar rates of interest cited for Portugal and the West and East Indies in Joseph Massie’s 1750 Essay, 51. The rate at such distant locations that would be most readily known was that in the West Indies. There were continual complaints from merchants about a rate that varied between 8 and 10 per cent (Importance of Jamaica (1741), 61; Inquiry concerning . . . the Scarcity of Money (1757), 32). Newspapers and magazines regularly recorded the interest paid on government bills and on East India securities, but there is little mention of rates that obtained abroad. At this time the rate of interest in London had seemingly sunk below 4 per cent, and that at Amsterdam stood closer to 3 per cent. In December 1749, Parliament approved lowering the interest on the national debt from 4 to 3 per cent. Had the holders of the debt been able to

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secure elsewhere a much better return for their money, consent would not have come as readily as it did (Parliamentary History, 14: 619–21). 228.11–12  one and twenty shillings substituted in the place of every guinea] A guinea was the standard British gold coin officially worth 21 shillings in the reigns of the Georges, or £1. 1s. Individual coins might not have their full content of precious metal, and the relative values of gold and silver varied, but Hume’s thought experiment puts aside these variables. 228.25–6  the augmentation may have some influence, by exciting industry] As reiterated in ¶ 20 and explained in ‘Money’ 6–9, an increase in itself quickens industry irrespective of whether the money supply is large or small. 228.29–30  Prices have risen near four times] a statistic reiterated from ‘Money’ 17. Judgements about the amount of inflation are difficult unless a particular country, a precise period of time, and even a commodity are specified. The estimate is perhaps conservative in comparison to the influential conclusion of Bishop Fleetwood, made in 1706, that five pounds in the middle of the 15th century would buy what thirty would in his time (Chronicon preciosum, 49, 136). 229.1  Money having chiefly a fictitious value] Removed for the 1770 ETSS was the following appositional phrase: ‘arising from the agreement and convention of men’ (variants). See the Glossary, s.v. fictitious. 229.20–1  a clear proof of the small advance of commerce and industry] ‘Populousness’ 84 gives instances from ancient Athens and Rome of how ‘Great interest of money, and great profits of trade, are an infallible indication, that industry and commerce are but in their infancy.’ 230.2–3  landholders, and the prodigals among them] The landed man, forced to borrow to pay for his extravagancies or for those of his ancestors, had long been a stock character in British life. A later example from fiction is Jane Austen’s Sir Walter Elliot, who ‘condescended to mortgage’ Kellynch Hall ‘as far as he had the power’ (Persuasion, ch. 1). The prevalence of this type appeared in parliamentary debate as the reason why rates of interest in Britain stood above those in the United Provinces. See Parliamentary History, 10: 101, from a debate of March 1737. variants for 230.13, n.  four centuries ago . . . five per cent.] This note was omitted as of the 1764 ETSS. Clearly Hume records a personal exchange here and not a printed source. As Hume records elsewhere (Hist. 3: 331), there was no officially recognized rate of interest in England until 1546, for the prohibition of usury rendered any rate illegal. The actual rate paid was thus subject to no close control or cognizance by the government, but was highest for royal borrowers who were able to renege on their debts. variants for 230.13, n.  high rate of interest among the early Romans] Livy frequently points to the plight of debtors in early Rome (e.g. History 2.23.1–15;

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6.34.1–4, 37.11–12; 8.28.1–9), exacerbated by the debtor’s absence on war service (e.g. 2.23.5–6; 6.14.3–8). He notes that, as a result of popular agitation, the max­ imum legal rate of interest was set in 357 bc at ‘unciarium fenus’ and was lowered a few years later to a half of this, ‘semunciarium . . . fenus’ (History 7.16.1 and 7.27.3–4). Oakley discusses the widely divergent interpretations that scholars have given of the Latin terms denoting the rates of interest, which he interprets as 100 per cent and 50 per cent respectively (Commentary, 2: 177–8). In his memoranda Hume interprets the rates differently. Referring apparently to the same two passages of Livy, he says: ‘The Romans were able to force Interest by Law. For they once l­imited the Interest to 12 per Cent. as an Ease to the People: And 4 or 5 Years after reduc’d it to six. Livy. Lib. 7’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 511). Oakley surveys the problem of debt in early Rome (Commentary, 1: 660–1). 231.11–12  merchants, one of the most useful races of men] Until the 1770 ETSS, the phrase read ‘the most useful race of men in the whole society’ (variants). 231.34–5  craving . . . for exercise and employment] Cf. ‘Tragedy’ 3–4. ‘Interest’ 11 as a whole reiterates ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 3. 234.39–40  we are informed by Garcilasso de la Vega] Garcilaso de la Vega’s The Royal Commentaries of the Incas and the General History of Peru (c.1609–17) contains various measures of the increase in money and of the amount of inflation, especially in pt. 2, bk. 1, chs. 3–6. However, there is no direct measure of the diminished rate of interest. At that time all of South America was referred to as Peru. n. 1  Lib. 51.] Dio Cassius, Roman History 51.21.5, referring to 29 bc: ‘So vast an amount of money, in fact, circulated through all parts of the city alike, that the price of goods rose and loans for which the borrower had been glad to pay twelve per cent. could now be had for one third that rate’ (Roman History, 6: 61). Assuming 6 per cent as the norm, Hume takes the sentence to indicate that the lowest rate was one-third of 12 per cent. Cf. ‘Money’, n. 1, on Roman money ‘after the conquest of Egypt’, and see the annotation for n. 2 on the normal rate of interest at Rome. n. 2  Columella, lib. 3. cap. 3.] Writing in the 60s ad, but paraphrasing Graecinus, an earlier writer of the time of Tiberius (14–37), Columella took 6 per cent to be a usual rate of interest on the purchase price of a vineyard (On Agriculture 3.3.9). Other evidence also suggests that 6 per cent was considered a normal rate of interest for loans in Italy (as opposed to 12 per cent outside of Italy) during the early imperial period. Pliny, Natural History 7.18.4, characterizes that rate as ‘a legal and moderate rate of interest’ [usura civilis ac modica]. See Sherwin-White, Letters, 423–4, and J. A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome, 211–13. n. 3  Plin. epist. lib. 7. epist. 18.] Pliny the Younger, Letters 7.18. Pliny is explaining a transaction he had made to provide funds to the municipal authorities in his native city of Comum for the support of poor children. Such schemes were known as alimenta. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. alimenta. The mechanism of Pliny’s

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benefaction is similar to schemes introduced about this time by the emperors Nerva and Trajan in that the 6 per cent maintaining the children is not, strictly speaking, ‘interest’ on a sum of money, but a perpetual rent-charge on a portion of Pliny’s land, which goes with the land (Sherwin-Williams, Letters, 423 and 104). Hume is interested in the figures Pliny gives: in order to provide 30,000 sesterces per annum for the fund, Pliny had put a rent-charge on an estate he owned worth ‘considerably more’, as Pliny puts it, than 500,000 sesterces. n. 4  Id. lib. 10. epist. 62.] The modern reference is Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.54. But there was some fluctuation in the division and numbering of the letters in bk. 10, and in several editions dating from 1677 to 1741 this letter is indeed 10.62. See the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 191.1. As governor of the province of Bithynia (in the north-west of present-day Turkey), Pliny reports to the emperor Trajan that he has been unable to find borrowers willing to pay 12 per cent to borrow money which is lying idle in the provincial treasury. Trajan agrees with his suggestion that he should offer to lend it at a lower rate (letter 55). Twelve per cent seems to have been the usual rate of return for short-term loans outside of Italy. See Sherwin-White, Letters, 635–6. 235.27–8  interest in Spain] In the case of Spain, widely understood to be in decline, the nation’s possession of money was a dubious advantage since it was neither an effect nor a cause of industry and the real prosperity attending it. Hume’s argument was not new, for in his 1698 Discourses on the Public Revenue, Davenant had already stressed, in relation to the situation of Spain, that ‘Industry and Skill to improve the advantages of Soil and Situation, are more truly riches to a People, than even the Possession of Gold and Silver Mines . . . . ’Tis not the taking in a great deal of Food, but ’Tis good Digestion and Distribution that nourishes the Body’ (Works, 1: 382). The essentials of Hume’s argument of 1752 appear as well in Massie’s 1750 Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest, accompanied by an emphasis upon the relation of political liberty and industry. Massie identified those who attributed low interest to quantity of money as Locke (Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and the Raising the Value of Money) and Sir William Petty (Political Arithmetick). His own thesis was that interest is governed by profits, which are themselves governed by competition in trade (Essay, 61–2). To Locke’s and Petty’s names, Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations 2.4.9) would add John Law and Montesquieu.

5. Of the Balance of Trade This essay appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. The essay was composed, or at least completed, after Hume’s letter to Montesquieu of 10 April 1749 and before James Oswald of Dunnikier’s letter of 10 October 1750 criticizing a draft (Selections,

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pt. 2.1, pp. 93–107). Oswald was an Opposition Whig in the parliament of 1752, though he had held an office in the Pelham ministry, and would again. His letter and Hume’s response serve as a commentary on the essay. Emphasizing their points of agreement, Hume states that his purpose was ‘to remove people’s errors, who are apt, from chimerical calculations, to imagine they are losing their specie, though they can show in no instance that either their people or industry diminish; and also to expose the absurdity of guarding money otherwise than by watching over the people and their industry, and preserving or increasing them’ (Letters, 1: 142–4 at 144). Oswald argued against Hume that attending to people and their industry required a favourable balance of trade maintained by keeping wages low as well as prices for necessaries and raw materials (Selections, pt. 2.1, p. 107). Hume’s description of the self-equilibration of trade and money is simplistic, in Oswald’s view. A  nation could preserve its favourable balance of trade indefinitely by keeping wages and costs low, and that could be achieved by eschewing protectionist measures and taxes on necessaries, by a liberal immigration policy, and by stockpiling necessaries and raw materials advantageously for release when costs rise. Britain could be to its neighbours as London is to the rest of Britain and Paris is to France: it can be the ‘manufacturer [and] the storehouse of the world’ (p. 98). A French translation of ‘Balance of Trade’ appeared in two installments in 1754: Journal œconomique (September), 176–84, and (November), 167–76 (Malherbe, ‘Hume’s Reception in France’, 57 and n. 60). Along with ‘Jealousy of Trade’ and ‘Balance of Power’, this essay would be appended to the London 1787 reprint of the 3rd edition of Josiah Tucker’s Brief Essay, on which see the head-note to the annotations for ‘Jealousy of Trade’. 237.11  informers were thence called sycophants] For the later role of ‘sycophants’ in classical Athens, see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 65 at 298.5. Hume’s readers would be all too aware of the sycophants’ British counterparts, the informers on whom the government relied to enforce economic prohibitions. Thus a crowd is instantly inflamed in ch. 2 of Dickens’s Pickwick Papers by the cry that the Pickwickians are informers. Between escapades of thievery Defoe’s Moll Flanders found it profitable to solicit prohibited goods like Flanders lace in order to betray the purveyers (Moll Flanders, 210–11). n. 1  Plutarch. de curiositate.] Plutarch, ‘On Being a Busybody’ 16 (Moralia 523b). The alleged legislation of early times in Athens prohibiting export is outlined in Plutarch, Lives, ‘Solon’ 24.1. It is not generally accepted as historical. Hume also appears to be embellishing the version in Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 3.74c–75a. The explanation of the word as ‘discoverer [“revealer”] of figs’ is believed to be etymologically correct, but why they were so called is unknown (Beekes, Etymological Dictionary, 2: 1421). 237.12–13  There are proofs in many old acts of parliament] For only the 1760 ETSS, the sentence read, ‘There are proofs in many old acts of the Scotch parliament of the same ignorance in the nature of commerce’ (variants). The phrase

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‘particularly in the reign of Edward III’ was included as of the 1764 ETSS. In Hist. 2: 280, Hume records and deplores several such examples of prohibitions against exporting even finished products. Here the traditional concern lest foreigners enjoy the gain from working up of raw materials was not a factor. 237.14–15  in France, the exportation of corn] As of the 1760 ETSS, the phrase ‘in France’ replaced ‘A neighbouring kingdom’ (variants). In France inexpensive food for the populace had long been a question of public order, and efforts such as those by the Physiocrats to liberalize trade always broke on this fear of famine and disorder. Mercantilist thought on trade often seems to have dwelt upon the possibility that an exported commodity might be in short supply and not readily increased to accommodate increased demand. 237.24  the balance of trade] Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. balance of trade: ‘the Difference between the Value of Commodities bought of Foreigners, and the Value of the native Productions transported into other Nations. ’Tis necessary that the Balance be kept in Trading Nations; and if it cannot be made in Commodities, it must in Specie’. Precedent for much of what Hume says in this essay existed in financier Nicholas Barbon’s 1696 Discourse concerning the Coining the New Money Lighter, § 3, as well as John Trenchard’s part of Cato’s Letters 67 for 24 February 1721 (1: 471–83). 237.31–238.1  The custom-house books] The earliest attempt to assess the balance of English trade was by collection of statistics on exports and imports, beginning in 1696 with the appointment of the first inspector-general of exports and imports (Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship, 230). Postlethwayt surveys the deficiencies in the custom-house records for judging the balance of trade (Universal Dictionary of Trade, 1: 184–5, s.v. ballance of trade). 238.7  Mr. Gee] Joshua Gee formulated the relation between trade and currency thus: ‘[T]o take the right Way of judging of the Increase or Decrease of the Riches of the Nation by the Trade we drive with Foreigners,’ we should ‘examine whether we receive Money from them, or send them ours; For if we export more Goods than we receive, it is most certain we shall have a Balance brought to us in Gold and Silver, and the Mint will be at Work to coin that Gold and Silver: But if we import more than we export, or spend our Money in Foreign Countries, then it is as certain the Balance must be paid by Gold and Silver sent them to discharge that Debt’ (Trade, 116–17). In ch. 34 and the conclusion of Trade and Navigation of Great-Britain Considered (a 1729 copy of which is listed in the Hume Library), Gee had argued that a negative balance of payments, notably with France, would prove ruinous. 238.11  an expensive foreign war] The struggle over the Austrian succession, called King George’s War by Americans, had a prelude in the War of Jenkyns’s Ear against Spain, starting in 1739. 238.13–14  Dr. Swift; author so quick in discerning the mistakes and absurdities of others] Until the two 1754 issues of Political Discourses the phrase

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read, ‘an author, who has more humour than knowledge, more taste than judgment, and more spleen, prejudice, and passion than any of these qualities’ (variants). 238.16–17  the Irish remitted every year a neat million to England] Swift did not proclaim in his Short View of the State of Ireland the absurdity that the nation annually remitted to England more cash than it had. He did not say that a ‘good Million’ was drawn entirely out of ‘the running Cash of the Nation’, i.e. the circulating specie reduced in 1724–7 by bankers from £500,000 to £200,000 (Prose, 12: 9, 11–12). But he did say that the trade imbalance could not be paid without drawing upon the shrinking money stock in Ireland needed for commerce, and it was an obvious fact that the money stock had not run out since 1727, when Swift wrote his pamphlet. For his general argument about the effect of a trade imbalance on the money stock, Swift may have taken his cue from Locke’s Some Considerations (Locke on Money, 1: 228–9). 238.22–3  at present . . . in a course of 30 years] The temptation to juxtapose ‘a  course of three years’ strikingly with ‘a course of 30 years’ leads Hume into ­inaccuracy. Until the 1764 ETSS the text read, ‘at present, in the course of near 30  years’ (variants). Neither version was accurate for a pamphlet published in 1727/8. 238.30  to form a general argument] Cf. Hume’s reaction to Josiah Tucker’s views (to Kames, 4 March 1758, Letters, 1: 271) with Hume’s statement of his ‘general argument’ to Montesquieu (10 April 1749, Letters, 1: 136–7). The importance of this argument for economics was proclaimed by Jacob Viner: ‘In so far as the classical theory of the mechanism of international trade had one definite originator, it was David Hume’ (Studies, 292). However, what is now called Hume’s pricespecie flow mechanism had earlier formulations in Vanderlint, Money Answers All Things (5, 46–7, 66), and Cantillon, Essai 2.6. Although the latter was not published until 1755, Hume might have seen it in a manuscript such as Postlethwayt must have used in plagiarizing its contents for his Universal Dictionary of Trade. 238.34  the reigns of the Harrys and Edwards] The reigns from Henry I through Edward VI cover the years 1100–1553. For some remarks on the amount of money available to the kings in this period, see Hume, Hist. 2: 379–81. 240.3–4  the monopolies of our India companies] There were India com­pan­ ies English, French, and Dutch. In 1769, the Abbé Morellet listed fifty-five such European trading monopolies established since 1600 and claimed that all those listed had failed despite their privileges (Examen, 35–8). If the monopolies restricted trade, the Chinese for their part tightly restricted trade with Europe, confining it for example to the port of Canton. 240.7–8  The skill and ingenuity of Europe in general surpasses perhaps that of China] Cf. the annotations for ‘Rise and Progress’ 21 at 108.13–14 and ‘Commerce’ 16 at 206.39. When Hume says, ‘yet are we never able to trade thither without great disadvantage’, he refers evidently to the huge trade imbalance with

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China. Hume wrote this essay at the peak of the fashion for chinoiserie, and tea was overtaking coffee in popularity. 240.13  Barbary] See the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 165 at 324.17. 240.16  a moral attraction] For the adjective ‘moral’ see the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 2 at 161.16–18. Also see ‘Populousness’ 5 and its annotation at 281.31–2 as well as the Glossary, s.v. moral. 240.26  the Heptarchy] the seven independent Saxon kingdoms—Kent, Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex—which established themselves in England by the 7th century. See Hume, Hist. 1: 23–5 (for a summary), 25–54 (for a survey of each kingdom). n. 3  Les interets d’Angleterre mal-entendus.] In writing in 1703 of the economic dangers of the union of England and Scotland, the Abbé Dubos wished ­primarily to promote the French interest in maintaining the old alliance with Scotland. For the argument about the greater industry of the Scots, see Les Intérêts d’Angleterre mal entendus, 45–8. n. 4.2–3  its proportional level to the commodities, labour, industry, and skill, which is in the several states] Greig guessed that Hume added this note in response to Oswald’s letter criticizing a supposed neglect of population and industry as factors in Hume’s description of the self-equilibration of ‘the level of money’. See Letters, 1: 142–3 and 143 n. 1; Oswald, Selections, pt. 2.1, pp. 93–107. Hume’s two counterfactual conditionals (¶¶ 9–10) isolated variables to highlight a relation between prices and the quantity of money, but Oswald saw the thought experiment just as simplistic. 241.17–18  innumerable barriers and obstructions upon commerce] e.g. the bans on exports of wool in 1614, 1648, 1660, 1662, 1688, 1695–6, and 1698, removed only in 1824 (Agrarian History, 5.2: 363–6). Smith illustrates some of these laws at Wealth of Nations 4.8, ¶¶ 17–23. 242.1  There are many edicts of the French king] Smith discusses one such edict of 1731 in Wealth of Nations 1.11.b, ¶ 27. 242.5  Mareschal Vauban] Vauban, Projet d’une dixme royale, 9, 31, 40. The text is far from explicit about the clashes of interest among the provinces of France. 242.22  banish a great part of those precious metals] Using banknotes as an exemplar of paper equivalents to money (Wealth of Nations 2.2, ¶ 27), Adam Smith says, ‘[T]he paper cannot go abroad; because at a distance from the banks which issue it, and from the country in which payment of it can be exacted by law, it will not be received in common payments. Gold and silver, therefore, . . . will be sent abroad’ (¶ 30). 242.28–9  It is only in our public negociations and transactions with foreigners] Hume said in ‘Money’ 1 that the quantity of money matters only to ‘the

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public’ (i.e. the government) and then ‘only in its wars and negociations with foreign states’. See the annotation for 218.8. 242.29–30  our paper is there absolutely insignificant] In ‘Money’ 4, Hume speaks of paper substitutes for specie as ‘counterfeit money, which foreigners will not accept of in any payment’. In fact bills of foreign exchange were used extensively for payments to foreigners (Jones, War and Economy, 66–94 at 77–82; Dickson, Finance and Government, 2: 165–7; Ashton, Economic History, ch. 6.3). Evidently Hume disregards such bills in his analysis of the money stock and speaks of only domestic paper such as ‘bank-bills and chequer-notes’. He has in mind paper that cannot be used in governmental transactions like the subsidy of Austrian troops, and his focus is on paper that augments the national money stock, inflating the currency and displacing specie and bullion. In contrast, bills of foreign exchange were based on the transfer of debts and credits arising from commodity transactions between the different countries. Though any residue would ultimately have to be settled in specie, the advantage of such bills was in obviating the shipping of precious metals. n. 5.1  We observed in Essay 3.] i.e. in ‘Money’ 6–9 on the ‘interval or inter­ medi­ate situation, between the acquisition of money and rise of prices’ (¶ 7). Hume made this point to Oswald of Dunnikier in his letter of 1 November 1750 (Letters, 1: 143). This note was included as of the 2nd edition (1752) of Political Discourses (variants). 243.8  chequer-notes] i.e. exchequer bills, the first of which were issued in 1696. Because such notes were transferable by written endorsement, they could in prin­ ciple serve as a substitute for specie. Issued ‘as low as £5 and £10’, the first exchequer bills were ‘intended partly to supply the want of money during the re-coinage’ (Grellier, History, 42). By 1750, however, the only denomination of exchequer bill was £1,000. As Dickson informs us, the bills ‘were largely monopolized by the Bank of England, and they appeared infrequently in the money-market’ (Financial Revolution, 384, 452). At the union of 1707 the Scots were reluctant to accept exchequer bills as payment of the ‘Equivalent’, the compensation for Scots tax rev­ enues now dedicated to paying pre-union English debt. Use of the bills then was forced by a lack of specie aggravated by the necessity of paying troops in cash (Riley, English Ministers, 203–11). 243.11–12  The French have no banks] The French did have financial institutions that performed relevant functions, and these were sometimes called banks, that of Samuel Barnard being one example. What they lacked, both before and after John Law’s scheme, was a national bank on the model of those in both England and Scotland—what Hume sometimes referred to as ‘public’ banks. See ‘Money’ 4 and the annotation for n. 2. In some of his writings, still then in manuscript and so un­avail­able to Hume, Law suggested that banks were not suited to monarchical states. The same judgement appears in Montesquieu, L’Esprit des lois 20.10. Defoe was another who discussed the poor facilities for affording commercial credit in France

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in terms that may have invited misunderstanding (Defoe, Chimera, 11). Finally, Jacques Savary once explained how the term ‘banker’ was little used in France because all the functions of such a person were performed by those known merely as négociants. He wrote too of those agens de banque to be found in various French cities (Le parfait négociant, pt. 1, bk. 2, ch. 9, p. 227, and pt. 2, bk. 3, ch. 7, p. 267). 243.12  Merchants’ bills do not there circulate] Again, the claim is misleading if taken literally, and Oswald challenged it, as well as Hume’s claim that paper money was ‘absolutely insignificant’ (¶ 20) in foreign transactions (Selections, pt. 2.1, pp. 106–7). Adam Smith thought that there was ‘a great deal of paper money in England, and scarce any in France’ (Wealth of Nations 2.2, ¶ 96). In English System of Finance, Tom Paine said that ‘There was no paper money [i.e. banknotes] in France before’ the French Revolution (Writings, 3: 308). An entry in Hume’s memo­ randa suggests that Hume’s source was Dutot’s Reflections, perhaps ch. 3, art. 6 (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Early Memoranda’, 507). Merchants’ bills—known variously as lettres de change, billets, or effets—had circulated in France since the financial mechanism arrived from Italy in the 16th century. There had been interruptions in the practice, however, some imposed in order to foster precisely that sort of royal bank sought by Law. For evidence both of the use of this sort of commercial paper and its restriction, see [Jean Le Correur], Traité de la pratique des billets, 270–1; le sieur Bouthillier, Le Banquier françois, v–vi, 288 et seq. It was to the destabilizing of the value of money by constant government interference that Dutot referred when he said that Bernard, the major banker in Paris, continued still to issue and to receive these instruments. The point here was that fluctuations in the value of a currency made transactions in it hazardous. Hume had consulted Savary’s compendium of commercial practice and so could be familiar with its entries on commercial paper. See Mossner, ‘Early Memoranda’, 510, and Jacques Savary, Dictionnaire, vol. 1, cols. 9–10, 650–1; vol. 2, cols. 503–12. 243.14  Great quantities of plate are used in private houses] Cf. Isaac Newton, ‘Representation Third’ (21 September 1717): ‘It may be said, That there are great Quantities of Silver in Plate, and if the Plate were coined, there would be no Want of Silver Money; But I reckon that Silver is safer from Exportation in the Form of Plate than in the Form of Money, because of the greater Value of the Silver and Fashion together; and therefore I am not for coining the Plate till the Temptation to export the Silver Money . . . be . . . diminished’ (‘Representations’, 279). 243.19–23  Genoa . . . in their late distresses] Genoa suffered a financial crisis owing to the War of the Austrian Succession. The announcement in 12 December 1750 of a sinking fund to retire the republic’s debt described the situation as dating from the surrender of Genoa to the Austrians in 1746: ‘The capital, and all the dominions of the most serene republick, being at that time in the most unhappy crisis, the government was forced, in order to save the bank from greater misfortunes, to lay, for the first time since its institution, hands upon this sacred deposit,

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by drawing out of it the sum of 15 millions of livres’ (Gentleman’s Magazine, 20 (1750): 594). The withdrawal necessitated the stoppage of payments on bank bills. Hume praised the bank in ‘Politics’ 12. 243.24  Our tax on plate] i.e. Charles Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland’s 1720 tax on the import and purchase of silver plate (6 George I, c. 2). It would be supplanted as unproductive in 1758 by 31 George II, c. 32 (Dowell, History, 4: 364–5). 243.25  the introduction of paper-money into our colonies] Cf. Hume’s relations of this situation to Montesquieu and the Abbé Morellet (10 April 1749 and 10 July 1769, Letters, 1: 136, 2: 204–5). From 1713, the over-issue of ‘bills of credit’ by the colonial governments of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and South Carolina resulted in the bills’ depreciation and an outflow of silver in transactions for foreign trade (Nettels, Money Supply, ch. 10). New England’s inflation was peaking c.1750. Hume’s complacency about the adequacy of colonial specie was not shared by the colonists, including Benjamin Franklin. The absence of that relatively free trade for which Hume was the advocate meant that the colonies in, for instance, British North America were kept in a chronic adverse balance of trade with the mother country. This trade was not sufficiently free to be self-correcting in the manner of Hume’s theory. There was a serious shortage of specie to settle accounts after unequal exchanges of commodities. British law also prevented the shipment of coin to the colonies, aggravating the situation. The introduction of paper money contributed to the disappearance of specie, but British regulations also played their part. It was also a situation that had grown more serious, for prior to 1700 piracy had supplied much of the needed coin. The title of one colonial publication tells the tale: Money the Sinews of Trade. The State of the Massachusetts-Bay Consider’d, with Respect to Its Trade for Want of a Medium of Exchange wherewith to Manage It (Boston, 1731). In 1751, Parliament enacted 24 George II, c. 53, ‘restricting the power of the New England governments to issue paper money’ (English Historical Documents, 9 (Amer. Col. Doc.): 426). The Currency Act would come in 1764. 243.32  Lycurgus] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Lycurgus’ 9.1–4. According to Plutarch, Lycurgus ‘withdrew all gold and silver money from currency and ordained the use of iron money only’ in order to encourage equality and eliminate emulation among the citizens. According to Plutarch it put an end to selling abroad and to imports of luxury goods, and in the end ‘luxury . . . died away of itself, and men of wealth had no advantage over the poor.’ This is a feature of the frugal way of life introduced at Sparta during the archaic period and ascribed to the semi-legendary lawgiver, Lycurgus. 244.14  It is there called a Bank-Credit] The Royal Bank of Scotland introduced the system in 1728. Hume’s apparent endorsement of this invention in ¶¶ 26–7 was included as of the 1764 ETSS (variants for 243.37) in the context of the exchange crisis described in the head-note to the annotations for ‘Money’. For the crisis see Checkland, Scottish Banking, 108–11, 253. Smith describes these ‘cash accounts’ in Wealth of Nations 2.2, ¶¶ 44–6.

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244.37  companies of merchants at Glasgow] Two banks had recently been established in Glasgow: the Ship Bank in the autumn of 1749 and the Glasgow Arms Bank of 1750. 245.2–3  perform the same operations as if it were six or seven] This adjusted the original phrase, ‘as if it were ten’, as of the 1772 ETSS (variants). 245.4  in all their transactions.] At this point was the following for the ETSS of 1764, 1767, and 1768: ‘In Newcastle and Bristol, as well as other trading places, the merchants have since instituted banks of a like nature, in imitation of those in Glasgow’ (variants). 245.9  the recoinage made after the union] The acts of union in 1707 established the English currency as the common currency of both England and Scotland. For the probable amount of gold and silver circulating in Scotland at the union, see Anderson, Selectus diplomatum et numismatum Scotiae, 84–5, and n. This account is part of the preface added by Thomas Ruddiman. During the withdrawal from currency of Scots silver for recoinage in 1707–10, banknotes came increasingly into use to supply the place of specie. 245.14  But as our projects of paper-credit are almost the only expedient] Until the addition for the 1764 ETSS of the two paragraphs on the uses of paper credit (¶¶ 26–7), this clause read, ‘But as our darling projects of paper credit are pernicious’ (variants). 245.36–8  the immense treasure amassed by Harry VII . . . . 2,700,000 pounds] In the 1770 ETSS the figure of £2,700,000 replaced the figure in all earl­ ier editions of £1,700,000 (variants). In his History, Hume set the treasure at ‘above 2,750,000 pounds sterling’ (History (1759), 1: 56 n.) and subsequently rounded that figure up to ‘near three millions of our present money’ (History (1773), 3: 389 n.). These two figures evidently are a rough conversion of Bacon’s figure of £1,800,000, or more probably Hume’s own figure of £1,700,000, into Hanoverian values. Although in Hume’s day a pound of silver was made to produce 62 coin shillings, it produced in Henry’s time ‘37 shillings and sixpence’, as Hume tells us (History (1759), 1: 56 n.). (62 ÷ 37.5 = 1.6 × £1,700,000 = £2,720,000.) 246.8  the Median . . . wars] now generally known as the Persian Wars (490 and 480–79 bc). The Peloponnesian War began in 431. 246.9  a sum not much inferior to that of Harry VII.] Prior to the 1770 ETSS the phrase was ‘greater than’ rather than ‘not much inferior to’, a change that may reflect the change from £1,700,000 to £2,700,000 discussed above for ¶ 29. Prior to the 1777 ETSS a note at this point stated that ‘There were about eight ounces of silver in a pound Sterling’ in Henry VII’s time (variants). The pound sterling was not a coin, but a unit of measure (‘imaginary money’, as it was called) for both purity and weight of silver to be mixed with alloy to the weight of a set fraction of the troy pound or, in Henry VII’s time, the lighter Tower pound. Silver mixed with alloy to mint shillings was beforehand only 11 oz. 2 dwt. out of the 12 oz., the

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standard of purity in Henry VII’s time, as in Hume’s. In sum, Hume is saying that in Henry’s time c.8 oz. of standard silver were added to c.4 oz. of alloy and coined into 37s. 6d. from a pound in weight to compose a pound sterling, which, in money of account, consisted of 20 shillings. Joseph Harris informs us that in 1752 the pound sterling had ‘3 oz. 17 dwt. 10⅔ gr. of silver’ (Essay, pt. 1, ch. 2, § 32), or slightly less than 4 oz. One reason to remove the note might have been that the ­difference between 8 oz. and 4 does not allow a conversion from £1,700,000 to £2,700,000. Arbuthnot makes 100 Attic talents equivalent to £19,375 (Tables, plate 23, following p. 48). n. 6  Thucydides, lib. 2. and Diod. Sic. lib. 12.] Thucydides, History 2.13.3, where the manuscripts state that there were 6,000 talents in the Athenian treasury at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and that there had once been up to 9,700 talents. Hume cites this passage in his memoranda: ‘They had 6000 Talents in bank, 600 a year says Thuc. L. 2. P. 13. 4000 Talents were spent before. Page 108.’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 517). Finding these figures incredible, some scholars have wished to emend the text. See Hornblower, Commentary, 1: 253–4. Diodorus rounds up the total to 10,000 talents (Library 12.40.2). n. 7  Vid. Æschinis et Demosthenis Epist.] Hume appears to be wrong in directing us to the letters of Aeschines and Demosthenes, relying apparently on his memo­randa (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 517). There he had collected evidence for 5th-century Athenian finances, including (a) Aeschines 3 (On the False Embassy) 175, (b) Demosthenes 13 (On Organization) 26, and (c) the spurious Letters of Aeschines (letter 11.7). Hume’s text suggests that he intended to cite (a) and (b) since he quotes their figure of (or close to) 10,000 talents. However, by writing ‘epist.’ Hume inadvertently referred the reader to (c), which gives the figure as 30,000 talents. Doubtless he misread his memorandum. The text to which he is mistakenly referring is Demosthenis et Aeschinis Epistolae, a Latin translation by Petrus Nannius of the letters, first published at Leuven in 1537. In this unpaginated book the passage in question occurs eight pages before the end. In any case it is most unlikely that Aeschines or Demosthenes had access to reliable statistics for the 5th century bc, writing as they were a century later. They do not have the authority of Thucydides (cited by Hume in the preceding note), let alone that of the 5th-century inscriptions (not known to Hume). n. 8  Περὶ Συμμορίας] Peri summorias, or Demosthenes 14 (On the Navy-Boards) 19. See the annotations to ‘Populousness’ 120 at 312.8 and n. 157. Cf. National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515: ‘The Census of the Athenians was 6000 Talents. περι ςυμμωρiας [sic]. Qu[ery:] Whether was this annual or the whole Stock. If the latter, their Forces must have been vastly high; since the twelfth Part was sometimes exacted. Id. < It was the whole Stock as Polybius says expressly. Lib. 2. C. 63. >’.

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n. 9  Lib. 2. cap. 62.] Polybius, Histories 2.62.7. See the annotations to ‘Populousness’ 120 at 312.8 and nn. 157–8. The coupling of Demosthenes with Polybius in reference to the Athenian financial reserves has a counterpart in Hume’s memorandum quoted in the annotation to n. 8 above. n. 10  Titi Livii, lib. 45. cap. 40.] Livy, History 45.40.1–3: ‘this fact [of the great wealth that Aemilius Paullus brought to Rome from Macedon for his triumphal procession in 167 bc] is the more marvellous, because this huge sum of money was accumulated within thirty years after Philip’s war with the Romans.’ The war of the Macedonian king Philip V with the Romans ended in defeat at Cynoscephalae in 197. Perseus, his son and successor, was defeated by Aemilius Paullus at Pydna in 168. Livy gives the value of the gold and silver carried in the procession as 120 million sesterces, about £1 million by the equivalences given in Arbuthnot, Tables, plate 26 (following p. 56). In addition there was a great deal more wealth, says Livy, in the form of valuable vessels and other booty. According to Plutarch the public treasury received such a vast quantity of money from Aemilius that it did not need to raise any extraordinary taxes for more than a century (Lives, ‘Aemilius’ 38). 246.27–8  a larger treasure than that of the English monarch] The phrase was ‘much larger’ until the 1770 ETSS (variants). See the annotation at 246.9 for ¶ 30 for a similar textual adjustment in 1770 to the comparative judgement concerning the size of Henry VII’s treasure. The size and nature of this treasure is subject to dispute today. n. 11  Vel. Paterc. lib. 1. cap. 9.] Velleius Paterculus indicates that Aemilius brought back ‘200 million sesterces’ (Compendium 1.9.6). Hume’s equivalent of £1,700,000 is consistent with the figures given in Arbuthnot’s Tables, plate 26. n. 12  Lib. 33. cap. 3.] Pliny the Elder says ‘300 million sesterces’ (Natural History 33.17.56), which is equivalent to £2,400,000 sterling according to Arbuthnot (Tables, plate 26). The citations to the elder Pliny given by Hume here and elsewhere are consistent with the numbering of editions available to him (see ‘Populousness’, n. 15.2). n. 13  Titi Livii, ibid.] Livy, History 45.40.1–3: ‘As much again was either expended in the late war, or scattered during the flight when Perseus was making for Samothrace.’ n. 14.1  The poverty which Stanyan speaks of] [Abraham Stanyan], An Account of Switzerland, 187 (ch. 9). A copy of this edition is listed in the Hume Library. n. 15  Proœm.] Appian, Gallic History, pref. 10. Alexander’s empire was divided by his ‘successors’ into three large kingdoms, one of which was Egypt and ruled by the Ptolemies. Ptolemy II Philadelphus is said by Appian to have left this vast sum in the royal treasury on his death in 247 bc. 247.13  Dr. Arbuthnot’s computation] See Arbuthnot, Tables, plates 23–4 ­(following p. 48), which provides the equivalence in sterling of the Egyptian talent.

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The sum recorded here was thus reached by applying Arbuthnot’s formula to Appian’s account, so the number does not appear in Arbuthnot. 247.33  A tax on German linen] The Scots linen trade was protected by tariffs and nurtured by the British Linen Company, which was formed in 1746. Prohibitions on French imports of linen (18 George II, c. 36; 21 George II, c. 26) helped Scots  and Irish manufacturers but also importers of German linen and linen fraudu­lent­ly so denominated, not to mention smugglers (Durie, Scottish Linen Industry, 148–50). 247.34  A tax on brandy] Imports of French brandy had been prohibited or ­prohibitively taxed since the Restoration (Dowell, History, 4: 161–3, 190–2). The ‘southern colonies’ were the Sugar Islands of the West Indies. 248.4  the maxim of Dr. Swift] Swift, An Answer to a Paper Call’d a Memorial of the Poor Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland, 1728 (Prose, 12: 21). The occasion for the observation was his citing the commissioners of customs to the effect that taxing a commodity at a high rate actually lowered revenue by reducing consumption while it increased smuggling. 248.11–12  The transport of wine and corn would not be much inferior] The corn is the ‘wheat or barley’ that (as explained in ¶¶ 16–17) France would need to import to compensate for the dedication of arable land to vineyards. A sup­pos­ ition is that the increased employment in importing wine and exporting corn would go to the British merchant navy, in which case it would nearly offset the employment lost in the diminished manufacture of ale due to its loss of market share to wine. 248.28–31  in Flanders, since the revolution . . . the Austrian provinces] Since the Glorious Revolution in 1688, Flanders had seen heavy fighting in the Nine Years War (1688–97) and the wars of the Spanish Succession (1702–13) and Austrian Succession (1741–8). The Spanish Netherlands, including much of Flanders, had become the Austrian Netherlands by the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, and the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 returned the southern Netherlands to Austria from French control. 248.33  For above a thousand years] This sentence concluding ¶ 38 was included as of the two 1754 issues of Political Discourses (variants).

6. Of the Jealousy of Trade Hume’s letter to Kames of 4 March 1758 describes the contents of ‘Jealousy of Trade’ but represents it as in an embryonic stage (Letters, 1: 272). This essay was added for the 1760 ETSS to follow ‘Balance of Trade’ and inserted with ‘Coalition of Parties’ into some copies of the 1758 edition, which had been printed in the fall of 1757 and published in April of 1758. Strahan printed the insert in March 1760. A letter to Millar of 18 December 1758 suggests a probability that ‘the two new

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Essays’ had been in Strahan’s hands since the summer when Hume had been in London (1: 317). The essay appeared first with the 1760 ETSS at the end of April, and a translation appeared in Journal étranger (August 1760), 88–97, together with a notice of the 1760 edition of the ETSS. Robel conjectures from the style that the translation was made by Turgot (‘Hume’s Political Discourses in France’, 225–6). The letter to Kames is about the economic theories of Josiah Tucker, a protégé of the philosopher Joseph Butler. Subsequently Tucker would claim vaguely that Hume came to write as if he were ‘a Convert’ to Tucker’s views (Four Tracts, vii), and sometimes ‘Jealousy of Trade’ has been deemed to reflect this supposed shift in position. Precisely how the two understood the issue between them is a question. Both espoused less than laissez-faire free trade. Both rejected the regulation of foreign trade to achieve a favourable balance drawing or keeping more precious metals than are paid out. The only genuine issues between them seem to have been over ‘luxury’ and the levelling effect of what is now called Hume’s price-specie flow mechanism on the competitiveness of rich and poor nations with each other. Consonant with the large areas of agreement between the two men, ‘Jealousy of Trade’ would be appended, along with ‘Balance of Trade’ and ‘Balance of Power’, to the London 1787 reprint of the 3rd edition of Tucker’s Brief Essay (ESTC T029622). The occasion for this compilation was William Eden’s controversial Treaty of Navigation and Commerce between Great Britain and France, signed 26 September 1786 and reported in the papers in October and November. The effect of this compilation probably would have been tacitly to claim Hume’s endorsement for the treaty. In a letter of 27 September 1760, Benjamin Franklin drew Hume’s attention to the implications of ‘Jealousy of Trade’ for the plight of the American colonies (Papers, 9: 229). In Continentalist 5 (1782), Alexander Hamilton would deem it ne­ces­sary to correct what he thought was a common misapprehension that in ‘Jealousy of Trade’ Hume argues that trade cannot and should not be regulated. Rather than showing that regulation must be ‘either useless, or hurtful’, Hamilton maintained, Hume intended to combat a jealousy of trade ‘which has been productive of so many unnecessary wars, and with which the British nation is particularly ­interested’ (Papers, 3: 76–7). 249.1–3  one species of ill founded jealousy, . . . another, which seems equally groundless] The ‘equally groundless’ jealousy pertains to the endeavour ‘to repress trade in all our neighbours’ (Letters, 1: 272) and in fact had been mentioned already in ‘Balance of Trade’ 1–2 in the form of prohibitions on exports. The first jealousy, the proper subject of that essay, pertained to exportation of gold and silver to make up the difference due after exchange of commodities. 249.19–20  the situation of Great Britain at present, with what it was two centuries ago] Treating ‘two centuries ago’ more precisely than possibly Hume intended, the comparison is between 1758 and the first year of Elizabeth I’s reign, when the name ‘Great Britain’ referred to the island rather than to the Union.

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Cf. the parallel discussion in the History, in which Hume compares the reigns of James I and his predecessor. Despite the advances in industry, commerce, and trade in James’s reign, ‘A catalogue of the manufactures, for which the English were then eminent, would appear very contemptible, in comparison of those which flourish among them at present. Almost all the most elaborate and curious arts were only cultivated abroad, particularly in Italy, Holland, and the Netherlands’ (Hist. 5: 142–6 at 143). For the difference between ‘Holland’ and ‘the Netherlands’, see the annotations for ‘Taxes’ 2 at 258.20 and 258.22. 249.22–3  arisen from our imitation of foreigners] Nicolas Barbon illustrates the point: ‘The Arts of making several sorts of Silks, were chiefly confined to Genoa, & Naples; afterwards Travelled into France, since into England and Holland, and are now Practised there in as great perfection as they were in Italy; So have other Arts wander’d, as the making of Looking-Glasses from Venice to England’ (Discourse of Trade, 8). Defoe would add shipbuilding, cutlery, and even the ‘Woollen Manufacture it self ’, which, ‘with all the admirable Improvements made upon it by the English, since it came into their Hands, is but a building upon other Mens Foundations, and improving on the Inventions of the Flemings’ (Plan, 283). Hume himself mentions ‘the art of dying woollen cloth’ and ‘the manufacture of glass and christal’ (Hist. 6:538). 249.26–7  we daily adopt . . . the inventions and improvements of our neighbours] A prominent example is the development of porcelain tableware and figures in Europe and England. The stemma from imported ‘China’ to English porcelain is complex and long, but in the 1750s there was a ‘remarkable efflorescence’ of porcelain manufacture in England (Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship, 310). Another example is the English manufacture of white paper, which over the first half of the century became competitive with Dutch and French white paper (Gaskell, New Introduction, 60). 250.13  Nature, by giving a diversity of geniuses, climates, and soils] Cf. ‘Balance of Trade’ 35. 250.23  any staple commodity, such as the woollen manufacture is in England] See the annotations for ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 4 at 210.37 on woollen cloth and for ‘Balance of Trade’ 16 at 241.17–18 on bans on exports of wool. 250.32–3  though foreign manufactures interfere with them in the market, the demand for their product] Until the posthumous ETSS this sentence read ‘though foreign manufactures interfere with us in the market, the demand for our product may continue’ (variants). 251.8–10  the Dutch, who, enjoying no extent of land, nor possessing any number of native commodities, flourish only by their being the brokers, and factors, and carriers of others] a point elaborated in ‘Taxes’ 2. See Temple, Observations, ch. 6, which appears to be Hume’s source. As of the 1772 ETSS, ‘the Dutch’ replaced ‘Holland’ (variants).

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251.16–17  The advantage of superior stocks] Hardly a conversion, this concession to Oswald and Tucker is a qualification to the principle that unobstructed trade could be expected to spread prosperity and that a negative balance of trade would prove to be self-correcting. Hume never denied that natural advantages might leave some nations substantially richer than others. One plausible construction of the issue between Hume and Tucker is that it arose from an ambiguity in ‘Money’ and ‘Balance of Trade’ as indicating that (a) prosperity is unsustainable in being undermined by its own high wages and prices, or (b) rich countries will gain overall in new markets what they lose piecemeal to those countries underpricing them (Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 267–96). Focused narrowly on the former idea, Tucker could well have seen any statements from Hume to the effect of the latter as a conversion. 251.21–2  The Dutch, having mortgaged all their revenues] The United Provinces funded their participation in the War of the Spanish Succession largely on credit to avoid increases in taxes, and in 1742 the War of the Austrian Succession forced upon them the creation of an income tax. Due to increased competition, Dutch overseas trade had declined dramatically in the 1720s, damaging exporting industries (Israel, Dutch Republic, chs. 36–7, 40). See also the annotation for ‘Civil Liberty’ 14 at 91.23–4. Writing from The Hague in March 1748, Hume described the immediate aftermath of disturbances arising from the interplay of economic collapse and military disaster (Letters, 1: 115–16). See the annotation for ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 66 at 371.33. 251.25  our narrow and malignant politics] The narrow and malignant pol­it­ ics mentioned here, in ¶ 1, and in the letter to Kames mentioned above (Letters, 1: 272) need not refer to any recent developments in mercantile policy. However, it is notable that the essay was written in the contexts of the Seven Years War—a struggle with France for empire that had begun in 1756—and of the propaganda of the Anti-Gallican Society founded in 1745. The economic warfare with France had its declaration with a 1677/8 act for a war tax including clauses prohibiting the im­port­ ation of French goods (29 & 30 Charles II, c. 1). See Journals of the . . . Commons, 9:  441–54 at 445–7. Though James II had it repealed in 1685 (1 James II, c. 6), Parliament replaced it with the 1689 Act for Prohibiting All Trade and Commerce with France (1 William & Mary, c. 34) upon England’s entering William’s war against France. The Commons would reject Bolingbroke’s attempt in 1713 to use the Treaty of Utrecht to make economic peace. These were seen as the major le­gis­ la­tive events of the economic contest, judging from the pamphlet literature concerning the 1786 commercial treaty with France. See also 2 William & Mary, sess. 2, c. 14; 4 & 5 William & Mary, c. 25. 251.27–33  Morocco and the coast of Barbary . . . . Germany, Spain, Italy, and even France] For Morocco and the Barbary Coast see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 165 at 324.17, for Germany, the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 19 at 167.30. Commodities were objects of jealousy because they (a) directly

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c­ ompeted with an important domestic product, like English wool or Scots linen, (b) indirectly competed with one, as French brandy was deemed to do with malt spirits and West Indian rum, or (c) were purchasable by Britain largely by money rather than an equivalent in exports. Both (a) and (c) applied to French wool and linen, both (b) and (c) to French brandy and wine. In contrast, though French, Italian, East Indian, and Turkish wrought silk all competed directly with the products of London’s Spitalfields silk workers, only Italian (as well as Neapolitan and Sicilian) silk, wrought or raw, was purchased with exports of wool, tin, lead, and fish. Accordingly, in his 1758 Reasons Humbly Offered, Massie opposed increasing the duty on Italian silk from the level set by the increase of 1747. If French wool, wine, and brandy were injurious and Spanish not, the difference may have been that Spain exchanged its commodities for British textiles and fish and paid the difference in bullion from the New World. Cf. ‘Balance of Trade’ 16 and its annotation at 241.17–18. Postlethwayt lists thirteen reasons for trade hostilities with Spain (Universal Dictionary of Trade, 2: 762, s.v. Spanish America).

7. Of the Balance of Power Putting aside the question of who occasioned this essay by supposing ‘that the ancients were entirely ignorant of the balance of power’ (¶ 8), the context seems to be the widespread dissatisfaction with the terms of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession (1741–8). Britain had supported Maria Theresa of Austria against France to preserve the Hapsburg counterweight to Bourbon hegemony. ‘Balance of Power’ appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. It followed and formed a diptych with ‘Balance of Trade’ until the interposition between them of ‘Jealousy of Trade’ in 1760. All twelve items in the first edition of Political Discourses were composed and ready for the press by 22 September 1751 (New Letters, 28–9). ‘Balance of Power’ was summarized and partly translated in the Journal étranger for August 1754 (pp. 210–18). Along with ‘Balance of Trade’ and ‘Jealousy of Trade’, it would be appended to the London 1787 reprint of the 3rd edition of Josiah Tucker’s Brief Essay. 252.1  It is a question] It is uncertain who raised this question so as to attract Hume’s attention. William Grant had suggested but not explored the question in the essay appended to his 1720 translation of Fénelon’s ‘Sur la nécessité de former des alliances, tant offensives que défensives, contre une puissance étrangère qui aspire manifestement à la monarchie universelle’, § 1 of Supplément à l’Examen de consience sur les devoirs de la royauté (‘Reflections’, 39). The anonymous author of a 1720 pamphlet, The Analysis of the Ballance of Power, remarks that the concept was ‘very little understood’ at the time of the Persian Wars with Greece and in the early Roman Empire (57, 44–45). In 1750, at about the same time as Hume wrote his

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essay, there appeared the 1st edition of John Campbell’s Present State, wherein Campbell opined that the balance of power became important as a function of trade ‘within these two, or at most these three Centuries past’ (24, ch. 2, repr. as it had appeared 24 May 1746 in no. 5 of Akenside’s The Museum (1: 197)). Eobald Toze would hold that it arose as a ‘maxim’ with the alliance of France with Turkey, Denmark, and Sweden in the 16th century against Charles V’s empire (Present State, 1: 149 at ch. 1, § 48). 252.1  the idea of the balance of power] Approximations to the idea are found in Bacon’s ‘Of Empire’ (Works, 6: 420–1), de Commynes’s Memoirs (5.18), and elsewhere, but the first full statement of the doctrine is ascribed to Fénelon’s Supplément (Butterfield, ‘Balance of Power’, 135–40). Both Guicciardini (History of Italy, 1: 5–10) and Jean-Baptiste Dubos (pref., History) regard the doctrine as already established wisdom during the Italian quattrocento. 252.2  the phrase only] Neither the Greeks nor the Romans had a comparable term, though the Greeks are argued to have practised the principle (Adcock and Mosley, Diplomacy, 122). Conventionally the expression is traced back to Bernardo Rucellai’s De bello italico, written around the beginning of the 16th century, with London editions in Latin in 1724 and 1733. Article 2 of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht contains the first explicit use of the phrase in a diplomatic document (Anderson, ‘Eighteenth-Century Theories’, 184 n. 4). In his ‘Essay upon the Balance of Power’, Charles Davenant discusses the situation just prior to the War of the Spanish Succession, and his ‘Universal Monarchy’ has some points of similarity with Hume’s essay (Works, 3: 297–360, 4: 3–41; both works from 1701). n. 1  Lib. 1.] Cyropaedia 1.5.2–3. In encouraging neighbouring nations to form a  joint force against the Medes and Persians, the king of Assyria, according to Xenophon, argued that the two groups were ‘large, strong peoples who worked in concert, that they had formed marriage alliances, and that if someone did not take the initiative to weaken them, there was a danger that they would attack each people separately and conquer them’. n. 2  Lib. 1.] presumably the classic statement at Thucydides, History 1.23.6: ‘But I think that the truest reason, though least discussed, was that the growth of Athenian power and the fear this inspired in the Lacedaemonians compelled them to go to war.’ 252.11–12  the league, which was formed against Athens] The Peloponnesian League, which formed the nucleus of the anti-Athenian alliance, had been founded in the 6th century. In describing the process by which in 432–1 bc the Corinthians and other members of the League convinced the Spartans as leader of the League to declare war on Athens, Thucydides shows them stressing the need to check Athenian expansion (e.g. History 1.68.3–4, 1.124.2–3). Thucydides himself said that the Spartans decided to declare war because they feared further growth of Athenian power (1.23.6, quoted above; 1.88; and 1.118.2).

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n. 3  Xen. hist. Græc. lib. 6. & 7.] Xenophon, Hellenica 6 and 7. The expansion of the power of Thebes, which led to the battle of Leuctra (371 bc) and the Theban invasion of Laconia, ended the supremacy that Sparta had enjoyed in Greece since her victory in the Peloponnesian War thirty years before. Xenophon devotes space to the debates at Athens that resulted in the Athenians’ ending their alliance with Thebes in favour of their former enemy Sparta. See Hellenica 6.3, 6.4.19–20, 6.5.33–49, 7.1.1–14. 252.20  Demosthenes’s oration for the Megalopolitans] Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘The Notion of the Ballance of Power seems to be containd in Demosthenes oration υπερ μεγαλοπολ [huper megalopol]: more clearly than in any antient Author’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515). In this speech of 353 bc Demosthenes puts before the Athenian people a complex set of diplomatic and military moves intended to promote Athenian interests by undertaking to protect the city of Megalopolis and at the same time ‘humble the Thebans without strengthening the Lacedaemonians’ (Pro Megalopolitis 24). Not many years later, however, when Philip II of Macedon threatened Greece with a universal monarchy, Demosthenes changed his position on Thebes and in his ‘Philippic Orations’ urged the Athenians to make an alliance with that city against him. This alliance fought Philip at Chaeronea (338 bc), and its defeat ended the independence of the city-states. 252.22  a Venetian or English speculatist] Probably Hume alludes to no identifiable individuals, but suppositiously to speculatists from two nations for which the balance of power was particularly important. The theorist most associated with speculation about Venetian foreign policy was Bernardo Rucellai, but he was a Florentine and, significantly, offered his thoughts after the League of Cambrai had demonstrated the inadequacy of Venetian policies for resisting the interference of large states such as France. An uncompelling candidate for Hume’s Venetian is Traiano Boccalini (1556–1613), a satirist and Venetian by adoption who in his Pietra de paragone politico (1614) depicts a European concern for a balance of power as arising out of a desire to prevent the formation of a new universal monarchy after the collapse of the Roman Empire. He depicts Lorenzo de Medici allegorically as governing the scales to keep the balance (Politick Touch-stone, 410–17). Englishmen had long appreciated that one might avoid attack by more populous states by maintaining some sort of balance amongst them. Allusions to this effect appeared in a historian such as William Camden: ‘And true it was . . . that France and Spain are as it were the Scales in the Balance of Europe, and England the Tongue or Holder of the Balance’ (Historie of . . . Princess Elizabeth (written c.1607), 223). But in the peri­od­ ic­al press and pamphlet literature since the War of the Spanish Succession there was no shortage of analyses of the factors to be weighed in adjusting the balance of power (e.g. Craftsman 82, repr. [Bolingbroke], Occasional Writer 2 (London, 1727)). 252.27–8  the Grecian wars are regarded by historians as wars of emulation] One of the earliest writers to compose a history of Greece in English, Temple

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Stanyan, viewed the city-states of ancient Greece as ‘so many distinct Republicks, almost wholly independent one of another, differing in their Laws and Customs, jealous of each others Superiority, and consequently always jarring in their Interests’ (Grecian History, 1: a4v–a5r). Of the origin of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta he writes, ‘the two States were thoroughly exasperated by a long Emulation; and as they were both arriv’d to their most flourishing Period, this was a Dispute betwixt ’em for the Empire of Greece, the Pretence for which was, preserving the Ballance, and protecting their Confederates’ (1: 327–9 at 329). Stanyan’s brother Abraham said that this war ‘had no better Foundation, than a Jealousie between them for Precedence’ (Account, 214). This is the factor that prevented the  city-states from forming a lasting union, ‘the divisive and destructive—but untranslatable—concept of phthonos: jealousy, malice, rivalry, envy, grudge’, of which the classical instance is the ‘emulation’, or phthonos, between Athens and Sparta leading to the Peloponnesian War (cf. Hornblower, Greek World, 14, 17). 253.10–11  Ostracism of Athens, and Petalism of Syracuse] Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. ostracism: ‘a kind of popular Judgment, or Condemnation, among the Athenians; or a Sentence of Banishment against Persons, whose too great Power render’d them suspected to the People; or whose Merit and Credit gave Umbrage, lest they should attempt something against the public Liberty, and their Power degenerate into Tyranny. . . . This kind of Banishment had nothing infamous in it, as not being for any Crime.’ (See Aristotle, Politics 1284a17–22.) Ostracism was in effect through most of the 5th century bc. Syracusan petalism ‘was nearly the same Thing as the Ostracism at Athens; except that the latter was for 10 Years, and the former only for five’ (Cyclopædia, s.v. petalism; see Diodorus, Library 11.87). The terms derive from the writing of the name of the victim, respectively, on a potsherd (‘ostrakon’) or an olive leaf (‘petalon’). n. 4  Thucyd. lib. 8.] Thucycides, History 8.46. The advice given by the exiled Athenian politician Alcibiades to the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, according to Thucydides, was not to ‘concede the command of both land and sea to either city but to allow each to have its separate dominion and to enable the [Persian] king, if  one of them gave him trouble, to urge the other against it’. With or without Alcibiades’s advice, such was Persian policy, not only in the closing years of the Peloponnesian War but also through the first half of the 4th century. Hume’s ­mention of the ‘neglect’ of this policy ‘for a moment’ refers to Persian distraction by revolts in various parts of the empire at the time when Philip II of Macedon took  advantage of the exhaustion of the three traditional rivals (Athens, Sparta, and Thebes) to conquer Greece. Philip’s son Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire. 253.23–5  The successors of Alexander . . . true politics . . . for several ages the partitions] Alexander’s death in 323 bc was followed by the Wars of the Successors between his leading generals for the control or partition of his empire. Antigonus Monophthalmus (‘One-Eye’) struggled for years to reunite the empire

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under himself and was finally defeated by a combination of the leaders of the now independent kingdoms at the battle of Ipsus (301 bc). The outcome of that battle confirmed the existence of three independent kingdoms: the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in the Near East, and the Antigonids in Macedonia and Greece. The first two are Hume’s ‘Eastern princes’. Hume’s ‘several ages’ of balanced power extended from Alexander’s death till the kingdoms in their different ways and times ran afoul of the Roman Empire, beginning with Macedon as described in the annotation for ¶ 8 at 254.8–9. n. 5  Diod. Sic. lib. 20.] Diodorus, Library 20.106, esp. § 4: ‘For they said that if Antigonus should get hold of Macedonia, he would immediately deprive the others also of their kingdoms; indeed he had given proof many times that he was grasping and rejected any form of power-sharing. It would therefore, they said, be in the interest of all to cooperate and make war on Antigonus together.’ 253.31  The Ptolemies] Aratus of Sicyon led the Achaean League (a federation of cities in the Peloponnese) in opposition to Macedonia. The League was largely financed by Ptolemy III, but in 228 bc, when the League got into a war with Sparta, he transferred his support from Aratus to Cleomenes III, king of Sparta, expecting him to be a more effective ally against Macedonia than the League. n. 6  Lib. 2. cap. 51.] Polybius, Histories 2.51.2: ‘Ptolemy threw over the league and began to give financial support to Cleomenes with a view of setting him on to attack Antigonus, as he hoped to be able to keep in check more effectually the projects of the Macedonian kings with the support of the Lacedaemonians than with that of the Achaeans.’ The king of Macedonia was Antigonus Doson. 253.36–254.1  seems to be drawn from the Roman history more than the Grecian] In his ‘Civil Liberty’ 11 (pub. 1741 as ‘Of Liberty and Despotism’), Hume had said, ‘The balance of power is a secret in politics, fully known only to the present age’. The apparent reversal in the present essay arose possibly from his restudy of Greek in 1742. Hume had followed the common educational practice of his time in learning Latin at an early age, partly through the perusal of ‘easy’ Roman historical readers such as Justinus. His own copy of Justinus survives (Hume Library, 13, 15). Normally Greek came later, sometimes only at university, and often was not so thoroughly mastered. Several modern histories of Rome had already been written in English by 1751, whereas Greek history was only just becoming independent of ‘universal history’ with Temple Stanyan’s Grecian History (1702–39). variants for 254.7, n.  strong suspicions, of late, arisen amongst critics] This note appeared only in the two 1752 editions of Political Discourses. Hume appears to be replying to Louis de Beaufort’s Dissertation of 1738, translated in 1740 as A Dissertation upon the Uncertainty of the Roman History during the First Five Hundred Years. Citing Livy, History 7.3.6, Beaufort argued that writing had been very uncommon in early Rome and, on the basis of Livy, History 6.1.1–2, that such records as had existed were destroyed in the sack of Rome by the Gauls about 390 bc.

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Consequently the historians of Rome whose works we have, notably Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, were dependent on what Beaufort calls the ‘family memoirs’ of the nobility, which were so unreliable, as Livy (History 8.40.4–5) and Cicero (Brutus 16.62) state, that ‘they serv’d rather to darken than to enlighten history’ (Dissertation upon the Uncertainty, 81). For his part Hume allows that ex­ag­ger­ ation was caused by family traditions in accounts of foreign affairs (battles, number of enemies killed, and so on), ‘as Cicero says they were’ (presumably in Brutus 16.62). But with regard to domestic affairs Hume insists that accounts would usually be balanced because the ‘domestic factions’ of early Rome would have left competing versions of events. Thus the internal history is likely to be sound, whereas we may safely ignore the exaggerated claims of Roman victories and enemy losses in Livy’s narrative of Rome’s wars with the hill-tribes of the Volsci and the Aequi in the 5th and 4th centuries, about which Livy himself admits to doubts (e.g. at 3.8.10). On the ‘domestic factions’ and ‘revolutions’ of early Rome, see the annotations for ‘Parties in General’, n. 1; ‘Remarkable Customs’ 10–11 at 276.10–11, 276.17–18, 276.29–32, 277.2–3; and ‘Populousness’, n. 188. variants for 254.7, n.  Machiavel’s comment on Livy] Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy (1531). In bk. 2, ch. 1, the neighbours of Rome are found to have paid the price of not knowing the maxim of the balance of power. 254.8–9  a remarkable crisis] In the first of several instances taken from the period of the Roman conquest of Carthage and the Hellenistic powers, Hume refers to the alliance that Philip V of Macedon made with Hannibal in 215 bc during the Second Punic War (219/8–202), precisely when Hannibal’s invasion of Italy was at its highest point of success after his devastating defeat of the Romans at Cannae in the previous year. After the Romans recovered and won the war against Hannibal, they invaded Macedon and, defeating Philip at the battle of Cynoscephalae in 197, established what eventually became a permanent occupation of the country. n. 7.2  Polyb. lib. 5. cap. 104.] Polybius, Histories 5.104. Agelaus of Naupactus, attempting to reconcile Macedonians and Greeks, warned that the victor in the war between Rome and Carthage would come to threaten both. Hume paraphrases this as a warning of ‘a contest for universal empire’, a major theme of the essay. n. 8  Titi Livii, lib. 23. cap. 33.] Livy, History 23.33.4: ‘Now that a third battle, a third victory, favoured the Carthaginians, he [Philip V] inclined to the side of success and sent ambassadors to Hannibal.’ 254.18  The Rhodian and Achæan republics] Rhodes, a prominent trading city and cultural centre, enjoyed a high reputation in the Hellenistic world for prosperity and good government (see e.g. Strabo, Geography 14.2.5; Green, Alexander to Actium, 378–81). But Rhodes’s mistake of seeking Roman assistance against Philip V of Macedon led to the first Roman conquest of Macedonia (197 bc). Rhodes compounded the error by supporting the Romans in their war against the Seleucid king Antiochus III, as a result of which he lost his territories in Anatolia (Peace of

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Apamea, 188 bc). Finally, as Hume notes in his memoranda from Livy, History 42.46 (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early  Memoranda’, 512), the Rhodians refused to support Perseus of Macedon in  his final failed effort to gain liberation from the Romans (Pydna, 168 bc). Subsequently the Romans crippled Rhodes economically by converting rival Delos into a free port and centre of the slave-trade (167 bc). The confederation of the Achaean League is generally portrayed favourably by Polybius, a native son. Like Rhodes, it tended to support Rome in its conquests through the 2nd century until it became itself embroiled in a war against Rome (the Achaean War of 146 bc). The victorious Romans disbanded the League and sacked and razed the city of Corinth. 254.28  Massinissa, Attalus, Prusias] These three rulers of independent states failed to oppose Rome in her wars against three of her great enemies: Carthage, the Seleucid Empire, and Macedon. Massinissa, king of Carthage’s neighbour Numidia, switched his allegiance from Carthage to Rome during the Second Punic War and assisted the Roman victory, in return for which he was confirmed by the Romans as king of Numidia. He later fell out of favour. The Attalids of Pergamum were consistent allies of Rome in her struggle against the Seleucid Empire and were pro­ verbi­al­ly the wealthiest rulers in Asia. Attalus III bequeathed his kingdom to Rome in 133 bc. The Prusias whom Hume has in mind is probably Prusias II of Bithynia, who helped Rome by remaining neutral in her second war against Macedon and supported her war against the Seleucid king, Antiochus III. After a long period as a dependent kingdom, Bithynia was bequeathed to Rome in 74 bc and incorporated into a province. 254.32–3  barred the Romans] The verb ‘barred’ must express a hypothetical and counterfactual proposition, for Massinissa did switch his allegiance from Carthage to Rome, and Rome subdued the African powers seriatim. 254.35  Hiero king of Syracuse] In ‘the war of the auxiliaries’, now normally called the ‘Truceless’ War (241–38 or 37 bc), Hiero supported Carthage in putting down a revolt of mercenary troops and dependent peoples that threatened its survival. Hitherto he had generally supported Rome in its struggle against Carthage in the First Punic War (264–41 bc) and had maintained the independence of Syracuse. See also the annotation for ‘Politics’, n. 5. n. 9  Lib. 1. cap. 83.] Polybius, Histories 1.83.3–4. In Hume’s quotation in the text, ‘their rights’ would more closely be rendered ‘even their acknowledged rights’. Polybius’s obiter dictum became a classic text in discussions of the balance of power (Butterfield, ‘The Balance of Power’, 132). Hume quoted it in part in his memo­ randa in Greek with the description: ‘Polybius Lib. 1 relating that Hiero, tho an Enemy, assisted the Carthaginians in the Mercenary War, in order to preserve a Ballance against the Romans, adds ινα μη πανταπασιν εξη το προτεθεν ακονιτι συντελεισθαι τοις ισχυουσι, πανυ ϕρονιμως και νουνεχως λογιζομενος. ουδε ποτε γαρ χρὴ τα τοιαυτα περοραν [mistakenly for παροραν] &c. [‘so that the stronger

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power should not be able to obtain its ultimate object without a struggle. In this he reasoned very wisely and sensibly, for such things should never be disregarded’]. Id. chap. 83.’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 518). 255.24–30  the Emperor Charles . . . . A new power] Charles I of Spain was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, thus uniting the Spanish and the Austrian parts of the Hapsburg territories. Hume describes them elsewhere as ‘an empire, greater and more extensive than any known in Europe since that of the Romans’. He contrasts it with the rich, united, and compact ‘kingdom of France’ under Francis I, and comments that Henry VIII of England, ‘by the native force of his kingdom and its situation’ would have been able ‘to hold the balance between those two ­powers’, had he known how to do so (Hist. 3: 127–8). Davenant describes the two powers successively, making much of the debilitating effect of the intolerance of the Hapsburgs. He judges that Louis XIV’s France, Hume’s ‘new power’, is in many ways an improvement on Austria, though still tainted with bigotry (‘Universal Monarchy’, Works, 4: 7–27). variants for 255.34.  that ambitious nation, in the five last general wars] Hume omitted this paragraph and altered the first sentence of the following para­ graph for the 1770 ETSS, evidently because he believed that France no longer threatened the peace of Europe. See Letters, 2: 85 (29 August 1766, about William Pitt) and 2: 237 (11 March 1771), where Hume says that ‘from 1740 to 1761 . . . a most pacific Monarch sat on the Throne of France’ (cf. 2: 234–5 (21 January 1771)). See also the annotation on Pitt for ‘Public Credit’ 5. variants for 255.34, n.  the Pyrenees, Nimeguen, Ryswick and Aix-la-Chapelle.] By the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), which ended the hostilities between France and Spain continuing from the Thirty Years War, France gained territory in the south and north of the country formerly belonging to Spain. The Treaty of Nijmegen (1678) ended the war of France and England against the Dutch republic (1672–78) and gave modest gains to France and displeased its negotiator, William Temple. That of Ryswick ended the Nine Years War (1688–97), in which Louis XIV, despite victories on the battlefield against the alliance of powers that William III had put together, was compelled to renounce his conquests. The Treaty of Aixla-Chapelle (1748), which ended the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8), was generally considered not to have satisfied any of the major combatants (France, Prussia, Austria, and England) except Prussia. variants for 255.34, n.  the peace of Utrecht.] Negotiated by Bolingbroke, this treaty ended the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13). In ¶ 15, Hume gives the date of the treaty as 1712, when negotiations opened. By the treaty Louis XIV’s career of aggrandizement was brought to an end. 255.35–6  Great Britain has stood foremost] Until the 1770 ETSS the s­entence read: ‘Britain has stood foremost in the glorious struggle; and she still

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maintains her station, as guardian of the general liberties of Europe, and patron of mankind’ (variants). 255.38  so fully sensible of the blessings of their government] Until the 1770 ETSS, the British were sensible of ‘the inestimable blessings of their government’ (variants). For the advantage of Great Britain’s ‘situation’, see the annotation for 357.25. 256.9  The same peace] During the Nine Years War, France entered into unsuccessful peace negotiations with the Allies after the naval defeat at La Hogue in 1692, but the war was not concluded until the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697. In the course of the War of the Spanish Succession, the French sought for peace in negotiations in 1708 at Gertruytenburg in the United Provinces after defeats at Blenheim (1704) and Ramillies (1706). At this point, Hume suggests, the Grand Alliance could have secured all its original war aims. The continuance of the war, in Spain and elsewhere, led eventually to political dissension in England, and the Tories eventually negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht after the dismissal of Marlborough and the elect­ or­al defeat of the Whigs (1710–11). In the War of the Austrian Succession the ‘Pragmatic’ allies had annulled most of the initial gains of France and Prussia (apart from Silesia) by 1743, and negotiations took place at Hanau. However, Britain ­supported the larger ambitions of Maria Theresa. 256.20–1  Habent subjectos . . . ut alienos] Britain’s strategic error in allowing itself to be compromised by weaker allies is imperfectly mirrored in the paraphrase of Tacitus, Histories 1.37, which says of Titus Vinius, an associate of the emperor Galba, that ‘He kept us in subjection as if we were his own slaves, but regarded us as expendable because we actually belonged to someone else’, i.e. the emperor. Hume had already used this passage in ‘Rise and Progress’ 11. 256.21  the factious vote of the house of commons] Under the term ‘last parliament’ Hume refers to the assembly that sat from December 1741 to June 1747. Doubtless the ‘factious vote’ refers to William Pulteney’s motion of 21 January 1742 for an inquest into the conduct of the War of the Austrian Succession. The motion was defeated by three votes in a record house of over five hundred, and the days of Walpole’s ministry were numbered. In calling the motion factious, Hume would seem to say that the Opposition to Walpole was less interested in the right to the Austrian throne of Maria Theresa, queen of Hungary, than in embroiling the administration in charges of mismanagement. An earlier motion of April 1741 had seen the Opposition pressing the ministers for more vigorous prosecution of the war. See Parliamentary History, 12: 332, 373, 178 (ad 1741–3). 256.23–4  prevented that agreement with Prussia] Under pressure from Walpole’s ministerial successors, Maria Theresa ceded Silesia in June 1742 to Frederick the Great’s Prussia by the Treaty of Breslau, following a truce arranged by Britain in October 1741. But Prussia recommenced hostilities in 1744 and unsettled the balance of military power in Europe. The Treaty of Dresden in 1745

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c­ onfirmed Frederick’s possession of Silesia (Anderson, Europe, 253–5; Browning, Duke of Newcastle, 131). 256.29  we were only accessories] Britain was not formally at war with France in the War of the Austrian Succession till March 1744, when France declared war on her. Previously Britain was merely the ally of the Hapsburg claimant Maria Theresa, as France was that of her rival, the Bavarian contender (who had taken the title of Emperor Charles VII). 256.31  That remedy of funding] Funding refers to the use of long-term loans to finance the war, officially beginning January 1693/4 with the first parliamentary act to raise a loan to be repaid with interest. Through dedicated tax revenues such debt was ‘funded’ rather than ‘floating’, but the new situation created an apparent difference of interest between those supplying the taxes to meet interest payments and the creditors, whose advantage was thought not to be served by retiring the debt. See ‘Public Credit’ for Hume’s dire prognosis. 256.38  The Athenians] After the abolition of Athenian democracy and independence by the establishment of Macedonian hegemony in 322 bc, the Athenians gained a reputation for flattery of their rulers. Athenaeus gives many examples (Learned Banqueters 6.252f–255a), among them the hymn with which they met Demetrius Poliorcetes of Macedonia in 307, which greets him as a visible and living god, son of Poseidon and Aphrodite, and the permission they gave him to live in the Parthenon (cf. Plutarch, Lives, ‘Demetrius’ 12.1–2). When Cleopatra visited in 32 bc, the Athenians honoured her with a statue of herself on the Acropolis dressed in the robes of Isis. 257.3  Enormous monarchies are, probably, destructive] Davenant says, ‘These great empires are not only oppressive to the race of men while they are fixing, and when they are fixed, but their very dissolution is attended with infinite mischiefs’ (‘Universal Monarchy’, Works, 1: 33). Hume’s paragraph has been connected to a corresponding entry in MS notes by Hume (Robertson, Scottish Enlightenment, 92 n. 16). After the expansion of empires is stopped by barbarous nations (the note states), ‘the Nobility & considerable Men of the conquering Nation & best Provinces withdraw gradually from the frontier Army, by reason of its Distance from the Capital & barbarity of the Country, in which they quarter: They forget the Use of War’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 517–18). variants for 257.3.  Enormous monarchies, such as Europe at present is threaten’d with] Hume omitted the modifying clause as of the 1767 edition, possibly because he no longer regarded France as a threat. The language of the two 1752 editions of Political Discourses referred to enormous monarchies, ‘such as Europe, at present, is in danger of falling into’. 257.22  the garrisons of Hungary or Lithuania] Hungary was the scene, as Salmon put it, of ‘Wars between the German and Turkish Emperors . . . which lasted

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upwards of two hundred Years’, dating from the sultanate of Sulieman (New Geographical and Historical Grammar, 133). In political union with Poland, the duchy of Lithuania had on its southern border Hungary and ‘Turky in Europe’, for which see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 165 at 324.22. 257.24  Cravates . . . Hussars] ‘Cravat’ was a French corruption for Croat. The Croatian light infantry were recruited from the militarized Balkan colonies facing Turkish Europe. Austrian maladministration provoked a revolt amongst the soldiers in 1735–7 that prompted a reform of the governance of the military reservation in 1743–9. By ‘Hussars’, Hume refers to Hungarian horsemen, though the word was already assuming its generalized meaning of light cavalry irrespective of nationality. The Austrian army deployed the Croats and Hussars as irregular forces in missions requiring their wonted savagery. Equally notorious were the Cossacks, whose status was analogous to the Croats’ in that, as a borderer population, they insulated the Poles, Lithuanians, and Russians against the Ottoman Turks (Salmon, Modern History, 1: 872). The counterfactual conditional that Hume describes is that if, like the Roman drive for universal monarchy, the modern Bourbon counterpart had succeeded, then France would have inherited from the Austrians the de­bili­tat­ing task of maintaining the militarized frontiers buffering Europe from the Turks. See Rothenberg, Austrian Military Border, 108–23, 125–6. 257.26  the melancholy fate of the Roman emperors] Presumably Hume has in mind the enrolment of barbarians in the Roman legions throughout the imperial period and the increasing use of ‘barbarian’ generals, who eventually deposed the last Roman emperor in the West (ad 476) and established kingdoms in the various parts of the disintegrating empire.

8. Of Taxes ‘Taxes’ appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. All twelve items in the first edition of Political Discourses were composed and ready for the press by 22 September 1751 (New Letters, 28–9). Portions of the 1752 version of ‘Taxes’ (¶¶ 4–10 plus those that were omitted for the 1770 ETSS between ¶¶ 4 and 5) were appropriated without credit by Malachy Postlethwayt for his article on taxes (Universal Dictionary of Trade, 2 (1755): 785). The 1752 permutation of ‘Taxes’, with its concern for abusive taxation, would be  posthumously reprinted in Walter Ruddiman junior’s Weekly Magazine, or Edinburgh Amusement, 44 (Wednesday 21 April 1779): 85–6, in which context it stood alongside discussions of the tax revolt in the American colonies. Doubtless Hume’s recommendation in 1751 of a regimen of taxation that checks itself from excess would have had resonance in 1779–80, when there was a groundswell of calls for ‘economical reform’ to correct ‘the gross abuses in the expenditure of public

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money’. Then, as in the reign of George II, controversies over taxation were closely linked to those over the use of ‘the national purse’ to influence elections and legislation (the Yorkshire petition of 30 December 1779, English Historical Documents, 7: 212–13). 258.1  some reasoners] Approximations from the 17th century to what Hume describes are the arguments for taxes on consumption in Sir William Petty’s Several Essays in Political Arithmetick (195–210), which focuses on the productivity of the poor rather than on the luxuries of the rich, and, from the United Provinces, [Pieter de la Court], True Interest, 109 (pt. 1, ch. 24). Closer yet is Houghton, Collection, 2: 174–86. The contention that taxing the necessaries of life or depressing wages ­stimulated labour was ‘seriously shaken’ by the third quarter of the 18th century (Seligman, Shifting and Incidence, 61). variants for 258.1.  ways and means men . . . Maltotiers] Altered to ‘some reasoners’ for the 1770 ETSS, the original version of this passage identified those holding the maxim as people ‘whom, in this country, we call ways and means men, and who are denominated Financiers and Maltotiers in France’. Cf. the attack on finançiers in ‘Civil Liberty’ 13 and the annotation at 91.10. Savary de Bruslons, Dictionnaire, s.v. financier: ‘On le dit dans le négoce pour signifier un homme extrêmement à son aise, qui a fait une grande fortune. Il est riche comme un Financier’ (Used in business to signify a man in easy circumstances. He is as rich as a financier). A maltôte was a sort of impost. See Richelet, Dictionnaire, s.v. maltôtier: ‘Terme injurieux . . . . Le caractére d’un maltôtier est d’être un franc coquin’ (term of abuse . . . . The nature of a maltôtier is to be a downright rogue). Samuel Johnson’s gloss on his own use of the phrase ‘Ways and Means’ in the 1738 poem London was ‘A cant term in the House of Commons for methods of raising money’ (Works, 6: 60). The phrase, with the other pejorative terms, was associated with injurious taxation, as when James Ralph referred derisively to Walpole’s ‘Understrappers in the Affair of Ways and Means, being, at present, hard at Work, to make Provision for the extraordinary Expences of the succeeding Year’ (28 February 1739–40, Champion, 1: 320). 258.13–14  Where taxes . . . affect not the necessaries of life] ‘In Great Britain, the principal taxes upon the necessaries of life are those upon . . . salt, leather, soap, and candles’ (Smith, Wealth of Nations, 2: 874). 258.20  Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Rhodes, Genoa, Venice, Holland] ‘Holland’ in common usage was often a synecdoche for the United Provinces. ‘Such a small Countrey, not fully so big as two of our best Shires’, as Mun described the Provinces (England’s Treasure, 72), acquired an extensive East Indian trading empire in the 17th century. Arbuthnot says, ‘The Phoenicians, of all the Ancients, resembled most the Dutch, their Country being narrow, low, and boggy, and by great Industry and Expences defended from the Sea. Those Inconveniences were ballanced by the Number and Goodness of their Harbours, amongst which the chief was Tyre’ (Tables, 219). Hume made this point about the Dutch in ‘Jealousy of Trade’ 6. Tyre was a city attached by a causeway to the narrow coastal plain of Phoenicia. Its citadel

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was built on a point of land accessible only by the causeway. Engaging in trade throughout the Mediterranean from at least the 10th century bc, it founded Carthage (814 bc is the traditional date) and many other trading stations in the western Mediterranean. The territory of Athens, known as Attica, was notoriously dry and relatively unproductive, so that in classical times the city imported large quantities of grain and exported olive oil and pottery. Its harbour was a centre for the transit of goods throughout the Greek world in the 5th and 4th centuries bc. Carthage, built upon a peninsula joined to the mainland by an isthmus, was a trading city but acquired a large and fertile hinterland. Rhodes, the largest island in the eastern Aegean (420 square miles), developed an extensive carrying trade, especially in corn, which particularly flourished after the conquests of Alexander. Genoa developed commercial relations with the Byzantine Empire. Its dominions, one reads in Campbell’s Present State, ‘consist of the Countries extending along the Sea-coast, on both Sides, from the City of Genoa, which are stiled the Eastern and Western Rivieras. This Word in Italian signifies a Strand; and indeed the Country is very little better, having high, craggy, and almost impassable Mountains behind it. These however are not so barren as they are represented, every Spot of Ground that will admit of it, being cultivated and improved to the utmost ’ (462). Venice, trad­ ition­al­ly founded in ad 421, from its base in the mud-flats at the head of the Adriatic sea, built an empire, chiefly in the Aegean, based on trade. 258.22  the Netherlands] As in ‘Populousness’ 154, ‘the Netherlands’ means the Austrian Netherlands and excludes the United Provinces. 258.26  trade has come late into that kingdom] Until the 1770 ETSS the phrase was ‘very late’ (variants). Under Colbert’s ministry during Louis XIV’s reign, France made advances in trade that prompted alarm and admiration in Britain. 258.30  The places mentioned by Cicero] Cicero mentions these places as the locations in the wealthier eastern part of the Roman dominions from which Pompey is collecting a fleet in anticipation of a civil war with Caesar (who confirms the list in a more general way at Civil War 3.3). It is a characteristic inference of Hume that they were ‘possessed of the greatest commerce’ in Cicero’s time. It is true that, in comparison with the states of Europe in Hume’s time, the places named were ‘either small islands, or narrow territories’, though by the standards of the city-states of the ancient world they all had quite substantial hinterlands. Alexandria, on the Egyptian coast in the western part of the Nile delta, became the capital of the Ptolemaic kingdom and then the largest city of the Roman Empire after Rome itself. Concerning what Hume calls ‘the happiness of its situation’, Arbuthnot said, a ‘Place, which had an easy Communication with the Sinus Arabicus, or the Red Sea, Ægypt itself, Ethiopia, and likewise the Mediterranean, was a proper Staple for all the Trade of the World: therefore it was a very natural Thought in Alexander the Great, after the Destruction of Tyre, to establish the Seat of Trade at Alexandria, his Name-sake and favourite City, which had all those Advantages’ (Tables, 228). Colchis (Hume’s ‘Colchus’) was a country at the eastern end of the Black Sea with several ports for

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export of local products and at the end of a trade route from central Asia. Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus, ancient Phoenician trading cities, had by Cicero’s time been incorporated into the Roman province of Syria. Tyre in particular continued to be an international commercial centre. Modern editions of the Letters to Atticus print what is surely the correct reading, ‘Arado’, instead of the variant MS reading, ‘Andro’, which Hume follows: Andros, an island in the Aegean, was commercially insignificant. The maritime cities of Cyprus, a large island in the eastern Mediterranean, had long been intermediaries of trade and culture between the Near East and the Greek cities and Rome. Pamphylia and Lycia, mountainous territories on the south coast of Asia Minor, had several good harbours that were way stations between the Aegean and the Levantine coast. Rhodes, Chios, and Lesbos were three of the largest and most prosperous islands of the eastern Aegean. Rhodes in particular flourished as a trading centre in the Hellenistic period. Byzantium controlled the passage through the Propontis from the Black Sea to the Aegean, through which essential corn and other supplies came to the Greek cities, especially Athens. Smyrna and Miletus (the Miletum of 2 Timothy 4.20 King James Version) were important trading cities on the west coast of Asia Minor. A small island close to Rhodes, Cos (or Coos) was famous in the Hellenistic and Roman period for its trade in silk garments. n. 1  Epist. ad Attic. lib. 9. epist. 9.] Letters to Atticus (no. 176 = 9.9 traditional), 3: 44–53 at 46–7. From the 1752 Political Discourses through the 1777 ETSS, the citation was to epistle 11, a number incorrect for editions of both Hume’s day and today and plausibly attributable to a compositor’s mistake. 259.6  artificial burdens] One such reasoner, criticized in ‘Balance of Trade’ 6, was Joshua Gee, who wrote that ‘The Dutch have brought their Poor under such Regulations, that there is scarcely a Beggar to be seen in the whole United Provinces; for that no other Nation may under-work them, they take all imaginable Care to keep all Materials for Manufactures as low as possible, and lay their Taxes upon such Things as the People cannot subsist without, as Eatables, Firing, &c. very well knowing that Hunger and Cold will make People work to supply their Necessities. Flanders and Hambourg pursue the same Measures, for suppressing Idleness and Beggary’ (Trade, 37). Temple of Trowbridge quoted this passage approvingly in an anonymous pamphlet of 1739 (Case, 27, 30) but did not make his own tax proposal until 1758 (Vindication 4.1–2, 5). See also the 1765 Considerations on Taxes, attributed to Temple of Trowbridge, passim. n. 2  Account of the Netherlands, chap. 6.] i.e. Temple, Observations, 109–10. Temple’s comments are those of a substantial Irish landowner. Cf. English Historical Documents, 6: 468. 259.18–19  the author proceeds to confirm his doctrine, by enumerating, as above] A list similar to that in ¶ 2, illustrating the same point, is in Temple, Observations, 110 (ch. 6). variants for 259.21.  ’Tis always observ’d, in years of scarcity] It had been by Gee: ‘[W]hen Corn has been dear, . . . the Clothiers have had more Work done with

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all the Ease that could be desired, and the constant Application to Business has fixed [the labourers’] Minds so much to it, that they have not only had Money enough to purchase Food, but also to provide themselves with Cloaths and other Necessaries, whereby to live comfortably’ (Trade, 38). Cf. Petty, Several Essays, 205. It was not typical, however, to propose that taxes on necessaries should be raised to improve the labourers’ lives. It was more usual to urge lowering wages. Hume went on in this discussion in ‘Taxes’, which was omitted after the 1768 ETSS, to make his point: ‘Exorbitant taxes, like extreme necessity, destroy industry, by engendring despair’ (variants, ¶ 6 of 1752b). variants for 259.21.  in the year 1740] Arnot says that in the beginning of 1740, ‘the weather was remarkably severe. The cold so intense, that above Alloe, the Forth was entirely frozen over; nay, there was even a crust of ice at the Queen’s ferry. By the mills being stopped, a great dearth was occasioned; by the vast quantity of snow upon the ground, coals were brought into the town with difficulty, and several ­people perished with cold’ (History, 210–11). The efforts of the magistrates of Edinburgh to prevent hoarding of meal and corn during the dearth did not prevent rioting in Edinburgh, Leith, Musselburgh, and Prestonpans (Scots Magazine, 1 (October 1740): 482–4). variants for 259.21, n.  To this purpose, see also . . . at the end.] Through the 1768 ETSS, Hume had here a note referring readers to ‘Commerce’ 20–1 for the incentives offered by adversity. 259.25–6  They naturally produce sobriety and frugality, if judiciously imposed] an addition as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). 259.28–9  they are expensive in the levying] Taxes ‘levied upon consumptions’ were the customs and the excise (English Historical Documents, 7: 315). Because farming of those taxes had stopped in 1671 and 1683, respectively, they involved the deployment of a skilled civil service of customs officers and excise men, or ‘an Army of Tax-Gatherers’, in Archibald Hutcheson’s phrase (Collection, 20). In contrast the land-tax was ‘controlled by gentry in the localities’ and ‘scarcely had an administration at all’ (Brewer, Sinews of Power, 93, 100–1). A tax on commodities like the excise was levied on various items on the rationale that it was an ‘easy’ tax, paid insensibly by consumers. Walpole’s renewal in 1732 of the salt excise, which had been suspended in 1730, was attacked as a tax on necessaries and therefore prejudicial to the poor. Accordingly Walpole’s subsequent attempt to extend the excise in 1733 was to the imported luxuries of wine and tobacco. 259.33  the most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary] Hamilton, Report on Manufactures: ‘Arbitrary taxes, under which denomination are comprised all those, that leave the quantum of the tax to be raised on each person, to the discretion of certain officers, are as contrary to the genius of liberty as to the maxims of industry’ (Papers, 10: 312–13). Hume might have had in mind as an example the assessment system introduced during the Civil War under which a fixed quota was levied

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per county, leaving local commissioners to determine the share paid by individuals. See Hume, Hist. 6: 146. 260.1  poll-taxes, even when not arbitrary] An attempt at a graduated tax by either income or rank, the poll-tax was the basis for raising the various aids and subsidies sought by government for exigencies. The gradations by rank stipulated in 12 Charles II, c. 9, extended from £100 to 6 pence per capita (English Historical Documents, 6: 313–16). Poll-taxes of both kinds were levied during the time of William III. In Adam Smith’s analysis polls by rank evaded arbitrariness at the cost of being unequal in presupposing all in a rank to be of equal means. The assessment of income, on the other hand, ‘must in most cases depend upon the good or bad humour’ of intendants (Wealth of Nations 5.2 at 2: 867–8). The other common form of direct taxation was the land-tax, which normally was raised in wartime and ­lowered in peacetime and was paid by landholders. 260.5  a duty upon commodities checks itself ] as was explained in ‘Balance of Trade’ 37. 260.8  Historians inform us] Roman historians blamed taxes not so much for the fall of the empire in general as for a catastrophic decline in agriculture in this period. See Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 7.1–8, for the reign of Diocletian; Zosimus, New History 2.38, for the reign of Constantine; Procopius, Anecdota 22.39–23.24, for the reign of Justinian. Gibbon accepted their judgement, citing Hume’s point that such direct taxes are dangerous to liberty. Constantine’s mode of assessment is obscure, and Gibbon explained it as follows: ‘Either from design or from accident, the mode of assessment seemed to unite the substance of a land-tax with the forms of a capitation’ (Decline and Fall, 2: 202–6 at 202 n. 178, and 206). 260.12–13  oppressed by the publicans] The publicani (Hume’s ‘publicans’) were private tax-farmers of the Republican period (on whom see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 84 at 304.7). By Constantine’s time they had long given way to imperial officials for the general collection of taxes. 260.16  It is an opinion . . . some political writers] In versions of this passage until the 1770 ETSS, Hume traced this argument to a ‘celebrated writer’ (variants), i.e. Locke, who argued in his much-quoted pamphlet, Some Considerations, that all taxes fell ultimately upon landowners (Locke on Money, 1: 271–9). In the form of  the claim that land was the real basis of all wealth, the doctrine, called physi­ ocracy, would gain a large following in France after 1760. Hume’s argument endorses that of Walpole’s ministry, which had sought controversially to reduce the land-tax by compensating with excise taxes on wine and tobacco. Opposing the excise ­measure, the author of Craftsman 336 quoted Locke at length to show how taxes upon trade constitute an indirect tax on land rather than tax-relief in that the cost supposedly is passed on through inflation to renters and labourers and thence to land owners (republished, with nos. 331–5, 337, as An Argument against Excises, in 1733).

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260.17  fall ultimately upon land] Originally in this passage Hume had allowed that this opinion, though false, could have a salutary effect: ‘Such an opinion may be useful in Britain, by checking the landed gentlemen, in whose hands our legislature is lodg’d, and making them preserve great regard for trade and industry’ (vari­ ants). This statement was omitted as of the 1770 ETSS. See the annotation for ‘Parties in General’ 10 at 68.7–8. 260.28–30  The manufacturer . . . will not give him more . . . . the merchant . . .  cannot raise its price] See Hume’s letter of September 1766 to Turgot (Letters, 2: 93–4): artisans, manufacturers, merchants, and landholders would all share the burden of a moderate tax on consumption of luxuries, for their respective abilities to raise wages, prices, and rents are generally small, and they will not allow one group to pass on the burden. See also the letter of 5 August 1766 (Letters, 2: 76). The original version of ‘Taxes’ indicated more concern that taxes will produce inflation and despair in labourers rather than industriousness. In Some Considerations Locke had taken the view that the labourer was not able to pay any additional tax: ‘either his Wages must Rise with the Price of Things, to make him live; or else, not being able to maintain himself and his Family by his Labour, he comes to the Parish’ for succour (Locke on Money, 1: 275). 261.1  They must be very heavy taxes] In place of this sentence was the following in the 1767 and 1768 ETSS: ‘No labour in any commodities, that are exported, can be very considerably raised in the price, without losing the foreign market; and as some part of almost every manufactory is exported, this circumstance keeps the price of most species of labour nearly the same after the imposition of taxes. I may add, that it has this effect upon the whole: For were any kind of labour paid beyond its proportion, all hands would flock to it, and would soon sink it to a level with the rest’ (variants). 261.8–11  Grand Signior . . . a new tax . . . perseverance] In 1787, Alexander Hamilton would parrot this misapprehension about Ottoman taxes nearly in Hume’s words (Federalist 30). Hume shared this misapprehension with Voltaire (Histoire de Charles XII (1731), bk. 5; Essai sur les moeurs, ch. 93) and Montesquieu (Considérations, ch. 22). It would reappear in Hume’s ‘Origin of Government’ 7 and the History, where Hume compares Elizabethan government with ‘that of Turkey at present’ (Hist. 4: 360). If he had read the 3 March 1738 issue of Robert Wallace’s The Reveur, he would have been informed from a letter of 6 December from Constantinople ‘that a new Tax has been laid upon the Inhabitants of that Metropolis and of all the principal Cities in the Empire, for carrying on the War’ (3). Though in the late 16th century the Ottoman government began to employ tax-farming, this system was subject to regional variation and arbitrary increases no longer controlled by the sultan. In the 17th century Englishmen were already noting the prevalence of the farming of all forms of Ottoman revenue and the resulting growth of arbitrary exactions. See Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe, 191, 667, 764–5, from the years 1623–7, and the observations of a prominent merchant in North, Life of the Hon.

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Sir Dudley North (1744, repr. in Lives of the Norths, esp. 2: 35, 97, 99, 118). (Sir Dudley had spent the period 1662–80 in Constantinople.) The picture given by voyagers like Tournefort was that the sultan’s excise, customs, capitation, and annual tributes were fixed. The sultan inherited the fortunes of his political appointees but could garner such inheritances as needed only by ordering strangulations of his own viziers and pashas, and the treasures in the mosques were available only during wartime emergencies (Voyage, 2: 2–6).

9. Of Public Credit This essay appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. All twelve items in the first  edition of Political Discourses were composed and ready for the press by 22 September 1751 (New Letters, 28–9). Leigh Hunt would quote the entirety of ‘Public Credit’ 28–33 in his Reflector 1 in 1810, and the same paragraphs were included in An Anthology of Modern English Prose (1741 to 1892), ed. Annie Barnett and Lucy Dale (London, 1910). In its 1752 version, Hume’s essay would be reprinted in Insecurity of the British Funds . . .  Observations on the Sound and Prophetic Nature of its Principles, Shewing from Indisputable Facts that a Perseverance in the Pitt and Paper System Must Eventually Produce a National Bankruptcy (London, 1817), by ‘Imlac’. One might suppose from the inclusion of ‘Public Credit’ in A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts . . . on the National Debt and the Sinking Fund (London, 1857) that it was rare in Victorian times, but the editor of that collection, J. R. McCulloch, says that he included it for ‘the beauty of its style’ and for a specimen of its view concerning ‘the public debt when it did not amount to a twelfth part of its present magnitude’ (x). Hume’s only error, he says, was in not foreseeing countervailing increases in productivity due to new machinery and mass production. n. 1  Essay 5.] See ‘Balance of Trade’ 30–2, 34 (and their annotations at nn.6–13 and 15) on these ‘immense sums’. From time to time, however, especially after their defeat in the Peloponnesian War and the loss of their empire, the Athenians were obliged to resort to ‘extraordinary impositions’, known as eisphorai, to meet the costs of war. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. eisphora. n. 2  Alcib. 1.] “Plato”, ‘Alcibiades 1’ 122d–123b. Most scholars today agree that this work is not a genuine dialogue of Plato. Attempting to instil some self-know­ledge into the flamboyant young aristocrat, Socrates points out to Alcibiades that however wealthy and magnificent his position may be, he is surpassed by Spartans and Persians inasmuch as he is an Athenian. According to Socrates, not only did Sparta have great state-owned holdings of land, slaves, and horses, but individual Spartans possessed great wealth: ‘treasure has been flowing in to them for many generations not only from every part of Greece but often also from foreign parts,

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and it never leaves the country.’ The ‘dramatic date’ of this dialogue is 431 bc, when, Thucydides reports, Athens and Sparta ‘both entered the [Peloponnesian] war in the highest state of readiness in every way’ (History 1.1). n. 3  Lib. 3.] Arrian reports Alexander’s seizures of the treasure of the Persian kings in Anabasis 3.15.5 (Arbela), 3.16.7 (Susa), 3.18.10 (Persepolis), and 3.19.4–5 (Ecbatana). In particular, when Alexander captured the Persian capital at Susa (331 bc) and the palace of the Persian kings at Persepolis, together with their ancient capital at Pasargadae (330 bc), he took over the vast quantities of wealth that they had accumulated through the generations, including the treasury of Cyrus himself, the founder of the dynasty in the 6th century. Herodotus reports the Persian ­custom of melting down the coinage paid as tribute and storing it as ingots until it  was needed (Persian Wars 3.96.2). For the Persian evidence see Asheri et al., Commentary, 495. n. 4.1  Plutarch. in vita Alex.] Plutarch reports Alexander’s capture of Persian treasure at Susa and at Persepolis (Lives, ‘Alexander’ 36.1, 37.2). n. 4.2  Quintus Curtius (lib. 5. cap. 2.)] Curtius, History of Alexander 5.2.11–12. Alexander was given presents as he approached Susa, and ‘when he entered the city, he amassed from its treasures an incredible sum of money, 50,000 talents of silver, not stamped into coins, but rough ingots. Many kings during a long term of years had amassed such great wealth for their children and their posterity’. Arrian also puts the figure from Susa at ‘as much as fifty thousand talents of silver, as well as other royal property’ (Anabasis 3.16.7). See Brunt’s appendix in the Loeb Arrian, 1: 516–17, for a survey of the figures given by different authors. 262.11–12  the treasure of Hezekiah and the Jewish princes] Scriptural sources record the treasures of David and Solomon in relation to the building and completion of the Temple (including 1 Chronicles 28–9 and 1 Kings 9–10). These had been cited by John Arbuthnot in his Tables of Ancient Coins, 207–8. For the treasure said to have been stored up by King Hezekiah and his forebears, see 2 Kings 18.15–16, 20.12–17, and 2 Chronicles 32.27–9. 262.12  Philip and Perseus] See the annotations for ‘Balance of Trade’, nn. 10–13, where Hume comments on the immense treasure the Romans found in the possession of Philip V and Perseus, kings of Macedon, after defeating them at the battles of Cynoscephalae (197 bc) and Pydna (168 bc), respectively. n. 5  Strabo, lib. 4.] Strabo reports on the great amount of treasure looted by the Roman consul Quintus Servilius Caepio when he sacked Tolosa (Toulouse) in 106 bc and adds that treasure was also found in many other parts of Gaul, safeguarded in temples and sacred lakes (Geography 4.1.13). The fact that Hume never gives section numbers for Strabo suggests that he was using a text that did not divide the books into sections. Such is the edition of 1707 used by Robert Wallace (Dissertation, 35 n.), which is built upon the celebrated edition of Isaac Casaubon, with additional notes by various other scholars. A copy was in the Advocates Library.

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262.14–16  Julius Cæsar . . . Severus, &c.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Caesar’ 35.2–4. See Tacitus, Annals 1.11; and Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Augustus’ 101.4, for Augustus’s account of the resources of the empire at the time of his death. See Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Tiberius’ 35, 46–9, on Tiberius’s frugality. For Vespasian’s frugality see Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Vespasian’ 16. For Severus see Dio, Roman History 77.16.3–4, and Scriptores Historiae Augustae, ‘Severus’ 12.2–3, 23.2. 262.19–20  trust that posterity will pay . . . contracted by their ancestors] Until the 1770 ETSS, this read ‘posterity, during peace, will pay off the incumbrances, contracted during the preceding war’ (variants). 263.22  It is very tempting to a minister] This paragraph was included as of the 1770 ETSS (variants) and consequently written before 16 October 1769 (New Letters, 188). The Seven Years War had ended in 1763, and William Pitt, now lord Chatham, had resigned from his own ministry in October 1768 but might have returned to office at any point, as he had in 1766. On 11 March 1771, Hume wrote to Strahan that ‘from 1740 to 1761, during the Course of no more than 21 Years, while a most pacific Monarch sat on the Throne of France, the Nation ran in Debt about a hundred Millions; [and] that the wise and virtuous Minister, Pitt, . . .  [contracted] more Incumbrances, in six months of an unnecessary War, than we have been able to discharge during eight Years of Peace’ (Letters, 2: 237). The ‘21 Years’ stretch from the War of the Austrian Succession to Pitt’s resignation from his coalition government with the Newcastle Whigs. 263.27  every banker’s shop] i.e. the ‘private bankers’ at whom Hume looks askance in ‘Money’ 4 and mentions in ‘Balance of Trade’ 26. Wholesalers, manufacturers, merchants, warehousemen, attorneys, scriveners, even booksellers―persons with any cash-keeping business―might be drawn into banking services from their ad hoc facilitation of transactions. 263.35–6  panegyrics . . . on Busiris and Nero] These examples of paradoxes are drawn from Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, save that the alleged panegyric upon Nero was, in the original, one upon Claudius (Seneca, Apocolocyntosis). See Erasmus’s prefatory letter to Thomas More (Collected Works, 27: 83). Busiris was a mythical king of Egypt killed by Heracles. In the 4th century bc both Isocrates and his pupil Polycrates wrote paradoxical encomia of him. 263.36–7  great ministers, and by a whole party] Deleted for the 1770 and subsequent editions of the ETSS was a specific reference here to Robert Walpole (‘lord Orford’s conduct’) and ‘his partizans’ in the Whig party (variants). (Walpole was not created earl of Orford, in fact, until 1742, when his premiership ended.) Some of the paradoxical reasonings were reputedly written by Walpole himself. One of these arguments, which emphasized especially the economic advantages of the debt, sought also to associate it with British liberty. See Some Considerations on Publick Credit (1733), 5–6, 10, 19–20, and the annotation on the variant reading for

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50.29 on the national debt in ‘Walpole’. More ambitiously, some ministerial writers described the public debt as now ‘Part of the Constitution’ (Essay upon Public Credit (1748), 5). variants for 263.40.  There is a word] Following ¶ 7 were two paragraphs, annotated below, on ‘circulation’ when applied to paper money rather than commodities. They were omitted as of the 1770 ETSS. variants for 263.40, n.  Law . . . publish’d in France] This citation refers to a translation of documents related to Law’s defences of his bank collected as The Present State of the French Revenues and Trade (1720). There seems to have been no corresponding collection in French, though four of its letters appeared individually in the Mercure de France. Law’s usage of ‘circulation’ is illustrated in this quotation from the second letter: ‘The Bank, with respect to the Finances, is the Heart of the Kingdom, to which all the Money ought to return for renewing the Circulation. Those who would hoard it up, and with-hold it, are like the extreme Parts of Human Body, that would stop the Passage of the Blood which moistens and nourishes them’ (Present State, 50). variants for 263.40.  chequer notes] See the annotation for ‘Balance of Trade’ 21 at 243.8. variants for 263.40.  Change-alley] Exchange (or ’Change) Alley was the location, opposite the Royal Exchange, of Jonathan’s Coffee-House, the original of the stock exchange. The Alley, which ran south off Cornhill Street, had burned down in a fire in Cornhill Ward (Gentleman’s Magazine, 18 (March 1748): 138), but the House had been rebuilt. Jobbers, or speculators in the fluctuations in the price of the ‘Funds’, took up operations there after ejection from the Royal Exchange by the merchants c.1697–8 (Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses 656). 264.6–7  No merchant thinks it necessary] Cf. Hume’s statement of the same point to Montesquieu in his letter of 10 April 1749 (Letters, 1: 137). 264.8  India-bonds] The East India Company was deeply involved at this time in the management of the public debt. The company’s bonds, unlike stocks, were secured by the public debt, were redeemable at par, and offered a fixed rate of interest. 264.32–3  diminishing its profits, promoting circulation, and encouraging industry] At this point was a note (see the variants), removed as of the 1767 ETSS, conceding that multiplicity of public debts lowers interest rates and pointing to the discussion of the effects on interest of profits in ‘Interest’ 13–14. 265.3–6  London . . . . the head is undoubtedly too large for the body] That very language had been used of London since the 16th century, notably by Andrew Fletcher in his 1704 Account of a Conversation: ‘For this vast city is like the head of a rickety child, which by drawing to itself the nourishment that should be distributed in due proportions to the rest of the languishing body, becomes so over-charged, that frenzy and death unavoidably ensue’ (Political Works, 213). The basis of the

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complaint of London’s disproportionate size, as encountered in Hume’s time, was that the city contained about one-tenth of the population of England and Wales, whereas Paris represented little more than one-fiftieth of the people in France. (For the population of London and Paris see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 112 at 310.31–2.) Reasonably accurate estimates of population date from the late 17th century, and so such ratios were familiar to contemporaries. For the political inferences that might be drawn from the great size of the metropolis, and especially for the argument that the ‘publick Funds’ served further to swell the metropolitan popu­la­ tion, see A Computation of the Increase of London (1719), 6. Most recently, the issue had claimed the attention of Corbyn Morris in his Observations on the Past Growth . . . of the City of London (1751), esp. 15–25. In a letter of 1763, Hume would refer to Morris as ‘my friend’ (New Letters, 71). 265.15–16  stock-holders . . . fly to the support of government] This sentence and the preceding one about London activists were included as of the 1770 ETSS (variants for 265.10). One of the supposed advantages of the national debt was that it strengthened the creditors’ loyalty to the Hanoverian establishment, for they could hardly expect to find the debt honoured by the Pretender. See e.g. Spectator 3 (Spectator, 1: 16–17). On public disorders see the annotation for ‘Coalition’ 16 at 354.22–3. The refractory people mentioned were the tradesmen in the cities of London and Westminster who could resort to breaking windows and burning effigies. They were the main support for William Pitt and, in 1768–70, the firebrand John Wilkes. It is difficult to characterize the evolving politics of a fractious group, but these ‘cits’ were accustomed to the comparative democracy of guild and ward governance and as a group were antagonistic towards a creditor plutocracy, courtier ministries, and suborned parliaments. They were hostile towards Protestant Dissenters or papists, as present fear directed. The 1745 uprising purged it of its Jacobitism. See Rogers, Whigs and Cities, chs. 1–2, 10. In George III’s reign the activists were increasingly hostile to Scots. 265.21–2  render all provisions and labour dearer than otherwise they would be] In only the 1768 permutation of the essay was the following elaboration: ‘We may also remark, that this increase of prices, derived from paper-credit, has a more durable and a more dangerous influence than when it arises from a great increase of gold and silver: Where an accidental overflow of money raises the price of labour and commodities, the evil remedies itself in a little time: The money soon flows out into all the neighbouring nations: The prices fall to a level: And industry may be continued as before; a relief which cannot be expected, where the circulating specie consists chiefly of paper, and has no intrinsic value.’ See the annotation for ‘Balance of Trade’ 20 at 242.29–30 for the kinds of paper that will not flow out into the neighbouring nations. 265.24–5  to heighten the price of labour, or be an oppression on the poorer sort] Omitted from this enumeration of effects, as of the 1770 ETSS, is a claim that interest on the debt was ‘apt to be a check upon industry’ (variants).

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265.26  foreigners possess a great share of our national funds] A large part of the debt was held by foreigners, especially Dutch financiers, expected to have no allegiance to Britain (Dickson, Financial Revolution, ch. 12). 266.1–2  from the right hand to the left] The source of this sentiment would seem to be Melon, Essai politique, 296. In Bindon’s translation it reads, ‘The Debts of a State are Debts due from the right Hand to the left, whereby the Body will not find it self weakened, if it hath the necessary Quantity of Aliments, and they are properly distributed’ (Political Essay, 329). 266.13–14  the excises upon malt and beer afford a large revenue] The 1697 excise on malt, a necessary ingredient of beer, saved the excise on beer from merely expanding home brewing at the expense of commercial brewers. The annual regranting of the malt duty in 1713 extended the tax to Scotland, prompting an effort to dissolve the union with England (Dowell, History, 2: 53, 56–7, 61, 72–3). 266.34–5  that condition, to which it is hastening] Paragraphs 22–7 were included as of the 1764 ETSS (variants) and therefore probably were amongst the ‘pretty considerable Improvements’ of which Hume speaks on 10 March 1763 (Letters, 1: 378). The Seven Years War had ended in January. 267.9–10  men, who have no connexions with the state] The primacy accorded to landed property in the system of parliamentary representation and in opinion generally was based upon the assumption that land was a form of possession that, far more than commerce or an income from investment, tied the owner to the nation and its fate. More liquid assets could readily be removed from the country. 268.20–1  the consent of the annuitants . . . they will never be persuaded] To the contrary, their consent was gained for purposes of lowering the rate of return, in effect a tax on the creditors. Between December 1749 and 1752, Henry Pelham, 1st lord of the Treasury and de facto prime minister, succeeded in this venture, consolidated the debt, and placed public finance on a stable basis for the next half century. Pelham’s conversion was successful because, at a time of declining rates of interest, the annuitants could not expect to do better elsewhere. See Dickson, Financial Revolution, 228–43. Hume might not have deemed his predictions discredited by these events, for he wrote only of tendencies and continued to foresee a disaster that never came. variants for 269.6.  leisure and tranquillity for such an undertaking] At this point until the 1770 ETSS, there was a substantial note on why ‘’Tis not likely we shall ever find any minister so bad a politician’ as to undertake to pay down the debt. Pelham’s restructuring of the debt might have given cause for dropping the note. 269.22  Mr. Hutchinson, above thirty years ago] Thirty years before 1752 suggests that Hume has in mind the 1721 collection of treatises by Archibald Hutcheson, but the Member of Parliament had mooted his proposal for a ‘Decimation’ tax c.1714. He focused on the trading, monied, and landed interests (Collection, 22) but did not exclude the poor when he proposed a levy on the ‘Nett Personal Estate of all

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the Inhabitants of Great Britain’ so that ‘every particular Person would only bear alone his own Share of that Burthen which he now bears in common with others’ (27–8). Hutcheson, like Melon, regarded the debt as owed by the nation to itself. 270.1  France during the regency] The phrase specifying the regency was included as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). It refers to the regency from the death of Louis XIV in 1715 to the majority of Louis XV in 1723. It was marked by the collapse of credit known as the Mississippi Bubble, and this time-frame fits well with the reference to a ‘projector’, doubtless an allusion to John Law. By contrast the previous regency during Louis XIV’s childhood saw no such projector, although in 1648 the state declared bankruptcy in the sense of an inability to pay interest on its debt. variants for 270.2, n.  Some neighbouring states practice an easy expedient] This note on the French and Dutch practices for reducing the debt was omitted for the 1770 ETSS. ‘Augmenting’ the money was often called ‘raising the money’ or ‘raising the coin’. According to its opponents Locke and Law, to ‘raise’ it was to depreciate it. A proponent, Barbon, said, ‘In Italy, France, and England, the way of raising their Coin, has been generally by keeping the old Standard for fineness, and only by altering the weight; from time to time Coining their New Money lighter’ (Discourse concerning Coining, 66). Alternatives were to reduce the fineness, or proporton of silver to allay, to alter the denomination of coins but not their weight and content, or to combine some or all of these three (Harris, Essay, pt. 2, ch. 1, § 10). Cf. Hume’s comments in ‘Money’ 8 and n. 4. 270.7  a match of cudgel-playing] The object of cudgel-play was to draw blood from an opponent’s head. The sport is depicted in Spectator 161 and 224. In William Somervile’s burlesque poem Hobbinol, or the Rural Games, young Hobbinol, son of Hobbinol, fells the butcher Gorgonius, who, though champion, had previously lost an eye and the symmetry of his nose (canto 2). 270.18  The right of self-preservation is unalienable] Originally a concept in the Roman law of property (e.g. Justinian, Institutes 2.8), unalienability, or in­ali­ en­abil­ity, was applied to a select but varying list of fundamental rights, including the right to life, by a number of writers, some in the natural-law tradition in its early modern forms and some engaged in discussing its topics. See Grotius, Jurisprudence 2.1.41–8; Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 14; Hutcheson, Inquiry 2.7.5 and System 1.2.3.4. 270.27  The money will immediately be seized] Cf. Hume’s discussion of Charles II’s disruptive ‘Stop’ in 1672–7 of redemptions of exchequer payment ‘Orders’ (Hist. 6: 253–4). 270.33  So great dupes are the generality of mankind] This paragraph appeared as a note until the 1770 ETSS (variants). 270.36–7  The present king of France, during the late war, . . . his grand­ father] Louis XIV was in fact the great-grandfather of Louis XV, the king during

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the ‘late war’ of the Austrian Succession, for the Sun King had outlived both his son and his grandson. 270.38–9  comparing the natural rate of interest in both kingdoms] The natural rate would be the rate set by the money-market without distortion by monopoly or legal ceilings on lending. Effectively Hume’s statement allows that the French government paid more, for the natural rate of interest in France was higher. The maximum legal rate in Britain had been 5 per cent since 1714, when 12 Anne, c. 16, lowered it from 6 per cent. n. 6  Hist. lib. 3.] Tacitus, Histories 3.55: ‘But the mob was very impressed by the magnificence of his indulgences; foolish people bought them with their own money, but the more aware citizens regarded as worthless benefits which could neither be given nor accepted without damage to the state.’ Tacitus is speaking of the desperate measures the emperor Vitellius made to win public support in face of the threat from his rival Otho during the civil wars of the ‘year of the four emperors’ (ad 69). The text of the first sentence is corrupt, and various emendations have been ­proposed for the meaningless ‘aderat’. Our translation assumes that it should be ‘hiabat’. n. 7.1–2  all the creditors of the public . . . amount only to 17,000] Dickson says that this estimate is ‘much too small’ and hazards a guess as to the confusion producing the figure (Financial Revolution, 286 and n. 1). n. 7.9  These fellows, says he, must be right at last.] Hume could have found this anecdote in Bayle’s Pensées diverses, § 18 (Miscellaneous Reflections, 1: 36). The anecdote has the appearance of being an apocryphal version of one that can be found in the memoirs of the dukes of Sully (L’Écluse, Memoirs, 3: 206 n.) and Nevers (Memoirs, 4: 896). 272.3  our foreign enemies] Until the 1770 ETSS this passage read, ‘enemies, or rather enemy (for we have but one to dread)’ (variants). 272.14–16  the ancients . . . the gift of prophecy] The frantic inspiration of ancient prophecy is perhaps most famously portrayed in Virgil, Aeneid 6.77–80, 98–101, but Hume’s comments on madness and sanity seem closest to Socrates’s remark in Plato, Phaedrus 244a–b: ‘The prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona achieve much that is good for Greece when mad, both on a private and on a public level, whereas when sane they achieve little or nothing.’

10. Of Some Remarkable Customs ‘Remarkable Customs’ appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. 273.2–3  all general maxims . . . with great caution] Until the 1772 ETSS, the phrase was ‘with great reserve’ rather than ‘with great caution’ (variants). Three

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examples of such general maxims can be found in ‘Politics’ 8–10, where Hume more optimistically speaks of ‘general truths, which are invariable by the humour or education either of subject or sovereign’ (¶ 8). On the contrast of moral and phys­ ic­al causes, see ‘National Characters’ 2–5 and the annotation at 161.16–18 as well as the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 5 at 281.31–2 and the Glossary, s.v. moral. 273.10–11  that entire liberty of speech should be granted to every member] In England this principle, however essential, was established for Parliament as late as 1667 by a resolution of both houses (English Historical Documents, 6: 165). 273.17–18  all inferior jurisdiction] It has been argued that the courts, which consisted of large popular juries, were the sovereign authority at Athens (Hansen, Sovereignty, 16–18). If this supposition is true, the basis of Hume’s argument disappears, contradicting the assumption that the people exercised its sovereignty through the political organs of Council and Assembly. More usually the sovereignty of the people is thought to have been exercised through both the popular assembly and the popular lawcourts (cf. Rhodes, Commentary, 489). Sometimes modern his­ tor­ians speak, as Hume does, of the sovereignty of the ‘supreme legislative assembly’ (eccle¯sia) at Athens as an acknowledged fact not needing argument (e.g. Staveley, Greek and Roman Voting and Elections, 78). 273.24–8  γραϕὴ παρανόμων, or indictment of illegality . . . unjust, or prejudicial to the public] The graphe¯ paranomo¯n, or ‘indictment of illegality’ as Hume translates it, was a legal procedure by which any Athenian citizen could be pros­ ecuted for proposing in the Assembly (eccle¯sia) a decree (pse¯phisma) that was contrary to existing law (nomos) or not beneficial to the people. The charge was directed against ‘decrees’ proposed in the assembly rather than, as Hume says, ‘laws’, since in the period when the graphe¯ paranomo¯n is known to have been in effect the Athenians distinguished between ‘decrees’ for a particular occasion and permanent ‘laws’. The earliest attested use of the graphe¯ paranomo¯n occurred in 415 bc (Andocides 1 (On the Mysteries) 17). It was frequently employed as a political weapon in the 4th century. According to Aeschines, writing in 330 bc, the minor politician Aristophon had claimed that he had been prosecuted and acquitted ­seventy-five times on this charge, whereas others had escaped it altogether (Aeschines 3 (Against Ctesiphon) 194). See Hansen, Sovereignty, 205–12, and Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. graphe¯ paranomo¯n, and s.v. law and procedure, Athenian: legislation. 273.29–30  the poor bore the same burden as the rich in equipping the gallies] While the state of Athens built the hulls of the ships, their equipment and command were supplied by citizens who performed ‘liturgies’, or special services (see the annotation for ‘Populousness’, nn. 86, 88). ‘Liturgies’ fell only upon wealthy men. Demosthenes attempted by his proposal to make the very wealthy pay more than the rather wealthy. In calling these two categories of wealthy people ‘rich’ and ‘poor’, Hume is perhaps following Demosthenes’s own language in his summary account of his proposal in De corona 102–9.

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n. 1  His harangue for it is still extant; περὶ Συμμορίας.] Hume cites Demosthenes’s speech 14 (On the Navy-Boards), delivered in 354 bc. (The title is normally given as περὶ τῶν Συμμορίων.) But On the Navy-Boards is not the speech in which Demosthenes made the particular proposal to reform the collection of ‘ship-money’ that Hume discusses in the text (on which see the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 157). The speech to which Hume refers here was made in 340 bc and has not come down to us. Demosthenes tells us about it in De corona 102–9 (see the annotation for ¶ 4 at 274.9), pointing out that he was prosecuted for it and acquitted. Possibly Hume misread his own reference to this passage of De corona in his memoranda (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 516): ‘The γραϕη παρανομων [indictment for illegality] a singular & a seemingly an absurd Law among the Athenians; by which a man cou’d be try’d & punish’d for promulgating a bad Law to the People, the only Legislators. This shows a remarkable Diffidence which the People had in their own Judgement. Demosthenes was try’d & acquitted for his Law περι συμμορiας [‘on the navy-board’]. Περι Sτεϕ: [Peri Steph, ‘On the Crown’].’ n. 2  Pro Ctesiphonte.] This speech, which is nominally a speech ‘in defence of Ctesiphon’ (Pro Ctesiphonte), is now more commonly known as De corona, or On the Crown (Περὶ τοῦ στεϕάνου). Hume is referring to §§ 102–9. 274.9  Yet was Ctesiphon tried by the γραϕὴ παρανόμων.] Hume’s summary of the situation is not completely accurate. In 336 bc an Athenian citizen, Ctesiphon, proposed that the high honour of a golden crown should be awarded to Demosthenes for his services to the city. Before the assembly could debate the motion, Aeschines, a political enemy of Demosthenes, brought a charge of graphe¯ paranomo¯n against Ctesiphon, thus suspending debate on the process of Ctesiphon’s decree. The case came to trial in 330 bc before a large, popular jury. Aeschines, in his prosecution speech (Against Ctesiphon), made a political and personal attack on Demosthenes, while Demosthenes replied with the speech in defence of Cteshiphon, cited in n. 2, in which he made a defence of the policies of his own career. Aeschines lost the case by a large margin: he failed to obtain one-fifth of the jury’s votes, and incurred the penalty prescribed for failing to do so. See the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 88.14. 274.14–15  the motion of Hyperides, giving liberty to slaves, and inrolling them in the troops] A distinguished Athenian orator and prominent antiMacedonian politician, Hyperides, made this proposal in 338 bc after the battle of Chaeronea, at which Philip II of Macedon inflicted a crushing defeat on a Greek alliance led by Athens and Thebes. The passage that Hume cites says that Hyperides proposed, amongst other things, ‘to grant citizenship to all resident aliens, to set the slaves free’. It does not say anything specific about enrolling slaves in the troops. n. 3.1  Plutarch. in vita decem oratorum.] Life of Hyperides in the ‘Lives of the Ten Orators’, falsely ascribed to Plutarch (Moralia 849a). Though these short

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lives are certainly spurious, the information about Hyperides’s proposal, confirmed elsewhere, is generally accepted. n. 3.1–2  contra Aristogiton. orat. 2.] “Demosthenes” 26 (Against Aristogeiton 2) 11: ‘he proposed that the disfranchised citizens should regain their citizen rights’ is a more accurate paraphrase of ‘render the ἄτιμοι ἐπίτιμοι [atimoi epitimoi]’ than Hume’s ‘restore the privilege of bearing offices to those who had been declared incapable’. The proposal referred to all citizen rights rather than only the right of holding office. No doubt Hume is right to say that this speech and the speech of Hyperides were referring to different clauses of ‘the same law’. Against Aristogeiton 2 has usually been judged to be spurious since antiquity (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ‘Demosthenes’ 57). 274.17–19  that stroke celebrated by Plutarch and Longinus . . . battle of Chæronea] i.e. the striking phrase quoted by Plutarch in the passage cited in n. 3, and by “Longinus”, On the Sublime 15.10. Plutarch’s quotation comes from Hyperides’s speech Against Aristogeiton and appears as Hyperides, fragment B18.2, in the Loeb Minor Attic Orators, 2: 576–7. It is Plutarch who tells us that in this speech Hyperides was defending himself against a graphe¯ paranomo¯n. Cf. ‘Eloquence’ 6 for Hume’s comment on a similar ‘stroke’ by Demosthenes. 274.22  The Athenian Democracy was such a tumultuous government] Until the 1760 ETSS the phrase was ‘such a mobbish government’ (variants). There is a great deal of evidence, unknown to Hume, that this adverse judgement is misguided. Above all we now have the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution, first published from a newly discovered papyrus in 1891, and a mass of inscriptions. (Whether it is by Aristotle or to what extent is in doubt.) Taken together, these sources show that meetings of the assembly were controlled by a strict agenda (see the annotation for n. 4.2) and that they were capable of dealing with complex legislation. There was indeed a good deal of heckling (Hansen, Athenian Assembly, 68–72), and Thucydides (e.g. History 6.8–26) and Xenophon (e.g. Hellenica 1.7.1– 35) vividly describe some tumultuous meetings. But these were only a few among some eight thousand (our crude calculation) held during the period of the democracy, i.e. the 5th and 4th centuries. Potter’s 1701 Archaeologia Graeca has a better understanding than Hume about the procedure in the Assembly (1: 95–7). n. 4.1  The senate of the Bean] i.e. the Boule¯, or Council of five hundred, whose members were appointed by lot from citizens over the age of thirty across the whole of Attica to serve for one year. Originally real beans must have been used for allotment. By the 4th century, at least, counters known as kuboi were inserted into an elaborate allotment machine to choose jurors (Rhodes, Commentary, 149, 707–8), though there is no comparable evidence for councillors. The phrase ‘senate of the Bean’ has a ludicrous ring that Hume need not have intended. Harrington discusses the senate of the bean in Oceana (Political Works, 177, 253, 279), and Potter describes the process (Archaeologia Graeca (2nd edn. 1706), 1: 97–8). The phrase is used occasionally, but rarely, in Greek sources, e.g. in the law quoted in Andocides 1 (On

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the Mysteries) 96; Thucydides, History 8.66.1; and the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution 32.1. n. 4.2  their authority was not great] This judgement is incorrect: ‘the council was the keystone of the democratic constitution’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. boule¯). No measure could be discussed by the Assembly unless it had previously been discussed by the Council, which formulated a probouleuma (prior resolution). This resolution might take the form of a specific proposal, which the Assembly, after debate, could accept or reject, or the subject might simply be put on the agenda with no recommendation either way from the Council. Furthermore, one-tenth of the Council (fifty men) served as prytaneis, the officers who presided at meetings of the Assembly. Hume’s account is directly contrary to Potter, Archaeologia Graeca, 1: 100: ‘The Power of this Council was very great, almost the whole care of the Common-wealth being devolv’d upon them; for the Commonalty being by Solon’s Constitutions invested with supreme Power, and entrusted with the Management of all Affairs, as well Publick, as Private, it was the peculiar charge of the Senate to keep them within due Bounds, to take Cognizance of every thing before it was refer’d to them, and to be careful that nothing should be propounded to them, but what they, upon mature Deliberation, had found to be conducive to the publick Good.’ n. 5.1  In Ctesiphontem.] Aeschines 3 (Against Ctesiphon) 5–8 stresses the im­port­ance of the graphe¯ paranomo¯n to the Athenian democracy: ‘If the laws are faithfully upheld . . . , the democracy also is preserved. This you ought always to remember and hate those who make illegal motions. You should not regard any such offence as trivial but treat it with the utmost seriousness.’ n. 5.1–2  It is remarkable . . . γραϕὴ παρανόμων] In ‘Hume’s “Early Memoranda” ’ (151), Sakamoto connects this passage with the following from Hume’s memo­ randa: ‘The first Law, on the Establishment of the Oligarchy in Athens was the Abolishing of the γραϕη παρανομων [indictment of illegality]’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 518). Hume appears to have confused the setting up of the oligarchy (‘dissolution of the democracy’) by Critias and the Thirty Tyrants in 404 bc with the setting up of the oli­ garchy of the Four Hundred by Pisander and his associates in 411. The former regime was imposed by Sparta, and there is nothing in our sources about the abolition of the ‘indictment of illegality’ on that occasion, whereas Thucydides explicitly states that its abolition was the one and only measure taken by the oligarchical con­ spir­ators in 411 before they introduced their proposals to restrict the franchise (History 8.67.2–3). n. 5.2–3  as we learn from Demosthenes κατὰ Τιμοκ.] This seems to be a reference to Demosthenes 24 (Against Timocrates) 154: ‘in time past popular governments were overthrown in this way when actions of graphe¯ paranomo¯n [‘indictments for illegal legislation’] were abolished.’ Cf. Thucydides, History 8.67.2, and ‘Aristotle’, Athenian Constitution 29.4, with Rhodes, Commentary, 378.

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n. 5.3  the words of the law] Demosthenes 24 (Against Timocrates) 33, where Demosthenes inserts the law into his text. There is debate about the authenticity of such documents (cf. MacDowell, Demosthenes, 186). The law starts: ‘It shall not be lawful to introduce any law contrary to existing laws’, and goes on to state that an indictment (graphe¯) shall be brought against anyone who does so. Hume cites from part 1 of the Aldine edition of 1504, which he also cites in ‘Populousness’, nn. 22, 102. 275.4  nothing but very numerous juries] The courts at Athens consisted of large popular juries, normally not larger than 1,001 persons, chosen by lot at the beginning of a court day from an annually appointed pool of 6,000 eligible citizens. Cases of graphe¯ paranomo¯n normally required juries of not less than 501 persons and sometimes more than 1,001 (Hansen, Athenian Democracy, 207). n. 6  Plutarch. in vita Pelop.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Pelopidas’ 25.7. Plutarch says that the Theban politician Meneclidas persuaded his compatriots to make a public dedication of a painting of a minor battle at Plataea, and that the general Pelopidas brought a graphe¯ paranomo¯n against him (c.366 bc). If this account is reliable, it is the only known evidence for the existence of the measure outside Athens. 275.12–13  to prohibit for ever its abrogation and repeal] Such clauses in a number of 5th century laws, mostly from Athens, are called ‘entrenchment clauses’ and are described as making it ‘impossible or at least very difficult and dangerous’ to reverse a decree (Lewis, Selected Papers, 136). Hume’s three examples all date from the 4th century and provide a variety of devices by which the Assembly attempted to deter would-be repealers: the laws on the Theoric fund, the law on exemption from liturgies, and the prohibition of laws directed against an individual (see the annotations for nn. 7–9). Hume does not imply that no Athenian law could be repealed, which would not be true. Though no law could be repealed simply by a vote of the Assembly, at least in the 4th century, the Assembly did regularly appoint a body of commissioners, nomothetai, to examine the laws, to hear proposals for reform, and to determine them, though the exact procedure is a subject of controversy (see Hansen, Athenian Democracy, ch. 7, esp. 166–9; Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. nomothetai). 275.13  the demagogue, who diverted all the public revenues] Hume must mean Eubulus, the politician who controlled Athens’ finances in the 350s and 340s bc and who may have introduced the Theoric fund. But Eubulus did not ‘divert all the public revenues’ to that fund. What the scheme did was to direct any unallocated revenue to the Theoric Fund, and those who criticized it, notably Demosthenes, argued that it starved the military fund of the resources it needed (see the annotation for n. 7 below). Eubulus is credited with restoring Athenian finances and with focusing Athenian efforts upon the defence of Athens and central Greece against the advance of Philip II of Macedon. On ‘demagogues’ at Athens see the variants for 40.12 for ‘Liberty of the Press’ and its annotations. n. 7  Demost. Olynth. 1. 2.] Hume’s citation is not perspicuous: the information about non-repeal of the theoric law is not in ch. 2 of Demosthenes, Olynthiac 1.

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Elsewhere Hume cites Demosthenes’s speeches by title and (sometimes) page number of the 1504 Aldine edition, Demosthenis orationes, without chapter numbers (e.g. at ‘Populousness’, nn. 22, 102). This edition is a single folio in two parts with in­dependent pagination. In the first part, two unnumbered prefatory compositions by Libanius (4th century ad) precede Olynthiac 1, and the second is his ‘hypothesis’. A common feature of editions of Demosthenes, the hypothesis gives the his­tor­ ic­al background to the speech. This is where the information about non-repeal appears in this case. Libanius says, ‘they passed a law about these theoric funds, making it a capital crime to propose to restore these funds to their former purpose, which was military’. Demothenes himself refers, guardedly in Olynthiac 1.19–29 and explicitly in Olynthiac 3.11–13, to the danger to a politician of proposing to shift theoric money to military purposes. n. 8  Demost. contra Lept.] Demosthenes 20 (Against Leptines), esp. 1–4, from which Hume quotes almost verbatim. In 355 bc, Leptines had proposed that no one, citizen or foreigner, should be exempted from the obligation to perform liturgies, on which see the annotation for ‘Populousness’, nn. 86, 88. In particular the ­people should not have the right to grant specific exemptions. In the year 355/4, Demosthenes brought a graphe¯ paranomo¯n (or a similar charge) against Leptines’s proposal with a view to getting it repealed. n. 9  Demost. contra Aristocratem.] Demosthenes 23 (Against Aristocrates) 86: ‘It shall not be lawful to propose a law directed against an individual, if it does not apply to all Athenians.’ The orators quote the same law in three other passages: Andocides 1 (On the Mysteries) 87, where ‘unless there is a quorum of 6,000’ is added; Demosthenes 24 (Against Timocrates) 59; and pseudo-Demosthenes 46 (Against Stephanus 2) 12. On attainders see the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 92.13. n. 10  Essay on the freedom of wit and humour, part 3. § 2.] In Characteristicks 2 (Sensus Communis) 3.2, Shaftesbury does not necessarily describe the complicated constitution of the ‘German empire’. His point is that the same natural sense of fellowship produces society, when directed by right reason, and the factions dis­ order­ing society, when violent. ‘Thus we have Wheels within Wheels’, he says, quoting Ezekiel 1.16, 10.10; ‘And in some National Constitutions (notwithstanding the Absurdity in Politicks) we have one Empire within another’ (Characteristicks, 1: 63). He translates the Latin proverb, Imperium in imperio. Hume makes the application to the Empire, which was a congeries of unequal states described by Pufendorf as ‘an Irregular Body, . . . like some mis-shapen Monster, if it be measured by the common Rules of Politicks and Civil Prudence’ (Present State, ch. 6, § 9). Madison’s diagnosis in Federalist 19 was that ‘the Germanic empire’ was ‘a community of sovereigns’, rendering ‘the empire a nerveless body’ (118–19). 276.10–11  the comitia centuriata and comitia tributa] The comitia centuriata was the old established assembly of the whole Roman people. In the republican period it enacted laws, voted on war and peace, and elected the senior magistrates,

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including the consuls and praetors. As Hume says, voting was by blocs (‘centuries’) determined by wealth (‘by the census’ as Hume puts it), and this assembly was dominated by the aristocracy. See the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 97. The comitia tributa was also an assembly of the whole Roman people, except perhaps the very small class of patricians. It was organized into tribes, thirty-five eventually. Each tribe voted as a bloc, but these voting units were territorial, not dependent on wealth. This assembly had arisen, it seems, from unofficial meetings of the poorer Romans and their appointment of tribunes (see the annotation for ¶ 11 at 276.32) to represent them during the ‘conflict of the orders’. It continued to elect the tribunes, the quaestors, and other lesser magistrates throughout the period of the republic and was eventually recognized as the usual assembly for the enactment of laws. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. comitia. 276.17–18  at first between the Patricians and Plebeians, afterwards between the nobles and the people] The former division seems to refer to the parties involved in the ‘conflict of the orders’ in the earlier republic, traditionally ended by the Lex Hortensia of 287 bc (see the annotation for 276.32). The latter division seems to refer to the struggles between the optimates and the populares in the last century of the republic. 276.27  established in Rome, by the authority of Servius Tullius] See Livy, History 1.43, and the annotation to ‘Populousness’, n. 97. 276.28  after the expulsion of the kings] In the traditional account the last of the seven early kings, Tarquinius Superbus was expelled from Rome, and a republic was established (509 bc) that endured until the introduction of imperial government by Augustus after the battle of Actium in 31 bc. See Livy, History 1.57–2.1. 276.29–32  the people . . . always prevailed when pushed to extremity] Hume discounts a factor by which the aristocracy as a whole largely maintained control of the government during the period of the Republic despite the constitutional powers of the popular assembly: the senate, which exercised its dominance less by constitutional law than through its auctoritas. Through at least the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc the success of the senate in directing policy during the Punic and other wars ‘led to  unquestioning acceptance of its authority, though the assemblies’ rights were respected’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. optimates). In practice magistrates normally sought the senate’s approval before putting a motion before an assembly, and the senate also had some power to disallow legislation on technical grounds after it had been passed. It also exercised authority by guiding and advising magistrates, and all the senior magistrates above the rank of quaestor, including tribunes, also became life-members of the senate. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. senate. The magistrates who presided over the comitia also had considerable powers to refuse to put motions and dissolve meetings. By these means the powers of the comitia were much curtailed. In contrast Hume’s memoranda contain several entries reflecting his view of the limitations of the senate’s authority, most notably one from Livy,

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History 10.24.4: ‘Every Part of the Office of the Senate coud be brought before the People; even the Distribution of Provinces; an evident Part of the Executive. Do. [i.e. Ditto, for Livy] Lib. 10. C. 24’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 511). 276.32–3  the magistracy of the tribunes, and next the legislative power of the comitia tributa] According to tradition the ‘tribunes of the people’ (tribuni plebis) were created in 494 bc, the date of the first secession of the plebs, which was an early move in the ‘conflict of the orders’. Elected by the comitia tributa, tribunes (eventually ten in number) had power to convene meetings and to interpose a veto over the actions of other magistrates and even over elections. The comitia tributa had their ‘legislative power’ formally recognized in 287 bc by the Lex Hortensia, by which their resolutions were granted legislative authority in themselves and no longer needed to be sanctioned by the authority of the senate. After this date their enactments are indifferently called in our sources both plebiscita and leges (Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies, 60). 277.2–3  the comitia tributa . . . frequently repealed laws] Livy reports: ‘the Twelve Tables enacted that whatsoever the people decreed last should have the binding force of law’ (History 7.17.12). This authority was used to justify repeal, though legislators tried various devices to protect their legislation, to little effect apparently (Lintott, Constitution, 63). For the Twelve Tables see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 13 at 105.17–20. 277.11  one slight attempt . . . mentioned by Appian] Appian, Civil Wars, bk. 3, § 30, accurately reported by Hume. Decimus Brutus, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar and brother of the famous Brutus, had been appointed to the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy). As Decimus was a partisan of the senatorial party, Antony wanted his governorship revoked. This was part of the manoeuvring which led to the civil war between Antony and the senatorial party led by Brutus and Cassius. When Hume says that the contest was ‘founded more on form than party’, he sees it as a sign of the confusion of the final years of the republic that Antony, the heir of Caesar and of the popular party, made use of the aristocratic centuriata to have Decimus’s appointment revoked when he might have been expected to use the popular tributa. All the MSS of Appian, and presumably the edition used by Hume, do indeed say that Antony used the centuriata. Modern editors, however, transpose words to make Antony put his proposal through the comitia tributa. They do so on the grounds that Antony would surely have been defeated in the centuriata and that the sentence must be consistent with the following one, which speaks of plebeian support for him. 277.21–2  Cicero was recalled by the comitia centuriata, though banished by the tributa, that is, by a plebiscitum] Cicero’s recall from exile is the only known instance of a law passed by the comitia centuriata from the 1st century bc, and this assembly may have been chosen because of the influence it gave to the wealthy men who supported Cicero. As consul (63 bc), Cicero had executed the

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insurrectionist Catiline on the strength of a ‘resolution of the senate’ and without a trial. Clodius and the populares subsequently hounded him by riot and legislation until in 58 Clodius, as plebeian tribune, put a law through the comitia tributa banishing all who had put Roman citizens to death without trial, and published a subsequent edict naming Cicero as an exile. After his recall in 57, Cicero attacked Clodius’s measures, particularly the edict, as illegal (e.g. Cicero, De domo sua 16.43– 18.47). Whether they were cannot now be determined (Tatum, Patrician Tribune, 156–8). The events are recounted in Plutarch, Lives, ‘Cicero’ (banishment, chs. 30–3; recall, chs. 33–4); cf. Cicero, Letters to Atticus (nos. 46–70, 73 = 3.1–25, 4.1 traditional), 1: 221–83, 285–91. For the circumstances see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 78 at 302.13. 277.28  It is a maxim in politics] Cf. the discussions of the offices of the Roman dictator and the Venetian Council of Ten in Machiavelli, Discourses 1.34–5: ‘To republics, indeed, harm is done by magistrates that set themselves up and by power obtained in unlawful ways, not by power that comes in lawful ways’ (Chief Works, 1: 267). For discussion of this ‘maxim’ see ‘British Government’ 4 and its annotation at 63.2–3. 277.38  the heroism of Hampden’s conduct] In Hist. 5: 245–8 (s.v. ad 1637), Hume gives an account of John Hampden’s trial in 1638 for refusing to pay shipmoney levied by Charles I without approval from Parliament. By his action the ‘people were rouzed from their lethargy, and became sensible of the danger, to which their liberties were exposed’ (5: 548). Hume’s appraisal of his career and character is rather more nuanced (5: 407, s.v. ad 1643). 278.4  the pressing of seamen] The issue was not new. In Craftsman 95 for 27 April 1728, ‘Marinas’ had opposed formalizing the crown’s power of impressing seamen. But probably Hume refers to the parliamentary debates in 1741 and 1744 over bills to increase the number of seamen during the War of the Austrian Succession. These were attempts to formulate legislation providing for the needs of the navy yet not exacerbate the exploitation of seamen and create alarming pre­ ce­dents for all subjects of the crown. See the Gentleman’s Magazine, 11 (1741), passim, for Samuel Johnson’s semi-fictional accounts of the debate in Parliament, which ventilate arguments similar to those that Hume recounts, including a proposal for a ‘register for seamen’ (11: 1–13, for January) such as Hume mentions in ¶ 16. Though it was acknowledged that impressment was not authorized by any statute law, its legality had been upheld in 1743 and would be again in 1776 on the grounds of immemorial usage and necessity (English Historical Documents, 7: 587–9). In 1758, the House of Lords, led by Lord Mansfield, would defeat a Pittite bill that the Commons passed applying the habeas corpus to impressed seamen. 278.24  The very irregularity of the practice] Until the 1772 ETSS the phrase was ‘the illegality of the power’, just as ‘an irregular power’ at the beginning of the paragraph was ‘an illegal power’ (variants).

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278.32  violence is permitted in the crown] Until the 1772 ETSS the text read ‘open usurpation’ instead of ‘violence’ (variants). 278.36  violence and disorder] Until the 1770 ETSS the language was, with slight variations, ‘violences and disorders, amongst the people, the most humane and best natur’d’ (variants). 278.38  the sanction of fundamental laws] Until the 1758 ETSS the text read ‘permission of fundamental laws (variants). An example of a fundamental law that could be invoked to overrule civil liberty is ‘that Maxim which declares the Preservation of the Public to be the strongest Law’, an argument that Johnson put into the mouth of ‘Walelop’ (Walpole), the prime minister of Lilliput (Gentleman’s Magazine, 11: 11). Cf. the annotation for ‘Passive Obedience’ 2 at 347.22 on the maxim ‘Salus populi suprema Lex’. Addison defended the Whig ministry’s suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1715 with the principle that ‘Self-preservation . . . is the first Duty of every Community’ and that ‘the publick Safety is the general View of all Laws’ (Freeholder, 108).

11. Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations This essay appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It entered the collected works with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS. It remained in subsequent editions of the ETSS. Possibly related to this essay is Hume’s reference in a letter of January 1747 to a need for leisure to prosecute his ‘historical Projects’, especially as Hume goes on to describe himself as having his Xenophon and Polybius in hand (New Letters, 23–4). He wrote to John Clephane on 18 April 1750 that ‘The last thing I took my hand from was a very learned, elaborate discourse, concerning the populousness of an­tiquity; not altogether in opposition to Vossius and Montesquieu, who exaggerate that affair infinitely; but, starting some doubts, and scruples, and difficulties, sufficient to make us suspend our judgment on that head’ (Letters, 1: 140). A holograph manuscript of ¶¶ 80–2 of this essay on a leaf of a letter from James Oswald indicates that those three paragraphs were drafted after the date of that letter, 10 October 1750 (Selections, plate IIB). Letters mentioning the loan to Hume of a copy of Strabo, possibly from the Advocates Library, suggest that Hume was still drafting ‘Populousness’ as late as 19 March 1751 (Letters, 1: 152–3, 157, 159). A note at the beginning of the essay in the two 1752 editions of Political Discourses acknowledged Robert Wallace’s work: ‘An eminent clergyman in Edinburgh, having wrote, some years ago [1745 at the latest (New Letters, 29 n. 2)], a discourse on the same question with this, of the populousness of antient nations, was pleas’d lately to communicate it to the author. It maintain’d the opposite side of the argument, to what is here insisted on, and contained much erudition and good reasoning. The author acknowledges to have borrow’d, with some variations, from that discourse, two computations, that with regard to the number of inhabitants in Belgium, and

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that with regard to those in Epirus [see ‘Populousness’ 171, 132]. If this learned gentleman be prevail’d on to publish his dissertation, it will serve to give great light into the present question, the most curious and important of all questions of erudition’ (variants for 279.0; cf. 22 September 1751, New Letters, 28–9). Hume corrected the proofs for Wallace, and the Dissertation was published in February 1753. On 26 February 1753, Hume wrote to Wallace that ‘Your Work has convinc’d me, that I must make a great many Alterations’ in ‘Populousness’. In a letter of 16 June 1753, Hume sent to Montesquieu some corrections prompted by Wallace’s Dissertation (Letters, 1: 177–8). These corrections were announced to readers in the 1754 Political Discourses and its separate issue as volume 4 in the 1753–6 ETSS in a new note (see the variant readings), and that announcement was itself removed for the 1770 ETSS. Wallace’s book was longer but not greatly different in argument from the paper that the minister had presented before the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh. Possibly it was the paper that Wallace had let Hume read (Dissertation, iii; Amoh, ‘Ancient-Modern Controversy’, 69–70 and nn. 2–3) rather than the augmented work that Hume would see through the press for him. Wallace’s appendix to the published dissertation, a point-by-point rebuttal of Hume’s essay, nearly doubles the size of the book. See 26 June 1753, Letters, 1: 177–8. A full summary of Hume’s essay is given in the Journal Britannique, 7 (April 1752): 387–411, and of Wallace’s Dissertation in 10 (March 1753): 393–421 (Malherbe, ‘Hume’s Reception in France’, 54). The Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen gave a notice of the Hume-Wallace debate in its issue for 4 June 1753 (no. 68, p. 632) and offered a detailed summary of ‘Populousness’ in a notice of the Political Discourses in the issue of 18 August 1753 (no. 100, pp. 906–12). It published a review of Wallace’s Dissertation on 27 August 1753 (no. 104, pp. 943–4), giving marked preference to Hume’s position (cf. Kuehn, ‘Reception’, 102). The Hume-Wallace debate was also noticed in Italy in Memorie per servire all’istoria letteraria, 4 (July 1754): 52–60 (Zanardi, ‘Italian Responses’, 169). A translation by Jean-Baptiste François de la Michodière was published anonymously in Journal de l’agriculture (April–September 1778) in six issues (Robel, ‘Hume’s Political Discourses in France’, 226). It has been observed frequently that Hume’s essay was a landmark in the study of ancient population figures (see literature cited on ¶¶ 3 and 111–22 and n. 138 and e.g. Beloch, Bevölkerung, 34–5; Brunt, Italian Manpower, 11). In the preface to the 2nd edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population (1803), Malthus listed Hume, Wallace, Adam Smith, and Richard Price as the four authors who had stimulated his interest in the determinants of populousness. The standard discussion of the context of Hume’s work on populousness and the history of population studies is Stangeland, Pre-Malthusian Doctrines. Glass, ‘Population Controversy’, and Box and Silverthorne, ‘The “most curious & important of all Questions of Erudition” ’, set the Hume-Wallace controversy against its background in both theory and practical politics. Since Hume and Wallace, Beloch’s Bevölkerung is the only discussion of the populousness of the whole of the ancient world. Like Hume, Beloch favours

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low estimates. He briefly discusses his predecessors, including Hume and Wallace, at 34–40 and 86–7. Hansen, Shotgun Method, 4–6, assesses his virtues and limitations. A guide to the more recent work on ancient population may be found in Golden, ‘Decade of Demography’, and Scheidel, ‘Progress and Problems’, especially 1–10. Valuable reference works on all classical topics include the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn., and Brill’s New Pauly. Detailed classical atlases are  The Barrington Atlas and Bengtson, Milojcˇ icˊ et al., eds., Grosser Historischer Weltatlas I, often referred to as ‘the Westermann atlas’. variants for 279.0, n.  Varro, . . . against Hannibal, Pharnaces against Caesar] Gaius Terentius Varro and his fellow-consul, Lucius Aemilius Paullus commanded the Roman army in the epochal defeat by Hannibal at the battle of Cannae (216 bc). Pharnaces II was the king of Pontus whose defeat at the battle of Zela (47 bc) Caesar announced with the words, ‘Veni, vidi, vici’ (‘I came, I saw, I conquered’). 279.1–2  to conclude the world eternal or incorruptible] The first sentence would appear to be a direct contradiction of Aristotle’s tenet that the universe is ungenerated and imperishable (On the Heavens 279b4–283b22; cf. Physics 250b11– 251b28). The language in which Hume expresses the contrary position evokes the atomism underlying Lucretius’s picture of the world as ageing analogously to the ageing of an organism (e.g. De rerum natura 1.951–2, 995–7; 2.80–111; 4.45–53). The continuity between ancient atomism and modern corpuscular or mechanical philosophy was acknowledged (Harris, Lexicon, s.v. corpuscular philosophy, mechanical philosophy). Wotton saw the tenet of the eternity of the world as a ser­ ious challenge to Christianity (pref. ¶ 4, Reflections, A7r). In this context ‘eternal’ means temporally unbounded, or, in Philo’s phrase (DNR 8, ¶ 11), ‘ingenerable and immortal’, rather than atemporal. 279.3–4  the changes remarked in the heavens] Cf. Saserna’s theory on the disposition of the heavens as described in ‘Populousness’ 164. 279.4–5  the plain traces as well as tradition of an universal deluge, or general convulsion of the elements] For naturalists like John Woodward (1665– 1728), strata disruptions and the location of marine fossils far from any ocean ­confirmed the biblical account of the flood (see his 1695 Essay). The reference to a universal deluge evokes the debate over whether the flood was universal or partial. For a contemporary example see the 1750 Enquiry into the Truth . . . of the Mosaic Deluge, in which Patrick Cockburn rebutted the various arguments of Vossius, Dennis Coetlogan, and Stillingfleet for a partial deluge. Cockburn argues in 1.3 and reiterates in 2.2 that the hypothesis of a partial deluge requires a greater miracle than does a universal one. The ‘general convulsion’ might refer to explanations of the flood other than those simply involving rain, as in Thomas Burnet’s famous theory of a collapse of the earth’s crust into the watery layer underneath (Theory of the Earth). ‘A Convulsive Tension of the Solids’, Chambers informs us, ‘is one of the principal Causes which destroy the Æquilibrium that should obtain between the Solids and Fluids’ (Cyclopædia, s.v. convulsive). The cataclysm tilted the axis of

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the earth, thereby creating seasonal change and deleteriously affecting post-diluvian mankind’s vigour and lifespan. See Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. deluge, for a con­ tem­por­ary assessment of the most advanced theories and Edward Stillingfleet’s Origines sacræ 3.4.8 for a brief survey of the extra-scriptural records of the deluge. In DNR 6, ¶¶ 11–12, Philo adduces the ‘almost incontestable proofs’ of ‘a total convulsion of the elements’ in support of the supposition that the world is incessantly changing in ‘eternal duration’. Philo’s argument is in rejoinder to Cleanthes’s for the ‘infancy of the world’ (¶ 11). 279.15  that short period which is comprehended by history and tradition] i.e. fewer than 3,000 years from Hume’s time, according to a common reckoning. See ‘Civil Liberty’ 1 and its annotation at 86.6–7. 279.24–5  the universe . . . had a natural progress from infancy to old age] Hume’s language suggests Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.91–103, 235–415, 821–36, also 1.1102–13, 2.1105–74, 6.43–4. Wallace quotes 5.324–31 in a similar context (Dissertation, 1 n.). Cf. Bacon, Essayes, ‘On Plantations’: ‘When the world was young it begat more children; but now it is old it begets fewer’ (Works, 6: 457). Another modern antecedent is the opening of Fontenelle’s Digression, where the querelle des anciens et des modernes is considered in light of the general physical cause of the ageing of the universe (Discourse, 178–81). In ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 70, Hume reiterates the idea that the ‘world itself probably is not immortal’. n. 1.1  Columella says, lib. 3. cap. 8.] Columella, On Agriculture 3.8.1. Hume translates ‘gemini . . . sunt’ in the preceding words, ‘the bearing . . . customary’. The belief goes back to Aristotle, Generation of Animals 584b30–1. It can be found in Strabo (Geography 15.1.22), Seneca (Naturales quaestiones 3.25.11), the elder Pliny (Natural History 7.3.33), and Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights 10.2), who ascribed the allegedly exceptional fertility of Egyptian women to the properties of the Nile water that they drank. But Columella had no first-hand knowledge of Roman North Africa, including Egypt and the province of Africa itself (which corresponded roughly to modern Tunisia). 280.5–6  Diseases . . . almost unknown to modern medicine] The elder Pliny discusses the appearance of new diseases at different times and the disappearance of others, in addition to the more than three-hundred kinds of disease which he says  are ‘recognized’ (Natural History 26.1.1–26.6.9). A notable instance is ‘the famous plague of Athens’, as Hume calls it in ‘Sceptic’ 50. Appearing in 430 bc and recurring several times (Thucydides, History 2.47–54), it defies identification despite persistent attempts and may well be ‘extinct’ (Holladay and Poole, ‘Thucydides’, 295). 280.6  new diseases] The rickets was thought to be new to England in the first quarter of the 17th century. There was disagreement about whether smallpox was ancient or modern. Both Clinch (Historical Essay, 1–30 at 21) and Thompson (Enquiry, 3–5) place its first documented appearance in Egypt in the 7th century ad,

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making it ‘modern’. Wallace’s consultant on smallpox and the lues venerea, Robert Whytt, agreed with these conjectures (Dissertation, 82–3). Disagreements over whether the Great Pox, or the clap, was ancient or modern were confused by poor differentiation between venereal diseases or between them and other diseases like  smallpox. Hans Sloane (Voyage, 1: ii–iii), Jean Astruc (Treatise 1.4, 9–10), Montesquieu (L’Esprit des lois, livre 14.11), and Hume’s friend John Armstrong (Synopsis, 411–12) believed that the Great Pox was a modern importation from the West Indies to Europe via Spain. But recent work on skeletal material from Pompeii evidently confirms the presence of syphilis there in the 1st century ad (Laurence, ‘Health’, 87). Mummies known today showing signs of smallpox date as far back as the 1500s bc (Hopkins, Princes and Peasants, 14). 280.21  The extravagancies of Vossius] Charles II was reported to have said that Isaac Vossius, son of the classical scholar G. J. Vossius, would believe anything if only it were not in the Bible. Hume’s remarks on Vossius in n. 193 indicate that Hume is thinking of the same extravagancies that De Souligné had attacked: ‘These are the Words of Vossius in his Observationes Variæ: “Let us compare (says he) the Area of the City of Rome with the Areas of the Two greatest Cities in the Christian World, viz. Paris and London, if the Measurers of them do not deceive us, those Two Cities join’d together take up as much Ground as comes almost to a German Mile, or a Square of Sixteen Thousand Paces. But the Area of the City of Rome, if we include its Suburbs, contain’d a Space Eighteen times bigger, and if we add that Part of it which was beyond the Tiber, the Area of the City of Rome was above Twenty times as big as that of London and Paris together.” ’ So with its suburbs ancient Rome was ‘a Hundred and Twenty, or a Hundred and Twenty Two’ miles in circumference and had a population of 14 millions (Old Rome, 28–9, 16, 47–8). De  Souligné translates from ch. 6 of Vossius’s ‘De antiquæ Romæ magnitudine’ (Observationes variæ, 33). n. 2  Lettres Persanes. See also L’Esprit des loix, liv. 23. cap. 17, 18, 19.] Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes 112–22, and L’Esprit des lois [livre] 23.17–19. Hume paraphrases a passage from letter 112 when he says that Montesquieu believes that the earth now contains less than one-fiftieth of the population of Caesar’s time (editions of 1721 and 1754, modified by Montesquieu in the 1758 edition to onetenth of the population). In Lettres Persanes 112–22, Montesquieu had used Vossius’s essay, which he perhaps knew through Bayle’s review in the Nouvelles de la république des lettres of January 1685, in support of the superior populousness of antiquity. 280.35  first, consider whether it be probable] The portion considering probable causes comprises ¶¶ 3–93. The rest of the essay discusses such facts as were available concerning actual numbers and sizes of cities in the ancient world. Thus the essay is composed of two approximately equal sections. Wallace had structured his argument on similar principles, though he discussed available numbers first, then physical causes, and moral causes third (Dissertation, 12–14, 33, 79–80, 83).

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In his major work on the demography of the Roman Republic, P. A. Brunt refers to Hume’s ‘epoch-making essay’, quoting this passage and commenting, ‘Hume’s method, however it may be disapproved by modern demographers who have more facts to work on, must still be employed by the student of the population of republican Italy, as the only one that can at least enable us to determine whether that population numbered some 14 millions or only 7 or 8’ (Italian Manpower, 11–12). 281.10  more than double every generation] Here, until the 1760 ETSS, was the qualification, ‘were every one coupled as soon as he comes to the age of puberty’ (variants). n. 3.2–3  even without the assistance of naturalization bills] The Pelham ministry attempted to pass naturalization bills in 1747, 1748, and 1751. In 1753, it would pass a bill enabling the naturalization of Jews living in Britain and be forced by the outcry to rescind it. n. 3.3  remarked by Don Geronimo de Ustariz] i.e. in his Theorica, y Practica de Comercio y de Marina, 21–2. Ustáriz rebuts the idea that emigration to the West Indies had depopulated and impoverished Spain rather than underperformance in manufactures and trade, which create the prosperity that enables growth in popu­la­ tion (chs. 11–13). 281.24–6  In general, warm climates . . . are likely to be most populous] a sentence included as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). 281.26–8  if every thing else be equal, . . . there will also be most people] Writing c.1729, Swift numbered amongst the undisputed maxims of government disproved by the unnatural example of Ireland ‘that people are the riches of a nation’, a truism ‘so universally granted, that it will be hardly pardonable to bring it in doubt’ (Maxims, in Prose, 12: 135). Commentators had been repeating this maxim and varying its formulation since at least Sir William Petty’s observations in 1662 that national wealth was proportional to numbers of people (Treatise 2.8, 3.12). Population was valued for purposes of war, domestic consumption, and production for export. Some, like Hume and Wallace, treated population not as means to an end, but as indicative of prosperity and security. Cf. Wallace’s statement: ‘[I]t must be a strong presumption in favour of the customs or policy of any government, if, cæteris paribus, it is able to raise up and maintain a greater number of people’ (Dissertation, 14 n.). 281.31–2  both the domestic and political situation of these two periods] The division of the discussion of probable, ‘moral’ causes into domestic and political aspects comprises ¶¶ 6–43 and ¶¶ 44–93, respectively. Hume here identifies ‘moral causes’ with his ‘first view’, i.e. reasoned surmise and, tacitly, not with his subsequent assessment of available facts. Moral causes contrast with physical ones as relating to human actions. Cf. the distinction between physical and moral causes in ‘National Characters’ 2–3 and annotations at 161.16–30. In ‘Balance of Trade’ 13, Hume speaks of the source of moral attraction as ‘the interests and passions of men’.

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282.1–2  which has been abolished for some centuries throughout the greater part of Europe] Bacon judged that slavery had been ‘abolished, in greatest part, by the Christian law’ (‘Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates’, Works, 6: 449). Adam Smith, on the other hand, argued that slavery was abolished in Europe only where the interests of church and monarch concurred to diminish the nobility’s power. He adduced the persistence of slavery in Europe where this convergence did not occur: ‘the elective kingdom of Poland, the elective empire of Germany, and the kingdom of Bohemia, which was elective till the House of Austria got possession of it [i.e. 1526]’, Hungary, Russian Europe, and Moravia (Lectures on Jurisprudence, 189, 455; Wealth of Nations, 1: 387). To this list Hume would add Denmark (Hist., app. 1 at 1: 172) and those nations then in ‘Turky in Europe’, to which he alludes in ¶ 165. If, like Smith, Hume classified Scots colliers and salters as slaves, he would have to include Scotland (Lectures on Jurisprudence, 191–2, 453). 282.2–3  Some passionate admirers of the ancients, and zealous partizans of civil liberty] A Scots reader in 1752 is likely to have taken this statement as a reflection on Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the ‘patriot’ who advocated reinstituting chattelism in the second of his Two Discourses concerning the Affairs of Scotland, Written in the Year 1698. Like Berkeley in Querist 379–88, Fletcher viewed slavery as a remedial response to widespread poverty. Fletcher followed a civic-humanist conception of slavery as subjection to arbitrary will. Accordingly chattelism duly subjected to the rule of law is not deemed slavery (see Political Works, 56–71 at 62–3). A more recent patriot defence of slavery than Fletcher’s was ‘The African Slave Trade Defended: and Corruption the Worst of Slaveries’, Common Sense, no. 191 (4 October 1740), repr. London Magazine, 9 (1740): 493–4. n. 4  Sueton. in vita Claudii.] This edict (Justinian, Codex 7.6.3; Digest 40.8.2) was issued in ad 47. Hume refers to Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Claudius’ 25.2: ‘When certain men were exposing their sick and worn out slaves on the Island of Aesculapius because of the trouble of treating them, Claudius decreed that all such slaves were free, and that if they recovered, they should not return to the control of their master; but if anyone preferred to kill such a slave rather than to abandon him, he was liable to the charge of murder.’ See Levick, Claudius, 124–5. The Island of Aesculapius is a small island in the Tiber just south of the Campus Martius. A temple of Aesculapius, the god of healing, was built there in 291 bc. The antiquarian Treadway Nash (1724–1811), in a marginal comment on this passage in his copy of the 1752 Political Discourses, 163–4 (King’s College London, Foyle Spec. Colls JC176 H8), insists, citing passages from Roman authors, that it was only sick slaves who were sent there, and not ‘to starve’, as Hume alleges, but to be cared for and ‘cured by Aesculapius’ since ‘the Priests of Aesculapius understood Physick’. n. 5  Plutarch. in vita Catonis.] Hume paraphrases Cato’s ‘maxim’, and ‘for any price’ is his own addition to it. Hume took the maxim from Plutarch, Lives, ‘Cato Major’ 4.4: ‘He thought one should sell slaves when they got older, and not feed them when they were useless.’ Plutarch is himself paraphrasing the advice that

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Cato gives to the slaveholder: ‘Sell worn-out oxen, blemished cattle, blemished sheep . . . old tools, an old slave, a sickly slave, and whatever else is superfluous’ (On Agriculture 2.7). The elder Cato (234–149 bc) was a leading Roman politician, noted for his severity and frugality but also for integrity. 283.5  The ergastula, or dungeons] Wallace translated ergastula as ‘work-houses, or houses of correction’ (Dissertation, 171). The Oxford Latin Dictionary defines ergastulum as ‘a kind of prison on a large estate to which refractory or unreliable slaves were sent for work in chain-gangs’. It is a difficult word to translate since there is some doubt whether they were living quarters for the rural slaves, as Hume believes, or prisons for refractory ones, as Wallace maintains. In ¶ 36, Hume supposes that ergastula existed in other places in the empire besides Italy and Sicily. See the annotation for n. 48. In his marginal note to his copy of the 1752 Political Discourses, 178, Treadway Nash quotes Pliny, Natural History 18.7.36: ‘Cultivating land by chain-gangs [‘ab ergastulis’] is a very bad practice, resorted to only by those who can see no other way.’ n. 6  Lib. 1. cap. 6.] Columella recommends an underground ergastulum for slaves who are in chains, receiving light through a number of high, narrow windows (On Agriculture 1.6.3). Writing in the mid-1st century ad, Columella is the first agricultural writer to use the term, but the institution already existed in the 2nd century bc. He adds that slaves working in vineyards were generally fettered (1.9.4), and his contemporary the elder Pliny tells us that ploughing and sowing are ‘nowadays done by slaves with fettered ankles’ (Natural History 18.4.21). In the next generation the younger Pliny asserts that neither he nor his Tuscan neighbours use chained slaves on their estates (Letters 3.19.7). Although ergastula are said to have been abolished by Hadrian (emperor ad 117–38), they appear to have persisted into the later 2nd century. n. 7  Id. lib. 11. cap. 1.] Columella, On Agriculture 11.1.22. 283.10  A proof of the frequency] The first and second editions of Political Discourses include this misquotation: ‘Partem Italiæ ergastula a solitudine vindicant, says Livy’ (variants), ‘the ergastula save a part of Italy from being deserted’ (History 6.12.5). To Wallace’s query Hume replied with the admission that he had been obliged to cite by memory, ‘which is very dangerous. But without reading over the whole Book I coud not recover it’ (1753, New Letters, 31). The correct text translates as ‘those parts [of Italy] which now gangs of Roman slaves [servitia Romana] barely save from being deserted.’ n. 8  Amor. lib. 1. eleg. 6.] Ovid, Amores 1.6.1, where the door-keeper is used as part of a conventional image of the locked-out lover (as in Tibullus 1.1.55–6). n. 9  Sueton. de claris rhetor.] Suetonius, Lives of Illustrious Men, ‘On Rhetoricians’ 3. Likewise a reference in Columella shows that slave porters were a reality (On Agriculture 1, pref. 10). Hume’s ‘ancient poet’, Lucius Afranius (2nd half of the 2nd century bc), was the most famous author of the type of Roman

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­comedy known as fabula togata. Afranius, Vopiscus, frag. 22 in Daviault, Comoedia, 238): ‘I hear the door-keeper’s fetters jangling’. n. 10  In Onetorem. orat. 1.] Demosthenes 30 (Against Onetor 1) 35–7. Similar assertions are found in other Athenian orators of the late 5th and 4th centuries bc (Antiphon, Isocrates, Isaeus, and Lycurgus). Indeed at Athens slaves could give evidence only under torture. But it is disputed how frequently, if at all, this requirement was applied in Demosthenes’s time. The question is discussed in Harvey, ‘Severity’. n. 11.2  Pro Cælio.] Perhaps Cicero, Pro Caelio 23.57–8, where Cicero disparages the evidence of the allegedly corrupted slaves of Clodia. Cicero does sarcastically disparage the evidence of slaves at Pro Milone 22.59–60. In Roman law the evidence of slaves was ‘not admissible except under torture’ (Crook, Law, 275). n. 12.1  Epist. 122.] Seneca, Epistles 122.15. The ‘barbarous wish of Caligula’, the emperor Gaius, is recorded in Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Gaius Caligula’ 30.2; Dio, Roman History 59.13.6 (s.v. the year ad 39); and Seneca, ‘De ira’ 3.19.2. n. 12.7  epist. 7.] Seneca urges his correspondent to avoid crowds, where mass  emotion may corrupt one’s moral judgement. As an example he describes the  bloodlust displayed at gladiatorial shows (Epistles 7.2–5). In the course of an imaginary dialogue with the crowd (7.5), he says, ‘Thank the immortal gods that you are teaching cruelty to a person who cannot learn to be cruel’. Hume takes this person to be the emperor Nero, and some modern commentators agree (‘you have a master’ is his own gloss; it is not in Seneca). But there is no allusion to Nero elsewhere in this letter, and Seneca has just depicted the crowd as upbraiding a gladiator for striking feebly. Summers (Select Letters, 160) seems likely to be right in taking the gladiator rather than Nero to be the person who could not learn to be cruel. 284.2  It is pretended] Fletcher did not argue that slavery conduces to popu­la­ tion growth, and Wallace did not advocate the reinstitution of chattelism, but Wallace did cite Fletcher and did argue that slavery contributed to the greater popu­la­tion of the ancients. In ancient times ‘men were either able to support themselves, or if they fell into poverty, became most commonly the property of rich men; and the masters finding their account in the number of their slaves, for cultivating their lands, and for working in all kinds of trades, encouraged them to marry, and took good care of their children, who became their property, and a valuable part of their riches’ (Dissertation, 88–9). In his appendix Wallace responded to Hume, maintaining ‘that slaves were not only not so harshly treated as mr. Hume imagines, but were commonly well treated; that their treatment did not debilitate them or hinder them from propagating; that interest, no less than humanity, led the master to encourage them to propagate; that they multiplied exceedingly; and that the vernæ, or home-born slaves, were extremely numerous’ (Wallace, as quoted in a review of his Dissertation (168) in Monthly Review, 8 (March 1753): 191–9 at 199).

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285.4–5  to buy one of the same age from Scotland or Ireland] The lower price of Scots and Irish cattle aroused protectionism in England. The Irish Cattle acts embargoed Irish cattle in 1667–79 and 1681–1758/9. A counterpart bill for Scots cattle was defeated in 1681, and a stipulation against protectionist duties against Scots cattle was included in article 6 of the 1706 treaty of union between Scotland and England. In a letter Hume explained his point to Wallace: ‘I was told by Captain [John] Rutherford, that in New york, they seldom raise black Children in their Cities (which deserve only the Names of Villages) They give them away for nothing to the People in the Country, who raise them’ (1753, New Letters, 31). 285.16  5000 people, as is usually computed] Using the unpublished calculations of Gregory King (1648–1712), Davenant estimated in his 1699 Essay on the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers in the Balance of Trade ‘that London requires a supply of 2000 souls per ann. to keep it from decreasing, besides a further supply of about 3000 per ann. for its encrease at this time. In all 5000’ (Works, 2: 179). In his 1750 New Observations, Thomas Short estimated an annual increase of  4,296 as ‘absolutely necessary without Increase of Merchandize, Trade, War, Accidents, &c.’ (182–3). 285.20–1  Cilicia, Cappadocia, and the Lesser Asia] These Roman provinces, the last normally called Asia Minor, are now part of Turkey. See the annotation for ¶ 37 at 291.4–5 and Bradley, Slavery and Society, ch. 3. n. 14.2  Strabo, lib. 14.] In this passage from Strabo (Geography 14.5.2), the word myriadai, literally ‘tens of thousands’, means ‘countless numbers’. It is not the precise statistic Hume takes it for. Hume also is mistaken about the position of Delos, which he locates in Cilicia rather than in the Aegean Sea. He was misled perhaps by the remark in Strabo (or in Casaubon’s translation) that the slave market at Delos ‘was not extremely far away’ from Cilicia. The distance is in fact some 400 miles, and Strabo must mean that it was not too far for the Cilicians to reach with safety and profit. Hume may have inferred that there was a place in Cilicia called Delos. n. 15.1  Columella, lib. 1. proœm. et cap. 2. et 7.] In the preface to On Agriculture, bk. 1, Columella argues that the soil of Italy is not exhausted, as some claim, but that ‘we have delivered over agriculture, once the concern of the best of our ancestors, to the worst of our slaves’ (1–3). Gentlemen should return to the land, he says, not leave it to the mercies of some incompetent overseer (10–12). Similarly in bk. 1, chs. 2 and 7, he insists on the importance of the landowner’s personal attention to his farm. Hume, like Swift and others in his time, might nat­ ur­al­ly take absentee ownership as an indication of ‘decay’ (see Agrarian History, 5.2: 174–5, 180, 240). Among many Roman writers who claimed by contrast that the cause of ‘the decay of agriculture’ was the age and exhaustion of the earth is Lucretius (De rerum natura 2.1150–74; see the annotation for ¶ 1 at 279.24–5). After a careful analysis of our admittedly meagre evidence on crop yields, White

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concludes that ‘sweeping evidence about the decline of cereal cultivation in Italy in the 1st century a.d. must be rejected’ (‘Wheat-Farming’, 212). n. 15.1  Varro, lib. 3. cap. 1.] Arguing that agriculture is both more ancient and more honourable than city life (On Agriculture 3.1.1–6), Varro claims: ‘It is not without reason that our ancestors tried to entice their citizens back from the city to the country; for in time of peace they were fed by the Romans of the countryside’ (3.1.4). He does not make clear what period he has in mind. n. 15.1  Horat. lib. 2. od. 15.] Horace, Odes 2.15, esp. lines 1–2, 5–8, 10–12. As Nisbet and Hubbard point out (Commentary on Horace, 241–52, esp. 241–4), Horace’s lament is a prophecy, not the descriptive account that Hume takes it to be. The theme of the poem, written c.28 bc, is the effect of luxury building on Italian agriculture. This theme became a commonplace (see e.g. the elder Seneca, Controversiae 5.5). n. 15.1–2  Tacit. ann. lib. 3. cap. 54.] Tacitus represents the emperor Tiberius as writing to the senate in ad 22 on the question of imposing new sumptuary laws to restrain the growing luxury: ‘Italy depends on external supplies. . . . And if the harvests of the provinces ever fail to come to the rescue of master and slave and farm, our parks and villas will presumably have to support us’ (Annals 3.54). Tacitus makes similar statements about Italy’s need for imported grain at Annals 2.59 and 12.43. But though the city of Rome needed to import grain from the early 2nd century bc, the high cost of inland transportation makes it impossible that the whole of Italy depended on imports (Brunt, Italian Manpower, 129). Cf. the annotation for n. 109. n. 15.2  Sueton. in vita Aug. cap. 42.] Suetonius reports Augustus as writing, after a shortage of grain in ad 6, ‘I was strongly inclined to do away for ever with public distributions of corn, because agriculture was becoming neglected because of dependence on them’ (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Augustus’ 42.3). The letter may be taken as authentic since Suetonius had access to the imperial archives. Hume cites this passage again in nn. 201 and 253, in both cases with the same implication that the free distribution of corn was ruining agriculture. n. 15.2  Plin. lib. 18. cap. 13.] ‘The harvests [were] sufficient for them [our ancestors] without any of the provinces providing food for Italy’, and the price of corn was low, says the elder Pliny. He gives a series of examples ranging from the (legendary) 5th century to the 2nd century bc. Though estates were small, the fields were fertile because they ‘were tilled by the hands of generals’, whereas nowadays ‘agricultural operations are performed by slaves with fettered ankles and by the hands of malefactors with branded faces’ (Natural History 18.4.15–21). Hume’s citation of the chapter as ‘lib. xviii. cap. 13.’ reflects his use of an early edition, like the Paris edition of 1543, which divided the books differently from modern editions. Despite the mention of Hardouin in n. 193, Hume’s citations do not match Hardouin’s edition of Pliny. See also the annotations to ‘Tragedy’, n. 3, and ‘Balance of Trade’, n. 13.

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285.23–4  that extreme fertility . . . which is commonly supposed] e.g. by Wallace in his discussion of slavery (Dissertation, 168–210, esp. 199 (app.)), and by Montesquieu’s Usbek (Lettres Persanes 115). 285.27  the numbers even of these did not encrease] By manumission slaves became citizens with the status of freedmen with limited rights. Possibly the number of citizens did not increase, but historians now accept that between 225 bc and Augustus’s time the whole population grew greatly, though largely in slaves. Cf. the annotations for ¶ 35 at 290.16–17 on ‘the encrease of slaves’ and nn. 44 and 45. n. 16  Minore indies plebe ingenua, says Tacitus, ann. lib. 4. cap. 27.] ‘Rome was already fearful because of the size of the slave establishments, which were increasing enormously in size while the free-born populace was dwindling day by day’ (Tacitus, Annals 4.27). Normally the phrase in dies, ‘day by day’, is spelt as two words in classical Latin. Earlier (3.53), Tacitus made Tiberius refer to large numbers of slaves in Roman households but not to a decline of free-born in ad 22. 285.27–8  till the freedom of the city was communicated to foreign provinces] Roman citizenship was extended to all free persons in the empire by the emperor Caracalla in ad 212. n. 17.1  servus . . . and verna] Servus means a slave, verna, a slave born in the master’s household. Paganus, originally ‘countryman’, had come to mean ‘civilian’ as opposed to ‘soldier’ (miles) as early as the beginning of the 2nd century ad, when Tacitus and the younger Pliny were writing. Wallace rebuts Hume’s linguistic argument from the absence of a correlative term for the species verna at Dissertation, 190–2 (app.). In characterizing the ‘government of the Roman emperors’ as ‘military’ so early, Hume is in accord with his younger contemporary Gibbon, who believed that the Praetorian Guard made the principate ‘military’ as early as the time of Augustus, that ‘crafty tyrant’ who recognized that ‘arms alone could maintain, his usurped dominion’ and instituted the praetorian guard (Decline and Fall, ch. 5 at 1: 114). n. 17.15  clergy and laity] Conventionally the modern age was reckoned to begin with the Middle Ages, a division that accords with Hume’s characterization of the distinction between clericus and laicus as modern. Similarly Hume and Wallace see smallpox as modern. n. 18.1  Verna is . . . equivalent to scurra] Verna acquired a secondary meaning, ‘a common town-bred person (especially with reference to the vulgar wit attributed  to such people’ (Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v.); hence the noun vernilitas, ­‘insolence’. A scurra is ‘a fashionable city idler, “man about town”; the term came to  be  used mainly with reference to the offensive wit affected by such a person, and from Augustan times denoted a professional buffoon’ (Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v.); hence our word ‘scurrilous’. Wallace adduces passages from Roman authors intended to show that Romans valued ‘pertness’ in their slaves (Dissertation, 183–4 (app.)).

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n. 18.2  Mart. lib. 1. ep. 42.] Martial, Epigrams 1.41.2: ‘You fancy yourself a wit [urbanus], Caecilius. Believe me, you are not. What then? You are a vulgar buffoon [verna].’ This epigram is no. 42 in some contemporary editions, including that of Antwerp in 1568 listed in the Hume Library. n. 18.2  Horace . . . vernæ procaces] Horace, Satires 2.6.66: ‘saucy slaves’; one of the pleasures of the Sabine estate that Maecenas has given him. n. 18.3  Petronius, cap. 24. vernula urbanitas.] Satyricon 24. In modern e­ditions the passage reads ‘hominem acutum atque urbanitatis vernaculae fontem’, a ‘smart man and font of scurrilous wit’ applied to a character for a lewd pun he had made. n. 18.3  Seneca, de provid. cap. 1. vernularum licentia.] We are pleased by the modesty of our children, says Seneca, but ‘by the cheekiness of our slave-boys’ (‘De providentia’ 1.6). n. 19.1  It is computed in the West Indies] For the 1689 edition of his Groans of the Plantations, Littleton estimated the attrition as 6 per cent (18). For the 1698 edition the percentage rose to eight or ten (16). n. 19.4–9  I shall add . . . a freeman] This addition on the higher cost and lower productivity of slaves than that of servants appeared in the 1777 ETSS (variants), the revisions for which were done by 20 April 1776. Hume read Smith’s Wealth of Nations in March. n. 20.1  Corn. Nepos, in vita Attici.] Cornelius Nepos, De viris illustribus, ‘Atticus’ 13.4: ‘he possessed no slave who was not born in his house and trained at home’. Cicero’s friend and correspondent Atticus (110–32 bc) had a profitable estate near Buthrotum in Epirus (modern Butrint in Albania (‘Atticus’ 14.3)). Epirus is indeed a ‘remote, desolate place’ (variants), as Hume says in a sentence added as of Political Discourses, 2nd edition (1752). However, Nepos’s remark about house-trained slaves follows immediately on his description of Atticus’s villa on the Quirinal in Rome and contains no reference to the estate at Epirus. Hume seems to have confused the two. 286.6  the Greek comedies] The Greek comedies that Hume has in mind are the Latin adaptations by Terence and Plautus of the Greek plays of Menander. Scholars must still rely chiefly on onomastics for the geographical origin of slaves. An Athenian inscription recording confiscated property (Meiggs and Lewis, Selection, no. 79) accords roughly with Hume’s geographical distribution. But in general our evidence is too scattered and too scanty to be of any statistical value. 286.6–7  Syrus, Mysus, Geta, Thrax, Davus, Lydus, Phryx] These are names of slave characters chiefly from the comedies of Plautus and especially Terence, comedies based on Greek originals. Many of the names also occur in the passage of Strabo (Geography 7.3.12) that Hume cites in n. 21: ‘[T]hey used either to call their slaves by the same names as those of the nations from which they were brought (as

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“Lydos” or “Syros”), or to address them by names that were prevalent in their countries (as “Manes” or else “Midas” for a Phrygian, or “Tibios” for a Paphlagonian).’ By these criteria the names Hume lists indicate that the slaves were from Syria, Mysia, Dacia, Thrace, Dacia (again), Lydia, and Phrygia, respectively. Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Paphlagonia are all in Asia Minor. Dacia is within the loop of the lower Danube, roughly modern Romania; ‘some of the people are called Daci, others Getai’, as Strabo says in the same passage. Thrace was a wide area, covering modern Bulgaria and much adjacent territory, especially to the south. 286.7–8  at Athens at least] This qualification is wise since constant wars between the Greek cities must have reduced many Greeks to slavery, a practice condemned by Plato (Republic 469b-c) and others. The names of Athenian slaves have been studied by Fragiadakis (Attischen Sklavennamen, summary at 127–34). n. 21  Lib. 7.] Strabo, Geography 7.3.12, quoted in the annotation for ¶ 18 at 286.6–7. n. 22  In Midiam, page 221. ex edit. Aldi.] Demosthenes 21 (Against Meidias) 46–50, wherein the law is cited verbatim. Evidently a commonplace, such praise of this law forbidding assault on slaves can be found in other 4th-century Athenian orators such as Aeschines 1 (Against Timarchus) 17, Hyperides, and Lycurgus, cited in Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 266e-267a. Plato also approved of this ­prohibition (Laws 6.777c). The citation ‘ex edit. Aldi’ refers to the edition of Demosthenes first published by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1504. The full reference is pt. 1, p. 221 of this edition. n. 23  Panegyr.] Isocrates 4 (Panegyricus) 181: ‘We think the barbarians are fit only to be used as household slaves’. The context makes it clear that these barbaroi are those of the East, the inhabitants of the Persian Empire. In the 1754 edition of the Political Discourses (both the independent issue and the issue as volume 4 in the 1753–6 ETSS), Hume changed ‘Isocrates also says’ to ‘Isocrates too insinuates’, perhaps in recognition that Isocrates does not say exactly what Hume claims. 287.1–4  Aristotle in his Politics . . . imitation of nature.] These three ­sentences, with notes 24–5, were included as of the 1758 ETSS (variants). n. 24  Lib. 7. cap. 10. sub fin.] Aristotle, Politics 7 (bk. 7, ch. 9, in the Loeb edition, 7.10 in others): ‘In the ideal situation the cultivators of the soil should be slaves who are not all of the same nationality nor men of spirit; in this way they will be both useful for their work and certain not to rebel’ (1330a25–8). Aristotle is writing about agricultural slaves, who worked in the open air and, having access to farm tools, posed a greater threat than slaves employed in domestic and other activities. n. 25.1  Aristoph. Equites, 1. 17.] Aristophanes, Knights 17. Hume’s argument seems weak. He refers to a single odd word (θρέττε [thrette]) in a line spoken by an Athenian politician, represented for comic purposes as a slave of the Athenian people, in the course of 150 lines of dialogue in which there are no other signs of

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non-Greek speech. The line runs, ‘I haven’t got the nerve (τὸ θρέττε [to thrette])’. A scholiast remarks in a margin: βαρβαρίζει ὡς δοῦλος (barbarizei hōs doulos), ‘he uses a foreign word like a slave’ or ‘he mangles his Greek, since he is a slave’. This comment refers only to the strange word θρέττε, which indeed may not be foreign. It looks cognate with other Greek words meaning ‘(to be) bold’. Linguists remain puzzled. n. 26  Contra Aphob. orat. 1.] Demosthenes 27 (Against Aphobus 1) 9–11. Hume provides an accurate summary of the passage. Fifty-two slaves is by Athenian standards rather a large number for a workshop. n. 27  κλινοποιοὶ, makers of those beds which the ancients lay upon at meals.] A κλίνη (kline¯; the Roman lectus) was a couch with a light-weight wooden frame; κλινοποιοὶ (klinopoioi), literally, were ‘couch-makers’. n. 28  In vita Catonis.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Cato Major’ 21.1–2 (Hume’s dash indicates an omission). A more modern translation by Waterfield may make the second part of the passage clearer: Cato ‘believed that the most common reason for slaves to neglect their duties was sex, and so on his instructions they could sleep with his female slaves for a stipulated amount of money, but were forbidden from having intercourse with any other women’ (Roman Lives, 29). The passage is doubly relevant to Hume’s argument: (a) these slaves are prisoners of war, not home-bred, and (b) they were segregated, a circumstance that will not have encouraged breeding. 287.28  Cato . . . lived in times] Cato the censor lived 234–149 bc, before in the common account the Roman Republic acquired great wealth from its expanding empire and declined into luxury and moral decadence, on which see ‘Refinement in the Arts’ 12 and its annotation at 214.1. n. 29.1–2  “Non temere . . . . Digest. lib. 5. tit. 3. de hæred. petit. lex 27.] Digest 5.3 (On the Claim for an Inheritance) 27 pr. (from Ulpian): ‘Slave-girls are not acquired solely as breeding stock.’ Wallace rejects the inference that Hume makes from this quotation from the law of usufruct, explaining that in its context it merely means that slave-girls are acquired for many tasks besides breeding (Dissertation, app., 185–9). All the quotations in n. 29 are from the Digest, which is a component of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the fruit of the emperor Justinian’s attempt to make a  comprehensive restatement of Roman law (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Justinian’s codification). The translations of Hume’s Latin excerpts are taken from Alan Watson’s version of the Digest. n. 29.2  are to the same purpose] i.e. carry a similar implication. Wallace argues that these texts do not have this implication, indeed that some of them suggest that the Romans practised slave-breeding on a large scale (Dissertation, 191–8). This and the following texts are all from Digest 21.1 (On the Aedile’s Edict), which regulated sale. They discuss what constitutes health or disease in the sale of a slave. In particular, is an inability to breed either a ‘defect’ or a ‘disease’ such as to invalidate a  sale? Hume’s position requires a negative answer since he maintains that the

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Romans did not make a practice of breeding slaves. The edict discusses a number of cases involving what were claimed to be sexual defects. It will be seen from the texts that the Roman lawyers themselves were not unanimous on what constitutes defects for this purpose, and why. n. 29.2–4  “Spadonem morbosum . . . . Digest. lib. 21. tit. 1. de ædilitio edicto, lex 6. § 2.] Digest 21.1 (On the Aedile’s Edict), 6.2 (Ulpian): ‘To me it appears the better view that a eunuch is not diseased or defective, any more than one who, having one testicle, is capable of procreation.’ The citation in the printed texts to ‘lib. 2’ was most likely a compositor’s mistake for ‘21’. The words ‘or defective’ are missing from Watson’s translation but are in the text quoted by Hume and in the Latin text of Mommsen from which the translation was made. n. 29.4–5  “Sin autem . . . . Id. lex 7.] Digest 21.1.7 (Paulus): ‘But if a slave be a eunuch in such wise that he lacks a necessary part of his body, he is diseased.’ n. 29.7–9  “Quæritur de ea muliere . . . . Id. lex 14.] Digest 21.1.14 pr. (Ulpian): ‘It has been asked whether a slave-woman who regularly produces stillborn issue is diseased. Sabinus says that she is, if this be due to some defect in her private parts.’ n. 29.9  It had even been doubted] Hume summarizes the passages that he has just quoted, and the one that follows. They are adjacent in the Digest. n. 29.11–15  “Si mulier prægnans . . . . Id.] Digest 21.1.14.1–3 (Ulpian): ‘All are agreed that a pregnant woman, the object of a sale, is healthy; for it is the highest and particular lot of woman to conceive and conserve what she conceives. 2. A woman in labour is also healthy, unless some extrinsic factor affect her body with some form of ill-health. 3. Where a barren woman is concerned, Caelius says that Trebatius took a distinction: if she be naturally barren, she is healthy, but not if her infertility be due to some bodily defect.’ 288.3  and even manufactures executed] a phrase included as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). 288.4–5  some great men possessed to the number of 10,000] Hume may have had in mind this passage of Athenaeus: ‘But every Roman, as you are well aware, good Masurius, owns an infinite number of slaves; in fact, there are very many who own 10,000, 20,000, or even more—not to bring in revenue, as in the case of the opulent Nicias’ (Learned Banqueters 6.272d–e). In his appendix Wallace picks it up to argue that many of them must have been home-born (Dissertation, 204–5). For Nicias’s slave-holding see ¶ 27 and the annotation for n. 39. n. 30  Tacit. ann. lib. 14. cap. 43.] The nobleman is Pedanius Secundus, prefect of the city, the year ad 61. Tacitus narrates the event in his Annals 14.42. There was a public outcry when it became known that, according to an ancient custom, all Pedanius’s four hundred slaves were to be put to death for a crime committed by one of them. There was such a passionate demonstration by protesters that Nero had to intervene and call in troops. Annals 14.45 seems to indicate that the four hundred included women and children.

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n. 31.2  the monks room in a convent.] Cf. Addison, Remarks: ‘I was told, that in Milan there are sixty convents of women, eighty of men, and two hundred churches’ (Miscellaneous Works, 2: 32). The restriction of the word ‘convent’ to mean ‘nunnery’ as opposed to ‘monastery’ was not observed, and even today has no basis in church authority. n. 31.2–3  Just. Lipsius, Saturn. 1. cap. 14.] Justus Lipsius, Saturnalium sermonum, bk. 1, ch. 14, where Lipsius talks about the tiny rooms (cellae) in which gladi­ ators were housed and compares these to the cellae of slaves and of brothels. Seneca’s ‘De tranquillitate animi’ 8.6 offers support for Hume’s argument: Seneca mentions a freedman, now rich, whose conception of wealth in his slave days would have been a larger cella. Slave quarters were certainly called cellae (Cicero, Philippics 2.67), but the literary sources give no clear evidence of their size. n. 32  Opera et dies, lib. 2. l. 24. also l. 220.] ‘First of all, get a house, and a woman and an ox for the plough—a slave woman and not a wife, to follow the oxen’ (Works and Days, lines 405–6); ‘Get a labourer without a household of his own and look out a servant-girl with no children; ―for a servant with a child is troublesome’ (lines 602–3). Neither line straightforwardly supports Hume’s claim. Hume perhaps misread line 406, ‘a slave woman [literally, a bought woman], not a wife’ as meaning ‘an unmarried slave woman’. The line is moreover a later addition to the text, as West establishes in his commentary on Hesiod (Works & Days, 260). The vocabulary of lines 602–3 shows that Hesiod is talking about free hired labour, not slaves. Hesiod’s didactic poem, the Works and Days, is generally dated to the late 8th or early 7th century bc. Though it is generally regarded as a single poem with lines numbered continuously, some earlier editions, like the Aldine edition of 1495, divided it into two books. Hume’s line numbers are in accordance with the recension often reprinted in editions of Ralph Winterton’s Poetæ minores Græci (twelve editions 1635–1739). 288.20  Xenophon in his Oeconomics] Xenophon, Oeconomicus [‘the Householder’] 9.5: ‘I [Ischomachos] showed her [my wife] the women’s quarters, separated from the mens’ quarters by a bolted door . . . , so that the slaves would not breed without our permission’. Xenophon’s concern is not to prevent breeding, as Hume’s language might suggest, but to give the master control over it, so that only the trustworthy slaves will have children, not the trouble-makers, as the next sentence makes clear: ‘For, generally, honest slaves become more loyal when they have produced children, but when bad ones mate, they become more troublesome’. It is argued that this passage, with others, suggests that home breeding was generally quite limited and the proportion of home-bred slaves quite small (Pomeroy, ed. and trans., Xenophon: Oeconomicus, 296–300). n. 33  Strabo, lib. 8.] Strabo, Geography 8.5.4: ‘The Spartans [or Lacedaemonians] held the Helots as state-slaves in a way, having assigned to them certain settlements to live in and special services to perform.’ Hume is right in saying that the Helots were exceptional in that they were state serfs who did not dwell in the houses of

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individual masters, both points here made by Strabo and elsewhere by other sources. The Helots were the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants of the territory ­controlled by Sparta, and ‘continued their own race’ in the sense that they were permitted to contract some form of marriage and to produce offspring. n. 34  De ratione redituum.] Xenophon, Ways and Means 4.14: ‘Those of us who have given thought to the matter have heard long ago, I suppose, that Nicias son of Niceratus once owned a thousand men in the mines, and let them out to Sosias the Thracian, on condition that Sosias paid him an obol a day per man net and filled all vacancies as they occurred.’ An obol was one-sixth of a drachma, and a drachma was an average day’s wage at this time. Hume cites this passage again in n. 159. Here he is interested in the last clause: Nicias, the famous and rich politician of late 5th-century Athens, stipulated that Sosias would replace all slaves who died from the harsh and unhealthy conditions in the silver mines at Laurium or were disabled by illness. A similar clause is found in contracts leasing slaves to work in mines in Hellenistic Egypt (Gauthier, Commentaire, 138–9). 289.4  this last circumstance of the contract had been superfluous] This paragraph, with its citation of Xenophon, appeared first in the two 1754 issues of the Political Discourses (variants for 289.1). A difficulty in interpreting this counterfactual conditional is to acquit it of the supposition that a nursling could replace or compensate for a lost miner. n. 35  See Cato, de re rustica, cap. 56.] Cato the Elder specifies recommended quantities of wheat and bread under the heading ‘rations for the slaves’ (Familiae cibaria): ‘For the field-workers, four modii of wheat in winter, and in summer four and a half. The overseer, the housekeeper, the foreman, and the shepherd should receive three’ (On Agriculture 56). Cato goes on to specify quantities of wine in ch. 57, quantities of ‘relishes’ (olives and salt) in ch. 58, and the clothing allowance in ch. 59. Similar recommendations for cattle follow in ch. 60. A modius is about two English gallons, or a peck. n. 35  Donatus in Phormion, 1. 1. 9.] ‘Slaves received four modii of grain a month, and that was called “dimensum” ’ (Donatus, commentary on Terence’s Phormio, act 1, scene 1, line 9, or line 43 in the continuous lineation). Donatus, the 4th-century ad commentator on the 2nd-century bc playwright Terence’s comedy Phormio, is explaining the word dimensum, ‘rations’ or ‘allowance’ (Donatus, Commentum, 2: 361). n. 35  Senecæ, epist. 80.] In Epistles 80.7–8, Seneca is discussing the regal parts played by actors who live in humble circumstances. One of them is in reality a slave who receives a mere five modii (of grain) and five denarii; another ‘receives a daily allowance (diurnum) and sleeps on rags’. n. 36  De re rust. cap. 10, 11.] Cato gives a list of the equipment and resources required for an olive plantation of 240 iugera (On Agriculture, ch. 10) and for a vineyard of 100 iugera (ch. 11), including the number of slaves. As Hume says, all the

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slaves except the overseer’s wife are male. Traditionally translated as an acre, a iugerum actually is roughly two-thirds of an English acre, so the former will cover some 150 acres, the latter some 66, but Hume has simply equated the iugerum with the acre. He seems to have taken the information on Cato from Varro’s quotation of this passage, since he gives the total of slaves for the vineyard as fifteen, as Varro wrongly does, not sixteen as in Cato’s text (see the annotation for n. 37). Dalby’s edition of Cato’s On Farming gives text, translation, and commentary, clearly tabulating the inventories in these chapters (82–91). n. 37  Lib. 1. cap. 18.] Varro, On Agriculture 1.18.1–6, cites Cato, On Agriculture, chs. 10–11 (n. 36) on the number of slaves required on a farm, together with the calculations of the agricultural writer Saserna (early 1st century bc). Varro gives the total number of slaves on Cato’s 100–iugera vineyard as fifteen, omitting Cato’s ‘willow-worker’ (salictarius). Hume does not report Varro’s arguments very clearly or completely, but he is right in saying that Varro does not dispute Cato’s assumption that the slaves will be unmarried males. n. 38  Lib. 1. cap. 17.] Varro, On Agriculture 1.17.5: ‘Care must be taken that the overseers have a bit of property of their own, and mates from among their fellowslaves to bear them children; for by this means they are made more steady and more attached to the farm.’ n. 39  Lib. 1. cap. 8.] Columella, On Agriculture 1.8.5: ‘But, whatever his character, the overseer should be given a woman companion [contubernalis mulier] to keep him within bounds yet nevertheless in certain matters to be a help to him.’ A contubernalis was a slave’s mate or partner, not a spouse. The overseer, or vilicus, ran the estate on behalf of the owner. The erroneous citation in the printed texts to ‘cap. 18’ (corrected in this edition to ‘cap. 8’) may be dittography from ‘cap. 18’ in n. 37. 289.25  In the same place, Varro] Varro, On Agriculture 1.17.5: ‘Avoid having too many slaves of the same nation, for this is the most powerful cause of slave ­disturbances.’ n. 40  Lib. 33. cap. 1.] The elder Pliny, Natural History 33.6.26: ‘This is the ­progress achieved by our legions of slaves—a foreign rabble in one’s home, so that an attendant to tell people’s names now has to be employed even in the case of one’s slaves!’ The ‘attendant’ is a nomenclator, i.e. ‘a slave whose duty it was to attend his master and inform him of the names of those he met’ (Oxford Latin Dictionary). Pliny is not serious: he means that people have so many slaves, many foreign, that a slave is necessary to identify the other slaves. This is part of an idealized picture of the past, when (Pliny asserts) a Roman would have had a single slave, known simply as ‘Marcus’s boy’ or ‘Lucius’s boy’, who would take his meals with the family. Hume’s citation corresponds to division numbers in earlier editions such as that of 1543. The text too, though it differs from modern editions, corresponds to that of 1543. n. 40  Tacitus, ann. lib. 14. cap. 44.] This citation of Tacitus was included as of the two 1754 issues of the Political Discourses (variants). The passage comes from

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Tacitus’s account of the incident referred to in n. 30: it was proposed that the four hundred slaves of the city prefect Pedanius Secundus should be put to death as  punishment for his murder. Defending the proposal in the senate, Gaius Cassius Longinus stressed the foreign origin of the slaves: ‘Now that our households comprise nations with religious practices that differ from our own, with alien cults or with none, you will never coerce that scum except by terror’ (Tacitus, Annals 14.44). n. 41  Lib. 2. cap. 10.] ‘As to the breeding of herdsmen it is a simple matter in the case of those who stay all the time on the farm, as they have a female fellow-slave in the steading, and the Venus [i.e. desire] of herdsmen looks no further than this. But  in the case of those who tend the herds in mountain valleys and wooded lands, . . . many have thought it advisable to send along women with them to follow the herds, prepare the food for the herdsmen, and make them more diligent’ (Varro, On Agriculture 2.10.6). Though Varro acknowledges that the women may have children, which will interfere with their work for a short while, they appear to be sent as companions and fellow-workers to the herdsmen rather than to breed from them. n. 42  Pastoris duri est hic filius, ille bubulci. Juvenal, sat. 11. 151.] In Satire 11, Juvenal invites his friend Persicus to dinner. It will be a plain, old-fashioned meal, he says, without luxuries. Persicus will not be served by some costly, ef­fem­in­ ate Phrygian or Lycian slave, and Juvenal’s slaves are of sturdy Italian stock: one is ‘the son of a tough shepherd; another of the cattle-man.’ The occasion is imaginary, but the details plausible. Juvenal’s line as Hume quotes it corresponds to the text printed in the edition of Juvenal in the Hume Library (no. 182d). n. 43  Lib. 1. cap. 8.] Columella, On Agriculture 1.8.19: ‘To women, too, who are unusually prolific, and who ought to be rewarded for the bearing of a certain number of offspring, I have granted exemption from work and sometimes even freedom after they had reared many children. For to a mother of three sons exemption from work was granted; to a mother of more, her freedom as well.’ As Parkin points out, ‘there is no indication that such “generosity” was typical’ (Demography, 122). 290.15  The laws, or, as some writers call them, the seditions of the Gracchi] In 133 bc, Tiberius Gracchus introduced a law to recover public lands which had been occupied by wealthy landowners and distribute them to farmers who had lost their own land. His younger brother, Gaius, attempted a few years later to take the reforms further. Both used unconstitutional or uncustomary procedures, and both suffered violent deaths. Their work is often regarded as the beginning of the Roman revolution, which led eventually to the downfall of the republican form of government. There was a long tradition of anti-Gracchan commentary. Cicero describes their efforts as ‘seditious’ (Brutus 27, 103) and uses similar phrases ­elsewhere (e.g. De officiis 1.30.109, In Catilinam 1.2.4, De legibus 3.10.24). Velleius Paterculus uses similar language (Compendium 2.6–2.7.1). Some early modern ­historians of Rome followed this tradition, e.g. Echard, Roman History, 1: 238–46 at 240–5.

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290.16–17  observing the encrease of slaves all over Italy, and the dim­in­ ution of free citizens] The information comes from Appian and Plutarch, cited in nn. 44 and 45. Appian (n. 44) speaks vaguely of ‘the Italians’ (i.e. the Italian communities allied to Rome), with no mention of personal observation. Plutarch (n. 45) too speaks of the whole of Italy but specifically mentions what Tiberius Gracchus had seen in Etruria. The number of slaves in Italy must have increased by the 130s bc as a result of the purchase of prisoners of war thrown on the market after the Third Macedonian War (171–67 bc) and subsequent revolts. Gracchus will have seen this imbalance as threatening in view of the major slave revolts in 198, 196, and 185 bc (in Italy), and in 137–3 (in Sicily). There was a perceived decline in the number of free peasant farmers who still possessed enough land to qualify for military service (Brunt, Social Conflicts, 77–8). n. 44  De bel. civ. lib. 1.] Appian, Civil Wars, bk. 1, § 7. Appian points also to oppression of citizens by ‘poverty, taxes and military service’. Writing three cen­tur­ ies after the events that he describes, Appian may have misunderstood his sources. Brunt points out that the census returns do not indicate that Italy was suffering from depopulation at this date and that poverty does not inevitably lead to a decline in the birth-rate, though the numbers available for military service may well have been declining (Italian Manpower, 76–7). The passage from Appian has been much discussed. n. 45  In vita Tib. & C. Gracchi.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus’: ‘Then the poor, who had been ejected from the land, no longer showed themselves eager for military service, and neglected the bringing up of children, so that soon all Italy was conscious of a dearth of free men, and was filled with prisons full of foreign slaves (βαρβαρικὰ δεσμωτήρια [barbarika desmo¯te¯ria]), by whose aid the rich  cultivated their estates, from which they had driven away the free citizens’ (‘Tiberius’ 8.3). Plutarch’s βαρβαρικὰ δεσμωτήρια translates the Latin ergastula, for which see the annotation on ¶ 9 at 283.5. n. 46.1–3  Seneca, ex controversia 5. lib. 5. ‘Arata quondam . . . imperant.’] ‘Country once ploughed by whole peoples belongs to single slave-farms and over­ seers have wider sway than kings’ (Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 5.5). The elder Seneca (c.50 bc–c.ad 40) was the father of the better-known Seneca, the politician, tragedian, and essayist. The Controversiae are collections of rhetorical arguments intended for the instruction of students and therefore not to be taken at face value. The quotation is merely one of the highly exaggerated instances in the poor man’s stock of arguments of the extravagant luxuries of the rich, including slave-farms as extensive as a people’s territory. n. 46.3–4  “At nunc eadem . . . exercent.” lib. 18. cap. 3.] ‘But nowadays those agricultural operations [i.e. ploughing the fields and sowing seed] are performed by slaves with fettered ankles and by the hands of malefactors with branded faces!’ (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 18.4.21). Hume cites a nearby passage in Pliny in n. 64, and refers to the whole context in n. 15 above.

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n. 46.5  “Et sonet . . . Thuscus ager.” lib. 9. ep. 23.] Martial, Epigrams 9.22.4: ‘And that Tuscan fields may clank with countless fetters’ (i.e. fettered slaves). As in n. 18 (see the annotation), Hume uses a text numbering this epigram as 9.23. The ‘vast numbers of slaves’ are not reported as fact, but are part of a wish. Martial was writing over two centuries later than the reforms of the Gracchi. n. 46.7–10  “Tum longos . . . colonis.” lib. 1.] Lucan, Civil War 1.167–70: ‘Next they stretched wide the boundaries of their lands, till those acres, which once were furrowed by the iron plough of Camillus and felt the spade of a Curius long ago, grew into vast estates tilled by ignotis colonis’. Lucan gave a rhetorical account of the civil war beween Caesar and Pompey in his epic Pharsalia. These lines come from his outline of its backgound. Commentators differ on the meaning of ignotis colonis, literally ‘unknown cultivators’. Hume apparently takes it as ‘foreign slaves’. Others explain it as ‘slaves unknown to their masters’ because so numerous. Lucan’s contrast of these farms with those worked by their owners makes it most likely that he meant simply ‘cultivators other than their owners’. n. 46.11–12  “Vincto fossore . . . segetes.” ―― lib. 7.] ‘The cornfields of Italy are dug by chained labourers’ (Lucan, Civil War 7.402–3). The previous passage refers to events preceding the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, whereas this complaint comes from the anticipation of the disasters, including depopulation, to follow the civil war. n. 47  Lib. 3. cap. 19.] ‘The numerous [ergastula] for slaves employed in tilling the soil and gangs of cultivators who worked in chains provided the forces for the war’ (Florus, Epitome 2.7.3, from his brief account of the first servile war in Sicily, 2.7.1–8). For ergastula see the annotation for 283.5. Hume’s citation of Florus’s Epitome ­corresponds to division numbers in editions of Hume’s time. It was frequently reedited as a useful book by which students could both improve their Latin and learn the rudiments of Roman history. A typical example is that put out ‘for the use of schools’ by John Stirling in 1738. 290.22  Eunus and Athenio excited the servile war] There were two ‘servile wars’ in Sicily, the first in the 130s bc, the second in 104–101 bc. Eunus, a Syrian slave, was the leader of the first revolt, Athenio, a Cilician, co-leader of the second. 290.23  60,000 slaves] Florus’s figure, ‘above 60,000’ (Epitome 2.7.6), differs from those given in the superior account in Diodorus, who charts the increasing numbers of the slaves who joined each revolt. In the first war they grow from 400 (Library 34/35.2.11) plus ‘a great multitude’ (2.12) to ‘more than 6,000’ (2.16) plus ‘untold numbers’ (ibid.) to ‘more than 10,000’ (ibid.) plus 5,000 (2.17) to 20,000 (2.18); before long, a wildly implausible 200,000 (ibid.). He gives still more figures for the second war. Diodorus’s use of ‘tens of thousands’ (compounds of ‘myrioi’) suggests greater precision than the ‘myriads’ in which such numbers are regularly expressed. However, it is difficult to see how accurate figures can have been ­ascertained.

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n. 48  Id. lib. 4. cap. 8.] Florus, Epitome 2.18.1. Pace Hume, although Florus mentions Spain earlier in the sentence, he means that these ergastula were in Sicily. Florus goes on at 2.18.2 to allege that even Sextus Pompey’s admirals, Menas and Menecrates, were slaves, though in fact they were not, but rather freedmen. Sextus Pompey (c.67–38 bc), son of Pompey the Great (106–48 bc), continued his father’s struggle against Caesar in Spain (46–44 bc), then moved to Sicily, which he used as a base (43–36 bc) to fight independently against Octavian, the later Emperor Augustus. His supporters were not slaves; this distortion is propaganda. ‘Pirates’ and ‘slaves’ are Augustus’s own terms for Sextus Pompey’s forces. 291.4–5  Constantinople, at present, . . . that Rome did of old] Since the siege of 1453, Constantinople had been the capital of the Ottoman Empire and location of the Grand Seignior’s seraglio. Slaves were imported because normally a free Muslim could not be enslaved. Hume treats this importation of slaves as an instance of his thesis that breeding slaves is too expensive in the capital itself and that ‘a perpetual recruit’ therefore is needed from ‘the poorer and more desert provinces’, a practice that ‘would tend mightily to depopulate the state’ (¶ 14). Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘Tis a presumption that the antient Practice of Servitude did not favour Propogation, that such immense Numbers of Slaves were daily brought to Rome from Asia & the East’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 514). ‘Asia & the East’ refer respectively to Asia Minor and the Middle East, the sources of Roman slaves most prominent in the literary tradition (Scheidel, ‘Roman Slave Supply’, 304). Hume highlights this area in ¶ 15, citing Strabo, Geography 14.5.2 (see the annotation for n. 14.2). Ironically, Asia Minor and the Middle East were the centre of the Ottoman Empire to which slaves were sent in Hume’s time. The devshirme levy of Balkan boys to supply the Ottoman administrative and military castes had been abandoned, but the source of mamluks was the slaves from the Caucusus region, as Hume shows himself aware in ¶ 38, as also of the slaves in eastern Africa. 291.7  according to Monsieur Maillet] Benoît de Maillet, Description de l’Egypte, lettre 13me. Both Mingrelia (under Ottoman control, anciently Colchis) and Circassia were on the east coast of the Black Sea, the former in Transcaucasia, the latter to its north in the Caucasus. Circassians were notorious for selling their daughters into seraglios. ‘Tartary’ was a name for a vast, amorphous territory stretching east from the Ukraine and facing Persian, Moghul, and Chinese ter­ri­tor­ ies to the south (Salmon, Modern History, 1: 692, 489). 291.17  as is commonly imagined] Cf. Heylyn, Cosmography, bk. 1: ‘All the Wealth that is now to be found in Italy is lodged in their Convents, Churches, and Clergy, where it serves no other End but to amuse the Minds of the People, to sink their Trade and dispeople their Country, by inviting too many to bury themselves alive in those plentiful, rich, easie Retirements: And those that are left in the World are so dispirited and worn out by their Miseries and Poverty, that they are not able to supply the Nation with a sufficient number of Inhabitants’ (55).

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291.24  exposing their children in early infancy] The practice of exposing unwanted infants seems to have been common among both Greeks and Romans as a means to limit numbers or dispose of children born deformed. A father had to ‘acknowledge’ a newly born child by taking it up in his arms. If he declined to do so, the infant was ‘exposed’ and left to die or be rescued by others. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. infanticide; Brunt, Italian Manpower, 149–54. n. 49  de moribus Germ.] Speaking of the Germans, Tacitus says, ‘to limit the number of their children, to make away with any of the later children is held abominable’ (Germania 19). Tacitus is presenting German customs as an ideal contrast to the degenerate habits of contemporary Romans. 291.26–7  the humane, good-natured Plutarch] a commonplace characterization, exemplified in the biography of Plutarch that Dryden affixed to his edition of the Lives. See Dryden, Works, 17: 259. n. 50.1  De fraterno amore.] Plutarch, ‘On Brotherly Love’ 18. Plutarch’s story runs as follows. Attalus II had been crowned king of Pergamum in 172 bc in the belief that the former king, his brother Eumenes II, had been killed in war. He also married Eumenes’s widow Stratonike. However, Eumenes recovered and returned, and Attalus handed back the crown and Stratonike. When Eumenes did die in 158, Attalus resumed both crown and Stratonike, and when he in his turn was facing death in 138, he ensured that the son of Eumenes, and not any of his own children, should succeed him. Plutarch says that Attalus ‘was unwilling to acknowledge [ἀνελέσθαι, anhelesthai, literally ‘take up in his arms’] any of the children his wife had borne him, though they were many, but brought up and educated his brother’s son and in his own lifetime placed the crown upon his head and saluted him as king’ (Moralia 489f–490a). When Plutarch tells the story elsewhere, he says that Attalus οὐκ ἔθρεψε (ouk ethrepse, ‘did not rear’) any of his own children (‘Sayings of Kings and Commanders’, Moralia 184b). In the earliest account of these events, however, Livy gives a more sober version (History 42.16–17). Most scholars now reject Plutarch’s version as fiction. n. 50.1–2  Seneca . . . . de ira, lib. 1. cap. 15.] ‘De ira’ 1.15.2: ‘Mad dogs we knock on the head; . . . unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children at birth who are weakly and abnormal’. This is rational behaviour, he adds, not an act performed in anger. Similarly, Cicero says that the Twelve Tables allowed a conspicuously deformed boy to be put to death (De legibus 3.8.19). Dionysius of Halicarnassus ascribes a similar law to Romulus (Roman Antiquities 2.15.2). We should understand ‘Romulus’ and ‘the Twelve Tables’ as signifying ‘Roman tradition’. 291.28  Pergamus] Pergamus was a small but prosperous and important Hellenistic kingdom on the western coast of Asia Minor. The Greek form Pergamon (Roman Pergamum) is more frequently used today. n. 51  Sext. Emp. lib. 3. cap. 24.] Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.24: ‘[A]nd Solon gave the Athenians the law concerning extralegal matters, by which he

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turned over to each individual the decision whether to kill his own children’ (Skeptic Way 3, § 211). Sextus was probably writing in the late 2nd century ad. No earl­ ier  author knows of any such law of Solon (archon 594 bc), though the laws of Solon, the great lawgiver of Athens and one of the ‘Seven Sages’ of Greece, are cited repeatedly. For this and other reasons this purported law is not considered authentic. 292.6  China, the only country] Cf. Hume’s memorandum: ‘Perhaps the Custom of allowing Parents to murder their Infant Children, tho barbarous, tends to render a State more Populous, as in China. Many marry by that Inducement; & such is the force of natural Affection, that none make use of that Privilege but in extreme Necessity.’ As Mossner notes, ‘This entire note is crossed out’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 503). Du Halde had  noted the practice of exposing infants: ‘Yet it must be owned that, however temperate and industrious these people are, the great Numbers of Inhabitants ­occasions a great deal of Misery; there are some of them so poor that they cannot supply their Children with the common Necessaries of Life, for which reason they expose them in the Streets, especially when the Mothers fall sick, or want Milk to nourish them; . . . and this is very common in the great Cities, such as Peking and Canton, but in the other Cities such instances are but few’ (General History of China, 2: 126). n. 52  De amore prolis.] Plutarch, Moralia 497e: ‘For poor men do not rear their children because they fear that if they are educated less well than is befitting, they will become servile and boorish and destitute of all the virtues; since they consider poverty the worst of evils, they cannot bear to let their children share it with them, as though it were a kind of serious and grievous disease’ (‘On Affection for Offspring’ 5). The incomplete treatise breaks off at this point, and Plutarch may have had more to say on the subject. He believes that all creatures naturally love their offspring and that for that very reason poor folk sometimes will not rear their children in order to spare them lives of poverty. 292.11–13  the rich were then averse to marriage . . . legacies from them] In  ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ 21, Hume describes the marriage legislation of the emperor Augustus as intended to enforce marriage among the upper classes. See the annotation for ¶ 21 at 156.2. The captator, the legacy-hunter who ingratiates himself with childless old men in the hope of gaining a generous bequest, is a topos in the satirical literature of the early empire. The classic texts are Horace, Satires 2.5; Juvenal, Satires 12.93–130; Pliny, Letters 2.20; and such epigrams of Martial as 1.10, 2.26, 6.63. That it had some basis in reality is attested by the stories that Pliny retails in Letters 2.20, but Hume overstates the prevalence of the practice. n. 53.2  common in Greece as well as Rome; as we may gather from Lucian.] There seems to be no evidence that this practice, known as captatio, was common in Greece. It is in all likelihood a Roman literary topos that the Greek satirist Lucian has taken over. Legacy-hunting is the subject of five of Lucian’s Dialogues of the

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Dead (nos. 15–19 in the Loeb and other modern editions, nos. 5–9 in older editions.), and he mentions it elsewhere (e.g. Timon 21–2). n. 53.3  Ben. Johnson’s Volpone] The childless, rich old man who gives his name to Jonson’s comedy tempts the courtship of legacy-hunters in order to receive gifts from them. Scholars find strong echoes in the play of the classical authors mentioned above. n. 53.5  liberty of divorces in Rome] The subject is controversial. The divorces of a handful of prominent Romans tend to obscure our perception of the overall picture. The excellent discussion by Treggiari, Roman Marriages, 446–58 (pro­ced­ ure), 473–82 (frequency), 516–19 (lists of attested divorces), indicates that divorce, though an option, was not as widespread as has commonly been thought. n. 53.7–8  See farther on this head, Part 1. Essay 19.] i.e. ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ 15–22. This essay was designated 1.19 in the Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary for the 1777 edition of the ETSS as a result of the posthumous inclusion of ‘Origin of Government’ as 1.5. 292.19  every ninth child born at Paris, is sent to the hospital] a statistic that Hume had ready for this occasion in his memorandum: ‘A ninth of the Children born in Paris sent to the Enfans Trouvés’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 506). Foundling hospitals were extolled as increasing the population in providing an alternative to infanticide and desertion, as was argued in their published rationales. Christ’s Hospital in London had long since stopped accepting foundlings. Captain Coram’s celebrated foundling hospital, which opened in London in 1741, was planned so as to benefit from the Parisian experience with such institutions. 292.30–1  we shall now examine the political customs and institutions of both ages] As announced in ¶ 5, Hume proceeds to the second segment concerning probable causes as distinct from matters of fact. See the annotation for ¶ 5 at 281.31–2. The comparison will survey the advantages of the ancients (¶¶ 45–52) and disadvantages (¶¶ 53–93) with regard to populousness, the former being the greater civil liberty and equality of fortune characteristic of small polities. 293.1–3  Before the encrease of the Roman power . . . petty commonwealths] This summary statement telescopes history for the sake of the contrast between the small, independent territories of an earlier period, such as the citystates of archaic and classical Greece, and the full establishment of the Roman empire, which may be said to have been completed by the latter part of the 1st century bc. It may seem to ignore for its own purposes the three great Hellenistic kingdoms whose relationships Hume discusses in ‘Balance of Power’ 7. Hume’s brief statement may be amplified by Montesquieu’s presentation of this argument in Esprit des lois 23.17–18: ‘Greece was a great nation, composed of cities, each of which had a distinct government and separate laws’, a condition highly ­favourable to populousness. ‘Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor, Gaul and Germany were nearly in the same state as Greece; full of small nations that abounded with inhabitants’ (Spirit

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of the Laws, 2: 10, 11). See also the annotation for ¶ 76 at 301.8–9 on ancient commonwealths. 293.6  This was the situation] Paragraphs 45–6 were one paragraph until the 1758 ETSS (variants). 293.8–9  no institution could be more favourable to the propagation of mankind] Taking this concession to be made to him specifically, Wallace added that the point supports his argument that primogeniture is detrimental to popu­ lousness (Dissertation, 164 and n. (app.)). However, Hume enunciates the ideology of civic virtue as exemplified not only by Wallace (Dissertation, 97–117), but also in Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois, livre 23, which indeed Wallace cites in his appendix (Dissertation, 249 and n.). Having in ¶ 3 cited livre 23 as a notable statement of the  view he is challenging, Hume will return to and rebut it in the concluding ­paragraphs (¶¶ 177–86). n. 54  De exp. Cyr. lib. 7.] Cf. Xenophon, Anabasis 7.2.36: ‘Seuthes promised to give each soldier a Cyzicene, to the captains twice as much, and to the generals four times as much’; also 7.6.1 and 7.6.7. Hume seems to be making use of the following entry in his memoranda: ‘The antient common Soldiers of much better Rank (being Freemen) than the Moderns. In Xenophon αναβαςiς εβδ [anabasis ebd, Anabasis 7]: The Captains got only double pay to the common Soldiers: The Colonels 4 times’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 514–15). 293.26  the famous expedition with Cyrus] Xenophon, together with 10,000 Greeks, joined the expedition of Cyrus the Younger to wrest the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes II. After the defeat of Cyrus at Cunaxa in 401 bc, Xenophon took command of the retreating army and led them back to Byzantium, where he negotiated with Seuthes, a king in the adjacent Thracian territory. His Anabasis is an account of this expedition. 293.29  daric] the standard gold coin of the Persian Empire (named after King Darius I), weighing 8.3 grammes. 293.32  Demosthenes and Æschines . . . were sent ambassadors] An unusually large delegation of ten men was sent by the Athenians in 346 bc to negotiate a peace (known as the Peace of Philocrates) with Philip II of Macedon, who had for some time been bringing cities in north and central Greece under his control. Hume bases his calculation upon the embassy’s lasting four months. In his memoranda Hume had reckoned it as lasting six months: ‘The ten Ambassadors sent by Athens to Philip had 1000 Drachmas of Allowance for 6 Months, which Demosthenes calls a considerable Sum. περι παραπρεςβεiας [peri parapresbeias, On the False Embassy]’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 516). n. 55  Demost. de falsa leg.] Demosthenes 19 (De falsa legatione) 158: ‘They were away from the city for three whole months, and received from you a thousand drachmas for journey-money’. This speech was delivered in 343 bc. Hume accepts

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the figure of a thousand drachmas, but does not read this passage as saying that three months was the total duration of the embassy (see the annotation for ¶ 48 at 293.32). n. 56  Thucyd. lib. 3.] Thucydides, History 3.17: ‘Two-drachma hoplites besieged Potidaea [432–30 bc] (because the hoplite received one each day for himself and one for his attendant).’ Hume appears to be drawing on two of his memoranda: ‘The Athenians gave 2 Drahmas [sic] a day to all their Soldiers at the Beginning of the Peloponesian War. ΘΟΥΚ: ΞΥΓ. Γ. iζ. [THOUK: XUG. G. iz, Thuc. bk. 3.17]’ and ‘The heavy arm’d in the Athenian Army had 2 Drachmas a day for Master & Servant. Thuc. Book 3.’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 516, 511). Thucydides’s 3.17 is a problematic chapter, regarded by some as spurious, by others as genuine but misplaced. If the chapter is genuine or misplaced, the information is reliable; if it is an early interpolation, it might perhaps be. The language of the chapter suggests that 2 drachmas was an exceptional sum. Pritchett, who provides a thorough discussion of the subject, concludes that the normal rate of pay for Athenian hoplites was 3 obols (half a drachma) a day (Greek State at War, 1: 23–4). The men at Potidaea received more because they were conducting a protracted overseas siege. Others believe that 6 obols (one drachma) was normal until the Athenian defeat in Sicily (413 bc), when it was halved. The keeping of slave attendants appears to have been regular practice (1: 49–51). n. 57  Lib. 6. cap. 37.] Polybius, Histories 6.39.12: ‘As pay the foot-soldiers receive two obols a day, centurions twice as much.’ Hume’s citation numbering, which sometimes differs from that of editions today, is consistent with that of the edition by Jacob Gronovius (Amsterdam, 1670) listed in the Hume Library. Polybius is writing about his own time, the early 2nd century bc. This source is still regarded as the key piece of evidence on the subject. On this passage and on military pay in later periods, see Watson, Roman Soldier, 89–92, 187–90. A centurion was the commander of a century, the smallest unit of the Roman legion, nominally one hundred men. n. 58  Titi Livii, lib. 41. cap. 7. 13. & alibi passim.] Livy, History 41.7.3: ‘Both commanders [i.e. Tiberius Gracchus the elder and Lucius Postumius Albinus] ­distributed twenty-five denarii each to the infantry, and twice that sum to the cen­ tur­ions.’ This event occurred in 178 bc, after a major campaign in Spain. Cf. 41.13.7: ‘Each of the infantry received [from Gaius Claudius] fifteen denarii, the centurions twice that sum.’ This passage refers to an event in 177 bc, after a campaign against the Ligurians in southern France, around Marseilles. Hume’s phrase ‘& alibi ­passim’ means ‘and elsewhere at various points’. n. 59  Appian, de bell. civ. lib. 4.] Appian, Civil Wars, bk. 4, § 120. Antony is addressing his troops before the second battle of Philippi in 42 bc, at which he and Octavian (later Augustus) defeated Brutus and Cassius. The ‘triumvirate’ here refers to the alliance of Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus, known as the ‘second triumvirate’. n. 60.1–2  de bello Gallico, lib. 8.] ‘In reward for so much effort and hardship . . . Caesar promised the soldiers two hundred sesterces apiece, and the

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same number of thousands in cash to each centurion in lieu of booty’ (Caesar, Gallic War 8.4). Bk. 8 of the Gallic War was added to Caesar’s seven books by his lieutenant, Aulus Hirtius. The Latin at this point is very odd (we deviate from the Loeb so as to preserve the oddity): why write ‘the same number of thousands’ instead of ‘two thousand’? Some editors have emended the text so as to award the centurions twice as much as the common soldiers, others five times as much. Others simply indicate an unresolved problem. The date is 51 bc, towards the end of Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul. n. 60.2  the Rhodian cartel] A cartel is an agreement to exchange prisoners. Hume explains the Rhodian cartel in ¶ 62. 294.12–13  Switzerland alone and Holland resemble the ancient republics] Abraham Stanyan concludes his °Account of Switzerland with comparisons of these two confederations with each other and of Switzerland as a whole with the Greek city-states. The Swiss’s country, he observes, ‘is crowded with People, which generally make the Riches of other Nations, but for want of Trade, increase the Poverty of this’ (156); so that ‘if they did not continually drain their Country, by keeping Troops in Foreign Service, they would soon be . . . overstock’d, in proportion to the Extent and Fertility of it’ (144). Stanyan reiterates a point made by Bianchi (Account, 25). 294.18  The Trachinians] In 426 bc, the people of Trachis in central Greece invited Sparta, their hereditary mother city (me¯tropolis), to found a settlement in their territory at Heracleia. n. 61  Diod. Sic. lib. 12. Thucyd. lib. 3.] Diodorus, Library 12.59.4–5; Thucydides, History 3.92.1–5. Hume gives pride of place to Diodorus because, unlike Thucydides, he provides figures. Unfortunately they are discredited by the smallness of the territory and the necessary augmentation by women, children, and slaves. It has also been argued that ‘ten-thousand-man city’ (polis muriandros) was originally a conventional expression denoting a foundation of some importance, but that Diodorus took the number literally and derived his other figures from it (Schaefer, ‘Πόλις μυρίανδρος’). 294.23  After Timoleon had banished Dionysius] Dionysius II, tyrant of Syracuse from 367 bc until deposed in 357, held on to power in other cities of Sicily until Timoleon was sent out from Corinth in 344 to remove him from power al­together and settle affairs in Sicily, which recent conflicts had devastated. n. 62  Diod. Sic. lib. 16.] Diodorus, Library 16.82.5: ‘Timoleon proclaimed in Greece that the Syracusans would give land and houses to those who wished to share in their state . . . . Eventually forty thousand [literally, ‘four myriads’] settlers were assigned to the vacant land of Syracuse, and ten thousand [‘one myriad’] to that of Agyrium.’ Hume’s ‘Sellinuntium’ is his Latin name for Selinus, a Greek foundation on the south-west coast of Sicily, but it is puzzling that he substituted it  for Diodorus’s Agyrium. Diodorus himself came from Agyrium, an inland town  west of Mt. Etna, and no doubt speaks from personal knowledge. But ten

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thousand is a conventional figure for a newly-founded community and need not be taken ­literally. n. 63  In vita Timol.] In his Lives, ‘Timoleon’ 23, Plutarch gives an account that agrees with Diodorus (n. 62 above), except, as Hume says, on the figures. (Both probably derive from the Sicilian historian, Timaeus.) But the numerical discrepancy is not as straightforward as Hume suggests. According to Plutarch, the Corinthian proclamation was aimed in the first place at Sicilian exiles in Greece, then at exiles in Asia and the islands (‘Timoleon’ 23.2), and then at Greeks in Corinth and the rest of Greece (23.3). It attracted ten thousand men altogether, the conventional ‘myriad’ (see the annotation for n. 61). They assembled at Corinth and sailed to Syracuse. ‘By this time many also from Italy and Sicily had flocked to Timoleon; and when their numbers had risen to sixty thousand [literally, ‘six myriads’], . . . Timoleon divided the land’ (23.4). Therefore fifty thousand must have come from Italy and Sicily. The regeneration of Sicilian life after Timoleon was on such a dramatic scale (Finley, Ancient Sicily, 99) that these figures, though large, may be correct. However, they do not appear to demonstrate, as Hume suggests, ‘the extreme populousness of that small country, Greece’, itself. 295.2  seven acres] Pliny says ‘seven iugera’, and since the iugerum is actually equivalent to only about two-thirds of an English acre, five rather than seven acres would be more accurate. n. 64.1  Plin. lib. 18. cap. 3.] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 18.4.18. Manius Curius Dentatus conquered the Samnites and defeated King Pyrrhus of Epirus during the first quarter of the 3rd century bc. His frugality and integrity became legendary. Hume refers to the whole context of this passage in n. 15 and to a nearby section in n. 46. n. 64.1  The same author, in cap. 6.] ‘To tell the truth, latifundia [large estates] have been the ruin of Italy, and are now proving the ruin of the provinces too—half of Africa was in the hands of six landowners, when the emperor Nero put them to death’ (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 18.7.35). Hume accepts Pliny’s judgement at face value, but it is controversial. The opening words, Verum fatentibus (literally ‘In the eyes of those who admit the truth’), suggest that Pliny’s is a minority view and that many, perhaps most, Romans saw latifundia as an excellent development. It is unclear that latifundia had ruined Italy. Varro and Virgil had sung the praises of the Italian countryside and its fertility and prosperity only a generation earlier (see the annotation for n. 255.5–7 on Pliny the Elder, Natural History 3.5.39). Italy can hardly have been wrecked in such a short time, even if they had exaggerated (Brunt, Italian Manpower, 128–30). There is evidence for latifundia also in some of the provinces. n. 64.6–7  Tacit. ann. lib. 3. cap. 55.] ‘Formerly aristocratic families of wealth or outstanding distinction were apt to be led to their downfall by a passion for magnificence . . . . After the merciless killings, when greatness of fame was death, the

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survivors turned to wiser paths. At the same time, the “new men”, frequently drafted into the Senate from the municipalities and colonies, and even from the provinces, introduced the plain-living habits of their own households’ (Tacitus, Annals 3.55). Tacitus’s reflections are prompted by a letter from the emperor Tiberius to the senate in ad 22 urging sumptuary restraint. The ‘merciless killings’ are most naturally taken as Hume takes them, as the executions of distinguished men by the Julio-Claudian emperors (Augustus to Nero, 27 bc to ad 68), which reached a climax in the later part of the reign of Nero. However, some think Tacitus means the civil wars of ad 68/69. A ‘new man’ was the first member of his family to become a member of the senate. Such men had been admitted from the late republican period onwards. The frugality of provincial life, as opposed to the extravagancies of the city, had become a topos in Roman literature. 295.4–5  We must now consider what disadvantages . . . and what checks] Within the examination of ‘the political customs and institutions’ begun in ¶ 44, Hume now turns from those customs that probably had a positive effect on popu­la­ tion to those that probably had a negative effect. This segment is divided into three sections: ¶¶ 54–62 on ancient warfare, ¶¶ 63–82 on internal strife, and ¶¶ 83–92 on industry and commerce. Summarizing the disadvantages is ¶ 93, concluding the discussion of moral causes that began with ¶ 4. 295.14–15  the ancient republics were almost in perpetual war] See ‘Commerce’ 7. 295.22–3  that distribution of plunder, in which the soldiers were indulged] For the scale of plunder see e.g. the annotations for nn. 170.1, 185, 258.1–2, and, for ‘Balance of Trade’, nn. 10–13. n. 65.1  The ancient soldiers . . . were all married.] Officers from centurions upwards might marry. Otherwise, until ad 197, Roman soldiers were not permitted to marry while in the service, which might last for twenty-five years (Herodian, History 3.8.5). A married man might even break off his marriage when he enlisted (Digest 24.1.60–2). Unofficial unions, however, were frequently formed, and many documents (diplomata) have survived recording grants to marry upon discharge. Hume cites no evidence for his erroneous belief. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. diploma. There is less evidence for the Greek world, where there seem to have been few restrictions. 295.30–296.1  The ancients drew up their men . . . 50 men deep.] The Greek and Macedonian phalanx was a close-packed formation of several lines of armoured hoplites. The phalanx consisted normally of eight lines of hoplites, but at the battle of Delion (424 bc) the Theban phalanx was twenty-five lines deep (Thucydides, History 4.93). At the battle of Leuctra (371 bc) the Thebans, under their innovating general, Epaminondas, inflicted a famous defeat on the Spartans with a line fifty men deep (Xenophon, Hellenica 6.4.12). Epaminondas adopted a similar tactic at the battle of Mantinea (362). The Roman legion of the time of the Punic Wars as

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described by Polybius (Histories 6.19.21–5) was drawn up for battle in a deep formation in which three types of troops (hastati, principes, and triarii) were arranged in companies or maniples one behind the other and engaged successively in battle. Whatever the depth of the lines, it was always the case that as the opposing forces came together, there was a great clash or ‘shock’, requiring hand-to-hand fighting at very close quarters, ‘each man closely buckled to his antagonist’, as Hume describes it (cf. Diodorus, Library 15.86.2: ‘their bodies all locked with one another and inflicting all manner of wounds’). variants for 296.12.  Folard’s project of the column] This sentence and its note were omitted as of the 1770 ETSS. The column is the fundamental principle of Jean-Charles Folard’s tactical system. Folard proposed to form troops in deep ­columns rather than in lines in the belief that the column was responsible for the victories of the Theban general, Epaminondas, at the battles of Leuctra (371) and Mantinea (362), in which the Thebans broke the power of Sparta, as well as that of Scipio at the battle of Zama (202), in which he defeated Hannibal decisively to end the Second Punic War. As for the Roman mode of warfare, Folard claims that both Lipsius (De militia Romana, bk. 4) and Machiavelli (L’arte della guerra) misunderstood it. The truth, he says, is that only Scipio, of the various generals who attempted to use the column, got it right, at the battle of Zama, where he organized his lines in such a way that the men were effectively drawn up in columns as they faced the enemy and, crucially, it seems, spaces were left between the columns. In ‘Traité de la colonne’, Folard applies the theory of the column to modern warfare in detail (Nouvelles decouvertes, 145–274). n. 66  Hist. lib. 2. cap. 44.] Tacitus, Histories 2.44, describes the aftermath of the battle of Bedriacum in April ad 69: the emperor Otho’s troops are fleeing after defeat by the army of the usurper Vitellius. Plutarch, who visited the battlefield, reflected that ‘It is natural that in civil wars, when a rout takes place, more men should be killed, because no quarter is given, there being no use for prisoners’ (Lives, ‘Otho’ 14.1–2). The same thing happened after the brutal sack of Cremona by the troops of Vespasian in October 69 (Tacitus, Histories 3.34). n. 67.1  Livy, lib. 31. cap. 17, 18] In History 31.17.4–11 and 18.6–8, Livy relates how the men of Abydos shut up their women in a temple and their children in the gymnasium, instructing their chief citizens to kill them all before surrendering. Their men resolved to fight to the death. After a furious battle, the chief citizens negotiated a surrender. The other citizens suspected treachery and killed their womenfolk and children themselves, then committed suicide, rather than fall into the hands of Philip. Abydos, a town on the southern coast of the Hellespont with an excellent harbour, was besieged by Philip V of Macedon in 200 bc during his attempt to gain control of Asia Minor. n. 67.1  Polyb. lib. 16.] Polybius, Histories 16.31.5, 16.34.9–12, which is the source of the passages from Livy summarized above. Polybius compares the actions of the inhabitants of Abydos with those of the Phocians of central Greece in the

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480s bc and the Acarnanians of north-western Greece in about 210 bc. There are other instances recorded. n. 67.2  Appian, de bell. civ. lib. 4.] Appian, Civil Wars, bk. 4, § 80. Xanthos was a large city in Lycia, on the south-west coast of modern Turkey, from which Brutus was trying to extract money in 42 bc for his struggle against Mark Antony. Plutarch gives a similar account (Lives, ‘Brutus’ 31). Appian and Plutarch both note the similar action of the Xanthians when besieged by the Persian general Harpagus after the fall of Sardis in the 6th century bc (Herodotus, Persian Wars 1.176). n. 68  In vita Arati.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Aratus’ 6.1: ‘Now stocking up with arms was nothing unusual, since almost everyone at that time went in for robberies and incursions into each others’ territory’. Plutarch is sketching the background to Aratus’s expulsion of the tyrant Nicocles from Sicyon in 251 bc. Brigandage was common during the Hellenistic period. Boeotia, in central Greece, was particularly notorious. Asia Minor was another dangerous area, not least because of the pirates operating from Cilicia on its southern coast. n. 69  Inst. lib. 2. cap. 6.] Justinian, Institutes 2.6, preamble: ‘To prevent uncertainty over title, the old state law laid down that, where someone dealt with a nonowner in the belief that he was dealing with an owner, and obtained something in good faith by purchase, gift or on some other legally sufficient basis, he should become owner by usucapion, i.e., possession over time. For movables the requirement was one year, with no geographical restriction; for immovables, two years, with a restriction to land in Italy.’ By ‘the old state law’ here is meant the Twelve Tables (450 bc) as distinct from later praetorian interpretation or development of the law, as is explained in contemporary commentaries on the Institutes, including that of Vinnius, which Hume tells us in ‘My Own Life’ he had been required to read during his legal studies. Hume’s conclusion about conditions in Italy in the 5th century bc is no doubt correct. On the Twelve Tables see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 13 at 105.17–20. Until the 1770 ETSS the citation of the Institutes was followed, with slight variation, by the following: ‘’Tis true, the same law seems to have been continu’d, till the time of Justinian. But abuses, introduc’d by barbarism, are not always corrected by civility’ (variants). n. 70  Diod. Sic. lib. 20.] Diodorus, Library 20.84.6. Rhodes is the large Aegean island off the south-west coast of Turkey that Demetrius besieged for a year (305– 304 bc) in an attempt to gain control of its navy, hence his epithet Poliorcetes, ‘the Besieger’. This cartel, or agreement to exchange prisoners, appears not to have been observed at a later stage (20.93.4). 297.10  amongst religious parties alone.] Until the 1770 ETSS this sentence finished with the clause,‘where bigotted priests are the accusers, judges, and executioners’ (variants). n. 71.1  Lysias . . . very narrowly escaped] Lysias himself gives a vivid account of the circumstances in speech 12 (Against Eratosthenes) 6–17. Though a staunch

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supporter of the Athenian democracy, the orator Lysias was not an Athenian. Because his father came from Syracuse, Lysias was a metic, or resident alien. Though, exceptionally, he was granted Athenian citizenship in 403 bc for his ­services to the democracy, the grant was soon rescinded as unconstitutional. n. 71.2–3  orat. 24. de statu popul.] ‘Under the democracy they are now doing the same things as the Thirty did. Out of poverty they have become rich. . . .  They have proclaimed war instead of peace. . . . They are no different from the Thirty―. . . they think they have a right to do evil to whomever they wish as readily as if everybody else were guilty and they themselves were totally respectable’ (Lysias 25 (Defence against a Charge of Subverting the Democracy) 31, with its context (30–3), trans. Todd). This passage, alleging violence by the restored democracy, comes from a speech that Lysias wrote as a professional speech-writer, despite his personal support of democracy, for a defendant who was being charged with op­pos­ ition to the restoration of democracy. The regime of the Thirty was imposed on Athens by the Spartans in 404 bc after they had defeated her in the Peloponnesian War (the details are in Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.1–14). Their short period of misrule was long remembered, and they have come to be called the ‘thirty tyrants’, a name first attested in Diodorus, Library 14.3.7 (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Thirty Tyrants). The numbers that Hume gives for almost all of Lysias’s speeches are one lower than those in modern editions, which insert Lysias’s ‘Epitaphios’ as no. 2. Contemporary editions, like that of van der Heidius (1615), listed in Hume Library, omit it. 297.24  the restoration of the Athenian Democracy] Cf. Hume’s memorandum: ‘Thrasybulus restoring the People, & Caesar’s Conquest, the only Instances in antient History of Revolutions without barbarous Cruelty’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515). The reference is to the restoration of democracy at Athens in 403 after the regime of the Thirty was ended by the return of the democrats under Thrasybulus. 297.25  the subduing of the Roman republic by Cæsar] Hume refers to the assumption of autocratic power by Julius Caesar, confirmed by his acceptance of the title ‘perpetual dictator’ in 46 bc. 297.26  Thrasybulus passed a general amnesty] Xenophon gives his account of the circumstances in which the amnesty of 403/2 was concluded (Hellenica 2.4.28–43). The text of the amnesty is preserved (with some omissions) in ch. 27 of “Aristotle”, Athenian Constitution, for which see the annotation for ‘Remarkable Customs’ 6 at 274.22. n. 72  Cicero, Philip. I.] Cicero, Philippics 1.1: ‘I . . . recalled the old precedent of the Athenians; I even adopted the Greek phrase which that state employed in mitigation of discord, and proposed that every memory of discord should be blotted out in everlasting oblivion.’ After the Ides of March 44 bc, Cicero had carried in the senate an amnesty for the murderers of Julius Caesar. The precedent that he cited was the reconciliation after the Athenian civil war of 404/3 bc between the

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returning democrats and the oligarchic supporters of the Thirty. Cicero may have believed that the Greek word amnestia was current in this sense in the 5th century. Plutarch uses it in the context of 44 bc (Lives, ‘Cicero’ 42.3). n. 73  As orat. 11. contra Eratost. orat. 12. contra Agorat. orat. 15. pro Mantith.] In modern editions of Lysias these speeches are 12, 13, 16. Eratosthenes, Agoratus, and Mantitheus were all put on trial by the restored democracy for their activities at the time of the Thirty (404–403). We do not know whether they were convicted, and Mantitheus was not tried for a capital offence. Hume would have done better to cite Lysias 13 (Against Agoratus) 56–62, where the orator tells us that Menestratus and Aristophanes of Cholleidai were executed for collaboration. variants for 297.30.  a difficulty not clear’d up . . . by antiquarians and his­ tor­ians] This sentence was omitted for the posthumous ETSS of 1777, an omission accepted in the critical text and thus emending the 1772 copy-text. The ‘difficulty’ that historians and antiquarians have not cleared up is how, despite the amnesty, some participants in the regime of the Thirty could have been tried and punished, as Lysias’s speeches indicate they were. The solution is that the amnesty of 403 did not extend to the Thirty themselves and others in their regime. In addition, for any Athenian, murder and wounding with one’s own hand were not amnestied (Rhodes, Commentary, 469). 297.30  Cæsar’s clemency] Caesar himself draws attention to his clemency many times in his Gallic War (e.g. 2.14–15) and in his Civil War (e.g. 1.23, his release of prisoners after his victory at Corfinium after crossing the Rubicon in 49 bc). After defeating the Pompeians at Pharsalus in 48, he is reported to have said, with a groan, ‘They would have it so’ (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Caesar’ 30, and Plutarch, Lives, ‘Caesar’ 46.2); and he famously released Brutus, who later as­sas­sin­ ated him. Cicero eulogizes Caesar’s clemency in the speech Pro Marcello 7.21, and praises Caesar to his face in Pro Rege Deitaro 3.8. Sallust contrasts the generosity of Caesar with the severity of Cato in War with Catiline 54. Suetonius gives many instances of his ‘moderation and clemency’ during the civil war (Lives of the Caesars, ‘Caesar’ 75). Some contemporaries were more sceptical, such as Caesar’s own follower Curio, who thought that Caesar’s clemency was merely policy (Cicero, Letters to Atticus (no. 195 = 10.4 traditional), 3: 120–1). n. 74  Appian, de bell. civ. lib. 2.] Appian, Civil Wars, bk. 2, § 100. The butchery occurred in the aftermath of the battle of Thapsus (46 bc) in the African campaign in the final stages of the war between Caesar and Pompey. Marcus Porcius Cato, great-grandson of Cato the censor, led the supporters of Pompey after the latter’s death and was in charge of their garrison at Utica, the port of Carthage, until Caesar captured it and ‘put to death all that he found of the three hundred.’ The three hundred had constituted the Pompeians’ council of war and were known as their ‘senate’ (Civil Wars, bk. 2, § 95). 298.1  that usurper] i.e. Caesar.

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298.2  by Hirtius’s law] Either as tribune in 48 or as praetor in 46, Caesar’s lieutenant, Aulus Hirtius, introduced a law known after him as the Lex Hirtia. The content of this law is not known. Hume’s contention that it debarred the followers of Pompey from holding public office after their defeat by Caesar in the decisive battle of Pharsalus in 48 seems to rest on an emendation of the text of Cicero, Philippics 13.16.32, to read dignitates (‘offices’). By this emendation the sentence reads: ‘Or do you not know that, by the law of Hirtius, no Pompeian holds offices?’ This emendation has not been adopted. 298.5  sycophants and informers] Since there was no public prosecutor at Athens, any citizen might initiate a public prosecution. ‘Sycophants’ were in­di­vid­ uals who made a practice of doing so, from a variety of motives (e.g. public spirit, rewards, blackmail, or ambition to kick-start a political career). It is disputed how useful their services may have been to the functioning of the democracy, but they undoubtedly acquired a bad reputation. Osborne, ‘Vexatious Litigation’, and Harvey, ‘Sykophant and Sykophancy’, present contrasting views of sycophants. Cf. ‘Balance of Trade’ 2. n. 75  Cæsar’s speech de bell. Catil.] Sallust, War with Catiline 51.29: The Thirty at Athens ‘began at first by putting to death without a trial the most wicked and generally hated citizens, whereat the people rejoiced greatly and declared that it was well done’. Caesar is citing precedents during the debate in 62 bc on how to punish the followers of Catiline. Xenophon and “Aristotle”, Athenian Constitution 35 (not known to Hume), speak of this rejoicing at the Thirty’s initial measures. Hume gives priority to Sallust (1st century bc) because only Sallust goes on to make the point about liberty: ‘Thus the nation was reduced to slavery and had to pay a heavy price for its foolish rejoicing’ (War with Catiline 51.30). n. 76.1  Orat. 24.] Lysias 25 (Defence against a Charge of Subverting the Democracy) 19: ‘If the Thirty had punished only these men [i.e., those who stole from public funds, bribe-takers, and sycophants], even you would have considered them good men; but in fact, when they thought fit to treat the Athenian people badly because of the offences of those people, you were indignant; for you considered it monstrous that the whole city should be treated as complicit in the crimes of a few.’ This passage might lie behind the argument that Sallust puts in the mouth of Caesar (n. 75 above), and Hume himself seems to have conflated the two. n. 76.1  And in orat. 29.] Lysias 30 (Against Nicomachus) 13: ‘Although among those who perished under the oligarchy [i.e. the Thirty] there were perhaps one or two villains, yet it was on account of even such sufferers that you were incensed against the Thirty, as having put them to death, not for their crimes, but for f­ actional motives [stasis].’ 298.10–14  The utmost energy . . . communicate] Hume refers to Thucydides’s reflections in History 3.82–83 (or 3.82–84, including a chapter now deemed spurious) on the evils of civil war (stasis), which Hume refers to as ‘the disorders that

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arose from faction’. In this passage Thucydides’s style reaches a complexity similar to that found in the speeches in his work, which readers ancient and modern have found difficult. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the literary critic of the 1st century bc, describes it as ‘tortuous and difficult to follow, containing combinations of figures that verge upon solecism’ (‘Thucydides’ 29). The word stasis covers the whole range of civil strife or political conflict from peaceful agitation to outright civil war between the ‘few’ and the ‘many’ (cf. Austin, in Cambridge Ancient History, 6: 528–35). After describing a bloody incident of civil butchery at Corcyra occurring in 427 in the early stages of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides comments, ‘So savage was the progress of stasis, and it seemed all the more so because this was one of the earli­ est incidents, since later practically the whole of the Greek world was convulsed, as violent conflict broke out in every city as popular leaders strove to bring the Athenians in to help them and oligarchs invited the Spartans.’ See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. stasis. 298.20  got the start of their antagonists] As of the 1772 ETSS this phrase replaced ‘prevented their antagonists’ (variants). See the Glossary, s.v. prevent/, -ing, -ed. n. 77  Lib. 3.] Thucydides, History 3.83.3. Hume translates the passage in his text, rather freely. His ‘by the sword and poinard’ is an elaboration of Thucydides’s cryptic expression ‘by action’ (i.e. by assassination). Omitted as of the 1770 ETSS was the following comparison of stasis in ancient Greece with the disorders in Ireland: ‘The country in Europe, wherein I have observ’d the factions to be most violent and party hatred the strongest, is Ireland. This goes so far as to cut off even the most common intercourse of civilities betwixt the protestants and catholics. Their cruel insurrections, and the severe revenges which they have taken of each other, are the causes of this mutual ill-will, which is the chief source of the disorder, poverty, and depopulation of that country. The Greek factions, I imagine, to have been inflam’d still to a higher degree of rage: The revolutions being commonly more frequent, and the maxims of assassination much more avow’d and acknowledg’d’ (variants). n. 78  Plutarch. de virt. & fort. Alex.] Plutarch, ‘On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander’ 2.5: ‘And Dionysius [II]’s father killed ten thousand or more citizens’ (Moralia 338b). Plutarch’s phrase, ‘a myriad or more’ probably means ‘countless’ (see the annotations for nn. 14.2 and 61). The figure is not found elsewhere and is generally rejected or not taken literally. Dionysius I, the father of Dionysius II, was tyrant (sole ruler) of Syracuse 405–367 bc. See the annotation for ¶ 108 at 309.7. n. 79  Diod. Sic. lib. 18, 19.] There is a great deal about Agathocles (derived from a hostile source) in Diodorus, Library, bks. 19 and 20. See esp. 19.6.4–8.6, 102.6–7, 107.4–5, 20.39.5–6, 63.6, 71–2, 89.4–5. We judge that Hume has cited the wrong books rather than that the error is a corruption. For Agathocles’s slaughters, see the pertinent annotations for n. 84.14–23. n. 80  Titi Livii, lib. 31, 33, 34.] Nabis, sole king (or tyrant, according to his enemies) of Sparta from 207 to 192 bc, attempted to modernize the state and to

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restore its power. The chief ancient sources (uniformly hostile) are Polybius, Histories 13.6–8 (sensational), 16.13, and Livy, whose account of Nabis, based on Polybius, is scattered across bks. 31–4 of his History (see 32.38–40, 34.22–43, esp. 31–2). Judgements on his cruelty are at Livy, History 33.44.8, 34.32.3, and ex­amples of his cruelty and treachery at 34.27.7–9. n. 81.1  Diod. Sic. lib. 14.] Diodorus, Library 14.4–5. Xenophon’s contemporary account in his history (Hellenica 2.3–4) gives the fullest narrative of the misdeeds of the Thirty, and there is much information in Lysias’s speeches. See the annotation for n. 71.2–3. Hume uses later writers who give numbers for those slain or exiled. The figures vary in our sources, with the majority giving 1,500 for the slain. But it is most unlikely that anyone was keeping a list or counting. We suspect that Hume took his figure of 1,200 by mistake from his next citation of Diodorus (15.58.3 in n. 84), which does refer to ‘more than 1,200 of the powerful men’ slaughtered in Argos. As for the number of fugitives, Diodorus says that ‘more than half of the Athenians took to flight’ (14.5.7), as Hume reports. Xenophon gives no statistics for the fugitives. n. 81.1–2  Isocrates . . . Areop.] Isocrates 7 (Areopagiticus) 67. The figure 5,000 refers to those who fled to the Piraeus, the port of Athens, and does not include those who fled elsewhere. The Areopagiticus was probably written c.354 bc, half a century after the events. As an example of the goodness of ‘democrats’, Isocrates strongly contrasts the wickedness of the Thirty with the mildness of the returning exiles. n. 81.2  Æschines contra Ctesiph.] Aeschines 3 (Against Ctesiphon) 235. This speech dates from 330, more than seventy years after the events. One of Hume’s memoranda refers to this passage: ‘The 30.Tyrants killd above 1500 Citizens untry’d’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515). n. 81.3  Seneca (de tranq. anim. cap. 5.)] Seneca, Moral Essay, ‘De tranquillitate animi’ 5.1. We can only guess at Seneca’s source. He was writing four and a half centuries after the event. 298.28  Argos, near the same time] It was in fact in 370 bc, thirty-five years later than the regime of the Thirty at Athens. Hume may have been misled by the chronological vagueness of Isocrates. Argos was a city-state in the north-eastern Peloponnese. If Athens and Sparta are considered the major states of mainland Greece, Argos would stand high among those of the second rank. n. 82  Diod. Sic. lib. 15.] Diodorus gives a narrative of the massacres at Argos and their causes in Library 15.57.3–58.4. He is believed to have derived his information from the 4th-century historian, Ephorus. Hume accepts the figure 1,200, which he found in Rhodoman’s Diodorus, 372. Other MSS of Diodorus give 1,000 or 1,600. As always (cf. annotation for n. 81.1 above), we should ask who was counting. Isocrates speaks as if this exceptional atrocity was habitual Argive behaviour, to fill

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in time when not fighting their enemies (5 (To Philip) 51–2). Xenophon omits it altogether from his history of these years. Lorenz Rhodoman’s Greek and Latin edition of Diodorus, first published in Hanau in 1604, was reissued with notes by various scholars in Amsterdam in 1745. n. 83  Diod. Sic. lib. 13.] The whole of Diodorus, Library 13.48 (i.e. 1–8), rapidly and dubiously, narrates the banishment of 1,000 nobles under the year 410. Diodorus also refers in the same passage to an earlier massacre of 1,500 nobles, which was presumably the appalling stasis of 427–5 bc described by Thucydides (History 3.69–81, 4.47–8). Hume does not here distinguish dates. n. 84.1  from Diodorus Siculus] Hume offers examples of ‘massacres’ from two periods, first from ‘the most shining age’ of Greece, then from the career of Agathocles. Diodorus of Sicily (mid-1st century bc) provided the only continuous narrative for both periods. The accuracy of his figures depends on the reliability of his sources, which cannot always be identified. Several of Hume’s examples are banishments, not massacres. Hume regularly omits Diodorus’s indications that ­figures are approximate. n. 84.2–3  banished from Sybaris . . . lib. 12. page 77. ex edit. Rhodomanni.] Telys, a popular leader, ‘persuaded the Sybarites to exile the five hundred wealthiest citizens and confiscate their estates’ (Diodorus, Library 12.9.2). Though no massacre, this act led to the war between Sybaris and Croton (511) in which Sybaris was destroyed (see the annotation for n. 111). This incident exceeds Hume’s chronological limits. Rather than passing in ‘the course of sixty years’, Hume’s examples span 143 years: 511–369/8 bc. Perhaps Hume was misled by the fact that Diodorus tells the story of Telys and the expulsion in a digression from his account of the founding of the city of Thurii, which he places in 446. From 446 to c.370 is rather closer to ‘sixty years’. For Rhodoman’s edition of Diodorus see the annotation for n. 82. n. 84.3–6  Of Chians . . . lib. 13. page 189 . . . . lib. 14. page 304] Diodorus, Library 13.65.4. Chios is a large island off the Aegean coast of modern Turkey. Diodorus records this event, not attested elsewhere, under the year 409/8 bc. This and the next three episodes come from the last years of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath. In the next reference (13.104.5–6), Hume’s ‘Ephesus’ is an error for Diodorus’s ‘Miletus’, no doubt occasioned by the mention of that city at the end of the immediately preceding sentence in Diodorus. Miletus (Hume’s Miletum in ‘Taxes’ 3) was a prosperous city on the Aegean coast of Turkey, some fifty miles south of Ephesus. There is a fuller account of this incident in Plutarch, Lives, ‘Lysander’ 8.1–3. In the case of Cyrene, Diodorus says, ‘Of the Cyrenaeans, five hundred of the most powerful citizens had recently been put to death, and the most distinguished among the survivors had been banished’ (Library 14.34.4). Hume reports the last phrase as ‘all the rest banished’. Cyrene was a Greek settlement in Libya on the coast of North Africa. Diodorus speaks of this event as ‘recent’ in the year 400/1 bc. Finally, some years after the war Diodorus says, ‘In Corinth certain men

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who favoured democracy . . . put to the sword one hundred and twenty of the citizens and drove five hundred into exile’ (14.86.1). Xenophon gives a much fuller (though hardly impartial) account, but no statistics (Hellenica 4.4.1–5), dating it to March 392 bc. n. 84.6  Phæbidas the Spartan . . . lib. 15. page 342.] Diodorus, Library 15.20.2: ‘Phoebidas, who . . . was leading an expeditionary force against Olynthos, seized the Cadmeia [the acropolis of Thebes]. When the Thebans, resenting this act, gathered under arms, he joined battle with them and after defeating them exiled three hundred of the most eminent Thebans.’ Thebes was the principal city of Boeotia, the region to the north-west of Attica. Xenophon gives a fuller and very different account (Hellenica 5.2.25–31) but agrees with Diodorus in giving the number of exiles as ‘about 300’. n. 84.9–14  at Phialæ, in Corinth, in Megara, in Phliasia . . . . lib. 15. page 357 . . . . lib. 15. page 373 . . . . p. 374] Hume mentions four of the five instances of civil strife (stasis) in the Peloponnese after Leuctra (371) that Diodorus gives in a rapid narrative at Library 15.40. Diodorus places them under the year 375/4 bc, but his introductory remarks (15.40.1) seem to present them as the consequence of the defeat of Sparta at Leuctra in 371 bc, and that is where Hume, like most modern historians, puts them. Isocrates 6 (Archidamus) 64–9 describes the same situation without naming the cities. At Phialae ‘the [oligarchic] exiles of Phialeia . . . fell unexpectedly upon the spectators in the theatre and killed many’ (Diodorus, Library 15.40.2). Phigaleia is a small town in the south-west of Arcadia (the mountainous district of the central Peloponnese). Diodorus uses the later spelling Phialeia, Rhodoman Latinizes it as Phialea, and Hume writes Phialae. In Corinth the democratic ‘exiles . . . attempted to return, but were surrounded, and, . . . fearful of the maltreatment their capture would entail, they slew one another’ (15.40.3). In Megara, ‘when some persons endeavoured to overturn the government and were overpowered by the people, many were slain and not a few driven into exile’ (15.40.4). Megara is immediately west of Athens. In the context this is most nat­ur­ al­ly taken as an oligarchic attack on a democratic regime. Hume omits a further incident in Sicyon from the same passage in Diodorus. He then accurately summarizes Diodorus’s account of the events in Phliasia. Phliasia is the territory of Phleious, a few miles south-west of Corinth. Diodorus seems to refer to the events of 369 bc described by Xenophon in Hellenica 7.2.5–9. A few chapters later (Library 15.59.2–3), Diodorus recounts an incident in Arcadia, as Hume reports it. In 370 its numerous small states, with Mantinea and Tegea taking the initiative, had combined to form the Arcadian Confederacy—another consequence of the defeat of the Spartans at Leuctra. It was from Tegea (some twenty-five miles north of Sparta) that the fourteen hundred fled. Pallantium lies a few miles to its west. There is a fuller but unsatisfactory account of these events in Xenophon, Hellenica 6.5.6–10. Finally, Hume reports the service of the banished from Argos and Thebes ‘as mercenaries in the Spartan army’ (Diodorus, Library 15.62.1). Further details are in

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Xenophon, Hellenica 6.5.11. Diodorus records the expedition as in 369/8 bc, Xenophon ­(correctly) as in 370. n. 84.14–15  the most remarkable of Agathocles’s cruelties] Born 361/0 bc, Agathocles was tyrant of Syracuse, the great Greek city on the east coast of Sicily from 316/15 and self-proclaimed king from 304 to 289/8. Diodorus’s narrative, our main source for his career, is largely based on Timaeus, whom Agathocles had banished, and therefore is heavily biased. Meister’s ‘Agathocles’ puts all the events mentioned by Hume into their context. n. 84.15–16  The people before his usurpation . . . lib. 19. page 655.] Diodorus, Library 19.4.3: ‘Many citizens of repute [at Syracuse] had been exiled along with the aristocratic régime [dynastai] on the ground that they had been members of the oligarchy of the Six Hundred noblest’. The page numbers in this and the following lemmata refer to Rhodoman’s edition of Diodorus (see the annotations for n. 82). Diodorus describes the banishment of oligarchs upon the re-establishment of democracy in Syracuse, with Agathocles’s support, in 322 bc, though Diodorus mentions it under 317 bc just before his account of Agathocles’s seizure of power in 316. Hume misreports Diodorus somewhat in saying that it was ‘six hundred nobles’ whom the Syracusans banished. n. 84.16–17  Afterwards that tyrant . . . id. page 657.] The printed texts of the essay incorrectly cited page 657 in Rhodoman’s edition as ‘p. 647’. Diodorus, Library 19.8.1–2, narrates the murders and banishments of oligarchs that ac­com­ pan­ied Agathocles’s seizure of power, with popular support, at Syracuse in 316 bc. n. 84.17  4000 people at Gela; id. page 741.] Diodorus, Library 19.107.4. This and the following three episodes occurred during the war between Agathocles and Carthage. The Carthaginians invaded Sicily in 311 bc, supported by the exiles whom Agathocles had banished. Gela, a major Greek city on the south-eastern coast, had remained neutral but was alleged to be sympathetic towards the invaders, who were encamped in force nearby. Agathocles captured the city, accused the inhabitants of treachery, and executed more than four thousand of them, an action that Diodorus tells us was regarded as ‘excessively cruel’ (§ 5). Diodorus devotes the whole of 19.107 to this incident. Agathocles then invaded North Africa and laid siege to the city of Carthage. n. 84.17–18  By Agathocles’s brother 8000 banished . . . lib. 20. page 757.] Diodorus, Library 20.15.3. While Agathocles was away in North Africa, he appointed his brother Antander as joint ruler in his absence. When the Carthaginian general Hamilcar besieged Syracuse and demanded its surrender, ‘those in charge’, whom Hume assumes included Antander, sent away, according to Diodorus, ‘not less’ than eight thousand of the people who opposed surrender. The figure has been said to be a ‘wild exaggeration’ (Meister, ‘Agathocles’, 401). n. 84.18–19  The inhabitants of Ægesta, to the number of 40,000, were killed . . . id. page 802.] Diodorus, Library 20.71.1: ‘Because he [Agathocles] was

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in need of money, he forced the well-to-do [citizens of Egesta] to deliver to him the greater part of their property, the city at that time having a male population of ten thousand.’ After taking their property, Agathocles massacred the citizens of Egesta, and Diodorus ends by saying, ‘The Egestaeans in one fatal day were all put to death, all but the children’—and these were sold into slavery (71.5). This event occurred in 307 after Agathocles’s final return to Sicily after his army had been defeated by the Carthaginians and the remnant of it abandoned by him in Africa. Egesta was a Hellenized native city in north-eastern Sicily, at that time allied to Agathocles. (Diodorus spells it Aigesta, which Hume Latinizes to Aegesta; Romans and native speakers called it Segesta.) Diodorus’s phrase ‘a ten-thousand-man city’ may refer to adult male citizens only, as in our translation. Hume, however, reports the number slaughtered as forty thousand. Perhaps he has multiplied by four so as to include the wives, young girls, and children mentioned by Diodorus, though the latter are said to have been sold, not killed (71.5). In doing so Hume would have followed Halley’s rule (see the annotation on women and children for ¶ 100 at 307.21). n. 84.20–1  All the relations, to wit, father, brother, children, grandfather, of his Libyan army, killed; id. page 803.] Diodorus, Library 20.72.1–5. At the same time as Agathocles was massacring the citizens of Egesta, his brother Antander at Syracuse massacred the relations of the soldiers whom Agathocles had abandoned in North Africa after the failure of his invasion (307). n. 84.21  He killed 7000 exiles after capitulation; id. page 816.] Diodorus, Library 20.89.5: ‘When they [the exiles] had received pledges of good faith and had come down from the hill-fort, Agathocles took their arms; and then, stationing his army about them, he shot them all down, their number being about seven thousand, as Timaeus says, but as some have written, about four thousand.’ The exiles were refugees from Syracuse and elsewhere, under the leadership of Deinocrates. The battle took place at Torgium in Sicily (whereabouts unknown), in 305 bc, shortly before Agathocles declared himself king. The figures are ‘undoubtedly a gross ex­ag­ ger­ation’ (Meister ‘Agathocles’, 404). Hume gives only the larger and more start­ ling figure. n. 84.21–2  Agathocles was a man of great sense and courage] In EPM, app. 4.19, Hume cites Polybius, Histories 12.15.5–8, for an appreciation of the ‘great talents’ of Agathocles; and at 15.35 Polybius reports Scipio’s judgement that Agathocles, like Dionysius I of Syracuse, was a statesman of ‘great sense and courage’. A famous account of Agathocles’s mix of courage and cruelty is in ch. 8 of Machiavelli’s Prince. For a survey of the widely differing modern assessments of Agathocles see Meister, ‘Agathocles’, 409–11. n. 84.22–3  is not to be suspected of wanton cruelty, contrary to the m ­ axims of his age] In the 1770 ETSS this clarification of the point replaced an earlier one added for the 1767 ETSS: ‘His violent tyranny, therefore, is a stronger proof of the manners of the age’ (variants).

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n. 85  Diod. Sic. lib. 18.] Diodorus, Library 18.8. Alexander’s Exiles’ Decree, ordering the Greek cities to accept the return of their exiles, was proclaimed by his son-in-law Nicanor at the Olympian Games of 324 bc. The difficulty of reintegrating them was a cause of the Lamian War (323–322), which broke out soon after Alexander’s death and was the final, unsuccessful attempt of the Greek cities to free themselves from Macedon. 299.10  says Isocrates to Philip] Isocrates 5 (To Philip) 96, written in 346 bc. Isocrates is proposing to Philip II of Macedon that he should form an army from the homeless exiles wandering around Greece in his time (the mid-4th century bc) in order to invade the Persian Empire. Cf. Fuks, ‘Isocrates’ in Social Conflict, 61–5. n. 86  Page 885. ex edit. Leunclav.] Hume paraphrases Xenophon, Symposium 4.30–2, a passage that is deliberately paradoxical. Hume’s ‘informer’ represents the Greek sykophantes, translated by the Loeb as ‘blackmailers’. On sycophants see the annotation for ¶ 65 at 298.5. ‘It was never allowed me to travel’ is a mistranslation, seemingly caused by the use of the word ‘licebat’ in the Latin translation in Leunclavius’s edition. The Greek means ‘it was not possible for me to travel or to get away from the city’ (i.e. because the city’s exactions had made me so poor). Charmides was an exceptionally handsome young man in Athens who was pros­ ecuted for his participation in the mutilation of the religious figures known as Herms in 415; hence, apparently, his impoverishment. The ‘impositions’ of which he complains are the ‘liturgies’, which were duties imposed by the state of Athens on its wealthiest citizens. See the annotation for n. 88.7. Wealthy men, unsurprisingly, chafed at these requirements and tended to minimize or conceal their wealth. n. 87  Orat. 29. in Nicom.] It is not easy to see which passage Hume has in mind. The speech ‘Against Nicomachus’ was provided by Lysias for the prosecution of Nicomachus, an official. Hume’s assertion is not specifically warranted by anything in the speech, though there are passages which speak of the Council’s accepting impeachments and confiscating property when the state was short of money (ch. 22) and, a little later, of having put many citizens to death for peculation (ch. 25). Perhaps Hume conflated these passages. On the Council at Athens see the annotations for ‘Remarkable Customs’, nn. 4.1 and 4.2. 300.11  an estate] i.e. his fortune, not his land. n. 88.7  orat. 20.] Hume summarizes Lysias 21 (Defence against a Charge of Taking Bribes) 1–5, leaving many Greek words untranslated (20.1–5 in Van der Heiden’s edition). The speaker, whose name is not known to us, begins by recounting his ‘liturgies’, or services, to the state of Athens (see the annotation for n. 86). At the date of this speech, the end of the 5th century bc, a drachma was a day’s wage for a manual labourer; 100 drachmas = 1 mina; 60 minas = 1 talent. We number the items for clarity. (1) A χορηγός (chore¯gos) was the producer of a tragic drama, who paid for the production, 30 minas. (2) ‘a chorus of men’ (as opposed to boys, not women), 20 minas. (3) εἰς πυρριχιστὰς (eis purrichistas), for pyrrhic dancers, 8 minas

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(the pyrrhic was a dance in armour). (4) ἀνδράσι χορηγῶν (andrasi chore¯go¯n), prod­ ucer of a male chorus at the Dionysia, the major competitive festival at Athens, 50 minas. (5) κυκλικῷ χορῷ (kukliko¯i choro¯i), responsibility and payment for a ‘circular’ or dithyrambic chorus in honour of Dionysus, 3 minas. (6) ‘Seven times trierarch’, i.e. seven times he commanded a warship (trireme) and was responsible for its maintenance and upkeep for a year (the state provided the ship and paid the crew). His total on this expenditure was 6 talents, a very large sum. (7) What Hume calls ‘Taxes’ are εἰσϕοραί (eisphorai), emergency payments raised from the wealthiest citizens. On one occasion Lysias’s client spent 30 minas, another time 40. (8) γυμνασιαρχῶν (gumnasiarcho¯n), i.e. he was responsible for athletic games in honour of Prometheus, 12 minas. (9) χορηγός παιδικῷ χορῷ (chore¯gos paidiko¯ choro¯), prod­ ucer for a chorus of boys, 15 minas. (10) κωμῳδοῖς χορηγῶν (ko¯mo¯dois chore¯go¯n), producer of a comic drama, 18 minas. (11) πυρριχισταῖς ἀγενείοις (purrichistais ageneiois), for young (literally, ‘beardless’) pyrrhic dancers (see item 3 above) 7 minas. (12) τριήρει ἁμιλλώμενος (trie¯rei hamillo¯menos), a trireme-race held in honour of Poseidon, 15 minas. (13) ἀρχιθέωρος (architheo¯ros), in charge of sacred embassies and processions (he specifically mentions the Errhephoria, the procession of girls at the annual festival of Athena), 30 minas. The total is 10 talents, 38 minas, and all within eight or nine years (411/0–403/2). The speaker, whose family seem to have collaborated with the Thirty Tyrants, ‘began a systematic course of buying himself back into public confidence’ with ‘a liturgical career of an intensity and expensiveness unparalleled in Athenian history’ (Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 593–4). For the Thirty Tyrants see the annotation for n. 71.2–3. n. 88.9–10  orat. 24. de pop. statu.] Lysias 25 (Defence against a Charge of Subverting the Democracy) 12–13. In this example of an Athenian’s spending more on public services than was legally required, the speaker, name unknown, provides a reason identical to that of Mantitheus in Lysias 16.17 as insurance against legal action. n. 88.11  orat. 25. de prob. Evandri.] ‘Our estate during the peace amounted to eighty talents, and the whole of it was spent in the war on the deliverance of the city’, says the speaker of Lysias 26 (On the Scrutiny of Evandros) 22, supporting the prosecutor of Evander. ‘During the peace’ must mean before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 bc. Eighty talents is indeed an immense sum, but ‘The figure is credible enough and would place his family high in the propertied elite of  late 5th-century Athens’ (Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 592, 419 [no. 11370]). n. 88.13  orat. 30. contra Phil.] a seeming reference to Lysias 31 (Against Philon) 29: ‘Who would not reasonably reproach you for honoring the metics in a manner worthy of the city for coming to the city’s aid beyond the call of duty, but not punishing this man [Philo] for failing the city contrary to his duty, by refusing him the present honor if in no other way?’ Philo is argued to be such a delinquent since, though an Athenian citizen, he preferred to live abroad as a metic at Oropus rather

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than share the struggle of his fellow citizens at Athens (9–10) which resulted in the restoration of the democracy in 403 bc. Hume’s comment seems to assume, incorrectly, that Philo was a metic at Athens. n. 88.14  de corona] In 330 bc, Aeschines attacked his rival Demosthenes in­dir­ ect­ ly by impeaching Ctesiphon on the grounds that his proposal to award Demosthenes an honorific golden crown was illegal and undeserved (Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon). After a speech by Ctesiphon, Demosthenes, as Ctesiphon’s advocate, launched into his masterpiece, De corona (On the Crown, or In Defence of Ctesiphon). In it he reviews the policies he himself had advocated and the actions he had taken in his career, contrasting them with the upbringing and behaviour of Aeschines. In § 267 he calls on the clerk of the court to recite all the liturgies that he had performed. In § 99 he had mentioned his splendid trierarchy of 366 bc, and he has already expatiated on his liturgic services in § 257. n. 88.14–15  and how he exaggerates Midias’s stinginess in this particular] Demosthenes 21 (Against Meidias) 154–67. Meidias, a rich Athenian, slapped Demosthenes in the face in 348 bc. Demosthenes intended to prosecute him for assault and wrote a vigorous speech for that purpose, but the dispute was settled out of court and the speech was never delivered. Sections 154–67 attack Meidias for spending his allegedly great wealth on himself and not on public service, contrasting his deplorable record in this respect with Demosthenes’s own. Hume is quite right to call it an exaggeration (Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 386–7). 300.12  raree-shows and figured dances] The competitive choruses and dances listed by Lysias’s client (see the annotation for n. 88.7) were part of festivals in ­honour of the gods, i.e. religious ceremonies. Dramatic performances (requiring choruses), both tragic and comic, also took place within a religious context. Johnson, Dictionary, s.v. rareeshow: ‘A show carried in a box’. In 1681 the broadside ballad, A Ra-ree Show, attributed to Stephen College in order to convict him of treason, depicted Charles II as carrying a raree-show to Oxford on his back (i.e. the ‘Oxford Parliament’). See State Poems, 2: 425–31, and cf. Hume, Hist. 6: 406–7. 300.13  the Greek tyrannies, which were altogether horrible] Cf. Hume’s remark to his nephew: ‘The ancient Republics were somewhat ferocious, and torn  [internally] by bloody Factions; but they were still much preferable to the Monarchies or [Aristocracies] which seem to have been quite intolerable’ (December 1775, Letters, 2: 306). (The conjectural reading ‘Aristocracies’ surely should be replaced with ‘Tyrannies’.) Hume presumably has in mind such ‘later’ tyrants as Dionysius I and Agathocles (4th century bc), whose cruelties he recounts in ¶¶ 67, 108, and nn. 78–9, 84. However, in the archaic Greek period of the 7th and 6th cen­ tur­ies bc, the word ‘tyrant’ did not necessarily denote the lawless and bloody government that Hume has in mind (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. tyranny). The rule of an archaic ‘tyrant’ such as Peisistratus of Athens (6th century bc) was remembered as mild and beneficial.

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300.14  the mixed monarchies] The typical form of government in the Greek city-states of the earlier archaic period consisted of king, council, and assembly with limited powers, which Hume terms ‘mixed monarchies’. This form continued at Sparta into the classical period, but most other cities, including Athens, dispensed with the kings and developed an oligarchical or democratic government. This is the process that Hume describes as the passage from ‘mixed monarchy’ to ‘republic’. n. 89  Panath.] Isocrates 12 (Panathenaicus) 125–6. The Panathenaicus, written in 342–39 bc when Isocrates was in his mid-nineties, presents an absurdly rosy picture of the Athens of the good old days. The kings of Athens are mythical figures of diverse origins, but the Athenians regarded them as historical figures in the remote past. Isocrates overlooks Sparta, where the kings survived so long as Sparta remained independent. The Spartan king-list is given in Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Sparta. 300.21  The universal preference given to the elder by modern laws] a point about the feudal principle of primogeniture that Hume would repeat in Hist. 1: 407–8 (ad 1199). Montesquieu’s Usbek had argued that primogeniture inhibits population growth (Lettres Persanes 119), as had Wallace (Dissertation, 92–3). 301.2  Heripidas] a personal friend and political ally of King Agesilaos II of Sparta. Some manuscripts of the passage in Diodorus spell the name Herippidas, which etymology as well as references to him elsewhere show to be correct. Herippidas was not personally involved in the Heracleot stasis. On the other hand, the Spartans notoriously supported oligarchies throughout Greece in the 5th and 4th centuries bc (see Thucydides, History 1.19.1, 3.82.1: in stasis, oligarchic leaders called in the Spartans). It is thus an easy conjecture that Herippidas’s sympathies lay with pro-Spartan oligarchs in Heraclea and that the men he executed were their  opponents. Cartledge quotes from this passage of Hume in his account of Herripidas’s action (Agesilaos, 288–9). n. 90  Diod. Sic. lib. 14.] Hume condenses Diodorus, Library 14.38.4, which dates the event at Heraclea to 399 bc. Hume has already mentioned Sparta’s foundation of a colony called Heraclea in central Greece in 426 bc (¶ 51 and n. 61). It suffered a seqence of miseries in its early years, both from its neighbours and from its Spartan governors. 301.8–9  the commonwealths of Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul] In his account of the violence of factional conflict in Greece, beginning at ¶ 63, Hume’s many instances have come largely from the 5th and 4th centuries, ‘the most shining age’ of Greece (n. 84). All other peoples were ‘denominated barbarous’ by the Greeks, i.e. barbaroi, literally ‘non-Greek-speaking’, but also said to evince inferior moral traits (see the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 22 at 168.17 and Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. barbarian). Dionysius offers a way to explain the apparent exception of early Rome, i.e. that the early Romans were of Grecian extraction. Less fortunate were such peoples or communities (‘commonwealths’) in Italy at this time

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as the Sabines, Latins, Aequi, Volsci, Umbrians, Campanians, and Samnites. All these, together with the various indigenous peoples of North Africa, Spain, and Gaul, would populate what Hume calls ‘the barbarous republics’. For Hume’s use of the term ‘commonwealth’, cf. ¶ 45 and ‘Rise and Progress’ 16–21. 301.14  till the murder of the Gracchi] an assessment that Hume could have found in Dionysius, Roman Antiquities 2.11.2–3, and Appian, Civil Wars, bk. 1, §§ 1–2. n. 91  Lib. 1.] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.89.1–2. Dionysius, a Greek himself, here summarizes the argument of his first book that Rome was originally a Greek city. His insistence on the Greek origins of Rome conflicts with the official story, as presented by Livy (History 1.1–8) and immortalized in Virgil’s Aeneid. In that story Aeneas, a refugee from Troy and therefore neither Greek nor Achaean, founded Rome’s first settlement at Lavinium, a few miles from Rome. Aeneas’s successors reigned at Alba Longa. The last successor was father of Romulus, who founded a new settlement a few miles away at the present site of Rome. To increase the population, Romulus invited refugees to come and live in his new town. Livy represents these men as a disreputable mob (1.8.4–6). 301.21–3  Appian’s history of their civil wars . . . massacres, proscriptions, and forfeitures] Hume’s words seem to echo Appian, Civil Wars, bk. 1, § 2, wherein one finds that as dissensions grew in the period of the civil wars (in the 1st century bc), the contending parties ‘assailed [Rome] like an enemy’s capital, and ruthless and indiscriminate massacres of citizens were perpetrated. Some were proscribed, ­others banished, property was confiscated’. 301.25–6  provoking coolness and indifference . . . in many of the Greek historians] Appian’s condemnations are explicit and passionate. Thucydides is notable for his detachment and neutral portrayal of power politics, perhaps especially in the ‘Melian dialogue’ (History 5.84-116). But he is shocked by the stasis at Corcyra, which he described as ‘an extreme of cruelty’ (3.82.1), and clearly moved by the ‘terrible calamity’ suffered by Mykalessos when its inhabitants were the ­victims of a bloodthirsty band of Thracians (7.29). The pathos and sympathy of his account of the final defeat of the Athenian troops in Sicily is unmistakable (7.78–87). n. 92.1–2  The authorities . . . historians, orators, and philosophers, whose testimony is unquestioned.] This statement should be read in light of what Hume says in n. 115 about the carelessness of ancient historians and the authority of sources contemporary with events. See the annotation for n. 115.5–6. n. 92.8  Gulliver’s travels] an inaccurate quotation from pt. 3, ch. 6, of Swift’s satire. This passage appeared first in a 1735 edition of the book. Hume’s truncation of the last sentence alters the reference of ‘those persons’ from intriguing ministers to their tools. From the full passage it would have been more discernible to contemporaries that Swift alluded to the events surrounding Walpole’s scaremongering

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prosecution of the bishop of Rochester, Francis Atterbury, who was involved in a plot to supplant George I with the Old Pretender. Since most of the incriminating documents were burnt and the conspirators had made use of fictitious names, prosecution was impeded for lack of evidence. Atterbury was imprisoned in the Tower of London, attainted for high treason in May 1723, deprived of his offices, and exiled, upon which he entered the service of the Old Pretender. In implying that Swift’s account of Tribnia might rather suit ancient Athens, Hume is alluding to their ‘sycophants and informers’, as he puts it in ¶ 65 (on which see the annotation at 298.5). n. 92.13  by a bill of attainder] a legislative act and thereby unconstrained by the burdens of proof in a court of law. Such acts would be prohibited in the American Constitution (1, § 9). As Hume says in ‘Remarkable Customs’ 8, they had been forbidden in ancient Athens. See the annotation for ‘Remarkable Customs’, n. 9. Atterbury faced a bill of pains and penalties (9 George I, c. 17). A difference between this sort of bill and the attainder of Bolingbroke in 1715 is that the penalty of death is not demanded. Whether a bill of pains and penalties is a kind of attainder and thus unconstitutional has been an issue in American law, but those debating over Atterbury’s bill seem to have had no doubt that it was a kind of attainder. 302.3  All capital punishments were abolished] ‘In the late republic . . .  ­exsilium was institutionalized as, in effect, a substitute for the death penalty. The magistrates were required to allow a condemned person time to escape before a capital sentence was executed’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. exile). The exile had no legal protection and could not return, on penalty of death. A famous case that Hume knew well (see ‘Civil Liberty’ 11) is that of Milo, who was prosecuted by Cicero for Clodius’s murder in 52 bc and went into exile at Marseilles before the end of the trial. See also the annotation for ‘Remarkable Customs’ 13 at 277.21–2. 302.8  Had Brutus himself prevailed] Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar, were in fact defeated by Octavian and Antony, the leading members of the ‘second triumvirate’, at the battle of Philippi in 42 bc. Brutus captured Antony’s brother, Gaius (or Caius), in March 43, but hesitated for some months to kill him, despite Cicero’s importunities. But then, according to Plutarch, the triumvirs sentenced to death two hundred men, including Cicero, prompting Brutus to order Gaius Antonius’s execution as vengeance (Lives, ‘Brutus’ 27–8). 302.13  Did not Cicero] As consul in 63 bc, Cicero had the accomplices of Catiline executed after they had been arrested for involvement in Catiline’s conspiracy to seize the government. Cicero obtained authorization to execute them from a majority of the senate, which was dominated by the Optimate party (‘all the wise and virtuous’), but did not put them to a formal trial. Afterwards he was severely criticized by the Popular party, especially by Clodius, for putting citizens to death without a trial and was sent into exile himself, though the banishment was rescinded within a year.

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302.22  pass their sacred boundaries] Until the 1754 ETSS the phrase was ‘use  freedom with their sacred regulations and prescriptions’ (variants). It was understood that ‘excessive severity in the laws’ in Britain led juries to make free with the law and fashion verdicts so as to spare defendants disproportionate punishment. Blackstone connected the practice to there being at least 160 capital crimes (Commentaries, 4: 18–19), with a ‘vast increase’ occurring in 1723 with the Black Act (4: 144, 208, 244–5, 435). 302.29–32  Solon’s laws . . . till those laws were repealed] Plutarch says that, ‘wishing to leave all the magistracies in the hands of the well-to-do, as they were, but to give the common people a share in the rest of the government’, Solon created three classes based on the value of their property (Hume’s ‘particular census’) and confined the magistracies to these. ‘All the rest [of the citizens] were called Thetes, they were not allowed to hold any office, but took part in the administration only as members of the assembly and as jurors’ (Lives, ‘Solon’ 18.1–2). Solon’s reforms took place in 594/3 bc. The highest magistracy of all, the archonship, was restricted by Solon to the two highest classes. Over a hundred years later, and fifty years after the Reforms of Cleisthenes initiated democracy in Athens (508/7), the third class became eligible for this office in 457/6 (“Aristotle”, Athenian Constitution 26.2). The lowest class, the thetes, still remained formally excluded, but by the 4th century bc this rule was ignored in practice, though there is no evidence of a formal repeal. Meanwhile, however, the ten-man Board of Generals had replaced the archons as the most powerful board of magistrates, and there were no formal property or ‘census’ restrictions on eligibility to that body or to most of the numerous other bodies by which the Athenian democracy was administered. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, 453, s.v. democracy, Athenian; also s.v. Athens and s.v. thetes. n. 93  Plutarch. in vita Solon.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Solon’ 18.1–2. We would turn first to “Aristotle”, Athenian Constitution 5–12, for information about Solon, but the document containing the treatise was not discovered until 1891. Plutarch, writing some seven centuries after the event, drew his information from a wide variety of sources, of whom he names some twenty. 302.32  Antipater] As soon as the Athenians heard that Alexander was dead (323 bc), they led a coalition of Greek states against their Macedonian overlords in what is known as the Lamian War (323–322). Antipater, the Macedonian commander who defeated them, imposed the abolition of democracy at Athens among his terms in 322 and installed a Macedonian garrison. n. 94  Diod. Sic. lib. 18.] Antipater ‘dealt humanely with them [the Athenians] . . . but he changed the government from a democracy, ordering that membership of the governing body should depend on a census of wealth, and that those possessing more than two thousand drachmas should be in control of the government and of the vote’ (Diodorus, Library 18.18.4). Diodorus’s narrative of subsequent events follows in the annotations on nn. 95 and 96 below.

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302.34  would to us appear sufficiently democratical] Greek democracies differed from modern in that decisions were taken directly by citizen assemblies rather than representatives in a parliament. In a full democracy such as that of Athens, all the adult male citizens were entitled to attend, speak, and vote. With few exceptions they were entitled to stand for election to any of the magistracies. Antipater’s reform, according to Diodorus (Library 18.18.4–5), imposed a property barrier on this entitlement allowing only about nine thousand of Athens’ citizens the right to attend the assembly, thus disenfranchising over a half of the twenty-one thousand citizens. (For this number see the annotations for n. 138 and ¶ 112 at 310.31–2.) Hume’s own judgement that this is ‘sufficiently democratical’ is based  not so much on the numbers entitled to participate as on the property ­qualification of 2,000 drachmas, which he estimates as £60 sterling. Apparently he bases his calculation on Arbuthnot, Tables (plate 21), a work he uses on a number of occasions (see the annotation to ‘Balance of  Trade’, nn. 11–13). For Hume’s views on property qualifications see the annotation for ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 8 at 365.6–7. n. 95  Id. ibid.] Diodorus, Library 18.18.4–5: Antipater ‘removed from the body of citizens all who possessed less than this amount [i.e. 2,000 drachmas] on the ground that they were turbulent and warmongers, offering to those who wished it a place for settlement in Thrace. These men, more than twenty-two thousand in number, were removed from their fatherland; but those who possessed the stated qualification, being about nine thousand, were designated as masters of both the city and the territory’, i.e. of Athens and Attica. The MSS of Diodorus give the figure as 22,000 (2 myriads and 2 thousand). Most editors emend this to 12,000 (1  myriad and 2 thousand), thereby bringing Diodorus into agreement with Plutarch, Lives, ‘Phocion’ 28.4. Hume gives Diodorus’s figures in the fragment on the back of the letter mentioned in the head-note but in the published text simply states the proportion (‘two-thirds’), no doubt because that was all that was required for his argument, though he may have been aware of the textual problem. n. 96  Id. ibid.] Diodorus, Library 18.74.3: ‘Peace was made on the following terms: the Athenians were . . . to be friends and allies of Cassander . . . the government was to be in the hands of those possessing at least ten minae [1,000 drachmas]; and what ever single Athenian citizen Cassander should designate was to be overseer of the city. Demetrius of Phalerum was chosen.’ A similar account of these events is given in Strabo, Geography 9.1.20. In Strabo’s view the government of Demetrius was a democracy, but the Athenians had such a hatred for anything that  seemed to them to be oligarchical that when, after ten years of rule, he was expelled from the city, they allegedly melted down his statues and turned them into chamber pots. 303.2  oligarchical tyranny] It is because of the position of Demetrius, which Hume ignores, that Plutarch describes it as ‘nominally an oligarchic constitution, but in fact a monarchical one’ (Lives, ‘Demetrius’ 10.2).

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n. 97  Titi Livii, lib. 1. cap. 43.] According to tradition Servius Tullius was the sixth king of Rome, reigning 578–535 bc. He was credited with elaborate constitutional reforms, of which Livy gives details (History 1.43). Briefly, Servius was said to have divided the Roman citizens into 5 classes, which were subdivided unequally into 170 centuries, plus 18 centuries of equites (knights). The assembly based on this structure, the comitia centuriata, voted in order of precedence (i.e. wealth): first the equites, then the 80 centuries of the first class, and so on. When a majority was reached, voting stopped. Simple arithmetic shows that the views of the wealthy would always prevail, thus ‘fixing the power in proportion to the property’, as Hume puts it. This assembly enacted laws, voted on war and peace, and elected the senior magistrates. These arrangements are not now attributed to Servius, but to a process of reform that occurred a century or so later. (See Hume’s analysis in ‘Remarkable Customs’ 10–13 with their annotations and Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Tullius, Servius.) 303.5–6  the Roman people could never be brought quietly to submit] No doubt Hume is thinking of the ‘struggle of the orders’ that dominated Roman in­tern­al politics throughout the 5th and 4th centuries bc (Livy, History 2–5). 303.9  not one republic in Europe] This sentence and the next in this paragraph were added for the 1777 ETSS (variants). In 8 December 1775, Hume wrote to his nephew, ‘[A]ll the Republics in Europe, without Exception, are so well governd, that one is at a Loss to which we shoud give the Preference’ (Letters, 2: 306). Neglecting to mention San Marino, Postlethwayt listed the modern republics as ‘Venice, the United Netherlands, Swisserland, the Grisons [not then a Swiss canton], Genoa, Lucca, and the small republics of Geneva and Ragusa’ (Universal Dictionary of Trade, 1 (1751): 738, s.v. Europe). The republic of Ragusa was a tributary of the Ottoman Empire on the coast of Dalmatia. Stanyan saw Switzerland in contrast with the ‘well temper’d Monarchy’ of Britain (Account, 100), but in Cato’s Letters 37 Thomas Gordon asserted that Britain’s constitution was tantamount to a republic (15 July 1721). Hume himself, in the peculiar context of ‘Rise and Progress’ 31, places England with the Swiss, Venetian, and Dutch republics. 303.11–12  Marseilles, Rhodes, or the most celebrated in antiquity] For Marseilles (Massalia) and Rhodes, see the annotations respectively for n. 255.2–3 and ‘Balance of Power’ 9 at 254.18. 303.16  The only garb of the ancients] Cf. Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. dress: ‘most classical garments belonged either to the category of mantles and cloaks that were “thrown around” and for which the general terms were perible¯ma and amictus, or to those items, including tunics, that were “entered into”, endyma and indumentum: the former often served at night as blankets.’ 303.18–19  Tyre . . . the greatest commerce] Though Tyre was still a commercial city, her greatest days were over by the 4th century bc, when she was a provincial city within the Persian Empire.

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n. 98.1–2  Lib. 2 . . . . Diodorus Siculus, lib. 17.] Hume accurately paraphrases Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 2.24.4, 5, and Diodorus, Library 17.46.4, on the lengthy siege of the city by Alexander’s Macedonian troops in 332 bc. But the stat­ is­tics are unreliable and complicated by the account given by Quintus Curtius, ignored here by Hume. In a note on the passage of Arrian, the Loeb editor Brunt suggests that thirty thousand is ‘a conventional figure’ for the number sold into slavery after the sack of a city (Cf. Brunt, Italian Manpower, 51 n. 6). 303.21–2  Athens is commonly supposed to have been a trading city] Hume may have in mind such a passage as Xenophon, Ways and Means 3.1–3: ‘I shall now say something of the unrivalled amenities and advantages of our city as a commercial centre. In the first place she surely possesses the finest and safest accommodation for shipping, since vessels can anchor here and ride safe at their moorings in spite of bad weather. Moreover, at most other ports merchants are compelled to ship a return cargo, because the local currency has no circulation in other states; but at Athens they have the opportunity of exchanging their cargo and exporting very many classes of goods that are in demand, or, if they do not want to ship a return cargo of goods, it is sound business to export silver; for, wherever they sell it, they are sure to make a profit on the capital invested.’ For a summary statement see Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1536, 2nd column, s.v. trade, Greek. But however extensive trade was in Athens, it was a matter of ‘private initiative. . . . As a rule . . . Greek states did not maintain merchant fleets or a trading policy’ (Möller, ‘Classical Greece’, 370). 303.22–3  Median war] the Persian invasions of Greece in 490 and 480/79, now called the Persian Wars. n. 99  Lib. 5.] Herodotus, Persian Wars 5.97.2: ‘It seems that it is easier to deceive many people than one, if he [Aristagoras] could not deceive one single man, Cleomenes the Spartan, but he could do so to thirty thousand [three myriads] Athenians.’ Aristagoras was seeking military aid for the Ionian revolt from Persia in 499/8 bc. He had just visited Sparta, where his appeal had been refused by King Cleomenes, whereas democratic Athens had promised to send twenty ships. For Herodotus’s (light-hearted) anecdote to make sense, the figure thirty thousand should refer only to adult male citizens sitting in the assembly. Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘Herodotus says there were 30.000 Athenians before the Median War. Lib. 5.’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 517). n. 100  Ibid. 8.] Herodotus, Persian Wars 8.132.3: ‘The Greeks brought them [some Ionian refugees] as far as Delos, and that not readily; for they feared all that lay beyond, having no knowledge of those parts, and thinking that armed men [i.e. their Persian enemies] were everywhere; and they supposed that Samos was as far away as the Pillars of Heracles.’ The citation in all the editions to ibidem 5 instead of 8 (see the variants) is a compositor’s error since, had Hume meant book 5 of

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Herodotus, he would have written ‘Id. ibid.’, as with the Diodorus references in nn. 95–6. Herodotus recounts this event in the aftermath of the battle of Salamis (480/79 bc). Delos is a mid-Aegean island, and Samos a large island off the coast of modern Turkey. Herodotus’s comment is not an accurate reflection of Greek perceptions. There had been numerous contacts between the states of Greece and of Asia Minor in the previous century and earlier. In particular the Athenians had sailed there in 498 and destroyed Miletus. The refugees were planning a second Ionian revolt (8.132.1), and it is hardly surprising that their Greek naval escort was reluctant to become implicated. 303.26  pillars of Hercules] i.e. the Straits of Gibraltar. 303.27  Great interest of money] For the converse, cf. ‘Interest’ 1: ‘Nothing is esteemed a more certain sign of the flourishing condition of any nation than the lowness of interest.’ Also ‘Interest’ 6, 13–14. On rates of interest at Rome, see the annotations for ‘Interest’, variants for 230.13 n, and nn. 1 and 2. n. 101  Orat. 33. advers. Diagit.] Lysias 32 (Against Diogeiton) 25: Diogeiton ‘dispatched to the Adriatic a cargo of two talents’ value, and told their mother, when it set sail, that it was at the risk of the children; when it went safely through and the value was doubled, he declared that the venture was his.’ ‘Diagit.’ is the spelling in the edition of Vander-Heiden, and the speech number is 33. Diogeiton, the uncle and guardian of Diodotus’s children, had used their money, which he held in trust, to make a maritime loan (Reed, Maritime Traders, 120–1). ‘To pay for a cargo, merchant or shipowner borrowed money for the duration of the voyage. Loan and interest were paid out of sale of the cargo only on condition that the ship arrived safely at its destination; loss was otherwise borne by the lender. High risks justified high interest’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. maritime loans). 303.31  extraordinary profit] Lysias’s client, it is true, does not comment on this profit, but commentators on the speech point out that it is exceptionally high. It would of course be in the speaker’s interest to exaggerate the figure (see the annotation for n. 101). He says that it would be tedious to give full details (§ 26). We do not know what commodity he was trading in. The voyage to the Adriatic was a no­tori­ ously dangerous route. n. 102  Contra Aphob. page 25. ex edit. Aldi.] Demosthenes 27 (Against Aphobus 1) 58. In this speech Demosthenes claims he was defrauded by his guardians, or ‘tutors’. A drachma on each mina lent (i.e. 12 per cent) was, as Hume says, the standard rate of interest in 4th-century Athens. Three and a half talents lent at that rate for six years (12 × 6 = 72 per cent = approx. 2½ talents) does add up to 6 talents plus. The full reference to the Aldine edition is part 1, p. 25 (on the Aldine edition see the annotation for n. 22). On the arithmetic of Demosthenes’s finances and his guardians’ fraud, see Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 126–35. 304.2  yearly profit] Hume has added ‘yearly’, and all modern commentators make the same assumption.

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n. 103  Id. page 19.] Demosthenes 27 (Against Aphobus 1) 9: ‘My father left two workshops, both doing a large business. One consisted of sword-makers . . . . The other was a couch-maker’s workshop, employing 20 slaves, given to my father as security for a debt of 40 minas. These brought him in a net income of 12 minas.’ This is part of the rather lengthy inventory referred to in n. 26, to which Hume returns in nn. 104–5, 153–4, 160. Demosthenes repeats these figures in § 24 of the speech, and again in § 29. His guardians, he says, kept the profits themselves for ten years, and the slaves have vanished. It is not clear how Demosthenes arrives at the figure of 12 minas’ income. Hume seems to assume that the slaves were worth 40 minas, but the passage says only that they were surety for a debt of 40 minas. 304.2–3  The most moderate interest at Athens] Twelve per cent was the ­regular rate in 4th-century Athens (Demosthenes 27 (Against Aphobus 1) 23, 35; “Aristotle”, Athenian Constitution 52; and see Millett, Lending, 103–8). Loans between friends, however, were free of interest. n. 104  Id. ibid.] Demosthenes 27 (Against Aphobus 1) 10: ‘My father left capital . . .  amounting to four talents and five thousand drachmae, and the proceeds amounting to 50 minas each year’; i.e. nearly 5 talents, with nearly 1 talent interest, or approximately 20 per cent. This is the sole example which Hume gives of an interest higher than 12 per cent, but we have evidence of 16 per cent per annum (Demosthenes 53 (Against Nicostratus) 13); 16.75 per cent (Demosthenes 34 (Against Phormio) 23–4); 18 per cent (Aeschines 1 (Against Timarchus) 107); 33.33 per cent (frag. 23 in the  Loeb edition of Isaeus). All these are allegations in court, not documentary evidence, but they must at least have been plausible. n. 105  Id. ibid.] Demosthenes 27 (Against Aphobus 1) 9: ‘In money my father left about a talent, loaned at the rate of a drachma a month, the interest on which amounted to more than seven minas a year’ (yet again from Demosthenes’s account of his father’s property, as in nn. 101–4). He means a drachma per mina per month = 12 drachmas per mina per annum; 100 drachmas = 1 mina, thus 12 drachmas per 100, or 12 per cent. Total: 60 minas = 1 talent, 12 × 60 = 720 drachmas = 7.2 minas. n. 105  Æschines contra Ctesiph.] Aeschines 3 (Against Ctesiphon) 104: ‘The people of Oreus paid Demosthenes interest on the fruit of his bribery at the rate of a drachma a month on each mina.’ The arithmetic is exactly the same as in the passage from Demosthenes. Aeschines was the inveterate rival of Demosthenes. His speech against Ctesiphon (§§ 85–103) gives a narrative of the events of the 340s, including this loan. Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘Demosthenes got a Drahma [sic] a Month for a Mina; 12 per cent. Αισχiνες [sic], περι ςτεϕ [Aischines, peri steph, an alternative title for Aeschines 3]’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515). 304.3–4  paid monthly] Payment by the month, as well as calculation by the month, appears to have been normal at Athens. See Aristophanes, Clouds 16–18,

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746–56. Also Theophrastus, Characters 10.2: ‘a penny-pincher is the sort of man who requires payment of half an obol in the middle of the month.’ n. 106  Epist. ad Attic. lib. 4. epist. 15.] ‘Bribery is running riot. “Let this be a sign unto you”: interest went up on the Ides of July from one ⅓ to ⅔ per cent. [per month]’ (Cicero, Letters to Atticus (no. 90 = 4.15 traditional), 2: 6–7). Cicero refers to the election of the consuls for the year 53, a particularly long-delayed and violent election in a succession of corrupt elections in these years. ‘Let this be a sign unto you’ translates a quotation from Homer. The rates in question do not appear to be ‘high interest’, as Hume claims. They are expressed in normal Roman manner as  per cent per month and amount to 4 per cent and 8 per cent per annum, ­respectively. However, before the 1777 ETSS the phrase ‘high interest’ in ¶ 84 read ‘exorbitant interest of 34 per cent.’ (variants for 304.4). In all editions prior to 1777 the citation in n. 106 was mistakenly to Letters to Atticus, no. 114 = 5.21 trad­ ition­al, which also contains crucial information about Roman rates of interest (esp. §§ 11, 13). 304.7  publicans] i.e. tax-farmers. In the republican period taxes were collected by companies of publicani, who paid the Roman government up front for the right to do so and recouped their costs and made profits by collecting the taxes. It was a lucrative business. Cicero called them ‘the flower of the Roman knights, the glory of  our country, the foundation of the state’ (Pro Plancio 9.23). Others were less complimentary. n. 107  Contra Verr. orat. 3.] Cicero, Verrine Orations, speech 2, bk. 3.165–9. The state had given Gaius Verres (governor of Sicily 73–71 bc) a mandate for payment from a society of publicans who had an account with the treasury. Cicero prosecuted him on his return to Rome in 70 bc. See the annotation for ‘Tragedy’ 8 at 176.8–9 on Verres’s butchery. 304.9–10  Interest . . . sunk at Rome, after the settlement of the empire] Probably Hume is thinking of Dio Cassius, Roman History 51.21.5, which he cites for the same fact in ‘Interest’ 16. After the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 bc, ‘so vast an amount of money circulated through all parts of the city [Rome], that . . .  loans for which the borrower had been glad to pay twelve per cent. could now be had for one third that rate.’ See, similarly, Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Augustus’ 41.1. n. 108  See Essay 4.] i.e. pt. 2, no. 4, namely, ‘Interest’, esp. ¶¶ 16–19. n. 109  Lib. 7.] Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘The Antient Navigation very de­fect­ ive, as is prov’d by this remarkable Instance. When the Lacedemonians fortify’d Deceleia, the Athenians were oblig’d to bring their Corn from Euboea by Sea turning the Promontory of Sunium, instead of bringing it on Land by Oropus. This they thought a great Inconvenience; tho the Sea Carriage was not above triple the Land, tho the Road was rough, & the Horses were then very scarce. Thuc. Lib. 7. Cap. 28. P.  509’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner,

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‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515–16). In 413 bc, in the later stages of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans established a fort in Athenian territory at Decelea in northern Attica. In History 7.27–8, Thucydides spells out the difficulties that this situation caused. Amongst other difficulties, ‘the bringing-in of provisions from Euboea, which had previously been managed more expeditiously by way of Oropos overland through Deceleia, now became expensive, the route being by sea round Sunium’ (7.28.1). Euboea is the island off the east coast of Attica. Hume writes ‘corn’ instead of ‘provisions’, not necessarily correctly, since Thucydides seems to be referring, among other things, to the livestock which the Athenians had shifted to Euboea in 431 to safeguard them from Peloponnesian incursions into Attica (2.14.1). Thucydides’s comment about expense has caused surprise since it is generally believed that transport by land in the ancient world was much more costly than by sea. The consensus on this matter, however, has been challenged on the grounds that earlier scholars were generalizing from exceptional circumstances (Adams, Land Transport, 3–16). Livestock do not need to be transported by land; they can be driven, and this was doubtless cheaper and easier than carrying them and their fodder aboard a small ancient Greek ship. n. 110  Lib. 13.] Diodorus, Library 13.81.4–5. Hume summarizes the passage in which Diodorus says that the wealth of the city of Agrigentum depended on the export of wine and olive oil to Carthage. Agrigentum was Greek Akragas, medieval and early modern Girgenti, modern Agrigento, on the south-western coast of Sicily, facing the coast of North Africa and only some 150 miles from it. It was the second most important city, after Syracuse, in Greek Sicily. Library 13.81–4 is an extended description of its wealth, taken from Timaeus (13.83.2). Wallace made much of Agrigentum (Dissertation, 64). n. 111  Lib. 12.] Diodorus, Library 12.9.1–2: ‘When the Greeks had founded Sybaris in Italy, the city had enjoyed a rapid growth because of the fertility of the land. For lying as the city did between two rivers, the Crathis and the Sybaris, from which it derived its name, its citizens, who cultivated an extensive and fruitful countryside, came to possess great riches. Indeed the city was so exceptionally popu­lous that it contained three hundred thousand [lit. thirty myriads] citizens.’ 304.27–8  fertile vallies, . . . an advantage so inconsiderable] Sybaris became legendary for wealth and luxury (see e.g. Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 12.15–21). Strabo says that it ruled over four neighbouring tribes, controlled twenty-five subject settlements, and marched against the men of Croton with an army of three hundred thousand, or thirty myriads (Geography 6.1.13). As Hume says, the basis of its wealth was agriculture. Coast, plain, and hinterland here are interconnected: ‘Lying in a broad and fertile coastal plain, at the estuary of the wide and ramifying fluvial system of the Crati-Coscile-Esaro, [Sybaris] occupies the natural outlet from which it is . . . possible to control this large geographical region’ (Lombardo, ‘Food and “frontier” ’, 266–9 at 266). On the population of Sybaris, see the annotations for ¶ 99 at 307.11–12 and nn. 116–17.

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304.33  the cruel and suspicious Dionysius] Dionysius I, for whom see the annotation for ¶ 108 at 309.7. 305.1  The persecutions of Philip II. and Louis XIV.] ‘It is observed . . . that our entertaining the Flemmings and the French refugees laid the foundation ­[respectively] of our [England’s] woollen and silk manufactures’, said Salmon (Considerations, 1). He refers to Protestant diasporas associated with the Spanish Inquisition under Philip from the 1560s into the next century and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis in 1685. ‘Flemmings’ here is a synecdoche for both Flemings and Walloons fleeing from the Spanish Netherlands to Protestant Europe, in greatest numbers to Holland. Marranos and Sephardic Jews established the silk manufactures in Amsterdam, only to be excluded from the craft in the 1650s (Bloom, Economic Activities, 35). 305.17–19  The most natural way . . . of encouraging husbandry, is . . . to excite other kinds of industry] Cf. ‘Commerce’ 9–12. n. 112  Oecon.] Xenophon, Oeconomicus 15.10. Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, written in the earlier 4th century bc, is a treatise on the management of a household and its estate. 305.26  as Columella hints] Columella (On Agriculture 1. praef. 21; 5.1.1) doubted whether one man could any longer understand all aspects of farming, and in his day ‘specialized works appeared’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. agricultural writers). 305.32  the use of bills of exchange] A credit instrument originating in the Middle Ages prompted by shortages and variability of specie, this ancestor of paper currency enabled commerce to take place over distances. See the annotation for ‘Balance of Trade’ 20 at 242.29–30. Forbes describes them as ‘short circular Letters, or Orders, given by Bankers and trading People, to furnish to others certain Sums of Money’ (Methodical Treatise, i). n. 113  See Part 1. Essay 12.] i.e. ‘Civil Liberty’ 11–12. Titled ‘Of Liberty and Despotism’ until the 1758 ETSS, this essay was designated 1.12 for the 1764, 1767, 1768, and 1777 editions of ETSS and 1.11 for the 1770 and 1772 editions. 306.15  there is no reasoning . . . against matter of fact] As indicated in ¶ 3, Hume next considers how rational conjecture can be checked against facts. This major section begins with such statistics as survive from ancient times, prefaced with four reasons why they may be unreliable (¶¶ 95–109). After assessing available numbers for Greece (¶¶ 110–33) and Rome (¶¶ 134–51), he proceeds from statistics to other questions of fact and concludes with a repudiation of Montesquieu’s thesis that empires subvert themselves and their populations (¶¶ 177–86). For an outline of the essay and an assessment of Hume’s use of classical sources, see Box and Silverthorne, ‘The “most curious & important of all Questions of Erudition” ’. 306.26  grounds of calculation, proceeded on by celebrated writers] e.g. Sir William Petty, Edmund Halley, and Charles Davenant. A common method for

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Britain was to apply a multiplier to a documented number, as when political ­arithmeticians estimated the number of houses on the basis of the hearth-tax and multiplied by a figure representing an average occupancy. This method would be discredited by Arthur Young, whose admiration for Hume’s essay is avowed (Political Arithmetic, 87–91). See the annotation for ¶ 100 at 307.21 on women and children. 306.27  the Emperor Heliogabalus] i.e. the Roman emperor also known as Elagabalus from the solar divinity worshipped in his birth-place of Emesa in Syria, whose priest he was. Hume briefly discusses the cult at NHR 5.7, with a reference to Herodian, History 5.3.3–5. The form of the name that Hume uses is a semiHellenized translation of the Syrian name (helios = ‘sun’). Elagabalus devoted his short reign to the promotion of the cult of the god at Rome and to a life of sensuality and extravagance, summed up by Gibbon as the ‘vices and follies of Elagabalus’ (Decline and Fall, ch. 6 at 1: 160). n. 114  Ælii Lamprid. in vita Heliogab. cap. 26.] ‘He used, too, to play jokes on his slaves, even ordering them to bring him a thousand pounds of spiders’ webs and offering them a prize; and he collected, it is said, ten thousand pounds in weight, and then remarked that one could realize from that how great a city Rome was’ (“Aelius Lampridius”, ‘Life of Antoninus Elagabalus’ 26.6 in the Historia Augusta). The Historia Augusta is a collection of lives of the Roman emperors of the 2nd and 3rd centuries ad, ascribed to six authors (Aelius Lampridius, cited here; Flavius Vopiscus, cited in nn. 176, 193, 208, and 211; Aelius Spartianus, cited in n. 93, and three others). It is generally agreed now that all these names are bogus and that the biographies are the work of a single author writing in the 4th or 5th century. The information that they contain therefore cannot be relied on. Much attention was paid to this collection in the 17th century after Casaubon’s edition of six of the lives appeared in 1603, and the question of its authenticity was debated by such scholars as G. J. Vossius, Fabricius, and Hardouin. Hume regarded it as the work of six genu­ ine authors, as did Gibbon (e.g. Decline and Fall, 1: 342 n. 2 on Vopiscus). 306.30–1  all kinds of numbers are uncertain in ancient manuscripts] In addition to the reason that Hume gives for the incorrect transmission of numbers (i.e. lack of grammatical connection), another cause of confusion lay in the fact that, in both Greek and Latin, numbers were represented by letters of the alphabet (Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 201, 203). Despite the work of earlier editors and commentators (whose texts Hume was using), it has been said that there was still ‘the necessity for a work which no previous scholar had thoroughly or successfully undertaken. This work was the purification of texts’ (Jebb, Bentley, 209). Richard Bentley opened a new era in textual criticism with the publication of his Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1697) and his editions of classical texts. Jean Leclerc had also published an Ars Critica (1697). In a passage omitted for the 1760 ETSS and subsequent versions of the essay, Hume states that the ‘critical art’ must show caution about the numbers in ancient texts: ‘we ought still to retain

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a kind of doubt or reserve, whenever the facts advanc’d depart, in the least, from the common bounds of nature and experience’ (variants for 309.27), a principle he applies in the instant case to the alleged size of the forces of Dionysius I (¶ 108). He applies it more momentously to Athenaeus’s figure for the number of slaves at Athens (see ¶¶ 111–22 and their annotations, especially n. 138, 310.17–18, and 310.18). On the other hand, he recognizes that a number in an ancient text may sometimes be verified by corroborative detail (e.g. ¶¶ 104, 120). However, Hume makes no sustained use of textual criticism. If he had, he would have had further reasons to start ‘doubts, and scruples, and difficulties’ (see head-note) on the subject of ancient population statistics. 307.3  exact registers kept of them] The ancient Athenians maintained registers of citizens and adult resident aliens (‘metics’) in the ‘demes’ (municipal districts) for purposes of taxation but, so far as we know, did not number slaves at all. Under the Roman Republic a census of citizens was normally conducted every five years. For taxation, governors in the imperial period were responsible for conducting a periodical census in their provinces, which, in this case, included details of landed property and the slaves upon it. Wallace used the Roman censuses (Dissertation, 60–1), which he took from Vossius (Observationes, 26). 307.6–7  The first page of Thucydides . . . real history.] Thucydides distinguished himself sharply from earlier writers in the care he took to draw his conclusions only from the evidence available, unlike the poets and ‘story-tellers’ (logographoi) who preceded him (History 1.21.1). By implication he includes Herodotus among these fablers, though Herodotus was already credited as ‘the father of history’ by the time of Cicero (De legibus 1.1.5). In preferring Thucydides, Hume makes a point about standards of evidence and comes close to George Grote’s distinction between ‘the age of historical faith’ and ‘the later age of his­tor­ ic­al reason’ (History, 1: viii). n. 115.2  Our speculative factions] Such factions ‘from principle’ Hume judged to be a modern development (‘Parties in General’ 11). n. 115.5–6  Diodorus Siculus is a good writer, but it is with pain] Hume’s criticism of Diodorus’s carelessness is the consensus view today (e.g. Stylianou, Historical Commentary, introduction, 1: ‘a second-rate epitomator who used firstrate sources’). Since Diodorus’s compilation is the only connected narrative of large stretches of ancient history to have survived from antiquity, it was in­dis­pens­ able to writers of ancient history contemporary with Hume. Rollin made extensive use of Diodorus in his account of the Egyptians and Assyrians. On Greek history Stanyan makes this judgement: ‘Diodorus Siculus is to be value’d for his laborious Collections; and tho’ he takes in too many of the Fables of his Predecessors, and adheres too much to the Traditions of the Ægyptian Priests, he serves very well to supply, and compare with others’ (Grecian History, 1: a3v). ‘Xenophon’s expedition’ is the Anabasis, a contemporary account by a participant. It is a fact that Plutarch did not make use of Cicero’s letters in the six of his Lives which are

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c­oncerned with Cicero’s period, including a life of Cicero himself. Cf. Hume’s remark, ‘as to the Argument, I shall only observe to you, what no doubt you have in your Eye, that when I dispute the positive Testimony of antient Authors, it is only or commonly their Testimony of Facts so much beyond their own Time, that there may remain some Suspicion of Mistake’ (1753, New Letters, 32–3). For Hume’s comments on Thucydides, see ¶ 98 and its annotation at 307.6–7. For Hume on Polybius see n. 258.1–2 and its annotation. 307.11–12  Sybaris . . . battle] Hume refers to the battle in 510 bc in which Sybaris was defeated by Croton and the city subsequently destroyed, though he mistakenly locates the battle at the river Siagra, more correctly Sagra, the modern Turbolo. The battle at the river Sagra was an earlier one between Croton and Locri. The three cities were neighbours at the foot of south Italy. n. 116  Lib. 12.] Diodorus, Library 12.9.5: ‘When the Sybarites advanced against them with thirty myriads [three hundred thousand], the Crotoniates opposed them with ten myriads [one hundred thousand].’ In this passage Diodorus gives 300,000 as the size of the army alone while earlier he had given 300,000 as the total number of citizens, including non-combatants (12.9.2: ‘the city contained three hundred thousand citizens’). If we take 300,000 as applying only to the army and multiply it to include women, children, non-citizens, and slaves, we arrive at a total population in the 1,200,000–1,500,000 range. As Hume sees, Diodorus’s figures are fantasy, not history. The geographical poem attributed to Skymnos (line 341) gives a less sensational 100,000, which may be about right for the total population of the whole area. The wealth and luxury of the citizens of Sybaris became legendary and will have been exaggerated, together with its population figures. Wallace is more receptive than Hume to the figures for Sybaris and Tarentum because he wants to prove the high populousness of early Italy and its decline after ‘the Romans enslaved it’ (Dissertation, 58–9, 61–2). n. 117  Lib. 6.] Strabo, Geography 6.1.13: ‘this city . . . made the campaign against the Crotoniates with three hundred thousand men.’ n. 118  Lib. 13.] Diodorus, Library 13.84.3. See the annotation for n. 110 above. Diodorus says 200,000 including citizens, i.e. 20,000 citizens and 180,000 xenoi. The figure of 20,000 for citizens is possibly about right. But there were surely not nine times as many non-citizens in the city as citizens. Wallace simply accepts Diodorus’s figures (Dissertation, 64). Carthage besieged and captured Akragas (Roman Agrigentum) in 406 bc. 307.21  the women and the children are not included] Hume reaches a total ‘near two millions of inhabitants’ by multiplying each aggregate by four to account for the women and children not included. Undoubtedly the source of this ratio is Edmund Halley’s rule that the number of ‘Fencible Men’ (i.e. ‘those between 18 and 56’ years of age) will normally be ‘somewhat more than a Quarter’ of the population (‘Value’, 3: 669). Hume will have encountered the ratio in Wallace’s attempt to

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c­ orroborate it, if not elsewhere (Dissertation, 39–41). Extending the rule to adult males, be they citizen or stranger, is not as startling as extending it to slaves, whom Hume has argued were not allowed to propagate in significant numbers. See also the annotation for n. 244.5 on ‘fighting men amongst the Helvetii’. n. 119.1  Diogenes Lærtius (in vita Empedoclis)] Diogenes Laertius, Lives 62–3. Diogenes quotes the opening of the poem Katharmoi (‘Purifications’) by the 5th-century poet-philosopher Empedocles, a native of Agrigentum, or Akragas, in Sicily, which begins, ‘Friends, who dwell in the great city sloping down to the tawny [river] Akragas’, and adds: ‘Timaeus says that he called Akragas “great” because eighty myriads [eight hundred thousand] dwelt there.’ Timaeus, the Sicilian his­tor­ ian of the 3rd century bc, gave the figure of eighty myriads to explain ‘great’, and Diogenes Laertius quotes Timaeus in his life of Empedocles, written in the 3rd century ad. We are a long way from Empedocles’s simple adjective, and clearly the figure may have been distorted in transmission. 307.24–5  a small English county] A recent estimate of Agrigentine territory put it at 2,500 square kilometres, or just over 965 square miles, out of which 217,500 hectares (2,175 square kilometres, or just over 839 square miles) were agricultural land (de Angelis, ‘Estimating the Agricultural Base’, 125, 135–6). Hume speaks of ‘the neighbouring fields’ as not exceeding ‘a small English county’. According to Templeman’s New Survey, a reference work that Wallace used, the four smallest English counties range from Bedford at 323 square miles to Rutland at 136. Templeman put Durham at 758 square miles (plate 2). n. 120  Idyll. 17.] Theocritus, Idylls 17.82–5: ‘Three hundred cities are built there, and three thousand in addition to three times ten thousand [lit. a triple myriad], and twice three and thrice nine [‘thrice eleven’ in some MSS, followed by Hume] besides; of all these lord Ptolemy is king.’ Theocritus, the Sicilian poet, was working at the court of Ptolemy II in Alexandria in the 270s bc. This is the language of poetic flattery, not demography, and a demonstration of metrical ingenuity: it is not easy to put the figure 33,333 (or 33,339) into hexameter verse. Wallace defends this passage in the appendix to his Dissertation (281–2). n. 121  Lib. 1.] Diodorus, Library 1.31.7–8: ‘The land of Egypt . . . in ancient times had over eighteen thousand [a myriad and eight thousand] important villages and cities, as can be seen entered in their sacred records, while under Ptolemy son of Lagus [reigned 305–282 bc] these were reckoned at over three thousand, of which the greater number remained until our own time. The total population in the old days, they say, was about seven million [seven hundred myriads], and in our time is no less than 3,000,000 [three hundred myriads]. That, they say, is how the ancient kings could leave such great and marvellous works as memorials of their glory, because of the multitude of hands.’ The text is corrupt and the figures are uncertain. We print the figures in the edition of Rhodoman, which Hume was using (Diodori Siculi Bibliothecae historicae libri XV, 27). Oddly, Hume juxtaposes the population figure for ‘our time’ (3,000,000) with the city figure for ‘ancient times’

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(18,000) instead of with that close to ‘our own time’ (less than 3,000) and comments that this would yield ‘an evident contradiction’. Possibly Hume misread Diodorus. Presumably he invites a division of 18,000 into 3,000,000 to produce an implausible average of no more than 160 or 170 persons per city even ignoring the factor that a very high percentage of the population would necessarily live outside of ‘important villages and cities’ (see ‘Commerce’, n. 1, and its annotation). Bagnall and Frier argue for some fifty cities and between two thousand and three thousand villages under the early Roman Empire (Demography, 55). As for the population in Diodorus’s own day (1st century bc), Beloch accepts Diodorus’s 3 million (Beloch, Bevölkerung, 254–56). Bagnall and Frier (Demography, 53–7) have the population under the early Roman Empire fluctuating between 4 and 5 million. Rathbone (‘Villages’, 108–10) prefers between 3 and 4 million. Ptolemy son of Lagus ruled in Egypt 323–282 bc. See also the second paragraph of n. 255 and the annotations at n. 255.30 and n. 255.31. n. 122  Id. ibid.] i.e. Diodorus, Library 1.31.7–8, as quoted in the previous annotation, which gives the population ‘in the old days’ as ‘seven millions’, as Hume reports. By ‘ancient times’ and ‘the old days’ Diodorus seems to refer to the times of the very earliest kings chronicled in ‘the sacred records’ (1.46.7), whose building achievements he celebrates at some length in subsequent chapters. Cf. the annotation for ¶ 110 at 310.2–3. 308.6  Herodotus’s wonderful narrations] Herodotus’s figures for the Persian and other troops that invaded Greece under Xerxes in 480 bc (Persian Wars 7.40, 54–5, 60, 184–7) are notoriously magnified beyond possibility, thus glorifying the Greek achievement in defeating them. As tabulated by Macan (Herodotus, 2: 157), they amount to 5,286,820 for both land and sea forces. A contemporary epitaph by Simonides, quoted by Herodotus at 7.228.1, put the land forces at 300 myriads, or 3,000,000. Modern estimates of the land forces vary from 80,000 to 300,000. Two popular and reasonable assumptions have been that Herodotus’s figures might be out by a factor of ten (i.e. that his myriads should be thousands) or that the figures refer not to the army that invaded Greece, but to the total forces available to the Persian king. n. 123  Orat. funebris.] Lysias 2 (Funeral Speech) 28. Every year a patriotic speech was delivered at the state funeral held at Athens for those who had died in battle (Thucydides, History 2.34). Such speeches normally celebrated the achievements of Athens, including her role in the Persian wars of 490 and 480–479. Despite Hume’s affirmation that Lysias’s argument has ‘something very rational’ about it, the motives which Lysias ascribes to Xerxes are sheer invention. Herodotus says nothing about such a calculation, and neither author will have had access to his thoughts. n. 124  Lib. 2.] Polybius, Histories 2.24.16: ‘The total number of Romans and allies able to bear arms was more than seven hundred thousand foot [literally seventy myriads] and some seventy thousand [seven myriads] horse, while Hannibal

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invaded Italy with an army of less than twenty thousand [two myriads] men.’ Polybius gives these figures for 225 bc, when, as Hume says, the Romans feared an invasion of the Gauls. He was writing in the 2nd century bc, but there are good grounds for thinking that he took the figures from his predecessor, the 3rd-century historian Fabius Pictor (Brunt, Italian Manpower, 44). Brunt’s own calculations (45–50) amount to more than 580,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry, which yields ‘a plausible hypothesis’ (60) that ‘the free population of Italy . . . lay between 3 and 3½ millions, and that the total population (including slaves) may easily have approached or exceeded 4 millions’. If he is correct, then for once Hume’s scepticism is ­misplaced. Polybius’s figures are also discussed by Walbank (Historical Commentary, 1: 196–203), who concludes that ‘Polybius’s total [is] a slight overestimate’. 308.12–13  between the first and second Punic wars] The first Punic War was in 264–241 bc, the second in 218–201. More precisely, Polybius’s figures were gathered in 225 bc (2.23.9). 308.16  not less, if not rather more] Until the two 1754 issues of Political Discourses the phrase was simply ‘is probably more than that extent of country affords at present’ (variants). n. 125.1–2  the Pope’s dominions, Tuscany, . . . Naples] To compare the territory of Rome and her allies in 225 bc and the areas mentioned by Hume, see e.g. Grosser Historischer Weltatlas, maps 25, 116. The size of the territories and cities of these areas in the 18th century are given in Templeman, New Survey, plate 9. n. 125.2–3  But perhaps in those early times there were very few slaves, except in Rome, or the great cities.] a sentence added as of the two 1754 issues of Political Discourses (variants). 308.18  with some exactness] This threat of a Gallic invasion occurred in 225 bc. The ‘detail of the particulars’ from Polybius, Histories 2.24.3–14, that support the figure of 700,000 men available to the Romans derives ultimately from the military registers (katagraphai). With ‘the detail of the particulars’ cf. Hume’s phrase in ¶ 104, ‘the detail, which checks him’, and the annotation for ¶ 95 at 306.30–1. n. 126  Lib. 2.] Diodorus, Library 2.5.7. Clearly Diodorus inflates the Roman figure for the sake of the argument he is making. Elsewhere (25.13) his figures for this occasion for available Roman forces accord with those of Polybius. Hume reverts to this passage in his final paragraph (¶ 186). 308.21–2  Italy in his time was not so populous] For the perceived decline of the Italian free population in this period, see the annotations for ¶ 35 at 290.16–17 and nn. 44 and 45. Diodorus was writing in the 1st century bc. The First Punic War was 259–241 bc. The first triumvirate is the name given to the coalition of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus (60–53 bc); the second, that of Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian (43–33 bc). n. 127  Celtica.] Appian, Roman History 4 (Gallic History 1.2): ‘The last and greatest war of the Romans against the Gauls was that waged under the command

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of Caesar, for in the ten years that he held command there, they fought with more than 4,000,000 [four hundred myriads] wild barbarians, taken all together. And of these 1,000,000 [one hundred myriads] were captured and 1,000,000 [one hundred myriads] slain in battle.’ The Gallic wars, strictly dated, occupied eight years, from 58 bc to 51, but Appian makes it ten by extending the period until Caesar’s return to Rome in 49 bc. The figures may go back to Caesar himself (see the annotation for n. 130.1 below). It would have been in his personal and political interest to exaggerate. n. 128.1  Plutarch (in vita Cæs.)] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Caesar’ 15.3: ‘For although he waged war in Gaul for less than ten years, he [Caesar] took more than eight hundred settlements by storm, subdued three hundred tribes, and fought pitched battles at different times against three million [three hundred myriads] men, of whom he slew one million [a hundred myriads] in hand-to-hand fighting, and took the same number prisoner.’ Hume’s dossier of evidence on Caesar’s slaughter is impressively full (five sources), but he has missed a pertinent reference in Plutarch’s Lives, ‘Pompey’ 67.6. n. 128.2  Julian (in Cæsaribus)] Julian (Caesars) 321a: ‘I have still not mentioned my campaigns in Gaul’, said Caesar, ‘when I conquered more than three hundred settlements and no less than two million [two hundred myriads] men.’ (The manu­ script title of this work is Symposium or Kronia, i.e. the Saturnalia.) This jeu d’esprit, in which all the Roman emperors are depicted as competing at a banquet for the honour of joining the company of the gods, was written c.ad 362. The two numbers seem plucked from the air and perhaps represent a vague and inaccurate memory of those given in earlier sources. 308.28–30  how often . . . soldiers?] A fair point, but returning troops are unlikely to have caused large-scale distortion of the figures. n. 129  Lib. 2. cap. 47.] Velleius Paterculus, Compendium 2.47.1: ‘During this period . . . more than four hundred thousand of the enemy were slain by Gaius Caesar and a greater number were taken prisoner.’ 309.3  his Commentaries] i.e. Caesar’s own account of the Gallic Wars in seven books, normally now called The Gallic War. n. 130.1  Pliny, lib. 7. cap. 25.] This note was added as of the 1772 ETSS (vari­ ants). Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.25.92: ‘I would not count it to his glory that in addition to conquering his fellow-citizens he [Caesar] killed in his battles 1,192,000 men, a prodigious even if unavoidable wrong inflicted on the human race, as he himself confessed by not publishing the casualties of the civil wars.’ That last clause suggests that he did publish casualty figures for his battles and constitutes the best grounds for claiming that the inflated figures in n. 128 go back to Caesar himself. In addition, there is a remarkable similarity in the way that the statistics are

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given by the various sources, which also suggests that they all derive from lists published by Caesar himself. 309.4  The most bloody of his battles . . . the Helvetii] This sentence was added for the 1777 ETSS (variants). In singling out an individual tribe, Hume seems to foreshadow the methods of modern scholars such as Beloch and Brunt, who have attempted to control some of the vast totals given by our sources by examining their component parts. On the Helvetii see the annotation for n. 244.5. 309.7  Dionysius the elder] Dionysius I, c.430–367 bc; tyrant (i.e. unelected sole ruler, with unrestricted powers) of Syracuse and eventually of all Sicily; a brilliant military commander, though remembered as a paradigm of the appallingly wicked tyrant. His was ‘the strongest and longest tyranny of any recorded by history’, in Diodorus’s view (Library 13.96.4). Dionysius’s lifetime was indeed ‘a time when letters flourished most in Greece’, embracing much of the work of Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, Plato, Isocrates, Xenophon, and some of the Attic orators. Hume is correct in his favourable appraisal of the historian Philistus, but only ­fragments of Philistus’s eleven books survive, and he was notoriously favourable towards tyrants, Dionysius I in particular. Dionysius and his circle will certainly have wished to exaggerate the size of his forces, if only to deter opponents. n. 131  Diod. Sic. lib. 2.] Diodorus, Library 2.5.6: ‘In Sicily, . . . Dionysius led forth on his campaigns from the single city of the Syracusans one hundred and twenty thousand [12 myriads] foot-soldiers and twelve thousand [a myriad and two thousand] cavalry, and from a single harbour four hundred [one MS has ‘twelve myriads’ here] warships, some of which were quadriremes and quinquiremes.’ Diodorus says 120,000 foot soldiers and 12,000 cavalry (Rhodoman’s edition, 93), Hume 100,000 foot and 10,000 cavalry. Hume frequently rounds out numbers in this way. n. 132  Plutarch in vita Dionis.] Plutarch Lives, ‘Dion’ 25.1. Dion was a sonin-law of Dionysius I (c.408–353). Banished from Syracuse c.366, he returned to the city in 357 (the year to which Hume refers) and briefly gained control of it thereafter. See Plutarch, Lives, ‘Dion’ 22–30. The detail about bringing arms is in chs. 25–6, 29. 309.21–4  The United Provinces . . . have much more resources from their commerce and industry] Cf. ‘Money’ 1 on the advantage that ‘rich and trading countries’ like the United Provinces gain in hiring mercenaries. 309.24–5  Diodorus . . . incredible] Diodorus, Library 2.5.6. Diodorus is arguing that the depopulation of his own day should not deter his readers from crediting accounts of the large forces available to past rulers, whether Ninus or Xerxes or the Romans at the time of the Punic Wars or even Dionysius, tyrant of a single polis. Cf. ¶ 186.

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variants for 309.27.  The critical art may very justly be suspected] This para­ graph was dropped after the 1758 ETSS. See the annotation for ¶ 95 at 306.30–1. variants for 309.27.  Sir William Temple tells us, in his memoirs] Temple, Memoirs of What Pass’d in Christendom from 1672, to 1679 [Memoirs, pt. 2, 1692], Works, 1: 371–480 at 383–4 (ch. 1). At its height in 1652 the army reached nearly 70,000 but declined thereafter to c.42,500 in 1658 (Firth, Cromwell’s Army, 34–5). Possibly more relevant than the totals is the division of England and Wales into twelve districts governed by militia units during the ‘rule of the major-generals’ in 1655–7. This militia totalled variously 5,200–6,250 (Durston, Cromwell’s MajorGenerals, 140–7). variants for 309.27, n.  Strabo, lib. 4.] Strabo, Geography 4.5.3: ‘for one legion, at the least, and some cavalry would be required in order to collect tribute from them [the Britons], and the expense of the army would offset the tribute-money.’ Strabo is referring to the time immediately after Caesar’s invasion and before the conquest by Claudius. Hume rightly says that the Romans normally kept ‘somewhat a greater force’ in Britain. In the 2nd century ad it consisted of three legions plus auxiliary units (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 262, s.v. Britain, Roman). variant for 309.27, n. See Scobel, chap. 31 . . . .. It appears from Whitlocke . . . . the very instrument of government . . . . See farther Thurloe, vol. 2. p. 413. 499. 568.] This note was added for the 1754 issues of the Political Discourses and omitted after the 1758 ETSS. From Scobell’s +Collection (pt. 2, p. 8), Hume cites cap. 31, i.e. the 31st act in 1656 of Cromwell’s parliament. Whitelocke records for 7 April 1649 the passing of an act (cap. 18) for the ‘Assessment of 90000 l. per mensem for the Forces of England and Ireland’ (Memorials, 394). (The figure of £80,000 is mentioned s.v. 8 March 1648.) The Protectorate’s Instrument of Government (repr. Memorials, 571–7, s.v. 16 December 1653) fixes the army’s foot and horse in § 27. The letters cited in Thurloe’s state papers indicate variously that forces were 2,800 foot and 1,800 horse in England (+Collection, 2: 413); ‘4 or 5000 in England’ with 10,000 in Scotland and 12–15,000 in Ireland (2: 499); and fewer than 7,000 in England (2: 568). 309.31  the age of Alexander] Alexander lived 356–323 bc. Like Hume, Wallace uses Alexander as a time-marker for Sicily: ‘SICILY was . . . well peopled before the times of Alexander the Great’ (Dissertation, 63), containing such great cities as Syracuse and Agrigentum. Syracuse had become powerful in the time of Gelon (early 5th century), and Sicily flourished with it ‘till it was conquered by the Romans’. Similarly, according to Wallace, the population of Italy declined after ‘the Romans enslaved it’ (Dissertation, 62). His general thesis is that the highest popu­la­ tion in ‘the countries we have chiefly in view’ was ‘about the time of Alexander the Great, and before the Roman empire had enslaved the world’ (148). Hume notes the fact of the Sicilian cities’ decline (from Strabo, Geography 6.3.5), but does not blame the Roman conquest, as such, in this passage. In historical fact the activities

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of Timoleon (344–late 330s) were, according to our sources, followed by at least a brief period of economic prosperity. See also the annotation for n. 63. 309.31–2  But in Augustus’s time] Hume singles out agriculture as an indicator of ‘decay’. Hiero II of Syracuse (c.271–216 bc) gathered taxes in the form of a tithe of grain. When Rome took over Sicily as its first province in 211 bc, she took over the tithe with it (we simplify for brevity), and required more besides for Italy and herself in crises. But a tithe would mean that nine-tenths, or at least the bulk of the crop, remained for local consumption. The corruption of individual governors such as Verres can hardly have ruined the economy of the whole island, and under Augustus a fixed levy replaced the tithe (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1402, s.v. Sicily). Continued large-scale wheat production, numerous finds of grain mills and spacious granaries, as well as striking new monumental public building all attest that Sicily flourished under Augustus. n. 133  Strabo, lib. 6.] Strabo, Geography 6.2.7. Hume has put something of a skew on his source, Strabo, who here praises the exceptional fertility of Sicily, so great (he says) that its produce feeds the city of Rome as well as its own inhabitants. Influenced by Strabo’s comments elsewhere on the desolation of Sicily (see the annotation for ¶ 109 at 309.31 on Alexander), Hume concludes that in that case there would have been little left for local communities. Strabo also gives the impression that most of the cities of Sicily were deserted in his time (6.2.2, 6.2.4–5). Strabo may have been misled by his source, Posidonius, who wrote shortly after the great slave revolts at the end of the 1st century bc. These and their suppression will have caused widespread disruption and destruction, from which Sicily seems to have recovered by the time of Augustus. Or the decay of the towns may have been caused by the shift to ranching (see the annotation for n. 64.1 on latifundia). Cicero called Sicily ‘the storehouse of the Republic, the nurse that feeds Rome’ (2 Verrine Orations 2.5). Silius Italicus (14.23–6) was still singing the virtues of its products in the 1st  century ad, and similar encomia are found in later centuries, even in the 6th century ad. 310.2–3  of Nineveh, Babylon, and the Egyptian Thebes] These are legendarily enormous cities of the ancient world. Diodorus is a main source for inflated numbers for all of them. Library 2.1.4–2.7.1 gives an account of the legendary King Ninus of Assyria with his army of 1,700,000 foot-soldiers (2.5.4) and his great cap­ ital at Nineveh (2.3). Diodorus describes the foundation of Babylon by the legendary queen Semiramis in 2.7.2–10.6. (Herodotus too had given a famous description of the city of Babylon in Persian Wars 1.177–83.) ‘Hundred-gated’ Thebes, the old capital of Pharaonic Egypt, celebrated as early as the Homeric poems (Iliad 9.382–4, Odyssey 4.126–7), is described by Diodorus in 1.45.4–50.2. Wallace expresses caution about the figures in Diodorus and other authors for the size of the ancient empires (Dissertation, 36–7), but uses them in any case. Wallace also accepts (35–6) Diodorus’s statement at 2.5 that the earth was much more populous in these very early times, and also finds support for this belief in Strabo (e.g. Geography 6.3.5,

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7.3.13). Hume dismisses all of these claims and ignores the biblical figures adduced by Wallace. The edition of Strabo that Wallace cites, that published by Joannes Wolters at Amsterdam in 1707, was in the Advocates Library and therefore eligible to be one that Hume borrowed. n. 134  Apolog. Socr.] Plato’s Apology 29d represents Socrates as calling Athens ‘the greatest city and the most famous for wisdom and power.’ ‘Great’ in Greek, as in English, may refer to quality, as it does here, as well as to extent. By 399, the date of the trial in which Socrates made the speech purportedly recorded in Plato’s Apology, Athens had lost her empire and her fleet, though she remained one of the most important Greek states and the leading cultural centre of Greece. In examining the populations of ancient Greece, Hume appropriately devotes most of his attention to Athens, for we have more information concerning the size of its popu­ la­tion than for any other city. n. 135.1–2  Argos . . . Lysias . . . . orat. 34.] Lysias 34 (Against the Subversion of the Ancestral Constitution) 7: ‘Argos . . . bordering on the Lacedaemonians . . . their number is no greater than ours.’ Argos is the city-state occupying the north-eastern corner of the Peloponnese. At this time, c.403 bc, it was of considerable importance in Greek politics. Lysias is considering whether the Athenians could defend themselves if they defied Spartan orders and compares the situation and strength of two Peloponnesian states, Argos and Mantineia. For Argos he gives no precise figures, simply equating her population approximately with that of Athens, nor is it clear whether he means the town of Argos or the territory she controlled, the Argolid. But if he is comparing like with like, he should be referring to men of military age in the whole of Argive territory. We have no population statistics elsewhere for Argos, but she frequently sent out an army of 6,000, on the basis of which Tomlinson estimates the total population, including women, children, and slaves, at 50,000 (Argos, 264 n. 6), of whom perhaps c.10,000 lived in the town (id. 18). Beloch argues for a minimum of 20,000 citizens on the basis of military statistics and the comparison with Athens (Bevölkerung, 116–18). This conclusion is compatible with Tomlinson’s estimate. Also calculating from army figures, however, Piérart opts for 12,000 adult male citizens of hoplite status (‘Argolis’, 603), and Hansen prefers a minimum total population of 70,000 (Shotgun Method, 94). Hume refers to this passage from Lysias again in n. 175 as evidence for the size of Mantinea. 310.8  Syracuse] Cf. Wallace, Dissertation, 63–4, 66–8. n. 136  Lib. 6.] A more sharply focused citation would be Thucydides, History 7.28.3: ‘Syracuse, a city which taken by itself is not smaller than the city of Athens’. Bks. 6 and 7 constitute a single narrative of the Sicilian expedition. By ‘taken by itself ’ Thucydides probably means ‘without counting its allies’. Syracuse is on the east coast of Sicily and was the greatest city-state on the island. It was the focus of the disastrous Athenian expedition against Sicily in 415–413. Because the size of the population of Athens is controversial (see the annotation for n. 138 below), it does not help us determine that of Syracuse. Beloch, collecting the evidence and

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discussing it soberly, argues for a population of 20,000–25,000 male citizens at this date, of whom 10,000–12,000 were of military age (Bevölkerung, 276). n. 136  also Plutarch. in vita Niciæ.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Nicias’ 17.2: ‘Syracuse, a city fully as large as Athens’. While Thucydides is speaking of population, Plutarch is thinking of the extent of Syracuse, as is clear from the context, the Athenian attempt to construct a wall around the city. In ¶ 126, Hume says that ‘Syracuse was twenty-two miles in circumference.’ n. 137.1  Orat. contra Verrem, lib. 4. cap. 52.] Cicero, 2 Verrine Orations 4.52.117: ‘You will often have been told that Syracuse is the largest of Greek cities and the loveliest of all cities’. Cicero follows this statement with a detailed description (117–19) of the topography of the city, its harbours, four quarters, and major buildings. n. 137.1  Strabo, lib. 6.] Strabo, Geography 6.2.4: ‘In olden times it was a city of five towns, with a wall of one hundred and eighty stades.’ Conventionally, 8 stades = 1 mile; Hume’s equivalent is near enough (strictly 180 stades = 22.5 miles, but the precise length of the stade varied). See Oxford Classical Dictionary, 943, s.v. measures. Strabo’s ‘five towns’ are the original settlement on the island Ortygia, Achradina, Tyche, Neapolis, and Epipolae. Cicero reckons four, omitting Epipolae. The southern harbour, the magnificent Great Harbour, is indeed ‘very large’, and can hardly have been included within the circuit of the city walls. A map clarifies matters, e.g. that in Gomme et al., Historical Commentary, opposite 4: 468. On the topography of Syracuse, see 4: 466–84. 310.11  not comprehending, I suppose, either Antioch or Alexandria] presumably because these two cities were Hellenistic foundations on foreign territory that Alexander conquered. Alexandria was founded by Alexander himself in 331 bc, after he took Egypt from the Persians. Antioch was founded in 300 in Syria by Seleucus, one of Alexander’s former generals, as the capital of his kingdom. Hume discusses their population and dimensions later. See ¶¶ 144–5 and their annotations, especially at nn. 202 and 204.8–9. n. 138  Lib. 6. cap. 20.] Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 6.272c: ‘Ctesicles, in the third book of his Chronicles, says that at Athens, during the one hundred and [figure corrupt] Olympiad, a census of the inhabitants of Attica was taken by Demetrius of Phaleron, and the number of Athenians was found to be two myriads and one thousand [21,000], of resident aliens a myriad [10,000], and of slaves forty myriads’ (400,000). (The citation to 6.20 is correct for editions available to Hume, including the one in the Advocates’ Library published in 1657 in Lyons.) This passage, our chief piece of evidence for the population of Athens, has been at the centre of a lengthy controversy, still not settled. Virtually nothing is known about Ctesicles (see Jacoby, Fragmente 245). Demetrius of Phaleron ruled Athens 317–307 bc (see the annotation for n. 96). Athenaeus presents his copious material in a long, loosely-constructed sentence, interweaving in his usual manner information from diverse sources on the numbers

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of slaves owned by individuals with statistics for whole states (cf. the annotations for nn. 164, 167, on Athenaeus). How reliable are his figures for Athens? For citizens, some scholars have taken 21,000 to refer to males of military age only, but most believe that it is the number of adult male citizens, a number Hume himself is willing to accept (see the annotation for ¶ 112 at 310.31–2). We may compare two con­ tem­por­ary figures: at Megalopolis in the Peloponnese citizens, foreigners, and slaves fit for military service in 318 bc totalled 15,000 (Diodorus, Library 18.70.1, not in Hume). At Rhodes in 305 the total for citizens, resident aliens (paroikoi), and foreigners was 7,000 (Diodorus, Library 20.84.2–3, cited in Hume’s n. 168). We are not given any figure for slaves at Rhodes. As for the ‘strangers’ (i.e. metics, or ‘resident aliens’), it is uncertain whether a myriad refers to adult males only or to all those paying the metic tax, which would include some women, but this makes little difference, and most scholars accept this figure. As for slaves, most scholars agree with Hume that Athenaeus’s figure of 400,000 is quite impossible. It comes in the middle of a list of spectacularly large slave numbers owned by both states and individuals. It would be compatible with the figure of 150,000, said to have been given by the Athenian orator Hyperides, if this figure refers only to adult males of military age. But the text of Hyperides is uncertain, and we do not know how accurately he is reported by our source (the 10th-century lexicon the Suda), nor (above all) how he could have known (Hyperides, frag. B.18.3 in Minor Attic Orators, Loeb edition, 2: 576–7; Suidae Lexicon, ed. Adler, 1: 279, no. 3111). And Thucydides reports (History 7.27.5) that the loss of more than two myriads (20,000) of Athenian slaves who deserted to the Spartans caused serious consternation at Athens (¶ 118 and annotation for n. 155). Yet it would, as Hume says, hardly have been a serious loss if the total were really 400,000. For Xenophon’s figures for large individual slave holdings see the annotations for nn. 34, 159. 310.17–18  the number of slaves] Hume’s criticism in ¶¶ 112–22 of the passage in Athenaeus is the most highly reputed and influential part of ‘Populousness’. Rachel Sargent wrote that the ten-point list is ‘the outline for all future investigations into the problem of the slave population of Attica’ (‘Size’, 15–16). Hume was anticipated in dismissing Athenaeus’s numbers by the French scholar Rollin in his 1735 Histoire ancienne (4: 409), but it is Hume’s reasoned and thorough demolition of Athenaeus that has been cited in most subsequent discussions. Thus Westermann says, ‘Since Hume’s day all attempts to re-establish confidence in these [i.e. Athenaeus’s] figures have been in vain’ (Slave Systems, 7). Wallace, who did not multiply the aggregate of slaves by four, defended Athenaeus’s figure (Dissertation, 55). It was also defended by the great economic historian Boeckh, whose Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener (1817) was widely read and translated into English (Public Economy of Athens, 1842). Boeckh has had some followers, most notably Friedrich Engels (ch. 5, Origin, 181), and consequently many but not all Marxist historians. Sargent (16–22) helpfully sets out Boeckh’s objections to Hume in the order in which Boeckh presents them, and we will deal with each in that order.

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310.18  augmented by a whole cypher] i.e. multiplied by a factor of ten. Cf.  the  annotation for ¶ 103 at 308.6 on Xerxes’s troops. But we cannot emend Athenaeus’s text, since the point of this whole passage is to list exceptionally large slave numbers. n. 139  Demosthenes assigns 20,000; contra Aristog.] “Demosthenes” 25 (Against Aristogeiton 1) 51: ‘All the Athenians [i.e. Athenian citizens] taken together come to two myriads.’ This speech, doubtfully ascribed to Demosthenes, was de­livered in the 330s or 320s bc. The speaker in an Athenian forensic speech needed to say what the jurors, a large body of fellow-citizens, would find plausible, not ­necessarily what was true; but we may accept this figure as roughly accurate because otherwise the speaker risked being shouted down by the jurors. The passage, however, is not given much weight by scholars: the speaker is simply asserting that his opponent, unlike thousands of his fellow citizens, is not a decent character. There is a similarly casual use of two myriads in Aristophanes’s Wasps 707–9 (produced in 422 bc): ‘A thousand cities there are that now pay us [the Athenians] tribute. If someone ordered each one to maintain twenty men, then two myriads of common folk would be living in abundance.’ See also annotations for nn. 61–2, 98–9, on the use of ‘myriad’ and the use of conventional numbers. 310.21  men of full age are only understood] Boeckh reasonably objected that the number of slaves, unlike that of citizens and metics, would not be of ‘men of full age only’: ‘they were counted’, he says, ‘like sheep or cattle, by the head’ (Public Economy, 36). Cf. Sargent, ‘Size’, 16–17. Still, we may ask for what purpose and therefore whether slaves would have been counted at all in Demetrius’s census. n. 140  Lib. 5.] Herodotus, Persian Wars 5.97.2. See the annotation for n. 99, where Hume has already cited this passage to show that there were 30,000 adult male citizens at Athens at the time of the Persian wars. If we add women, children, and non-citizens (metics), the total (say 100,000–120,000) seems high, though some accept it, and it must have seemed plausible to his audience. Herodotus repeats the figure 30,000 in 8.65.1, perhaps as a symbolic estimate of the population of Athens, but there the context is far from straightforward. The figure also crops up in 4th-century literature in contexts referring to adult male citizens: Aristophanes, Assemblywomen 1132 (‘more than 30,000’); Plato, Symposium 175e (‘more than 30,000 Greeks’); also “Plato”, Axiochos 369a. The slave Onesimus in Menander, Epitrepontes 1088–9, claims that every city (polis) in the world has 30,000 inhabitants (perhaps including women and children). Other sources give other figures for the population of Athens at different times. See the annotations for nn. 138–9. 310.24–5  excluding the women and children] Boeckh makes the same point (Public Economy, 33). n. 141  Lib. 8.] Thucydides, History 8.72.1. Because of ‘their military expeditions and their activities abroad, the Athenians had never yet come to deliberate on any matter so important that five thousand had assembled’. Unfortunately Hume

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neglects the context of this statement. Thucydides does not make this claim himself; he reports what the envoys sent by the oligarchical government of Athens in 411 were told to say in order to win the support of the Athenian army on Samos for their regime. Thus it is propaganda, not an impartial assessment. ‘Never yet’ is not true: in peacetime, attendance was certainly higher inasmuch as the quorum to vote on certain matters and for a valid ostracism was six thousand. Furthermore, in the 5th-century bc the Pnyx, where assemblies took place, could accommodate six thousand people. But five thousand may have been the maximum attendance during the Peloponnesian War when large numbers of troops were deployed abroad. n. 142  Lib. 2.] Thucydides, History 2.13.6: ‘As to heavy armed infantry [hoplites], Pericles told them that there were thirteen thousand [one myriad three thousand], not counting the sixteen thousand [one myriad six thousand] men who garrisoned the forts and manned the city walls.’ These figures refer to the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, in 431. The first figure is secure, and is confirmed at Thucydides, History 2.31.2. The second has generated controversy. The general consensus is that this figure too should be accepted (see Hornblower, Commentary, 1: 255–7). But in any case Hume makes no use of it. n. 142  Diodorus Siculus’s account perfectly agrees, lib. 12.] Diodorus’s figures are 12,000 hoplites and 17,000 men to garrison the forts and defend the walls, respectively (Library 12.40.4). His figures do not ‘perfectly agree’ with, but are very close to, those of Thucydides. 310.31–2  these being but the fourth of the inhabitants] In this first of ten arguments intended to throw doubt on Athenaeus’s report of 400,000 slaves at Athens, Hume has first adduced four passages (see the annotations for nn. 140, 141, and 142) to prove that when ancient historians gave a figure for citizens, they meant only ‘the men of full age’. On this premiss Hume makes a calculation of the total population of Athens, intended to show that if there were 400,000 male slaves of full age, the total population would be absurdly large. Following Halley’s rule (see the annotation for ¶ 100 at 307.21), Hume multiplies the figures by four in order to include the women and children, not only in the case of the citizens but also in the case of the metics and slaves. On the assumption that the number of adult male slaves was 40,000, the total population of Athens will have been 284,000 (21,000 adult male citizens × 4 = 84,000; plus 10,000 adult male metics × 4 = 40,000; plus 40,000 adult male slaves × 4 = 160,000; for a total population of 284,000). If, however, one takes the adult male slaves as 400,000 and multiplies that figure by four for slave women and children, the total slave population will have been 1,600,000 and the whole population of Athens 1,724,000 (which Hume’s text gives as 1,720,000). This is an absurdly large figure, in Hume’s view, and throws serious doubt on Athenaeus’s report of 400,000 slaves. So large a population would in fact make ancient Athens larger than Paris and London combined. According to Templeman, the population of London c.1730 was ‘about . . . 840,000’ and that of Paris ‘less by one third than at London’ (New Survey, plate 1 n.). According to the Encyclopédie,

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11 (1765): 944, the population of Paris was at that time 700,000 (s.v. Paris). In his appendix Wallace challenges Hume’s extension of Halley’s ratio to slaves (Dissertation, 286–8), as Boeckh also does (see the annotation for ¶ 112 at 310.21). Hansen succinctly summarizes earlier scholarly accounts of the number of adult male citizens at Athens (Studies in the Population, 20). n. 143  Xenophon. Mem. lib. 3.] Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.6.14: ‘Since our city is composed of more than a myriad of houses.’ The citation in the printed texts to bk. 2 seems likely to be a compositor’s error since Hume notes this passage twice in his own memoranda and on both occasions correctly cites bk. 3 (Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515–17).‘Populousness’ 113 is the second of Hume’s arguments against Athenaeus’s report of 400,000 slaves at Athens with its absurd implication for the total population. By ‘households’ (oikiai), Xenophon means households, not buildings. Xenophon’s remark is part of an argument that if one cannot manage one household, one cannot manage a whole city. We might compare his Oeconomicus 8.22: ‘the city as a whole has a myriad times as many things as we.’ In both cases the figure is hardly a real statistic. As usual Hume takes ‘a myriad’ literally, and he misquotes Xenophon’s ‘more than a myriad’ as ‘but 10,000’. The little dialogues that compose the Memorabilia are imagined as taking place in the late 5th century bc. Boeckh both accepts 10,000 as a definite figure and takes oikiai to be structures rather than families. To accommodate the large population for which he argues, he puts them in lodgings and the slaves in factories (Boeckh, Public Economy, 39; cf. Sargent, ‘Size’, 17). 311.7  the extent of the walls, as given us by Thucydides] Hume had assembled the passages in an entry in his memoranda to prove ‘That Athens was not so populus as we shou’d naturally conclude from its Bulk describd by Thucidides’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 516–17). This entry rehearses several of the ‘ten points’ made in these paragraphs. n. 144  Lib. 2.] Thucydides, History 2.13.7: ‘For the length of the Phalerian wall was 35 stades up to the circuit-wall of the city, and the portion of the circuit-wall which was guarded was 43 stades . . . ; and the Long Walls to the Peiraeus were 40 stades in extent . . . ; and the whole circuit of the Peiraeus including Munychia was 60 stades.’ (The passage follows immediately that cited in n. 142.) In this passage Hume gives ‘the extent of the walls’ of Athens as 18 miles ‘beside [apart from] the sea-coast’. In ¶ 126 he says that ‘its walls, with the sea-coast, were above twenty miles in extent’. Hume’s phrase ‘beside the sea-coast’ seems to exclude the Phalerian wall. Apart from that wall there were two separate circuits of walls, the one surrounding the city of Athens itself, the other surrounding the harbours at Piraeus and Munychia. The ‘long walls’ connected the two. A map—e.g. that in Cambridge Ancient History, 5 (1992): 208—makes things clearer. Hume seems to work with the conventional equivalent of c.8 stades to the mile (see the second annotation for n. 137.1).

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n. 145  De ratione redituum.] Xenophon, Ways and Means 2.6: ‘Then, since there are many places empty of houses within the city.’ Xenophon’s tract, usually dated to the 350s bc, advocates ‘ways and means’ of increasing Athens’s revenues. At Athens resident non-citizens (metics) were not permitted to own land or houses. Xenophon urges that selected metics might be permitted to buy land and build on it. Unfortunately we do not know just how many he means by ‘many’. The inhabitants of Attica crowded into the city at the outset of the Peloponnesian War in 431 (see ‘Populousness’ 122). Even though conditions were cramped, as Thucydides tells us, some space was available for them. To answer this third of Hume’s objections to the enormous figure for the population of Athens implied by Athenaeus’s report of 400,000 slaves in Athens, Boeckh ‘arbitrarily distributes the population throughout Attica’, producing an average of 617 persons to the square mile, i.e. an Attica ‘almost six times as densely populated as the state of Delaware’ in the 1920s (Sargent, ‘Size’, 17). This, Sargent judges, is ‘simply incredible’, and Boeckh’s explanation is unsatisfactory (Boeckh, Public Economy, 39). n. 146.1  Dionysius Halicarnassæus says] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 4.13.5: ‘But if one should wish to measure Rome by its wall . . . and to compare it with the circuit of the city of Athens, the circuit of Rome would not seem to him very much larger than the other.’ Dionysius is referring to the ancient wall of Rome, traditionally ascribed to King Servius Tullius (6th century bc) but in fact built in the 4th century. The circuit is about 11 kilometres, or almost 7 miles, i.e. c.55 stades (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. wall of Servius). Thucydides gives 43 stades for the city wall of Athens, omitting unguarded stretches (see the annotation for n. 144). Dionysius’s statement cannot be faulted. n. 146.3–4  Pyræum, Phalerus, and Munychia] The name of the Πειραιεύς (Peiraieus), the port of Athens, can be transliterated in many ways, but Hume’s Pyræum seems eccentric. Phalerus is a contemporary spelling, though now it is usually spelled either Phaleron or Phalerum. It was the old harbour, replaced by the Piraeus in the 5th century. Munychia was the citadel that gave protection to the ports of Athens. See also the annotation for n. 144. n. 146.5  after the walls of Cimon and Pericles were destroyed] Hume means the ‘long walls’ that joined Athens to her ports, built in the 5th century bc under Cimon and Pericles, completed c.457 bc, and dismantled in 404 under the terms of the peace imposed by Sparta (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.2.20–3). The destruction of the ‘long walls’ would have had the effect of separating the city of Athens from the harbour towns. Though soon rebuilt, they were allowed to fall into a ruined state long before Dionysius’s day. n. 146.6  all Vossius’s reasonings] See Observationes, ch. 3, where Vossius compares the length of the walls of Rome with that of the walls of Athens. 311.11–12  No insurrection . . . except one] In his memoranda Hume notes, ‘No Rising or Suspicion of a rising is ever mention’d by the Historian’, i.e. by Xenophon (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early

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Memoranda’, 517). However, in addition to the disturbance to which Hume refers (see the annotation for n. 147), there may have been an earlier revolt by the slave miners in the 130s bc. It is unclear whether the meagre evidence available refers to one event or two. We also hear of large-scale desertion by slaves towards the end of the Peloponnesian War (see ‘Populousness’ 118). But, as Hume says, we hear of no other revolts. It is possible that there were minor disturbances that did not get into the historical record. Boeckh says nothing about this fourth point by Hume. n. 147  Athen. lib. 6.] Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 6.272f: ‘Most of these Athenian slaves, myriads in number, worked in the [silver] mines in chains. Posidonius . . . says that they revolted, murdered the guards set over the mines, seized the hill of Sunium, and for a long time plundered Attica.’ Little is known about these events, which took place, as Athenaeus notes, at approximately the same time as the Sicilian slave wars (see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 36 at 290.22), i.e., c.100 bc. Laurium, the mining district, is close to Sunium, the south-eastern promontory of Attica. Athenaeus’s source, the great polymath Posidonius, lived in the late 2nd and early 1st centuries bc and was thus reporting a revolt that had taken place during his lifetime in a city-state that he knew personally, having been educated there. n. 148  De rep. Athen.] ‘Now among the slaves and metics at Athens there is the greatest uncontrolled wantonness; you can’t hit them there, and a slave will not stand aside for you . . . they let the slaves live luxuriously there and some of them sumptuously. . . . We have . . . granted slaves an equal right of free speech [ise¯goria] towards their masters, and between metics and citizens’ (“Xenophon”, The Constitution of the Athenians 1.10–12). This essay that has come down to us with the works of Xenophon is now informally known as ‘The Old Oligarch’ and generally is dated to the 420s. Characteristically devious, the titular Old Oligarch intertwines statements about ‘slaves and metics’ with remarks that clearly apply only to slaves, only later separating the two categories, thus creating a false impression that a master had no right to strike his own slave, and so on. n. 149  Philip. 3.] Demosthenes 9 (Third Philippic) 3: ‘You think it so necessary to grant general freedom of speech [parrhe¯sia] to everyone in Athens that you even allow metics and slaves to share in the privilege, and many household slaves may be observed among you speaking their minds with more liberty than citizens enjoy in other states.’ The Old Oligarch had spoken loosely of the ise¯goria granted to slaves and metics. Technically this term should mean an equal right to speak in the assembly, which in fact metics and slaves did not possess; but the term came to be used in a wider sense, as a synonym of parrhe¯sia, freedom to say what you like. Demosthenes uses parrhe¯sia, the more accurate term, and goes on to make precisely this point, that foreigners do not have the right to address the assembly. His Third Philippic was delivered in 341 bc. n. 150  Sticho.] Plautus, Stichus 446–8: Stichus, a slave, says to the audience, ‘You people needn’t be surprised that we slavelings have our liquor and love affairs and

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dinner engagements: all this is allowed to us in Athens’ (act 3, scene 1). Plautus’s comedies were adaptations of Greek originals for Roman audiences, and here he breaks the dramatic illusion to explain to the audience that Athenian mores differed on this point from those to which they were accustomed. Produced in 200 bc, Stichus is based upon a Greek play by Menander of a century earlier. 311.17–18  a rigorous military government over the Negroes] Cf. Melon, Essai politique: ‘Colonies are necessary to the Nation, and Slaves to the Colonies, where their Superiority of Number, would be dangerous, if the ordinary Mildness of Government, were not accompanied, with military Severity. The least Disobedience of a Soldier is punished with Death, because Impunity, or a less Punishment than Death, might encourage Mutiny in the Army’ (Political Essay, 82). Melon’s ch. 5 is an argument for the superiority of slavery to domestic service. Hume cites Melon three times in the Political Discourses. 311.19  Sixthly, . . . ] In this sixth objection to Athenaeus’s report of large numbers of slaves in Athens, Hume adduces a few Athenians, reputed to be rich, who nevertheless had only a modest number of slaves. By contrast Boeckh believed that there were roughly four slaves to every Athenian citizen, comparing the ratio of one to six in the ‘American sugar islands’ (Public Economy, 36–7). He reaches this conclusion by selecting a handful of owners who possessed an exceptionally high number of slaves, as well as postulating ‘whole hosts’ in ‘numerous workshops’, for which we have no evidence. Sargent exposes these flaws in his reasoning and shows moreover that even these figures will not produce the huge number of slaves for which he argues (‘Size’, 19). 311.21–2  is computed by some to spend sixpence a-day] Hume might have drawn this figure from Archibald Hutcheson, Collection, 37. Sixpence per diem was £9. 2s. 6d. per annum. Corbyn Morris calculated ‘the annual Expence of each Person’ after 1688 as £8 per annum, or about 5¼ pence per diem (Letter, 108–9). Sixpence per diem in 1750 was a common wage for day-labourers in Scotland and would be a subsistence wage if the labourer had no dependents and was employed year round (Gibson and Smout, Prices, 350; Statistical Account, 16: 340–1). n. 151  Contra Timarch.] Aeschines 1 (Against Timarchus) 97. Elsewhere (ibid. 42), Aeschines calls Timarchus’s inheritance ‘a very large property’. In this speech, delivered in 345 bc, the Athenian politician Aeschines seeks to discredit his rival Timarchus. As he wants to stress the size of the estate which he alleges that Timarchus squandered, he is unlikely to have minimized the size of Timarchus’s slave workshop. On the other hand he may have failed to mention slaves who worked in the household. He specifies eleven to twelve slaves rather than Hume’s ‘only . . .  ten’. See Against Timarchos, ed. Fisher, 231–5. This passage is verbally close to a section of Hume’s memoranda: ‘Timarchus was said by Aeschines to have been left in easy Circumstances by his Father, because he had ten Slaves who gained him 2 Obols apiece a day a Proof that every Citizen of Athens upon an Average had not 20 Slaves’ (Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 516; cited again at Mossner 217).

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311.24–5  master only of ten slaves employed in manufactures] For such small-scale Athenian slave workshops see the annotation for n. 103 above. 311.25  Lysias and his brother, two strangers] Lysias and his brothers were born in Syracuse (Sicily) and settled in Athens. They were thus metics, or ‘strangers’, not citizens. See the annotation for n. 71.1. n. 152  Orat. 11.] Lysias 12 (Against Eratosthenes) 19: ‘They had a hundred and twenty slaves [of ours], of whom they took the ablest, delivering the rest to the Treasury.’ Agents of the Thirty executed a number of rich metics and seized their property (see ¶¶ 65, 67, and the annotations for nn. 75, 81). Among those arrested were Lysias and his brother Polemarchos, joint owners of a shield-factory. The orator escaped, but Polemarchos was put to death. Lysias describes the events in his prosecution speech against Eratosthenes, the member of the Thirty whom he holds responsible for his brother’s death (12.6–20; cf. the annotation for n. 73 above). Eratosthenes’s men also seized much of the brothers’ property, including these 120 slaves, all of whom are usually assumed to have worked in the factory. ‘This is by far the largest industrial establishment of which we know’, writes A.  H.  M.  Jones (‘Slavery in the Ancient World’, 4). n. 153  Contra Aphob.] Demosthenes 27 (Against Aphobus 1) 9: ‘My father left two factories, each doing a large business. One was a sword-factory, employing thirty-two or thirty-three slaves . . . . The other was a couch-manufactory, employing twenty slaves.’ Hume has already given us the context of these figures in ¶ 20. Hume cites this speech in nn. 26, 102, 103, 105, 153, 154, 160. n. 154  Ibid.] Demosthenes implies this in the phrase ‘each doing a large business’ in the passage quoted in the annotation for n. 153. 311.30  the Decelian war, as the Greek historians call it] The Decelean war was the final stage of the Peloponnesian War, 413–404 bc, during which the Spartans occupied and fortified Decelea in Attica, a few miles north-east of Athens. Strabo seems to be the first of ‘the Greek historians’ to use this title (Geography 9.1.17). 311.31  brought the Athenians to great distress] Boeckh’s reply to this seventh of Hume’s objections to Athenaeus’s absurd figure for slaves is that after this date the Athenians ‘probably ceased to keep many slaves on account of the facility of escape’ (Public Economy, 38). He apparently ignores the fact that Athenaeus’s figure does not refer to the period before the Decelean war and asserts that ‘a still greater number than ran away may have been dismissed’—a major social upheaval that Thucydides strangely failed to notice. n. 155  Lib. 7.] Thucydides, History 7.27.5: ‘[M]ore than two myriads of slaves had deserted, a large proportion of these being skilled men’, i.e. more than Hume’s ‘20,000 slaves’. Thucydides records these desertions under 413 bc, among the effects of the Spartan occupation of Decelea. He goes on immediately to record another result of the occupation, the increased cost of transporting livestock from Euboea (see the annotation for n. 109). We translate cheirotechnai as ‘skilled men’,

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rather than ‘artisans’ (Loeb). The deserters may have included skilled miners (perhaps the majority) and agricultural slaves as well as ‘artisans’. The Spartans then sold them at cheap prices over the border to the Thebans. n. 156  De ratione redituum.] Xenophon, Ways and Means 4.23–5: ‘[The state should invest in slaves, and lease them out at an obol a day to work the silver mines.] And when a total of ten thousand men is reached, the revenue will be a hundred talents [a year]. But the state will receive far more than that, as anyone will testify who is old enough to remember how much the charge for slave labour brought in before the events at Decelea.’ See the annotation for n. 155 for ‘the events at Decelea’. Athens, like few other Greek states, had a vein of silver on her territory, at Laureum near cape Sunium at the south-easternmost point of Attica (see the annotation for n. 147 above), which was mined by slaves. Exploitation of the mines declined after the desertions during the Decelean war. Xenophon’s tract, probably written in the 350s bc, recommends ‘ways and means’ of increasing Athens’s rev­ enues. His scheme here (4.13–32), never adopted, is that the state should buy large numbers of slaves and lease them out to individuals at an obol a day to work in the mines. This would generate a sizeable profit. For the sake of the arithmetic, murioi must really mean ten thousand here, not, as so often, an approximate or ideal number. Boeckh’s weak counter-argument is that this passage in Xenophon ‘has a very strange appearance, and is obscured by manifold difficulties’ (Public Economy, 26). Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘600 Slaves working in the Silver Mines of Athens yielded a Mina a day to their Master. Xenophon. He computes that 10.000 Slaves wou’d produce a Revenue of 100 Talents a year’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 511). 312.8  Ninthly, The whole census] ‘Census’ is used here by Hume to translate time¯ma. Scholars have taken time¯ma in this context in two senses, either as the total value of all private property or as that proportion of it which was taxable (‘taxable capital’). Scholarly consensus now favours the former sense. This is the sense in which Hume too must have taken it since his argument depends upon the fact that the total value of all property in private hands in Athens was ‘less than 6000 talents’. This argument by Hume does not worry Boeckh, since he maintained (Public Economy, 492), in the course of a lengthy discussion of the Athenian property tax (470–536), that the figure given by Demosthenes and Polybius (the time¯ma) represents only a proportion of the value of property in private hands. Ste. Croix, ‘Demosthenes’ Timema’, has now conclusively shown that this view is mistaken. See also Sargent, ‘Size’, 22. n. 157  De classibus.] Demosthenes 14 (On the Navy-Boards) 19: ‘The total value of private property [time¯ma] in the country is 6,000 talents.’ In this speech, which Demosthenes delivered in the assembly in 354 bc, he outlines a more efficent way of financing the Athenian navy (cf. Pickard-Cambridge, Public Orations, 1: 31–2). After the statement here quoted, he continues, ‘This sum should be divided into a hundred parts of sixty talents each’. This elaboration is what Hume calls ‘the detail,

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which checks him’. Hume notes this passage in his memoranda (Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515). n. 158  Lib. 2. cap. 62.] Polybius, Histories 2.62.7: ‘The total of this estimate [of the total value of all private property, time¯ma] fell short of six thousand talents by 250’ (i.e. it came to 5,750 talents). Polybius is talking about the valuation of Athenian property made in 378/7 bc, at the time of the foundation of the Second Athenian League. See Walbank, Historical Commentary, 1: 268–9. Demosthenes (see the annotation for n. 157) rounds the figure up, so that it is not quite ‘the same number’. Six thousand talents is also the figure given by Philochorus, who wrote a history of Attica in the early 3rd century bc (Jacoby, Fragmente 328 F46). Cf. Hume’s memorandum: ‘It was the whole Stock as Polybius says expressly Lib. 2 C.  63’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 515). 312.13  an obolus a day . . . 12,000 talents] Six obols make a drachma, 100 drachmas a mina, 60 minas a talent. n. 159  De ratione redituum.] Xenophon, Ways and Means 4.14. This passage is quoted in the annotation for n. 34. 312.15  whom he employed in mines] Until the 1754 issues of Political Discourses this passage read ‘whom he employ’d in digging of mines; and also kept up the number of slaves’ (variants). 312.18  allowance be made for the great number of holidays in Athens] Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘The Holydays in Athens made two Months in the Year. Salmasius.’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 511). It has been calculated that festivals occupied 120 days of the Athenian year, more than in any other Greek state. Cf. “Aristotle”, Athenian Constitution 3.2 (which Hume could not have known): ‘they . . . hold more festivals than any other Greek city.’ Salmasius was the Latinized name of the French scholar Claude Saumaise, author of Plinianae Exercitationes (1629), a discussion of geographical passages in the elder Pliny. He is best known today for his Defensio regia pro Carolo I (1650), which provoked Milton’s famous response in Pro populo Anglicano defensio (1651). n. 160  Contra Aphob.] Demosthenes 27 (Against Aphobus 1) 9 is the passage in which Demosthenes lists his father’s property, cited by Hume in nn. 26, 102–5, 153–4. 312.20–1  two minas a head] Hume’s statement is incorrect: Demosthenes says that most of the slaves in the sword-making workshop were ‘worth five or six minas each, and none worth less than three minas’ (our emphasis). This reading is in the Aldine edition (1504), pt. 2, p. 19, which Hume used (see the annotation for n. 22). There are no manuscript variants. Correction of Hume’s slip would strengthen his argument.

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312.23  Tenthly, Chios is said by Thucydides] Cf. Hume’s memorandum: ‘Chios is said by Thucydides to have had most Slaves except Sparta of any Greek City. Lib. 8. Page 581. Now the Helots were not very numerous as we learn from Plutarch. Besides Sparta had no Trade’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 517). Hume’s reference in this memorandum corresponds to the pagination of the edition of Thucydides published at Frankfurt in 1594 edited by H. Stephanus, with the translation of L. Valla and notes by Aemilius Porta. Cf. the annotation for n. 109. n. 161  Lib. 8.] Thucydides, History 8.40.2: ‘For the slaves of the Chians, who were numerous—and indeed the most numerous in any single city except that of the Lacedaemonians [Spartans].’ Unfortunately Thucydides does not give us a figure; doubtless none was available. By ‘most numerous’ he must mean in proportion to the free population, not most numerous absolutely, given that the island of Chios is somewhat smaller and much more mountainous than Attica (Andrewes, in Gomme et al., Historical Commentary, 5: 86–7). In comparing them with the slaves at Sparta, he overrides the usual distinction between chattel slaves who were the property of individual owners and state-owned Helots. The free population of Chios in the early 5th century, including women and children, has been estimated, with qualms, at 60,000 to 80,000 (Roebuck, ‘Chios’, 81–3). Chios is the rather large island about half-way down the Aegean coast of modern Turkey. 312.25–8  The Spartans were 9000 in the town . . . Laconia] As Hume expresses himself elliptically, it may help to spell out his argument in order to clarify his arithmetic. Athenaeus, citing Ctesicles, says that there were 21,000 citizens and 400,000 slaves at Athens (¶ 111). That would be 20 slaves per citizen. Plutarch says there were 39,000 (9,000 + 30,000) free men in Laconia. On Athenaeus’s ratio of 20 slaves to each free man, that would mean 780,000 male slaves. Multiply by four to include women and children (assuming, dubiously, that Athenaeus had not included these for Athens), and the total amounts to 3,120,000. In his appendix Wallace criticizes Hume for multiplying the aggregate of slaves by four (Dissertation, 293–5). Hume discusses the size of Sparta also in ¶ 127. n. 162  Plutarch. in vita Lycurg.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Lycurgus’ 8.3: Lycurgus ‘distributed the rest of the Laconian land among the perioikoi [free but subservient native Laconians who “dwelt around” Sparta], in three myriad lots, and that which belonged to the city of Sparta, in nine thousand lots, to as many genuine Spartans’. Hume is on treacherous ground here. Lycurgus is a semi-mythical figure of uncertain date to whom the Greeks credited most of Sparta’s social, political, and military institutions, though they were in fact the result of gradual development. Hume, like Plutarch, regards Lycurgus as a historical person, and he is unaware of later debates on Spartan land tenure. Most scholars today (e.g. Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, 165–70 (= 2nd edn. 142–6)) believe that Plutarch’s figures of 30,000 lots for the perioikoi (‘in the country’, as Hume puts it) and 9,000 lots for the citizens (‘in the town’) represent the reforms of the 3rd-century kings Agis IV and Cleomenes III,

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retrojected into the distant Lycurgan past. Moreover, Plutarch goes on to give two alternative figures for the number of lots (kle¯roi) distributed by Lycurgus. The most reliable figures for the population of early 5th-century Laconia are those given by Herodotus: 8,000 citizens in 480 bc (Persian Wars 7.234.2); 5,000 picked perioikoi at the battle of Plataea in 479 (9.11.3). Each of the hoplites who fought at Plataea was accompanied by seven Helots (9.10.1, 28.2, 29.1; frequently doubted). Current estimates for the number of Helots are in the range of 170,000–200,000. For the Helots see the annotation for n. 33. n. 163  Lib. 4.] Thucydides, History 4.80.3–4: ‘about two thousand of them [Helots] were selected. . . . [T]he Spartans not long afterwards made away with them, and nobody ever knew in what way each one perished.’ The historicity of this incident has been doubted (Hornblower, Commentary, 2: 267). Thucydides records it under the year 424 bc but leaves the date of its occurrence uncertain. n. 164.1  The same author affirms, that Corinth had once 460,000 slaves] Athenaeus (Learned Banqueters 6.272b) ascribes the information to Timaeus, the 4th/3rd century bc Sicilian historian. Athenaeus’s figure for slaves ‘is impossibly high, and cannot be satisfactorily replaced’ (Salmon, Wealthy Corinth, 167). Corinth, at the south of the isthmus joining the Peloponnese to the rest of Greece, was a much smaller state than Athens and is never recorded as having more than 5,000 hoplites. Hansen and Nielsen estimate the total population, including slaves, at 70,000 (Inventory, 466). n. 164.1  Ægina 470,000] ‘Aristotle in The Constitution of Aegina, says that even among the Aeginetans there were 47 myriad slaves’ (Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 6.272d). ‘The Aeginetans became so populous that they bought 47 myriad slaves, as Aristotle says’ (scholiast (ancient commentator) on Pindar’s 8th Olympian Ode, line 30 (ed. Drachmann, 1: 244)). This source material from Aristotle becomes fragment 472 in Rose, Aristotelis fragmenta (available in English in Jonathan Barnes, ed. Complete Works, 2: 2453). Hume cites the commentator on Pindar as if the passage were additional evidence though in fact it relies on the passage from Aristotle. Together with his pupils, Aristotle collected and published information on the constitutions of 158 Greek cities, including that of Aegina, of which only the Athenian Constitution and fragments of the others survive. Aegina is the mid-sized Aegean island not far south of Attica. Its area is only some 35–40 square miles, of which much is rocky and mountainous. Athenaeus’s figure is implausible in suggesting about 10,000 slaves per square mile, or 2 slaves per square foot, leaving no room for buildings, roads, or indeed the slaves’ masters. On the population of Aegina see Harvey, in de Ste. Croix, Athenian Democratic Origins, 414, and Hansen, Studies in the Population, 5–18. n. 165  Lib. 2.] Thucydides, History 2.14–16 (esp. 14.1–2): ‘The Athenians began to bring in from the fields their children and wives, and also their household furniture . . . and the removal was a hard thing for them to accept, because most of them had always been used to live in the country.’ This removal was part of Pericles’s

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strategy at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, that the Athenians should not fight on Athenian territory if the Spartans invaded Attica, but rather give up their lands and take refuge behind the walls of the city (1.143.5, 2.13.2). The Spartans did indeed invade frequently in the early years of the war (in 431, 430, 428, 427, and 425 bc), and the Athenian countrymen followed Pericles’s advice. n. 166  Thucyd. lib. 2.] Thucydides, History 2.17.1. This passage follows immediately after the words quoted in the annotation for n. 165. 313.7  the inhabitants of the neighbouring country, as well as of the city] The ancient Greek city-state was composed of a central city or town and its ­surrounding countryside, or cho¯ra, together with the small towns and villages in that area. Thus Athens controlled the surrounding countryside and settlements of Attica. Cf. the annotation for ¶ 100 at 307.24–5 on Agrigentum’s ‘neighbouring fields’. 313.8–10  Greece . . . so narrow a territory, . . . not very fertile] Unsuitable for wheat, Attica did produce quite large quantities of the shallower-rooted barley, and she was by no means unique among Greek city-states in this respect. For the importation of corn to Athens, particularly from ‘Pontus’ (or the Black Sea), cf. the annotation to n. 167. n. 167.1–3  Demost. contra Lept. The Athenians . . . importation of corn.] Demosthenes 20 (Against Leptines) 31–2: ‘Now the corn that comes to our ports from the Black Sea is more or less equal to that from all other trading ports. . . . Now from the Bosporus there come to Athens about forty myriad medimnoi; the figures can be checked against the books of the grain-commissioners [sitophylakes].’ Commentators have suspected that Demosthenes’s first statement is an ex­ag­ger­ ation, but on any reckoning corn imports from the Black Sea area were sizeable. Demosthenes offers documentary proof of his second statement, but no member of the jury could go off and look up the figures before casting his vote. ‘Bosporus’ refers here to the ‘Cimmerian Bosporus’, i.e. the east end of the Crimea. The medimnos, which Hume translates as ‘bushel’ was, according to Arbuthnot’s Tables, 1⅛ of a gallon larger than a bushel (plate 11). Current estimates put it nearer 1½ bushels. The sitophylakes were a board of magistrates chosen by lot, no doubt annually, to regulate the corn supply. But there is no need to assume that 355/4 bc, the year in which Demosthenes delivered this speech and the only one for which we have a figure, was a typical year. However uncertain these import figures may be as a basis for the calculation of the population of Athens, they do provide a further good argument for ruling out the 400,000 slaves suggested in Athenaeus, Learned Banqueters 6.272c (cited in nn. 138, 164), as Hume notes. Cf. Hansen, Studies in the Population, 43–5; Shotgun Method, 90–1. n. 167.4–5  For Attica itself . . . . Titi Livii, lib. 43. cap. 6.] Livy, History 43.6.3: these Roman magistrates ‘had ordered a hundred thousand units [i.e., modii] of grain from them; although they tilled a barren soil and supported even their farmers on imported grain, yet they had gathered this amount so as not to fail in their

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duty’. The modius is one-eighth of a medimnos, an English ‘peck’, or a quarter of a bushel. The year is 170 bc, and ambassadors from a number of Greek cities are in Rome to explain their response to demands for supplies to support Rome’s war (171–168 bc) against Perseus, king of Macedon. Some historians (e.g. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History, 629–32) have been less than impressed by the Athenians’ excuse about the barrenness of Attica, maintaining that Athens had large quantities of imported grain available. n. 167.5–6  And 400,000 medimni . . . twelvemonth.] a sentence added for the 1777 ETSS (variants). n. 167.6–8  Lucian, in his navigium sive vota . . . for a twelvemonth.] Lucian, The Ship, or the Wishes (i.e. the vanity of human wishes) 6. Marvelling with his friends at the Isis, a ‘huge’ ship that they have come to Piraeus to see, Samippus says, ‘She was said to carry enough corn to feed all the inhabitants of Attica for a year’. The dimensions of the ship are given in § 5 (cf. Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 186–8). But Hume himself would never have seen such a large cargo vessel, and Lucian’s dialogue, written in the 2nd century ad, is moralizing fiction, not a his­tor­ ic­al report. n. 167.7  about the size of our third rates] the third of the six classes, or rates, into which British warships were divided, according to the number of guns carried. 313.14–15  city of extensive commerce, and . . . splendour] Rhodes, the southernmost island off the Aegean coast of modern Turkey, became an important political power and trading centre in the 3rd century bc. Hume’s figure (from Diodorus) refers to an event a few years earlier than the siege by Demetrius in 305 bc. n. 168  Diod. Sic. lib. 20.] Diodorus, Library 20.84.2. Diodorus also mentions ‘about a thousand resident non-citizens [paroikoi] and aliens’. The date is 305 bc during the famous year-long siege of Rhodes by Demetrius of Macedon which gave him his epithet Poliorcetes, ‘the Besieger’. As Diodorus has just been speaking about defending the city, this figure must refer to the city of Rhodes, not to the whole island, on which there were a number of other towns. Still less can it include Rhodes’s possessions on the mainland and offshore islands. Six thousand seems a small figure, even for men of military age only, but the period of Rhodes’s maximum prosperity was yet to come. Furthermore, Diodorus may be speaking of hoplites only. Wallace argues in his appendix that the ‘6,000 citizens able to bear arms’ did not constitute the entire population (Dissertation, 300–2). Modern estimates of the total population vary between 40,000 and 100,000 (e.g. Beloch, Bevölkerung, 226–7; Berthold, Rhodes, 55–6). n. 169  Isocr. paneg.] Isocrates 4 (Panegyricus) 64: ‘Of all the Hellenic states, excepting our own [Athens], Argos and Thebes and Lacedaimon were at that time the greatest, as they still are to this day.’ The phrase ‘the greatest’ (megistai) here means greatest in power, not the largest. The phrase ‘at that time’ refers to the

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mythical past, ‘long before the Trojan war’, as Isocrates says in § 54. The phrase that Hume needs for his argument is ‘to this day’. Isocrates was writing in 380 bc. The same four states are given prominence in Isocrates 5 (To Philip) 30, written in 346 bc, and again in chs. 47–55 of that work. n. 170.1  Diod. Sic. lib. 17.] Diodorus, Library 17.14.1: ‘Over six thousand Thebans perished, more than three myriad were captured, and the quantity of property taken as plunder was unbelievable.’ Diodorus is describing the sack of Thebes by Alexander in 335/4 bc. The Thebans, as Hume says, echoing Diodorus (17.10.6, 11.4, 12.2, 13.2), defended their city with great bravery. The figure of 6,000 is found also in Plutarch, Lives, ‘Alexander’ 11.6, and in Aelian (Historical Miscellany 13.7). This figure has not been questioned by modern historians. But Diodorus’s source here is generally thought to have been the historian Cleitarchus, and though Cleitarchus probably wrote soon after the event, he was more interested in bloodshed than in accurate figures. Until Hume’s 1753–6 ETSS the citation read ‘Diod. Sic. lib. 15 and 17’. All the discursive material in n. 170 was added as of the two issues of the 1754 Political Discourses (variants), seemingly in reaction to Wallace’s challenge to Hume’s implication in ¶ 125 that Thebes had only 6,000 citizens. Wallace assumes that Hume was relying on Diodorus 15.52 (Dissertation, 295–7 (app.)). n. 170.7  sold . . . 30,000] Diodorus, Library 17.14.4, says three myriads; so too do Plutarch and Aelian, cited in the previous annotation. Some regard this figure as a purely conventional one (see the annotation for n. 98 above on Arrian’s figure for Tyre). Diodorus says that the sale of the captives fetched 440 talents, or 26,400 minas. If 30,000 slaves reached that price, they must have been sold off for less than a mina each on average, which seems unlikely. n. 170.7–8  We may therefore conclude . . . about 12,000.] The figure of 36,000 for the total population of Thebes accords with Diodorus but is not ‘indisputable’, as Hume claims. His distribution into categories is made in accordance with Halley’s rule (for which see the annotation for ¶ 100 at 307.21 on the women and children of Agrigentum). n. 170.14–15  The above-mentioned number of Rhodians . . . able to bear arms] See the annotation for n. 168. But Hume is mistaken in saying that the number 6,000 includes ‘all the inhabitants of the island’. Diodorus was writing only about the city of Rhodes, which he mentions five times in the relevant chapter (Library 20.84), and its walls too. The rest of the islanders, who lived in the towns and territories of Lindos, Ialysos, and Kameiros, should be excluded from the arithmetic. Cf. Wallace on Rhodes, Dissertation, 307–9 (app.). 313.18–314.1  Phliasia . . . 6000 citizens] Hume has slightly pushed up Xenophon’s figure (‘more than five thousand’; see the annotation for n. 172). Phleious was a citystate in the north-eastern Peloponnese, near Nemea. It was certainly small by comparison with, say, Athens or Syracuse, let alone Macedon or Persia. Phleious

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controlled a modest plain, but its territory (known as Phleiasia) was surrounded by mountains, so that it possessed no ‘extensive country’. In the Inventory (613), Nielsen gives the area of its territory as c.135 square kilometres of fertile plain. According to Xenophon the city’s acropolis was largely uninhabited and used for growing grain (Hellenica 7.2.8). n. 171  Hist. Græc. lib. 7.] Xenophon, Hellenica 7.2.1: ‘[I]f a small state has accomplished many noble deeds, in my view it is even more fitting to set them forth.’ n. 172  Id. lib. 5.] The best reference here appears to be Xenophon, Hellenica 5.3.16. The printed texts mistakenly read ‘lib. 7’ (or ‘vii’), doubtless a careless repe­ ti­tion by the compositor of the number from the previous note. If Hume had intended to refer to that book, he needed only to have written ‘ib.’, as he does elsewhere. Xenophon calls Phleious in 381 bc a ‘state of more than 5,000 men’ (Hellenica 5.3.16). As the context makes clear, Xenophon’s figure refers to the assembly (i.e. all citizens), not to hoplites. It may well be exaggerated. Phleious had sent 1,000 hoplites to fight at the battle of Plataea in 479 bc (Herodotus, Persian Wars 9.28.4), and that figure was not exceeded on other occasions. There is no reason why the town should have attracted many metics. We know nothing of its slaves. 314.1–2  I pretend not to reconcile these two facts.] Here the paragraph ended in the two editions of 1752; the concluding sentence was added as of the two issues of the 1754 Political Discourses (variants). A reconciliation might be needed if Rhodes, Thebes, and Phliasia all contained c.6,000 people though two were deemed large and one small. But the discursive material added to n. 170 as of 1754 brings the population of Thebes up to 36,000; 24,000 of these were citizens amongst whom the 6,000 numbered. In the process Hume has applied Halley’s rule and quadrupled 6,000 defenders to yield 24,000. Presumably he now must do likewise for Rhodes, which had ‘6000 citizens able to bear arms’ and therefore a proportionably larger total population. Compared to Thebes and Rhodes, Phliasia (or Phleious), with ‘6000 citizens’, is indeed small. Wallace discusses Phliasia in relation to Thebes and other cities at 296–7 (app.). n. 173  Polyb. lib. 2.] Polybius, Histories 2.62.11: ‘Mantinea, both in wealth and power, was second to no city in Arcadia, as Phylarchus himself says’. Mantinea was a polis in eastern Arcadia, the mountainous central region of the Peloponnese. This is at the time of the destruction of the city by the Macedonian king Antigonus Doson in 223 bc. Phylarchus lived in the 3rd century bc and wrote a history of Greece covering the central years of that century (272–220). Polybius criticizes him as inaccurate, partisan, sensational, and digressive (see esp. the whole of Histories 2.56). Yet Polybius was happy to use him as his main source both here and elsewhere, and there is no need to doubt this plain statement about Mantinea. ‘Wealth and power’ need not be indicators of population, but in the case of Mantinea we do have a population figure (see the annotation for n. 175), though a deceptively simple one and from an earlier period.

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n. 174  Polyb. lib. 9. cap. 20.] Polybius, Histories 9.26a.2. Hume’s citation is correct for J.  Gronovius’s edition (Amsterdam, 1670). Only fragments survive of Polybius’s bk. 9. On their order, and consequently their numbering in modern editions, see Walbank, Historical Commentary, 2: 8–11. The historian compares this circumference with the periphery of Sparta to demonstrate that one should not estimate the size of cities by their circumference alone. In 368 bc, the cities of Arcadia formed themselves into a confederacy and built a capital at Megalopolis in the south-east of their territory. Excavations in the late 19th century showed that the wall was c.9 kilometres long (c.45 stades) and confirmed Polybius’s statement that ‘it was much too big for its inhabitants’. See Hansen and Nielsen, Inventory, 520–2. n. 175  Lysias, orat. 34.] Lysias 34 (Against the Subversion of the Ancestral Constitution of Athens) 7. Lysias is comparing the danger from Sparta faced by Athens in 403 bc with that faced by the Argives and Mantineans: ‘In the one case [Argos], their number is no greater than ours, in the other [Mantinea] it is less than three thousand.’ For Argos see the annotation for n. 135.1–2. For Mantinea, s­ cholars now estimate the total population in the late 5th century bc at c.11,500–14,500 on other grounds than this passage since we do not know who is included in Lysias’s figure, as Hansen demonstrates (‘Concept’, 42–3). The figure of ‘less than three thousand’ may imply a total citizen population as low as 9,000 or as high as 28,000, quite apart from an unknown number of metics and slaves. Lysias’s figure presents a good example of the complexities that can arise even when we seem to have a clear and unambiguous piece of evidence. 314.11–13  Athens contained . . . houses; yet its walls . . . extent] See the annotations for nn. 143–4. 314.13–14  Syracuse was . . . than Athens] On Syracuse see the first annotation for n. 137.1. 314.15–16  Babylon was . . . , as we learn from Pliny] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 6.30.121. Pliny’s figure of sixty miles corresponds with and is probably taken from Herodotus, Persian Wars 1.178.2: Babylon ‘lies in a great plain, and is in shape a square, each side an hundred and twenty stades [15 miles] in length; thus four hundred and eighty stades [60 miles] make the complete circuit of the city’. Pliny says nothing of fields within the walls. Herodotus’s and Pliny’s huge lengths seem to be at variance with the still partial archaeological evidence (cf. Asheri, Commentary on Herodotus, Books I–IV, 197–8). n. 176  Vopiscus, in vita Aurel.] “FlaviusVopiscus”, Scriptores historiae Augustae, ‘Deified Aurelian’ 39.2: Aurelian ‘extended the walls of the city of Rome, so that its circuit extended to nearly fifty miles of walls’. (The text is corrupt. See the annotation for n. 193.40–2.) The true length is 18 kilometres (Todd, Walls of Rome, 22–3)), just over 11 miles. As elsewhere, Hume omits the qualifying adverb, here prope, ‘nearly’. On the bogus and unreliable Scriptores historiae Augustae, see the annotation for

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n. 114 above. Aurelian, emperor 270–275, began work rebuilding the fortifications of Rome in 271–272, and they were completed under Probus some ten years later. 314.17–19  the circuit . . . , according to Publius Victor, was only about forty-three miles] This text is now known as Libellus de regionibus urbis Romae, edited under that title by A. Nordh, who lists early editions (54–5). Hume may have used Gelenius’s edition (Basle, 1552), included by Graevius in his Thesaurus antiquitatum Romanarum (1696), 3: 37–51. There were in fact fourteen regions, as is stated in the passage of the elder Pliny (Natural History 3.66-7) that Hume cites on the size of Rome in n. 193. Possibly Hume is not including ‘Trans Tiberim’, or was misled by the numbering in Graevius. These regions are divisions of the city made by Augustus (Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, 331–2, s.v. Regiones Quattuordecim). At the end of the description of each region, a number is given that is understood to be the measure of the circumference or boundary of the region. See Hermansen, ‘Population’, 131–8, esp. 132. Hume has added these numbers together to reach a total for all the boundaries, which he calls ‘the circuit of all the thirteen divisions of Rome, taken apart’: the numbers add up to 223,317 feet, a bit less than 43 miles. (For this meaning of ‘circuit’ as circumference, see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. circuit, 1.) This reference to “Publius Victor” is part of Hume’s argument that the walls of ancient cities enclosed large open spaces, as well as built-up areas. Therefore the walls were long, but the built-up areas were relatively small, and, most importantly, long walls do not indicate a large population within. This was the case, he says, at Athens, at Babylon, and elsewhere. Likewise, at Rome the wall of Aurelian is said by “Vopiscus” to be 50 miles long, but the circumferences of all the individual regions (‘divisions’) within Rome amounted only to 43 miles, so there must have been large open spaces between these regions. n. 177.1  De rep. Laced.] Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 1.1: ‘Sparta, although among the most thinly populated of states.’ Hume rightly takes Xenophon to refer to full citizens of the city as opposed to the large territory that Sparta controlled. The number of Spartan citizens is a controversial subject (see Shipley, ‘Messenia’, 590). But all scholars are agreed that a marked decline occurred between the early 5th century and the time that Xenophon wrote the Constitution of the Lacedaemonians a hundred years later. Because Xenophon was in close touch with Sparta for some twenty years, he should have been aware of what was happening. Hume is right to point out the discrepancy between Xenophon’s statement and the population figures given by Plutarch (on which see the annotation for n. 162 above). Wallace gives Plutarch’s figures for Sparta (Dissertation, 57). n. 178  Polyb. lib. 9. cap. 20.] Polybius, Histories 9.26a.2, the passage quoted in part and discussed in n. 174. Hume’s citation is correct for J. Gronovius’s edition (Amsterdam, 1670). Forty-eight stades is c.6 miles. Classical (pre-4th century bc) Sparta famously had no city wall and relied on the valour of its inhabitants for its defence, but one was constructed by Nabis (on whom, see the annotation for n. 80) in or before 188 bc. This is the wall to which Polybius refers, writing in the mid-2nd

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century bc. Hume cites the figure accurately, but Polybius does not directly assert that the wall ‘was round’. The erroneous notion that it was round seems to have been a commonplace. Thus the Chevalier Ramsay describes Sparta as round like an armed camp (Voyages de Cyrus, 140). The article s.v. Sparte in the Encyclopédie (15: 429) says, ‘La forme de Sparte étoit ronde, & son terrein inégal & coupé par des collines, selon la description de Polybe’ (‘The shape of Sparta was round, and its terrain uneven and divided by hills, according to Polybius’s description’). This notion doubtless arose from Polybius’s statement a few lines later that we should remember our school geometry, meaning that we should remember that ‘the largest area that can be enclosed by a perimeter of given length takes the form of a circle’ (Walbank, Historical Commentary, 2: 156) and that therefore Sparta might cover twice the area of Megalopolis, as Polybius asserts, despite the fact that their perimeters are almost equal. Archaeological investigation has shown Polybius’s assertion to be incorrect. Megalopolis in fact covered a much larger area than did Sparta (Walbank, ibid.). 314.26–7  deducting some few garrisons] a qualifying phrase added as of the two issues of the 1754 Political Discourses (variants). n. 179  Diod. Sic. lib. 18.] Diodorus, Library 18.24.2, referring to 322/1 bc. Antipater was regent of Greece in the period following the death of Alexander (323). Aetolia is the area to the north of the western end of the Corinthian gulf. Previously a loose collection of tribes dwelling in unfortified villages (Thucydides, History 3.94.4), the Aetolians formed themselves into a federation in the 4th century bc, which, like their rivals, the Achaean League (discussed by Hume in ¶ 129), became a major political power in the 3rd century (see Hansen and Nielsen, Inventory, 379–90). Diodorus’s myriad should not be taken as a precise figure. n. 180  Legat.] Polybius, Histories 29.24.8: ‘Polybius . . . said that they [the Achaeans] could very well raise a force of even three or four myriads fit to take the field.’ Only the first five books of Polybius survive complete. Thus the present passage comes from collections of excerpts and quotations by later writers. This passage comes from a collection of excerpts, ‘On Embassies of Foreign Peoples to the Romans’ (De legationibus gentium ad Romanos), made in the first half of the 10th century ad. It is so entitled, for example, in the edition of Polybius by Gronovius (2: 1086) listed in the Hume Library. Since Hume’s day these fragmentary passages have been assigned to their original places in the books of Polybius; hence Hume cites the excerpts while we follow the standard modern convention by citing bk. 29 (with the chapter numbers used in all modern editions). Polybius is reporting his own speech to an assembly of the Achaeans at Sicyon in 170 bc in which he argued that they could easily send troops to support the Romans in the 3rd Macedonian war and still have some to spare to send to Egypt. Since he was calling for action, he may have given an optimistic assessment of the numbers available, but he could not afford to depart too far from the truth when he reported the speech in his History. Achaea itself occupies the northern strip of the Peloponnese, immediately south of

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the Corinthian gulf, but at this date the Achaean Confederacy had absorbed the whole of the Peloponnese. Polybius speaks of ‘fighting men’ (in the Loeb edition, ‘men fit to take the field’). Hansen convincingly argues that as many as 20 per cent of the male population were unfit for or exempted from military service and that we should allow for this consideration in calculating total population from military statistics (Democracy and Demography, 16–21; Shotgun Method, 3–4). n. 181  In Achaicis.] Pausanias, Description 7.15.7. Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece in the mid-2nd century ad, devoting a book to each area. His book on Achaea, like the other books, begins with a history of the region described. He is giving an account of the Achaean War (147–46 bc), ‘the last stand of the Greeks against Rome’ (Fuks, ‘Bellum Achaicum’, 270). The slaves come from the 12,000 liberated on the orders of the Achaean leader Diaeus (Polybius, Histories 28.15.3), a measure taken to make up the number of troops in the crisis. This is the only ­occasion on which Hume cites Pausanias in his Essays. Wallace contests Hume’s assumptions here (Dissertation, 297–8). n. 182  Titi Livii, lib. 34. cap. 51.] Livy, History 34.51.5: ‘For they [the Thessalians] had been thrown into confusion . . . also by the restless character of the people, which from the earliest times down to the present day has never conducted a meeting or an assembly or a council without dissension and rioting.’ Thessaly is in north-eastern Greece. Livy’s comment refers to 194 bc, in the context of the pacification of Greece by T. Quinctius Flamininus. Thessaly is also alleged to be lawless by Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.2.24) and Isocrates 8 (On the Peace) 118 and Letters 2 (1st Ep. to Philip) 20. n. 182  Plato, in Critone.] Plato, Crito 53d, wherein there is mention of extreme disorder and lack of moral discipline in Thessaly. Plato’s Socrates is imagining how the laws of Athens will rebuke him if he absconds from Athens, as Crito has urged him to do, and takes refuge in Thessaly. 315.4–7  We are told by Thucydides . . . extremities of Greece.] This para­ graph was included, with its two notes, as of the two issues of the 1754 Political Discourses (variants). n. 183  Lib. 4.] Thucydides, History 4.3.2. The erroneous citation to book 7 in all the editions since 1754 is easily explained by supposing, e.g., that a compositor inadvertently duplicated the content of n. 184. Pylos is on the coast of Messenia in the south-west Peloponnese, opposite the island Sphacteria. Its bay was later famous as Navarino. Thucydides is recounting the events of 425 bc. Many Messenians had left for Naupactus in the 450s, so the territory may indeed have been uninhabited. Shipley writes: ‘Archaeological survey has tended to confirm the existence of a relatively sparse population’ (‘Messenia’, 548). n. 184  Lib. 7.] Herodotus (Persian Wars 7.125–6) is recounting Xerxes’s invasion of Greece in 481 bc. His army encountered these animals as they marched across northern Greece, more precisely in the area known as Crestonia on the borders of

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Macedonia. Aristotle, who came from Macedonia (History of Animals 579b5–7), Pliny the Elder (Natural History 8.45), and Pausanias (Description 6.5.4–5) accepted Herodotus’s information as accurate, as most commentators have done. It is confirmed by Xenophon (On Hunting 11.1), who lists lions among the animals that could be caught in this area, though not wild bulls. n. 185  Titi Livii, lib. 45. cap. 34.] Livy, History 45.34.5. The inhabitants were ‘removed’ from Epirus in 167 bc (i.e. led off into slavery) because they had supported Perseus in his war against Rome (the Third Macedonian war, 171–168 bc). As Wallace pointed out, we need not assume that those removed were the entire population of Epirus (Dissertation, 299–300). It is impossible even to guess at a population figure from the number enslaved. The vast scale of this enslavement, however, can be judged by comparison with the other figures in the table in Pritchett, Greek State at War, 5: 226–34. Beloch (Griechische Geschichte, 3.1: 293), on the basis of Epirus’s size, estimated its population as 220,000 (excluding peripheral areas). Livy’s account is derived from Polybius (Histories 30.15; see Walbank, Historical Commentary, 3: 438), as is that in Plutarch (Lives, ‘Aemilius Paulus’ 29–30), who gives the same figures. We are told that seventy cities were sacked on this occasion and their walls destroyed, a surprisingly large number of urban centres for this wild  region (see Hansen and Nielsen, Inventory, esp. 338–50; Hansen, Shotgun Method, 117). 315.9–10  Epirus . . . Yorkshire] Templeman gives the area of Yorkshire as 4,684 square miles and of Epirus as 7,955 square miles (New Survey, plates 1, 20). Yorkshire is the largest county in England. Epirus is in north-western Greece, opposite Corfu and south of the Albanian border. The boundaries of Epirus were disputed in antiquity (Hansen and Nielsen, Inventory, 338), and precise comparison is impossible. variants for 315.10, n.  A late French writer, in his observations on the Greeks] i.e. in livre 3 of Gabriel Bonnot de Mably’s 1749 Observations sur les grecs, 193. Mably outlived Hume by eight years, and a ‘late French writer’ means a Frenchman whose book has appeared lately, as when in ‘National Characters’ 24 Hume called George Berkeley ‘a late writer’. Mably probably extrapolated his figure of 230,000 from Justin, Epitome 9.5.6–7, cited by Hume in n. 186. Hume’s note appears in only the two 1752 editions of Political Discourses. It is replaced by ¶ 133 as of the two issues of the 1754 Political Discourses. In his calculations Hume follows Halley’s method of multiplying by four the number of soldiers mustered (see the annotation for ¶ 100 at 307.21). In his appendix Wallace criticizes Hume for failing to distinguish here between the numbers of those deployed and the numbers of free citizens, not all of whom will have been deployed though capable of having families (Dissertation, 283–5). Wallace himself is inconsistent in maintaining this distinction, e.g. his phrase ‘the heads of families, or fighting men’ (Dissertation, 45). See the annotation for n. 244.5 on the Helvetii, and cf. Hansen, cited in the annotation for n. 180 above.

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n. 186  Lib. 9. cap. 5.] Justin, Epitome 9.5.6–7. The occasion is the foundation of the League of Corinth in 338/7 bc; the purpose, says Justin, is the invasion of the Persian Empire. Justin summarized Trogus (who probably wrote during the reign of Augustus, 30 bc–ad 14) in the 2nd or 3rd century ad. Trogus’s source may have been the reliable polymath Posidonius (1st century bc). But we do not know where Posidonius found his figures. Referring to this passage, Cawkwell comments: ‘The total military potential of the League of Corinth was far greater than any Greek army on the field of battle’ (Greek Wars, 273). Beloch (Griechische Geschichte, 3.1: 312–13) estimated the total population controlled by Philip at this date at 3,800,000, without reference to the passage in Justin. 315.19–20  contrary to all history] Modern historians agree. But the statistic does provide a basis of calculation for Hume, who uses Halley’s ratio of four members of the total population to one military person (see the annotation to ¶ 100 at 307.21). Thus 200,000 infantry plus 15,000 cavalry yield a total free population of 860,000. Add 430,000 slaves, calculated as twice the 215,000 free adult males, and the total population of ancient Greece (excepting the ‘Lacedemonians’, the inhabitants of Laconia), free and slave, comes to 1,290,000. This time Hume does not multiply the aggregate of slaves by four. 315.23–5  all the inhabitants . . . one million two hundred and ninety thousand] Others have drawn different conclusions from this passage in Justin: ‘If [quite a big ‘if ’] it is anywhere near the truth . . . the total “citizen” [adult and child, male and female] population of Greece, excluding Macedon and the still hostile Sparta, should work out at around a couple of million, in very rough terms’ (Sallares, Ecology, 50–1). Modern estimates, based on a variety of evidence, of the total popu­ la­tion, including slaves, of the whole of mainland Greece, including Thessaly, Epirus, and Macedonia, range from 3 to 3.5 million, with as much as a further 2 million in the Greek cities of Ionia, the Black Sea region, Sicily, and Italy (Scheidel, ‘Demography’, 44). 315.26  Scotland, a country of not much greater extent] Until the 1770 ETSS the phrase read, ‘of nearly [or ‘nearly of ’] the same extent’ (variants). By Templeman’s figures in New Survey, plate 20, the area of Greece (excluding Albania and Macedonia) is 28,785 square miles, while plate 3, gives the area of Scotland as 27,794 square miles. The note to plate 4 adds, ‘The number of Souls in Scotland is computed to be 1,500,000’. n. 187  Lib. 4.] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 4.13.3–5. For the Servian wall and the comparison with the walls of Athens, see the annotations for nn. 144, 146. Dionysius also tells us that though Rome was never formally extended beyond the Servian wall, there were many ‘inhabited places round it, which are many and large and without walls’, so that it is hard to tell where the city ends and the country begins, ‘giving the beholder the impression of a city stretching out indefinitely’.

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n. 188  Lib. 10.] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 10.32.5: ‘After the [Icilian] law had been ratified the plebeians began to build houses [on the Aventine]; sometimes two, three, or even more men joined together to build one house; and some obtained the lower storeys by lot, and others the upper.’ In the early 5th century bc, one of the matters in dispute between patricians and plebeians at Rome was whether public land (ager publicus) should be leased out by wealthy citizens or distributed to poorer citizens. The tribune Lucius Icilius proposed that the ager publicus on the Aventine Hill should be made available to plebeians for building. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. ager publicus and Icilius, Lucius. Dionysius records this event under the year 456/5 bc, as does Livy (History 3.32.7). It is not clear from Dionysius’s words how many storeys these buildings contained. He may well mean only two, though Hume seems to envisage multi-storey dwellings—highly improbable in 5th-century Rome, though common enough in Dionysius’s day. n. 189  Sat. 3. l. 269, 270.] Juvenal, Satire 3.269–70: ‘What a long way it is from the high roofs for a tile to hit your skull! How often cracked and leaky pots tumble down from the windows!’ The speaker in Juvenal’s 3rd satire complains of the disadvantages and dangers of living in the city of Rome. Juvenal already has such buildings in mind in lines 193–202 of this satire, and he returns to the theme in 6.31. Imperial legislation (see annotation for n. 190.1–2) shows that such passages are not sheer fantasy, and Cicero’s On the Agrarian Law 2.96 shows that multi-­ storey dwellings were already characteristic of the city in 63 bc. n. 190.1–2  Strabo, lib. 5 . . . . higher than seventy feet.] Strabo, Geography 5.3.7. Augustus’s legislation appears to have been ineffective: Nero restricted the height of new structures in the post-incendiary building of ad 64, but our source, Tacitus, gives no figure (Annals 15.4). Trajan limited the height to 60 feet (Aurelius Victor, Liber de Caesaribus 13.13). Cf. Courtney, Commentary, 181, 190. The source for Hume’s original memorandum on this topic was Vossius (Observationes, 33–4): ‘Nero Fixt the Houses of Rome to seventy foot high. Vossius.’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 514). n. 190.2  In another passage, lib. 16.] Strabo, Geography 16.2.23: ‘The houses here [in Tyre], they say, have many storeys, even more than the houses at Rome.’ The author’s aside, ‘they say’, suggests that he had not seen them himself. Excavations to date do not confirm his informants, but not all areas have been ­excavated. n. 190.3  Vitruvius, lib. 2. cap. 8.] Vitruvius, On Architecture 2.8.17: ‘Since a level site could not receive such a multitude to dwell in the city, circumstances themselves have compelled the resort to raising the height of buildings . . . . Walls are raised to a great height through various stories’. The architect Vitruvius was writing in the later 1st century bc. n. 190.3–5  Aristides . . . whole surface of Italy.] Aelius Aristides 26 (εἰς Ῥώμην, Regarding Rome) 8. Hume fairly summarizes this passage. Aelius Aristides,

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writing in the 2nd century ad, came from Asia Minor. His viewpoint is that of an admiring provincial. He says that the city would cover the whole area between Rome and the southernmost tip of Italy, a gross exaggeration that Hume’s phrase ‘the whole surface of Italy’ magnifies. n. 190.7–8  in so scattered a manner as Dionysius says] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 4.13.3–5, as in the annotation for n. 187. 316.3  only the poorer citizens, and only in some few streets] Much of Rome was covered by ‘insulae’, or blocks of apartments, of several storeys. The high total of 44,300 suggests that not only the poor inhabited them (Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, 209, s.v. insula). It comes from the regionary catalogues of the 4th century ad (see annotation for ¶ 126 at 314.17–19). n. 191.1  Lib. 2. epist. 17. lib. 5. epist. 6.] The citation to ‘Lib. 2. epist. 16’ in the printed texts is an error: the number in both modern and contemporary editions dating from 1677 to 1741 is Pliny the Younger, Letters 2.17 (see the annotation for ‘Interest’, n. 4). In these two letters Pliny describes two separate houses, though Hume writes as if they were one and the same. In Letters 2.17, Pliny gives a detailed account of his spacious country villa at Vicus Augustanus, which he calls his ‘Laurentine’ villa. The letter was published in the late 90s ad, but we cannot be sure when it was written. The many interconnected rooms of the villa extend over a large area, and there is no mention of an upper storey. The Loeb Pliny gives a plan at 2: 554, one of several possibilities. Though this villa is in the country, not in Rome, it is, as Hume says, an indication of how the great men would build in town. In Letters 5.6, Pliny describes his villa in Tuscany in the upper Tiber valley. This letter, published in the early years of the 2nd century ad, is less precise than 2.17. The villa is even more luxurious than the Laurentine one and of a type (‘porticoed’) that would occupy a great deal of space. See Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 186–99, 321–30. n. 191.3  certainly build the same way in town] Hume’s ‘certainly’ is surprisingly confident, but his reasoning is borne out by modern research. n. 191.3–4  “In laxitatem ruris excurrunt” . . . epist. 114.] Seneca, Epistles 114.9, written during the reign of Nero. Hume has slightly adapted Seneca’s text, ‘ut in laxitatem ruris excurrant’ (in Costa’s trans., 141: ‘so that they emulate country estates in their extent’). The phrase again emphasizes Hume’s mistaken belief that the larger part of Rome spread out horizontally and that high-rise buildings were confined to the poorer quarters.   alerius Maximus, n. 191.4–6  Valerius Maximus, lib. 4. cap. 4 . . . patuerant.] V Memorable Doings 4.4.7: ‘Nowadays anyone whose house covers the same area as Cincinnatus’ estate thinks he is living under cramped conditions’. Cincinnatus is one of the figures in early Roman history regularly cited as an example of frugality and patriotic duty, e.g. by the elder Pliny in the passage referred to in n. 15. According to tradition, in 458 bc, when Rome was suffering from attacks from her

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Italian neighbours, Cincinnatus, who had lost half his land, was summoned from his lowly agricultural tasks to become Dictator (in early republican times, an extraordinary supreme magistrate appointed in times of crisis for a period, normally six months). The story is told briefly by Valerius Maximus, more fully by Livy, History 3.26. n. 191.6  see lib. 36. cap. 15.]  In 36.24.101–25 the elder Pliny, whose name is not included in the citation, describes eighteen marvellous structures at Rome. Sections 109–12 describe the rapid increase in the grandeur of the great houses: in 78 bc ‘there was no finer house in Rome than that of Lepidus, but within 35 years the same house was not among the first hundred’ (Natural History 36.24.109). Marcus Lepidus was one of the consuls in that year. Pliny goes on to contrast the modest homes of that time with the great palaces of the emperors Gaius (Caligula) and Nero: ‘their grounds occupied a smaller space than those emperors’ sitting rooms’. Nero’s palace is the famous ‘Golden House’, constructed after the fire of ad 64, which stretched from the Aventine to the Esquiline (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Nero’ 31). These sections fall within ch. 24 of modern texts of Pliny but in ch. 15 of the edition used by Hume (see the annotation for n. 15.2). For Nero’s most no­tori­ous palace, the ‘Golden House’, see n. 208.1–2. n. 191.6  also lib. 18. cap. 2.] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 18.2.7: ‘In those days two iugera [about 1⅓ acres] of land each was enough for the Roman people, who assigned to no-one a larger amount—which of the persons who but a little time before were the slaves of the emperor Nero would have been satisfied with an ornamental garden of that extent? They like to have fishponds larger than that, and it is a thing to be thankful for if someone does not insist on kitchens covering a greater area.’ These ‘slaves’ are the freedmen of the emperor who made large fortunes from their role in imperial administration. Pliny is making much the same point as in the note on Cincinnatus above, with an additional dig at the contemporary craze for fish-ponds (piscinae). 316.4–5  Bartoli’s plans] In a letter to John Clephane of April 1750, Hume writes of his draft of the essay that ‘Amongst other topics, it fell in my way to consider the greatness of ancient Rome; and in looking over the discourse, I find the following period. “If we may judge by the younger Pliny’s account of his house, and by the plans of ancient buildings in Dr. Mead’s collection, the men of quality had very spacious palaces, and their buildings were like the Chinese houses, where each apartment is separate from the rest, and rises no higher than a single story.” Pray, on what authority are those plans founded? If I remember right, I was told they were discovered on the walls of the baths, and other subterraneous buildings. Is this the  proper method of citing them? If you have occasion to communicate this to Dr  Mead, I beg that my sincere respects might be joined.’ Hume repeated his request on February 1751: ‘I asked you a question with regard to Dr Mead’s collection. Pray, are they authentic enough to be cited in a discourse of erudition and reasoning? have they never been published in any collection? and what are the

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proper terms in which I ought to cite them?’ (Letters, 1: 140, 150). In the auction for Richard Mead’s collection there were several books by Pietro Santi Bartoli (Langford, Catalogue). However, from Hume’s comments it seems possible that the ‘plans’ by Bartoli that Hume saw were in a MS album of reproductions of Roman frescos, or Hume’s memory has confused Bartoli’s work with something else. See Pace, ‘Pietro Santi Bartoli’s Drawings’, esp. 24–5, 29, 36–8. 316.6  the Chinese houses] The largely single-storey, though extensive, houses of even the wealthiest Chinese are described in Du Halde, General History, 2: 144–9. n. 192  Vitruv. lib. 5. cap. 11.] Vitruvius, On Architecture 5.11.4: ‘The xysta ought to be so laid out that there are plantations or groves of plane trees between the two colonnades. Here walks are to be made among the trees.’ A xystum is an area shaped like a race-course, sometimes covered, and used for gymnastics or for walks. Trees among villa buildings are mentioned by Horace (Epistles 1.10.22, Odes 3.10.5–7) and others (cf. Nisbet and Rudd, Commentary on Horace, 144). n. 192  Tacit. ann. lib. 11. cap. 3.] Annals 11.3 refers to large, shady trees in the ‘gardens of Lucullus’, a magnificent estate in Rome that Valerius Asiaticus had acquired and was lavishly renovating until he was tried for treason in ad 47. Cf. Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, 200, s.v. horti Luculliani. n. 192  Sueton. in vita Octav. cap. 72.] Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Augustus’ 72.3: ‘His own villas, which were modest enough, he [i.e. Augustus] furnished . . . with exercise-tracks [xysta], groves, and objects notable for their antiquity and rarity.’ It strengthens Hume’s point that in this chapter Suetonius thrice emphasizes the modesty of Augustus’s villas though they contain groves. But these villas were not necessarily in Rome. The remark might refer to the emperor’s villas in the Italian countryside. n. 192  &c.] i.e. ‘and elsewhere in Roman literature’ (not ‘and elsewhere in Suetonius’s “Life of Augustus” ’). 316.9–317.2  we may perhaps allow Vossius . . . draws from it.] i.e., even accepting the size of the city that Vossius has deduced from the passage of Pliny, Hume argues, we cannot accept the deduction from the size of the city that there was an enormous number of inhabitants. Hume himself does not attempt to infer the population from the size of the city, and indeed disagrees with Vossius’s in­ter­ pret­ation as to its size. For Vossius see the annotation for ¶ 3 at 280.21 and, for his views on the size of Rome, the references to his Variae observationes in the annotations for n. 193.32. n. 193.1–9  “Moenia ejus . . . ei comparari.” Plin. lib. 3. cap. 5.] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 3.66–7. Hume’s reference to 3.5 is in accordance with early editions of the elder Pliny, including the 1543 edition (see the annotations for nn. 15.2 and 40, on Pliny), where this quotation appears on p. 40. Hume’s Latin quotation also corresponds to this edition with one exception noted below, though not to modern editions, nor to that of Hardouin, despite the mention of Hardouin later in

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this note. The translation of the text that Hume quotes is as follows: ‘The area surrounded by its [i.e. Rome’s] walls at the time of the principate and censorship of the Vespasians in the 828th year of its foundation, measured 13 miles and 200 yards in circumference, embracing seven hills. It is itself divided into 14 regions; their crossways are 265. If a straight line is drawn from the Milestone standing at the head of the Roman Forum to each of the gates, which today number 37 (provided that the Twelve Gates be counted only as one each and the seven of the old gates that exist no longer be omitted), the result is a total of 30 miles, 775 paces, in a straight line. But the total length of all the ways through the districts from the same Milestone to the extreme edge of the buildings, taking in the Praetorians’ camp, amounts to a little more than 70 miles. If one were further to take into account the height of the buildings, a very fair estimate would be formed that would bring us to admit that there has been no city in the whole world that could be compared to Rome in magnitude.’ This passage comes near the beginning of Pliny’s description of Italy. We do not know from where Pliny got his statistics, possibly the records kept by the censors. Some details of the passage require comment. (i) The ‘principate and censorship of the Vespasians’ was ad 73. Accordingly most editions correct the MSS’s reading of 828th to 826th (counting from Varro’s date for the foundation of Rome in 753 bc). (ii) The Latin text translated by ‘their crossways’ is corrupt and has been emended in various ways. (iii) The total of ‘30,775 miles’ does not correspond to the text of 1543 (which gives 30,765); the MSS of Pliny give ‘20,765’, and are followed by modern editors. (iv) The MSS give twenty miles for ‘the total length of all the ways through the districts’, and seventy is a correction of the figure by early editors, including the 1543 edition. More recent ­editors favour sixty. For ‘14 regions’ see the annotation for ¶ 126 at 314.17–19 on Publius Victor. The ‘Milliarium’ is the ‘Golden Milestone’, a monument in gilded bronze in central Rome. It was ‘conceived as a point where all the roads converging on Rome met’ (Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, 254, s.v. Milliarium Aureum). The identity of ‘the Twelve Gates’ is controversial. Hume takes them to be twelve separate gates, the only ones that ‘had straight streets, leading from them to the Milliarium’. But it has been suggested that ‘Duodecim Portae’ is in fact the name of a single gate, the name being derived from the twelve arches which carried the aqueduct of the Aqua Appia across the valley between the Caelian and Aventine hills close to the walls (Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary: 141, s.v. Duodecim Portae). In that case Pliny’s phrase ‘ita ut duodecim portae semel numerentur’ should not be translated, as above, ‘provided that the Twelve Gates be counted only as one each’ but ‘provided that the Twelve Gates be counted only as one’. The camp of the Praetorian Guard was immediately outside the walls of Rome, to the north-east. n. 193.10  All the best manuscripts of Pliny] In this paragraph Hume gives his own interpretation of the passage of Pliny, beginning with a remark on the text.

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As the readings ‘a.u.c. 828’ and ‘earum’ show, he is accepting the text of an early edition such as that published at Paris in 1543 (rather than Hardouin’s more recent edition, which emends ‘828’ to ‘826’ and ‘earum’ to ‘Larium’). However, in both editions the figure for ‘the compass of the walls of Rome’ is a little over ‘thirteen miles’, and Hume accepts this figure. Vossius followed a different MS reading (a ‘manuscript of no authority’ according to Hume and ignored by recent editors), which gave the length as 30 miles. In addition Hardouin and Vossius differ in the interpretation of the statistics Pliny gives in the following sentences, particularly the ‘30,775 paces’. Hume, Hardouin, and Vossius agree that ‘Rome was a semicircular area’, as Hume puts it, based upon the Tiber river, but differ as to the length of the radius and of the base line on the river. The question had some resonance. The antiquarian Treadway Nash (see the annotation for n. 4) fills the endpapers of his copy of the 1752 Political Discourses with an interpretation of Pliny’s passage that reduces the radius of the city well below Hume’s estimate. But Pliny’s passage might serve as a text-book example of the ease with which ancient authors’ nu­merals may be corrupted, and modern historians are less sanguine about making sense of the passage: Richardson says, ‘Pliny’s description . . . of the size of the city in his day is a bewildering set of statistics from which it is impossible to wrest more than a general meaning’ (New Topographical Dictionary, 331, s.v. Regiones Quattuordecim). It should also be noted that Hume’s dimensions are approximate. Hume ignores the admittedly slight difference between English and Roman miles (13 Roman miles = 12 English miles). n. 193.23–5  Pere Hardouin understands this passage in the same way . . . . But then he supposes] Hardouin published an edition of Pliny’s Natural History in 1685 with annotations. His interpretation is outlined in the notes to this passage of Pliny (which Hardouin numbers bk. 3, ch. 9) at 1: 331–2. According to Hume, Hardouin unduly restricts the size of Rome because he interprets the key phrase ‘30,775 paces’ as implying far too small a radius. n. 193.31  below even Bristol or Rotterdam] Hume lived in Bristol in 1734. According to an official survey published in 1736, the ‘circumference’ of the city was 7 miles and 55 perches as marked by boundary stones (Bristol: The City Charters, [298–309]). According to Defoe the ‘Ground Plat . . . is said very much to resemble that of Old Rome, being Circular, with something greater Diameter one way than another, but not enough to make it Oval: And the River cutting off one small part, . . . a Sixth, or less from the rest’ (Tour, 2 (1725): 57). The diameter Whately put at ‘no way above a [mile]’. The population he put at 95,000 (England’s Gazetteer, s.v. Bristol), much higher than Browning’s estimate discussed in the annotation for ¶ 142 at 318.19 on bills of mortality. A table in Short’s Comparative History (70) indicates that in 1732 Rotterdam had 6,621 houses, which figure Browning would multiply by six to estimate the population as 39,726. A recent estimate puts the population in 1732 at 45,000 (Israel, Dutch Republic, 1007). Hume passed through Rotterdam in 1748 during his service with General St Clair’s military embassy (3 March 1748, Letters, 1: 115).

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n. 193.32  Vossius in his Observationes variæ] Hume now turns to criticize Vossius’s interpretation of the passage of Pliny in his Observationes variae, 10–14, which yields, in Hume’s view, a wildly exaggerated figure for the ‘compass of Rome’. A map on p. 13 illustrates Vossius’s conception of the semicircular shape of Rome. On Vossius see the annotations for ¶ 3 at 280.21 and ¶ 135 at 316.9–317.2. n. 193.40–2  Aurelian’s wall is said by Vopiscus . . . corruption in the text] Scriptores historiae Augustae, ‘Aurelian’ (supposedly by Flavius Vopiscus) 39.2. The text that Hume used of this corrupt passage apparently printed an emendation containing the words ‘laxiore ambitu’ (‘in a wider circuit’). However, neither the incunabulum of 1489 (p. 66 in British Library IB.22631, in which the Historia Augusta is bound with Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars), nor Casaubon’s edition (1603; repr. Leyden, 1671), 2: 522, contains this reading. Hume’s statement that the remains of what is supposed to be Aurelian’s wall ‘exceed not twelve miles’ is correct: the length is given as 18 kilometres in Todd, Walls of Rome, 22–3. n. 193.42–4  since the walls, which remain, and which are supposed to be the same with Aurelian’s, exceed not twelve miles.] This clause was included as of the 1777 ETSS (variants). n. 193.44  from Augustus to Aurelian] i.e. from 31 bc to ad 275. Maximus and Balbinus were joint emperors for three months in 238. The account of them in the Scriptores historiae Augustae records riots at Rome both during their short reign and at their assassination by the Praetorian Guard (“Capitolinus”, ‘Maximus and Balbinus’ 9.1–4, 10.4–8, 14.2–7). n. 193.46–7  Caracalla is said by Aurelius Victor to have encreased Rome.] ‘[T]he city was enhanced by the magnificent addition of a new road and the construction of a public bath with beautiful fittings’ (Aurelius Victor, Liber de Caesaribus 21.4, written in the 4th century ad). Caracalla was emperor from ad 198 to 217. The new road was the Via Appia Nova, ‘running parallel to the Appian Way but three times as wide and giving access to . . . the Baths of Caracalla’ (Bird, in Liber de Caesaribus, 113–4). Pace Hume, Aurelius’s aucta accessu (here translated as ‘enhanced by the . . . addition’) does not imply an increase in the size of the city. n. 193.48  Vossius’s reply to this objection] Vossius, Observationes variae, 19 (ch. 4). n. 193.49–50  It appears from Spartian (in vita Severi) . . . out of the city.] Scriptores historiae Augustae, ‘Didius Iulianus’ 8.10: ‘His body was laid in the tomb of his great-grandfather by the fifth milestone on the Labican way’. Allegedly this life is by Aelius Spartianus. Didius Iulianus was emperor for two months in 193. The Labican Way (which Hume, like others in his day, spelled ‘Lavican’) ran east from Rome up the Tiber Valley. See Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, 416, s.v. Via Labicana. n. 193.50–1  Olympiodorus . . . betwixt forty and fifty thousand.] Olympiodorus of Thebes wrote a history of his own times in Greek in the early 5th century ad. The

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work as a whole is lost, but fragments survive in the Bibliotheca of Photius. The statement that Hume attributes to Olympiodorus seems not to occur in the surviving fragments (available in Wilson’s edition of Photius, Bibliotheca, 80–93). n. 193.51–2  the consequences drawn by this critic, as well as Lipsius] Vossius, Observationes variae, 34. Justus Lipsius’s Roma illustrata, sive Antiquitatum Romanorum breviarium (Amsterdam, 1657) contains Admiranda sive De magnitudine romana libri quatuor and another shorter work on the government and administration of Rome, both comprehended under the running head, ‘Descriptio Romae’, as well as a third work by another author. Lipsius discusses the population of Rome at pp. 282–4 (2 million free people plus 3 or 4 million slaves) and the length of Aurelian’s wall at p. 280 (50 miles). He calculates the corn supply and the number of recipients at p. 265. Rome extending into the suburbs is on p. 282. n. 193.53  fourteen millions of inhabitants] Scholarly estimates today suggest that ‘the most probable guess is in the region 800,000–1,000,000’ in the time of Augustus (Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, 98). Scheidel accepts this figure, rejecting lower estimates (‘Demography’, 78). Beloch put the population of Rome at ‘about 800,000’ (Bevölkerung, 412) on the basis of the total of citizens receiving the dole, the number of residential dwellings, and the size of the corn supply. Dismissing Vossius and Lipsius, Beloch (394) also chides Gibbon for arguing from the number of residential dwellings alone to so high a figure as 1,200,000. Gibbon commends Hume because ‘with admirable good sense and scepticism’ he ‘betrays some secret disposition to extenuate the populousness of ancient times’ (Decline and Fall, 3: 324 n. 67). Hume offers no estimate himself of the population of the city of Rome, finding only that there is ‘no reason to support those exaggerated calculations, so much insisted on by modern writers’ (¶ 134). 317.3  The number of citizens who received corn] Hume now turns to another time-honoured method of estimating the population of the city of Rome, the number of those who received the free corn distribution known as ‘annona’. n. 194  Ex monument. Ancyr.] Res Gestae 15.4: ‘When consul for the thirteenth time I gave sixty denarii apiece to the plebs who were in receipt of public grain at that time; these were a little more than two hundred thousand persons.’ The Res Gestae was Augustus’s own account of his achievements, copies of which were probably set up throughout the Roman Empire. The most complete version we have is the one inscribed on a temple in Ankara (ancient Ancyra; hence the alternative title used by Hume, the Monumentum Ancyranum). On this passage Brunt and Moore comment in words similar to Hume’s in ¶ 138: ‘This chapter provides the best evidence we have for the number of free poor at Rome. The corn-dole was normally restricted to adult males. It was probably 5 modii a month (which is about 44 litres or just under 1¼ bushels). A single man perhaps needed no more than 3 modii, but the ration was not enough for a family’ (Res Gestae, 59). See also the annotation for n. 196 below. Rickman (Corn Supply, 181–5) concludes that at this date the ‘plebs

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who were in receipt of public grain’ meant the entire citizen population of Rome, not a section of it, a point that Hume challenges. n. 195  Tusc. quæst. lib. 3. cap. 48.] Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.20.48: ‘The famous Piso Frugi had spoken consistently against the Corn-law. When the law was passed, in spite of his consular rank, he was there to receive the corn.’ Piso is Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, consul in 133 bc. The law was the lex frumentaria of Gaius Gracchus (123 bc). Cicero adds that Gracchus criticized Piso for inconsistency, not for inappropriate behaviour or illegality. The anecdote implies, as Hume notes, that rich citizens might collect the corn-dole, not that all of them did. And a further uncertainty is whether what was true of the time of the Gracchan law remained true more than a century later. n. 196  Licinius apud Sallust. hist. frag. lib. 3.] Sallust, Histories 3.48.19: ‘that hastily enacted law for the distribution of grain, a law by which they have valued all your liberties at five modii a man, an allowance not much greater than a prison ration.’ Sallust puts this comment into the mouth of Gaius Licinius Macer, tribune in 73 bc and historian, who proceeds to expatiate on the inadequacies of the measure. The Histories were the last work of Sallust (c.86–35 bc). Only fragments survive (here numbered as in the Loeb edition). The ‘hastily enacted law’ is again the cornlaw of Gaius Gracchus of 123 bc. A modius was a dry measure equivalent to about two British gallons, or a peck (see e.g. Arbuthnot, Tables, plate 13). n. 197  Nicolaus Hortensius de re frumentaria Roman.] Appendicula Nicolai Hortensii de re frumentaria Romanorum, § 7, ad fin.: ‘Nor do I think that it [the corn allowance] was given to every individual, because it would have been given to far more people than is credible. If one may advance a conjecture, as one must do in so obscure a subject, I would be inclined to believe that only the men, not the women, I mean the father and the sons of military age, were accepted for this distribution, so that it was in a sense distributed per capita, but it was not, as Licinius complained, that “such a small thing did away with family responsibility”, because— since it was too small to support a whole family, I mean a husband together with his wife and children—it would not turn the common people from industry to idleness’ (app. M. Tullii Ciceronis opera, ed. Olivetus, 4: 606; see the annotation for ‘Eloquence’ 3 at 93.3). n. 198.4  Sueton. August. cap. 40.] Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Augustus’ 40.2: Augustus ‘revised the lists of the people district by district, and to prevent the commons from being called away from their occupations too often because of the distributions of grain, he determined to give out tickets for four months’ supply three times a year; but at their urgent request he allowed a return to the old custom of receiving a share every month’. By ‘the people’ Suetonius means the plebs frumentaria, those entitled to the distribution of corn. He is talking about the city of Rome, though Hume takes him to include Roman citizens resident elsewere in Italy. The revision of the lists took place in 2 bc.

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n. 199  Sueton. in Jul. cap. 41.] Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Julius Caesar’ 41.3. Suetonius says that the total of 320,000 was reduced to 150,000. The criteria by which 170,000 were excluded are not clear, nor the means by which they were prevented from receiving grain. The reduction took place in 46 bc (Dio, Roman History 43.21.4). 318.12  what proportion of slaves] Roman slave numbers are controversial. Hume leaves the question open and, uncharacteristically, gives no evidence. The Oxford Classical Dictionary suggests 80,000 to 100,000 in classical Athens and 2,000,000 ‘in Italy at the close of the republic’ (s.v. slavery). 318.19  bills of mortality] Accumulated bills of mortality supplied statistics from which, amongst other things, early modern political arithmeticians extrapolated estimations of population. An example cited in Hume’s History (5: 141) is Sir William Petty’s calculation that the population of London had doubled every forty years in 1604–82. Petty also applied a ratio of thirty living for each dead to estimate the current population of London and corroborated this result by multiplying the number of houses by eight inhabitants (Several Essays, 12–15). A similar instance of the ‘grounds of calculation’ (¶ 94) employed before censuses is John Browning’s estimation of the population of Bristol (see the annotation for n. 193.31). Browning totals the burials for the ten years of 1741–50 and divides by ten for an average per annum of 1,731. Inasmuch as the ‘latest and most accurate observations demonstrate, that in great cities a 25th part of the people die yearly’, he multiplies the average by 25 to total 43,725 for ‘the number of inhabitants’. He then checks this result against an alternative calculation. Using the land-tax numbers for 1751, he estimates the number of houses as 7,282. Inasmuch as the ‘usual ­number of souls allowed to each house is six’, he accordingly multiplies the number  of houses to arrive at 43,692, a figure close enough to corroborate the validity of the estimate by burials (‘Number’, 315–16). See also the annotation for ¶ 94 at 306.26. n. 200  In vita Neronis.] Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Nero’ 39.1. The plague is probably that of ad 65 described by Tacitus (Annals 16.13). According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman Antiquities 4.15.5–6)—following Calpurnius Piso (2nd century bc)—King Servius Tullius required the families of those who were born and who died and who reached the age of manhood (women were not registered) to deposit a coin in the appropriate treasuries: births in that of Juno Lucina, deaths in that of Venus Libitina. The passage from Suetonius shows that the practice was still observed during the reign of Nero (pace Parkin, Demography, 38). Unfortunately, as Hume notes, the figure is exceptional because it refers to a plague year. Cf. Hume’s memorandum, ‘In Nero’s time 30.000 bury’d in one Autumn, while there was a Plague’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 509). n. 201  Sueton. August. cap. 42.] Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Augustus’ 42.3: ‘He [Augustus] writes: “I was strongly inclined to do away forever with distributions

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of grain, because through dependence on them agriculture was neglected, but I did not carry out my purpose.” ’ Hume cites this passage also in nn. 15.2 and 253. It has been argued that Augustus wished to abolish the corn-dole at Rome for moral rather than economic reasons on the ground that it encouraged farmers to abandon the traditional, rural way of life that had made Rome great (cf. Carter, in Suetonius, Divus Augustus, 157). Augustus’s remark was made in the aftermath of a severe famine in ad 6 (Dio, Roman History 55.26) that strained the ability of Rome to support her citizens. In fact Italian agriculture was not in decline at the time: see the annotations for nn. 15, 64, above. Historians generally distrust reports of unfulfilled intentions, but, as secretary to Trajan, Suetonius had access to the imperial archives. n. 202  Lib. 4. cap. 5.] Herodian, History 4.3.7: ‘Geta said that either Antioch or Alexandria, which were not much smaller than Rome, would be a suitable capital for his empire.’ The year is ad 211. Septimius Severus nominated his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, to succeed him as emperor after his death. There was, however, ‘bitter antagonism between the brothers over every single thing they did’, and they planned to partition the empire between them so that they would not have to live in the same city. The scheme was rejected (see Herodian, History 4.3.1–7, written in the early 3rd century ad), and Caracalla soon murdered Geta. Both men were in their early twenties. There is no reason to think that either Herodian or Geta misrepresented the size of Alexandria (see the annotation for n. 203). As for Antioch, Strabo (Geography 16.2.5) says that it does not fall much short, either in power or in men, of Seleuceia on the Tigris (see the annotation for n. 214) or Alexandria. In  his poem, ‘The Order of Famous Cities’, Ausonius (4th century ad) ranked Alexandria and Antioch together as equal third of the cities in the empire (Ausonius, 1: 270–1). The Oxford Classical Dictionary says, ‘With a population of around 250,000, it was the third city of the east after Alexandria and Seleuceia on the Tigris’ (s.v. Antioch). Duncan Jones (‘Size of Cities’ 260–1 n. 4) lists the evidence for the size of the cities discussed by Hume. Hume’s citation to ‘Lib. 4. cap. 5’ is in accordance with some contemporary editions. n. 203  Lib. 17.] Diodorus, Library 17.52.3: In shape Alexandria ‘is similar to a cloak, and it is approximately bisected by an avenue remarkable for its size and beauty. From gate to gate it runs a distance of forty stades [c.5 miles]; it is a plethron [100 feet] in width’. Strabo gives 30 stades, or 3¾ miles, for the length of the city and 7 or 8 stades, nearly a mile, for the width. Diodorus’s larger figure may include the suburbs (Delia, ‘Population’, 278 n. 11). On either reckoning the city was, as Hume says, much longer than it was broad. (More reliable maps than that in vol. 8 of the Loeb Strabo may be found in numerous publications, e.g. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, opposite 1: 8.) Diodorus, who had visited Egypt himself, is speaking of his own time, the late 1st century bc. Hume cites this passage again in nn. 204.7 and 205. Until Constantinople was built in the 4th century ad, Alexandria was the second city of the Roman Empire. Situated at the mouth of the Nile, it was renowned for its splendour.

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319.2–3  the bulk of Paris] Salmon sceptically reports an estimate of the size of Paris as ‘about two common French leagues in the diameter, and six in the circumference’ (Modern History, 2: 479). A French league at that time, according to Chancel, was ‘2 English Miles and 3 quarters’ (New Journey, xvi). n. 204.1–2  Quintus Curtius says, . . . lib. 4. cap. 8.] Alexander ‘planned a circuit of eighty stades [about 10 miles] for the walls’ (Curtius, History 4. 8.2). Alexandria was founded by Alexander in 331 bc after he had taken Egypt from the Persians. Quintus Curtius Rufus wrote his history of Alexander in the 1st or early 2nd century ad, following reliable sources. Curtius’s figure is dismissed by Fraser (Ptolemaic Alexandria, 2: 27) in favour of Strabo’s account (see the next annotation). n. 204.2–3  Strabo . . . lib. 17.] Strabo, Geography 17.1.8: ‘The shape of the site of the city [Alexandria] is like a cloak; the long sides of it are those that are washed by the two waters, having a diameter of about thirty stades [c.3¾ miles], and the short sides are the isthmuses, each being seven or eight stades [about a mile] wide and pinched in on one side by the sea and on the other by the lake.’ A map makes the passage clearer. See the annotation for n. 203. The two ‘waters’ are the same as ‘the sea’ (the Mediterranean) and ‘the lake’ (Lake Mareotis). Hume notes that Strabo ‘had travelled to Alexandria’. Indeed Strabo tells us that he had lived ‘for a long time’ in the city (Geography 2.3.5). His account is thus to be preferred to other sources. The whole of bk. 17.1–2 is devoted to Egypt, and 17.1.6–13 to Alexandria. Strabo’s estimate of the length of the ‘long sides’ compares ­favourably with modern measurements. Geographical shifts account for north–south discrepancies (Delia, ‘Population’, 278–9). ‘Like a cloak’: Strabo’s phrase is ­‘chlamys-shaped’, an adjective that he also uses of the whole of the inhabited world (2.5.6). n. 204.3–4  Pliny says . . . lib. 5. cap. 10.] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 5.11.62: ‘in the shape of a Macedonian cape, with indentations in its circumference and with projecting corners on the right and left side’. Hume’s ‘cassock’ as a translation for chlamys is an approximation for something his readers could not picture from their experience. A chlamys was a rectangular or oval woollen cloak, worn particularly by hunters and soldiers, which was usually draped around the neck and down  the left side of the body and pinned on the right shoulder, thus leaving the right arm free. A version of it can be seen on the famous statue in the Vatican known as the Apollo Belvedere. Several authors liken the shape of Alexandria to a chlamys: Strabo (see the previous annotation), Diodorus (see the annotation for n. 203), and Plutarch, Lives, ‘Alexander’ 26.8, as well as Pliny. It is striking that four such diverse authors employ the same comparison, which presumably derives from some handbook. n. 204.6–7  Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. 22. cap. 16.] ‘But Alexandria herself, not gradually (like other cities) but at her very origin, attained her wide extent’ (Ammianus Marcellinus, History 22.16.15). We may wonder how Ammianus,

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­ riting in the late 4th century ad, knew anything about the foundation of Alexandria w in the late 4th century bc. We can only guess at his source (cf. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 2: 13). The statement may be a deduction from the peripheral position of early buildings. n. 204.7  μεγέθει διαϕέροντα, extremely great, ibid.] Diodorus, Library 17.52.3: ‘Alexander laid out the walls so that they were both exceedingly large [megethei diapheronta] and marvellously strong.’ Hume cites this passage in nn. 203, 205. Whether Diodorus refers to the circuit rather than the height and thickness of the wall is doubtful. n. 204.8–9  300,000 free inhabitants] Diodorus, Library 17.52.6: ‘The number of its inhabitants surpasses that of those in other cities. At the time that we were in Egypt those who kept the records said that its free residents were more than thirty myriads.’ The nature of these ‘records’, or registers, is uncertain. Fraser comments: ‘These figures suffer from the usual vagueness of ancient population statistics, and it is hardly possible to accord them statistical value. More valuable is his statement that Alexandria was the largest city in the world, which, if correct, suggests that the population was hardly, if at all, short of a million’ (Ptolemaic Alexandria, 1: 91). Delia collects modern estimates, which range from 500,000 to 1,500,000, and ­proposes a maximum for the Roman period of 500,000–600,000, including women, children, and slaves (‘Population’, 275 n. 1). Scheidel is sceptical (‘Creating a Metropolis’ 27–9). There may have been seasonal fluctuations: nowadays Alexandria’s population doubles in the summer months. n. 204.9  He also mentions . . . 6000 talents] The king ‘received from the rev­ enues of the country more than six thousand talents’ (Diodorus, Library 17.52.6, carrying on from the passage just cited). It is difficult to know what Diodorus means: the king of Egypt owned the whole of the land, had a monopoly on major trades, and received a fearsome array of taxes in addition to the poll-tax (listed in Tarn and Griffith, Hellenistic Civilization, 193–4). We have no reliable figure for his total income. n. 204.11–12  What Strabo says . . . οικούμενα καλῶς.] Lake Mareia ‘contains eight islands, and all the shores round it are well inhabited [oikoumena kalo¯s]’ (Strabo, Geography 17.1.14, ad fin.). Lake Mareia, or Mareotis (now Maryut), lies immediately south of the city. n. 204.12–13  Might not one affirm . . . are one city?] The ‘river’ is the Thames. Windsor is to the west of London, Gravesend to the east, at the river-mouth. Even today, the affirmation is not without hyperbole. n. 204.13–14  This is even more . . . and of the canal to Canopus] We have just quoted Strabo’s comment on the lake (Geography 17.1.14). At 17.1.16, he mentions two settlements, Eleusis and Schedia, between Alexandria and Canopus (or Canobus), a distance of 120 stades or 15 miles to its east (17.1.17). Other places named in 17.1.16 are on the coast parallel to the canal.

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n. 204.14–15  the king of Sardinia has but one town in Piedmont] Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy, was made king of Sardinia by the Treaty of London (1720). He also ruled Piedmont, of which the chief city is Turin. n. 204.15–16  Agrippa in Josephus, de bello Judaic. lib. 2. cap. 16.] The citation to 2.16 is in accordance with editions available in Hume’s day. Josephus, Jewish War 2.385–6: Egypt ‘does not disdain to submit to Roman domination; and yet what an incentive she has to revolt in Alexandria, so populous, so wealthy, so vast! The length of that city is thirty stades [about 3¾ miles], its breadth not less than ten [1¼ mile]’. Agrippa II was trying to persuade the Jews not to revolt from Rome in ad 66. Josephus’s ‘thirty stades’ agrees with Strabo. Hume’s phrase, ‘to make his audience comprehend the excessive greatness of Alexandria, which he endeavours to ­magnify’, indicates Hume’s awareness that such figures may be distorted by ­propaganda. n. 204.17–18  describes only . . . lodged there] Hume seems to overreach here. Agrippa’s adducing the compass of the city to magnify Alexandria does not prove that the bulk of the inhabitants were lodged within the walls. No less than a quarter or even a third of the area was taken up by the Ptolemies’ palace (Strabo, Geography 17.1.8), and there were numerous public buildings, extensive villas and gardens. Conversely, multi-tenanted apartment blocks have been reasonably conjectured, but proof is lacking (Delia, ‘Population’, 280–1). 319.3  the size of London] For the size of London, Templeman adopts Defoe’s reckoning, correcting the arithmetic to 35 English miles, 2 furlongs, and 39 rods for the circumference (New Survey, plate 1). Reckoning by a different boundary, ‘Guthrie’ gives London a length of 7 miles, a breadth varying between ½ mile to 3 miles, and a circumference of almost 18 miles (New . . . Grammar, 196). n. 205  Lib. 17.] See the annotation for n. 204.8–9 on the earlier citation of Diodorus, Library 17.52.6. n. 206.1  He says ἐλεύθεροι not πολῖται] Hume’s argument is that if Diodorus had written πολῖται (politai) rather than ἐλεύθεροι (eleutheroi), he would have meant only adult males and that therefore it would be necessary to multiply 300,000 by four to calculate the total free population. (Cf. the annotation for n. 213 for a similar argument about the meaning of politai.) Hume’s argument is not valid since politai might include citizen women and children who, though without political rights, were still citizens, not metics or slaves. In any case Diodorus writes eleutheroi, and the question is whether the word here indicates only free males or includes women and children since grammatically a masculine noun may include both masculine and feminine. Fraser writes, more cautiously than Hume, ‘there is no means of telling whether it embraces free men, women, and children, or only the first’ (Ptolemaic Alexandria, 2: 171). Delia argues that ‘eleutheroi cannot possibly signify only free male citizens since, were we to treble this figure to allow for one wife and a minimum of one child per citizen family, the total free population would amount to nearly one

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million, without even taking into account the extensive foreign population or slaves’ (‘Population’, 284). For similar reasons she rules out the possibility that Diodorus meant all free males, regardless of status, each with wife and child. She thus concludes that it represents a rough total of all citizens of both genders and all ages. It is impossible to estimate the numbers of foreign residents and of slaves. 319.7  the foregoing computation] i.e. the conjectural argument in ¶ 144 about  the relative sizes of Alexandria and Rome, and the comparison with Paris and London, respectively. Hume uses the word ‘computation’ similarly in ¶ 173 to refer to an estimate based on the implications of numbers gathered from different sources and compared. Until the 1770 ETSS the phrase was ‘foregoing calculation’ (variants). n. 207  Lib. 4. cap. 1. πάσης πόλεως. Politian interprets it ‘ædibus majoribus etiam reliqua urbe.’] Having completed the comparison of Rome with Antioch and Alexandria, Hume returns to Rome and to the fraternal discord between Caracalla and Geta before the abortive proposal to divide the Roman Empire (see the annotation for n. 202). Herodian says that they ‘divided up the palace, where they could each live their separate lives as they wished in a vast spacious building that was bigger than pase¯s poleo¯s’ (History 4.1.2). Translation of pase¯s poleo¯s is not quite straightforward. The Loeb translator C. R. Whittaker offers ‘bigger than any city’, a translation with which Treadway Nash would have agreed, according to a note which he wrote on the endboard of his copy of the 1752 Political Discourses, blaming an early translator for leading Hume astray. But Hume needs Herodian to be saying something about the city of Rome and writes ‘as large as all the rest of the city’. Politian’s Latin version translates as ‘an edifice even larger than the rest of the city’. Politian (Angelo Poliziano, 1454–94) published his translation in 1493 from a MS now lost (Herodiani historiae de imperio post Marcum (Bologna, 1493). Hume suggests that Herodian’s remark, being ‘only by the by’ (¶147), might be true though surprising. Gibbon, acknowledging Hume’s surprise, follows him in his paraphrase and suggests how the Imperial estates in Rome might indeed by that time have grown to such a size (Decline and Fall, ch. 6 at 1: 143 n. 20). n. 208.1–2  He says (in Nerone, cap. 31.) . . . haberet.”] Nero’s ‘Golden House’ (‘domus aurea’), ‘was so extensive that it had a triple colonnade a mile long’ (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Nero’ 31.1). The phrase ‘porticus triplices milliarias’ might be misinterpreted: hence Hume’s denial that Suetonius meant three porticoes each a mile long. The ‘Golden House’ was built after the clearance caused by the great fire of ad 64 described in Tacitus, Annals 38–42. According to Suetonius it stretched ‘all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline’ (Lives of the Caesars, ‘Nero’ 31). See Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, 119–21. n. 208.3  Vopisc. in Aureliano] “Flavius Vopiscus”, Scriptores historiae Augustae, ‘Deified Aurelian’ 49.2: Aurelian ‘built a portico in the Gardens of Sallust one thousand feet long [milliarensi], in which he would exercise daily both himself and his

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horses’. The adjective might mean a thousand feet or a thousand paces, which is a mile. Hume says, ‘it must be understood of a thousand feet’; Treadway Nash, in his marginal note to pages 238–9 (see the annotation for n. 4), prefers a mile: ‘piazzas with triple rows of columns, a mile in length’. Richardson, however, agrees with Hume: ‘it is difficult to see how a colonnade one mile long could be fitted into these gardens’ (New Topographical Dictionary, 202–3, s.v. Horti Sallustiani). The Gardens of Sallust, built by the historian, were ‘probably the most famous estate of its kind in Rome’ and became a favourite residence of successive emperors. n. 208.5–8  So also Horace . . . ” Lib. 2. ode 15.] In the old days ‘no private citizen had a portico measured out with ten-foot rules, lying open to the shady north’ (Horace, Odes 2.15.14–16). Hume quotes from the ode cited in n. 15 above. See the annotation there for parallels. ‘Ten-foot rules’ were part of surveyors’ equipment. Hume’s point is the scale implied. n. 208.9–11  So also in lib. 1. satire 8 . . . . Hic dabat.”] Horace, Satires 1.8.12–13: ‘Here a pillar assigned a thousand feet frontage and three hundred of depth’. The ‘pillar’ is the inscribed boundary stone of what had been a public graveyard, but has now been taken over by a rich man and made into a splendid private estate. n. 209  Plin. lib. 36. cap. 15 . . . . ac Neronis.”] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 36.24.111: ‘Twice we have seen the whole city girdled by imperial palaces, those of Gaius and Nero’. The emperor Gaius (reigned ad 37–41), better known as Caligula, extended the palace of his predecessor Tiberius as far as the Roman Forum. The second instance was Nero’s Golden House (see the annotation for n. 191.6). Both were built within Pliny’s lifetime. n. 210  Lib. 2. cap. 15.] Herodian, History 2.4.6. The reliability of this information is difficult to assess. Pertinax was emperor for less than three months (early ad 191), and a sweeping measure of this kind would have taken longer than that to implement, as Heitland remarks (Agricola, 337), citing the same parallel as Hume uses in ¶ 149 of Aurelian ‘planning the development of waste lands in Etruria’. The passage of Herodian appears in Hume’s memoranda: ‘Tis probable that the Roman Empire & even Italy was not so well peopled as Europe at present, because Pertinax by an Edict gave the waste Lands to the first Occupier, with Immunities Herodian. Lib. 2. C.  15’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 514). The citation to ‘Lib. 2. cap. 15’ is in accordance with some editions available in Hume’s day. 320.14  remote parts of Hungary] See the annotations for ‘Balance of Power’ 19 at 257.22 and 257.24 on the militarized frontiers buffering Europe from the Turks. n. 211  In Aurelian. cap. 48.] “Flavius Vopiscus”, Scriptores historiae Augustae, ‘Aurelian’, describes this scheme of Aurelian (48.2), referring not only to Etruria, but to ‘vast tracts of land’ ‘from Etruria to the Maritime Alps’, a distance of at least 200 kilometres. The author goes on to explain why the scheme was abandoned and offers proof that Aurelian did indeed consider this measure. Scholars are generally

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sceptical about this proposal, though some have taken it seriously, together with Aurelian’s allegedly free bread, oil, pork, and salt, but have thought that the m ­ easure will probably not have been effective: e.g. Homo, Essai, 150–1, 179–80; Paschoud’s edition of Histoire Auguste, 5.1: 215–7; Watson, Aurelian, 137, 257. Aurelian was emperor ad 270–75. On Vopiscus and the Historia Augusta see the annotations for nn. 114, 176, and 193. 320.20–1  a very proper expedient for depopulating still farther that cap­ ital and all the neighbouring territories.] Cf. ‘Populousness’ 176, where Hume says that the free corn distribution at Rome led to ‘the neglect of tillage and agriculture’ and was ‘a very bad means of multiplying the inhabitants of any country’; cf. also ¶ 143. n. 212  Lib. 12. cap. 2.] Polybius, Histories 12.4.5–14 (but 12.2 in editions like the  1670 Amsterdam one of Gronovius). Hume provides a selective translation. Hume’s phrase ‘the greater flock’ seems to translate the reading πλείονας χοίρους (pleionas choirous) in § 13, whereas modern texts of Polybius read πλείονας χεῖρας (pleionas cheiras), ‘more hands’. On swine see White, Roman Farming, 316–21. 321.6–7  that œconomy which is to be met with in our American colonies] The practice of pasturing livestock in the forests of North America is attested in American Husbandry (1775): ‘Many of the planters, especially in the back parts of the province [Pennsylvania], where the wild tracts are adjoining, keep great stocks of cattle . . . . [T]hey let them run through the woods, not only in summer, but also in winter’ (1: 166–7 at ch. 12). See the Glossary, s.v. cattle. Of swine specifically Allen would note in 1798: ‘As soon as the acorns, beech-nuts, &c. begin to fall, they are driven to the woods, in large herds, to feed on them’ (Natural and Political History, 276). See also Deane, New-England Farmer, s.v. swine. n. 213  Lib. 9. cap. 10.] Hume summarizes Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1170b29–1171a4. It is 1170b31–2 that startles him, but he seems to misunderstand it, as Wallace argues in his appendix (Dissertation, 325–6). Aristotle does not say that ‘a city [polis] cannot subsist’ if it consists of a hundred thousand persons (anthro¯poi). He says that an entity of that size ‘is no longer a city’, or polis, in his sense of a selfsufficient, self-governing community since a major requirement of such a community is that the population, particularly the citizens, should be able to know each other’s characters. See Politics 1326a5–b25. It is not clear who is comprehended under the word anthro¯poi here, but Hume sees them as a wider category than the politai (citizens), who, he says in n. 206, would be only the adult males among the free population. In ‘Hume’s “Early Memoranda” ’ (150), Sakamoto connects Hume’s summary with the following from Hume’s memoranda: ‘Aristotle speaking of a Medium in the Number of Friends compares it to a City which cannot consist of ten, nor yet of 100 thousand. ΝΙΚ: βιβ. ενν. κεϕ. δεκα. [NIK. bib. enn. keph. deka, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 9, ch. 10].’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 518). ‘Medium’ becomes ‘mediocrity’ in Hume’s text.

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n. 214  Lib. 6. cap. 26.] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 6.30.122. A citation to 6.26 is in accordance with editions available to Hume; that to 6.28 in the printed texts of this essay is a mistake. Rostovtzeff regarded Pliny’s 600,000 (whence derived?) as ‘more or less trustworthy’ (Social and Economic History, 498). After the death of Alexander the territories that he had conquered were eventually divided among his successors. Seleuceia, on the river Tigris, was the capital of the vast eastern territories that became the Seleucid Empire. n. 215  Lib. 17.] Strabo, Geography 17.3.15. Carthage, Rome’s great rival on the North African coast, was destroyed by the Romans in 146 bc but refounded thereafter. Arguing from the number of troops who defended the city and those who survived the three-year siege, Warmington dismisses Strabo’s figure and suggests a total population of some 200,000, including slaves, and perhaps as much as 400,000 in its great days in the earlier 3rd century (Carthage, 133). 321.22–3  Pekin . . . . London, Paris, and Constantinople] Estimates varied widely depending on how they were calculated. For the population of London and Paris see the annotation for ¶ 112 at 310.31–2. Salmon says that Peking ‘contains 2,000,000 of people, which is more than double the number there is in London’ and that ‘The largest calculators will not make the inhabitants of Paris amount to much more than 700,000 men; and there are, at least, 200,000 more in London’ (Modern Gazetteer, s.v. Pekin, Paris). The city and suburbs of Constantinople, he says, are ‘computed to contain two Millions of People’ (New Geographical and Historical Grammar, 362). Du Halde asserted with confidence that c.1735 Peking had not more than 3,000,000 souls (General History, 2: 10). 321.24–5  Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, we have already spoken of.] Hume discusses the size and populations of Rome in ¶¶ 134–47 and of Alexandria in ¶¶ 144–5 and n. 201. Antioch is passed over with a mere mention (¶ 144). Treadway Nash (see the annotation for n. 4) notes that ‘the account of Antioch has been inadvertently omitted.—Between 1 and 2 hundred thousand inhabitants there, according to St. Chrysostom.’ See the annotation for n. 202. n. 216.1  Such were Alexandria, . . . &c. in the Roman empire] For Alexandria, Antioch, and Carthage, see the annotations for nn. 204, 202, 215, respectively. Ephesus was the economic and administrative hub of the Roman province of Asia, Lugdunum (Lyons) the centre for the Three Gauls. Hume knew that all these ancient cities except Lyons were important well before they were part of the Roman Empire. When he says that capitals arise in the provinces if dominions arrive at an enormous size (¶ 153), the point is that they assume an increased local importance when incorporated within a large empire. 322.6–7  the Netherlands, the United Provinces] The ‘Netherlands’ here corresponds roughly to present-day Belgium, the United Provinces roughly to what is now called the Netherlands. The former were the Belgic provinces that became the Austrian Netherlands after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713.

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n. 217  Vol. 2. § 16.] From pt. 2, § 16, of the Abbé Dubos’s Reflexions critiques, Hume translates part of an extended contrast between modern and ancient Romans (2: 156; Critical Reflections, 2: 209). Dubos makes the same contrast for other ­peoples. Cf. ‘National Characters’ 17. 322.13–14  Italy is warmer at present than it was in ancient times] Recent study of the advances and retreats of the Alpine glaciers, currents in the north Atlantic, and other phenomena suggest, to the contrary, that at least in the early centuries ad the Mediterranean countries were experiencing what has been called a ‘Roman Warm Period’ (Sallares, ‘Ecology’, 19). 322.15  the year 480 ab U. C.] i.e. 480 auc, or ab urbe condita, from the founding of the City (of Rome), corresponding to 273 bc. n. 218  Sat. 6.] Juvenal, Satires 6.522–3: ‘In winter she will go down to the river of a morning, break the ice, and plunge three times into the Tiber.’ Evidently a devotee of the Eastern goddess Isis, the woman is purifying herself. In fact the Tiber rarely froze. When it did, as in 399 bc (Livy, History 5.13.1) and in 270 bc (frag. of Dio 10, in the Loeb Dio, Roman History, 1: 370–1), it blocked imports and was a memorable event. n. 219  Lib. 5.] Diodorus, Library 5.25.2–5. Hume’s printed texts’ ‘Lib. 4.’ (or ‘iv’) must be an error since the passage is correctly cited at n. 238. Perhaps the compositor accidentally duplicated the citation in n. 221. Caesar refers to deep snow in Gaul in 52 bc (Gallic War 7.8.2), but the emperor Julian (reigned ad 361–3) speaks in a vivid passage of winters in Paris as generally mild and blocks of ice in the Seine as exceptional (Misopo¯go¯n 341a–c). 323.6–7  Colder than a Gallic Winter] Petronius, Satyricon 19. The Loeb translator Heseltine ingeniously renders the phrase as ‘colder than a Swiss winter’. The speaker is shivering with fear. The phrase sounds proverbial, but we have been un­able to trace other uses. This sentence was included as of the 1758 ETSS, the next, with its citation of Aristotle, as of the 1772 ETSS (variants). n. 220  De generat. anim. lib. 2.] a note included as of the 1772 ETSS (variants). Aristotle, Generation of Animals 2.8: ‘The ass is by nature so sensitive to cold, it is not readily produced in wintry regions, such as Scythia and the neighbouring parts, or among the Celts beyond Iberia, which is also a cold quarter’ (748a23–7). Hume’s ‘live in it’ slightly misrepresents Aristotle’s ‘be born in it’. For Scythia see the annotation to ¶ 166 at 324.31–2. n. 221  Lib. 4.] Strabo, Geography 4.1.2: ‘The whole of Narbonensis produces the same fruits as Italy. As you proceed towards the north and the Cemmenus Mountain [the Cévennes], the olive-planted and fig-bearing land ceases, but the other crops still grow. Also the vine, as you proceed in this direction, does not easily bring its fruit to maturity.’ Strabo was writing not long after Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, and

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these fruits were established later. The Cévennes marked the limit of southern Gaul (the province Gallia Narbonensis), which the Romans had controlled since the 2nd century bc. Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the 50s, and Augustus subsequently divided that territory into the three provinces of Lugdunensis, Aquitania, and Belgica, collectively known as the ‘the three Gauls’. Strabo was writing at the time of Augustus. The vine seems to have been established in these areas not much after this, and ‘under the High Empire the vintages of the Three Gauls were already an easily saleable commodity’ (Drinkwater, Roman Gaul, 167). Cf. Sallares ‘Ecology’, 28–30. In an undated letter to Wallace of 1753 (New Letters, 32), Hume accepts the suggestion of this possibility (Wallace, Dissertation, 278–9). n. 222  Trist. lib. 3. eleg. 10. de Ponto, lib. 4. eleg. 7, 9, 10.] Ovid, Tristia 3.10.37–52, esp. 37–8: ‘I have seen the vast sea stiff with ice, a slippery shell holding the water motionless.’ Ex Ponto 4.7 and 4.9, addressed respectively to Julius Vestalis and Lucius Pomponius Flaccus, both of whom held high office in the area, appeal to their eyewitness testimony that the Euxine (the Black Sea) does indeed freeze over. See esp. 4.7.7–10 and 4.9.37–52. In 10.31–62, Ovid offers an explanation to Albinovanus Pedo, another Roman official with northern experience, as to why the sea freezes. (Brief accounts of these officials are in Syme, History in Ovid, 81–3, 88–9.) In ad 8, Ovid was exiled to Tomis, now Costantsa in Romania, on the coast of the Black Sea, where he died in ad 17. The poems in Tristia and Ex Ponto, mostly written in the early years of his exile, are full of bitter complaints about the harsh climate. The incorrect citation in all the printed texts of the essay to Tristia 3.9 instead of 3.10 we treat as a compositor’s mistake. 323.14–15  This seldom or never happens] Most scholars agree with Tournefort that Ovid’s accounts of cold and gloom are exaggerated or reflect his misery in exile or reinforce his pleas to be allowed to return to Rome. They share some of the features of Virgil’s description of ‘Scythia’ as a paradigm of the wintry north (Georgics 3.349–83). Cf. Williams, ‘Ovid’s Exilic Poetry’, 340–9. 323.19  Tournefort, a Provençal] Joseph de Pitton Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant (Voyage, 2: 124–5, 160). Tournefort was from Aix, in Provence, and visited the Black Sea in 1701. n. 223  Lib. 4. cap. 21.] Polybius refers to ‘the harshnesss of character resulting from the cold and gloomy atmospheric conditions usually prevailing in these parts [i.e. Arcadia]’ (Histories 4.21.1). Arcadia is in the centre of the Peloponnese and very unlike the idyllic Arcadia of poetry and painting. Its numerous mountains no doubt created the chill. n. 224  Lib. 1. cap. 2.] Varro, On Agriculture 1.2.4: ‘We must agree [with Eratosthenes] that Italy was more suited to cultivation than Asia. In the first place, it is in Europe; and secondly, this part of Europe has a more temperate climate than we find farther inland. For the winter is almost continuous in the interior.’ Here

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Varro is beginning his eloquent praise of Italy. As he tells us, he is following the eminent 3rd-century Alexandrian geographer Eratosthenes. Hume’s is a natural interpretation of Varro’s words, but Heurgon says that Varro seems to envisage the Arctic regions as starting immediately north of the Alps (in Varron, Économie rurale, 1: 102–4). Pannonia lies in the bend of the Danube to the south and east. n. 225  Lib. 3.] Strabo, Geography 3.1.2: ‘Northern [Iberia] is extremely cold as well as rugged, and it borders the ocean; it is also cut off and isolated from others, so that it is an exceedingly wretched place to live in.’ Aulus Gellius cites Cato: ‘the North wind fills one’s mouth when one speaks; it knocks over an armed man, even a loaded cart’ (Attic Nights 22.29). Such impressions will have derived from military campaigns in the winter. Men died of cold at Numantia in 153/2 bc (Appian, Roman History 6 (Wars in Spain) 9.47). In fact, broadly speaking, the climate of coastal regions is mild and that of the high inland plateau (the Meseta) is harsh, but there are local variations. 323.35–324.1  Our northern colonies in America become more temperate, in proportion as the woods are felled] From early colonial times there was discussion as to whether the clearing of the forests would temper the climate of North America and bring it closer to that of ‘places under the same latitude in Europe’. In 1645, Edward Johnson remarks, referring to the year 1632, that ‘some impute’ a moderating of the winter’s cold ‘to the cutting downe of the woods, and breaking up the Land’ (Providence, 84). American Husbandry (1775) takes it for granted: ‘The climate [of New England] has been vastly improved since the country has been cleared of wood and brought into cultivation. The cold in winter is less intense, the air in summer purer, and the country in general much more wholesome’ (1: 46 at ch.  5). In the early 19th century Timothy Dwight still mentions the theory, and rejects it (Travels, 1: 38–48). Cf. Hume’s remark in n. 254 about the effect on Italy of the cold winds which would have blown from the other parts of Europe if they were ‘more savage and woody’ in ancient times. n. 226.1–4  the Spanish histories . . . Cortes’s or Pizzarro’s small armies] In his History of America (pub. 1777), William Robertson names his major con­tem­por­ ary sources for Cortes’s conquest of Mexico (apart from the dispatches of Cortes himself) as Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Cronica de la Nueva España, and Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. For Pizarro’s conquest of Peru, Robertson refers to the accounts by Francisco de Xerez and Don Pedro Sancho, as well as Pedro Cieza de Leon, Cronica del Peru, and Don Augustine Zarate, Historia del descubrimiento y conquista de la provincia del Peru, Don Diego Fernandez, Historia del Peru, and Garcia Lasso de la Vega, Commentarios reales del origin de los Incas, reies del Peru (Works, 7: 413–14 n. 1, and 426–8 n. 29). Hume occasionally refers to Robertson’s work on this subject in his letters, e.g. Letters 2: 230 for August 1770. n. 227  Lib. 1. cap. 1.] Columella, On Agriculture 1.1.4–5. Hume paraphrases Columella’s account of Saserna’s theory, which derived from Hipparchus. Two men

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named Saserna, father and son, wrote on agriculture in the early 1st century bc (see White, Roman Farming, 20–1). Hipparchus is the great astronomer (2nd century bc). He seems to have been the first to have considered the question and to have offered an explanation. Data on climate change in antiquity are sporadic and inadequate, and the spread of the olive and the vine depends on other factors besides climate, e.g. soil and knowledge of techniques (see White, Roman Farming, 225–7, 229–46). n. 228  He seems . . . Africanus; lib. 1. cap. 1.] The citation is to Columella, On Agriculture 1.1.12, where Saserna is placed between Cato and later writers. Hume dates the ‘age of Saserna’ by the date of a famous contemporary.The familiar bc system dating back from the Christian Era was not yet standard (Blackburn and Holford-Strevens, Oxford Companion to the Year, 781). ‘The younger Africanus’ is Scipio Aemilianus, who captured and destroyed Carthage in 146 bc. He lived from 185 to 129 bc. 324.11–12  if it be continued to the present times] Dubos and Hume were in no position to know that they lived when what is now called the Little Ice Age was by many reckonings beginning to abate on both sides of the Atlantic (Lamb, Climate, chs. 12–13; Sallares, ‘Ecology’, 19–20). By some reckonings it began in the later Middle Ages. 324.14  Let us now cast our eye] Having dealt with testimony as to numbers (¶¶ 94–154) and posited that the putatively warmer climate of modern Europe is an effect of more extensive cultivation attending increased population (¶¶ 155–64), Hume proceeds to survey regions allowing a comparison of present conditions with their ancient ones (¶¶ 165–76). 324.17  Egypt is represented by Maillet] In Description de l’Egypte, lettre 1re. A common thread in Hume’s paragraph is the comparision of the Islamic present with the ancient past. Egypt and Syria (which then included Palestine) had been under Ottoman rule since the early 16th century. Asia Minor, or Anatolia, was the heart of Ottoman rule. Despite the convention of viewing the Barbary coast of Africa as part of ‘Turky in Africa’, Salmon was unwilling to see Ottoman rule as truly extending west of Egypt given the independence of the pirate regimes. Barbary contained ‘the countries of Algiers, Tunis [anciently Carthage], Tripoli and Barca’, but not Morocco (Modern History, 1: 485, 3: 2). Nevertheless, Wallace describes them all as under ‘a Turkish policy’ (Dissertation, 207). 324.21  The depopulation of Greece] There is no accurate figure for the popu­ la­tion of Greece in Hume’s lifetime, but it has been estimated at less than a million. Finlay suggests for the early 19th century a million in continental Greece and another million for the islands, Constantinople, Asia Minor, Cyprus, and other parts (History of Greece, 6: 2). 324.22  the country now called Turky in Europe] Under Ottoman control in one form or another were the Crimea, Greece (including Albania and Macedonia),

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Bulgaria, Romania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and parts of Croatia and Serbia. For an extended description of the Greek lands within Turky in Europe, see Salmon, Modern History, 1: 486, 582–603, 637–75. n. 229  Xen. exp. lib. 7. Polyb. lib. 4. cap. 45.] Xenophon, Anabasis 7.2–7, passim; Polybius, Histories 4.45.1–8. Xenophon describes the encounters of his army with Thracians, a ferocious people occupying present-day Bulgaria and adjacent areas. See esp. 7.3.21–33 for a drunken dinner with Thracians and 7.3.44–7.4.6 for a plundering expedition. Polybius recounts the difficulties that the Greek city of Byzantium experienced with its Thracian neighbours. n. 230  Ovid, passim, &c. Strabo, lib. 7.] Ovid makes frequent reference to ‘the Getes’, e.g. in Tristia 3.10.5; 5.7.9–24. The Getae were a Thracian tribe, though some, like Hume, thought otherwise (Strabo, Geography 7.3.2). They were the ­people of whom Ovid complains so much in his poems from exile at Tomis (e.g. Tristia 5.7.9–24, 5.10.11–46, and see the annotation for n. 222). Ovid perhaps exaggerates their barbarity. Strabo offers a general account of the people, with emphasis on their religious beliefs (Geography 7.3.2–8), a point Hume notes in his memoranda: ‘The immortal Getes Theists & Unitarians Id Lib. 4 [i.e. Herodotus, Persian Wars 4. 93–4]’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 517). Strabo stresses their poverty and their guilelessness but also recounts their incursions into Roman territory (7.3.11). n. 231  Polyb. lib. 2. cap. 12.] The ‘Illyrians were not the enemies of this ­ eople  or that, but the common enemies of all’ (Polybius, Histories 2.12.6). The p Illyrians, notorious pirates, occupied, roughly speaking, the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Polybius’s judgement explains the relief felt after the treaty concluding the First Illyrian War (229/8 bc). The area was gradually Romanized and became a Roman province in 59 bc. The disparaging remarks about ‘barbarians’ in passages quoted in the annotations for nn. 229–31 were all made by their enemies. 324.31–2  Poland and Muscovy in Europe . . . Sarmatia and Scythia] For a map showing the territories of Poland before and after the partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795, see Beauvois, ‘Poland’, 307. The Sarmatians (Sauromatae) lived east of the Scythians in Herodotus’s time (Persian Wars 4.22) and made their way westwards, displacing the Scythians over the course of centuries. Tacitus gives an account (Histories 1.79) of the irruption of a tribe of Sarmatians into the Roman province of Moesia in ad 69. Muscovy in Europe comprised those portions of the Russian empire not deemed Asian. Its western border was Poland, its eastern, Siberian Russia, and its southern, Turkish Europe and Caucasia. At this time it included Estonia, Ukraine, and some of Finland and Lapland. Scythia was the vaguely conceived area from north of the Black Sea towards the river Volga. For classical writers the Scythians were a type of nomadic savagery, despite the wise prince Anacharsis (‘Money’ 6; cf. also the annotation for ‘Love and Marriage’ 4 at 23.15–16).

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325.2–4  Denmark and Sweden . . . from the North] Gibbon speaks of the reputed origin of the Goths in Scandinavia: ‘On the faith of ancient songs, the uncertain but the only memorials of barbarians, they [Cassiodorus and Jordanes] deduced the first origin of the Goths from the vast island or peninsula of Scandinavia’ (Decline and Fall, 1: 258–9). He cites Jordanes, Getica 4.25: ‘Now from this island of Scandza, as from a hive of races or a womb of nations, the Goths are said to have come forth long ago under their king, Berig by name’ (Gothic History, 57). 325.11  the Teutons and Cimbri] These two Germanic peoples invaded the Roman provinces and entered Italy towards the end of the 2nd century bc. After a desperate struggle they were fought off by Marius in two battles in 102 and 101. n. 232  De bello Gallico, lib. 6.] Caesar, Gallic War 6.22–3. Caesar says of the Germans that they ‘have no interest in agriculture’ and that there is no fixed possession of plots of land. They also devastate their borders for security. He says the same of the Suebi, a Germanic tribe, at Gallic War 4.3. His claims may not have been universally true. Caesar may have heard of tracts of wasteland in Germany and provided his own explanation. Gibbon commends Hume’s scepticism about the population of Germany in ‘the age of Caesar and Tacitus’ (Decline and Fall, ch. 9 at 1: 241 n). For Germany ‘at present’, see the annotation for ‘National Characters’ 19 at 167.30. In Hume’s day ‘Germany’ stretched from the Alps in the south to the Baltic Sea in the north but did not include the Austrian Netherlands. n. 233  De moribus Germ.] Tacitus, Germania 26.2: ‘They change the ploughlands every year, and there is still land to spare, for with the fertility and extent of their soil they do not exert themselves by their own labour to plant orchards, to fence off meadows and to irrigate gardens. Grain is the only harvest required of the land.’ The precise agricultural practices implied by this passage are uncertain, but, pace Hume, some cultivation of the ground at least for cereals is implied. Perhaps in some passages (e.g. 23.1 on diet) Tacitus implies a more varied agriculture, and there is archaeological evidence of established and privately owned estates. See Rives in Tacitus: Germania, 131, 221–3, and 215. n. 234  Lib. 7.] Strabo describes the peoples between the Rhine and the Elbe as nomads, who ‘do not till the soil’ (Geography 7.1.3). On the ‘small republics’ of Germany see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 14 at 105.35. n. 235  Lib. 3. cap. 47.] ‘Most of Britain is marshland because it is flooded by the continual ocean tides’ (Herodian, History 3.14.6; further details follow). Hume reports Herodian’s ‘most of Britain’ as ‘all Britain’. The historian is introducing the British campaigns of the emperor Septimius Severus, which took place in ad 208–11, chiefly in Scotland, ‘above a century’ after the major advances in civilization ­attributed to Agricola, governor of the province ad 77–84. The antiquarian Treadway Nash (in his marginal note in his copy of 1752 Political Discourses, 249) contends that ‘Herodian speaks not of the whole Island, nor of the Roman Province, but of the Country still posses’d by the Britons, (i.e. the region to the North of

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Editors’ Annotations

Antonine’s Wall) and only of ye greater part of that. τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς Βρεττανῶν χώρας [ta pleista to¯n Brettanno¯n cho¯ras] − Severus’s army had need of Bridges, to pass the Highland Lochs and Morasses.’ But writing in the Eastern Roman Empire, Herodian relies on travellers’ tales, and his informant may have generalized from an uncharacteristic area. The swamps and marshes recur somewhat bizarrely in Dio, Roman History 77.12.1, 4. The citation to ‘Lib. 3. cap. 47’ is in accordance with ­editions available in Hume’s day. n. 236.1  Cæsar, de bello Gallico, lib. 6.] Caesar, Gallic War 6.13: ‘It is believed that their training [disciplina] was discovered in Britain and transferred thence to Gaul; and today those who would study the subject more accurately journey, as a rule, to Britain to learn it.’ We do not know what evidence there was for Caesar’s report that the Druids’ disciplina originated in Britain, that it spread thence to Gaul, and that Britain remained the centre of Druid studies. n. 236.1–2  Strabo, lib. 7. says, the Gauls were not much more improved than the Germans.] Strabo, Geography 7.1.2; cf. 4.4.2: ‘These peoples are not only similar in respect to their nature and their governments, but they are also kinsmen to one another.’ Drinkwater writes: ‘careful combination of our best literary information (above all, Tacitus’s Germania) with modern archaeological research prod­ uces a picture of a simple (by comparison with the Celtic) but developing iron age society, with permanent farms and villages . . . , but unlike the Celtic, the Germanic peoples produced no proto-urban settlements which might accommodate central administrations’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 635). 325.30–1  an incredible populousness in Gaul] Where informed estimates differ so widely it would be foolish to be dogmatic, though we may safely follow Hume in doubting the highest numbers. We have no figures for other periods of Gallic history, though the prosperity of the province, especially of Narbonensis (Provence), during the early empire may have led to an increase in its population. Estimates by modern historians of the population of Gaul at the time of Caesar’s conquest vary from a minimum of 4,890,000 (Beloch, Bevölkerung 448–60) to 15 or even 20 million (Grenier, in Frank, Economic Survey, 3: 447–55). A more recent calculation by Drinkwater yields c.10,000,000 in the imperial period (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 626, s.v. Gaul (Transalpine)). n. 237  Celtica. pars 1.] Appian, Roman History 4 (Gallic History 1.2): Caesar’s troops ‘reduced to subjection 400 [Gallic] tribes and more than 800 settlements’. See n. 127, where Hume cites the same passage. Hume’s ‘nations’ translates ethne¯ in Appian and Diodorus, usually now rendered ‘tribes’. Four hundred is an overestimate, no doubt caused by counting sub-groups and alternative names. n. 238  Lib. 5.] Diodorus, Library 5.25.1. 325.34  Calculating, therefore, at a medium] Hume multiplies his ‘medium’ (125,000 men) by 400 nations and then by 4 to include ‘women and children’, yielding 200 million. This procedure, which Hume adopts to produce an ‘incredible’

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result, would be faulty in any case in that we do not know how many tribes came close to Diodorus’s largest and smallest figures and therefore should not take an average. n. 239  Ancient Gaul . . . modern France] The boundaries of 18th-century France did not differ greatly from those of present-day France. Ancient Gaul, however, included what is now Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Holland and (in the 1st century ad) Switzerland, but did not include Corsica (French since 1768). Salmon ponders the effects of the Huguenot diaspora, Louis XIV’s wars, famine, and the plague and concludes that ‘if there was ever any colour for those high calculations of their numbers which some writers have made, computing the souls in France at nineteen millions and upwards; those who now estimate them at five or six millions, possibly come much nearer the truth’ (Modern History, 2: 473). In 1789, Richard Price would put the population at 30 millions (Discourse, repr. app. A3 in Wollstonecraft, Vindication, 370). n. 240  Cæsar, de bello Gallico, lib. 6.] Caesar, Gallic War 6.13: ‘Throughout Gaul there are two classes of some account and dignity [i.e. Druids and knights]. The common folk are treated almost as slaves.’ On the basis of the archaeological evidence of the distribution of villas, Drinkwater questions whether the divide between rich and poor in Gaul was so very wide as Caesar alleges. Drinkwater points to ‘the undoubted existence [in the archaeological record] of medium-sized villas, with relatively well-appointed dwelling-houses, which it is impossible to fit into a general scheme of great landlords and their downtrodden petty tenantry’ (Roman Gaul, 170–8 at 173). n. 241  Id. ibid.] Caesar, Gallic War 6.15: ‘Whenever war breaks out—and before Caesar’s coming this would happen well-nigh every year, in the sense that they would either be making wanton attacks themselves or repelling such.’ Similar remarks on Gallic bellicosity are at 3.10 and 3.19. Cf. Strabo, Geography 4.4.2. On the ‘intestine wars’ of the ancients, see ¶¶ 54–62. n. 242  Lib. 4.] Strabo, Geography 4.1.2: ‘None of the country is untilled except parts where tilling is precluded by swamps and woods. Yet these parts too are thickly populated—more because of the largeness of the population than because of the industry of the people; for . . . the men are fighters rather than farmers. But at the present time they are compelled to till the soil, now that they have laid down their arms. I am speaking here only in a general way of the whole of the outer Celtic land [i.e. Gaul excluding the south, Narbonensis].’ Writing not long after the Roman conquest, Strabo is emphasizing its benefits. n. 243  De bello Gallico, lib. 2.] The figures given by modern editions of Caesar (Gallic War 2.4) vary somewhat, so that the total is uncertain. The figures printed in the edition of Davies, to which Hume apparently refers (see the annotation for n. 244.8), yield a total of 308,000, a figure which could easily be mistakenly rendered in Hume’s text as 208,000. (Davies notes a number of variants in his annotations.)

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Editors’ Annotations

The figures that Caesar reports may well have been inflated either by the Belgae to alarm the Romans or by Caesar to magnify his achievements. 326.10–11  the great forces which were levied in Belgium] In 57 bc, Caesar attacked the Belgae, a group of tribes inhabiting Gaul north of the Seine and Marne. At Gallic War 2.4 he lists the forces promised by the various tribes to oppose him. The figures, he says, were supplied to him by the Remi, a pro-Roman tribe. It is not safe to assume that each of these tribes, like the Bellovaci, sent only six-tenths of their fighting men. Hence the figure of 350,000 is insecure. Hume multiplies that total by four to derive a figure for the total population from that of the fighting men (see the annotation for ¶ 100 at 307.21). Nevertheless, Hume’s total for the popu­la­ tion of the whole of Gaul falls within the same general range as the more cautious modern estimates: see the annotation for ¶ 170 at 325.30–1. 326.16–18  about 350,000; all the inhabitants a million and a half . . . . that country might contain six millions] In the two 1752 editions of Political Discourses the arithmetic was ‘above half a million; the whole inhabitants two millions. . . . might contain eight millions’ (variants). On the basis of the same passage of Caesar, Wallace calculates 8 million for ancient ‘Belgium’ and consequently 32 million for ancient Gaul (Dissertation, 71–3). n. 244.1–5  It appears . . . the nobility] ‘As for the common folk, they are treated almost as slaves, venturing naught of themselves, never taken into counsel. The greater part of them, oppressed by debt, or by heavy tribute, or by the wrongdoing of the most powerful, commit themselves in slavery to the nobles, who have the same rights over them as masters over slaves’ (Caesar, Gallic War 6.13). (Hume has cited this chapter at n. 240.) The word paene, ‘almost’, together with the cautious tone of the passage, suggests that Caesar is writing about an institution unfamiliar to his readers and not identical with Roman slavery. Drinkwater argues that, as Romanization progressed, increasing prosperity and urbanization offered some prosperity to the common people; and he distinguishes a separate class of slaves (Roman Gaul, 202–6). n. 244.3–4  and a nobleman . . . of this kind] Amounting to some 10,000 (Caesar, Gallic War 1.4), the household (familia) of Orgetorix, a Helvetian nobleman, was perhaps exceptionally large. Gallic War 6.15 is evidence that dependants followed their superiors into war. n. 244.4–5  composed of the people as well as of the nobility] Omitted after the 1768 ETSS was the following elaboration: ‘An army of 100,000 noblemen from a very small state is incredible’ (variants). The army of 100,000 noblemen evidently refers to the ‘hundred thousand men’ that the Bellovaci ‘could have brought . . . into the field’, according to Caesar (¶ 171). n. 244.5  The fighting men amongst the Helvetii] The Helvetii were a Celtic tribe living, roughly speaking, where Switzerland is today. They were incorporated in the province of Gaul in the 1st century ad. In 58 bc, Caesar had prevented them

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from migrating westwards and crossing what then was the boundary of Gaul. Caesar tells us that documents were found in the camp of the Helvetii and brought to him that gave the figures of the total population of the Helvetii and their allies, those of military age, and (separately) of children, old men, and of women (Gallic Wars 1.29). This is astonishing at a time when the Romans themselves kept no such detailed records. Even more oddly, Caesar claims that these documents were written in Greek. The story has generally been rejected. Hume’s ‘clear proof ’ is consistent with Halley’s rule that fighting men are about one-fourth of the population (see the annotation for ¶ 100 at 307.21), but this ratio is subject to the provision that a proportion of any eligible age group will be unfit for service or otherwise exempted from deployment (Hansen, Democracy and Demography, 16–21). See the annotation for the paragraph in the variants for 315.10, n. on the Abbé Mably. Wallace adduces these figures in support of Halley’s rule that fighting men are generally about a quarter of the population (Dissertation, 39–41, citing Halley, ‘Value’, 3: 669). n. 244.6  See Cæsar, de bello Gallico, lib. 1.] Caesar, Gallic War 1.29: ‘on all these counts the total showed 263,000 persons of the Helvetii . . . ; of these [the Helvetii plus allies] about 92,000 were able to bear arms. The grand total was about 368,000.’ Ninety-two thousand is roughly one-fourth of the total of Helvetii plus allies, not of the Helvetii alone, which would be c.65,000. n. 244.8  the Greek translation] Hume would be making a valid point if this translation were a genuine ancient work. Almost certainly he refers to the Greek version first published in 1606, long believed to be of medieval origin and reluctantly included by John Davies in his edition, C.  Julii Caesaris quae exstant omnia (Cambridge, 1706). It was, however, demonstrated conclusively in 1857 by Heller (‘De Graeco metaphraste’) that the translation was made from Stephanus’s edition of 1544. See Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, 40 (1950), col. 2248, s.v. Planudes. 326.18–23  We are informed by Cæsar . . . in land . . . new division . . . desolation.] These two sentences appeared first in the 1760 ETSS (variants). Hume refers to Gallic War 6.22: ‘No man has a definite quantity of land or estate of his own; the magistrates and chiefs every year assign to tribes and clans that have assembled together as much land and in such place as seems good to them, and compel the tenants after a year to pass on elsewhere.’ But Hume has misremembered the text: Caesar speaks here of the Germans, not the Gauls, and says that land redistribution took place ‘every year’, not, as Hume reports, ‘when any death happened in a family’. He has both points right in Hist. 1: 16. Hume treats Irish gavelkinde here as implicit in tanistry, as is evident in his explanation of the related practices in Hist. 5: 47–8. As Hume understood the practices, the tanist, or chieftain’s heir, divided the deceased’s property according to the principle of gavelkinde rather than primogeniture; i.e. it was divided amongst all the males of the clan sept. Neither was the succession of the tanist hereditary, adding to the occasions for instability. Tanistry was abolished by the Irish parliament in 1613.

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n. 245  De bello Gallico, lib. 1.] ‘The territory they occupied, which was 240 miles long [i.e. east to west] and 180 miles broad [i.e. north to south]’ (Caesar, Gallic War 1.2). The second figure is too great, and editors suspect an early copyist’s error or an interpolation. Caesar may have been misinformed. Helvetia was in the southeastern part of the province of Gaul that was later detached to form Germania Superior. 326.25–6  The canton of Berne] Templeman says that the canton of Berne can raise 100,000 militiamen (New Survey, plate 10), a figure that Halley, Wallace, and Hume would multiply by four to estimate the total population. Hume, it seems, has rounded down to 360,000 Caesar’s 368,000 (Gallic War 1.29, cited on n. 244 above). But this figure includes allies as well as Helvetii. Hume’s argument would be stronger had he given Caesar’s figure (263,000) for Helvetii alone. 326.27  After this computation of Appian and Diodorus Siculus] The section on the population of ancient Gaul is rounded off by this reference to the figures given by Appian and Diodorus that Hume had used in ¶ 170 to calculate the popu­ la­tion of Gaul as a whole, producing, as he says, ‘incredible’ results (see the annotation for 325.34). The Batavi lived in the northern part of the province of Gaul that was later detached from Gaul to form the province of Germania Inferior. On the Batavi see ‘National Characters’ 17. 327.1  Spain is, perhaps, decayed] For the ‘decay’ of Spain see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 5 at 102.12–13 on Charles II of Spain. n. 246  Titi Livii, lib. 34. cap. 17.] Livy, History 34.17.5–6. This event was during Cato’s campaigns in Spain in 195 bc. Hume cites the same passage in ‘National Characters’, n. 5. n. 247  In vita Marii.] Plutarch, Lives, ‘Gaius Marius’ 6.1, in relation to the campaigns of Marius, who was governor of Farther Spain following his praetorship of 115 bc. A series of military campaigns in the 1st century bc supposedly pacified the peninsula, but unrest persisted. Roman propaganda tended to dismiss those who opposed conquest as ‘brigands’. Marius’s claim to have pacified the peninsula was premature (see the annotation to n. 250). n. 248  De bello Hisp.] ‘Here too, in view of the constant attacks of the natives, all places which are remote from towns are firmly held by towers and fortifications, as in Africa, roofed over with rough-cast, not tiles’ (“Caesar”, The Spanish War 8.3). The author of this work, an account of the campaign leading up to the battle of Munda (45 bc), is not Hirtius as Hume believed, but an unknown eye-witness who fought in Caesar’s army. The editors of the Loeb series include it among the other continuations of Caesar’s Civil War. The author is not speaking of the whole country, but only of Farther Spain (n. 247 above). n. 249  Vel. Paterc. lib. 2. § 90.] Velleius Paterculus, Compendium 2.90.1–4: ‘The provinces of Spain were pacified after heavy campaigns conducted with varied ­success now by Caesar [Augustus] in person, now by Agrippa.’ Velleius details the

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series of wars, many disastrous, that the Romans fought over a period of two hundred years in Spain before the country was brought to ‘such a condition of peace that . . . they were . . . free even from brigandage’. With other generals, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, lifelong friend and supporter of Augustus, played important roles in these Cantabrian wars, which did not end until 19 bc (Syme, Roman Papers, 825–54). Augustus then organized the whole of the country as three provinces: Baetica, Lusitania, and Tarraconensis. n. 250  Lib. 3.] ‘[B]y their modes of life they became inclined to attack and to rob. . . . Those who live in villages are wild (and such are most of the Iberians), and even the cities themselves cannot easily tame their inhabitants’ (Strabo, Geography 3.4.5, 13). These sweeping denigrations serve to enhance the achievement of the Romans in civilizing them (3.4.5 ad fin.). Writing under Augustus, Strabo paints a variegated picture of the peninsula and its inhabitants (3.2–4), some thoroughly Romanized (3.2.15), others still devoted to brigandry (3.3.5, 8; 3.4.5, cf.13). n. 251  Lib. 44.] Justin, Epitome 44.5.8: ‘Augustus Caesar, . . . bringing a wild and barbarous people to a more civilized way of life under the rule of law.’ The inhabitants of Spain ‘prefer war to peace; lacking an enemy from without, they will look for one at home’ (44.2.2). Cf. 44.2.5, 2.7, 3.7. In his survey of Spain, Justin is epitomizing an Augustan writer (see the annotation for n. 186), and the wildness of the Spaniards has clearly become a literary topos through which to glorify the emperor’s achievements. It no doubt arose from memories of fierce and lengthy warfare against the Romans. n. 252.1–3  “Nec numero . . . de harusp. resp. cap. 9.] Cicero, De haruspicum responsis 9.19: ‘However good our opinion of ourselves may be, we have excelled neither Spain in population, nor Gaul in vigour, nor Carthage in versatility, nor Greece in art, nor Italy and Latium in the innate sensibility characteristic of this land and its peoples.’ n. 252.4  ‘Nec . . . .’ Virg. Georg. lib. 3.] Virgil, Georgics 3.408: as a farmer, Virgil says, you should acquire dogs, because with them on guard, you need not fear a thief at night in the stables nor attacks from wolves nor ‘unpacified Spaniards creeping up from behind.’ Commentators agree with Hume: ‘the Iberians are a general ­symbol, standing for a class’ (Mynors, in Virgil, Georgics, 243). 327.17  Italy, . . . it is probable, has decayed] Cf. Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes 112, and see the annotation for n. 2 above. n. 253  Varro, de re rustica, lib. 2. præf. Columella, præf. Sueton. August. cap. 42.] Varro, On Agriculture 2. pref. 3–4: ‘As . . . in these days virtually all heads of families . . . would rather employ their hands in the theatre and the circus than in the grain-fields and the vineyards, we hire someone to bring grain from Africa and Sardinia to fill our stomachs’. For Columella, On Agriculture 1. pref., esp. 1–5, 11–17, 20, and Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Augustus’ 42.3, and other similar passages, see the annotations for n. 15.

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327.25–6  that pernicious practice of importing corn . . . citizens] The exceptionally large population of Rome required that from an early date food should be imported, initially from Italy and Sicily. In the early republic individual magistrates competed to provide supplies. In 123 bc, Gaius Gracchus inaugurated monthly distributions of rations (frumentationes) at a set price, which Clodius made free of charge in 58 (see the annotations for ¶ 136 at 317.3 and nn. 194–7). This practice is the change that Hume finds so pernicious. Augustus stabilized the number of recipients at 200,000 and reorganized the system of distribution (see the annotations to nn. 198–9). But it remained unsatisfactory, and shortages continued to occur. n. 254.1  the observations of L’Abbe du Bos] See the annotation for n. 217. For the chilling effect of forests on the climate, see n. 163. 327.27–8  The sportula, so much talked of by Martial and Juvenal] The sportula was a small present, generally of money, given to clients when they attended the patron’s morning levée (salutatio) or at a banquet. See Juvenal, Satires 1.95–6, 13. 31–3; Martial, Epigrams 1.59.1, 10.27.3. 328.1–2  The parish-rates . . . in England] Hume’s reference to the bad consequences of the parish rates in England (added as of the 2nd edition of Political Discourses (1752)) may have a topical implication (variants). The parish rates for England and Wales, established by 39 Elizabeth I, c. 3, and 43 Elizabeth I, c. 2, had in practice no equivalent in Scotland, which depended largely on voluntary contributions. In 1749, the town council of Edinburgh controversially and unsuccessfully petitioned Parliament to establish by statute a poor-law scheme for the city and its suburbs. 328.3–8  period . . . government.] Cf. Gibbon’s famous judgement: ‘If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus’ (Decline and Fall, ch. 3 at 1: 85–6). The causal connection of happiness and prosperity with populousness (¶ 4 and n. 13) means that Hume and Gibbon were not speaking of altogether different things. Gibbon’s discussion is also strikingly reminiscent of Bacon’s praise of the same stretch of Roman history in Advancement of Learning, bk. 1 (Works, 3: 303–6). A similar judgement of ‘the times from Nerva to Marcus’ is found in Machiavelli, Discourses 1.10 (Chief Works, 1: 221–2). The concept of the succession of good emperors, from the accession of Nerva in 96 to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180, was sometimes employed in the 18th century as a vehicle for discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of absolute rule. See e.g. Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 3 (Soliloquy) 2.1 at 1: 117–18; Fielding’s 1749 Tom Jones, bk. 12, ch. 12, ad fin.; Thomson, Liberty 3.500–11; Gordon, ‘Discourses’ 5, in Works of Tacitus, 1: 65–8 at 67). In ‘An Essay upon Universal Monarchy’, Charles Davenant strongly insists that trade could not have flourished nor could ‘the

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c­ ondition of mankind’ have been ‘happy’ under these universal monarchs (Works, 4: 28–30), criticizing Pedro Mexia’s citing of them in support of the benefits of ‘universal monarchy’. n. 255.2–3  See Strabo, lib. 4.] Strabo explains that the inhabitants of Massalia (Marseilles), a Greek colony of long standing, held the superiority (perhaps military rather than commercial, as Hume suggests) over the Gauls, until they ‘threw away the greater part of their prosperity’ by taking the losing side in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey (Geography 4.1.5). They have retained their technical skills, however, while Gauls for their part, since their conquest by the Romans, have tended away from military activity towards ‘civil life and farming’. For ‘the improvement arising from the Roman arts and civility’, see e.g. Strabo, Geography 3.3.8; 4.1.5; 6.4.2; also the annotation for n. 250. Strabo was born c.64 bc and wrote during Augustus’s reign. n. 255.5–7  Pliny . . . lib. 14. proœm.] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 14.1.2: ‘For who would not admit that now that intercommunication has been established throughout the world by the majesty of the Roman Empire, life has been advanced by the interchange of commodities and by partnership in the blessings of peace, and that even things that had previously lain concealed have now all been established in general use?’ Pliny goes on to insist that, despite these advantages, his contemporaries are no longer aware of the agricultural wisdom contained in the older writers, since they are now concerned only with the arts of avarice. Hume takes what he needs from his source and leaves the rest. n. 255.10  lib. 3. cap. 5.] Italy is ‘a land chosen by the providence of the gods to make heaven itself more glorious, to unite scattered empires, to make manners gentle, to draw together in converse by community of language the jarring and uncouth tongues of so many nations, to give mankind civilization, and in a word to become the single fatherland of all races’ (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 3.5.39). This panegyric opens Pliny’s account of Italy. On her natural resources, cf. 37.77.201–3. For comparable encomia of Italy see Varro, On Agriculture 1.2.3–8; Virgil, Georgics 2.136–76; Strabo, Geography 6.4.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.36–7. The citation in the printed texts to book 2 instead of 3 is a clear instance of erroneous citation or misprinting. We treat it as the latter. n. 255.11–12  Tertullian . . . Severus.] Septimus Severus was emperor ad 192–211. Tertullian lived c.160–c.240 and composed the De anima perhaps between 210 and 213. n. 255.18  de anima, cap. 30.] Tertullian, On the Soul 30.3–4: ‘A glance at the face of the earth shows us that it is becoming daily better cultivated and more fully ­peopled than in the olden times. There are few places now that are not accessible; few, unknown; few, unopened to commerce. Beautiful farms now cover what were once trackless wastes, the forests have given way before the plough, cattle have driven off the beasts of the jungle, the sands of the desert bear fruit and crops, the

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rocks have been ploughed under, the marshes drained of their water, and, where once there was but a settler’s cabin, great cities are now to be seen. No longer do lonely islands frighten away the sailor nor does he fear their rocky coasts. Everywhere we see houses, people, stable governments, and the orderly conduct of life. The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs; as our demands grow greater, our complaints against nature’s inadequacy are heard by all.’ As one of a number of arguments for population variation, Tertullian is here arguing that populations have increased and that this is an argument against transmigration of souls. It had indeed always been an assumption of that doctrine that the number of souls must remain constant (e.g. Plato, Republic 611a), but it is not necessary, as Tertullian assumes, that the number of living men must be constant. Hume needs only Tertullian’s perception that the population had increased by this time. n. 255.18–20  The air of rhetoric . . . destroy it.] Balanced clauses and repeated words are more obvious in the Latin than in the translation. Following this sentence but omitted as of the two issues of the 1754 Political Discourses was ‘A man of violent imagination, such as Tertullian, augments every thing equally; and for that reason his comparative judgments are the most to be depended on’ (variants). n. 255.21–9  “The whole world . . . compassion.”] Aelius Aristides 26 (Regarding Rome) 97–9, with an omission (between ‘adorned’ and ‘insomuch’). Where Hume has ‘temples, schools, academies’, the Greek has ‘temples, workshops [demiourgo¯n], schools’. Aelius Aristides the rhetorician (117–post 181) long outlived the emperor (H)adrian, who ruled 117–138. See the annotation for n. 190.3–5. n. 255.30  though Diodorus Siculus makes the inhabitants] Diodorus, Library 1.31.8. See the annotations for nn. 121–2: the MSS of Diodorus, and Rhodoman’s text, read ‘no less than three hundred [myriads]’, i.e. than 3,000,000, and this is the figure Hume quotes. Others have emended the text so that it implies a population of ‘no less than’ seven hundred myriads, i.e. 7,000,000. n. 255.31  Joseph. de bello Judaic. lib. 2. cap. 16.] Josephus, Jewish War 2.385 (a citation to 2.16 is in accordance with editions available to Hume). Hume’s phrase ‘the books of the Roman publicans, who levied the poll-tax’ represents Josephus’s ‘as may be estimated from the poll-tax returns’. This tax was collected from all adult males, apart from certain privileged categories, based upon a periodically updated census (Lewis, Life in Egypt, 169–70). King Agrippa II, the speaker here, had reason to exaggerate in this speech delivered in ad 66 to a crowd of his angry fellow countrymen, attempting to deter them from taking measures that would result in war with the Romans. He stresses the size of the populations in the various provinces that the Romans are able to control with a few legions. In the event he was unsuccessful, and the subsequent war ended in the destruction of Jerusalem in ad 70. On the population of Egypt see the annotations for nn. 121–2.

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n. 255.34  Strabo, lib. 17.] Strabo, Geography 17.1.12–13: ‘Since the city was badly administered in their time, the prosperity of the city was also vanishing on account of the prevailing lawlessness . . . . But the Romans have, to the best of their ability, set most things right.’ Strabo, though starting in this passage with law and order in Alexandria alone, goes on to give examples of financial reforms throughout Egypt. However, we should not overestimate the efficiency of the Roman administration in that province, which has been argued to have been in the hands of in­ex­ peri­ enced amateurs, unfamiliar with the complexities of the assessment and collection of taxes in Egypt (Brunt, ‘Administrators of Roman Egypt’, 243–5). n. 255.36  Athenæus, (lib. 1. cap. 25.)] Athenaeus mentions this when commenting on Mareotan wine (Learned Banqueters 1.33d). He speaks from personal know­ ledge of the locality and the wine. But, as Hume implies, the decay of one town does not imply general decline. Athenaeus lived rather later than Hume’s ‘reign of the Antonines’ (Antoninus Pius, ad 138–61; Marcus Aurelius, 161–80; Commodus, 180–92). n. 255.39–40  Suidas (August.) says, . . . only 4,101,017 men (ἄνδρες).] ‘Augustus Caesar, acting on a decision, counted all the inhabitants of the Roman empire individually, because he wanted to know how great a number they were. They were found to be 410 myriads and 1,017 men [andres]’ (“Suidas”, Lexicon A 4412). For Suidas/the Suda, a 10th-century lexicon, see the Catalogue of Hume’s References and the Biographical Appendix. Hume is right to suspect ‘some great mistake here’ since Augustus was taking a census only of Roman citizens, the vast majority of whom in his time lived in Italy and were by no means equivalent to all the inhabitants of ‘the whole Roman empire’. Citizenship was not extended throughout the empire until ad 212 (see the annotation for ‘Populousness’ 15 at 285.27–8). The figures of the Augustan census were 4,063,000 in 28 bc, 4,233,000 in 8 bc, and 4,937,000 in ad 14 (Res Gestae 8) and include not adult males alone (ἄνδρες, andres), but all citizens including women and children other than infants (cf. Brunt, Italian Manpower, 113–20). By contrast the total population of the Roman Empire in ad 14, including slaves, has been estimated at 45.5 million. An estimate for ad 164, during Hume’s ‘age of Trajan and the Antonines’, is 61.4 million (Cambridge Ancient History, 11: 812, 814). n. 255.42  the exaggerated accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus] Hume refers to their population figures in ¶¶ 99–103, 105, 108, above. n. 256  L’Esprit des loix, liv. 23. chap. 19.] Montesquieu, L’Esprit des lois, bk. 23, ch. 19. Montesquieu cites this passage of Plutarch and several others as evidence of the depopulation caused by the Romans’ swallowing up the populous small republics of Greece. This account is also Wallace’s thesis (Dissertation, 249–58 (app.)). n. 257  De orac. defectu.] Plutarch, ‘Obsolescence of Oracles’ (Moralia 413f-414a): ‘It is an accurate assumption that Greece has more than its share in the general depopulation which the earlier wars civil and external [στάσεις καὶ πόλεμοι,

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staseis kai polemoi] have wrought throughout the whole inhabited earth, and that today the whole of Greece would hardly muster three thousand hoplites, the number that the single city of Megara sent to Plataea.’ Megara is the city-state immediately to the west of Athens. Three thousand is the figure given by Herodotus (Persian Wars 9.28.6) for her hoplite troops at the battle of Plataea in 479. Plutarch makes similar observations elsewhere in his works, and his remark is supported by many other witnesses. Polybius, writing in the 2nd century bc, was already aware of a decrease in the population of Greece (Histories 36.17.5), and his account ‘has repeatedly been confirmed by the landscape surveys’ (Hansen, Shotgun Method, 12 n. 43). In the next century one of Cicero’s friends, in Cicero, Letters to His Friends 4.5.4 (no. 248 in Shackleton Bailey’s Loeb edition, 2: 404–5), mentions the general decay of Aegina, Megara, Piraeus, and Corinth, which presumably includes their reduced population. There is more evidence in Strabo, in Pausanias, and in Plutarch’s contemporary, Dio Chysostom. 329.17  the former wars and factions of the several states] Hume discusses the ‘destructive’ nature of ancient warfare in ¶¶ 54–62 and the ‘bloody maxims’ of factional conflict in ¶¶ 63–82. n. 258.1  Lib. 2. cap. 62.] Phylarchus says that the Spartans took 6,000 talents in booty from Megalopolis in 223 bc. See the annotation for n. 174. But this is incredible, Polybius objects, because ‘not speaking of those times, when the Peloponnese had been utterly ruined by the kings of Macedon and by continual internal wars, in our own times, when all are in complete unison and enjoy, it is thought, very great prosperity, a sale of all the goods and chattels, apart from slaves, in the whole Peloponnese would not bring in such a sum’ (Histories 2.62.3–4). For Phylarchus, see the annotation for n. 173. Polybius backs up his assertion about the Peloponnese with statistics for Athens and Attica. n. 258.1–2  Polybius . . . would naturally extol the Roman dominion.] Polybius, a native of Megalopolis, was deported to Rome in ad 167 following the defeat of the Achaean League at Pydna in the previous year. There he was accepted into the highest levels of Roman society. His History recounts ‘by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in less than fifty-three years [220–167 bc] succeeded in subjugating nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government’ (History 1.1.5). Hume insists, however, that beside being ‘one of the gravest and most judicious, as well as most moral writers of antiquity’ (EPM 5.1.6), Polybius made his remark about the prosperous condition of Greece under the Romans ‘by the by, while he is intent upon another subject’, and that therefore his information is likely to be trustworthy (see Baumstark, ‘Hume’s Reading’, 71). n. 259  Ann. lib. 1. cap. 2.] Tacitus, Annals 1.2: ‘Nor was the state of affairs unpopular in the provinces, where administration by the Senate and People had been discredited by the feuds of the magnates and the greed of the officials, against which there was but frail protection in a legal system for ever deranged by force, by favoritism, or (in the last resort) by gold.’ ‘The state of affairs’ is the way in which

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the administration of many provinces of the Roman Empire had fallen into the hands of the emperor. Under the republic, the provinces had been governed by men who had just held the major magistracies at Rome. These governors (‘the officials’) proceeded to their provinces with a very large administrative staff. One might have expected tax-collectors (publicani) to have been mentioned here also. The ‘feuds of the magnates’ are the wars between the great Roman military commanders such as Marius and Sulla and Caesar and Pompey, that had characterized the 1st century bc. The ‘legal system’ refers above all to the possibility of redress for maladministration through the laws on res repetundae. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. ­repetundae, and Brunt, ‘Charges’, 85–6). Cf. ‘Politics a Science’ 9 and ‘Original Contract’ 30. n. 260  Lib. 8. and 9.] Hume may have noticed Strabo’s remarks about the preferential treatment given to individual Greek cities, e.g. Geography 8.5.5, where Strabo states that after 146 bc the Spartans ‘were held in particular honour’ by the Romans ‘and remained free’ (see also 9.2.40), and similarly Athens ‘to this day is free and held in honour among the Romans’ (9.1.20). But Strabo makes no general statement about the freedom of the Greeks under the Romans, not surprisingly, since it would not have been true. In his appendix Wallace criticizes Hume on this point (Dissertation, 260–2). Admittedly in 196 bc, after defeating the Macedonians, Flamininus had proclaimed the liberty of the Greeks (Livy, History 33.30–34; Plutarch, Lives, ‘Titus Flamininus’ 10). But this proclamation was meaningless: Greece simply passed from the control of Macedon to that of Rome. n. 261  Plutarch. de his qui sero a Numine puniuntur.] Nero claimed that ‘to the nation which among his subjects was noblest and most beloved of Heaven he had granted freedom’ (Plutarch, ‘On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance’ (Moralia 567f–568a)). This is an odd passage to cite: more mainstream mentions of Nero’s proclamation are Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Nero’ 24.2, and Plutarch, Lives, ‘Titus Flamininus’ 12.8. As the climax of his tour of Greece in ad 66–67, Nero granted the whole province of Greece (Achaea) ‘liberty and freedom from taxation’. Liberty meant a degree of internal autonomy, a privilege that was soon revoked by Vespasian, Nero’s eventual successor (Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 5.41). See Henderson, Life, 389–92, for the relevant texts in translation and their context. n. 262  De mercede conductis.] Lucian 36, On Salaried Posts in Great Houses. The tone of the whole essay is relevant. On poverty see § 5. Roman luxury is perceived throughout as alien and unGreek. The Roman master of the household lords it over the poor dependent scholar, who is, typically, Greek. Cf. Herodotus, Persian Wars 7.109.1: ‘Greece and poverty have always been like brothers brought up together.’ For ‘the ancient frugality of the Greeks, and their equality of property’, see ¶¶ 45–6. Lucian lived about half a century later than Plutarch. Hume quotes from this essay in a letter to John Clephane of 18 February 1751 (Letters 1: 150). 330.24–5  if these commonwealths . . . maintained each of them a small city-guard] The Greek cities at this time seem to have relied for policing upon

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various bodies of volunteers under the command of local officials backed up by the authority to draft in soldiers as required (MacMullen, Enemies, 165–6). n. 263.1  I must confess . . . Plutarch, concerning the silence of the oracles] Plutarch, ‘Obsolescence of Oracles’ (Moralia 409–38), cited in n. 257 above. Plutarch’s works cover a wide range, and it may seem peculiar to characterize their tone as, universally, one of ‘plain sense’. He was a priest of Apollo at the oracular shrine at Delphi and a follower of Plato. ‘Obsolescence of Oracles’ belongs to a group of works known as Plutarch’s Pythian dialogues. ‘Obsolescence’ contains three main themes, all uncongenial to Hume: (a) oracular divination; (b) daimones, i.e. supernatural spirits who act as intermediaries between gods and men; and (c) the existence of parallel worlds. But Plutarch puts some of the more outrageous statements into the mouths of interlocutors in the dialogues, and elements of parody are distinctly possible. n. 263.12  only one other discourse of Plutarch] Plutarch, ‘On the Delays of Divine Vengeance’ (Moralia 548–68), cited in n. 261. It is not the only other discourse to which Hume might have taken exception. Plutarch asks why the gods are slow to punish wrongdoing, and one answer is that they are allowing time for moral improvement. Furthermore, ancient believers were puzzled that the innocent suffer. Divine punishment for the sins of one’s ancestors, which Plutarch discusses at length (556e–563b), solved the problem. The dialogue ends (563c–568a) with an eschatological flight: an account of one Aridaeus, who returned to life and described the fate of souls after death. n. 263.14–15  Plato, particularly his last book de republica.] Plato, Republic 10.614b–621d. ‘His last book de republica’ means the tenth and final book of that work. Plato concludes the Republic by leaving dialectic and describing in a poetic swirl the post-mortem experiences of one Er, who died and came to life again on his funeral pyre. He describes the geography and inhabitants of the world he had ­visited in a mythical account of the fate of the good and the bad soul after death. (Cf. Plato, Phaedo 107d–114d.) n. 263.21  See Histoire des oracles.] Some of Fontenelle’s criticisms can be found in History of the Oracles 1.4, 6, 12, and some of the criticized passages in ‘Obsolescence’ are Moralia 419b–d, 419e–420a, 415c–416c, 437c–d. n. 264  Lib. 2.] Diodorus, Library 2.5.4–7. In ¶ 105, Hume expresses a similar doubt about the claim in 2.5.4–7 that the population of Italy in the time of Augustus was so low. For Ninus, see the annotation for ¶ 110 at 310.2–3. Diodorus’s text (ed. Rhodoman) has 210,000, not 200,000, but it is characteristic of Hume to round out numbers. 331.10–11  The humour of blaming the present] This sentiment is found also in “Longinus”, On the Sublime 44.6, a chapter cited by Hume in ‘Civil Liberty’ 4 (for which see the annotation at 87.29–30): ‘It is easy, my good friend, and characteristic of human nature to find fault with the age in which one lives.’

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12. Of the Original Contract Hume’s language in ¶ 31 (discussed in the annotation at 341.7) suggests that this essay was completed in 1748. On 8 January 1748, Hume wrote to the Stuart loyalist Lord Elibank for his reactions to ‘the Reasonings with regard to the original Contract, which’, Hume hoped, were ‘new & curious, & form a short, but compleat Refutation of the political Systems of [Algernon] Sydney, Locke, and the Whigs, which all the half Philosophers of the Nation have implicitely embrac’d for near a Century; tho’ they are plainly . . . repugnant to Reason & the Practice of all Nations’ (Mossner, ‘New Hume Letters’, 437). In a letter of 13 February 1748, Hume wrote of plans to replace ‘Essay Writing’, ‘Moral Prejudices’, and ‘Middle Station’ with ‘Original Contract’, ‘Passive Obedience’, and ‘Protestant Succession’, which trio would ‘be more instructive’ (Letters, 1: 112). ‘Original Contract’ appeared, with ‘National Characters’ instead of ‘Protestant Succession’, in Essays, Moral and Political (3rd edn. 1748), Three Essays (1748), and all editions of the ETSS. See the head-note for ‘Protestant Succession’. The critical text restores the ending of the essay to the form it had in 1753–68, before what we deem to be a corruption occurred. In the ETSS of 1770 the sentence comprising note 5 became repositioned as the final paragraph of the essay. This placement appears to have been a mistake, likely by the compositor, and passed uncorrected in 1772 and 1777. As note 5 the sentence is a suitable comment on ‘the disorders which attend all revolutions and changes of government’ (¶ 45). It is not suitable as a conclusion to a sequence of paragraphs on the plausibility of ‘general opinion’ as against a theory (¶ 46) or as a conclusion of the essay. (See variants at 345.16 and 346.6.) 332.3–4  each of the factions, into which this nation is divided] Until the 1772 ETSS this passage read ‘each of the Parties’ (variants). 332.9–10  The one party, by tracing up government to the Deity] The dichotomy that Hume draws gives an impression that only High-Church Tories and Jacobites preached the doctrine of the divine right of kings, but that tenet had a number of variants, some of which were used by Whigs seeking to confirm obedience to the Hanoverians. Though often proclaimed dead, the tenet of divine right could be found in sermons in the late 1740s and enjoyed a further revival late in the century. Cf. ‘British Government’ 5. 332.11  however tyrannical it may become] Until the 1772 ETSS this passage read ‘however disorderly it may become’ (variants). 332.12  The other party] Although contractarianism was regarded as Whig ideol­ ogy, Bolingbroke, the reconstructed Tory, had in letter 13 of his Dissertation upon Parties proclaimed the tenet to be a consensus amongst the right-minded of both parties following the Revolution settlement (Craftsman 436 for 16 November 1734). 333.8  Titus or a Trajan] As of the 1770 ETSS, the two Roman emperors replaced Elizabeth I of England and ‘Henry the 4th of France’ as exemplary rulers

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(variants). Titus (reigned ad 79–81) and Trajan (reigned ad 98–117) were deemed to be laudable Roman emperors. Trajan is similarly cited by Hume in ‘Dignity or Meanness’ 11 (on which see the annotation for 85.18–19). 333.9  Borgia] Cesare Borgia, ruler of a number of Italian states, had long had a reputation—owing a good deal to his place in Machiavelli’s Prince—as the very model of the cruel and ruthless ruler. In ‘Sceptic’ 39, Hume quoted Pope’s lines attributing Borgia’s actions to general causes: ‘If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design, | Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?’ (Essay on Man 1.155–6). 333.10  Angria] The name belonged to a family engaged for more than half a century in waging war upon European shipping off the Malabar coast of south-west India. The member first to acquire territory was Connagee, or Kanhoji (died c.1729). His grandson, Tulagee (or Monagee, Manaji), took command in 1745 and would lose his fortress at Gheria to a British expedition in 1756. Deemed pirates by the European powers, these warriors were rulers in their own right and served successively as the naval commanders of the Maratha Empire. For contemporary accounts see [Defoe], A General History of the Pyrates, 127, for Kanhoji, and An Authentick and Faithful History for Tulagee. 333.12  A constable] Parishioners of means often preferred to pay a fine rather than serve as constable (Webb and Webb, English Local Government, 18–19, 62–3, 68–9). 333.14  how nearly equal all men are in their bodily force] an allusion perhaps to the argument in Hobbes, Leviathan 13, ¶ 1, but the premiss of human equality in nature was a commonplace of the theory of natural law, e.g. Pufendorf, On the Law of Nature and Nations 3.2.1 and On the Duty of Man and Citizen 1.7; Locke, Two Treatises 2 (ch. 2); Hutcheson, Short Introduction 2.4.4. 333.30  or something approaching equality] This qualification appeared first in the 1770 ETSS (variants). 333.38–334.10  Yet even this consent . . . the people.] Paragraph 5 was added in the 1777 ETSS (variants). Cf. THN 3.2.8.2. 334.21–2  the sovereign promises him in return] In THN 3.2.8.3, Hume had identified this version of contractarian theory as ‘in a manner the creed of a party amongst us’. He describes one Whig ideology that set contractarian theory against James Stuart’s claim to the throne and, subsequently, to his male heirs’ claims. Although in ¶ 46 below Hume identifies Locke as ‘the most noted’ of the partisans of a Whig theory of an original contract, the tenet concerning ‘a mutual promise’ (¶ 7) between sovereign and people is not to be found in Locke’s Two Treatises. It is to be found in contemporary and subsequent Whig polemic, some of which associated itself with Locke, and it had precedents in continental natural-rights theorists like Samuel Pufendorf in his De jure naturae et gentium. Pufendorf argued that the formation of a civil state requires ‘two Covenants and one Decree’ (Law 7.2.8), i.e. covenants between (a) prospective citizens and (b) them and a prospective sovereign

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with (c) an intervening decree of the impending form of government so that people know to what they were consenting. A covenant consists of reciprocal promises. Hugo Grotius’s use to Whiggism is more problematic. To see Grotius enlisted to defend James II’s replacement with William of Orange, consult the anonymous Proceedings of the Present Parliament Justify’d (1689), which cites and translates Grotius, Rights 1.4.16, 2.14.4, 1.4.7, 1.4.13, 1.4.9–10, 2.7.26. Discussion of these theories of natural jurisprudence in the early 18th century was promoted above all by the extensive commentaries of Jean Barbeyrac on Grotius, Pufendorf, and Cumberland, and, in Scotland, for example, by Francis Hutcheson (Short Introduction, e.g. 3.5.2 and 3.7.1–3). In his teaching at Glasgow University down to 1729, Gershom Carmichael applied the theories to the Revolution of 1688 and subsequent events. See Carmichael, Natural Rights, xiii–xv, 147–53, 164–9, 184–7. Second amongst the propositions condemned in the 1683 convocation of Oxford University was that ‘There is a mutual compact, tacit or express, between a Prince and his Subjects; and that if he perform not his duty, they are discharg’d from theirs’ (Judgment and Decree, 2). Plainly the tenet of reciprocal promises was already current in England at the time of the Rye House plot, which provoked the university’s action. 334.28  nothing that, in the least, corresponds to their ideas] Scepticism about original contracts was not new. See e.g. Temple, ‘An Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government, Written in the Year 1672’ [1680], in Miscellanea, pt. 1 (Works, 1: 95–108). In his 1712 Passive Obedience, §§ 22–3, Berkeley criticized the logic of contractarian theory. With respect to governmental authority, Thomas Chubb had made the same point about the logical redundancy of a contract as Hume makes in ¶ 36 with respect to allegiance (‘Some Short Reflections upon the Grounds and Extent of Authority and Liberty with Respect to Civil Government’ (1728), 453–71 at 456). In 1706, Samuel Clarke had pointed out the circularity of deriving ‘Obligation of Just and Right’ from compacts inasmuch as compacts themselves depend on a prior obligation making it wrong to disobey compacts (Discourse, 52–4, 124, 132–3). 334.36–7  Persia and China; in France and Spain; and even in Holland and England] Persia had been under the tumultuous rule of Kouli Khan from 1732 until his murder in 1747 (see the biographical appendix). China was a ‘pure monarchy’ but not ‘absolute’ (‘Rise and Progress’, n. 3). On France’s ‘pure’, absolute monarchy, see ‘Liberty of the Press’ 2 and ‘Civil Liberty’ 10, 13). See the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 14 at 105.35. Holland and England are here syn­ec­ doches respectively for the United Provinces and Great Britain and exemplify a commonwealth and a limited monarchy, respectively (see ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 66–7). 334.40  resistance] i.e. the property of a body ‘whereby it keeps other Bodies out of the space which it possesses’ (Locke, Essay 2.4.3). Cf. THN 3.2.10.16: ‘matter wou’d have been created in vain, were it depriv’d of a power of resistance, without

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which no part of it cou’d preserve a distinct existence, and the whole might be crowded up into a single point.’ 335.23–4  which republican writers will never allow] Cf. Milton Pro populo Anglicano defensio: ‘[I]f at any time our forefathers, out of baseness, have lost anything of their right, that ought not hurt us, they might if they would promise slavery for themselves, for us certainly they could not’ (ch. 8). The translation is Sir Robert Filmer’s in § 12 of his criticism of Milton (Observations, 259–60). (For the Latin text see Milton, Works, 7: 412; for a contractarian account of government, including reciprocal promises, see Milton’s 1649 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates at Works, 5: 8–10.) In Two Treatises 1.64–72, Locke strictly delimited fathers’ power over pro­ geny, and in 2.116–22 he provided for the continuance of allegiance over successive generations with his tenet of a consent to government tacit in the possession of land in the polity. 335.29  an artful and bold man] In his commentary on Pufendorf (Law 7.1.7 n. 2, 7.2.8 n. 1), Barbeyrac adopted a similar view about the origin of societies in the designs of bold and ambitious men. 336.14  Are these disorderly elections] This paragraph was split off from the end of ¶ 12 as of the 1758 ETSS. 336.28–9  It was only the succession . . . which was then changed] In his History, Hume speaks with a different emphasis of the Revolution establishment: ‘The convention annexed to this settlement of the crown a declaration of rights, where all the points, which had, of late years, been disputed between the king and people, were finally determined; and the powers of royal prerogative were more narrowly circumscribed and more exactly defined, than in any former period of the English government’ (Hist. 6: 530; cf. 528–9). Not a declaration of individuals’ rights, the 1689 Bill of Rights (1 William & Mary, sess. 2, c. 2) deprived the executive of ways to obviate the rule of law. For example, the ministry could no longer use fines or excessive bail to obviate writs of habeas corpus. See English Historical Documents, 6: 122–8. 336.29–30  majority of seven hundred] The number 700 is a round figure not offered as precise, and it might simply stand for Parliament, the aggregate size of which approximated 700 over time. In the Convention Parliament for England there were 551 members of the Commons and 181 members of the House of Lords eligible to attend, although only 97 lords appear to have attended the crucial vote of 12 February 1688/9 (Journals of the House of Lords, 14: 124–7). The total eligible to vote was thus greater than 700, but the number actually voting was fewer. In any event, when the Commons passed its motion on the Settlement, there was no ­division. 336.30  near ten millions] For the two permutations of this essay in 1748, Hume’s text had read ‘near seven Millions’ (variants), a figure that contrasts more strikingly with ‘the majority of seven hundred’. In 1757–8, Robert Wallace wrote

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that ‘It is computed, there are ten millions of people in Great Britain and Ireland at present’ (Characteristics, 159). The source of this figure is unidentified, but it is consistent with estimates in Templeman, New Survey, which Wallace cites. More recent estimates place the population of Great Britain alone in 1741 at about seven millions (Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth, 6). 336.36  The republic of Athens] The population of Athens consisted of citizens, ‘strangers’ (metics, or resident aliens), and slaves. Only adult male citizens could vote, hold office, and participate in Council and Assembly. Hume’s calculation of the respective numbers of these groups, laid out in ‘Populousness’ 111–12, concludes that there were 21,000 adult male citizens in a total population of 284,000—less than a tenth part, as he says here. See the annotations for ‘Populousness’, n. 138 and ¶¶ 111–12 at 310.17–18, 310.18, and 310.31–2. The original ‘establishment’ of democracy at Athens was often attributed to the aristocrat Cleisthenes who, in a struggle for power with another aristocrat, Isagoras, ‘took the people [de¯mos] into his party’ (Herodotus, Persian Wars 5.66) and introduced a number of popular reforms leading eventually to full democracy. In ‘Remarkable Customs’ 6, Hume repeats the judgement that the ‘popular assemblies in [Athens] were always full of licence and disorder’, but see the annotations for ¶ 6 at 274.22 and n. 4.2. 337.1  theirs by right of conquest] The empire of Athens in the 5th century originated not so much in a conquest as in an alliance against Persia led by Athens after the Greek defeat of the Persian invasion of 480–79, an event in which Athens played a large role. It consisted largely of many islands in the Aegean sea and some cities on the neighbouring coast of Asia Minor. As the century progressed Athens tightened control over the empire, but was stripped of what remained of it in 404 after being defeated in the Peloponnesian War. 337.8  The Achæans enjoyed] Paragraphs 17 (with its note citing Polybius) and 18 appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 1  Lib. 2. cap. 38.] Polybius’s problematic description of the Achaean League of the 3rd century bc as exemplifying ‘the constitution and principles of true democracy’, together with a reference to the League’s use of force against some of  the constituent cities, is found at Histories 2.38.6–7. (See Walbank, Historical Commentary, 1: 221–2, and Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Achaean Confederacy.) 337.11  Harry the IVth and Harry the VIIth of England] Henry VII did have a title other than that of a parliamentary vote, but Hume saw it as unconvincing because it dated from the original Lancastrian claim of Henry IV, who supplanted Richard II. In his History, Hume argued still for the importance of de facto possession and dismissed Henry IV’s case ‘by acquisition or inheritance’ as ‘such a piece of jargon and nonsense as is almost without example’ (Hist. 2: 322). 337.25  My intention here] Paragraphs 20–1 were included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants).

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338.2–3  when the people’s consent was the least regarded in public transactions] In discussing the Revolution of 1688 in the History, Hume would repeat this generalization but admit that the transfer of power from James II to William of Orange in 1689 was ‘a singular exception to this observation’ (6: 528). 338.36  carried on board while asleep] Hume discusses ‘the pressing of seamen’ in ‘Remarkable Customs’ 15. 338.39  it was regarded as a crime in a Roman knight] In 1748, this statement read, ‘Tiberius punish’d a Roman Senator for attempting’ to fly (variants). Rubrius Fabatus, the man whom Tacitus names at Annals 6.14, was probably a senator rather than a knight since the prohibition on travel beyond Italy and Sicily without im­per­ ial permission is thought to have applied only to senators. See Talbert, Senate, 139– 40. Hume may have been misled by the preceding passage in Tacitus, which instances a number of knights who were found guilty of conspiracy against Tiberius in the same year (ad 33). On ‘knights’ at Rome see the annotation on Atticus for ‘Rise and Progress’ 33 at 112.27–9. n. 2  Tacit. ann. 6. cap. 14.] This note appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants), when Hume changed Rubrius’s rank from a senator to a knight. 339.1  Muscovites prohibited all travelling] Hume’s source (employed also in ‘Rise and Progress’, n. 16) is Guy Miège, Relation of Three Embassies, 61–3. Miège made the familiar point that such restrictions were essential to prevent subjects’ learning of a better life. 339.22  Did one generation of men go off the stage] Paragraph 28 was added for the 1777 ETSS (variants). 340.2–5  violent innovations in the reign of Henry VIII . . . . in the reign of Charles I.] The innovations imposed by Henry VIII resulted in the English Reformation, while the innovations due to faction and fanaticism during Charles I’s reign pertained to ‘the doctrine of resistance’, about which speculative reasoners ought to be silent, Hume concluded, because the people should not be instructed ‘beforehand, that the case can ever happen, when they are freed from their duty of allegiance’ (Hist. 5: 544, s.v. ad 1649). 340.31  grateful to Augustus] At ‘Politics’ 9, Hume refers to passages in Tacitus, Annals 1.1–8, to show that the principates of both Augustus and his successor Tiberius were particularly welcome to the inhabitants of the provinces. See the annotations for ‘Politics’, n. 2, and ‘Populousness’, n. 259. Augustus had designated Tiberius as his successor by adopting him in ad 4, by conferring certain powers upon him during his lifetime, and by confirming him as heir in his ‘last will and testament’, which was read out in the Senate on his death in ad 14 (Suetonius, Lives, ‘Tiberius’ 23; ‘Augustus’ 101.2). See the annotation for ¶ 40 at 343.21–2 on  Tiberius’s own use of adoption as a means for securing the succession.

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The ­succeeding three emperors—Gaius (Caligula), Claudius, and Nero—were descended from either Augustus or his third wife, Livia, and constitute the JulioClaudian dynasty. 340.38–9  And the sword alone could decide the controversy] Hume seems to have primarily in mind the events of ad 68–9, following the suicide of Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Three contenders—Galba, Otho, and Vitellius— seized and briefly held power with various support from the Praetorian Guard and the frontier legions in Germany. Vitellius was overcome by Vespasian, who was supported by ‘the legions in the East’. For these events see Tacitus, Histories 1–3. Hume instances two further contests for the principate thereafter in ¶¶ 41–3 (see the annotations for n. 3 and ¶ 43 at 344.25). 341.6  partizans of the white rose] i.e. of the house of York, whose contest with the house of Lancaster is known as the Wars of the Roses (1455–86). The reign of the Lancasters, whose emblem was a red rose, was that of the Henrys IV, V, and VI (1399–1461). The civil wars began during Henry VI’s reign. This clause about the partisans of the white rose was included as of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 341.7  during a still longer period] So the text read as of the 1758 ETSS, meaning still longer than the period of ‘about sixty years’ of Lancastrian rule. In 1748, the phrase had been ‘very near the same Time’ (variants), i.e. very near sixty years since 1689, when ‘the new settlement took place’. 341.12  the abdicated family] This phrase, not of Hume’s coinage, evokes two issues that were entangled at the English Convention Parliament: whether James II had deserted or abdicated and whether his actions could abrogate his son’s claim to the throne. The hard-won conclusion was recorded in 1 William & Mary, sess. 2, c.  2. After a debate, in which there was much talk of the ‘original contract’, the Lords acceded to the Commons’ insistence on the word ‘abdicated’ (Parliamentary History, 5: 60–108). Although England was a hereditary monarchy, the Commons argued, James’s actions left the Convention Parliament with a vacancy needing remedy immediately. A straightforwardly unconciliatory construction on events was that a son cannot inherit what a father had forfeited. Some of the Commons’ argument was discernible in the retrospective analysis in an anti-Jacobite polemic written during the 1745 rebellion, according to which in 1689 an abdicating king was ‘understood in some Manner to unking or depose himself ’. The author explained that abdication was distinguished from desertion in ‘including Maleadministration, and signifying that to be a good Reason for declaring a Vacancy in the throne’ (Comparison, 10, 11 n). In other words, James disqualified himself, irreversibly, rather than was overthrown. The Scots Parliament, for its part, determined that James had ‘forfeited’ rule of Scotland (1689, c. 28). See English Historical Documents, 6: 123, 634, 636. In ¶ 31, Hume uses the words ‘abdicated’, ‘expelled’, and ‘forfeited’, and in ‘Protestant Succession’ refers to the Stuarts as both ‘the

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abdicated family’ and ‘the banished family’ (¶¶ 5, 11). Hume’s analysis of the debate is at Hist. 6: 522–8. 341.23  Of this nature are, love of children] See the annotations for ‘Polygamy and Divorces’ 2 at 150.6–7 and 150.8–9. 342.1–2  duty of allegiance, as with the natural duties of justice and fidelity] Cf. THN 3.2.8 (‘Of the Source of Allegiance’), where Hume criticized at length the basing of allegiance on a contract consisting of reciprocal promises between ruler and ruled. Hume’s distinction between instinctual and non-instinctual moral duties reiterates that elaborated in THN 3.2.1 between natural and artificial virtues, though the disposition to perform what he cautiously terms here the ‘natural duties of justice and fidelity’ (¶ 35) he earlier had designated as an artificial virtue. Cf. 3.2.1.19, where the term ‘artificial ’ is defended, with EPM 3.40–6 and app. 3, where it is eschewed. Remonstrating with Hutcheson, Hume wrote on 17 September 1739, ‘I have never call’d Justice unnatural, but only artificial’ (Letters, 1: 33). Clearly the pejorative connotation of ‘artificial’ was troublesome, but both allegiance and promise-keeping are here obligations calling on ‘artificial’ virtues deriving from our reflection upon the harmfulness of disobedience and promise-breaking. Basing allegiance upon ‘fidelity or a regard to promises’, Hume insists, does not achieve the creation of an obligation hoped by contractarians. 342.18  But why are we bound to observe our promise?] The argument by rhetorical questioning recalls Shaftesbury’s wielding of the same argument (Sensus Communis 3.1) for a different purpose, to disprove the Hobbesian tenet of the meanness of human nature that necessitates a contract deriving its authority from the obligation to obey promises: ‘—A Man is oblig’d to keep his Word. Why? Because he has given his Word to keep it. ―Is not this a notable Account of the Original of moral Justice, and the Rise of Civil Government and Allegiance!’ (Characteristicks, 1: 61). According to William Warburton, we are bound to this promise by religion: ‘The Progress and Increase of mutual Violence, in the State of Nature, ’till it became general and intolerable, were owing to the natural equality of Power amongst Men. . . . But that Equality of Power, which occasioned the Evil, prevented the Remedy, any otherwise than by the Will and free Consent of every one. . . . But then again, that same Equality which made every Man’s Consent necessary, prevented his giving any other Security for the Performance of his Compact than his mere Word. . . . Some Means therefore were to be contrived to strengthen the Obligation of his given Word. Now nothing, in the Case here imagined of perfect Equality, . . . could give this Strength, but Religion. An Oath, then . . . was that Sanction to his Word which was universally employed in all Conventions’ (Alliance 1.4). The importance of promissory oaths, like oaths of allegiance, underlay the rationale for excluding atheists and Quakers from toleration. 342.33–3  any answer, but what would . . . have accounted for our obligation to allegiance] Cf. THN 3.2.8.6.

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343.6–7  The necessities of human society, neither in private nor public life, will allow of such an accurate enquiry] Cf. THN 3.2.3.9 and 3.2.10.7. Hume addresses the question of allegiance in detail in 3.2.10. 343.15–16  forms of government.] From this point, in the 1748 permutations of this essay, this paragraph ended with the following: ‘The Discussion of these Matters would lead us entirely beyond the Compass of these Essays. ’Tis sufficient for our present Purpose, if we have been able to determine, in general, the Foundation of that Allegiance, which is due to the establish’d Government, in every Kingdom and Commonwealth’ (variants). This sentence was attended by a note with material on Louis XIV’s succession that moved to what would become ¶ 45 with the additions of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political. Following the note in 1748, however, the essay concluded with material that subsequently would appear in ¶ 46. The ‘Several cases’ of Edward III, of Tiberius’s sons, of Pertinax and his succession, of Gordian, of Alexander’s successors, were all interpolated as of 1753. 343.18–19  our historian Rapin pretends, . . . Edward the Third and Philip de Valois] Until the 1770 ETSS the passage read ‘our historian, Rapin, allows’ (vari­ ants). Rapin-Thoyras (History, bk. 10) discusses the regency that followed the death of Charles IV of France in 1328 and the ultimate succession of the regent Philip of Valois as Philip VI of France despite the claims of Edward III of England (1: 411). Cf. Hume, Hist. 2: 196–9, s.v. ad 1337. But see ‘Protestant Succession’, variants for 357.39, n., for Hume’s low opinion of Rapin (as found in the 1754–68 versions of that essay). In his History Hume listed Rapin with ‘Locke, Sidney, Hoadley, &c.’ as Whig ideologists whose compositions were ‘despicable, both for style and matter’ though ‘extolled, and propagated, and read; as if they had equalled the most celebrated remains of antiquity’ (6: 533). Appeals to consent, contract, and promise appear throughout Algernon Sidney’s posthumous Discourses (written c.1680), commencing in 1.10 (cf. 3.1, 4). Bishop Hoadly’s contractarianism was expounded in his Measures of Submission (1705), ch. 3, and Original and Institution of Civil Government (1710, repr. in a 1715 collection). The latter, which was structured in imitation of Locke’s Two Treatises, was commended by the House of Commons. 343.20  appeal to heaven] This expression echoes Locke’s euphemism for rebellion as used in his Two Treatises 2.21 (ch. 3), 168 (ch. 14), 242 (ch. 19). 343.21  Who shall tell me] Paragraph 40 appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). 343.21–2  Germanicus or Drusus . . . Tiberius] This passage is nearly identical with one in THN 3.2.10.15. Germanicus ‘was born 24 May 15 of 16 bc and adopted in ad 4 by his uncle Tiberius. As Tiberius was immediately adopted by Augustus, Germanicus became a member of the Julian gens in the direct line of succession’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Iulius Caesar, Germanicus). Drusus was born to Tiberius and his wife Vipsania c.13 bc and ‘became a Caesar in ad 4 on Tiberius’s adoption by Augustus’ (s.v. Iulius Caesar (1), Drusus). The emperors used adoption

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as a means of attempting to designate a successor. The ‘two instances’ prior to the present situation are the adoptions of Octavian (later Augustus) by Julius Caesar and of Tiberius by Augustus. In the Roman law of intestate succession, an adopted son was on a par with any natural children, and no distinction was made on the basis of age (Justinian, Institutes 3.1.2; cf. Crook, Law, 119). The careers and alleged rivalry of Germanicus and Drusus are a major theme of the early books of Tacitus’s Annals. n. 3  Herodian, lib. 2.] Hume cites Herodian, History 2, but the story from Commodus’s murder to Severus’s consolidation of power stretches from History 1.17 to 3.9. Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, succeeded the ‘five good emperors’ (see ‘Populousness’ 177 and its annotation at 328.3–8) in ad 180. He was as­sas­ sin­ated in 192 by ‘his wench’, Marcia, and ‘her gallant’, Aemilius Laetus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, who offered the throne to the senator Helvius Pertinax. Discontented with Pertinax’s frugal ways, the Praetorian Guard put the throne up for auction. Didius Julianus (Hume’s ‘Julian’) bid highest and was acclaimed emperor but was immediately challenged by Pescennius Niger, governor of Syria; Clodius Albinus, governor of Britain; and Septimius Severus, governor of Pannonia. Severus was the victor in these civil wars and was emperor until 211. Gibbon’s memorable narrative of these incidents is found in Decline and Fall, ch. 5 at 1: 104–29. In a rare dissension from Hume, Gibbon narrates that Septimius Severus was acclaimed emperor by his troops in Pannonia before he entered Italy and comments in his note that ‘Mr. Hume, in supposing that the birth and dignity of Severus were too much inferior to the Imperial crown, and that he marched into Italy as general only, has not considered this transaction with his usual accuracy’ (1: 122). 344.25  says Capitolinus] ‘In the meantime Gordian Caesar was lifted up by the soldiers [the Praetorian Guard] and hailed emperor, there being no one else at hand.’ The passage is from “Capitolinus”, ‘Maximus and Balbinus’ 14.7, which is to be found in Scriptores historiae Augustae, 2: 476–7. Hume’s quotation of this ­passage is textually in line with Casaubon’s edition published in 1671 in that Hume omits three words in parenthesis (‘id est Augustus’) after ‘appellatus’. On the  Scriptores historiae Augustae, or Historia Augusta, see the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 114. The emperor in question is Gordian III (ad 238–244). His age on accession is generally considered to be thirteen rather than Hume’s fourteen. See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Gordian III. 345.3–4  Instances of this kind are but too frequent, especially in the eastern monarchies] As of the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, this sentence replaced ‘This was frequently the case with the Roman Empire’ (variants). n. 4.1  It is remarkable] This note appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants). n. 4.2–11  Louis the XIVth . . . . original contract . . . . The Comte de Boulainvilliers . . . . noted republican] This effort by Louis XIV to control the

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succession was quashed by the regent and the parlement of Paris in a controversy in which Henri de Boulainvilliers played some part. The edict of July 1714 allowed for the lines of descent from Louis’s sons by Mme de Montespan to succeed the le­git­ im­ate princes’ lines upon their failure. After Louis’s death Louis-Henri, duc de Bourbon, with his brother and his cousin, challenged the edict with a remonstrance of 22 August 1716 appealing to ‘loix fondamentales’ that even an absolute monarch could not violate. In his 4è Mémoire, Boulainvilliers criticized these ‘fundamental laws’, and the ‘droit prétendu fondamental du peuple, de se choisir des Maîtres’ (purported fundamental right of the people to choose their masters), rather than any theory of contract so called (Etats de la France, 3: 532–3). However, the controversy did involve talk of contract, called by its defenders ‘le Contrat primitif de la  Nation’ and by its enemies ‘un prétendu Contrat de la Nation avec son Roi’ (a purported contract of the nation with its king). Support for a notion of contract was not peculiar to either side, for both employed it when it suited them. Boulainvilliers was not a republican in the modern sense, but rather a noble frondeur seeking to confine the royal prerogative within its ancient limits and resuscitate the old nobility’s role in government. For the sympathetic and antipathetic quotations concerning contractarianism, see, respectively, the anonymous Memoire instructif sur la requêste presentée au Roi contre les princes legitimez, and, Défense des droits du Roi . . . both in Recueil général des pièces, 1: 345–402 at 399, 3: 104–87 at 143. 345.8  the will of Charles the Second] This sentence appeared first in the 1758 ETSS (variants). The last Hapsburg ruler of Spain, lacking an heir and facing the division of the empire by signatories of the Partition Treaties, willed the throne to Philip, duke of Anjou and grandson of Louis XIV of France. The prospect of the Spanish Empire’s coming under Bourbon sway provoked the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13), pitting France and Spain against Great Britain, the Austrian Empire, and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. n. 5.1–2  νεωτερίζειν, novas res moliri] Both expressions mean to effect political innovations or ‘revolutions’. The Greek word (neo¯terizein) is common in Attic ­writers for attempting to make a violent change of government or rebellion (e.g. Thucydides, History 1.97, 8.73; Lysias 20.16). ‘Novas res moliri’ reflects common Latin expressions to the same effect, used for instance of the conspiracy of Catiline (Sallust, War 28.4, 37.1; Cicero, In Catilinam 1.2.5, 2.1.1). It is used particularly of popular revolutions, as at Livy, History 23.14.7. This note appeared first in the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political (variants for 345.16). 345.17–18  an appeal to general opinion] a principle enunciated also in THN 3.2.8.8, 3.2.9.4, and 18 February 1751, Letters, 1: 150–1. n. 6  Locke on government, chap. 7. § 90.] Hume quotes Locke’s 1689 Two Treatises 2.90 (ch. 7), with omissions. Cf. Hume’s discussion of contract and allegiance in THN 3.2.8.3. Although identified with the notion of ‘consent’, Locke avoided the notion of reciprocal promises and obligations between a magistrate and

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people with distinct interests. Instead the governors’ power is purely ‘Fiduciary’ (2.149 (ch. 13)). Passim in Collection of State Tracts (1705–7) can be found Lockiansounding passages contemporary with the Two Treatises and closer to Hume’s language than are Locke’s own tenets. E.g., in his legalistic Brief Justification of the Prince of Orange’s Descent into England (1689), the Scot Robert Ferguson said, ‘Whenever any Person is chosen from the rest of the Society, and raised to Kingship upon a foregoing and previous Contract with the Community, he becomes upon the very accepting it bound absolutely and without reserve to govern them according to the Terms and Measures, which they and he have agreed and stipulated, and to rule them by the Tenor of the Laws, unto which they have circumscribed and confined him. Whereas all the Obedience and Fealty which they who by Agreement have rendred themselves Subjects, owe unto their ordained and created Sovereign, do derive their Obligatory Force towards them, and become due unto him, upon his governing them according to the concerted and stipulated Conditions, and his preserving unto them their reserved Privileges, Liberties, and Rights’ (Collection, 1: 137; cf. 1: 136). As early as 1687, Ferguson alluded to contractarian concepts without regarding them as needing explanation: ‘I could never yet be otherway’s minded, than that the Rules of the Constitution and the Laws of the Republick or Kingdom, are to be the measures both of the Soveraigns Commands, and of the Subjects obedience; and that as we are not to invade what by concessions and stipulations belongs unto the Ruler, so we may not only lawfully, but we ought to defend what is reserved to our selves, if it be invaded and broken in upon’ (Representation, 29–30; cf. 31). For another Scottish example see the Vindication of the Proceedings of the Convention of the Estates in Scotland (1689), where one reads that ‘Government could not be settled without Contract and Agreement; and that those mutual Obligations of a King to protect, and People to obey, are necessarily included in the Nature of Government: for otherwise I desire to know for what end do the People give their Allegiance, if not to be protected from Violence’ (Collection, 3: 449). Lockians like Hoadly could be more wary about mutual obligation, but faced with the 1745 Jacobite uprising a Whig like Samuel Squire could actually emphasize the subjects’ covenanted obligation to obedience: ‘But of Governments constituted by the People, formed, accepted, agreed, and sworn to by general Compact and Consent, (whether Emperor, King, or Senate, Doge or Diet, singular or plural) the Authority is still the same, and they who resist it, (unless in Cases of extreme Necessity) are Enemies to God and Traitors to the Peace of their Country’ (Letter, 46–59 at 57; cf. 49). Squire identifies himself as a Lockian and, in documenting in history the contractarian nature of the constitution, cites his own 1745 Enquiry into the Foundation of the English Constitution (Letter, 46, 62). n. 7  Id. chap. 11. §§ 138, 139, 140.] Hume paraphrases Two Treatises 2.138–40 (ch. 11). Locke’s point was the commonplace that arbitrary rule negates the benefit of government for which people left the state of nature, namely the security of the subjects’ property and rights.

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346.8  Plato’s Crito] i.e. Crito 49e-54e, perhaps particularly such a passage as 51e, where Plato represents the Laws of Athens addressing Socrates and laying down the obligation of all Athenian citizens to obey them, even a citizen who feels unjustly treated by them: ‘[W]e say that whoever of you stays here, and sees how we [the Laws] administer justice and how we govern the state in other respects, has thereby entered into an agreement with us to do whatever we command.’ Socrates’s exact position in the Crito is much debated. Cf. ¶ 23 above, where Hume discusses ‘tacit consent’.

13. Of Passive Obedience This essay, with ‘National Characters’ and ‘Original Contract’, appeared first in Three Essays (1748) and Essays, Moral and Political, 3rd edn. (1748). See the bibliographic head-note for ‘Protestant Succession’. More complicated than it may appear in this essay, the tenet of passive obedience is to be distinguished from active obedience on one hand and resistance on the other. The tenet arises from problemcase reasoning concerning what is to be done when the duties to obey a ruler and God conflict, for example, when rulers command conversion to a false religion. Active obedience would require conversion, passive only submission to legal punishment. See e.g. Berkeley, Passive Obedience, §§ 3, 40. Berkeley’s tract illustrates the fact that the tenet did not presuppose monarchism or Jacobitism: passive obedience was ‘due to the supreme civil power, wherever placed in any nation’ (Works, 6: 17). See also Smedley, Doctrine, 6. 347.1–2  the speculative systems of politics advanced in this nation] See ‘Original Contract’ 1, as well as ‘Parties in General’ 11. 347.6  the obligation to justice] Cf. EPM 3.8 for additional problem cases. A more stark formulation appears in the appendix to the reign of James I, s.v. Civil Government: ‘In every government, necessity, when real, supersedes all laws, and levels all limitations’ (Hist. 5: 128). For an elaboration of this reasoning see THN 3.2.2, where Hume argues that the rules of justice are conventions deriving from a shared sense of common interest. Hence he concludes here that the ‘interests of society’ have priority over justice when they conflict. 347.11  fiat Justitia & ruat Cœlum] ‘Let justice be done, though the heavens fall’ was a proverbial expression existing in various forms. Its first recorded use in English was by William Watson’s 1602 Decacordon of Ten Quodlibeticall Questions (338). Watson was a Catholic priest executed in 1603 for his conspiratorial op­pos­ ition to James I. One version of the expression was the motto of the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I. Cf. Hume’s comments on the relation between justice and usefulness in EPM 4.3. 347.14–15  burning the suburbs] The issue here is over the eminent domain by which the state might dispose of private property as necessary to secure the common safety. Pufendorf sounds more moderate than Hume on this issue in insisting

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that restitution be made where possible. He did draw the line, however, at compensating those who chose to live in the suburbs (i.e. outside the city walls), vulnerable to destruction in war (Law 8.5.7). 347.16  plundering a neutral country] Again Hume sounds more terrible than the position endorsed by natural law. Grotius insisted on the respect owed to neutral territory and the possessions of the inhabitants, and both he and Pufendorf deemed plunder to be contrary to the law of nature. See Grotius, Rights 2.2.10; 3.17.1; Pufendorf, Law 8.6.7. Carmichael, Hutcheson, and others carried the discussion of such questions in these terms into the Scottish universities. See e.g. Hutcheson, Short Introduction 3.9.5, and System 3.10.8. 347.22  Salus populi suprema Lex] The original expression in Cicero, De legibus 3.3.8, is ollis salus populi suprema lex esto, or ‘let the safety of the people be the supreme law for them [i.e. for the higher magistrates]’. Hobbes (On the Citizen 13.2; Leviathan, ch. 29) and Pufendorf (Duty 2.11.3; Law 7.9.3) use this quotation to state a general rule for the duties of sovereigns. In ‘Of Judicature’, Bacon applied the maxim to judges (Works, 6: 509, 585), and Archibald Hutcheson invoked it in support of his tax reforms (Collection, 80). Cf. EPM 3.32, where Hume asserts that ‘The safety of the people is the supreme law’. 347.24  Nero or Philip the Second] These two tyrants are mentioned in THN 3.2.9.4 in connection with the right of resistance. Hume’s readers would recognize in them two types of tyrant, one ancient and megalomaniacal, the other modern and fanatically bigoted. Presumably it was to get this effect that Hume replaced the emperor Caracalla with Philip II of Spain in the 1753 version of the essay (variants). A series of revolts by provincial governors ended Nero’s reign (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Nero’ 40–9), and Hume describes him as ‘that bloody tyrant’ whom his people had the right not only to depose but also to punish, unlike the situation for Charles I (Hist. 5: 545). The most important of several rebellions against Philip (1527–98) was the Dutch war of independence known as the Eighty Years War (1568–1648). 347.26  our high monarchical party] Though High-Church Tory spokesmen like the controversialists Francis Atterbury and Henry Sacheverell endorsed both passive obedience and non-resistance to hereditary rulers, some Tories admitted in practice the need for resisting tyranny and accepted the legitimacy of the Revolution of 1688. Cf. ‘British Government’ 5. 347.33–348.1  the last refuge in desperate cases] The point of justified rebellion does not need to be fixed in principle, for when it ‘really occurs, even though it be not previously expected and descanted on, it must, from its very nature, be so obvious and undisputed, as to remove all doubt, and overpower the restraint, however great, imposed by teaching the general doctrine of obedience’ (Hist. 5: 544, s.v ad 1649). 348.7–10  the tyrannicide . . . approved of by ancient maxims, . . . now . . . abolished by the laws of nations] The ancient exemplars of tyrannicide for modern

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Europe were the legendary Lucius Junius Brutus, who deposed the last king of Rome, and Julius Caesar’s assassins, the ‘noble’ Brutus and ‘the last of the Romans’, Cassius. But the doctrine was pervasive in the ancient sources from the honours paid in the Athenian democracy to the tyrant-slayers, Harmodius and Aristogiton, through the frequent practice of giving rewards to tyrannicides, to the rhetorical commonplaces of the schools of the Roman Empire, satirized in a well-known passage of Juvenal (Satires 7.150–4): ‘Or do you teach rhetoric? O Vettius, what iron bowels you must have when your large class of students slays the cruel tyrant: when each in turn stands up, and repeats what he has been conning in his seat, reciting the self-same things in the self-same verses! This old chestnut, served up again and again, kills the poor teacher.’ Hobbes reacted strongly and specifically against this tradition in On the Citizen 12.3 and Leviathan, ch. 29. Pufendorf denied that the law of nations permits tyrannicide (Law 7.8.6) and was extremely hesitant about intervention by one state to remove a tyrant from another (Law 8.6.14, ad fin.). He refers in the latter case to the fuller discussion by Grotius (Rights 2.25.8). On the ancient tyrants see ‘Populousness’ 73 (with its annotation at 300.13) and ¶ 87. For Hume on tyrannicide see EPM, ‘Dialogue’ 15 (on Harmodius and Aristogiton) and 2.19. 348.24–5  the maxims of resistance] The ‘party’ that held such doctrines might refer to those republicans who had been responsible for the execution of Charles I or to the Whigs of the 1680s. There were not many among Hanoverian Whigs who subscribed to such views. Ironically the Jacobites were the ones to practise resistance in 1715 and 1745, even though the doctrines were used by Whigs to support the supplanting of James II. See the annotations for ‘Original Contract’ 1 at 332.9–10 and 332.12. 348.37–8  His ministers alone . . . are obnoxious to justice] As Samuel Johnson put it, ‘there is no power by which [the monarch] can be tried. Therefore . . . we hold the King can do no wrong; that whatever may happen to be wrong in government may not be above our reach, by being ascribed to Majesty’ (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 1: 424). In response to Bolingbroke’s attacks on the court, one critic pointed out in 1740 that ‘the Crown has already given up the Power of protecting Ministers that are obnoxious to the Parliament’ (Historical View, 37). Hume’s use here of the word ‘obnoxious’ is, as in EPM 3.10, in the archaic sense of ‘Liable to punishment’ (Johnson, Dictionary). 349.7  This case . . . is never expressly put by the laws] as Hume had said in THN 3.2.10.16. He invokes the legal convention that no state could be expected to authorize its own demise. Abraham Lincoln would invoke the principle in his first inaugural address: ‘no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination’ (Collected Works, 4: 264). The first issue of Magna Charta, however, included a provision for duly authorized barons to ‘levy war’ against the monarch (Hume, Hist. 1: 446, ad 1215). 349.15  Where the king is an absolute sovereign] Until the 1753 Essays, Moral and Political, the language was ‘Where the King is the sole Sovereign of the State’ (variants).

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349.20–4  James the Second . . . . even to deprive the latter formally] The emphasis on James II seems to suggest that the more extreme measures were taken against him though Charles I had paid for his misjudgements with his head and the dissolution of the monarchy itself. The distinction between the cases to which Hume points is that only James II was ‘formally’ deprived of authority, an implication being possibly that Charles’s deposition was not likewise lawful. 349.22  engrossing the whole legislative power] See the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 14 at 105.35 on the role of the monarch in ‘the legislative’.

14. Of the Coalition of Parties Like ‘Jealousy of Trade’, this essay was added to the ETSS for the 1760 edition and interpolated into some unsold copies of the 1758 edition. A letter to Andrew Millar of 18 December 1758 indicates that ‘Coalition of Parties’ had been in William Strahan’s hands since the summer, when Hume had been in London (Letters, 1: 317). The new ETSS was printed in March and published at the end of April 1760. A translation, ‘Sur la réunion des partis’, appeared in Journal étranger (September 1760), 21–40, together with a notice of the 1760 ETSS. Robel attributes the translation to Turgot (‘Hume’s Political Discourses in France’, 226). The essay seems at least in part a response to Whiggish criticisms of the volumes of Hume’s History on the reigns of the Stuarts, which had been published in 1754 and 1756. Hume links ‘Coalition of Parties’ explicitly in ¶ 2 with ‘Original Contract’ and ‘Passive Obedience’, making it supply the place of ‘Protestant Succession’ as part of a triptych. For the delay in publishing that essay, see the bibliographical head-note for its annotations. 350.1–2  distinctions of party . . . in a free government] See ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ 57. 350.2  The only dangerous parties] Cf. the comments on parties of principle in ‘Parties in General’ 11–12. 350.13  this tendency to a coalition] The context of this essay seems to be the spectacle of William Pitt the elder’s attracting the support of the diverse groups in opposition to the ‘Old Corps’ Whig ministries and then, improbably, retaining his following, including Tories, when he formed a coalition government with the Old Corps’ leader Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of Newcastle, Walpole’s old ally and political heir. The Newcastle-Pitt coalition spanned 1757–61. As a ‘patriot’ theme, the phrase ‘coalition of parties’ recalled Bolingbroke’s opportunistic campaign in the Craftsman (repr. as his Dissertation on Parties) for ‘the Coalition of Parties, by which Term [Bolingbroke] understood that all the invidious national Distinctions of Whig and Tory, Dissenter and Churchman, &c. which had so long divided and distracted this Country, either had, or . . . ought to have, sunk into those of Court and Country; the first of which ought to be look’d upon as a Faction and Confederacy against the other’ (Historical View (1740), 43–4). Hume saw both court and country as parties indigenous to the mixed-monarchical constitution.

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350.22–3  the philosophical and practical controversies between the parties] The phrase ‘and practical ’ was added as of the 1772 ETSS (variants). Cf. ‘Passive Obedience’ 1. When ‘Original Contract’ and ‘Passive Obedience’ were set to appear with ‘Protestant Succession’, Hume offered a different account of their purposes to Charles Erskine (Letters, 1: 112): ‘One is against the original Contract, the System of the Whigs, another against passive Obedience, the System of the Tories.’ 350.31  who afterwards acquired the name of whigs] For Hume’s account of the origin of the terms ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’, which he dates to 1680, see Hist. 6: 381 and the annotations for ‘Parties of Great Britain’ 7 at 74.8 and 74.10. 351.3–4  Such might have been their reasoning] The reconstruction of the arguments of ‘the popular party’ in ¶ 3, followed by that of ‘the royalists’ in ¶¶ 5–16, employs a technique of hypothetical historical debate used also in ‘Protestant Succession’. Cf. also Hume’s account of the arguments surrounding the Petition of Right in 1628 (Hist. 5: 192–5). With the reasonings of ‘the popular party’ as given here, cf. the arguments that Hume attributes to the ‘partizans’ of Parliament in 1641 (Hist. 5: 352–4). Hume’s references to ‘specious arguments’ here and in ¶ 4, and possibly in ‘Standard of Taste’ 4, may be old-fashioned in being (evidently) neutral in connotation rather than negative. All of the illustrative quotations in Johnson’s Dictionary bear a negative connotation. 351.14  The example of all the neighbouring nations] Cf. ‘Protestant Succession’ 3, where a country-party doctrine is stated that since Tudor days ­‘public liberty has, almost in every other nation of Europe, been . . . extremely upon  the decline’ due to the supplanting of militias with standing armies that ­monarchs can turn against their people. If 1640 is a point of reference, the popular party could adduce the programmes of Cardinal Richelieu and the Count of Olivarez to centralize power in the monarchies of Louis XIII of France and Philip IV of Spain, respectively. Olivarez’s actions caused rebellions in the Basque region and, in 1640, in Catalonia and Portugal. Spanish hostilities with the Dutch republic had resumed in 1621, strengthening the hand of the house of Orange against republicanism in that state. In that republic Frederick Henry of Nassau was accorded the title of ‘Highness’ in 1637, and in 1641 his son William married the daughter of the English king, Charles  I.  In Carolean times no one could imagine that their son William would depose a Stuart, James II, who was his uncle and father-in-law, and, with his wife Mary II, establish a constitutional monarchy in England and Scotland. Ahead lay the establishment of absolute governments in Denmark and Sweden in 1661 and 1682, respectively. See Ogg, Europe, 195–6, 201–2, 38–9, 370–3, 416–17, 8. In 1700–1, Frederick, the elector of Brandenburg, made himself the king of Prussia. 351.24  and naval power] Republican views were associated with British naval power inasmuch as a ‘Blue-water policy’, or an emphasis on the navy and the Channel for defence of the island, was held to provide an alternative to a standing army, which might be used by monarchs against their subjects. This ideology is

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epitomized in Thomson’s famous ode of 1740 with its refrain, ‘Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; | Britons never will be slaves’ (Poetical Works, 422). See the annotations for ‘Protestant Succession’ 3 at 357.25 and 357.29–30. 351.31–2  at the assembling of that parliament] i.e. the Long Parliament (1640–60), to which Hume felt that he had not been ‘unfavorable’ in his History. As he wrote to Strahan on 3 May 1755, ‘Till they push’d their Advantages so far as to excite a civil War, so dangerous & unnecessary, I esteem their Conduct laudable; & to this Extremity nothing carry’d them but their furious Zeal for Presbytery: A low Bigotry, with which they sully’d a noble Cause’ (Letters, 1: 222). For Hume’s ana­ lysis of the delicate situation of James I and Charles I, see Hist. 5: 568–70 (n. W for ch. 53), and the comment in a letter to Andrew Millar of 12 April 1755 (Letters, 1: 217): ‘The two first Princes of the House of Stuart were certainly more excusable than the two second. The Constitution was in their time very ambiguous & undetermin’d, & their Parliaments were, in many respects, refractory & obstinate.’ Cf. letter to Adam Smith for 24 September 1752 (Letters, 1: 167–8). 352.6–7  the plausible pretence of their recovering the ancient liberties of the people] Cf. Hume on the Commons’ pretensions at the end of 1640 ‘to recover the ancient and established government’ (Hist. 5: 297). A putative ancient constitution supplied a standard against which to expose deviancy, like that alleged against Charles  I.  Whig ideology would portray this deviancy as a family trait of the Stuarts extending from James I down to the Old and Young Pretenders. Some definition for the ancient constitution was sought in Magna Charta, or rather in Sir Edward Coke’s influential interpretation of it in his posthumous Second Institutes of 1642. A more ancient source of definition for polemicists was the supposed liberty of the irrepressible Germanic (‘Gothic’) tribes. In his summary remarks on the Middle Ages in his History, Hume rejected German freedom as a standard: ‘The pretended liberty of the times, was only an incapacity of submitting to government’ (2: 521). 352.8  the present prerogatives of the crown] The prerogatives claimed by Charles I in 1640 included the continuing jurisdiction of the Star Chamber, martial law, and imprisonment by warrants from the Privy Council, as well as recent financial exactions such as ship-money, forced loans, and various forms of taxation without the consent of Parliament. Hume describes the abolition of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission (an ecclesiastical court) in 1641 as intended ‘to annihilate the principal and most dangerous articles of the king’s prerogative’ (Hist. 5: 328–30 at 329). More generally, coming to a head under Charles I was the issue of whether the monarch was constrained by the common law. See also the annotation for ¶ 13 at 353.40 below on Elizabeth I’s government. 352.9–10  the accession of the house of Tudor] The house of Tudor commenced in 1485 with Henry VII’s reign, or roughly ‘a hundred and sixty years’ before the 1640s, when the Long Parliament assembled and when Hume sets his royalists’ speech (¶ 4).

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352.12  in the reign of the Emperor Adrian] Hadrian was emperor in ad 117–138, about 160 years after Octavian defeated Antony at the battle of Actium (31 bc) and seized power, thus effectively ending the Roman Republic. The name Augustus was conferred on Octavian by the senate in 27 bc. 352.18  a plain usurpation] Shaftesbury too speaks of Augustus’s ‘usurp’d Dominion’ (Characteristicks 3 (Soliloquy) 2.1 at 1: 117), as does Gibbon (Decline and Fall, ch. 5 at 1: 114). See the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 17.1, on ‘servus’. An account of Augustus’s ascendancy as a usurpation is Gordon’s Cato’s Letters 23 for 1 April 1721 at 1: 165–8. 352.19–20  If Henry VII. really, as some pretend, enlarged the power of the crown] In Hist. 3: 73–4, Hume asserts that Henry did indeed enlarge the power of the crown: ‘The power of the kings of England . . . was scarcely ever so absolute during any former reign, at least after the establishment of the great charter, as during that of Henry’ (ad 1509). See also the annotations for ‘Rise and Progress’ 5 at 102.8–9 and ‘Money’ 1 at 218.7. 352.27–8  The house of Tudor, . . . that of Stuart, . . . the Plantagenets] The house of Tudor, established by the accession of Henry VII, was continued through his son Henry VIII and the latter’s children, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. On Elizabeth’s death without children in 1602/3, James VI of Scotland became James I of England, the first of the Stuarts. His son Charles I, after the interval of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, was followed by his sons, Charles II and James II. Deposed in 1688, James was succeeded by the last Stuarts, his daughters Mary II and Anne, who both died childless. The Plantagenets is the name conventionally given to the English royal family descending from Henry II, who came to the throne in 1154, when the dynasty of the Norman kings came to an end in civil war. Henry was followed by his sons, Richard I and John (who signed Magna Charta in 1215), then by a succession of descendants down to Richard II, who was deposed in 1399, to make way for the houses of Lancaster and York. (Hume reflects on Henry IV’s title at Hist. 2: 333–4, for ad 1399.) The two houses disputed the crown between them until Henry Tudor defeated Richard III in 1485 to become Henry VII. variants for 352.32, n.  the family of Tudor] This note, in which Hume claimed to be ‘the first writer who advanced that the family of Tudor possessed in general more authority than their immediate predecessors’, was dropped as of the 1770 ETSS. An implication of the claim is that the Stuarts did not arrogate to themselves greater powers than the crown had already possessed. Hume puts this point to friends in letters. See especially his letter to Gilbert Elliot of 12 May 1765: ‘I know that I have affirmd, and, what is worse, have provd, that Q. Elizabeth’s Maxims of Government were full as arbitrary as those of the Stuarts’ (Letters, 1: 502). See also Hume’s discussion of his History with John Clephane, 3 September 1757 (Letters, 1: 264): ‘I wish, indeed, that I had begun there [with ‘the reign of Henry VII.’]: For by that means, I should have been able . . . to have shown how absolute the authority was, which the English kings then possessed.’ Cf. also ‘My Own Life’ (Letters, 1: 5).

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352.36–7  recovering the ancient constitution] In app. 3 to his History, Hume defines three successive ancient constitutions, in reverse chronological order: (a) that of the Tudors and Stuarts, (b) that from ‘the charters’ (presumably com­men­ cing with Magna Charta in 1215) to the reign of Henry VII, and (c) that before ‘the charters’. He says, ‘By the ancient constitution, is here meant that which prevailed before the settlement of our present plan of liberty. There was a more ancient constitution, where, though the people had perhaps less liberty than under the Tudors, yet the king had also less authority: The power of the barons was a great check upon him, and exercised great tyranny over them. But there was still a more ancient constitution, viz. that before the signing of the charters, when neither the people nor the barons had any regular privileges; and the power of the government, during the reign of an able prince, was almost wholly in the king. The English constitution, like all others, has been in a state of continual fluctuation’ (Hist. 4: 355 n. l). Hume’s ‘royalists’, presented as speaking in 1640, discuss (a) the Tudors and Stuarts (who for them represent the times in which they are living) in ¶¶ 6–8, (b) the period from the charters to the accession of Henry VII in ¶ 9, and (c) the period before the ­charters in ¶ 10. 352.37–8  controul over the kings was not placed in the commons, but in the barons] In this paragraph (as ¶ 10 indicates), Hume’s royalists describe the ancient constitution existing from the charters to the accession of the house of Tudor. Hume discusses the Great Charter (Magna Charta) in some detail at Hist. 1: 442–7 (ad 1215), and the renewal and confirmation of that Charter made on the accession of Henry III at Hist. 2: 5–7 (ad 1216). On the latter occasion he delivers a judgement differing markedly from that of his royalists: ‘Thus these famous charters were brought nearly to the shape, in which they have ever since stood; and they were, during many generations, the peculiar favourites of the English nation, and esteemed the most sacred rampart to national liberty and independence. As they secured the rights of all orders of men, they were anxiously defended by all, and became the basis, in a manner, of the English monarchy, and a kind of original contract, which both limited the authority of the king, and ensured the conditional allegiance of his subjects. Though often violated, they were still claimed by the nobility and people; and as no precedents were supposed valid, that infringed them, they rather acquired, than lost authority, from the frequent attempts, made against them in several ages, by regal and arbitrary power’ (2: 6–7). At 2: 119–23 he describes the reconfirmation and amendment of the Charter under Edward I (ad 1297), by which ‘the Great Charter was finally established’ (2: 122). He says, ‘the validity of the Great Charter was never afterwards formally disputed; and that grant was still regarded as the basis of English government, and the sure rule by which the authority of every custom was to be tried and canvassed’ (2: 123). 353.2  the ancient barbarous and feudal constitution] Until the 1770 ETSS  the text read ‘Gothic’ instead of ‘feudal’. Similarly, in ‘Protestant Succession’ 3, ‘Gothic militia’ became ‘feudal militia’ for the 1764 ETSS (variants). ‘The introduction of the feudal law into England by William the Conqueror’, Hume

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would write in his History (ad 1214), ‘had much infringed the liberties, however imperfect, enjoyed by the Anglo-Saxons in their ancient government, and had reduced the whole people to a state of vassalage under the king or barons, and even the greater part of them [i.e. the villeins] to a state of real slavery.’ Thus he distinguished the feudal system from the Anglo-Saxon (or ‘German’) constitution: ‘England of a sudden became a feudal kingdom’ (Hist. 1: 437, 461). In app. 1 he says that it is doubtful whether the feudal law had any place at all among the AngloSaxons, who having expelled or exterminated the Britons, did not need a large and cohesive military establishment (1: 181–2). By contrast the Normans, living amidst a conquered population, needed the system of feudal obligations to provide military strength and security (app. 2, at 1: 460–1). 353.10  a constitution still more ancient than that] In line with the historical scheme set out by Hume in Hist. 4: 355 n. l (see the annotation for ¶ 9 at 352.36–7 on ‘recovering the ancient constitution’), his royalists now refer to the time before the Magna Charta of 1215. The reputed origin of this more ancient constitution was the compilation of laws from earlier sources made by Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042–66), ‘which was long the object of affection to the English nation’ (Hist. 1: 146) and which ‘the English, every reign during a century and a half, desire[d] so passionately to have restored’ (1: 493). In response to pressure from the nation, ‘the laws of king Edward’ were subsequently confirmed in whole or in part by William the Conqueror (1: 209), Henry I (1: 253), and Henry II (cf. 1: 371) before ‘the most material articles . . . were afterwards comprehended in Magna Charta’ (1: 493). 353.14–15  It is ridiculous to hear the commons, while they are assuming, by usurpation, the whole power of government] This final formulation was adopted in steps in the 1770 and 1772 ETSS. The original, printed in 1760, was ‘It is pleasant to hear a house, while they are usurping the whole power of government’ (variants). 353.16  representatives] In his account of ‘the feudal government of England’ in app. 2, Hume affirms that, whatever continuity there was between the medieval great councils and the assemblages that would be called parliaments, ‘the commons were no part of the great council, till some ages after the conquest’ (Hist. 1: 461–74 at 461 and 467). The manoeuvres of de Montfort in 1265 gave a start to the summoning of ‘representatives from the boroughs’ (Hist. 2: 56–7), but ‘the commencement of the house of burgesses, who are the true commons’, occurred no earlier than 1295 during the reign of Edward  I.  This group has come to be called the ‘Model Parliament’. Hume describes this origin of the Commons in the sending of temporary ‘representatives’, two from each borough, to the parliament. They were there solely to hear the king’s revenue requirements (Hist. 2: 105–9), while the le­gis­ la­tive Members of Parliament continued to be the barons, bishops, and knights. Hume notes that the ‘charges’ of the representatives from the boroughs were met by the boroughs and that the task was regarded as neither honourable nor profitable (Hist. 2: 107).

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353.30  the present established practice of the age] In his translation of the essays Robel cites two statements of this point in Hume’s History (Robel, ed. Essais, 729–30 n. 2). Concerning Richard III and constitutional change (ch. 23), Hume says that ‘the only rule of government, which is intelligible or carries any authority with it, is the established practice of the age’ (Hist. 2: 525). In extenuating Elizabeth’s indifference to the constitution (app. 3), Hume says that ‘If any other rule than established practice be followed, factions and dissentions must multiply without end’ (4: 354–5). A reason is that nothing more firm than public opinion enables government to function. As ‘Force is always on the side of the governed’, Hume says in ‘First Principles of Government’ 1, ‘the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded.’ Cf. his statement that government is ‘always founded on opinion, not on force’ (Hist. 5: 544, s.v ad 1649). Whether the question is forms of government or who the le­git­im­ ate ruler is, ‘No maxim is more conformable, both to prudence and morals, than to submit quietly to the government, which we find establish’d in the country where we happen to live, without enquiring too curiously into its origin and first establishment. Few governments will bear being examin’d so rigorously’ (THN 3.2.10.7). 353.32  those tribunes] On the popular magistrates at Rome called tribunes, see the annotation for ‘Customs’ 11 at 276.32. Hume’s royalists here use the term pe­jora­tive­ly of the representatives of the commons. Cf. Hist. 6: 533: ‘tribunitian arts, though sometimes useful in a free constitution, have usually been such as men of probity and honour could not bring themselves either to practice or approve’ (ad 1689). Cf. Heylyn, ‘Perhaps you thinke, because Mass. Prinne is of a factious Tribunitian spirit; he must be Sacrosanct and uncontrollable as the Tribunes were’ (Briefe and Moderate Answer, 80). Heylyn refers to William Prynne, who, with Henry Burton and John Bastwick, was harshly treated by the Star Chamber court for libelling king and church. All three were later absolved by Parliament (Hist. 5: 239, 295). 353.38  Camden] The word ‘monuments’ here evidently means memorials (Johnson, Dictionary, s.v. monument, memorial). William Camden’s Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum, regnante Elizabetha (2 pts., 1615, 1625) made use of state papers. Cf. Hist. 5: 154, where Hume’s judgement that Camden’s annals are perhaps ‘among the best historical productions which have yet been composed by any Englishman’ is qualified by the reflection that ‘the English have not much excelled in that kind of literature’ (app. 4). 353.40  the most important maxims of her government] Cf. the account of Elizabeth’s government in app. 3 in Hume’s History. Hume begins, ‘The party among us, who have distinguished themselves by their adhering to liberty and a popular government, have long indulged their prejudices against the succeeding race of princes, by bestowing unbounded panegyrics on the virtue and wisdom of Elizabeth. They have even been so extremely ignorant of the transactions of this reign, as to extol her for a quality, which, of all others, she was the least possessed of;

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a tender regard for the constitution, and a concern for the liberties and privileges of her people. . . . Elizabeth only supported the prerogatives, transmitted to her by her predecessors.’ In practice, Hume says, she extended the prerogative even further than her father, as for example in forbidding the Commons to discuss foreign policy without her consent. Hume undertakes ‘to recount some of the ancient prerogatives of the crown, and lay open the sources of that great power, which the English monarchs formerly enjoyed.’ The Tudor governments, he comments, resembled that of Turkey in that ‘The sovereign possessed every power, except that of imposing taxes’ (Hist. 4: 354–60). 354.5–6  general consent . . . during so long a time] Cf. THN 3.2.10.4–5 on the right to rule derived from ‘long possession’. 354.22–3  Popular rage] Cf. Hist. 5: 380 on how religious fanaticism ‘confounded all regard to ease, safety, interest; and dissolved every moral and civil obligation’ (ad  1642). Hume’s royalists speak of a time when popular rage was enflamed by religious controversies in a way that it was not in the mid-1750s, the context in which Hume now appeals for ‘a moderate opposition’ (¶ 17). But furores over reform of  the calendar (1752), the Jewish Naturalization Bill (1753), and the ­disgrace of Admiral Byng (1756–7) preceded still more alarming ones in the reign of George III. 354.27–8  if that can be admitted as a reason] a reformulation for the 1772 ETSS of ‘if that can be allowed a rule’, a clause that was itself added as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). 354.34  our present establishment] altered from ‘our present happy establishment’ as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). 354.39–40  the malcontent party] i.e. the Jacobites and nonjurors. In a letter of 10 February 1773, Hume wrote to Sir John Pringle that the Young Pretender had visited England more than once after the invasion and defeat of 1745: ‘I find that the Pretender’s visit in England, in the year 1753 [actually 1750], was known to all the Jacobites; and some of them assured me, that he took the opportunity of formally renouncing the Roman Catholic religion, under his own name of Charles Edward Stuart, in the new church in the Strand’ (Letters, 2: 273). In 1752–3 came the failed ‘Elibank plot’ for a Jacobite coup d’état. 355.1–2  the spirit of civil liberty, though at first connected with religious fanaticism] Cf. ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm’ 9. 355.13  abdicated family] See the annotation for ‘Original Contract’ 31 at 341.12.

15. Of the Protestant Succession A version of ‘Protestant Succession’ existed by 8 January 1748, when Hume so­li­ cit­ed Lord Elibank’s criticism (Mossner, ‘New Hume Letters’, 437). In ¶ 9, Hume indicates that it had been sixty years since the 1689 establishment, dating the

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c­ omposition of that sentence at 1749. Inasmuch as Hume expected the uncited reference in ¶ 2 to Bolingbroke to be recognized by his readers, that sentence would date after the authorized publication of The Idea of a Patriot King in July 1749. (The passage quoted does not appear in the three extracts from the book appearing in the London Magazine beginning in January.) In a letter to Charles Erskine of 13 February 1748, Hume wrote of plans to replace ‘Essay Writing’, ‘Moral Prejudices’, and ‘Middle Station’ for Essays, Moral and Political (1748) with ‘Protestant Succession’, ‘Passive Obedience’, and ‘Original Contract’, which essays, he thought, ‘shou’d be more instructive’ (Letters, 1: 112). In the event, however, ‘Protestant Succession’ was separated from its two companions and did not appear until its inclusion in Political Discourses (1752), to reappear thereafter in the 2nd and 3rd editions of that book (1752b, 1754) and all editions of the ETSS. In Essays, Moral and Political, 3rd edn., and Three Essays (both published c.17 November 1748), ‘National Characters’ appeared in place of ‘Protestant Succession’. With its two originally intended companions, ‘Protestant Succession’ would have formed a triptych, most discernibly in Three Essays. As Hume wrote to Erskine, ‘One is against the original Contract, the System of the Whigs, another against passive Obedience, the System of the Tories: A third upon the Protestant Succession, where I suppose a Man to deliberate, before the Establishment of that Succession, which Family he shou’d adhere to, & to weigh the Advantages & Disadvantages of each’ (Letters, 1: 112). Hume wanted Erskine’s opinion as to whether it would be imprudent to publish such a deliberation, having been warned that it would harm himself and his friends, ‘particularly those with whom [he was] connected at present’. Doubtless the connection refers to the branch of Argyll’s faction of the Whigs among whom Erskine was a leader (see Emerson, ‘The “Affair” ’). One such friend, Archibald Stewart, had been tried and acquitted in 1747 of neglecting his duty as lord provost to defend Edinburgh during the Jacobite attack of 1745. In this context insufficient zeal in Hume for the Protestant succession could be made to reflect badly on his associates. Mossner says that friends advised Hume to withhold the essay so as not to embarrass ‘his patron, General St. Clair, whose brother had been attainted as a Jacobite after the rising of 1715’ (Life, 269). Argathelians were suspected of protecting Jacobites from punishment, and Argyll himself would be investigated in 1752, the year of the appearance of ‘Protestant Succession’ (Murdoch, ‘The People Above’, 38–9). By 6 Anne, c. 7, it was high treason to challenge the Protestant Settlement. Hume’s own description of ‘Protestant Succession’ was that the ‘conclusion shows me to be a Whig, but a very sceptical one’ (to Kames on 9 February 1748, Letters, 1: 111). 356.2–3  the Protestant Succession was yet uncertain] Despite the 1701 Act of Settlement (12 & 13 William III, c. 2), which was designed to ensure ‘the succession of the crown in the Protestant line’ (English Historical Documents, 6: 129–34 at 130), there was apprehension about the settlement until the throne had safely moved from the house of Stuart to that of Hanover with the ascension in 1714 of Georg

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Ludwig, elector of Brunswick-Lüneberg, to the throne of Great Britain as George I. For the factors causing apprehension, see Somerville’s 1798 ‘Dissertation concerning the Danger of the Protestant Succession, during the Last Years of the Reign of Queen Anne’ (History, 573–96). George I declared it an act of Providence that brought him ‘in Safety to the Crown of this Kingdom’ (English Historical Documents, 7: 149). Some doughty Whigs even prepared for military action, and in the event there was a Jacobite uprising in 1715. 356.12  governors, independent of government] Cf. Bolingbroke, Idea of a Patriot King, ¶ 14: ‘Reverence for government obliges to reverence governors, who, for the sake of it, are raised above the level of other men: but reverence for governors, independently of government, any further than reverence would be due to their virtues if they were private men, is preposterous, and repugnant to common sense’ (Political Writings, 228). Bolingbroke here rebuts a hereditary right to rule, though he favours a hereditary, limited monarchy. 356.24  The condition of the Roman empire] On the imperfection of dynastic succession in the Roman Empire, cf. ‘Original Contract’ 30 and 40–43, with the annotations for 340.31, 340.38–9, 343.21–2, n. 3, and 344.25. 356.25–6  Eastern nations, who pay little regard to the titles of their sovereign] The Turkish sultan or his vizier, by his immunity from regular legal checks, was notoriously in danger of being murdered by those same subjects or by the palace guard. See Boyer et al., Political State, 40 (November and December 1730): 529–40, 619–29; and 41 (January 1731): 1–30, regarding the deposition in October 1730 of Ahmed III, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the execution of his grand vizier, with a series of reports detailing the circumstances of the deposing of a number of sultans as far back as 1512. 357.1–3  A tragedy . . . that introduces kings] The ultimate source of this tenet is Aristotle’s recommendation that tragic heroes should be men of high rank and reputation (Poetics 1453a10–12). Dryden’s formulation of the critical commonplace is that the action of a tragedy ‘ought to be great, and to consist of great Persons, to distinguish it from Comedy; where the Action is trivial, and the persons of inferior rank’ (pref. to Troilus and Cressida, in Works, 13: 231). Domestic tragedy was too popular in Hume’s day for this tenet to pass undisputed. Steele contravened it in Tatler 172 for 16 May 1710. George Lillo’s famous London Merchant (1731), with an apprentice for its hero, had yearly revivals in London during Hume’s life with the possible exceptions of 1738–9, 1754–5, 1762, and 1764 (Schneider, Index, 513–14; London Stage 1660–1800, passim). 357.23–4  by the division of the church-lands, by the alienations of the barons’ estates] The increase in the people’s privileges is seen here as arising paradoxically from Tudor acts to aggrandize monarchical power. James Harrington’s explanation was that the attending shift of land ownership to the commons constituted a realignment of power. For the alienation of estates, see the annotation for ‘Rise and Progress’ 5 at 102.8–9.

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357.25  by the happiness of our situation] i.e. Britain is, as Hume says in ¶ 5, ‘surrounded and guarded by the sea’. Somers paraphrased the argument in 1697 in order to rebut it: ‘Can an Army be brought together, with a Fleet to bring it over, and we know nothing of it? These Things require time, and we cannot be supposed so destitute of Intelligence as not to know of such Preparations. In such a case, our Fleet will cover us, while our Militia may be exercised, and marched where the Danger is apprehended.’ Somers pointedly noted the happy irony that the happiness of their situation had not hindered William of Orange from crossing the Channel and toppling James II (Letter, 5–7 at 5). Hume put the size of William’s army at ‘above fourteen thousand men’ (Hist. 6: 510), but including the volunteers, like the Huguenot Rapin-Thoyras, raises the total to over 21,000 (Israel, Dutch Republic, 849). 357.29–30  the old feudal militia . . . mercenary armies] A similar argument appears in Hume’s summation of the time of Henry VII in the History (3: 80 for ad 1509): ‘In most nations, the kings . . . established standing armies, and subdued the liberties of their kingdoms.’ See the annotation for ‘Coalition of Parties’ 3 at 351.14 on ‘The example of all the neighbouring nations’. As of the 1764 ETSS the phrase ‘the old feudal militia’ replaced ‘the old Gothic militia’ (variants). variants for 357.39, n.  Ne sutor ultra crepidam] According to Pliny this proverb developed from a remark of the painter Apelles. Having accepted a shoemaker’s criticism on the rendering of a pair of shoes in a painting, Apelles balked at criticism of the legs. ‘A shoemaker should not pass judgement on anything above the shoes’, he said (Natural History 35.36.85); ‘ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret’. James I quoted a version of the saying in a letter of 11 December 1621 as part of an exchange with the House of Commons over foreign policy that escalated into an issue concerning Parliament’s independence and the crown’s prerogative. Retelling this story in the History, Hume says, ‘This expression is imagined to be insolent and dis­obli­ ging: But it was a Latin proverb familiarly used on all occasions’ (Hist. 5: 91). In the History, Hume identifies his source as ‘Kennet, p. 43’, an apparently corrupted citation to page 743 in volume 2 of Arthur Wilson, A Complete History of England, ed. White Kennett, 3 vols. (London, 1719). variants for 357.39, n.  in the life of Mr. Waller] i.e. the anonymous ‘Account of the Life and Writings’ prefixed to Edmund Waller’s Poems &c. Written upon Several Occasions, 8th edn. (London, 1711), and subsequent editions. Retelling the story in the History, Hume identifies the accommodating bishop as Richard Neile, then bishop of Durham, and the adroit one as Lancelot Andrewes, then bishop of Winchester (Hist. 5: 60). variants for 357.39, n.  Raleigh’s preface . . . . Philip the II.] Sir Walter Raleigh, History, xiv. variants for 357.39, n.  State of Ireland, page 1537, Edit. 1706] The passage is from Edmund Spenser’s A View of the State of Ireland, written in the reign of

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Elizabeth I and first published by Sir James Ware in his Two Histories. The page cited and the quotation are in John Hughes’s 1715 edition of Spenser’s Works, where the State of Ireland is reprinted at 6: 1509–671. Pagination in this edition, which is listed in Hume Library, was continuous throughout the volumes. The reference here to a ghost edition of the year 1706 has no obvious explanation except a compositor’s error. variants for 357.39, n.  Rapin, suitable to his usual malignity] This description appears only in the 1754–68 permutations of the essay. In books 18 and 19 of his Histoire, Rapin-Thoyras said that James I was inspired ‘with the design of setting himself above the laws, and not suffering the Parliament to share the supreme authority with him. . . . James’s chief care . . . was to maintain the prerogative Royal in its utmost extent, nay, to carry it higher than any of his predecessors.’ His son Charles I attempted ‘to carry the Regal Authority much higher than the King his Father, or any of his Predecessors had done’ (History, 2: 159, 237). Hume’s disapproval of Rapin grew as work on his own History progressed, and the Huguenot who had in 1748 been ‘our historian’ in ‘Original Contract’ 39 became ‘altogether despicable’. So Hume described him in a letter of 1757 to Jean-Bernard Le Blanc in which he corrected his ‘Mistake’ in the two 1752 permutations of the essay in calling Rapin the most judicious of historians of Britain (Letters, 1: 258). Rapin had been part of the army with which William of Orange deposed James II in 1688, and he served under William in the subsequent campaign in Ireland. 358.7–8  several passages of scripture] Hume, Hist. 5: 177 (s.v. ad 1626), suggests that two of the clergy whom Hume had in mind are Robert Sibthorpe (Apostolike Obedience (London, 1627), preached 22 February 1626 on Romans 13.7) and Roger Maynwaring (Religion and Alegiance (London, 1627), preached 4 and 29 July 1627 on Ecclesiastes 8.2). Romans 13.1–7 would again become the subject of heated dispute c.1705–10 over its implications for passive obedience, as in Bishop William Fleetwood’s The Thirteenth Chapter to the Romans, Vindicated from the Abusive Senses Put upon It (London, 1710). 358.17  by excluding the lineal heir] i.e. James II’s son James Francis Edward Stuart, called the Old Pretender. 358.27–8  the foreign dominions] From 1714 to 1837, Hanover and Great Britain shared their sovereign. Under George I, Hanover included the duchies of Kalenburg, Bremen, and Verden; the princedoms of Göttingen and Grubenhagen; the countships of Hoya and Deipholz; and the dukedom of Lauenburg (Williams, Whig Supremacy, 11–13). During the War of the Austrian Succession, George II was constrained by the jeopardy in which the Hanoverian dominions were placed. 358.32  the abdicated family] See the annotation for ‘Original Contract’ 31 at 341.12. 359.22–3  the house of Stuart ruled in Great Britain, . . . with some interruption, . . . above 80 years] The Interregnum began with the beheading of

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Charles I in 1649 and ended with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Charles’s father James I inaugurated the rule of the house of Stuart in 1602/3, and the Glorious Revolution was eighty-six years later. Hume excludes James II’s daughters Mary and Anne from ‘the house of Stuart’ because as monarchs they displaced their father and his lineal heir. In 1604, James I was proclaimed king of the island of Great Britain, though the creation of the nation-state of that name occurred only with the union in 1707. 359.28–9  a foreign power, dangerous to public liberty] i.e. Bourbon France. Until the 1777 ETSS the passage read ‘dangerous, if not fatal, to public liberty’ (variants). 359.40–360.1  derived equally from our progress in the arts of peace, and from valour and success in war] As of the 1770 ETSS this phrase replaced ‘while we stand the bulwark against oppression, and the great antagonist of that power, which threatens every people with conquest and subjection’ (variants). 360.10–11  two rebellions . . . plots and conspiracies] The princes of ‘narrow genius’ who led the ‘two rebellions during the flourishing period’ were James II’s son and grandson, the Old and Young Pretenders. The former had instigated an uprising in 1715 (‘the Fifteen’). The latter led the Jacobite uprising in 1745 (‘the Forty-Five’). For the six decades that separated the Revolution of 1688 from the time of writing, there had always been a good number of British subjects who were in regular correspondence with the exiled dynasty even though that act itself was construed as high treason. There had been an attempt upon the life of King William in 1696, and plots were being uncovered until the accession of George II in 1727. One was the so-called ‘Atterbury Plot’ of 1721–2 to which Hume alludes in ‘Populousness’, n. 92. 360.22–3  A prince, who . . . dares not arm his subjects] With the pacification of the Highlands following 1745, George II was in the process of disarming many of his Scots subjects. Scotland would not be permitted to form a militia until 1797. 360.25–6  what a critical escape did we make, by the late peace, from dangers] thus altered as of the 1770 ETSS from ‘what a critical escape did we lately make, from dangers’ (variants). The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded on 18 October 1748. 360.27–8  the pernicious practice of mortgaging our finances] See the annotation on ‘funding’ for ‘Balance of Power’ 17. Until the 1770 ETSS this paragraph ended with a note stating: ‘Those who consider how universal this pernicious practice of funding has become all over Europe may perhaps dispute this last opinion. But we lay under less necessity than other states.’ 360.34–5  that parliament which recalled the royal family] i.e. the Convention Parliament (25 April–29 December 1660) that replaced the restored Long Parliament. The English parliamentarians who reassembled the House of Lords and restored the monarchy were called a convention instead of a parliament

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because parliaments need authorization from the monarch to meet. They had to proclaim Charles I’s son to be king before he could declare them a parliament (12 Charles II, c. 1). See Hume, Hist. 6: 133–9. The parliament in Edinburgh was not likewise embarrassed because the Interregnum had been imposed on Scotland, where Charles II had been crowned king in 1649. 360.38  the Duke of York or Gloucester] Hume thought that antipapist paranoia made thoughtful people sceptical about accusations of popery against the Duke of York until he ‘openly declared’ his religion in 1671, leading to the exclusionist effort to prevent his becoming James II (Hist. 6: 251). There was no room for doubt about his conversion when he resigned as lord high admiral in 1673 rather than submit to the requirements imposed by the Test Act. Henry, duke of Gloucester (died 1660), third son of Charles I, was ‘believed to be affectionate to the religion and constitution of his country’ (Hist. 6: 162), unlike his elder brothers. 361.2  like a quack with a sickly patient?] Until the 1770 ETSS, ¶ 15 was followed by this paragraph: ‘The advantages, which result from a parliamentary title, preferably to an hereditary one, tho’ they are great, are too refin’d ever to enter into the conception of the vulgar. The bulk of mankind wou’d never allow them to be sufficient for committing what wou’d be regarded as an injustice to the prince. They must be supported by some gross, popular, and familiar topics; and wise men, tho’ convinc’d of their force, wou’d reject them, in compliance with the weakness and prejudices of the people. An encroaching tyrant or deluded bigot alone, by his misconduct, is able to enrage the nation, and render practicable what was always, perhaps, desirable’ (variants). 361.17  protected by the laws of the empire] Individual states, however, could remain neutral in wars not for the defence of the Holy Roman Empire. The constitutional arrangements of the empire had remained largely unchanged since the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and subsequent treaties. For contemporary accounts see [Campbell], Present State, ch. 9, esp. p. 231, and Madison’s Federalist 19. 361.18–19  the house of Austria, our natural ally] The War of the Austrian Succession had just ended. Aside from George II’s being both king of Great Britain and the Hanoverian elector in the Holy Roman Empire, the Hapsburg emperors had historically been the Bourbons’ primary rivals on the continent. Britain fought both the wars of Spanish and Austrian Succession to further Austrian aims and prevent the Bourbons from uniting crowns to their advantage. See Display, 28, 41–2. The geopolitical implications are epitomized in a polemic of 1741: the ‘Houses of Austria and Bourbon were the Carthage and Rome of Europe: As such, the Ballance of Power, and the Liberties of Europe, required they should be so supported as not to leave it in their Power to bear down one another . . . . For this Purpose . . . was the [1688] Revolution in England concerted and supported by the States General [the parliament of the United Provinces], the Princes of Germany [i.e. of the Holy Roman Empire] and even by the Pope of Rome: And for this

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Purpose, particularly was the present Royal Family of England called to the British Crown, . . . . The Reasons for the Act of Settlement [of the crown] in England were founded chiefly on a Presumption that the Equilibrium between the houses of Austria and Bourbon was not to be preserved without calling the electoral Family of H――― [Hanover] to the British Crown’ (Groans of Germany, 15–16). In 1749, Hume does not foresee the ‘diplomatic revolution’ that would align Austria with France against Frederick II’s Prussia in the Seven Years War (1756–63), setting Britain against its ‘natural ally’, Austria. variants for 361.20.  auxiliary troops . . . most faithful in the world] Hume endorses the use of the controversial Hanoverian and Hessian mercenaries. Their use did not accord with the civic tradition and its emphasis upon the role of a citizen militia, but it allowed for maintenance of a smaller standing army. This paragraph was omitted as of the 1770 ETSS. variants for 361.20.  harm we have ever receiv’d from the electoral dominions] The fact that the elector of Hanover and the king of Britain were one and the same at times created continental obligations for the British government. The readi­ness with which George I associated himself with an alliance against Charles XII of Sweden came to be interpreted by the Swedish king as betrayal by an ally. To avenge himself Charles toyed with the possibility of supporting a Jacobite invasion, and, though his Protestant principles would not allow him to go very far, he used it as a threat against Britain. Hume’s treatment of what he took to be a ‘personal quarrel’ picked by the Swedish king is a very Hanoverian reading of events. In the absence of the Swedish documents available to modern historians, it was probably the only interpretation available, and Jacobites, while not joining in this negative view of Charles, accepted the designs against Britain as real and lamented their saviour’s early death. Nor was 1718 the only occasion causing regret for entanglements arising because of the connection with Hanover. It had been an issue in 1731, and in 1743 Walpole’s successors were kept busy answering attacks by Philip Dormer Stanhope, lord Chesterfield, on the use of British taxes to pay for the services of Hanoverian troops, allegedly in the interests of Hanover. variants for 361.20.  made a personal quarrel of every public injury.] Following this paragraph in the 1764, 1767, and 1768 ETSS was a note stating, ‘This was published in the year 1752’ (variants). A possible reason in the 1760s to point to 1752, as perhaps also to omit the whole paragraph as of the 1770 ETSS, was to indicate that the discussion of commitments to Hanover was not written with knowledge of a notorious instance in 1757 of Hanoverian interests’ affecting British ones. Britain was drawn into fighting in Europe during the Seven Years War after the French defeated the Duke of Cumberland’s German army. In the Convention of Kloster-Zeven, Cumberland agreed to disband his army, only to be contravened by William Pitt, who sent British troops to re­inforce the army and paid large subsidies to their Prussian ally. Cumberland was George II’s youngest son.

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361.22  The Roman-Catholic religion] These reservations regarding the pol­it­ ical costs of Roman Catholicism belong to a polemical tradition assailing it as dangerous to liberty and property. In the 17th century it had been a commonplace to invoke ‘Popery and wooden shoes’ to depict the abject condition of those under a  Roman Catholic prince. Since the Exclusion Crisis the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession, 17 November, had been observed customarily with the burning of an effigy of the pope, Hume’s ‘foreigner’ assuming ‘the regal office’. It is to such pope burnings that Alexander Pope alludes in Epistles to Several Persons 3 (Bathurst), lines 207–14. Cf. ‘Standard of Taste’ 35. 361.25–6  dividing the sacerdotal from the regal office (which must be prejudicial to any state)] Henry VIII’s solution to the problem of rivalry between church and state in England was to make the monarch the head of a national church. But following the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, Stuart attempts to impose the episcopacy of the Church of England onto Scotland failed disastrously. In 1690, as part of the Protestant settlement after the expulsion of James II, the Scots Parliament repealed its act of 1669 asserting the monarch’s supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs (English Historical Documents, 6: 611, 639). It then proceeded to establish a Presbyterian Church of Scotland that governed itself, though it was  subject to restraint, for example by the act of 1712 for the toleration of Episcopalians in Scotland. Covenanters for whom this settlement was too Erastian in not acknowledging the kingship of Jesus Christ formed what would become the  Reformed Presbyterian Church. Thomas Salmon oversimplified when he said that ‘what is most remarkable in the Kirk of Scotland is, that they insist the Civil Power ought to be subject to the Ecclesiastical, carrying their Authority in these Cases as high as the Church of Rome’ (New Geographical and Historical Grammar, 342). variants for 361.34.  The conduct of the Saxon family] This conclusion to ¶ 19 was removed as of the 1770 ETSS. Frederick Augustus II, elector of Saxony, played the role of a Protestant prince in the politics of Germany even as he served as the Roman Catholic king of Poland, where he was Augustus III. This situation was a greater oddity than the familiar one of a Dutch Calvinist and a German Lutheran, in the persons respectively of William III and George I, heading the Church of England and appointing its bishops. variants for 361.34.  a speedy period to the protestant religion in the place of its nativity] Hume’s doubt that Saxony could remain Protestant was rendered the more poignant by the reminder that Saxony contained Wittenberg, where Luther had begun the Reformation. 362.2  may, perhaps, to some appear hard to determine.] Until the 1770 ETSS this paragraph concluded with the declaration, ‘For my part, I esteem ­liberty so invaluable a blessing in society, that whatever favours its progress and security, can scarce be too fondly cherish’d by every one, who is a lover of human kind’ (variants).

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362.18–20  long possession, . . . present possession] For these principles of property see Hume, THN 3.2.10.4–7, and the related annotations. Hume says that a ‘century is scarce sufficient to establish any new government, or remove all scruples in the minds of the subjects concerning it’ (¶ 5). 362.23–4  incumbrances, in which the interest of so many persons is ­concerned] See ‘Public Credit’ 32, on the ‘violent’ as opposed to the ‘natural death’ of credit.

16. Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ appeared in Political Discourses (1752a), 2nd edition (1752b), and 3rd edition (1754). It moved with copies of 1752b and 1754 that were included as volume 4 (the former as a reissue, the latter as a separate issue) in the 1753–6 ETSS, and remained in subsequent editions of that collection. In the 1752 and 1754 permutations of Political Discourses, the norm was to make space between paragraphs with leading, but in this essay the norm was suspended sometimes so as to group certain paragraphs together by subject. This typography disappeared as of the 1758 ETSS when leading between paragraphs was dropped altogether. In the 1754 permutation, the groupings are demarcated also in that the initial word of the first paragraph in each group has large and small capitals while subsequent paragraphs in the group are not so distinguished. The groupings, as they appear in the 1st and 2nd editions, are as follows: ¶¶ 6–11 (plan of representation), 12–16 (legislative process), 17–18 (expulsion of members), 19–20 (forming an administration), 21–4 (purviews of and articulation among the branches), 25–7 (the loyal opposition), 30–4 (functions and oversight), 35–6 (defence on land), 37–8 (due process of law), 39–40 (powers for extraordinary circustances), 42–4 (county government), 47–8 (?), 58–60 (preventing combination and division in the magistrates), 62–3 (the integration and co-ordination of levels of government in a large commonwealth). Paragraphs 6 and 7 separated into two as of the 1754 ETSS and are not grouped together. The sequence of ‘political aphorisms’ (¶¶ 47–65) has only one group: ¶¶ 58–60 (dangers of combination and factional division in the magistrates). The puzzling coupling of ¶¶ 47–8 in the 1752 permutations disappears in 1754, as though a mistake was noticed and corrected. variants for 363.1.  Until the 1772 ETSS, ¶ 1 began thus: ‘Of all mankind, there are none so pernicious as political projectors, if they have power; nor so ridiculous, if they want it: As on the other hand, a wise politician is the most beneficial character in nature, if accompany’d with authority, and the most innocent, and not al­together useless, even if depriv’d of it.’ See the Glossary, s.v. projector/, -s and politician/, -s. William Temple Johnson refers to Hume as a politician in a letter to Boswell (26 April 1770, Correspondence, 1: 272). 363.1–6  other artificial contrivances . . . established government . . . mankind being governed by authority, not reason] See the annotation for ‘Coalition

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of Parties’ 13 at 353.30 on established practices. For government as an ‘artificial’ contrivance see THN 3.2.2 and 3.2.7. Hume’s general point about adjusting in­nov­ ations to established practice and prejudice so as to implement ‘gentle alterations’ would be reiterated by Adam Smith in Theory of Moral Sentiments 6.2.2. 363.8  or try experiments] Until the 1770 ETSS the phrase was ‘or try projects’ (variants). 363.15–16  Huygens, who at last determined the controversy] The controversy was not about ship-building itself, but about the manoeuvring of vessels and specifically the optimal angle between the course of a vessel and the keel in order to maximize speed. Christiaan Huygens, the great Dutch mathematician, took issue with the geometry of the Chevalier Renau d’Elicagaray, and their differences were so divisive of the learned community that Jean Bernoulli was asked to make a ruling. His judgement in 1714 was that Huygens had been correct about the point on which he insisted but had erred in not correcting the original theory in another respect. Hume could have known of the controversy from a journal of 1693, but in his own time the matter was still subject to further refinements. See Huygens, ‘Remarque de M.  Huguens sur le livre de la Manoeuvre des vaisseaux’, and Bernoulli, Essai. Though dating after the composition of ‘Perfect Commonwealth’, Alexandre Saverien’s Dictionnaire universel provides an overview (1: 266–8, s.v. derive; 2: 114–18, s.v. manoeuvre). 363.18  Sir Francis Drake made the tour of the world] Drake’s expedition of 1577-80 was the second, following Magellan’s, to circumnavigate the globe. 363.26–7  consent of the wise and learned] The consent of the wise was stipulated in addition to that of the learned as of the 1770 ETSS (variants). 364.1  to revive this subject of speculation] The efflorescence of speculative constitution design was the time of the civil wars and the commonwealth, culminating possibly in the debates held in James Harrington’s and Henry Neville’s Rota Club. The club disbanded in 1660, when the restoration of the monarchy made it more difficult to distinguish between speculation and sedition. Harrington was incarcerated in 1661–2, Neville in 1663–4. In so far as constitution design was associated with republicanism, the repercussions in 1683 from the Rye House Plot would have promoted circumspection. Such repercussions included Algernon Sidney’s beheading and the Oxford Convocation’s book burning at the Bodleian Library. 364.7–8  Republic . . . Utopia . . . Oceana] In lauding the model supplied by Harrington’s Oceana (1656), Hume follows the judgement of his century, which found the analysis of legislative institutions and the relation of political power to the distribution of property of far greater value than the notions of rule of the wise and the community of property contemplated in both Plato’s Republic and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. Hume wrote that even in Hanoverian times Oceana was ‘justly admired as a work of genius and invention. The idea, however, of a perfect and

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immortal commonwealth will always be found as chimerical as that of a perfect and immortal man’ (Hist. 6: 153). On 8 December 1777, he wrote to his nephew that ‘No Laws, however rigorous, [would make Harrington’s] Agrarian [law] practicable. And as the People have only a Negative, the [senate] woud perpetually gain Ground upon them’ (Letters, 2: 306–7). The people, the senate, and the magistracy were the groups that Harrington claimed to have ordered so that, ‘neither jostling nor showing which way they can possibly come to jostle one another’, they would ‘make a perfect and (for ought that in human prudence can be foreseen) an immortal commonwealth’ (Political Works, 209). 364.10  The chief defects of the Oceana] The proposed ‘equal commonwealth’ of Oceana is based upon ‘an equal agrarian’ law designed to establish and maintain a near equality in property. ‘Rotation’ is the rotation of offices among those qualified, by means of annual elections (Political Works, 180–1). In the preface to the regulation designed to achieve ‘an equal agrarian’, Harrington says: ‘the fundamental laws of Oceana, or the centre of this commonwealth, are the agrarian and the ballot: the agrarian by the balance of dominion preserving equality in the root, and the ballot by an equal rotation conveying it into the branch, or exercise of sovereign power’ (231). The senate’s ‘negative upon the people’, as Hume puts it, arises from its having the sole authority to initiate and deliberate about issues. The people are confined to voting without deliberation on the proposals that the senate puts before them (172–4). Cf. the annotation for ¶ 50 at 369.15–16. 364.19–20  the King’s negative] See ‘Independency of Parliament’ 5 and its annotation at 58.16–17. 364.29  the lords of the articles] i.e. the Committee of Articles of the Scots Parliament, dating from the early 15th century. Formally elected to decide upon proposals submitted to Parliament by the king, it came to control most matters of public policy in Scotland. This body was abolished in 1689–90 in response to its subversion of the rights of Parliament (English Historical Documents, 6: 673–4). Documents that record the misdeeds of the committee and its abolition include [Robert Ferguson], The Late Proceedings (24–31), and a publisher’s compilation, The History of the Affaires of Scotland (152–7, 229–30). See Hist. 5: 333 (s.v. ad 1641) for Hume’s description of the Lords of the Articles. 364.33–4  back to its original principles] Machiavelli makes this claim in 3.1 of his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy (Chief Works, 1: 419–23), probably written in the second decade of the 16th century and first translated into English in 1636. 365.6–7  freeholders of twenty pounds a-year in the county, and all the householders worth 500 pounds in the town parishes] Hume’s requirement in this paragraph originally read simply ‘all the freeholders in the country parishes, and those who pay scot and lot in the town’ (variants). His requirement was raised for the two 1754 issues of the essay to £10 per annum ‘in the country, and all the

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householders worth 200 pounds’, and was increased to the current reading as of the 1770 ETSS. Possibly the last increase was in reaction to the ferment of 1768–70 connected with Wilkite populism and the campaign of the Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights. Josiah Tucker had advocated raising the requirement to £20 for freeholders in the country and £200 in stock for householders in the town (Brief Essay (1750), 50–3). Before the 1832 Reform Act the right to vote in British county elections (Hume’s ‘country parishes’) required ownership of freehold land valued at more than 40 shillings rental value, or £2, per annum (18 Henry VI, c. 7). Archibald Campbell, earl of Ilay and subsequently 3rd duke of Argyll, argued in 1716 that the Hanoverian equivalent to the 40 shillings of 1429 would be £40 and that inflation had lowered the qualification so that the electorate was ‘more subject to corruption’ (Parliamentary History, 7: 302). In boroughs (Hume’s householders ‘in the town’) the franchise varied inasmuch as they were ‘close’ or ‘open’. In close boroughs voting could be confined to members of the corporation or to the ‘freemen’, the numbers and configuration of which were manipulable (Sedgwick, History, 1: 20–1). The requirements for standing for Parliament of £600 in land for every county candidate and £300 for every borough one (9 Anne, c. 5) were not applied to Scots. A Tory measure, this property qualification for candidacy from 1711 was intended to exclude placemen and moneyed men and reduce corruption. Swift praised it in the Examiner for 29 March and 7 June1711 (Prose, 3: 119, 169–70). William III had vetoed a similar bill in 1696. 366.14–15  an intricate ballot, such as that of Venice or Malta] Hume’s readiest authority on the Venetian ballot was Harrington, who, in turn, may have taken some of the details from Howell, Survey of the Signorie of Venice, 34, and Contarini, Commonwealth and Government of Venice, 51–6, as well as his avowed source, Giannotti’s Libro de la republica de Venitiani. On the electoral process ­associated with Malta, see Vertot, Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers, 5: 284–395 (Dissertation, art. 6). 366.16–17  two secretaries of state] The norm since the restoration of the monarchy was for there to be secretaries for the northern and southern departments, though in 1707–25 and 1742–6 there was a third for Scotland. The purview of the northern department was the Netherlands, ‘Germany’, Russia, and Scandinavia. That of the southern department was the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, France, and the colonies. In 1767–January 1768, Hume would be under-secretary of state for the northern department. 367.21  the judicative authority of the house of Lords] The upper chamber of Parliament served as the court of last resort until the reform act of 2005. 367.24–5  the representatives may make bye-laws] The phrase was ‘county laws’ until the 1777 ETSS (variants). 367.31  The magistrates have the appointment] Until the 1772 ETSS Hume gave them the ‘nomination’ of the revenue officers (variants).

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367.36  The magistrates name rectors] The ‘First Secession’ of Presbyterians from the national church of Scotland had occurred in 1733–40 over the infringement of the rights of congregations to choose their ministers. The issue of patronage in the Church of Scotland persisted in the 1740s as congregations rejected ministers appointed to them, and it was brought to a head in 1751–2 by the efforts of William Robertson, Alexander Carlyle, John Home, Hugh Blair, Gilbert Elliot, and others to ensure that appointments were not thus vetoed. Carlyle described the controversy in terms of church government (Anecdotes, s.v. 1751). For the involvement of secular political management see Sher, Church and University, 47–56. 367.37  The Presbyterian government is established] See the annotation for ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm’ 6 at 78.35 on Presbyterianism. 368.1  The militia . . . in imitation of that of Switzerland] Hume’s source appears to be chapter 10 of Abraham Stanyan, An Account of Switzerland, a book that he cites in ‘Balance of Trade’, n. 15. The first edition is listed in Hume Library. 368.19  dictatorial power for six months] The authority of the Roman ‘dictator’, as appointed in emergencies in the earlier years of the republic, was similarly limited, normally for up to six months. See the annotation for n. 191.4–6 and Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. dictator. 368.38–9  inequalities . . . in the representative] Cf. Hume’s ¶ 67 and its annotation at 372.10. Considering anomalies in the distribution of seats, Salmon concluded that ‘The Commons are said to represent the People, tho’ they do not in Reality represent a fourth Part of them’ (New Geographical and Historical Grammar, 314). Whigs (Gilbert Burnet, Locke), Tories (Bolingbroke, Swift), and the equivocal (Defoe, Hume) recognized alike the irrationality of the distribution of representation for the Commons. 369.15–16  as Harrington observes] See the rationale for bicameralism in pt. 1 of ‘Preliminaries’, Oceana, where Harrington says, ‘Nor is there any remedy but to have another council to choose. The wisdom of the few may be the light of mankind, but the interest of the few is not the profit of mankind, nor of a commonwealth.’ When in ¶ 52 Hume speaks of the senate’s carving for the popular assembly, his language points to this discussion, in which Harrington assigns to different groups the functions of dividing, or carving and choosing (Political Works, 172–3). Just as equality will be observed if the person carving portions is not the same who chooses portions for all, the public interest will be observed if the senate deliberates and proposes but the assembly resolves. 369.19  fall into disorder] Cf. Hume’s description of the popular assemblies in ancient Athens at ‘Remarkable Customs’ 6 and the annotations at 47.16–18 and 274.22. 369.27  Cardinal de Retz says] Hume may refer specifically to Mémoires, 394 (mars. 1649), where Retz wrote that he had said many times that ‘toute compagnie

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est peuple, et que tout, par consequent, y depend des instants’ (‘any gathering is a mob and that everything with them depends upon the impulse of the moment’). He is thinking of the parlement of Paris, which he calls a body with over two hundred heads that is neither capable of governing nor of being governed (258). Elsewhere he observes how the magistrates placed a higher value on dinner than on considering weighty issues (315–6, 596) and how as a group but not as individuals they could be dominated through fear (241). The laconic style of the original invites some elaboration by those citing it, and we should note as well that Retz’s general term for assemblies was the same as used to describe the parlements, which were called compagnies souveraines. 369.34  among a number of people.] Until the 1770 ETSS, ¶ 53 concluded thus: ‘Good sense is one thing: But follies are numberless; and every man has a different one. The only way of making a people wise is to keep them from uniting into large assemblies’ (variants). 371.7–8  by the whole body of the people, that are of any consideration] The clause qualifying ‘people’ appeared first in the 1764 ETSS. Hitherto the ­language had read simply ‘by almost the whole body of the people’ (variants). 371.22–3  the French judges] That salaries of the judges who composed the ­parlements were modest is correct. However, the offices afforded a living that could be passed on to a son or sold. 371.23–4  The Dutch burgo-masters] Hume’s authority on other matters to do with the United Provinces was William Temple (e.g. ‘National Characters’, n. 9). Temple noted the low salary of the burgomaster but also noted the great amount of patronage at his disposal (Observations, 54–5, 68). Another noted source that presented the Dutch ideal of republican virtue as reality was [Pieter de la Court], True Interest, 375–7, 400. Doubtless Hume knew this source since elsewhere he cites a  reference as ‘de Wit’ (i.e. Johann de Witt, grand pensionary of Holland), the ­supposed author of Court’s book (see National Library of Scotland, MS 23159, item 14 = Mossner, ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda’, 498, 507). 371.24–5  the English justices of peace, or the members of the house of commons] The office of the 18th-century justices was subject to a considerable property qualification (raised to £100 in 1744) and reflected social status, but typ­ ic­al­ly the duties left a justice out of pocket. The custom of constituencies’ paying a Member of Parliament, which had lapsed by the 18th century, had been only for purposes of defraying expenses. 371.32–3  the resemblance that it bears to the commonwealth of the United Provinces] The stadtholderate had been restored in 1747. Writing in the mid-1780s, a time of flux in the United Provinces, John Adams described its constitution in retrospect: ‘Here were a Stadtholder, an assembly of the States General, a council of state: the Stadtholder hereditary had command of armies and navies, and appointments of all officers, &c.’ Additionally, ‘Every province had an assembly’

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(Defence, 1: 69). Adams thought that Hume’s perfect commonwealth was like that of the Venetian Republic, and similarly flawed (3: 60–1, 370–1). 371.33  a wise and renowned government] Until the 1770 ETSS the phrase was ‘formerly one of the wisest and most renown’d governments, that ever was in the world’ (variants). This essay went to press in September 1751 (22 and 29 September 1751, New Letters, 28–30), and William IV died on 22 October, concluding a stadtholderate that disappointed the expectations raised by the popular uprising that had ended the ‘second stadtholderless period’ (1702–47). Hume witnessed the early stages of this revolution during his embassy with General St. Clair. Describing to his brother the disturbances that ended the oligarchic rule of the regents, he offered the judgement that ‘Holland’ was ‘undoubtedly ruin’d by its Liberty; & has now a Chance of being sav’d by its Prince’ (3 March 1748, Letters, 1: 115–16). Most of the 18th century was recognized within and outside of the United Provinces as a time of economic and military decline for the republic, made conspicuous during the ruinous wars of the Spanish and Austrian successions (Israel, Dutch Republic, chs. 36, 40). This recognition is reflected in ‘Civil Liberty’ 14 and ‘Jealousy of Trade’ 6. 372.10  The plan of Cromwell’s parliament] Until the 1770 ETSS this phrase was ‘The plan of the republican parliament’ (variants). The Instrument of Government (repr. Whitelocke, Memorials, 571–7, s.v. 16 December 1653) removed anomalies in the geographical distribution of representation and raised the property requirement for voting in county elections (§§ 9–10, 18). At the restoration of the monarchy the Cromwellian reform was abrogated, along with all legislation subsequent to the last statute assented to by Charles I. The qualification of 40 shillings freehold for county voters—a low one, given the effect of inflation—was restored along with all other traditional electoral practices. Even Edward Hyde, Charles II’s lord chancellor and a shaper of the Restoration settlement, appreciated the rationale of the Cromwellian reform of the electoral and representative systems (Clarendon, History, 5: 298–9). So too did Bolingbroke (Craftsman 421, repr. Gentleman’s Magazine, 4 (1734): 380–1) and Hume himself (Hist. 6: 69, s.v. ad 1654). 372.12  who possess not a property of 200 pounds value] Until 1754 the figure incorrectly read ‘a hundred a year’ (variants). The Instrument of Government (§ 18) set the requirement at £200 (Whitelocke, Memorials, 574). Hume specifies £200 in Hist. 6: 69. 372.14  the Bishops and Scotch Peers] Prior to the 1770 ETSS the text read that the bishops and Scots peers should be removed because their ‘behaviour, in former parliaments, destroy’d entirely the authority of the house’ (variants). These two categories of lords were notoriously subject to the influence of the crown’s government of the day. The bench of twenty-six bishops consisted of men who had benefited from patronage in their initial appointments and might hope for further favour. Formally the sixteen Scottish peers, provided for by the 1707 treaty of union

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with England, were elected as representatives by the Scots nobility at every general election. In practice they were elected largely as directed by the government in London (Turberville, House of Lords, 158–9, 416). They lacked the independence of hereditary peers and had a reputation for venality. A common judgement was that the lack of independence of a portion of the House of Lords left it weaker than the elected house. Opinion changed later when it became notorious how many members of the Commons owed their elections to wealthy peers (Williams, EighteenthCentury Constitution, 136–8). In ‘Independency of Parliament’ 4–6, Hume had pointed out how the corporate interest of a body was one thing and the interests of individual members another and how court influence was an informal check on the aggrandizement of the Commons. 372.16–17  They ought to have the election of their own members] Queen Anne had controversially created three new peers in 1703 and twelve in 1712 to increase Tory votes in the Lords. George I made twenty-eight new peers over thirteen years. Hume’s maximum of ‘three or four hundred’ peers may be compared with the maximum of 235 allowed by the reforming peerage bill defeated in 1719 in the Commons by Walpole and Steele. In Hume’s life the number of peers did not deviate far from 220 (Turberville, House of Lords, 44–5, 115–16, 416–17, 4–5, 171). 372.23–4  the abilities and behaviour of the sovereign; which are variable] Cf. ‘Independency of Parliament’ 8. variants for 372.30.  Sweden seems . . . to have a militia, along with its limit­ed monarchy, as well as a standing army] Until the 1770 ETSS there were two sentences concluding ¶ 68 concerning militias and standing armies. A monarch’s incentive to keep a standing army at the expense of a militia ‘is a mortal distemper in the British government, of which it must at last inevitably perish’. Sweden, he concedes, has managed to maintain both. Though the limited monarchy in Sweden existed in 1718–72, the use of a militia was already in place from the late decades of the previous century (Robinson, Account, ch. 13). The system for raising troops, known as indelingsverk, entailed setting a quota of conscripts for localities which then were responsible for providing resources for the support of the conscripts’ families. This arrangement allowed for a force for home defence that was locally supported but under national control. The standing army refers, no doubt, to the mercenaries who were employed for other purposes. 372.31–4  the falsehood of the common opinion . . . in a city or small territory] Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois 1.4.7 affirmed this understanding that a republic was necessarily of small extent. The opinion had long been current, however, and drew upon the observation that republics often, in the modern world as in the ancient, favoured forms of political participation that were feasible only in a small area. Often they had come to be absorbed into large states that were monarchical or despotic.

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373.17–19  the parts are so distant and remote . . . measures against the public interest] The most famous version of this argument would be offered in 1787 in Madison’s Federalist 10. 373.20  whether such a government would be immortal] See John Toland’s ‘Life of James Harrington’ for a summary of Harrington’s argument that ‘the Commonwealth of Oceana having no Factions within, and so not to be conquer’d from without, is therefore an equal, perfect, and immortal Government’. This unity results from a government in which ‘no Man or Men under it can have the interest, or (having the interest) can have the power to disturb it with Sedition’ (xxxix). Hobbes thought that a commonwealth could be secured in principle against at least ‘internall diseases’ (Leviathan, ch. 29, ¶ 1). 373.22  Man and forever!] In ‘The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace’, lines 246–63 at 252, Alexander Pope proclaims the impermanence of human possessions, as of human life: The Laws of God, as well as of the Land, Abhor, a Perpetuity should stand: Estates have wings, and hang in Fortune’s pow’r Loose on the point of ev’ry wav’ring Hour; Ready, by force, or of your own accord, By sale, at least by death, to change their Lord. Man? And for ever? Wretch! what wou’dst thou have? Heir urges Heir, like Wave impelling Wave: All vast Possessions . . .……………………. …………………………. . . what will they avail? ……………………………………… Link Towns to Towns with Avenues of Oak, Enclose whole Downs in Walls, ’tis all a joke! Inexorable Death shall level all, And Trees, and Stones, and Farms, and Farmer fall. (Twickenham, 4: 183)

Pope adapts the lines of Horace, Epistles 2.2.175–9, which were printed on the ­facing page in all early editions of his ‘imitations’ of Horace. On ‘imitations’ as a literary kind, see the annotation for ‘Epicurean’, n. 3.1–4.

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G L O S S ARY Included here are only meanings that might give pause to readers unfamiliar with Stuart and Hanoverian usage and idiom or with peculiar jargon. For instance, though normally Hume used the word ‘imitation’ in the meaning it bears today, only an instance of an antiquated meaning is registered here. We have attempted to document Hume’s usage with definitions and illustrations from contemporary sources, though the semantic drift of a word over time and according to circumstance can make it problematic to match definitions with Hume’s meaning or even to know what Hume meant precisely. (Does the replacement in the text of ‘brigue’ with ‘intrigue’ indicate synonymity, a compositor’s error, or the shifting or expansion of meaning?) Sometimes we have had to rely on fallible intuition to assign a meaning to an instantiation in the essays. For definitions we have sometimes had to look elsewhere than the lexicons of the time. Normally contemporary dictionaries will be cited simply by the authors’ names. The two dictionaries by John Kersey will be distinguished by their years of publications thus: Kersey 1702 or Kersey 1708. Contemporary dictionaries used are as follows: Bailey, N[athan], Dictionarium Britannicum, 2nd edn. (London, 1736). [Bullokar, John], An English Expositor (London, 1616). Chambers, E[phraim], Cyclopædia: or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences . . ., 2 vols. (London, 1728). Dyche, Thomas, and William Pardon, A New General English Dictionary, 3rd edn. (London, 1740). Johnson, Samuel, A Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edn., 2 vols. (London, 1773). [Kersey, John], A New English Dictionary (London, 1702), fac. repr. (Menston: Scolar, 1969). Kersey, John, Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (London, 1708), fac. repr. (Menston: Scolar, 1969). Mitchell, Hugh, Scotticisms . . . Corrected (Glasgow, 1799). On occasions when illustrative quotations happen to illustrate usages for more than one word in the glossary, all glossed words are in bold. Some but not necessarily all of the appearances in Hume’s essays of these words or their cognates in the specified usages are cited by paragraph number. An entry like combin/e, -ation indicates that the inflexions ‘combine’ and ‘combination’ are both to be found in the essays bearing the meaning or meanings glossed. It is evident from such an entry that the antiquated meanings might cut across distinctions of parts of speech.

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Glossary

action. Dyche and Pardon: ‘the peculiar manner of gesture made use of by the speaker to gain upon his audience’. (Eloquence 7, 20; Liberty of the Press, variants for 40.11) Blair, Lectures: ‘The study of action in Public Speaking’ (lect. 33).

at adventures. Johnson, s.v. adventure: ‘By chance; without any rational scheme’, i.e. present-day ‘at a venture’. (Public Credit, variants for 270.2; Sceptic 4) Locke, Essay 4.17.2: ‘the effects of Chance and Hazard, of a Mind floating at all Adventures, without choice, and without direction’.

affection/, -s. Dyche and Pardon: ‘the passions or inclinations of the mind’. (Essay Writing 6; Avarice 3; Dignity or Meanness 11; Rise and Progress 3; Platonist 6; Sceptic 2, 8, 21, 27, 36–7, 48, 51; Simplicity and Refinement 9–10; Tragedy 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, 25–7, n. 2; Standard of Taste 21; Commerce 13; Interest 12; Dedication to Home 5) Jocelyn, Essay on Money & Bullion, 1: ‘Value is an Affection of the Mind’.

amuse/, -s, -ments. Johnson, s.v. to amuse: ‘to fill with thoughts that engage the mind, without distracting it.’ (Study of History 3, Parties in General 9, Sceptic 24, Tragedy 3, Populousness 53) Kames, Elements, 3: 19: ‘[w]hen the resembling subject or circumstance is once properly introduced in a simile, the mind passes easily to the new objects, and is transitorily amused with them, without feeling any disgust at the slight interruption’ (ch. 19).

ancients. Johnson, s.v. ancient: ‘Those that lived in old time were called ancients, opposed to the moderns.’ Chambers, s.v. antient: ‘When we say absolutely, the Antients, we mean the Greeks and Romans’. (Parties in General, n. 3; Civil Liberty 3–4; Eloquence 19; Rise and Progress 33, 35, 37, 42, 44, 48; National Characters, n. 1; Standard of Taste 32; Refinement in the Arts 11; Balance of Power 8; Public Credit 33; Populousness 6, 23, 28, 34, 40–1, 44, 53, 56, 83, 93, 126, 155, & nn. 27, 53, 65, 191; Original Contract, n. 5) Harrington, Oceana, prelims., pt. 1: ‘the ancients, and their learned disciple Machiavel, the only politician of later ages’ (Political Works, 162).

balance/, -d. Johnson, s.v. to balance: ‘to compare by the balance.’ Kersey, s.v. to balance: ‘to weigh in Mind, or consider’. (Delicacy of Taste 1, Populousness 154, Perfect Commonwealth 5) Locke, Essay 2.21.58: ‘Were the pains of honest Industry, and of starving with Hunger and Cold set together before us, no Body would be in doubt which to chuse: were the satisfaction of a Lust, and the Joys of Heaven offered at once to any one’s present Possession, he would not balance, or err in the determination of his choice.’

bands. Bailey, s.v. band: ‘a Troop or Company.’ (First Principles of Government 1, Original Contract 30, 42) Spectator 43: ‘the Gallant Train’d-Bands had patroll’d all Night’.

biass. Johnson, s.v. bias: ‘The weight lodged on one side of a bowl, which turns it from the strait line.’ (Rise and Progress 3, Parties of Great Britain 12)

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Pope, Dunciad 1.170–2: ‘like byass to the bowl, | Which, as pond’rous, made its aim more true, | Obliquely wadling to the mark in view’.

brigue. Kersey 1708, s.v. briga: ‘Contention, Quarrel, Strife’. The 1770 ETSS replaced ‘brigue’ with ‘intrigue’, a synonym according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Though synonymy is not suggested by contemporary definitions, it was by contemporary usage. (Perfect Commonwealth, variants for 370.17) Davenant, Essays upon Peace . . . and War, § 6: ‘Brigues and cabals were not made in his favour’ (Political and Commercial Works, 4: 347). Mandeville, Fable, pt. 2.1: ‘the Plots, Machinations, Brigues and Contrivances of a Society’ (Fable, 2: 55). Kames, Sketches 2.10: ‘it requires briguing to be named a church-warden’ (Sketches, 3: 68).

buckled. Johnson, s.v. to buckle with: ‘to join in a close fight, like men locked or buckled together.’ (Populousness 56) Dryden, Love Triumphant 1.1.21: ‘To buckle with a King in single Fight’.

candour. Johnson: ‘Sweetness of temper’, ‘kindness’. But cf. ‘ingenuity’ below and the pleonasms ‘candour and ingenuity’ in ‘National Characters’, n. 2, and ‘ingenuous and candid liberty’ in Dedication to Home 1. (Populousness, n. 263) Fielding, Tom Jones 13.11: ‘[W]hen we suffer any Temptation to attone for Dishonesty itself, we are as candid and merciful as we ought to be.’ Fielding, Tom Jones 2.5: ‘Candour, or the forming of a benevolent Opinion of our Brethren, and passing a favourable Judgment on their Actions’.

careless. Johnson: ‘Cheerful; undisturbed’, i.e. carefree. (Protestant Succession 2) Dryden, All for Love 1.1.307: ‘My careless dayes, and my luxurious nights’.

cattle. Johnson: ‘Beasts of pasture, not wild nor domestic’, i.e. livestock in general. (Money 9; Populousness 13, 14, 126) Defoe, Robinson Crusoe: ‘I had my Enclosures for my Cattle, that is to say, my Goats’ (152).

cheerful/, -ness. Johnson, s.v. cheerfully: ‘Without dejection; with willingness’. (Sceptic 26, Commerce 17, Original Contract 41) Burke, Economical Reform: ‘go directly and with a chearful heart to the salutary work’ (Writings and Speeches, 3: 550). Kames, Sketches 1.1: ‘to bear with chearfulness the fatigues of hunting’ (Sketches, 1: 85–6).

cit/y, -ies. Watts, Logick: ‘So a City, in a strict and proper Sense, means the Houses inclosed within the Walls; in a larger Sense it reaches to all the Suburbs’ (63). (Civil Liberty 11; Populousness 36, 59, 86, 94, 114, 122–3, 126–7, 144, 146, & nn. 146, 170, 193, 204) Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year: ‘The Face of London was now indeed strangely alter’d, I mean the whole Mass of Buildings, City, Liberties, Suburbs, Westminster, Southwark and altogether; for as to the particular Part called the City, or within the Walls, that was not yet much infected’ (16).

civilian. Johnson: ‘One that professes the knowledge of the old Roman law, and of general equity.’ (Eloquence 10)

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Milton, Tetrachordon: ‘a much nam’d Civilian in his comment on this law’ (Works, 4: 229).

civility. Johnson: ‘Freedom from barbarity; the state of being civilized.’ (Rise and Progress 25; National Characters 22; Commerce 21; Populousness 154, variants for n. 69.1, & n. 255) Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 23 March 1772: ‘I thought civilization, from to civilize, better in the sense opposed to barbarity, than civility; as it is better to have a distinct word for each sense, than one word with two senses, which civility is, in his way of using it.’ Berkeley, Querist 253: ‘larger and better built towns, more plenty, more industry, more arts and civility’.

closet. Dyche and Pardon: ‘a small room . . . used for private retirement, study’. (Study of History 1, 7; British Government 7) Milton, Animadversions: ‘write them in your closets, and unwrite them in your Courts’ (Works, 3.1: 174).

clown. Dyche and Pardon: ‘country person uneducated in the polite behaviour of cities or courts’. (Independency of Parliament, variants for 57.1) Addison, Spectator 119: ‘the Clown, who had no such Delicacy of Conception and Expression, cloathed his Ideas in those plain homely Terms that are the most obvious and natural.’

club. Bailey: ‘the payment of an equal share of a reckoning’, a meaning still applied to ‘club’ as a verb. (Money 21, variants for 226.37) Farquhar, Beaux’ Stratagem 4.2: ‘we can’t pay our club o’th reckoning’.

combin/e, -ation. Johnson, s.v. combination: ‘It is now generally used in an ill sense’; as in Kersey 1708, s.v. to combine: ‘to plot together’. (British Government 2; Remarkable Customs 11; Original Contract 12; Perfect Commonwealth 54–5, 58) Milton, Animadversions: ‘a combination of Libelling Separatists’ (Works, 3.1: 119). Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents: ‘When bad men combine, the good must associate’ (Writings and Speeches, 2: 315).

commerce. Kersey 1708: ‘Intercourse of Society, Converse, or Correspondence’. (Moral Prejudices 6; Middle Station 4; Study of History 2; Rise and Progress 16, 19–20; Polygamy and Divorces 13; National Characters 39; Populousness 21) Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 4.11: ‘During this last Voyage I had no Commerce with the Master, or any of his Men; but . . . kept close in my Cabbin.’

complexion. Chambers: ‘COMPLEXION, in Physics, is used for the Temperature [temperament, constitution], Habitude, or natural Disposition of the Body’. Chambers goes on to relate the term to the theory of humours and the four basic complexions: sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious, and melancholic. The close relation between complexion and psychic state is foreshortened when Gilbert Burnet the younger speaks of two kinds of enthusiasms requiring ‘a very different Complexion of Mind’ (Free-Thinker 77). (Essay Writing 8, Study of History 3, Sceptic 54, National Characters 2)

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Smith, Select Discourses: ‘That Idea which men generally have of God is nothing else but the picture of their own Complexion’.

condescension. Dyche and Pardon: ‘an yielding, complying, joining, agreeing, or submitting’. (Sceptic 48) Fielding, Tom Jones 11.1: ‘they exact, and indeed generally receive, great Condescension from authors’.

condition. Johnson: ‘Rank.’ (Middle Station 1, Study of History 5, Rise and Progress 30, Polygamy and Divorces 12, Populousness 132) Fielding, Tom Jones 13.7: ‘[N]or will any Woman of Condition converse with a Person with whom she is not acquainted’. controul/, -s, -ed, un~able. (a) Johnson, s.v. to control: ‘To overpower; to confute’. Johnson, s.v. uncontroulable: ‘Indisputable, irrefragable.’ (Politics 6, Original Contract 28) Marshall: ‘It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it’ (Marbury v. Madison, 249). Swift, Contests and Dissensions, ch. 1: ‘the Error of those, who think it an uncontroulable Maxim’ (Prose, 1: 200).

(b) Kersey 1708, s.v. controll: ‘Contradiction, . . . Check.’ (Love and Marriage 5; Politics 3; Origin of Government 7; Independency of Parliament 1, 4, 8; Sceptic 29; Polygamy and Divorces 8; Public Credit 25; Remarkable Customs 6–7, 9, 11; Populousness 6; Coalition of Parties 9, 16) Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents: ‘The people, by their representatives and grandees, were intrusted with a deliberative power in making laws; the King with the control of his negative’ (Writings and Speeches, 2: 279).

conversible. Johnson, s.v. conversable: ‘fit for company; well adapted to the reciprocal communication of thoughts’. (Essay Writing 1–2, 5, 7, 9) Defoe: ‘[A]s they seem to Converse with the rest of the World, by their Commerce, so they are more conversible than their Neighbours’ (Tour, 2 (1725): 85).

conviction. Johnson: ‘the act of forcing others, by argument, to allow a position.’ (Independency of Parliament variants for 57.1, Standard of Taste 16) Locke, Essay 4.7.11: ‘obstinately to maintain that side of the Question they have chosen, whether true or false, to the last extremity; even after Conviction’.

correspondence. Kersey 1708: ‘Intercourse; mutual Commerce.’ (Essay Writing 5, Jealousy of Trade 6) Defoe: ‘The Trade of Liverpoole  .  .  .  consists not only in Merchandizing and Correspondencies beyond Seas; but as they Import almost all Kinds of foreign Goods, They have consequently a great Inland Trade, and a great Correspondence with Ireland, and with Scotland’ (Tour, 3 (1726): 202).

critic/, -s, -ism, -al. Kersey 1708, s.v. critick: ‘a profound Scholar’; s.v. criticks or critique: ‘a Skill that consists in the curious and nice examination of Authors’. (Civil Liberty 8; Balance of Power, variants for 254.7; Populousness 111, 120, 156, variants for 309.27, & n. 193)

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Swift, Tale of a Tub, § 3: ‘[B]y the Word Critick, have been meant, the Restorers of Antient Learning from the Worms, and Graves, and Dust of Manuscripts’ (Prose, 1: 57). Wotton, Reflections, ch. 27: ‘How clearly has the Old Chronology and Geography been stated by Modern Criticks and Philologers’. Hutcheson, Essay 1, §1.2: ‘a Criticism of an obsolete Word’.

cunning. Bailey: ‘skillful’. (Stoic 3) Exodus 31.4: ‘To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass’. Psalms 137.5: ‘let my right hand forget her cunning’ (King James Bible).

cunning man. Johnson, s.v. cunningman: ‘A man who pretends to tell fortunes’. Kersey 1708, s.v. cunning-man: ‘one skill’d in Astrology; that tells where Things are that were lost, &c.’ (Sceptic 6) Butler, Hudibras 2.3.105–10: ‘A cunning man, hight Sidrophel, | That deals in Destinies dark Counsels, | And sage Opinions of the Moon sells’.

curious. Dyche and Pardon: ‘nice, delicate, correct, exact, or fine.’ (Tragedy 18) Mandeville, Fable, pt. 2.4: ‘the Exactness of some curious Workmanship’ (Fable, 2: 164).

custom/, -ary. Johnson, s.v. custom: ‘Habit’. Kames, Elements: ‘By custom we mean, a frequent reiteration of the same act’ (ch. 14), a noun variation of accustom, as in Origin of Government 5. (Sceptic 11 & n. 6; National Characters, n. 3; Standard of Taste 33; Refinement in the Arts 3; Taxes 4; Public Credit 28; Populousness 77 & n. 1) Gerard, Essay 2, § 4: ‘Custom wears off this indisposition’ (101).

desert/, -s. Dyche and Pardon, s.v. desart: ‘a lonesome, uninhabited place, consisting of large tracts or spaces of ground.’ (Epicurean 11; Stoic 2; Polygamy and Divorces 5; National Characters 26; Populousness 14, 131, 165; Original Contract 4) Wallace, Dissertation: ‘the highlands of Scotland . . ., tho’ at present almost a desert’ (155).

desire. Dyche and Pardon: ‘to beseech, pray, request or entreat.’ (Essay Writing 6; Study of History 1; Sceptic 7, 9) Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 1.4: ‘He ordered his Coach to wait at a distance, and desired I would give him an Hour’s Audience’.

despotism. Johnson: ‘Absolute power’, in a non-dyslogistic, neutral sense. (Liberty of the Press 4, Rise and Progress 26) Milton, Samson Agonistes: ‘Gods universal Law | Gave to the man despotic power | Over his female in due awe’ (lines 1053–5).

discover/, -s, -ed, -ing. (a) Kersey 1708, s.v. discover: ‘to make manifest’. Johnson:  ‘To shew’. (Study of History 7; First Principles of Government 3; Origin of Government 6; Parties in General 6, 12, 15; Rise and Progress 1, 39; Epicurean 9; National Characters, n. 6; Interest 7; Balance of Trade 8; Balance of Power 5; Public Credit 1; Populousness, n. 258; Original Contract 1; Protestant Succession 3) Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, pt. 1: ‘A work of grace in the soul discovereth it self, either to him that hath it, or to standers by’ (206). Paine, Rights of Man 1: ‘Their fear discovers itself in their outrage’ (Writings, 2: 355).

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(b) Dyche and Pardon: ‘make known, or publickly to lay open’, as in present-day ‘uncover’. (Middle Station 1; Rise and Progress 20, 25; Standard of Taste 9; Refinement in the Arts 6; Balance of Power 3; Populousness 30) Dryden, Religio Laici: ‘[O]n high, | Those rowling Fires discover but the Sky | Not light us here’ (lines 3–5).

discoverer/, -s. Oxford English Dictionary: ‘an informer.’ Brown defines ‘bewrayer’ as ‘a discoverer’ (Union Dictionary). (Balance of Trade 2; Populousness, n. 92) Law of Arrests 2.9, § 34: ‘if any Person, being out of Prison, shall commit any Robbery, and afterwards discover two or more who shall commit any Robbery, so as they may be convicted, such Discoverer shall have the Pardon of their Majesties’ (207).

disgust. Kersey 1708: ‘Distaste, Dislike.’ Bailey, s.v. to disgust: ‘to displease.’ (Delicacy of Taste 2, Standard of Taste 9, Protestant Succession 2) Kames, Elements, 2: 96: ‘frequency and uniformity of reiteration, which in the case of intense pleasure cannot obtain without satiety and disgust’ (ch. 14). Gerard, Essay 1 § 3: ‘the want of this kind of proportion disgusts us’ (35).

draw. Johnson, s.v. to draw, to draw up: ‘To receive’, ‘To form in writing’, with application to bills of exchange. Notwithstanding the ambiguity in the verb, the person writing and receiving are the same with respect to bills of exchange. In drawing up a bill for its purchaser, one draws upon those accepting the bill from the purchaser’s hands and paying out ready money. (Public Credit 5) Stevenson, Full and Practical Treatise: ‘[F]or the drawer of a bill of exchange actually sells and transfers to another [the buyer of the bill] the credit which he [the drawer] hath with that person upon whom he draws . . .’ [when the buyer presents it for remittance] (11). Barbon, Discourse concerning Coining: ‘And so in Spain, he draws his Bill to be paid in Rials’ (14).

easy. (a) Johnson: ‘Free from pain’, ‘not harassed; unmolested; secure’, i.e. the opposite of ‘uneasy’, as in ‘Tragedy’ 1, 28. (Liberty of the Press 3; Sceptic 51; Money, n. 1; Balance of Trade 14; Public Credit 18, 19; Populousness 117) Davenant, Essays upon Peace . . . and War, § 12: ‘[U]nder the first they find themselves rich and easy, under the second, poor and oppressed with taxes’ (Political and Commercial Works, 4: 427).

(b) Johnson: ‘not stiff’. Bailey, s.v. easiness: ‘facility’. (Avarice 5; Rise and Progress 39, 42; Sceptic 7, 29; Commerce 2; Refinement in the Arts 5; Money 1; Taxes 10; Coalition of Parties 17) Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 5: ‘his address, though confident, was easy’ (¶ 3).

educat/e, -ed, -ion. Johnson, s.v. education: ‘Formation of manners in youth’. See s.v. manners below. (Moral Prejudices 6; Politics 6, 8, 12; Parties in General 1; Dignity or Meanness 9; Civil Liberty 1, 12; Eloquence 1; Rise and Progress 4, 11, 30, 38–9; Sceptic 11, 31; Polygamy and Divorces 2, 12; National Characters 31 & n. 3; Standard of Taste 1; Refinement in the Arts 3, 11; Populousness 6, 13, 43, 153) Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 2.3: ‘the Prejudices of his Education’.

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emulat/e, -ion. Johnson, s.v. emulation: ‘desire of superiority’, ‘Envy; desire of depressing another; contest’. A distinction between emulation and envy was old when in Fifteen Sermons, no. 1, Butler wrote, ‘Emulation is meerly the desire and hope of equality with, or superiority over others, with whom we compare our selves. . . . To desire the attainment of this equality or superiority by the particular means of others being brought down to our own level, or below it, is . . . the distinct notion of envy’ (Works, 1: 40 n.). Kames saw the two as continuous: ‘Envy is emulation in excess’ (Elements 2.1.1). Possibly Hume observes a distinction between emulation and envy as contrasting types of jealousy (Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 116–20), but it appears rather that in Hume’s usage a ‘jealous emulation’ is negative, a ‘noble emulation’ positive. (Parties in General 4; Eloquence 17; Rise and Progress 15–16, 45–7; National Characters 24; Commerce 15; Jealousy of Trade 2, 5, 7; Balance of Power 4, 6, 15, 19; Remarkable Customs 9; Populousness 54, n. 255) Johnson, Rasselas, ch. 25: ‘embittered by petty competitions and worthless emulations’. Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 4.2.2.2: ‘an honest Emulation’.

enthusias/m, -ts. (a) Johnson, s.v. enthusiasm: ‘A vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour or communication.’ (Superstition and Enthusiasm, passim; National Characters 17; Refinement in the Arts 1; Perfect Commonwealth 70) Locke, Essay 4.19.7: ‘Enthusiasm, which though founded neither on Reason, nor Divine Revelation, but rising from the Conceits of a warmed or over-weening Brain’. Sprat, History 3.20: ‘the Enthusiast, that pollutes his Religion, with his own passions’.

(b) Johnson, s.v. enthusiasm: ‘Heat of imagination; violence of passion; confidence of opinion’. (National Characters 9) Hutcheson, Inquiry 2, § 4.4: ‘an injudicious and unreasonable Enthusiasm for some kind of limited Virtue’.

(c) Johnson, s.v. enthusiasm: ‘Elevation of fancy’. (Epicurean 2; Sceptic 23) Blair, Lectures, 2: 355: ‘that enthusiasm which is understood to be a characteristic of Lyric Poetry’ (lect. 39).

equipage. An elastic word applied variously but with a connotation of display. (a) Johnson: ‘Attendance; retinue’. (Commerce 13; Interest 15) Tatler 49: ‘Her Equipage is, an old Woman, . . . an antiquated Footman, . . . and a ChamberMaid’.

(b) Johnson: ‘Accoutrements; furniture’. (Sceptic, n. 6; Interest 5) Barbon, Discourse of Trade: ‘Those Trades that make the Equipage for Servants, Trappings for Horses; and those that Build, Furnish, and Adorn Houses’ (35).

essay/, -s. An elastic word applied variously, sometimes involving a combination of definitions (a), (b), or (c). Hume’s withdrawn essays exemplify definition (c). Indexed are only instances in which the denotation seems determinate. (a) Johnson: ‘A trial; an experiment’. (Protestant Succession 6)

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Locke, Essay 2.21.69: ‘Trials often reconcile us to that, which at a distance we looked on with aversion; and by repetitions wears us into a liking, of what possibly, in the first essay, displeased us.’

(b) Johnson: ‘Attempt; endeavour’. (Civil Liberty 8, Politics, n. 1; Study of History 4; Commerce, n. 1; Remarkable Customs, n. 10) Mandeville, Fable, pt. 2.4: ‘to see among a rude Nation those first Essays they made’ (Fable, 2: 149).

(c) Johnson: ‘An irregular indigested piece’. (Essay Writing 5) Addison, Spectator 476: ‘AMONG my Daily-Papers, . . . there are some which are written with Regularity and Method, and others that run out into the Wildness of those Compositions, which go by the Name of Essays’. Berkeley, Siris, § 297: ‘It may . . . be pardoned if this rude essay doth, by insensible transitions, draw the reader into remote inquiries and speculations, that were not thought of either by him or by the author at first setting out.’

event. Johnson: ‘The consequence of an action’, ‘the upshot’. (Protestant Suc­ cession 11) Addison, Guardian 152: ‘Neutral Forces, who waited for the Event of the Battle before they would declare themselves’.

evidences. Bailey, s.v. evidences: ‘a witness . . . against a malefactor or prisoner’. (Populousness, n. 92) Defoe, Poor Man’s Plea: ‘The Name of an Evidence or Informer is so scandalous’ (20).

experiment/, -s. Kersey 1708, s.v. experimental: ‘grounded upon Experience’. Johnson, s.v. experimentally: ‘By experience’. (Civil Liberty 4, Rise and Progress 24, Standard of Taste 10) Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, pt. 1: ‘By an experimental confession of his Faith in Christ’ (206). Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents: ‘through hard essays of practised friendship and experimented fidelity’ (Writings and Speeches, 2: 317).

fabulous. Johnson: ‘Feigned; full of fables, invented tales’. (Epicurean 16, Balance of Power 8, Populousness 108) Biographia classica, s.v. ‘Homer’: ‘supported chiefly by fabulous Traditions’ (Biographia classica, 1: 2).

fact/, -s. Oxford English Dictionary: ‘Something that is alleged to be, or conceivably might be, a “fact” ’. (Avarice 7; Eloquence 12; National Characters 32, 34; Money, n. 4; Balance of Trade 5, 29; Populousness 11, 94, 159, & nn. 130, 164) Fielding, Journal of a Voyage, pref.: ‘I reply, the fact is not true.’ Wallace, Various Prospects 3.2: ‘supposing the fact to be true’ (57).

famil/y, -ies. Kersey 1702, s.v. family: ‘household’. (Dignity and Meanness 9; Rise and Progress 39, & n. 15; Polygamy and Divorces 11; Money 14; Interest 15; Populousness 16–17, 21, 23–5, 32–3, 39, nn. 31, 198) Pepys, Diary, 31 December 1664: ‘My family is my wife, . . . her woman Mercer, . . . her chambermaid Bess―her cook-maid Jane—the little girl Susan, and my boy . . . Tom Edwards’.

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farmer/, -s. Johnson: ‘One who cultivates hired ground.’ (Civil Liberty 13; Commerce 11, 20; Money 9, 14–15) Cobbett, Rural Rides, 5 November1821: ‘Those only who rent . . . are, properly speaking, farmers. Those who till their own land are yeomen’ (Rural Rides, 1: 14).

fictitious. Kersey 1708, s.v. fiction: ‘an Invention or Device’. Oxford English Dictionary: ‘Constituted or regarded as such by a (legal or conventional) fiction.’ In Thoughts on the Present Discontents, Burke defines a legal fiction as ‘a matter of form, to satisfy some method and rule of technical reasoning’ (Writings and Speeches, 2: 301). (Interest 5, Original Contract 41) Kames, Principles, bk. 1, pt. 2, § 2: ‘this supposition or fiction is termed an implied ­condition.’

freedom. Johnson: ‘Privileges; franchises; immunities’. (Populousness 15) Milton, Observations: ‘grac’d and rewarded with such freedomes and enlargements’ (Works, 6: 243).

friendly. Johnson: ‘Salutary’, ‘favourable’. (Middle Station 1; Stoic 15) Thomson, Liberty 2.178: ‘Each Science shed o’er Life a friendly Light’.

furniture. Johnson: ‘embellishments; decorations’. (Refinement in the Arts 5, Money 14, Interest 5, Balance of Trade 26, Populousness 126) Addison, Remarks on Italy: ‘Their furniture is not commonly very rich, if we except the pictures’ (Miscellaneous Works, 2: 54). Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, pt. 1: ‘all manner of Furniture, . . . as Sword, Shield, Helmet, Brest plate’ (183).

generous/, -ly. Johnson, s.v. generous: ‘Noble of mind; magnanimous; open of heart’. Kersey 1708, s.v. generosity: ‘Courage, Bravery’. (Parties of Great Britain 1; Rise and Progress 39, 47; Stoic 13–14, 16–17; Sceptic 49; National Characters 5; Public Credit 2; Coalition of Parties 4, 18) Home, Douglas: ‘But whilst these generous rivals fought and fell, | These generous rivals lov’d each other well’ (prologue).

genius. Johnson: ‘Nature; disposition’. (National Characters 19, n. 2; Balance of Trade 35; Jealousy of Trade 4; Populousness 170; Original Contract 28; Protestant Succession 3) Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 3.2.2: ‘that natural and simple Genius of Antiquity’.

great. Johnson, s.v. great, adj.: ‘Of high rank; of large power’. (Middle Station 2) Smith, Theory 4.1: ‘The condition of the rich and the great’ (¶ 8).

grin. Johnson, s.v. to grin: ‘To set the teeth together and withdraw the lips either in anger or in mirth.’ (Rise and Progress 34) Blackmore, Satyr againt Wit: ‘He grins and snarles, and in his dogged Fit | Froths at the Mouth, a certain Sign of Wit’ (lines 57–8).

habitudes. Bailey: ‘the Respect or Relation that one Thing bears to another’, variously applied, entailment being but one possibility. In Berkeley, Alciphron 4.21, arithmetic ratios are habitudes. (Standard of Taste 9)

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Locke, Essay 4.3.29: ‘In some of our Ideas there are certain Relations, Habitudes, and Connexions, so visibly included in the Nature of the Ideas themselves, that we cannot conceive them separable from them, by any Power whatsoever.’ Chambers, Cyclopædia: ‘Conversion is usually defined a due Change of the Order of Extremes, i.e. under such a Habitude and Coherence, with respect to each Other, that the one is rightly infer’d from the other’ (s.v. conversion). Chambers, Cyclopædia: ‘RELATION, in Geometry, Arithmetic, &c. is the Habitude, or Respect of two Quantities to one another, with regard to their Magnitude’ (s.v. relation).

illapses. Johnson: ‘Gradual emission or entrance of one thing into another.’ Bailey, s.v. illapsed: ‘fallen or slide gently in or upon.’ (Superstition 3) Murphy, Zenobia, act 4, line 10: ‘the sweet illapse of gentler passions’.

imitation. Johnson: ‘A method of translating looser than paraphrase, in which modern examples and illustrations are used for ancient, or domestick for foreign.’ (Epicurean, n. 3) Dryden, pref. to Ovid’s Epistles: ‘I take Imitation of an Authour in their sense to be an Endeavour of a later Poet to write like one who has written before him on the same Subject: that is, not to Translate his words, or to be Confin’d to his Sense, but only to set him as a Patern, and to write, as he supposes, that Authour would have done, had he liv’d in our Age, and in our Country’ (Works, 1: 116). ingenuity. Johnson: ‘Openness; fairness; candour’, i.e. present-day ‘ingenuousness’. (National Characters, n. 2) Tucker, Series of Answers, pref.: ‘he had not the Ingenuity to acknowledge it’ (xiii). interest/, -ing, -ed. Kersey 1702, s.v. to interest: ‘concern himself  ’. Johnson, s.v. to interest: ‘to give share in’, ‘to touch with passion’. As an antonym of ‘disinterested’, ‘interested’ might or might not be negative in connotation. (Study of History 7, Avarice 2, Politics 7, Balance of Power 19, Standard of Taste 32, Populousness 13, Coalition of Parties 2; Dedication to Home 5) Temple, Observations: ‘They argue without interest or anger’ (ch. 5). Burke, Reflections: ‘The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it’ (Writings and Speeches, 8: 102). Smith, Wealth of Nations 4.5, ‘Digression’: ‘The people feel themselves so much interested in what relates either to their subsistence in this life, or to their happiness in a life to come’ (¶ 40). Chesterfield, Letters: ‘What hero ever interested more than Henry IV; who, according to the rules of Epic poetry, carries on one great and long action’ (4 Oct. 1752). interfere. Bailey, s.v. to interfere: ‘to fall foul upon one another’. Kersey 1708: ‘to clash together’. Cf. Hume’s letter of 20 June 1758: ‘if this be not done, our Publications will interfere.’ (Jealousy of Trade 5; Populousness, n. 193) Forbes, Methodical Treatise: ‘There’s a noisy distinction frequently made betwixt the Custom of Merchants and the analogy of our Law; as if these often interfer’d, and clash’d together’ (A5r).

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invention. Johnson: ‘Excogitation; . . . power of producing something new.’ Kersey 1708: ‘the Act of . . . finding.’ (Eloquence 20; Standard of Taste 9, 22, 25) Dryden, pref. Annus Mirabilis: ‘Invention, or finding of the thought’ (Works, 1: 53). Harrington, System of Politics 5.18: ‘invention is as contrary to the nature of a council as it is to musicians in consort, who can play and judge of any air that is laid before them, though to invent a part of music they can never well agree’.

jealous/y, -ies. Johnson, s.v. jealousy: ‘Suspicious caution, vigilance, or rivalry.’ (Essay Writing 5–6; Impudence and Modesty 4; Liberty of the Press 2, 4; Politics 19; Origin of Government 7; British Government 2, 4, 8; Parties of Great Britain 2, 5; Civil Liberty 9; Eloquence 13; Rise and Progress 19, 27, 35, 39; National Character 31; Standard of Taste 11, 33; Refinement in the Arts 11; Balance of Trade 3–4, 14–16, 37, 39; Jealousy of Trade 1–2; Balance of Power 1–2, 4, 7, 15; Remarkable Customs 16; Populousness 32, 63, 68, 82; Original Contract 22; Protestant Succession 8; Perfect Commonwealth 66, 69) Milton, Letter to a Friend: ‘as jealous of thir Honour’ (Works, 6: 103). Wotton, Reflections, ch. 1: the ‘Jealousie is not so great in the Contest for Learning, as it is in that for Riches and Power’.

kind/, -ness, un~. Johnson, s.v. kindness: ‘love’; cf. ‘candour’ above. (Middle Station 4, Tragedy 27) Johnson, ‘Dryden’: ‘Love, as it subsists in itself, with no tendency but to the person loved and wishing only for correspondent kindness’ (Lives, 2: 149).

machine. Johnson: ‘Any complicated work in which one part contributes to the motion of another’. (Epicurean 4; Standard of Taste 10; Remarkable Customs 9, 11; Perfect Commonwealth 70) Motteux, Words for an Entertainment, grand chorus: ‘Thou Spring, thou Rule, and Soul of Nature’s grand Machine!’ Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 3.2.1: ‘this specious Machine of Arbitrary and Universal Power’.

manners. Kersey 1702: ‘good, or ill . . . institutions, rules of life’. Johnson: ‘General way of life; morals; habits.’ Cf. present-day ‘mores’. (Study of History 7; Politics 13 & n. 6; Parties in General, n. 3; Civil Liberty 4; Eloquence 1; Rise and Progress 21 & variants for 113.21; Stoic 2; Platonist 2; Sceptic 30 & n. 1; Polygamy and Divorces 11; National Characters 1–3, 9–19, 23, 32–3; Standard of Taste 3, 21, 28, 31–3; Commerce 4 & n. 5; Refinement in the Arts 18; Money 11, 17, 22; Interest 7–8; Populousness 4, 6, 21, 25, 44, 63 & nn. 17, 53, variants for n. 84.22; Original Contract 24; Perfect Commonwealth 2, 4; Dedication to Home 2) Wallace, Characteristics, pt. 5: ‘Bad manners . . . must first enervate, and then ruin, a nation.’

manufact/, -ory, -ure/, -s. (a) Oxford English Dictionary: ‘A particular branch or form of productive industry’, i.e. a business with market share, the product of which is ‘any commodity made by the hand’ (Bailey). (Polygamy and Divorces 14; Commerce 7–9, 12; Money 3, 10, 18; Interest 2, 15, 20; Balance of Trade 27, 37, 39; Jealousy of Trade 5; Populousness 83, 86, 89, 93, 108, 117,141; Protestant Succession 9)

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Burke, Economical Reform: ‘it ought to be undertaken upon the principles of a manufacture; that is, for the best and cheapest execution, by a contract, upon proper securities’ (Writings and Speeches, 3: 499).

(b) Oxford English Dictionary: ‘a manual occupation; handicraft’. (Refinement in the Arts 9; National Characters, n. 6; Commerce 10–11) Kames, Sketches 1.2 : ‘Private property became more and more sacred in the progress of arts and manufactures: to allow an artist of superior skill no profit above others, would be a sad discouragement to industry’ (Sketches, 1: 119).

(c) Kersey 1708: ‘Any sort of Commodity made by the Work of the Hands, of Things that are naturally produc’d.’ (Commerce 5, 12, 14–15; Balance of Trade 9, 16, 24, 27 & n. 4; Jealousy of Trade 5) Considerations on Taxes, ¶ 5: ‘a received maxim, that taxes on the necessaries of life raise the price of labour, render our manufactures dear, and lessen our foreign trade’ (3).

manufacturer/, -s. Bailey: ‘one who works up any commodity with the hands.’ (Commerce 5–6, 10–11, 15; Money 6; Jealousy of Trade 5) Postlethwayt: ‘The mechanic artizan and manufacturer . . . may be insensibly disciplined to perform works of the hands with wonderful dexterity’ (Universal Dictionary, 1: 219, col. b).

mechanic/, -s, -al. (a) Kersey 1708, s.v. mechanicks: ‘the Science of Motion, or that Part of the Mathematicks, which shews the effects of Powers, or moving Forces, and applies them to Engines, &c. (Populousness 91) Johnson, Rasselas, ch. 6: ‘a man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanick powers, who had contrived many engines both of use and recreation.’

(b) Kersey 1708, s.v. mechanicks: ‘those Handy crafts, in which the Labour of the Hands is requisite, as well as the Study of the Brain.’ (Commerce 10–11, 17; Refinement in the Arts 4, 14; Populousness 88, & n. 255) Blackmore, Satyr against Wit: ‘That hates all Liberal and Mechanick Arts’ (line 119). Paine, Rights of Man 2.5: ‘a mechanical trade, such as a carpenter, joiner, millwright, shipwright, blacksmith’ (486).

mediocrity. Bailey: ‘a mean or middle between two Extremes’. In ethics, a term for Aristotle’s ‘mean’ (Nicomachean Ethics 1106a14–1109b26). (Populousness 152) Browne, Religio Medici 1.3: ‘some angrily and with extremitie, others calmely, and with mediocrity’.

medium/, -s. Johnson, s.v. medium: ‘Any thing used in ratiocination, in order to a conclusion’, e.g. a source of information or an idea relating two other ideas. (Populousness 106, 133) Locke, Essay 4.3.4: ‘between two different Ideas we would examine, we cannot always find such Mediums, as we can connect one to another with an intuitive Knowledge in all the parts of the Deduction’.

merchant/, -s. Johnson: ‘One who trafficks to remote countries’, or by extension a trader between distant regions; s.v. tradesman: ‘A merchant is called a trader, but not a tradesman’, i.e. not a ‘shopkeeper’, a wholesale trader rather

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than a retailer. (Parties in General 9; National Characters 19, & n. 2; Commerce 15, & n. 1; Refinement in the Arts 16; Money 3–4, 6–7, 9, 15; Interest 10–12, 14–15, 20; Balance of Trade 22, 26–7; Taxes 10; Public Credit 8–9, 11; Populousness 87) Locke, Some Considerations . . . Interest: ‘it must hinder the Merchant’s Buying and Exportation’ (Locke on Money, 1: 225).

mold. Johnson, s.v. mould: ‘Matter of which any thing is made’. (Middle Station 6) Thomson, Seasons: ‘By Fortune sunk, but form’d of generous Mold’ (‘Spring’, line 8).

monuments. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. monument: ‘A written document or record’. Johnson, s.v. monument: ‘a memorial’, in the sense of a record or chronicle. (Eloquence 4, Coalition of Parties 13) Hale, Primitive Origination § 2.7: ‘since no Monument is extant that gives an account of their Traduction or Migration thither’ (183).

moral. Bailey defines moral philosophy as, among other things, ‘a science that . . . explains the nature and reason of action’, an action being ‘an Act or Deed’ (s.v. action). For ‘moral’ as opposed to ‘physical’ causes, see the annotations for ‘National Characters’ 2 and ‘Populousness’ 5. Johnson, s.v. moral: ‘such as is known or admitted in the general business of life’, i.e. commonsensical and probabilistic, as would follow from the supposed indeterminism of human actions. Hume might use ‘moral’ in this sense in common parlance as a manner of speaking without personal commitment to indeterminist suppositions. (Sceptic, n. 1; National Characters’ 2–4, 9, 24, 31–2, & n. 2; Standard of Taste 3; Balance of Trade 13; Remarkable Customs 1; Populousness 2, 5) Wallace, Dissertation: some causes ‘may be called physical, as they depend entirely on the course of nature, and are independent of mankind. Others of them are moral, and depend on the affections, passions and institutions of men’ (12). Defoe, Moll Flanders: ‘it was morally impossible, with a supposition of my reasonable good Conduct, but that we must thrive there and do very well’ (158). Bailey, Dictionarium Britannicum, s.v. evidence: ‘a thing is said to be morally evident, so far as we have a distinct notion and knowledge thereof by unexceptionable Witnesses.’

naturalists. Johnson, s.v. naturalist: ‘A student in physicks, or natural philosophy.’ (Balance of Trade 11) Mandeville, Fable, pt. 2.3: ‘by the Mixture of various Ingredients, by Fire and Fermentation, several Operations are perform’d, which the most sagacious Naturalist cannot account for’ (Fable, 2: 145).

nervous. Johnson: ‘Well strung; strong; vigorous.’ (Populousness 66) Beattie, ‘On Poetry and Music’ 2.2: ‘From Achilles, Sarpedon, and Othello, we should as naturally expect a manly and sonorous accent, as a nervous style and majestic attitude’ (Essays, 304).

numbers. Chambers: ‘in Poetry, Oratory, Music, &c. . . . certain Measures, Proportions, or Cadences, which render an Air, Verse, or Period, agreeable to the Ear.’ (Simplicity and Refinement 10; Tragedy 9, 19; Standard of Taste 20)

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Dryden, Tyrannic Love, pref.: ‘I have not every where observed the equality of numbers, in my Verse; . . . because I would not have my sense a slave to Syllables’ (Works, 10: 111).

obnoxious. Bailey: ‘properly liable to be punished for offence’. (Passive Obedience 6) Harrington, Oceana, ‘Corollary’: ‘obnoxious to the animadversion of the council of religion’ (Political Works, 354).

ɶconom/y, -ist, -ics. (a) Johnson, s.v. economy: ‘Disposition of things; regulation.’ (Sceptic 53; Public Credit 10; Populousness 6, 151) Fielding, Tom Jones 16.3: ‘all the Laws of Animal Œconomy’. Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 2.3.2: ‘Kindred and Companions, bred under the same Discipline and Oeconomy’.

(b) Johnson, s.v. economy: ‘The government of a household.’ (Populousness 21, 26, & n. 198) Fielding, Tom Jones 18.12: ‘She lives in Reputation at the polite End of Town, and is so good an œconomist, that she spends three Times the Income of her Fortune, without running in Debt.’

paint/, -ing. (a) Johnson, s.v. to paint: ‘To describe; to represent’, ‘To colour; to diversify.’ (Study of History 7; Avarice 1; Eloquence 6; Simplicity and Refinement 7, 9; Tragedy 9) Thomson, Liberty 1.103–4: ‘But language fails | To paint this sun, this centre of ­mankind’.

(b) Johnson: ‘Colours laid on the face.’ (Parties in General, variants for 67.29; Simplicity and Refinement 10) Defoe, Moll Flanders: ‘I had never yielded to the baseness of Paint before, having always had vanity enough to believe I had no need of it’ (235–6).

patriotism. Johnson, s.v. patriot: ‘It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.’ (Public Credit 31) Jenyns, ‘The Modern Fine Gentleman’, lines 29–30: ‘Now in cropt greasy hair, and leather breeches, | He loudly bellows out his patriot speeches’ (Miscellaneous Pieces, 48). Smollett, Expedition, ‘London, June 2’: ‘that weather-cock of patriotism that veers about in every point of the political compass, and still feels the wind of popularity in his tail.’

people. Johnson: ‘The commonalty; not the princes or nobles’, i.e. one of several estates of a body politic. In ‘Perfect Commonwealth’ the people are set apart from a Dutch kind of ‘aristocracy’, or an oligarchy. (Politics 5–6, 8, 10, 13; First Principles of Government 8; Parties in General 9; Civil Liberty 13; Rise and Progress 11–13, 24, 27–8, 30, & n. 3; National Characters 3, 9, 19; Commerce 10–11, 19–20; Balance of Trade 37, & n. 14; Taxes 1–2, 5; Public Credit 8, 23; Remarkable Customs 10–11, 13; Populousness 14, 63, 67, 70, 80–1, 176, 181, & nn. 84, 88, 198, 244; Original Contract 42; Coalition of Parties 9; Protestant Succession 3, 9; Perfect Commonwealth 5, 26–7, 49–52, 54–7, 66, 69) Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 2.7: ‘the Nobility often contending for Power, the People for Liberty, and the King for absolute Dominion’.

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pile. Chambers: ‘a Mass, or Body, of building.’ (Platonist 6) ‘A South Sea Ballad’, st. 1, referring to the Royal Exchange and Exchange Alley: ‘In London stands a famous pile, | And near that pile an Alley, | Where merry crowds for riches toil, | And wisdom stoops to folly’ (Parliamentary History, 7: 659).

place. Johnson: ‘Office; publick character or employment.’ (Civil Liberty 10, Populousness 6) Swift, ‘Ireland’: His Excellency’s condescension | Will serve instead of place or pension’ (lines 17–18).

pleasant. Oxford English Dictionary: ‘laughable’. Johnson: ‘adapted rather to mirth than use’; surviving in present-day ‘pleasantry’, as in ‘good-natured jests and pleasantries’ in ‘Study of History’ 3. (Parties in General 8, Populousness 72, Coalition variants for 353.14) Milton, Of Reformation 2: ‘these pleasant Sophismes’ (Works, 3: 47).

poise. Johnson, s.v. poize: ‘Weight’; cf. ‘counterpoise’ and ‘equipoise’. (Protestant Succession 6) Campbell, Present State, ch. 14: ‘the only natural Poize in their Constitution is the Power of a Stadtholder’ (502).

police. Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence: ‘the regulation of the inferior parts of government, viz. cleanliness, security, and cheapness or plenty’ (B, 203). A French word naturalized by way of Scotland in the early 18th century. (Civil Liberty 11; Rise and Progress 13, & n. 3; Commerce 21; Refinement 9; Populousness 4, 61, 92–3, 154, 177, & n. 255) Temple of Trowbridge, Vindication 1.1: ‘through its good police to prevent famines’ (12).

polite/, -ness, -st. (a) Kersey 1708, s.v. polite: ‘well polished, neat’. (Civil Liberty 8) Bianchi, Account: ‘Politeness is conspicuous in the Beauty of their Houses’ (73). Addison, Spectator 405: ‘How cold and dead does a Prayer appear, that is composed in the most Elegant and Polite Forms of Speech, which are natural to our Tongue, when it is not heightened by that Solemnity of Phrase, which may be drawn from the Sacred Writings.’

(b) Kersey 1708, s.v. polite: ‘well-bred, accomplished’. Kersey 1702: ‘genteel ’. The phrase ‘Politeness of manners’ in Rise and Progress 30 evinces the transition of the meaning of the word polite from socially distinguishing polish to its meaning as a moral quality related to the way people treat each other. (Delicacy 2; Parties in General 8, 13; Dignity or Meanness 2; Rise and Progress 30, 33–4, 36–7, 39, 42; National Characters 12, 35, & n. 1; Refinement in the Arts 6, 11) Swift, Proposal, ¶ 2: ‘all the learned and polite Persons of the Nation’ (Prose, 4: 6).

(c) Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, s.v. ‘politesse’: ‘s’est dit de la culture morale et intellectuelle des sociétés (1665), là où nous disons aujourd’hui civilisation et culture’; ‘said of the moral and intellectual culture of societies, where today we say civilization and culture’. (Civil Liberty 5; Eloquence 4; Rise and Progress 9, 16, 21; National Characters 23)

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Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 2: ‘the majestic ruins that are still scattered over Italy and the provinces would be sufficient to prove that those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful empire’ (1: 47).

(d) Bullokar: ‘fine.’ (Essay Writing 7; Delicacy 5; Civil Liberty 7; Rise and Progress 23, 28, 42, 47, & n. 4; Standard of Taste 33, 36) Goldsmith, Enquiry, ch. 5: ‘THE Germans early discovered a passion for polite literature’ (¶ 8).

politician/, -s. Dyche and Pardon: ‘a . . . studier of policy, or the well regulating and governing a state or kingdom; a wise or cunning man.’ (Study of History 7; Politics 10; First Principles of Government, variants for 51.26; Independency of Parliament 3; British Government 1; Parties in General, n. 1; Civil Liberty 1; Rise and Progress 26; Commerce 2; Money 5; Coalition of Parties 7, 14, 17; Perfect Commonwealth, variants for 363.1) Johnson, Rambler 156: ‘Every government, say the politicians, is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles’.

popular/, -ity. Kersey 1708, s.v. popular: ‘belonging to the common People’. Johnson: ‘pleasing to the people’. See people above. (Politics 5, First Principles of Government 1, 8; Independency of Parliament 8; British Government 6–8; Civil Liberty 4, 12–14; Eloquence 4, 8, 17; Rise and Progress 15, 19, 21, & n. 3; Plationist 1; Sceptic 23; Refinement in the Arts 17; Interest 16; Public Credit 32; Remarkable Customs 8; Populousness 112, & nn. 71, 76; Original Contract 16; Coalition of Parties 3, 5, 9, 15–18; Protestant Succession 2; Perfect Common­ wealth 5, 69) Wallace, Dissertation: ‘So fatal is the influence of a neighbouring monarchy, governed by able councils, when it intermeddles in the affairs of popular states, and by raising up factions among them, sets them in opposition to one another’ (262).

preten/sion, -sions, -ce, -ces, -d, -ds, -der, -ders, -ded, -ding. (a) Dyche and Pardon, s.v. pretension: ‘a claim’, either as a demand or an assertion of fact. (Moral Prejudices 6; Love and Marriage 3, 6; First Principles of Government 7; British Government 4; Parties of Great Britain 5, 7; Civil Liberty 11; Eloquence 4, 11–12, 16, 18; Rise and Progress 11, 44; National Characters 23, & n. 2; Standard of Taste 16; Commerce 9; Money 19; Taxes 10; Balance of Power 17; Populousness 13, 34, 74, 78, & n. 130; Original Contract 9, 19–20, 39; Coalition of Parties 1, 3, 7, 14–16; Protestant Succession 2–3, 6, 15; Perfect Commonwealth 3) [Pope? John Hughes?], Spectator 224: ‘[I]t settles the various Pretensions, and otherwise interfering Interests of mortal Men’. Swift, Drapier’s Letters 7: ‘disburthen themselves of their supernumerary Pretenders to Offices’ (Prose, 10: 132).

(b) Johnson, s.v. to pretend: ‘To presume on ability to do any thing; to profess presumptuously.’ Cf. Johnson’s use of ‘pretends’ in his definition of ‘cunningman’ above. (Essay Writing 7; Moral Prejudices 2; Impudence and Modesty 3; British Government 5; Dignity or Meanness 9; Eloquence 10, 14; Rise and

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Glossary

Progress 8; Epicurean 4–5, 6, 10; Stoic 13; Platonist 3–4; Sceptic 7, 28, 36, 41, & n. 6; Polygamy and Divorces 13, 21; Standard of Taste 4–5, 7–8, 12, 14–15, 24, 26, 34; Balance of Trade 9; Remarkable Customs 16; Populousness 3, 125; Perfect Commonwealth 70) Pope, Essay on Criticism: ‘Nature to all things fix’d the Limits fit, | And wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit’ (lines 52–3). Harrington, System of Politics 6.21: ‘Democracy pretends not to infallibility’.

prevent/, -ing, -ed. Kersey 1702, s.v. prevent: ‘get before’, ‘do a thing before another’, as in the doctrine of prevenient grace. (Rise and Progress variants for 106.7, Epicurean 15, Populousness variants for 298.20) Thomson, Liberty, ep.: ‘that ready Condescension, that preventing Generosity’ (40). Sprat, History 3.1, ‘I have already . . . prevented my self; and said many things as I came along, which would have bin more proper for this place.’

projector/, -s. Johnson: ‘One who forms schemes or designs’, ‘One who forms wild impracticable schemes.’ (Money, variants for 220.20; Public Credit 22, 27, 29; Protestant Succession 15; Perfect Commonwealth, variants for 363.1) Swift, Proposal . . . English Tongue: ‘faster than the most visionary Projector can adjust his Schemes’ (Prose, 4: 6).

prospect. Mitchell, s.v. ‘A pocket-prospect’: Scotticism for ‘A pocket-perspective’. In Scots, though not in English, a prospect is ‘a glass through which objects are viewed’ (66). Johnson, s.v. perspective: ‘A glass through which things are viewed’. Very possibly Hume meant a ‘prospect’ to refer to a magnifying glass. (Sceptic 36) Burnet’s Travels, letter 3: ‘I looked at this Statue very attentively, through a little prospect that I carried with me’ (97). Robertson, Elements of Navigation 5.209: ‘to distinguish these bisections with accuracy, they are to be examined with a small prospect, or magnifyingglass’ (1: 263).

public. Oxford English Dictionary: ‘the body politic; the nation, the state’, as in Hume, EPM 3.10. (Politics 15; Parties of Great Britain, variants for 75.21; Civil Liberty 14; Commerce 4, 6, 9, 11, 13–14; Refinement in the Arts 7, 9, 19, 21–2; Money 1, 4, 18–20; Taxes 10, variants for 260.16; Public Credit 2, 14, 17, 19–22, 25, 27, 29–31, & n. 7; Remarkable Customs 3; Populousness 26, 39, 42, 119, & n. 64; Original Contract 40; Passive Obedience 3; Protestant Succession 3, 18) Davenant, On the Public Debts: ‘A people is more or less easy, as the taxes and payment to the public are more or less’ (Political and Commercial Works, 1: ‘252’ [255]). Berkeley, Querist 329: ‘Whether the great and general aim of the public should not be to employ the people?’

purpose. Dyche and Pardon: ‘to design, intend, resolve’. (Remarkable Customs 14) Smith, Theory 7, § 3.3: ‘There are many men who mean very well, and seriously purpose to do what they think their duty’ (¶ 10).

quality. Johnson: ‘Rank; superiority of birth or station’, ‘Comparative or relative rank’. (Moral Prejudices 6; Populousness 80, 135)

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Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 2.3.4: ‘to send the Youth of highest Quality to Philosophers to be form’d’.

recruit/, -s. Kersey 1702, s.v. a recruit: ‘new supply’. (Rise and Progress 49; National Characters 32; Refinement in the Arts 3; Balance of Trade 13; Populousness 14–15, 17, 37, & n. 19) Locke, Considerations . . . Interest: ‘Every Man must have at least so much Money, or so timely Recruits, as may in hand, or in a short distance time, satisfie his Creditor’ (Locke on Money, 1: 235).

rent. Johnson: ‘Revenue; annual payment’. (Politics 9, Public Credit 23) Halifax, ‘Political Thoughts and Reflections’: ‘Men’s Industry is spent in receiving the Rents of a Place, there is little left for discharging the Duty of it’ (Works, 2: 237).

revolution/, -s. Kersey 1708: ‘whirling round’, as in present-day ‘revolve’, ‘a notable Change of Government, or great Turn of Affairs’. (Politics 11; British Government 1; Parties of Great Britain 7; Civil Liberty 1, 3; Eloquence 1; Rise and Progress 5; Sceptic 49; National Characters 2; Standard of Taste 26, 32–3; Commerce 9; Jealousy of Trade 5; Public Credit 21; Populousness 1, 78; Original Contract 45, & n. 4; Coalition of Parties 1, 7) Campbell, Present State 13, § 8: ‘according the the Nature of all Commonwealths, Fluctuations and Revolutions in Government have been very common here’.

rude. Kersey 1708: ‘rough’, ‘unpolished’. Johnson: ‘Harsh; inclement’, ‘Ignorant’, ‘uneven; shapeless’. Hume’s ‘rude and shapeless’ and ‘rude and uncultivated’ are characteristic pleonasms. (Eloquence 6; Stoic 1, 3–4; National Characters, n. 6; Refinement in the Arts 16; Money 14, 16; Interest 7, 10; Jealousy of Trade 2; Original Contract 1, 4; Coalition of Parties 3) Sprat, History 2.10: ‘rude, and untaught Nature’. Shaftesbury, Characteristicks 3.2.2: ‘by a certain Art distinguish false Thought from true, Correctness from Rudeness’.

sallies. Bailey, s.v. a sally: ‘a flash of wit; a transport . . . of passion’. (Standard of Taste 9) Berkeley, Alciphron 3.9: ‘in their bold sallies seem to act without aim or design, and to be governed by no idea, no reason, or principle of art, but pure caprice’.

secret/, -ly. (a) Johnson: ‘Occult; not apparent’. (Love and Marriage 9; Dignity or Meanness 4, 6; Rise and Progress 2, 7; Sceptic 29; Balance of Trade 38; Populousness 177) Addison, Spectator 115: ‘Labour and Exercise ferments the Humours, casts them into their proper Channels, throws off Redundancies, and helps Nature in those secret Distributions’. Berkeley, Principles 1, ¶ 64: ‘like so many instruments in the hand of Nature, that being hid as it were behind the scenes, have a secret operation in producing those appearances’.

(b) Johnson:‘private’. (Dignity or Meanness 1, 10; Simplicity and Refinement 3) Pope, Ep. to Arbuthnot: ‘each man’s secret standard in his mind’ (line 176).

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secure. Dyche and Pardon: ‘careless, fearless, negligent’. (Epicurean 10, Public Credit 32) Dryden, ‘Heroique Stanzas’, st. 14:‘He fought secure of fortune as of fame.’

session. Johnson: ‘The act of sitting.’ (Perfect Commonwealth 21) Milton, Readie & Easie Way: ‘both in their motion and thir session’ (Works, 6: 130–1).

simpl/e, -er, -icity. Sometimes distinguishable into (a) and (b) below when applied to writing or speech. (a) Blair, Lectures, lect. 19: ‘opposed to too much ornament, or pomp of Language’. (Simplicity and Refinement 6; Standard of Taste 2, 30; Dedication to Home 5) Johnson, ‘Waller’: ‘Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime’ (Lives, 2: 53). Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 20: ‘the easy simplicity of my style’ (¶ 9).

(b) Johnson, s.v. simplicity: ‘artlessness; not subtilty’, i.e. ‘natural’ in conception, unpretentious, straightforward. (Eloquence 10; Simplicity and Refinement 12) Gibbon, ‘Address’: ‘the unconscious simplicity with which they represent the manners and opinions of their contemporaries: a natural picture, which the most exquisite art is unable to imitate’ (English Essays, 535–6).

(c) Johnson, s.v. simple: ‘Uncompounded’. (Passive Obedience 6, Protestant Succession 3) Gerard, Essay 1 § 3: ‘Uniformity and simplicity are, strictly speaking, distinct ideas; the former implying the similarity of the correspondent parts; the latter, the fewness of unlike parts in the whole object’ (31). Gerard, Essay 3 § 1: ‘capable of being resolved into simpler principles’.

(d) Blair, lect. 19: ‘equivalent to Plainness’, opposite to ‘luxury’. (Civil Liberty 4; Rise and Progress 36; Standard of Taste 31; Money 17–20; Populousness 21, 25; Coalition of Parties 3) Wallace, Dissertation: ‘he loved the ancient simplicity, lived on plain food, and did not throw away his money on delicacies’ (146).

statuary. Dyche and Pardon: ‘one that makes or carves images in wood, stone, &c.’ (Platonist 6) Hutcheson, Inquiry 1, § 4.1: ‘a Statuary, Painter, or Poet, may please us’. stranger/, -s. Dyche and Pardon: ‘a foreigner’. (Politics 7; Polygamy and Divorces 18; Commerce 15–16, & n. 5; Balance of Trade 25; Balance of Power 19). But in Original Contract 16, Populousness 71–2, 100, 111–12, 117, & nn. 88, 170, Hume uses it as a translation for the Greek word metoikoi, or resident aliens. King: ‘all kinds of French manufactures that were . . . purchased in France, either by Natives or Strangers’ (British Merchant, 1: 17). Persian Spy 14: ‘THE moderation of the government, the integrity of those in power, and the wisdom of the laws, soon peopled their country with a multitude of strangers, who transplanted their families and effects to this land of liberty, and not a little contributed to its present flourishing condition’ (repr. Gentleman’s Magazine, 17 (1747): 601).

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stupid/, -ity. Johnson, s.v. stupid: ‘wanting sensibility’, ‘heavy’. Johnson defines ‘heavy’ in turn as ‘Wanting alacrity’, ‘sluggish’. (Dignity or Meanness 9, Platonist 6, National Characters 17, Refinement in the Arts 1, Public Credit 23) Bailey, s.v. Cupid: ‘the Power of Love to give Life and Briskness to the most heavy and stupid.’

subject. Oxford English Dictionary: ‘property’; Mitchell: ‘Effects’. (Refinement in the Arts 1) Forbes, Institutes 3.1.4: ‘A Trustee is understood, in Law, to act for the behoof of his Constituent, in relation to the Subject of the Trust.’

symphony. Johnson: ‘harmony of mingled sounds’. (Epicurean 11) Milton, Paradise Lost 3.365–9: ‘thir gold’n Harps they took, | . . . and with Præamble sweet | Of charming symphonie they introduce | Thir sacred Song’.

tradition/, -al. Johnson, s.v. tradition: ‘The act or practice of delivering accounts from mouth to mouth without written memorials’. Extended in Roman Catholic theology to extra-scriptural revelation. Chambers: ‘Apostolical Tradition . . . is defin’d by the Romanists, to be the unwritten Word of God, descended from the Apostles to us, thro’ a continual Succession of the Faithful.’ Relatedly there is both ‘written’ and ‘unwritten’ tradition according to whether ‘there are some traces in the antient fathers and doctors’ (Bailey, s.v. tradition). (Parties in General 14, Superstition and Enthusiasm 10, Populousness 1) Dryden, Hind and the Panther 2.165–7: ‘Each ask’d but what he heard his Father say, | Or how he was instructed in his youth, | And by traditions force upheld the truth.’ Wotton, Reflections, pref.: ‘since no Records nor Traditions of the Memory of the Facts are pretended’.

trepan. Kersey 1708, s.v. to trepan: ‘to insnare, or Decoy’. (Public Credit 31) Defoe, Moll Flanders: ‘I was not Trepan’d I confess, but I betray’d my self ’ (60).

vulgar. (a) Johnson: ‘The common people’. (Eloquence 15, 18; Rise and Progress 1; Epicurean 6; Sceptic 12; National Characters 1) Wollstonecraft, Vindication . . . Men: ‘The vulgar, . . . who, working to support the body, have not had time to cultivate their minds’ (45–6). Cf. Essay Writing 1.

(b) Bailey: ‘common, ordinary, . . . low’, as in ‘vulgar arithmetic’. (National Characters 30; Commerce 3; Refinement in the Arts 9; Populousness 120, & n. 204; Protestant Succession16) Locke, Essay 3.11.10: ‘Vulgar Notions suit vulgar Discourses’.

wit. Johnson: ‘The powers of the mind; the mental faculties’, ‘Sense; judgment’. But cf. Locke’s contradistinction between wit and judgement (Essay 2.11.2). (Moral Prejudices 6, Rise and Progress 34, Public Credit 22, Perfect Common­ wealth 2) Johnson, ‘Cowley’: ‘It was about the time of Cowley that Wit, which had been till then used for Intellection, in contradistinction to Will, took the meaning, whatever it be, it now bears’ (Lives, 1: 214). Pope, ‘EPITAPH. On Mr. GAY’: ‘OF Manners gentle, of Affections mild; | In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child’.

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B I O G R A P H I C AL AP P ENDIX This appendix offers brief accounts of the figures mentioned in Hume’s Essays who do not appear in Webster’s Biographical Dictionary, rev. edn. (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam, 1983), or the Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia, ed. David Crystal, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Figures are excluded— as with the Persian nobles mentioned in ‘Politics’, n. 6—when biographical infor­ mation is better placed in the annotations. Pseudonyms or spurious names are alphabetized under the pseudonym or the traditional attribution, which is given in double quotation marks (e.g. “Lampridius, Aelius”). Meaningfully determinate dates for life spans (birth and/or death) are provided if available. Aemilius Paullus, Lucius (died 160 bc), Roman politician and general. He was one of the commissioners for the settlement of the province of Asia in 189 bc, consul in 182 and 168, and censor in 164. He succeeded in bringing Rome’s Macedonian wars to an end at the battle of Pydna against King Perseus in 168. Agelaus, general and strategist for the Aetolian League in the ‘Social War’ (‘War of the Allies’, 221–217 bc), against the Achaean League. He is chiefly remembered for his warning at negotiations for the Peace of Naupactus (217) that the Greeks should unite against the forces of Rome, which he described as ‘the cloud from the west’. Agoratus, an Athenian prosecuted c.399 bc for giving information under the Thirty Tyrants, the oligarchic regime that briefly ruled Athens after her defeat by Sparta in 404 bc and that caused the execution of several supporters of democracy. The speech for the prosecution was written by Lysias (speech 13). Anacharsis, legendary Scythian prince, who became for Greeks an exemplar of the wise barbarian, accounted a friend of Solon (active 594–c.560 bc) and one of the Seven Sages (c.620–550). The spurious letters attributed to him, probably composed in the 3rd c. bc, extol the ideal simple life. Angria, Connagee, or Kanhoji Angrey (c.1669–1729), founder of a warlord dynasty, pirate, whose territory stretched south from Bombay to the fortress at Gheria built by the Portuguese. British expeditions against him in 1715 and 1721 failed. Antidorus, wealthy Athenian, known only for having made a great profit by renting out an estate some time before 363 bc. Antipater the Cyrenaic, known only as a member of the Cyrenaic school of phil­oso­ phy, which had been founded by Aristippus, an associate of Socrates (died 399 bc), or possibly by his namesake grandson. The elder Aristippus is reported to have developed a hedonist philosophy and a sybaritic lifestyle. Antonius, Gaius (died 42 bc), Roman politician and commander, brother of Mark Antony. After a brief and unsuccessful military career, he was captured by Brutus

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in Greece in 43 bc (during the Civil Wars) and executed on the charge of inciting Brutus’s troops to mutiny. Aphobus, Demosthenes’s uncle, appointed guardian when the boy’s father died in 377 bc. Aphobus was said to have swindled Demosthenes out of his inheritance. The uncle was found guilty in 361 bc, after a series of lawsuits in which Demosthenes made his earliest speeches, but Demosthenes recovered only a fraction of the money of which he had been defrauded. Aratus (271–213 bc), Greek statesman and commander from Sicyon in the north Peloponnese. He persuaded his native city to join the Achaean league in 251 bc and subsequently became a leading figure in that league, pursuing an antiMacedonian policy. Changing circumstances, however, forced him to come to uneasy terms with the Macedonians in his later years. Argens, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’ (1703–71), prolific French philosophe, translator, member of Frederick the Great’s academy in Berlin. He visited Constantinople in 1724. Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus and instigator of the revolt of Ionia from the Persian empire (499–493 bc). He sought alliances unsuccessfully at Sparta and success­ fully at Athens and Eretria, whose troops then attacked and burnt Sardis, a Persian provincial capital, in 498. When the revolt collapsed, Aristagoras went off to Thrace, where he was ambushed and killed. Arist(e)ides, Publius Aelius (ad 117–later than 181), distinguished member of the 2nd-c. Greek rhetorical movement known as the ‘Second Sophistic’, which is chronicled in Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists. Though early illness deprived him of the political career usual to Sophists, he wrote a large number of speeches, of which the best known is To Rome. He also left memorials of his frequent illnesses and his attempts to find relief at the temple of Asclepius in Pergamum. Aristocrates, Athenian politician, supporter of the Euboean general Charidemus, for whom he proposed honours. In 352 bc, he was attacked for this allegiance by Demosthenes in a speech (no. 23) that tells us much about Thrace and about Athenian homicide laws. Aristog(e)iton, Athenian politician, known as ‘the Dog’, who, in the 330s bc was prosecuted for debt. The speeches against him are preserved as Demosthenes’s orations 25 and 26. Their authenticity has often been disputed. He is alleged to have been unsociable, devious, and odiously depraved, selling his sister for export, for example, and biting off and swallowing the nose of a fellow prisoner. Athenio(n), Cilician slave who was leader, together with Salvius, of the second Sicilian slave revolt (c.104–101 bc). Salvius, like Eunus (q.v.), proclaimed himself king, and quarrelled with Athenion, but after his death Athenion succeeded to the throne. Although Athenion’s forces were smaller than those involved in the first slave war, fighting extended more widely. The revolt was finally extinguished by a Roman army. Attalus II, king of Pergamum (220–138 bc, reigned 158–138), general in numer­ ous conflicts under his brother Eumenes II and diplomat, above all at Rome.

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As king he recognized the supremacy of Rome and supported the Roman cause in many states of the Eastern Roman world. He gave Athens the striking Stoa that now dominates the Agora. Atterbury, Francis (1663–1732), antagonist of Richard Bentley in the contro­ versy over the authenticity of the Letters of Phalaris, involving William Temple and Swift’s Battle of the Books. A high-church controversialist in the lower house of the convocation of Canterbury, he became dean of Christ Church College, Oxford (1711–13), then Thomas Sprat’s successor as dean of Westminster and bishop of Rochester (1713–23). He was exiled for his part in a Jacobite plot. Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine le Jumel de Barneville, comtesse d’, or Marie Catherine Jumelle de Berneville (1650/1–1705), salonnière, friend of SaintÉvremond, member of the Academy of Ricorati of Padua (1698). Remembered today for her fairy tales, she also wrote historical novels and quasi-fictitious memoirs and travels concerning Spain. Aurelius Victor, Sextus, Roman politician and author of a history in biographical form, ‘On the Caesars’, which runs from Augustus until Constantius II (ad 360). Though following the pattern of Suetonius’s gossipy biographies, it is moralizing in character. The author was governor of Pannonia in ad 361 and in 389 held high office in Rome. Balbinus, Decius Caelius Calvinus (died ad 238), Roman emperor, appointed by the senate together with Maximus (q.v.) in exceptional circumstances in ad 238. Both men had years of senatorial experience behind them, and both were mur­ dered by the Praetorian Guards after a reign of three months. Bartoli, Pietro Santi (c.1635–1700), Italian engraver and antiquarian who studied under Poussin. He produced an extensive and celebrated series of books of water colours and engravings illustrating the architecture, murals, sepulchral monu­ ments, sculpture, gems, and coins of ancient Rome, including Romanae magnitudinis monumenta and Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum. Bellièvre, Pomponne de (1606–57), French politician and diplomat. He was sent as ambassador to Holland in 1635 and to England in 1637 and 1646–7. On the last occasion his mission was to strengthen the ties between Charles I and the Scots. He was appointed ‘premier président’ of the Parlement de Paris in 1653. Bourdaloue, Louis (1632–1704), French Jesuit, professor of rhetoric, philosophy, and moral theology, so renowned as a preacher as to become a model for pulpit eloquence. Brutus, Decimus Iunius (died 43 bc), Roman politician and commander. He served under Caesar in Gaul in the 50s bc but subsequently took part in the conspiracy against him, like his more famous kinsman, Marcus Iunius Brutus. Given com­ mand by the senatorial party, he opposed the triumvirs (Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus), who claimed Caesar’s legacy, but his troops deserted to Octavian and he was subsequently put to death by Antony as he attempted to make his way to Macedonia to join the forces of Brutus and Cassius.

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Caelius Rufus, Marcus (82–48 bc), a brilliant, dissolute, and opportunistic Roman politician and orator, trained in oratory by Cicero. Though associated with Catiline, he did not join Catiline’s conspiracy. For a time he was a lover of Clodius’s sister, Clodia. Prosecuted on the ground of involvement in the intimi­ dation and murder of envoys from Alexandria, he was defended by Cicero in the speech Pro Caelio. Subsequently he attained high office. At the outbreak of the Civil War he joined Caesar but was later killed attempting to raise an insurrection in co-operation with Milo. Book 8 of Cicero’s Letters to His Friends preserves some of his letters to Cicero. Çalebi Mehmed, Efendi (1670–1731), Janissary, poet, Ottoman plenipotentiary at the treaty of Passarowitz (1718), ambassador extraordinary to the court of Louis XV (1720–1). Calvus, Gaius Licinius (82–before 47 bc), Roman politician, poet, and orator. As a poet he shared the tastes of his close friend, Catullus, several of whose poems to him survive. Physically small and a lively speaker in the ‘Atticist’ style, he was described by someone who heard him perform in court as ‘an eloquent sprat’ (Catullus, Poems, 53). He had a long feud in and out of the courts with Caesar’s supporter Publius Vatinius and, like Catullus, wrote epigrams against Caesar but, also like Catullus, was later reconciled to him. Carlisle, Charles Howard, 1st earl of (1628–85), army officer, politician, ambas­ sador extraordinary. Member of the Barebones Parliament and part of the rule of the major-generals during the Protectorate, he held important posts in govern­ ment before and after the Restoration and was ennobled by Cromwell and reennobled by Charles II. His attendant Guy Miège wrote an account of his two embassies (1663–4, 1668). Charmides (died 403 bc), nephew of the oligarch Critias and uncle of Plato. Plato’s Socratic dialogue bearing the name of this strikingly beautiful young man is a discussion of moderation (sōphrosunē). Later, with Critias, he became a member of the Thirty, the oligarchic regime that governed Athens in 404–403 bc after her defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian war. He was killed fighting the returning democrats. Charpentier, François (1620–1702), secretary to Colbert, member of the Académie Française, defender of the modern cause in the querelle, particularly in his Défense de la langue française (1676) and De l’excellence de la langue française (1683). Cibber, Colley (1671–1757), highly successful actor, playwright, theatrical man­ ager, from 1730 the much ridiculed poet laureate. He wrote An Apology for the Life of Mr Colly Cibber, Comedian (1740) and was enthroned as king of dullness in the 1743 edition of Pope’s Dunciad. Clodius Pulcher, Publius (c.92–52 bc), Roman politician and agitator. A patrician by birth of the ancient family of the Claudii, he took plebeian status and was elected tribune of the plebs in 58 bc, in which capacity he introduced popular legislation and brought about Cicero’s exile. He used his political organization of the urban plebs and formation of armed gangs to sway elections and influence

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policy, generally in opposition to Pompey and to the senatorial party. He was killed after a brawl with an opposing gang led by Milo. Columella, Lucius Iunius Moderatus, born in Spain but farmed several estates in Italy. Written in the 60s ad, his De re rustica is the most comprehensive surviving Roman work on agriculture. In twelve books, it covers management, animals, fish, trees, food processing, and storage as well as crops (with emphasis on vines). Crito, wealthy friend and pupil of Socrates who urged him to escape from prison when he was condemned to death in 399 bc. The ethical and political implica­ tions of his plea are the subject of Plato’s dialogue Crito. Ctesicles, Greek author cited by Athenaeus for population statistics of Athens in the late 4th c. bc. He is mentioned nowhere else, and nothing is known about him. Estimates of his lifetime range from 3rd c. bc to 2nd c. ad. Ctesiphon, minor Athenian politician who proposed in 337/6 bc that Demosthenes be honoured with a golden crown for his services to the state. Aeschines promptly indicted him for this proposal. The case came to court in 330 bc, when Demosthenes delivered his finest speech, On the Crown, a defence of his whole political career. Curio, Gaius Scribonius (died 49 bc), Roman politician and vigorous orator. His decision to rally to Caesar while tribune in 50 bc was a major step towards the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey. He brought Caelius and other young aristocrats over to Caesar, and attempted to win Cicero, by then an elder states­ man. He was killed fighting for Caesar in the Civil War. Curius, or Manius Curius Dentatus (died 270 bc), virtuous Roman, four times consul, once censor. After bringing the Samnite wars to an end in 290 bc, he went on to conduct a series of victorious campaigns in Italy, for which he was awarded three triumphs. Romans of later ages remembered him for his outstanding fru­ gality and incorruptibility. Curtius Rufus, Quintus, Roman historian of the 1st or early 2nd c. ad, author of a history of Alexander the Great in ten books that is incompletely preserved. He is arbitrary in his use of sources, which he rarely names, and rhetorical in style, sometimes moralizing. Cyrus the Younger (died 401 bc), launched an attack on his elder brother, Artaxerxes II, with an army of troops from Asia Minor supported by Greek mer­ cenaries in the hope of usurping the throne of Persia. He was defeated and killed at the battle of Cunaxa on the Euphrates. The expedition and the saga of the return of the ‘Ten Thousand’ Greek troops to Greece are recounted in Xenophon’s Anabasis. Datames (born c.405 bc), Persian general who served at the court of Artaxerxes II of Persia (reigned 404–358). He was appointed satrap (or governor) of the province of Cappadocia, where he achieved considerable military success but fell foul of the king and died, perhaps murdered. He is the subject of a biography by Cornelius Nepos. Demetrius Phalereus, or Demetrius of Phaleron (born c.350 bc, died early 3rd c.), Athenian politician and philosopher, a pupil of Theophrastus. In 318 he was

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appointed supreme governor of Athens by Cassander of Macedon. His ten-year rule was remembered as tyrannical, and his ejection by Demetrius Poliorcetes (q.v.) in 307 was warmly welcomed. He fled to Boeotia and later to Alexandria, where in 297 he became Librarian. Demetrius Poliorcetes, or Demetrius I of Macedon (336–283 bc), son of Antigonus I of Macedon. In 307 he liberated Athens from the unpopular Demetrius of Phaleron (q.v.) and, in 305–304, besieged Rhodes for a year, a lengthy operation that gave him his nickname of ‘Poliorcetes’ (the Besieger). He was a successful agent of Antigonus in Greece and became king of Macedon himself in 294, but ended his life in captivity. Diog(e)iton, an Athenian businessman and money-lender like his brother Diodotos. All that is known of him is the loan referred to in Lysias’s speech 32 (402/1 bc). Dion (c.408–353 bc), Syracusan politician and pupil of Plato. When the young Dionysius II inherited the tyranny of Syracuse from his father in 367/6, Dion brought Plato to Syracuse to instruct the young ruler, an episode recounted at length in the probably spurious seventh of the Letters of Plato. Plato returned unsuccessful to Athens, and Dion was exiled. Dion returned to Syracuse in 357 and eventually succeeded in establishing himself in power, but his arrogant behaviour alienated the citizens and he was assassinated. Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, abbé (1670–1742), French diplomat, historian (Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie française dans les Gaules, 1734), and critic (Reflexions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture, 1719), secretary of the Académie Française from 1722. Dutot, Nicolas (1684–1741), clerk to the treasurer, possibly sous trésorier of the Banque Royale (1720–3), and thereby a witness concerning John Law’s Mississippi Company and informed apologist for Law’s Système. For the de­tect­ ive and conjectural work see Murphy, ‘The Enigmatic Monsieur Du Tot’, and Velde, ‘Life and Times of Nicolas Dutot’ (the account followed here). Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty Tyrants, the oligarchic regime that governed Athens in 404–403 bc. One of the less extreme members of the group, he never­ theless gave orders that Lysias’s brother should be arrested and executed and his property confiscated. Lysias’s eleventh speech attacking him relates these events. Eumenes ii, king of Pergamum in Asia Minor (reigned 197–158 bc) and a loyal ally of Rome. The peace of Apamea concluded with Syria in 188 bc brought great wealth to him and his small kingdom. His building programme resulted in a splendid capital, and his extensive diplomacy was characterized by generous gifts. Eventually, however, Rome withdrew her support. Eunus, a Syrian slave who led the first slave revolt (or slave war) in Sicily c.136–133 bc. He attracted large numbers of slaves, who defeated a series of Roman armies. Calling himself by the royal name Antiochus, he assumed the trappings of roy­ alty. He also claimed to be a miracle-worker. The revolt was extinguished by force, and Eunus was allowed to die in prison.

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Eutychus, a figure to whom the poet, Phaedrus (c.15 bc–c. 50 ad), dedicated a book of his Fables but who cannot be identified. See Fables 3, prologue 1–17 and 62–3. Evander, candidate for the archonship (chief magistracy) at Athens for 382 bc in place of Leodamas, who had been disqualified at his ‘scrutiny’ for office. When Evander in his turn underwent a scrutiny, Lysias wrote the accusation against him (speech 26), alleging oligarchic sympathies. Cf. ‘Mantitheus’ and ‘Philo(n)’. Flamininus. T.  Quinctius (c.229–174 bc), Roman statesman and general. He defeated Philip V of Macedon at the battle of Cynoscephalae (197), thus achiev­ ing the ‘liberation’ of the Greeks of Europe from Macedonian rule and laying the foundations of the hegemony of Rome in Greece. His subsequent diplomatic efforts to liberate the Greeks of the Near East from the Seleucid king, Antiochus, were less successful. Fléchier, Valentin-Esprit (1632–1710), prelate renowned for his funeral orations, member of the French Académie (1673), director of the Académie of Nîmes, historian, bishop successively of Lavaur and Nîmes. Florus, Lucius Annaeus (2nd c. ad or later), wrote an abbreviated history of Rome from Romulus to Augustus, usually entitled Epitome bellorum omnium annorum DCC [‘Epitome of All the Wars of 700 Years’]. It has been described as a pious and ecstatic panegyric of the Roman people. See the annotation for ‘Populousness’ n. 47. Folard, Jean-Charles, sieur de (1669–1752), controversial tactical theorist who had served in the armies of Louis XIV and Charles XII of Sweden. His system drew criticism from Maurice de Saxe and Frederick the Great. Foster, James (1697–1753), heterodox Anabaptist minister, famed for his preach­ ing. Gibbon thought his sermons showed him to be ‘a divine preferring reason to faith, and more afraid of vice than of heresy’ (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 4: 9 n. 5). Pope, Bolingbroke, Savage, and Burke quoted from his sermons the sentiment that ‘Where the mystery begins, religion ends’, because the purpose of even reve­ lation could not be ‘to nonplus and puzzle human reason, and make ignorant men stare’ (‘Of Mysteries’, Sermons, 1: 114, 118). Gee, Joshua (1667–1730), merchant, author of the influential Trade and Navigation of Great Britain (1729), thought to be a contributor to the serial British Merchant (1713–14). Geta, Publius Septimius (ad 189–211), Roman emperor, son of Septimius Severus. He and his elder brother Caracalla loathed each other. Consul in ad 205 and 208, Geta, like Caracalla, campaigned in Britain in 208. When Septimius died in February 211, the brothers succeeded as joint emperors. Caracalla had Geta murdered in December of that year. Grosphus, a wealthy man known only from Horace, Odes 2.16, and Epistles 1.12.22–4, references that locate him in time in the 20s bc and that give his name as Pompeius Grosphus. Hardouin, Jean (1646–1729), French Jesuit. Though he did serious work as editor of the elder Pliny (1685) and as author of works on numismatics, he was an

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extreme anti-literary antiquarian who came to the conclusion that almost all the ancient classical texts had been forged in the Middle Ages. Herip(p)idas, Spartan commander and political leader. As a friend of Agesilaus II, he played a leading role in Sparta’s wars in the 390s bc. He was banished in 379 after surrendering Thebes, which was under Spartan control. Hirtius, Aulus (died 43 bc), Roman author and military commander. As an officer under Julius Caesar he served in Spain and Asia Minor during the Civil Wars. In 45, he was appointed governor of Transalpine Gaul, and, in 43, he was elected consul but was killed at the siege of Mutina in that year. A fluent writer, he added an eighth book to Caesar’s Gallic Wars and is probably also the author of the Bellum Alexandrinum (Alexandrian War), which has come down to us among Caesar’s works. Hoadl(e)y, Benjamin (1676–1761), Anglican controversialist, bishop successively of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, and a royal chaplain from 1716. Low church, Erastian, and latitudinarian in theology, he supported toleration of Dissenters. He was a prolific pamphleteer and publicist in Whig causes both under Queen Anne and the Hanoverians. Hortensius, Nicolaus, commentator whose work Pierre-Joseph Thoulier Olivet incorporated into his edition of Cicero (1740–2). Hortensius Hortalus, Quintus (114–50 bc), Roman politician and prominent orator in the florid ‘Asiatic’ style, older rival, and sometimes colleague, of Cicero in the courts. On the senatorial side in politics, he achieved the consulship in 69 bc. In his later years he led a life of conspicuous luxury. Cicero presents him as an interlocutor in his protreptic to philosophy, Hortensius, famous throughout antiquity (cf. Augustine, Confessions 3.4), now lost. Hutcheson, Archibald (c.1660–1740), lawyer, Member of Parliament in the ‘Country’ Opposition (1713–27), commissioner of the Board of Trade (1714–16). A prolific pamphleteer, he predicted the crash of South Sea Company stock, served on the House of Commons committee investigating the company (1721),  and decried the growing national debt. In 1722 the Whig ministry attempted and failed to displace Hutcheson in the Commons (Browning, Duke of Newcastle, 33). Juba (c.85–46 bc), king of Numidia (in North Africa), Juba I fought against Julius Caesar in the Civil War against Pompey, defeating and killing Caesar’s lieutenant, Curio. He continued to support Cato and the senatorial forces in Africa until their defeat at Thapsus (46), after which he committed suicide. Justin, or Marcus Iunian(i)us Iustinus, 2nd- or 3rd-c. ad author of the epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus (q.v.), through which that work is known to us. Nothing else is known about its author. The epitome was popular during the Middle Ages, and over two hundred manuscripts survive. Kouli Khan, Thamas, or Nadir Shah (?1687–1747), robber chief who in 1727 joined the fugitive shah of Persia, Tahmasp II, against Afghan rule. Expelling the Afghans (1729–30), he imprisoned Tahmasp (1732) and acted as regent for the

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deposed shah’s child until 1736, when the child died and Nadir proclaimed him­ self shah. By the time his officers murdered him in 1747, he had extended Persian territory to the Indus on the east and the Oxus on the north. “Lampridius, Aelius”, one of the six fictional authors of the Historia Augusta (probably late 4th c. ad) to whom a number of biographies of the later Roman emperors are attributed. Cf. “Spartianus”, “Vopiscus”. Leptines, Athenian politician, opponent of Demosthenes, who prosecuted him (speech 20) for having passed a law in 356/5 bc cancelling all exemptions from the public services, called liturgies. Licinius Macer, Roman politician and historian, tribune in 73 bc, praetor in 68. Convicted of extortion in 66, he committed suicide. He wrote a history of Rome in sixteen or more books, starting from the origins of the city. It does not survive but was used by Livy as a source. He is known to have rationalized legends and to have favoured the popular cause. Lipsius, Justus, or Joest Lips (1547–1606), influential Dutch humanist. His De constantia (1584) was a foundational text of neo-Stoicism, whose advocacy of a detached stance towards the religious conflicts of the day was mirrored in his own career, which spanned Catholic and Protestant countries indifferently. Among his many works are esteemed editions of Tacitus and Seneca. Lyttelton, George (1709–73), in 1741 a vocal member of the House of Commons in the Whig ‘patriot’ Opposition attached to the Prince of Wales. An author suf­ ficiently noted to have a place in Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets, he was patron to his friends Henry Fielding and the poet James Thomson. Subsequently a member of the Pelham ministry and, as of 1757, first baron Lyttelton. Mably, Gabriel Bonnot, abbé de (1709–85), philosophical historian, classical republican, and one of Hume’s ‘severe moralists’ declaiming against luxury. Prolific writer, e.g. of Le droit public de l’Europe (1746), Observations sur les Grecs (1749), Observations sur les Romains (1751), he would be one of Hume’s critics. Maillet, Benoît de (1656–1738), French diplomatist serving in Egypt, Tuscany, the Levant, the Barbary Coast, and Ethiopia (1692–1720), memoirist of sojourns in Ethiopia and Egypt, cosmogonist. Mantitheus, a young Athenian who was elected to his city’s council towards the end of the 5th c. bc. At the ‘scrutiny’ that he was obliged to undergo before assuming office, he was attacked for having served in the cavalry under the Thirty, the oligarchic regime that governed Athens in 404–403 bc. Lysias wrote the speech (no. 16) that Mantitheus delivered in his own defence. Marchmont, Hugh Hume, 3rd earl of (1708–94), previously styled Lord Polwarth. His succession in 1740 to his father’s title removed him from the House of Commons, where he had been, like his father, in the Whig Opposition to Walpole and, with George Lyttelton and William Pitt, one of the ‘boy patriots’. Though extolled in Pope’s poems, he was according to Alexander Carlyle ‘as much a Slave of the Court as any Man of his time’. He was known to Carlyle and Hume per­ sonally. In 1750–84 he was one of the Scots Peers in the House of Lords.

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Maximus, Marcus Clodius Pupienus (died ad 238), Roman emperor, appointed by the senate together with Balbinus (q.v.) in exceptional circumstances in 238. Both men had years of senatorial experience behind them and both were murdered by the praetorian guards after a reign of three months. M(e)idias, an exceptionally wealthy Athenian politician. A supporter of Eubulus (active 355–342 bc), he was involved in a longstanding quarrel with Demosthenes that led to a series of lawsuits in the 340s bc. Melon, Jean-François (1675–1738), secretary to John Law in 1720 and subse­ quently to the regent and the Duc de Bourbon. Founder in 1712 of, and secretary to, the Académie of Bordeaux. Morgan, Thomas (died 1743), Welsh dissenting minister turned Christian deist. Prolifically participated in the religious controversies of the day in England, con­ tending, for example, with Thomas Chubb and John Leland. Nabis (died 192 bc), king of Sparta who seized the throne in 207, and carried through a series of revolutionary reforms in line with the programme of his pre­ decessor Cleomenes III. His reign marked Sparta’s last period of independence. After a military defeat in 193 he was assassinated by Aetolians. Nicomachus, Athenian official who, after the oligarchic interludes of 411 and 404/3 bc, was given the difficult and politically sensitive task of revising the city’s law code once democracy was restored. In 399 he was accused of failing to submit any accounts and of exceeding his time limit. Lysias may have written the speech for his prosecutor (speech 30). Ninus, the name given by the Greeks and Romans to the legendary founder of the Assyrian empire. Diodorus Siculus 2.1–20 recounts his conquests and the reign of his widow, Semiramis. Pâris-Duverney, Joseph, or Duvernet (1684–1770), tax-farmer opposed to and involved in liquidating John Law’s Mississippi scheme (1721), re-organized the French East India Company (1723) and the coinage (1726), French councillor of state (1725), imprisoned 1726–8 and thereafter ennobled. Patru, Olivier (1604–81), lawyer, lexicographer, grammarian, translator, admitted to the Académie Française 1640, esteemed prose stylist. Perrault, Charles (1628–1703), best known today for his classic fairy stories, Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1690–5); he was a member and director of the Académie Française, celebrant of the age of Louis XIV, and prolific partisan of the moderns in the querelle, in opposition to Boileau and Racine, especially in Le siècle de Louis le Grand (1687) and Parallèle des anciens et des modernes (1688–97). Pertinax, Publius Helvius (died 193 ad), Roman emperor, who started his career as a schoolmaster. Elected consul in ad 175, he was appointed governor succes­ sively of Moesia, Dacia, Syria, Britain, and Africa. Hailed emperor in December 192 on the assassination of Commodus, he was himself assassinated by soldiers in the following March after two abortive coups. Pescennius Niger, or Gaius Pescennius Niger Iustus (died c. ad 194). While gov­ ern­or of the province of Syria he was proclaimed emperor by his troops on the

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death in ad 193 of Pertinax (q.v.), but he was defeated in a series of encounters by the forces of Lucius Septimius Severus, who succeeded in becoming emperor. Pharnaces II (reigned 63–47 bc), king of Bosporus, a kingdom on the north shore of the Black Sea centred on the Crimea. He was defeated at Zela by Caesar in 47 bc. Philistus (c.430–356 bc), Syracusan historian, friend and adviser to Dionysius I  and II, tyrants of Syracuse, and political opponent of Plato and Dion. His History of Sicily, a source for Diodorus, does not survive. He was a very compe­ tent historian, a follower of Thucydides, though allegedly he unduly favoured tyrants. Philo(n), elected official in Athens and defendant in a ‘scrutiny’ (the obligatory pre­ liminary enquiry), for which Lysias provided the accusation (speech 31, c.398 bc). Politian, or Angelo Poliziano (1454–94), outstanding Florentine humanist scholar and poet who enjoyed the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. An exegete and text­ual critic, he wrote and lectured on a wide range of Greek and Latin lit­ erature, including Hellenistic Greek and post-classical Latin texts. Pompey (‘The Younger Pompey’), i.e. Sextus Pompeius Magnus (c.67–36 bc), Roman commander, younger son of Pompey the Great who carried on his father’s struggle against Julius Caesar, first in Africa, then in Spain. In 44 he received a naval command from the senate, which he turned into an independent force, and continued to oppose Caesar’s heir, Octavian. In 39 the triumvirs (Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian) concluded the pact of Misenum with him and granted him the governorship of Sicily and other honours. The following year, however, they accused him of breaking the pact, and naval warfare continued until he surrendered and was put to death. “Publius Victor”, a name invented by Ianus Parrhasius in 1503 for the author of the work now known as the anonymous Libellus de regionibus urbis Romae. Rapin De Thoyras, Paul de (1661–1725), Huguenot who left France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes for England and the United Provinces. He was with William of Orange’s forces at the Revolution of 1688 and served in William’s war in Ireland. Author of the Dissertation sur les Whigs et les Torys (1717) and the famous L’Histoire d’Angleterre (1723–5, translated and continued by Nicolas Tindal). Saserna, name of father and son in the 1st c. bc who wrote a work or works on agri­ culture that have not survived and that Varro criticized for irrelevance. Scobell, Henry (c.1610–60), clerk of the Commonwealth parliaments (1648–58), functionary in the Protectorate, author on parliamentary subjects. Servilia (born c.100 bc), half-sister of M. Porcius Cato, mother of Brutus (born c.85), long-time mistress of Caesar, and bitter opponent of Pompey, she appears to have been one of the most powerful women of her generation. After the mur­ der of Caesar by Brutus and the other tyrannicides (44), she is shown in Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, bk. 15, to be playing a considerable role in their deliberations. Servius Tullius (according to tradition, reigned 578–535 bc), sixth king of Rome, said to have been murdered by his successor Tarquinius Superbus. Most of what

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we are told about him is legend. He was credited with the political and military institutions outlined in the annotation to ‘Populousness’, n. 97. The earliest walls of Rome, constructed much later, were also named after him. Seuthes ii (died 383 bc), ruler of part of Thrace near Byzantium. After negotiations with Xenophon he took over the remnants of the ‘Ten Thousand’ (see ‘Cyrus’ above). Later he made an alliance with Athens, and lost and regained his king­ dom. Some coins minted in his name survive. “Spartianus, Aelius”, one of the six fictional authors of the Historia Augusta (com­ posed probably in the late 4th c. ad) to whom a number of biographies of the later Roman emperors are attributed. Cf. “Lampridius” and “Vopiscus”. Stanyan, Abraham (?1669–1732), English diplomatist, author of a highly regarded Account of Switzerland, envoy successively to Switzerland, the imperial court at Vienna, and the Ottoman Porte, member of the Kit-Cat Club. Brother of Temple Stanyan. Statilius (died 42 bc), Epicurean, from a distinguished Roman family. A friend of the younger Cato and later of Brutus, he was killed at the battle of Philippi. “Suidas”, not a person, as traditionally thought, but the name of a book, the ‘Suda’. See the annotation for ‘Populousness’, n. 255. Talon, Omer (1595–1652), eminent advocate-general of the Parlement of Paris and eloquent defender of the Parlement’s prerogative against absolute monarchy. His memoirs were published in 1732. Thurloe, John (c.1616–68), Member of Parliament (1654–5, 1656–8) and secre­ tary of state in the Protectorate (1652–8). His important state papers were dis­ covered after the Revolution of 1688 and acquired by John Somers, the lord chancellor. Timarchus, Athenian politician and supporter of Demosthenes. Timarchus accused Aeschines of taking bribes on an embassy to Philip of Macedon in 346 bc. Aeschines retaliated (in speech 1) by successfully prosecuting Timarchus in 347/6 for conduct that would have debarred him from taking part in public life. The charges included having prostituted himself as a young man, a common insult to politicians in Athenian comedy, less so in surviving lawsuits. Timocrates (before 400 bc–later than 348), wealthy Athenian politician, a younger associate of the politician Androtion, who seems to have specialized in financial matters. In about 352 he proposed a law concerning debt for which he was pros­ ecuted by Demosthenes (speech 24). Some at least of his wealth, which enabled him to engage in horse-breeding, was derived from his political activities. Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de (1656–1708), French naturalist, professor of bot­ any in the royal Jardin des Plantes, professor of medicine in the Collège-Royale, travelled widely investigating natural history, geology, geography, and commerce. His most noted achievement was in botanical taxonomy. Trogus, Pompeius (active during the reign of Augustus 31 bc–ad 14), a Romanized Gaul, author of forty-four books on history, from the Assyrians to his own day, and a work on zoology and perhaps on botany. Though none of these works

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s­ urvive, we possess an epitome of his Histories by Justin (q.v.). It is known as the Philippic History because of its emphasis on the Macedonian kings Philip and Alexander. Ustáriz, Don Gerónymo de (1670–1732), Spanish administrator and mercantilist writer. Valerius Maximus, Roman author of a handbook of ‘Memorable Deeds and Sayings’, mostly Roman. Compiled during Tiberius’s reign (ad 14–37), the book was intended to provide examples of moral excellence for the edification of Roman gentlemen and to flatter Tiberius. Varro, Gaius Terentius, consul and ancestor of the agricultural writer Varro, defeated by Hannibal at Cannae in 216 bc. Vauban, Sébastien le Prestre, seigneur de (1633–1701), French military engineer and strategist. Advocated tax reform in La Dîme royale, which Louis XIV attempted to suppress in 1714. Velleius Paterculus (c.19 bc–after ad 30), Roman historian. He began his career in the army and held high office under Augustus. His histories were in two books, only parts of which survive. They began in mythical Greek times and ended in ad 29, taking a conventional establishment view. “Vopiscus, Flavius”, one of the six fictional authors of the Historia Augusta (com­ posed probably in the late 4th c. ad) to whom a number of biographies of the later Roman emperors are attributed. See “Lampridius” and “Spartianus”. Vossius, Isaac, or Vos (1618–89), prolific Dutch scholar, bibliophile, canon of Windsor (1673–89), though reputedly a religious sceptic. In England he moved in the circle of the duchesse de Mazarin and Saint-Évremond. Moreri character­ ized him as having a penchant for the extraordinary and marvellous. Son of G. J. Vossius. Whitelocke, Bulstrode (1605–75), lawyer, annalist, prominent member of parlia­ ments during the Commonwealth Interregnum, keeper of the great seal, par­ doned at the Restoration. What was published posthumously as his Memorials was set by Whigs against Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion.

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C ATAL O G U E O F H U M E’ S REFERENCES Included in this catalogue are Hume’s references, sometimes not explicit, to whole works or to passages. If the probability of a tacit reference is sufficient, we record the instance as a reference. Excluded are instances in which Hume mentions an author but no single work can be assigned to the reference, as with the reference to Thomas Sprat in ‘Civil Liberty’ 8. Also excluded are instances of verbal repetition or slight reformulation that do not rise to the status of deliberate reference. An example is Hume’s echoing of Robert Nugent’s stanza on the tyrannicide of Caesar, in which Hume might or might not have expected to prompt certain associations in some readers (see the annotation for ‘Moral Prejudices’ 2). Such instances, familiar enough in the study of poetic influence, are not determinable as intentional allusion, creative appropriations of wording, or unconscious echoes of other writers. On the other hand, we have taken to be a deliberate allusion Hume’s adaptation for ‘Walpole’ 2 of a well-known Tacitean formulation. Such judgements are fallible. Hume’s essays are indexed herein by paragraph or footnote numbers. Normally, when Hume refers to a work in his discussion and then cites it in a footnote we index this reference to the footnote only and ignore the paragraph number. Occasionally, however, cases arise (as when Hume quotes in a paragraph from his source) for which it has seemed better to index to both Hume’s footnote and the discussion to which it corresponds. References to be found in the apparatus of variant readings (in the Editorial Appendix of Emendations and Variants) will be identified as ‘variants’ with locator numbers. Specific editions are listed when (a) one was needed to verify the accuracy of Hume’s citations employing superannuated division numbers, and (b) one has an enhanced probability of having been used by Hume, as when it is listed in the Hume Library and is chronologically eligible for Hume to have used it or Hume’s citation allows an identification of an edition. Occasionally a specific edition is eligible for some essays but not for ones written at an earlier date. Hume’s occasional citations to page numbers will not always allow the identification of a specific edition since editions sometimes were patterned after previous ones in the setting of type and their pagination can be identical or nearly identical. The following symbols indicate the reason(s) for including specific editions: º = a work listed in the Hume Library1 + = a work identifiable as Hume’s source 1 i.e. that (a) was in the sale catalogue for the library of Hume’s nephew and namesake (1757–1838), and therefore had possibly been the uncle’s, or that (b) has Hume’s bookplate (Norton and Norton, Hume Library). The presence of the bookplate does not itself establish the uncle’s ownership since evidently the nephew used the bookplate himself. Moreover the plate exists in two states (Hillyard and Norton, ‘Hume Bookplate’), and bookplates have been known to be fraudulenlty attached to books by speculators.

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‡ = a work that Hume likely used for his memoranda † = a control edition used to verify Hume’s citations when they employ super­ annu­ated division numbers. For this short-title catalogue, capitalization is regularized but not spelling and accents. The term ‘reprinting’ is deliberately ambiguous here and does not necessarily mean a technical reprint, that is, a repeat printing from standing type without much alteration. Likewise some ‘editions’ might upon examination prove to be re­issues with new title-pages. Anonymous works and those for which authorship is in doubt are alphabetized under the title with a cross reference to any putative author. Pseudonymous works for which the authors are unknown are listed under the pseudonyms, which are given in double quotation marks. In the case of Greek and Latin titles, an English equivalent short-title is given that, normally, is identical to titles used in the Loeb Library of Greek and Latin Classics. Full publication details for the Loeb editions are found in the Reference List. Addison, Joseph. Cato, 1st pub. 1713, other lifetime editions. (Rise and Progress, variants for 116.28) °† Works, ed. Thomas Tickell, 4 vols., London, 1721. Addison, Joseph, Richard Steele et al. Spectator, 1711–12, 1714–15, periodical collected in 8o and 12o, both 1712–15, many reprintings, lifetime and posthumous. (Simplicity and Refinement 1) ° Spectator, 5th edn., 8 vols., London, 1720. Or, for Addison’s nos., see Works, s.v. Addison. Tatler, 1709–11, collected in 12o and 8o, both 1710–11, many reprintings lifetime and posthumous. For Addison’s Tatler nos. see Works, s.v. Addison. (Civil Liberty, n. 2) Aeschines. Ἐπιστολαί (Epistolai) / Epistulae / Letters. (Balance of Trade, n. 7) Κατὰ Κτησιϕῶντος (Kata Κtēsiphōntos) / Contra (or In) Ctesiphontem / Against Ctesiphon. (Populousness, nn. 81, 105) Κατὰ Τιμάρχου (Kata Timarchou) / In Timarchum / Against Timarchus. (Populousness, n. 151) + Demosthenis et Aeschinis Epistolæ, trans. Petrus Nannius, Louvain, 1537. Aesop. See Phaedrus. Afranius, Lucius. Vopiscus (lost drama), in Daviault, A., ed., Comoedia togata: Fragments (Populousness, n. 9) Allais, Denis Vairasse (Veiras) d’. The History of the Sevarites or Sevarambi, 1st pub. 1675, trans. and expanded 1677 as L’Histoire des Sévarambes, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Polygamy and Divorces 5) Amhurst, Nicholas, ed. Craftsman, 1726–47, 1750, collected 1727, 1728, and Craftsman, 14 vols., London, vols. 1–7 (nos. 1–255), 1731, vols. 8–14 (nos. 256–495), 1737. To restore the original dates and numbers, which were altered for this set, see Davis, ‘Reprinting The Craftsman’. Bolingbroke’s Dissertation upon Parties (q.v.) is in vol. 12. (Essays, Moral and Political, 1741, 1742, advt.; Independency of Parliament, n. 1; Politics, n. 11)

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Ammianus Marcellinus. Res gestae / History. (Populousness, n. 204) Appian. Ῥωμαϊκά (Rōmaika) / Historia Romana / Roman History. (Balance of Trade, n. 15; Populousness 77, 173 & nn. 44, 59, 67, 74, 115, 127, 237; Remarkable Customs 12) Arbuthnot, John. Tables of Coins, Weights and Measures, 1st pub. 1727, earlier version, [1705]. (Balance of Trade 34) Argens, Jean-Baptiste De Boyer, marquis d’. Memoires de Monsieur le Marquis d’Argens, . . ., 1st pub. 1735, other lifetime editions. (Polygamy and Divorces, variants for 154.2) Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando furioso / The Madness of Roland, 1st pub. 1516 in part, 1532 complete, other lifetime editions. (probably Civil Liberty 5; Rise and Progress, variants for 114.19; Standard of Taste 9) ° Orlando furioso, Venice, 1590. Aristides, Aelius. Εἰς Ρώμην (Eis Rhōmēn) / Ad Romam / Regarding Rome. (Populousness, n. 190, 255) Aristophanes. Ἱππείς (Hippeis) / Equites / The Knights. (Populousness, n. 25) ° Aristophanis comœdiæ undecim, ed. Joseph Scaliger et al., Leiden, 1624. Aristotle. Αἰγινητῶν πολιτεία (Aiginētōn politeia) / Constitution of the Aeginetans in Fragmenta Aristotelis, ed. Rose, frag. 472; Complete Works, 2: 2453. (Populousness, n. 164) Περὶ ζῴων γενέσεως (Peri zōōn geneseōs) / De generatione animalium / Generation of Animals. (Populousness, n. 220) Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια (E̅thika Nikomacheia) / Ethica Nicomachea / Nicomachean Ethics. (Populousness 152 (with n. 213)) Πολιτικά (Politika) / Politica / Politics. (National Characters, n. 10; Populousness, n. 24) Arrian (Flavius Arrianus). Ἀλεξάνδρου ἀνάβασις (Alexandrou anabasis) / De expeditione Alexandri / Anabasis of Alexander. (Politics, n. 6; Populousness, n. 98) ° Arriani de expeditione Alex. Magni historiarum libri VII, ed. Nicolaas Blanckaert, Amsterdam, 1668. Asconius Pedianus, Quintus. ‘In orationem Pro Milone’ / ‘Commentary on the Pro Milone’. (Civil Liberty, n. 4) Athenaeus. Δειπνοσοϕισταί (Deipnosophistai) / Deipnosophistae / The Learned Banqueters. (Polygamy and Divorces 4; Populousness nn. 138, 147, 164, 167, 255) † Athenæi deipnosophistarum libri quindecim, ed. Isaac Casaubon, Latin trans. Jacques Daléchamps (Lyon, 1657). Atterbury, Francis. ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Edmund Waller, Esq.’, anon. published, prefixed to Edmund Waller, Poems &c. Written upon Several Occasions . . . , 8th edn., London, 1711, and subsequent editions. (Protestant Succession, variants for 357.39) Augustus. Res gestae divi Augusti (= Monumentum Ancyranum) / Acts of the Deified Augustus. (Populousness, n. 194) Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine le Jumel de Barneville, comtesse d’. Mémoires de la cour d’Espagne / Memoirs of the Court of Spain, 1st pub. 1690, one other lifetime edition. (Polygamy and Divorces, n. 1) Aurelius Victor, Sextus. Liber de Caesaribus / On the Caesars. (Populousness n. 193)

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Bacon, Francis. De augmentis scientiarum / Advancement of Learning, 1st pub. 1605, and Latin versions in lifetime. (National Characters 24, Parties in General 1) Essayes, 1st pub. 1597, twelve other lifetime editions. (Commerce 19) ° Francisci Baconi . . . operum moralium et civilium tomus, ed. William Rawley, London, 1638. De bello Hispaniensi / The Spanish War. See s.v. “Caesar”. (Populousness, n. 248) Bentivoglio, Guido. Unidentified work. (National Characters 25) Berkeley, George. Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, 1st pub. 1732, other lifetime editions. (National Characters, n. 7) Βιβλία (Biblia) / Biblia / Bible. (Middle Station 3; Polygamy and Divorces 11; Public Credit 1) Blackwell, Thomas. Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, 1735, other lifetime editions. (Rise and Progress 8) Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decamerone, assembled c.1349–51. (Sceptic 50; Standard of Taste 36) ° Il Decamerone [ed. Paoli Rolli], London, 1725. Bolingbroke, Henry Baron st. John, 1st viscount. A Dissertation upon Parties, orig. pub. in the Craftsman (see s.v. Amhurst), pub. independently in 1735 as a ‘2nd edn.’ (see Barber, ‘Some Uncollected Authors’, 534), other lifetime editions. (Independency of Parliament, n. 1; Parties of Great Britain, variants for 74.29; Politics, n. 11) The Idea of a Patriot King, Alexander Pope’s unauthorized pub. 1741, authorized pub. 1749, posthumous Works, 1754. (‘Protestant Succession’ 1) °A Dissertation upon Parties; in Several Letters to Caleb D’Anvers, Esq., ‘7th edn.’, London, 1749. Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne. Oraisons funèbres / Funeral Orations, pub. 1680, augmented thereafter. (Eloquence, variants for 98.9) ° Recueil des oraisons funèbres prononcées par . . ., ‘Nouvelle’ edn., Paris, 1731. Boulainvilliers, Henri De. Mémoires présenté à Mgr. le Duc d’Orléans, regent de France pendant la minorité de Louis XV. / Memoirs Presented to Monseigneur the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France during the Minority of Louis XV, posthumously pub. 1727, collected into vol. 3 of Etat de la France / The State of France. (Original Contract, n. 4) + Etat de la France, 3 vols., London, 1727 (vols. 1–2), 1728 (vol. 3). Bourdaloue, Louis. Sermons 1692, but most sermons pub. posthumously from 1701. (Eloquence, variants for 98.9) “Caesar, Gaius Julius”. De bello Hispaniensi / The Spanish War. (Populousness, n. 248) Caesar, Gaius Julius. De bello Gallico / The Gallic War. (National Characters 17, 28, & n. 3; Populousness, nn. 60, 232, 236, 240–1, 243–5) ° C. Julii Cæsaris quæ extant [ed. Usher Gahagan], 2 vols., London, 1744. + C. Julii Cæsaris quæ exstant omnia, ed. John Davies (Cambridge, 1706). Camden, William. Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum, regnante Elizabetha / Annales of Events in England and Ireland in the Reign of Elizabeth, pub. in pts. 1615 and, posthumously, 1625. (Coalition of Parties 13) “Capitolinus, Julius”. ‘Maximus and Balbinus’, in Historia Augusta / Augustan History. (Original Contract 43) Cato ‘Censorius’, Marcus Porcius. De re rustica / On Agriculture. (Populousness, nn. 35–6)

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° Libri de re rustica M.  Catonis . . ., M.  Terentii Varronis . . ., L.  Iunii Moderati Columellæ, . . . Palladii, Basle, 1535. Catullus, Gaius Valerius. Carmina / Poems. (Rise and Progess, n. 6; Simplicitiy and Refinement 10) Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel De. Don Quixote de la Mancha, 1st pub. 1605, cont. 1615, Eng. trans. 1616. (Simplicity and Refinement 2; Standard of Taste 14–15) Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Brutus (= De claris oratoribus / On Famous Orators). (Balance of Power, variants for 254.7; Dedication to Home 2; Eloquence, nn. 1, 3) Pro Caelio / In Defence of Caelius. (Populousness, n. 11) Epistulae ad Atticum / Letters to Atticus. (Populousness, n. 106; Taxes, n. 1) Epistulae ad familiares / Letters to his Friends. (Rise and Progress, n. 5) De finibus bonorum et malorum / On the Ends of Goods and Evils. (Rise and Progress 33) De haruspicum responsis / Concerning the Response of the Soothsayers. (Populousness, n. 252) De legibus / On the Laws. (Passive Obedience 2) Pro Ligario / On Behalf of Ligarius. (Eloquence 14) Pro Milone / On Behalf of Milo. (Civil Liberty 11) Pro Murena / In Defence of Murena. (Eloquence 10) De natura deorum / On the Nature of the Gods. (Rise and Progress, variants for 113.2) De officiis / On Duties. (Commerce, n. 5) De oratore / On the Orator. (Rise and Progress, variants for 113.2) Orationes Philippicae i / Philippics 1. (Populousness, n. 72) Orator / The Orator. (Eloquence 3) Pro Sestio / In Defence of Sestius. (Parties of Great Britain, variants for 71.18) Tusculanae disputationes / Tusculan Disputations. (Moral Prejudices 3; Populousness, n. 195; Rise and Progress, n. 7; Sceptic 45, n. 4) In Verrem / Against Verres. (Eloquence 6 (with n. 2); Politics 9; Populousness, nn. 107, 137; Tragedy 8, 22) ° Lettres de Ciceron à Atticus, ed. and trans. l’Abbé [Nicolas Hubert] Mongault, Latin text by J. G. Grævius, 6 vols., Amsterdam, 1741. ° M.  Tullii Ciceronis opera, ed. Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d’Olivet, 9 vols., Paris, 1740–2. Clarendon, Edward Hyde, 1st earl of. History, posthumously pub. 1702–4. (Tragedy 23) ° The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England . . ., 3 vols. in 6, Oxford, 1720–1. Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus. De re rustica / On Agriculture. (Interest, n. 2; Populousness 90 & nn. 1, 6, 15, 39, 43, 227–8, 253) ° Libri de re rustica M.  Catonis . . ., M.  Terentii Varronis . . ., L.  Iunii Moderati Columellæ, . . . Palladii, Basle, 1535. De legationibus. See s.v. Excerpta de legationibus. Copernicus, Nicholas. De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium / On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, 1st pub. 1543. (Sceptic 16) Corneille, Pierre. Cinna, 1st pub. 1643, other lifetime editions. (Politics, n. 10;) Polyeucte, 1st pub. 1643, other lifetime editions. (Standard of Taste 35) ° Le Theatre, ‘Nouvelle’ edn., 5 vols., Paris, 1714, which exists in 3 states (see Picot, Bibliographie 630).

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Craftsman, The. See s.v. Amhurst, Nicholas. Curtius Rufus, Quintus. Historia Alexandri / History of Alexander. (National Characters, n. 11; Populousness, n. 204; Public Credit, n. 4) ° Quintus Curtius [ed. Usher Gahagan], 2 vols., London, 1746. “Demosthenes”. Oration 25. Κατὰ Ἀριστογείτονος α (Kata Aristogeitonos i) / In Aristogitonem i / Against Aristogeiton 1. (Populousness, n. 139) Oration 26. Κατὰ Ἀριστογείτονος β (Kata Aristogeitonos ii) / In Aristogitonem ii / Against Aristogeiton 2. (Remarkable Customs, n. 3) Demosthenes. Oration 23. Κατὰ Ἀριστοκράτους (Kata Aristokratous) / In Aristocratem / Against Aristocrates. (Remarkable Customs, n. 9) Oration 27. Κατὰ Ἀϕόβου α (Kata Aphobou i) / In Aphobum i / Against Aphobus 1. (Populousness, nn. 26, 102, 154, 160) Ἐπιστολαί (Epistolai) / Epistulae / Letters. (Balance of Trade, n. 7) Oration 18. Ὑπὲρ Κτησιϕῶντος περὶ τοῦ στεϕάνου (Huper Ktesiphōntos peri tou stephanou) / De corona (Pro Ctesiphonte) / On the Crown (In Defence of Ctesiphon). (Eloquence 6; Populousness, n. 88; Remarkable Customs 4 & n. 2) Oration 20. Πρὸς Λεπτίνην (Pros Leptinēn) / In Leptinem / Against Leptines. (Populousness, n. 167; Remarkable Customs, n. 8) Oration 16. Ὑπὲρ Μεγαλοπολιτῶν (Huper Megalopolitōn) / Pro Megalopolitanis / For the People of Megalopolis. (Balance of Power 3) Oration 21. Κατὰ Μειδίου (Kata Meidiou) / In Meidiam / Against Meidias. (Populousness, n. 22, 88) Oration 1. Ὀλυνθιακός α (Olunthiakos i) / Olynthiaca i / Olynthiac Oration 1. (Remarkable Customs, n. 7) Oration 3. Ὀλυνθιακός γ (Olunthiakos iii) / Olynthiaca iii / Olynthiac Oration 3. (Balance of Trade, n. 7) Oration 30. Προς Ὀνήτορα α (Pros Onētora i) / Adversus Onetorem i / Against Onetor 1. (Populousness, n. 10) Oration 19. Περὶ τῆς παραπρεσβείας (Peri tēs parapresbeias) / De falsa legatione / On the Embassy. (Populousness, n. 55) Oration 14. Περὶ τῶν συμμοριῶν (Peri tōn summoriōn) / De classibus / On the Navy-Boards. (Balance of Trade, n. 8; Populousness, n. 157; Remarkable Customs, n. 1) Oration 24. Κατὰ Τιμοκράτους (Kata Timokratous) / In Timocratem / Against Timocrates. (Remarkable Customs, n. 5) Oration 9. Κατὰ Φιλίππου γ (Kata Philippou iii) / Philippica iii / Philippic 3. (Populousness, n. 149) + Demosthenis et Aeschinis Epistolæ, trans. Petrus Nannius, Louvain, 1537. °+ Demosthenis orationes duæ& sexaginta, ed. Aldus Pius Manutius, 2 pts., Venice, 1504. Digesta seu Pandecta Iustiniani / Digest or Pandects of Justinian. (possibly Civil Liberty, variants for 90.12; Populousness, n. 29) Dio Cassius. Ῥωμαϊκά / Historia Romana / Roman History. (Interest, n. 1). Diodorus Siculus. Βιβλιοθήκη ἱστορικὴ (Bibliothēkē Historikē) / Bibliotheca historica / The Library of History. (Balance of Power, n. 5; Balance of Trade, n. 6; Commerce, n. 3; Eloquence, n. 6; National Characters, n. 10; Politics and Science, n. 6; Populousness 156 (with n. 219), & nn. 61–2, 70, 79, 81–5, 90, 94–6, 98,

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110–11, 116, 118, 121–2, 126, 131, 142, 168, 170, 179, 203–6, 219, 238, 255, 264–5) + Diod. Siculi Bibliothecæ historicæ libri XV, Latin trans. Laurentius Rhodomanus, 2 vols. in 1, Hanover, 1604. Diogenes Laertius. Φιλοσόϕων βίοι (Philosophōn Bioi) / Vitae philosophorum / Lives of the Philosophers. (Polygamy and Divorces 4; Populousness, n. 119) Dionysius Of Halicarnassus. Ῥωμαϊκὴ ἀρχαιολογία (Rōmaikē archaiologia) / Antiquitates Romanae / Roman Antiquities. (National Characters, n. 2; Polygamy and Divorces, n. 2; Populousness nn. 91, 146, 187–8, 190) Donatus, Aelius. Commentum Terenti / Commentary on Terence, s.v. Phormio. (Populousness, n. 35) Dubos, Jean-Baptiste. Les Interêts de l’Angleterre mal-entendus dans la présente guerre / The Interests of England Mistaken during the Present War, 1st pub. 1703, other lifetime editions. (Balance of Trade, n. 3) Reflexions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture / Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting, 1st pub. 1719, other lifetime editions. (Independency of Parliament, variants for 57.1; Populousness, nn. 217, 254; Tragedy 3) ° Les Intérêts de l’Angleterre mal-entendus dans la guerre présente, 6th edn., Amsterdam, 1704. ° Reflexions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture, 2 vols., Utrecht, 1732. Dutot, Nicolas. Réflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce / Political Reflections upon the finances and commerce of France, 1st pub. 1738, trans. 1739. (Money, n. 4; Public Credit, variants for 263.40) Epictetus. Ἐγχειρίδιον / Encheiridion / Manual. (Moral Prejudices 3; possibly Sceptic 36) Euclid. Στοιχεῖα (Stoicheia) / Elementa / Elements. (Sceptic 16) Excerpta de Legationibus. (Populousness n. 180) The False Accusers Accused; or the Undeceived Englishman . . . in a Letter to the Pretended Patriots, by a Member of the House of Commons, all editions 1741. (Independency of Parliament, variants for 57.1) Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Motte-. Les Aventures de Télémaque, fils d’Ulysse / The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses, 1st pub. 1699, other lifetime editions. (Standard of Taste 3) Fléchier, Valentin-Esprit. Oraison funèbre de . . . Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne / Funeral Oration for Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Marshall Turenne, delivered and pub. 1676; other lifetime editions. (Eloquence, variants for 98.9) Florus, Lucius Annaeus. Epitome bellorum omnium annorum DCC / Epitome of all the Wars of 700 Years (= Epitome of Roman History). (Populousness, nn. 47–8) † L. Annæi Flori rerum Romanarum Epitome, ed. John Stirling (London, 1738). Folard, Jean-Charles. ‘Traité de la colonne; . . .’ / ‘Treatise on the Column’, in Nouvelles découvertes sur la guerre, dans une dissertation sur Polybe / New Discoveries on War, in a Dissertation on Polybius, 1st pub. 1724, other lifetime editions. (Populousness, variants for 296.12) Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de. ‘Digression sur les anciens et les modernes’ / ‘Digression on the Ancients and Moderns’, pub. in Poésies pastorales, 1688, other lifetime pubs. (Independency of Parliament, variants for 57.1)

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Catalogue of Hume’s References

Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes / Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, 1st pub. 1686, other lifetime and posthumous editions. The 6e soir cited by Hume was added in the 1687 edition. (Delicacy, n. 1; Sceptic 46) Histoire des oracles / History of Oracles, 1st pub. 1686, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Populousness, n. 263) Réflexions sur la poétique / Reflections on Poetics, written c.1695 but pub. 1st in 1742, vol. 3 of Œuvres listed below. (Tragedy, n. 1) ‘Traité sur la nature de l’eglogue’ (= ‘Discours’ as of Œuvres diverses, 1724) / ‘Treatise on the Nature of the Eclogue’, pub. in Poésies pastorales, 1688, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Simplicity and Refinement 7) ° Œuvres, ‘Nouvelle’ edn., 6 vols., Paris, 1742. Gee, Joshua. Trade and Navigation, 1st pub. 1729, other lifetime editions. (Balance of Trade 6) ° The Trade and Navigation of Great-Britain Considered, London, 1729. Gellius, Aulus. Noctes Atticae / Attic Nights. (Polygamy and Divorces 4) Guicciardini, Francesco. Storia d’Italia / History of Italy, pub. 1494–1532, other lifetime editions. (Refinement in the Arts 8) ° Della istoria d’Italia [ed. Giambatista Pasquali], 2 vols., Venice, 1738. Harrington, James. Commonwealth of Oceana, 1st pub. 1656, other lifetime editions. (British Government 1; First Principles of Government 4–5, 50; Perfect Commonwealth 4–5, 50) Herodian. Ἱστορίαι (Historiai) / Historiae / History. (Original Contract, n. 3; Populousness, nn. 202, 207, 210, 235) °† Herodiani historiarum libri VIII, Latin trans. Angelo Poliziano [Politian], Edinburgh, 1724. Herodotus. Ἱστορίαι (Historiai) / Historiae / History. (Politics a Science, n. 6; Populousness, nn. 99–100, 140, 184, 255) Hesiod. Ἔργα καὶ ἡμέραι (Erga kai hēmerai) / Opera et dies / Works and Days. (Populousness, n. 32) † Poetæ minores Græci, ed. Ralph Winterton (London, 1712). Historia Augusta. See Scriptores Historiae Augustae. Homer. Ἰλιάς (Ilias) / Ilias / Iliad. (Standard of Taste 3) Ὀδύσσεια (Odusseia) / Odyssea / Odyssey. (Standard of Taste 3) Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus). Ars poetica / Art of Poetry. (Rise and Progress 42) Carmina / Odes. (Populousness, nn. 15, 208; Rise and Progress 48 & variants for 113.21; Standard of Taste 32) Epistulae / Epistles. (Civil Liberty 7; Rise and Progress 8; Simplicity and Refinement 3; Study of History 7) Sermones / Satires. (Populousness, nn. 18, 208; Rise and Progress 32) ° Quinti Horatii Flacci opera [ed. Usher Gahagan], London, 1744. Hortensius, Nicolaus. Appendicula Nicolai Hortensii de re frumentaria Romanorum, pub. history unknown, app. to ° M.  Tullii Ciceronis opera, ed. Pierre-Joseph Thoulier Olivet, 9 vols., Paris, 1740–2, 4 (1741): 601–8. (Populousness, n. 197) Hutcheson, Archibald. A Collection of Treatises Relating to the National Debts & Funds, London, 1721. (Public Credit 29)

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Institutiones Iustiniani / Institutes of Justinian. (Populousness, n. 69 & variants for n. 69.1, Rise and Progress 44) Isocrates. Speech 7. Ἀρεοπαγιτικός (Areopagitikos) / Areopagiticus. (Populousness, n. 81) Speech 12. Παναθηναϊκός (Panathēnaikos) / Panathenaicus / Panathenaic Oration. (Populousness, n. 89) Speech 4. Πανηγυρικός (Panēgurikos) / Panegyricus / Festival Oration. (Populousness, nn. 23, 169) Speech 5. Φίλιππος (Philippos) / Philippus / To Philip. (Populousness 69) Jonson, Ben. Every Man in His Humour, 1st pub. 1601, rev. for Works, 1616. (Rise and Progress 46) Volpone, or, the Fox, 1st pub. 1607, another lifetime edition. (Populousness, n. 53; Rise and Progress 46) Josephus, Flavius. Περὶ τοῦ Ἰουδαϊκοῦ πολεμοῦ (Peri tou Ioudaikou polemou) / De bello Judaico / The Jewish War. (Populousness, nn. 204, 255) † Flavii Josephi opera quæ reperiri potuerunt omnia, ed. John Hudson (Oxford, 1720). Julianus, Flavius Claudius. Συμπόσιον ἢ Κρόνια (Symposion ē Kronia) / Convivium vel Saturnalia (= Caesares) / The Symposium or The Saturnalia or The Caesars. (Populousness, n. 128). Justinian. See Digesta, Institutiones Justinus, Marcus Junianus. Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi / Epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s Philippic History. (Populousness, nn. 186, 251) ° Justini Historiæ Philippicæ, ed. Joannes Georgius Graevius et al., 4th edn., Leiden, 1701. Juvenal (Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis). Saturae / Satires. (National Characters 24 (with n. 8); Populousness 155 (with n. 218), 176 & nn. 42, 189, 218; Rise and Progress 32 & n. 15) ° Decimi Junii Juvenalis et A. Persii Flacci satyræ [ed. Usher Gahagan], London, 1744. Koran. (Standard of Taste 4) La Motte, Antoine Houdart De. Fables nouvelles / New Fables, 1st pub. 1719, other lifetime editions. (Avarice 5) ° Fables nouvelles . . . avec un discours sur la fable, Paris, 1719. Hume Library lists ‘Fables nouvelles. 12mo . . . Paris, 1719’ but, in the absence of any known copy of this 12mo, identifies Hume’s copy with some quartos of 1719 in the British Library. However, according to the translator of the fables, Robert Samber, the book was ‘first printed at Paris, in a beautiful Edition in Quarto, with fine Cuts, to each Fable, which presently went off, and was succeeded soon after by a Third Edition in Twelves, and is now being printed, I understand, at Amsterdam’ (Houdart de la Motte, One Hundred New Court Fables, xii). As Samber’s dedicatory letter is dated 1 Aug. 1720, this statement indicates that there was indeed a less expensive edition of 1719 in a size looking like 12o to follow up on the success of the quartos. Copies in small 8o to be found in the National Library of Scotland (ND.808.d.16) and the Bibliothèque Nationale could be the edition in question. “Lampridius, Aelius”. ‘Antoninus Heliogabalus’ / ‘Life of Antoninus Elagabalus’, in Historia Augusta / Augustan History. (Populousness, n. 114)

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Catalogue of Hume’s References

La Vega, Garcilaso de. Commentarios reales que tratan del origen de los Yncas / Royal Commentaries on the Origin of the Incas, 1st pub. 1609, subsequently expanded into Historia general de Peru / General History of Peru, 1st pub. 1617, posthumous editions. (Interest 16) Law,  John. The Present State of the French Revenues and Trade, and of the Controversy betwixt the Parliament of Paris and Mr Law, . . ., London, 1720, a compilation of (a) four tracts pub. 1st in Mercure de France (fév., mars, avril, mai, 1720), later known as ‘Lettres sur le nouveau système des finances’, (b) ‘Answer to the Remonstrances . . . by the Parliament . . .’, and (c) ‘Lettre au sujet de l’arrêt du conseil d’état du 22 mai 1720’. (Public Credit, variants 263.40) Lipsius,  Justus (  Joest Lips). Saturnalium sermonum libri duo / Saturnalian Con­ver­ sations, 1st pub. 1585, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Populousness, n. 31) Admiranda, sive De magnitudine Romana libri quattuor / Marvels, or On the Greatness of Rome, in Four Books, 1st edn. 1598, other lifetime editions. (Populousness, n. 193) Livy (Titus Livius). Ab urbe condita / From the Founding of the City (History of Rome). (Balance of Power, n. 8 & variants for 254.7; Balance of Trade, n. 10, 13; Commerce, n. 4; National Characters, n. 5; Parties in General, n. 1; Politics, nn. 8–9; Populousness 9 (variants for 283.11), nn. 58, 67, 80, 97, 167, 182, 185, 246) ° T.  Livii Patavini historiarum ab urbe condita libri qui supersunt omnes, ed. A[rnoldus] Drakenborch, 7 vols., Amsterdam, 1738–46. Locke, John. Two Treatises, 1st pub. 1690, other lifetime editions. (Original Contract 46 (with nn. 5–6); Parties of Great Britain, variants for 75.34) ° Two Treatises of Government, London, 1690. “Longinus”. Περὶ Ὕψους (Peri hupsous) / De sublimitate / On the Sublime. (Civil Liberty 4; Eloquence 6 & n. 5; Remarkable Customs 5) ° Dionysii Longini de sublimitate commentarius, ed. Zacharias Pearce, 3rd edn., Amsterdam, 1733. Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus). De bello civili (Pharsalia) / The Civil War. (Populousness, n. 46) ° M. Annæi Lucani Cordub Pharsalia sive belli civilis cum vita et testimoniis, 2 vols., London, 1751. Lucian. Τὰ πρὸς Κρόνον κτλ (Ta pros Kronon etc.) / Saturnalia. (Rise and Progress, n. 15) Μένιππος (Menippos) / Menippus. (Sceptic 48) Περὶ τῶν ἐπὶ μισθῷ συνόντων (Peri tōn epi misthōi sunontōn) / De mercede conductis / On Salaried Posts in Great Houses. (Populousness, n. 262; Rise and Progress, n. 15) Πλοῖον ἢ Εὐχαὶ (Ploion e Euchai) / Navigium seu Vota / The Ship or the Wishes. (Populousness, n. 167) Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus). De rerum natura / On the Nature of Things. (Epicurean, n. 2; Middle Station 9; Rise and Progress, n. 6; Simplicity and Refinement 6; Study of History 7) °† T.  Lucretii Cari de rerum natura libri sex, ed. Sigebert Havercamp, 2 vols., Leiden, 1725.

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Lysias. Κατὰ Ἀγοράτου (Kata Agoratou) / Contra Agoratum / Against Agoratus. (Populousness, n. 73) Ἀπολογία δωροδοκίας ἀπαράσημος (Apologia dōrodokias aparasēmos) / Apologia pro eo, qui muneribus corruptus ferebatur / Defence against a Charge of Taking Bribes. (Populousness, n. 88) Δήμου καταλύσεως ἀπολογία (Dēmou kataluseōs apologia) / De popularis status eversione / Defence against a Charge of Subverting the Democracy. (Populousness, nn. 71, 76, 88) Κατὰ Διογείτονος (Kata Diogeitonos) / Adversus Diogitonem / Against Diogeiton. (Populousness, n. 101) Ἐπιτάϕιος (Epitaphios) / Oratio funebris / Funeral Oration. (Populousness, n. 123) Κατὰ Ἐρατοσθένους (Kata Eratosthenous) / Contra Eratosthenem / Against Eratosthenes. (Populousness, nn. 73, 152) Περὶ τῆς Εὐάνδρου δοκιμασίας (Peri tēs Euandrou dokimasias) / De probatione Evandri / On the Scrutiny of Evandros. (Populousness, n. 88) Ὑπὲρ Μαντιθέου (Huper Mantitheou) / Pro Mantitheo / In Defence of Mantitheus. (Populousness, n. 73) Κατὰ Νικομάχου (Kata Nikomachou) / In Nicomachum / Against Nicomachus. (Populousness, nn. 76, 87) Περὶ τοῦ μὴ καταλῦσαι τὴν πάτριον πολιτείαν Ἀθήνησι (Peri tou mē katalusai tēn patrion politeian Athēnēsi) / Ne recepta reipublicae forma aboleatur / Against the Subversion of the Ancestral Constitution of Athens. (Populousness, nn. 135, 175) Κατὰ Φίλωνος (Kata Philōnos) / Contra Philonem / Against Philon. (Populousness, n. 88) †° Lysiæ orationes, ed. Iodoco Vander-Heidius, Hanover, 1615. The numbering of the orations in Hume’s citations is normally lower by one from that of modern editions; however, it is consistent with van der Heiden’s edition and other contemporary editions. Mably, Gabriel Bonnot. Observations sur les Grecs / Observations on the Greeks, 1st pub. 1749, other lifetime editions. (Populousness, variants for 315.10) ° Observations sur les Grecs (Geneva, 1749). Machiavelli, Niccolò. Clitia, posthumously pub. 1537. (Standard of Taste 31) Discorsi di . . . sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio / Discourses of . . . on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, posthumously pub. 1531. (Balance of Power, variants for 254.7; Perfect Commonwealth 5) Historie Fiorentine / The History of Florence, posthumously pub. 1532. (Politics, n. 7; Study of History 7) Il principe / The Prince, posthumously pub. 1532. (Civil Liberty 1; Politics 10–11 & n. 6) ° Opere, 4 vols., the Hague, ‘1726’. After the general title-pages for the set, vols. 1–2, 4, have title-pages dated 1725. Maillet, Benoît De. Description de l’Égypte / Description of Egypt, 1st pub. 1735, posthumous edition 1740. (Populousness 38, 165) Mandeville, Bernard. Fable of the Bees, orig. pub. as Grumbling Hive, 1705, expanded 1714, other lifetime editions. (Refinement in the Arts, n. 2) ° Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, . . ., 2nd edn., London, 1723.

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Catalogue of Hume’s References

Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis). Epigrammata / Epigrams. (Populousness 176 & nn. 18, 46; Simplicity and Refinement 10) °† Martialis epigrammaton libri xii, ed. Hadrianus Junius, Antwerp, 1568. Melon, Jean-François. Essai politique sur le commerce / Political Essay upon Commerce, 1st pub. 1734, other lifetime editions. (Commerce, n. 1; Money, n. 4; Public Credit, variants for 263.40) + Essai politique sur le commerce, ‘nouv.’ edn., n.p., 1736. See annotation for n. 1 in ‘Commerce’. Menander. See Stobaeus. (National Characters, n. 1) ° Menandri et Philemonis reliquiæ, ed. Hugo Grotius, trans. Jean LeClerc, Amsterdam, 1709. Miège, Guy. A Relation of Three Embassies from His Sacred Majestie Charles II to the Great Duke of Muscovie, the King of Sweden, and the King of Denmark, Performed by the Right Ho[nourable] the Earle of Carlisle in the Years 1663 & 1664, 1st pub. 1669, other lifetime editions. (Rise and Progress, n. 16) Milton, John. + Paradise Lost, issues of 1st edn. 1667–9. (Scotticisms) Pro populo Anglicano defensio / Defense of the People of England, 1st pub. 1651, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Middle Station 5) Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De. Essais / Essays, 1st version 1580, rev. 1588, again posthumously 1595. (Sceptic, n. 6) Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de. Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence / Considerations on the Causes of the Glory of the Romans and of Their Decline, 1st pub. 1734, other lifetime editions. (Parties in General, variants for 68.6) De l’esprit des lois / Spirit of the Laws, 1st pub. 1748, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Populousness, nn. 2, 256) Lettres persanes / Persian Letters, 1st pub. 1721, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Polygamy and Divorces, variants for 154.2; Populousness, n. 2) ° Lettres persanes, 2 vols., Cologne, 1730. Monumentum Ancyranum. See Augustus. More, Thomas. Utopia, 1st pub. 1516, other lifetime editions, posthumous English trans. (Perfect Commonwealth 4) ° De optimo reipublicæ statu, deque nova insula Utopia, Hanover, 1613. Morgan, Thomas. The Moral Philosopher, pub. 1737–40. (Rise and Progress 33) + ° The Moral Philosopher. In a Dialogue between Philalethes a Christian Deist, and Theophanes a Christian Jew . . ., vol. 1 of 3, London, 1737. Nepos, Cornelius. De viris illustribus / Lives of Famous Men. (Populousness, n. 20; Refinement in the Arts 11) ° Cornelius Nepos de vita excellentium imperatorum, ed. Nicolaus Courtin, 3rd edn., London, 1709. ° Cornelii Nepotis excellentium imperatorum vitæ [ed. Usher Gahagan], London, 1744. Olympiodorus of Thebes. History, summarized in Photius, Βιβλιοθήκη (Bibliothēkē) / Bibliotheca / Library. (Populousness, n. 193) Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). Amores. (Populousness, n. 8) Epistulae ex Ponto / Pontic Epistles. (Delicacy 5; Populousness, nn. 222, 230) Metamorphoses. (Tragedy 26)

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Tristia / Sorrows. (Populousness, nn. 222, 230) Fasti / Calendar. (Rise and Progress 8 (with n. 1)) ° P. Ovidii opera quæ extant, 5 vols., London, 1745. Paris-Duverney, Joseph (and/or François-Michel-Chrétien Deschamps?). Examen du livre intitulé Réflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce / Examination of the Book Entitled Political Reflections upon Finances and Commerce, only edition 1740. (Money, n. 4) + Examen du livre intitulé Réflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce, 2 vols., The Hague, 1740. Parnell, Thomas. ‘Hesiod, or, the Rise of Woman’, 1st pub. in Poems on Several Occasions, Published by Mr Pope, posthumous pub. ‘1722’ [1720], subsequent editions, repr. in Pope’s Miscellany Poems, 5th edn., 1726–7. (Polygamy and Divorces, variants for 155.34) Patru, Olivier. Plaidoyers / Pleadings, 1st pub. 1670, posthumous editions. (Eloquence, variants for 98.9) Pausanias. Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις (Hellados Periēgēsis) / Graeciae descriptio / Description of Greece. (Populousness, n. 181) Petrarch, Francesco. Canzioniere / Collected Lyrics, posthumously pub. 1470? (Standard of Taste 36) Petronius Arbiter. Satyricon. (Populousness 156 & n. 18; Refinement in the Arts 6) Phaedrus. Fabulae / Fables. (Rise and Progress, n. 6) ° Phædri . . . fabularum Æsopiarum libri quinque, ed. Pieter Burman, Leiden, 1727. Pindaric Scholiast. (Populousness, n. 164) “Plato”. Ἀλκιβιάδης α (Alkibiades i) / Alcibiades 1. (Public Credit, n. 2) Plato. Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους (Apologia Sōkratous) / Apologia Socratis / Apology. (Original Contract 47; Populousness, n. 134) Κρίτων (Kritōn) / Crito. (Original Contract 47; Populousness, n. 182) Νόμοι (Nomoi) / Leges / Laws. (Civil Liberty, n. 1) Πολιτεία (Politeia) / De republica / Republic. (Perfect Commonwealth 4; Populousness, n. 263) Συμπόσιον (Sumposion) / Convivium / Symposium. (Love and Marriage 6–8) Plautus, Titus Maccius (Marcus Accius Plautus). Stichus. (Populousness, n. 150) °M. A. Plauti comœdiæ, ed. J. F. Gronovius, ‘novissima’ edn., 2 vols., Amsterdam, 1684. Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secondus). Naturalis historia / Natural History. (Balance of Trade, n. 12; Money, n. 7; Parties in General, n. 3; Populousness 126 & nn. 15, 40, 46, 64, 130, 191, 193, 204, 209, 214, 255; Rise and Progress, n. 15; Tragedy, n. 3) † C. Plinii Secundi historiæ mundi libri xxxvii, Paris, 1543 (see the annotations for ‘Populousness’, nn. 15, 40, and 193). + Caii Plinii Secundi Naturalis Historiae libri XXXVII, ed. J. Harduinus (Paris 1685). Later editions 1723, 1741 (see the annotations for ‘Populousness’, n. 193). Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus). Epistulae / Letters. (Interest, nn. 3–4; Populousness, n. 191; Rise and Progress, nn. 5, 15) “Plutarch”. Vitae decem oratorum / Lives of the Ten Orators. (Remarkable Customs, n. 6)

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1196

Catalogue of Hume’s References

Plutarch. Βίοι (Bioi) / Vitae / Lives. Ἀλέξανδρος / ‘Alexander’. (Public Credit, n. 4; Rise and Progress 18; Study of History 1) Ἄρατος / ‘Aratus’. (Populousness 68) Βροῦτος / ‘Brutus’. (Moral Prejudices 2; Refinement in the Arts 6; Study of History 1) Γ. Καίσαρ / ‘Caesar’. (Populousness 128; Study of History 1) Κάτων / ‘Cato the Younger’. (Refinement in the Arts 6) Μάρκος Κάτων / ‘Cato Major’ / Cato the Elder. (Populousness 21, nn. 5, 28) Κικέρων / ‘Cicero’. (Eloquence 14) Δίων / ‘Dion’. (Populousness, n. 132) Γάϊος Μάριος / ‘Gaius Marius’. (Populousness, n. 247) Λυκοῦργος / ‘Lycurgus’. (Balance of Trade 25; Populousness, nn. 162, 177) Νικίας / ‘Nicias’. (Populousness, n. 136) Πελοπίδας / ‘Pelopidas’. (Remarkable Customs, n. 6) Πύρρος / ‘Pyrrhus’. (Refinement in the Arts 11) Σόλων / ‘Solon’. (Populousness 93) Θεμιστοκλῆς / ‘Themistocles’. (National Characters 12) Τιβέριος και Γάϊος Γραγχος / ‘Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus’. (Populousness, n. 45) Τιμολέων / ‘Timoleon’. (Populousness, n. 63) Τίτος Φλαμινῖνος / ‘Titus Flamininus’. (Rise and Progress, nn. 9–11) Ἠθικά (ēthika) / Moralia. Περὶ Ἴσιδος καὶ Ὀσίριδος (Peri Isidos kai Osiridis) / De Iside et Osiride / Isis and Osiris. (Rise and Progress, variants for 106.40) Περὶ τῆς Ἀλεχάνδρου τύχης ἤ ἀρετῆς (Peri tēs Alexandrou tuchēs ē aretēs) / De Alexandri Magni fortuna aut virtute / On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander. (Populousness, n. 78) Περὶ τῆς εἰς τὰ ἔγγονα ϕιλοστοργίας (Peri tēs eis ta eggona philostorgias) / De amore prolis / On Affection for Offspring. (Populousness, n. 52) Περὶ πολυπραγμοσύνης (Peri polupragmosunēs) / De curiositate / On Being a Busybody. (Balance of Trade, n. 1) Περὶ τῶν ἐκλελοιπότων χρηστηρίων (Peri tōn ekleloipotōn chrēstēriōn) / De defectu oraculorum / The Obsolescence of Oracles. (Populousness, nn. 257, 263) Περὶ ϕιλαδελϕίας (Peri philadelphias) / De fraterno amore / On Brotherly Love. (Moral Prejudices 3; Populousness, n. 50) Περὶ τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ θείου βραδέως τιμωρουμένων (Peri tōn hupo tou theiou bradeōs timōroumenōn) / De sera numinis vindicta or (in Hume) De his qui sero a numine puniuntur / On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance or (in Hume) Concerning Those Whose Punishment Is Delayed by the Deity. (Populousness, nn. 261, 263) Πῶς ἄν τις αἴσθοιτο ἐαυτοῦ προκόποντος επ’ἀρέτῃ (Pōs an tis aisthoito heautou prokopontos ep’aretēi) / Quomodo quis suos profectus in virtute sentire possit / How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue. (Money, n. 3)

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Catalogue of Hume’s References

1197

Polybius. Ἱστορίαι (Historiai) / Historiae / Histories. (Balance of Power, nn. 6–7, 9; Balance of Trade, n. 9; Independency of Parliament, n. 2; Commerce, n. 5; Money, n. 6; Original Contract, n. 1; Politics, nn. 5–6; Populousness, nn. 57, 67, 124, 158, 173–4, 178, 180, 212, 223, 231, 229, 258; Rise and Progress, n. 8) °† Polybii historiarum libri qui supersunt, ed. Jacobus Gronovius, trans. Isaac Casaubon, 3 vols., Amsterdam, 1670. Hume Lib. indicates only 2 vols., but the edition was also published as 3 vols. in 2. Pope, Alexander. ‘Eloisa to Abelard’, 1st pub. in Works of Alexander Pope [vol. 1], 1717, and independently, 1720, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Polygamy and Divorces 19) An Essay on Man, eps. 1–3, 1st pub. 1733, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Politics, n. 1; Sceptic 39; Simplicity and Refinement 6) The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, 1st pub. 1737, other lifetime and posthumous editions. (Perfect Commonwealth 70) Of the Use of Riches, an Epistle to the Right Honorable Allen Lord Bathurst, 1st pub. 1732 [1732 / 3], other lifetime editions. as well as inclusion in vol. 2 of Works, 1735, and subsequent editions. (Avarice 6) Prior, Matthew. ‘Alma: or, The Progress of the Mind’, 1st pub., along with Solomon, in Poems on Several Occasions [3rd edn.], 1718 [1718 / 19], which had numerous reprintings. See Burton, Life, 2: 501. (Essay Writing 2; Epicurean 6) Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus). Μεγίστη σύνταξις (Megistē suntaxis) / Almagest. (Sceptic 16) “Publius Victor”. De regionibus urbis Romae / On the Regions of the City of Rome. (Populousness 126 & n. 193) Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius. Institutio oratoria / The Orator’s Education. (Eloquence 6 & n. 4; National Characters 24; Simplicity and Refinement 11) Racine, Jean. Athalie, 1st pub. 1691, other lifetime editions. (Standard of Taste 35) Ralegh, Walter. History of the World, 1st pub. 1614, another lifetime edition. (Protestant Succession, variants for 357.39) Rapin-Thoyras, Paul. Histoire d’Angleterre / History of England, 1st pub. 1724–7 (some vols. posthumous). (Original Contract 39; Protestant Succession, variants for 357.39) Retz, Jean-François-Paul de Gondi, cardinal de. Mémoires / Memoirs, posthumously pub. 1717. (British Government, variants for 62.37; Eloquence, variants for 98.9; Perfect Commonwealth 53) ° Memoires, rev. edn. [ed. Jean Fréderic Bernard], 4 vols., Amsterdam, 1731. Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste. ‘Sonnet’ (‘Jadis Matelot renforcé, . . . .’). (Rise and Progress, n. 4) ° Œuvres diverses, ‘Nouvelle’ edn., 5 vols., Amsterdam (vols. 1–3) and London (vols. 4–5), 1734. See 2: 329 for the sonnet. Following the inventory of Baron Hume’s library, Hume Library lists this entry wrongly s.v. Rousseau, JeanJacques. But see Catalogue général, 157: 385–6, nos. 18, 13, for Œuvres diverses, vols. 1–3 (Amsterdam) and Supplément aux œuvres, 2 vols. (Londres). Rowe, Nicholas. Ambitious Stepmother, 1st pub. 1700, other lifetime editions. (Tragedy 24) Rufus, Quintus Curtius. See Curtius Rufus, Quintus.

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1198

Catalogue of Hume’s References

Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus). Bellum Catilinae / War with Catiline. (Civil Liberty 11; Populousness, n. 75 ; Refinement in the Arts 12; Rise and Progress 32) Historiae / Histories. (Populousness, n. 196) ° Caii Sallustii Crispi quæ extant [ed. Usher Gahagan], London, 1744. Scobell, Henry. Acts and Ordinances, only edition 1657–8. (Populousness, variants for 309.27) + A Collection of Acts and Ordinances of General Use Made in the Parliament . . ., 2 pts., London, 1657–8. Scriptores historiae Augustae (Historia Augusta) / Augustan History, a collection of lives, for which see entries s.v. purported authors Capitolinus, Lampridius, Spartianus, and Vopiscus. (Original Contract 43; Populousness, nn. 114, 176, 193, 208, 211) Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, the Elder. Controversiae (Populousness, n. 46) Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, the Younger. De ira / On Anger. (Populousness, n. 50) Ad Lucilium epistulae morales / Moral Epistles to Lucilius. (Populousness, nn. 12, 35, 191) De providentia / On Providence. (Populousness, n. 18) De tranquillitate animi / On Tranquillity of Mind. (Populousness, n. 81) Sextus Empiricus. Πυρρώνειοι ὑποτυπώσεις (Purrōneioi hupotupōseis) / Pyrrhoniae institutiones / Outlines of Pyrrhonism. (Populousness, n. 51) Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of. An Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit, 1st pub. 1699, rev. for inclusion in Characteristicks, 1st edn. 1711, posthumous editions. (Dignity or Meanness, variants for 84.1) ‘Miscellaneous Reflections . . .’, pub. as treatise 4 in Characteristicks, which in­corp­or­ated the works below. (Independency of Parliament, variants for 57.1) The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody . . ., 1st pub. 1709. (Rise and Progress, n. 14) Sensus Communis; an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in a Letter to a Friend, 1st pub. 1709. (Remarkable Customs, n. 10; Scotticisms) Soliloquy or Advice to an Author, 1st pub. 1710. (Civil Liberty, n. 2; Eloquence, variants for 98.9) ° Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 3rd edn., 3 vols., London, 1723. Shakespeare, William. The First Part of Henry the Fourth, pub. 1598, other lifetime editions. (Avarice 1) Othello, the Moor of Venice, posthumously pub. in differing versions in 1622 and the 1623 (i.e. 1st) folio. (Rise and Progress 46; Tragedy 13) Pericles, Prince of Tyre, pub. 1609, other lifetime editions, not included in the 1623 folio or in the collection, shown below, listed in Hume Library. (Rise and Progress 46) ° The Works of Shakespear, ed. Alexander Pope, 6 vols., London, 1723 (vols. 2–6), 1725 (vol. 1). Sheffield, John, duke of Buckingham. An Essay upon Satire, 1st publ. 1689. (Scotticisms) “Spartianus, Aelius”. ‘Severus’, in Historia Augusta / Augustan History. (Populousness, n. 193) Spectator, The. See Addison, Steele et al.

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1199

Spenser, Edmund. A View of the Present State of Ireland, posthumously pub. in Two Histories of Ireland, ed. James Ware, 1633. (Protestant Succession 3) + ° Works, ed. John Hughes, 6 vols., London, 1715. Hume cites A View of the Present State of Ireland, ‘p. 1537. Edit. 1706’, but there is no edition of that date, and the quotation is on 6: 1537 of the 1715 edition listed in Hume Library. Stanyan, Abraham. Account of Switzerland, 1st pub. 1714, posthumous editions. (Balance of Trade, n. 14; Perfect Commonwealth 35) ° An Account of Switzerland, London, 1714. Stobaeus, Johannes. Ἐκλογαί (Eklogai) / Anthologium (National Character, n. 1) Strabo. Γεωγραϕικά / Geographica / Geography. (National Characters, n. 3; Populousness, nn. 14, 21, 33, 117, 133, 137, 190, 204, 215, 221, 225, 230, 234, 236, 242, 250, 255, 260 & variants for 309.27; Public Credit, n. 5) See 18 February 1751, Letters, 1: 152–3. † Strabonis rerum geographicarum libri XVII, ed. [T. J. van Almeloveen from Isaac Casaubon et al.], 2 vols., Amsterdam, 1707. Suetonius Tranquillus, Gaius. De claris rhetoribus / On Rhetoricians. (Populousness, n. 9) De vita Caesarum / Lives of the Caesars. (Parties in General, n. 3; Politics, n. 3; Populousness, nn. 4, 15, 192, 198–201, 208, 253; Sceptic 34) “Suidas”. A 10th-century Greek lexicon, now commonly known as The Suda (ἡ  Σούδα / Hē Souda), but formerly referred to as ‘Suidas’ in the erroneous belief that this was the author’s name. (Eloquence n. 7; Populousness n. 255) Swift, Jonathan. An Answer to a Paper Called a Memorial of the Poor Inhabitants, Tradesmen, and Labourers of the Kingdom of Ireland, pub. 1728, then collected into vol. 4 of Works, Dublin, 1735, and subsequent editions. (Balance of Trade 37) Gulliver’s Travels, 1st pub. 1726, other lifetime and posthumous editions, including collection into Works, Dublin, 1735, and subsequent editions. (Populousness, n. 92) The ‘scatological’ poems, collected into Works, Dublin, 1735. (Rise and Progress, n. 6) 1. ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’, orig. pub. 1732 2. ‘A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed’, orig. pub. 1735, as were . . . 3. ‘Strephon and Chloe’ 4. ‘The Progress of Beauty’ 5. ‘Cassinus and Peter’ A Short View of the State of Ireland, pub. independently March 1727/8 and repr. as Intelligencer 15 for November 1728, collected into vol. 4 of Works, Dublin, 1735, and subsequent editions. (Balance of Trade 7) ° Hume Library lists ‘The Works of. 12 vols. 12mo . . . . Not Uniform. London, 1736’. Very likely this set pieced together Miscellanies [ed. Alexander Pope], 6 vols., London, 1736, with six more duodecimos, as described in an advt. quoted in Scouten and Teerink, Bibliography, 20. The ‘scatological’ poems are in vols. 4–5, the two pamphlets on Ireland in 6: 136–49. Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. Annales / Annals. (Middle Station 4; Money, n. 1; Original Contract, n. 2; Parties of Great Britain, n. 2; Politics, nn. 2, 4; Populousness, nn. 15–16, 30, 40, 64, 192, 259; Rise and Progress, n. 12) Dialogus de oratoribus / A Dialogue on Oratory. (National Characters 24)

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1200

Catalogue of Hume’s References

Germania / Germany. (Populousness, nn. 49, 233) Historiae / Histories. (Balance of Power 16; Liberty of the Press 3; Parties of Great Britain, n. 1; Populousness, n. 66; Public Credit, n. 6; Rise and Progress, n. 2; Walpole 2) Tasso, Torquato. Gierusalemme liberata / Jerusalem Delivered, 1st pub. 1580–1, other lifetime pubs. (probably Civil Liberty 5; Epicurean, n. 3) ° La Gierusalemme liberata [ed. Nicolo Francesco Haym], 2 vols., London, 1724. Tatler, The. See Addison, Steele et al. Temple, William. Memoirs, 1st pub. 1692, other lifetime editions. (Populousness, variants for 309.27) Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, 1st edn. 1673, other lifetime editions. (National Characters, n. 9; Taxes, n. 2) ° Memoirs of What Past in Christendom, from the War Begun 1672 to the Peace Concluded 1679, London, 1692. Terence (Publius Terentius Afer). Andria / The Woman of Andros. (Standard of Taste 31) Heauton timoroumenos / The Self-Tormenter. (Rise and Progress, n. 13) ° Terentii Comœdiæ sex [ed. Usher Gahagan], London, 1744. Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus). De anima / On the Soul. (Populousness, n. 255) Theocritus. Εἰδύλλια (Eidullia) / Idyllia / Idylls. (Populousness, n. 120) ° Theocriti quæ extant, London, 1729. Thucydides. Ἱστορίαι (Historiai) / Historiae / History. (Balance of Power, nn. 2, 4; Balance of Trade, n. 6; Commerce, n. 2; Politics, n. 6; Populousness 66 (with n. 77), 98, & nn. 56, 61, 109, 136, 141–2, 144, 155, 161, 163, 165–6, 183; Sceptic 50) †‡ Thucydidis . . . de bello Peloponnesiaco libri octo, ed. H. Stephanus, Frankfurt, 1594. Thurloe, John. State Papers, posthumous pub. 1742. (Populousness, variants for 309.27, n.) + A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, . . ., ed. Thomas Birch, 7 vols., London, 1742. Tournefort, Joseph Pitton De. Relation d’un voyage du Levant / Account of a Voyage into the Levant, posthumously pub. 1717, other editions. (Polygamy and Divorces 13; Populousness 159) ‘Twelve Tables’. [fragmentary code of early Roman law] in M. H. Crawford, Roman Statutes, no. 40, ‘XII Tabulae’. (Parties in General, n. 3) Uztáriz, Don Gerónymo De. Théorica, y práctica de comercio, y de marina / Theory and Practice of Commerce and Marine Affairs, 1st pub. 1724, posthumous editions. (Populousness, n. 3) Valerius Maximus. Facta et dicta memorabilia / Memorable Doings and Sayings. (Populousness, n. 191) Varro, Marcus Terentius. De re rustica / On Agriculture. (Populousness 32 & nn. 15, 32, 37–8, 41, 224, 253) ° Libri de re rustica, M.  Catonis . . ., M.  Terentii Varronis . . ., L.  Iunii Moderati Columellæ, . . . Palladii, Basle, 1535. Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, seigneur de. Projet d’une dixme royale / A Project for a Royal Tithe, two editions 1707, posthumous edition and Eng. trans. (Balance of Trade 18)

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Catalogue of Hume’s References

1201

Velleius Paterculus. Historiae Romanae / Compendium of Roman History. (Balance of Trade, n. 11; Populousness, nn. 129, 249) ° M. Velleius Paterculus, ed. G. J. Vossius, Amsterdam, 1664. Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro). Aeneis / Aeneid. (Sceptic 17) Georgica / Georgics. (Populousness, n. 252; Rise and Progress, variants for 113.21) ° Publius Virgilius Maro, Edinburgh, 1732. ° Publii Virgilii Maronis Opera [ed. Usher Gahagan], London, 1744. Vitruvius Pollio. De architectura / On Architecture. (Populousness, nn. 190, 192) Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet). La Henriade, 1st pub. 1728, other lifetime editions, orig. pub. as La Ligue, ou Henry le Grand, 1723. (Liberty of the Press 3) Merope, 1st pub. 1744, other lifetime editions. (Dedication to Home 5) “Vopiscus, Flavius”. ‘Divus Aurelianus’ / ‘The Deified Aurelian’, in Historia Augusta / Augustan History. (Populousness, nn. 176, 193, 208, 211) Vossius, Isaac (Isaac Vos). Observationes variæ / Divers Observations, 1st pub. 1685, at least one posthumous edition. (Populousness 3, 135 & nn. 146, 193) Wallace, Robert. + A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in Antient and Modern Times . . ., Edinburgh, 1753, only lifetime edition. (Populousness, variants for 279.0) Waller, Edmund. See s.v. ‘Atterbury’. Whitelocke, Bulstrode. Memorials of the English Affairs: or, an Historical Account of What Passed from the Beginning of the Reign of King Charles the First, to King Charles the Second His Happy Restaruration, posthumously pub. 1682, rev. 1732. (Populousness, variants for 309.27 n.) “Xenophon”. Ἀθηναίων πολιτεία (Athēnaiōn politeia) / De republica Atheniensium / Constitution of the Athenians. (Populousness, n. 148) Xenophon. Ἱέρων (Hierōn) / Hiero. (Civil Liberty, n. 1) Κύρου ἀνάβασις (Kurou anabasis) / Expeditio Cyri / Anabasis (Politics, n. 6; Populousness, nn. 54, 115, 229) Κύρου παιδεία (Kurou paideia) / Cyropaedia / Education of Cyrus. (Balance of Power 1; Politics, n. 6) Λακεδαιμονίων πολιτεία (Lakedaimoniōn politeia) / De republica Lacedaemoniorum / Constitution of the Lacedaemonians. (Populousness, n. 177) Ἀπομνημονεύματα (Apomnēmoneumata) / Memorabilia. (Populousness, n. 143) Ἑλληνικά (Hellēnika) / Hellenica / History of Greece. (Balance of Power, n. 3; Politics, n. 6; Populousness, nn. 171–2) Οἰκονομικός (Oikonomikos) / Oeconomicus / On Estate Management. (Populousness 26 & n. 112) Πόροι ἢ Περὶ προσόδων (Poroi ē Peri prosodōn) / De vectigalibus (De ratione redituum) / Ways and Means. (Civil Liberty, n. 5; Populousness, nn. 34, 145, 156, 159) Συμπόσιον (Sumposion) / Symposium (Convivium) / Symposium (= Banquet). (Populousness 70 (with n. 86); Rise and Progress 42) † Xenophontis . . . quae extant opera, ed. J. Leunclavius, 2 vols. in 1, Paris, 1625. In the citation to the Banquet at ‘Populousness’, n. 86, Hume indicates ‘Pag. 885. ex edit. Leunclav.’, but the passage quoted is on page 885 of the 1625 Paris folio and also page 885 of Quae exstant opera, 2 vols. in 1, ed. Aemilius Portus, trans. Ioannis Leunclavius, Francofurti, 1596, 1594. Which among several Leunclavius folios Hume used is unknown.

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R EF E R E N C E LIS T This list is a key to the editors’ short-title citations in ‘A History of Hume’s Essays’, the record found in ‘European Book Translations of the Essays’, and the ‘Editors’ Annotations’. For a list of works specifically cited or alluded to by Hume, see the Catalogue of Hume’s References. As this list is a key to citations rather than an enumerative bibliography, items mentioned by the editors and not actually cited by passage might not be included. With few exceptions citations are to an author’s name and a short title ­corresponding to the relevant title in this reference list. Normally items will be found in the reference list under authors’ names, but when authorship is problematic, items are alphabetized under titles, as with periodicals like the Craftsman. Works with an institutional author, like the Ministère de l’Education Nationale, and those with anonymous authors are alphabetized by title rather than author where titles are available. Pseudonymous, spurious, or dubiously attributed works for whom authorship is unknown or uncertain are alphabetized under the ­pseudonym or traditional attribution, which is given in double quotation marks (e.g. “Longinus”). All books from the Loeb Classical Library, which serves as our standard for division numbers and titles for classical works, are published by Harvard University Press and, formerly, in London by William Heinemann. Loeb volumes are now available online. When a number of titles belong to a collected set, as sometimes is the case with the Loeb volumes, individual titles might be cross-referenced to an omnibus entry for the whole set (e.g. the entries for Demosthenes). º = a work listed in Hume Library + = a work identifiable as Hume’s source Act for the Encouragement of Learning, in Anno regni Annæ reginæ magnae Britanniæ, Franciæ, & Hiberniæ octavo [London, 1710], 261–6. Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes, 12 vols. (Edinburgh, 1814–75). Adams, Colin, Land Transport in Roman Egypt: A Study of Economics and Administration in a Roman Province (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Adcock, Frank, and D. J. Mosley, Diplomacy in Ancient Greece (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975). Addison, Joseph, The Freeholder, ed. James Leheny (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979). ——The Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Addison, ed. A.  C.  Guthkelch, 2 vols. (London, 1914). ——°The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq. [ed. Thomas Tickell], 4 vols. (London, 1721).

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Reference List

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INDEX Pagination is continuous through the two volumes of this edition. Therefore volume numbers are not specified in the index. Normally titled peers and holders of courtesy titles are listed under the names by which they are best known: Bacon rather than Verulam, Shaftesbury rather than Cooper, Walpole rather than Orford. Spellings of persons, things, and places are normally those of currently standard forms with variants appearing in the essays given in parentheses: Hutcheson (Hutchinson), exchequer bills (chequer-­notes), Marseilles (Massalia). The reverse practice might be followed when more practical, as when Hume says ‘Andros’ incorrectly for Aradus and the two are not variant spellings of the same word. Indexing under the heading ‘Hume, David’ is necessarily restricted. A the ‘abdicated’ family: their claim on the throne  360 disqualified from rule  781, 1115–16 partisans of  341, 355 Roman Catholicism of  358–9, 361 see also Stuart, house of Abelard, Peter, and Eloisa  155, 868 absolutism, see absolute under monarchy abstruse philosophy and shallow thinkers 199–200 Cicero’s abstract philosophy discredited 192 in contrast with easy and obvious philosophy  408, 417, 422, 716–18 in contrast with literature  909 John Locke’s accurate and abstruse philosophy  408, 909 see also scepticism; speculative ideas and systems Abydos  296, 1012 Achaea 1068–9 Achaean League (Achaeans)  951, 1106, 1113

and the balance of power  254, 953 the freest and most perfect democracy of antiquity  337 population  314, 1068–9 support from the Ptolemies  253 see also under Athens; democracy; Greece, ancient Achaean War  953, 1069 Achaemenes (Achmaenes)  46, 751 ‘Achaicis’, see Description under Pausanias Achilles  182, 196, 900, 910, 911, 912 Adams, John  1145–6 Addison, Joseph  818 and allegory  729, 903 on arts and sciences and their flourishing  87n., 799, 801 on liberal arts  740 polite learning  716 and Cato  724, 839 climatic determinism  887 on duelling  839 as an easy and obvious philosopher  408, 717–18, 909 his elegant discourses on religion  5 on eloquence  819

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1272

Index

Addison, Joseph (cont.) and the ‘Golden Mean’  725 and Hume  409, 443–4, 730 on John Bunyan  902–3 literary criticism  859, 871, 874 balance of simplicity and refinement 871 characterizations of fine writing  157, 870 on good taste  901, 906 on Ovid  897–8 propriety of sentiments  839 on tragedy  718, 893, 897 on wit  869 on Londoners  882 a man of genius and capacity  13, 183–4 on manners and morals  722, 725, 733, 794, 873, 910 and mixed monarchy  826 as a model for early essays  409, 422, 728, 731, 734 periodical essays  409, 717 on politics  782, 783, 852, 981 as providing a concise definition of fine writing  157 on religion  5, 717, 786, 788, 792 and the Spectator  408–9, 720 Adorni faction  66, 772 Adrian, see Hadrian Adriatic 1033 Advertisements (in periodicals) of the 1741 Essays, Moral and Political  xxxi n. 4, 405–6, 410, 708 (in facsimile) the Advertisement in Essays, Moral and Political (1741 & 1742a)  417, 529, 708 the Advertisement in Essays, Moral and Political (1742b)  53 the Advertisement in the 1758 ETSS announcing a collected works  431, 530

the Advertisement in Three Essays, Moral and Political (1748)  529 Aegesta  299, 1021–2 Aegina: number of slaves in  312 n. 64, 1061 population 1106 Aeneas  139, 859, 1027 Aeschines 941 ambassador, with Demosthenes, to Philip of Macedon  293, 1007 on Athenians’ rash and imprudent enterprises  246 n. 7 on the banished and killed by the Thirty Tyrants  298, 1018 and the graphē paranomōn 274–5, 972, 973, 975 on interest rates in Athens  304, 1034 on laws necessary for democracy in Athens 274–5 and the prosecution of Demosthenes 1025 his spurious Letters  941 on three forms of government  748 on Timarchus and slaves in manufactures  311, 1056 Aeschylus 803 Aesculapius  65, 772, 987 Ætolians: the Aetolian League  835–6, 1068 number of, in bearing arms  314 the population of  314, 1068 their quarrel with Romans about the order of names  113 affection: and love between the sexes  114, 137 as a principle at the founding of governments 52 as underlying attachments to factions 67 Afranius, Lucius  988–9 quoted 283

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Index

Africa 1027 and Carthage  45, 749, 923 European trade with  225, 304, 307 the exporting of wine and oil into 304 oppression in, by Carthaginians  45 and the Portuguese  883 and Rome  254, 953, 984, 1010 sale of wine and oil into  304 slave-trade in  225, 291, 928, 987 ‘Turky in Africa’  1093 see also slavery Agamemnon 912 Agathocles  1017, 1025 assessments of  1022 cruelties of  298–9, 1021–2 Agelaus of Naupactus  254, 952 Agoratus 1015 agriculture 200–1 America as agriculturally unimproved  321, 1088 Columella on  285 n. 15, 289–90, 305, 327 n. 253, 990, 1037, 1101 discouraged by the corn-dole  327–8 in England  208 in Europe  321 in France  322, 330 in Germany, ancient  325, 1095 Horace on the decline of  991 in Italy, ancient  305, 320–1, 990–1 latifundia ruinous to agriculture  295 n. 64, 1010 in Rome, ancient  990–2 as a science and an art  204, 208 Seneca the Elder on the decline of  290, 1001 slavery’s involvement in ancient Rome  290, 990 stimulated by manufactures  203–5, 214–15, 1037 Tacitus on the decay of, in Rome  285 n. 16 taxation of  91

1273

Varro on agriculture in Rome  991, 1101 Xenophon on  305, 1037 see also corn supply; also under wine Agrigentum  304, 1036, 1046, 1062 population of  307, 1040–1, 1064 Agur’s Prayer  11; see also under the Bible Ahmed III, Ottoman sultan  1133 Aix-la-Chapelle 1091 provincial capital  322 the treaty of  256, 943, 947, 954, 1136 Albinus, Clodius, his perceived right to a part of the Roman empire  344, 1118 Alcibiades, his advice given to Tissaphernes  253, 950 Alcinous 853 Alexander the Great  26, 46, 172, 950–1 the age of  309, 1046–7 and Alexandria  319, 959, 1083 the ambition of  863 Arrian on Persians and  752–3 his attack on Thebes  313 n. 170, 1064 conquests of  143, 832, 861, 1049 and the decline of eloquence  799 effects in Greece of the  87, 172, 309, 313 n. 170 inimical to the arts and sciences  87, 800 Machiavelli on  45–6 and Persia  751–3 Diodorus Siculus on Alexander’s ordering exiles restored in cities 299 fame of  112 the great circuit of Alexandria drawn by Alexander  319 n. 204 his leading the Greeks into Persia 172

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1274

Index

Alexander the Great (cont.) Machiavelli on political truths and  45–6 n. 6 his marriage of 80 captains to Persian women  46 n. 6 and the restoration of exiles  299, 1023 his successors  46, 247, 253, 344, 752, 950–1 and treasure seized by  262, 965 and Tyre  303, 1032 his weaknesses  107, 827 Alexander  VI, Pope 773–4 Alexandria 1049 administration of  1105 a centre of commerce  258, 959 dimensions and population  310, 318–19, 1082–6, 1089 its founding by Alexander  319 n. 204 a great city of the ancient world  310 as a provincial capital  322, 1089 see also Alexander the Great; Egypt; populousness calculations for ancient nations Algerine rovers  203, 915 alienation, statutes of  102, 357, 822, 1133 Allais, Denis Vairasse d’  865 allegory, see fable and allegory ambassador from the dominions of learning (Hume as)  4 ambition: appropriate restraints of  48, 57–9, 62, 66, 142, 201 cruel factions arising from  70 imprudent forms of  349 in inferior magistrates  371 in the middle station of life  12 peasants’ lack of  230 the pleasures of  209 its power to overcome other passions  26, 31, 275

in priests and ecclesiastical parties  72, 163 n. 2 a prime mover in public transactions 92 in Roman expansions of empire  254 America: as agriculturally unimproved  321, 1088 and the balance of trade  939 climate of  323–4, 1092 mines and the increase of industry in Europe 220 the œconomy and climate of Britain’s colonies in  321, 323–4 paper money in  939 slavery in  282, 311, 928, 1056 and the world money supply  220–1, 240, 926, 927–8 Ammianus Marcellinus  1083–4 cited on the circuit of Alexandria  319 n. 204 Amsterdam  88, 372 a centre of commerce  89, 248, 1037 interest rates in  228, 929 Anabaptists  79, 786, 787, 789 Anacharsis  220, 926, 1094 Anatolia 1093 Ancients, the: on the balance of power  252–3, 254–5, 948–51, 953–4 brigandage in  296, 1013, 1101 their customs versus those of the Moderns 291–2 freedom and the arts in  87, 799–80 the hoarding of treasure by  940, 941–2, 965 infanticide in  291–2, 1004 manners and morals of  281–92 legacy hunting  292, 1005–6 simplicity of manners  194, 909–10, 915

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Index

unfavourable to populousness 297–303 want of civility  112–13, 115, 832–7 massacres by  297–9, 1012–23 republics in almost perpetual and destructive wars  295 tyrannicide  348, 1122–3 warfare bloodier than modern  295–7, 1011–13 androgynes  23–4, 73 Andros (Aradus), a centre of commerce  258, 960 animals (non-human): affection between the sexes, in many species  114, 116, 137 as brute-creatures  94, 116, 125 comparison to humans in thought and affection  82–3, 137 the courageous always carnivorous 170 the creatures that inhabit only unpeopled forests  315 friendship and mutual sympathy in 114 humans’ attitudes towards  81 sagacity in  83 transmission to progeny in the races of (species of)  172 the use of horns to call swine herds (Polybius reports)  320 Anglo-Saxons, their government  1129 Angria, Kanhoji  333, 1110 Angria, Tulagee  1110 Anne, queen of Great Britain  1127, 1136 her augmentation of the House of Lords 1147 and the Church of England  781 government of  765, 770, 782 and the Protestant succession  356, 755 Anthony, see Antonius, Marcus

1275

Antidorus, in Demosthenes’s account 303 Antigonus  I, his ambition a threat to successors of Alexander 253, 827, 951 Antioch 1049 dimensions and population  310, 318, 1082 provincial capital  322, 1089 Antiochus I  46, 752 Antiochus III  254, 952, 953 Antiochus IV  779 Antipater the Cyrenaic (Cyreniac)  145, 862 Antipater, Macedonian statesman  302, 1029, 1068 antiquity hypothesized more populous than modern times  280 Antonines, the  328, 1105 Antonius, Gaius  302, 1028 Antonius, Marcus  294, 1008, 1013 against the senatorial party  277, 979 defeated at Actium  836, 1127 proscriptions 748 second triumvirate  302, 754, 1028, 1043 Antony, see Antonius, Marcus Antwerp: a centre of commerce  89 a centre of politeness  88, 802 apathy 128 Apelles  178, 1134 Appian: his account of the treasure of the Ptolemies 247 his apparent ignorance of Cicero’s epistles  307 n. 115 on the bloody and frightful side of Roman civil wars  301 on Caesar’s butchering all of Cato’s senate  297 n. 74 and Cicero  307

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1276

Index

Appian (cont.) on the comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa  276–7, 979 his figures indicating an incredible population of Gaul  308, 325, 1043–4, 1096, 1100 on the Greeks’ fury when their cities were besieged  296 n. 67, 1013 Hume’s judgement of  301, 1027 on Julius Caesar’s killing a million Gauls and taking a million prisoners 308 on numbers of Roman slaves  290, 1001 on pay to the centurions by Mark Antony and the triumvirate 294 on the reason for an increase of slaves in Italy  290, 1001 on the Roman civil wars  1008, 1015 on the treasure of the Ptolemies  247, 942 approbation: as critical for understanding the standard of taste  183, 185, 188 degrees of  193 general principles of  185–7, 191, 193 and the language of morals  182–3 qualities of the mind of persons that bring forth  84, 341 a sentiment underlying judgements of the beautiful and amiable 137–8 as sentiments from the structure of the human mind  138, 185, 188, 195 of virtue in Machiavelli  28 see also beauty; delicacy; standard of taste; taste, the nature and delicacy of a priori reasoning, see under reason; and under Hume, David

Aquinas, Thomas, see Thomas Aquinas, St Arabs, Arabic language, and Arabian notation  18, 182, 220 Aradus, see Andros Aratus and the Achæans  253, 951 Arbuthnot, Charles  921 Arbuthnot, Dr. John  965 on Alexandria  959 and climatic determinism  878 on comparative values of ancient money  247, 924, 941–3, 1062, 1080 and Hume  1030 on the Phoenicians and the Dutch 958 Arcadia  299, 314, 1065 Arcadian Confederacy  1020, 1066 the forests and pastoral landscapes of  159, 873 massacres and banishments in  299 n. 84, 1020 Polybius on the cold climate in  323, 1091 Polybius on the size of cities in  314, 1066 Archimedes  163, 879 British Archimedeses and doing honour to one’s country  98, 818 Argens, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’  867 Argos  298, 1018 the banishment of persons for killing 1200 nobles  298, 299 n. 84, 1018–19 population of  310, 1048, 1063–4 stasis in  299, 1018–19 Argyll, Archibald Campbell, 3rd duke of 424 and the aftermath of the ’45 uprising  423–4, 1132

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Index

and suffrage  1143 as Whig manager for Scotland  726, 766, 1132 Argyll, John Campbell, 2nd duke of  726, 812 Ariosto, Ludovico  88, 801 a genius  14 an irregular poet who pleases  184 his Orlando furioso  837–8, 904 Aristides, Publius Aelius: his oration on Rome and assessment of the size of Rome  316 n. 84, 1072–3 quoted  328 n. 255, 1104 aristocracy: ancient  302–3, 1029–30 the best form of  43 consolidated contrasted with composite authority  42–3 in contemporary Europe  303 Dutch burgo-masters as an aristocracy 371–2 as an estate in monarchies and republics  111, 167, 303 French 91 mediates crown and people  267 its place in the Roman legislative hierarchy 276–7 Polish and Venetian, how different in 42–3 as stable but oppressive  373 and Venetian government  42–3, 47, 89, 213, 370, 747 whether Persia had an  46 n. 6, 750–3 see also authority, political; democracy; government; republics (and republicanism); Rome, ancient; Venice and Venetians Aristophanes: on the alleged misogyny of Euripides 865

1277

on debt  1034–5 on love  731 on population  1051 on slaves speaking barbarous languages  287 n. 25, 994–5 on the population of Athens  1051 quoted 287 Aristotle  415, 771 and the Athenian Constitution  974 and the doctrine of the mean (Hume’s ‘mediocrity’)  725, 871 on effects of climate  878, 887 the climate of Gaul  323 on figures of speech  816 on forms of government  748, 770–1 on friendship, in his ethics  321 on the Gauls’ negligence of women  171 n. 10, 890 on imitation  894 on keeping to the issue  815 on the middling rank  921 and mixed government  764 and the mutability of philosophical theories  192, 909 on novelty  895 on ostracism  950 on the Piraeus  882 his place in the histories of philosophy and science  192 on poetic diction  871 on the priority of truth over friendship 730 on the probable in poetry  893 quoted  321 n. 213 on the rule of law  806 and Scholasticism  828 on slaves and slavery in his Politics  287, 312 n. 164, 994, 1061 his threefold division of oratory  815 on tragedy  893, 1133

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1278

Index

Aristotle (cont.) on tyranny as a corruption of monarchy 785 on the ungenerated nature of the world 983 viable population of a polis  321, 1088 Armenians in the east  166, 882, 883 Arminians of the Louvestein faction, esteemed heretics  72, 779–80 Armstrong, John  420, 729–30, 985 Arrian (Lucius Flavius Arrianus): on Alexander and Persians  752–3 Hume’s judgement of  112 n. 5, 832 on Persian nobility  46 n. 6, 751, 752 on Persian treasure  262, 965 quoted  46 n. 6 on Tyre  303, 1032 Artaxerxes II of Persia  172, 752, 891, 919, 1007 Artaxerxes III Ochus of Persia  46 n. 6, 752 artificial happiness  119 artisans  207, 231; see also arts; arts and sciences; music; painting; poetry; sculpture arts: as cultivated tastes for the polite  36 the fine and the finer  87, 178, 191, 201 in Florence and Rome (sculpture, painting, music, poetry)  87 general rules of the  185 the liberal  13, 36, 98, 110, 142, 211 the mechanical  203, 210 the nature and history of  101ff. the nobler, and the delicacy of passion in  36 the practical  65 progress in as favourable to liberty 214 the refined  102, 106, 110, 211

the sublime arts of poetry and eloquence 104 universal admiration of some works of the  185 when first in decline in ancient Greece 87 see also arts and sciences arts and sciences: and absolute governments  87–8, 799–802 as arising exclusively in free nations  87, 87 n. 2, 103, 106–7, 109, 799–804 the conditions of their flourishing  87, 89–90 in Greece and Rome  87, 827–8, 799–80 history of, with a caution in assigning causes  102 the influence of useful inventions in 65 their near perfection in France  88 in the north and south  167–70 the perfection and decline of  87–90, 116–18, 279, 800–1, 840 the polite  111, 116 the rise and progress of  101ff., 102–3, 109, 116 their softening and humanizing character  36, 142, 739–40 see also artisans; arts; emotion; free governments; liberal arts; music; painting; poetry; sciences; sculpture; theatre; tragedy Asconius Pedianus, Quintus  806 Asiatic style  875 Asia Minor  285, 324, 990, 1003, 1013, 1033, 1093 Athenaeus  865, 933, 1036, 1062 and Aeginetan slave numbers  312 n. 164, 1061 on Athenian flattery  956

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Index

and Athenian slave numbers  310–13, 1049–61 and Corinthian slave numbers  1061 and the depopulation of Egypt  328 n. 255, 1105 on the Gauls  890 on the Persians  891 and the population of Athens  310, 312, 1049–50 on Roman slavery  996 Athenio  290, 1002 Athens: armed forces of  201–2, 914 pay for soldiers in the  1008 Athenians’ desire to preserve the balance of power  252 and Attica  312–13, 1062 and the balance of power  252, 256–7, 948–9 battle of Chaeronea  252, 973 centre of commerce  258, 303, 959, 960, 1032, 1033 character of Athenians  164, 165, 171, 881, 882, 890 civil liberty and free government in  89, 804 the different characters of Thebes and 165 dimensions of  311, 314, 315, 1053, 1054, 1066, 1067 economy of: confiscation of property  299–300, 1023 finances  246, 941, 964, 976, 1058 interest rates  91, 303–4, 808, 930, 1033–5 private wealth  312, 1058–9 eloquence in  97, 815, 816, 875 Attic  99, 820 the deliberative kind  95–6, 815 Demosthenes, see Demosthenes funeral speeches  1042 Pericles  99, 820–1

1279 relish for  93 empire of  336–7, 1113 its festivals  312, 1959 the fortune of more than 10,000 talents collected in  246 government: democracy  1014; abolition of  302–3 1029, 1030; the Amnesty of 403/2 bc 297, 1014–15; Assembly and Council  273–5, 972, 975, 1052; and demagoguery  743; development of  1026, 1029; laws necessary for democracy in  274–5; the most extensive democracy, yet few could vote 336–7; tumultuous 47, 274–5, 302–3, 753; women, slaves and strangers unable to vote  336, 1113 kings  300, 1026 a great trading city in the ancient world 303 Hellenistic  956, 1174–5 importation of corn in  304, 313, 1062–3 law courts  275, 300, 972, 976 and the Areopagus  95, 815 laws: attainders  977, 1028 creating a ban on exports  237, 933 entrenchment clauses  275, 976 graphē paranomōn  273–5, 973 of infanticide  291, 1005 on marriage  150, 154, 865, 868 liturgies  300, 972, 1023–4, 1025 metics (strangers)  300, 310–11, 1013–14, 1024–5, 1050, 1057 excluded from the democracy in 336 navigation  304, 1036

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1280

Index

Athens (cont.) oligarchical revolution  275, 975 ostracism in  253, 950 Peloponnesian War  313, 941, 1054, 1057 and the balance of power  252, 313 economic effects of  964 Persian (Median) Wars  246, 813, 1032 and Philip II of Macedon  817, 1007 the plague of  147, 984 population of  310–13, 1018, 1048, 1051, 1062, 1063–4 adult male citizens  914, 1032 census of Athens  310, 1049–50 Hume’s arithmetic regarding 1060 non-citizens 313 and the Peloponnesian War  1052, 1061–2 population registers  1039 slavery in  286–7, 973, 994–5, 998, 1058 evidence of  283, 989 marriage rare among slaves  288–91, 997–8 number of slaves  310–14, 315, 318, 1051, 1052–9, 1081 slave manners  311, 1055–6 slave revolts  311, 1054–5 slaves excluded from voting in Athens 336 see also slavery and Sparta  948, 950 stasis in  297–300, 1013–15, 1016–17, 1018 sycophants in  237, 301, 933, 1016, 1028 the Thirty Tyrants in  298, 1014, 1016, 1018 Xenophon on the population of Athens 311–14

Xenophon’s report of a payment of  200% on debt in emergencies 91, 807 see also Achaean League (Achaeans); Æschines; democracy; Greece, ancient; tradingcities in the ancient world under trade attainder, bills of: and Francis Atterbury  302 n. 92, 762, 1027–8 and Bolingbroke  820, 1028 forbidden in Athens  275, 977, 1028 as obviating burdens of proof  1028 Attalus I of Pergamum  254, 953 Attalus II of Pergamum  291, 1004 Attalus III of Pergamum  953 Atterbury, Francis (bishop of Rochester): the attainder of  302 n. 92, 762, 1027–8 the ‘Atterbury Plot’  1136 on Edmund Waller  818 passive obedience and non-resistance 1122 and the querelle des anciens et des modernes 1172 Atticus, Titus Pomponius: his family and Cicero’s representation of him  112, 286 and slavery  286, 993 Augustus II of Poland (the Strong)  748, 802 Augustus II of Saxony and III of Poland 1139 Augustus, Roman emperor  754, 1091 age of  109, 317, 1079–80 compared to Camillus’s  202 cultural apogee  160, 169, 800, 875, 888 and the decay of Sicily  309, 1047 and the population of the city of Rome  317, 1079

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Index

Augustus an honorary name 1127 the authority established over his people  340, 352 and Cinna  754 and civil war  1008, 1028 and corn distribution  317–18, 318 n. 198, 991, 1079–82, 1102 and the decline of eloquence  87, 799–800 decline of Greek colonies in his time  309, 1047 family of  733 forced marriage for men during his reign  156, 869 government of  340–1, 748, 921, 1114 a usurpation  352, 992, 1127 in the provinces  44, 749 high taste and genius in his time  160 his hoarding of treasure  262, 966 and imperial succession  1114–15, 1117–18 learning and knowledge in his time 169 his legislation  156, 316, 869, 1005, 1072 his limits on the height of houses  316 n. 190 and population figures for the Roman empire  328 n. 255, 1105 his wars  327, 836, 925, 1100–1 a wise emperor  262 Aulnoy (Aunoy), Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, comtesse d’, her tale of miscommunication  153n., 867 Aurelian, Roman emperor  314, 317 n. 193, 320 n. 211, 1078 Aurelius Victor, Sextus  317 n. 193, 1072, 1078 Austria, house of  255, 361, 877, 987

1281

its bigotry  954 as a natural ally of England  361 authority, political: antecedently established  52 in the British constitution and history  62–3, 93, 277–8, 348–55, 358 in a civilized monarchy  110–11 its conflicts with liberty  55–6, 59, 63, 105–7 its conflicts with religious authority  56, 63, 69, 78–9; see also priests degrees of, from mild to absolute monarchy 45 delegation of, to inferior magistrates 104 in early human communities  103 essential division of, in small commonwealths 293 as essential to the very existence of liberty 56 from established practice  351–3 by a mixture of force and consent 56 in original-contract theory  333–43 in a perfect commonwealth  365, 367–8 taxation placing a limit on  261 under a nobility  42–3 under two distinct legislatures in a government, each with  275–7 see also constitution of under England; government under Great Britain; original contract authority of teachers, the need for supervision and checking  108 avarice: Antoine Houdart de la Motte’s fable about 31

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1282

Index

avarice (cont.) its appearance in different forms of government  110–11, 275 endemic to cold tempers  31, 735 in the male world  26 motivation by  205 the need to constrain it for public good  48, 57 as the spur of industry  89, 205 a stubborn passion  30–1, 735 a universal passion  102 as a vice  30–2 B Babylon  46, 310, 751 dimensions of  314, 1047, 1066, 1067 Bacchus  65, 122, 772, 845 Bacon, Sir Francis  65, 418, 772, 1122 on the ageing of the world  984 on arts and sciences  169, 740 on the balance of power  948 on effects of climate  169, 887–8, 889 on English prosperity  207, 916 on the happiest period of the world 1102 on Henry VII  822, 940 language and style of  88, 803–4 and philosophy  831 on slavery  987 on superstition  786 his wisdom  83, 795 balance of power: between polities  272 and the Achaean League  254, 953 ancients wrongly supposed ignorant of  252–7 in contrast with conflicts of emulation  252–3, 256–7 fully known in the present age  89 as understood by the ancients  252–5

see also universal empires or monarchies domestic  57–60, 364 and the balance of property  52–3 general laws in contrast with rule by fiat in  109 in Great Britain  52–3, 757–9 Harrington on property and power  61, 768 and the monarch  61 balance of trade: between China and Europe  240 defined 934 England’s  240, 247–8, 934 with France  241 in Great Britain  933, 944 jealousy of, in nations  4, 237–42, 247–8 Joshua Gee’s writings on, striking a universal panic  238, 934 measurement of  237–8, 934 and Oswald of Dunnikier  938, 981 in provinces of kingdoms  240–1 and Spain  239, 241, 251, 947 uncertain facts and suppositions about 237–9 see also commerce; commodities; foreign trade; merchants Balbinus, Roman emperor  317, 1078 Bangorian controversy  762, 784, 792; see also Hoadly, Benjamin; latitudinarians banks 940 advantages of  219–20 bank-credits 244–5 Bank of Amsterdam  220, 925 Bank of England  244, 925, 937 Bank of Ireland  925 Bank of Scotland  925 in Edinburgh  244–5 paper-credits, whether advantageous  219, 243 private bankers in Dublin  219

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Index

‘public’ in contrast with private  219–20, 925, 937 Royal Bank of Scotland  925, 939 see also merchants; money; paper-credit Barbary Coast  240, 251, 324, 915, 1093 Barbeyrac, Jean  1111, 1112 Barbon, Nicholas: on the balance of trade  932 on coinage  970 and Machiavelli  799 on the migration of arts and industry  945 Barclay, Robert  788 barons  357, 1133 rule of  352–3, 921, 1123, 1128, 1129 Bartoli, Pietro Santi, plans of ancient buildings  316, 1075 bashaws  104, 261, 825; see also cadis Batavi  166, 326, 884, 1100 Batavia  228, 929 Bayle, Pierre  720, 723, 862, 873, 971, 985 Beattie, James  442, 886 Beaufort, Louis de  951–2 beauty: different orders, degrees, and kinds of 189 diversity in sentiments of  137–40 as a dominant emotion  176 Euclid as unconcerned with the beauty of circles  139 freedom from prejudice required in judging of  189–90 general rules, principles, and models of 187–8 the genuine sentiment of  189 moral beauty  130 in paintings  37, 159 the perception of, by human minds 183ff.

1283

the role of experience in comparing different kinds of  189 rules of criticism, art, and beauty  184–7, 190–3 sceptical rejections of real beauty 183 as a sentiment of taste, not a factual judgement  137–9, 183 truth and falsehood unlike judgements of  138 see also approbation; delicacy; emotion; standard of taste; taste, the nature and delicacy of Belgae 1098 Belgium  326, 1089, 1097, 1098 belles-lettres  3–4, 716 Bellovaci  326, 1098 benevolence and beneficence: benevolent dispositions  19, 84 habitual practice of  143 hearts destitute of  209 human virtues of compared to the deity’s 134 in sexual relationships  114 in the true sage  130 Bentivoglio, Guido, Cardinal  170, 888–9 Bentley, Richard  1038 Berkeley, George  169 n. 7, 879, 888 against self-centered theories  718 on manners and morals  794 and passive obedience  1111, 1121 on political economy  922, 925, 987 on Shaftesbury  888 Berne, canton of  326, 1100 accumulated treasure  246 Bernoulli, Jean  1141 Bianchi faction  66, 772 Bible, the  860, 866–7, 911, 917 Agur’s prayer  11, 722 Hezekiah’s treasure  262, 965 bigotry  41, 182, 1013, 1137 decline of among sectaries  79

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1284

Index

bigotry (cont.) and the house of Austria  255 Hume on  410, 1126 and literature  195–6, 911 and monotheism  911 and persecution of Christians  69 n. 3, 776–7 of Philip II of Spain  1122 of Pierre Corneille  196, 911 bills of credit  939 bills of exchange  305, 1037 bills of mortality  318, 1077, 1181 bills of pains and penalties  755 and Francis Atterbury  1028 whether an attainder  1028 Bithynia  235, 932, 953 Black Sea  740, 960, 1003, 1062 climate  323, 1091 Blacklock, Thomas  737 and imitation  846 Blackstone, Sir William  805 severity of the laws  1029 Blackwall, Anthony  739, 818 Blackwell, Thomas  797 importance of climate  823–4, 841, 877–8, 886 Blair, Hugh  436 and church patronage  1144 on Corneille and Racine  872 his faulting of Seneca’s style  875 on literary history  724 romance in contrast with the novel 732 the Select Society  907 on simplicity of language  872 on simplicity of thought  870 on Thomas Parnell’s simplicity  874 on tragedy  893 Blewitt, George  917 Boccaccio (Boccace), Giovanni  147, 196, 863, 912 Boccalini, Traiano  949 Bodin, Jean  890

Boeotia  1013, 1020 Boileau [-Despréaux], Nicolas: a genius  14 on Homer  905 and Hume  905 and Olivier Patru  818 and the querelle  762–3, 1179 and satire  8, 794 and taste  737, 905 translation of Longinus  801, 905 on wit and fine writing  870 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 1st viscount 817 attainder of  820, 1028 Hume’s alluding to  820, 1132 Hume’s criticism of  410 his opposition to the court Whigs  763–4, 820, 1123 the Craftsman  409, 719, 754–5, 775, 1124 and parliamentary representation  1144, 1146 and partisan disputes between parties 49 repudiation of Tory doctrines by  411, 781, 1109, 1133 and the Treaty of Utrecht  946, 954 writings of  59 n. 1, 764, 766, 771, 781, 782–3, 949 and eloquence of  99 and Hume  409–11, 778 Bordeaux (Bourdeaux)  322 Borgia, Cesare  145, 333, 862, 1110 Bossu, René le  870 Boswell, James  407 and Donaldson v. Beckett  439 and Hume  777, 778, 803, 859–60 Bouhours, Dominique  720 on delicacy  906 on good sense  908 and taste  737 Boulainvilliers, Henri de  345 n. 4, 1118–19

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1285

Index

Bourbon, house of  86, 257, 345, 798, 826 Bourdaloue, Louis  818 Bourignon, Antoinette  717 Bowyer, William, the younger  429, 898 his printing ledgers  430 n. 98, 455, 470 nn. 25–7 Brahe, Tycho, his knowledge  161, 877 bribery  44, 59 n. 2, 267; see also bribery and corruption under elections; also corruption Bristol  317, 403, 758, 940 dimensions 1077 population 1081 Britain, ancient  151, 325, 866, 1046, 1095–6, 1129 in contrast with modern  167 British constitution, see the constitution in England and Great Britain Brittany 242 Brown, John  770, 777 Browning, John  1077, 1081 brute-creatures  94, 116, 12; see also animals, nonhuman Brutus, Decimus Junius  277, 979, 1172 Brutus, Lucius Junius  165, 881 Brutus, Marcus Junius  7, 27, 302, 732, 834, 1013 and the assassination of Caesar  7, 50, 719–20, 755, 1122–3 and Caesar  1015 and Cassius  1028 and Cato the Younger  846 Buckingham, John Sheffield, duke of  690, 693 Bunyan, John  729 contrasted with Addison  183–4 a modern classic  903 Burgundy 208 Burke, Edmund  421 and absolute government  807

and Hume  805, 898 and parties  777 quoted 903 Burnet, Gilbert (son of the bishop) 790 Burnet, Gilbert, bishop  783, 791, 792, 803, 818, 1144 on polygamy  865 Burnet, Thomas  983 Busiris  263, 966 Bussy-Rabutin, Roger, comte de  895 Bute, John Stuart, 3rd earl of  777 Butler, Joseph  851, 944 on compassion  852 his connection to Hume  415, 794 and moral distinctions  733, 900 against psychological hedonism  796 and the science of man  802 against self-centered theories of ethics 795–6 Byzantium  1007, 1094 as a centre of commerce  259, 960 C cadis  104, 825; see also bashaws Cadiz  221, 926 Caelius Rufus, Marcus  92, 811 Caesar, Gaius Julius  26, 768, 853, 1014, 1090–1 his account of the numbers slaughtered in his wars  309, 1044–5 the appellation ‘drunkard’ hurled at him by Cato  211 Appian’s report of his killing 1,000,000 Gauls  308–9, 309 n. 130 on the ancient Britons  866 his armed forces  171, 294, 880, 889, 924, 1008–9 assassination of  719–20, 755, 1122–3 and Brutus  732 and Catiline  1016

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1286

Index

Caesar, Gaius Julius (cont.) and Cato the Younger  211, 846, 852, 1015 on the character of the Gauls  167 and Cicero  96, 816 civil war  754, 1107 clemency of  297–8, 1015 corn distribution  318, 1081 on the Druids  1096 and Gaul  167, 308–9 n. 130, 326, 880, 884, 1043–5, 1090–1, 1096–1100 on Germany  325 as orator  92, 811 and Servilia, mother of Brutus  211 and Spain  327, 1003 and the subduing of the Roman republic 297 on Terence  872 time of  280, 985 treasure seized by, in Rome  262 ‘veni, vidi, vici’  983 and world population figures in his age 280 Calais 322 Caligula (Gaius) Roman emperor  1087 bad emperor  90 cruelty and inhumanity of  283–4 n., 989 and imperial succession  1115 Calvinistic clergy  72, 779 Calvus, Gaius Licinius  92, 99, 811, 820 Cambridge Platonists  792, 854, 855 Camden, William  949, 1130 Camillus, Lucius Furius  202, 914, 1002 Camisards (camisars)  79, 789 Campbell, John  1137 on the balance of power  947–8 Campus Martius  42, 747, 987 Canopus  319, 1084 Cantillon, Richard: distribution of populace  913

and the price-specie flow mechanism 935 slowly increased money supply a stimulant 926 Capet, Hugh  345 Capitolinus, Julius, see Scriptores Historiae Augustae Cappadocia 990 Caracalla, Roman emperor  317, 320, 1082, 1086 Carlisle, Charles Howard, 1st earl of  115 n. 16, 838 Carlyle, Alexander  1178 and church patronage  1144 Carmichael, Gershom  848, 1111 and natural law  1122 Carte, Thomas  770 Carteret, John, 2nd baron  811 Cartesian philosophy, its progress as checked by foreign criticism  107–8, 828 Carthage: and Agathocles  1021 and the balance of power  254–5, 953–4, 1137 centre of commerce  89, 218, 258, 303, 959 and early Roman piracy  203 n. 5, 915, 929 employment of mercenary forces  218, 749, 923 Hannibal as a great figure from  13, 723–4 Hiero’s assistance in protecting 254–5 labours under natural disadvantages 258 oppressive to provinces  45 population  303, 321, 1089 provincial capital  322, 1089 Punic language  862 Punic Wars  749, 953–4 Cassander  303, 1030

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Index

Castelani faction  66 n. 1, 773 Catholics and the Catholic Church, see priests; Roman-Catholic Church; Roman Catholics Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina)  89–90, 862 conspiracy of  211, 805, 1119 and Cicero  302, 817, 832, 979–80, 1028 as a villain  39, 97, 832–3, 1110 Cato the Elder  1100 and slaves  283, 287, 289 n. 35–6, 987–8, 995, 998–9 Cato the Younger  27, 113, 732, 834, 918 death 1015 patriotism  50, 755, 852–3 his rebuke of Caesar  211 Stoic sage  846 Catullus, Gaius Valerius: licentious language of  112 n. 6, 833 style of  159, 873–4 causation: caution in assigning causes in arts and sciences  102 in contrast to chance  101–3 the distinction between causes and concomitant effects  223, 227, 234 effects as holding proportion with their causes  228 the existence of requires the appearance of  165 general principles of  102 moral and physical causes  161–2, 165, 171, 208 see also causal connection and causation and domestic affairs under Hume, David Cavalier party  73, 74, 780 Cerceau, Jean Antoine du  909 Ceres  65, 772

1287

Cervantes, Miguel de  157, 161, 186, 871, 877, 906 Chaeronea, decisive battle of and cultural significance  252, 274, 800 Champagne  208, 392 chance, see under causation; also under Hume, David character traits in individuals and groups: affection for liberty  74 in cool and sedate persons  35 delicacy of passion  35 delicacy of taste  35 as drawn by comic writers  30 of the fair sex in ancient thought 116 in great philosophers  14 in great poets  14 lively passions of  35 as manifest in different professions 162 national characters  161, 164–73 oppression, levity, and artifice in rulers 41 in a rare and highly valued individual 191–2 a strong imagination as  81 of virtue  141–2 see also characters of; national characters; virtue(s) characters of: The Epicurean  119ff. The Platonist  132ff. The Sceptic  135ff. Sir Robert Walpole  15 The Stoic  125ff. Charles I of England  340, 351, 1114, 1122, 1123, 1125, 1126 arrogation of the legislative power  349, 1124 and the constitution  357–8, 746, 784, 1126, 1135

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1288

Index

Charles I of England (cont.) the Eikon Basilike 804 execution of  769, 780, 789, 896, 1135–6 and the Long Parliament  780 reign of  1146 and ship-money  980 and the Stuart succession  768, 1127, 1137 Charles II of England  61, 1025 and the constitution  74, 746 on Isaac Vossius  985 and the press  744, 745 reign of  1137 his Stop on the Exchequer  970 and the Stuart succession  360–1, 768, 781, 1127, 1137 Charles II of Spain  102, 345, 822, 867, 1100, 1119 Charles  V, Holy Roman Emperor 102, 822, 948, 954 Charles VII of France  13 Charles VIII of France  212, 919 Charles XII of Sweden  889, 1138, 1176 Charmides  299–300, 1023 Charon, in a fable  31, 736 Charpentier, François  762 Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1st baron  811–12, 820 his definition of the novel  732 and the New Style calendar  402 opposition to the court Whigs  755, 763, 1138 and parties  783 China: arts and sciences in  108, 829 excellence and defects in  108 foot-binding in  867 government of  830, 928 as despotic  830 pure monarchy but not absolute in  108 n. 3, 826, 1111

infanticide (exposing infants) in  292, 1005 internal commerce flourishing in  206 Jesuits in  830 little foreign trade in  206 manners and morals  830 money supply of  226 national character in  165, 168, 882 powers of the military and civil establishment 226 religion in  79, 791 its slow progress in the sciences  108 trade, internal flourishing in  206, 916 trade with Europe  240, 243, 935–6, 945 William Temple on  829, 830 Chios and Chians: centres of commerce and  259, 960 number of slaves  312, 1060 people of the Greek island of Chios  299 n. 84 stasis in  1019 Christian II of Denmark  779 Christianity  790, 860 alleged decline of  167, 770, 884–5 and the arts  179–80, 196, 911, 912 the Christian Era  1093 Christians and Jews punished by the Romans  93 n. 3 early use of speculative systems in  69 in English history  80, 783–4, 786, 789, 791, 1114 and Epicureanism  842 episcopal clergy as established  72–3 as an established religion  69–73, 107 the ‘fable of Christianity’  885 its history of splitting into new sects, divisions, and heresies  69–70, 80 and the incorruptibility of the world  983

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Index

Jesuits as tyrants of the people  80, 166 Levellers and other fanatics in England  79, 789, 879 Molinists, Jansenists, and French disputes 80 priests’ assumption of authority in  69, 78–80, 163 n. 2, 296 n. 17, 361 its principles often opposite to polite society’s 69 principles and disputes about  69–70 toleration and persecution in  69–70, 776, 911 treatment of Christians under the Romans  69 n. 3 zealous priests and the hatred of competing sects in  70 see also Calvinistic clergy; Church of England; enthusiasm; Jansenists; Molinists; Presbyterians; priests; the Protestant succession; Quakers; religion; Roman-Catholic Church; superstition Chubb, Thomas  1111 Church of England  786, 788, 885–6, 1139 convocations suspended  783 inferior clergy versus bishops  75–6, 783–5 latitudinarianism 792 Thirty-nine Articles  886 see also Bangorian controversy Churchill, Charles  869–70 Cibber, Colley  93, 812–13 Cicero, Marcus Tullius  843 his abstract philosophy discredited  192 age of  169 on amnesty  1014–15 on an archaic Roman law against new gods  775–6

1289 assassination of  44, 748, 1028 on Atticus  112, 834 his banishment  277 a British Cicero  98 and Caesar  96, 816 on captatio 908 and Catiline  302, 817, 979–80, 1028 on Cato the Younger  113, 834, 846 and Clodius  90, 277, 805, 980, 1028 his comments on Verres  44 on corn distribution at Rome  317, 1080 on Crassus  768 on deafness  145 and Demosthenes  93, 97, 810, 816–17 Diogenes the Cynic, a story about  8, 720 and disorders in the Roman Republic  90, 805 his eloquence: as charming to Caesar  96 in general  148, 864 Hume’s appreciation of  192, 909 the ideal orator  810 moral precepts and moralism in  148 n. 6 his orations against Verres  176, 179 his oratory more admired than his abstract philosophy  192 his pleadings for Milo  90 his pre-eminence in oratory  92, 97, 99, 810, 816 styles of oratory  160, 812, 814, 819, 820, 875 on great commercial centres  258–60 Hume’s early reading of  402, 847–8 and Hume’s philosophical characters 842

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1290

Index

Cicero, Marcus Tullius (cont.) and Herodotus as ‘the father of history’ 1039 as an historical source for Hume  307, 747, 1039–40 on history  733 on hostis as both stranger and enemy in early Latin  203 n. 5, 915 imperfect civility in his dialogues  112–13, 834 on interest rates  304, 1035 on legal evidence of slaves  283, 989 and liberty  799 on mixed government  58, 764 Olivetus’s edition of  811, 813 on optimates  777–8 his perorations  176, 894 on philosophical schools  831 and public taste  819 and Plutarch  1039–40 on the populousness of Spain  327, 1101 on provincial maladministration  44, 748 quoted  93, 94, 113, 145, 327, 811 his recall from exile by the comitia centuriata 277 his religious scepticism  587–8, 834 and salus populi suprema Lex 1122 self-praise  112, 832 on the simplicity of Roman law  95, 814 on Socrates  718 on Stoicism  145, 847, 850, 851, 852, 853, 860, 862 on the Stoic sage  848 his style  94, 97, 815, 819 and superstition  330, 787 on Syracuse  310, 1049 and Verres  44, 94, 304, 748, 813, 894, 1035 his wisdom  83, 795 Cilicia  285, 990, 1013

Cimbri  325, 1095 Cimon  311, 1054 Cincinnatus, Lucius Quinctius  316, 1073–4 Circassia  291, 1003 cities, size of and limits to greatness  321–2, 1088, 1089 civil liberty: absolute forms of government compared to  87ff., 103–5, 799 and arts and sciences  87–9, 103–6, 799–804, 824 and commerce  89 in Europe  294, 357, 1125 political enthusiasm and  79–80 superstition as an enemy of  79, 791 see also liberty civility  114–15, 322 and climate  208 and forms of government  111–12, 801 gallantry as a generous passion of  114–16 imperfect civility in Cicero’s dialogues  112–13, 834 marks of civility and incivility in countries  115 n. 15 progress and decline  27, 110 and the querelle 762–3 and religion  195, 761–2 and the Roman empire  328, 1103 as a valuable quality  111, 113, 115, 215 want of, in the ancient republics  112–13, 115, 162, 833–6 civilized ages, their nature and effects 212 civilized persons and the rank of most civilized 215 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, 1st earl of 1182 account of Charles I’s execution  179, 896

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Index

and reform of Parliament  1146 Clarke, Samuel  877, 899, 1111 Claudius, Roman emperor  776, 966, 1046 age of  160, 875 edict on slaves  282–3, 987 and imperial succession  1115 and Messalina  732–3 his suppression of Druids  69 n. 3, 776 Clearchus  46 n. 6, 752 Cleisthenes  1029, 1113 Cleomenes I of Sparta  1032 Cleomenes III of Sparta  253, 951 clergy, the established  69–70, 79 and the court party  72 in the Church of England  73, 75–6, 358 in the Church of Scotland  416, 419, 719, 778–9, 1139, 1144 loss of credit of  770 management of  766 subordinate to the state  367, 371 see also priests; superstition climate: climatic determinism  208, 877–8 colder in ancient times  322–4, 1090–3 limited effect on national character  163, 172 the Little Ice Age  1093 Clodius Pulcher, Publius  744 assassination of  90 battle with Milo  90, 805, 1028 and corn distribution  1102 his role in Cicero’s exile  277, 980, 1028 coalition of parties as an agreeable prospect 350ff. Cockburn, Patrick, and a partial deluge 983 Coetlogan, Dennis, and a partial deluge 983 coinage  925, 927, 930, 938, 940–1, 970, 1007

1291

Coke, Sir Edward  1126 Colchis (Colchus), a centre of commerce  258, 959–60 cold weather, severity in ancient times 322–3 Collins, Anthony  761–2 Colonnesi (Colonesi) faction  66, 772 Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus agriculture  289–90, 305, 327 n. 253, 1037 decay of  285 n. 15, 990, 1101 and climate  324, 1092 human fertility and human decay  279 n. 1, 984 industry, decay of  285 n. 15 interest rate in Rome  235 n. 2, 931 on slaves  283, 289, 290, 988, 999, 1000 comitia centuriata and comitia tributa, in opposition to each other  276–7, 977–80 commerce (trade): and absolute government  89 its advantages  201, 205–6 an affair of state  86–7 ancient  303–6, 1031–7 Carthage as a centre of  89, 218, 303 China’s flourishing in  206 centres of commerce  258–60, 303, 313, 959–60, 1031–2 and freedom  89, 804 Cicero on great centres of  258–60 and civil liberty  89 domestic industry and the foundation of foreign  250 extensive as causing diminished interest and profits  233 flourishing: from exchange of commodities 304 the role of free governments in  89–90

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1292

Index

commerce (trade) (cont.) foreign: increases domestic prosperity  205–6, 249–50 precedes manufactures  206 with France, affected by British jealousy and hatred  241 in Great Britain  218, 239, 241, 249, 251, 266 greatness of states without commerce in Sparta and early Rome 201–3 ignorance of, in Parliament  237 its increase of industry and frugality 232 and interest rates  229, 232–4 lenders and low interest in  232 manufacturers, husbandmen, and mechanic arts as basic to  200, 203 and money supply  221–36, 248, 922–3, 927 and national character  165, 167 oppression of the poor by the rich in 207–8 passions that should govern in  205, 241 private wealth and the greatness of states  200–1, 203–7 profits from  206, 219, 229, 232–3, 236, 264 progress of  89, 102 public credit’s effects on  263–6 the rise and progress of  102 and trade in Italy  248, 251 in wine  238, 241–2, 290, 304, 307 see also balance of trade; banks; corn supply; foreign trade; inequality; labour; liquor and wine; luxury; mines; money; merchants; papercredit; taxation; trading cities in the ancient world under trade

commodities: and agriculture as a science and an art  204, 208 in the ancient world  304–7 consumption of, its advantages  212 domestic 250–1 exportation of  237–9 foreign  206, 239, 242–3, 246–8, and interest  228–36 linens 943 manufacturing and mechanic arts  203–4, 328 n. 255 money and prices  218, 220–6, 239, 241 porcelain 945 porter beer  209, 917 prohibition of their exportation and its consequences  237 silks  945, 947 as the strength of a community  226 white paper  945 woolens 918 Commodus, Roman emperor  343–4, 1102, 1118 common life  3–4, 30, 88, 110, 146–7, 180 common sense in law, morals, and politics  95, 136, 183, 255, 311 n. 136, 347 commonwealth, see perfect commonwealth compassion: Aristides’s comment on  328 in the allegory in ‘Impudence and Modesty’ 21 arousing and supporting it in tragedies 174–9 beauty as rendering compassion delightful 176 Epictetus on the control of  8 honour and interest as steeling against 213 new directions of, created by sentiments of beauty  176 and the Sceptic  147

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Index

slavery as causing a loss of all sense of 283 sovereigns lacking in  270 and the Stoic sage  128 Condé, Louis I de Bourbon, prince de  890 Condé, Louis II de Bourbon, prince de  106, 826–7 Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de  887 Confucius and Confucianism  79, 108, 791 Congreve, William  818 on humour  734, 885 as tragedian  893 wit and refinement of  158, 873 consent, tacit, express, and popular  55, 337–40, 342, 345 n. 4; see also original contract Constantine I (the Great), Roman emperor  260, 962 Constantinople  153, 772, 840, 1082 population  321, 1089 and slavery  291, 1003 the constitution in England and Great Britain: absolute monarchy as the true euthanasia of  64 before the Civil Wars  73, 352–5 conceptions of, in court and country parties  50, 72 conditions of its legality and validity 354 dangers in dissolution of the monarchy 64 and parties of principle  71 party zealots as a problem under 49–50 political statements of ministers that undermine 48–50 powers, liberties, and legal controls for monarchs  348–9 proper balance between republican and monarchical parts  71–2, 358–9

1293

proper degree of court influence and parliamentary dependence  59–60 the roles of the House of Commons and the monarch  58, 64 sovereigns who have mistaken the nature of  357 see also the constitution of under England; and government under Great Britain constitutions, political  41–2, 47, 274–7, 281, 337–9, 352, 764–5, 767, 825–6 conversible world, the  3–6, 408, 716 women in  6 Cooper, Mary  420–1, 427 Copernican system of astronomy  138–9, 848, 858 Corcyra, stasis in  298–9, 1017, 1027 Corinth and Corinthians  1010 destruction of  953 massacre of 100 people in  299 n. 84 number of slaves  312 n. 164 population  1061, 1106 stasis in  299, 1019–20 Corinth, League of  1071 corn supply: Athenian worries and purchases  304, 313 n. 167 cost in shipping by sea  304 distribution of, in Rome  42, 317–18 famines increased by prohibiting exportation  237, 280 Greek policy on supply in modern times 330 in Italy’s agriculture  318, 327 money policy regarding prices and sales  222–4, 231, 241 n. 4 pernicious practices of importing 327 prohibition of exporting to prevent famines 237 public granaries as a richness  205

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1294

Index

corn supply (cont.) sales and exportation in France  222, 237, 330 superior value of, above other products 242 Corneille, Pierre, his character, poetry, assessments, and rank  840 bigotry of  196, 911 early productions of  117 his genius  14 and grandeur d’âme 897 and Jean Racine  5, 872 quoted  48 n. 10, 754 wit and refinement of  158, 873 Cornelius Nepos, on Atticus’s recruiting his household from slaves  286 n. 20 corpus juris civilis  292 n. 53, 296 corruption  726, 771, 921, 1143 antithetic to a free constitution  7, 213–14 elections swayed by  267 as a form of influence  59 as integral to the constitution  58–9, 214, 765–6 a supposed effect of luxury  62, 214 as a threat to the bonds of society and everything valuable  7 of true religion by superstition and enthusiasm 77 see also bribery; priests; religion Corsica  45, 750, 918, 1097 Cortes, Hernan  324, 1092 Cos (Coos), centre of commerce  259, 960 Cossacks (Cossacs)  257, 957 countries with policies favourable to having children  293–4 country party: as a coalition against Walpole  50, 409–10, 719, 809 conception and administration of the constitution 50

and the dependence of Parliament 59 and Dissenters  72, 75–6, 780 espousal of a free press  743 and genuine divisions in the British government 75 government of laws, not men  745 high church support of  783–4 and limited monarchy  372, 1124 mixed party of principle and interest  71–2, 75 more functional label than Whig party 781 not a faction according to Bolingbroke 778 its origin  777 Roundheads as a type of  73 as against standing armies  923, 1125 see also faction(s); parties (political); Tory party; Whig party courage: accompanied with discipline and martial skill  213 degrees of, in conquering nations  170 its enervation under tyrannical governments 46 the most precarious of national qualities 170–1 right measures of  59 Roman superiority in virtue and  92 Sir William Temple on  170 n. 9 in war and commanders  13, 55, 170, 325 court of competitors  367, 370 court party  761 conception and administration of the constitution 50 the established clergy as naturally aligned with  72 and the genuine divisions in the British government  75

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Index

as a ministerial party  50 a mixed party of both principle and interest  71–2, 75 and Parliament  59 see also faction(s); parties (political); Tory party; Whig party Covenanters in Scotland  79, 789–90 Cowley, Abraham  159, 871, 874 Craftsman, The: its appropriation of Hume’s essay  410–11, 709, 767, 769 attacks on Walpole in  408, 817 authorship of  409 on the balance of power  949 the Dissertation upon Parties 754–5, 766, 782–3, 820, 1109 facsimile of its reprinting of ‘British Government’ 709 on instructing MPs  758 on landed versus trading interests  775, 962 as a model for Hume  410, 715 opposition to the court Whigs  1124 on the pressing of seamen  980 on prime ministers  726 sedition and libel  744 Crassus, Lucius Licinius  814, 834 Crassus, Marcus Licinius  754, 1043 wealth of  62, 768 credit, see banks; commerce; merchants; paper-credit; public credit; public debt Critias  275, 975 criticism: Fontenelle’s excellence in his dissertation on pastorals  158 minute observations in  88 and the moral standard of the common sentiments of mankind 345 rules of, and rules of art and beauty  184–5, 187

1295

see also literary criticism under Dryden, John; under Addison, Joseph; under Dubos, J-B; under Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de; under Perrault, Charles Croats (Cravates)  257, 957 Cromwell, Oliver  792 his army  788, 1046 a character of  15 as despot  771 his plan of parliamentary representation deserving restoration  15, 372, 1146 as usurper  769, 791 crop management in England  208 Croton (Crotona)  307, 1040 Ctesicles  310, 1049, 1060 Ctesiphon  274, 973, 1025 cudgel-play  270, 970 Cumberland, Richard  1111 Cumberland, William Augustus, 1st duke of  1138 Curio, Gaius Scribonius, orator  92, 811 Curio, Gaius Scribonius, politician  1015 curiosity: and the love of knowledge  102 as powerfully attractive in the wise  211 its role in advances of knowledge 105–6 Curius Dentatus, Manius  295, 1002, 1010 Curtius Rufus, Quintus  262 n. 4, 319 n. 204, 891, 965, 1032, 1083 customs (social)  38, 47, 49, 86, 90–2, 96, 115 n. 15, 148, 194–6, 223, 227, 273ff. Cyprus, as a centre of commerce  258, 960

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1296

Index

Cyrene, stasis in  299, 1019 Cyrus the Great  252, 262, 293, 750–1, 965 Cyrus the Younger  172, 293, 752, 891, 1007 D Dacier, Anne  762–3, 904, 910 on Homer  905 Danaids  32, 736 Darius I (Darius Hystaspes) of Persia  46, 172, 751, 752, 891, 1007 Darius II of Persia  752 Darius III of Persia  751, 752 Datames, Persian general  213, 919 Davenant, Charles  808, 823, 913 and balance of power  948, 954 on the decline of Spain  932 and political arithmetic  1037–8 the population of London  990 universal empires  956, 1102–3 debt, public, see public debt Dedication to Rev. Mr. Hume (Home) in Four Dissertations 695–700 de la Vega, see Vega, Garcillasso de la de Verney, Pâris, on money policy  222 n. 4 de Witt, Johann  742, 1145 Defoe, Daniel  722 and China  830 on commerce  921, 937–8 description of Bristol  1077 on informers  933 and the Kentish petitioners  757 on the migration of arts and industry 945 and parliamentary representation 1144 and robbers  805 and Scots Toryism  784

on the size of London  1085 deists  79–80, 790, 791–2; see also  free-thinkers delicacy  97, 859–60 delicate sense of morals as fostering misanthropy 81 false delicacy  194 of imagination  185–6 of passion  35–7, 737 of sentiment  20, 139, 737, 859 of taste  35–7, 186–8, 738, 740, 843, 904–6 see also taste, the nature and delicacy of deluge, universal or partial  279, 983–4 Demetrius of Phaleron (Demetrius Phalereus) 1030 his census of Athens  310, 1049, 1051 Demetrius Poliorcetes  297, 313, 956, 1013, 1063 democracy: the Achaean League, the most perfect of antiquity  337 Æschines on laws necessary for Athenian 274–5 ancient  303, 336–7, 337, 1030, 1113 Athenian, tumultuous  274 the best form of  43, 337 during the shining age of Greece  299 n. 84 in the Dutch commonwealth  371–2 and elections  336 English government, a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and  167 in Florence, Rome, and Naples  42, 213 and the Levellers  789 licentious if without a representative 42 in the Roman republic  276 and the suffrage  302–3, 336–7, 1029–30, 1113

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Index

supposedly superb in Athens, yet only 10% of the population could vote  336–7 turbulence in small democracies  373 where some people have no representation  42, 336–7 see also aristocracy; government under Athens; original contract; republics (and republicanism) Democritus 902 Demosthenes: the Aldine edition of 1504:  977 ambassador, with Aeschines, to Philip of Macedon  293, 1007–8 on Athenian finances  246, 312, 941–2, 976–7, 1058–9 on Athenian purchases of corn  313 n. 167, 1062–3 his attractions as a pleader  93–4 on the balance of power  252, 949 celebrity of  93, 94, 812 and Cicero  93, 97, 810 On the Crown  973, 1025 defrauded of a large family fortune  287 Dionysius of Halicarnassus on  810 exemplary orator  97, 99 and graphē paranomōn  273–5, 976 as historical source  307 on the humanity of Athenian laws of slavery 286 on importation of corn  1062 interest rates in Athens  303, 1033–4 his liturgies  300 the memorable census mentioned by 246 oath on the heroes of Marathon 813 his opposition to Philip of Macedon as a topos in the 1730s  97, 817 pre-eminence of  810

1297

oration for the Megalopolitans  252 his orations the nearest to perfection  97, 99, 307 n. 115 pleading for himself  274, 300 n. 88, 973, 1025 and problems of slavery  283, 286–7, 311, 989, 994, 995, 1055, 1057 quoted 94 on ‘ship-money’  273–4, 972–3 style of  93–4, 815, 816, 819, 820 Denham, Sir John  785 Denmark  161, 325, 877, 987 and the origin of the Goths  1095 Dennis, John  734, 893 a severe moralist  918 on simplicity of thought  870 Descartes, René  829 animal spirits  844, 894 and the mutability of philosophical theories  192, 909 and Nicolas Malebranche  828 design, the argument from  134 Dickens, Charles  933 Dickson, William  886 Didius Julianus, Roman emperor  344, 1118 diffidence  19–21, 297 dignity or meanness of human nature 81ff. Dijon 322 Dio (Dion) Cassius  235 interest rates in Rome  931, 1035 Diodorus Siculus  950, 1019, 1026 abolition of democracy in Athens 1029–30 on Agathocles  1017, 1021–2 on Alexander’s ordering exiles restored in cities  299 on ancient Persians and Persian nobility  46, 752–3 on Athenian treasure and its dissipation  246, 941

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1298

Index

Diodorus Siculus (cont.) on the cartel between Demetrius Poliorcetes and Rhodians  297 on the climate of Gaul  322–3, 325, 1090 on the depopulation of the Roman Empire  331, 1045, 1108 on the dimensions of Alexandria  318–19, 1082, 1084 on Dionysius butchering 10,000 fellow-citizens 298–9 on drunkards and addiction to wine 171 his exaggerated population figures  307–10, 313–14, 326, 328 n. 255, 331, 1047–8, 1105 and the exchange of prisoners in Rhodes  297, 1013 on the fortune and ambition of Antigonus  253 n. 5, 950–1 on Heripidas’s killing 500 citizens of Heraclea 301 Hume’s edition of  816 judgement on, as a historian  307, 914, 1039 manners and morals of the Gauls  171, 890 on massacres during the shining age of Greece  299 n. 84, 301 on orators and the tastes of Athenians  97 n. 6 on the oratory of Gorgias  97 n. 6, 816 population of Aetolia  1068 population of Agrigentum  304, 307, 1036, 1040 population of Alexandria  319, 1084, 1085–6 population of ancient Greece  1009–10 population of Athens  1052

population of Egypt  307, 328, 1041–2, 1104 population of Gaul  325, 1096, 1100 population of Megalopolis  1050 population of Rhodes  1063, 1064 population of Rome and Italy  308, 1043 population of Sparta  1009 population of Sybaris  304, 307, 1036, 1040 population of Syracuse  309, 1045 population of Thebes  313, 1064 population of Tyre  303 n. 98, 1032, 1064 populousness of ancient Greece 1009–10 quoted 97 on the sale of wine and oil into Africa 304 on slave numbers in Sicily  1002 on the Spartans’ division of available lands  294 n. 61 on stasis and massacres  299, 1017–23 and the Thirty Tyrants’ murders and banishments  298, 1014, 1018 on Timoleon’s invitation to repeople the cities of Sicily  294 n. 62, 1009–10 on the treaty with Antipater and Athenians  302, 1029–30 Diogenes Laertius  307, 862, 865, 872 Diogenes the Cynic  8, 720, 794 Dion, Syracusan politician  163, 309, 1045, 1175 Dionysius I of Syracuse  914, 1037, 1045 his armed forces  202, 309, 1038–9, 1045 his massacres  298, 1017 as a tyrant  304, 804, 1025

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Index

Dionysius II of Syracuse  294, 1009, 1017 Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Halicarnassaeus) 1004, 1081 on Demosthenes  810 dimensions of Rome and Athens, compared  311, 315–16, 1054, 1071 on early Rome  301, 869, 880, 913, 952, 1027 on Italy  1103 quoted 156 on Thucydides  1017 diseases, ancient and modern  280, 878, 984–5 Dissenters  786, 968 and the country party  72, 75–6, 780 and free-thinking  79, 790 penalties and prohibitions  886 in Scotland  778–9, 790 and the Whigs  75–6, 782, 783, 792 see also clergy, the established; Nonconformists diversity in sentiments of beauty and worth 137–40; see also beauty divine being, as the object of devotion  77, 121, 196; see also religion divine fury or madness in ancient thought 272 divine providence and superintendence 333 division of property, how useful to populations  293, 294–5, 1007 divorce: arguments in favour of and objections  154–5, 292 n. 53 effect on children  154 the exclusion of  156 friendship as a way of avoiding  155 a preservative to keep love alive  154

1299

voluntary  151, 154–6 see also marriage; polygamy domestic economies of ancients and moderns 281–2 domestic industry, a foundation of foreign commerce  250; see also commerce domestic slavery, see slavery Domitian, Roman emperor  143, 749, 861, 1102 bad emperor  45, 90 his prevention of oppression in the provinces  45, 90, 143 Don Quixote, and the definition of ‘delicacy’ 186–7 Donaldson, Alexander: and Alexander Kincaid  424, 441 and copyright  438–9, 759 and Hume  734 Donatus, Aelius  998 Dorians  171, 890 Dover 322 Drake, Sir Francis, his tour of the world 363 Dresden, centre of politeness in Germany  88, 802 Druids and their superstitions  325, 884, 1096, 1097 suppression of the  69 n. 3, 776 drunkenness  171–2, 891 as worse than adultery  211, 918 Drusus (Iulius Caesar Drusus)  343, 1117 Dryden, John  13, 725, 785, 820, 858, 903 literary criticism  418, 818, 840, 871, 887 and la belle nature 870–1 passionate language  874 prosody 817 rules of art  843, 904 on tragedy  718, 893, 897, 1133

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1300

Index

Dryden, John (cont.) on Virgil  873 on Waller  841 Ut pictura poesis 738 natural and revealed religion  860 odes and satires  724, 792, 879, 902 plays of  5, 839 on Plutarch  1004 his versification  724, 803 Dublin  322, 925 banking in  219, 925 Dubos (Du Bos), Jean-Baptiste  716, 724, 823, 826–7, 1093 on the balance of power  948 climate of Italy  322, 327 climatic determinism  841 physiology of  878, 892 on Emperor Maximilian  927 on human restlessness  174–5, 893 and Hume  903 and ‘internal’ senses  905–6 literary criticism of  738, 840, 892, 904, 911–12 on the middle sort  721 mutability of philosophical theories 909 on national characters  876, 877 in colonies  883 of the Dutch  884 in polar and equatorial regions 886 of the Romans  883, 1090 and the querelle  763, 823, 877, 904 on taste  737, 893, 898, 903, 904, 905, 909 comparison 907 delicacy 906 public taste  907, 908–9 the test of time  904–5 on tragedy  829 on the Union of Scotland and England  240–1, 936 Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste  829–30, 916, 928, 1005, 1075

Dutch book translations of Hume’s essays in his lifetime  501 duties, see moral duties Dutot (Du Tot), Nicolas  222 n. 4, 921, 1175 identity of  926 on merchants’ bills in France  938 on money  222 a questionable source of information  222 n. 4 E East India Company (English)  240, 935, 967 East Indies  225, 929 Ecbatana  262, 965 Eclectics, sect of  109, 831 economics, see balance of trade; banks; commerce; economy of under Athens; economy of under Rome, ancient; foreign trade; merchants; money; papercredit; public credit; taxation; trading cities in the ancient world under trade Edinburgh  322, 733, 735, 758 banking in  244–5, 922 clergy of  719, 879 the dearth of 1740:  961 falls to Jacobites  785, 1132 music in  858 the Philosophical Society in  982 poor-law scheme in  1102 and the Restoration  1137 Select Society in  876, 907 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures, and Agriculture  898, 907 Edward I of England  13, 723, 882, 1129 and the Magna Charta (the Great Charter) 1128

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Index

Edward III of England  13, 343, 723, 1116 and commerce  237, 933–4 Edward VI of England  1127 Edward the Confessor  1129 Egypt and Egyptians  1082 Alexandria  318–19, 1082–5 arts and sciences in  87 and the city of Thebes  310, 1047 Columella on bearing twins in  279 n. 1 Diodorus Siculus’s assigning three million inhabitants to  307 economic consequences of Roman conquest  218, 235, 925, 1035 an entrepôt for the slave-trade, ancient and modern  285, 291 even the soldan must rule by opinion 51 Maillet’s excellent account of populousness in  324 and modern slavery  291, 1003 politics of, reported by Polybius  253 population  307–8, 328, 1041 ancient in contrast with modern  324, 1093 remarkable for gaiety  168 revenues  319, 1084 the Roman conquest of  218 n. 1 Rosaces’s command of an army in, under Artaxerxes  46 n. 6 revolt against Persians  751–2 scepticism about the number of inhabitants in Egyptian Thebes 310 sending slaves to the Turkish empire 291 sultan and mamelukes  51, 756 treasure of  247, 942 Elagabalus (Heliogabalus), emperor  306, 1038 elections: in ancient Greece  302, 1030 in ancient Rome  304, 979 of bishops and Scottish peers  1146–7

1301

bribery and corruption in  214, 267, 1035 as a check upon authority  105 and hereditary succession  43 ideal scheme of  365, 369, 372 influence of the monarch in  53, 758, 958 and instructions to members  757–8 nature of  336, 344 in Oceana 1142 of the Polish king  748 property qualification  1142–3, 1146 Elibank, Patrick Murray, 5th baron 422–3, 1109, 1131 and Hume  1131 Elizabeth I (Elisabeth I) of England  13, 353, 723, 944–5, 1109–10, 1139 government of  39, 742, 746, 963 and the prerogatives of the crown  353, 1127, 1130–1 Elliot of Minto, Gilbert  415, 419, 822, 1127 and church patronage  1144 eloquence 117 agreeable passions excited by  176 in the ancients  93–5, 96–9, 815, 816–17, 819–20 ancients superior to moderns in  92–3, 98 Areopagites on the allurements of 95 Asiatic style of  160, 875 Attic style of  811, 820 Cicero’s noble form of  92–3, 95–6, 99, 179 contemporary political speakers 811–12 decline of, in imperial Rome  799–801, 888 of Demosthenes  93–4, 97, 99, 252, 273–5, 286, 300 n. 88, 303, 307, 311–13, 810

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1302

Index

eloquence (cont.) French  579–80, 818–19 of Gorgias of Leontini (Leontinus)  97 n. 6 Hume’s relish for  809 legal eloquence  815, 894 and liberty  87, 799–800, 801 models of  92–8, 100 modern, inferiority of and its causes  93, 94–100, 810 and the passions  176, 179, 180 as it springs up in popular governments 106 and the querelle  809–10, 823, 832 and sympathy  816 see also Cicero; Demosthenes; Longinus Emonson, James  429, 898 emotion: delicacy of imagination and the finer forms of  185–6 representations of, in painting  177 n. 2 rougher and more boisterous forms of  36 tragedy’s connection to passion and 176–7 uneasiness of melancholy passions converted into pleasure 176 see also approbation; beauty; delicacy; standard of taste; taste, the nature and delicacy of; tragedy emulation: and admiration for true genius 117 jealous  66, 252–3, 256–7, 275, 950 noble  97–8, 117, 257, 328 n. 255 among states and regions  117–18, 328, 827; as it arises in popular governments  106; of Athens and Rome  169–70; of foreign

inventions and industry  249, 251–3 England  214, 910 agriculture of  208 arts and industry in  236, 945, 1037 arts and sciences in  88–9, 117–18 and balance of power  949, 954 the balance of trade  240, 241, 247–8, 934 as a centre of commerce  89 character of the present-day English  167, 885 Church of, see Church of England its civil wars  98, 350, 780, 961–2, 1141 causes of  746, 757, 1126 contending parties  73, 80, 351, 791 coinage  927, 930, 938, 940–1, 970 constitution of  743, 972, 1031, 1115, 1125; see also the constitution in England and Great Britain on church and state  412, 778, 1139 feudal 1128–9 James I’s view of as a simple monarchy 357–8 limited monarchy  39–40, 348–9, 826, 1111, 1123 parties  73, 75–6, 350, 775 Restoration of the monarchy  61, 768, 1136–7 rise of the commons  102 Tudor 1127  crop management in  208 established liberty in  214 the expulsion of Jews from  882 first rise of parties in  73, 780–1 and France  241, 831, 946, 955 the Heptarchy  240, 936 the house of Austria as a natural ally of 361 the house of Lancaster  341, 782, 1115, 1127

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and Ireland  45, 238, 750, 990 labour costs versus trade  207 Levellers, religious fanatics in  79 liberty of the press in  38–40 literature of  13, 160, 729, 803–4 a maritime nation  258, 799 money supply in  245–6 national characters and manners in  161, 164, 166–7, 169–70, 885 painting in  117 parish-rates in  328, 1102 parties of  66–8, 71, 73, 350 the poor in  311, 1056 its population  200, 322, 913, 1089 pressing of seamen in  278, 980–1 rates of interest in  235–6, 930 and Scotland  240, 245, 437–8, 940, 969, 990, 1146–7 social ranks  721, 785 staple commodities  250, 918, 945 succession to Crown  337, 755 Swift’s indignation over Ireland’s loss of specie to  238 its wars with France  207, 256 see also country party; court party; faction(s); free governments; government under Great Britain; House of Commons; House of Lords; Stuart, house of; Ireland; original contract; party-prejudices; Parliament; Tory party; Tudor, house of; Whig party the engraved portrait of Hume in the 1768 ETSS (facsimile)  712 enthusiasm: poetic  119, 140 political 354 and civil liberty  79–80, 791 religious  788–90, 1131

Index

1303

corruption of true religion by superstition and  77 decline of among sectaries  79–80, 354–5, 791–2 and the spirit of liberty  80 explained and assessed  77ff. and false religion  77 Henry More on  787 John Locke on  787 Plato on  786 Presbyterian forms of  780; character of  72, 78, 788; Presbyterian clergy in Holland  72; next in the degree of enthusiasm after Independents and Quakers 78 the Quakers’ form of  78–9 sources of  77–9, 787 and superstition  77ff., 167 as throwing illusions over minds  60–2, 307 n. 115, 332 see also Dissenters; religion; superstition; zealotry Epaminondas’s victory at Leuctra  252, 1011 Ephesus  322, 1019, 1089 stasis in  299 Epictetus  847, 850, 857 artificial arguments of  144, 843, 861 dispassionate Stoicism  8, 720, 738, 850–1 instability of fortune  849 on men and animals  847 on moral progress  849 striving to live according to nature 848 Epicureans  109, 846 Hume’s Epicurean against the Stoics  119ff., 843 Hume’s Epicurean and other varieties of the Epicurean  842

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1304

Index

Epicureans (cont.) Hume’s Epicurean on pleasure and virtue  121, 844–5 on friendship  121, 845 their reverence for Epicurus  831 Epicurus: as an adherent of the selfish system of morals  795 and the mutability of philosophical theories  192, 909 Epirus 315 dimensions 1070 population  315, 1070 and slavery  286, 993 episcopacy, see under clergy, the established; Church of England equality: in the distribution of the necessaries and conveniencies of life  207 of fortune as favourable to having children 293–4 Hobbes and human equality  1110 human nature and the equality of persons 207 Hutcheson, Francis, on human equality 1110 for labourers  207–8, 210 love of  297 the natural equality of property  373 of persons and human nature  207 of property in the ancients  306, 311, 326, 330 of the sexes  23, 152 see also equity; inequality; justice; taxation equity  51, 54, 56, 95, 182, 278, 282, 343, 362; see also equality; justice Erasmus, Desiderius  966 Eratosthenes, geographer  1091–2 Eratosthenes, politician  1015, 1057, 1175

ergastula (‘dungeons’ where slaves worked, according to Hume)  283, 290–1, 988, 1001–3 erudition  27, 98 Espiard de La Borde, François Ignace  876, 882, 883, 887 eternity  134, 856–7 Etruria  320, 805, 1001, 1087 Euboea  304, 1035–6 Eubulus 976 Euclid  139, 859 Eugenius 8 Euripides  150, 865, 893 Europe: absolute monarchy in  45, 64, 89–90, 294, 351, 357, 806–7, 1125 agriculture in  321 animals of  164 aristocracy in contemporary republics 303 armed forces in  201, 309 arts and industry  212, 303 arts and sciences  104, 107–8, 116–17, 827, 829 balance of power in  256, 272, 723, 949, 955–6, 1137–8 balance of trade with China  240 civil liberty in  294, 357, 1125 climate of  322–4, 327, 1091, 1093 diasporas  305, 1037 exclusion of divorce and polygamy 156 ‘enormous monarchies’  255, 257, 954, 956 highwaymen  90, 805 import of gold and silver  221, 926, 927 marriage  151, 156 migrations 325 monarchs (princes)  86 money supply of  220–1, 223, 225, 226–7, 240–1, 248, 926 the most constant habitation of science  108, 169–70

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1305

Index

north and south parts of  169, 887–8 Poland, where venality and corruption most prevail  214 popularity of Political Discourses in 425–6 population of  200, 280, 319 n. 204, 321, 1087 the Protestant succession and intrigues in  358, 361 rates of interest  235–6, 932 republics in  111–12, 303, 1031 Roman Catholicism in  79 slavery in  168, 281–91, 928, 987 and syphilis  985 trade  89, 935, 945 with Africa  225, 304, 307 the balance of  240, 247–8 Treaty of Utrecht between belligerents 256 war in continental  358, 361 see also monarchy European book translations of Hume’s essays during his lifetime  496ff. Euxine, see Black Sea exchequer bills (chequer-notes)  937, 970 executive power  58, 365, 370; see also prerogative under monarchy exiles in ancient Greece, their numbers  298–9 experience: in assessing the disadvantages of slavery  286 n. 19 in assessing the size of a city  321 in comparing the value of governments 359 when history extends experience to the past  28, 201, 321, 335–8 of human capacities by examining oneself 83

justification on the basis of  57–8, 350 Machiavelli’s failure to consult it sufficiently 86–7 in matters of money  237, 240, 242 in matters of taxation  258 in persons of merit by contrast to fools 20 as productive of knowledge and reasoning  4, 82–3, 86, 802 reconciling reason to  223 its role in guiding political states 109 as supplying reasons against voluntary divorces  155–6 its value in the arts and sciences  89, 142, 184–5, 188, 191, 200, 211 the exposing of children by parents, see infanticide the exposing of old, useless, or sick slaves to harsh conditions  282 F Fabius ‘Cunctator’  103, 824 Fabius Pictor, Quintus  1043 fable and allegory  31–2, 408, 443, 731, 735–6, 846 Addison in contrast with Bunyan 902–3 of avarice  31–2, 736 in Don Quixote 906 in England and France  729 of impudence and modesty  20–1, 728 of love and marriage  23–5, 730 of the middle station of life  11, 721 faction(s): ancient and modern, violent and bloody  297–301, 335, 355, 439 the Bianchi Florentine political  66 the Castelani and Nicolotti, mobbish factions in Venice  66 n. 1

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1306

Index

faction(s) (cont.) the Colonesi, Roman political  66 cruel, arising from ambition  65, 70 Fregosi and Adorni, of Genoa  66 the Guelf (Guelph) and Ghibbelline, now long lost in Italy  67 inveterate rage in  297 the Louvestein  72 the neglect of honour and morality in  51, 65 the Neri, Florentine political  66 the Orsini, Roman political  66 the Parasini, in the Byzantine empire 66 the personal and the real as types of 66–7 playing one against another  151 of principle, by contrast to those of interest  57, 69 in the reign of Charles I  340 religious, when throwing illusions over minds  60–2, 307 n. 115, 332 subversion of government by  64–8, 329 Veneti, in the Greek empire  66 zeal in  48–9, 297, 332 see also country party; court party; impartiality; interest (self-interest); parties in general; party-prejudices; Tory party; Whig party; zealotry Falstaff, Sir John  30, 735 Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe-  717, 854 and the balance of power  947–8 and unanimity regarding basic moral precepts  182, 900 severe precepts of  918 Ferguson, Robert  1120, 1142 Fielding, Henry  407, 721, 1178 and Andrew Millar  420, 441

cited 1102 on Cervantes  877 on crime  805 on impudence  728 opposition to the court Whigs  727, 812–13 quoted 856 social ranks  785 Flamininus, Titus Quinctius  113, 835, 1069, 1107 Flanders  164, 248, 305, 750, 888–9, 943, 960 Fléchier, Esprit  818 Fleetwood, William  930, 1135 Fleming, Robert: collaborates with Alexander Kincaid  405, 407 on Millar, Strahan, and Kincaid  437 printer of Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political 405 printer of Hume’s Political Discourses 424 Fletcher of Saltoun, Andrew: on London  967 a neo-Machiavellian  920 a severe moralist  917, 920 on slavery  987, 989 Fletcher, John  840 Fleury, André-Hercule, cardinal de  86, 798 Florence 62 arts and sciences  87–8, 801 centre of commerce  89, 799 factions in  66, 772 Machiavelli’s history of  28, 734 and the Medici  769 plague in  147, 863 populousness of  327 Florus, Lucius Annaeus  290–1, 920, 1003 Folard, Jean-Charles  1012 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de  37, 829, 906

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Index

an allusion in Pluralité des mondes  37 n. 1, 740, 863 eclogues by  873 on climate  878 importance for Hume  740 his judicious criticisms in the dissertation on pastorals  158 and literary criticism  892, 893–4, 904, 1108 on eclogues  158–9, 873 an excellent critic showing bad taste 158–9 his misunderstanding of Plutarch in Histoire des oracles  331 n. 263 on tragedy and pain and pleasure  175, 734–5 poetic justice  897 on national characters, polar and equatorial regions  886 and philosophy  717, 740, 843, 863 and the querelle  550, 762, 810, 814, 823, 984 quoted 145–6 on what is destructive to ambition and passion for conquest  145–6 foreign trade: its advantages in commerce  205–7 government protections of, and taxes on 248 and the price of labour  221 as requiring a flourishing domestic industry 250–1 see also balance of trade; banks; commerce; commodities; corn supply; liquor and wine; luxury; merchants; mines; money; paper-credit; taxation; trading cities in the ancient world under trade Foster, James  722, 762, 790, 1176 foundling hospitals  292, 1006 Fox, George  788

1307

Hume’s characterization of  787 France: agriculture and climate of  322, 330 arts and sciences in  88, 160 and the balance of trade  241, 251, 258, 947 British jealousy and hatred of  241, 256 the Camisars in, their religious enthusiasm 79 Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy  212 commerce of  89, 200 n. 1, 207, 235, 241, 251, 258, 305, 805 Comte de Boulainvilliers on, in Etat de la France  345 n. 4 corn sales and exportation policies in modern  222, 237, 330 debt and public credit in  269–70 drinking practices in  172 and gallantry  5, 108, 837 government  41, 67, 88, 207, 760–1, 798, 822–3, 826 as a model of pure monarchy  90–1, 1111 the monarchs and monarchical governments of  13, 38, 45, 90, 334; Henri III, factions in his government  41; Henri IV of France  41, 723 horses in, the worst in Europe  164 n. 3 Languedocians and Gascons the gayest people in  165 liberty in  38 Louis XIV and money raised in  222 merchants’ conditions in  243 Molinists, Jansenists, and theological disputes in  80 money policies and interest in  222 n. 4, 235 national character of  165–7 painting and the diversity of arts in 88

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1308

Index

France (cont.) pais conquis  45, 749–50 population of  317 n. 193, 325–6, 326 n. 239 poverty of the common people in 207–8 princes of capacity in (Louis XI, XII, and XIV, Francis I)  13 querelle des anciens et des modernes  550, 910 religious factions and dissent in  79–80, 305, 723, 789, 793 taxation in  91, 207 Treaty of Utrecht, between other European powers and  256 want of paper-credit in  243 wars of  207, 212, 256, 270 see also Gaul; Paris; Henri III; Henri IV; Huguenots; Louis XIV François I of France  13, 954 Franklin, Benjamin  886, 939 and ‘Jealousy of Trade’  944 Franks, their apparently uniform character  167, 883, 885 Frederick the Great  955–6, 1138 free governments: advantages to the English common people from  207 bicameralism 369 bloody and violent actions in  298 checks and controls on  41–3 debt as a source of degeneracy in 91 extensive conquests as the ruin of 373 extraordinary wealth of subjects under 61–2 factions, their inveterate rage in  297; see also faction(s) flourishing of commerce as requiring 89 liberty of thought as requiring  72 partitioning of power in  56

requirements for councils in  369 as requisite for the birth of arts and sciences  87–8, 103, 106–7, 109, 214 Rome as once the only free nation  87 see also arts and sciences; authority, political; liberty of the press; governments; republics (and republicanism); Rome, ancient; taxation; Venice and Venetians freedom, see free governments; free trade; liberty; liberty of the press; slavery freeman, a rank and privilege in ancient Greece 302 free trade  241–2, 247, 250–1, 936, 942–3, 945–6 see also commerce; price-specie flow mechanism under Hume, David; trade free-thinkers  162 n. 2, 761–2, 790, 791–2; see also deists; Tindal, Matthew; Toland, John Fregosi faction  66, 772 friendship  37, 152, 155, 740–1, 868 Aristotle on, in his ethics  321, 730 Asiatic manners as destructive to 152 a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reason  35, 37, 84, 92, 142, 155 and Epicureanism  121–2, 845 impartiality sometimes required in judgements of  190 as lacking in fear  155 the marriage bond as chiefly consisting in  155 as a means to avoid divorce  155 not merely a matter of self-love  84–5 and mutual sympathy in non-human animals 114

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Index

polygamy as destructive to  152 and Stoicism  7–8, 720, 850–1 a supreme value in relationships, together with love  152 as a virtue  12, 48, 152, 321 frugality 922 in ancient times when still in reputation  287, 330 in assembling personal riches  136 in industry, trade, and commerce  232, 236, 246–7 judicious taxes as producing  259–61 in mortgaging public revenues and payment of debts  262, 269 in the protection by rulers of treasures  247, 262 Robert Walpole’s lack of  15 the role of judicious taxes in producing 259–61 in the use of public money  91 G Galba, Roman emperor  727, 742, 825, 955, 1115 Galilei, Galileo  88, 801 a great philosopher  14 on necessary truths of natural science 858 gallantry 211 books of  5, 717, 732 in France  5, 108, 837 French concerns about their theatre containing too much  108 a modern refinement  114–16, 837 a natural and generous passion of civility 114–16 as the product of courts and monarchies 114 soldiers’ inclination to  162 where women are the sovereigns of the learned world  5

1309

Gascony  165–6, 882 Gaul 1027 arts and sciences in  170, 888 Caesar’s conquest of  308–9, 1043–5 climate of  322–3, 1090 Diodorus Siculus on drunkards in  171 Druids in  69, 776 the extremely cold northern climate of 322–3 Gallic cavalry  880 herds of swine in  320 ignorance, barbarity, and grossness in ancient  167 Juvenal on eloquent Gaul’s teaching of Britain  170 manners and morals in  171, 884, 890–1, 1098 and modern France  167, 1097 the only warlike nation indifferent to women, according to Aristotle  171 n. 10 population of  308–9, 325–6, 1043–5, 1096–1100 as richer than Italy in Tiberius’s time 45 Romans threatened by an invasion from 308 the treasure its government kept in reserve 262 its wars almost perpetual before Caesar’s time  326 the whole common people being slaves in  326 n. 244 Gay, John  857 and Bolingbroke  755 Gee, Joshua: on the balance of trade  238, 934 on the labouring poor  960–1 on taxing necessaries  960 Gela  299, 1021 generosity  12, 61, 70, 115–16, 149, 209, 216, 252 Geneva  245, 1031

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1310

Index

genius(es): Addison as a man of genius and capacity  13, 183–4 Ariosto, Ludovico as a  14 admiration for true genius  117 and the arts and sciences  88, 110, 161 of a Cicero or Tacitus, on mixed government  58, 764–5 Corneille’s 14 different forms of, in different countries and contexts  13–15, 88, 92, 102–3, 112, 117, 168–9, 247, 250, 279 in eloquence  92–9, 104, 112 emulation and admiration for true  106, 117 in government and law  49, 55, 58, 106, 109, 111 judgements of found through refined taste  4, 36, 111, 160 Juvenal as the last Roman writer possessing any degree of  170 and the laudable pursuits of life  209, 213 of Machiavelli, on furious and tyrannical governments  86 man of, distinguished by the depth of principles on which he reasons 199 of the Molinists  80 of a nation, as assisted by liberty of the press  58 the natural genius of humankind in all ages  116, 119 necessary to a tragedian  176, 180 of a particular sect or religion  80, 167 of Philip  253 philosophical devotion and high genius 140

problems in asserting an equality of in great writers  183–5, 189–93 problems in assessing claims of in religion and theology  195 see also Cicero; Demosthenes; Homer; Milton; Newton; Pope; Virgil Genoa  66, 945 the Bank of San Giorgio  47, 753, 938–9 as a centre of commerce  89, 248, 258, 959 and Corsica  750 its factions, Fregosi and Adorni  66, 772 populousness of  327 prohibitions on chinaware  243 a republic  47, 1031 George I of Great Britain  723, 782, 784, 1028, 1139 accession to the throne  1132–3 augments the House of Lords  1147 and Hanover  1135, 1138 and the Whigs  792 George II of Great Britain  13, 411, 723, 921, 958 and the Civil List  769 and Hanover  1135, 1137–8 and Scotland  1136 and Sir Robert Walpole  770 George III of Great Britain  777, 1131 Gerard, Alexander: his Essay on Taste 898 on good sense  908 and Hume  879, 898, 907, 908, 909 on ‘internal’ senses  899, 905 on mimesis  871 on sensibility  906 Germanicus (Iulius Caesar, Germanicus)  343, 1117–18 Germany, ancient: agriculture  325, 1095

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Index

Caesar’s accounts of  309, 325 n. 236 climate 323 history of horses in  164 n. 3 manners and morals in  1095, 1096 Germany, modern  248, 325, 957, 1095, 1119 Anabaptists in  79 and the balance of power  1137–8 Cardinal Bentivoglio’s assessment of 170 centres of learning and politeness in  88, 117 changes in over the last three centuries 223 elective monarchy in  987 and the Empire  223, 361, 806–7, 885, 927, 977, 1137–8 Hanover as inconvenient for relations with Great Britain 357–8 mixed monarchy in  826 national character in  167, 885 Geta, Roman emperor  1082, 1096 Getes, as uncivilized  324 Ghibelline party  67, 772, 773–4, 782–3 Gibbon, Edward  924 on ancient Germany  1095 on Augustus  1127 and Bacon  1102 on climatic determinism  878 on Elagabalus  1038 on Goths  1095 on the happiest period of the world 1102 and Hume  825, 992, 1038, 1102 citations to him  754, 827, 962, 1079, 1086, 1118 on James Foster  1176 on Longinus  801 on martyrs  776 quoted 914 on Roman toleration  775 on Trajan  797

1311

Glasgow  244–5, 922, 940 merchants in  244 University of  845, 848, 850, 1111 gold and silver: the effects of encreasing the quantity of 221–2 and interest rates  228–9 shortage of caused by loss of trade and industry  248 see also coinage; precious metals Goldsmith, Oliver  727, 856 good sense, as essential to judgements of taste  190, 908 Gordian III, Roman emperor  344, 1118 Gordon, Thomas: anticlericalism 778 Augustus a usurper  1127 Britain a republic  1031 Cato’s Letters  723, 764, 799, 805, 852–3 on commerce and freedom  804 the Humourist  735, 789 and mixed government  765 and the Works of Tacitus 1102 Gorgias of Leontini  97 n. 6, 816 Gothic liberty  746, 1126, 1128–9 Gothic style  157–8, 819, 871 Goths  92, 1095 government: absolute forms of: and arts and sciences  87–8, 799–802 no checks and controuls  41 and commerce  89, 805 and England  746 in European countries  90, 1125 and factions  65–6 in France  88, 90–1, 802, 807 full comparison of civil liberty to  87–8, 799 limited by opinion  261

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1312

Index

government (cont.) succession in  343–5, 1117–19 and taxes  56, 91, 261, 268, 760, 807, 963–4 allegiance to  333, 342, 347–8 Athenian democracy, see government under Athens distribution of justice as the purpose of 54 executive power in  58, 365 factions as destructive to, see faction(s) first principles of  51 forms of  41–7, 58 general advantages reaped from  51–3, 57–8, 233 by laws, not individuals  90 Machiavelli (Machiavel) on original principles of  364 mixed forms of  57 ancient  58, 764–5 bicameralism 369 executive power in  58, 365 and liberty of the press  38–40 their stability  47–8, 344 taxes in  268 moral, political, and civil duties of allegiance to  342 national characters in  164–7 the nature of British forms of  53, 59, 61–2, 64, 90 office-bearers’ remuneration  220, 353, 368, 371, 885, 1109, 1145 origin of  54–6, 62, 333–4, 335, 337–8, 760 original contract, theories of  334–7, 340 politicians’ attraction to monarchical forms of  110 promises of allegiance to as constituting a contract  334–5, 340–1

rise of science requires a free  86–7, 103, 105–9, 111 social necessity as an obligation binding persons to  345 the struggle between authority and liberty in  55–6, 59, 63 superstition’s effects on  212, 291 three forms of  748 usurpation of power as one origin of  62, 337 violent innovations in  339–40, 1114 see also authority, political; constitutions, political; country party; court party; equality; equity; England; free governments; Great Britain; liberty; Machiavelli; original contract; republics (and republicanism); under Rome, ancient; taxation; Venice and Venetians Gracchi, the (Tiberius and Gaius)  301, 744, 1027 and the increase of slaves in Italy 290 laws of  290, 1000, 1080, 1102 the murder of  301 Grant, William  947 gratitude  92, 129, 140, 341 Gravesend  319, 1084 Great Britain: anticlericalism in  72, 778 arts and sciences in  88–9, 239, 803–4 and the balance of power  255–7, 947, 954–6, 1119, 1137–8 and the balance of trade  933, 944 commerce in  218, 239, 241, 249, 251, 266 extant bias in the constitution of  76 established clergy  72, 778–9 government of  826, 1031, 1111 how far a republic  53, 62–4

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Index limited monarchy  71–2, 753, 826 prime ministers  15, 726–7, 771 guarded by the sea  1134 and Hanover  680, 1137–8 hatred of France in  241, 256 interest rates  930, 971 and liberty of the press peculiar to  38–40, 741 liberty (political) in  38–40, 55–6, 71–5 money supply of  218, 241 mortgaging of its revenues as delusional  256, 268 national debt  256, 268–72, 808, 956 national spirit of  255–6 naturalization of aliens  986 and the New Style calendar  401, 406 parties of  66–8, 71–6 populousness of  336, 1037–8, 1112–13 protectionism in  918, 946–7 severity of the laws in  1029 Union of England and Scotland  811, 990, 1136 common currency  940 early misapprehensions  240–1, 936 and an establishment of religion 778–9 and the ‘Equivalent’  937 and the malt tax  969 Scots militia bill  765 see also authority, political; country party; court party; England; faction(s); House of Commons; House of Lords; parties (political); perfect commonwealth; Parliament; republics (and republicanism);

1313

Scotland; Tory Party; Whig Party Greece, ancient: advantages of its natural territory 108 alleged depopulation under the Romans  329–31, 1105–8 arts and sciences in  87, 107–8, 169–70, 800, 827–8 and balance of power  252–3, 254–5, 948–51, 953–4 on ‘barbarians’  301, 887, 1026–7 the different characters of Athens and Thebes  165 effects that resulted from Alexander’s conquests  87, 172, 309, 313 n. 170 eloquence of orators in, see Demosthenes; eloquence exiles numerous in  298–9, 1023 freeman in, a rank and privilege in 302 frugality in  330 Greeks ‘much addicted to the bottle’  172, 838, 891 liberty and its loss  87 manners in ancient, contrasted to modern 166 mercenary forces not maintained in ancient 315 military force of when Philip led the confederacy of  315 the Peloponnesian war and the balance of power  252, 313 population  315, 324, 1070–1 poverty in ancient Greece and Rome  87, 213 its principalities as evolving into republics 107 stasis in  297–9 and n. 84, 1016–23 the two chief tribes of, Dorians and Ionians  171, 310

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1314

Index

Greece, modern: ancient in contrast with modern population  324, 1093 manners in ancient, contrasted to modern 166 its national character  166, 168, 883 Greek language: compared with English  169 Hume’s knowledge of  415 Grotius, Hugo  823, 851, 878 an Arminian  779–80 and inalienable rights  970 and natural law  1111, 1122, 1123 Guelf party (faction), long lost in Italy  67, 772, 773–4, 782–3; see also faction(s); parties in general Guicciardini, Francesco  212, 772, 774, 919, 948 Guienne 242 Gustav I (Gustavus Ericson (or Vasa)) of Sweden  13, 72, 723, 779 Gustav II (Gustavus Adolphus) of Sweden  13, 723 H habeas corpus  782, 980, 981, 1112 habit, as a means to good dispositions  55, 140, 143, 148 Hadrian (Adrian), Roman emperor  988, 1127 time of  328, 352, 875 Halley, Edmund: a British Archimedes  818 and political arithmetic  1037–8 his rule of population  913, 1022, 1064, 1065, 1096–7, 1100 classes in the multiplier  1040–1, 1052–3, 1060, 1070, 1071, 1099 Hamburg  88, 802 as a centre of commerce  89

Hamilton, Alexander  963 on arbitrary taxes  961 and ‘Jealousy of Trade’  944 Hampden, John  277, 980 Hannibal  13, 254, 723–4, 983 and the Second Punic War  254, 824, 952, 1012, 1042–3 Hanover 1135 and balance of power  1137–8 and Great Britain  361, 1137–8 Hanover, house of  424, 968 accession of  755, 1132–3 advantages for Britain  357–8, 359–60, 362 its disadvantages for Britain  358, 360–1 and divine right to rule  1109 and the Hanoverian succession  357–60 title to the British throne  783–4 and the Whigs  761 see also George I; George II; George III happiness: ancient nations inferior to modern in engendering  303, 328 its connection to the populousness of political states  281, 284 n. 13 not contingent on the quantity of money in a political state  222 enlarged by delicacy of taste and passion  35–6, 210 Epicurean depictions of  119ff. human industry’s end as the attainment of  126, 201, 203–5, 207–8 institutions that secure it for future generations 65 liberty and law as a source of  109, 129, 200–2 in the middle station of life  11, 14 the Platonist’s depiction of  132ff.

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Index

the Sceptic’s depiction of  135ff. slavery as disadvantageous to  290 the Stoic’s depiction of  125ff. superstition as disturbing the pursuit of 212 three ingredients of (action, pleasure, and indolence)  210 tragedy in theatre as a source of  174–8 and unequal distributions of misery 148 virtue and good morals as contributing to  65; see also virtue(s) Hardouin, Jean  991, 1038, 1075–6 on the dimensions of Rome  317 n. 193 (cont.) Harington, Sir John  838 Harrington, James  756 and bicameralism  369, 1144 and corruption of polities  771 government of laws, not men  745, 806 an Independent  791 language and style  88, 803–4 and mixed government  764, 826, 1148 Oceana, its defects  364, 1142 on property and power  52, 757, 921, 1133, 1141–2 on the demise of feudalism  822 and the English monarchy  61, 768 and the Rota Club  1141 on the senate of the bean  974 on the Venetian republic  1143 Helvetia, its population and wars  326, 1098–9, 1100 Henri (Harry) III of France  745 and factions and changes in government 41 Henri (Harry) IV of France (Henri de Navarre)  41, 745, 819, 822, 1109–10

1315

Edict of Nantes  723 esteemed prince governing with virtue  13, 102 quoted  271 n. 7 Henry (Harry) I of England  1129 Henry (Harry) II of England  13, 723, 1129 Henry (Harry) III of England  1128 Henry (Harry) IV of England  1127 his title to the throne  337, 352, 1113 Henry (Harry) V of England  13, 723 Henry (Harry) VII of England  13, 723, 782, 839–40, 1126 and the economy  245, 923, 940, 942 government  352, 822, 1127, 1134 money policy and amassing of an immense treasure  218, 245–6 his title to the throne  337, 1113 Henry (Harry) VIII of England  340, 954, 1114, 1127, 1139 Heraclea  301, 1026 Hercules, choice of  844–5 Herippidas (Heripidas)  301, 1026 Herodian (Aelius Herodianus)  1011, 1038 on Alexandria  318, 1082 on Antioch  318, 1082 on Britain  325, 1095–6 from the death of Commodus to Septimius Severus  344, 1118 on empty land in Italy  320, 1087 on Rome  319, 1086 Herodotus 1106 and arts and sciences  799 on Babylon  1047, 1066 his exaggerated figures of early times  328 n. 255, 1105 on Macedonia  315, 1069–70 on Persian treasure  965 on the population of Athens  303, 310, 1032, 1051

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1316

Index

Herodotus (cont.) on the population of Sparta  1061 on Scythians  731 as superstitious  330 three forms of government  748 on Xerxes’s army  308, 1042 Hervey, John, Lord  812 on Bolingbroke  820 on the clergy  770 on the Craftsman 409 on the fable of Christianity  885 on the Holy Roman Empire’s lack of money 927 on Whigs and Tories  780–1 Hesiod 736 on the inconvenience of married slaves  288, 997 Hezekiah, king of Judah and his treasure  262, 965 Hiero, dialogue of Xenophon  86 n. 1 Hieron II (Hiero) of Syracuse   804, 1047 and balance of power  254–5, 953 Hill, Aaron  719–20, 745 Hippocrates, on the effects of climate 878 Hirtius, Aulus  1009, 1016 Historia Augusta, see Scriptores Historiae Augustae historians: Thucydides, the first real historian 307 as true friends of virtue  28 history: ancient historians  307, 1039–40 of arts and sciences, difficulty of assigning causes  102 commencement of modern history 839–40 commencement of real history  307, 1039 familiarity of Roman  213–14, 253–4, 951

when intermixed with fable  307, 1039 in Diodorus  331, 1039 fables of paganism  911–12 recommended to women  26–9 value of the study of  26–8, 337–8 a history of Hume’s essays  401–45 Hoadly (Hoadley), Benjamin  792 attacks Francis Atterbury  762 and the original contract  1117, 1120  see also Bangorian controversy hoarding, the practice of a state's accumulating treasure  245–7; see also treasure, accumulation of Hobbes, Thomas  722, 893 an alleged adherent of the selfish system of morals  795 and denial of moral distinctions  733, 900, 1116 duties of sovereigns  1122 on faction  1148 and human equality  1110 and inalienable rights  970 and the meanness of human nature 796 and the mutability of philosophical theories 909 on the original contract  768 on superstition  786 on tyrannicide  1123 Holland, province of  372, 779, 808, 884; see also United Provinces Home, Henry, see Kames Home, John  430–1, 716, 718, 1144 and the probable in tragedy  893 Homer: his belonging in the species of divine genius 14 date of as the marker of historical experience 797–8 enduring admiration of him and his enduring reputation  117, 185, 840, 907

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Index

language and style of  169, 874 manners and morals in  195, 900, 910, 911, 912 and the querelle  762–3, 905, 910 time and place of his appearance  14, 103, 724, 823–4, 877–8 translated by John Ogilby  183, 902 and Virgil  158–9, 872–3 the want of humanity and decency in his characters  195 Hooker, Richard  788 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)  835–6, 909 on arts and sciences in Rome  88, 800, 803, 839 on the city of Rome  319, 322, 1075, 1087 his condemnation of Plautus  116 on the deceiving path of life  157 on the decline of agriculture  991 and Edmund Waller  118, 841 and Epicureanism  842, 845, 846 as a favourite author  14, 193 his finished odes  118 a genius  14 on genius  103, 824 ‘Golden Mean’  725, 871 imitated 1148 on the origin of moral good and evil 112 on poetry  738, 843 quoted or cited  28, 103, 194–5, 286 n. 18, 319 n. 208, 322, 734, 845, 854, 871, 911 on the Romans  88 on slaves  286, 993 vulgarities in  112, 116, 833 Hortensius Hortalus, Quintus  92, 811 Hortensius, Nicolaus  318 n. 197, 1080 hospitals for foundlings, mortality in  292, 1006 hostis, its signification in old Latin  203 n. 5, 915

1317

House of Commons  353, 1134, 1142–3, 1145 alterations to improve the present 372 chiefly composed of proprietors of land 271–2 crown influence on members  58–9 a factious vote in the  256 and instruction of members  53, 757–8 its orators  93, 812 and property  53, 215, 921 representation  372, 1144 its share of power  58, 64, 770 see also Parliament House of Lords  102, 271–2, 765 as appellate court  367, 438, 759, 1143 augmented controversially  1147 and the crown  58 orators in  93, 811–24 weakened by lords spiritual and Scots peers  372, 1146–7 see also Parliament Huguenots  745, 750 diaspora of  305, 742, 789, 805, 1037, 1097 see also Rapin de Thoyras, Paul human life: dignity or meanness of  81ff. the general idea of  119, 149 governed by fortune more than reason 149 philosophers’ narrow conception of  135, 148 scepticism about the importance of 147 the shortness of, and what history teaches 28 a sketch of  141 see also human nature; humanity, sentiments and virtues of

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1318

Index

human nature: comparisons between divine nature and 130 comparisons between humans and nonhuman animals  82–3, 137 the common sentiments of  185 contemptible notions of in some philosophers  83, 144 decay in not supported by the evidence 279 the dignity of  81ff., 360 and the equality of persons  207 the finest and most innocent enjoyments of  188 frivolous temptations of, seducing us from distant interests  54, 81 honoured when liberty is secured and public good sought  48, 355 the ills of life incident to  140, 145, 148 its incapability for perfect justice and perfect understanding  337 knowledge of required for many judgements 36 the present and past rooted in  215, 331 principles of  55, 83, 155 refinement of virtue in  86 as at risk of fanaticism in religion  68, 354–5 the selfishness implanted in  54, 67 slavery as trampling on  282 uniformity of the general principles of taste in  193 weaknesses and imperfections of  210, 337 see also delicacy; human life; humanity, sentiments and virtues of; religion; standard of taste; virtue(s); taste, the nature and delicacy of; zealotry

humanity, sentiments and virtues of: and commitments made in marriage 150 good laws and education critical to instill  47, 90, 211–2 hearts destitute of  209, 282 inhuman sports of Rome as lacking in  283 n. 12 in laws protecting slaves  286 required for governing in political states 13 the sentiments of that engage and elevate  128, 142 slavery as prejudicial to  282–3 universal applause of  181–2 as a virtue  12–13, 142, 163 n. 2, 181–2, 211–2 the want of in Homer’s characters 195 see also human nature; virtue(s) Hume, David: his account of Charles I’s execution 896 on ancient philosophy  857 on artificial virtues  733, 843 allegiance  54–6, 342, 1116 chastity  794, 837, 864 justice as involving  759–60, 1116 and bank-credits  244, 922–3, 939 on causal connection  821; see also causation on causation and domestic affairs  102, 200, 821 on chance  101–3, 200, 809, 821, 912 on the clergy  54, 72, 162–3, 787 on disputes of words  796 questions of degree  59–60, 81–2, 84, 158–9, 548, 794–5 on the distinction between virtues and abilities  899 on duelling  591, 839 on the evidence of ancient historians  307, 1040

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Index on the feudal constitution  1128–9 general laws as opposed to discretionary power  43–5, 103–6, 108, 109–10, 824–5, 826 the Glorious Revolution and the people’s consent  1114 on Henry VII  1127 how far property determines power  52–3, 757 and ‘internal’ senses  185–6, 905 on James Harrington  364, 1141–2 justice and civil society  347, 1121 the impelling object of government  54–5, 341, 760 its laws as general  104, 824–5 and marriage  150, 731, 864 on the justification of resistance to authority  347–8, 1114, 1122, 1123 his memoranda: account of  403 economic matters  916, 941–2, 1007, 1059; Greek navigation  1035–6; Greek soldiers’ pay  1007, 1008; ignored by Machiavelli  799; inflation in Rome  925; interest in Athens  807, 1034; interest in Rome  931; money  925, 929, 938; treasure in Athens  941 factions 773 manners and morals  754, 776, 805, 882, 1094 political matters  807, 956 ancient  749, 949, 953, 953–4, 1014, 1018; constitutions  767, 973, 975, 978–9 populousness matters  1006, 1032, 1053, 1054–5, 1059, 1072, 1081, 1087; infanticide in

1319 China  1005; and slavery  1003, 1056, 1058, 1060; viable population of a city  1088 on money supply: paper displaces specie  242–3, 247, 265, 939 quantity of no consequence  218, 227, 229–30, 233–4, 932 slow increase as a stimulant  222–3, 227, 228, 242 n. 5, 930 on the Magna Charta and successors 1128 before the Magna Charta  1129 on modern history  839–40 natural virtues  341 on Negroes  168, 172, 876, 886–7 on the obligation to allegiance  342, 347, 1116 tacit consent  338–9 on the obligation to keep promises  341–2, 1116 on opinion: and courage  171 the foundation of authority  52, 756; constrains authority  56, 63; established practice  1130; hereditary title  1137; of interest  51; long possession  338, 363; of right to power  51, 340; of right to property 52 and the origin of Parliament  1129 on parental affection  8, 84, 150, 341, 796, 852, 864 a passion converted into a contrary one  176–8, 180, 892, 895 passions, violent and calm  739, 857–8, 868 on his philosophical essays  414 on poetic justice  897 on the pressing of seamen  278, 980

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1320

Index

Hume, David (cont.) the price-specie flow mechanism  219, 239–41, 933, 935, 936, 944, 968 on primogeniture  300, 1026 the progress of literature  160, 875 English  88, 803–4 projected weekly paper  406–7, 422, 715, 719, 809 reason: a posteriori  403 a priori  184, 746–7, 899, 903 not conative  739, 848 practical reason  848 on the Revolution establishment  354–5, 1112 against self-centred theories of ethics  84–5, 718–19, 795–6, 860 on the senescence of the world  279–80, 984 on the several English constitutions  352–3, 1128, 1129 on the stadtholderate  1146 sympathy, tenet of  164–5, 174, 729, 881, 893, 894 on the Tudors  1127, 1131 Hungary  256–7, 320, 956–7, 987, 1087 Hurd, Richard  431, 442, 823–4, 839 husbandmen, their proportion to manufacturers 200–1; see also agriculture Hussars  257, 957 Hutcheson (Hutchinson), Archibald  269, 961, 969–70, 1056, 1122, 1177 Hutcheson, Francis  737 as against the selfish systems of morals  796, 917 on human equality  1110 and Hume  403, 414, 416, 719, 899, 1116 on inalienable rights  970

on ‘internal’ senses  899, 902, 905 and the middle stations of life  721 and natural law  1111, 1122 against psychological hedonism  796 and the science of man  802 and a standard of taste  900, 901 and Stoicism  848, 851, 852 Huygens, Christiaan  363, 1141 Hyperides, prosecuted  274, 973 hypocrisy  75, 162 n. 2 I il non finito  178, 896 Illyricum (Dalmatia)  914 ills of human life incident to human nature 145 imagination: its capacity to colour reasoning  191 the character trait of a strong  81 delicacy of, and the finer emotions 185–6 Lucian’s superb  148 n. 6 poetry-initiated pleasure through  185–6, 190–1 see also under delicacy impartiality: in the administration of justice  55 in assessments of the Protestant succession  315, 358, 361–2 in comparing different nations  215 in judging adversaries and heretics  307 n. 115 in judging the character of Robert Walpole 15 in political judgements of parties, Parliament, and the crown  59, 73 sometimes required in judgements of friendship  190 implicit faith  68, 163 n. 2 impudence: allegory of modesty and  19ff.

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Index

in fools, knaves, and seditious ringleaders  20, 336 under loss or absence of virtue  19 the vice of  19–21 indefeasible right  358–9, 411, 781 alleged principles of and claims of authority  74, 333, 359 Independents  80, 788, 791 a sect closest to Quakers in fanaticism 78 see also Dissenters the indexes in different editions of Hume’s essays  375–400, 503, 505 n. 4, 523 India 1110 and Greece and Rome  800, 836, 861, 928 India-bonds  264, 967 India trade  248, 928, 929, 935, 958 indolence, its temptations, value, and vices  19, 164, 174, 177, 204, 210, 212, 216, 233, 292 industry, as a character trait: and the education required for perfection 13 attainment of happiness as its end 126–7 in intelligent refinements of nature 125–6 inequality: in arbitrary taxation, a pernicious form of  91, 259, 273 of money  240, 273 of pay and income among Roman citizens at the end of the Republic 294 preventing and correcting exorbitant 239 of property, and the landed gentry 229 unequal division of property among brothers 300

1321

unequal distributions of happiness and misery  148 see also equality; equity; justice; taxation infidelity and customs in marriage  150, 211 inheritance and succession of princes, moral questions about  343–4 interest, public: the general advantage reaped from government acting in  51–3, 57, 233 in impartial administration of justice 55 interest (self-interest)  52–5, 57–8, 63, 68, 71, 151, 352 see also Mandeville, Bernard; selfishness interest rates  243, 768–9, 928, 929, 931–2, 1034 in ancient Rome  235, 304, 930–1, 1035 in Athens  91, 303–4, 808, 930, 1033–5 not derived from a quantity of precious metals  228, 230 determinants of  228–30, 232–6, 932 and the economy  228, 233, 303–4, 930, 1033 falling in Spain  234 French policies on  222, 235 high, as arising from three circumstances 229–30 legal in contrast with real  270, 930, 931, 971 low, as arising from three circumstances  228–30, 233–4, 236 and prices in Italy  226, 235, 241 and public debt  91, 808, 929–30, 967, 969 variation by country and city  228, 235–6 see also money; public debt; usury

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1322

Index

Ionians and Dorians, ancient Greek tribes  171, 890 Ireland: and England  45, 238, 750, 990 factions in  1017 Irish compared to the Dutch  259 money supply of  238, 935 national characters in  161 population  986, 1112–13 poverty of  285 Swift on the money supply of  238 tanistry  326, 1099 taxes 943 troops in  1046 Isocrates 1069 and arts and sciences  799 on the four great cities of Greece 1063–4 panegyric of Busiris  966 on raising an army in Greece from vagabonds  299, 1023 on slaves  286–7, 994 on stasis in Argos  1019 on a succession of kings of Athens  300, 1026 on the Thirty Tyrants’ murders and banishments  298, 1018 Italian language, character of  168–9, 887 Italy, ancient: agriculture  305, 320–1, 990–1 climate  322, 323, 327, 1090, 1091–2 ‘commonwealths’ of  301, 1026–7 disorder of  296, 1013 the economy in  929 interest rates in  931 encomia of  1103 Hannibal’s invasion  952 herds of swine in  320 its history of harsh weather  322, 327 n. 254 population  308, 986, 1040, 1043, 1046–7, 1087, 1105, 1108

and Pyrrhus  919 slavery in  282–3, 285–6, 289–90, 988, 1002 number of slaves  290–1, 1001, 1081 small commonwealths, peace and equality in early times  293, 301 Italy and Italians, modern: allegations of lack of courage and effeminacy in  213 arts and industry  945 and balance of power  948 national characters of  169–72, 213, 881, 920 popish institutions in  67, 291 poverty of the common people  207–8, 248 poverty and weakness of  1003, 1101 populations, ancient contrasted to modern 327 the reception of Hume’s essays in  501, 982 vices and virtues in the character of 48 want of industry and commerce in  248, 251 Ixion 736 J Jacobites  755, 764, 783 and the divine right of kings  1109 and Hume’s writings  411, 420, 422–4, 1132 as a potential threat to stock-holders’ interests 265 plots and uprisings  360, 422–3, 1131, 1132–3, 1136, 1138 and the doctrine of resistance 1123 and habeas corpus  782 uprising (1715)  792

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Index

uprising (1745)  785, 792 nonjurors in Scotland  784–5 see also nonjurors Jamaica  168, 228, 886–7, 929 James I of England: and the clergy  791 and the English economy  945 government of  357–8, 746, 1126, 1134, 1135 and the Stuart succession  1127, 1136 James II of England: ‘abdication’ of  781, 1115–16 his arrogation of legislative power  349, 357–8 and French trade  946 Roman Catholicism of  781, 1137 and the Stuart succession  755, 782, 1125, 1127, 1135, 1136 supplanted by the Glorious Revolution  770, 1124, 1134, 1135, 1139 and nonjurors  785 and the original contract  1111, 1114, 1123 Jansenists 793 as enthusiasts  80 their genius and support of liberty in France 80 jealousy: and amorous dispositions  172–3, 178 of monarchs toward their subjects  38 in nations regarding the balance of trade 237 a painful passion with frightful effects  152, 178 of power in Alexander the Great  253 jealousy of trade: how far valid  251 as narrow and malignant  247, 249, 251, 946 Jessop, Thomas E.  406

1323

Jesuits  793, 828, 882–3 and China  830 their distinct character  80, 166 Jews  883, 1037, 1131 assimilations of  882 their character preserved amidst surrounding peoples  166 Flavius Josephus, his Jewish War  319 n. 204, 328 n. 255 intolerance of, by the Romans  69 n. 3, 776 and Judaism  788 Maccabees, Jewish rebel warriors who took Judea  77 the treasure of Hezekiah and the Jewish princes  262 John, king of England  1127 Johnson, Edward  1092 Johnson, Samuel  444, 958 on Abraham Cowley  874 on Addison’s religion  717 on Alexander Pope  872 and the Booksellers’ Relief Bill  442 Dictionary of  420, 716, 803, 846, 1125, 1130 and Hume  402, 859–60 on the novel  732 parliamentary reports of  812, 980, 981 on prime ministers  726–7 quoted  785, 856, 873, 1123 and Robert Walpole  727 on the Spectator 408 on William Congreve  872 Jonson (Johnson), Ben  13, 724 contrasted with Shakespeare  724, 840 his Volpone  117, 292 n. 53, 846, 1006 Josephus, Flavius: on Alexandria  319, 1085 his Jewish War  319 n. 204, 328 n. 255 on the population of Egypt  1104

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1324

Index

Julia Livilla  27, 733 Julian, Roman emperor  308 n. 128, 1044 Julio-Claudian emperors  90, 742, 1011 justice: customs that poorly instill it  47 the demands of hard cases of  32 duties (obligations) of  54 duties of as validly overridable in emergencies 347–8 the impartial administration of  55 a moral duty and a virtue  341–3, 347–8 and property rights  337, 341, 343, 347 the purpose of government as the distribution of  54 unjust taxes on the poor by the rich  207–8, 266 see also equity; government; impartiality; inequality; rights; taxation; see also under Hume, David Justices of the Peace  367, 371, 1145 Justin (Marcus Iunianius Iustinus): on Amazons  731 his Epitome a school text used by Hume 951 on the size of the combined Greek forces  315, 1070–1 on Spain  327, 1101 Justinian, Roman emperor  732, 962, 987 the Digest, a compendium of juristic legal writings ordered by  287– 8, 995–6 and factions in Constantinople  772 on Homer and Virgil, the poets par excellence 117 his Institutes  840, 970, 1013, 1118 his suppression of philosophical schools 831 Juvenal (Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis)  327, 794, 1102 on the city of Rome  315–16, 1072

the last of the Roman writers possessing genius  170, 888 his mention of an uncivil ancient custom of dining  115 n. 15 on Messalina  732 quoted  169–70, 290, 322, 888, 1090 on slaves  1000 on tyrannicide  1123 vulgarities in  112, 833 K Kames, Henry Home, Lord: and the analogy between values and secondary qualities  902 his career  404 and copyright  438, 439 his editing of A Letter from a Gentleman 416 as friend and correspondent of Hume  404 n. 15, 418, 423, 730, 747, 809, 868, 894 and the Millar-Kincaid collaboration in publishing  437–8 on philosophical dialogues  841 quoted 870 Kincaid, Alexander: and Andrew Millar  421, 437–9, 442, 898 apprenticeship 437 a collaborator with Robert Fleming  407, 437 and copyright  441–2 as publisher of Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political 405 as publisher of Hume’s Political Discourses 424–5 King, Gregory  913, 990 kings, when constrained by barons rather than the people  352–3; see also monarchy knaves  20, 57, 145, 271

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Index

Koran (Alcoran)  182, 900 K(o)uli Kan (Nadir Shah), a prodigy among the Persians  14, 724, 1111 L La Bruyère, Jean de  720 a philosopher of the easy and obvious type  909 on good sense and good taste  908 on Gothic style  871 La Motte, Antoine Houdart de  904 fables of  31–2, 721, 735–6, 906 and the querelle  763, 910 La Motte-Guyon, Jean-Marie Bouvier de 717 labour: as central to commerce and state interests 204–14 dungeons (ergastula) in which slaves laboured 283 equality for labourers  207–8, 210 in farming  202, 204, 214 high price of, under conditions of abundance 207 impracticability of a sovereign commanding labourers to work 205 low price of, where little commerce exists  207–8, 219–20 money as a representation of  220 price of, in foreign trade  221 public gain by diverting labourers to public service  206 of Spartan public slaves (Helotes)  201, 288, 309 the stock of, consisting of all power and riches  222 superfluities that arise from, in commerce 204–5 see also commerce; corn supply; equality; inequality; slavery

1325

Lacedaemonia (Lacedemonia)  164 n. 3, 171–2, 252, 262, 299 n. 84, 304, 315; see also Sparta Laconia  312, 315, 1071; see also Sparta Lampridius, Aelius, on Heliogabalus’s bizarre estimate of Rome’s greatness  306 n. 114; see also Scriptores Historiae Augustae Lancaster, house of  341, 782, 1115, 1127 landed versus trading interests  68, 266–7, 775, 962–3, 969 language and national character  168–9, 887 language of moral precepts, unanimity in the  182; see also approbation; Fénelon; humanity, sentiments and virtues of Languedoc  165–6, 242, 265, 882 Latin, its character  169 latitudinarians  80, 737, 783, 792 Arminians 779–80 Benjamin Hoadly  762 law (of political states and nations): alleged simplicity of Greek and Roman laws  95 the British constitution and its controul by  348–9 of divorce in ancient Rome  156, 292 n. 53 and eloquence in ancient lawyers 95 government by laws, not individuals 90 high capacity required for the profession of  13 of Hirtius banning Caesar’s opponents from office  298 of Hyperides, giving liberty to slaves 274

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1326

Index

law (of political states and nations) (cont.) laws of the Twelve Tables  69 n. 3, 105, 296 laws necessary for democracy in Athens 274–5 legislative attempts to bind a legislature forever  275–6 in opposition to external superstition in Rome  69 n. 3 and order as a source of happiness and liberty  109, 129, 200–2 the place of, in republics  105–6 polygamy permitted by, in some nations 151 Roman laws against external superstition  69 n. 3 of Servius Tullius on power in proportion to property  303 Solon’s: on freemen in voting  302 giving permission to parents to kill their children  291 Sparta’s peculiar  202, 243 Turkish lack of constraint by  104, 152 on tyrannicide  348 Law, John  919, 937, 938, 1175, 1179 on coinage  970 and the Mississippi Bubble  970 on the money supply  932 writings 967 Law, William  918 Le Blanc, Jean-Bernard  733, 811–12, 831, 834, 1135 learning and the learned world  3–6, 13, 40, 63, 87–92, 95, 106–9, 148, 169–70, 330–1; see also arts and sciences; liberal arts; science Leghorn 327 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm  791, 829, 830 Lepidus, Marcus Aemilius (consul 78 bc)  1074

Lepidus, Marcus Aemilius (triumvir)  754, 1008, 1043 Leptines  275, 977 Lesbos, centre of commerce  259, 960 Levellers, religious fanatics in England  79, 789, 879 Lewis (Louis) XII  67 n. 2 liberal arts  13, 36, 98, 110, 169–70, 214, 739–40, 908 and forms of government  109, 111, 161, 801, 878 moral benefits  36–7, 142, 211, 861 liberty: its abolition in Athens  298–300, 300 n. 86, 301–2 civil liberty compared to absolute government  86ff., 103–5 its decay, causing a decay of letters 87 enthusiasm in religion and the spirit of 80 as established in England  214 in France  38 forms of never to be sacrificed  75 as a perfection of society  56 political authority in conflict with  56, 59, 63 progress in the arts as favourable to 214 of reasoning regarding religion, politics, metaphysics, and morals 111 as recently increased for rulers  353 zealous friends of  73 see also free governments; free-thinkers; liberty of the press; priests; slavery liberty of the press  741, 743 Great Britain’s extreme form of 38–40 and the Licensing Act  743 potentially an evil when unbounded 40

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Index

see also free governments; free-thinkers; liberty liberum veto 748; see also an elective monarchy under Poland Libitina (Venus Libitina), temple of  318, 1081 Libya  299, 749, 923, 1019, 1022 Lipsius, Justus  776, 997 Folard on  1012 as a modern Stoic  738 on the population of Rome  317, 1079 on slaves’ little rooms and the effect on marriage and propagation  288 n. 31 liquor and wine: drinking large quantities of  172 duties on  248 the love of, in northern nations  172 prices of  241 Lisbon, as a centre of commerce in  248, 926 literati, Chinese  79, 791 Lithuania  257, 957 Livia, wife of Augustus  113, 836 Livy (Titus Livius)  1119 on Abydos  1012 and the balance of power  952 cited  48, 66, 166, 202, 246, 254, 294, 298, 303 on citizen soldiers  202, 913–14, 914–15 on the climate of Rome  1090 on governments of laws  806 on incidents of religious intolerance 775–6 on infanticide  1004 on the ‘liberty’ of the Greeks  1107 Machiavelli on  952, 1142 on Nabis of Sparta  1018 on the origins of the Republic  881, 978 on the origins of Rome  1027

1327

on the Papirian and Pollian tribes  66, 773 on a poisoning incident  753–4 on the problem of debt in early Rome 930–1 on questions of reliability  951–2 on Roman government  978–9, 1031 on the size of estates  1072, 1074 on slavery  988, 1070 on soldiers’ pay  1008 as superstitious  330 n. 263 on Thessaly  1069 on treasure seized by the Romans 942 on the Twelve Tables  825 Locke, John: an accurate and abstruse philosopher  408, 909 an adherent of the selfish system of morals 795 against Cartesianism  828 on coinage  927, 970 composition of his Two Treatises 783 on currency  922 on enthusiasm  787 on eternity  857 on human equality  1110 his inelegance in writing  88 on the money supply  927, 932, 935 on the original contract  345–6, 422, 1109, 1110, 1112, 1119–20 and parliamentary representation 1144 on primary and secondary qualities  859, 902 quoted  345–6, 719 on the right of resistance  1117 and the science of man  802 his style  88, 803–4 on taxes  962, 963 and the Whigs  1117 wit distinguished from judgement 869

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1328

Index

Lombard school  88, 802 Lombardy  320, 802, 929 London: as a centre of commerce  89, 228, 922, 925, 967 dimensions of  319, 1085 as distended  265 population  285, 321–2, 967–8, 990, 1052, 1081 satirical ridicule of, by Swift in Gulliver’s Travels  301 n. 92 Longinus 1108 on ancient orators  96 n. 5 on arts and sciences flourishing in free governments  87, 799, 801 on Demosthenes  94, 813 on Demosthenes and Cicero  810 on eloquence  816, 819–20 the humour of blaming the present 1108 on Hyperides  274, 974 identity of  800–1 translated by Boileau  762, 801, 905 Lords of the Articles, the  364, 1142 Louis XI of France  13, 866 Louis (Lewis) XII of France  13, 67 n. 2, 774, 919 Louis XIII of France  749–50, 822, 1125 Louis XIV of France  13, 102, 970–1 advances in trade  959 his armed forces  212, 890, 913, 924 bigotry of  255, 954 and currency revaluation  222 his edict about succession  345 interest paid on his debt  270 and Jesuits and Jansenists  793 and the Nine Years War  883 his persecutions  305, 805 his rule  798, 817, 822–3 his wars  884, 919, 1097 revocation of the Edict of Nantes 1037

statue of  919 and the succession  345, 1118–19 Louis XV of France  742, 798 interest paid on his debt  270 and monarchy  807 Louis XVI of France  742 Louvestein party in Holland  72, 779–80 love: of children  341, 864 of dominion in the married state  22 encouraged by ease and leisure  171 of equality  297 of gain  232 of knowledge  102 of laudable actions for their own sake 85 of liberty  62, 80, 166, 295, 297, 304 of money  214 as a passion  123, 155 of self  84; see also interest (self-interest) of virtue  85, 130, 142 see also passions; virtue(s) Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) 1002 on Cato the Younger  846, 853 quoted  290 n. 46 Lucian  844, 926 the ‘choice of Hercules’  845 on courting legacies  292 n. 53, 1005–6 and the fabulous ship transporting corn  313 n. 167, 1063 on the frugality of Greeks  330, 1107 Hume on  116, 839 his imagination  148 n. 6 and marks of civility and incivility in countries  115 n. 15 as a moralist  148, 864 on Philip in the infernal regions  146, 863 and philosophy  146, 831, 854, 863

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1329

Index

pleasantry in his dialogues  176 and superstition  330 n. 263 Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)  850 and the age of the world  984, 990 and atomism  859, 983 Epicureanism  738, 831, 846, 863 a genius  14 licentiousness in his style and vulgarities  112, 833 quoted  29, 121, 734, 844 simplicity of style  158, 872 on superstition  787 luxurious ages, the happiest and the most virtuous  209–12; see also luxury luxury  831, 917 its advantages  204–6, 210–15 and arts and sciences  110 its different senses and uncertain meanings  209, 917 its disadvantages  216–17 effects of when excessive  217 employment of the arts of  200–1 and the fall of the Roman Republic  213–14, 920–1 innocent when a refinement in arts and conveniencies  216 and martial spirit  213–14 severe judgements against  215 vicious and innocent kinds of  209, 214, 216–17 harm in suppressing vicious kinds  210, 216–17 where it nourishes commerce and industry 215 when viewed as indulgent  209 see also indolence; luxurious ages Lycia, a centre of commerce  259, 960 Lycurgus, Athenian orator  815 Lycurgus, Spartan legislator  243, 939, 1060–1

Lyons  322, 1089 Lysias: Attic style of  99, 815, 820 cited or quoted  297 n. 71, 298, 300 n. 87, 303, 308, 310–11, 314 on the democracy at Athens  297, 1014 on financial exactions  300, 1023–5 and interest rates  303, 1033 on liturgies  300, 1023–4 number of his family’s slaves  311, 1057 and the restored democracy  1014, 1015 and the Thirty Tyrants  297 n. 71, 298, 1013–14, 1015, 1016, 1018 on violence in Athenian democracies and oligarchies  297 n. 71 on Xerxes’s army  308, 1042 Lyttelton, George, 1st baron: as gentleman author  402, 763 opposition to the court Whigs  755, 763, 1178 M Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de  1070, 1099 Macedonia  836, 1069–70 Æschines as ambassador, with Demosthenes, to Philip II  293 the army raised by Philip II as head of the Greek confederacy 315 and balance of power  252, 951 among Alexander’s successors  253 battle formation  1011 Demosthenes’s opposition to the rise of the power of  252 and Greece  800, 956, 973, 1023, 1029 Perseus, king of  246, 262 and Persia  751–3 Philip V:

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1330

Index

Macedonia (cont.) his imprudence in forming an alliance with Hannibal (215 bc) 254 his wit in a meeting with Titus Flamininus  113, 835 population 1070 and Rome  952, 1068, 1107 treasure in  246, 262, 942, 965 Machiavelli (Machiavel), Niccolò  764, 771, 866, 1102 on Agathocles  1022 on Alexander the Great and political truths  45–6 n. 6 his assessments of Italy  86 on the bank at Genoa  753 and Brutus  720 on Cesare Borgia  1110 his Clitia unpleasing to many readers 194 on the conquests of Alexander the Great  45, 46 n. 6 his descriptions of Persia  46 n. 6 his Discourses 952 his errors on weak princes and monarchies  46, 86, 798 on factions  772 his failure to consult experience sufficiently 86–7 Folard on  1012 as historian  28, 734 his instructive failure to consult experience 86–7 and martial virtue  914 and maxims of eastern princes  45–6, 750 and mixed government  764 Nicholas Barbon on  799 on original principles in government  364, 1142 as playwright  194, 910 quoted  47 n. 7, 86, 769, 798

refutation of his maxims by experience  86, 798 silent on trade  799 speaking as a politician  28, 45 a true sentiment of virtue displayed in his History  28–9, 734 on tyrannical governments  86 on usurping power  980 on the weakness of Italy  919–20 Mackenzie, Henry  740 Madison, James  1148 on the Germanic Empire  977, 1137 Magna Charta (the Great Charter)  353, 1123, 1126, 1127, 1128 Maillet, Benoît de, his account of Egypt  291, 324, 1003, 1093 Malebranche, Nicolas  828, 859, 909 Malta  366, 883, 1143 Malthus, Thomas  982 Mandeville, Bernard  870, 879, 921 his abuse of words such as ‘vice’  216–17, 900, 922 his denial of moral distinctions  733, 794, 916–17, 922 on duelling  839 and the meanness of human nature  718, 794, 796 and the science of man  802 manners: in the ancient Persians  46 n. 6, 172 Asiatic, where destructive to friendship and love  152 in China  108 and conversational and social abilities 28–9 damage done by revolutions in  161, 194–5 difficulties in reaching judgements about unfamiliar  195 each nation as having a peculiar set of 161 England, national characters, and  161, 164, 166–70, 885

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Index

gallantry and  114 innocent and vicious peculiarities of  194, 297 and morals in Homer  195, 900, 910, 911, 912 in Muscovy  115, 168, 324, 339 of a people, their changes over time  92, 165–6, 169, 194–5, 297 politeness of, in monarchies and courts  111–12, 115 refinements in politeness, civility, and  114–15, 162 n. 1, 173, 194 Roman  69 n. 3 similitude of, emerging from conversations among parties 164–6 slave manners  311, 1055–6 slavery as a cause of barbarous 282 of soldiers  162 n. 1 universal contagion of, in history 165 women’s positive influence on  116 see also Ancients, the, under their customs versus those of the Moderns; Addison, Joseph, under on manners and morals; Berkeley, George, under on manners and morals; civility; custom; Muscovites, under manners and morals; national characters; polite writings; politeness; virtue(s) Mansfield, William Murray, 1st earl of 443, 812 on copyright  439, 442–3 and the pressing of seamen  980 Mantinea  1011, 1020, 1048, 1065 its population and size  314, 1066 Mantitheus  1015, 1024

1331

Marathon, battle of  46 n. 94, 94, 751, 813 Marcellinus, Ammianus, his History of Rome quoted  319 n. 204 Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor  847, 853, 854, 862 last of ‘the five good emperors’  1102, 1118 on training of the mind and moral progress 848–50 society natural to man  851 Mareia 328 Mareotis, Lake  319, 1083, 1084 Maria Theresa, archduchess of Austria  256, 927, 947, 955–6 Mark Anthony (or Antony), see Antonius, Marcus Marlborough, John Churchill, 1st duke of 14, 724 opposition to  741, 955 marriage 22–5 Abelard and Heloise  155, 868 Alexander’s marriages of his captains to Persian women  46 n. 6 an allegory of love and  23–24 an artificial creation  150–1, 864 the bond of friendship in  155 and breeding under conditions of slavery  284–5, 287–8, 291 and divorce  154–6 in ancient laws of Rome  156, 292 n. 53, 869, 1006 in ancient Rome and Greece  154, 867–8 enforced forms of, in the reign of Augustus 156 and gallantry  211 infidelity and related customs in  150, 211 many arrangements for wives and children 150–1 mutual consent involved in the contract 150

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1332 marriage (cont.) polygamy in  151–4, 865–6 among Roman soldiers  295, 1011 and slavery  284, 287–90, 995–1000 superstitions about  150 united interests and concerns in  155–6 varieties of  150–2, 865–7 see also divorce; friendship; love; polygamy Marseilles (Massalia)  302, 303, 328 n. 255, 1008, 1103 Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis)  327, 993, 1102 epigrams  159, 873–4 over-refined 871 quoted  290 n. 46, 1002 on slavery and the words verna and scurra  286n n. 17–18 on the sportula 327–8 Mary I of England  807, 1127 Mary II of England  1127, 1136 accession  770, 781, 1125 massacres in ancient Greece, recorded by Diodorus Siculus  299 n. 84 Massie, Joseph  929 and the balance of trade  947 on interest rates  932 Massinissa, an unknowing instrument of Roman greatness  254, 953 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor nicknamed Pocci-danari: Machiavelli’s ‘weak’ prince  798 want of money  223 n. 5, 927 maxims of common prudence  136 Maximus, Marcus Clodius Pupienus  316–17 n. 193 Maximus, Valerius, Roman emperor  316 n. 191 and connection to Balbinus as emperor  317 n. 193, 1078 Maximus of Tyre  854

Index Maynwaring, Roger  1135 Mazarin (Mazarine), Cardinal Jules  212, 798, 819, 919 Mead, Richard  1074–5 Medes  46 n. 6, 252, 948 Median Wars, see Persian Wars Medici family: and Florence  62, 87–8, 769, 801 Lorenzo de Medici  949, 1180 Megabyzus and family  46, 751 Megalopolis  949, 1106 Demosthenes’s oration for Megalopolitans 252 dimensions of  314, 1066, 1068 population of  1050 Megara 329 population 1106 stasis in  299 n. 84, 1020 Mehmed Efendi, Çalebi (Mehemet Effendi)  603, 866 Meidias (Midias)  300, 1025 Melon, Jean-François: his sorting out of the French population 913 and devaluation of currency  926 the French population  200 n. 1 on luxury  915 on money  222 n. 4 and national debt  969, 970 on slavery  1056 Menander  910, 993, 1056 on the character of soldiers  162 n. 1 and population  1051 quoted  162, 878 Mercantilism  934, 946 mercenary troops (or armies)  357, 924 in Britain  218, 923, 1134, 1138 in Carthage  218, 749, 923 Dionysius the elder’s alleged maintaining of  202 in enormous monarchies  257 Greek republics did not maintain 315

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Index

Greeks as mercenaries  299 n. 84, 752, 1020–1 in indebted countries  267 in Italy  920 maintenance of requires great trade and numerous manufactures 309 in Morocco  774 in rich and trading countries  218 Sweden 1147 Syracuse  202 n. 3 in the United Provinces  218, 1045 see also standing army merchants: the begetters of industry  232–3 the conditions of French  243 conditions of opulence in  233 in Edinburgh and Glasgow  244 heightening of prices by  220 how interest rates affect  233 their need for and use of credit  244, 264 the origin of  231 professional commitments of  163 property gained by  232 public credit that supports  264 stimulation of enterprise in  221 see also banks; foreign trade; money; paper-credit; public credit; taxation Messalina, wife of Claudius  27, 732–3 metaphysics: liberty of reasoning as a vital condition of  111 a science  111 speculative and shallow ideas in  199, 345 see also Aristotle; Berkeley; Cartesian philosophy; Descartes; Hobbes; Locke; Plato; Platonists; The Sceptic Michelangelo (Michael Angelo)  88, 801

1333

the middle station of life  11–14, 721, 722, 785 Midias, Demosthenes’s exaggeration of his stinginess  300 n. 88 Miège, Guy  838, 1114, 1173 Milan  67, 327, 774 the arts in  802 convents in  997 Miletus (Miletum)  1033 as a great centre of commerce  259, 960 stasis in  1019 militias: in China  108, 830–1 citizen soldiers  1138 feudal 1134 as necessary for security  371 oversight of  366 readiness of  368, 372 Scots-militia bill  765 Swedish 1147 Swiss 1144 as threats to a prince with a disputed title 360 see also standing army Millar, Andrew  433, 722, 746 his apprenticeship  437 his collaboration with Alexander Kincaid  421, 437–9, 442, 898 and Hume  402, 420, 423, 437 and Hume’s History 439 and perpetual copyright  438, 442–3 his publication of Hume’s Four Dissertations 428–30, 442, 898 secretly published works of  420–1, 427 and Strahan’s ledgers  427, 437 and Hume’s withdrawn essays  422, 730, 731 see also Cooper, Mary; Kincaid, Alexander; Strahan, William

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1334

Index

Milo: battle with Clodius  90, 805 Cicero’s pleadings on behalf of  90 exile of  980 Milton, Andrew Fletcher, Lord  726, 766 Milton, John: adversities of  724–5 on allegiance  1112 a British Virgil  818 and censorship  745 as a controversialist  722, 743, 768, 801, 1059 exemplifies fine writing  870 Filmer’s criticisms of  1112 a genius  14, 183, 871, 902–3 language and style  88, 169, 803–4, 874 and the middle sort  722 on the original contract  1112 quoted  690, 693–4, 845, 856 mimesis  133–4, 176, 178, 189, 287 and Greek models  870 and la belle nature  157, 870–1 Ut pictura poesis 738 minds, human: animals compared to, in thought and affection  82–3, 137 their capacity to acquire a taste for the polite arts  36–7 the cultivation of  36, 127 the different functions in making judgements of fact and value 138–40 the effects of religion on uncultivated  68, 77ff., 307 n. 115, 361, 373 ennobling sentiments of  129 the finer emotions of  185; see also emotion freedom from prejudice in  189; see also impartiality genius in  13–14, 36, 58, 86, 88, 92, 98, 117, 169, 185, 189–90, 253

and the growth of learning in arts and sciences  27, 29, 143 the learned and conversible worlds of 3 narrow, neglected, rude, and uncultivated  126–9, 135, 142, 144, 148, 161–2, 174 nature’s prodigious influence on 141 the negative effect of factions on  51 the oeconomy of  149 the perception of beauty by  183; see also approbation; beauty virtues as the model for and happiest disposition of  141, 143 of women  22, 28 see also animals; arts and sciences; emotion; passions; virtue(s) mines: in America  220 slaves employed in  32, 312, 998, 1055, 1058 the rise of money from, in Spain and Portugal 225 Mingrelia  291, 1003 Minos, judge of the dead  32, 736 Mithradates (Mithridates), allegedly descended from an eminent Persian family  46 n. 6, 752 moderation: the ancients as showing little in politics 301 in the exercise of liberty  353–4 gained from knowledge in arts of government 212 improved by education and customs 90 lessons of, for political factions  48, 59, 64, 350, 354 in matters of religion  69 n. 3, 361 not merely a matter of local customs and beliefs  41

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Index

in a passionate ardour of national spirit 255–6 of the passions  193 the place of good laws in establishing 47–8 in popular assemblies  108 n. 3 the value ancient Greeks placed on their own  301 in a virtuous life  141, 163 n. 2 modesty 729 and English national character  819 female virtues of softness and  116 impudence and  19ff., 112 when associated with vice  21 Molesworth, Robert, 1st viscount  783 Molière (pseud. of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)  117, 840, 909 Molinists, as friends to superstition  80, 793 Molyneux, William  750 monarchy: absolute  806–7, 822–3, 830, 1119, 1181 and the arts and sciences  88–9, 801–2 and the British government  61, 64, 771 civilized  90, 110–11 and commerce  89, 805 and debts  91 inherently illegitimate  345–6 no jealousy of the people  38–9 and passive obedience  74, 770 and population  328–9, 1102 poverty of the common people  207–8, 294 and provinces  45, 749 pure  108 n. 3, 1111 and republican cities  373 capable monarchs of England and France  13, 723 destructive when enormous  257 European in contrast with Eastern  45–6, 261

1335 French monarchs and monarchical governments  13, 38, 45, 90, 334 gallantry and politeness as the product of courts and  114 hereditary in contrast with elective 43 Polish  214, 748, 826, 987 improper for commerce when vast 321 limited  60, 71–2, 74–5, 277–8, 348–9, 351, 783, 826, 1111, 1133 Hume’s plan of  372 in Sweden  1147 Machiavelli (Machiavel) on weak princes and monarchies  86 mixed with aristocracy and democracy  39–40, 61ff., 71ff., 167, 300, 761, 764–5, 767, 826, 1026 modern advances towards perfection in 90 nobility’s advantage under  91 passive obedience to  74–5, 347ff. Persian, as ruled by petty princes 253 prerogative  80, 352, 353, 360, 365, 746 circumscribed  214, 361, 1112 dispensing and suspending power 765 dissolving Parliament  765, 771 in Europe  351, 357–8 in France  1119 Hanoverian  62, 355 Stuart  351–2, 359, 1126, 1134, 1135 Tudor 1131 usurped 277–8 veto over legislation  58, 364, 765, 1142 superstitious reverence to  111

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1336

Index

monarchy (cont.) weaknesses in  90–1, 351 see also aristocracy; authority, political; democracy; executive power; France; usurpation of power money: its diffusion, how advantageous  223–4 its gradual increase advantageous to countries  222–3, 227, 228, 242 n. 5, 926, 930 experience in matters of  237, 240, 242 and finance and interest in Great Britain 241 French policies on interest rates and  222, 235 in general  218–27 inequality of  240, 273 as the instrument to facilitate exchange of commodities  218, 224 and interest and prices in Italy  226, 235, 241 love of  214 Montesquieu on the supply of  932 as the oil of the wheels of trade  218 Parliament’s borrowing of, at low interest 270 precious metals and  227 public 91 the proportion between commodities and  218, 224–5, 245–6 as a representation of labour and commodities 220 its rise in Spain from mines  225 in Roman history  240, 273 severe scarcity of, obliging landlords to take no rent  223 Spain’s increase of for lending  235, 239 Swift on the Irish money supply  238, 935

see also banks; commerce; credit; merchants; paper-credit; public debt; public credit; taxation Montaigne, Michel de  418, 720, 731, 826–7, 854 a modern sceptic  738 a moralist  148 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de  963, 1101, 1179 on ancient populousness  280, 329, 981, 985, 1006–7, 1037, 1105 China a despotic state  830 climatic determinism  878 economics 937 on government  766, 771, 775 and Hume  774–5, 876, 878 correspondence between the two  807, 932, 935, 939, 967, 982 and Isaac Vossius  985 his Lettres Persanes 867 on the money supply  932 on national characters  876, 877, 890 of Romans  883 on primogeniture  1026 on republics  750, 1147 on syphilis  985 Monumentum Ancyranum (Res Gestae)  317 n. 194, 1079 Moors  67, 117, 215 moral beauty  130; see also approbation; beauty; virtue(s) moral causes (distinguished from physical causes)  280, 876, 877, 985, 1011 and character  161–73 chief influence on populousness 280–331 defined  161, 877–8, 986 domestic in contrast with political  281, 986

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1337

Index

fixed in contrast with accidental  162–3, 165, 170, 881 and unpredictable irregularities  273 moral distinctions: Joseph Butler and  733, 900 Hobbes’s alleged denial of  733, 900, 1116 sceptical denials of their reality  28, 216–17 see also approbation; Mandeville, Bernard; moral beauty; universality of moral precepts and the nature of language moral duties (obligations): of allegiance to society  342 and the correction of gross vices 114 divisible into two kinds, natural humane instincts and sense of obligation 341 general maxims of, their need for sentiment to be influential 142 justice and fidelity as obligatory and authoritative in morals  341–3 and the standard of the common sentiments of mankind  345 social necessity as the obligation binding us to governments  345 universality of moral precepts and the nature of language  182 see also humanity, sentiments and virtues of; justice; maxims of common prudence; virtue(s) moral prejudices  7–10, 195; see also party-prejudice; prejudice More, Henry  792 on enthusiasm  787 More, Sir Thomas  364, 966, 1141 Morellet, André  939 Morgan, Thomas  112, 833–4

Morocco  915, 946, 1093 civil wars between blacks and whites in  67, 774 state of sloth and ignorance in  251 Morris, Corbyn: per capita expenses per annum  1056 and the population of London  968 and the power of the crown  770 the size of the French army  919 mortgages and mortgaging  235, 251, 256, 262, 266, 268–70; see also frugality; public credit; public debt Motte, Antoine Houdart de La, see La Motte Muscovites: manners and morals of  115, 172, 339, 838, 892, 172, 1114 their language  168 Muscovy 13 arts and sciences in  170, 888 Muscovy in Europe  324, 1094 music: carried to perfection in Rome  87 for Epicureans  121 pleasures given by musicians  178 in songs  122 study of the beauties of  37 value judgements assessing Italian music and Scotch tunes 138 N Nabis, Spartan king  298, 1017–18, 1067 Naples 801 as dominated by women  213, 920 populousness of  308 n. 25, 327 silk manufacture in  945 Nash, Treadway  987, 988, 1077, 1086, 1087, 1089, 1095–6

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1338

Index

national characters: the essay on  161–73, 413, 419 n. 62, 421 in extensive and small governments 164–7 in France  165, 167 and language  168–9, 887 and manners in England  161, 164, 166–70 moral, in contrast with physical, causes of  161–2, 165, 168, 877–81 Plutarch on differences in  165 in Roman history  166, 170 virtues, as character traits, in different nations  164–73 see also manners natural religion  140; see also deists, under religion nature, its prodigious influence on the human mind  141 Negroes: character of  168 n. 6, 172, 876, 886–7 military government of  311, 1056 see also slavery neighbouring states, their mutual jealousy and prejudices  107 Nepos, Cornelius  286, 919, 993 Neri, Florentine political party and faction  66, 772 Nero, Roman emperor  966, 989, 996, 1010, 1072 Alexandria’s size during his reign 328 his bungled policies on debt and taxes 263 cruelty of  284 his extravagance and ‘Golden House’  319–20, 1074, 1086 and imperial succession  1115 insurrections against, and influential party-systems 347 and the ‘liberty’ of Greece  329, 1107

his passion for glory  85 his rule inferior in taste and genius 160 Stoic opposition to  852 suicide of  1115 time of  160, 328, 875, 1081 a tyrant  347, 1122 his vanity  85, 797 wealth of his freedmen  1074 among the worst of Roman emperors  90, 160, 263, 284 n. 12, 347, 807 Nerva, Roman emperor  932, 1102 Netherlands, the Hapsburg  322, 959, 1095 arts and industry  945 debt 808 Nine Years War  883 one of only three large and fertile countries equipped for much trade 258–9 and the Protestant diaspora  1037 Spanish and Austrian  943, 1089 Neville, Henry  791, 1141 New England climate  1092 Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of: the broad-bottom administration 726 coalition with William Pitt  1124 Newton, Sir Isaac: a British Archimedes  818 against Cartesianism  828 on coinage  938 a great philosopher  14, 803 rules of reasoning of  881 second law of motion of  774 theory of dynamics  108, 828–9 Nichols, John  898 Nicias, his slave-holdings  289, 312, 996, 998, 1059 Nicolotti, mobbish faction in Venice  66 n. 1, 773

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Index

Nicomachus, politician  1023, 1179 Niger, Pescennius, Roman emperor 344 Nineveh  310, 1047 Ninus  331, 1045, 1047 Nonconformists  73, 780, 788, 789, 790, 879; see also Dissenters nonjurors  783, 785, 1131; see also Jacobites Noon, John  403, 427, 436–7 Normandy, absurd duties on wines imported into  242 North, Frederick, Lord  727 North, Sir Dudley  963–4 northern nations, their swarms no proof of populousness  324–5 novelty: its agreeable manner of rousing the mind 177 in the arts, as introduced by trade 249 as causing affectation and conceit in some writers  160 the excitement aroused in false religions by  79 Numidia  923, 953 O Octavian, see Augustus odium theologicum (theological hatred)  163 n. 2, 880 Ogilby, John  183, 902–3 Olivarez, Gaspar de Guzman y Pimental, conde-duque de 1125 Olympiodorus of Thebes  317, 1078–9 Onslow, Arthur  812 opinion of interest distinguished from opinion of right  51; see also on parental affection under Hume, David

1339

Orange, house of  72, 779, 1125; see also United Provinces oratory and orators, see eloquence original contract, theory of: belied by history  335–7, 340–1 boasted by many governments as a source of authority  335 Boulainvillier’s ridicule of  345 n. 4 as distilling to the idea of consent 333 an ideology  332, 422 as the justification of authority  333, 337 lacking for Henry IV and VII  337 not justified by history or experience  335, 337, 340 Locke’s version of  88, 345, 346 n. 6 native liberty foregone in submitting to the  334 reciprocal promises involved in  334–5, 342, 783, 1110–11, 1112, 1116, 1119–20 not a refined and practical philosophical system  334–6 the obligation created by a conditional promise in the 334 proposed as the basis of legitimate governments  333, 337 rejected by sovereigns and magistrates 335 tacit consent used to support  333, 338–40, 346 see also characterizing ideology under Whigs; consent, tacit; democracy; Locke, John Oropus and trade in corn  304, 1024, 1035–6 Orsini, Roman political faction  66, 772 ostracism of Athens and petalism of Syracuse  253, 950

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1340

Index

Oswald of Dunnikier, James  938, 981 and Hume  936 and Hume’s draft of Philosophical Essays 418–19 and Hume’s essay ‘Balance of Trade’  932–3, 937 and Hume’s ‘Protestant Succession’ 423 Otho, Roman emperor  825, 971, 1012, 1115 Ottoman Empire  1093–4 a barbarous, absolute monarchy  826 and slaves  291, 1003 and taxes  56, 261, 760, 963–4, 1131 Voltaire on  963 see also Tournefort, Joseph de Pitton; Turkey; Turkish Europe Otway, Thomas  5, 718 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)  211, 837, 918, 988, 1094 on the Black Sea  323, 740, 1091 a favourite author with the young  193, 909 on inspiration  103, 823 on liberal arts  36, 739–40, 861 licentiousness in style  112, 833 and painters  180, 897–8 passages cited from  112, 283, 323, 324 quoted  36, 103 P Paine, Tom  938 painting: L’Abbé du Bos and  174 the beauties of  37, 159 and the diversity of arts in France 88 in Florence  87 the history and perfection of in Rome  87–8, 97, 117 last works of artists, left imperfect, their high value  178, 896

models of in Italy  117 passions as moved by  176 representations of emotion in  177 n. 2 artistry converts terror and distress into pleasure  177 artistry fails to convert and aggravates terror and distress 179–80 see also arts and sciences; beauty; il non finito pais conquis, see under France Pamphylia, centre of commerce  259, 960 Pannonia  323, 344, 1092, 1118 paper-credit: doubts about its advantages  219–20, 242–3, 245, 247, 265 as inflationary  220, 265, 968 public stocks as a form of  265 the want of, in France  243 see also banks; public debt paper money, see bank-credits under Hume, David; bills of credit; bills of exchange; exchequer bills; India bonds under India; paper money under America Papirian and Pollian tribes in Roman history 66 Parasini and Veneti factions in the Byzantine empire  66 Paris  159, 185, 196, 265, 311 dimensions  319, 985, 1083 foundling hospital in  292, 1006 population  321, 322, 968, 1052–3, 1089 Pâris-Duverney, Joseph  926 on money  222 parlement (parliament) of Paris  10, 720, 1119, 1145; see also government under France

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Index

Parliament: its borrowing of money at low interest 270 and the British constitution  49, 59, 73–4, 364 Convention parliaments  781, 1112, 1115, 1136–7 and court and country parties  59 Cromwell’s plan of, as deserving restoration 372 deliberation about the Protestant succession  356, 360 dependence or independence of, under the constitution  55, 58–60, 765 eloquence and the preservation of speeches in  93 its ignorance of commerce  237 impartiality required in its political judgements  59, 73 limitations it might impose on the crown 351 its tacit permission of the pressing of seamen 278 laws: Act for the Encouragement of Learning 438–43 Act for the Relief of Roman Catholics (1778)  911 Act of 1751 regulating paper money in New England  939 Act of Settlement (1701)  743, 1132, 1138 Bill of Rights (1689)  765, 1112 Blasphemy Act (1698)  745 Civil List Act (1697)  769 Conventicle Act (1664)  790 Corporation Act (1661)  886 Disbanding Act (1699)  923 Fox’s Libel Act  744 Licensing Act (1662)  743, 745 naturalization act (1753)  986, 1131 Occasional Conformity Act (1711) 886

1341

protectionist  918, 936, 943, 946, 990 Schism Act (1714)  792 Septennial Act  758, 782 Test Acts (1673 and 1678)  886, 1137 Theatre Licensing Act (1737)  722, 727 Toleration Act (1689)  886 Toleration Act (1712)  1139 Triennial Act  765 Waltham Black Act  1029 the Long Parliament  351, 780, 1126 see also House of Commons; House of Lords Parnassus  94, 814 Parnell, Thomas  159, 869, 874 Parthians  338, 753, 779 parties in general: personal  66–7, 373 real  66, 350 of affection  70 of interest  67–8 mixed 71–2 of principle  68–70, 73 safeguards against  370, 373 parties (political): affection for liberty in  74 and ambition in priests and ecclesiastical superiors  72, 162–3 n. 2 Cavalier party  73 coalition of, an agreeable prospect worthy of promotion  350ff. divisions between patricians and plebeians in Rome  276 ecclesiastical, the enemies of liberty  69, 72 in England, their animosity for above a century past  350 first rise of, in England  73 Fregosi and Adorni of Genoa  66 of Great Britain  71ff. mixed and those of principle  71–2

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1342

Index

parties (political) (cont.) Roundhead party  73–4 zeal in  48–50, 114, 297, 332 see also faction(s); country party; court party; party-prejudices; prejudice; Tory party; Whig party; zeal party-prejudices: in politics  86 in religion  69, 72, 77, 79, 195 those that resist the authority of civil magistrates 56 as undermining judgements of the understanding 190 see also country party; faction(s); House of Commons; House of Lords; house of Stuart; impartiality; parties in general; prejudice passion(s): the agreeable  140, 176 ambition’s power to overcome competitive  26, 31, 275 the amorous  5, 124, 155, 184, 193 appropriate restraints of  48, 57–9, 62, 66, 142, 201 avarice, a universal  102 in commerce, those that should govern 205 those connected to tragedy  176–7 cruel factions arising from  70 delicacy of sentiment and  35–7, 210 those excited by eloquence  176 imprudent forms of  349 in inferior magistrates  371 jealousy, a painful passion with frightful effects  152, 178 for learning  141 the lively  35 in the middle station of life  12 the nobler arts and their delicacy of 36 the pleasures of  209

those connected to tragedy  176–7 those predominant over a lifetime 135–6 revenge, a rough and fierce  140 the social  129 those stimulated by poetry  28 those subordinate and predominant in poetry  180 see also approbation; beauty; delicacy; poetry; revenge; tragedy passive obedience  74, 75, 346ff., 770, 781, 1122, 1135 as distinct from active obedience and resistance 1121 Paterculus, Velleius, see Velleius Paterculus Patru, Olivier  580, 818–19 Paullus, Lucius Aemilius (d. 216 bc)  983 Paullus, Lucius Aemilius (Paulus Aemilius, d. 160 bc)  246, 315, 914, 942 Pausanias 835 his Description of Greece cited  314, 1069 Pavia 327 pay (wages), the proportion between officers and soldiers  293 Peisistratus, Athenian ‘tyrant’  1025 Peking (Pekin)  1089 population of  321 Pelham, Henry  933, 1178 the broad-bottom administration 726 failed naturalization bills  986 restructuring of the debt  929–30, 969 Peloponnese 315 population of  1106 stasis in  1020–1

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Peloponnesian War  890, 1036, 1057 and the balance of power  252, 313, 948, 950 and stasis  1017, 1019–20 as a war of emulation  950 perfect commonwealth : alterations that could be made in Britain to reach a  372–3 Harrington’s Oceana as a type of, with disadvantages  364–70 the idea of a  109–10, 363–73 a practical and advantageous plan of a  364–71, 373 questions about the most perfect form of a  363, 365 a renowned model in the United Provinces 371–2 utopian ideas requiring social reformation (Plato and More) 364 perfection: in the arts and sciences  13, 87–9, 116–7, 169, 279 in commodities, industry, and mechanical arts  210, 212, 250, 305 education and industry required for 13 in eloquence  92–3, 97–8, 112 and human happiness  9 of human nature and mind, labour required for  3, 7, 13, 27, 82–3, 337 liberty as civil society’s  56, 337; see also authority in manufacturing  206 of mental sense, feeling, and taste 188–91 monarchical government’s recent advances toward  90 in perceiving minute objects  187 in poetry  158 state of, in human society  337–8

Index

1343

of wisdom, through tranquility (Epictetus) 8 see also perfect commonwealth Pergamum (Pergamus)  291, 1004 Pericles: his bringing Athenians into the city 1061–2 eloquence of  99, 821 the first Athenian leader to read his speeches from a prepared text  99 n. 7 his long walls connecting Athens to the Piraeus  311 n. 146, 1054 on numbers of Athenian forces  1052 Peripatetic philosophy  107, 828; see also Aristotle Perrault, Charles: and a priori criticism  904 on gallantry  837 on Homer  905 and the querelle  762–3, 823, 832, 1179 persecution  49, 68–70, 79, 255, 305 Perseus, king of Macedon  246, 262, 942, 953, 965, 1063, 1070 Persia, ancient: Alexander’s leading the Greeks into 172 Alexander’s marriages of his captains to Persian women  46 n. 6 arts and sciences in  87 and balance of power  252, 253, 948, 950 as ‘barbarians’  887, 994 coinage 1007 constitutional debate  748 the expedition of Cyrus the Younger  293, 1007 its failure to recover its empire after the conquest by Alexander 45 its invasions of Greece  813, 1032, 1042, 1113

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1344

Index

Persia, ancient (cont.) lack of martial skill  213, 919 Machiavelli’s erroneous description of 45–6 Megabyzus, Zopyrus, and their descendants’ eminence in  46 n. 6 the nobility of  46 n. 6, 750–3 Persian treasure  262, 965 remarkable gaiety in  168 valuation put upon drunkenness in  172, 891 Persia, modern: government 1111 Kuli Kan (Thomas Kouli-Kan; Tahmasp Quli Khan), emperor  14, 724, 1111 national character in  168 Persian (Median) Wars  940 and the population of Athens  303, 310, 1032, 1051 Pertinax, Roman emperor  320, 343–4, 1087, 1118 Pescennius, Roman emperor  344, 1118 Peter I (the Great) of Russia  104, 723, 825, 838, 888 Petersburgh 323 Petrarch, Francesco  196, 896, 912 Petronius Arbiter  211, 323, 800, 918, 1090 quoted  286 n. 18, 993 Petty, Sir William: on interest  932 on the labouring poor  961 and political arithmetic  1037, 1081 population and prosperity  986 taxes on consumption  958 Phaedrus, Roman fabulist, cited  112 n. 6, 833 quoted  588, 836 Phigaleia (Phialae), stasis in  299, 1020 Philip II of Macedon  1023

conquest of the Greek citystates  800, 950, 973, 976, 1007 and the decline of eloquence  799 Demosthenes and Aeschines as ambassadors to  293 as head of the Greek confederacy (League of Corinth)  315, 1071 his occupation in the infernal regions  146, 863 and universal monarchy  252, 817, 863, 949 Philip II of Spain  723, 822 a bad monarch  90, 102, 347 his persecutions  305, 807, 1037 as a tyrant  1122 Philip III of Spain  102, 822 Philip IV of Spain  102, 154, 822, 867, 1125 Philip V of Macedon  113, 835, 942, 965, 1012 his neutrality until he saw Hannibal’s victories  254, 952 Philip VI of France (Philip de Valois)  343, 1117 Philistus  309, 1045 philosophy: Aristotle’s  171, 192, 287, 312, 321 Cartesian  107, 192 the chief business and triumph of  143, 200 the Epicurean, a character of  119ff. the exceptional talent in truly great philosophers 14 fixing rules of conduct in  126 original-contract theory in  334–40 philosophical schools  109, 831 liability to revolutions of chance and fashion  192 the Platonist, a character of  132ff. its refined precepts  65 the Sceptic, a character of  135ff.

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Index

scepticism carried too far in  147–8 n. 6 speculative ideas in metaphysics and natural philosophy  345 the Stoic, a character of  125ff. Stoicism  7, 109, 125–31 when too distant to have place in common life  144, 146–7 see also Aristotle; causation; Epicureans; Descartes; Hobbes; Locke; metaphysics; original contract; Plato; Platonists; Pythagoreans (Pythagoricians); Stoics Phliasia  299 n. 84, 313–14 stasis in  299, 1020 Phoebidas (Phaebidas)  299, 1020 physical causes, see moral causes Picardy, regiment of  171, 889–90 piracy, Roman exercise of  203 n. 5 Piedmont  319, 1085 Pindar 762 his scholiast quoted  312, 1061 Pitt, James  757, 763 the Commons versus the monarch  764, 765, 766 on the demise of feudalism  822 Pitt, William, earl of Chatham  817 coalition government of  1124 eloquence of  812 and Hanoverian interests  1138 Hume and  954 and ‘patriotism’  777 popular support of  968 resigned from his ministry  966 and Sir Robert Walpole  1178 Pizarro, Francisco  324, 1092 Plantagenets  352, 353, 1127 Plataea  1061, 1065, 1106 heroes, who fought at  94, 813 Plato  262, 1174, 1175, 1180

1345

‘Alcibiades’ attributed to  262 n. 2, 964 allegiance based on a promise  346, 1120 allegory  729, 731 ‘amicus Plato’  730 on art  856 on Athens  310, 1048 on the beautiful  855 a ‘British Plato’  818 on ‘enthusiasm’  786 excludes trade from the model city of his Laws  86, 978 his fictional story of Androgynes 24–5 on forms of government  748, 770 on lawgivers  771 on love and marriage  23–4, 731 and the mutability of philosophical theories  192, 909 the myth of Er  1108 on pleasure  855, 856 and Plutarch  331 on prophecy  971 his Republic  86 n. 1, 331 on slavery  994, 1012 on the soul  856, 1104 on Sparta  915 and the standard of taste  901 on symposia  891 the unstable temporal world in contrast with the eternal  132, 134, 854, 856–7 visionary systems  330, 364, 1141 see also Platonists; Socrates Platonists: against the Epicureans on pleasure  132, 855 against the Stoics  132–3, 855–6 their blind submission to masters in the schools  109, 831 on God and eternity  132, 134, 855, 856–7

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1346

Index

Platonists (cont.) Hume’s Platonist and other varieties of Platonism  854 the Platonist, a character of  132ff. Plautus, Titus Maccius, Roman playwright  116, 839, 993, 1055–6 and slavery  311 Pliny the Elder  69 n. 3, 115 n. 15, 227, 246, 748 on Alexandria  319, 1083 on ancient art  178, 896 on Babylon  314, 1066 on the civilizing effect of the Roman empire  328, 1103 on the dimensions of the city of Rome  316–17, 1075–7 on diseases  984 on economic matters  928, 929, 931, 942 the edition of Natural History used by Hume uncertain  896, 991, 999 on great houses in Rome  1074 on Italy  1103 latifundia ruinous to agriculture  295 n. 64, 1010 on a proverb  1134 on Nero’s Golden House  320, 1087 on the numbers killed by Caesar  309, 1044–5 on Scythians  730–1 on Seleuceia on the Tigris  321, 1089 on slavery  289, 290, 988, 991, 999, 1001 on the suppression of the Druids 776 Pliny the Younger: his descriptions of his houses  316, 1073, 1074 on discrimination at banquets  838 on economic matters  235, 931–2

on legacy-hunting  1005 on self-praise  112 n. 5, 832 Plutarch  308, 747, 1013 on Alexandria  1083 on amnesty  1015 on the Athenian constitution  1029, 1030 on Attalus’s exposing of his children 291 a ‘British Plutarch’  818 on Brutus  1028 on Caesar and Brutus  1015 on Caesar and Cato the Younger  732 on Cato the Elder  309, 987–8, 995 his not allowing his slaves to marry and propagate  287, 995 on Cato the Younger  918 and Cicero  307, 816, 980, 1039–40 on Crassus  768 on depopulation, as felt most acutely in Greece  329–31, 1105–6, 1107–8 on destructive methods in wars in Greece 296 on differences of national character 165 and diplomatic dialogue  113, 835, 836 on dissatisfaction with Solon’s laws pertaining to a freeman voting  302, 1029 on the effects of air or climate on the human mind  165, 882 on the esteem of robbery and plunder by Spaniards  327 his exaggerated numbers of Gauls killed by Caesar  308 on a famous trope by Demosthenes 274 on Gaul  308, 1044 Hume’s judgement of him  330, 1105–6, 1107, 1108

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Index

and Hume’s ‘Platonist’  854 Hume’s early reading of  847 on Hume’s recommendation of Plutarch’s Lives to a friend  26 on imitation  894 on infanticide by exposing children  291–2, 1004, 1005 on the ‘liberty’ of the Greeks  1107 on Macedonian treasure  942 maxims in  146, 720, 827, 861–2, 863, 891–2, 926 a moralist  180, 864 on Nero’s proclamation of the ‘liberty’ of the Greeks  329–30, 1107 on numbers of Roman slaves  1001 a passage on the silence of the oracles examined  329–31 and Plato  331 on the purchase of barbarians for purposes of slavery  290 on Pyrrhus  919 quoted 287 on Roman treasure  966 on slavery  287, 290 on Spain  327, 1100 on Sparta and its population  312, 314 n. 177, 915, 939, 1060–1, 1067 on the Stoics  847 on superstition  786–7 a superstitious historian, not a superstitious philosopher  330 on sycophants  933 on Syracuse  1010, 1017, 1045, 1049 on the Stoics  847 on Thebes  976, 1064 on the treasure Alexander seized from the Persians  262 on warfare by brigandage  296, 1013 Plutarch (attributed), on Hyperides  274, 973–4

1347

Pococke, Edward  794 poetry: L’Abbé du Bos’s restrictions on  174 Alexander Pope’s  13–14, 93, 158 the art of, in arousing an audience 174 the beauties of  37, 184, 192 character traits of great poets  14 claims by poets to inspiration  103 as confined by rules of art and standards of taste  184 divine genius in Homer, Virgil, and Milton  14, 117 Fontenelle quoted on  175 great poets in Roman history (Virgil, Horace, and Lucretius)  14, 117 the inculcation of unanimously accepted moral precepts in  182 Lucretius’s greatness in  14 the object of as pleasing through passion and imagination  190–1 often passes over agreeable sentiments to favor melancholy ones  177 n. 2 passions aroused by poetry, for good or ill  28 pastoral 158–9 perfection in  158 its place in the higher parts of learning 13 pleasure taken from  178, 185–6, 190–1 the reasoning involved in tragic and epic 191 simplicity and refinement in  158–9 species of genius in Greek, Roman, English, and French  14, 92 and the standard of taste  181ff. a sublime art, comparable to eloquence 104

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1348

Index

poetry (cont.) subordinate and predominant passions in  180 tender sympathy in the art of  174, 179 Terence’s 158 Virgil’s rank among the great poets  14, 117 the virtues, how handled in  28 in Voltaire’s Henriade 39 Waller’s genius for and standing in  13, 98, 118 see also approbation; arts and sciences; beauty; delicacy; minds, human; standard of taste; taste, the nature and delicacy of Poland: an elective monarchy  748, 802, 826, 987, 1139 and Lithuania  957 overmighty nobility in  42–3, 326 n. 244, 369 population  324, 1094 where venality and corruption most prevail in Europe  214 ‘police’, in ancient states compared to modern 306 polite writings  5, 195–6; see also belles-lettres; politeness politeness  113–7, 165, 169, 173, 211, 213; see also manners; polite writings; virtues political arithmetic  806–7, 1037–8; see also Browning, John; and under Davenant, Charles; Halley, Edmond; Morris, Corbyn; Petty, Sir William; Wallace, Robert politicians: attractions of the monarchical form of government to  110 great ones to be found in all ages and countries 13

as judges of political truth  86 Machiavelli, speaking as one  28, 45 and the maxim of preserving the balance of power  255 public good as the chief business of 200 see also parties in general; politics reducible to a science  41ff. Politian (Angelo Poliziano)  319, 1086 politics reducible to a science  41ff. see also faction(s); free governments; government; parties (political) Pollia and Papiria, Roman tribes, their animosity 66–7 poll taxes, see under taxation Polybius: his account of Egyptian politics  253 on the Achaean League  314, 953, 1068–9 a free and near perfect democracy  337, 1113 on Athenian finances  941 and the balance of power  253, 255, 951, 953–4 on the benefits of Roman rule to Greece  329, 1106 on the census of Athens  246, 312 on the cheapness of provisions in Italy  226, 929 and diplomatic dialogue  113, 835 on effects of climate  878 on the extremely cold climate and cities of Arcadia  314, 323 on Hiero’s understanding of the balance of power  254–5 on how Thracians and Illyrians lived  324, 1094 on inveterate rage in severely besieged cities  296 on the long descent of Persian families through Alexander’s successors  46 n. 6

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Index

on Megalopolis  1066, 1068 on mixed government  59, 748, 753, 764, 766–7 on the oppression of the Carthaginians over subject states 45 on the pay of a Roman centurion 294 on the pecuniary influence of Roman senators and censors  59 n. 2 on Philip V of Macedon’s meeting with Titus Flamininus  113 and the population of Greece  329, 1106 and the population of Italy  308, 1042–3 quoted  255, 320 reliability of  329 n. 258 Republican frugality  226, 929 on Roman treaties with Carthage 915 on Roman piracy  203 n. 5 on the Romans mustering 700,000 soldiers when threatened by Gauls 308 as a source for Hume  981 on the threat of the universal empire posed by the Romans  254 n. 7 polygamy: advocates of, as found in Eastern nations 151–2 barbarism an inseparable attendant of 152 as destructive to friendship  152 disadvantages of  150 and divorce in general  150ff. legal exclusions on both divorce and 156 permitted by law in some nations 151 the sovereignty of the male in  152 see also divorce; friendship; marriage; Pufendorf, Samuel

1349

Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius)  62, 732, 754, 768, 959, 1016 and civil war  1107 Pompey the younger (Sextus Pompeius)  290, 1003, 1180 Pontus  313, 752, 983 Pope, Alexander  740, 818, 838, 854, 857–8, 1139 on avarice  32 and Bolingbroke  755, 820 on Cesare Borgia  1110 as didactic poet  873 edition of Shakespeare  840, 895 on Eloisa and Abelard  868 on forms of government  745 a genius  13, 14, 93 on Homer  905 and Horace  803 hostile to the court Whigs  812 and imitation  846 and James Foster  1176 pastorals 873 quoted  41, 145, 155, 373, 736, 862, 1148 refinement of style  158, 872 on remotest antiquity  797–8 and Robert Walpole  727 rules as methodized nature  843 and sensibility  737 on the schoolmen  828 simplicity of the ancients  910 true wit  870 versification 724 women’s love of sway  730 the populousness of ancient nations 279ff. its connection to happiness in a political state  281, 284 n. 13, 303 its connections to slavery  281–91 populousness calculations for ancient nations: Caesar’s dubious figures of fallen soldiers in battle  309 n. 130

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1350

Index

populousness calculations for ancient nations (cont.) comparisons of countries past and present 324–8 data used in, often uncertain or mistaken 306–12 no reason why ancient populations should be taken as larger than modern 306–7 number of slaves in Athens much exaggerated by Athenaeus  310–12 rarity of slave insurrections in Athens argues for low number of slaves  311 scepticism about figures assigned to cities  310–14, 316 n. 190, 316 n. 193, 320–1, 324 scepticism about figures assigned to countries  315–21, 324, 330, 330 n. 263 slavery’s influence on figures for  284 slaves, women, and children often not included in  307–8, 310, 319 n. 206 when including exaggerated numbers of mercenary forces 309 see also entries for individual cities and countries; the populousness of ancient nations; slavery Portugal: commerce in wine with  241 interest rates in  228 the mines of  225 money and trade with  239, 241 the Portuguese in their colonies  883 Posidonius 1047 Postlethwayt, Malachy  947 and the custom-house records  934 and Gregory King  913 lists modern republics  1031 as plagiarizing Hume  957

and Richard Cantillon  913, 935 poverty: in ancient Greece and Rome  87, 213 of common people in France, Italy, and Spain  207–8, 248 conquests as enabled by  170 an effect of absolute monarchy  207–8 foreseeable from conditions of money  222–3, 226, 263 in Ireland  285 oppressive and corrupt governments as causes of  161, 203, 207–8, 267 the poor oppressed by the rich in commerce and taxation  207–8 and the weakness of modern Italy  1003, 1101  see also equity; justice; taxation power (political): bestowal of, by subjects, on rulers in republics  111, 333, 354 in the British system of government  58–9, 64, 74, 80, 265, 349–53 in China  226 despotic, in Caesars and other princes  42, 62, 72 the domestic balance of  52–3, 61, 89, 362 establishing it in subordinate ministers and the military  55 executive, in the crown  58–60, 110 fixed in proportion to property in Servius Tullius’s laws  303 and the independency of Parliament 57ff. of the comitia in the Roman republic 276–7 Machiavelli’s views on  28 in mild forms of monarchy  45 nobilities with, different forms of  42 partitioning of, to form a mixed government  56–60, 63, 71 in political parties  74

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Index

political and religious forms of  56, 59–60, 69, 72 priestly  72, 78–80 right to, distinguished from right to property 51–2 in a single person as shared with a legislature  43, 53, 58 of the state, aided by arts, industry, trade, and manufactures  204–7 trade functioning to increase the sovereign’s  203, 205 unbounded in the Roman people as opposed to nobility and consuls 42 the union of ecclesiastical and civil forms of  69 usurpation of  58, 62, 277, 336–7, 340, 349 Walpole as moderate in the exercise of 15 see also balance of power; government; monarchy; original contract; parties; priests Praetorian Guards and Imperial bodyguards, see under Rome, ancient Prasini (Parasini) faction  66, 772 precious metals, see gold and silver; on the money supply under Hume, David prejudice: in ancient Gauls, as moderated by the Romans  69 n. 3 in assessments of liberal arts  98 in assessments of taste  181ff., 185, 189–93, 195 in commercial, financial, and tax situations  241, 245, 248, 261 directed at minority groups in society  156 n. 4 favouring birth and family  356

1351

freedom from in matters of taste as valuable and estimable  192 how harmful to taste  189 moral forms of  7–10 and mutual jealousy in neighboring states 107 from narrow maxims and principles  135, 137, 181, 350 party-prejudices  86, 350 in religion  69, 72, 77, 79, 195 in political contexts  71, 75, 107, 190 see also country party; court party; faction(s); impartiality; parties Presbyterians 780 their character  72, 78, 788 their clergy in Holland, friends of the family of Orange  72 as an established church body  367 next in enthusiasm after Independents and Quakers  78 as Nonconformists, thrown into the party of the Parliament  73 Scots  719, 778–9, 1144 press, liberty of, see liberty of the press pressing of seamen  278, 980 Price, Richard  1097 and Malthus  982 priests: ambition in  72, 162–3 n. 2 their assumption of authority in Christianity  69, 78–80, 163 n. 2, 296 n. 17, 361 the character of  162–3, 879–80 ‘clergymen’ and ‘priests’  569, 787 dominance of, in modern Rome  87, 213 established episcopal clergy  72–3 in established religions in general  69–70, 72–3 Jesuits as tyrants of the people  80, 166

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1352

Index

priests (cont.) Molinists and the authority of  80 and monarchy  111 none among the Chinese literati  79, 791 none among Quakers  78, 788 their origins in superstitions  78, 79 and parties of interest  69–70 powers of  72, 78–80 Quakers and Independents as free from bondage to  78 revenge in  162–3 n. 2 in Roman Catholicism  69, 78–80, 166, 361 and the spirit of persecution  69–70 superstition favourable to their power  78–80, 163 n. 2 superstitious reverence to, in monarchies 111 typically enemies to liberty  72, 79–80, 778–9 tyranny in  80, 87 when zealous and ambitious  70, 72, 163 n. 2 see also Jansenists; Molinists; religion; Roman-Catholic Church; superstition; zealotry primary qualities  859 primogeniture, its advantages  300; see also under Hume, David; Montesquieu; Wallace, Robert prince of Condé, see Condé, Louis II de Bourbon, prince de principle(s): of affection at the founding of a government 52 of approbation and blame in the standard of taste  185–7, 191, 193 of beauty  130, 187–8 of causation  102; see also causation

of Christianity, when opposite to polite societies  69 of the court and country parties  71–2, 75 of delicacy of taste  187–8, 191–3; see also under delicacy exceptions to their demands  161, 163 n. 2, 166 n. 4, 200, 284 n. 13, 340, 348 factions of, contrasted to those of interest  57, 69 fanaticism of, in headstrong religious beliefs 354 of government, first and original  51, 364 Harrington’s, on the balance of power 61 of human nature  55, 83, 155, 193 of indefeasible right and its authority  74, 333, 359 moral, as different from speculative systems of  195 in philosophical systems used to support political and practical positions 332 refinements of theological  195 in religion, amounting to superstitions 195–6 Roundhead and Cavalier as parties of 73–4 of self-love as the motive of moral behavior in sceptical accounts 83–5 in speculative ideas and systems of political parties  68, 195, 332ff., 347 Prior, Matthew  716, 818, 844 quoted  3, 120 Procopius  732, 772, 962 profits: in Amsterdam, from the East-India trade 248

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Index

from commerce and trade  206, 219, 229, 232–3, 236, 264, 303 Demosthenes’s expectation of extraordinary 303–4 of farmers in England  208 in Lisbon and Amsterdam from the East-India trade  248 and problems of cause and effect in cases of low  233 the motive of, and the passion for 232 as proportionable to their expence and hazard  208 from public securities to alleviate public debts  264 the relation between low interest and low profits  233 from slavery in ancient times  296, 304 see also commerce; corn supply Prometheus  32, 736 promises: of allegiance to a prince or government  334–5, 340–1 conditional, in theories of the original contract  334 as the foundation of political authority 337–8 see also consent, tacit, express, and popular; original contract property: distribution of shares of  52–3, 61–2, 105, 111, 229–30, 268, 326 distributive justice in  341, 343, 347, 373; see also justice division of land, as encouraging populousness  294–5, 1009–10 equality of, among the ancients  306, 311, 326, 330 gained by merchants in industry 232 in lands and houses  229, 269

1353

the natural equality of in a small state 373 and political power  52–3, 61, 353 power in proportion to Servius Tullius’s laws  303 private  42, 89–90, 343, 345–6 the right to  51–2 security of, in the political state  110 of stock-holders  265, 269 subjects regarded as the property of princes 334 taxation of  265–9 and primogeniture laws  300 see also debt; under Harrington, James; justice; power (political); taxation the Protestant succession, its advantages and disadvantages  356–62, 422–4 advantages from the growth of public liberty 357–9 advantages in the restoration of the Stuart family  356 advantages of the Hanoverian succession 357 and the definition of Tory as partizan of the family of Stuart  75 and the definition of Whig as friend of the settlement in the Protestant line  75 disadvantages in sharing a monarch with Hanover  358 disadvantages of importing intrigues in continental Europe  358, 361 impartiality in assessments of  315, 358, 361–2 Parliamentary deliberation about the establishment of  356, 360 toleration and  358 see also Hanover, house of providence, divine  12, 19, 269, 332–3

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1354

Index

provinces, under which kind of government most oppressed  43–5, 748–50 Prusias  254, 953 Prussia  256, 954, 955–6, 1138 Ptolemaic system  138, 139, 848, 858 the Ptolemies, kings of Egypt and Alexandria  319 n. 204, 1085 and the balance of power  253, 951 and the population of Egypt  307, 1041 the treasure of  247, 262, 942 public credit: abuses of  262–3 by contrast to the ancients’ hoarding of treasures to provide for war 262 consequences of debt on commerce and industry  263–6 consequences of debt on foreign transactions and relations  263, 265, 267 and foreigners who own shares of national funds  265 funding by, its dangers  256, 262–3 mortgaged taxes as ruinous to the poor 266 mortgaging public revenues for future payment  262, 266–8 its natural death, and its violent death, from ruin  270, 272 ruinous forms of debt for posterity 262–8 when public stock is in the hands of idle people  265 when supportive of merchants  264 see also banks; money; paper-credit; public debt; public money public debt, its lure and effects  68, 256, 262–3, 268–9, 360, 966–7 ‘domestic management’  263 advantages of  264, 967 disadvantages of  264–5, 969

effect on wars and negotiations  263, 265–8 increases at oppressive and intolerable levels  68, 256 steady frugality in payment of  269 our strange supineness regarding 268–9 see also paper-credit; public credit public speaking  92, 99; see also eloquence public spirit  7, 47–8, 84, 202, 213, 215, 371 Publius Victor  314, 317 n. 193, 1067, 1180 Pufendorf, Samuel  779, 848 on duties of sovereigns  1122 on eminent domain  1121–2 on the Germanic Empire  977 on human equality  1110 and natural-law theory  1111, 1122, 1123 on the original contract  1110–11 on polygamy and divorce  865, 866, 868, 869 Pulteney, William  409, 719, 755, 812, 955 Punic Wars  308, 723–4, 753, 803, 978, 1043 the First  953 the Second  824, 952, 953, 1012 Pylos  315, 1069 Pyrenees  166, 239, 882 Peace of the  954 Pyrrhus, king of Epirus  1010 his saying about the Romans  213, 919 Pythagoreans (Pythagoricians)  109 Q Quakers  788, 790 their freedom from bondage to priests 78

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Index

and Independents, their similarity 78 as innocent enthusiasts  78–9 and oaths  1116  see also Dissenters querelle des anciens et des modernes 904, 984 and the capacities of human nature  94–5, 814 civility and incivility of disputants  550, 762–3 and eloquence  809, 810 and Homer  905, 910 manners and morals  194–5, 900 and national character  877 sciences in contrast with the polite arts 823 Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus): and the cheapening of learning  169 on Demosthenes  94 n. 4, 813 on eloquence  810–11, 814, 815, 816–17, 888 action 814 the Attic style  820 captatio 908 division 821 figures of speech  816 the ideal orator  810 the middle style  819, 871 perorations 894 on Homer  905 quoted 160 on Seneca  160, 875 on taste  906 see also Demosthenes; eloquence Quintus Curtius, see Curtius Rufus, Quintus R Racine, Jean  909, 1179 an admirer of the ancients  762

1355

Athalie (Athalia) 893 bigotry in  196, 911 a genius  14 a great French poet  5, 14, 158 and love in tragedy  829 set against Pierre Corneille  5, 872 style  158, 872, 875 Ramsay, Allan (the poet)  735, 736 Ramsay, Allan (the portraitist)  429 on taste  898, 901 Ramsay, Andrew Michael, the Chevalier  854, 857, 900, 1068 a disciple of Fénelon  717, 918 Raphael  88, 801 Rapin de Thoyras, Paul  343, 1117, 1134, 1135 Rapin, René  843 on French tragedy  829 poetic justice  897 on the probable in poetry  893 raptures and flights of fancy  77 raree-shows  300, 1025 reason: a posteriori reasoning  4, 802 a priori reasoning  42, 184, 904 and experience as requisite to good judgements 190–2 friendship as a calm affection conducted by  35, 37, 84, 92, 142, 155 more precarious than taste  192–3, 909 practical reason  126 religious beliefs proclaimed above and beyond  195–6 and taste, their boundaries  183 an uncertain guide to political practice 351 see also experience; under Hume, David; religion; standard of taste

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1356

Index

rebellion(s): the constitution before the ‘great rebellion’ (civil wars)  73, 352–5, 780 causal conditions of  212, 340, 362 a cause of tyranny and violence in rulers 348 crime in  345 n. 5 English  73, 360 French 41 prevention of  108 n. 3, 349 see also resistance to sovereigns; revolution(s) refinements: appropriate to general reasonings 199–200 in the arts  209–17 of breeding in humans  86, 114 and cultivated tastes for the polite arts 36 in the fine and the finer arts  87, 178, 191, 201 in home manufactures  206 of human nature in matters of virtue and vice  86 in the mechanical arts  203, 210 in municipal laws  104 in politeness, civility, and manners  114, 162 n. 1, 173, 194 in taste and sentiment  110 of theological principles  195 how useful  226 in writing  157–60 see also arts; arts and sciences; belles-lettres; civility; delicacy; luxury; manners relativism of taste and sentiment  137–8 religion  740, 1176 Addison’s elegant discourses on  5 Anabaptists in Germany  79, 789 belief in oneself as a favourite of the divinity 77–8

beliefs in, presumed beyond reason 195–6 Camisars in France, their religious enthusiasm  79, 789 as a cause of wars and divisions  68–70 Christianity when established, and its sects  69–70, 107 corruption of true religion by superstition and enthusiasm  77, 785–6 Covenanters in Scotland, a species of false  79, 789–90 decline of  63, 167, 770, 884–5 deists 790–1 as deriving from tales and fictions 69–70 Druidic  69, 776 its effects on manners and morals  162–3, 167, 884–5 enthusiasm in, throwing illusions over minds  60–2, 307 n. 115, 332 episcopacy and the episcopal clergy as established  72–3, 778, 783–4, 792 fear as a source of superstition in 77–8 false religion that corrupts the true 77–9 fanaticism of, in headstrong beliefs of 354 in France  79–80 free-thinking and free-thinkers on  111, 790 human nature subject to fanaticism in  68, 77ff., 307 n. 115, 354–5, 361, 373 as an intractable principle  56 Jesuits  80, 793, 828 Levellers and other religious fanatics in England  79, 789 liberty of reasoning in  111

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Index moderation in  69 n. 3, 361 natural and revealed  140, 426, 444, 790, 854, 860 party-prejudices in  77, 79, 195 in a perfect commonwealth  366 philosophy’s ability to conquer false and superstitious  78 political authority in conflict with  56, 63, 69, 78–9 polytheistic and theistic types distinguished 777 principles and disputes in  56, 68–70, 88, 361 where good sense is not heeded 195–6 and speculative factions and reasoning  69–70, 163, 307 propensity to beliefs of  162–3 the psychology underlying  77–9 as the reason assigned in Great Britain for excluding the Stuarts 361–2 Remonstrants 779 Romans, toleration and persecution  69, 775–6 similarities across all religions  162 speculative theological systems  162–3 n. 2, 195, 307 n. 115 in Sweden  72 its temper as grave and serious  162–3 n. 2 toleration of differences in  69 n. 3, 83, 355, 358 wars of  67, 69–70, 723 zeal in  80, 162–3 n. 2, 196 see also Calvinistic clergy; Christianity; the Church of England; enthusiasm; Jansenists; Molinists; Presbyterians; priests; Protestant succession; Roman-Catholic Church; superstition; zealotry

1357

remarkable customs in governments  273ff. Rennes 322 republics (and republicanism)  38–9 the ancient, constantly engaged in destructive wars  295 Athens as the most extensive democracy that we read of in history 336 bestowal of power by subjects in  111, 333, 354 British mix of monarchical and republican parts  39–40, 61ff., 71ff., 826 Caesar’s subduing of the Roman republic 297 conflict of power in the legislature in the Roman republic  276–7 and conquests  43–5, 47–8, 213–14, 373, 748, 753 constitutional checks and controls on 41–2 as favourable to the growth of the sciences 109 feasible size  372–3, 1147 great armies raised in small  201 Greece’s principalities as evolving into  107, 300, 1025, 1026 mercenary forces not maintained in ancient Greek  315 modern in contrast with ancient  303, 1031 and the nature of the British government  53, 59, 61–2, 64, 90, 826 people voting through representatives, the best form of democratic  43 personal factions arise most easily in small 66 the place of law in  105–6 Plato’s imaginary republics in his Republic and Laws  86 n. 1, 364

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1358

Index

republics (and republicanism) (cont.) provincial governors as plunderers during the Roman Republic  44 Rhodian and Achæan, celebrated for wisdom yet ignorant of the balance of power  254 the ruin of Athens and Rome due to defects in the original constitution 47 the Spartan republic, its power due to the want of commerce and luxury 201–2 Tories who talk in the style of republicans 75 want of civility in  111–13 see also aristocracy; democracy; free governments; government; the Republic under Rome, ancient; Switzerland; under Venice and Venetians; under United Provinces resistance to sovereigns: justified forms of  347–9 a last refuge in desperate cases  347–8 tyrannicide and assassination  719–20, 846, 1122–3 approved by ancient maxims  348 now universally condemned  348 see also passive obedience; rebellion(s); revolution(s) Retz, Jean-Francois Paul de Gondi, cardinal de  369, 413, 769, 819, 1144–5 revenge: for the butchery of an opposite party  297, 299 its incompatibility with civilized society 182 a passion that moves public transactions 92 people addicted to arms as given to  203, 296, 299

a rough and fierce, but natural passion  140, 163n of a slave in Rome  288 see also rebellion(s); revolution(s); slavery Revocation of the Edict of Nantes  789, 1037, 1180 revolution(s): in ancient history, those free of massacres and assassination 297 not based on an original contract  336–8, 345 n. 4 involving conquests by foreign forces 362 less tragical when tempers are softened and knowledge improved 212 by parties in the late period of the Roman commonwealth  302 the violent likely to bring more ill than good  339 see also rebellion(s); resistance to sovereigns Revolution of 1688:  75, 770, 782, 1122 and the constitution  49–50, 63, 74–5, 336, 746, 781 and contractarian theory  1111, 1114 and John Locke  783 and the succession  755 rhetoric, see Cicero; Demosthenes; eloquence; public speaking Rhodes  1031, 1175 and balance of power  254, 952–3 a centre of commerce  258, 259, 313, 959, 960 exchange of prisoners in  297, 1013 population  313, 1050, 1063, 1064, 1065 Richard I of England  1127 Richard II of England  1113, 1127 Richard III of England  1127, 1130

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Index

Richelieu, Armand du Plessis, cardinal de  102, 822, 1125 riches, see wealth and riches rights: of the crown now long annihilated 355 indefeasible right and its authority  74, 333, 359 to power  51–2 of princes and forms of government 343 and privileges in Ireland  45 and privileges legally conferred on English subjects  278 to property  51–2 of resistance, see resistance to sovereigns as viewed by the popular party  351 Robertson, William  436 and the Booksellers’ Relief Bill  442 and church patronage  1144 sources on the conquest of Mexico 1092 Rochefoucauld, François, duc de la  722, 733, 895 Rochester, John Wilmot, 2nd earl of: his disregard of shame and decency  112, 833 on Edmund Waller  841 his Satyre against Mankind 794 Rollin, Charles: and Hume  813, 1050 Hume’s judgement of  891 the Roman-Catholic Church  107 its acquisition of power  79–80 bigotry in  196, 911 and Henri IV of France  723, 745 inspired by zealots to a violent hatred of other religions  196 Jansenists in, as preservers of a love of liberty  80 Jesuits in  80, 166 papism in  361, 781, 1139

1359

priestcraft and priests in  69, 78–80, 166, 361 and Protestants in Ireland  1017 as recently reconciled to the Whig party 80 its spread over the civilized world and engrossment of learning 107 the Stuarts’ Catholicism  359, 361, 1131 superstition in  786, 788 Thomism in  828 toleration of  744 see also Jansenists; Molinists; priests; religion; Stuart, house of; superstition; zealotry Roman Catholics: affinity to high-church Tories  80 not protected by the Toleration Act 778 and the Whigs  80, 792, 886 Rome, ancient  48 agriculture 990–2 and slavery  289–90, 1000 latifundia  295, 1010 armed forces  201–2, 286, 294, 913–14, 914–15, 919, 924 battle formation  1011–12 cavalry 880 economics of  218, 924, 1008–9 legions in Britain  658–9, 1046 marriage  295, 1011 arts and sciences in  88, 92 and alleged moral decline  213–14, 920–1 ‘Golden Age’ of literature  87, 159–60, 800–1, 875 learned from Greece  97, 117, 803 rise and decline  87, 117, 170, 800–1, 840, 888 ‘Silver Age’ of literature  875–6 and the balance of power  254–5, 951, 952, 1137

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1360

Index

Rome, ancient (cont.) on ‘barbarians’  168, 887 city of Rome: bills of mortality in  318, 1081 Caesar’s seizure of treasure in 262 Campus Martius  42, 747 corn distribution in  317–18, 327–8, 991, 1079–82, 1102 decline of interest rates in  304 dimensions of the  311, 314, 315–17, 318–20, 1054, 1067 family slaves for show and luxury in 289 height of buildings  316, 1073 houses and streets of  316–17 n. 193 liberties in  7, 39, 156, 292 n. 53 population  306, 315–20, 321–2, 985, 1038, 1079 slavery and inhuman sports in  283 n. 12 villas and palaces of  316–17, 319–20, 1073–4, 1075, 1086–7 civil strife  301–2, 1027 climate  322, 1092–3 the constitution of the Roman republic  42, 47, 276 cruelty of Roman governors under the Republic  44 early Rome not barbarous  301, 1026 economy of: interest rates  235–6, 304, 626, 768–9, 930–1, 932, 1033, 1035 money 924 Republican frugality  226–7, 928–9 taxation  364, 962, 1035, 1104 treasure  246, 262, 942, 965–6 eloquence in  88, 90 flourishing and decline  799–801 legal 814

Republican orators  92–3, 94, 95, 97, 811 see also Cicero; eloquence; Quintilian Empire, the  322, 338–9 alleged depopulation  293, 1006–7, 328–31, 1046–7, 1088, 1108 civilizing effect  328 n. 255, 1102–5; civilized and cultivated in the age of Trajan and the Antonines 328–9 population  328, 1102–3, 1105 population census  1039 its provinces and its fall  39, 44, 203 n. 5, 219, 241, 254–5 survey of the Empire  325–8 whether advantageous to its subjects  328 and n. 255 factions 978 optimates and populares  777–8 party-divisions between patricians and plebeians  276 Pollian and Papirian tribes  66–7, 772–3 government  742, 826 ‘dictator’ 1144 Imperial  39, 90, 798, 807; succession  343–4, 352, 356, 742, 1118 kings 1031 Republican  42, 53, 59, 214, 753, 977–8; assemblies (comitia centuriata and comitia tributa)  276–7, 747, 977–80, 1031; mixed constitution  764; tumultuous  47–8, 753 the Senate  276, 978–9 tribes  66–7, 758, 773 tribunes  276, 743–4, 1130 infanticide (exposing infants) in  291, 292, 1004, 1005

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Index knights (equites)  833, 1114 law: divorce laws  155–6, 292 n. 53 on inalienability of property  970 of intestate succession  1117–18 and the legal system  156, 276–7 its simplicity  95 relating to slaves  287–8, 995–6 the Twelve Tables  105, 825 usucapion 1013 and ‘liberty’ of the Greeks  329–30, 1107 liberty in  7, 39 the Macedonian wars  254, 942 marriage and divorce in  155–6, 292, 867–8, 869, 1006 nobility 295 Praetorian Guards and Imperial bodyguards  51, 889, 992, 1076 as kingmakers  340, 344, 756, 825, 1078, 1115, 1118 recruits 884 pro aris et focis  50, 755 provincial administration  43–5, 749, 1106–7 the Punic Wars  723–4, 749, 824 religion: persecution and toleration  69, 775–7 priests 163 Republic, the  1014 alleged moral decline in  47–8, 213–14, 718–19, 920, 921 anciently pirates  203 n. 5 capital punishment abolished in 302 the end of  7, 50, 719, 755 establishment of  276, 881, 978 internal disorders in  89–90, 747 population census  1039 population of Rome and Italy  308, 1043

1361

proscriptions in the late Republic 44 when most depraved  47–8 see also republics (and republicanism) slavery: in agriculture  290, 990 breeding not a common practice  284–8, 997 home-bred slaves (vernae) 285–6, 993 importation and trade  285, 990, 994, 1000 the inhumanity of  282–3, 987–9 marriage rare among its slaves  287–8, 289–91 numbers of slaves  308, 318, 992, 1001, 1081 and populousness figures  284–91, 308 slave wars  290, 1002 trade in  226, 928 see also slavery its treaties with Carthage  203, 915 triumvirates in  754, 1043 and warfare: battles  983, 1012 plunder  295, 1011 Rome, modern  213 arts and sciences in  87, 97–8 degeneration of Romans in  166, 877, 883 factions in  66, 772 finances of  248 governed by priests  213, 920 Romulus  65, 772 Rose, Valentin  1061 Rose, William  425, 431 Rotterdam  317, 1077 Rouen 322 Roundhead party  73, 74, 780, 789 Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste  832 quoted  111–12 n. 4

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1362

Index

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques  737 Rowe, Nicholas  893 Ambitious Step-Mother censured  179, 896–7 poetic justice  897 Royal Society  803, 804 Rubens, Peter Paul  88 Rucellai, Bernardo  948, 949 Ruddiman, Thomas  940 Ruddiman, Walter  957 rules of art  5, 88, 803 fixed by experience  184–5, 187, 843, 903 limits of  119 narrowly based on the ancients  904 as nature methodized  84 rules of morality  81; see also common sense in law, morals, and politics; moral distinctions; moral duties; universality of moral precepts and the nature of language rules in politics, few admitting of no exception 340 Russia  987, 1094; see also Muscovites; Muscovy Rymer, Thomas: and poetic justice  897 on Shakespeare  840, 895 Ryswick, Treaty of, and the 1697 peace  256, 883, 955 S Sacheverell, Henry  783, 1122 Saint-Évremond, Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, sieur de  1172, 1182 on the ancients  911 on delicacy  906 on friendship  740, 845 incompatibility of wit and passion 874

modern Epicurean  738, 842 St. George, bank of, see under Genoa Sallee rovers  203 n. 5, 915 Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus): on the conspiracy of Catiline  89–90, 97, 112, 805, 817, 832–3 his contrast of Caesar and Cato the Younger  846, 1015 and corn distribution  1080 on the decay of the Roman Republic  89–90, 214, 718–19, 915, 920 his gardens  319, 1086–7 Hume’s copy of  920 quoted  298, 1080 and the Thirty Tyrants  1016 vulgarities in  112 Salmasius, Claudius  722, 1059 Sansovino, Francesco  821 Saracens, conquerors from the south  170, 889 Sardinia  319, 835, 1085 Sarmatia  324–5, 1094 Saserna  999, 1092–3 changes in its climate  324, 983 satire  22, 193, 301 n. 92 Savary de Bruslons, Jacques  925, 938, 958 Saxony  802, 1139 scepticism: about ancient populousness  310, 1043, 1079, 1095 as carried too far in philosophy  147–8 n. 6 checked by its abstruseness  861 Hume on Cicero as a religious sceptic  587–8, 834 Hume’s alleged, regarding morality and religion  416 Hume’s Sceptic, a character of the sceptic 135–49 about the original contract  1111

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Index

about the possibility of attaining a standard of taste  183–4 Pyrrhonian 739 about the reality of beauty  183 about secondary qualities and values 902 see also selfish principles and self-love, a refutation of sceptical theories; selfishness science  823, 829, 831–2 agricultural  204, 208; see also agriculture ancient Greece and modern Europe the most constant habitation of sciences  108, 169–70 controversies and unanimity in 182 flourishing of requires a free government  86–7, 103, 105–9, 111 Goths as inferior to Romans in  92 history of the arts and sciences, with a caution about assigning causes 102 history as a source of materials for other sciences  28 of human nature  716, 802–3 law as a science enabling the rise of other sciences  105 natural science  828–9, 858 politics as admitting of general truths like those in  43, 86, 746–7 politics as reducible to a  41ff., 733 practical sciences  184, 843 pretended science in abstract philosophy and theology  192 rise and progress of the sciences  101ff., 824 speculative forms of  65, 345, 859 see also arts and sciences Scipio Aemilianus, Publius Cornelius  920, 1022, 1093

1363

Scipio Africanus, Publius Cornelius  103, 824, 1012 Scotland: and banking  244–5, 925 bank-credits, an ingenious idea from Edinburgh banks  244–5 condition of the people  285, 916, 987, 1056, 1102 Covenanters in, a species of false religion 79 the Lords of the Articles  364, 1142 modern population  315, 325, 1071 as a neighbour of England  167, 240 party management of  726, 766, 1132 peers in the House of Lords  372, 1146–7 religion in  717, 778–9, 784, 788–9, 789–90, 1139, 1144 Roman Scotland  325, 1095–6 and the Scythians  23, 731 and the Union  240–1, 811, 936, 937, 940, 969, 990 see also Great Britain ‘Scotticisms’ insert in Political Discourses  xxx, 689–94 scourges affecting populations: famines increased by prohibiting the exportation of corn  237, 280 plagues in general  281, 984 smallpox  280, 984–5 war and pestilence as  280 Scriptores Historiae Augustae: Aelius Lampridius  1038 Aelius Spartianus  317, 1078 Flavius Vopiscus  280, 311 n. 146, 314 n. 176, 316–17 n. 193, 319 n. 208, 320 n. 211, 1066–7, 1078, 1086–7, 1087–8 Julius Capitolinus  344, 1078, 1118 sculpture 87–8 Scythia  324–5, 926, 1094

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1364

Index

Scythians: Anacharsis the Scythian  220 in Scotland  731 its women conspiring against men  22–3, 730–1 secondary qualities  139, 186, 859, 902 sedition and libel, laws of  744 Sejanus (Lucius Aelius Seianus), Praetorian Prefect  86, 798 selection of copy-texts for critical editions of The Clarendon Hume 503–10 Seleuceia (Seleucia) on the Tigris: dimensions and population  1082 population of  321, 1089 self-interest, see interest (self-interest) selfish principles and self-love, a refutation of sceptical theories 83–5 selfishness  57, 84, 115, 216 Seneca the Elder: on the decline of agriculture  290, 1001 on the decline of eloquence  800 on ‘division’ in speeches  821 quoted  290 n. 46 Seneca the Younger  211, 722 his abstemiousness  918 accused of adultery  733, 918 on apatheia  850, 851–2 the Apocolocyntosis 966 artificial arguments of  144, 843, 861 on the decline of eloquence  800 on divine providence  853 as an entertaining moralist  148 his form of Stoicism  831 on friendship  852 on gladiatorial shows  283–4, 989 on great houses in Rome  316, 1073 Hume’s early reading of  847 on infanticide  291 n. 50, 1004 on the instability of fortune  849

philosophic life superior to political 853 quoted 286 on reason as ‘man’s peculiar good’ 847 on slavery  283, 997, 998 on the spurious revolt of Cinna  754 on the Stoic sage  848, 850 Cato the Younger as Stoic sage  846 style of  160, 875 on the Thirty Tyrants  298 n. 81, 1018 on training of the mind and moral progress  848, 849 sense of morals  81; see also moral duties; virtue(s) Septimius Severus, emperor  1082 campaigns in Britain  1095–6 how he became emperor  344, 1118 time of  325, 328, 1103 treasure of  262, 966 Servilia  211, 732 Servius Tullius: constitutional reforms  276, 978, 1031 his laws on property  303 the king who established the aristocratical comitia centuriata 276 register of births and deaths  1081 and Rome’s walls  1054 Seuthes  293, 1007 Seven Years War  797, 946, 966, 969, 1138, 1138 Severus, see Septimius Severus, emperor Sextus Empiricus  291 n. 51, 902, 1004–5 Sforza family  67, 774, 802 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st earl of 791–2

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Index

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of  275, 418, 740, 791–2, 827, 855, 1127 on arts and sciences  87, 799, 800, 801, 819 George Berkeley on  888 against egoism  795–6 on Epicureanism and Stoicism  844, 849, 851, 852 on gallantry  114 the learned and conversable worlds  716, 837 as a moralist, his sublimity  148, 864 on passions and affections  901, 977 on promissory obligation  1116 quoted  690, 694 on religious zealotry  776, 789 ridicule as a test of truth  761 Shaftesbureans  719, 737, 899 and taste  906–7 on the tolerance of the ancients  775 on tragedy  897 Shakespeare, William: the artfulness of Othello 117, 177, 895 contrasted with Jonson  724, 840 critical assessment of  840 and Falstaff  30, 735 and Pericles  117, 840 and tragedy  892 shame  31, 61, 92, 112, 149, 177, 179 Shaw, William  402, 408 Sherlock, Thomas  421, 766 Short, Thomas  990 Sibthorpe, Robert  1135 Sicily 1010 and Agathocles  299, 1021–2 Agrigentum and Sybaris, two wealthy cities  304, 1036 armed forces  309, 1045 Athenian expedition against  201–2, 914, 1008, 1027 and Carthage  923, 1021

1365

and Dion  309, 1045 and Dionysius I  309, 1045 and Dionysius II  294, 1009 effect of Roman conquest on  309, 1046–7 export of corn  309, 1047, 1102 prosperity and decline  309, 1046–7 and Pyrrhus  213, 919 and Sextus Pompey  290–1, 1003 slavery in  290–1, 988, 1001, 1002–3 and Syracuse  310, 1048–9 and Timoleon  294, 1009–10 and Verres  44, 94, 176, 304, 748, 813, 894, 1035 Sidney, Algernon  422, 758, 791, 1117, 1141 Sidon, centre of commerce  258, 960 simple lifestyle as disadvantageous 225–6 simplicity in writing  157–60, 871–6 Sinking Fund  728 Sisyphus  32, 736 slavery: ancient: in ancient Rome  282–91, 308 n. 125, 318, 326 Aristotle on slaves and slavery in his Politics  287, 312 n. 64 in Athens  311–2 breeding not a common practice in 285–91 dungeons in which slaves laboured (ergastula) 283 importation of slaves  285–7 slaves in manufactures  311 its effect on freedom  282 exposing of old, useless, or sick slaves to harsh conditions 282 family slaves in Rome for show and luxury  289 Helotes, the slaves of the public in Sparta  201, 288, 309

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1366

Index

slavery (cont.) humanity of the laws protecting slaves 286 the increase of, in Italy  290 in inhuman sports in Rome  283 n. 12 insurrections by slaves in Athens, rarely mentioned  311 large holdings of slaves in Chios, Sparta, and Athens  312 laws granting liberty to slaves upon the motion of Hyperides 274 marriage and breeding under conditions of  284–5, 287–9, 291 in mines  32, 312, 998, 1055, 1058 a nobleman’s execution of 400 slaves for one slave’s act of rebellion 288 the number of in Aegina  312 n. 64 and populousness calculations 284 profits from  296, 304 in ancient Rome  282–91, 308 n. 125, 318, 326 sale of superannuated slaves  283 slaves in manufactures  311 Strabo on Athenians’ naming of slaves 286 Strabo on Romans selling 10,000 slaves per day  285 n. 14 verna, the term for a slave born and bred in a family  285, 285 n. 17, 286 n. 18 Xenophon on the separation of male and female slaves  288; see also under Athens; Demosthenes; Egypt; Italy, ancient; populousness calculations for ancient nations; Rome, ancient

its injurious consequences: a cause of barbarous manners  282 disadvantages of  282–3, 286 n. 19, 290 petty tyrants shaped by  282 as prejudicial to humanity  281–3 as prejudicial to populousness 284–91 modern: Atlantic slave-trade  928 in British colonies  168 n. 6, 282, 311 in Europe  168 n. 6, 282, 987 trade via Egypt  291 see also under America; Egypt sloth  126, 203, 212, 215, 217, 324 smallpox and great pox  280, 984–5 Smith, Adam: on British politics  411, 766 on cash accounts  939 his criticisms of Francis Hutcheson 899 on established practice  1141 and Hume  422, 435, 730, 839, 921, 993 as Hume’s executor  444 and Hume’s ‘My Own Life’  445 and Malthus  982 and the Millar-Kincaid collaboration 437–8 on the money supply  922–3, 932 on paper money  936, 938 on poll-taxes  962 and protectionist laws  936 and the Select Society  907 on slavery  987 and the Strahan-Cadell partnership 437 on Swift  803 on sympathy  893 on taxes in France  807 on taxes on necessaries  958 Smith, John  792, 854–5, 856

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Index

Smith, John, printer  432 Smith, William  801 Smollett, Tobias  811–12 Smyrna, centre of commerce  259, 960 Sobieski, Jan  748 Socrates: ‘brought philosophy down from heaven’ 718 on obedience to law and refusing to escape from prison  346, 1120 opposition to the Sophists  854 on the Spartans  964 on Thessaly  1069  see also Plato soldiers  68, 147, 166, 201–4, 213, 218 n. 1, 257, 286 n. 17, 293, 294 n. 60, 295, 344, 356 and competition for numbers with trades and manufactures  201–2 their character  162, 857 Solomon  152, 866–7 Solon and his laws  854, 862, 926 and the Athenian constitution  302, 975, 1029 and infanticide  291, 1005 Somers, John  792, 1134, 1181 Somervile, William  721, 970 Sophocles  803, 893 simplicity of style  158, 872, 873 Spain  1027, 1100, 1111 and the Americas  324, 926, 928, 1092 ancient Spain  190, 301, 323, 327, 1003 in contrast with modern  327, 1100–1 Pompey’s augmentation of his army in  290 as a restless, turbulent, unsettled state 327 and Roman civilization  888 Strabo’s account of  327

1367

an anecdote concerning Philip IV’s queen (Mariana de Austria)  153, 867 and the Assiento  928 and the balance of power  255, 949, 954 and the balance of trade  239, 241, 251, 947 the cause of low interest in  234–5 and Cervantes  871, 877 character, manners, and wars of the old Spaniards  166–7 commerce from wine in  241 Convention of Pardo  759 decline of  822, 883, 986, 1100 the depression of the Spanish after the death of Charles V  102 discouragement of commerce in  805 drop in interest rates  234 its fame for light horses of good mettle 164 increase of money to be lent in  235, 239 indulgence of liberty in  38 its inhabitants, ancient and modern 327 interest rates  234–5, 932 the most populous provinces also the richest in  281 n. 3, 293 national character  167, 881, 883 populousness of modern Spain  281 poverty of the common people  207–8 the Spanish Inquisition  1037 and the United Provinces  744, 1125 the weakness of wit and gaiety in 161 Sparta  253, 1060–1 and Athens  252, 948, 950 character of Spartans  881 colonies  294, 301, 1009 dimensions  314, 1066, 1067–8

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1368

Index

Sparta (cont.) economy  243, 939 martial  201, 202 government  764, 1026 Helots (Helotes), slaves of the public in  201, 288, 309, 312, 913, 997–8, 1060 manners and morals  202, 915 Nabis 1017–18 and Persia  752, 891 population  312, 314, 1060, 1063–4, 1067 slaves, number of  312, 1060–1 and Thebes  252, 949 war with Achaean League  951 wealth 964–5 Spartianus, Aelius, see Scriptores Historiae Augustae Spectator  407–9, 418, 438, 715, 717–18 speculative ideas and systems: abstract ones of political parties and principles  68, 332ff., 347 as improving the mind of few persons 65 introduced to explain articles of faith in early Christianity  69 in metaphysics and natural philosophy 345 moral principles as different from 195 opinions and errors in  195 in original-contract theory  332ff., 345 in politics, and the refutation of 347 in religions and their theologies  162–3 n. 2, 195, 307 n. 115 in the sciences, liberal arts, and philosophy 142–3 see also Cartesian philosophy; metaphysics; Peripatetic philosophy; Platonists; religion

speech, freedom of, see liberty of the press Spenser (Spencer), Edmund  13, 724, 1134–5 a British Virgil  818 versification 818 Spinoza, Benedict de  744, 823 on superstition  786 sportula, bad tendency of  327–8, 1102 Sprat, Thomas  797, 1172 on Bacon’s style  804 a high-church Tory  804 style of  88, 803 Squire, Samuel, and the original contract 1120 St. Clair, Gen. James  424 brother of a Jacobite  422–3, 1132 Hume’s military mission with  402, 418, 423, 876, 877, 924, 1077, 1146 St. Petersburg (Petersburgh)  323, 727, 888 standard of taste: approbation as underlying and essential to a theory of the  183, 185–8 its connection to the internal fabric of the mind  185–7 and cultivated tastes for the polite arts 36 and delicacy of taste and the lack of it  181ff., 187–8 discernment of the true standard of taste and beauty  186–7, 190–3 general principles of approbation and blame in the  185–7 as involving a universal admiration of artistic objects  185, 191 questions of fact distinguished from sentiments in the  192 reconciling different sentiments of taste  183, 193

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Index

the requirement to be free from prejudice in judging by the  189–90, 194 and rules of art, rules of criticism, and rules of beauty  184–5, 187 scepticism about the possibility of attaining a  183–4 a sound state of judgement a necessary condition of  186–7 and the variety of taste  181, 183 see also under approbation; beauty; delicacy; poetry; taste, the nature and delicacy of standing army  202, 884 and Britain  218, 357, 758, 770, 924, 1125–6, 1138 threat to liberty  271, 372, 1125, 1134, 1147 see also mercenary troops; militias Stanhope, George  851–2 Stanhope, James, 1st earl 792 Stanhope, Philip, 2nd earl 430 Stanyan, Abraham  716 Account of Switzerland  246–7, 942, 1144 on the modern Philip of Macedon 817 the Peloponnesian War  950 populousness in Switzerland  1009 Switzerland as a republic  1031 Stanyan, Temple  951 on Demosthenes  812, 816 on Diodorus  1039 Greek wars of emulation  949–50 stasis (disorders that arise from faction) 1016–17 state of nature  278, 351, 1116, 1120 states, small, encourage populousness 293–5 Statilius  7, 720, 1181 stations of life:

1369

inferior stations  11–12 the middle station  11–14, 721, 722, 725, 785 Steele, Sir Richard  723, 910 and comedy  829 on duelling  839 and free-thinkers  761–2, 792 on impudence and modesty  728 on manners and morals  794 and the peerage bill  1147 periodical essays of  408–9, 717 on tragic heroes  1133 Stewart, Archibald  420, 424, 735, 1132 Stillingfleet, Edward  792 and a partial deluge  983–4 Stoics and Stoicism  7, 109, 125–31, 719, 831, 845, 860 and ‘artificial happiness’  119, 843, 861 and Brutus  846 and Cato the Younger  834, 846 on dispassion and social affection  128–9, 850–2 Hume’s Epicurean as against  119–20 Hume’s Platonist as against  132–3, 855–6 Hume’s Sceptic as against their artificial arguments  144–5, 862 on man and other animals  125, 847 on moral progress  126–7, 847–9 and politics  129–30, 852–3 and providence  130–1, 853 on the sage  128, 850 Strabo: on Alexandria  319, 1083, 1084, 1085 on Antioch  1082 on Athenians’ naming of slaves after their nations  286 on Athens’ size, as the greatest Greek city  310

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1370

Index

Strabo (cont.) on Augustus’s limitation of the height of houses  316 n. 190 on Athens  1030 on Britain  1046 on Carthage  321, 1089 on the Celts  891 on the Druids  325 n. 236 on the city of Rome  316, 1072 on the civilizing effect of the Roman empire  328, 1097, 1101, 1103 on the comparative sizes of European cities  319 n. 204, 321 on the decline of the Greek colonies in Sicily in Augustus’s time 309 on the effect of climate on character  164, 880–1 on Egypt  328, 984, 1105 on excessively cold and ill-inhabited regions 323 on Gaul  325, 965, 1096 climate  323, 1090–1 martial character  326, 328, 880, 1097 on Germany’s inhabitants and conduct  325, 1095 on the Getes  1094 as uncivilized  324 on Greece  329, 1107 on the Helots (Helotes) as state owned slaves  288 on the hoarding of treasures prior to wars 262 and Hume’s ‘Populousness’  981 on the populousness of early times 1047–8 on inhabitants of Marseilles  328 n. 255 on Italy  1103 on Rhodes  952 on Romans maintaining the liberty and privileges of the Greeks 329

on Roman sales of 10,000 slaves per day  285 n. 14 on Sicily  1046, 1047 on slavery  285, 286, 990, 993–4, 997–8, 1003 on Spain  327, 1092, 1101 on the superior police of Romans  328 n. 255 on Sybaris and the number of Sybarites  307, 1036, 1040 on Syracuse  310, 1049 on Tyre  1072 Strahan, William  417, 430, 438 and Andrew Millar  420–1, 437 his apprenticeship  437 and the Booksellers’ Relief Bill  442 and copyright  439–43, 759 the dissatisfaction of Hume’s family with the publication of ‘My Own Life’  445 Hume’s dealings with  419, 421, 435, 436, 437, 445, 898, 943–4 as Hume’s literary executor  444 ledgers of  420–1, 426–7, 437, 445 and typography  432 Stuart, Charles Edward (the Young Pretender)  968, 1126, 1131, 1136; see also Jacobites Stuart, house of  1126, 1127, 1128, 1136 advantages to a restoration of the 356–7 and the dispensing power  765 government of the  352, 359, 746 and religion  361, 1139 the succession  356–61, 782, 1125, 1132–3 and Tories  75 and Whigs  1110–11  see also Charles I; Charles II; James I; James II; Stuart, Charles Edward; Stuart, James Francis

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Index

Stuart, James Francis Edward (the Old Pretender)  1028, 1135, 1136 style, the elegance and propriety of  88, 157–60; see also belles-lettres; delicacy; polite writings; refinements; standard of taste substantive variants and substantive editorial emendations of style in Hume’s text(s)  524–688 Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus): on the accession of Tiberius  1114 on Augustus’s villas  1075 on Caesar’s clemency  1015 on Caligula  989 on the distribution of corn  318, 991, 1080–2 on Domitian  45, 749, 861 on expulsion of Jews and Christians from Rome  776 on extensive estates in the city of Rome  316 n. 192 on frugal emperors  966 on interest rates at Rome  1035 Lives of the Caesars 807 on Nero  797, 1122 his ‘Golden House’  319–20, 1074, 1086 his proclamation of the ‘liberty’ of the Greeks  1107 quoted 319 on Roman bills of mortality  318, 1081 on slavery  282, 283, 987, 988 on soldiers’ pay  924 on the suppression of the Druids  69 n. 3, 776 on Terence  872 Suidas (Suda): on Pericles  99, 820–1

1371

on the population of the Roman Empire  328 n. 255, 1105 quoted  99 n. 7 Sunium (Sounion)  304, 1035–6, 1055 superstition  212, 786–7, 883 in British ancestors of centuries ago 167 as contrary to philosophy  77 defined 77–8 its effects on governments and individuals  212, 291 as an enemy to civil liberty  79 and enthusiasm  77ff., 167 and false religion as corrupting true religion 77–9 as favourable to priestly power  78–9, 163 n. 2, 296 n. 17 hypocrisy about, in the clergy  162 n an ingredient in almost all religions 78 about marriage  150 Molinists as friends of  80 in Plutarch  330 n. 263 psychological sources of  77 religious principles that amount to 195–6 Roman laws against external sources of  69, 775–6 Spinoza, on superstition  786 see also enthusiasm; prejudice; priests; religion superstition and enthusiasm  785–6, 790, 884 and civil liberty  79–80, 791 effects of  77–78, 79–80, 788, 790, 791 and priests  78–9, 569, 787 see also enthusiasm the Supreme Being in Platonism  132–4

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1372

Index

Susa 752 treasure of  262, 965 Sweden  13, 170, 172, 325 the armed forces of  1147 martial courage of the Swedes  170, 889 and the origin of the Goths  1095 power of the clergy  72, 779 the Swedes  72, 170, 172 Swedish book translations of Hume’s essays in his lifetime 501 Swift, Jonathan  785, 811, 817 on absentee landlords  990 allegories by  729 attacks the Duke of Marlborough 741 and the attainder of Francis Atterbury 1027–8 authority founded on opinion  756 and the beginning of party conflict 781 and Bolingbroke  755 on Bolingbroke  820 breaks with the Whigs  783 on calculations by customs agents of foreign commodities  248 his cure for love  112, 833 customs revenue related to consumption  248, 943 his extreme satire in Gulliver’s Travels  301 n. 92 on freedom and the arts and sciences 824 Hume’s judgement on  934–5 on the Irish money supply  238, 935 lawful government in contrast with expedient 866 on liberal arts  740 a misanthrope affirming virtue  794 and mixed monarchy  826 and the mutability of philosophical theories 909

and parliamentary representation 1144 on people as the riches of a nation 986 and polite prose  88, 803, 815, 875 the possible influence of Lucretius on  112 n. 6 on the property qualification for Parliament 1143 and the querelle des anciens et des modernes 1172 rebellion versus civil war  780 and Robert Walpole  301–2, 727 his satire as misleading  301–2 n. 92, 1027–8 on Sir William Temple  804 on William III’s foreign policy  757 as a writer of polite prose  88 n. 3 Switzerland  246–7, 817, 1097, 1098–9 contemporary, as resembling an ancient republic  294 honesty in the common people of  161 its militia  368, 1144 national character of  161 populousness of  294, 1009 a republic  111–12, 294, 1031 skillful husbandmen and bungling tradesmen in  305 Stanyan’s judicious account of  247 want of politeness  112 Sybaris: stasis in  299 n. 84 wealth and population  304, 307, 1036, 1040 sycophants  933, 1016 the word’s original sense  237 the Thirty Tyrants’ seizure of  298 sympathy: the art of the poet as providing the tenderest expressions of  174, 179 Epictetus on a justified counterfeiting of  8

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Index

with fellow-creatures, the common lack of  142 love and the tender sentiments of  129 nature’s implantation of  114 Plato’s fiction about a perfect  24 in Roman history and factions  66–7 a sentiment of the mind as the source of  116, 138, 165 in writers who evoke passion  193, 328 n. 255 see also under Hume, David Syracuse  202, 254, 1022, 1045, 1046 and Agathocles  298, 299 n. 84, 1021 armed forces in  202 and balance of power  254–5, 953 centre of commerce  89, 804 dimensions and population  294, 310, 314, 1009–10, 1048–9 and oratory  799 petalism  253, 950 and Timoleon  1010 Syria  344, 1038, 1093 its depopulation in modern times  324, 1093 the perpetual flux of slaves to  285, 994 T Tacitus, Publius Cornelius  722, 742 allusion to his remark about Galba  15, 727 on arbitrary powers becoming ruinous and intolerable  104 on the Batavians  884 civil wars most bloody  296, 1012 on the decay of industry and agriculture in Rome  285 n. 16 on the decline of eloquence  800 effect of the diffusion of knowledge  169, 888 effects of climate  878

1373 on established clergy’s alliances with despotic princes  72 on extensive porticoes and properties of Roman nobility  316 n. 192 a favourite author  193 on foreign religions  776 on forms of government  72, 780 on the Germans  1095, 1096 on Germany  1095 its small population in ancient times 325 on infanticide  291, 1004 on the Jews  72, 779 on liberty and oppression under Roman emperors  39, 44–5, 58 on Livia, wife of Augustus  113, 836 on Messalina  733 on mixed government  58, 764–5 on Nero  797, 807 on a nobleman’s execution of 400 slaves to revenge the actions of one  288 n. 30 provincial administration under the Empire  44–5, 329, 749, 1106–7 on public debts and emperors’ desperate measures  271, 971 quoted  39, 45, 72, 104, 271, 285 on the repression of provincial maladministration by Roman emperors 329 on Roman orators  810 on the rule that names must be placed in order by persons’ dignity 113 the Sarmatians’ invasion of Moesia  1094 on Sejanus  798 on the size and pay of the Roman emperors’ legions  218 n. 1, 924

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1374

Index

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius (cont.) on slavery  806, 992, 999–1000 on Tiberius and Nero  807 and travel restrictions  338, 1114 tanistry  326, 1099 Tantalus 736 tariffs  247–8, 943 Tarquinius Superbus  881, 978 Tartars  108 n. 3, 168 n. 6, 170, 211, 215, 257, 291, 296, 324 manners and morals of  168, 211, 215, 296, 324 Tartary  291, 1003 Tasso, Torquato, as great Italian poet  88, 801, 845–6, 902, 904 his genius  14 quoted  122 n. 3 taste, cultivation of  905–8 and good sense  36–7, 190–1, 739 practice as improving  188–9 prejudice as distorting  189–90 requires comparison  189 taste, the nature and delicacy of: how advantageous  35–6 the definition of taste and sentiment 187 departures from the true standard of taste 190–3 different degrees of  187 and excellence in rare achievements 192 general rules of beauty and  187 general rules, principles, and models of  187–8, 191–3 as a highly refined sensitivity  35–37, 187 impartiality and prejudice in judgements of  190, 192–3 lack of  187–8 the nature and definition of  185–7 qualities in objects that produce and justify judgements of 186–8

a rule to reconcile different sentiments of taste  183 its similarity to delicacy of passion 35–6 some persons better judges than others in  92–4 as a source of the finest enjoyments 188 and the standard of taste  181ff. and uniform experience and approbation  188, 191 see also approbation; beauty; delicacy; standard of taste taxation: of agriculture  91 in a barter economy  223, 226 demands for and the consequences of new and higher  258 experience in matters of  258 on foreign commodities, sometimes useful 247–8 in France  91, 207 in free governments  91 hurtful forms of  91, 258–9, 261 injudicious and confusing forms of 266–7 judicious taxes as producing frugality 259–61 levied to pay the interest on the national debt  265–6 in monarchies  90–1 as placing a limit on political authority 261 retractions in Turkey of new forms of 261 when screwed up to the most a nation can bear  266 taxes, types assessed: arbitrary  259, 961–2 on consumption  258, 260–1, 266, 961, 969 best levied on luxuries  259

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Index

on land  266, 961, 963 and physiocracy  260–1, 962 poll-taxes, sometimes oppressive and intolerable  260, 962 upon possessions  259 tax-farmers: finançiers 807 publicani  260, 304, 328, 962, 1035, 1104 Ottoman 963–4 Temple of Trowbridge, William  960 Temple, Sir William  804, 816, 960 on the army  1046 on authority based on opinion  756 on the character of the Dutch  259, 742, 884, 1145 on China  829, 830 climatic determinism  878, 885, 889 on courage  170 n. 9 on determinants of courage  170 on the Dutch nobility  885 good men as opposed to good schemes of government  745 on the ground of trade  823 on the incorrigibility of faction  774 on interest rates  808 on the Irish  259, 960 on natural disadvantages, industry, and trade  259 on the original contract  1111 and the querelle des anciens et des modernes 1172 style of  88, 803–4 and the Treaty of Nijmegen  954 on the Swedes  889 on the United Provinces  889, 945 his weak knowledge of rules of prose 88 Terence (Publius Terentius Afer)  114, 837, 993, 998 his Andria  194, 872, 910 his enduring reputation  192 his Self-Tormentor  114 n. 13

1375

his simplicity of style  158, 159, 872, 873, 874 his writing skills  159 Terrasson, Jean  902, 904, 905, 910 Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus), his perception of a population increase under the Roman empire  328 n. 255, 1103–4 Teutons  325, 1095 theatre  94 n. 2, 108, 175–6, 179, 196, 328 n. 255; see also tragedy Thebes: always one of the capital cities of Greece 313 the banished citizens of, in the Spartan army  299 n. 84 battle of Chaeronea  274, 973–4 battle of Leuctra  252, 949, 1011, 1012, 1020 character of Thebans  165, 881, 882 depth of phalanx in  295–6, 1011–12 the different characters of Thebans and Athenians  165 law courts  275, 976 and the politics of Greece regarding balance of power  252 population  313, 1063–4, 1065 similarity to Athens in a law to protect democracy  275, 976 and Sparta  252, 949, 1020 stasis in  299 n. 84 Strabo on the influence of climate, customs, and education in  164 n. 3 Thebes, Egyptian  310, 1047 Theocritus: on Egypt  307, 1041 pastorals 873 on Ptolemy’s command of 33,339 cities 307

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1376

Index

theological systems that prevail and then explode from absurdity  192, 195–6 see also Jansenists; Molinists; priests; religion; speculative ideas and systems Theseus  65, 772 Thespis 803 Thessaly, lawlessness of  315, 1069 thinkers, the abstruse and the shallow compared 199–200; see also speculative ideas and systems Thomas Aquinas, St  828 Thomson, James  811–12, 1178 and Andrew Millar  441, 722 compares Elizabeth I and James I 746 on modern Greeks  883 the navy emphasized over the army 1125–6 quoted 845 Thrace 994 Greeks in the service of Seuthes, prince of  293 manners and morals in  324, 1027, 1094 and Ovid  740 removal of Athenians to  1030 a source of slaves  285, 994 Thrasybulus, his amnesty at the restoration of democracy in Athens  297, 1104 Thucydides: on Athenian finances  941 on Athenian government  974–5, 1051–2 on Athens and Thebes  881 and the balance of power in the politics of Greece  252, 950 on the delivery of corn and Athenian worries 304 and desertion of slaves  1050, 1057–8 his detachment  1027

and the dimensions of Athens  311, 1053 on Dorians and Ionians  171, 890 on the famous plague of Athens and how a dissolute gaiety still prevailed 147 Hume on  307, 798, 1039 the pay of ambassadors and common foot-soldiers 293 the pay of Athenian soldiers  1008 and the Peloponnesian War  304, 948, 965, 1036, 1061–2 on the plague at Athens  147, 863, 984 on the population of Athens, especially slaves  310, 311, 312–13, 914, 1051–2 on Pylos  315, 1069 quoted on stasis  298, 1017 his report of a treasure of more than 10,000 talents collected in Athens 246 his representations of the league formed against Athens  252 quoted on stasis  298, 1017 Sicilian expedition  201–2, 914, 1048 on slaves in Chios  312, 1060 on soldiers that Athens sent in the expedition against Sicily  201–2 and Sparta  1009, 1026 on the Spartan Helots  312, 1061 on the Spartans’ collection of 10,000 men for a colony  294 n. 61, 1009 on stasis  298, 1016–17, 1019 on the strategy of and prolongation of the Persian empire  253 on Syracuse  310, 1048 his work as the commencement of serious history  307, 1039. Thule  170, 888 Tiber (Tyber): and the city of Rome  317, 1077

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freezes in winter  322, 1090 Tiberius, Roman emperor  113, 776, 798, 836, 1010–11 a bad emperor  90, 807 hoarding by  262, 966 and imperial succession  343, 1114, 1117–18 and Roman trading imbalances  928 sumptuary laws  991, 1010–11 his suppression of Druids  69 n. 3, 776 time of  45, 118, 235, 338–9, 749, 924 Tillotson, John  792, 903 Timarchus, his ‘easy circumstances’ though master of only ten slaves  311, 1056 Timoleon, and the regeneration and repopulation of Sicily  294, 1010, 1046–7 Timomachus 178 Tindal, Matthew  785 on Benjamin Hoadly  762 a deist  790 on freedom of the press  743, 744 and James Foster  762 ridicule as test of truth  761–2 on the tolerance of the ancients  775 Tinwald, Charles Erskine, Lord  1125 and the aftermath of the ’45 uprising  423–4, 1132 Tissaphernes  253, 950 title-pages of Hume’s Essays (1741, 1752, 1757, 1772) in facsimiles 702–7 Titus, Roman emperor  113, 333, 1109–10 Todd, William B.  406, 425 Toland, John  781, 882 a deist  790 on James Harrington  1148 toleration: and the country party  72

1377

in the circumstances of the Protestant succession  358 religious  69 n. 3, 83, 355, 358–60; see also religion see also country party; court party; faction(s); parties in general; Tory party; Whig party Tomis (Tomi)  323, 740, 1091, 1094 Tonquin  150, 865 Tory party: its characterizing ideology  75, 780–1, 782, 1109 indefeasible right  74, 332 passive obedience  74, 346, 423, 1122 conduct of, at the Revolution of 1688: 75 and the court and country parties 75–6 its constituents  785 its definition of, as partisans of the family of Stuart  75 as high-church, and their connection to Roman Catholics  80 Hume’s assessment of  783, 784 obsolete or operative  75–6, 409–10, 777, 782–3, 1124 origin of  74, 781, 791, 1125 the speculative system of  74–5 support of passive disobedience in 346 see also country party; court party; faction(s); parties (political); Whig party Toulouse (Tholouse)  322, 965 Tournefort, Joseph de Pitton, French botanist and voyager  153, 323, 867, 1091 as a physician in a Turkish seraglio 153 on Ottoman taxes  964 Trachinians  294, 1009

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1378

Index

trade: as an affair of state  86–7, 102 with Africa  225, 304, 307 balance of  237ff. in Carthage  89, 218, 255, 303 with China  206, 240 and commerce in Italy  248, 251 commodities and prohibitions on exportation in  237 competition in, among nations  219 a council of trade, in a perfect commonwealth 366 with East-India  248 exchange as sustaining the balance of 239 foreign  205–7, 221, 222 n. 4, 248–51 gold and silver diminished from a loss of  248 Great Britain’s with France  241, 258 as increasing frugality  232 as increasing the power of the sovereign  203, 205 jealousy of, the essay on  249–51 money as the oil of the wheels of trade  218, 922 as nothing but a stock of labour  205 novelty in the arts introduced by 249 profits from commerce and  206, 219, 229, 232–3, 236, 264, 303 restrictions on  44 in Sir Robert Walpole’s years  15 three large, fertile countries that have possessed much trade 258–9 trading cities in the ancient world  258–9, 303 in wool  210, 224, 241, 250 see also balance of trade; commerce; foreign trade; jealousy of trade

tragedy: L’Abbé du Bos on  174 as an agreeable imitation  176 consciousness of its fictitiousness  175, 734–5 domestic tragedy  357, 1133 and eloquence  176, 894 as an escape from tedium  174–5 finding pleasure, happiness, or amusement in  174–8 falsehood and fiction in  175–6 Fontenelle on the movement of the heart in  175 heroic plays  718, 829 its nature  174ff. overly shocking images in  179 and poetic justice  897 a subtype concluding in joy  174, 892–3 sympathy and compassion brought forth by  174, 179 tears, sobs, cries, and high passions in reaction to  174 why it sometimes pleases  174–7 Trajan, Roman emperor  840, 932, 1072 the age of  117, 235, 328, 1105 as an exemplary ruler  85, 333, 797, 1109–10 tranquillity: as disposed by the study of beauties in the arts  37 the Epicurean on  123 in government(s)  68 as insipid languor  174 as the perfecting wisdom in Epictetus 8 in Platonism  132 and social conditions of peace and  204–5, 220, 256, 296, 350 treasure, accumulation of  245–7, 262; see also hoarding

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1379

Index

Trenchard, John: on the balance of trade  934 Cato’s Letters 852–3 on commerce and freedom  804 on the crown and the Commons  757 on the durability of the monarchy 771 on the English  742 on enthusiasm  787 and the Independent Whig 778 polemic on eloquence  809, 815 triumvirate(s), Roman  48, 294, 302, 308 Trivulzio, Gian Giacomo  67, 774 truth and falsehood, judgements of as unlike judgements of beauty 138; see also beauty Tucker, Josiah: and Hume  933, 935, 944, 946, 947 and suffrage  1143 Tudor, house of  782, 1127, 1128, 1133 and the prerogatives of the crown  352, 353, 1126, 1127, 1131 Tully, see Cicero Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques  721, 741 and taxes  963 translates Hume  944, 1124 Turin 327 Turkey: arbitrary power in  104 assassination of sultans  1133 a barbarous monarchy with judges unrestrained by laws  104, 152 Egyptians sending slaves to parts of the empire of  291 government of  261, 324, 760, 963–4, 1131 medical treatment of women in 153 national character in  166, 168, 883 population of  324 retractions of taxes and new taxation in, with fatal effects  261

subjection of wives in  866 see also Ottoman Empire Turkish Europe (Turky in Europe)  324, 957, 987, 1093–4 Tuscany  308 n. 125, 320, 988, 1002, 1043, 1073 Tweed, the River  164, 881 the Twelve Tables in Roman law  69 n. 3, 105, 296 tyrannicide  719–20, 846, 1122–3 justly abolished in the laws of nations 348 tyrants, ancient  300, 1025 their barbarity and cruelty  39, 44, 48, 90, 297 n. 7, 304, 348, 352, 1017–18 good tyrants  1025 Tyre and Tyrians  1072 as a centre of commerce  89, 117, 258, 303, 804, 958–60, 1031 population of  1064 U Ulysses  182, 900 unequal distributions of happiness and misery 148; see also inequality; justice; taxes the Union of England and Scotland, see under Great Britain universality of moral precepts and the nature of language  181–2 United Provinces (‘Holland’)  322, 930, 1089 arts and industry in  945 as a centre of commerce  89, 102, 258, 958–9 the clergy in  72, 779 the decline of  1146 its dependence on trade  251

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1380

Index

United Provinces (‘Holland’) (cont.) its employment of mercenary troops  218, 309, 884, 1045 as a maritime power  799 money supply of  218 national character in  167, 742, 823, 885, 1145 its national debt  91, 251, 808, 946 and religious toleration  539, 744, 1037 a republic  294, 826, 1009, 1111 instructing representatives  758 liberty of the press in  38–9 and the stadtholderate  742, 1145–6 and the Revolution of  1688  1137 taxation of necessaries in  958, 960 see also Orange, house of universal empires or monarchies  949 Antigonus I  253, 951 defects of  257, 956 Hapsburg  255, 954 Louis XIV  817 Philip of Macedon  97, 252, 817, 863, 949 Roman  254, 952, 957 Urban VIII, Pope  13 quoted 723 the usefulness of industry, capacity, and knowledge 111 Ustáriz, Gerónymo de  281, 986 usurpation of power at the origin of governments  335–7, 340; see also original contract usury: high and extravagant  304 rates of  230 when prohibited  243 see also interest rates Utica, battle of  297, 1015 Utrecht, treaty of  256, 750, 943, 946, 948, 954, 955, 1089

V Valerius Maximus, on great houses in Rome  316 n. 191, 1073–4 Vanderlint, Jacob  785, 917 and the price-specie flow mechanism 935 vanity: for achievements in art and industry 119 as alluring to the foolish  211 its capacity to overcome other passions 26 its close alliance to a sense of virtue 85 Nero’s passion for glory and vanity in driving a chariot  85 the only capacity in which humans surpass other animals  81 Varro, Marcus Terentius, Roman scholar and antiquarian  285, 327, 880 on agriculture  991, 1101 date for the foundation of Rome 1076 on Italy  323, 1010, 1091–2, 1103 on the meaning of ‘barbarian’  887 on slaves  289–90, 999, 1000 Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, seigneur de  242, 936 Vega, Garcilaso de la  234, 931, 1092 Velleius Paterculus  246, 309, 327, 800, 920, 942, 1000, 1100–1 on the Gauls killed by Caesar  309, 1044 Veneti faction  66, 772 Venice and Venetians: arts and industry of  945 centre of commerce  89, 248, 258, 802, 959 factions of  66, 773 and mercenaries  213, 884, 920 populousness of  327

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Index

as a republic  38, 42–3, 88, 89, 366, 370, 1031, 1146 the ballot  1143 civilized  112, 826 its cohesion and longevity  47, 747 Venus  844, 896 verna, a slave born and bred in a family  285, 285 n. 17, 286 n. 18 its sense and implications  285–6, 992 see also slavery Verres, Gaius: butchery of  176, 894 depredations by  44, 748 and interest rates  304, 1035 as a provocation for Cicero’s eloquence 97 proscription of  44, 748 prosecuted by Cicero  179, 894 Vespasian, Roman emperor  316 n. 193, 1012, 1107, 1115 age of  169, 749, 888 treasure of  262, 966 the Vespasians (Vespasian and Titus), their joint ‘principate and censorship’  316 n. 193, 1075–6 vices: avarice as belonging in the class of 30–2 of impudence  19–21 morals as the correction of gross 114 poets often advocates for  28, 30 Robert Walpole’s  15 treachery and cruelty as the most pernicious and odious  215 two opposite vices in a state may be more advantageous than either alone 216–17 and virtues, their boundaries often confounded  19, 195–6

1381

and virtues during the politically most illustrious period of Roman history  48 see also indolence; virtue(s) Victor, Aurelius, on Caracalla’s encrease of Rome  317 n. 193, 1078 Victor, Publius, on the number of houses and the divisions of Rome  314, 317 n. 193, 1067, 1180 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro): British Virgils  98, 818 his enduring reputation  117, 192, 840 a genius  14 as of greater glory than Augustus 725 Hume’s early reading of  402, 843, 845 on Italy  1010, 1103 John Ogilby’s translation of  902 and the origins of Rome  1027 pastoral poetry of  873 quoted  208, 327 n. 252, 836, 916, 1101 his rank among the great poets  14, 117 on Scythia  1091 style and taste in writing  158, 159, 589, 872–3, 874 the unpoetic mathematician on  139, 859 virtue(s): the boundaries between the virtue and the vice of luxury not precise  209, 917 its connection to agreeableness and utility  347, 796 the definition of  729–30 degrees of  83, 96 disinterested albeit gratifying  84–5, 796

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1382

Index

virtue(s) (cont.) the enemies of  81 Epicurean 121 of friendship  12, 152, 321 and good fortune  19, 729 good manners and customs distinguished from good laws 47–8 and good morals as requisite to happiness 65 in Henri IV, French prince esteemed for governing   13, 102 historians as true friends of  28 human, compared to benevolence and justice in the Deity  134 humanity as a  12–13, 142, 163 n. 2, 182, 211–12 inaptly distinguished from talent  738, 899 justice, as both a moral duty and a virtue  341–3, 347–8 loss or absence of  19 love of and desire for  85, 130, 142 and luxury  209, 917 Machiavelli’s approbation of true sentiments of  28–9 as manifest in professions  162 in the middle station of life  11–14, 722 mixed with non-moral qualities such as vanity  85, 129, 796–7 as the model for human minds and a happy disposition  86, 141, 143 moderation as integral to the life of  141, 163 n. 2 modesty as a prejudicial virtue  19–20 the most delicate sentiments of  28 in nations (national characters)  164–73 the nature of virtuous character  141

poets’ handling of  28 in a political state arising from education and wise laws  65, 771–2 private, a most cardinal but not always most eminent  47–8, 343 and public spirit  47–8, 50, 753–4, 755 the refinement of human nature to achieve 86 the reward(s) of  130–1 Robert Walpole’s vices and  15 sense of shame as a  149 sentiments of  28, 129 the social virtues, their predominance 129 in sovereigns  52 the Stoic as a person of action and 125ff. and the study of history  27–9, 734 the term’s implying praise by the nature of language  83, 182 unanimity of opinion about the value of 182 vanity’s close alliance to a sense of 85 and vice(s), their boundaries confounded  19, 195–6, 209 a virtuous life as the happiest disposition of human nature 141 see also approbation; character traits in individuals and groups; delicacy; friendship; historians; human nature; humanity, sentiments and virtues of; justice; love; vice(s) Vitellius, Roman emperor  971, 1012, 1115 Vitruvius: on the city of Rome  316, 1072, 1075

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Index

on Augustus prohibiting the raising of houses beyond a set limit  316 n. 190 Voltaire (pseud. of François-Marie Arouet)  436, 876 and Bolingbroke  820 as a genius and celebrated poet  14 his La Henriade  723, 742 quoted 39 and Isaac Newton  829 on Ottoman taxes  963 on Quakers  788 on Racine (Jean)  911 on Roman toleration  775–6 as tragedian  893 Vopiscus, Flavius, see Scriptores Historiae Augustae Vossius, G. J.  985, 1138, 1182 Vossius, Isaac  887, 1038, 1039, 1072, 1078, 1182 on ancient populousness  280, 981 on China  829 on the dimensions of Athens  311, 1054 on the dimensions and population of Rome  311, 316–17 n. 193, 985, 1075, 1077, 1078, 1079 and a partial deluge  983 W wages  207, 221, 260, 293–4, 933, 958, 961, 963 Wales, Frederick Louis, prince of  402 as Opposition patron  411, 1178 Wallace, Robert  1065, 1112–13 and the fund for widows and orphans 407 on Gaul  1098 on Halley’s rule  1040–1, 1053, 1060, 1099, 1100 and Hume  879, 916, 981–2, 985–6, 986, 988, 1091

1383

rebuts Hume  982, 992, 1064, 1069, 1070, 1088, 1107 against inquisitorial proceedings  417 on luxury versus simplicity  915 and Malthus  982 the mortality of the world  984 and numbers in ancient sources  1047–8, 1050, 1063, 1067 on populousness  1036, 1039, 1040, 1041, 1046 on the depopulation caused by the Roman empire  1105 an indication of security  986 on primogeniture  1007, 1026 and the Reveur  407, 963 on the size of the French army  919 on slaves  988, 989, 992, 995, 996 on small polities and equality of fortune 1007 and the Squadrone  417 and Strabo  965 on Turky in Africa  1093 writings of  407, 982 Waller, Edmund  906, 1134 his character and status as a poet  13, 98, 118 Epicureanism of  842 and Horace  118, 841 in Parliament  817–18 versification  724, 818 Walpole, Horace  421, 777 on Robert Walpole  727 Walpole, Sir Robert  422, 981 and the excise controversy  759, 775, 812, 961, 962 and the Hanovers  769, 770, 1138 as harmful to culture  15, 727, 809, 818–19 hatred and ridicule of  15 and Houghton Hall  15, 727 Hume’s essay on, as a character of 15

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1384 Walpole, Sir Robert (cont.) dissemination of  413, 728 occasion of  725–6, 809 recast as a note  745 and the Jacobites  792, 1027–8 ministry of  726–7, 745, 755, 761 assessment of it  726, 727–8 and the clergy  770 and the national debt  728, 966–7 opposition to him  410–11, 413, 726–7, 741, 820 in Parliament  93, 755, 813, 1178 in the press  408, 727, 744, 812–13; topics  719–20, 746, 809, 817, 958 ouster from government  725–6, 758, 761, 809, 955 and patronage  726, 727 and the peerage bill  1147 and Scotland  726 as a speaker in the Commons  812 his vices and virtues  15 against war  759 war: ancient battles, bloodier than modern 295–6 ancient republics, in perpetual and destructive wars  295 balance of power in the Peloponnesian 252 in continental Europe  358, 361 costs, destruction, and calamities of  212, 218, 263–4, 270, 295–6 the early Romans lived with their neighbours in perpetual  203 n. 5, 213 Great Britain’s wars with France  207, 212, 256–7 of the Helvetii  309 the hoarding of treasures to make provision for  262 the old Spaniards addicted to  166

Index the costs of French armies  212 the period of the Punic wars the most politically illustrious in Roman history  47, 308 religion as a cause of divisions and 68–70 scourges caused by  280; see also scourges Sparta and war  201, 301 War of the Austrian Succession  741, 923–4, 956, 966, 970–1, 980 its aftermath  947, 954, 955 and the balance of power  1137–8 and the Bank of Genoa  938–9 and Flanders  943 and Hanover  1135 and the Hapsburg line  927 and the public debt  360 and Sir Robert Walpole  955 and the United Provinces  946, 1146 and the War of Jenkins’s Ear  934 War of the Spanish Succession  789, 867, 923 and the balance of power  948, 949, 1119 and the Duke of Marlborough  724 and the Dutch  884, 1146 and Dutch national debt  808 and Flanders  943 as protracted  955 Tory opposition  741 and the Treaty of Utrecht  954 and the United Provinces  946 Warburton, William: and Hume  431 on promissory obligation  1116 Wars of the Roses  782, 1115 wealth and riches  21, 44–5, 61–2, 205–6, 219, 222, 245, 262, 311 West Indies  225, 228, 239, 281 n. 3 economic impact  234–5, 927, 929, 943

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Index

and population  986 and slavery  286, 993 and syphilis  985 Whig party: characterizing ideology of  80, 746, 780–1, 783, 1109, 1126 original-contract tenet  332, 346, 422–3, 1109, 1110–11 right of resistance  334, 348–9, 350–1 and the court and country parties 75–6 constituents 785 its definition, name, and nature  74–5 deists or professed latitudinarians as leaders of  80 factions within  417 obsolete or operative  75–6, 409–10, 777, 782–3, 1124 origin of  74, 781, 791, 1125 as the popular party, and its opposition to the crown  350–2 the Roman-Catholic Church’s reconciliation with  80, 792 and toleration  80 see also Addison, Joseph; Hanover, house of; Locke, John; Molesworth, Robert; Sidney, Algernon Wilkes, John  741, 968, 1143 William I of England (the Conqueror)  13, 723, 1129 William II of England (Rufus)  143, 861 William III of England  13, 723, 782, 1139, 1143 his accession  770, 781, 1125 economic policy  962 opposed by a Tory House of Commons  53, 757

1385

and the Protestant succession  356, 1132 religious policy  788–9, 790, 792 the standing-army crisis  923 and the Treaty of Ryswick  954 Williams, Francis  886–7 Windsor  319, 1084 wine: absurd duties on, when imported into Britanny and Normandy 242 drunkards and addiction to  171–2 the exporting of wine and oil into Africa 304 farms for and commerce in  238, 241–2, 290, 304, 307 see also liquor and wine Wishart, William: and Hume  415–16, 719, 733 inquisition into  719 a Shaftesburean  719 wit: and agreeableness, valued qualifications in monarchies 111 distinguished from genius  98 its merit, but overuse, in refined writing 157–61 in poor taste in Philip V’s meeting with Titus Flamininus  113 in the press  40 of Seneca  148, 160 Shaftesbury on  275 trials of, among rhetoricians  263 weakness of, in Spain  161 Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal  113, 836 women: Alexander’s marriage of 80 captains to Persian women  46 n. 6 Aristotle on the Gauls’ indifference to  171 n. 10 and equality in the sexes  152

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1386

Index

women (cont.) excluded from the democracy of Athens 336 in the married state  22ff. the minds of  22, 28 Naples governed by  213 in nations where they are sovereigns of the learned world  5 the natural passion of revenge in 163 population figures often exclude  307, 310 the positive influence on manners by virtuous 116 in Scythia, where women conspired against men  22–3 of sense and education  5, 9–10, 23, 28 in southern climates  171 wit in  28 see also divorce; marriage wool products and trade  210, 224, 241, 250, 918, 936, 945, 947 Woodward, John  983 the world, as probably mortal  373, 983–4 Wotton, William: on the eternity of the world  983 on gallantry  837 on modern philosophy  831 on ‘the new philosophy’  716–17 on the querelle  810, 815, 823 writing: Addison and the character of fine  157, 870 admired models of left by the ancients 118 the beauties of  187 claims by poets to inspiration in  103 Dr. Swift, Britain’s first polite prose writer 88 of essays  3–6 polite forms of  5, 88, 195 simplicity and refinement in  157–60

skills of, in great writers  158–9 wit in  157–60 see also arts and sciences; belles-lettres; delicacy; polite writings; standard of taste; style, elegance and propriety of; taste, the nature and delicacy of X Xenophon  808, 1069 on agriculture  305, 1037 and the amnesty of 403/2 bc 1014 on the Athenian economy  91, 798, 807, 1032, 1058 on Athenian exactions upon the rich  299–300, 1023 on Athenian payment of 200% on debt in emergencies  91 on the balance of power among the Greek cities  252, 948, 949 on the balance of power sought by Asiatic nations  252, 948 his Banquet (Symposium), as possibly a piece of pleasantry  116, 838 his claim that every man can be a farmer 305 the ‘choice of Hercules’  844 his description of the ‘tyranny’ of the Athenian people  299 on the dimensions of Athens  311, 1053, 1054 his ‘expedition’ (Anabasis) 752, 1007, 1039, 1174 his brief service to Seuthes  293 as an authentic piece of Greek history  307 n. 115 on ancient Persian manners  46 n. 6 as a historical source  307 payment of his troops  293, 1007 on the Persian nobility  46 n. 6, 750–1

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1387

Index

on Phliasia (Phleious)  313–14, 1064–5 quoted  86 n. 1, 91 n. 5 on slavery  288–9, 312, 997, 998, 1050, 1055, 1058 on the separation of male and female slaves, in his Oeconomics 288 as a source for Hume  981 on Sparta  314, 915, 1067 on stasis in the Greek cities  1019–21 and the Thirty Tyrants  1016, 1018 on Thracians  324 n. 229, 1094 on trade, a subject neglected by other ancient writers  86, 798 on women  838 Xerxes  46 n. 6, 843, 1045 army of  308, 1042 the invasion of Greece  751, 1069–70 his pursuit of new pleasures when Persian king  119

Y York 322 York, house of  782, 1115, 1127 Yorkshire: dimensions  201, 315, 1070 and prices  265 the Yorkshire petition  958 Young, Arthur  1038 Z zealotry: political  41, 48–50, 59, 63, 72–3, 332, 354, 549–50 religious  68–70, 80, 162 n. 2, 196, 354–5, 789–90, 1131 see also enthusiasm; faction(s); parties (political); superstition; superstition and enthusiasm