Hume’s Reception in Early America Expanded Edition 9781474269018, 9781474269049, 9781474269032

Citation preview

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Hume’s Reception in Early America Expanded Edition

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Also available from Bloomsbury American Philosophy, Erin McKenna and Scott L. Pratt The Bloomsbury Companion to Hume, edited by Alan Bailey and Dan O’Brien The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America, edited by John Shook The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, edited by Mark G. Spencer

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Hume’s Reception in Early America Expanded Edition Edited by Mark G. Spencer

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Mark G. Spencer, 2017 Mark G. Spencer has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the editor. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: PB: 978-​1-​4742-​6 901-​8 ePDF: 978-​1-​4742-​6 903-​2 ePub: 978-​1- ​4742- ​6 902- ​5 Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Spencer, Mark G., editor. Title: Hume’s reception in early America / edited by Mark G. Spencer. Description: Expanded Edition. | New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016038148| ISBN 9781474269018 (pb) | ISBN 9781474269032 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Hume, David, 1711–1776–In literature. | Hume, David, 1711–1776–Public opinion. | Hume, David, 1711–1776–Influence. | Philosophy, American--18th century. | Philosophy, American–19th century. | Public opinion–United States. Classification: LCC B1498. H93 2017 | DDC 192–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038148 Cover image © Mark G. Spencer Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India

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For William and Thomas my sons older, taller, even wiser

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Contents Preface to the Expanded Edition Preface to the First Edition Acknowledgements Abbreviations

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Part I  Early American Responses to Hume’s Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

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Introduction to Part I

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Dispute about the Tragedy of Douglas 9 [William Smith] “Dispute about the Tragedy of DOUGLAS,” The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies, vol. 1, no. 5 (February 1758), pp. 203–​9.

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Natural Inferiority of Blacks 21 Anonymous Personal Slavery Established, By the Suffrages of Custom and Right Reason: Being a Full Answer to the Gloomy and Visionary Reveries, of All the Fanatical and Enthusiastical Writers on that Subject (Philadelphia, [1773]); selection from pp. 18–​19.

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Every Man Ought to be Supposed a Knave 23 [Alexander Hamilton] The Farmer Refuted: or, A more Impartial and Comprehensive View of the Dispute between Great-​Britain and the Colonies, Intended as a Further Vindication of the Congress: In Answer to a Letter from A. W. Farmer, Intitled A View of the Controversy Between Great-​Britain and her Colonies: Including a Mode of Determining the Present Disputes Finally and Effectually, &c (New York, 1775); selection from pp. 1, 11–​13, 18.

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Observations on the Liberty of the Press 27 “Republicus” “OBSERVATIONS on the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, humbly offered to the perusal of not only the POLITICAL FATHERS and GUARDIANS of this Commonwealth, but to every sincere FRIEND to RELIGION and LIBERTY, and to the Promoters and Well-​wishers of Arts and Sciences throughout the UNITED STATES of AMERICA; which the disinterested Author hopes will be read with the utmost of Attention,” from The American Monitor, or the Republican Magazine, vol. 1, no. 1 (October 1785), pp. 3–​7.

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A Complicated Aristocracy 35 John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, against the attack of M. Turgot in his letter to Dr. Price, dated the twenty-​second day of March, 1778, 3 vols (Philadelphia, 1787); “Letter LIV. LOCKE, MILTON, and HUME,”; selection from vol. 1, pp. 369–​71.

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Cementing the Union 39 Robert Fulton “Mr. Fulton’s Communication,” in Albert Gallatin, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals; Made in Pursuance of a Resolution of Senate, of March 2, 1807 (Washington, 1808); selection from pp. 108–​109, 120–​23.

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First American Edition of Hume’s Essays Thomas Ewell “Preface” and “Notes” to Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics, By David Hume, Esq. To Which is Added the Answer to his Objections to Christianity, By the Ingenious Divine Dr. Campbell. Also, An Account of Mr. Hume’s Life, an original Essay, and a few Notes, 2 vols (Georgetown, D.C. and Philadelphia, 1817); “Preface,” from vol. 1, pp. vii–xvii; “Notes,” from vol. 1, pp. 80, 231–2, 521–3; vol. 2, pp. 124–7, 475.

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Genius and Passion 55 “S.N.” and “R.” “Genius and Passion,” The Portico, a Repository of Science and Literature, vol. 3, no. 2 (February 1817), pp. 121–​6; “Remarks addressed to the author of the Essay on Genius and Passion, in the last number of the Portico,” The Portico, vol. 3, no. 3 (March 1817), pp. 229–​32; “Passion the Soul of

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Genius —​(in Reply to ‘R.’),” The Portico, vol. 3, no. 4 (April 1817), pp. 297–​303; “Reply to the Essay, entitled ‘Genius, the soul of Passion.’ Addressed to ‘S.’,” The Portico, vol. 3, no. 5 (May 1817), pp. 373–​6. 9 For and Against Luxury 73 Anonymous “FOR THE NATIONAL REGISTER. Memorandums for an Essay against Luxury [and] Extract from an Essay ‘On Refinement in the Arts.’ —​By one David Hume,” The National Register, A Weekly Paper: Containing a Series of Important Public Documents, and Proceedings of Congress, vol. 4 (2 August 1817), pp. 66–​7. 10 Arts and Sciences under a Free Government 77 [Jared Sparks] “ART. VIII. —​1. An Oration pronounced at Cambridge, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, August 27, 1824. By EDWARD EVERETT. Published by Request. 8vo. pp. 67. Boston. 2. An Oration delivered at Plymouth, December 22, 1824. By EDWARD EVERETT. Boston. 8vo. pp. 73. Cummings, Hilliard and Co,” The North American Review, vol. 21, no. 47 (April 1825), pp. 417–​40; selection from pp. 418–​19. 11 Euthanasia of the British Government 81 [Edward Everett] “ART. VII. —​ The Prospect of Reform in Europe. L’ Avenir. Par M.J.L. de SISMONDI. Extrait de la Revue Encyclopédique. Paris. 1830,” The North American Review, vol. 33, no. 72 (July 1831), pp. 154–​90; selection from p. 189. Part II  Early American Responses to Hume’s Philosophical Writings

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Introduction to Part II

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12 Jonathan Edwards a Humean 91 James Dana An Examination of the late Reverend President Edwards’s “Enquiry on Freedom of the Will;” More especially the Foundation Principle of his Book, with the Tendency and Consequences of the Reasoning therein contained (Boston, 1770); selection from pp. vi, 69–​71, 126, “Appendix,” pp. 131–​6, 139.

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13 Remarks Upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles “H.” “Remarks upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles; more especially upon the Arguments advanced in the first part of this Essay,” The Theological Magazine, or Synopsis of Modern Religious Sentiment. On a New Plan, vol. 2 (September/​October 1796), pp. 42–​54.

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14 Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy 107 Timothy Dwight The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy, exhibited in Two Discourses, addressed to the Candidates for the Baccalaureate, in Yale College (New Haven, 1798); selection from pp. 29–​32. 15 Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel 111 “S.” “THE CELEBRATED OBJECTION OF MR. HUME TO THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL,” The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 1, no. 4 (April 1805), pp. 182–​6. 16 Hume on Experience 117 Samuel Stanhope Smith A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (New-​Brunswick, 1815); selection from pp. 81–​9. 17 With all your Philosophy be still a Man 123 Anonymous “ART. I —​ Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, Copious Notes, Critical and Explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix. By James Ogilvie. Philadelphia. 1816. 8vo. pp. 413,” The Analectic Magazine, vol. 9 (January 1817), pp. 1–​32; selection from pp. 6–​29. 18 Hume on Cause and Effect 143 [Edward Tyrrel Channing] “Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, copious Notes, critical and explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix. By James Ogilvie. 8vo. pp. 416. Philadelphia: John Conrad. 1816,” The North American Review, vol. 4, no. 12 (March 1817), pp. 378–​408; selection from pp. 401–​402.

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19 Hume’s Science of the Mind 145 Ezra Stiles Ely Conversations on the Science of the Human Mind (Philadelphia, 1819); selection from pp. 17–​19. 20 Channing on Hume 147 Anonymous “The Rev. Dr. Channing’s Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion,” The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor, vol. 1, no. 5 (May 1821), pp. 213–​22; selection from pp. 214–​17. 21 Hume a Lubricous Philosopher 151 [Samuel Gilman] “ART. XXII. —​ Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect. By Thomas Brown, M. D. F. R. S. Edinburgh, &c. Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Third edition. Edinburgh, 1818. 8vo, pp. 569,” The North American Review, vol. 12, no. 2 (April 1821), pp. 395–​432; selection from pp. 395–​6, 419–​30. 22 A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind 163 Frederick Beasley A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind, Part First (Philadelphia, 1822); selection from Book I: “CHAPTER IV. The opinions of Mr. Hume on Cause and Effect,” pp. 31–​45; “CHAPTER V. The opinions of other authors upon Cause and Effect,” pp. 47–​54, 58–​82; “CHAPTER VI. The Opinions of Professor Stewart,” pp. 83–​112; Book II: “CHAPTER VI. Mr. Hume’s Principles,” pp. 227–​32; Book III: “CHAPTER VIII. Upon Miracles,” pp. 363–​90. 23 Miracles Capable of Proof from Testimony 239 Archibald Alexander Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, 1836); selection from “Chapter VI. Miracles are Capable of Proof from Testimony,” pp. 65–​88. 24 Chalmers on Hume 257 Anonymous “ART. VII. —​ NATURAL THEOLOGY,” Quarterly Christian Spectator. Conducted by An Association of Gentlemen, vol. 10, no. 2 (May 1838), pp. 319–​37; selection from pp. 322–​4.

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25 Kant Expands upon Hume’s Scepticism 261 [Alexander Hill Everett] “ART. II. —​Critick of Pure Reason; translated from the Original of IMMANUEL KANT. London: William Pickering. 1838. 8vo. pp. 655,” The North American Review, vol. 49, no. 104 (July 1839), pp. 44–​68; selection from pp. 54–​5. 26 An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles A.H. Lawrence An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles (Washington, 1845).

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27 Review of Lawrence on Hume on Miracles 279 Anonymous “6 —​ An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles. By A.H. Lawrence. Washington: Printed by J. & G.S. Gideon. 1845. 12mo. pp. 20,” The North American Review, vol. 62, no. 130 (Jan. 1846), pp. 263–​4. 28 Hopkins on Hume 281 [Noah Porter, Jr.] “HOPKINS’ LECTURES BEFORE THE LOWELL INSTITUTE,” The New-​Englander, vol. 4, no. 15 (July 1846), pp. 401–​10; selection from pp. 405–​409. Part III  Early American Responses to Hume’s History of England

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Introduction to Part III

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29 A Certain Historian of Our Own Times 295 [Benjamin Mecom] “The famous Oliver Cromwel’s private Life —​his Sickness —​Death —​and Character; from a certain Historian of our own Times,” The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, no. 2 (October 1758), pp. 3–​12; “The Duty of Authors,” The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, no. 2 (October 1758), pp. 13–​18. 30 Power Like This 307 [John Adams] “[Remainder of Governor Winthrop’s Second Letter to Governor Bradford, begun in our last.],” Boston Gazette, (16 February 1767); selection.

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31 Hume on the English Constitution 311 [Charles Carroll and Daniel Dulany, Jr.] “Antilon-​First Citizen Letters,” in the Maryland Gazette 11 March 1773; 8 April 1773; 6 May 1773; 3 June 1773; 1 July 1773; selections. 32 Progress of Freedom 319 David Hume “Progress of the human Understanding, from the Extinction of the Saxons, to the Accession of the House of Tudor. From Mr. HUME,” Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum, vol. 2 (1776), pp. 274–​7. 33 Review of First American Edition of Hume’s History 325 Anonymous “Art. V. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688. In Six Vols. Octavo. Illustrated with Plates. By David Hume, Esq. Vol. I. Philadelphia, 1795. Campbell. Boards, 1 Dol. 67 cents to Subscribers,” The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, vol. 3, no. 1 (September 1795), pp. 29–​43. 34 Parallel between Hume, Robertson and Gibbon “O.” “ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. Parallel between HUME, ROBERTSON and GIBBON,” The Monthly Magazine, and American Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (May 1799), pp. 90–​94.

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35 Hume and Burnet 341 Anonymous “HUME AND BURNET,” The Philadelphia Repository, vol. 5, no. 10 (9 March 1805), p. 76. 36 On Hume and Robertson Anonymous “VARIETY,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 2] (January 1806), pp. 44–​5.

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37 Hume on Tyranny: The Tudors and the Stuarts Anonymous “VARIETY,” The Port Folio, vol. 3 [series 2] (January 1807), p. 27.

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38 Jefferson on Hume’s History 349 Thomas Jefferson Letters from Jefferson to John Norvell (11 June 1807), to William Duane (12 August 1810), to Horatio G. Spafford (17 March 1814), to [George Washington Lewis] (25 October 1825); selections.

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39 Hume’s History: An English Classic Anonymous “THE LITERARY WORLD,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 3] (January 1809), pp. 98–​100.

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40 Hume’s Prose: “Tame and Uninteresting” 359 Anonymous “RHETORIC —​FOR THE PORT FOLIO. LECTURE X, Of the peculiarities attached to the correct reading and recitation of Narration, Dialogue, Soliloquy, Address, and works of Sentiment and Imagination,” The Port Folio, vol. 3 [series 3] (June 1810), pp. 488–​99; selection from pp. 488–​90. 41 Hume and Robertson Compared 363 Anonymous “For the Port Folio. Hume and Robertson Compared,” The Port Folio, vol. 4 [series 3] (October 1810), pp. 330–​33. 42 Hume and Dryden Anonymous “COINCIDENCES. Hume and Dryden,” The Port Folio, vol. 2 [series 5] (July 1816), p. 126.

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43 Hume on Religion as a Cause of the English Civil War 369 Anonymous “REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Dean KENNEY’s Principles and Practices of pretended Reformers,” Christian Observer and Advocate, vol. 19, no. 226 (October 1820), pp. 666–​93; selection from pp. 669–​82. 44 History and Hume 383 Anonymous “Variety,” Saturday Magazine: National Recorder, vol. 5 (17 March 1821), p. 174. 45 Hume’s History of England 385 Anonymous “HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND,” The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, vol. 1, series 2 (15 April 1824), p. 85. 46 Review of Hume and Smollet Abridged 387 [James G. Carter?] “Hume and Smollet Abridged, and Continued to the Accession of George IV. By John Robinson, D.D. With 160 Engravings. New York. 1824. 12mo.

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pp. 501,” The United States Literary Gazette, vol. 1, no. 13 (15 October 1824), p. 196. 47 Sophistry and Misrepresentations of Mr Hume 389 [Edward Brooks] “ART. II —​The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, to which is added an Historical View of the Affairs of Ireland. By EDWARD EARL of CLARENDON. A new Edition, exhibiting a faithful Collation of the original MS.; with all the suppressed Passages; also the unpublished Notes of Bishop Warburton. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. Reprinted by Wells & Lilly, Boston,” North American Review, vol. 27, no. 61 (October 1828), pp. 300–​317. 48 Constitutional History 407 [Edward Brooks] “Constitutional History. ART. X. —​1. History of England from the first Invasion of the Romans. By JOHN LINGARD, D.D. London. 1825. 2. History of the British Empire from the Accession of Charles the First, to the Restoration. By GEORGE BRODIE. Edinburgh. 1822. 3. A Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry the Seventh to the Death of George the Second. Second Edition. 3 vols. 8vo. London. 1829. 4. History of the Commonwealth. By WILLIAM GODWIN,” North American Review, vol. 29, no. 64 (July 1829), pp. 265–​81. 49 Power of the Historian 423 Anonymous “ART. IV. —​The Life of Belisarius. By LORD MAHON. London. John Murray. 1829. 8vo. pp. 473,” Christian Examiner, vol. 7, no. 2 (November 1829), pp. 202–​12; selection from pp. 204–​205, 208–​11. 50 Parallel between Hume and Robertson “Juverna” “A PARALLEL BETWEEN HUME AND ROBERTSON, AS HISTORIANS,” The Irish Shield and Monthly Milesian, vol. 1, no. 9 (November 1829), pp. 403–​407.

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51 Hume: Philosophical Historian? Richard Hildreth “LITERARY NOTICES: Dermot Mac Morrogh, or The Conquest of Ireland; an Historical Tale of the Twelfth Century. In Four Cantos. By John Quincy Adams,” The New-​England Magazine, vol. 3 (December 1832), pp. 503–​507; selection from pp. 504–​506.

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52 Criticisms of Hume on the Puritans and Charles I 439 [Charles Francis Adams] “ART. VII. —​Vaughan’s Memorials of the Stuarts. Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, including he Constitutional and Ecclesiastical History of England from the Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II. By ROBERT VAUGHAN. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1831,” The North American Review, vol. 37, no. 80 (July 1833), pp. 164–​89; selection from pp. 165, 173–​7. 53 Hume, As Historian Leonard Withington “HUME, AS A HISTORIAN,” The American Quarterly Observer, vol. 1, no. 2 (October 1833), pp. 189–​205 [pp. 190–​91 skipped in page numbering of original].

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54 Knickerbocker’s review of the 1849 Boston edition of Hume’s History 459 Anonymous “THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from the invasion of JULIUS CÆSAR to the Abdication of JAMES THE SECOND, 1688. By DAVID HUME, Esq. Boston: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY,” The Knickerbocker, or New-​York Monthly Magazine, vol. 34, no. 3 (September 1849), p. 257. 55 Graham’s review of volumes 1–​4 of the 1849 Boston edition of Hume’s History 461 Anonymous “History of England from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Abdication of James the Second. By David Hume. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 12mo,” Graham’s American Magazine, vol. 35 (1849), p. 379. 56 Graham’s review of volume 5 of the 1849 Boston edition of Hume’s History 463 Anonymous “The History of England. By David Hume. Vol. 5. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co,” Graham’s American Magazine, vol. 36 (1850), p. 223. 57 The North American Review’s review of the 1849 Boston edition of Hume’s History 465 [Francis Bowen] “2. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius CÆSAR to the Abdication of James the Second, 1688, By DAVID HUME, Esq. A New

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Edition, with the Author’s Last Corrections and Improvements, and a Short Account of his Life, written by himself. Vols. I. and II. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1849. 12mo,” The North American Review, vol. 69, no. 145 (October 1849), pp. 527–​8. 58 The New Englander’s review of the 1850 New York edition of Hume’s History 469 Anonymous “The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Abdication of James the Second, 1688. By DAVID HUME, Esq. A new edition, with the Author’s last corrections and improvements. To which is prefixed a short account of his life, written by himself. Vols. I, II, III. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 82 Cliff Street. New Haven: T. H. Pease. 1850,” The New Englander, vol. 8, no. 30 (May 1850), pp. 322–​3. Part IV  Early American Responses to Hume’s Character and Death

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Introduction to Part IV

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59 Contrast between the Death of a Deist and a Christian 479 [Benjamin Rush] “CONTRAST between the Death of a DEIST and a CHRISTIAN, David Hume, and Samuel Findley [sic],” The United States Magazine, A Repository of History, Politics, and Literature, vol. 1 (February 1779), pp. 65–​72. 60 Hume (David, Esq;) A Late Celebrated Philosopher and Historian Anonymous 489 “David Hume,” Encyclopædia; or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature . . . . ([vols. 7, 8, 9, and 10] Philadelphia, 1793), vol. 8, pp. 708–​10. 61 Hume and Bishop Horne 493 Anonymous “ANECDOTES,” The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; and Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (July 1800), pp. 38–​9. 62 Hume, Who Practised what he Preached Anonymous “FOR THE PORT FOLIO … THE FARRGO,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 1] (28 February 1801), p. 66.

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63 Hume a Fanatic “S.P.” “Letters to the Editor,” Christian Observer and Advocate, vol. 1 (October 1802), pp. 650–​51.

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64 A Tear to Hume 499 “The Philanthropist” “ORIGINAL POETRY,” Medley; or Monthly Miscellany, vol. 1 (1803), p. 249. 65 Hume and Burnet 501 Anonymous “HUME AND BURNET,” The Philadelphia Repository, vol. 5 (9 March 1805), p. 76. 66 On the Death of David Hume “G.” “ON THE DEATH OF DAVID HUME,” The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine, or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 2 (January 1806), pp. 32–​4.

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67 Remarks on Hume and Finley 507 John Mitchell Mason “Remarks on the accounts of the death of David Hume, Esqr. and Samuel Finley, D.D. in the last No,” Christian’s Magazine, designed to promote the knowledge and influence of evangelical truth and order, vol. 1 (January 1806), pp. 419–​36. 68 Hume’s Life: The True Practical Philosophy 519 “T.” “THE AMERICAN LOUNGER, By Samuel Saunter, Esq. No. 158,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 2] (March 1806), pp. 113–​14. 69 Last Days of Hume 523 Anonymous “STRIKING EVIDENCES OF THE DIVINITY OF THE SCRIPTURES. I. EXAMPLES OF DYING INFIDELS,” The Moral and Religious Cabinet, vol. 1 (26 March 1808), pp. 193–​8; selection pp. 196–​7. 70 Contrast between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian 525 Anonymous “The Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian’,” The Ordeal (21 January 1809), pp. 42–​5.

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71 Considerations on the Contrast 529 Anonymous “CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CONTRAST ‘Between the Death of a Deist and of a Christian,’ contained in the Panoplist of November last,” The Ordeal (28 January 1809), pp. 63–​4. 72 More of the “Contrast” 533 “B.” “MORE OF THE ‘CONTRAST’,” The Ordeal (4 February 1809), pp. 72–​3. 73 Adversaria: “Hume and Finley” 535 Anonymous “Adversaria: ‘Hume and Finley’,” The Ordeal (11 February 1809), p. 94. 74 Death of Hume 537 Anonymous “MISCELLANIES. DEATH OF HUME,” The Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine United, vol. 2 (March 1810), pp. 462–​4. 75 Anecdotes of Infidel Morality 541 [John Watkins] “ANECDOTES OF INFIDEL MORALITY,” Robinson’s Magazine, A weekly Repository of Original Papers; and Selections from the English Magazines, vol. 2, no. 11 (13 March 1806), pp. 164–​8; selection from pp. 164–5, 167–8. 76 Anecdote of David Hume 545 Anonymous “Desultory Gleanings, and Original Communications. Translated from Mémoires et correspondence de Madame D’Epinay [section ‘Anecdote of David Hume’],” The New-​England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine (18 June 1819), p. 144. 77 Hume a Pessimist 547 Anonymous “For the Port Folio. ART. XV. —​ The Adversaria,” The Port Folio, vol. 9 [series 5] (1820), pp. 131–​5; selection p. 135. 78 Anecdote of Hume 549 Anonymous “VARIETY . . . Anecdote of Hume,” Ladies’ Literary Cabinet, vol. 4 (1821), p. 126.

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79 Beasley on Hume’s Death 551 Frederick Beasley A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (Philadelphia, 1822); Book IV: pp. 559–​61. 80 Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume 553 “N.Y. Amer.” “GIBBON, VOLTAIRE, HUME,” The Gospel Trumpet, vol. 2 (1823), p. 63. 81 Original Anecdote 555 Anonymous “VARIETIES. Original Anecdotes, Literary News, Chit Chat, Incidents, &c,” Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, vol. 1 [series 2] (1824), pp. 362–​8; selection p. 365. 82 Hume’s Sceptical Character Anonymous “Skepticism,” The Christian Examiner and Theological Review, vol. 1 (1824), p. 35.

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83 Hume an Honorable Sceptic Anonymous “Belief and Unbelief,” Christian Examiner, vol. 7 (January 1830), pp. 358–​65; selection from pp. 363–​4.

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84 Death-​Bed of Hume Anonymous “DEATH-​BED OF HUME,” The Spirit of the Pilgrims, vol. 5, no. 3 (March 1832), pp. 172–​3.

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85 Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau 565 [James Murdoch] “HUME, VOLTAIRE, AND ROUSSEAU,” The New-​Englander, vol. 1, no. 2 (April 1843), pp. 169–​83; selection from pp. 169–​76. 86 Hume’s Character and Writings Defended 577 [William Bourn Oliver Peabody] “ART. IV. —​ Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the Time of George the Third. By HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1845. 12mo. pp. 295,” The North American Review, vol. 61, no. 129 (October 1845), pp. 383–​421; selection from pp. 399–​405.

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87 Hume’s Death Defended 583 [William Bourn Oliver Peabody] “ART. II. —​ Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the time of George the Third. By HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S. Second Series. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1846. 12mo. pp. 302,” The North American Review, vol. 64, no. 134 (January 1847), pp. 59–​97; selection p. 72. Part V  Addendum: Additional Material for the Expanded Edition

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88 Hume, the Idol of Historic Taste 587 William Hayley “Character of Rapin, Hume, and Littleton’s Histories,” in “Poetical Essays, for July, 1784,” The Boston Magazine, containing, a collection of instructive and entertaining essays, in the various branches of useful, and polite literature, vol. 1 (July 1784), pp. 392–​3. 89 To Bring Home your Hume 591 Anonymous Untitled Letter to the Editors, The New-​Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut Magazine, vol. 1, no. 5 (16 March 1786), p. 38. 90 Hume on Civil Liberty 593 David Hume “An ESSAY on CIVIL LIBERTY, By HUME,” The Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany Containing a View of the History, Literature, Manners & Characteristics of the Year, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1788), pp. 9–​13. 91 Hume’s History Claims Superior Notice Anonymous “To the editor of the American Museum,” The American Museum; or, Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, &c, vol. 3, no. 2 (February 1788), pp. 183–​4.

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92 What Think you of David Hume, Sir? 605 Anonymous “ANECDOTE,” The Columbian Magazine, vol. 2, no. 5 (May 1788), p. 283. 93 Haughty Hume 607 Samuel Knox “Ode to Education,” The American Museum, or, Universal Magazine, vol. 5, no. 4 (April 1789), pp. 406–​8; selection from p. 408.

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94 Hume’s Sketch of Jane Shore 609 David Hume “LANE SHORE,” The Christian’s Scholar’s, and Farmer’s Magazine, vol. 2, no. 6 (February/​March 1791), p. 707. 95 Read Hume’s History John Dunning “DIRECTIONS to a STUDENT of LAW. [In a Letter from JOHN DUNNING, Esq. to a gentleman of the Inner Temple],” The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (August 1791), pp. 81–​2.

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96 Reading Hume equals Death, by Hanging 615 Anonymous “COPY of a LETTER written by a young Man under sentence of Death, for Forgery,” The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (September 1791), p. 168. 97 Illustrating Hume’s Observations of Anne Bullen 617 Anonymous “Anecdote of Anne Bullen,” The New York Magazine, or Literary Repository, vol. 5, no. 9 (September 1794), p. 534. 98 Hume’s Essay “On Miracles” Harrowed up from the Gulph of Oblivion 619 Anonymous “ART. XXVII. An Enquiry into the Pretensions of Richard Brothers, in Answer to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed. By a Freethinker. 8vo. 18. Sterl. Parsons, &c,” The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, vol. 2, no. 2 (June 1795), pp.197–​8. 99 Critical Remarks on Hume 621 [Francis Garden, Lord Gardenstone] “Critical Remarks on some of the most eminent Historians of England. [From Gardenstone’s Miscellanies.],” The New York Magazine, or Literary Repository (June 1797), pp. 295–​300. 100 Hume Took Away all Foundation 627 David Hudson “Some Account of the Religious Exercises of David Hudson, written by himself,” The New-​York Missionary Magazine, and Repository of Religious Intelligence, vol. 2, no. 4 (4 January 1801), pp. 294–​302.

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101 Hume on Spenser’s Faery Queen 633 [Royall Tyler] “AN AUTHOR’S EVENINGS. FROM THE SHOP OF MESSRS. COLON AND SPONDEE,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 1] (7 February 1801), pp. 44–​5; selection p. 44. 102 History a Proper Object of Female Pursuit 635 David Hume “History a proper object of Female Pursuit. (EXTRACTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF HUME.),” The Lady’s Magazine and Musical Repository (February 1801), pp. 91–​5. 103 Hume on the Rise of America 639 Anonymous “LONDON REVIEW,” The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review Containing Sketches and Reports of Philosophy, Religion, History, Arts, and Manners, vol. 1, no. 4 (1 May 1804), pp. 323–​5. 104 Two Men Travelling on the Highway 643 David Hume Untitled Essay, Prospect: or, View of the Moral World, vol. 4 (26 January 1805), pp. 30–​1. 105 Historical Characters: False Representations of Nature 647 “R.” “Historical Characters are false Representations of Nature,” The Literary Magazine, and American Register, vol. 5, no. 29 (February 1806), pp. 32–​6. 106 Hannah More’s Stricture upon Hume’s History 653 Anonymous “For The Port Folio,” The Port Folio, vol. 4, no. 8 (22 August 1807), pp. 118–​9. 107 Hume’s History, Dangerous to the American Reader 655 “C.” “REMARKS ON HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND,” Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine, vol. 1, no. 4 (April 1818), pp. 159–​64. 108 Professing Themselves to be Wise, They Became Fools 661 Anonymous “REMARKS. On an Article in THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, in which the Doctrine of Hume on Miracles is maintained: By the Rev. James Somerville, Minister of Drumelzier,” Religious Monitor and Evangelical Repository,

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vol. 3, no. 9 (February 1827), pp. 428–​36; vol. 3, no. 10 (February 1827), pp. 466–​77. 109 Hume’s Housekeeper 683 Anonymous “HUME THE HISTORIAN,” The Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal, vol. 5, no. 26 (7 April 1832), p. 204. 110 Hume’s Pretended Calm 687 Anonymous “HUME, THE HISTORIAN,” The Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal, vol. 5, no. 38 (30 June 1832), pp. 299–​300. 111 Hume and his Mother 689 Anonymous “DAVID HUME AND HIS MOTHER,” The Episcopal Watchman, vol. 7, no. 19 (14 September 1833), p. 76. 112 Chargeable with the Sins of Omission, and Commission 691 Anonymous “HUME — AS A HISTORIAN,” The Episcopal Watchman, vol. 7, no. 24 (19 October 1833), p. 95. 113 An Infidel! What is That? 695 Anonymous “HUME, THE INFIDEL,” The Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal, vol. 10, no. 39 (1 July 1837), p. 311. 114 Infidelity for the Million 697 [Francis Palgrave] “HUME’S INFIDELITY,” Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Journal, vol. 15, no. 31 (31 July 1844), [p. 121]. 115 Life and Writings of David Hume 701 Anonymous “From the Dublin University Magazine. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAVID HUME. The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the papers bequeathed by his Nephew, Baron Hume, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other original sources. By John Hill Burton, Esquire, Advocate. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1846,” The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, vol. 8, no. 1 (May 1846), pp. 80–​94.

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116 Review of Lawrence’s Examination of Hume on Miracles 725 Anonymous “AN EXAMINATION OF HUME’S ARGUMENT ON THE SUBJECT OF MIRACLES. BY ALEXANDER H. LAWRENCE,” Christian Register, vol. 25, no. 40 (3 October 1846), p. 157. 117 A Saint Amidst the Benighted Pagans 733 “H.G.E.” “For the Register. DAVID HUME,” Christian Register, vol. 26, no. 35 (28 August 1847), p. 137. 118 Hume and the Puritans S. G. Buckingham “HUME AND THE PURITANS,” The American Literary Magazine, vol. 5, no. 1 (July 1849), p. 33. 119 The Independent’s Review of the 1849 Boston Edition of Hume’s History Anonymous “The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the abdication of James the Second, 1688. By David Hume, Esq. A new edition, with the Author’s last corrections and improvements. To which is prefixed a short account of his Life, written by himself. Vol. I. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1849. Sold in New York by M. H. Newman, 199 Broadway,” The Independent, vol. 1, no. 37 (16 August 1849), p. 148.

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120 The Christian Register’s Review of the 1849 Boston Edition of Hume’s History 749 Anonymous “HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND,” The Christian Register, vol. 28, no. 33 (18 August 1849), p. 131. 121 The American Literary Magazine’s Review of the 1849 Boston Edition of Hume’s History Anonymous “A NEW EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY,” The American Literary Magazine, vol. 5, no. 2 (August 1849), pp. 127–​8.

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122 The Christian Examiner’s Review of the 1849 Boston Edition of Hume’s History 753 Anonymous Untitled Review, The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany, vol. 48, no. 2 (March 1850), pp. 331–​2. 123 Sartain’s Union Magazine’s Review of the 1849 Boston Edition of Hume’s History 755 Anonymous “BOOK NOTICES. HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND,” Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art, vol. 6, no. 4 (April 1850), p. 308. 124 The Merchant’s Magazine’s Review of the 1850 New York Edition of Hume’s History 757 Anonymous “20. History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James II. By David Hume. 6 vols, 12mo., pp. 470. New York: Harper & Brothers,” The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review, vol. 22, no. 6 (1 June 1850), p. 702. 125 Hume’s Splendid Tomb 759 Anonymous “LINES, Written on seeing the monument to the memory of David Hume at Edinburgh,” Ladies’ Garland and Family Wreath Embracing Tales, Sketches, Incidents, History, Poetry, Music, etc, vol. 4, no. 10 (October 1850), p. 114. Index

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Preface to the Expanded Edition The first edition of Hume’s Reception in Early America, published in Bristol, UK, by Thoemmes Press in 2002, was favorably reviewed in several publications, including Hume Studies, The Scottish Historical Review, and The William and Mary Quarterly.1 Despite those positive assessments, sales of the two-​volume hardback set were hampered by its lofty price tag. It was priced out of reach of many individuals who might otherwise have purchased it and even beyond many university and college library budgets. The much lower cost of this single-​volume paperback edition will make the work more affordable. And the newly available e-​book will hopefully widen the book’s potential circulation even further. The opportunity of this second edition has been used to improve the book’s contents in several ways. Any typographical errors and other inconsistencies that were detected in the first edition have been silently corrected here. Many of the suggestions for further reading have also been updated. Since 2002, there have been several new books published on Hume’s thought and its reception. Among those that readers of this book may find most useful to pursue are: Peter Jones, ed., The Reception of Hume in Europe (London, 2005); Emilio Mazza and Emanuele Ronchetti, eds., New Essays on David Hume (Milano, 2007); Neil McArthur, David Hume’s Political Theory: Law, Commerce, and the Constitution of Government (Toronto, 2007); Roger L.  Emerson, Essays on David Hume, Medical Men and the Scottish Enlightenment: Industry, Knowledge, and Humanity (Farnham, 2009); Annette C. Baier, The Pursuits of Philosophy: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of David Hume (Cambridge, MA, 2011); Marc Hanvelt, The Politics of Eloquence:  David Hume’s Polite Rhetoric (Toronto, 2012); Mark G.  Spencer, ed., David Hume:  Historical Thinker, Historical Writer (University Park, 2013); James A.  Harris, Hume:  An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge, 2015); and Ryu Susato, Hume’s Sceptical Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 2015). As well, those interested to explore a deeper context for Hume’s early American reception than can be achieved in this primary source collection are encouraged

See reviews by David Fate Norton in Hume Studies, vol. 30, no. 2 (2004), pp. 408–​11; Andrew Hook in Scottish Historical Review, vol. 83, issue 2 (2004), pp. 258–​61; and Adam Potkay in The William and Mary Quarterly, ser. 3, vol. 60, no. 4 (October 2003), pp. 882–​8.

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to consult the editor’s monograph, David Hume and Eighteenth-​Century America (2005; paperback edition, Rochester, 2010). And, for the broader context to which Hume’s eighteenth-​century American reception belonged, there is the editor’s recently published reference work, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, 2 vols (New York, 2015). From that work, individual essays of particular relevance for this one have been noted in the headnotes. The contents of this revised edition have been notably enlarged by the addition of a completely new section:  “Addendum:  Additional Material for the Expanded Edition.” Included there are thirty-​eight extra primary sources. Each of those pieces, originally published in an early American periodical between 1784 and 1850, has been reset. Those sources increase the number of reprinted pieces in Hume’s Reception in Early America:  Expanded Edition to 125 (there were eighty-​seven in the first edition). The editorial principles employed in resetting the additional texts remain the same as they were in the first edition (and are outlined in the “Preface to the First Edition,” included below). As well, the volume’s contents are now indexed for the first time. While new material has been added, all of the original contents remain intact. One of those warrants further comment. That is because a reviewer of the first edition questioned its relevance to the collection. The piece, by “Republicus” and entitled “Observations on the Liberty of the Press,” was originally published in The American Monitor, or The Republican Magazine in 1785. Stating that “Spencer occasionally displays a knack for hearing references to Hume where none are apparent to me,” the reviewer explained that he could “find no internal evidence” for the claim that the American essay was based on Hume’s essay “Of the Liberty of the Press.”2 But, since Republicus to my mind clearly did borrow from Hume —​and heavily so —​the decision was easy to retain the piece in this new edition. To allay any doubts about that choice, readers might compare the following sets of parallel passages from Hume’s “Of the Liberty of the Press” and Republicus’s “Observations on the Liberty of the Press”:

Passage #1 Hume, “Of the Liberty of the Press”: SINCE therefore the liberty of the press is so essential to the support of our mixed government; this sufficiently decides the second question, Whether this liberty be See, Adam Potkay’s review in The William and Mary Quarterly, p. 884.

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advantageous or prejudicial; there being nothing of greater importance in every state than the preservation of the ancient government, especially if it be a free one. But I would fain go a step farther, and assert, that such a liberty is attended with so few inconveniencies, that it may be claimed as the common right of mankind, and ought to be indulged them almost in every government: except the ecclesiastical, to which indeed it would prove fatal. We need not dread from this liberty any such ill consequences as followed from the harangues of the popular demagogues of ATHENS and tribunes of ROME. A man reads a book or pamphlet alone and coolly. There is none present from whom he can catch the passion by contagion. He is not hurried away by the force and energy of action. And should he be wrought up to ever so seditious a humor, there is no violent resolution presented to him, by which he can immediately vent his passion. The liberty of the press, therefore, however abused, can scarce ever excite popular tumults or rebellion. And as to those murmurs or secret discontents it may occasion, ’tis better they should get vent in words, that they may come to the knowledge of the magistrate before it be too late, in order to his providing a remedy against them. Mankind, ’tis true, have always a greater propension to believe what is said to the disadvantage of their governors, than the contrary; but this inclination is inseparable from them, whether they have liberty or not. A whisper may fly as quick, and be as pernicious as a pamphlet. Nay, it will be more pernicious, where men are not accustomed to think freely, or distinguish betwixt truth and falshood.3

Republicus, “Observations on the Liberty of the Press”: Since, therefore, the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS is so essential to the support of our new Republican Government, this sufficiently decides the second question, Whether this LIBERTY be advantageous or prejudicial? There being nothing of greater importance in every state for the preservation of a free Government. But I would fain go a step further and assert, that such a LIBERTY is attended with so few inconveniences, that it may very justly be claimed as the common right of Mankind, and, in my opinion, it ought to be indulged them in every Government, except the Ecclesiastical, to which indeed it would prove fatal. We need not dread from this LIBERTY such ill-​consequences as followed from the harangues of the popular Demigogues of Athens and Tribunes of Rome. A man reads a News-​Paper alone and coolly. There is none present from whom he can catch the passion by contatagion. He is not hurried away by the force and energy of action: and should he be wrought up to ever so seditious a humour, there is Quoted from Hume’s essay “Of the Liberty of the Press” as it appeared in his Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (London, 1758), pp. 6–​8. The quoted passage is on pp. 7–8. For a modern reprinting, see “Variant Readings” for “Of the Liberty of the Press” in David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1985; revised edition, Indianapolis, 1987), edited by Eugene F. Miller [hereafter Essays], p. 604.

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no violent resolution presented to him, by which he can immediately vent his passion. The LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, therefore, however abused, can scarce ever excite popular Tumults or Rebellion. And as to those murmors or secret discontents it may occasion it is better they should get vent in words, that they may come to the knowledge of the Magistrate before it be too late in order to his providing a remedy against them. Mankind, it is true, have always a greater propension to believe what is said to the disadvantage of their Governours, than the contrary; but this inclination is inseparable from them whether they have LIBERTY or not. A Whisper may fly as quick and be as pernicious as a Pamphlet. Nay it will be more pernicious, where men are not accustomed to think freely, or distinguish between truth and falsehood.4

Passage #2 Hume, “Of the Liberty of the Press”: IT has also been found, as experience of mankind increases, that the people are no such dangerous monster as they have been represented, and that ’tis in every respect better to guide them, like rational creatures, than to lead or drive them, like brute beasts. Before the United Provinces set the example, toleration was deemed incompatible with good government; and it was thought impossible, that a number of religious sects could live together in harmony and peace, and have all of them an equal affection to their common country, and to each other. ENGLAND has set a like example of civil liberty; and tho’ this liberty seems to occasion some small ferment at present, it has not as yet produced any pernicious effects; and it is to be hoped, that men, being every day more accustomed to the free discussion of public affairs, will improve in their judgment of them, and be with greater difficulty seduced by every idle rumor and popular clamor.5

Republicus, “Observations on the Liberty of the Press”: It has been found, as the experience of Mankind increases, that the PEOPLE are no such dangerous MONSTER as they have, in Arbitrary and Tyrannical Governments been represented, and that it is in every respect better to guide them, like rational Beings, than to lead or drive them like brute beasts. Before the United Provinces set the example, TOLERATION was deemed incompatible with good Government; and it was thought impossible that a number of religious

See below p. 31. Hume, op. cit.; see also Essays, pp. 604–​5.

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Sects should live in harmony and peace, and have all of them an equal affection in their Common Cause, CIVIL LIBERTY; and though this LIBERTY has, in several instances, occasioned some small ferment among us, yet it has never produced any pernicious effects; and it is to be hoped, that Mankind in general, being more accustomed to the discussion of publick affairs, will improve in the judgment of them, and be with greater difficulty seduced by every idle rumour and popular clamour.6

Additional passages could be cited here to further demonstrate that Republicus in “Observations on the Liberty of the Press” borrowed heavily from Hume’s “Of the Liberty of the Press.” But those I  will leave for readers of the volume to explore. In the fifteen years that have passed between preparing the first and second editions of this book, much has changed on the research landscape. Now—​much more so than was the case in the early 2000s—​many primary sources are openly available on the internet and, by subscription, through electronic databases. However, many of the publications in which Hume’s earliest American reception is documented are difficult to locate and access, even for today’s scholar. That is especially true for obscure booklets, pamphlets, and early American periodical publications. Locating, extracting, and bringing those sources together, with brief headnotes and in a single volume, as is done here, serves a worthwhile scholarly purpose. Together, those sources shed considerable light on Hume and his thought and the early Americans who engaged with his life and writings. Given the wide range of the volume’s contents, many of its readers are likely to be more interested in some parts of that story than others. After all, Hume’s earliest readers were often selective as well. Still, it is hoped that Hume’s Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition might also encourage modern readers to expand what they take to be useful and entertaining in Hume. And in doing so, perhaps they will even engage in disputes about his principles, just as Hume hoped would be the case among his enlightened readers in the eighteenth century. St. Catharines, Ontario April 2016

See below p. 30.

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Preface to the First Edition Early Americans came to Hume’s pages with varying purposes, took from them different lessons, and left responses which are disparate. Reprinted below are eighty-​seven responses to Hume; the earliest was published originally in 1758, the latest in 1850. Selections have been chosen from early literary, political, and religious magazines, from books, pamphlets, and letters, from book reviews and encyclopedia articles, from newspaper essays, and from correspondence published in official reports. These entries have been sorted into four sections: Part I: Early American Responses to Hume’s Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary; Part II: Early American Responses to Hume’s Philosophical Writings; Part III: Early American Responses to Hume’s History of England; and Part IV: Early American Responses to Hume’s Character and Death. The contents of this collection are not completely exhaustive of Hume’s early American reception. Rather, they are representative of a somewhat wider body of writing and illustrative of the wide-​ ranging responses Hume evoked from his early American audiences. While a few of the texts reprinted here are famous and likely to be available in good research libraries, the focus is on obscure readings that are otherwise very difficult to obtain. Most of the selections reprinted in this edition have not been reprinted since their first publications and have not been discussed in print by modern commentators. The poor quality and fragile nature of many of the original sources reproduced here have necessitated that the selections be reset rather than reproduced by facsimile. Original capitalization, punctuation, and spelling have been maintained. Spelling in the eighteenth century was not always standardized and no attempt is made to standardize it here. Instances which appear to be printer’s mistakes in the originals are followed by “[sic]” in this edition. The use of abbreviations and diphthongs has also been preserved. Type in the originals set in italics has been reset in italics. Some few liberties have been taken with the text. Any editorial remarks in the body or notes of the reproduced text are enclosed within square parentheses (i.e., “[]”). Where square parentheses were used in the original source, these have been changed to square parentheses set in italic type (i.e. “[ ]‌”). The long ‘s’ in originals has been modernized and end-​of-​line

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hyphenation in originals has been ignored in the reprint. All footnotes have been maintained, but occasionally the superscript indicators have been altered if the same symbol would have appeared twice on the same page of the reprint. When quoting long passages, eighteenth-​century texts often place a quotation mark at the beginning and end of each line of quoted text: in the reprint, quotation marks have only been placed at the beginning of the quotation and at its end. In preparing this edition, no electronic scanning devises have been used. The text has been hand-​typed by the editor. The primary editorial goal has been to produce an accurate reset text.

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Acknowledgements Acknowledgements for the First Edition For their assistance in various matters, I wish to thank Roger L. Emerson, James Fieser, Jean V. Matthews, Mark A. Noll, Richard B. Sher, and Kelly A. Spencer. David Murphy at the D. B. Weldon Library, The University of Western Ontario, helped secure interlibrary loans. The Bentham Research Centre at Huron University College provided a place to work. At Thoemmes Press, I thank Philip deBary, Alison Lewis, Rudi Thoemmes, and Jane Williamson.

Additional Acknowledgements for the Expanded Edition With pleasure, I renew my thanks to the people, acknowledged above, who assisted with this book’s first edition. I’m equally pleased to acknowledge my thanks to those who have helped with the new edition. Colleen Coalter, senior commissioning editor at Bloomsbury Academic, recommended this expanded edition and supported it from start to finish. Her editorial advice is always solid. Many others in Bloomsbury’s London and New York offices, including Andrew Wardell and James Tucker, have helped along the way. In Chennai, India, Kalyani and her team at Newgen KnowledgeWorks, Ltd., typeset the book and created its index. David Allan, Roger J. Fechner, Peter Jones, and Mark R. M. Towsey kindly provided advance endorsements. Two scholars deserve special mention: Roger L. Emerson (professor emeritus of History at The University of Western Ontario) and Marc Hanvelt (assistant professor of Political Science at Carleton University). Both read Part V, “Addendum: Additional Material of the Expanded Edition,” and provided valuable improvements. I thank them for that, but also for countless conversations over the years that have enriched my understanding of Hume, and for their friendship. Early research for this edition benefited from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funding and from a Chancellor’s Chair for Research Excellence, at Brock University. The book was largely completed in

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2015–16, while I enjoyed a leave from my teaching and administrative duties in the Department of History at Brock University. I thank the university for granting my sabbatical and my departmental colleagues for creating an environment in which we all might flourish as scholars. Much has changed in my life since the first edition of this book was published, but not Kelly’s constant love and support. Without that, none of what I do as an historian would be possible, or matter much to me. Our two boys, Thomas and William, have certainly changed since 2002. They were only children when the first edition was published. They are now young men. This book is dedicated to them.

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Abbreviations Early Americans referred to various editions of Hume’s works. In the editorial apparatus for this book, some of those particular eighteenth and nineteenth-​ century editions are referred to, when appropriate. Unless otherwise indicated, citations to Hume’s works are to the following modern editions: EHU =

EPM =

Essays = History =

THN =

An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume (Oxford, 2000), edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume (Oxford, 1998), edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1985; revised edition, Indianapolis, 1987), edited by Eugene F. Miller. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols (Indianapolis, 1983), edited by William B. Todd. A Treatise of Human Nature, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume (Oxford, 2000), edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton.

Other abbreviations used in the editorial material are as follows: ANB = American National Biography, 24 vols (New York, 1999), edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. API = American Periodicals, 1740–​ 1900:  An Index to the Microfilm Collections (Ann Arbor, 1979), edited by Jean Hoornstra and Trudy Heath. BAP = An Annotated Bibliography of American Literary Periodicals, 1741–​ 1850 (Boston, 1977), compiled and edited by Jayne K. Kribbs. DAB = Dictionary of American Biography, 11 vols (New York, 1957), edited by Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone. DNB = Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004), edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. EAE = The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, 2 vols (New York, 2015), edited by Mark G. Spencer.

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PART I:

EARLY AMERICAN RESPONSES TO HUME’S ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY

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INTRODUCTION TO PART I

Hume published his first volume of Essays Moral and Political in 1741.1 A second volume with the same title but different contents was published in 1742.2 By 1748, the 1741 volume had had two more editions with additions and corrections. In 1752 Hume published a new set of essays as Political Discourses, a book which was in its third edition by 1754.3 All of the essays contained in these various editions circulated widely in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-​ century America.4 Most eighteenth-​century readers of Hume’s essays, in Britain and America, read them as Essays, Moral, Political and Literary in Volume 1 of Hume’s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, 4 vols (London, 1753–​56). Hume’s Essays and Treatises, known to Hume and his contemporaries as his collected works, was reprinted at least a dozen times in English before the end of the It contained the following essays: 1. “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” 2. “Of the Liberty of the Press,” 3. “Of Impudence and Modesty,” 4. “That Politicks may be reduc’d to a Science,” 5. “Of the First Principles of Government,” 6. “Of Love and Marriage,” 7. “Of the Study of History,” 8. “Of the Independency of Parliament,” 9. “Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic,” 10. “Of Parties in General,” 11. “Of the Parties of Great Britain,” 12. “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 13. “Of Avarice,” 14. “Of the Dignity of Human Nature,” 15. “Of Liberty and Despotism.” For a complete publishing history of Hume’s Essays Moral, Political, and Literary see T.E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy from Francis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (1938; reprinted New York, 1983); Eugene F. Miller, “Foreword,” to his edition of Hume’s Essays, pp. xi–​xviii; William B. Todd, “David Hume. A Preliminary Bibliography,” in William B. Todd, ed., Hume and the Enlightenment: Essays Presented to Ernest Campbell Mossner (Edinburgh and Texas, 1974), pp. 189–​205. 2 It contained the following essays: 1. “Of Essay-​Writing,” 2. “Of Eloquence,” 3. “Of Moral Prejudices,” 4. “Of the Middle Station of Life,” 5. “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” 6. “The Epicurean,” 7.  “The Stoic,” 8.  “The Platonist,” 9.  “The Sceptic,” 10. “Of Polygamy and Divorces,” 11. “Of Simplicity and Refinement,” 12. “A Character of Sir Robert Walpole.” 3 The 1754 edition contained the following essays: 1. “Of Commerce,” 2. “Of Luxury,” 3. “Of Money,” 4. “Of Interest,” 5. “Of the Balance of Trade,” 6. “Of the Balance of Power,” 7. “Of Taxes,” 8. “Of Public Credit,” 9. “Of Some Remarkable Customs,” 10. “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” 11. “Of the Protestant Succession,” 12. “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.” 4 For statistical and other evidence documenting the American circulation of Hume’s essays see Mark G. Spencer, “The Reception of David Hume’s Political Thought in Eighteenth-​Century America,” 2 vols (Ph.D.  dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, 2001), “Tables and Figures,” vol. 1

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eighteenth century.5 That the Essays and Treatises was available to Hume’s earliest American audience is certain. British editions of the book were imported in significant numbers in the 1760s by colonial booksellers in Philadelphia (such as William Bradford, David Hall, and John Miller), New  York (James Rivington and Hugh Gaine), Boston (John Mein), and elsewhere. As early as 1765 colonial newspapers reprinted individual essays from the Essays and Treatises, one of which, “Of the Liberty of the Press,” was accompanied with the instructions to “Read them with Attention!” Even earlier, newspapers such as the Maryland Gazette, the Boston Weekly News-​Letter, and Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette evidence scattered references to Hume’s essays, including economic ones.6 In the years before the War for Independence, booksellers continued to stock the Essays and Treatises which was also found with increasing frequency on the shelves of important libraries like the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Association Library Company of Philadelphia, the Union Library Company, and the New  York Society Library. Other libraries whose lending records survive, like Harvard University Library and the Hatboro Library, show that Hume’s Essays and Treatises was not only on colonial library shelves, but also frequently borrowed from them. Prominent Americans like Thomas Jefferson and John Witherspoon read Hume’s Essays and recommended others to do the same. Other learned Americans, like Ezra Stiles, entered passages from Hume’s Essays into their commonplace books. By the early nineteenth century, the list of American booksellers and libraries supplying Hume’s essays to an expanding American reading public had grown larger than ever before. This ready availability of British editions of Hume’s moral, political, and literary essays explains why no American edition was attempted during the eighteenth century, even though Hume was keen to see one. When Thomas Ewell gave them their first American imprint in 1817, Hume’s essays had long been standard reading in the United States. Ewell’s edition would disseminate Hume’s essays even more widely, as would the reprinting of individual essays in early nineteenth-​century American periodicals.7 Before and after its 2, pp.  347–​92; Appendix A:  Hume’s Works in American Book Catalogues, 1740–​1830,” vol. 2, pp. 544–​80. 5 Known editions are: (London, 1758), 4 vols (London, 1760), 2 vols (London, 1764), 2 vols (London, 1768), 4 vols (London, 1770), 2 vols (London, 1772), 2 vols (London, 1777), 2 vols (Dublin, 1779), 2 vols (London, 1784), 2 vols (London, 1788), 4 vols (London, 1793), 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1800). 6 See Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606–​1865 (New York, 1946), p. 126; M.A. Stewart, “Hume in the Service of American Deism,” in Emilio Mazza and Emanuele Ronchetti, eds. New Essays on David Hume (Milano, 2007), p.  311; Virginia Gazette [Purdie & Dixon], (25 April 1771), p. 1, and (14 April 1774), p. 2, not reprinted below. 7 Ewell’s edition was titled Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics, By David Hume, Esq. To which is added the answer to his objections to Christianity, By the Ingenious Divine

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first American edition, Hume’s Essays elicited numerous responses from its American readers. As early as 1758 William Smith showed an interest in Hume as literary critic when in The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies he compared British assessments of Hume’s evaluation of John Home’s Douglas.8 In the 1770s Hume’s comments on “blacks,” as found in his infamous footnote to “Of National Characters,” were the subject of a heated pamphlet debate in Philadelphia. Richard Nisbet, for instance, quoted Hume with approval in Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture (1773). A  passage from Personal Slavery Established, by the Suffrages of Custom and Right Reason: Being a Full Answer to the Gloomy and Visionary Reveries, of all the Fanatical and Enthusiastical Writers on that Subject (1773), a pamphlet penned by one of the wittier of Hume’s critics, has been reprinted below. Hume’s place in the debate about Africans continued into the 1790s, though there has not been space to reprint more sources in this volume.9 The nature of Hume’s impact on the debate on the Constitution and especially on the political thought of James Madison in the 1780s has been often contested, but reprinted below are earlier assessments of Hume’s political writings taken from Alexander Hamilton’s The Farmer Refuted (1775). Hamilton, like Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Dickinson before him, saw Hume’s economic and political essays as offering support for a colonial cause which was becoming a revolutionary cause.10 Also in the 1770s colonists such as Ezekiel Russell, “A Freeman,” “Agricola,” and James Chalmers turned to essays such as “That Politics Dr.  Campbell. Also, An account of Mr. Hume’s Life, an original Essay, and a few Notes, 2 vols (Georgetown, D.C. and Philadelphia, 1817), selections reprinted below. Examples of the printing of Hume’s essays in early nineteenth-​century American periodicals include: “Miscellany. From Hume’s Essays. On the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” Saturday Magazine: National Recorder, vol. 3 (4 March 1820), pp.  152–​4; “On Divorces,” Saturday Magazine:  National Recorder, vol. 3 (29 April 1820), pp. 286–​7; “Of Tragedy,” The Theatrical Censor and Critical Miscellany, (4 October 1806), pp. 28–​30, (1 November 1806), pp. 95–​6; “MARRIAGE-​STATE [reprinted Hume’s essay, “Love and Marriage”],” Ladies’ Literary Cabinet, vol. 5 (1819), pp. 12–​13. Some of Hume’s other essays were also reprinted in different formats. Hume’s essay “Of the Study of History,” for example, was appended to some American editions of John Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters. 8 That essay is reprinted below. 9 Through the efforts of James McHenry, for instance, the theory that blacks were naturally inferior to whites even became known in America as “Mr Hume’s doctrine.” See McHenry’s letter to this effect in Benjamin Banneker’s Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris, of the Year of Our Lord, 1792; Being Bissextile, or Leap-​Year, and the Sixteenth Year of American Independence, Which Commenced July 4, 1776 (Baltimore, [1791]), pp. 2–​4. McHenry’s letter was also reprinted as “A letter from Mr. James McHenry, to messrs Goddard and Abgell, containing particulars respecting Benjamin Banneker, a free negro,” American Museum, vol. 12 (1792), pp. 185–​7. See also Charles Crawford, Observations upon Slavery (Philadelphia, 1784; reprinted 1790). 10 See Benjamin Franklin to David Hume, 27 September 1760, in Leonard W. Labaree, ed., Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1959–), vol. 9, p. 230, not reprinted below; see Jonathan Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the inhabitants of the British Colonies (1767) which makes frequent and significant references to Hume’s essays, not reprinted below.

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may be Reduced to a Science,” “Some Remarkable Customs,” “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” “Of the Original Contract,” “Of the Protestant Succession,” and “Of the Balance of Trade” to support their stance of conservative moderation.11 Revolutionaries and loyalists both aimed to claim Hume and competed for the right to do so. In his “Continentalist” essays from the early 1780s, Hamilton continued unapologetically to invoke Hume’s name and to borrow ideas from Hume’s essays, just as he would at the Constitutional Convention.12 An essay by “Republicus” in The American Monitor, or the Republican Magazine for 1785, shows that Hume’s essay “Of the Liberty of the Press” was as well known to its American audience in the mid-​1780s as it had been to audiences of the 1760s and 1770s.13 Federalists and Antifederalists in the late 1780s referred to Hume’s essays in writings that have not been reprinted in this volume.14 In 1800 when Mathew Carey included an entry for “Liberty of the Press” in his School of Wisdom:  or, American Monitor, containing a Copious Collection of Sublime and Elegant Extracts, from the Most Eminent Writers, on Morals, Religion  & Government, he reprinted a passage from Hume’s essay,15 as he did under the heading “Liberty” when he quoted from Hume’s essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.”16 Not all Americans, however, agreed with what Hume wrote on political subjects. Assessing Hume’s essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” in his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, John Adams labeled Hume an “aristocratical” thinker.17 That criticism had had occasional eighteenth-​century precursors, but it was to become a standard

For Russell see The Censor, 4 January 1772 and 1 February 1772, not reprinted below. For “A Freeman” see To the Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania, now met in this City (1774), not reprinted below. For “Agricola” see To the PRINTER (1774), not reprinted below. For James Chalmers see Plain Truth (1776), not reprinted below. 12 See, for instance, Alexander Hamilton, “The Continentalist No. V,” in Harold C. Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1961–​87), vol. 3, p. 77, not reprinted below. 13 Other of Hume’s essays were also reprinted in America journals in the 1780s. For instance, in 1784, The Boston Magazine reprinted Hume’s “Essay on Love and Marriage,” vol. 1 (November 1783 [in the volume for 1784]), pp. 15–​18, not reprinted below. 14 For examples see “Publius,” Federalist #85 in Clinton Rossiter, ed., The Federalist Papers (New York, 1961), pp.  526–​ 7; “A Democratic Federalist,” Pennsylvania Herald (17 October 1787); John Dewitt in the American Herald in Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-​Federalist (Chicago and London, 1981), vol. 4, p. 37; “Cato,” “Letter VI, To the People of the State of New-​York,” in Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-​Federalist (Chicago and London, 1981), vol. 2, p. 122; Civis Rusticus,” Virginia Independent Chronicle, 30 January 1788. 15 See pp. 222–​3, not reprinted below. 16 See p. 211, not reprinted below. 17 Selections from John Adams are reprinted below. See also “A Democratic Federalist,” Pennsylvania Herald (17 October 1787), reprinted in Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-​Federalist, vol. 3, p. 62, not reprinted below. 11

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reading in nineteenth-​century America.18 Some Americans in the early nineteenth century continued to see Hume as a champion of liberty. Robert Fulton in 1807 found in Hume’s essays a theoretical cement with which to bind the United States together.19 Thomas Ewell’s 1817 edition of Hume’s Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics amplified the existing American interest in Hume’s essays. Ewell’s “Preface” and editorial “Notes” are themselves informative of Hume’s American reception and are therefore included in this volume. Hume’s essay “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion” was at the center of an exchange of letters on the relationship between “Genius and Passion” published in Baltimore’s Portico magazine in 1817.20 Also in 1817, the National Register reprinted an excerpt from Hume’s “On Refinement in the Arts,” an essay whose message was defended implicitly by contrasting Hume’s moderate stance with a ludicrous view entitled “Memorandums for an Essay against Luxury.”21 Other discussions of Hume’s essays are to be found scattered about in numerous essays, books, and reviews of the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1825, for instance, in an essay he wrote for the North American Review, Jared Sparks showed that Hume’s thoughts on the nature of the relationship between forms of government, on one side, and the arts and sciences, on the other, continued to be on the minds of American readers.22 Early American interest in Hume’s essays was sustained, but varied considerably between commentators and over time. Given the mixed nature of the responses to Hume’s essays, it is unwise to characterize a typical early American reception: it is even difficult to identify, with precision, broad trends of interpretation. But in 1831 when Edward Everett criticized Hume’s essay “Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic,” he did so in a way that suggested Hume was no longer heard as a voice of liberty.23 Americans of the mid-​nineteenth century had forgotten much of the earlier reception of Hume’s Essays.

See Charles Lee, The Lee Papers, vol. 1 (1754–​76) in Collections of the New-​York Historical Society for the Year 1871 (New York, 1872), pp. 102–​104, 111, not reprinted below; see Samuel Adams, Boston Gazette (27 January 1772), in Hary Alonzo Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams, 4 vols (New York, 1968), vol. 2, p. 324, not reprinted below. 19 Robert Fulton “Communication,” in Albert Gallatin, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals; Made in Pursuance of a Resolution of Senate, of March 2, 1807 (Washington, 1808), selections reprinted below. 20 Reprinted below. 21 Reprinted below. 22 Reprinted below. 23 Reprinted below. 18

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1

DISPUTE ABOUT THE TRAGEDY OF DOUGLAS

“Dispute about the Tragedy of DOUGLAS,” The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies, vol. 1, no. 5 (February 1758), pp. 203–​9. [William Smith] The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies was published by William Bradford (1722–​91) and edited by William Smith (1727–​1803), the first provost of the College of Philadelphia. Printed in Philadelphia, the magazine’s numbers date from October 1757 through October 1758. “Dispute about the Tragedy of DOUGLAS” is unsigned; but Smith, as editor, is the most plausible author. The essay reprinted in full below was introduced in the American Magazine for January 1758 where it was remarked that after Douglas: had run for a long time at Edinburgh, it was also bro’t on the theatre of Covent-​ Garden in London, March 14th, where it was received with considerable applause. The famous Mr. David Hume endeavoured to prepossess the town in its favour by publishing an extraordinary character of it. But as the piece by no means deserved such lavish encomiums, it was rather hurt than served thereby, as will always be the case when the expectations of the public are raised too high and then disappointed. The characters given of this play by the aforesaid David Hume, and by the authors of the monthly and critical reviews, form a very agreeable contrast, and shall be inserted in our next. (pp. 160–​61)

“Dispute about the Tragedy of DOUGLAS” begins by printing the dedication from Hume’s Four Dissertations (London, 1757). Hume dedicated that book to his friend, the clergyman and playwright, John Home (1722–​1808). Contrasting Hume’s assessment of Home’s Douglas with reviews from the Monthly Review

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and the Critical Review, the essay shows that Hume’s literary thought and his character were of interest to an early colonial American audience. This essay would also have popularized the image of Hume as a friend to toleration and free discussion. See Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (1954; second edition, Oxford, 1980), pp.  356–​69. On The American Magazine see Jayne K.  Kribbs, complier and editor, An Annotated Bibliography of American Literary Periodicals, 1741–​1850 (Boston, 1977)  [hereafter BAP], p.  7; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), esp. pp.  80–​82; Wm. David Sloan and Julie Hedgepeth Williams, The Early American Press, 1690–​1783 (Westport, 1994), pp. 107–​108; Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (1810, reprinted New  York, 1970), p.  449. On William Bradford see Dennis Barone, “William Bradford,” in American National Biography (New York, 1999) [hereafter ANB], vol. 3, pp. 365–​6. On William Smith see A.F. Gegenheimer, William Smith:  Educator and Churchman, 1727–​1803 (Philadelphia, 1943); Thomas Firth Jones, A Pair of Lawn Sleeves, A Biography of William Smith (Philadelphia and Ontario, 1972); and the entry on Smith by Mark G. Spencer and M. A. Stewart in The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment (New York, 2015) [hereafter EAE], vol. 2, pp. 980–​83. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Dispute about the Tragedy of DOUGLAS. [Continned [sic] from our last.] Characters, &c. of DOUGLAS, a Tragedy. Mr. HUME’s Dedication of his Four Dissertations, which were published, at London, in the beginning of February. To the Rev. Mr. HOME, Author of DOUGLAS, a Tragedy.

My dear Sir, IT was the practice of the ancients, to address their compositions only to friends and equals; and to render their dedications, monuments of regard and affection, not of servility and flattery. In those days of ingenuous and candid liberty, a dedication did honour to the person to whom it was addressed, without degrading the author. If any partiality appear’d towards the patron, it was at least the partiality of friendship and affection.

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Another instance of true liberty, of which ancient times can alone afford us an example, is the liberty of thought; which engaged men of letters, however different in their abstract opinions, to maintain a mutual friendship and regard; and never to quarrel about principles, while they agreed in inclinations and manners. Science was often the subject of disputations never of animosity. Cicero, an, [sic] academic, addressed his philosophical treatises, sometimes to Brutus, a stoic; sometimes to Atticus, an epicurean. I have been seized with a strong desire of renewing these laudable practices of antiquity, by addressing the following dissertations to you, my good friend: for such I  will ever call and esteem you, notwithstanding the opposition which prevails between us, with regard to many of our speculative tenets. These differences of opinion I  have only found to enliven our conversation; while our common passion for science and letters served as a cement to our friendship. I still admired your genius, even when I imagined, that you lay under the influence of prejudice; and you sometimes told me, that you excused my errors, on account of the candor and sincerity which, you, thought, accompanied them. But to tell truth; it is less my admiration of your fine genius, which has engaged me to make this address to you, than my esteem for your character, and my affection to your person. That generosity of mind which ever accompanies you; that cordiality of friendship, that spirited honour and integrity, have long interested me strongly in your behalf, and have made me desirous, that a monument of our mutual amity should be publicly erected, and, if possible, be preserved to posterity. I own too, that I have the ambition to be the first who shall in public express his admiration of your noble tragedy of Douglas; one of the most interesting and pathetic pieces that was ever exhibited on any theatre. Should I give it the preference to the Merope of Massei, and to that of Voltaire, which it resembles in its subject; should I affirm, that it contain’d more fire and spirit than the former, more tenderness and simplicity than the latter; I might be accused of partiality: and how could I entirely acquit myself, after the professions of friendship which I have made you? But the unfeigned tears which flowed from every eye, in the numerous representations which were made of it on this theatre; the unparalleled command which you appeared to have over every affection of the human breast; these are incontestable proofs, that you posses the true theatrical genius of Shakespear and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one, and licentiousness of the other. My enemies, you know, and I  own even sometimes my friends, have reproached me with the love of paradoxes and singular opinions; and I expect to be exposed to the same imputation, on account of the character which I have here given of your Douglas. I  shall be told, no doubt, that I  had artfully chosen the only time when this high esteem of that piece could be regarded as a

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paradox, to wit, before its publication; and that not being able to contradict, in this particular, the sentiments of the public, I have, at least, resolved to go before them. But I shall be amply compensated for all these pleasantries, if you accept this testimony of my regard, and believe me to be, with the greatest sincerity, dear Sir, your most affectionate friend, and humble servant,  DAVID HUME. Edin. Jan. 3, 1757.

CRITICAL REVIEW, March 1757. These critics begin this article with quoting the passage of Mr. Hume’s dedication which ends, I might be accused of partiality [293.]—and then say, “And so indeed, in our opinion, he might, with great justice: for though we are ready to allow much of the bias of friendship and affection, yet would we beg leave to put this author in mind, that there is something also due to truth, taste, and judgment, which we cannot think any man hath a right to sacrifice, even to the most intimate private connections.” They next observe, that the well-​known line in Horace, Neve minor, neu sit quinto productior actu,

though adopted by modern critics as an incontestable maxim, has spoiled many more good plays than it has made; that it was a law utterly unknown to the masters of the Grecian theatre, those models of perfection; that their tragedies consisted of one continued act, longer or shorter according to the subject, together with the occasional interruption of the chorus; that there can be no more impropriety in a tragedy of three acts than in a comedy of two, many of which have been lately seen; and that the universal opinion concerning the small merit of the two first acts of Douglas, makes it presumable that this piece might admit of some contraction. They then proceed to examine separately the fable, characters, sentiments, and diction, which we shall give in their own words, viz. The striking resemblance of the Plot, in its principal features, to others which have been so lately treated by our modern tragic poets,* were it ever so interesting, would greatly diminish our pleasure in the representation. * It is so like Merope, especially in the beginning, that it is impossible not to feel the similitude: the sentiments must be consequently alike in many places. Lady Randolph, on sight of Norval, reflects upon her lost child, and says, He might have been like this young gallant stranger, And pair’d with him in features and in shape. Merope, we may remember, talks of Dorilas exactly in the same manner.

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The Discovery is, perhaps, made too early, and casts a disagreeable shade over all the other scenes. The Catastrophe is awkwardly brought about, the jealousy of Randoph too precipitately caught, and without foundation. Besides that it doth not sufficiently appear what advantages Glenalvon would reap from the effects of this discord, as it might possibly have ended, not only in the destruction of Norval, (or Douglas,) but also in the death of Matilda, the woman he loved. To this we may add, that the fate of Douglas and Matilda, who are both innocent, is scarce reconcileable with poetical justice, which seems to have been violated by their deaths; so that the audience have reason to cry out with Lady Randoph,* Hear, Justice, hear; are these the fruits of               virtue?

As to the Characters, there is scarce one in it, except Douglas; which indeed is tolerably well supported. The Sentiments which we meet with in this tragedy, though but thinly sown, are for the most part adapted to the characters, and make their appearance with some degree of propriety; and to them it is, in our opinion, that Douglas is principally indebted for its success. When Lady Randoph tells us, in the first act, that she took an equivocal oath she never would marry (because at this time she was already married) one of Douglas’s name, she adds the following reflection, which naturally arises on the occasion.               Sincerity, Thou first of virtues, let no mortal leave Thy onward path! altho’ the earth should                   gape; And from the gulf of hell destruction cry, To take dissimulation’s winding way.

What Anna says on the pleasure Lady Randolph took in looking on young Norval, before she knew him to be her son, is extremely pretty: How fondly did your eyes devour the boy! Mysterious nature, with the unseen cord Of pow’rful instinct, drew you to your                own. * [Here, and in some other places, alterations were made, with the author’s approbation, in the Edinburgh edition.]

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14

Matilda, in describing her husband, says,     On his piercing eye Sat observation;* on each glance of tho’s Decision follow’d, as the thunderbolt Pursues the flash.

When she hears the news of the landing of the Danes, she cries out, How many mothers shall bewail their sons! How many widows weep their husbands                   slain! Ye dames of Denmark! ev’n for you I feel, Who, sadly sitting on the sea-​beat shore, Long look for lords that never shall return.

These, with some other strokes of nature equally pleasing and just, pleaded strongly with the audience in favour of Douglas. In regard to the Diction of this tragedy, we shall only observe, that though it is the part in which its most sanguine admirers have placed its greatest merit, we cannot agree with them in this determination. With superficial judges, as ranting will pass for passion, and bombast for sublimity, low and vulgar expression may also be mistaken for simplicity. From a studious affectation of this, an author may often deviate into very mean and servile language. For instance: Lady Randolph tells us, that war with foreign foes is not so hateful As that which with out neighbours oft we wage.

and, by way of informing us she was with child, she says, she was As women wish to be that love their lords.

Says Anna, The hand that spineth uneven thread of                life, May smooth the length that’s yet to come                   of yours.

* This seems to have been borrowed from Milton:                   On his brow Deliberation sat, and public care Par. Lost.

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* When I had seiz’d the dame by chance             he came, Reson’d, and had the lady for his labour. The bless’d above upon their golden beds†

When the prisoner is brought in, in the beginning of the third act, he cries out, I know no more than does the child unborn Of what you charge me with.       As I hope For mercy, &c.      Honey’d assent! How pleasing art thou to the taste of man, And woman also?‡ A rude and boist’rous captain of the sea Fasten’d a quarrel on him. Having no lacquey but pale poverty. Let no man after me a woman wed, § Whose heart he knows he has not, tho’             she brings A mine of gold. You look (says Glenalvon to Norval) As if you took the measure of their minds, And said in secret, You’re no match for me. Imposes silence with a stilly sound.

The lines above quoted may, for ought we know, be much extolled by some critics; and Mr. David Hume, may, if he pleases, call them a close imitation of nature, and a pattern of true simplicity:  we should notwithstanding rather be inclined to rank them in the number of vulgarisms, and much beneath the dignity of tragical expression. * The first of these verses rhymes like the old monkish tales, and in the second is a vulgar expression. † What ideas can we form of ease and pleasure in lying on a golden bed? Which we may suppose was accompanied with a bolster of adamant, and marble pillows, for softness. ‡ He might as well have gone on, and said, ay and of children too. § Here ten long words do creep in one dull line.   We meet also with, timeless death, the tip-​toe of expectation, array’d in nature’s case, water-​wasted armies, the wicked of the heart, &c. which, we cannot greatly admire.

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Douglas, upon the whole, with all its imperfections, (and what piece is without some?) is infinitely superior to Barbarossa, Athelstan, and the rest of those flimsy performances with which we have been visited for some years past:  and if the author is careful to improve that genius for dramatic writing which is visible in this essay, we have reason to expect something that may do still more honour to the English stage. We should not indeed have dwelt so long on the little obvious faults to be found in this tragedy, had not Mr. David Hume, whose name is certainly respectable in the republic of letters, made it absolutely necessary. —— Every addition of praise to any work beyond its real and intrinsic merit, will always be found in the end prejudicial to it; as the same moisture which feeds and nourishes the plant, may, if poured on in too great abundance, overwhelm and destroy it. We shall conclude this article, by quoting the following lines from the epilogue which, though very short, is one of the best which we ever remember to have heard on the stage. After briefly observing, that there is nothing so absurd as a ludicrous epilogue, our author ——sadly says, that pity is the best, The noblest passion in the human breast: For when its sacred streams the heart o’er                  flow, In gushes pleasure with the tide of woe; And when its waves retire, like those of                  Nile, They leave behind them such a golden soil, That there the virtues without culture                  grow, There the sweet blossoms of affection blow

This surely is infinitely more rational after a tragedy, than the pert jokes, witticisms, and loose conceits, which an unfeeling audience generally meets with, to help them to wash away the little tincture of virtue which they may possibly have received from a serious performance.

CHARACTER from the MONTHLY REVIEW, May 1757. When the town, by a tedious succession of indifferent performances, has been long confined to censure, it will naturally wish for an opportunity of praise; and, like a losing gamester, vainly expect every last throw must retrieve the

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former. In this disposition, a performance with but the slightest share of merit, is welcomed with no small share of applause; its prettinesses exalt us into rapture; and the production is compared, not with our idea of excellence, but of the exploded trash it succeeds. Add to this, that the least qualified to judge, are ever foremost to obtrude their opinions; ignorance exclaims with excess of admiration; party roars in its support; and thus the trifle of the day is sure to have the loudest voices, and the most votes in its favour: nor does it cease to be the finest piece in nature, till a newer (and consequently a finer) appears, to consign it to oblivion. Do these men of applause, who can so easily be brought To wonder with a foolish face of praise, deserve our envy, or our censure? If their raptures are real, none but the ill-​ natured would wish to damp them; if fictitious, stupidity only can sympathise with their pretended felicity. As, in company, the loudest laugh comes generally from the person least capable of relishing the conversation; so, in criticism, those are often most easily pleased, whose sensations are least exquisite in the perception of beauty. The glutton may like the feast, but the delicacy of the epicure alone can distinguish and enjoy the choice, the disposition, the flavors, that give elegance or spirit to the entertainment. To direct our taste, and conduct the poet up to perfection, has ever been the true critic’s province; and though it were to be wished, that all who aim at excellence would endeavour to observe the rules he prescribes, yet a failure in this respect alone should never induce us to reject the performance. A  mechanically exact adherence to all the rules of the drama, is more the business of industry than of genius. Theatrical lawgivers rather teach the ignorant where to censure, than the poet how to write. If sublimity, sentiment, and passion, give warmth, and life, and expression to the whole, we can the more easily dispense with the rules of the Stagyrite; but if languor, affectation, and the false sublime, are substituted for these, an observance of all the precepts of the ancients will prove but a poor compensation. We would not willingly have applied this last observation to the performance now before us; but when a work is obtruded upon us, as the consummate picture of perfection, and the standard of taste. Ne, quodcunque volet, poseat sibi fabula credit.

Let candour allow this writer mediocrity now; his future productions may probably intitle him to higher applause.

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With respect to his present tragedy we could, indeed, enter on a particular examen of the beauties or faults discoverable in the diction, sentiment, plot, or characters; but, in works of this nature, general observation often characterises more strongly than a particular criticism could do; for it were an easy task to point out those passages in any indifferent author, where he has excelled himself, and yet these comparitive beauties, if we may be allowed the expression, may have no real merit at all. Poems, like buildings, have their point of view, and too near a situation gives but a partial conception of the whole. Suffice it, then, if we only add, that this tragedy’s want of moral, which should be the ground-​work of every fable; his unfolding a material part of the plot in soliloquy; the preposterous distress of a married lady for a former husband, who had been dead near twenty years; the want of incidents to raise that fluctuation of hope and fear, which interest us in the catastrophe, — are all faults we could easily pardon, did poetic fire, elegance, or the height-​enings of pathetic distress, afford adequate compensation: but these are dealt to us with a sparing hand. However, as we have perceived some dawnings of gennius [sic] in this writer, let us not dwell on his imperfections, but rather proceed to shew on what particular passages in this performance we have founded our hopes of his brightening, one day, into stronger lustre. Those parts of nature, and that rural simplicity, with which the author was, perhaps, best acquainted, are not unhappily described; and hence we are led to conjecture, that a more universal knowledge of nature will probably increase his powers of description. The native innocence of the shepherd Norval, is happily expressed. It requires some art to dress the thoughts and phrases of the common people, without letting them swell into bombast, or sink into vulgarity: A fault generally charged upon the English authors, who are remarked by their neighbours of the continent to write too much above, or too much below every subject they undertake to treat upon. Glenalvon’s character is strongly marked, and bears a near resemblance to Shakespaer’s [sic] Richard. It is thus delineated in the first act. Anna. Why speaks my Lady thus of Randolph’s heir? Lady Rand. Because he’s not the heir of Randolph’s virtues. Subtile and shrewd, he offers to mankind An artificial image of himself: And he with ease can vary to the taste Of different men, its features. Self-​deny’d, And master of his appetites he seems:

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But his fierce nature, like a fox chain’d up, Watches to seize unseen the wish’d-​for prey Never were vice and virtue pois’d so ill, As in Glenalvon’s unrelenting mind, Yet he is brave, and politic in war.

The following passage is an oblique panegyric on the union, and contains a pleasing gradation of sentiment. The lines marked in Italics demand particular distinction. La. Ran. War I detest: but war with foreign                foes, Whose manners, language, and whose looks              are strange, Is not so horrid, nor to me so hateful, As that which with our neighbours oft we               wage. A river here, there an ideal line By fancy drawn divides the sister kingdoms On each side dwells a people similar, As twins are to each other,——​ Both for their valour famous through the               world, Yet will they not unite their kindred arms And if they must have war, wage distant               war, But with each other fight in cruel conflict? Gallant in strife, and noble in their ire, The battle is their pastime. They go forth Gay in the morning, as to summer sport: When evening come, the glory of the morn, The youthful warrior, is a clod of clay.

It may not be improper to observe, before we take our leave of this performance, that it was first acted with great applause in Edinburgh; but made its appearance in England under a peculiar disadvantage. The commendation a man of taste and learning had bestowed on it previous to its representation here, perhaps raised too much expectation in some, and excited a spirit of envy and

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critical prejudice in others. Possibly, indeed, that gentleman, in some degree, sacrificed his taste to his friendship. However, if this was the case, he will sustain no great loss with regard to his reputation; since he may gain as much on the one hand, as he can lose on the other: the worst that can be said, amounting only to this, that the benevolence of his disposition prevailed over the rectitude of his judgment.

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2

NATURAL INFERIORITY OF BLACKS

Personal Slavery Established, By the Suffrages of Custom and Right Reason: Being a Full Answer To the Gloomy and Visionary Reveries, of All the Fanatical and Enthusiastical Writers on that Subject (Philadelphia, [1773]); selection from pp. 18–​19. Anonymous Personal Slavery Established (1773) satirized Hume’s account of Africans. In a footnote to his essay “Of National Characters,” Hume wrote: I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are NEGROE slaves dispersed all over EUROPE, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; tho’ low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but ’tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly (Essays, pp. 629–​30).

This footnote was known and often quoted in colonial American writings. In 1773, it was the subject of debate in Philadelphia. Hume’s footnote was

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quoted in full and with approval by Richard Nisbet in his pamphlet, Slavery Nor Forbidden by Scripture. Or a Defence of the West-​India Planters, from the Aspersions thrown out against them, by the author of a pamphlet, entitled, ‘An Address to the Inhabitants of the British settlements in America, upon Slave-​ Keeping’ (1773). Nisbet’s piece aimed to answer an earlier pamphlet by Benjamin Rush (1745–​1813). The debate continued in Personal Slavery Established (1773), a selection from which is reprinted below. Here, an anonymous writer ridiculed Nisbet’s use of Hume. See Lester B. Scherer, “A New Look at Personal Slavery Established” William and Mary Quarterly, ser. 3, vol. 30 (1973), pp. 645–​52. On Hume on race see John Immerwahr, “Hume’s Revised Racism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 53 (1992), pp. 481–​6; Robert Palter, “Hume and Prejudice,” Hume Studies, vol. 21 (1995), pp. 3–​23; Richard H. Popkin, “Hume’s Racism,” The Philosophical Forum, vol. 9 (1977–​78), pp. 211–​26; Mark G. Spencer, David Hume and Eighteenth-​Century America, pp. 73–​4. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ The author of the Defence asserts that there are four or five different species of men, —​with submission, I will limit them to four, viz. 1st, Europeans, 2d, Assiaticks, 3d, Americans, and 4th, Africans, and retracting the word species, substitute genus, which is more expressive of my idea as being a general term, by which I would distinguish the last as only a species of that genus, though utterly devoid of reason. Carrying this idea a little further, I would yet subdivide the Africans into five classes, arranging them in the order as they approach nearest to reason, as 1st, Negroes, 2d, Ourang Outangs, 3d, Apes, 4th, Baboons, and, 5th, Monkeys. The opinion of their irrationality is so well supported by facts, that to those acquainted with them, I need advance very little on the subject; but to remove every scruple from the sceptic, a little undeniable evidence may not be improper. —​There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white; nor ever any individual eminent either in action or speculation that was not rather inclining to the fair. Africa, except a small part of it, inhabited by those of our own colour, is totally overrun with Barbarism —​nay such is the contaminating influence of black, that I fear I need not except even the whites among them. Perhaps this observation may assist us in accounting for the few appearances of Barbarism we now and then discover among the whites in our southern colonies and islands, where blacks bear so large a proportion to their number. But to proceed from this short digression, Africa has no kingdoms of any eminence, but chiefly consists of petty monarchies, excepting Bildulgerid, Ethiopia, Nubia, Abissinia, Morocco, and many others that are rather large.

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3

EVERY MAN OUGHT TO BE SUPPOSED A KNAVE

The Farmer Refuted: or, A more Impartial and Comprehensive View of the Dispute between Great-​Britain and the Colonies, Intended as a Further Vindication of the Congress:  In Answer to a Letter from A.  W. Farmer, Intitled A  View of the Controversy Between Great-​ Britain and her Colonies:  Including a Mode of Determining the Present Disputes Finally and Effectually, &c (New York, 1775); selection from pp. 1, 11–​13, 18. [Alexander Hamilton] In The Farmer Refuted, Alexander Hamilton (1757–​1804) considered Hume to be an empirical thinker and used Hume’s writings to argue against the loyalist sentiments of the pseudonymous “A.W. Farmer,” the Anglican clergyman Samuel Seabury (1729–​96). Seabury’s pamphlet, A View of the Controversy Between Great-​Britain and her Colonies (1774), was itself a reply to Hamilton’s pamphlet of the previous year, his first known printed work, A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress, &c (1774). The selection from The Farmer Refuted reprinted below is from the first edition. It shows the impact on a sixteen-​year-​ old Hamilton of Hume’s essays, “Of the Independency of Parliament,” and “That Politics may be Reduced to a Science.” Hume’s political maxims percolated in Hamilton’s mind many years prior to his writing of the Federalist essays in 1787. The Farmer Refuted has been reprinted with annotation in Harold C.  Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, Volume I:  1768–​1778 (New  York and London, 1961), pp. 81–​165; and, more recently, in Richard B. Vernier, ed. The Revolutionary Writings of Alexander Hamilton (Indianapolis, 2008), pp. 41–​135. On Hume and Hamilton see Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea

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of Republican Government (Stanford, 1970). For the broader context of “Race” in the American Enlightenment, see Enrico Dal Lago’s entry on it in EAE , vol. 2, pp. 862–5; and Trevor Burnard on “Slavery,” vol. 2, pp. 966–8. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ SIR, I resume my pen, in reply to the curious epistle, you have been pleased to favour me with; and can assure you, that, notwithstanding, I am naturally of a grave and phlegmatic disposition, it has been the source of abundant merriment to me. The spirit that breathes throughout is so rancorous, illiberal and imperious: The argumentative part of it so puerile and fallacious: The misrepresentations of facts so palpable and flagrant:  The criticisms so illiterate, trifling and absurd: The conceits so low, steril and splenetic, that I will venture to pronounce it one of the most ludicrous performances, which has been exhibited to public view, during all the present controversy. … There seems to be, already, a jealousy of our dawning splendour. It is looked upon as portentous of aproaching [sic] independence. This we have reason to believe is one of the principal incitements to the present rigorous and unconstitutional proceedings against us. And though it may have chiefly originated in the calumnies of designing men, yet it does not entirely depend upon adventitious or partial causes; but is also founded in the circumstances of our country and situation. The boundless extent of territory we possess, the wholesome temperament of our climate, the luxuriance and fertility of our soil, the variety of our products, the rapidity of our population, the industry of our country men and the commodiousness of our ports, naturally lead to a suspicion of independence, and would always have an influence pernicious to us. Jealousy is a predominant passion of human nature, and is a source of the greatest evils. Whenever it takes place between rulers and their subjects, it proves the bane of civil society. The experience of past ages may inform us, that when the circumstances of a people render them distressed, their rulers generally recur to severe, cruel and oppressive measures. Instead of endeavouring to establish their authority in the affection of their subjects, they think they have no security but in their fear. They do not aim at gaining their fidelity and obedience, by making them flourishing, prosperous and happy; but by rendering them abject and dispirited. They think it necessary to intimidate and awe them, to make every accession to their own power, and to impair the people’s as much as possible.

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One great engine, to effect this in America, would be a large standing army, maintained out of our own pockets to be at the devotion of our oppressors. This would be introduced under pretence of defending us; but in fact to make our bondage and misery complete. We might soon expect the martial law, universally prevalent to the abolition of trials by juries, the Habeas Corpus act, and every other bulwark of personal safety, in order to overawe the honest assertors of their country’s cause. A numerous train of court dependents would be created and supported at our expence. The value of all our possessions, by a complication of extorsive methods, would be gradually depreciated, till it became a mere shadow. This will be called too high wrought a picture, aphantom [sic] of my own deluded imagination. The highest eulogies will be lavished on the wisdom and justice of the British nation. But deplorable is the condition of that people who have nothing else than the wisdom and justice of another to depend upon. “Political writers (says a celebrated author*) have established it as a maxim, that, in contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controuls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave; and to have no other end in all his actions, but private interest. By this interest, we must govern him, and by means of it, make him co operate to public good, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition. Without this, we shall in vain boast of the advantages of any constitution, and shall find in the end, that we have no security for our liberties and possessions, except the good will of our rulers; that is, we should have no security at all.” “It is therefore a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave. Though, at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact. But to satisfy us on this head, we may consider, that men are generally more honest in a private than in a public capacity; and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind. But, where a considerable body of men act together, this check is in a great measure removed; since a man is sure to be approved by his own party, for what promotes the common interest, and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries. To this we may add that every court, or senate is determined by the greater number of voices; so that if self-​interest influences only the majority, (as it will always do) the whole senate follows the allurements of this separate interest, and

* Hume, Vol. I. Essay 5th.

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acts as if it contained not one member, who had any regard to public interest and liberty.” What additional force do these observations acquire, when applied to the dominion of one community over another! … [T]‌he authority of the British Parliament over America, would, in all probability, be a more intolerable and excessive species of despotism than an absolute monarchy.* The power of an absolute prince is not temporary, but perpetual.

* Mr. Hume, in enumerating those political maxims, which will be eternally true, speaks thus: “It may easily be observed, that though free governments have been commonly the most happy, for those who partake of their freedom, yet are they the most ruinous and oppressive to their provinces.” He goes on to give many solid reasons for this, and among other things, observes, that “a free state necessarily makes a great distinction (between herself and the provinces) and must continue to do so, ‘till men learn to love their neighbours as well as themselves.” He confirms his reflections by many historical facts, and concludes them thus: “Compare the pais conquis of France with Ireland, and you will be convinced of this truth; though this latter kingdom being in a good measure peopled from England, possesses so many rights and privileges, as should naturally make it challenge better treatment.”

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4

OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS

“OBSERVATIONS on the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, humbly offered to the perusal of not only the POLITICAL FATHERS and GUARDIANS of this Commonwealth, but to every sincere FRIEND to RELIGION and LIBERTY, and to the Promoters and Well-​wishers of Arts and Sciences throughout the UNITED STATES of AMERICA; which the disinterested Author hopes will be read with the utmost of Attention,” from The American Monitor, or the Republican Magazine, vol. 1, no. 1 (October 1785), pp. 3–​7. “REPUBLICUS” The American Monitor of Boston survived only long enough to produce one number. Its publisher was Ezekiel Russell (1744–​96). Russell had earlier been the publisher of The Censor, a Boston newspaper which made frequent use of Hume’s writings in the 1770s, quoting for instance from Hume’s essays “That Politics may be Reduced to a Science,” and “Of Some Remarkable Customs.” The essay reprinted below is based on Hume’s essay “Of the Liberty of the Press.” “Republicus” borrowed paragraph after paragraph from Hume, often altering only what was necessary given the American context. “Of the Liberty of the Press” had been reprinted in colonial newspapers, like the South-​Carolina Gazette and the Virginia Gazette, where it had been used to help buttress the Revolutionary cause. As the essay reprinted below attests, the popularity and relevance of Hume’s essay did not end with Independence. On The American Monitor, or, Republican Magazine see Jean Hoornstra and Trudy Heath, eds., American Periodicals, 1741–​1900 (Ann Arbor, 1979)  [hereafter API], p.  22; BAP, p.  10; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge,

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1938), pp. 29n, 788. On Ezekiel Russell see Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (1810, reprinted New York, 1970), pp. 153–​4, 284–​5. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

For the REPUBLICAN MAGAZINE. Mr. RUSSELL, If you think the following OBSERVATIONS on the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS will afford either Instruction or Amusement to your Readers, or serve to remove the present unconstitutional Shackles that most useful VEHICLE labours under, your publishing them will much oblige one of your Friends and Customers, at least. REPUBLICUS. OBSERVATIONS on the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, humbly offered to the perusal of not only the POLITICAL FATHERS and GUARDIANS of this Commonwealth, but to every sincere FRIEND to RELIGION and LIBERTY, and to the Promoters and Well-​wishers of Arts and Sciences throughout the UNITED STATES of AMERICA; which the disinterested Author hopes will be read with the utmost Attention, IT is sufficiently know, that arbitrary power would steal in upon us, were we not extremely watchful to prevent its progress, and were there not an easy method of conveying the alarm from one end of these Free, Sovereign, Independent and United States of AMERICA to the other. The spirit of the Publick must be frequently roused and kept up; and the dread of rousing this spirit must be employed to prevent that ambition. Nothing is so effectual to this purpose as the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, by which all the learning, wit and genius of the Nation may be employed on the side of LIBERTY, and every one be animated to its defence. As long, therefore, as the Republican Part of either our Continental or separate Governments can maintain itself against the arbitrary strides that has already been unsuccessfully made, or that may in future be attempted by those Sycophant Tools of a Despotick and Tyrannical System of Government, the Monarchical Part, our infant rising States ought, in a most peculiar manner to keep a watchful eye over the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, as of the most infinite importance to its preservation. And we AMERICANS in a peculiar manner ought to set the highest value upon this inestimable Blessing the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, not only for the

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sake of that most useful of all mechanical Vehicles having already been a mean, even in the worst and most perilous times, (when happily for the Cause of Truth and Virtue in the World, it has been intrusted, by Providence, in the hands and under the direction of resolute, daring, enterprising and staunch Friends of Religion and Liberty) to expand far and wide, the sacred Volume of TRUTH, even to the remotest corners of the earth, and where black Priestcraft with all its attendant and still more horrid spectres of Infernality and Destruction Bigotry, Enthusiasm and Persecution had much too long prevailed, and taken such deep root as almost to overshadow and spread a universal gloom over the once fair, delectable and fertile Field of Religious and Civil Freedom. But, to wave the subject of Religion for a moment, and think, O Columbians! Think, my Fellow-​Countrymen, what would have been the consequence, in the glorious and so much boasted-​of LIBERTY OF THE PRESS could once have been suppressed in AMERICA, a few years ago by the Tyrannical and Arbitrary Tools of Power, who were using their utmost efforts, both in England and America, to carry their wicked designs into execution, not only with respect to this, but in many other most essential and important Points, that must of course have very materially endangered the LIVES, RELIGION, LIBERTY and PROPERTY of almost every Subject throughout this wide-​extended Continent of AMERICA. I say my Fellow-​Countrymen, had such an almost irreparable Misfortune took place in AMERICA only within the short space of twenty years; and at a Time I say, when the fate of our rising Empire hung by little more than a twine-​ thread!  —​Let each of us, my Brethren and Fellow-​Citizens, call to mind the many animating and patriotick Addresses so recently and seasonably reverberated from that highly useful Machine the PRINTING PRESS, throughout the then despairing Continent of AMERICA, when clouds and thick darkness had almost overshadowed this LAND OF FREEDOM —​this chosen ASYLUM for the OPPRESSED of all Nations of the World to flee to, where every man may, without molestation, sit peaceably under his own vine, and under his own fig-​tree. When we reflect on these things, my Fellow-​Countrymen, it must, I think, create a blush in the face of even the fiercest and most violent Advocate for laying duties and restrictions of any kind on the PRESS, if they are not callous to every feeling for the RELIGIOUS and CIVIL RIGHTS and LIBERTIES of MANKIND. —​And I have not the least doubt but our WORTHY POLITICAL GUARDIANS, the Honourable GENERAL ASSEMBLY at their next Sessions will think fit, in their great wisdom, further to revise and amend the Act relating to

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News-​Papers, which so evidently affects the Interest of the PRINTER in the end; for if an Advertisement, that was sent to the Press for insertion from a Merchant or Trader, prior to said Act, cost but thirty shillings for inserting it three weeks, and should the same Merchant, &c. refuse to pay the additional tax of near three dollars a column in the Paper; in this and every other instance of the kind, the Printer would of course be the sufferer, by losing a very lucrative branch of his business in the News-​Paper Way; to the enjoyment of which emoluments, may perhaps, in a great measure, I humbly presume, be attributed the present cheapness of News-​Papers. ——But, should that Honourable, Respectable and Worthy BODY think different from me in respect to this matter I shall be sorry. It has been found, as the experience of Mankind increases, that the PEOPLE are no such dangerous MONSTER as they have, in Arbitrary and Tyrannical Governments been represented, and that it is in every respect better to guide them, like rational Beings, than to lead or drive them like brute beasts. Before the United Provinces set the example, TOLERATION was deemed incompatible with good Government; and it was thought impossible that a number of religious Sects should live in harmony and peace, and have all of them an equal affection in their Common Cause, CIVIL LIBERTY; and though this LIBERTY has, in several instances, occasioned some small ferment among us, yet it has never produced any pernicious effects; and it is to be hoped, that Mankind in general, being more accustomed to the discussion of publick affairs, will improve in the judgment of them, and be with greater difficulty seduced by every idle rumour and popular clamour. It is a very comfortable reflection to all the sincere Lovers of the LIBERTY of the Subject, and to every Well-​Wisher to the COMMON RIGHTS of Mankind, that, (thanks to HEAVEN and the UNREMITTED VIGILANCE of our EVER-​ WATCHFUL POLITICAL FATHERS and GUARDIANS, the HONOURABLE AMERICAN CONGRESS) this peculiar PRIVILEGE of AMERICANS is of that kind, that it cannot easily be wrestled from us, without our own consent, but must last as long as our Government remains, in any degree, FREE and INDEPENDENT:  Which was once the case in Britain, before the PRINTERS and People in that inslaved and infatuated Country tamely and basely suffered themselves to be shackled by the Tyrannical and Arbitrary TOOLS of the Iron Hand of POWER. It is seldom that LIBERTY of any kind is lost all at once. —​Slavery has so frightful an aspect to Men accustomed to FREEDOM, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received. But if the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS ever be lost, it must be lost at once.

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The general laws against Sedition and Libelling, are at present as strong as they can possibly be made. Nothing can impose a farther restraint, but either clapping an Imprimature upon the PRESS, or giving the Court very large discretionary POWERS to punish whatever displeases them. But these concessions would be so barefaced violation of to [sic] LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, that they will be the last efforts of a DESPOTICK GOVERNMENT. We may conclude, that the CIVIL and RELIGIOUS FREEDOM of AMERICA is gone when these attempts shall succeed. Since, therefore, the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS is so essential to the support of our new Republican Government, this sufficiently decides the second question, Whether this LIBERTY be advantageous or prejudicial? There being nothing of greater importance in every state for the preservation of a free Government. But I would fain go a step further and assert, that such a LIBERTY is attended with so few inconveniences, that it may very justly be claimed as the common right of Mankind, and, in my opinion, it ought to be indulged them in every Government, except the Ecclesiastical, to which indeed it would prove fatal. We need not dread from this LIBERTY such ill-​consequences as followed from the harrangues of the popular Demigogues of Athens and Tribunes of Rome. A man reads a News-​Paper alone and coolly. There is none present from whom he can catch the passion by contatagion [sic]. He is not hurried away by the force and energy of action: and should he be wrought up to ever so seditious a humour, there is no violent resolution presented to him, by which he can immediately vent his passion. The LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, therefore, however abused, can scarce ever excite popular Tumults or Rebellion. And as to those murmors or secret discontents it may occasion it is better they should get vent in words, that they may come to the knowledge of the Magistrate before it be too late in order to his providing a remedy against them. Mankind, it is true, have always a greater propension to believe what is said to the disadvantage of their Governours, than the contrary; but this inclination is inseparable from them whether they have LIBERTY or not. A Whisper may fly as quick and be as pernicious as a Pamphlet. Nay it will be more pernicious, where men are not accustomed to think freely, or distinguish between truth and falsehood. I must acknowledge the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS has been greatly abused by many, and this useful Machine has often been subservient to the worst of purposes, by being made an Engine of ushering much obscenity, nonsense and folly into publick view; —​but these abuses, however vile in themselves, derogate from the excellency of PRINTING in general, no more than the spots in the Sun from the glory of his illustrious ORB.

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And I cannot help remarking, to the everlasting honour of our POLITICAL FATHERS, the HONOURABLE AMERICAN CONGRESS, by the exemplary and Liberal Encouragement given to RELIGION and LITERATURE, in the Sanction and Countenance lately shewn by that August, Revered and Honourable BODY, (to whom, not only in this, but in many other instances, our highest plaudit and thanks are justly due,) by their promoting a new, elegant and correct American Edition of the Scriptures, and by their kindly recommending to the good People of these States to purchase the same in preference to any imported from Europe.  —​By such wise, noble and patriotick Resolutions, if happily adopted and steadily pursued in every State throughout this rising AMERICAN EMPIRE, we should, in a very few years, find that even the Britons themselves have adopted a bad policy, notwithstanding the exhausted situation of their finances, in laying TAXES on the PRESS; for, by this means, if we seize the present favourable opportunity put into our hands even by our Enemies on the other side of the Atlantick, for promoting Literature among ourselves, even we in this remote part, and where the useful and polite ART of PRINTING has been carried on but a little more than a century in any degree of perfection, shall stand a great chance of rivalling even those who have practised this curious and eminently useful ART more than three times that period. Although some among us have said, that so trifling a duty as Six Pence on an Advertisement ought not even to be mentioned, especially when it is laid for the support and maintenance of GOVERNMENT, and at the same time it does not come out of the Printer’s pocket immediately: Then, by a parity of argument, we might, on another occasion have also said, that the trifling sum of Three Pence on a Pound of Tea was not worth contending for, and, therefore, we might as well have tamely submitted and swallowed the Bait that was so artfully laid for us in the ever-​memorable year 1773, by our implacable and designing ENEMIES in Britain. — No! be it forever remembered, I say, COLUMBIANS in general, but my Fellow-​Citizens of this COMMONWEALTH in particular, it was the RIGHT Britain claimed to TAX America in all cases whatever, we boldly and successfully contended for! It was not the paltry Three Pence laid by them on a Pound of Tea that brought on the late glorious Struggle with that ungrateful Country! For, it is evident, if their RIGHT of levying the TEA TAX had been tamely recognized by the AMERICANS, ten thousand others might have been, with equal justice, imposed on us;  —​and then we might have bid a final adieu to the so-​much-​ boasted-​of birthright Privilege of being the subjects of a Monarch, who, when he took the reins of Government upon him, declared in his first Words from the Throne, that he “gloried in being born a Briton.”—​—​I say, my Fellow-​Countrymen,

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(with the highest deference to my Superiours of the Legislative Body) we ought all to plead against their RIGHT of laying a TAX on the PRESS! And each one of us have an undoubted Privilege to ask our Political Fathers and Guardians, Whether this DUTY on the PRESS is levied on us agreeable to our CONSTITUTION? The trifling sum exacted, no one can value who have one spark of Patriotism or Generosity left: But if our LEGISLATURE have a RIGHT to lay SIX PENSE on every Ten Lines, by the same rule they can as well exact SIX SHILLINGS; and so on to the entire suppression of advertising in the News-​Papers; and though trifling as the Tax may appear to be, it operates very much to the detriment of one useful Manufacturing Branch in the Community, not to mention the hurtful tendency it may have to the cause of Literature in this INFANT EMPIRE.—​—​ Admitting even the latter sum of SIX SHILLINGS were laid on every ten lines, it would not, (on an accurate calculation, which I may, perhaps, in some future Number of your useful MAGAZINE, think proper to lay before the PUBLICK) bring one Sixth Part the revenue to Government there might be raised, if the Honourable Legislature should think fit, in their great wisdom, entirely to repeal the Act relating to Printers, and, in lieu of which, I would humbly propose, that they lay the trifling sum of One Shilling and Two Pence on each Barrel of Cyder consumed in this Commonwealth, in addition to the small duty of Four Pence already laid on that article, which would not be out of proportion to that on Rum, Wine, Molasses, &c. and may be thought a more equitable and eligible mode of raising a Revenue to Government. —​I think the method I have candidly laid before the PUBLICK in general, but the Honourable LEGISLATIVE BODY of this Commonwealth in particular, will answer sundry good purposes; for, should the above plan I have disinteresteadly proposed for the good of the whole, be happily adopted, I presume, (and I am not alone in my opinion) it will have a great tendency to ease the minds of the ever-​jealous People, lest an innovation be made in our CONSTITUTION, and consequently the proposed Mode of Taxation would give more satisfaction to the People at large. Although I must acknowledge the demands on our Government are at present exceeding great and pressing, (as was wisely observed by several learned and worthy Gentlemen of the Honourable Assembly in their last Session, when speaking on ways and means for reducing the Public Debt,) and, notwithstanding we seem almost on the verge of a Public Bankruptcy; yet, at the same time our Worthy and Honourable POLITICAL FATHERS are providing for the exigencies of Government, (I would humbly observe, with the highest respect and submission to that Honourable Body, and I know of a large number of disinterested Fellow-​Citizens who are of my opinion) those Honourable

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Gentlemen, who ought to be the political Guardians of our Civil and Religious Rights and Liberties, should be extremely cautious of making provision for the unavoidable emergencies of the Commonwealth at the expence either of the least infringement of the happy, and, in many respects, equal CON-​ STITUION we live under, or by abridging any individual Societies in the Community of either their Civil or Religious Liberty, or Personal Property, as every Class of Men among us are, by the mutual Compact made between the RULERS and PEOPLE, sacredly promised EQUAL LIBERTY and PERSONAL SECURITY, while they demean themselves as good Subjects; for should this once become a precedent, farewell to our so-​much-​boasted-​of LIBERTY of the SUBJECT. But, Mr. Printer, lest any of that Honourable Body should think I am interested in thus writing in defence of the LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, you may venture to assure them, that although I am a Trader in the Shop-​keeping-​Way, yet I never sent an Advertisement to the Press that would cost the small sum of ten shillings, and have not made it a practice to advertise my goods more than once or twice a year; but I know many of my Brother-​Shopkeepers who have a desire, for their own as well as the advantage of the Publick, at least in the spring and fall of the year, to acquaint their Customers of having furnished their shops with a variety of articles for sale: And indeed, if some Printers have abused their Customers, by filling more than one half of their Papers with Advertisements, yet, in my opinion, it is the business of them only who pay for those Papers to chastize the Printer for such an imposition, if they should think fit, by withholding their Subscriptions: And I cannot think that Printers are amenable to the Legislative Authority of this Commonwealth for any offence of this nature; therefore, it is humbly presumed, they have no Right to take Cognizance of such matter. —​The reason of mentioning this arose from an objection of the kind I have often heard started by sundry Gentlemen belonging to the Honourable General Court. I shall conclude these OBSERVATIONS, my Fellow-​Citizens, with my sincere Wishes, that RELIGION, KNOWLEDGE, PEACE, LIBERTY and PROSPERITY may universally pervade the World of Mankind in general, but that they may, in a peculiar manner, spread their Benign Influence throughout these HAPPY, INDEPENDENT and UNITED STATES of AMERICA. REPUBLICUS. From my Grotto, on Mount-​} Lookout, Oct. 10, 1785.}

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5

A COMPLICATED ARISTOCRACY

A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, against the attack of M. Turgot in his letter to Dr. Price, dated the twenty-​second day of March, 1778, 3 vols (Philadelphia, 1787); “Letter LIV. LOCKE, MILTON, and HUME,”; selection from vol. 1, pp. 369–​71. John Adams John Adams (1735–​1826), in the 1760s and 1770s in essays published in the Boston Gazette, had frequently quoted with approval from Hume’s History of England (see Part III below). In the Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Hume was also referred to approvingly. But in the passage reprinted below, Adams struck an attitude of American exceptionalism when he took aim at Hume and a string of other European thinkers. Adams’s criticisms of Hume’s “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” have added importance coming as they do on the eve of the Constitutional Convention. On Adams as a political thinker see C. Bradley Thompson, John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty (Kansas, 1998); and Richard Alan Ryerson’s entry on Adams in EAE, vol. 1, pp. 6–​17. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Americans in this age are too enlightened to be bubbled out of their liberties, even by such mighty names as Locke, Milton, Turgot, or Hume; they know that popular elections of one essential branch of the legislature, frequently repeated, are the only possible method of forming a free constitution, or of preserving the government of laws from the domination of men, or of preserving their lives, liberties, or properties in security; they know, though Locke and Milton did not, that when popular elections are given up, liberty and free government must be given up. Upon this principle, they cannot approve the plan of Mr. Hume, in his

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“Idea of a perfect Commonwealth.” —​“Let all the freeholders of twenty pounds a year in the country, and all the householders worth five hundred pounds in the town parishes, meet annually in the parish church, and choose, by ballot, some freeholder of the county for their member, whom we shall call the county-​representative. Let the hundred county-​representatives, two days after their election, meet in the county-​town, and choose by ballot, from their own body, ten county-​magistrates, and one senator. There are therefore, in the whole commonwealth, one hundred senators, eleven hundred county-​magistrates, and ten thousand county-​representatives; for we shall bestow on all senators the authority of county-​magistrates, and on all county-​magistrates the authority of county-​representatives. Let the senators meet in the capital, and be endowed with the whole executive power of the commonwealth; the power of peace and war, of giving orders to generals, admirals, and ambassadors, and, in short, all the prerogatives of a British king, except his negative. Let the county representatives meet in their particular counties, and possess the whole legislative power of the commonwealth; the greater number of counties deciding the question; and where these are equal, let the senate have the casting-​vote. Every new law must first be debated in the senate; and, though rejected by it, if ten senators insist and protest, it must be sent down to the counties: the senate, if they please, may join to the copy of the law their reasons for receiving or rejecting it,” &c. —​The senate, by the ballot of Venice or Malta, are to choose a protector, who represents the dignity of the commonwealth, and presides in the senate; two secretaries of state, and a council of state, a council of religion and learning, a council of trade, a council of laws, a council of war, a council of the admiralty —​each of five persons, all senators; and seven commissioners of the treasury. If you compare this plan, as well as those of Locke and Milton, with the principles and examples in the foregoing letters, you will soon form a judgment of them; it is not my design to enlarge upon them. That of Hume is a complicated aristocracy, and would soon behave like all other aristocracies. It is enough to say, that the representatives of the people may by the senators be deprived of a voice in the legislature; because the senate have their choice of sending the laws down, either to the county-​magistrates or county-​representatives. It is an ingenious device, to be sure, to get rid of the people and their representatives; besides that the delays and confusions would be endless, in sending the laws to be debated in as many separate commonwealths as there are counties. But the two decisive objections are, 1. Letting the nobility or senate into the management of the executive power; and, 2. Taking the eyes of the people off from their representatives in the legislature. The liberty of the people depends entirely on

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the constant and direct communication between them and the legislature, by means of their representatives. The improvements to be made in the English constitution lie entirely in the house of commons. If county-​members were abolished, and representatives proportionally and frequently chosen in small districts, and if no candidate could be chosen but an established long settled inhabitant of that district, it would be impossible to corrupt the people of England, and the house of commons might be an immortal guardian of the national liberty. Instead of projects to abolish kings and lords, if the house of commons had been attended to, wild wars would not have been engaged in nor countless millions thrown away, nor would there have remained an imperfection perhaps in the English constitution. Let the people take care of the balance, and especially their part of it: but the preservation of their peculiar part of it will depend still upon the existence and independence of the other two; the instant the other branches are destroyed, their own branch, their own deputies, become their tyrants.

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6

CEMENTING THE UNION

“Mr. Fulton’s Communication,” in Albert Gallatin, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals; Made in Pursuance of a Resoltuion of Senate, of March 2, 1807 (Washington, 1808); selection from pp. 108–​109, 120–​23. Robert Fulton Robert Fulton (1765–​1815) was born in Philadelphia of Irish parents. He was an engineer and improver. His many improving devices included a double-​inclined plane for canal travel and a mill for processing marble. His most famous accomplishments came out of his work with steamboats. Fulton’s first steamship, the Clermont, was launched on the Hudson in 1807. His letter to Albert Gallatin (1761–​1849), a selection of which is reprinted below, was printed at the end of Gallatin’s Report on Public Roads and Canals. Fulton’s reference to Hume in the context of binding together the United States of America is interesting, especially in the light of the debate on Hume’s influence on the Founding Fathers. Fulton’s reference to Hume also suggests that Hume’s essays informed the improving spirit that was rampant in early nineteenth-​century America, even though in this case the words do not appear to be Hume’s. On Fulton see C. M. Harris, “Robert Fulton,” ANB, vol. 8, pp. 568–​72. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Mr. Fulton’s Communication. SIR, BY your letter of the 29th of July, I  am happy to find that the attention of Congress is directing itself towards the opening of communications through the United States, by means of roads and canals; and it would give me particular

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pleasure to aid you with useful information on such works, as I have long been contemplating their importance in many points of view. But a year has not yet elapsed since I returned to America, and my private concerns have occupied so much of my time, that as yet I have acquired but very little local information on the several canals which have been commenced. Such information, however, is perhaps at present not the most important branch of the subject, particularly as it can be obtained in a few months at a small expense, whenever the public mind shall be impressed with a sense of the vast advantages of a general system of cheap conveyance. I hope, indeed, that every intelligent American will in a few years, be fully convinced of the necessity of such works to promote the national wealth, and his individual interest. Such conviction must arise from that habit of reflection which accompanies the republican principle, and points out their true interest on subjects of political economy. From such reflections arises their love of agriculture and the useful arts, knowing them to augmeut [sic] the riches and happiness of the nation; hence also their dislike to standing armies and military navies, as being the means of increasing the proportion of non-​productive individuals, whose labor is not only lost, but who must be supported out of the produce of the industrious inhabitants, and diminish their enjoyments. Such right thinking does great honor to our nation, and leads forward to the highest possible state of civilization, by directing the powers of man from useless and destructive occupations, to pursuits which multiply the productions of useful labor, and create abundance. … Having thus in some degree considered the advantages which canals will produce in point of wealth to individuals and the nation, I will now consider their importance to the union and their political consequences. First, their effect on raising the value of the public lands, and thereby augmenting the revenue. … Second, on their effect in cementing the union, and extending the principles of confederated republican government. Numerous have been the speculations on the duration of our union, and intrigues have been practised to sever the western from the eastern states. The opinion endeavored to be inculcated, was, that the inhabitants beyond the mountains were cut off from the market of the Atlantic states; that consequently they had a separate interest, and should use their resources to open a communication to a market of their own; that remote from the seat of government they could not enjoy their portion of advantages arising from the union, and that sooner or later they must separate and govern for themselves.

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Others by drawing their examples from European governments, and the monarchies which have grown out of the feudal habits of nations of warriors, whose minds were bent to the absolute power of the few, and the servile obedience of the many, have conceived these states of too great an extent to continue united under a republican form of government, and that the time is not distant when they will divide into little kingdoms, retrograding from common sense to ignorance, adopting all the follies and barbarities which are every day practised in the kingdoms and petty states of Europe. But those who have reasoned in this way, have not reflected that men are the creatures of habit, and that their habits as well as their interests may be so combined, as to make it impossible to separate them without falling back into a state of barbarism. Although in ancient times some specks of civilization have been effaced by hordes of uncultivated men, yet it is remarkable that since the invention of printing and general diffusion of knowledge, no nation has retrograded in science or improvements; nor is it reasonable to suppose that the Americans, who have as much, if not more information in general, than any other people, will ever abandon an advantage which they have once gained. England, which at one time was seven petty kingdoms, has by habit long been united into one. Scotland by succession became united to England, and is now bound to her by habit, by turnpike roads, canals and reciprocal interests. In like manner all the counties of England, or departments of France, are bound to each other; and when the United States shall be bound together by canals, by cheap and easy access to market in all directions, by a sense of mutual interests arising from mutual intercourse and mingled commerce; it will be no more possible to split them into independent and separate governments, each lining its frontiers with fortifications and troops, to shackle their own exports and imports to and from the neighbouring states; than it is now possible for the government of England to divide and form again into seven kingdoms. But it is necessary to bind the states together by the people’s interests, one of which is to enable every man to sell the produce of his labor at the best market and purchase at the cheapest. This accords with the idea of Hume, “that the government of a wise people would be little more than a system of civil police; for the best interest of man is industry and a free exchange of the produce of his labor for the things which he may require.” On this humane principle, what stronger bonds of union can be invented than those which enable each individual to transport the produce of his industry 12,00 [sic] miles for 60 cents the hundred weight? Here then is a certain method of securing the union of the states, and of rendering it as lasting as the continent we inhabit.

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7

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF HUME’S ESSAYS

“Preface” and “Notes” to Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics, By David Hume, Esq. To Which is Added the Answer to his Objections to Christianity, By the Ingenious Divine Dr. Campbell. Also, An Account of Mr. Hume’s Life, an original Essay, and a few Notes, 2 vols (Georgetown, D.C. and Philadelphia, 1817); “Preface,” from vol. 1, pp. vii–​xvii; “Notes,” from vol. 1, pp. 80, 231–​2, 521–​3; vol. 2, pp. 124–​7, 475. Thomas Ewell Thomas Ewell (1785–​1826) was a writer, physician, and surgeon in the navy. Ewell had studied in Virginia and before that in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, where one of his teachers was Dr. Benjamin Rush. Ewell’s edition of Hume’s Essays was dedicated to the President of the Untied States, James Monroe (1758–​1831). Ewell remarked in the dedication that “Mr, Hume was a man of transcendant mind, and these writings transcend his other performances.” “If a parallel could be drawn with propriety between actions and writings, it appeared to me that it might be drawn between your labours and Mr. Hume’s Essays. —​ His productions exhibit a grandeur of genius —​a depth of investigation —​an independence of spirit —​never surpassed by a British subject: —​your exertions exhibit a soul never surpassed by an American citizen”(pp. iii–iv). The first of Ewell’s volumes included Hume’s My Own Life, the Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary as a collection of thirty-​eight essays, and Ewell’s own original contribution, “Essay on the Laws of Pleasure and Pain.” The second volume reprinted An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, A Dissertation on the Passions, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, The Natural History of Religion and an Index of the Dissertaiton on Miracles which reprinted George Campbell’s answer to Hume on miracles. The “Preface” and “Notes” to Ewell’s edition of Hume show

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that, for many in early America, concern with Hume’s character was part and parcel of dealing with the ideas in Hume’s essays (see also Part II). The earl of Charlemont’s account of Hume’s character, reproduced by Ewell, had earlier been reprinted in American journals such as The Analectic Magazine: containing selections from Foreign Reviews and Magazines, together with original miscellaneous compositions; and a naval chronicle, vol. 1 (1813), pp. 419–​25. Ewell’s “Preface” also hints at the nineteenth-​century trend which would see the eighteenth-​ century American popularity of Hume’s History of England surpassed by Hume’s Essays and philosophy. On Thomas Ewell see Allan Westcott, “Thomas Ewell,” Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1957), edited by Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone [hereafter DAB], vol. 3, part 2, pp. 230–​31. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

EWELL’S PREFACE IT has been with much hesitation that I have undertaken to have an edition of Mr. Hume’s Essays printed. My engagements rendered it very inconvenient; and nothing but a strong desire of doing service to the gentlemen of minds in this country decided the undertaking. An instrumentality in disseminating such sublime philosophy, and astonishing research, as is exhibited by this wonderful genius and writer, could not be otherwise than exceedingly agreeable. Unaccountable as it is, these Essays have not heretofore been printed in America —​although pronounced by the author in health, and when about to die, “incomparably his best performance.” —​while his history —​which is marked by more objectional features, has been demanded in several editions. This suppression is a melancholy instance of withholding many advantages on account of a few probable errors; of the success of ignorance and prejudice, of incapacity and malignancy, in opposing ambition for intellectual advancement. The bigots have raised an unfounded clamour against the work —​while its philosophy — ­seldom understood, and often misrepresented, —​has been degraded by classing it with the disorganizing productions of the French nation. Assuredly these Essays may, with truth, be pronounced the greatest —​the best calculated to awaken enquiry, while communicating instruction —​that were ever written. The liberal, who have read them in the spirit of candour and truth, will not require to be reminded of their worth. Our host of horn-​book politicians  —​our men of homespun ­literature  —​friends to the study of metaphysics and of morals  —​will all find themselves improved —​raised —​transported by the lights diffused.

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The present time appears to be peculiarly adapted to the study of such works of philosophy. Suspicious of their agency in producing that infuriation of mind, regardless of morals, and devoted to revolutions, that marked the age which has just passed by, are now subsiding. The intelligent perceive it was the great foul mass of the community, not the thinking philosophers; the bad passions of the men, not erroneous principles conceived in the closet —​which have produced the calamities of thoughtless insurrection, and all the horrors of its train, which have desolated so fair a portion of Europe. The present subsidence of the violent convulsions which agitated the world affords, at all events, the most proper time for receiving, considering, and settling, the value of the innovations of philosophers. But a few pages of Mr. Hume’s Essays are devoted to religious subjects —​yet the confederation of decryers would stamp the whole as inimical to religion. To guard against infidelity —​that might arise from the freedom of his discussion —​ the pious Dr. Campbell’s answer is annexed. The character of this stands deservedly high; and ought to be read, not only for its object, —​but on account of the ingenuity —​the close and strong reasoning it exhibits. It is by tracing, and going along with, the ideas of such powerful minds that our own become enlarged. No character, however religious, can rationally object to reading these volumes under the present circumstances of publication. On the score of Christianity, his faith cannot be affected. Indeed it would be well for the clergy if they would diligently study, instead of endeavouring to proscribe, them. They cannot do the one, and will be greatly benefited by the other. Doctor Campbell states it was first from the study of Mr. Hume’s ingenious writings, that he learnt to think and write on the subject. Our clergy will not be accused of having more learning than the Scotch divines; and they may safely imitate them by venturing on the study. The habit of acute reflection will more effectually enable them to make converts to the religion of our Saviour, than all the rhapsodical promises and denunciations that ever came from the pulpit. As a friend to the preachers of Christianity, I wish them more learning, and better temper to discuss and glean the good from every writer —​ however objectionable they may be in some points. Men are so frequently benefited from hearing the worst said of them by their enemies, that I cannot think sound religion can be injured by its friends reading the strictures passed on it: —​ indeed it must be strengthened, since it can stand the most scrutinizing attacks. After all the clamour about Mr. Hume’s anti-​religious doctrines, it appears that what he calls his discovery for the solution of miracles, is the point most objectionable and dreaded. It appears astonishing to me that such importance

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has been attached to this subject. Most people are conscious of most extraordinary emotions in them at times, which they attribute to something of the miraculous. Many clergymen of certain sects teach, that a man converted to Christianity has an extra visit from the Holy Spirit. Can it be of the least importance, if our faith be brought on by a miracle within us, or by a visitation in spirit from above? For my part —​so that a man has the true faith, and acts the good part of a christian, —​I care not to what possible cause he may attribute his creed. No one ought to be more displeased at his amusing himself by ascribing it to the ghosts of his fancy, than at Mr. Hume’s ascribing it to a miracle. It is somewhere said by one of the apostles, “a good work is wrought within me.” Many of those who have not capacity to understand the doctrines of Mr. Hume —​on the one side, and on the other, —​have not patience to enter into his singularly ingenious modes of reasoning, have confederated to propagate unfounded slander against him —​hoping so to traduce his private life as to lessen the respect paid to his doctrines. —​Among the various attempts of this kind which have been made, I have heard of reports of him in this country, very contrary to the plain —​interesting account he gives of himself in his life annexed. The annexed extracts, taken from Mr. Handy’s life of the Earl of Charlemont, give sufficient: evidence of his truly amiable spirit. “The celebrated David Hume —​whose character is so deservedly high in the literary world; and whose works, both as a philosopher and as an historian, are so wonderfully replete with genius and entertainment —​was, when I was at Turin, secretary to sir John Sinclair, minister from the court of Great Britain to his Sardinian majesty. —​With this extraordinary man I was intimately acquainted. He had kindly distinguished me from among a number of young men, who were then at the academy, and appeared so warmly attached to me, that it was apparent he not only intended to honour me with his friendship, but to bestow on me what was, in his opinion, the first of all favours and benefits, by making me his convert and disciple.” “Nature, I believe never formed any man more unlike his real character than David Hume. The powers of physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most skilful, in that science, pretend to discover the smallest trace of the faculties of his mind, in the unmeaning features of his visage. His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide; and without any other expression than that of imbecility. His eyes, vacant and spiritless, and the corpulence of his whole person was far better fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-​eating alderman, than of a refined philosopher. His speech in English, was rendered ridiculous by

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the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable; so that wisdom, most certainly, never disguised herself before in so uncouth a garb. Though now fifty years old, he was healthy and strong; but his health and strength far from being advantageous to his figure, instead of manly comeliness, had only the appearance of rusticity. His wearing an uniform added greatly to his natural awkwardness, for he wore it like a grocer of the trained bands. Sinclair was a lieutenant-​general and was sent to the courts of Vienna and Turin, as a military envoy, to see that their quota of troops was furnished by the Austrians and Piedmontese. It was therefore thought necessary that his secretary should appear to be an officer, and Hume was accordingly disguised in scarlet.” “Having thus given an account of his exterior, it is but fair that I should state my good opinion of his character. Of all the philosophers of his sect, none, I  believe, ever joined more real benevolence than my friend Hume. His love to mankind was universal, and vehement; and there was no service he would not cheerfully have done to his fellow creatures, excepting only that of suffering them to save their souls in their own way. He was tender-​hearted, friendly, and charitable in the extreme, as will appear from a fact, which I have from good authority. When a member of the university of Edinburgh, and in great want of money, having little or no paternal fortune, and the collegiate stipend being very inconsiderable, he had procured, through the interest of some friend, an office in the university, which was worth about forty pounds a year. On the day when he had received this good news, and just when he had got into his possession the patent, or grant intitling him to his office, he was visited by his friend Blacklock, the poet, who is much better known by his poverty and blindness, than by his genius. This poor man began a long descant on his misery, bewailing his want of sight, his large family of children and his utter inability to provide for them, or even to procure them the necessaries of life. Hume, unable to bear his complaints, and destitute of money to assist him, ran instantly to his desk, took out the grant, and presented it to his miserable friend, who received it with exultation, and whose name was soon after, by Hume’s interest, inserted instead of his own. After such a relation it is needless that I should say any more of his genuine philanthropy and generous beneficence.[”] “About this time 1766 or somewhat before this, lord Charlemont once more met his friend David Hume. His lordship mentions him in some detached papers which I  shall here collect, and give to the reader. “Nothing,” says lord Charlemont, “ever showed a mind more truly beneficent than Hume’s whole conduct with regard to Rousseau. That story is too well known to be repeated,

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and exhibits a striking picture of Hume’s heart, whilst it displays the strange and unaccountable vanity and madness of the French, or rather Swiss, moralist. When first they arrived together from France, happening to meet Hume in the park, I wished him joy of his pleasing connexion, and particularly hinted that I was convinced he must be perfectly happy in his new friend, as their sentiments were, I  believed, nearly similar. “Why, no man,” said he, “in that you are mistaken; Rousseau is not what you think him; he has a hankering after the bible, indeed is little better than a christian, in a way of his own.” Excess of vanity was the madness of Rousseau. When he first arrived in London, he and his Armenian dress were followed by crowds, and as long as this species of admiration lasted, he was contented and happy. But in London such sights are only the wonder of the day, and in a very short time he was suffered to walk where he pleased, unattended, unobserved. From that instant his discontent may be dated. But to dwell no longer on matters of public notoriety, I shall only mention one fact, which I can vouch for truth, and which would, of itself, be amply sufficient to convey an adequate idea of the amazing eccentricity of this singular man. When, after having quarrelled with Hume, and all his English friends, Rousseau was bent on making his escape, as he termed it, into France, he stopped at a village between London and Dover, and from thence wrote to general Conway, then secretary of state, informing him that although he had got so far with safety, he was well apprised that the remainder of his route was so beset by his inexorable enemies, that, unprotected, he could not escape. He therefore solemnly claimed the protection of the king, and desired that a party of cavalry might be immediately ordered to escort him to Dover. This letter general Conway showed to me, together with his answer, in which he assured him that the postillions were, altogether, a very sufficient guard throughout every part of the king’s dominions. To return to Hume. In London where he often did me the honour to communicate the manuscripts of his additional essays, before their publication, I have sometimes, in the course of our intimacy, asked him whether he thought that, if his opinions were universally to take place, mankind would not be rendered more unhappy than they now were; and whether he did not suppose that the curb of religion was necessary to human nature? “The objections,” answered he, “are not without weight; but error never can produce good, and truth ought to take place of all considerations.” He never failed in the midst of any controversy, to give its due praise to every thing tolerable that was either said, or written against him. One day that he visited me in London, he came into my room laughing, and apparently well pleased. “What has put you into this good humor Hume?” said I. “Why man,” replied he, “I have just now had the best thing said to me I ever heard. I was complaining in a company, where I spent the

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morning, that I was very ill treated by the world, and that the censures past upon me were hard and unreasonable. That I had written many volumes, throughout the whole of which, there were but few pages that contained any reprehensible matter, and yet, for those few pages, I was abused and torn to pieces.” “You put me in mind,” said an honest fellow in the company whose name I did not know, “of an acquaintance of mine, a notary public, who, having been condemned to be hanged for forgery, lamented the hardship of his case; that, after having written many thousand inoffensive sheets, he should be hanged for one line.” “But an unfortunate disposition to doubt of every thing seemed interwoven with the nature of Hume, and never was there, I am convinced, a more thorough and sincere sceptic. He seemed not to be certain even of his own present existence, and could not therefore be expected to entertain any settled opinion respecting his future state. Once I asked him what he thought of the immortality of the soul; “Why troth, man,” said he, “it is so pretty and so comfortable a theory, that I wish I could be convinced of its truth, but I cannot help doubting.” “Hume’s fashion at Paris when he was there as secretary to lord Hertford, was truly ridiculous; and nothing ever marked in a more striking manner, the whimsical genius of the French. No man, from his manners, was surely less formed for their society, or less likely to meet with their approbation; but that flimsy philosophy which pervades, and deadens even their most licentious novels, was then the folly of the day. Freethinking and English frocks were the fashion, and the Anglomanie was the ton du pais. Lord Holland, though far better calculated than Hume to please in France, was also, an instance of this singular predilection. Being about this time on a visit to Paris, the French concluded that an Englishman of his reputation must be a philosopher, and must be admired. It was customary with him to doze after dinner, and one day at a great entertainment he happened to fall asleep: ‘Le voila!’ says a marquis, pulling his neighbour by the sleeve, ‘Le voila! qui pense!’ But the madness for Hume was far more singular and extravagant. From what has been already said of him, it is apparent that his conversation to strangers, and particularly to Frenchmen, could be little delightful, and still more particularly, one would suppose, to French women. And yet no lady’s toilet was complete without Hume’s attendance. At the opera his broad unmeaning face was usually seen entre deux tolis minois. The ladies in France give the ton, and the ton was deism; a species of philosophy, ill suited to the softer sex, in whose delicate frame weakness is interesting, and timidity a charm. But the women in France were deists, as with us they were charioteers. The tenets of the new philosophy were a portee de tout le monde, and the perusal

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of a wanton novel, such, for instance, as Therese Philosophe, was amply sufficient to render any fine gentleman, or any fine lady, an accomplished, nay, a learned deist. How my friend Hume was able to endure the encounter of these French female Titans I know not. In England, either his philosophic pride, or his conviction that infidelity was ill suited to women, made him perfectly averse from the initiation of ladies into the mysteries of his doctrine. I never saw him so much displeased, or so much disconcerted, as by the petulance of Mrs. Mallet, the conceited wife of Bolingbroke’s editor. This lady, who was not acquainted with Hume, meeting him one night at an assembly, boldly accosted him in these words: “Mr. Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you; we deists ought to know each other.” “Madam,” replied he, “I am no deist. I do not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appellation.” “Nothing ever gave Hume more real vexation, than the strictures made upon his history in the house of lords, by the great lord Chatham. Soon after that speech I met Hume, and ironically wished him joy of the high honour that had been done him. ‘Zounds, man,” said he, with more peevishness than I  had ever seen him express, ‘he’s a Goth! he’s a Vandal!’ Indeed, his history is as dangerous in politics, as his essays are in religion; and it is somewhat extraordinary, that the same man who labours to free the mind from what he supposes religious prejudices, should as zealously endeavour to shackle it with the servile ideas of despotism. But he loved the Stuart family, and his history is, of course, their apology. All his prepossessions, however, could never induce him absolutely to falsify history; and though he endeavours to soften the failings of his favourites, even in their actions, yet it is on the characters which he gives to them, that he principally depends for their vindication; and from hence frequently proceeds, in the course of his history, this singular incongruity, that it is morally impossible that a man, possessed of the character which the historian delineates, should, in certain circumstances, have acted the part which the same historian narrates and assigns to him. But now to return to his philosophical principles, which certainly constitute the discriminative feature of his character. The practice of combating received opinions, had one unhappy, though not unusual, effect on his mind. He grew fond of paradoxes, which his abilities enabled him successfully to support; and his understanding was so far warped and bent by this unfortunate predilection, that he had well nigh lost that best faculty of the mind, the almost intuitive perception of truth. His skeptical turn made him doubt, and consequently dispute, every thing; yet was he a fair and pleasant disputant. He heard with patience, and answered without acrimony. Neither was his conversation at any time offensive, even to his more scrupulous companions; his good sense, and good nature, prevented his saying any thing that

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was likely to shock; and it was not till he was provoked to argument, that, in mixed companies, he entered into his favourite topics. Where indeed, as was the case with me, his regard for any individual rendered him desirous of making a proselyte, his efforts were great, and anxiously incessant.” _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

EWELL’S NOTES In his essay “Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic,” Hume wrote that “If the house of commons … ever dissolve itself, which is not to be expected, we may look for a civil war every election. If it continue itself, we shall suffer all the tyranny of a faction, subdivided into new factions. And, as such a violent government cannot long subsist, we shall, at last, after many convulsions, and civil wars, find repose in absolute monarchy, which it would have been happier for us to have established peaceably from the beginning.” To that statement, Ewell added the following editorial note: *Mr. Hume’s prejudices in favor of a monarchy, appear to have warpt his judgment in this assertion. It is only where elections are very uncommon, like that for example in Poland, that such excesses are committed. The frequency of elections, as in the United States, afford an effectual remedy against the violence apprehended by Mr. Hume. E. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ To Hume’s essay “Of National Characters,” Ewell added the following editorial note: * Notwithstanding the learning and ingenuity exhibited by Mr. Hume in this essay, it appears to me that he has missed the truth. There can be no doubt but that the human mind is so connected with the body, that but few changes can be made in one without affecting the other. It is not to be contended that minds may not, by extraordinary means, be moulded almost to any disposition; for the coward may be made brave, and the brave made to lose self command; the cold inhabitant of the north, by generous diet and drink, diligently given, will become fully as amorous as those stimulated by a southern sun. But by the ordinary operation of regimen and of climate, I think effects will be produced peculiar

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to each essential change, ultimately fully equal to counteracting any operation from accidental and extraordinary causes. A vegetable diet lessens the ferocity of all accustomed to animal; as does a stimulating diet encrease it. —​Obesity begets good nature; and the climate favouring it must be marked by the good nature of the inhabitants, when not counteracted by some powerful cause. The state of country producing the enlargement of the throat called goitre; or indeed any other enlargement of the body cannot fail to produce some peculiar effects upon the mind, although at present not known. The emigrations or changes of residence, to which most men are so much inclined, render it difficult to acquire accurate knowledge of the peculiar effects produced by each climate. But I think it may be laid down as a truth, that any climate which produces peculiar effects upon men’s bodies, will produce changes on their habits. Must it not be owing to the climate, that in Turkey, at the present day, there are nunneries established by sects of the Mahomedans, who devote themselves as fully to the monastic life, as the followers of the Christian religion, in the same country, of former ages? Do not the Christians of Judea circumcise, with the same pious motives, as the Jews? To what but the climate can be ascribed the despotic governments, universal in all hot countries? Indeed I have some belief, that every country remarkably different from another, will have a government and religion as peculiar and natural to it, as any peculiar shape of body or disposition. But many centuries must elapse, and man become infinitely more stationary, before we can pretend to say what religion, morals and manners are peculiar to each climate. E. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ To Hume’s essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” Ewell added the following editorial note: *Mr. Hume’s idea of a perfect Commonwealth, like all that have heretofore been published, is very defective. The authors have entirely lost sight of the most important part of man —​his usefulness in the community. No one will think that the value of a man in society, is in proportion to his wealth: or that numbers constitute wealth; for it is daily seen the rich become the greatest drones, and the most worthless people the most numerous. Although all men will differ, probably, as much about the degree of each other’s utility, as they have about the standard of taste; yet, as certainly as that they have agreed that Homer and Virgil are great poets, they will agree that one man is more serviceable than another: They can make sufficient approaches to the truth, for useful purposes.

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Where is the man who will presume to declare, that the part of the community occupied in those low employments, which keep the mind in total ignorance, can be qualified to judge of the expediency of a political measure? It is a mockery, to call on such to decide: yet reason dictates that, whatever may be the poverty or condition of such men, no laws should be made respecting them, without their having a voice. The plan which presents itself to my mind, as best calculated to insure prosperity to the public; to reduce the influence of the wealthy, who cease to be active and useful; to keep the ignorant in their proper sphere; and to raise the useful to their standing in the government, is the following: Let the country be divided into small districts of population, not exceeding one thousand voters or free men: let each hundred elect one of their number; and the ten so elected to be sworn judges, free from favor or prejudice: Let them meet; and, choosing an eleventh to decide on equal divisions, they are to fix a scale of utility from one to twenty degrees —​the most useful in the community to have twenty votes; the most indifferent but one vote; the intermediate stages to be filled up by the judges, according to their honest belief of the relative value of the exertions of each citizen. There can be no doubt, but that such judges would with all men agree, that the drunken carman was not to have as many votes; or, in other words, was not as useful as an attentive ingenious mechanic: that the mechanic was not as useful as the merchant, who relieved the wants of his country, by converting what could be spared into the superfluities of other countries: They would say, that the professional man of science, who was active in his business, was entitled to more weight than the recluse: In short they would decide, that one sphere was superior to another —​though the lowest be necessary. And although they might err in their decisions, more justice would come from them than from the monstrous system —​giving to the fool and the knave the weight of the useful. After determining the scale every two or three years, of each man’s useful activity, the people would assemble; and, according to their rate, vote for legislators: And if any possible contrivance could secure proper representatives, assuredly this would. According to this plan, the only chance of continuing in office, and in rank, would be through the best possible channel, usefulness to the community. In addition, what a powerful stimulus would it prove, to encrease the valuable

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labours of every citizen? Would the indolent rich see themselves in inferior stations to the industrious poor? The Spartan and the Christian age would speedily appear in perfection: to promote one’s self, by promoting or doing good to the public, being the achme of human greatness. Such a government would for ever be the government of the thinking part of the people; having in its nature the principles of as eternal life, as can be had by human institutions. E. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ To Section X of Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, “Of Miracles,” Ewell added the following editorial note:

NOTE. I repeat the observation made in the preface, that it matters naught, so that we believe in the doctrines of our holy Testament, whether we ascribe the belief to a miracle wrought within us, or to the workings of the Holy Spirit, as among several religious sects, or to any other cause into the admission of which we may be able to reason ourselves. The miracle of conversion into the true faith, does not in my view appear half so extraordinary as many sudden excitements in our systems. Indeed, we could better explain to our minds, an hundred miracles for converting the souls of men to heaven, than for example, the operations for generation; a most wonderful process as all admit. Again; Mr. HUME states, that there is no connexion between cause and effect; we are to look upon every thing as detached; that the connexion is only in our habit of associating the one with the other. Suppose then, a man saw but one event of a kind; that he never saw but one conversion of water into ice; would he be justifiable in doubting his senses; could he deny the occurrence because to him it appeared as a miracle; an extraordinary event, although it may have been in contradiction to all he had formerly seen? If this astonished man ought to be credited about the ice, why should not others who report extraordinary occurrences for supporting doctrines, connected with the fate of the world, be also credited? But those who are not satisfied with this short manner of treating Mr. Hume’s argument, must refer to Dr. Campbell’s answer annexed. E.

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GENIUS AND PASSION

“Genius and Passion,” The Portico, a Repository of Science and Literature, vol. 3, no. 2 (February 1817), pp. 121–​6; “Remarks addressed to the author of the Essay on Genius and Passion, in the last number of the Portico,” The Portico, vol. 3, no. 3 (1 March 1817), pp. 229–​32; “Passion the Soul of Genius —​(in Reply to ‘R.’),” The Portico, vol. 3, no. 4 (1 April 1817), pp. 297–​303; “Reply to the Essay, entitled ‘Genius, the soul of Passion.’ Addressed to ‘S.’,” The Portico, vol. 3, no. 5 (May 1817), pp. 373–​6. “S.N.” and “R.” The Portico was founded in Baltimore in 1816 and edited by Tobias Watkins (1780–​1855) and Stephen Simpson (1789–​1854). It was published by Neale Wills & Cole and later by E.J. Coale. Contributors to the Portico were closely affiliated with a literary club in Baltimore, the Delphian Club, and included John Neal (1793–​1876), John Pierpont (1785–​1866), and H.M. Brackenridge (1786–​1871). The exchange of letters between the unidentified “S.N.” and “R.” reprinted below show Hume’s writings, and especially his essay “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” to be at the center of a controversey over the relationship between genius and passion. On The Portico see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, N.J., 1975), p. 220; Marshall W. Fishwick, “The Portico and Literary Nationalism After the War of 1812,” William and Mary Quarterly, series 3, vol. 8 (1951), pp. 238–​45; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 293–​6; John Earl Uhler, “The Delphian Club. A Contribution to the Literary History of Baltimore in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Maryland Historical Magazine, vol. 20 (1925), pp. 305–​46. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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Genius and Passion. ———​“Glory, the reward That sole excites to high attempts, the flame Of most erected spirits, most temper’d pure Ethereal, who all pleasures else despise, All pleasures, and all gain esteem as dross, And dignities and powers all but the highest?”

To dispute the immemorial practice of the world on any subject, is always dangerous; and any attempt to explode confirmed opinions, is apt to procure us the fate of martyrdom, without gaining for us the glory of immortality. Mankind are not only bigotted in religion; but morals, politicks, and even physick, have their disciples, their devotees, and their persecutors. In modern systems of education, the inveterate force of misguided zeal, has never been exceeded by the most furious estuation of a fanatical spirit; and the suggestions of wisdom, respecting the discipline and advancement of youthful intellect, have been treated with alternate ridicule and resentment, and denounced as insidious attempts to subvert the reign of virtue, because unfortunately habited in the garb of a philosophy, which by the epithet of modern, has been made a dreadful phantom to the fears, instead of an inspiring idol, to the reason of mankind. If rightly appreciated, and rationally conceived, little, perhaps nothing, detrimental to human happiness, can be discovered in the systems of philosophy rashly proscribed, as inimical to virtue. But it is the fate of genius to create systems above common apprehension; and to revolve thoughts, or indulge in speculations, too sublime, noble, or refined, for general reception in their original or native form, free from that perversion, and deformity, with which ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, are ever big. Even Voltaire, the most noxious of heretical philosophers, is allowed, by the most refined bigot of the present age, Chateaubriand, to have advanced the cause of morals and felicity. The enemies of Hume are rapidly receding from their hostile position; and begin to confess, that he was right, through [sic] the sphere of his reflection and speculations, was too elevated for common mortals. Yet the truths he unfolds cannot be confuted by those who would believe them, had they courage to repose in their consequences. There are few daring enough to maintain the separate truths, and individual interests of science and religion; as if the petticoat of the monk and priest must necessarily induce correspondent effeminacy of reason, and lay the intellect prostrate at the tremulous command of dread and superstition. If, however, there existed no hypocrites, we should

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probably find few, if any foes to the divine illumination of philosophy; but as long as men desire to wear an appearance of purity they never can attain, so long must reason suffer from ignorance, and truth from affectation; so long too, must education be perverted; the bold current of the understanding obstructed, and the warm effusions of the heart stifled and chilled by dissembling circumspection. Whoever has observed the characteristicks of genius, or inquired into, and mediated upon the properties that constitute that grandeur of erected spirits, must bow to the conviction, that passion, as it expresses every modification of rapid and tumultuous feeling, chiefly conduces to the existence of this exalted endowment. The misguided zeal of unenlightened piety, insists on the extinguishment of all the passions; and this attempt, comprised in every method of prevailing instruction, invariably induces to stifle and chill them, in place of directing their force to a beneficial purpose. By the prevailing method their creative and inspiring warmth is removed; and the soul is left a damp and dreary void, with no power to generate aught, except clouds and vapours, spleen, prudence, and a debasing superstition; like the caverns of the forest, which denied the renovating beams of the sun, continue for ages, the birth place of reptiles, and the resort for beasts of prey. Lest the vague meaning of general expressions, however, should lead to a wrong conception of my views, I shall descend to a more particular detail. The education of man commences from his infancy. Without innovating on the principles, or altering the phraseology of morals, pains should early be taken to avoid those invectives against the passions, and those lessons to subdue them, which at present lead to stupify and benumb the noblest faculties. Commands and exhortations to make a proper application of the passions, should be substituted for the fashionable cant; and what objects are proper, and improper for their excitement and exercise, should be discriminated and enforced. It may, perhaps be alleged, that this in effect takes place under the prevailing system; as passion cannot be wholly extinguished. Yet if any good effect results from the established practice, it is left to chance and accident, and not the certain consequence of predestined means. To make that certain, which was before casual, is one of the noblest aims in philosophy; but the system here recommended is fraught with still superiour benefits. It strikes at the vitals of hypocrisy, and dissimulation, vices always dangerous and mean; it cherishes a daring spirit of courage and enterprise; and hinders that tame, creeping, frigid circumspection, which blasts the noble purposes of a predominant intellect. But how, exclaims the advocate of the schools and the pulpit, shall man be restrained from the commission of crimes, when thus encouraged in his passions? I answer, he is only encouraged in the rational application of them; which implies an open discouragement of all vice, and the active influence of the moral

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and religious principles anciently established. His motives to happiness are rather enhanced than diminished by their fervency; he is more susceptible of pleasure, and more alive to pain; the flame of his imagination burns brighter, the conceptions of his mind swell with a bolder energy, and flow with a more rapid motion; he feels inspired by nature, and mounts with the enthusiasm of one, who disdains to grovel amidst the obscurity and gloom of contented mediocrity. Such a method is naturally adapted to form a soul of fire, and to create a genius deaf to the admonitions of prudence and prescription. It must be allowed, therefore, that there is the same liability to moral aberration, in this practice, as in that now current, but not more. It is the privilege of passion to be free, to be daring; and whether curbed or cherished, its impetuousity will sometimes lead to precipitate deviation. The permanent advantage, however, flowing from this method, is the entire concentration of the force of the passions, in the cause of intellect. It is said Plato was endued by nature, with the most vehement passions; but in place of stifling them, he changed their direction, and even employed their rational vigour in vanquishing their pernicious effects. Both history and observation inform us, that genius is always a concomitant of the most vehement passions; and philosophy by her inquiries into the mysterious constitution of the human understanding, confirms its truth. Yet it need not be concealed, or palliated, that those geniuses have generally been conspicuous for various moral obliquities. The question, thus impartially opened, resolves itself into the subsequent propositions; and the interests of society, of learning, and of taste, must decide which expediency would adopt, and reason sanction. Shall we encourage the proper direction of the passions, and by that means multiply genius a hundred, or a thousand fold, with the certainty of some trivial sins attending its blessings; —​or shall we deaden the sublimest intellects, by chilling all their glowing and violent emotions, for the probable benefit of apparent purity, and the certain evil of dissimulation and hypocrisy? No man will withhold his approbation to the first proposition, who remembers the resplendent glories emitted by ancient genius, and the sudden oblivion of the moral turpitude, which they were guilt of, in their lives and actions. Who feels the evil consequences of, or recollects with displeasure, the amours of Alcibiades, Æschylus, Euripides, Menander, or Pericles; or any of the slight sins that famous men have secretly or openly indulged in? The evils, if any evil ever resulted from them, were confined to a day, or a week, only at the place where they were committed; but the splendour of their genius, and the beneficial effects of their writings have spread through every age, and every nation, exciting emulation, even in dulness, kindling sensibility into rapture, and inspiring sagacity, with the ambition of excellence, and the honours of immortality.

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“Of fate, and chance, and change in human life, High actions and high passions best describing.” —​ Milton.

The amorous disposition of Milton; his furious zeal, sullen discontent, and rebellious plots, all found an early grave, in the everlasting monument of his fame, erected by his passions and his genius. What are the crimes of Voltaire and Rousseau, of lord Bacon and Chatterton, compared to their productions, and their animating influence on science and intellect? He who can advocate dulness for moral deficiencies such as these, is surely entitled to no praise for his wisdom, or veneration for his virtue! That neither ignorance nor affected sanctity may find an excuse for invective in the ambiguity of the preceding observations, I here explicitly deny all encouragement to crime, or approbation of licentiousness. The accidental deviations of the passions, only, do I represent as unimportant, when compared with the stupendous performances of the same mind. But confirmed depravity, or premeditated licentiousness, is totally incompatible with the grandeur of genius, and the advancement of art or science. In the disgrace and infamy of dulness mingled with vice, crime must ever have a check and corrective in the bosom of ambition and of genius, panting for distinction; for no man abandoned to vice can become illustrious for intellect, and industry, fancy and invention, science or arts. In this theory, I neither assume the principle of an equality of passion, nor of intellect in mankind; for in whatever portions either is dispensed to different individuals, the same consequences will attend a rational culture of the passions; for history and daily experience evince that of those who have become eminent for any superiour skill in art, or extraordinary attainments in science and erudition; the far greater number have been endowed with vehement and commanding passions, that obviously led them to the fame and honours they acquired. At present I shall conclude with this remark, that if those impassioned minds now paralysed by the lessons of prudence, and the terrours of punishment, and by consequence condemned to everlasting mediocrity, had been allowed to mature that generous glow of soul, which illjudged zeal subdued, we should have been richer in genius, and more advanced in letters; more profound in science, and more refined in taste. S. N. NOTE. —​We may remark that none of the passions are in themselves vicious, or detrimental; their excess or perversion, only, being pernicious. Thus it is difficult to conceive how the morals can be corrupted, by cherishing the passions; or the passions rendered sinful by directing them to excellence in any art or profession.

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A man devoid of any one of the passions, wants a sense; and is as intellectually imperfect as he would be corporeally deformed by the loss of an ear, an arm, or a leg; or any body member or function. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Remarks addressed to the author of the Essay on Genius and Passion, in the last number of the Portico. “Passion,” you say, “chiefly conduces to the existence” of Genius; and Passion you have admirably defined, to be “every modification of rapid and tumultuous feeling.” If this be the character of Passion, and if Passion be productive of such magnificent effects as we all ascribe to Genius, then, every effort that succeeds in directing it, must at the same time so far succeed in destroying its distinguishing properties of rapidity and tumult, and must necessarily produce a corresponding effect on their consequences. Every attempt to direct its impetuosity through any particular channel, to any particular purpose, is an effort to confine it; and so far as it succeeds must be productive of the very evils, which you charge the common system of education with effecting. I admit that tumult is but another name for passion. It is a cataract, and it loses the only properties that distinguish it from sluggish waters, the very moment that it ceases to toss its foam to the heavens in its own way. You can never make a mill stream of such a power, or even a canal without destroying its native character. The essence of Passion is its freedom:  it must have no master, or it ceases to produce its phenomena. If it can be beneficial to obtain the mastery over it that you recommend, it must be still more so, to subjugate it entirely, to render it completely obedient, as attempted by the common system of education, of which you complain. If unfettered Passion, or Genius, no matter which, for you maintain that they are inseparable  —​will always in its wildest moments, be productive of more benefits than injuries to science and philosophy, it must be madness to shackle them at all  —​for every opposition to their spirit, and every attempt to control them so far as it is successful, will go just so far in chilling the pulse of the soul —​smothering the aspirings of their free spirit, and exciting “dissimulation and hypocrisy.”

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What! you may ask “shall Passion be left completely unrestrained?”  —​ Certainly, I reply, if Passion and Genius are twin flames from the same censer, encourage their ascent to the skies —​if they are more dangerous, will they not give the more light? —​If Passion be the fountain that supplies to Genus all that ungovernable tide to which you attribute such fertilizing properties —​you must encourage its tumultuous overflow. But, I would ask you seriously, is it your deliberate opinion, notwithstanding all that “history” and “observation” may say on the subject, that the Passions and Genius of a man are always in proportion to each other? History and observation have hallowed innumerable errours that we are hourly detecting, as we continue to think for ourselves. Do you not know men who are passionate —​who have uncontrollable passions, and yet, no Genius; who have not even uncommon sensibility? Petulance is the offspring of the passions, and yet, I believe, that just in proportion to a man’s petulance is his want of all that distinguishes Genius. Would you call Newton a Genius? No, if he had been a Genius, he would have gone crazy or hanged himself, when the fruit of so much labour was destroyed by a favourite puppy in the manner that is related. If he had Genius, where was his Passion then? Animals have Passions as strong as men —​have they Genius? Children that are very passionate, frequently become the most orderly members of society  —​does their Genius disappear with their Passions? You may reply, that they have learned to direct their Passions; but if their Passions do not show themselves, how are you certain that they are not vanquished or utterly destroyed? For my own part I do know that passion may not only be increased at pleasure, but that it is the very creation of the will. Who cannot assume passion? —​And who can assume genius? When I was a boy, I learned that the character of having a bad temper, or what is the same thing, of being implacable, was the best protection in the world, and, therefore, I feigned violent rage whenever I found it convenient; what was then affectation, is now habit; I was passionate from policy then, and now I am from character. I do not fear that I shall be disbelieved; for every man will find some testimony to the truth of the remark in his own experience. But who would not laugh at me if I should pretend that genius was the creation of the will? It will be but fair for me to expose myself at the same time that I assail you, and, therefore, I will declare that the passions should be rendered entirely and completely subservient to the judgment, not because they have a necessary connexion with Genius, any more than fevers, madness, peculiar proportion of

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form, or colour of hair; but because they always do more injury than benefit to society. And I will venture further, and say that even Genius is as far removed from utility, as Poetry is from Mathematicks. That, as for strong passions, or great genius being an advantage to vigorous literature, or useful science; it is so problematical that the very supposition is what I should call poetry, for I believe it to be a fact that most writers appear before the publick as at a masquerade, and generally choose a character the most opposite to their own. That those who strut most in the terrours of passion before the publick, are generally the most quiet and inoffensive behind the scenes. That all attempts to control or direct Genius are merely idle and useless; it is a flame that continually mounts to the Heavens  —​no efforts of man can ever extinguish or suppress it  —​it never dies —​but may be hunted till it escapes —​ and when a great Genius behaves like a common man, and becomes useful, depend upon it, he has not learned to direct his powers in any new channels; he has only driven them abroad. I have only one or two remarks to add, respecting the manner in which you have spoken of Voltaire and Hume; whatever may have been your opinion it was not generous or fair to say that their enemies were so, because their capacities were more limited —​there [sic] sphere of observation less —​or because they were hypocrites, and dared not avow their real sentiments; you have unnecessarily expressed an opinion on subjects that are always apt to excite asperity, and subjects that might have been avoided without weakening your arguments. Men who may think very differently from Mr. Hume on the most important of all subjects, are not necessarily fools, or hypocrites. They may be as willing as yourself to admit all the greatness of any such sneering infidels, without seeing the necessity of your unqualified approbation, in such an argument as yours. R. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Passion the Soul of Genius —​ (in Reply to “R.”) NOTHING is so inimical to philosophical disquisition, as the brevity which a miscellaneous magazine, constrains you to observe, in your expressions, arguments and allusions. As far, however, as this brevity will admit, I shall attempt, not to vindicate my opinions, but to remove misconceptions, explain what is ambiguous, and elucidate what may appear obscure, to your correspondent

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“R;” who, in your last number, endeavoured to controvert, what I shall now also endeavour to confirm. It is remarked by Dr. Reid, that the ambiguity of the term Passion gave birth to the controversy between the ancient Stoicks, and Peripateticks; and the differences even between modern philosophers, as to the nature of Passion, have been the chief cause of the prevalent outcry against Mr. Hume’s system. According to the latter author, every principle of action in the human mind, is properly termed a Passion; and hence his inference, so frightful to the timid and the weak, that we should be governed by our passions. Without going at present into this discussion, I  shall remark only, that the same ambiguity has exposed me to misrepresentation, in my first paper; as appears, by this very unphilosophical question of “R.” —​“Do you not know men who are passionate, who have uncontrollable passions, and yet, no genius; who have not even uncommon sensibility?” I am extremely indebted to the liberality of “R,” for supposing me guilty of a rank absurdity, where the passage was susceptible of a better interpretation. Do you seriously suppose, sir, (to imitate your Socratick method,) that I am so childish a theorist, as this implies? There are, perhaps, men, within the circle of your acquaintance, who are called fanciful; yet you would not, surely, for that reason, pronounce them poets? Yet this is a fair parallel to your argument and you are willing to think me guilty of a folly, that you would yourself blush to commit. By a passionate man, I  understand one, who is subject to violent bursts of anger, upon trifling occasions, or from improper objects. The adjectives, amorous, fearful, fretful, &c. likewise give me a conception of man, in whom one of those passions is supposed to predominate. When I use the word passion, in a general sense, the natural meaning cannot be mistaken, but by design; it signifies all those sensations, both of pleasure, and of pain, which not being calm, are properly styled rapid and tumultuous; and are not, even in general, accompanied by excessive gesture, or violent action. Of the truth of this, numberless examples might be cited. Every philosophical discourse upon the nature of the Human Mind, that touches upon the passions, speaks of them generally, and abstractedly. I believe Passion to be the very Soul of Genius; but I should shrink from the folly of maintaining, that an amorous, an angry, or a proud or a vain man, was necessarily a Genius. It is universally admitted, that the Imagination holds a very close relation to every kind of Genius. It is the Imagination that selects, combines, and in a manner creates, the most pleasing and sublime images. The Imagination too, excites the most violent passions, and the most active and beneficent ones, which lead immediately to excellence, grandeur and renown. But without the Passions,

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the Imagination would be inefficient, and incapable of the least creation: hence I conclude, they are not only favourable, but essential to Genius. A conclusive attestation of this opinion, is to be found in an old-​fashioned writer, by no means favourable to Mr. Hume, or his metaphysical friends. “Every Passion,” observes Dr. Reid, “naturally draws our attention to its object, and interests us in it. The mind of man is naturally desultory, and when it has no interesting object in view, roves from one to another, without fixing its attention upon any one. A transient and careless glance is all that we bestow upon objects, in which we take no concern. It requires a strong degree of curiosity, or some more important passion, to give us that interest in an object which is necessary to our giving attention to it.” “Take away the Passions, and it is not easy to say, how great a part of mankind would resemble those frivolous mortals, who never had a thought that engaged them in good earnest,” &c. &c. Essay 3. ch. vi. After these extracts, it is easy to suggest all the collateral facts, which confirm our position. The passion of fame is consequently conspicuous, in the grand achievements of Genius. Vanity, envy, fear, gain, and many other passions, are also entitled to the gratitude of mankind, for driving them to excellence. I therefore answer one of the questions of “R,” in the affirmative. Newton was a Genius, but his Passions made him such. An objection may perhaps be started to this position, on the ground of Passion being the propelling force, and not the intrinsick quality that constitutes Genius. I answer, that I know of no Genius, unless it is manifested in some creation, production, or discourse; and as the latter cannot be attained with the moving power, Passion, so Passion is the soul of Genius; and the mind is the object that it animates. Much more, however, may still be said, upon this interesting subject. There is a delicacy of Passion, as well as of Taste, which Mr. Hume has admirably painted; this refines and polishes Genius, to the utmost point of beauty, and of brilliance; and augments a thousand fold, the vivid impression of every object. The same philosopher observes, that “the delicacy of Taste has the same effect as delicacy of Passion; it enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and misery, and makes us sensible to pains, as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind.” The boisterous passions of the vulgar, have no part in this intellectual inquiry. It is the finer emotions of the Soul, to which we must look for this beneficent effect; to those melting and vivid feelings, which fire the fancy, swell the heart, and invigorate the understanding; which exalt us to higher conceptions, and beget in us, the most liberal sentiments, and extensive views, so subversive of prejudice, and conducive to reason. —​This is commonly termed Sensibility; and the succeeding quotation from Dugald Stewart, will evince whether my position

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is erroneous: “What we commonly call sensibility,” says he, “depends, in a great measure, on the power of Imagination. Point out to two men any object of distress; a man, for example, reduced by misfortune, from easy circumstances to indigence. The one feels merely in proportion to what he perceives by his senses. The other follows in Imagination, the unfortunate man to his dwelling, and partakes with him and his family, in their domestick distress. He listens to their conversation, while they recal to remembrance the flattering prospects, which they once indulged; the circle of friends they were forced to leave; the liberal plans of education which were begun, and interrupted; and pictures out to himself the various resources which delicacy and pride suggest, to conceal poverty from the world,” &c. “It will be said, he continues, that it was his sensibility which originally roused his imagination; and the observation is undoubtedly true; but it is equally evident on the other hand, that the warmth of his imagination increases, and prolongs his sensibility.” Thus it appears undeniable, that the Passions inspire the Imagination; while the latter kindles, and ministers to the Passions; whence the natural and unavoidable conclusion, that Passion is the Soul of Genius. The authority of great names, and still more, of superiour intellectual powers on a metaphysical subject, where the fear of tediousness precludes the requisite detail of argument, seems preferable to bold assertions, unsubstantiated by the shadow of a reason. If more names were necessary to support me in the position I have assumed, more however could readily be cited; but I shall content myself with a general reference to Gerard’s Essay on Genius, the writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds; Helvetias’s L’Esprit; and I could name others, but it is needless. Having attempted to sustain my opinions in their original strength, I shall now bestow a few observations upon your numerous queries. And first. —​I do believe that the genius and passions of a man are always in proportion to each other. But it is certain, that a man may possess violent passions, and not a spark of genius. He may want imagination; his mind may want culture; his faculty may be defective, and his passions perfect. You exclaim, a palpable inconsistency. I am sorry your own precipitancy has led us into a needless discussion, for unless I err grossly, you have altogether misconceived my position. I never asserted, that all men who were endued with passion, were also gifted with a proportionate genius. This would have rendered my aim preposterous; which was to multiply genius; but where would be the reason of this, if all men possessed it, as they do passion? Yet I am totally at a loss to comprehend you in any other sense. I will not affirm, but undertake to show, that the history of Literature and Politicks fully illustrates and confirms the principles I have promulgated: nor do

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I remember a solitary instance in opposition to the fact. As for my observation, this is still more strongly in my favour. I shall wave all reply to your assertion, after what has been said, that “passion and genius have no necessary connexion.” To a man who denies all utility to genius, what shall I  reply? That you are willing to be jocose, or wish to make our readers gape with wonder, at an unexpected paradox. If you jest, I  can smile; if you are serious, you can guess the cause of my silence. You say, you can assume a passion, and ask, who cannot? Permit me to say, that no man can assume a passion; but all may assume the appearance of it: when you feel it, it is not assumed; if you do not feel it, you have only the trappings and the pomp of Passion. I shall now sir, attempt to return those thrusts, which you have been so ready to direct against me at random. Passion you say, may be increased at pleasure. If you will impart to me the mysterious art, that this assertion implies, I shall think myself bound in everlasting gratitude for so blest a power. The agreeable Passions which constitute happiness, I have long panted to enjoy; and if they are “the very creation of the will,” I shall deem it no slight favour to know how to set my will in motion. When you disclose this, the art of happiness will be complete, and my misery at an end! “Who, you ask, can assume Genius?” This is an invidious question. In my apprehension, Sir, any pretender to letters may assume it; but none can attain it; it is the gift of heaven; and it is only to preserve it from wanton ruin and desolation, that I  advocate a system, which may cherish the generous ardour of the soul, in the event of that celestial spark having been originally bestowed; and to hinder it from being quenched, in the utter darkness of prudence, or superstition. I had nearly forgot, Sir, to return you one of your own questions, with the alteration of a word. “Who would not laugh at me, if I  should pretend that Passion was the creation of the will?” Petulence, Sir, I freely confess, attends some passions; nor do I think Petulence constitutes Genius. My opinion of Voltaire and Hume is unchangeable. Persecution is the dagger of bigotry and prejudice, that would exterminate all opposition to untenable opinions. In a free country, Sir, I dare to think that, which Slaves are allowed under tyrants. Of illiberal denunciations, I hope not to be guilty; nor do I think the vindication of genuine philosophy a mark of uncharitableness, or esteem it as a symptom of ignorance. You have rashly ventured, Sir, to propatate a fiction,

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in saying, I  pronounced the dissenters from Mr. Hume, either fools, or hypocrites. The Philosophy of that brilliant man, has taught me a different system; and though you have grossly misrepresented my meaning, in this, and some other more trivial instances; yet I feel not the slightest asperity towards you, or any literary opponent chance may procure me. My convictions though strong, never fire me with the zeal of proselytism, or the resentments of bigotry. Our opinions will harmonize on few subjects. You observe, that most authors appear before the publick in a mask; and that they assume a character the most remote from their real one. To reason on this point is difficult; at least to reason with complete effect. Yet as I  never can believe that men can constantly assume, preserve, and create whatever passions they please; so must I  ever reject the preposterous supposition of such a masquerade. The greatest retrospection that I am capable of, affords no instance of this literary disguise. Among the Greeks, the Romans, the Assyrians; among the Italians, the French, the English, the Spaniards, the Germans, and even the Americans, I can remember no example to the purpose, in war, politicks, poetry, or any branch of science, or letters. All authors preach a moral purity which they fail to practise; but I presume you cannot allude to so natural and universal a discrepance between character and composition; the inevitable result of original frailty. “All attempts to control or direct Genus,” you hold to be “idle and useless.” You have here promulgated an opinion, that might prove dangerous, did not experience denounce it as a fallacy. The career of Genius proves its docility; and its history shows, that its peculiar quality, is the readiness with which it submits to be both directed and controlled. Not by prejudice, superstition, custom, threats, or authority; but to be controlled by reason, judgment, and propriety; and to be directed by nature, taste, sensibility, and ambition; and I may even add, by Passion. You say “it mounts to the heavens.” There let it always sparkle and wanton, in light ineffable, not dimmed by earthly vision; or clogged by prejudices, consecrated by custom. But you also affirm, it cannot “be extinguished;” yet it may “escape.” I cannot affect sagacity to perceive the difference here laid down. If it escapes, I must conceive it to be annihilated; unless you have allusion to that escape of the soul, through the nostrils, which Fielding so wittily describes in his journey from this World to the next. It is a remark of Socrates, that education can never bestow those qualities, which nature has denied. It is a principle of Lord Verulam, that wrong systems of instruction stifle and pervert the noblest faculties, that can adorn the human mind. I  never affirmed, that Genius could be created by education; but I  still

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insist, and I hope have proved to the conviction of your readers, that a liberal system of instruction, which allows the passions a generous play, will develope genius, that might otherwise lie obscured, and lead to acquisitions, which may prove an everlasting benefit to mankind. I forbear to retort upon your expression of “Sneering Infidels.” It is the common characteristick of errour, to blacken an adversary by abuse, or distort his meaning, by unfair citations; to revile his cause, before his principles are proved eroneous; and appeal to the fears of the publick, when nothing dangerous has been promulgated by him. With this remark I shall content myself; and at the same time, throw you my pledge, to substantiate by dispassionate argument, whatever I may have asserted in this, or any anteriour essay. S. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Reply to the Essay, entitled “Genius, the soul of Passion.” Addressed to “S.” I should never have appeared in the Portico with my remarks upon your essay on Genius and Passion, but for the manner in which you spoke of Hume: with Voltaire, I have nothing to do; you said no more of him than any man may say with propriety. A great governing maxim with me is, that every man’s opinion should be respected, while it appears to be sincere; and we are bound to believe it sincere, until the contrary be proved. I have always held too, that prejudices are not, of necessity, legitimate subjects of assault. I admit that prejudice is errour, yet, there are errours so innocent as to deserve respect, while they are so obstinate, as to defy conviction. Of this class are many respecting Mr. Hume. It is the character of the human mind to submit its judgment to wit and ridicule, while it can resist reason and argument forever. The majority of mankind from their pursuits and habits, can never be interested or awakened by the sublime speculations of philosophy; their leisure and education, will not permit them to examine its evidences, or its arguments: but every man can feel ridicule. They cannot be benefited by the truths of such philosophy, and they may be injured by its falsehoods. It is therefore better, for it is safer, that the majority of mankind, should retain their very prejudices against the general character of such philosophy. In my reply, I complained of your approbation being unnecessary and unqualified. —​If your opinions had been assailed —​if you had been called upon as a

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man to declare them: —​if they had been necessary to your argument, —​or even if they had not been strictly necessary, and you had qualified them as far as you might conscientiouly [sic] —​I should have been the last to condemn you; for I am more than an admirer of Mr. Hume myself. These are your words: “The enemies of Hume are rapidly receding from their hostile position, and, begin to confess, that he was right, though the sphere of his reflection and speculations was too elevated for common mortals.” —​Now there is much truth in that remark, but the continuation is too general, and I think rather uncharitable: you say: “Yet the truths he unfolds, cannot be confuted by those who would believe them, if they had courage to repose in their consequences,” and again “If there existed no hypocrites, we should probably find few, if any foes to the divine illumination of philosophy. —​In my reply, I chose to take your meaning rather than your words —​and I still think that there is a fair inference from what I have quoted —​that those who think differently from Mr. Hume, and yourself of course, upon his divine philosophy —​are considered by you as hypocrites and I did say “fools,” but I should have said, “common mortals” —​ and cowards. —​and this you have dispassionately called a “fiction” a gross misrepresentation. —​The reader must judge between us. I admit that your remarks upon Hume, seemed but a secondary object of consideration with me, and these were my reasons. —​Of all subjects in the world, religion is that which ought to be approached with the most reverence. —​I do not say this because others say it, or because I would appear to be religious —​ for, I am not: but because so little is to be gained, and so much to be lost, by altercation. No two men every did, or ever will think precisely alike on any of its doctrines; every man is responsible to his God alone, for his opinions, and his prejudices. When you have given an argument to an adversary, to which he cannot reply, he is generally further than ever from adopting your side of the question; for, generally, he gets angry. Another remark I have made, which I think peculiar to religion and politicks; a man aims only to establish his own arguments, rather than to refute those of his adversary: both are subjects that I would carefully avoid, but yet, if necessary, I would avow my opinions on both, in the face of heaven and earth. By approving, in general terms, any individual who has rendered himself obnoxious to the majority of mankind upon either, you touch a fibre that is felt in every heart at the same moment; all their habits of thinking, resent the indignity, if that touch be careless and unprovoked: their very prejudices are the creatures of habit, and they cannot be discomposed with impunity; thus the passions, the prejudices, the feelings are all connected by that chain, and they all kindle in its vibration.

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Hume was a Deist: almost every man in society knows more of him in that character, than in any other:  it follows, that when an advocate steps forth for Mr. Hume, unless he specifies how far he is so, he appears to the most of society as an advocate for Deism —​ this is a fair statement of the case. The publick opinion should be respected: what one man calls truth, another calls prejudice; he who carelessly and needlessly assaults any general doctrine, directly or indirectly, gives to its supporters the most unequivocal proof of contempt. You touched a general doctrine indirectly, but with a carelessness, that proved your indifference to the feelings of the publick: I called upon you more to defend yourself than your doctrines. So much for my principal motive; it was rendered subordinate for the reasons I have stated. In reading your essay I found it full of inconsistencies, and I attempted to prove that your own means would destroy your own purpose:  how far I  succeeded must be determined by others who have read us both. I was not surprised at finding such inconsistencies:  such subjects are always fruitful in them, and they arise from the precipitation with which general laws are established. Either passion is what the generality of mankind mean, when they say such a person is passionate, or is not. If it is, I take your own words to prove that genius and passion are not necessarily inhabitants of the same mind. If it is not, but some other quality resembling grandeur of thought, perseverance, application, or judgment, you will find no opposition in declaring, that such qualities produce the very consequences which you attribute to passion. You have produced abundance of authorities; I shall offer only one, one reason is, because I recollect no more at present, and another, that if I did, I should not use them, for great men commit the greatest errours. The majority of writers had rather go wrong alone, than follow a leader who is right. Gibbon says of Justinian II.  his “passions were strong; his understanding was feeble.” You may say to this, understanding is not genius; if you should, it would strengthen my former position, that Genius has nothing to do with usefulness. In my remarks, I declared that one may assume Passion: you say no, but that one may assume the “appearance of passion.” You will not deny, that affectation may become habit; that habit may be mistaken for nature; that what was once but an appearance from indulgence and repetition, may become real. Do we not see how contagious is the example of an irritable, or a mild man? I declared that Passion (i e what the world calls Passion, passionate manners) was the very creation of the will. Now I demand if it be as practicable to acquire the character of a Genius, as of a passionate man? Or grant that it is all appearance only; is it as easy to appear to have Genius as Passion?

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Indeed you have puzzled me by the apparent contradiction of some of your explanations. First you say, “a man may possess violent Passions and not a spark of Genius” —​we certainly agree there: and you give the following philosophical reasons, “he may want imagination, his mind may want culture, his faculty may be defective, and his Passions perfect.” You accuse me of misconcieving [sic] you; I fear I shall continue to do so, let me take either side of your argument, for I cannot reconcile the preceding admission with this declaration of yours, “I do believe that the Genius and Passions of a man, are always in proportion to each other.” In the former, you admit that Passion may exist, not only without Genius, but without imagination: and further, that Genius is produced by education; for you assign the want of “culture” as a reason, that a man of violent Passions may not have a spark of Genius. Passion is natural then, but Genius is not! You cannot deny the latter part of this proposition, it is drawn from your own words, and if you deny the former, you admit what I contend for, that Passion may be created by ourselves; but I have done: the greatest men who touch such subjects, are soonest bewildered. R.

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FOR AND AGAINST LUXURY

“FOR THE NATIONAL REGISTER. Memorandums for an Essay against Luxury [and] Extract from an Essay ‘On Refinement in the Arts.’  —​By one David Hume,” The National Register, A Weekly Paper: Containing a Series of Important Public Documents, and Proceedings of Congress, vol. 4 (2 August 1817), pp. 66–​7. Anonymous The National Register was published in Washington by Joel K. Mead in ten volumes from March 1816 to October 1820. Its contents are well-​described by the Register’s subtitle: a weekly paper, containing a series of the important public documents, and the proceedings of Congress; statistical tables, reports and essays, original and selected, upon agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and finance; science, literature and the arts; and biographical sketches; with summary statements of the current news and political events; making two volumes yearly. In the essay reprinted in full below an anonymous author gives a humorous defense of Hume’s views on luxury as found in his essay “Of Refinement in the Arts.” On the National Register see API, p. 152. For the wider context to which this debate on “luxury” belongs, see James Moore, “Hume’s Political Science and the Classical Republican Tradition,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. 10 (1977), pp. 809–​39. Hume’s essay was entitled “Of Luxury” from 1752 through 1758; it was renamed “Of Refinement in the Arts” in the Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects of 1760. For a modern reprinting of the entire essay, see Essays, pp. 268–​80. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Memorandums for an Essay against Luxury. 1st Proposition.  —​Man was born without clothing:  cite Adam and Eve in proof. Contrary to nature to wear small-​clothes: therefore luxurious. Weavers,

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tailors, and seamstresses, pernicious in society, and tend to overthrow the republic. No occasion for sole-​leather: the skin of the feet in men hardens by exposure, which renders shoes wholly unnecessary. Cookery a vile art, and not required by mankind in this probationary state. Men may subsist upon raw rattle-​snakes —​ vide Wilkinson’s memoirs. Nonsense to build houses: it renders people effeminate. Blankets a superfluity in winter: cold only ideal; but as it operates chiefly upon the imagination, and is a kind of a stimulant, it is a prodigious corroborant of genius; which is a sufficient reason for sleeping in the open air in winter. Safety of the nation depends upon our forbearing to eat “kidney fat”  —​vide Cicero and Juvenal, and all the ancient orators and poets, who are much better authority than the historians, because the former never exaggerate or amplify. Print the Greek and Roman classics by way of illustration, and as an appendix to this essay. Refer to Ephraim Jenkinson and the Cosmogony; —​Berosus, Ocellus Lucanus, &c. “The pigs they sleep,” &c. &c. 2d Proposition. —​If clothing and houses be necessary, they are only necessary in a certain degree. Quote the English and the French, who are the most extravagant persons in the world in dress, and who, as nations, have been both blotted from the face of the earth on that account. —​Calmuc Tartars live in tents; a very wise people. The Athenians a silly people, because, their country being full of fine marble, they carried on a trade with foreign nations in statues. The art of painting flourishes best: among those who are strangers to luxury. The Swiss very frugal and quite famous for the encouragement of the fine arts. Indian mode of life the true one. No luxury, and, consequently, no vice among them —​vide Brackenridge’s Sketches of Louisiana. Society altogether artificial: man not gregarious. —​Industry leads to luxury: labor should be restrained within due bounds. Tipling houses very good: they keep laborers from work, and prevent their getting too rich. To walk about, and follow the first impulses of nature, the only genuine philosophy. Skirts to coats entirely needless. Ridiculous to wear a jacket and a coat too. Manufactures the ruin of any country. David Hume an idiot. Time —​“A light heart, and a thin pair of——​, will go through the world, my brave boys.” PHILO-​LUCILIUS

Extract from an Essay “On Refinement in the Arts.” —​By one David Hume “Luxury is a word of an uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as well as in a bad sense. In general, it means great refinement in the gratification of

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the senses; and any degree of it may be innocent or blameable, according to the age, or country, or condition of the person. To imagine that the gratifying of any sense, or the indulging of any delicacy in meat, drink, or apparel, is, of itself, a vice, can never inter into a head that is not disordered by the phrensies of enthusiasm. I have, indeed, heard of a monk abroad, who, because the windows of his cell opened upon a noble prospect, made a covenant with his eyes never to turn that way, or receive so sensual a gratification. And such is the crime of drinking Champaigne or Burgundy, preferable to small beer or porter. These indulgencies are only vices, when they are pursued at the expense of some virtue, as liberality or charity; in like manner as they are follies, when for them a man ruins his fortune, and reduces himself to want and beggary. Where they entrench upon no virtue, but leave ample subjects whence to provide for friends, family, and every proper object of generosity or compassion, they are entirely innocent, and have in every age been acknowledged such by almost all moralists. “Industry, knowledge, and humanity, are linked together by an indissulable chain, and are found, from experience as well as reason, to be peculiar to the more polished, and, what are commonly denominated, the more luxurious ages. “All the latin classics, whom we peruse in our infancy, universally ascribe the ruin of their state to the arts and riches imported from the east; insomuch that Sallust represents a taste for painting as a vice, no less than lewdness and drinking. And so popular were these sentiments, during the latter ages of the republic, that this author abounds in phrases of the old rigid Roman virtue, though himself the most egregious instance of modern luxury and corruption; speaks contemptuously of the Grecian eloquence, though the most elegant writer in the world; nay, employs preposterous digressions and declamations to this purpose, though a model of taste and correctness. “But it would be easy to prove, that these writers mistook the cause of the disorders in the Roman state, and ascribed to luxury and the arts, what really proceeded from an ill-​modelled government, and the unlimited extent of conquests. Refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life has no natural tendency to beget venality and corruption. The value which all men put upon any particular pleasure, depends on comparison and experience; nor is a porter less greedy of money, which he spends on bacon and brandy, than a courtier who purchases Champaigne and ortolans.”

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ARTS AND SCIENCES UNDER A FREE GOVERNMENT

“ART. VIII. —​1. An Oration pronounced at Cambridge, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, August 27,1824. By EDWARD EVERETT. Published by Request. 8vo. pp. 67. Boston.  2.  An Oration delivered at Plymouth, December 22, 1824. By EDWARD EVERETT. Boston. 8vo. pp.  73. Cummings, Hilliard and Co,” The North American Review, vol. 21, no. 47 (April 1825), pp. 417–​40; selection from pp. 418–​19. [Jared Sparks] Hume’s character and writings were frequent subjects for discussion in The North American Review, one of the most important magazines in the United States in the nineteenth century. In the passage reprinted below, Jared Sparks (1789–​1866) discussed Hume’s essay, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.” Sparks was a notable clergyman, historian, editor, and a graduate of Harvard. In 1825 Sparks was the owner and editor of the North American Review. William Cushing attributes Sparks as the author of this review in Index to The North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p. 36. On The North American Review see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, NJ, 1975), pp.  203–​206; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, Volume II: 1850–​1865 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 219–61. On Jared Sparks see Baxter Adams, The Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (1893); Richard J. Cox, “Jared Sparks,” ANB, vol. 20, pp. 420–​21. For an account of the essay “On the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” within Hume’s world view, see John B. Stewart, The Moral and Political Philosophy of David Hume (Westport, 1963), esp. chapter xi, “The Plot of Time.” _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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Hume long ago attempted to demonstrate, that it was not possible for the arts and sciences, or those acquisitions, which constitute the refinement of intellect and manners, to take their rise under any other than a free government. He lays it down as an axiom, that in a community there must be laws before the desire of knowledge; for laws give security, this prompts to curiosity, and hence inquiry, which is the prelude to knowledge. An absolute despotism is in its nature without laws; the will of the sovereign is supreme, and as no rules exist from which the people can anticipate the mode, in which his judgment or caprice will induce him to decide and act, it follows that no sense of security, no settled confidence in the governing power remains. The case will not be altered, into whatever number of departments a despotic government may be divided. The head may delegate a portion of his authority to subordinate governors, but each of these, having no laws to guide him, will be a despot, and the security of the people will be in the same state of jeopardy, as if there were no such division of power. The moment you establish laws, you weaken the despotism, and give the people some influence in their own government. These laws will be binding on the rulers and the ruled, forming a known system, and thus far giving security. If they are oppressive, the people can take measures to lighten the burden, by making it expedient for the governing power to adopt modifications and improvements. Such was the process in Rome, when the authority of the consuls was absolute, and they decided all causes without any other statutes than their own opinions. The people grew impatient, the decemvirs were chosen, and the laws of the twelve tables promulgated, which became gradually enlarged and formed into a system, that answered all the purposes of a government essentially free. It is, moreover, impossible for the arts and sciences to take root in a despotism, because, till they have gained some degree of ascendency, the monarch himself must be unenlightened, and ignorant of the modes of establishing forms of government suited to embrace the complicated operation of laws, and the machinery necessary for preserving a balance among the various subordinate departments. Now, whether this argument of Hume may not be a little too specious, to be set down as a practical axiom in politics, we shall not decide. The theory appears sufficiently sound, and is probably borne out by facts as far as history records them; but when we go back so remotely into the ages that have been, and search for the origin of governments, and the first dawnings of the arts and sciences, we grope in a darkness too profound to enable us to fortify our discoveries by any substantial historical testimony. As all governments must

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have originated in the consent of the people, it is hardly probable that any forms have long subsisted wholly independent of law, or so despotic as not to afford security enough to give the mind leisure to become enamored of knowledge, and freedom to pursue it within certain limits. Nor could there have been occasion forcibly to narrow these limits; the progress of acquirement must have been gradual, and rarely so rapid as to alarm the jealousy of despotism. Hence knowledge and laws sprang up together, and the question, as to which took the lead in the primitive forms of government, if it be not idle to ask it, will hardly be answered with the present imperfect light, which the world has on the subject.

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EUTHANASIA OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

“ART. VII.  —​The Prospect of Reform in Europe. L’  Avenir. Par. M.J.L.  de SISMONDI. Extrait de la Revue Encyclopédique. Paris. 1830,” The North American Review, vol. 33, no. 72 (July 1831), pp. 154–​90; selection from p. 189. [Edward Everett] Edward Everett (1794–​1865) was Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University and one-​time editor of the North American Review, to which he contributed 116 articles. Hume, in his short essay “Whether the British Government Inclines More to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic,” had written: “It is well known, that every government must come to a period, and that death is unavoidable to the political as well as to the animal body. But, as one kind of death may be preferable to another, it my be enquired, whether it be more desireable for the BRITISH constitution to terminate in a popular government, or in absolute monarchy?” Hume’s answer was that “Absolute monarchy … is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution.” In his assessment of Hume, Everett appears oblivious to the nature of the earlier reception of Hume’s essays in America. Authorship is attributed to Everett in William Cushing, Index to The North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p. 128. On Everett see Daniel Walker Howe, “Edward Everett,” ANB, vol. 7, pp. 420–​21. On The North American Review see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, N.J., 1975), pp. 203–​206; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, Volume II: 1850–​1865 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 219–​61. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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We have already remarked, that we see no intrinsic difficulty in the adoption by England and the other countries in Europe, of a Constitution like ours; and we believe it will take place; with what ease and tranquillity on the one hand, or violence on the other, must depend upon the resistance of the party opposed to change. If the liberal party, as a class, are to undertake the business of reform, with halters round their necks, they will of course go desperately to work; and if they triumph, the blood of their adversaries will flow. But if, as appears to be the intention of the privileged orders at present, they allow the measures of amelioration proposed, to take a parliamentary course, although we are far from believing the plan now in agitation will content the people of England for a long time, yet we see no reason why it should be productive of any convulsions, either while it lasts, or in the transition to still more popular institutions. One thing is certain, the feudal system is worn out, and with it all the institutions that rested on it; so that the form cannot much longer be kept up. The state of the world requires a simpler action of Government; and despotism or liberty is the alternative. Hume has paradoxically said, that the English monarchy would find its Euthanasia in despotism. Hume certainly was never claimed for the liberal party; but it is not easy to imagine what ideas he could have had of the objects of any Government, that enabled him to view the degeneracy of the English system into a despotism, as an Euthanasy. But if despotism is to be its Euthanasia, we believe republicanism will be its resurrection. If it must dies an absolute Government, it will revive a popular one.

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PART II

EARLY AMERICAN RESPONSES TO HUME’S PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS

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INTRODUCTION TO PART II

An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, two of Hume’s most important philosophical writings, circulated widely in colonial America and during the early years of the United States.1 As early as 1750 the Charleston Library Society had available for its members a first edition of Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Before 1760 first editions of An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals were offered for sale by Noel Garret, a New York bookseller, and copies were on the shelves of important social libraries like the New York Society Library and the Library Company of Philadelphia. From the 1760s both Enquiries became even more widely circulated when they were included in Hume’s collected works, the Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, a book that was frequently imported in British editions. By the end of the eighteenth century, prominent Americans like Thomas Jefferson, John Randolph or Roanoke, and John Witherspoon are known to have read Hume’s philosophy; but it is safe to say that both of Hume’s philosophical Enquiries were generally available, in significant numbers and in various editions, to Hume’s American audience. Both Enquiries were also reprinted in early America when Thomas Ewell included them in his Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics, By David Hume, Esq. Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was first published in 1748 with the title Philosophical essays concerning Human Understanding. An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals was first published in 1751. For the early publication details of these works see T.E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy from Francis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (1938; reprinted New York, 1983). It is worth noting that both Enquries were essentially collections of essays, and eighteenth-​century American readers often read them in that way. For an effort to represent some of that in tables and figures, see volume 2 of Mark G. Spencer, “The Reception of David Hume's Political Thought in Eighteenth-​Century America,” 2 vols (Ph.D.  dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, 2001). For modern editions of Hume’s Enquiries, see An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Oxford, 2000), edited by Tom L.  Beauchamp [hereafter EHU] and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (Oxford, 1998), edited by Tom L. Beauchamp [hereafter EPM]. For Hume’s Treatise, also discussed below, see A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford, 2000), edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton [hereafter THN].

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To which is added the answer to his objections to Christianity, By the Ingenious Divine Dr.  Campbell. Also, An account of Mr. Hume’s Life, an original Essay, and a few Notes, 2 vols (Georgetown, D.C.  and Philadelphia, 1817). Hume’s Enquiries were standard reading in America. The early circulation of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature was a different story. As in Britain, the Treatise was not well known in America until the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Still, Hume’s Treatise was advertised for sale by Henry Knox in the Boston Gazette in 1771. The earliest recorded library to hold the Treatise was Harvard University Library whose catalogue of 1790 listed the book. Even after the Treatise saw its second British edition in 1817, it seems not to have attracted a significant readership in the United States. Only from 1825, with its inclusion in the Edinburgh edition of The Philosophical Works of David Hume, would the Treatise begin slowly to gain the currency it holds among scholars today. The circulation of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in early America falls somewhere between that of the Treatise and the Enquiries. From 1785 the Dialogues was consistently available in American libraries and bookshops. It was read closely by Benjamin Vaughan and a handful of other Americans, but it was not generally well known to Hume’s early American audience. Recorded American responses to Hume’s philosophical writings date from as early as 1755. In that year, the prominent colonial philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, wrote to the “Old Light” Scottish clergyman, John Erskine, to say that he had read “that book of Mr. David Hume’s, which you speak of. I am glad of an opportunity to read such corrupt books, especially when written by men of considerable genius; that I may have an idea of the notions that prevail in our nation.”2 Edwards, we see, considered Hume to be a writer of “corrupt books,” but he also thought that Hume’s works were well known and that they were having an impact. Edwards was not alone when he felt that way. Often the comments of those Americans who wrote against Hume’s philosophy shared a common point of departure when they lamented the American popularity and influence of Hume’s philosophical writings. They were especially concerned about Hume’s impact on students attending America’s colleges. Although they have left little evidence in print, American students, particularly at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, appear to have been eager readers of Hume’s philosophy. Timothy Dwight’s attack on Hume in his The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy, exhibited in Two Discourses, addressed to the Quoted in Sereno Edwards Dwight, The Life of President Edwards (New  York, 1830), p.  550. It is uncertain to which of Hume’s books Edwards here referred; but the context suggests that it was Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.

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candidates for the Baccalaureate, in Yale College (New Haven, 1798) was grounded in Dwight’s perception of Hume’s unfortunate popularity among students at Yale.3 One of Hume’s anonymous attackers warned in a Philadelphia publication in 1805, Hume’s writings “are in the hands of almost all young persons.”4 Joseph Dennie expressed a similar sentiment about Harvard College when he wrote to his friend Roger Vose in 1790. Discussing Hume’s philosophy and his own preference for James Beattie, Dennie wrote in a letter not printed in this volume: “I am fully sensible, that by many of the students Hume is admired; of this number I perceive you were a part.”5 Edwards, Dwight, Dennie, and others, were apprehensive about Hume’s philosophy circulating among young people in America because Hume’s primary message they understand to be an anti-​religious one. Abigail Adams expressed this fear concisely in a letter to her husband John Adams in 1783: “I have a thousand fears for my dear Boys as they rise into Life, the most critical period of which is I conceive, at the university; there infidelity abounds, both in example and precepts, there they imbibe the speicious arguments of a Voltaire a Hume and Mandevill. If not from the fountain, they receive them at second hand. These are well calculated to intice a youth, not yet capable of investigating their principles, or answering their arguments. Thus is a youth puzzeld in Mazes and perplexed with error untill he is led to doubt, and from doubt to disbelief.”6 When American writers attacked Hume’s philosophy, they did so because Hume’s philosophy was being read. For many, the reception accorded Hume’s philosophical writings was certainly besmirched by Hume’s religious scepticism. Ezra Stiles provided unambiguous evidence of that unapproving disposition when he wrote in 1759 that Hume “directly opposes a supernatural Revelation —​ & strongly denies the Possibility of those Things which are the proper Evidences of Christianity: and I think treats the Subject with Caprice & Insolence.”7 In his Theory of Agency: Or, An Essay on the Nature, Source and Extent of Moral Freedom (Boston, 1771), John Perkins counted Hume among the infidel thinkers who had  “made the most violent attacks upon all religion, both natural and revealed.”8  When James Dana argued in his An Examination of the late Reprinted below. “The Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel,’’ The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 1 (April 1805), pp. 182–​6, reprinted below. 5 “Letters from Joseph Dennie to Roger Vose,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 6 (1890), p. 124, not reprinted below. 6 Abigail Adams to John Adams, 11 November 1783, The Adams Papers (Cambridge, 1993), series II, vol. 5, p. 268, not reprinted below. 7 Quoted in Isaac Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (New York, 1907), p. 214. 8 See p. 20, not reprinted below. 3 4

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Reverend President Edwards’s ‘Enquiry on Freedom of the Will;’ More especially the Foundation Principle of his Book, with the Tendency and Consequences of the Reasoning therein contained (Boston, 1770) that Jonathan Edwards on the topic of cause and effect “agrees with Mr. Hume in words as well as sense,” he did not intend to strengthen the reputation or persuasiveness of Edwards’s book.9 It was Section  X of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume’s essay “Of Miracles” (see EHU, pp. 83–​99), which was largely responsible for Hume’s reputation as an “infidel” and it was that essay which aroused the most vehement responses from Hume’s American critics. American answers to “Of Miracles” followed various lines. In an essay of 1796 entitled “Remarks upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles; more especially upon the Arguments advanced in the first part of this Essay,” a writer for the Theological Magazine argued that Hume’s reasoning led to conclusions that were clearly “contrary to the plainest dictates of reason and common sense.”10 For Samuel Stanhope Smith, Hume’s position on miracles led to atheism, and along the way it would also “arrest all improvements in science.”11 William Ellery Channing, offered a similarly negative critique of Hume on miracles in his A Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion (Boston, 1821), a book which was reviewed in The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor.12 Later in the nineteenth century, contributions to the debate on Hume’s “Of Miracles” by Archibald Alexander in Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures (1836), A.  H. Lawrence in An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles (1845), and a review of Lawrence’s pamphlet in the North American Review show that Hume’s essay continued to be of interest.13 Many other examples could have been reprinted in this volume had there been space.14 Another favourite target for Hume’s Reprinted below. Reprinted below. Other responses to Hume’s “Of Miracles,” were printed in America when British periodicals were given American reprintings. For instance, the essay “Reply to Mr. Hume’s Argument Against Miracles,” saw an American imprint in the Christian Observer and Advocate, vol. 1 (May 1802), pp. 292–​5. 11 See Samuel Stanhope Smith, A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (New-​Brunswick, 1815). See also an essay by “S.” (attributed below to S. S. Smith), entitled “The Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel,” in The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 1 (April 1805), pp. 182–​6. Both items are reprinted below. 12 Reprinted below. 13 These three items are reprinted below. 14 Not reprinted below are discussions in Uzal Ogden, Antidote to Deism:  The Deist Unmasked; or, An Ample Refutation of All the Objections of Thomas Paine, Against the Christian Religion (Newark, 1795); “For the Port Folio. ‘A Dissertation on the External Evidences of the Truth of the Christian Religion; [Concluded],” Portfolio, vol. 5 (1805), pp. 348–​54; ‘Denial of miracles’ by David Hume (The American Tract Society: New York, n.d.); Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, Essay on the Nature and Uses of the Various Evidences of Revealed Religion (New York, 1824). 9

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nineteenth-​century critics was Hume’s thought on cause and effect. In 1817 Edward Tyrrel Channing was critical of Hume on that subject in the pages of The North American Review, as was Samuel Gilman the following year.15 When American commentators rejected aspects of Hume’s philosophy they were often only following examples set by British authors. The selections reprinted below allude to, cite, or quote from, the works of William Adams (1706–​89), Samuel Bailey (1791–​1870), James Beattie (1735–​1803), Thomas Brown (1778–​1820), George Campbell (1719–​96), Thomas Chalmers (1780–​1847), John Douglas (1721–​1807), George Horne (1730–​92), John Leland (1691–​1766), James Oswald (1703–​93), William Paley (1743–​1805), Richard Price (1723–​91), Joseph Priestley (1733–​1804), Thomas Reid (1710–​96), Thomas Starkie (1782–​1849), Dugald Stewart (1753–​1828), and others. Hume’s philosophy was often rejected by Americans who preferred philosophy of the Scottish common sense tradition written by Beattie, Campbell, Oswald, Reid, and Stewart. A colonial bookseller, John Mein, tapped into that preference when, in a Boston Chronicle advertisement for Campbell’s answer to Hume, he puffed:  “This masterly writer in this excellent work hath fully refuted the reasoning and objections of Mr. Hume and other Freethinkers, who have attempted to undermine the foundations both of natural and revealed Religion.”16 Thomas Ewell’s decision to append Campbell’s answer to the first American edition of Hume’s philosophy is emblematic of the guarded acceptance of Hume’s philosophical writings in America. Still, while Americans like Benjamin Rush said that he could not think of Beattie “without fancying that I see Mr. Hume prostrate at his feet,” and although he praised Beattie as the “David who slew that giant of infidelity,”17 Hume’s philosophy was very much alive in America, where it would continue to elicit responses from American

Both items reprinted below. Not reprinted below are selections from Frederick Beasley, A Review of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, by Thomas Brown (Philadelphia, 1825); Debate on the Evidences of Christianity; Containing an Examination of the “Social System,” and of the Systems of Scepticism of Ancient and Modern Times, Held in the City of Cincinnati, Ohio, from the 13th to the 21st of April, 1829, Between Robert Owen, of New Lanark, Scotland, and Alexander Campbell of Bethany, Virginia, Reported by Charles H. Sims, Stenographer (Bethany, 1829); Nathanael Emmons, Sermons on Some of the First Principles and Doctrines of True Religion (1800; reprinted Boston, 1815); James Fishback, The Philosophy of the Human Mind, in Respect to Religion; or, A Demonstration, from the Necessity of Things, That Religion Entered the World by Revelation(Lexington, 1813); Samuel Miller, A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1803); Leicester Ambrose Sawyer, Elements of Mental Philosophy; containing A  Critical Exposition of the Principal Phenomena and Powers of the Human Mind (New York, 1846); and George Tucker, An Essay on Cause and Effect; Being an Examination of Hume’s Doctrine, That we Can Perceive No Necessary Connection Between Them (Philadelphia, 1850). 16 The Boston Chronicle, vol. 2, no. 97 (1 June 1796), p. 176. 17 Benjamin Rush to James Kidd, 13 May 1794, Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, 1951), vol. 2, p. 748, not reprinted below. 15

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writers. Some of these were notably noncommittal,18 but others were utterly rejecting of Hume’s philosophy.19 That was certainly the case with Frederick Beasley. Beasley’s A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (1822) was the longest and most virulent attack on Hume published in early America. Entire chapters are given to “Mr. Hume on Cause and Effect,” “Upon Miracles,” and “Mr. Hume’s Principles,” but other chapters in Beasley’s long books are peppered with criticisms of various sorts.20 For Beasley, Hume’s British critics had been far too lenient in their treatment of the “arch sceptic.” “We would not raise the Tomahawk against a literary adversary, or kindle around him the fires of the stake; but, according to all the laws of the most civilized warfare, we must be allowed to resort to the use of those weapons the best suited to the nature of the contest, and the most likely to produce a favourable issue. Atheism is a monster not to be tamed or subdued by gentleness and coaxing.” Other Americans, however, defended Hume’s philosophical thought. A  reviewer of James Ogilvie’s Philosophical Essays in The Analectic Magazine argued that Ogilvie and most of Hume’s other critics had misinterpreted Hume’s scepticism which was really of a “merely speculative” variety and not intended to affect the way one lived one’s life.21 For Ezra Stiles Ely, in Conversations on the Science of the Human Mind (1819), Hume’s premise that “all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another,” provides a starting point for philosophical inquiry.22 Hume’s philosophy was clearly not ignored in early America. Hume’s impact can be traced in a steady stream of debate. It is also clear that Hume’s philosophy was more often the subject of censure than it was of praise; but even these critical appraisals show Americans to be familiar with the details of Hume’s philosophical writings. Critical appraisals of Hume’s philosophy in early America did not preclude friendlier American receptions for his Essays Moral, Political and Literary, or his History. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for instance. On Emerson’s reading of Hume see Earl Burk Braly, “The Reputation of David Hume in America,” (Ph.D.  dissertation, The University of Texas, 1955), pp. 219–​25. Braly references many of the works reprinted in this volume, and his discussion of the reception of Hume’s philosophy in America is useful.

18

For instance, Asa Mahan, Abstract of a Course of Lectures on Mental and Moral Philosophy (Oberlin, 1840), pp. 242–​3, not reprinted below. 20 Reprinted below. 21 Reprinted below. See also selections from Joseph Buchanan, The Philosophy of Human Nature (Richmond, 1812)  and Richard Hildreth, Theory of Morals:  An Inquiry Concerning the Law of Moral Distinctions and the Variations and Contradictions of Ethical Codes (Boston, 1844), not reprinted below. 22 Reprinted below. 19

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JONATHAN EDWARDS A HUMEAN

An Examination of the late Reverend President Edwards’s “Enquiry on Freedom of the Will;” More especially the Foundation Principle of his Book, with the Tendency and Consequences of the Reasoning therein contained (Boston, 1770); selection from pp. vi, 69–​71, 126; “Appendix,” pp. 131–​6, 139. James Dana James Dana (1735–​ 1812) was a graduate of Harvard University and a Congregational clergyman. He was also one of New England’s conservative “Old Lights” who argued against the positions of the “New Divinity.” In 1768 Dana had been awarded the degree of D.D. by the University of Edinburgh. In the selections from An Examination of the Late President Edwards’s ‘Enquiry on Freedom of the Will’, reprinted below, Dana aimed to blacken the reputation of Edwards’s thought by showing him to be a Humean on the topic of causation. In his “Appendix,” Dana traced, point-​by-​point, the “coincidences” between Edwards and Hume. Especially evident in these selections is Dana’s familiarity with Section VIII, “Of Liberty and Necessity,” of Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (see EHU, pp.  62–​78). In 1773 Dana published a continuation of the Examination and would also write against the practices of the slave trade, amongst other things. On Dana see Joseph Haroutunain, Piety versus Moralism, the Passing of the New England Theology (1932; reprinted New York, 1970), pp. 229–​36; Harris Elwood Starr, “James Dana,” DAB, vol. 3, pp. 54–​5. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Lord Kaims and Mr. Hume affirm, ‘that man hath, in no case, a power of self-​ determination; but is, in all his actions, determined by a moral necessity’ —​which necessity they hold to be as real as any other. The only difference is, that Lord Kaims, while he allows that GOD has implanted in man’s nature an invincible

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feeling of liberty, maintains, that this feeling is fallacious: And Mr. Hume denies the subsistence of any such relation as we signify by the words cause and effect. But whether liberty, as maintained by Mr. Edwards, be not altogether hypothetic, may appear from the following pages. And as to his notion of cause and of effect, whenever he uses the former word for any antecedent, or the occasion of an event or thing, and the latter for the consequence of another thing (as he tells us he sometimes doth, p. 58. 59.) he so far agrees with Mr. Hume in words as well as sense. … TO this scheme, Mr. Hume supposeth it will be objected in the following form. ‘Human actions, therefore, either can have no moral turpitude at all, as proceeding from so good a cause, or if they have any turpitude, they involve our Creator in the same guilt, while he is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author. Wherever a continued chain of necessary causes is fixed, that being, either finite or infinite, who produces the first, is likewise the author of all the rest, and must both bear the blame, and acquire the praise, which belong to them. Our clearest and most unalterable ideas of morality establish this rule upon unquestionable reasons, when we examine the consequences of any human action; and these reasons must still have greater force, when applied to the volitions and intentions of a being infinitely wise and powerful. Ignorance or impotence may be pleaded for so limited a creature as man; but those imperfections have no place in our Creator. He foresaw, he ordained, he intended all those actions of men, which we so rashly pronounce criminal. And we must conclude, therefore, either that they are not criminal, or that the Deity, not man, is accountable for them. But as either of these positions is absurd and impious, it follows that the doctrine from which they are deduced cannot possibly be true, as being liable to all the same objections. An absurd consequence, if necessary, proves the original doctrine to be absurd, in the same manner that criminal actions render criminal the original cause, if the connection between them be necessary and inevitable.’* THIS objection, which Mr. Hume states to himself, may be made with the same propriety to the general scheme of our author. From Mr. Hume’s answer, it is sufficiently manifest what his principles were. He tells us, ‘It is not possible to explain distinctly, how the Deity can be the immediate cause of all the actions of men, without being the author of sin and moral turpitude. These are mysteries, which meer natural and unassisted reason is very unfit to handle; and whatever system it embraces it must find itself involved in inextricable * Essays by David Hume, Esq; vol. iii. pp. 151, 152, 153.

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difficulties, and even contradictions, at every step which it takes with regard to such subjects.’* MR. Hume acknowledgeth, that upon his scheme, the Deity is the mediate, original cause of all the actions of men; and virtually admits the consequence; (that he is therefore the author of sin and moral turpitude) by observing, that it is not possible distinctly to explain, how he can be the one, and not the other. Now let it be shewn, that Mr. Edwards’s scheme is not liable to the foregoing objection, or admitting the objection, let the consequence be shewn not to follow, and it will afford no small satisfaction to many, who are greatly embarrassed with Mr. Edwards’s scheme of necessary connection. Whoever examines part ii. sect. 3d, 4th, 9th, 12th, and 13th. Part iii. sect. 3d, 4th, and 6th. Part iv. sect. 9th and 10th, and the conclusion of his discourse, must, we are persuaded, see the objection, as above stated, to be just —​. And if the consequence also be fairly drawn, doth it not prove the doctrine against which the objection lies to be false and absurd? absolutely irreconcilable with the moral character of GOD? … WE do not deny but Mr. Edwards was ‘worthy of the name of a Philosopher (p.  401) But we appeal to the publick, whether some of the most famed Philosophers in the English nation, for many years back, and at this day, have not philosophised themselves into scepticism? One of first distinction in particular (whose essays on some moral subjects are so nearly akin to Mr. Edwards on necessity, that a reader might think the latter copied from the former) appears plainly to be a disbeliever in natural religion, not less than revealed.† … The APPENDIX.  Exhibiting a specimen of coincidence between the principles of Mr. Edwards’s book, and those of antient and modern Fatalists. SOME of the most distinguished maintainers of universal necessity, in the last and present century, were Hobbs, Spinoza, Collins, Leibnitz, the authors of Cato’s letters, Hume, among the Atheists and Deists; and Lord Kaims and Mr. Edwards among the advocates for revelation. Our author’s agreement with these on the article of necessity may more distinctly appear from the following extracts. We shall place the similar passages over against each other in different columns, that the reader may have a readier view of the coincidence * Ibid. p. 156. †

Hume’s essay, Vol. III. Sect. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. &c.

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… HUME.  The conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as that between the cause and effect in any part of nature (Essays, vol. iii. p. 137) EDWARDS.  The acts of the will and material things have a like necessary dependance on a cause without. Moral necessity may be as absolute as natural. Volition is as passive with respect to the antecedent cause, as the motions of the body to the volitions which determine them. (P. 183, 184 —​also p. 30, 40, 48, 58, 62, 65, &c.) … HUME. Vol. iii. p. 149, 150. Actions not proceeding from a permanent, fixed cause (that is, from necessity) are neither virtuous nor vicious. EDWARDS.  SIN and virtue come to pass by a necessity consisting in a sure, established connection of causes and effects. (P. 309). Moral habits are owing to the nature of things. (P. 31) The good or bad state of the moral world depends on the improvement they make of their natural agency. (P. 162) … HUME. Liberty a power of acting or not acting according to the determination of the will —​ that is, if we chuse to remain at rest, we may; if we chuse to move, we may. Now this hypothetical liberty (as Mr. Hume justly stiles it) belongs (as he adds) to every body who is not a prisoner and in chains. (Vol. iii. p. 145) EDWARDS.  LIBERTY is a power, opportunity, or advantage that any one has, to do as he pleases —​or power and opportunity to pursue and execute his choice —​without taking into the meaning of the word any thing of the cause or original of that choice. Two things are opposed to liberty, namely, constraint and restraint (P. 38, 39, 40, 300, et passim) … UPON the whole: One of the famous objections of the fatalists of old to the liberty of human actions, and which is urged for necessity by modern infidels, was, that every action results from a precedent motive or reason, which reason or motive is out of our power. (Jackson’s answer to Cato, p. 100.) We need not produce any passage from Mr. Edwards to shew the coincidence. His whole scheme is founded on this principle.

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REMARKS UPON HUME’S ESSAY ON MIRACLES

“Remarks upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles; more especially upon the Arguments advanced in the first part of this Essay,” The Theological Magazine, or Synopsis of Modern Religious Sentiment. On a New Plan, vol. 2 (September/October 1796), pp. 42–​54. “H.” Printed in New  York by Thomas and James Swords, the first number of the Theological Magazine was published in 1795. The magazine was in existence until 1799. Cornelius Davis was the magazine’s publisher and its content was primarily Presbyterian. The essay reprinted in full below is critical of Section X of Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the essay “Of Miracles.” The writer for the Theological Magazine summarizes Hume’s argument about miracles and aims to show that it will lead to conclusions “contrary to the plainest dictates of reason and common sense.” That suggests a “falacy” in Hume’s “pretended demonstration.” On the Theological Magazine see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 917–​19; API, p. 208; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 131,790. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Remarks upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles; more especially upon the Arguments advanced in the first part of this Essay. IN this essay Mr. Hume seems greatly to please himself with the idea, that he has discovered an argument which, in the view of reason and philosophy, must forever render all miracles wholly incredible.

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He therefore labours, with great subtilty and plausibility, to demonstrate, that no human testimony can ever afford any probable, much less satisfactory, proof of their truth; and, with much satisfaction and self-​complacency, he appears to exult in his fancied victory: for, as miracles are inseparably connected with the christian religion, he well knew they must stand and fall together. Imagining, therefore, that he had given a fatal blow to the credibility of miracles, he flattered himself that he had overthrown the whole system of revelation. And since Mr. Hume, in this laboured essay, strikes at the foundation of our religion, and aims to deprive us of the glorious hopes of life and immortality through the gospel; and since he glosses his specious reasoning with the plausible appearance of demonstration, it becomes a matter worthy of the attention of the friends of Christianity, and especially at the present time, when infidelity is struggling to rear its head, and its votaries are boasting of the strength of their arguments, as unanswerable. It is therefore designed to offer some remarks upon the arguments advanced in this essay, especially in the first part of it. Our author observes, that experience is our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact. Thus it is from past experience that we expect heat in summer, cold in winter, and better weather in June than in December. All the credibility of human testimony is also derived from experience —​from past experience of the conformity between testimony, and the thing testified. Had we not found by experience, that mankind, through a sense of shame for being detected in falshood, and on various other accounts, were commonly inclined to speak the truth, and that there was generally some agreement between facts, and the reports of witnesses; we could not give any rational credit to human testimony. The evidence of testimony is therefore founded wholly on experience. A miracle is a violation of the common laws of nature, established by a constant uniform experience. As, therefore, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, established by a constant, unalterable experience, so, of course, there is a full and entire proof, from experience, against every miracle; yea, as great a proof as can be derived from experience. Now, the evidence of testimony, as before observed, depends wholly upon experience, and, therefore, at best, cannot amount to more than a full and entire proof of this kind. But as there is a full, entire proof, from experience, against the miracle, that being contrary to our constant uniform experience, it appears, that no possible human testimony can afford any rational proof, or even probability of a miracle. For were there the highest possible proof, from human testimony, in support of a miracle, and had we found from experience, that human testimony

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was always true, even in this case there would be no more than a full and entire proof, from experience, in support of it. On the contrary, there would be a full, entire proof, from our constant experience, against the miracle. Here, then, there would be two full, entire proofs, both drawn from experience, and directly contradictory: of course, they would mutually annihilate and destroy each other, and leave the matter perfectly doubtful, without any probability on the one side or the other. This would be the case, had if been found, by experience, that human testimony was always certain. But, since it appears, from experience, that this is often false and uncertain, and that mankind are frequently guilty of falsehood or mistake, it is manifest, that no human testimony can ever be sufficient to render a miracle in the least degree probable, since, in the nature of the case, there must be a full proof, from our own constant experience, against it. This is the substance and scope of Mr. Hume’s reasoning in the first part of his essay, and the conclusion, which he fancied, must destroy all rational belief of miracles. —​And this conclusion will necessarily follow from the principles upon which he grounds his reasoning. If these are just and well founded, they will necessarily prove, that no possible human testimony can ever be sufficient to render a miracle in the least degree probable. But let us attend, for a few moments, to some of the consequences which will necessarily result from these principles and this reasoning. How would it be possible for a person, upon this scheme, ever to have a rational belief of any phenomenon which was contrary to his own experience? For instance, supposing a person, who had no experimental acquaintance with the loadstone or magnetic attraction, should be informed, that there was a certain stone, to which a large piece of iron would hang suspended without any support: this would contradict his constant uniform experience; consequently he would, from his own experience, have a full proof against this phenomenon. Of course, the highest possible human testimony, in favour of it, could no more than counterbalance this entire proof against it from the person’s own experience. And so, according to Mr. Hume’s principles, the united testimony of the whole human race would be utterly insufficient to prove the existence of magnetic attraction to one who had never seen it. This also would be the case with earthquakes, volcanoes, and many other phenomena. As these things would be directly contrary to the experience of those who were unacquainted with them, so, according to the reasoning in this essay, they would, from their own experience, have a full proof against them. Consequently no possible human testimony could ever render such events in the least degree credible. In short, we could never have any rational belief of any fact different from our own experience and observation.

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These consequences, it appears, will inevitably follow from the arguments advanced by Mr. H. but how contrary are they to the plainest dictates of common sense? Would not the person be justly deemed devoid of reason, or out of his senses, who should adopt these principles in his common conduct, and refuse to believe every thing different from his own experience, though supported by the highest possible testimony? Had there been an earthquake just before my birth or remembrance, and were it uniformly testified by all who were living at that period, would it not be deemed very unreasonable to disbelieve it, because I had never experienced one? But, according to Mr. H. I should have a full proof against this earthquake from my own experience, and so could never rationally believe it upon any possible human testimony. It is manifest then, that the principles upon which Mr. H.’s reasoning against the credibility of miracles is founded, will necessarily lead to consequences which are contrary to the plainest dictates of reason and common sense; and it will necessarily follow from them, that we never ought to believe any thing different from our own experience. Thus it would, in a great measure, destroy the evidence of human testimony, one of our greatest sources of information; and confine our knowledge and ideas to the narrow circle of our own personal experience, or, at farthest, to things which are similar to this. Further, supposing that all authors, in all nations and languages, had informed, that, in the year 1760, the sun, for ten days, rose in the west, and went down in the east: suppose also, that all persons who were then living, universally testified to the truth of this miraculous fact; could any in such circumstances reasonably doubt of the truth of this wonderful event? It could not be rationally supposed, that mankind in all countries could be deceived about such a fact; or, that all nations should universally unite in fabricating and supporting such a falshood; no reasonable, intelligent person could suppose it. Surely then, in the view of reason and common sense, such general testimony would be sufficient to render this miraculous event fully credible; and it would seem, that no rational, well informed mind could doubt it. But, according to the drift of Mr. H.’s reasoning, all this evidence would be so far from giving any rational credibility to this fact, that it would not be sufficient to render it, in the least degree, probable. For, according to him, our constant uniform experience of the sun’s passing from east to west, would amount to a full proof against the fact, that the sun rose in the west; and our evidence, from human testimony, be it ever so perfect, could amount to no more than a full proof from experience; consequently, in this instance there would be two complete proofs, from experience, directly opposite; the one in favour, and the

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other against the miracle, and these two opposite proofs being equal, must just counterbalance and destroy each other. Thus, according to this gentleman’s reasoning, all this evidence, from human testimony, would not be sufficient even to render the fact probable; and it would be wholly unreasonable to pay it the least credit, though asserted by all historians, and testified by all who lived during that period. But is not this conclusion, necessarily resulting from the principles advanced in this essay, very contrary to the plainest dictates of reason and common sense? It was so manifestly unreasonable, that Hume himself dare not avow it: for, notwithstanding all his reasoning to the contrary, yet he finally allows, that there may be such miraculous events as will admit of proof from human testimony. Had there been an account in all authors, in all languages, and had the same been confirmed by traditions among all nations, that, from the first of January, 1600, there was total darkness over the whole earth for the space of eight days, he allows that fact ought not to be doubted. “It is evident,” says he, that “our present philosophers, instead of doubting the fact, ought to receive it as certain, &c.” But does not this conclusion contradict the whole scope of his reasoning? For this eight days darkness would be directly contrary to the common laws of nature, established by a firm, unalterable experience, and so, as real a miracle, according to Mr. H.’s own description, as raising the dead, stopping the sun in its daily course, or any other miracle recorded in the scriptures; consequently, according to his reasoning upon the subject, we should have a full, entire proof, derived from a constant, unalterable experience against this miraculous event. And, as the highest evidence, from testimony, in favour of it, could not exceed a full, complete proof, so, of course, could not be more than sufficient to counterbalance the opposing evidence. Therefore, upon the principles on which he grounds his arguments against the belief of miracles, and according to the whole drift of his reasoning upon this subject, there could not be the least probability in favour of this miraculous darkness; and yet he declares, that instead of doubting the fact, it ought to be received as certain. Is here not a manifest inconsistency and contradiction? Does he not fairly concede, that a miracle may be proved by human testimony, and thus give up every point he was labouring to establish? It certainly has this appearance. And how does he attempt to extricate himself from this difficulty, and to get rid of the apparent inconsistency? “Our present philosophers,” he observes, “ought to receive it as certain, and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived. The decay, corruption, and dissolution of nature, is an event rendered probable by so many analogies, that any phenomenon which seems to have a tendency towards that catastrophe, comes within the reach of human testimony, if that testimony

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be very extensive and uniform. Here, to save the appearance of contradicting his own principles and arguments, he pretends that this miraculous darkness would betoken the decay and dissolution of nature, and therefore ought to be received upon human testimony, merely because it would be an event, rendered probable by many analogies. But is not this a mere pretence, a subtle evasion, to cover his inconsistency? For how does it appear, that there being such a darkness upwards of 100 years before, could be reasonably considered as a token of the decay and dissolution of nature? Its tendency towards that catastrophe, if it had any, would be so remote and imperceptible, that it could rationally have little or no influence in rendering it credible. It is manifest, then, that the reason why such a supernatural darkness ought to be fully credited is, that it would be supported by such extensive human testimony, and not that it would be probable from analogy, as Mr. H. pretends; for this would be so remote and uncertain, that it could have very little, if any, influence upon our belief. For let the extraordinary event have been of some other kind, which could not be considered as a symptom of a tendency in nature to dissolution, yet, when thus supported by human testimony, it could be no more rationally disbelieved than the fact he mentions. Suppose, for instance, that instead of the eight days darkness, all authors, in all languages, had informed, that in 1600 there appeared two suns for the space of a month; and suppose also, that there was a strong uniform tradition of this remarkable event in all countries, without any variation or contradiction: Would not this fact, thus supported by universal testimony, be as firmly believed as the eight days darkness? And would it not be as unreasonable to disbelieve it, although it could not be considered as an indication of the decay and dissolution of nature? If so, then it is evident, that this phenomenon of the darkness would not be believed, because an event rendered probable by analogy, but merely because supported by such extensive human testimony; consequently, Mr. H’s. special reason why this ought to be credited upon human testimony, rather than any other miraculous event, appears to be a groundless evasion. It is manifest, then, from what Mr. H. says concerning this extraordinary darkness, that he does, in fact, allow, that human testimony may be a sufficient proof of miracles: and by this he has plainly contradicted the whole drift of his reasoning. For his fundamental arguments, if they prove any thing, will necessarily prove, that no human testimony can ever render a miracle in the least degree probable. Since, therefore, our author’s reasoning is founded on principles, which lead to consequences so contrary to the plainest dictates of common sense, and he himself has plainly contradicted it, we may be certain, that there must be some falacy in his pretended demonstration; and this, upon examination, we shall find

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to consist in the idea, that our uniform experience of the common course of nature affords a proof which is directly contrary to any proof that can be adduced in favour of a miracle, or a deviation from those common laws. But this supposition, upon which the chief strength of his reasoning depends, is a perfect fallacy; for these two proofs relate to different facts, which are not at all contradictory; but may both be true with entire consistency. For instance, supposing for 10,000 days, my constant unvarying experience teaches me, that the sun rises and sets once in 24 hours. Happening, however, to be confined from the light for the space of a month, I am informed by all around, as far as I can get intelligence, that in this period, the sun once continued 48 hours in the horizon. Here then, according to our author, are two entire proofs directly contradictory; but is this the case? By no means; for these two proofs relate to different and distinct facts. The evidence arising from my own personal experience, concerns the time only which was the subject of my experience. Whereas, the proof from testimony respects a different time, concerning which I had no personal experience, as I was confined from the light. The proofs then for these distinct facts are not at all inconsistent or contradictory; both may be true. It may be true, according to my own experience, that the sun did rise and set once in 24 hours, as long as I had personal knowledge about the time. It may also be true, according to the universal testimony of others, that the sun did continue in view 48 hours. Nor would this evidence from testimony, at all contradict the experience of my senses with respect to this particular fact, as by the supposition I had no personal experience about it, either for or against it. Had I known, from my own senses, that the sun did rise and set as usual at that time, when others testified that it was in the horizon for 48 hours, the two proofs, from experience and testimony, would then be directly contradictory, as they would respect the same fact, and so could not both be true. But since these two proofs (in the instance first stated) relate to different facts, it is manifest that there is no inconsistency or contradiction between them. And this is just the cause with respect to the miracles recorded in the scriptures. The evidence in favour of them does not at all contradict our experience with respect to those particular facts, as by supposition our experience does not extend to them. Thus the miracle of the sun’s standing still in the days of Joshua, does not contradict the evidence of our experience and senses. The proof in favour of that miracle relates to one time and fact, but the evidence of our own experience respects different times and facts. Both these proofs, therefore, may be true without any inconsistency. It may be true according to the proof from the scriptures, that the sun did stand still in the days of Joshua. It may also be true, according to the evidence of our senses, that the sun has

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never stood still in our days. It is plain, therefore, that there is no inconsistency or contradiction between these two proofs, because they relate to different events. Had we lived at that time, and seen with our own eyes, that the sun did not stand still, then the testimony in favour of that miracle, would have been contrary to our experience and senses; and in such a case Mr. H’s. reasoning would justly apply. But since we did not live at that period, and had no experience about the fact, either for or against it, it is manifest that our experience does not contradict the proof in favour of this miracle; and these same observations will apply to all the other miracles mentioned in the word of God. They are facts, to which our personal experience does not extend; therefore, the evidence in proof of them does by no means contradict the evidence of our own senses or experience. The supposition then, that the evidence from human testimony, in proof of a miracle, must be contradictory to the evidence of our own senses and experience, and inconsistent with it, appears to be very false and unjust; and upon this fallacy depends the chief force and plausibility of Mr. H’s. reasoning. This, therefore, being detected and removed, his arguments lose their greatest force, and his whole fabric, reared with such art and labour, falls to the ground. But since the supposition which has been now mentioned appears to be the foundation of our author’s reasoning, by which he endeavours to demonstrate, that no human testimony can render miracles credible, it may be well perhaps to pay some further attention to it, and see whither it will lead. Supposing then, according to our former statement, that being confined from the light for the space of a month, I am informed by all around me, that in this period the sun once continued 48 hours in the horizon. —​Here then, according to Mr. H. are two proofs directly contradictory; the one, from testimony, in favour of the miraculous fact; the other, from my own experience, against it, and these mutually counterbalance and destroy each other. Supposing then, instead of being informed of this wonderful event, I had seen it with mine own eyes. Here then, upon these principles, the evidence of my own experiences would be contradictory to themselves: for if my former experience afforded a direct proof against this event, when informed of it by others, it must also afford a direct proof against it, when seen by me with my own eyes: for the fact is just the same. According to our author then, I shall have experience against experience, counterbalancing and destroying each other. In this case he directs to deduct the smaller number from the greater, that we know the exact force of the superior evidence, and may proportion our faith accordingly. As, therefore, in this instance my experiences would be 10,000 on one side, and one on the other; so, of course, there would be 10,000 degrees of

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evidence to one, that the sun did rise and set as usual. —​I ought, therefore, to believe it did, without any hesitation, although directly contrary to what I saw with my own eyes; and though I should see the sun continue 48 hours in the horizon hundreds of times, yet it would be unreasonable to believe it, until I had thus seen it more than 10,000 times, and had more experiences for than against it. And when my experiences for the sun’s remaining in view 48 hours should be 10,000, and thus just equal my contrary experiences, then they would exactly counterbalance and destroy each other; consequently I must remain in perfect equilibrio, without believing, that the sun did continue in the horizon either 12 or 48 hours. These, and many other most absurd consequences will necessarily result from the supposition, that the evidence of our sense and experience directly contradicts all miraculous facts, and affords a direct proof against them. For, if this were the case, there would be some difficulty in proving a miracle from our own senses, as from human testimony; and as already shewn, it would be wholly unreasonable to believe any extraordinary event, although seen with my eyes, until our experiences for it exceed those against it. These considerations plainly manifest the falshood of the supposition on which the force and plausibility of Mr. H’s. reasoning chiefly depends; and they fully evince, that the evidence of our senses and experience does, by no means, contradict the proof of miracles, concerning which we have had no personal experience, either for or against them. From the observations made in the course of these remarks, it appears, that the scope of Mr. H’s. reasoning in the first part of his essay, if it proves any thing, will necessarily prove, that no possible human testimony can ever afford any rational proof of any extraordinary fact or event, different from our own experience; and thus it will lead to consequences directly contrary to the plainest dictates of reason and common sense. It also appears, that by allowing there may be miracles which will admit of proof from human testimony, he has fairly contradicted the principles and general drift of his own reasoning. And it likewise appears, that the chief force and plausibility of his reasoning, in this first part of his essay, by which he endeavours to prove the incredibility of miracles from human testimony, depend upon the fallacious supposition, that evidence of our own experience afford a full and direct proof against any evidence, which can be derived from testimony in favour of a miracle. But this supposition being groundless, the whole chain of reasoning depending upon it falls to the ground. It appears, then, notwithstanding all Mr. Hume has laboured to demonstrate to the contrary, that miracles may be rationally proved, and rendered

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fully credible by human testimony. This being established, the only question is, whether the miracles recorded in the scriptures are thus supported by rational, credible evidence.  —​And that this is in fact the case, has been often clearly shewn by writers upon this subject.  —​And were it necessary to our present purpose, it might be fully evinced, that these miracles are supported by all those proofs which could be rationally expected, and are necessary to give full satisfaction to a candid, judicious mind. But before we conclude, we shall make a brief remark upon a passage in the second part of this essay. “But should this miracle be ascribed to any new system of religion, men, in all ages, have been so imposed upon by ridiculous stories of that kind, that this very circumstance would be a full proof of a cheat, and sufficient with all men of sense, not only to make them reject the fact, but even reject it without farther examination.” Our author, in this and some following passages, insinuates, that religious miracles, or those ascribed to some new system of religion, are much more suspicious and incredible than any other, and therefore ought to be rejected without any further examination; but certainly this is a most unreasonable insinuation: for a miracle is a supernatural interposition or violation of the laws of nature, by the immediate agency, direction or permission of the Supreme Being. Reason would therefore teach, that miracles would not be wrought, and the course of nature, thus violated, except to answer some important purposes. But what end can be more important or worthy the supernatural interposition of God, than the establishment of religion and a divine revelation? This is a matter which concerns not one nation only, but all mankind; not one generation only, but thousands; not only their present, but also their everlasting happiness. Thus, religion, involves in it, by far, the most important concerns on earth. If, therefore, miracles were ever wrought on any account, it would be most reasonable to suppose that they would be in favour of this most important concern: for nothing seems so worthy of a divine and special interposition as this, consequently, miracles, in favour of religion, other things being equal, are, by far more credible than any others; and these, if any, may be rationally believed upon human testimony. How unreasonable and unjust then the insinuation, that of all miracles those connected with religion are worthy of the least credit! What bitterness and prejudice does this insinuation manifest against the religion of the Bible? To conclude then, in the strain of Mr. Hume, is it not very wonderful and miraculous, that any man of sense should adopt principles of reasoning, so frau­ ght with absurdity, and necessarily involving consequences, so contrary to the

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plainest dictates of common sense? And should a person act according to these principles in his common conduct, he would be a standing miracle of folly and absurdity; and would be as great a deviation from reason and common sense, as a miracle is from the common laws of nature. H.

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NATURE, AND DANGER, OF INFIDEL PHILOSOPHY

The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy, exhibited in Two Discourses, addressed to the Candidates for the Baccalaureate, in Yale College (New Haven, 1798); selection from pp. 29–​32. Timothy Dwight Timothy Dwight (1752–​1817), a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, wrote The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy soon after assuming the presidency of Yale College, upon the death of Ezra Stiles, in 1795. Dwight’s aim was to raise Yale from the depravity into which he felt the school had sunk. His Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy was designed to help revive the college. That Hume was the subject of such directed comments suggests that Dwight considered Yale students to be all too well familiar with the arguments of Hume’s philosophy. The content, style, and tone of Dwight’s critique of Hume are clearly borrowed from George Horne’s famous publication, A Letter to Dr.  Adam Smith LL.D. on the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his friend David Hume Esq. By one of the People called Christians (London, 1777). Dwight also quotes extensively from Horne in a footnote included below. In earlier writings such as The Triumph of Infidelity: A Poem Printed in the World (1788) and Greenfield Hill: A Poem, in Seven Parts (1794), Dwight had singled out Hume for comment. On Timothy Dwight see Sydney E.  Ahlstrom, “The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology,” Church History, vol. 24 (1955), p.  263; Chandos Michael Brown, Benjamin Silliman:  A  Life in the Young Republic (Princeton, 1989); Charles E.  Cunningham, Timothy Dwight (New  York, 1942); William C.  Dowling, “Timothy Dwight,” ANB, vol. 7, pp.  192–​4; I.  Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (New York, 1907). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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Mr. HUME declares, That there is no perceptible connection between cause and effect; That the belief of such connection is merely a matter of custom; That experience can shew us no such connection; That we cannot with any reason conclude, that, because an effect has taken place once, it will take place again; That it is uncertain and useless to argue from the course of nature, and infer an Intelligent Cause; That we cannot, from any analogy of nature, argue the existence of an Intelligent Cause of all things; That there is no reason to believe that the Universe proceeded from a Cause; That there are no solid arguments to prove the existence of a God; That experience can furnish no argument concerning matters of fact, is in this case useless, and can give rise to no inference; and That there is no relation between cause and effect; and yet, That Experience is our only guide in matters of fact and the existence of objects; That it is universally allowed, that nothing exists without a cause; That every effect is so precisely determined, that no other effect could, in such circumstances, have possibly resulted from the operation of its cause; That the relation of cause is absolutely necessary to the propagation of our species, and the regulation of our conduct; That voluntary actions are necessary, and determined by a fixed connection between cause and effect; That motives are causes, operating necessarily on the will; That Man is a mere machine (i.e. an object operated on necessarily by external causes;) That there is no contingency (i.e. nothing happening without a settled cause) in the universe; and That Matter and Motion may be regarded as the cause of thought (i.e. The Soul is a Material Cause, and thought its effect:) That God discovers to us only faint traces of his character, and that it would be flattery, or presumption to ascribe to him any perfection, which is not discovered to the full in his works (and of course, that it would be flattery or presumption to ascribe any perfection to God:) That it is unreasonable to believe God to be wise and good; That what we believe to be a perfection in God may be a defect. (i.e. Holiness, Justice, Wisdom, Goodness, Mercy, and Truth, may be defects in God;) Of consequence, Injustice, Folly, Malice, and Falshood, may be excellencies in his character;

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That no reward, or punishment, can be rationally expected, beyond what is already known by experience and observation: That self-​denial, self mortification, and humility, are not virtues, but are useless and mischievous; that they stupify the understanding, sour the temper, and harden the heart (and of course are gross crimes:) That pride and self-​valuation, ingenuity, eloquence, quickness of thought, easiness of expression, delicacy of taste, strength of body, health, cleanliness, taper legs, and broad shoulders, are virtues: That Suicide, or self-​murder, is lawful and commendable (and of course virtuous:) That Adultery must be practised, if we would obtain the advantages of life: That Female Infidelity (or Adultery) when known, is a small thing; when unknown, nothing: and That Scepticism is the true and only wisdom of man.* * The following summary of Mr. Hume’s doctrines, published some years before his death, Bishop Horne says, was never, so far as he could find, questioned, as to its fidelity or accuracy, either by Mr. Hume, or his friends. A Summary of Mr. Hume’s Doctrines, Metaphysical and Moral. Of the Soul. That the soul of man is not the same this moment, that it was the last: that we know not what it is; that it is not one, but many things, and that it is nothing at all. That in this soul is the agency of all the causes that operate throughout the sensible creation; and yet that in this soul there is neither power nor agency, nor any idea of either. That matter and motion may often be regarded as the cause of thought. Of the Universe. That the external world does not exist, or at least, that it’s existence may reasonably be doubted. That the universe exists in the mind, and that the mind does not exist. That the universe is nothing but a heap of perceptions, without a substance. That though a man could bring himself to believe, yea, and have reason to believe, that every thing in the universe proceeds from some cause; yet it would be unreasonable for him to believe, that the universe itself proceeds from a cause. Of Human Knowledge. That the perfection of human knowledge is to doubt. That we ought to doubt of every thing, yea, of our doubts themselves, and therefore, the utmost that Philosophy can do, is to give us a doubtful solution of doubtful doubts. That the human understanding, acting alone, does entirely subvert itself, and prove by argument that by argument, nothing can be proved. That man, in all his perceptions, actions and volitions, is a mere passive machine, and has no separate existence of his own, being entirely made up of other things, of the existence of which he is by no means certain; and yet, that the nature of all things depends so much upon man, that two and two could not be equal to four, nor fire produce heat, nor the sun light without an act of the human understanding. Of God. That it is unreasonable to believe God to be infinitely wise and good, while there is nay evil or disorder in the universe. That we have no good reason to think the universe proceeds from a cause. That as the existence of the external world is questionable, we are at a loss to find arguments by which we may prove the existence of the Supreme Being, or any of his attributes.

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Hume’s Reception in Early America That when we speak of Power, as an attribute of any being, God himself not excepted, we use words without meaning. That we can form no idea of power, nor of any being endued with power, much less of one endued with infinite power; and that we can never have reason to believe, that any object or quality of any object exists, of which we cannot form an idea. Of the Morality of Human Actions. That every human action is necessary, and could not have been different from what it is. That moral, intellectual, and corporeal virtues are nearly of the same kind —​In other words, that to want honesty, and to want understanding, and to want a leg, are equally the objects of moral disapprobation. That adultory must be practised, if men would obtain all the advantages of life; that, if generally practised, it would in time cease to be scandalous; and, that, if practised secretly and frequently, it would by degrees come to be thought no crime at all. Lastly, as the soul of man, according to Mr. Hume, becomes every moment a different being, the consequence must be, that the crimes committed by him at one time cannot be imputable to him at another.

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CELEBRATED OBJECTION OF MR. HUME TO THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL

“THE CELEBRATED OBJECTION OF MR. HUME TO THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL,” The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 1, no. 4 (April 1805), pp. 182–​6. “S.” Published in Philadelphia, the first volume of the Evangelical Intelligencer was printed in 1805. Essays submitted for publication to this magazine were supervised by the “Standing Committee of Missions” of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. That body included Samuel Blair, Ashbel Green, Elias Boudinot, Ebenezer Hazard, and Robert Smith. The essay reprinted in full below also saw a contemporary reprinting in The Virginia Religious Magazine, vol. 1 (November 1805), pp. 348–​54. The author, “S.,” summarizes Hume’s argument against miracles and purports to offer a “simple” argument against it. Hume’s argument is said to lead to “Atheism” and would also “resist all improvements in science.” In the end, Hume’s argument is said to refute itself. “S.” seems almost certainly to have been Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751–​1819), who would later rework his argument when he included it in his A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (New-​ Brunswick, 1815), a selection from which is also reprinted below. On The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 62, 339–​42. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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THE CELEBRATED OBJECTION OF MR. HUME TO THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. When the defenders of Christianity thought they had established the evidences of the miraculous history of our Saviour upon foundations which could no longer be shaken, the ingenuous Mr. Hume invented an argument which revived the spirits of vanquished infidelity, and has since been triumphantly urged by all the enemies of religion, as irrefragable, and decisive against every proof that can possibly be alleged in favour of divine revelation. His celebrated argument is this,  —​That miracles are, in their own nature, incredible, and that, therefore, no testimony can ever verify them. The only rational foundation of our belief of what has ever happened, or what can happen in the world is our own experience of what does constantly take place in the course of nature. Men may be false, or may be deceived, but nature never changes. As we, then, have had no experience of any miraculous changes in the order of the world, it is unreasonable to believe that any have ever existed, whatever may be the number, or the character of the men by whom they are attested. —​This reasoning was esteemed, by those who were inclined to reject divine revelation, to be unanswerable, and, for a moment, it seemed to its friends to be the most formidable attack which had yet been made on the authenticity of the sacred scriptures. It has since, however, been vigorously repelled, and I think effectually overthrown by many pious and excellent writers, and by none with more skill and force than by Bishop Watson in his letter on this subject to Mr. Gibbon. But, it appears to me that Mr. Hume’s redoubted argument may be destroyed by a process more simple and obvious than most of those which have hitherto been employed against it. And a plain, concise, and popular refutation of such an adversary, whose writings are in the hands of almost all young persons, may answer some of the valuable ends contemplated by your Magazine. On Mr. Hume’s principle, that no miracle is credible because it is contrary to our experience of the uniformity of the course of nature, it would be impossible for God to make any revelation of his will to the world, distinct from the structure of the world itself, whatever reasons for it might exist in the state of human nature. Such a revelation would itself be a miracle, whether made to mankind immediately by a voice from heaven, or by the more humble instrumentality of prophets and apostles. And, if by the agency of the latter, their divine mission could be authenticated only by such works of omnipotence as would be a sufficient demonstration to the world that the spirit of God accompanied and

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instructed them. This is a consequence of the principle, I am aware, not at all alarming to those by whom it is urged but rather a subject of their triumph. But, I trust, there are few reasonable and serious men who are willing to say that it is impossible for God to make any extraordinary communication of his will to his erring and miserable creatures. But, I add, that this principle leads to Atheism —​acted upon to its full extent it would resist all improvements in science, —​it refutes itself. It leads to Atheism. For if our own experience of the uniformity of nature is the sole test of a reasonable belief concerning whatever has been, or what ever shall be, in the history of the world, it is impossible that the world should ever have had a beginning, it is impossible that it should ever have an end. It must have existed, it must continue to exist, eternally in the same order in which we now behold it. There can be no future state of existence, no future judgment, no future retribution to the virtuous and the wicked; for these are all contrary to our experience; there can be, therefore, no foundation for religion. The world, eternal in its own nature, must exist independent on any intelligent and omnipotent cause. But the only proof of the being of God is derived from the wise order and harmony of the world; and if this is order eternal and uncreated, it would at least be unphilosophical to suppose the existence of a Deity who would then be a superfluous and unnecessary apendage to the universe. We must receive the absurd idea of an eternal succession of mutable and perishing beings governed only by their own internal and immutable laws. We must believe, that there is no God, or embrace the old Aristotelian hypothesis, which is but one step removed from Atheism, that the universe itself is God. These consequences flow so obviously from the principle, that I have been surprised not to find them urged with more point and force than they have been by the friends and defenders of Christianity. Indeed, I have scarcely seen them touched except transiently by the judicious and ingenious Dr. Allen.* They are consequences, however, which, though not displeasing to a part of the followers of Mr. Hume, yet, I trust, were never contemplated by the greater portion of them. Atheism has not yet become so fashionable in Great Britain. And if they are, as I believe, the genuine results of the principles, they must be decisive against it in the opinion of every pious and virtuous man. * A celebrated French Refugee in England, in his reflections on the books of the sacred scriptures.   This work was published in London, 1688; and shews that the objection of Mr. Hume to the evidences of christianity, is not novel, but has only been set in a new and stronger light by that ingenious writer.

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Another consequence of this principle, though not so gross and impious as the former, tends not less to demonstrate its absurdity; —​it would, if acted upon to its full extent, arrest all improvements in science. Permit me, by a familiar example to illustrate and confirm this proposition. When first the effects of the electric or magnetic influence were discovered, how ought all philosophers, on this ground, if, on this ground a philosopher could have ever existed, to have treated the history of them? precisely as infidels have treated the history of the gospel, rejected them instantly, and without examination, as absurd and impossible, because contrary to all their experience. Do you say let them repeat the same experiments by which these new powers in nature were originally discovered? But, if the principal which we are combating be certain and infallible, a wise man could have no motive for making the experiment, since his own past experience of the coure [sic] of nature is the criterion of whatever is possible, or credible. Even if he should repeat the experiment, I do not know whether he could consistently admit the testimony of his senses to a new fact; certainly not the testimony of other persons. And what are the greater portion of mankind to do, who have neither the skill nor the means of experimenting? Let us take another example where no counter experience can possibly be applied. The inhabitants of a torrid climate never can have the effects of frost made obvious to their senses. Congelation is as great a mystery to them as any mystery, or miracle of the christian religion. According to this favourite maxim of infidelity, then, they ought never to believe it, and the king of Siam acted right in punishing the Dutch navigator for attempting to insult his understanding by incredible stories, who assured him that in Holland, during part of the year, water became sufficiently hard to bear men, and carriages drawn by horses, upon its surface. If testimony, then, were under no circumstances, sufficient to vouch to us, facts which not only are not conformable, but which, in many instances, are wholly contrary to all our past experience, science must be arrested in the very commencement of its progress. This consequence was, certainly, not adverted to by the ingenious writer who invented, or gave its present form, to the principle against which we contend. But, when we are testing the merit of a principle, if it is not found to hold universally, or co-​extensively with the latitude of its terms, it ought to be rejected. For, by what rule shall we apply it only to the facts of religion, when it is found absolutely false in its application to the facts of science? I maintain, in the last place, that this celebrated argument, drawn from our experience of the uniformity of nature, refutes itself. For, if the physical course

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of nature, on which the argument rests, is found to be stable and uniform, the moral order of things appears to be not less steady and invariable. If the former of these facts, upon Mr. Hume’s principle, stands in the way of the admission of any miraculous history, the latter, upon the same ground, forbids the rejection of the history, if, by rejecting it, we must contradict all the moral phenomena of human nature. Admitting, then, what can hardly be deemed by the bitterest enemies of religion, that the apostles and evangelists were men of the soundest understanding,* and the most upright hearts, it is contrary to all that we know of the motives of conduct among mankind, that, for the sake of propagating a most improbable imposture, they should voluntarily submit to incessant toils and extreme sufferings, they should abandon honour, interest, family, all that is usually accounted most dear to the human heart, and march with intrepidity through perpetual persecutions to certain death, inflicted in the most excrutiating and dreadful forms. They were evidently not frantic in their writings, which are always rational and simple, and in which there appears to be no tincture of enthusiasm; yet they yielded all their original prejudices, and all their hopes from a triumphant Messiah, to their deep conviction of the divine mission, and the miraculous power of a suffering Master, for whom they encountered every actual evil, and every possible hazard. If, then, we should suppose, with the objectors, that the gospel is not true, here are contradictions to the moral order of things, that is, to all the ordinary principles of conduct among men which have ever occurred to our experience in other cases, not less wonderful, and out of the course of nature, than the miracles themselves for which the apostles, and companions of our Lord, and witnesses of his life, made such astonishing and almost incredible sacrifices.† This so much vaunted objection, then, against the miracles of the gospel evidently refuses itself, inasmuch as in its application to the established moral order of things it contradicts the conclusion which the enemies of religion have so triumphantly drawn from their physical order. This particular view of the subject merits, and, to give it its full force, would require a more extensive elucidation. But, that I  might not encumber your Magazine, I  have chosen to represent it with all the conciseness which I thought in any way consistent with perspicuity. * The perfection of the moral system published by these humble fishermen, so far excelling all the philoso-

phy of their age, demonstrates, that either they were inspired from above, to admit which, is yielding the question, or they were men of superior minds to the profoundest writers of Greece and Rome. Which is yielding almost as much. † Some men have encountered great dangers, and endured great sufferings even for an erroneous opinion, but there is a wide difference between dying for an opinion, and in attestation of a fact.

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It ought to carry with it the greater conviction to the objectors, since they equally subject the natural and the moral world to the laws of necessity, so that the ordinary and natural motives of human conduct must be those also, which are certain and necessary. S.

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HUME ON EXPERIENCE

A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (New-​Brunswick, 1815); selection from pp. 81–​9. Samuel Stanhope Smith Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751–​1819) was educated at Princeton by his future father-​in-​law, John Witherspoon. Smith taught for a while at his father’s (Robert Smith) Presbyterian academy at Pequea, Pennsylvania, and also in Hanover at Hampton-​Sydney Academy, before taking up the position of professor of moral philosophy at Princeton in 1779. In 1795 he was elected president of Princeton following Witherspoon’s death in 1794. The selection reprinted below is evidently a revision of an essay Smith had originally published in the Evangelical Intelligencer in 1805 (reprinted above). On Smith see Edward L. Lach, “Samuel Stanhope Smith” in ANB, vol. 20, pp. 283–​4; Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976), pp. 214–​15; Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768–​1822: The Search for a Christian Enlightenment in the Era of Samuel Stanhope Smith (Princeton, 1989); I. Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (New  York, 1907), pp.  497–​508; Herbert W.  Schneider, A History of American Philosophy (New York, 1946). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ The second view in which this objection [to miracles] has been presented is less speculative. It is the celebrated argument ascribed to the ingenuity of Mr. Hume, although, it is probable of much earlier origin, and which has exercised the talents of several able and judicious writers to refute its sophistry.* I think * Particularly Dr. Campbell in his treatise on miracles. Bishop Watson in his third letter to Mr. Gibbon, having introdued [sic] the subject, appears to me to have, in a few sentences, effectually overturned the principle on which the whole objection rests.

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I shall weaken nothing of its force by the following statement; All our knowledge of natural things we derive solely from experience. And the only rational ground of our belief of what has ever happened, or what can happen in the world, is our own experience of the regular and constant course of nature. Men may impose upon us by false testimony, or they may be deceived themselves; but nature never changes. Inasmuch then, as we have had no experience of any miraculous changes in the order of the world, it is unreasonable to believe that any such have ever taken place, whatever may be the number, or the character of the witnesses by whom they have been attested. If the principle of this objection is found to be false, the whole objection must fall to the ground with it. If it will not hold in its application universally to other subjects, it is contrary to all just reasoning to admit its validity only against the miracles of the gospel. Let us then try its application in other cases: let us follow it to its ultimate consequences; these will be found sufficient to destroy it. It leads to atheism; acted upon in its full extent it would resist all improvements in science; it will be found, in opposing the moral to the physical phenomena of nature, to refute itself. At least the moral phenomena will conclude as strongly in favour of the miracles of the gospel as the physical, admitting the justness of the principle, would seem to contradict them. I return back on these ideas. And in the first place, it leads to atheism. For, if our own experience is the sole and exclusive ground of judging of whatever is credible in the physical history of the world, it is unreasonable to believe that this globe ever had a beginning, or that it will ever perish. It must always have existed, and must always continue to exist in the same state in which we now behold it. There can be no future condition of existence for human nature, no future judgment, no future retribution to the righteous and the wicked. For each of these states implies a condition of things, such as has never come under our observation, or been the subject of our experience. There is, on this supposition, no foundation for religion. The order of the world must be eternal, immutable, necessary; and can have no dependence on a creating and intelligent cause. We must embrace the philosophical absurdity of an eternal succession of mutable and perishing beings; and are driven to the impious alternative of believing that there is no God; or, that the universe itself is God.* These consequences are deduced so obviously from the principle of Mr. Hume, that it is not a little surprising that they have not been more frequently remarked. Scarcely, indeed, have they been observed by any writer who * This tenet of the Aristotelian philosophy has always been regarded by christians as only a modification of atheism.

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has fallen in my way, except the learned and ingenious Dr. Allix, in his reflections on the books of the sacred scriptures.* Yet if they are fairly and legitimately drawn, they must be decisive against the principle in the opinion of every pious and virtuous man. Another consequence of this doctrine, though not chargeable with impiety like the former, equally demonstrates its absurdity. It would arrest all great improvements in science. When the effects of the electric or magnetic influence, for example, were first discovered, how ought all philosophers, according to this principle, to have treated the history of their phenomena? Precisely as infidels have treated the miraculous history of the gospel: rejected it without examination, as absurd and impossible, because contrary to their experience. Do you say, they have it in their power to repeat the experiments by which those new properties in nature were originally discovered. But if the principle which we combat is just, what motive could a philosopher have for repeating these experiments, since his own past experience of the course of nature is the sole criterion of whatever is credible. And whence should the greater portion of mankind derive their knowledge who possess neither the skill, nor the means requisite to make the necessary experiments, it they are not to rely for the truth of new facts in science, and facts the most remote from the analogy of their own experience, upon the testimony of others? Must not the progress of science be arrested almost at its commencement? Let us take another example in which no experiment can possibly be applied to verify the testimony of the narrators with regard to facts the most certain in nature. The inhabitants of a torrid climate never can have the effects of frost presented to their senses. Congelation is as great a mystery to them, as any mystery or miracle of the christian religion. According to this favourite maxim of infidelity, then, they ought to refuse all credit to the fact: and the king of Siam acted according to the principles of sound wisdom in punishing the Dutch navigator for insulting his understanding by incredible stories, who assured him, that, in Holland, water became so hard during part of the year, that it bore horses and carriages upon its surface. If testimony were, under no circumstances, sufficient to vouch to us facts which not only are not conformable, but which, in many instances, are contrary, to all our past experience, science must be circumscribed within a very narrow sphere. This consequence was certainly not adverted to by the ingenious author who invented, or who gave its present form to the principle * This work of Dr. Allix, a celebrated French refugee, was published in London in the year 1688, which

sufficiently demonstrates that the objection of Mr. Hume to the miracles of the gospel is not novel; but has only been set in a new light and urged with more plausibility by that ingenious writer.

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against which we contend. It was aimed solely against the miracles of the sacred scriptures. But when we are testing the merit of a principle, if it is not found to hold universally, or coextensively with the latitude of its terms, it cannot furnish the ground of any certain conclusions. For, by what rule shall we apply it only to the facts of religion, when it is false in its application to the facts of science? Miracles then, as well as other extraordinary facts in nature, are susceptible of proof from testimony. The only subject of inquiry is, the competence and integrity of the witnesses: the soundness of their judgment, the accuracy of their observation, the fidelity of their narration. In all these respects the disciples of our blessed Saviour, the witnesses of his miracles will be found to possess a decided superiority over the witnesses of any other facts recorded in history. Their writings demonstrate their wisdom; their long intimacy with their Master is sufficient to gives [sic] us confidence in the accuracy of their observation; their labours, their sacrifices, their deaths, attest their sincerity, and the fidelity of their narration.* I maintain, in the last place, that this celebrated argument, drawn from our experience of the uniformity of nature refutes itself. For, if the physical course of nature, on which the argument rests, is found to be stable and uniform, the moral order of things appears to be not less steady and regular. If the former of these facts opposes, upon Mr. Hume’s principle, our reception of the miraculous history of the gospel; the latter, upon the same ground, forbids the rejection of that history, if, by rejecting it, we must contradict all the moral phenomena of human nature. Admitting then, what can hardly be denied by the bitterest enemies of Christianity, that the apostles and evangelists were men of the soundest understandings,† and the most upright hearts, it is contrary to all that we know of the motives of human conduct, that, for the sake of propagating a most improbable, and to them, unprofitable imposture, they should voluntarily submit to incessant toils and extreme sufferings; they should abandon all that is usually accounted most dear to the human heart, and march with intrepidity through perceptual persecutions to certain death inflicted in the most excruciating and dreadful forms. Their writings, which are always rational in their doctrines, simple in their style, and calm and judicious in their manner of address, exempt them from every charge of enthusiasm; yet, renouncing all the early prejudices * These topics will hereafter be more amply illustrated. †

The perfection of that system of piety and morals published by these humble fishermen, so far excelling the philosophy of their age, demonstrates that, if they were not inspired from above, they must have possessed a degree of wisdom and understanding far surpassing whatever antiquity has produced besides.

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of their nation, in which they had been educated, and all the hopes which they had originally conceived from a royal and triumphant Messiah, which might have inflamed the zeal of enthusiastic minds, do we not see them, for a suffering Master, encounter every actual evil, and every possible hazard? If then, we should suppose, according to the spirit of this objection, that the apostles, who expected no recompense in this world, could have acted from any other motive than a deep conviction of the miraculous power, and the divine mission of Jesus Christ, would we not be involved in contradictions to the moral order of things; that is, to all the ordinary principles of conduct among men which have ever occurred to our experience, not less wonderful, and out of the course of nature, than were the miracles themselves in the attestation of which these wise and pious men, the companions and witnesses of his life, made such astonishing and almost incredible scarifies? Thus does this so much vaunted objection against the miracles of the gospel refute itself; inasmuch as, in its application to the moral order of things, it contradicts the conclusion which the enemies of religion have drawn from their physical order. And this consequence ought to be admitted by those especially who have most earnestly urged this objection against the evangelic history, since, according to their philosophic system, they subject the natural and the moral world equally to the laws of necessity. I repeat, then, that it is not by the nature of the works ascribed to Christ as being conformable, or contrary to our experience, but by the character and competence of the witnesses, together with all the preparatory and attending circumstances of these miracles, and their consequences upon the world, that the question of their truth is to be decided.

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17

WITH ALL YOUR PHILOSOPHY BE STILL A MAN

“ART.I  —​ Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, Copious Notes, Critical and Explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix. By James Ogilvie. Philadelphia. 1816. 8vo. pp. 413,” The Analectic Magazine, vol. 9 (January 1817), pp. 1–​32; selection from pp. 6–​29. Anonymous The Analectic Magazine was published in 16 volumes at Philadelphia from 1813 to 1821. Its full-​title described its contents accurately as “Comprising original reviews, biography, analytical abstracts of new publications, translations from French journals, and selections from the most esteemed British reviews.” Its first editor was Washington Irving. In 1817, when this review of James Ogilvie’s Philosophical Essays was published, the journal’s editor was Thomas Isaac Wharton. The reviewer is critical of Ogilvie’s essay, “On The Nature, Extent, and Limits of Human Knowledge, so far as it is Founded in the Relation of Cause and Effect, and Concerns Mind and Matter,” and shows a nuanced understanding of Hume’s philosophical scepticism. The reviewer argues for a position that is in some ways similar to that of modern Hume scholars who see Hume as a “mitigated sceptic.” On the Analectic Magazine see Neal L.  Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), pp. 103–​104; API, p.  28; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 279–​83; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and Their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), pp. 123, 145, 178–​9. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ We shall now proceed to detail our reasons for the belief which we have once or twice hinted, —​that the author before us has mistaken the scope and aim

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of Hume’s Essay ‘concerning Human Understanding.’ His mistake is the common one of supposing, that the reasonings of that philosopher were intended to have application in the concerns and pursuits of real life; —​a supposition which Hume himself endeavoured to prevent in the Section on the different Species of Philosophy, and which is, moreover, at direct variance with the uniform and explicit language of his subsequent speculations.* In the Section alluded to he enters into a formal division of moral philosophy into two kinds, —​the active and the speculative; the former of which considers man as an agent, influenced in his conduct by taste and sentiment, —​while the latter views him rather in the light of a reasonable, than of an active, being, —​and endeavours, by a narrow scrutiny of human nature, to develop those laws ‘which regulate our understanding, excite our sentiments, and make us approve or blame any particular object, action, or behaviour.’ The active philosophy is carried along with us at every step of life; while the speculative is never meddled with, except in the anticipated death of academic seclusion. It is the latter alone which Hume professedly considers in his Inquiry concerning the human mind: —​and the pains which he has taken to impress the reader with the assurance, that all his philosophy is merely speculative, might, one would think, have secured him against those prejudicial imputations with which his memory has been so much overloaded. This ‘philosophy (says he) being founded on a turn of mind, which cannot enter into business and action, vanishes when the philosopher leaves the shade, and comes into open day; nor can its principles easily retain any influence over our conduct and behaviour.’ Farther on in the Inquiry he tells us again, —​after some sceptical arguments on the subject of cause and effect, —​that ‘though none but a fool or a madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience, or to reject that great guide to human life; it may surely be allowed a philosopher to have so much curiosity at least, as to examine the principle of human nature which gives this mighty authority to experience.’ A  similar caution occurs in * Even Reid seems to have fallen into the error here alluded to. See particularly Essay II. chap. xx. on

the Intellectual Powers. ‘The statesman continues to plod,’ &c. See also Essay VI. chap. iv.; where, in our opinion, there is an argument against Hume’s philosophy, which proves somewhat too much. Dr. Reid first quotes the passage of the sceptic, in which he acknowledges, that ‘Nature cures him of his philosophical delirium,’ and then subjoins, a little satirically, ‘what pity is it, that nature (whatever is meant by that personage), so kind in curing this delirium, should be so cruel as to cause it. Doth the same fountain send forth sweet water and bitter? Is it not more probable, that if the cure was the work of nature, the disease came from another hand, and was the work of the philosopher?’ Now, we have, on every hand, a great many instances in which nature both causes and cures diseases. To adduce an obvious one —​water is so deleterious when suffered to stagnate, that the absolute quiescence of the whole ocean, for any length of time, would probably depopulate the globe; and accordingly it is prevented from becoming stagnant both by saline impregnation and by constant agitation. Here the poison and the antidote are both administered by the hand of the same ‘personage;’ and yet we suspect that Dr. Reid would hardly venture to be ironical on the subject.

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the very next Section.* ‘Nor need we fear (says he) that our endeavours to limit our inquiries to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever.’ We have often heard it urged as a triumphant refutation of this philosophy, —​that Hume himself, its great author and professor, conducted in ordinary life exactly as the veriest plebeian, who never dreamed of philosophical speculation. ‘My practice, you say, (anticipates the ‘Sceptical Doubter’) refutes my doubts. But you mistake the purport of my question. As an agent, I am quite satisfied in the point; but as a philosopher, who has some share of curiosity, I will not say scepticism, I want to learn the foundation of this inference.’ Again he assures us that ‘the feelings of our sentiments (we do not answer for the accuracy of this expression), the agitations of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all the conclusions of speculative philosophy, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian.’ And he has summed up the whole in the energetic sentence, —​‘Be a philosopher; but, with all your philosophy, be still a man.’ We have been induced to protract these quotations,† because we believe there is no mistake more extensive than that of supposing, that Hume’s philosophy was intended to influence the actions of man, —​and because no writer, so far as we can recollect, has taken pains to prove, at any length, how completely such a supposition is discountenanced by the explicit phraseology of that philosopher himself. The whole of the Essay under consideration is vitiated by the same mistake; and we may judge how extensive must be its prevalence, when we observe it embraced by such a man as Mr. Ogilvie. Nothing, in fact, more thoroughly establishes the complete practical inutility of Hume’s speculation concerning causes, than the attempt of our author to make it the basis of conclusions in the active philosophy of real life. Cause and effect, according to that philosopher, is nothing more than an invariable conjunction of two objects or events; and all we know about the relation between them is, that, upon the presentation of the one, our mind irresistibly infers the appearance of the other. Now mere conjunction does not involve any particular arrangement; and accordingly it is inferable from the doctrine we have just stated, that a cause does not necessarily antecede its effect. All the necessity there can be in the case is, that, either antecedently, or collaterally, or consecutively, one object or event, to which we give the name of * Sceptical Solution of Sceptical Doubts. †

We have not by any means transcribed all the passages in which Hume takes the pains to assure us, that his philosophy has nothing to do with active life. See particularly the latter paragraphs in Part II. of the Section on the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy.

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cause, —​should be infallibly conjoined, both in place and in time, with another object or event, to which we apply the term effect. We have already thrown out a hint or two respecting the absurdity of such a doctrine; and we only wish in this place to subjoin, that it has evidently given rise to Mr. Ogilvie’s definition of human knowledge. If we grant the accuracy of Hume’s speculation, it will necessarily follow, that all definitions of that term must include the circumstance of what our author calls arrangement; and the only objection which we should then have to urge against the definition which he has given would be, that, —​instead of embracing the ascertainment of real causes, which, in our opinion, is the very essence of human knowledge, —​it proceeds upon the supposition, that all the causes are already ascertained, and considers the word as having relation merely to the proper arrangement of those causes. Even in speculation, therefore, we think Mr. Ogilvie has not given the true meaning of human knowledge. —​But what we most object to is, that he should make his own definition the very beam on which he hangs a chain of consequences relative to the real business of active life. His master never intended to have his philosophy so applied; and we venture to affirm, that utter discomfiture will attend every attempt to establish such an application. But we should be greatly disinclined to believe ‘in the shade’ what we knew could have no reality ‘in open day’: and we shall, accordingly, proceed to examine very briefly whether, even in speculation, the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy can be supported by valid reasoning. The great argument against the received doctrine concerning causation is, that, as all we are capable of perceiving consists in the uniform accompaniment or conjunction of two objects, which we customarily denominate cause and effect, we have no philosophical right to conclude, that the one takes place in consequence of any indissoluble or necessary connexion with that which accompanies, or is conjoined to it. We are totally incapable of perceiving the peculiar efficiency, or igVrzVia of the antecedent object, which operates to the necessary production of the subsequent event; and the only legitimate conclusion is, therefore, that the former can be nothing more than the ‘occasion’ upon which the latter makes its appearance. Throughout his Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume is constantly calling upon us to exhibit the ‘tie’ which binds one event to another, in the way of cause and effect; —​and because we are unable to produce some connecting principle as visible and as tangible as a tow-​string, he triumphantly infers, that no such ­connexion should be believed to exist. The obvious objection to such a doctrine is, that it proves a great deal too much; —​for if, indeed, our incapacity to perceive, or to conceive, a particular thing, is a conclusive argument against

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its existence, we shall find ourselves obliged to prune away a great many of the most important parts both of physical and of moral science. There are some ideas which, on account of their magnitude, —​and there are others which, in consequence of their minuteness, —​the mind finds itself utterly inadequate to embrace or to get hold of; and yet we reason about such ideas with as much confidence, as if they could he comprehended with the utmost ease and clearness. Thus, though it is utterly impossible to have an adequate idea of a point, or of an infinite line, we nevertheless employ both these ideas in a great variety of mathematical reasonings. —​There are also a great multitude of external phenomena which exceed, on both sides, the limits of our perceptive powers. Motion, for example, is often too tardy, and as often too rapid, for the cognizance of sensation. We can perceive neither the advancement of a dial-​pointer, nor the circumvolution of a top; and yet nothing would be more repugnant to our reason than the inference, that both were absolutely stationary. Instances of this sort might be indefinitely multiplied; —​but enough has been said, we apprehend, to convince our readers, that the mere incapability to perceive an object, or an event, is not, of itself, a conclusive argument against the existence of that object or event. After providing to his own satisfaction, that no connexion subsists between any two objects, Hume undertakes to explain our meaning when we make use of the phraseology in which the common belief on the subject is always expressed. According to his explanation, ‘there is nothing further in the case’ than an association of ideas, —​insomuch that after the repeated conjunction of two objects, or events, the idea excited by the appearance of the one comes at last to be so indissolubly united to that which is produced by the appearance of the other, that the former never enters the understanding without bringing the latter along with it.* ‘When we say, therefore, that one object is connected with another, we mean only, that they have acquired a connexion in our thoughts, and give rise to this inference (of the effect from the cause,) by which they become proofs of each other other’s existence.’† Again, he says a little farther on, ‘had not objects a regular conjunction with each other, we should never have entertained any notion of cause and effect; and this regular conjunction produces that inference, which is the only connexion that we can have any comprehension of ’.‡ Now we apprehend that the same reasoning which our sceptic employs against the belief * The doctrine is every where inculcated in such expressions as the following: —​‘We have already observed (Sec. V. Part II.) that nature has established connexions among particular ideas, and that no sooner one idea occurs to our thoughts, than it introduces its correlative,’ &c. † Hume’s Essays, Vol. II. p. 87, of the London edition, duodecimo, 1765. ‡ Id. ibid. p. 107.

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of a connexion between objects, is equally cogent against the hypothesis of a connexion between ideas. Indeed we think it is more so; —​for if we can have no ‘comprehension of any thing like a visible or tangible connexion between things which are themselves both visible and tangible,  —​how much less can we have a ‘comprehension of such a connecting principle between things which are themselves neither visible nor tangible! We think those sorry philosophers whom the ‘sifting humour’ and ‘inquisitive disposition’ of Hume has been ‘pushing from one corner into another,’ have here a fair opportunity of turning upon their ­persecutor, —​and of invoking him either to abandon his philosophy, or to exhibit the ‘tie’ of connexion which binds together any two associated ideas. Nor is this the only ‘corner’ of absurdity into which they might ‘push’ Mr. Hume. It follows as an obvious consequence of his principles, that all our casual and incongruous associations are so many instances of cause and effect,*  —​ or, in the words of the doctrine itself, whenever any particular object or event excites an idea in the mind, which in its train introduces the idea of any other object or event, the first object or event is to be considered as the cause of the second. Nothing is a more common subject of remark, than the inexplicable capriciousness of association; and if the mere conjunction of two ideas is all the connexion we can ‘comprehend’ between cause and effect, there is hardly any absurdity or contradiction which may not be proved to form a part of the regular course of nature. Indeed Hume himself has so logically adhered to his doctrine as to be betrayed into manifest absurdities. Thus in his argument against the existence of miracles, he speaks of the conjunction between an event and a report, as a legitimate example of cause and effect. ‘As the evidence derived from human testimony (says he, p. 126) is founded on past experience, so it varies with the experience, and is regarded either as a proof or a probability, according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of objects, has been found to be constant or variable.’ Now though our philosopher seems here to be himself a little diffident of his own principles, —​taking occasion to remark that ‘this species of reasoning, perhaps, one may deny to be founded on the relation of cause and effect,’ and subjoining that ‘he shall not dispute about a word,’ —​we think a due regard to self-​consistency must oblige him to acknowledge, that the conjunction abovementioned is precisely conformable to his own definition of cause and effect. Yet what can appear more absurd than to place the report of an event among the legitimate and necessary effects of its existence! * See Inquiry, Sec III.; where Hume himself resolves association into the three principles of contiguity, causation, and resemblance.

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There are other absurd conclusions involved in this account of cause and effect; but we cannot make room for their specification here; —​and indeed the way to confute Hume, is not that of demonstrating his absurdity. He has all the advantage of his antagonist; for the more you push him into uncertainty, by adventuring beyond the limits of human understanding, the greater will be the triumph of his academical or sceptical philosophy. He is sure to sing Te Deum after every defeat; or, in his own words, ‘he will be the first to join the laugh against himself when you have driven him into ‘some dangerous dilemma.’ In fact the very essence of scepticism seems to consist in drawing us over the boundaries of the human mind, and then taking occasion to deduce a sweeping conclusion of general ignorance;  —​in first alluring us beyond our depth, and then laughing at us because we are incapable of touching the bottom. Thus, because our faculties are inadequate to the conception of that peculiar principle which causes bodies to cohere with one another, or to gravitate towards the centre of the earth, our sceptic concludes with the reflection, that ‘the most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of our ignorance.’ And ‘thus (continues he) the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us, at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude it.’ Similar reflections occur in every part of his Essays on Human Understanding. He asks, ‘what is the nature of all our reasonings concerning matter of fact?’ And when it is answered, that they are founded on the relation of cause and effect, —​he inquires again, ‘what is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions concerning that relation?’ ‘Experience,’ is the answer: —​but then, says he, ‘what is the foundation of all conclusions from experience?’ And when he has thus persecuted us till we have transgressed our intellectual limits, he tells with a ‘knowing’ air of triumph, that we had ‘better make a merit of our ignorance’ by frankly confessing it at once. The truth is, that no science could stand the test of Hume’s ‘sifting humour;’ for all our reasonings must necessarily proceed from some principles for which we can give no reason, —​otherwise they could have neither beginning nor end; and the attempt, therefore, to push our inquiries into the nature of those principles, is at once to break up the very foundations of human knowledge.* There is * ‘There are in every science (says D’Alembert) certain principles, true or supposed, which we lay

hold of by a species of instinct; to which we must abandon ourselves without resistance: otherwise it would be necessary to admit in our principles a progress ad infinitum, —​which would be equally absurd as a progress ad infinitum in actual causes and existences, —​and which would render every thing uncertain,  —​without some fixed point beyond which we cannot proceed.’ Hume himself makes a similar remark. When his ‘pushing’ system has brought him to a conclusion, that all our

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not a proposition in the whole field of mathematics, that does not proceed upon postulata for which we can give no proof, except that of their self-​evidence; and if, therefore, we must acknowledge our ‘ignorance’ because we are unable to tell what those postulata are founded upon, the clearest and most perfect of sciences is reduced to one confused mass of chaotic uncertainty. But surely no conclusion appears more unphilosophical than, that we know nothing, because we are not omniscient, —​or that we have no power at all, because we are not omnipotent.* Human understanding may certainly be comprehensive, without being boundless; and the mere fact that it has some limits is not equivalent to its having no extent. We are now prepared to say a word or two, by way of positive argument, in favour of the common notion relative to cause and effect. According to Hume’s doctrine, every effect is so ‘distinct and arbitrary’ an event, that it cannot be concluded to have been connected with any antecedent event —​inasmuch as our idea of conjunction, —​the term which he almost invariably employs to express the relation under view, —​includes nothing more than a juxtaposition in time and in place. If, however, we scrutinize the subject more narrowly, and mark the circumstances which attend any given instance of cause and effect, we shall, if we mistake not, observe such a mutual change both in the antecedent, and in the consecutive, event, as impresses on the mind an inference of connexion, with a cogency of evidence which it is absolutely incapable of resisting. To adopt an example which is employed by Hume on all occasions; when one billiard-​ ball is impelled against another, it is demonstrable, that the second gains exactly as much motion as the other loses. Now human understanding is not able to resist the conclusion, that, between these two balls, there was some connecting ­principle, —​some conductor, —​or some sort of medium, call it what you will, —​by which a certain quantity of motion has been transferred from the one to the other. Whether it be a subtile fluid, like electricity, —​or whether there be a species of volition in one or in both of the balls, —​we can never be able to determine; but that, in some way or other, these two objects have contrived to pass a given ratable quantity of motion from one to the other, is as conclusively evident as that they have each a separate and independent existence. Between all causes inferences from experience must be founded in habit; ‘perhaps (says he) we can push our inquiries no farther; but must rest contented with it as an ultimate principle.’ The spirit of his philosophy should have carried him farther; and some votary of scepticism more ‘inquisitive’ than himself might drive him from this ‘corner,’ and follow him up, from dilemma to dilemma, in his own two-​handed way, —​nunc dextrâ ingeminans ictus, nunc ille sinistrâ. * ‘No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticims, than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human knowledge.’ Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion, Part II.

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and effects the circumstances indicative of a connexion are not so unequivocal as those between the impulse of the one ball, and the motion of the second; but in almost every instance of the same sort, there are diagnostics sufficiently apparent to convince the mind, that the first event was absolutely necessary to the production of the other.* But the ascertainment of this connexion is, in all cases, greatly subsequent to our belief of its existence: and it becomes, therefore, another part of Hume’s ‘inquisitive’ philosophy, to discover that principle of our nature which leads us to believe, that certain objects and events are somehow endowed with inherent efficiency to produce certain other objects and events. This question is totally different from that which we have just done examining; though the author before us very strangely confounds the two, in the statement he gives of Hume’s conclusions on the subject. ‘We are indebted (says he, p. 43.) to the sagacity of that philosopher, for the first satisfactory elucidation of the all-​important fact, that our knowledge of cause and effect does and can embrace nothing more, than a perception and belief, of the uniform antecedence of one event, and sequence of another.’† Now, it is a plain matter of fact, that the existence of our belief in a necessary connexion is never once called in question throughout the Inquiry; and that the great object of the ‘arch-​sceptic’ was to ascertain, whether human reason had any part in the formation of such a belief. His great principle is, —​that ‘in all reasonings from experience there is a step taken by the mind (namely, the conclusion that an object which has, in time past, been followed by a particular event, will also, in time to come, be followed by a like event) which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding;’ and in the language of Locke’s philosophy, he calls for the ‘medium, the interposing ideas,‡ which join propositions so very wide of each other?’ He takes great pains to establish the thesis, —​that there is a vast difference between our belief of past effects from certain causes, and our anticipation of similar effects from similar causes. ‘From a body of like colour and consistence with bread, (says he, p. 46.) we look for like nourishment and support. But this surely is a step or progress of the mind, which * The language even of Hume himself is sometimes quite as strong as this. One of his definitions of

cause is, —​‘where if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.’ p. 88, Inquiry. And again ‘ ’tis universally allowed, (says he) that matter, in all its operations, is actuated by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so precisely determined by the energy of its cause, that no other effect, in such particular circumstances, could possibly have resulted from the operation of that cause.’ Inq. p. 93. This seems to be admitting, —​if not a necessary connexion, —​at least a necessary conjunction: and ‘provided we agree about the thing (p. 58) ’tis needless to dispute about the terms.’ † It is very seldom that Hume employs the words antecedence and consequence. The term conjoin, in all its variations, is his usual expression of the idea we have of cause and effect. ‡ See Duncan’s Logic, b. iii. chap. i. sec. 1. Remote Relations Discovered by Means of Intermediate Ideas.

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wants to be explained. When a man says, ‘I have found, in all past instances, such sensible qualities conjoined with such secret powers:’ And when he says, ‘Similar sensible qualities will always be conjoined with similar secret powers;’ he is not guilty of a tautology; nor are these propositions in any respect the same.’ Now, for our own parts, we cannot perceive the ‘wide’ difference here attempted to be shown; and we are inclined to think that —​so far from being in ‘no respect the same’ —​the two propositions of Mr. Hume would be completely ‘tautologous’ in the languages of those nations, who have no idea of distributions into moods and tenses. Such languages do exist. The Nootkian is an example:  and whenever the members of that tribe express themselves, either in their own or in any other tongue, they uniformly reduce all voices to the active —​all moods to the ­indicative —​and all tenses to the present. Of this fact our readers will find abundant proofs in Jewitt’s Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence among that Tribe. When Maquina, for example, told the Armorour that his life should be spared upon the condition of his swearing to be a slave for life, —​‘John I speak —​You no say, No: You say, No —​daggers come;’* —​he involved the indicative and the subjunctive moods, as well as the present and the future tense; —​and yet it is all crowded into one mood and one tense. Perhaps we could not have adduced a better example to prove that the mind, in the case supposed; does not take so ‘wide’ a ‘step’ as Hume would represent; inasmuch as human understanding, it appears to us, could not so easily pass from one of his propositions to the other, unless they were in many ‘respects the same.’ But it is confessed, at the same time, that they are not exactly identical; and we think it may also be conceded to Hume, that the mind here takes a step, for which a philosopher might reasonably demand an explanation. ‘If the mind be not engaged by argument to make this step, it must be induced by some other principle of equal weight and authority. What that principle is, may well be worth the pains of inquiry.’† Now, we apprehend, that every step of the mind from one proposition to another, is an act of inference,‡ or reasoning, and that the ‘principle’ here alluded to must, when discovered, be considered as that intermediate idea ‘which join the propositions’ mentioned in our last paragraph. —​We think, * Page 30. † ‡

Sceptical Solution of Sceptical Doubts, Part II. Hume himself almost uniformly uses this very word to denominate the intellectual operation in question. See the Inquiry, pp. 52, 53, et passim. Conclusion is another word which he often uses for the same purpose. We suppose Locke, and perhaps Reid, would call this mental step by the name of judgment. And yet the latter defines reasoning to be the ‘power (we should call it the act) of inferring, or drawing a conclusion.’ —​Essay VII. on the Intellectual Powers, cap. 1. —​We are inclined to think that, strictly speaking, there is no formal inference in the case; and that, in the language of the last mentioned philosopher, our ‘understanding’ here takes a step without the intermediation of its ‘crutch:’ but since Hume represents the mind as going, in the way of inference, from the past to the

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too, in the first place, that the principle in question is not experience. ‘Experience (says Hume, Sec. IV. Pt. II. and we suppose no one will object to the definition), can be allowed to give direct and certain information only of those precise objects, and that precise period of time, which fell under its cognizance.’ But we have nearly as much confidence in anticipation, as in memory; and it behoves [sic] us to inquire, therefore, by what peculiarity of the human constitution we are led to apply past experience to future phenomena? The Sceptical Doubter resolves the question by supposing, that the reiterated conjunction of two events, in the way of cause and effect, imparts to the mind a custom or habit of expecting the one, upon the appearance of the other. This supposition, again, is founded upon another supposition, —​that the mind could not, from one instance only of the conjunction of two events, be led to anticipate the second on the future appearance of the first. ‘No man (says Hume) having seen only one body move after being impelled by another, could infer, that every body will move after a like impulse. ‘Tis only after a long course of uniform experiments in any kind, that we attain a firm reliance and security with regard to a particular event.’ And he accordingly asks for ‘the sake of information,’ why the mind cannot draw, from one instance, a conclusion which is thus drawn from a hundred instances, that are acknowledged to be precisely similar to that one? Now the misfortune was, that our sceptical inquirer here laboured under a false conception of the fact. No part of our constitution is more the subject of common remark, than the propensity of the mind to consider even casual conjunctions as examples of cause and effect, —​and to look for the future sequence of any particular event, which in only a single past instance, we have observed to succeed another particular event. The author before us has occasion to make the same remark, p. 48; and indeed, it is, as he says, so ‘notorious’ a truth, that we can hardly conceive how it should have escaped the sagacity of Hume. The supposition of custom, therefore, is inadequate to account for the phenomenon; for custom depends, of course, upon the repetition of similar instances.* We must have recourse, then, to some more future, —​which, according to all just lexicography, is but a definition of reasoning, —​and since we pretend to do little else than to combat the sceptic on his own ground, we shall take it for granted that, by some medium or other, the mind actually draws a conclusion, when we expect similar effects from similar causes. * Even Hume is, in one place, obliged to distort the meaning of the word habit, in order to warp his theory to fact. See Inquiry, sec. ix. ‘When we have lived any time, (says he) and have been accustomed to the uniformity of nature, we acquire a general habit, by which we always transfer the known to the unknown, and conceive the latter to resemble the former. By means of this general habitual principle, we regard even one experiment as the foundation of reasoning.’ No proposition is certainly more unquestionable, than that habit is the result of repetition, and is confined to those precise objects with which that repetition is conversant; nor any thing appear to us more inconceivable than this doctrine concerning a ‘general habit.’ When he calls it a ‘principle’ we agree with him; and have

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comprehensive principle; and, for our own parts, we can see none which satisfies us so well as that which was first propounded, in a formal way, by Turgot; afterwards alleged by Reid; and subsequently illustrated and insisted upon more fully, by his disciple, Mr. Stewart; —​the principle, namely, that, in all our reasonings about contingent truth, we rely implicitly upon the continuance and stability of the laws of nature. We may add, that, besides the quotation in our last note, even Hume himself has frequent occasion to observe the reliance here alluded to, —​ though he nowhere seems to consider it as an ultimate general principle of intellectual philosophy. ‘Every part of mixed mathematics (says he, Sceptical Doubts, Part I.) goes upon the supposition, that certain laws are established by nature in her operation.’ —​‘All our experimental conclusions (he observes again, Part II.) proceed upon the supposition, that the future will be comfortable to the past.’ —​‘All inferences from experience (id. ibid.) suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past.’ —​These, and several other similar passages, which might be adduced, are sufficient to show us, that the author had now and then a glimpse of what we consider as the true ‘foundation’ of all our reasoning about contingent truth: —​And it is something in confirmation of the doctrine we have espoused, that the language here transcribed is almost identical with that which Mr. Stewart employs when treating of the same subject.* We are now prepared to state the qualifications with which we use the parse —​ necessary connexion. And, in the first place, we must not be understood to mean, that there exists, in any cause, an independent, essential, and indestructible energy or efficiency by which it must, from all eternity, have been fitted to produce its appropriate effect. All we mean is, —​that so long as the order and laws of nature are suffered to remain unaltered, the same or similar causes must and will produce the same or similar effects; —​and we apprehend that this is the only sense in which the word necessity can be at all applicable to the phenomena of the physical universe. We are aware that the term is open on all sides to the cavil of superficial criticism; and we have, therefore, endeavoured to prevent any such treatment, by explaining as well as we could, the signification in which we have intended to use it. We are now prepared, also, to make a remark or two upon the manner in which Priestly, and our author after him, have contrived to find, fault with Reid for only then to accuse his self-​contradiction, and to retract what we said in the text about the failure of his sagacity. See p. 47. of the Essay under consideration, where our author adopts the language of Hume again. * See Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. II (Boston edition,) pp. 37, 38, 39, et seq. And also our Number for January, 1815, pp. 47–​8–​9.

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having applied the word instinctive to the abovementioned reliance upon the permanency of nature’s laws. Mr. Ogilvie does not appear to have perused the apology which Mr. Stewart has made for this slight violation of vernacular purity;* and we shall, therefore, repeat, after the last mentioned writer, ‘that in applying this term to characterize certain judgments of the mind, —​although it is not employed with unexceptionable propriety, —​its employment is by no means a departure from the practice of nearly all the philosophers who preceded Dr.  Reid.’ In addition to the instances which Mr. Stewart has been at the pains of adducing from other authors, we can also quote a few from Hume, the metaphysician in whom Mr. Ogilvie seems chiefly to place his trust. While treating of this very subject, ‘all these operations (he tells us) are a species of instincts.’ When the same subject comes up a little further on, ‘ ’tis more conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature (he remarks) to secure so necessary an act of the mind, by some instinct or mechanical tendency;’ and in the next sentence he observes still more at length, that ‘as nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves, by which they are actuated; so she has implanted in us an instinct which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects.’ So again he states explicitly in his Essay on the Reason of Animals, ‘that all experimental reasoning is nothing but a species of instinct,’ &c. Indeed there is no other word in our language which can so adequately characterize this process of the understanding. A principle of action, of which we can neither date the origin, nor trace the progress, though it differ from real instinct, in being acquired, instead of innate, —​is nevertheless so very nearly similar, in its effects, to that part of our constitution, that for want of a distinctive term, it may well enough be denominated a species of instinct. … We shall not be able to examine in any detail the illustrations which our author has given of the relation between cause and effect; —​nor to repeat, after him, the conclusions which are now pretty generally admitted, relative to the futility of inquiring into the nature either of mind, or of matter. … For the same reason that induced us to decline a detailed statement of our author’s speculations concerning cause and effect, we shall omit to make particular mention of the twelve conclusions which he thinks are deducible from his analysis. … * Philosophical Essays, Philadelphia edition, pp. 132–​3–​4.

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There are two conclusions,  —​deducible, as our author supposes, from his analysis of cause and effect, —​which perhaps it would be unpardonable to pass over in silence; —​the conclusions, we mean, which refer, first, to the existence of Deity, and secondly, to the existence of miracles. With regard to the former we shall give Mr. Ogilvie an opportunity to use his own phraseology. ‘From this analysis, we derive one of the strongest a posteriori proofs, (perhaps the strongest a posteriori proof,) of the existence of a Deity, that human reason can discover or invent: if the phenomena of the material universe, (like the steps of a mathematical demonstration,) were necessarily and immutably connected, it would be unreasonable to look beyond the phenomena, for the efficient cause of their concatenation, in the order of cause and effect: but as the succession of events, does not appear to be necessarily connected, we are irresistibly led to infer, that the order in which they succeed each other, has been established and appointed by an omniscient, and, consequently omnipotent being: and that every indication of harmony and order, every tendency to produce and diffuse happiness, which the universe displays, is not only a shining evidence of the existence of the Deity, but an evidence also, of the divine attributes, that claim the adoration, love, and worship, of all his rational creatures.’ —​pp. 91, 92. Now, we are very sure that an inference of this sort must be supported by considerations widely different from those embraced in the doctrine which our author has adopted, relative to cause and effect; and that, in fact, an inference directly at variance with the one here drawn is legitimately deducible both from his own essay, and from his master’s speculations on the same subject. If we are to consider every example of cause and effect as a mere conjunction of two events, —​or as a case of mere antecedence and consequence, —​we must necessarily believe, also, that the only foundation of our inference from the one to the other, in time to come, is the experience we have of the manner in which they have accompanied or followed each other in time past. In Hume’s own language, the two things are quite ‘distinct and arbitrary;’ nor can we discover either in the first, or in the second, the least circumstance from which we might conclude that their succession, or conjunction, was the result of any connecting principle, or necessary causation. The obvious consequence is, —​that no object or event can be inferred to have had a cause, unless at some time or other, we have seen a similar object or event, preceded by another in close and direct conjunction. Nay the antecedence and consequence must have passed repeatedly under our own eyes before the object or event or question can, according to this doctrine, be considered as having any thing like what we denominate a cause. Now, when we come to extend this principle beyond the petty phenomena of our own little

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‘spot which men call earth,’ and bring the total universe, as one single object, under the supervision of the mental eye, we find ourselves utterly incapable of concluding that it had a cause; for who has ever witnessed the production of such a phenomenon? Who has ever seen a universe come from the hands of a Creator, or preceded by any other object or event whatsoever? Another obvious consequence of Hume’s doctrine is,  —​that we never can have any notion of the efficiency by which one event is rendered adequate to the production of another. All we know about the matter is, that the first goes immediately before the second; and the conclusion is, that any other event might take the place of either, without disturbing, in the least, our ideas relative to the propriety of association. Even if the ‘philosopher’ should grant, therefore, —​what we know he must be less sagacious than Hume* to think of granting,  —​that every object and event is logically concluded to have a cause, he still has a strong hold of impregnable scepticism in the denial of our possibility to point out the powers and attributes of that cause. If he suffers us to infer that the universe had a cause, he will dispute our right of attempting to define what sort of a cause it was. We are granted the simple fact, —​that some object or event was immediately antecedent to the appearance of the universe; but whether it was material, or ­intellectual, —​whether, in short, it was God or not, —​we cannot make our premises bear us out in concluding. Turn the doctrine on whatever side you will, therefore, it is inevitably destructive of all belief in a Supreme Being. The relation of cause and effect, as we have endeavoured to explain it, involves no such conclusions as these. It is an unquestionable fact, —​let philosophers dispute ever so much about the foundation on which it lies, —​that from the circumstances invariably attending the phenomena which have come within our cognizance, from the uniform certainty that, with due examination, we can always find a reason for the events which fall under our supervision, —​we are irresistibly led to the general conclusion that every object must have a cause. When all the examples of experience are added together, this general inference may be considered as the sum which stands at the foot: —​and we find it formed n the mind so very early in life, that even children who are scarcely able to lisp a question are extremely anxious to know the reasons of things. —​But, along with our belief in the existence of causes, we receive, also, a notion of their comparative adequacy. We learn from experience that a force or momentum which can move a billiard-​ball would be inadequate to impel a thirty-​two-​pound * Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State. We suspect the author before us has forgotten this Essay.

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cannon-​shot; and we are taught farther by natural philosophy, that the momenta, which are respectively adequate to the impulsion of both, may be measured with arithmetical precision. From the same instructor, also, we acquire the additional information, that momentum itself is resolvable into the two elements of weight and velocity; —​insomuch that by making up with the one what is wanting of the other, we are able to move the greatest mass of matter with the least, or the least with the greatest. From such examples as this, we acquire a notion of adequacy; and whenever we are attempting to investigate the cause of any anomolous event, this circumstance forms an essential and an invariable part of our ­reflections. —​From the foregoing considerations we are impressed with the irresistible conclusion that the universe must have proceeded from a cause; from what we have just been saying, we acquire, at the same time, a conviction that, to be adequate, such a cause must have exceeded immeasurably any power within the sphere of our knowledge; and the mind finds itself obliged, therefore, to take refuge in the supposition of omnipotence. Beyond this we cannot go. There can be no cause of omnipotence. With regard to Mr. Ogilvie’s argument in favour of miracles we have to observe, that it proceeds upon an assumption which, by the person he is combating, would be considered as altogether false and gratuitous. Perhaps Hume, were he alive, would be the last person in the world to profess ‘a conscientious belief (p. 145) in the existence of God;’ and our author would, therefore, find himself contending with an antagonist who, without trying the temper of his weapon or the force of his blows, would deprive him at once of the very ground on which he stood. In disputing with a sceptic it is doubly necessary to be assured, first of all, that our fundamental propositions are such as he acknowledges to be tenable: and without examining particularly the reasoning of the author before us, therefore, or requiring of Hume any other concession than such as he has voluntarily made, we shall proceed to offer one or two brief remarks in oppugnation of his celebrated argument against the existence of miracles. ‘An absurd consequence, if necessary, (says he, Of Liberty and Necessity, Pt. II; and we only quote his own language in order to take nothing for granted which he would not concede) proves the original doctrine to be absurd.’ No absurdity can be greater than that the same principle should prove a thing to be, and not to be, at the same time; and if, therefore, we can demonstrate that Hume’s rule on this subject is equally conclusive both against, and in favour of, the existence of miracles, we suppose the principle itself must be given up as absurd. The great object is to ascertain the degree of confidence which we may rationally place in human testimony: —​‘and in all cases, (according to Hume) we must balance the

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opposite experiments, where they are opposite, and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence. An hundred instances on one side, and fifty on another, afford a very doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance.’ Now the great defect of this rule is, that it proves too much. If it is admitted to be true, we can establish the veracity of the veriest liar in the world, —​and prove that any extraordinary event of which we have testimony, both did, and did not, occur. We prove its occurrence by examining the character of the witness; and we demonstrate its non-​occurrence by investigating the nature of the event. It is a received truth, —​and Hume himself acknowledges in one place, —​ that the great body of mankind are to be considered as worthy of belief.* Let us, therefore, ‘balance the opposite experiments’ or ‘deduct the smaller number from the greater,’ and, if this doctrine is to be practised upon, we must be necessarily influenced to believe the testimony, —​notwithstanding the knavery and mendacity of the witness is known and acknowledged. His veracity has the ‘hundred chances to one’ in its favour; and the validity of his evidence is, therefore, weighted in the balance and not found wanting. But, on the other hand, nothing can be clearer than that, from the very nature of the thing, the extraordinary event in question could never have taken place. Our process here must also be that of ‘balancing and deduction.’ Rarity is the very quintessence of the extraordinary:  —​and accordingly when we came to balance the probabilities, we should find, on counting up the ‘instances’ for ‘both sides,’ that the number against the event is perhaps a thousand, while that in its favour is not more than a dozen. Deduct and balance as before; and it would be indubitably established that no such event could possibly have taken place. The odds are fearfully against it; and ‘with the wise and learned’  —​‘the judicious and knowing,’ —​therefore, the testimony in its favour can never be of the least possible weight. Perhaps we shall be better understood by adducing an instance. Let us suppose, then, that a person who was an eyewitness of the fact, should bring us the intelligence, that, in the transition of the steam-​boat over the Delaware, one of the passengers fell overboard and was drowned. It would be our first business to establish the veracity of our informer; and this is very easily done by deducting the number of liars from the great body of mankind. If neither of the sums was * ‘Men have commonly an inclination to truth and a principle of probity.’ Of Miralces, Pt. I. But we are

far from alleging the proposition upon his single authority; inasmuch as in Part II. of the same Essay, he finds it expedient to say ‘that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena,’ &c.

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precisely numerable, the balancing of proportions must be resorted to; and perhaps the result would be that 100 men will speak the truth, for one who would tell a lie. The passenger, therefore, was clearly drowned. —​But, in the next place, we must examine the nature of the event: —​and the result of our inquiries would probably be that 1000 men had passed the river in that very steamboat, and yet not one of them had fallen overboard or was drowned. ‘Deduct the smaller number of chances from the greater,’ and it is indisputable that the man in question could never have fallen overboard. Indeed, when this doctrine comes to be generalized, it amounts to precisely this,  —​that the majority of instances which give rise to a rule is conclusive against the smaller number which form the ­exceptions; —​a proposition which is so much at variance with the common sense of mankind, that the existence of exceptions is proverbially considered as proving the validity of the rule. We are aware of the two answers which Hume would make to the observations in the foregoing paragraphs. He would tell us, in the first place, that ‘the very same principle (Of Miracles, Pt. 1.) which gives a certain degree of assurance in the testimony of the witness, gives us also,’ to be sure, ‘another degree of assurance against the fact:’ but then ‘from this contradiction necessarily arise a counterpoise, and mutual destruction of belief and authority.’ Now to us the legitimate conclusion seems to be that a ‘principle’ which thus produces a flat and palpable ‘contradiction’ is radically and essentially absurd. Contradiction is the very last extreme of absurdity; and ‘an absurd consequence (see above, p. 25) proves the original doctrine to be absurd.’ —​But there is, besides, a great absurdity enveloped in the mysterious expression —​‘mutual destruction of belief and authority;’ a phrase which, being interpreted, means nothing less than that, as the two conclusions destroy each other, neither the event, nor the testimony, nor any thing connected with the one or the other, could ever have had e­ xistence: —​ and this, again, is to discredit the direct and immediate evidence of our own eyes and ears. Read Hume’s remarks upon the evidence of sense, at the beginning of Part I. Our sceptic’s second answer would be, that, as the drowning of a man was not miraculous, the rule proposed could have no legitimate application to such an event. In the prosecution of his argument on this subject, Hume unfortunately stumbled upon the instance of a tropical prince’s disbelieving, that, in more northern climates, the intensity of cold had the effect of reducing water to a state of hardness; and as he perceived that such an example struck at the very root of the doctrine, he endeavoured to explain it away by an amusing note, in which we are told, for our satisfaction, that ‘the operations of cold upon water

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are not gradual, according to the degrees of cold; but whenever it comes to the freezing point, the water passes from the utmost liquidity to perfect hardness.’ Nothing, we apprehend, can be more unquestionable than this; and yet it does not prevent us from seeing, that the conclusion of the Indian was exactly accordant with Mr. Hume’s reasoning, and directly contradictory of notorious matter of fact. The congelation of water in tropical countries would be almost as much a miracle as the restoration of sight in a person by the mere touch of the hand; and yet to conclude that water could not be frozen there, or any where else, against the direct testimony of veracious eye-​witnesses, would be considered as ridiculous and absurd. Here, then, Mr. Hume has been at the pains to exhibit his own infallible rule in the act of discrediting the existence of facts, which he and all of us acknowledge to be of notorious and ordinary occurrence. —​To say, that the rule cannot be applicable to cases in which the laws of nature are not suspended, is surely to draw distinctions where ordinary eyes can see no difference; for if the rule is applicable to one class of facts which lie without the regular course of things, we are utterly incapable of perceiving why it should apply to others which are in the very same predicament. A miracle may be called the sublime of extraordinary phenomena; but from that point there are almost infinite degrees of strangeness and rarity; and if the rule of ‘deduction and balancing’ is applicable to the one, we cannot find a good reason why it should not be so to all the rest. Certainly the language in which his principle is expressed does not recognize any such distinction: —​And whether, upon the whole, this rule of Hume’s ought to be ‘an everlasting check’ to our belief in well attested miracles, we shall leave our readers to determine. We have to observe, in quitting this subject, that notwithstanding the many absurdities which, in our opinion, are the unavoidable consequences of the sceptical philosophy, we believe it to be a logical and fair deduction from the metaphysical systems of the profoundest philosophers who preceded Hume: and we venture to assert, that there is hardly a proposition in the whole Inquiry concerning Human Understanding which may not be ultimately traced to Locke’s erroneous doctrine about ideas. The scepticism of Hume unfortunately took the wrong direction;  —​inasmuch, as, instead of doubting the validity of the principles upon which the received system was founded, he credulously took the whole for granted, and only busied his ingenuity in the superstruction of such doctrines as he clearly perceived must find support in those principles. Had he asked himself the question, —​whether, in fact, the ideas in our minds are copies or resemblances of external phenomena, —​his sagacity would have soon reduced him to a negative answer; for

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when he came to run over a variety of ideas, —​which his inquisitive mind would have done immediately, —​he would have discovered that, the greatest part of those ideas could not possibly be endowed with figure. Our notions of hardness, colour, heat, —​and, indeed, all those ideas which are not obtained through the single sense of sight, have nothing in them that can be conceived to resemble the objects from which they are derived. It was left for Dr. Reid to make this discovery; and it is only by reasoning similar to that of which he is the author, that we are enabled to break up the foundations, and consequently to overthrow the fabric, of Hume’s philosophical speculations. And here we take occasion to repeat, that they are speculations merely. In action we should, perhaps, accord exactly with the sceptic; and it is only from his philosophy that we should profess our dissent. ‘Cum Patrone Epicureo mihi omnia sunt: nisi quod philosophia vehementer ab eo dissentio.’ Cic. ad Memmium.

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HUME ON CAUSE AND EFFECT

“Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, copious Notes, critical and explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix. By James Ogilvie. 8vo. pp. 416. Philadelphia: John Conrad. 1816,” The North American Review, vol. 4, no. 12 (March 1817), pp. 378–​408; selection from pp. 401–​402. [Edward Tyrrel Channing] Edward Tyrrel Channing was a Unitarian who, in 1819, would be appointed to the Boylston Chair of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. In that capacity he was an important conduit of Scottish common sense philosophy in early America. Besides this review of Ogilvie, Channing was the author of fourteen other reviews in the North American Review. Authorship of this review is attributed to Channing in William Cushing, Index to the North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p. 123. On Channing see W. Charvat, The Origins of American Critical Thought (Philadelphia, 1936), p.  33; Richard  J.  Petersen, “Scottish Common Sense in America, 1768–​ 1850:  An Evaluation of its Influence,” (unpublished Ph.D.  dissertation, The American University, 1963), pp. 144–​5; E. H. Todd, “Philosophical Ideas at Harvard College, 1817–​37,” New England Quarterly, vol. 16 (March 1943), p. 87. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ It is certain, that we are very much in the dark as to efficient causes. We cannot trace what the philosophers call necessary connexions in the phenomena we witness; nor can we explain the “manner in which one event proceeds from another as its cause.” We observe a constant conjunction between certain events; we confidently look for this conjunction hereafter, and are in the habit of calling that which precedes, the cause; and that which follows, the effect. If this is what Mr. Ogilvie means, when he says, that we owe to Hume the first satisfactory elucidation of the fact, that our knowledge of cause and effect includes nothing more ‘than a perception and

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belief of the uniform antecedence of one event and sequence of another,’ we assure him, the fact was clearly held and explained, and by christian philosophers too, before Hume’s speculations appeared. If Mr. Ogilvie’s statement of the fact mean [sic] the same thing as ours, we can set him right on another point. He gives us to know, that Dr. Reid and his disciples, differ from Hume, and on fallacious grounds too, as to the fact which has just been stated. Mr. Ogilvie will find, by looking into the matter, that Dr. Reid and one of his disciples at least, opposed only the sceptical conclusions, which Hume drew from a principle they admitted. —​The Doctor does indeed argue rather drily against Hume, that if mere priority or conjunction implied efficiency or causation, we may call day the cause of night, night the cause of day, and in this way make any thingto [sic] be the cause of any thing. We are sorry to see Mr. Ogilvie so much discomposed at this.* —​Dr. Reid does indeed deny, that there is any efficiency in priority or conjunction. Still he thinks we are greatly in the dark as to efficient causes, though he holds it to be a first principle, that there must be an efficient cause for every phenomenon we witness. He is merely saving men from dreary scepticism. Mr. Ogilvie should have understood his countryman better, and remembered that Hume himself may possibly better deserve the charge of ‘sophistical artifice,’ than such a straight-​forward observer as Dr. Reid. The foundation of knowledge being laid, our author proceeds to analyse the relation of cause and effect; and begins with inquiring into the grounds of our belief, that the succession of events in time future, will resemble that of events in time past. He takes Adam, (who had the advantage of being full grown from the first, and who surely would be the only person, who could have any doubts on the subject) and gives a flourishing account of the supposed state of his mind, as to the reappearance of the sun after its first set. At first, he is in perfect uncertainty; but the repeated and regular return of the luminary would, by and by, give him a firm assurance of the unbroken alternation of day and night; though it would take an antediluvian life at least, to become as sure of the fact as we are. So Mr. Ogilvie adopts Hume’s hypothesis, and resolves our belief in this case into custom or habit; while Dr. Reid would make it a part of our constitution. Here then is our author’s creed, and we take it to be a mere obscuration of Hume. He is now in motion, and the remainder of the Essay is devoted to defining the regions of the knowable, and drawing several conclusions from the whole matter. Of these, and the enormous notes upon every thing, we can say nothing. * The Shepherd tells Touchstone, “that a great cause of the night, is lack of the sun;” or, in our author’s elegant paraphrase, it is ‘the absence of solar light in consequence of interposing terraqueous opacity.’ Mr. Ogilvie actually undertakes to support the shepherd’s proposition, in a very vigorous analysis of day and night, shewing how ‘they resolve themselves into four links in the chain of cause and effect.’ p. 51.

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HUME’S SCIENCE OF THE MIND

Conversations on the Science of the Human Mind (Philadelphia, 1819); ­selection pp. 17–​19. Ezra Stiles Ely Ezra Stiles Ely was a graduate of Yale (1804) and, when he published his Conversations on the Science of the Human Mind (1819), a Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia. Ely was involved with numerous periodical publications, including the Philadelphian, the Presbyterian Magazine, the Princeton Review, the Quarterly Theological Review, and the Religious Magazine, or Spirit of Foreign Theological Journals and Reviews. The selection reprinted below from Ely’s Conversations is notable for including one of the earliest printed American quotations from Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. (For the passages Ely quotes, see THN, “Introduction,” pp. 4–​6.) Despite his reservations about Hume’s philosophy, Ely here accepted Hume’s basic premise that all sciences are traced to the science of the human mind. On Ezra Stiles Ely see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), p. 24; Herbert W.  Schneider, A History of American Philosophy (New  York, 1946), pp. 253–​4; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted New York, 1970), p. 203. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Pupil. Before you proceed to propose your system, Sir, will you have the goodness to state wherein consists the usefulness of the science of the human soul? May we not think and reason, feel and act, while we remain in utter ignorance of it?* * “ ’Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however

wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even

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Professor. Can you seriously ask, of what use is this science? Surely it: must be profitable to man to understand the nature of his own bodily organs; for otherwise he could not employ them aright. You would laugh at him who should persist in attempting to walk on his hands, to see with his ears, to hear with his eyes, and to write with his lips. Of how much greater importance must it be for him to understand the nature, number, and operations of the faculties of the intelligent, sensitive, and efficient part of his complex being? The inherent parts of the constitution of our souls are like mental organs, by which we perform our mental work and appropriate our own intellectual activity to the promotion of our happiness. To know ourselves, is to be prepared for profitable exertions, and a cheerful discharge of duty. If you are thoroughly versed in the science which you are now pursuing, you will be able to refer every duty enjoined to the original constitution of your mind by which it is to be performed; you will be able to make accurate discriminations; will profitably classify the objects of your thoughts; will be prepared to investigate every other science, by knowing the foundation of human reasoning, and the talents which we have received for cultivating it; will be able to detect error and defend the truth; and in short will experience all the advantages which knowledge can boast over ignorance. No man can reason well in any science, or employ his knowledge to advantage, any farther than he is a good, practical metaphysician. The utility of the science of the human soul will, however, best appear from the developement of the science itself.* Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of man, and are judged of by their powers and faculties. ‘Tis impossible to tell what changes and improvements we might make in these sciences, were we thoroughly acquainted with the extent and force of human understanding, and could explain the nature of the ideas we employ, and of the operations we perform in reasoning. There is no question of importance, whose decision is not comprised in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending, therefore, to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect propose a complete system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security. And, as the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience and observation.” —​ Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature.   By quoting some admirable sayings from Mr. Hume, we shall not render ourselves responsible for his numerous errors. Mental science is built upon consciousness; which Mr Hume calls experience; and the testimony of others concerning their consciousness. Our knowledge of the operations of our own minds and of the minds of other people, he would say we have by experience and observation. His remark, that mental science lays a foundation for “a complete system of the sciences,” has been verified in the review of Judge Woodward’s splendid work on Universal Science, contained in the Analectic Magazine, vol. ix., pp. 89, 105, 106.   I have there evinced, that a systematic arrangement of all human sciences may be founded on the operations of two faculties, perception and conception; for all our knowledge is of things perceived through the organs of sense, or of things conceived of by the mind. * “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 behavour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension.” –​ HUME.

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CHANNING ON HUME

“The Rev. Dr. Channing’s Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion,” The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor, vol. 1, no. 5 (May 1821), pp. 213– 22; selection from pp. 214–​17. Anonymous The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor was published in Baltimore as a monthly from 1821 to 1824. In 1821 the editor was Jared Sparks who was to leave Baltimore for Boston in 1823. The author under review in this essay, William Ellery Channing (1780–​1842), graduated from Harvard in 1798 and was a leading American Unitarian. In his A Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion (Boston, 1821), Channing offered an attack on Hume’s essay “Of Miracles.” Much of that analysis is reprinted below in a favourable review of Channing’s book. The reviewer evidently thought Channing’s answer to Hume’s essay important enough to repeat in full. On The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 945–​7; API, p. 211. On William Ellery Channing see John White Chadwick, William Ellery Channing (Boston, 1903); David P.  Edgell, William Ellery Channing:  An Intellectual Portrait (Boston, 1955); I.  Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy:  The Early Schools(New York, 1907), pp. 206–​207; Herbert W. Schneider, “The Intellectual Background of William Ellery Channing,” Church History, vol. 7 (1938). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ The author first goes into a consideration of the argument from miracles; proves their credibility; explains some of the causes from which objections to them have arisen; and obviates these objections in a manner ingenious, forcible and satisfactory. The following are his remarks upon the famous argument of Hume.

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“Before quitting the general consideration of miracles, I  ought to take some notice of Hume’s celebrated argument on this subject; not that it merits the attention which it has received, for infidelity has seldom forged a weaker weapon; but because it is specious and has derived weight from the name of its author. The argument is briefly this, —​‘that belief is founded upon and regulated by experience. Now we often experience testimony to be false, but never witness a departure from the order of nature. That men may deceive us when they testify to miracles, is therefore more accordant with experience, than that nature should be irregular; and hence there is a balance of proof against miracles, a presumption so strong as to outweigh the strongest testimony.’ The usual replies to this argument I have not time to repeat. Dr. Campbell’s work, which is accessible to all, will shew you, that it rests on an equivocal use of terms, and will furnish you with many fine remarks on testimony and on the condition or qualities which give it validity. I will only add a few remarks which seem to me worthy of attention. “1.  This argument affirms, that the credibility of facts or statements is to be decided by their accordance with the established order of nature, and by this standard only. Now if nature comprehended all existences and all powers, this position might be admitted. But if there is a Being higher than nature, the origin of all its powers and motions, and whose character falls under our notice and experience as truly as the creation, then there is an additional standard, to which facts and statements are to be referred; and works, which violated nature’s order, will still be credible, if they agree with the known properties and attributes of its author; because for such works we can assign an adequate cause and sufficient reasons, and these are the qualities and conditions, on which credibility depends. “2.  This argument of Hume proves too much and therefore proves nothing. It proves too much; for if I  am to reject the strongest testimony to miracles, because testimony has often deceived me, whilst nature’s order has never been found to fail, then I ought to reject a miracle, even if I should see it with my own eyes, and if all my senses should attest it; for all my senses have sometimes given false reports, whilst nature has never gone astray; and, therefore, be the circumstances ever so decisive or inconsistent with deception, still I must not believe what I see, and hear, and touch, what my senses, exercised according to the most deliberate judgment, declare to be true. All this the argument requires; and it proves too much; for disbelief, in the case supposed, is out of our power, and is instinctively pronounced absurd; and what is more, it would subvert that very order of nature on which the argument rests; for this order of nature is

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learned only by the exercise of my senses and judgement, and if these fail me, in the most unexceptionable circumstances, then their testimony to nature is of little worth. “Once more; this argument is built on an ignorance of the nature of testimony, and it is surprising, that this error has not been more strikingly exposed. Testimony, we are told, cannot prove a miracle, [sic] Now the truth is, that testimony, of itself and immediately, proves no fact whatever, not even the most common. Testimony can do nothing more than show us the state of another’s mind in regard to a given fact. It can only show us, that the testifier has a belief, a conviction, that a certain phenomenon or event has occurred. Here testimony stops; and the reality of the event is to be judged altogether from the nature and degree of this conviction, and from the circumstances under which it exists. This conviction is an effect which must have a cause, and needs to be explained, and if no cause can be found but the real occurrence of the event, then this occurrence is admitted as true. Such is the extent of testimony. Now a man, who affirms a miraculous phenomenon or event, may give us just as decisive proofs, by his character and conduct, of the strength and depth of his conviction, as if he were affirming a common occurrence. Testimony then does just as much in the case of miracles, as of common events; that is, it discloses to us the conviction of another’s mind. Now this conviction in the case of miracles requires a cause, an explanation, as much as in every other; and if the circumstances be such, that it could not have sprung up and been established but by the reality of the alleged miracle, then that great and fundamental principle of human belief, namely, that every effect must have a cause, compels us to admit the miracle. “It may be observed of Hume and of other philosophical opposers of our religion, that they are much more inclined to argue against miracles in general, than against the particular miracles, on which Christianity rests. And the reason is obvious. Miracles, when considered in a general, abstract manner, that is, when divested of all circumstances, and supposed to occur as disconnected facts, to stand alone in history, to have no explanations or reasons in preceding events, and no influence on those which follow, are indeed open to great objection, as wanton and useless violations of nature’s order; and it is accordingly against miracles, considered in this naked, general form, that the arguments of infidelity are chiefly urged. But it is great disingenuity to class under this head the miracles of Christianity. They are palpably different. They do not stand alone in history: but are most intimately incorporated with it. They were demanded by the state of the world which preceded them, and they have left deep traces

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on all subsequent ages. In fact, the history of the whole civilized world, since their alleged occurrence, has been swayed and coloured by them, and is wholly inexplicable without them. Now such miracles are not to be met and disposed of by general reasonings, which apply only to insulated, unimportant, uninfluential prodigies.”

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HUME A LUBRICOUS PHILOSOPHER

“ART. XXII. —​ Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect. By Thomas Brown, M.  D. F.  R. S.  Edinburgh, &c. Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Third edition. Edinburgh, 1818. 8vo, pp.  569,” The North American Review, vol. 12, no. 2 (April 1821), pp. 395–​432; selections from pp. 395–​6, 419–​30. [Samuel Gilman] Samuel Foster Gilman (1791–​1858) was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1811 from Harvard College. In 1819 he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he was a Unitarian minister in the Second Independent Church. In the selection of his review of Thomas Brown’s Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect reprinted below, Gilman says he aims to defend Hume’s philosophical reputation from any “unfair stigma.” However, Gilman presents Hume as a philosopher who has plunged deep into the “mire” of scepticism. Gilman’s authorship of this review is attributed in William Cushing, Index to the North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p.  131. On Gilman see Daniel Walker Howe, “Samuel Gilman,” ANB, vol. 9, pp. 63–​4. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ A WHOLE article of solid metaphysics is a phenomenon, that perhaps requires apology, as well as explanation. We will therefore briefly submit our reasons for its appearance. The philosophy of the late lamented Dr. Brown is scarcely known in this country. It was presumed that considerable interest would attach among us to the speculations of the successor of Dugald Stewart, whose own work on the Mind has passed, we believe, through as many editions in the United States as in Great Britain, and who is well known, on becoming emeritus, to have warmly recommended Dr. Brown to the chair of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh.

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But farther, there is a vague belief among those who are but partially acquainted with the nature of the late professor’s speculations, that they coincided too nearly with the dangerous parts of the philosophy of David Hume. A faithful analysis of the work before us will correct this error, and redeem Dr. Brown’s reputation. Still further, an unjust and indiscriminate censure has overwhelmed the whole system of Hume itself with relation to the doctrine of Cause and Effect. When Professor Leslie, in consequence of having expressed his approbation of certain portions of that system, encountered from the ministers of Edinburgh strong opposition to his pretensions as candidate for a chair in the university, the nucleus of the present volume was published in a pamphlet form, and by distinguishing what was sound from what was exceptionable in the opinion of Hume, contributed to soften the opposition made to the too honest candidate. The work, in its present very much enlarged state, confirms the points maintained in the pamphlet, and though we profess no love, and but qualified respect for Hume in his metaphysical capacity, we are willing to assist in removing every unfair stigma from every literary reputation. … The Fourth and last Part is employed in an examination of Mr. Hume’s Theory of our Belief of the Relation of Cause and Effect. If our readers will lend their attention to a few succeeding statements, they will perhaps find that clear ideas of Mr. Hume’s Philosophy have not hitherto prevailed, and that Dr. Brown’s system of Cause and Effect, although corresponding with a portion of Mr. Hume’s, yet departs as widely as possible from it on every exceptionable point. We shall take considerable pains to set these assertions in a convincing light;  —​both because we regret to have learned, that an opinion was not long since entertained by most illustrious authority on the other side of the water, that Dr. Brown had been endeavouring to set up a theory of causation, which was ill-​understood by himself, and which differed not materially from the theory of Hume, —​and because, as our author is now laid where he cannot reply to one surmise against the soundness and correctness of his writings, we would try, with at least as fond a reverence as strangers may be supposed capable of, to efface every stain that may unjustly attach to his literary reputation. Mr. Hume commenced the statement of his views on this subject by reviving some hints that former writers had suggested as to the doctrine of a conjunction, rather than a connexion of the events that are constantly succeeding one another in the world of nature around us. In this simple doctrine, how much alarm soever a mistatement [sic] or a misapprehension of it may have once excited, there was not the semblance of a dangerous tendency. It still left the existence of every object and every event in nature as real and as certain as they were before. In resolving those

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incessant changes, that are every where happening, into a long train of antecedents and consequents, it did not deny, but rather confirmed the necessity of an antecedent for every consequent, and thus furnished a strong argument for the existence of some great First Cause —​some necessary antecedent of all the effects in the universe. It still left to this great invisible Being the ability to will into existence every substance that is, and the wisdom of arranging that eternal continuity of successive phenomena, which is all the time developing such astonishing results of order, harmony, beauty, and happiness. There was nothing truly sceptical about this doctrine, if by sceptical we mean any quality of an opinion, which fairly leads to an irreligious conclusion. The question related purely to a physical matter of fact, which, whatsoever way decided, leaves all the great truths of natural and revealed religion as sacredly guarded as they were before. As for philosophy, she certainly had a right to demand the evidence for that supposed invisible link, which connects each change with the substance that produces it. On the absence of that evidence, Hume, trusting to the evidence of the senses which God had given him, and perceiving by those senses nothing more than a succession of changes, advances his leading doctrine, that we can have no other idea of causation, than a bare precession of one event to another, without involving any thing that intervenes between the antecedent and consequent. Dr. Brown, perceiving the strong ground of nature and the senses on which Hume stood, embraces the doctrine, states and defends it at much length in the First Part of this treatise, insists that every new link which is discovered between the two parts of a sequence, such for instance as an inflammable gas between the heat of yon candle and the combustion of this pen, becomes only a new unlinked antecedent to the visible effect; —​and not only this, but in his Second Part, assigns several satisfactory reasons why the world should have been so long deceived in imagining, and giving a name to a nonentity. The next doctrine of Hume was equally free from the character of scepticism. It was, that the human mind has no capacity of predicting, previously to experience, the particular consequents that will result from any given antecedent, or in other words, that we are unable of ourselves to divine any of the powers of nature. It required but little reflection to adopt this opinion, which, to our minds, is perfectly independent of the former doctrine, and might be true, whatever theory of causation be so. Accordingly, Dr. Brown, as we have seen, in his Third Part, maintains that experience alone is the ground of those predictions which we are every day forming of the future effects of objects now existing around us. Thus far our two philosophers go along together. But from this point they separate; they diverge widely and irrecoverably. Having hitherto agreed with each other; when they come to ask, on what principle of the human mind

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we predict, after experience, the consequences of causes, Dr. Brown answers the question —​ by intuitive and irresistible belief. On thrusting this pen into the candle’s blaze, we believe it will burn; but we arrive at this belief, not from any process of reasoning, but because, having before seen the same effect proceed from the same cause, we cannot help believing it. This simple and clear statement of an ultimate fact, so consonant to the most approved rules of the Baconian philosophy, terminates Dr. Brown’s system. And whether that system be right or wrong, we do earnestly crave leave to insist, that if ever there was one, which deserved the appellations of intelligible, compact, consistent, simple, this is the one. Even before Dr. Brown wrote, we were confessedly all in the dark about causation. He does not pretend to reveal the mystery of it to us, but only to check our impatient and unavailing struggles after a figment of our own fancy, to exhibit the limits of the human mind on this subject, and to confine our reasoning and imagination entirely to the visible side of the curtain of our existence, on which are wrought no other figures, nay, out of which peeps not a thread, but those of experience. If the author himself was so unfortunate as not to understand his own system, he certainly has had the signally good success of causing some readers; humble, and without authority, we allow, but as conscientiously attentive to the train of his reasonings as their capacities would admit of; to comprehend it to their most entire satisfaction. Nor, until we find some hint in his writings, or learn of some declaration that passed his mouth, revealing a consciousness of the unintelligibility of his speculations, can we possibly conceive or believe that he did not understand them himself. Let us now turn to Mr. Hume, and see if he has really gained in our author an implicit and unqualified follower. Instead of allowing, or perhaps perceiving the force and authority of that great principle of intuitive belief which terminates Dr. Brown’s speculations, he lays a world of stress on the following maxim, which in hands as dexterous as his own, may lead into the most licentious, extravagant, and dangerous scepticism. ‘In all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind, which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding.’ At the enunciation of this portentous proposition, the mind involuntarily stands aghast. All the realities and well grounded expectations of life seem to be sinking, like fragments of floating ice, under our feet. The truth of the proposition itself you cannot deny; that is, if you allow that the business of life is carried on by ‘reasonings from experience.’ It is but too evident that from no quarter on earth have we gotten the information that the future will resemble the past, which

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is the assumed step that Hume refers to. Hence one feels that one has no right to introduce that assumption into any reasoning which is to guide his future operations. The consequence is, he may proceed to beat his head against a rock, with all the calmness in the world, and still be a very reasonable man; and why? Why, he has no right to assume that the future will resemble the past! and therefore the rock may in all possibility meet his head with the softness of a pillow of down. A wanton assassin may be justified in rushing out of his den, and stabbing a whole virtuous population one by one through the body; because, if he supposes that his dagger will sever their souls from their mortal tenements, he most illogically and unrighteously assumes a step in his reasoning, for which he has no authority, viz: that the future will resemble the past. Not to multiply examples of this kind, which must press on the imaginations of our readers as numerously as on our own, we will yet instance only religion, which, by the magical waving of this dialectic wand, is made to evaporate into air, along with all other solid realities. For why should you rely on any one attribute of Jehovah; why should you trust in his mercy, hope for his bounty, pray for his blessing, nay, expect his existence or your own one moment longer, since in so doing you assume that step for which you have no imaginable authority, which is, that the future will resemble the past? This is the slough to which Hume would conduct us. It seems a cruel fatality, that the man who has taken off the bandage from our eyes, by which we might have been betrayed into the midst of this miry scepticism, and who has shown us the rock on which we may safely and surely rest our foot far from this side of the horrible results of the above maxim of Mr. Hume, should have been suspected of coinciding in the main with that lubricous philosopher. Brown asserts that we expect an effect to follow any given cause, or the future to resemble the past, only in consequence of an irresistible and intuitive belief, which God has wrought into our very constitutions, and which we can no more avoid than we can avoid perceiving a visible object when we open our eyes. Hence, the mind of itself assumes no step in the above-​mentioned reasonings, if reasonings there be; it is God himself who assumed it, when he so created us, that there should be a perfect correspondence between our own minds and the onward progress of rolling events around us. From this view of the subject, not one dangerous or shocking consequence flows. It utterly excludes the idea of an arbitrary or unappointed arrangement of things, since we find, in millions of instances, events to take place according to our expectations, and in the few instances where they do not, it is in con-​sequence of the error of our expectations, arising from a limited experience. So far, moreover, from its involving scepticism, it is but too

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plain that it justifies and encourages a universal and confident belief, as directly opposite to scepticism as pole to pole. And as to exciting any distrust towards the Deity, or any irreligious affections whatever, we have already learned in the beautiful passage which closes the abstract of the Third Part of this book, that in impressing on our minds this unavoidable, this instinctive belief, the Deity has manifested for us a signal tenderness, which must touch every susceptible heart. When we recollect, that, were it not for this truly vital principle in our mental constitution, we must every moment be liable to be crushed by the masses and powers that are resistlessly moving by, or are at work all around us; that we must be constantly exposed to being caught in the wheels of that mighty machinery, whose operations we can now intuitively predict; or that we must sit still and starve amidst this world of plenty and joy into which we are born; we may literally say of our Creator with Moses, as an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord hath condescended to take care of his creature man. Yet Mr. Hume, writhing beneath the tortures of his own absurd conclusions, sets about with all his metaphysical might to extricate himself from them, although in so doing, he only wanders still further from Dr. Brown, and plunges still deeper into the mire. Instead of resorting, at once, with our author, to an ultimate principle of our mental constitution, an intuitive belief, which would have untied the knot that puzzled him, he makes the affair of the gratuitous step in our reasonings from experience, a very intricate process, which he would explain to the following effect, as summed up by our author. ‘When two objects have been frequently observed in succession, the mind passes readily from the idea of one to the idea of the other: from this tendency to transition, and from the greater vividness of the idea thus more readily suggested, there arises a belief of the relation of cause and effect between them; the transition in the mind itself, being the impression, from which the idea of the necessary connexion of the objects, as cause and effect, is derived.’ p. 391. We can afford but some very short commentaries on this passage, which will, however, be sufficient to demonstrate its astonishing absurdity, and will still further evince that Hume and Dr. Brown do not go hand in hand so affectionately together. 1.  Hume begins, ‘when two objects have been frequently observed in succession,’ &c. He here implies, that we do not expect that one thing is the cause of another, or that the antecedent will again produce the consequent, or in other words, that the future will resemble the past, until after repeated observations

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of the sequence. But our belief arises on a single observation, according to Dr. Brown, who instances a vast number of cases in which there can be no doubt, such as the stinging of a bee for the first time, or the smell of a new flower, which we immediately believe will in all future time produce the same effects. Our author reconciles to his principle those cases which seem to contradict it; but we must not stop to show how. The difference between the two authors is our principle object here. 2.  ‘The mind,’ continues Mr. Hume, ‘passes readily from the idea of the one to the idea of the other.’ There is something so hypothetical, so unphilosophical, in this assumption, that we need not contrast it with our author’s simple open theory of immediate and intuitive belief. Surely there is some difference between stating an ultimate intellectual operation, as Brown has done, without attempting to explain it, and gratuitously representing the mind as skipping backward and forward from idea to idea, as a bird does from twig to twig. 3.  One would have thought the preceding assertion of Mr. Hume quite shadowy enough; but next comes a statement, which is more evanescent and impalpable than even the shadow of a shade. ‘From this tendency to transition, and from the greater vividness of the idea thus more readily suggested, there arises a belief of the relation of cause and effect between them.’ Whoever can grasp the meaning of this tendency, and then combine it, some how or other, with the vividness of an idea, so that the union of the two together shall make up the operation of belief, must be blessed with a truly metaphysical genius. Even on the supposition that the statement is clear and intelligible, our author demonstrates its falsity by a long course of arguments, combatting particularly the error that the vividness of an idea is essential even to the strongest belief. This is at least a third minor difference. 4.  ‘The transition in the mind itself, being the impression, from which the idea of the necessary connexion of the objects, as cause and effect, is derived.’ A transition in the mind, an impression on the mind! —​a high absurdity. Yet this is the very keystone of the theory which would explain our expectations of the future, or our belief in causation, on any other principle than intuitive belief. We leave this passage now to the reflections and the judgment of our readers, and will not attempt to abstract more copiously the hundred pages, in which our author exposes its fallacies, its assumptions, its absurd consequences on the one hand, its inconclusiveness on the other, and the various theories and considerations brought to defend it. The whole topic is somewhat of an excrescence on the simple exposition of the theory before us. The author himself indeed somewhere apologises for its introduction, by observing that Mr. Hume’s opinions on the

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subject have had so powerful an influence on this abstruse but very important part of physical science, that it would be injustice to his merits, to consider them only with incidental notice, in a work that is chiefly reflective of the lights which he has given. We will therefore fill up the space allowed us, by extracting a masterly sketch of Mr. Hume’s character, as a metaphysical writer. Every reader, we presume, will thank us for the exchange. ‘That he was an acute thinker, on those subjects to which the vague name of Metaphysics is commonly given, there was, probably, no one, even of his least candid antagonists, who would have ventured to deny. That he was also an exact and perspicuous metaphysical writer, has been generally admitted, but it has been admitted, chiefly as a consequence of the former praise, or from the remembrance of powers of style, which, in many other respects, he unquestionably possessed. We think of him, perhaps, as an historian, while we are praising him as a metaphysician; or in praising him as a metaphysician, we think of qualities, necessary indeed for the detection of error, but different from those which the development of the system of truths of an abstruse and complicated science peculiarly requires. ‘In the philosophy of mind, where the objects are all dim and fleeting, it is the more necessary to remedy, as much as possible, by regular progressive inquiry, and the methodical arrangement, and precision of terms, the uncertainty that might otherwise flow from the shadowy nature of the inquiry itself. The speculations of Mr. Hume, however, as I conceive, are far from being marked with this sort of accuracy. The truths, which his acuteness is quick to find and to present to us, rather flit before our eyes in gleamy coruscation, than fling on the truths which follow them that harmonizing lustre, which makes each in progressive illumination more radiant by the brightness that preceded it, and more fit therefore to reflect new radiance on the brightness which is to follow. The genius of his metaphysical style, —​discursive and rapid, and sometimes in consequence of  that very rapidity of transition, slow in its general results, from the necessity of recurring to points of inquiry that have been negligently abandoned, —​is not of the kind that seems best fitted for close and continuous investigation: and though, in the separate views which he gives us of a subject, we are often struck with the singular acuteness of his discernment, and as frequently charmed with an ease of language, which, without the levity of conversation, has many of its playful graces, still, when we consider him as the expositor of a theory, we are not less frequently sensible of a want of rigid order and precision, for which subtlety of thought and occasional graces of the happiest diction are not adequate to atone.

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‘It is when we wish to unfold a system of truths, that we are most careful to exhibit them progressively, in luminous order: for, in the exposure of false opinions, the error, whatever it may be, which we wish to render manifest, may often be exhibited as successfully, by varied views of it in its different aspects, as by the closest analytical investigation. The want of strict, continuous method in some of the theoretical parts of Mr. Hume’s metaphysical essays, —​in which we discover more easily what he wishes us not to believe, than what he wishes us positively to believe, or in which, at least, the limits of the doubtful and the true are not very precisely defined to our conception, —​ may thus, perhaps, in part be traced to the habits of refined scepticism, in which it seems to have been the early and lasting passion of Mr. Hume’s mind to indulge. It was more in the detection of fallacies in the common systems of belief, than in the discovery of truths, which might be added to them, that he loved to exercise his metaphysical ingenuity; or, rather, the detection of fallacies was that species of discovery of truth, in which he chiefly delighted. There is, indeed, a calm, yet ever wakeful scepticism of an inquisitive mind, which has nothing in it that is unfavourable, either to closeness of reasoning in the discovery of truth, or to exactness of theoretical arrangement, in the communication of it to others. Such a spirit is even so essential to every sort of intellectual inquiry, that the absence of it in any one may be considered as a sufficient proof, that he has not the genius of a metaphysician: for the science of metaphysics, as it regards the mind, is, in its most important respects, a science of analysis; and we carry on our analysis, only when we suspect that what is regarded by others as an ultimate principle, admits of still finer evolution into principles still more elementary. It is not, therefore, by such doubts as have only further inquiry in view, that the intellectual character is in any danger of being vitiated: but there is a very great difference between the scepticism which examines every principle, only to be sure that inquiry has not terminated too soon, and that which examines them, only to discover and proclaim whatever apparent inconsistencies may be found in them. Astonishment, indeed, is thus produced; and it must be confessed, that there is a sort of triumphant delight in the production of astonishment, which it is not easy to resist, especially at that early period of life,* when the love of fame is little more than the love of instant wonder and admiration. But he who indulges in the pleasure, and seeks, with a sportful vanity of acuteness, to * ‘We are told by Mr. Hume, that the Treatise on Human Nature was projected by him before he had left college.’

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dazzle and perplex, rather than enlighten, will find, that though he may have improved his quickness of discernment, by exercises of nice and unprofitable subtlety, he has improved it at the expense of those powers of patient investigation, which give to dialectic subtlety its chief value. ‘The perpetual consideration of the insufficiency of all inquiry, as deduced from inconsistencies which may seem to be involved in some of our principles of belief, is more encouraging to indolence than to perseverance. By representing to us error, as the necessary termination of every speculative pursuit, it seems, at every moment, to warn us not to proceed so far; and tends, therefore, to seduce the faculties into a luxurious sloth-​fulness of occupation, which prefers a rapid succession of brilliant paradoxes, to truths of more extensive and lasting utility, but of more laborious search. ‘To shew that it is not from any logical inference, or direct induction, we have derived many of those opinions which, by the very constitution of our nature, it is impossible for us not to hold, and which have been formed without any thought of their origin, requires indeed superior perspicuity, but does not require any process of long continued reasoning. The very habit of ratiocination is thus apt to yield to a love of briefer exercises of discursive subtlety; and this tendency, when the scepticism relates to moral and religious subjects, is still increased by the popular odium attached to infidelity, in those great articles of general belief,  —​an odium, which may naturally be supposed to induce the necessity, in many cases, of exhibiting subjects only by glimpses, and of hinting, rather than fully developing and enforcing a proof. ‘A mind that has long been habituated to this rapid and lively species of remark, and that has learned to consider all inquiries as of doubtful evidence, and their results therefore as all equally or nearly equally satisfactory or unsatisfactory, does not readily submit to the regularity of slow disquisition. It may exhibit excellencies, for which we may be immediately led to term it, with the justest commendation, acute or subtle, or ingenious: but it will not be in many cases that there will be reason to ascribe to it that peculiar quality of intellect, which sees, through a long train of thought, a distant conclusion, and separating at every stage the essential from the accessory circumstances, and gathering and combining; analogies as it proceeds, arrives at length at a system of harmonious truth. This comprehensive energy is a quality to which acuteness is necessary, but which is not itself necessarily implied in acuteness; or rather it is a combination of qualities, for which we have not yet an exact name, but which forms a peculiar character of genius, and is, in truth, the very guiding spirit of all philosophic investigation.

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‘That a long indulgence in the ingenuities of scepticism, though it may improve mere dialectic acuteness, has a tendency to deaden, if I may so term it, the intellectual perception of the objects on which it is wisdom to rest, and, by flinging the same sort of doubtful light over truth and error, to make error often appear as worthy of assent as truth, —​at least if the error happen to be in any doctrine of the sceptic himself, —​is, I think, what our knowledge of some of the strongest principles of the mind might naturally lead us to expect. That the evil, of which I speak, is truly to be found in the metaphysical speculations of Mr. Hume, I may be wrong, indeed, in supposing; but, if any part of his abstract writings be marked with it, there is none, I conceive, in which it is so conspicuous, as in those which relate to the subject that has been now under review. While he appears only as the combatant of error, in exposing the inadequacy of perception or mere reasoning to afford us directly any notion of the necessary connexion of events, it is impossible not to feel the force of the negative arguments which he urges, and equally impossible not to admire the acuteness and vigor of intellect which these display. But when, after these negative arguments, he presents to us opinions on the subject, which he wishes us to receive as positive truth, a very slight consideration is all that seems necessary to show, how strong the self-​illusive influence must have been, that could make these opinions, unwarranted as they are by the evidence of observation or consciousness, appear to his own mind worthy of the credit which he expects to be given to them. It is fortunate for his intellectual character, that it is not as a dogmatist only, he has given us opportunities of knowing him. The minor theories involved in his doctrine of the origin of the notion of power, would certainly give a very unfavourable impression of his talents as a metaphysical inquirer; if his reputation as a metaphysician were to be founded wholly on this or other positive doctrines maintained by him, and not on the acuteness with which, in many brilliant exercises of sceptical subtlety, he has exhibited what he wishes to be considered as errors in the systems of popular and scientific faith.’ p. 338. Before dismissing our author, we shall venture to offer one or two strictures on the leading doctrine and definition in his book. We apprehend that both himself and Mr. Hume have overlooked an essential element which enters into our idea of a cause, and which, if introduced into their definition, would at least have made it more easily comprehended and received. A cause, Dr. Brown defines to be, that which immediately precedes any chance, &c. This definition involves only immediate succession, or proximity in time. Is not contiguity in place equally a part of our notion of causation?

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Must not the antecedent in our idea be locally present with the consequent? It is an axiom, which, at its very first announcement, every body, —​child —​ peasant —​philosopher —​believes and acknowledges, that no power can act where it is not present. It is true we have an idea of remote causes, as well as proximate causes. But every remote cause is always supposed to act upon something immediately near, and then that something to act upon another as immediately near it, and so on, till we arrive in idea to the proximate cause, which, to produce the last effect, is believed to be near it, even to immediate contiguity. We think that the omission of this idea has led Dr. Brown as well as Mr, Hume into considerable embarrassment, when they came to apply their principle to the innumerable coexisting sequences of phenomena, which at every moment are taking place throughout nature. They have both left that point in an unsatisfactory state, Mr. Hume to Dr. Brown, and Dr. Brown to us. If nothing more than immediate precession in time is admitted into our idea of causation, then, why is not the acorn, which is planted at the same time with the cherry-​stone, regarded as the cause of the fruit-​tree, as much as it is of the oak? Admit into your definition the necessary circumstance of immediate contiguity in place, as well as immediate precession in time, and you escape from this objection.

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A SEARCH OF TRUTH IN THE SCIENCE OF THE HUMAN MIND

A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind, Part First (Philadelphia, 1822); selection from Book I: “CHAPTER IV. The opinions of Mr. Hume on Cause and Effect,” pp. 31–​45; “CHAPTER V. The opinions of other authors upon Cause and Effect,” pp. 47–​54, 58–​82; “CHAPTER VI. The Opinions of Professor Stewart,” pp. 83–​112; Book II:: “CHAPTER VI. Mr. Hume’s Principles,” pp. 227–​32; Book III: “CHAPTER VIII. Upon Miracles,” pp. 363–​90. Frederick Beasley Frederick Beasley (1777–​1845) was an Episcopal clergyman who had been educated at the College of New Jersey. Upon graduating in 1797, Beasley stayed on as a tutor and to pursue further studies under the college president, Samuel Stanhope Smith. In 1813 Beasley was offered the provostship of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Beasley wrote A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind while provost and while he occupied the chair of moral philosophy. Beasley’s students commented upon his pleasant demeanor, but he was also known for the virulence of his polemical attacks. As one of his biographers has put it, “he was absolutely convinced of absolute truth and his acquaintance with it.” Beasley’s attack on Hume is one of the most extended of all American responses. As the selections reprinted below illustrate, Beasley aimed, in part, to drive a wedge between Locke’s theory of knowledge and Hume’s scepticism. On Frederick Beasley see Ernest Sutherland Bates, “Frederick Beasley,” DAB, part II, p. 98; I. Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (New York, 1907), pp.  519–​36; Herbert W.  Schneider, A History of American Philosophy (New York, 1946), pp. 239–​40; John R. Shook, entry on Beasley in his Dictionary of Early American Philosophers, 2 vols (New York, 2012), vol. 1, pp. 83–​84. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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BOOK I. CHAPTER IV. The opinions of Mr. Hume on Cause and Effect. SUCH a full and elaborate explanation of terms, in themselves simple and intelligible, would have been unnecessary, had they not been rendered ambiguous and confused in their signification by some writers of a more recent date than the authors before referred to. That writers, whose evident aim is, to treat every received maxim in science as a professed enemy, with whom they are to wage hostility, and who, in the prosecution of this warfare, would unsettle the foundations, not only of religious and moral, but even of philosophical and mathematical truth, and conduct the understandings of mankind to universal scepticism, and even a blank atheism, should adopt as one of the expedients, by which to accomplish their purpose, a doubtful and cloudy application of terms; sometimes, taking them as expressive of one combination of ideas, and, at other times, of another; at one time, using them according to ordinary acceptation, at another, in a meaning variant from the authorised usage of the language, was to have been anticipated. Accordingly we find Mr. Hume, in his treatise of human nature, giving the following account of cause and effect, as far as his opinion is to be collected from the affected obscurity of his style, and the studied intricacy and involution in his modes of thinking. He divides all our perceptions into impressions and ideas, the latter being regarded merely as the faint images or copies of the former; and to this arbitrary division of our perceptions, alike unknown to the schools and to nature, he adverts in laying the foundation of his doctrine about causation. “To begin regularly,” says he, “we must consider the idea of causation, and see from what origin it is derived. ‘Tis impossible to reason justly without understanding perfectly the idea concerning which we reason; and ‘tis impossible perfectly to understand any idea without tracing it up to its origin, and examining that primary impression from which it arises. Let us, therefore, cast our eyes on any two objects which we call cause and effect, and turn them on all sides in order to find that impression which produces an idea of such prodigious consequence”. He maintains that, with the most diligent search, he can discover no previous impression, from which the idea of efficiency or necessary connection between causes and effects can be derived, and that the relation of contiguity and constant conjunction are all that are essential to causation. But lest it should be asserted that our having a distinct idea of force, power or efficiency in one object to produce an effect upon another, shows that we have some ideas which have not been preceded by their

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correspondent impression, and overthrows his theory of perception, instead of his theory overturning the doctrine of causation; he proceeds to the discussion of the two following propositions. “First, for what reason we pronounce it necessary, that every thing whose existence has a beginning, should also have a cause? Secondly, why we conclude that such particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects?” In reference to that maxim so generally received in philosophy, that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of its existence, it is neither intuitively nor demonstrably certain. And since it is not from knowledge or scientific reasoning, that we derive the opinion of the necessity of a cause to every new production, that opinion must necessarily arise from experience and observation. Now the nature of experience is this. We remember to have had frequent instances of the existence of one species of objects; and also remember that the individuals of another species of objects have always attended them, and have existed in regular order of contiguity and succession in regard to them. Thus we remember to have seen that species of objects we call flame, and to have felt that species of sensation we call heat. We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without any further ceremony we call the one cause and the other effect, and infer the existence of the one from that of the other. In giving a solution of the second question, viz. why we conclude that such particular causes must have such particular effects, he maintains; “that if it be allowed for a moment, that the production of one object by another in any one instance implies a power, and that this power is connected with the effect, we have no reason to infer that the same power still exists merely upon the appearance of the sensible qualities. The appeal to past experience decides nothing; and at the very utmost can only prove that the very object which produced any other, was at that very instant, endowed with such a power, but can never prove that the same power must continue in the same object or collection of sensible qualities; much less that a like power is always conjoined to such sensible qualities. Thus,” he concludes, “not only our reason fails us in the discovery of the ultimate connexion between causes and effects; but even after experience has informed us of their constant conjunction; ‘tis impossible for us to satisfy ourselves by our reason why we should extend that experience beyond those particular instances which have fallen under our observation.” The passages before extracted from Locke, Newton, and Cicero, when compared to these from Mr. Hume upon the same subject, furnish us with a tolerably just conception of the difference between that clear and intense light which is shed around the investigations of the true philosopher, of him who exerts himself to the utmost to become, in sincerity and truth, the faithful interpreter of

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nature; and those faint and false fires which cast a dubious and deceptive glimmering along the footsteps of those who would sedulously, and with full purpose of mischief, lead us astray from the paths of truth and right reason. Is there any one who is in the smallest degree versed in the science of nature, and accustomed to trace his ideas to their origin, or compare and combine them, who would seriously maintain that our ideas of the relation of cause and effect, and of the contiguity and conjunction of objects are the same? The veriest tyro in metaphysicks could detect a fallacy of this kind. The mere contiguity and conjunction of those objects existing in nature, without conceiving of them as possessed of powers and actually exercising those powers, would not afford even a plausible account of those numberless changes and modifications both bodies and minds are perpetually undergoing, and the endless diversity of forms they are successively assuming. If contiguity and constant conjunction form the only bond of connexion between cause and effect, then, there is no one thing in nature which may not be the cause of any other. Heat may be the cause of cold, and cold of heat, health may be the cause of sickness, and sickness of health, rain may be the cause of sunshine, and sunshine of rain, winter of summer, and summer of winter. I open the lids of my eyes during the day and I perceive the objects around me; I unfold the shutters of window and my room is illuminated. Now, in both these cases, the one event immediately succeeds the other, and is constantly conjoined to it. But is the act of opening my eye-​lids the cause of me seeing, or the unfolding of the shutters of my window the cause of the illumination of my room? Scarcely any one can be so little skilled in tracing the operations of nature as to be imposed upon by so palpable a sophism. Take the example furnished us by Mr. Hume himself. “We remember to have seen that species of objects which we call flame, and to have felt that species of sensation, which we call heat. We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without further ceremony we call the one cause and the other effect.” We may leave it to the judgment of any man of sound understanding, however little accustomed to metaphysical speculations, to decide whether this be a just interpretation of nature. Besides the contiguity and constant conjunction of heat as a quality in fire and of our sensation, do we not become sensible that there is a force or power in the fire to produce that sensation? We never approach the fire, but our lungs are at the same time, inflated with air and we breathe, the blood is propelled through the arteries and our pulse beats. These acts of breathing through the lungs and the pulsations of the heart are events as constantly conjoined to that of our approaching the fire as our sensation of heat; and yet is the heat in the fire the cause of our breathing or of the pulsations of the heart? In what, then, it

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may be asked, consists the difference between the relation which our sensation of heat bears to that quality in fire which excites that sensation, and that which the same quality in fire bears to our breathing through the lungs and the pulsations of our arteries? It is evident, that the difference does not consist in the greater or less degrees of contiguity and conjunction of those objects, as they are equally contiguous and conjoined to each other. The matter can be solved only by admitting that in the one case, we are sensible of a power residing in the fire which operates upon our sense and produces its results; in the other case we are sensible of no such power or operation. Instances without number might be adduced, that fall under every person’s daily experience, in which objects are found to be contiguous and conjoined to each other, precedent and sequent, without making the smallest approximation towards that union which is denoted by the expressions, cause and effect. In fact, if Mr. Hume’s representation of this matter be correct, the pursuits of the philosopher are greatly abridged, and his irksome and laborious exertions in the prosecution of his discoveries utterly superseded. If instead of striving with the ancient Peripateticks to attain to a knowledge of causes, properly so called, or with Newton to arrive at a solution of the phenomena of nature, by referring them to such causes as are both true and sufficient to explain them; in a word, if instead of exerting himself to the utmost with the soundest and best investigators both of an ancient and modern times, to remove the awful veil from nature, and disclose to the pupils of science her venerable mysteries; his task be limited to tracing the contiguities and conjunctions of objects, their antecedences and sequences, it might, indeed, be rendered more practicable and easy; but at the same time would become in the highest degree frivolous and futile. What could be more easy than to trace a thousand contiguities and conjunctions of objects, what more difficult than by a complete induction, to ascend upon the modern plan of philosophising to efficient causes and general maxims of science? It is worthy of remark, indeed, that there is a summary mode of philosophising, or compendious method of explaining the appearances of nature, prevalent among the vulgar, which is not unlike that recommended by him, whom Dr. Reid and his contemporaries of the same school of mephysicks [sic], so often mention as one of the acutest metaphysicians that ever lived. Minds undisciplined to thinking and inquiry, and untutored in the science of nature, appear to have a natural propensity to regard events which merely precede or succeed each other, in the light of causes and effects; as when an eclipse of the sun or moon is thought, by the vulgar, to occasion the changes that ensue in the state of the atmosphere, or itself to have arisen from the vices of men, the approach of a comet to be the cause of pestilential influences. Non

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causa pro causa, is a very ordinary vulgar sophism. Whenever such appearances among the heavenly bodies have been found in conjunction with such changes and influences upon earth, although these phenomena may be casual coincidences, events purely contingent and unconnected with each other in the order of nature, the vulgar imagination immediately assigns to them a real connection, and considers them as bearing towards each other the relation of cause and effect. In fine, the same mode of reasoning pursued by Mr. Hume, when extended to those limits to which it inevitably leads, however reluctant he might have felt to trace it to such consequences, would give the sanction of philosophy to the wildest reveries of folly and imposture, and the most extravagant freaks of ignorance and superstition. When the judicial astrologer pretends to foretell the future fortunes of men from the relative positions of the heavenly bodies at the period of their nativity —​when the Roman Soothsayers and Augurs undertook to predict the fate of armies and empires, from the pecking of fowls, the flight of birds and the entrails of victims; when the votary of superstition performed a toilsome journey to the tomb of his tutelary saint, and waited with unwearied patience expecting to be healed of his diseases by the heavenly influence supposed to be shed from his ashes: what did all these dupes of ignorance and credulity, but rest their conclusions, and support their visionary hopes, upon the foundation laid for them by Mr. Hume? Men born at certain conjunctions and oppositions of the heavenly bodies, had been found to be partakers of peculiar fortunes. Certain appearances in the pecking of fowls, the flight of birds, and the entrails of victims, had been succeeded by prosperous or disastrous circumstances to armies and empires; devotion at the tombs of saints had been attended, on some occasions, with the cure of diseases. Hence from the contiguities and conjunctions between these events, their antecedences and sequences, the astrologer, the soothsayer, and the votary of superstition, supposed himself justified in considering them as assuming towards each other the relation of cause and effect. So nearly do the extremes in the principles of scepticism and atheism approach to those of ignorance and superstition! And thus does he, who thought himself one of the ablest and most successful enemies of superstition, unwarily establish maxims that lead to its support and encouragement! But we have objections of a much more serious nature to bring against the principles of Mr. Hume. They lead by inevitable consequence to the rankest atheism. For, if as he asserts, we have no idea of power or efficiency in causes to produce their effects, there being no previous impression to which that idea can be traced; and if moreover, we have no reason to believe, either from intuition, demonstration or experience, that there is any efficiency in any one thing

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to produce another; and, still farther, if when any effect is exhibited to us there be no good ground to conclude that there must have been a cause, there being no truth in the maxim, that whatever begins to exist must have a cause; the very foundation of the argument by which the existence of a God is proved is sapped and destroyed. And yet we find the learned and judicious Dr. Reid, in animadverting upon these opinions of Mr. Hume, speaking in the following style. “If, on the other hand, our belief that every thing that begins to exist has a cause, be got only by experience: and if, as Mr. Hume maintains, the only notion of a cause be something prior to the effect, which experience has shewn to be constantly conjoined with such effect, I see not how from these principles it is possible to prove the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe.” This must be allowed to be very mild and courteous treatment of a man who had the impudence and the hardihood to broach such abominable doctrines. The Dr, need not have discovered any solicitude to relieve the principles of Mr. Hume from the charge of leading to the exclusion of an intelligent cause of all things, as he seems not to have been liable on that score to any such, compunctions visitings of nature for himself. Not only is it true, that from the principles of Mr. Hume, it is impossible to prove the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe; but it is moreover, perfectly certain, that, advancing upon the ground of such doctrines, we are led at once precipitately and unavoidably into the gulf of atheism. How much soever we may be inclined to approve of that christian temper and moderation which would induce us, like a Campbell, a Watson, and a Hooker, to treat a literary antagonist with candour and liberality, and to oppose even the most pernicious errors in a spirit of meekness and forbearance; it may be made a question, when the great and fundamental interests of truth and mankind are at stake, whether it is not at once more compatible with true sincerity and zeal in their cause, and more likely to terminate in a favourable result; instead of meeting the adversaries of truth and righteousness with such softened phrase of overacted courtesy, to assume the severe countenance and stern reproof of a Beattie, what Mr. Hume himself denominates “the arrogance and scurrility” of the Warburtonian school, or even the intrepid invective of “slashing Bentley with his desperate hook.” It is scarcely to be conceived as consistent with a hearty zeal in the cause of truth and virtue, to treat their worst enemies with so much respect and tenderness. We would not raise the Tomahawk against a literary adversary, or kindle around him the fires of the stake; but, according to all the laws of the most civilized warfare, we must be allowed to resort to the use of those weapons the best suited to the nature of the contest, and the most likely to produce a favourable issue. Atheism is a monster not to be tamed or subdued by gentleness and coaxing.

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But this is not all that we have to reprehend in the treatment which Dr. Reid has given to Mr. Hume’s doctrine. Not only in no part of his voluminous writings on these subjects, has he spoken in terms of such decided reprobation as the case required, but on some occasions we find him capable of offering a direct apology for it. “The common theory,” says he, “that all our ideas are ideas of sensation and reflection, and that all our belief is a perception of the agreement or disagreement of those ideas, appears to be repugnant both to the idea of an efficient cause and the belief of its necessity. An attachment to that theory, has led some Philosophers to deny that we have any conception of an efficient cause or of active power, because efficiency and active power are not ideas either of sensation or reflection. They maintain, therefore, that a cause is only something prior to the effect and constantly conjoined with it. This is Mr. Hume’s notion of a cause. Here we find that hideous monster atheism traced to the door of Mr. Locke and the philosophers; but we shall show during the progress of these dissertations that it is the genuine offspring of Mr. Hume himself. This is not the only time in which in the writings of Dr. Reid, the errors of Mr. Hume and others are laid to the account of the great english metaphysician. Dr. Reid had before indicated his doubts whether our belief that every thing which begins to exist has a cause be gotten only by experience, and he now peremptorily asserts, “that the common theory that all our ideas are ideas of sensation and reflection, and that all our belief is a perception of the agreement or disagreement of these ideas, appears to be repugnant to the idea of an efficient cause and a belief in its necessity.” From these and other expressions more directly in point, it appears that Dr. Reid did not think that our idea of cause and effect is derived from experience, or through the channel either of sensation or reflection; and he undoubtedly would not be willing to admit any doctrine which is repugnant to the idea of an efficient cause and a belief in its necessity. And yet it is a little singular that the Dr. in a very few sentences before, in attempting to trace to its origin our idea of cause and effect, or active power, seems inadvertently to have been betrayed into the theory of Mr. Locke. “It is very probable,” says he, “that the very conception or idea of active power and efficient causes, is derived from our voluntary exertions in producing effects, and that if we were not conscious of such exertions, we should have no conception at all of a cause or active power, and consequently no conviction of the necessity of a cause to every change which we observe in nature.* * See Essay fourth, upon cause and effect, page, 409. vol. 2.

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By adverting to the portion of Mr. Locke’s treatise before quoted in part, the reader will find that the author derives our idea of power, and of cause and effect also, both from sensation and reflection, from our observation of the operations of bodies upon each other, and also the operations of our own minds. Now, what does Dr. Reid, in this passage but refer the same idea to the origin of reflection or consciousness, excluding sensation from all share in producing it? But after all that has been said on this subject, we can perceive no good reason for impugning the opinion of Mr. Locke, that we derive our idea of cause and effect, power and active power, as well from witnessing the changes and alterations which outward objects produce on each other, as from the operations of our own minds, and our voluntary exertions in producing effects. —​Let us now return to the doctrine of Mr. Hume. Dr. Reid asserts, that an attachment to the common theory, that all our ideas are ideas of sensation or reflection, and all our belief a perception of the agreement or disagreement between these ideas, led Mr. Hume to deny that we have any conception of an efficient cause. But the Dr. should have recollected that a man, in commencing sceptick, as soon as he is initiated into the mysteries of that fraternity, finds it imposed as one of the strictest rules of his order, to discard his attachment to all theories whatever. Like Ishmael, his hand should be against every man, convinced that every man’s hand is against him. He should believe in nothing but that nothing is worthy of belief, oppose with his utmost strength all those truths which others have been in the habit of considering as established and consecrated, and discover a leaning towards all that by others are regarded as questionable or absurd, exploded or offensive, hazard any doctrines or arguments that suit his purpose, at the time, without fear of being detected in any inconsistencies with himself, since this circumstance would not defeat or mar his great design, and whenever he finds himself at a loss for sufficient proofs to lead to his conclusions, involve the whole subject in a cloud of subtilty and confusion, and escape to his inferences, unobserved through the darkness. In all these qualifications of an able sceptick we think Mr. Hume an admirable proficient. He certainly was not led into his sceptical and atheistical principles from his attachment to the theory of Mr. Locke and the philosophers, since he found no better ground in that theory on which to erect his system, if it may be called such, than in the doctrines of those metaphysicians who have succeeded them. And after a tolerably careful perusal of his works, we profess ourselves unable to discover in him a fondness for any one truth or system throughout the whole circle of the sciences. —​In fact as a professed Pyrrhonist, this would have been inconsistent with his plan, which is not to construct systems, but to limit his views solely to the subversion of the systems of others. It is true that in the

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commencement of his treatise upon cause and effect, he adverts to a distinction made by himself among our perceptions, in which, without any authority from the schools or from nature herself, he divides them into impressions and ideas, considering the first as our original perceptions, and the second as the mere copies or images of these. So far, however, is he from following Mr. Locke in this arbitrary division, that he expressly asserts, that in this manner he restores the term idea to its original signification, from which it had been perverted by Mr. Locke, when he makes ideas include all our perceptions. It is true, moreover, that Mr. Hume makes use of this arbitrary division of our perceptions, into impressions and ideas, as the first step in his progress towards overturning the doctrine of causation, and that he seems to think it a very convenient instrument for the purpose, since he professes that, with the most diligent search, he cannot find any previous impression to which the idea of power or efficiency is to be referred and of which it is the image or copy. Others, perhaps, might think themselves a little more fortunate in this search, and without laying claims to uncommon perspicacity, might imagine that even upon his own principles, considering the term impressions as equivalent to that of our original perceptions, an impression or original perception might be found to which the idea of power might be traced. It is worthy of remark, however, that while Mr. Hume does endeavour to subvert the doctrine of causation by attempting to show that there is no impression to which the idea of power or efficiency can be traced, yet he does not rest upon this point the main stress of his argument. —​The foundation of his atheism is much deeper. Perceiving that it would be very justly alleged against him, that the very circumstance of his being able to reason on the subject, and speak intelligibly about power, cause, and effect, was decisive proof of his having ideas of them, since he could not argue about any thing of which he had no idea; and of consequence, that if according to his views there were no previous impressions, to which those ideas, which it must be allowed he possessed, could be referred, this went to overturn his theory, since it showed that we had some ideas which could not be found to originate in or be copied from any previous impressions, instead of his theory subverting the doctrine of causation; he very adroitly shifts the subject, and merges this question in the discussion of two interesting points: first, for what reason we pronounce it necessary that every thing whose existence has a beginning should also have a cause? Secondly, why we conclude that such particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects? This, it must be admitted, discovers all the management and subtilty of an able sceptick; but at the same time it justifies us in the assertion, that the doctrines of Mr. Hume, so far from having sprung out of the theory of Mr. Locke, or

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any of the philosophers who lived before his time, is as much at variance with it as with any system that has been or ever can be broached on this subject. As it will naturally fall in our way, at a future period of this discussion, to prove that our ideas of power, active power, cause and effect may be derived from sensation and reflection, notwithstanding all that Dr. Reid and Mr. Hume have alleged to the contrary; and to show in what manner we arrive at the very important conclusion that every effect must have a cause, we dismiss the subject at present with remarking that the doctrines before stated as held by Mr. Hume, not only lead by inevitable consequence to atheism, but tend also to invalidate, and utterly to destroy, the force of the method of reasoning from induction, upon which all natural and experimental science is founded. “Supposing,” says he, “that the production of any one object by another, in any one instance, implies a power, and that this power is connected with the effect, we have no reason to infer that the same power still exists, from the appearance of the same sensible qualities. The appeal to past experience decides nothing; and at the very utmost can only prove, that that very object which produced any other, was at that very instant endowed with such a power, but can never prove that the same power must continue in the same object or collection of sensible qualities, much less that a like power is always conjoined to such sensible qualities. Thus,” he concludes, “not only our reason fails us, in the discovery of the intimate connection, between causes and effects, but even after experience has informed us of their constant conjunction, ‘tis impossible for us to satisfy ourselves by our reason why we should extend that experience beyond those particular instances which have fallen under our observation.” Thus, while with one hand, he would strike away the foundation upon which rests the proof of the existence of God, with the other he would overthrow the certainty of all those sciences which consist, to use the language of Lord Bacon, in the interpretation of nature. All those sciences rest the certainty of their principles upon the ground of the stability of the constitution, and order of nature, and upon the uniformity and permanence of her laws; while Mr. Hume informs us that we have no reason to draw any inference from our own experience concerning the past or future. If this part of Mr. Hume’s doctrine be true, we have no reason to conclude, because we have ascertained by a just induction that the united influence of the Sun and Moon occasions the ebbing and flowing of the tides to-​day, that the same influence will produce that result to-​morrow; because bodies now gravitate towards the earth, and the Planets towards the Sun, they will do so in future; in a word, because the Sun rises and sets to-​day, and has always risen and set every twenty-​four hours, since the Creation, it will rise and

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set to-​morrow. Into such extravagancies and absurdities are men driven by the wanton spirit of scepticism. And yet this frivolous, and flimsy disquisition has been dignified with the title of profound reasoning, and acute metaphysicks. It forms a part of the task we have assigned ourselves to detect its fallacy, and exhibit the force and certainty of that part of our knowledge which rests upon experience or the inductive method of reasoning. We proceed, therefore, without further delay to the opinions of the remaining authors upon the subject of cause and effect.

BOOK I. CHAPTER V. The opinions of other authors upon Cause and Effect. Dr. Priestley, in speaking upon the subject of cause and effect, says, “a cause cannot be defined to be any thing but such previous circumstances as are constantly followed by a certain effect, the constancy of the results making us conclude that there must be a sufficient reason in the nature of the things why it should be produced in those circumstances.” If by the expression, sufficient reason in the nature of the thing, be meant, as no doubt it is meant, a power or efficiency in the cause to produce such results, we see no room for objection against this definition, but that it is couched in language rather inaccurate, when previous circumstances are placed in the same category with thing or cause, and that it does not furnish an example in which that author has expressed himself with his usual perspicuity and precision of style. Mr. Hume’s doctrine appears to have shed a baneful influence upon the Scottish school of metaphysicks, most of the writers of that school discovering in their productions some tincture of his opinions. Whether it be that Dr. Reid, from frequent perusal of the works of that celebrated sceptick, and from that admiration of his genius which he takes frequent opportunities to display, even while combatting his errors, was at first drawn insensibly into the vortex of that influence which the principles of Mr. Hume evidently obtained in his native country; or whether the Dr.  in his earlier productions, had not as yet, (as he acknowledges to have been the case in reference to the immaterialism of Bishop Berkeley) seen those ulterior consequences that result from them, certain it is, that in his treatise upon the human mind, the first and most crude of his publications, he has not only adopted some of the opinions but the very language of Mr. Hume, relative to cause and effect.* “What we call natural causes,” says * Chap. 5. sect. third. Inquiry concerning the human mind.

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he, “might with more propriety be called natural signs; and what we call effects, the things signified. The causes have no proper efficiency or causality, as far as we know: and all that we can certainly affirm, is, that nature hath established a constant conjunction between them and the things called their effects, and hath given to mankind a disposition to observe their connections, to confide in their continuance, and to make use of them for the improvement of our knowledge and increase of our power.” Again he expresses himself to the same purport, “*For effects and causes in the operations of nature mean nothing but signs and the things signified by them; we perceive no proper causality or efficiency in any natural cause, but only a connection established by the course of nature between it and what is called its effect.” This, it will be perceived is precisely the language of Mr. Hume, and as far as the structure and operations of the physical world are concerned, to all intents and purposes, his doctrine. But how are we to reconcile these views of this matter to the following passage, as well as others which will be afterwards adduced.† “The chain of natural causes,” says Dr. Reid, “has not unfitly been compared to a chain hanging down from Heaven; a link that is discovered supports the link below it, but it must itself be supported; and that which supports it must itself be supported, until we come to the first link which is supported by the throne of the Almighty. For every natural cause must have a cause until we ascend to the first cause which is uncaused and operates not be necessity, but by will.” Professor Stewart has remarked an inconsistency between this and the language previously and subsequently held by the same writer, although unfortunately for the discernment and reputation of that author, as we shall see afterwards, he has stopped short in the crude and less digested opinions of his master and repudiated the more sound conclusions into which he was occasionally drawn by the force of truth.‡ “It is difficult to reconcile the approbation here bestowed on the above similitude,” says he, “with the excellent and profound remarks on the relation of cause and effect, which occur in other parts of Dr. Reid’s works.” But we affirm that it is not only difficult to reconcile the doctrine taught in the one case, when it said that causes and effects, imply nothing more than signs and the things signified by them, and that causes, as far as we know, possess no proper causality or efficiency; with that which is alleged in the other case, when the connection between natural causes and effects, is compared to a chain hanging down from Heaven; and when it is * See chap. 6. sect 24. Inquiry concerning the human mind † ‡

See Essay 2. chap. 6. vol. 1. Intellectual and active powers. See note N. to vol. 2. On philosophy of the human mind.

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said that every natural cause, must have a cause; but that the two representations of the subject are in direct and irreconcilable contradiction to each other. For, if according to the above representation, between any one effect in the natural world and the Creator there be any chain of causes or any single cause forming a link in that chain, that cause must contain within itself a power or efficiency to produce that effect, upon the principles of the Dr. himself, who again and again, declares, what all but atheists admit, that for every effect in nature there must be an adequate or efficient cause. The Supreme Being must either be the immediate operating cause of every event in the physical world, or he must communicate to those natural causes intervening between him and the effects, a force, power, or efficacy, adequate to produce those effects. Thus is it evident that the Dr. in one part of his works, maintains a doctrine in direct hostility to that which is held in another. But let us contemplate this matter in another light. We are told that what we call natural causes, might with more propriety be called natural signs, and what we call effects the things signified. Let us put this mode of speaking to the test, and see what advantage to philosophy is likely to accrue from the change of phraseology. When wax is melted in the sun, according to ordinary methods of speech, heat in the sun’s rays is said to be the cause, and the efficient cause too, and the melting of wax, is called the effect; but we are told by our philosopher, that the heat would with more propriety be denominated the sign, and the melting of the wax the thing signified. In like manner when lightning rends the oak, the electrick fluid is the sign, and the rending of the oak the thing signified. This phraseology approaches so nearly to the jargon of the schools, and is so little comprehensible, that in despair of obtaining any instruction from such a representation of things or penetrating into the motives that led to the proposal for such a change of language, we set ourselves forward in quest: of an explanation, and to our utter astonishment we find that this mode of expression is attempted to be justified by the authority of Lord Bacon, who denominates the true method of investigating nature, that method in which after a full and complete collection of facts, we ascend to the great maxims of science, an interpretation of nature, which is regarded as equivalent to the expressions interpretation of signs. “The great lord Verulam,” says the Dr.  “had a perfect comprehension of this, when he called it an interpretation of nature.”* Strange that a beautifully figurative expression should have been so egregiously misunderstood and so grossly perverted. * See chap. 5. sect, third. On the human mind.

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But to return to our subject. We are informed that natural causes have “no proper causality or efficiency in them, as far as we know, and that all we can certainly affirm, is, that nature hath established a constant conjunction between them and the things called their effects.” And yet afterwards we find Dr. Reid reprehending Mr. Hume for uttering the same language and inculcating the same doctrine, to which in this and other parts of his essays he gives his decided sanction. “Mr. Hume,” says he, “maintains that the only notion of a cause is something prior to the effect, which experience has shown to be constantly conjoined to it. He seems to reason justly from his definition of a cause when he maintains that any thing may be the cause of any thing, since priority and constant conjunction are all that can be conceived in the notion of a cause.” Now, in what does Mr. Hume’s account of a cause differ from that which Dr. Reid has given in the passages before quoted from him, in which he boldly asserts that “there is no proper causality or efficiency in any cause, as far as we know, and that all we can certainly affirm, is, that nature hath established a constant conjunction between them and the things called their effects?” I am aware, that it may be answered, and justly too, that Dr. Reid meant this doctrine as propounded by him to apply solely to the events of the natural world, and had no relation to what are properly denominated efficient causes, in which the energies of mind are always presupposed to be exerted. Although this explanation would not relieve his doctrine from the charge of inconsistency which has been shown to lie against it, as expounded by him, yet the question may then be asked, why not qualify his reprehension of Mr. Hume, and show that his doctrine was only partly true, but could not be supported in the extent to which he wished to apply it? This would have been but fair and honourable dealing, and commendable conduct even towards a sceptick and atheist. The fact is, that what we have to complain of in the works of Dr. Reid, is, not that they do not contain a considerable portion of sound learning, judicious observations and occasionally profound reflections; but that he has not been sufficiently attentive to systematise his ideas and digest and condense his views. Essay after essay is poured out upon us, in which the same subject is recurred to, the same things repeated, and when we supposed that we had fully ascertained the opinions of the author, some additional speculations are indulged that again throw us back into total darkness as to his opinions and put our understandings to the utmost test to reconcile them with what he had previously taught. Upon the point now under discussion of cause and effect, I have to regret that after a diligent perusal of the several portions of his works which bear relation to it, which are, as usual, very numerous and prolix, I  am unable to discover

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that clearness of conception, coherence and consistency of views and luminous exposition of doctrine, which so eminently distinguish the writings of Locke, Clarke, Des Cartes and Mallebranche, those lights of moral science. In order to let each author speak for himself, I am compelled to fill these pages with more frequent and detailed quotations than I  could have desired. This, however, is an evil which is unavoidable, if we wish to ascertain with accuracy the progress which the science of the human mind has already made, to arrive at any definite conclusions in it, or that it should be cultivated with success in future, and make any further advances towards that perfection which has been attained in natural philosophy. In Dr. Reid’s essay upon the “intellectual and active powers,” he undertakes to illustrate what is meant by giving a solution of any phenomenon in nature. After remarking that it is a dictate of common sense, that the causes which we assign of appearances should be both true and sufficient to explain them, (and by the by, why should we talk of causes being sufficient to explain appearances, if as this author we have seen maintains there be no proper efficiency or sufficiency in them, but they are to be regarded merely as signs) he proceeds —​“That those who are less accustomed to inquiries into the causes of natural appearances, may better understand what it is to show the cause of such appearances or to account for them; I  shall borrow a plain instance of a phenomenon or appearance, of which a full and satisfactory account has been given  —​The phenomenon is this: That a stone or heavy body, falling from a height, continually increases its velocity as it descends; so that if it acquire a certain velocity in one second of time, it will have twice that velocity at the end of two seconds, and so on in proportion to the time. This accelerated velocity in the stone falling, must have been observed from the beginning of the world, but the first person, as far as we know, who accounted for it in a philosophical manner, was the famous Gallileo, after innumerable false and fictitious accounts had been given of it. He observed that bodies once put in motion, continued that motion with the same velocity and in the same direction until they be stopped or retarded, or have the direction of their motion altered by some force impressed upon them. He observed also, that gravity acts constantly and equally upon a body, and therefore, will give equal degrees of velocity to a body in equal times. From these principles which are known from experience to be fixed laws of nature, Gallileo showed that heavy bodies must descend with a velocity uniformly accelerated as by experience they are found to do. We may here observe that the causes assigned of this phenomenon are two; first that bodies once put in motion retain their velocity and their direction until

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they are changed by some force impressed upon them; secondly, that the weight or gravitation of a body is always the same. These are laws of nature, confirmed by universal experience, and therefore are not feigned but true causes —​then they are precisely adequate to the effect ascribed to them; they must necessarily produce that very motion in descending bodies which we find to take place, and neither more nor less. The account, therefore, given of the phenomenon is just and philosophical.” … In order, however, to give the fairest construction possible to the language of Dr. Reid, I shall state what appear to me to be the principles which he aims to establish, although he no where fully explains himself; and then endeavour to test the truth of those principles. As to the origin of our idea of power, active power, cause and effect, which are inseparably connected together; he is evidently of the opinion of Mr. Hume in believing that it cannot be explained upon the principles of Mr. Locke, not being derivable either from sensation or reflection. He maintains that the maxim for every effect there must be an efficient cause, is not founded either upon reason or experience, but is to be traced to an original or instinctive principle in the constitution of our nature. Finally, he asserts that mind alone can possess active power, the Supreme Being or Spirits commissioned by him can be regarded as efficient causes; and of consequence the business of natural philosophy, is not to trace real causes and effects, but merely to mark the constant conjunctions of objects or trace the connections between the signs and the things signified by them.* “With regard to the phenomena of nature,” says he, “the important end of knowing their causes, besides gratifying our curiosity, is, that we may know when to expect them, or how to bring them about. This is very often of real importance in life; and this purpose is served, by knowing what, by the course of nature, goes before them and is connected with them; and this, therefore, we call the cause of such a phenomenon.” First, as to his assertion, that the origin of our idea of power, active power, &c. cannot be explained upon the principles of Mr. Locke, not being referable either to sensation or reflection, but to be derived from some source different from these: I shall not now stop to refute this objection, as it will naturally present itself to consideration when I shall undertake to vindicate from exception that fundamental point of Mr. Locke’s system, in which he maintains, in my opinion with unanswerable force of argument, that all our simple ideas are derived * See Essay 1, ch. 6, vol. 2. Intellectual and active powers.

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through the inlets of sensation and reflection. I trust I shall be able to show that no instance yet enumerated by Dr. Reid forms a valid exception to the theory of the English metaphysician; and until some contradictory facts are alleged, upon the true principle of philosophising, that no more causes of things are to be admitted than are both true and sufficient to explain the appearances, it ought to be received as an established maxim. As Dr. Reid admits that we have ideas of power, active power and efficient causes, although he ascribes them with preposterous absurdity rather to an inference of reason, than to the simple perceptions of the mind: this concession is sufficient for our present purpose, as it places this part of metaphysical science upon a different ground from that on which it was placed by Mr. Hume. The second point maintained though rather obscurely by Dr.  Reid is, that the maxim so universally received in philosophy, for every effect there must be an efficient cause, is not derived either from reason or experience, but is to be traced to an original or instinctive principle in the constitution of our nature. “A train of events,” says he, “following one another ever so regularly, could never lead us to a notion of a cause, if we had not from our constitution a conviction of the necessity of a cause to every event.” We find, in like manner, professor Stewart interpreting and adopting the sentiment of his master, when he says, “if this part of his system (Mr. Hume’s) be admitted; and if, at the same time, we admit the authority of that principle of the mind, which leads us to refer every change to an efficient cause,” &c. Again he remarks, “in stating the argument for the existence of the deity, several modern philosophers have been at pains to illustrate that law of our nature, which leads us to refer every change we perceive in the universe, to the operation of an efficient cause. This reference is not the result of reasoning but necessarily accompanies the perception, so as to render it impossible for us to see the change without feeling a conviction of the operation of some cause by which it was produced.” Dr. Reid, as will be found in his essay upon active power, declares, that power being an operation neither of matter nor mind cannot be an object either of sensation or consciousness, but is an inference made by reason from witnessing the exercise of our powers; and yet we are here told that we have an original and instinctive principle which leads us to refer every effect to an efficient cause antecedently to all reasoning and reflection, although it is admitted, that without our having an idea of power, it would be impossible to have any conception of the relation between cause and effect. As soon as we see any change, we have a conviction of the operation of some cause by which it was produced, although reason has afterwards to go through her slow and operose process in order to arrive at the conclusion, that the cause

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must have power to produce the effect. This is supposing strange confusion in the works of nature. That must be a sharp-​sighted instinct, indeed, which could thus rush to the conclusion that every event in nature must have a cause, before it had ascertained what was included in the idea of a cause. The writers who have broached this theory have not given a name to this principle of our constitution; though they have attempted to christen one no less disavowed by nature to be her offspring, and no less contemptuously handed over by her to its genuine parent, a mistaken and spurious philosophy, viz. the inductive principle. We are informed by these writers that man, instead of coming out of the hands of his Maker, untutored and the simple pupil of nature, in whose school only all his lessons are to be learnt, has two original principles hitherto unnoticed by philosophers, which make him at once acquainted with the deepest lessons of wisdom, the first of which tells him, that for every effect there must be an adequate cause; while the second, the inductive principle, conducts him to the very profound conclusion, a more profound one than Mr. Hume was ever able to attain with all the metaphysical acumen that has been ascribed to him, that similar causes will always produce similar effects, and induces him, at once, antecedently to all experience, to repose confidence in the stability of the order of nature. Perhaps it would have been wiser and more consonant to the maxims of a just philosophy, somewhat to have abridged this attempt at an interpretation of nature, and have resolved these two principles into the inductive principle alone; and then, like another Janus, it might have been represented as having two faces, one looking back upon the past and the other forward to the future; while from a contemplation of the past if might arrive at the maxim, that for every effect in nature there must be an adequate cause; in prospect of the future, it might deduce the inference that similar causes will produce similar effects. It is difficult to treat with seriousness and philosophick gravity opinions so evidently and preposterously absurd. Dr.  Reid could have been betrayed into such a gross misinterpretation of nature only by one of two motives; either from what I cannot but regret to perceive throughout his works, a prurient propensity to cavil at the doctrines of Mr. Locke, or to rid himself of the difficulty in which Mr. Hume had involved him by his sophistry, and from the toils of which he saw no other mode of extrication. In the one case the motive was unworthy of a man so respectable in his talents and attainments; and in the other, it is to be remarked that the expedient adopted to silence the scepticism of Mr. Hume was mistaken and altogether inadmissible. Without having recourse to any expedient of this kind, we trust we shall be able before we arrive at the close of these dissertations, under the conduct of so

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illustrious a guide as the metaphysician of England, to put into the hands of the votaries of metaphysical science a clue that shall lead them safely out of that dark labyrinth into which they had been translated by Berkeley and Hume. Mr. Hume denies that there is any truth in the maxim, that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of its existence, and endeavours to show that it is neither susceptible of proof, from reason, intuition or experience; and when the brave champion of scepticism vainly imagines that he has successfully silenced all opposition and fought his way to his conclusion, Dr. Reid approaches and informs him that he has all this time been entirely mistaken and wasting his skill and prowess to no useful purpose, as he has left an impregnable fortress in his rear, for there is an original principle of our nature, which without the aid of intuition, reasoning or experience, leads us to the conviction that for every event in nature there must be an adequate cause. Mr. Hume denies, that there is any ground for the doctrine that similar causes will invariably produce similar effects, maintains that we have no reason to draw any inference concerning the order of nature beyond our own experience, asserts what amounts to the opinion that because the sun has risen and set hitherto, this consideration furnishes no sufficient argument to prove that it will rise and set to-​morrow; because fire warms us now, is no adequate proof that it will warm us in future: Dr. Reid relinquishing the contest in the open field, allows himself vanquished there, but again takes refuge in his fortress; and gives notice to his antagonist that he has a second time been engaged in a fruitless warfare, for although he has “clearly and invincibly shown” that our belief in the stability of the order of nature is neither grounded upon intuition, upon reasoning or experience, it is irresistibly inferred from that luminous instinct without which we should be as “blind as bats,” the inductive principle. This it must be allowed is a short road to victory, and a summary mode of settling philosophical disputations. Of this inductive principle of Dr Reid it will be our province to treat when we shall undertake to explain the method of induction of which lord Bacon was the proposer. Of this new and unchristened instinct by which we arrive at the immensely important conclusion that for every effect in nature there must be an adequate cause, I would proceed to remark. Can we wish that any phenomenon of the human mind should be more satisfactorily explained, than this is explained upon the principles of Mr. Locke? The problem to be solved is, in what manner do we arrive at the maxim, that for every event there must be an efficient cause? According to the philosophy of Mr. Locke the account to be given of it would be to the following purport, though I believe he has no where attempted an especial solution of it. From our constant observation

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of the operation of bodies upon each other, by sensation, and of the operations of our own minds and the influence which our minds possess over the actions of our bodies in our voluntary exertions, by reflection or consciousness, we arrive at ideas of power, active power, agency, cause and effect. No sooner have we obtained these ideas, than continuing our observations and experiments upon the course of nature, we find from an invariable experience, that no changes or alterations take place in those objects with which we are daily conversant, but in consequence of the action of sufficient causes. This observation commences, and this inference is deduced at a period of life more remote than that to which the strongest memories extend. Hence from a complete induction of facts, from an invariable experience, as far as the imbecility of the human mind allows us to attain to a knowledge of causes, we become deeply convinced of the truth of the maxim, that every thing which begins to exist must have a cause. This is soon strengthened into a confirmed opinion, into an opinion so confirmed, that no sophistry or scepticism can shake or eradicate it. Is not this a philosophical and satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon? For my part I could not conceive of one that bears more deeply marked upon it the genuine impress and authentic seal of nature and truth. The following observations upon this subject are very singular as coming form the pen of an avowed champion of theism. “I know of only three or four arguments in the way of abstract reasoning,” says Dr. Reid, “that have been urged by philosophers to prove that things which begin to exist must have a cause. One is offered by Mr. Hobbes, another by Dr.  Clarke, another by Mr. Locke. Mr. Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature, has examined them all, and in my opinion has shown that they take for granted the thing to be proved; a kind of false reasoning, which men are very apt to fall into when they attempt to prove what is self-​evident.” And could Dr. Reid really have imagined that Mr. Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature, has fairly met and refuted the arguments of Clarke and Locke, and found them liable to the charge of that logical abortion, called a petitio principii? They did not live in the days in which nature put forth abortive intellectual exertions, and it was not compatible with their habits to make them. Let us bring the matter to issue between Mr. Hume and his antagonists, and we shall see how well he is entitled to the praise bestowed upon him of obtaining a triumph over them. For our part, instead of agreeing with Dr. Reid in the opinion that Mr. Hume has exposed the fallacy of Mr. Locke’s and Dr. Clarke’s reasoning, we think that he has never discovered himself able

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to meet it, not taken the pains to comprehend it. We perceive in his work only an artful attempt to misrepresent and elude the force of their arguments. Thus he states the arguments of Dr. Clarke. The second argument which I find used on this head, labours under an equal difficulty. “Every thing,” ’tis said, “must have a cause; for if any thing wanted a cause, it would produce itself; that is exist before it existed, which is impossible.” This to be sure, which is referred by the author to Dr. Clarke, it must be admitted is an admirable syllogism. Whether Mr. Hume quoted this argument from memory, and supposed at the time he wrote it, that it was Dr. Clarke’s, or whether with his usual disingenuousness and subtilty, he was willing to misrepresent and evade the force of that great man’s reasoning, it is not easy to decide. He seems to have been perfectly satisfied if he could throw all truth into a cloud of uncertainty, and make his readers sceptics either by having recourse to fair or foul means. Certain it is that he has not understood or wilfully mis-​stated the argument of Dr. Clarke. “Every thing,” ’tis said, “must have a cause; for if any thing wanted a cause it would produce itself; that is exist before it existed, which is impossible.” This would have been strange language in the mouth of Dr. Clarke, who maintains that the Deity, although the cause of all other things, exists without cause. Apply, therefore, the proposition above assumed to the case of the Creator. The Deity exists without a cause, and of consequence must produce himself; that is exist before he existed. Mr. Hume probably would have had no objection to reducing the proof of the self-​existence of the Deity to such a manifest absurdity, but the illustrious Dr. was quite of a different turn of thinking, and had too much penetration not to have perceived that, by such a concession, he would have uprooted the whole of his argument in demonstration of the Being and attributes of God, one of the most masterly efforts of human genius. Dr. Clarke, indeed, does maintain and justly, the self-​existence of the Deity, but he expressly states in what he conceives that self-​existence to consist; “not,” says he, “in producing himself, for that is an express contradiction, but in existing by an absolute necessity in the nature of the thing itself.” Equally false and unfounded is the statement given by Mr. Hume, of the next argument which he refers to Mr. Locke as the author; but which when rightly understood and stated is common both to him, Dr.  Clarke, and many other ancient and modern writers. He says, that Mr. Locke maintains, “that whatever is produced without any cause, is produced by nothing, or in other words, has nothing for its cause.” “But nothing, can never be a cause, no more than it can be something, or equal to two right angles.” In his reply to this, it is at once curious, and disgusting to a mind, devoted to the pursuit of truth, to see how he chooses

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to subtilize, and darken the subject, by words without knowledge and a foolish play upon the expression, “nothing as a cause;” and although he himself allows, that Mr. Locke had alleged that it could no more be a cause, than it could be something or equal to two right angles; yet in the very wantonness and pruriency of debate, he chooses to consider nothing, as Mr. Locke’s cause; and such is his rooted antipathy to causes, that he would even fight with this shadowy form and exclude it from the privilege of becoming a cause. “Tis sufficient,” says he, “only to observe, that when we exclude all causes, we really exclude them, and neither suppose nothing, nor the object itself, to be the cause of existence.” How insignificant and unworthy of the candid spirit of philosophy are such subterfuges and shifts to escape from the power of right reason! In order that we may perceive how grossly Mr. Hume has misrepresented the opinions of Locke, and Clarke, and how readily Dr.  Reid has acceded to the opinions of his countryman, and how prematurely he has adjudged him the palm of victory; let us hear those authors deliver themselves in their own person. “There is no truth, says the English metaphysician, more evident than that something must be from eternity. I  never heard of any one so unreasonable, or that would suppose so manifest a contradiction, as a time when there was perfectly nothing, this being of all absurdities the greatest, to imagine that pure nothing, the perfect negation and absence of all beings, should ever produce any real existence.” Mr. Locke considers it as one of the greatest of all absurdities to imagine, that pure nothing, the perfect negation and absence of all being, should ever produce any real existence, and on this account Mr. Hume represents him as saying, that nothing is a cause, and with this kind of nothing he feels himself bound to combat. To the same purport as this doctrine of Mr. Locke, is that of Dr.  Clarke. He prescribes it as an established and incontrovertible truth, that “whatever exists has a cause, a reason, a ground of its existence; a foundation on which its existence relies; a ground, or reason why it doth exist, rather than not exist; either in the necessity of its own nature, and then it must have been of itself eternal, or in the will of some other being, and then that other being, must at least, in the order of nature and causality, have existed before it.” Having laid thus the deep foundation of his reasoning, he proceeds upon this plan. “Every thing which exists, must either have come into being, out of nothing, absolutely without cause, or it must have been produced by some external cause, or it must be self-​existent. Now, to arise out of nothing, absolutely without cause, is a plain contradiction. For to say a thing is produced, and yet there is no cause at all of that production, is, to say that something is effected, when it is effected by nothing: that is, at the same time when it is not effected at all.” Now, is this according

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to Mr. Hume, making nothing a cause, or as both he and Dr. Reid seem willing to believe a petitio principii or begging of the question? When it is alleged, that to suppose this world to have begun to exist without a cause at a time when there was nothing, is to suppose something to arise out of nothing, is so far from a begging of the question, that it furnishes an abstract argument from the reason and nature of things in confirmation of the practical truth, that for every effect there must be a cause. When I say, for every thing which begins to exist, there must be a cause, I state a proposition, the truth of which it is evident I could have derived only from experience; but when I declare that it is impossible something should arise out of nothing, I trace a relation between something and nothing, which is abstract; and the connection or disagreement between which ideas, I should be able to perceive, if the case were supposed possible, antecedently to all experience, as soon as I am made acquainted with the import of the terms made use of in the proposition. The truth that out of nothing, something cannot proceed, arise, or be produced, is intuitively discerned, and cannot, therefore, take for granted any other proposition, and more especially one which it is impossible for us to arrive at but from experience and observation of facts. In this sense of the words, the celebrated maxim of the ancients, ex nihlio nihil fit, is undoubtedly just. Notwithstanding, therefore, all that has been alleged to the contrary, we cannot help thinking, that if we were required to give an abstract argument in proof of the maxim, that for every effect in nature there must be a cause, it would be solid and satisfactory to say, that to affirm any effect had taken place without an adequate cause, is to suppose something to arise out of nothing, absolutely without cause. By this time, I trust, we clearly and distinctly perceive the disingenuousness, and artifice of Mr. Hume, in representing Mr. Locke as asserting that nothing may become a cause, and how well he is entitled to the encomiums bestowed upon him, of which mention was made in the commencement of this article. He never has met and never could fairly have met the arguments of Clarke and Locke.* * Bishop Watson, in his biography of himself, lately published, has given the following account of one

of the events of his college life. “I had not been six months in College before a circumstance happened to me,” says he, “trivial in itself, and not fit to be noticed, except that it had some influence on my future life, inasmuch as it gave me a turn to metaphysical disquisition. It was then the custom in Trinity College for all the undergraduates to attend immediately after morning prayers, the College lectures at different tables in the hall, during term time. The lecturers explained to their respective classes certain books, such as Puffendorf de Oficio hominis et Civis, Clarke on the Attributes, Locke’s Essay, Duncan’s Logic, &c.; and once a week the head lecturer examined all the students. The question put to me by the head lecturer was —​whether Clarke had demonstrated the absurdity of an infinite succession of changeable and dependent beings? I  answered with blushing hesitation, non. The head lecturer, Brocket, with great good nature, mingled with no small surprise,

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I shall conclude this part of our subject by answering the objections alleged by Dr. Reid himself against the doctrine, that every thing which begins to exist must have a cause being derived from experience. The first is this —​“The proposition to be proved is not a contingent but necessary proposition. It is not, that things which begin to exist commonly have a cause, or even that they always, in fact, have a cause, but they must have a cause and cannot begin to exist without a cause.” But in reply let me ask, are the propositions that there is a God, that God is an intelligent Being, that God is benevolent, contingent or necessary truths? No one can deny that they are necessary. It is eternally and immutably true that there is a God, and that he is an intelligent and benevolent being —​And yet are not these truths which are collected from experience, from observing in creation the proofs of his existence,

encouraged me to give my reason for thinking so. I  stammered out in barbarous Latin (for the examination was in that language) that Clarke had inquired into the origin of a series, which, being from the supposition eternal, could have no origin; and into the first term of a series, which, being from the supposition infinite, could have no first. From this circumstance I was soon cried up, very undeservedly, as a great metaphysician.”   From the account here given by the Bishop, we are at a loss to determine whether he considered his argument against the principles of Dr. Clarke valid and conclusive or not. He says, indeed, and very justly, that it gained him undeservedly the reputation of a great metaphysician in the College, but he no where discovers that he was conscious of its fallacy. Now to us the fallacy appears so glaring and the objection so frivolous and shallow, that it was no great compliment to the discernment of his contemporary undergraduates of the institution, that it should have gained him reputation with them for metaphysical acumen, or to his head lecturer, if he did not detect and expose his error. Let us examine the matter as it is stated by the Bishop. The question proposed by the head lecturer was, has Dr. Clarke demonstrated the absurdity of an infinite succession of changeable and dependent beings? The Bishop’s reply was no: for Clarke had inquired into the origin of a series, which, being from the supposition eternal, could have no origin; and into the first term of a series, which, being from the supposition infinite, could have no first. —​Now, with all due submission to the Bishop’s better judgment, it would be strange, indeed, if in determining the question whether it is not absurd to suppose an eternal succession of changeable and dependent beings, that eternal succession or infinite series were taken for granted or included in the supposition. So far from this eternal succession of such beings that have no origin, or this infinite series that could have no first term, being included in the supposition, it formed the very point at issue, viz. to determine, whether there could be any such eternal succession or infinite series of changeable and dependent beings; or in other words, whether changeable and dependent beings must not always have an origin or first term. Dr. Clarke, in our estimation, has shown with irresistible force of argument, the gross absurdity of an eternal succession of changeable and dependent beings, or what is the same thing, beings of this description who have no origin. Thus the Bishop is found guilty of that grossest of all logical abortions, called an ignorantia elenchi, or ignorance of the question, and Dr. Clarke’s argument relieved from an objection that might be supposed by those who were unacquainted with the subject to lie against it. Of a nature similar to this of Bishop Watson will be found most of those objections brought by Dr. Reid against the principles of Clarke and Locke. They appear plausible at first sight and upon a superficial view; but when narrowly examined, are found to be frivolous and futile. We consider Dr. Clarke’s demonstration of the being and attributes of God as one of the finest monuments of human genius, and would strongly recommend to all students of divinity diligently to study it, and never to be contented until they completely understand it. “Ille se profecisse sciat,” says Quintilian, “cus Cicero valde placebit.” The same may be said of the writings of Samuel Clarke. That candidate for the ministry may consider himself as having made no inconsiderable advances in divinity, who has learned to understand and relish the writings of that author.

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his wisdom and goodness, and would it not be impossible to prove these things in any other way but by an appeal to his works? Why should any proposition, because it takes its rise in experience, be thought incapable of being rendered eternally and immutably certain, when it is laid hold of by the understanding, and found to be in accordance with the necessary nature of its ideas, and the unalterable habitudes and relations of things? We talk much, and justly too, of the eternal and immutable truths of morality, such as that, a just God will reward virtuous men and punish the guilty, that man should obey the will of his Creator and be just towards his fellowmen; and yet are not these maxims derived from experience and observation of the constitution and laws of nature? The second objection of the Dr. to the doctrine that the truth, for every effect there must be a cause being derived from experience, is “that general maxims, grounded on experience, have only a degree of probability proportioned to the extent of our experience, and ought always to be understood so as to leave room for exceptions, if future experience should discover any such.” This is a rule in which the philosopher is bound by the principles of his order cheerfully to acquiesce. And if ever it should be found in the course of our experience that any effect is produced without the operation of a cause, we shall be compelled to abandon our maxim, whether it be estimated as a contingent or necessary proposition. The third objection is frivolous and futile  —​“I do not see,” says he, “that experience could satisfy us that every change in nature actually has a cause. In the far greatest part of the changes in nature that fall within our observation, the causes are unknown; and therefore, from experience we cannot know whether they have causes or not.” But is it not a settled principle in philosophy, and indispensable to its advancement, that maxims collected from an ample induction of facts should be regarded as universal, until other facts are discovered that form just exceptions to them, and limit the the [sic] extent of their application? The whole race of man, if they could be consulted, have not had experience that every body upon the earth’s surface gravitates towards the centre, and yet have we not sufficient reason to believe that all bodies around the earth’s surface gravitate towards its centre, as universally true? Before I conclude this article, I cannot refrain from indulging a single observation more. In the commencement of our strictures upon Dr. Reid’s doctrine on this point, we find him asserting, “that a train of events following one another ever so regularly, could never lead us to a notion of a cause, if we had not from our constitution a conviction of the necessity of a cause to every event.” Here he traces our belief in the necessity of a cause to every event, to an instinctive and

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original principle in our constitution, and, of course, one which is distinct from all the other constituent principles of our nature. In his further observations upon the same subject, he says; “I know of only three or four arguments in the way of abstract reasoning that have been urged by philosophers to prove, that things which begin to exist must have a cause. One is offered by Mr. Hobbes, another by Dr.  Clarke, and another by Mr. Locke. Mr. Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature, has examined them all, and in my opinion has shown, that they take for granted the thing to be proved; a kind of false reasoning which men are very apt to fall into when they attempt to prove what is self-​evident.” Here, the truth, that for every event there is a cause, before traced to an original and instinctive principle in the constitution of our nature, is said to be self-​ evident. How do these doctrines comport with each other? If it be a self-​evident truth, whence the necessity of supposing a distinct principle in the formation of our nature, in order to account for our having arrived at it? Could we not have obtained it as we do our other intuitive perceptions? Why unnecessarily multiply the original and instinctive principles in the constitution of our nature? The method which nature pursues is a method of admirable simplicity and order, that which some writers would prescribe to her is a plan of intricacy, entanglement and confusion. Passing from the objections of Dr.  Reid against the systems of other philosophers on these points, I proceed to examine the next peculiarity in his own doctrine about cause and effect. He maintains, that material substances cannot possess active power, and, of course, cannot be regarded as efficient causes; that the province of natural philosophy is not to trace real causes and effects, but merely to mark the constant conjunctions of objects and to ascertain the laws of nature; and finally, that mind alone, either the mind of the Supreme Being or Spirits commissioned by him, can possess active power, or be, in the true sense of the word, efficient causes. In favour of these views of things he endeavours to enlist Newton and the soundest philosophers. “Those philosophers,” says he, “appear to have had the justest views of nature, as well as the weakness of human understanding, who giving up the pretence of discovering the causes of the operations of nature, have applied themselves to discover by observation and experiment, the rules or laws of nature, according to which the phenomena of nature are produced.” Again to the same purport. “The whole object of natural philosophy,” as Newton expressly teaches, “is reducible to these two heads; first, by just induction from experiment and observation, to discover the laws of nature, and then to apply those laws to the solution of the phenomena of nature. This is all that this great philosopher attempted, and all that he

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thought attainable.” Here we perceive that all the phenomena of the natural world, are said to be referable to some law or laws of nature as their cause. But the Dr.  informs us, as we have seen in extracts from his works, and I  think with good reason, that the laws of nature are not agents. They are not endowed with active power, and therefore cannot be causes in the proper sense. They are only the rules according to which the unknown (or he might have added the known) cause acts. Now, since for every effect in nature there must be an efficient cause, let us ask what is the efficient cause of natural appearances? The only answer which the Dr. could consistently return, is mind, either that of the Supreme Being or of Spirits commissioned by him. The Supreme Being, then, operating according to the laws of nature, is the real efficient cause of all natural phenomena. What becomes of matter in this system, and what office is left it to perform? Surely material substances disappear from the stage in such a philosophy. Dr. Reid informs us that he once heartily embraced the opinions of Bishop Berkeley, and really and truly believed that there is no such thing as a material universe, sun, moon, stars, the earth, mountains, rivers, trees and men, and we are inclined to think, however he may have persuaded himself to the contrary, from an apprehension of those ulterior consequences which he saw resulting from this belief, that he never entirely released himself from the toils of that fantastical theory, for here we find him unexpectedly arrived at it, although by a route somewhat more circuitous than that taken by the English prelate. Plato imagined that he could construct a world out of matter, ideas, and a creating mind; Aristotle out of matter, form, and privation; but Dr. Reid can work with more dexterity than either, for he can fabricate a universe, and afterwards conduct all its operations by means of mind and the laws of nature. And this doctrine we find too attempted to be supported by the sacred authority of Newton and the philosophers. As to the philosophers, it is certain that among all the ancients, the province of philosophy was regarded as an investigation of causes, real efficient causes. See what Cicero says on this subject in his treatise de fato, which has been quoted both by Dr. Reid and professor Stewart in a mutilated form, only so far as made it appear to comport with their opinions, but so as not to elucidate the real sentiments of the author. Causa, autem ea est, quae id efficit, cujus est causa; ut vulnus morits, cruditas morbi, ignis ardoris. Itaque non sic causa intelligi debet, ut quod cuique antecedat, id ei causa sit, sed quod cuique efficienter antecedat. Nec quod in campum descenderem id fuisse causa cur pila luderem; nec Hecubam causam interritus fuisse Trojanis, quod Alexandrum genuerit. This passage shows that while the term cause was received, at that time as well as now, in so many vague and

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uncertain acceptations, Cicero as a philosopher perfectly understood its philosophical import. That is cause, he maintains, which has power to produce the thing called its effect; not merely that which precedes it (as if he had anticipated the theories of Mr. Hume and Dr. Reid) but which efficiently precedes it; as a wound produces death, crudity disease, and fire heat. Here we see that Cicero considers fire the efficient cause of heat. As to the opinion of Newton, that he considered it the business of natural philosophy to investigate efficient causes there cannot be a shadow of doubt. What does he mean when in the commencement of his principia he prescribes his two first rules of philosophising? “No more causes of things are to be admitted than are both true and sufficient to explain the appearances; and for the same appearances, because of the uniformity of nature, the same causes are to be assigned:” What can he here mean by the term cause, true and efficient cause? Take the passages before cited from him, and his opinion is ascertained beyond any dispute. “What the efficient cause (causa efficiens) of attraction is, I  do not here inquire. I  use the word attraction only in general, to signify the force by which bodies tend towards each other, whatever be the cause of that force.” Could he have more distinctly marked the distinction between an efficient cause and the laws by which that cause acts? He evidently regards the efficient cause of attraction as a legitimate object of philosophical research, avowing at the same time that he had not been able to discover it, not being deducible from any phenomena he had witnessed, and he did not choose to frame an hypothesis. Of what nature this efficient cause might have been, in the opinion of this great man, is sufficiently ascertained from the conjecture he modestly hazards of its being an etherial elastic medium pervading the whole system and binding its parts together. Thus, we perceive how fruitless and ineffectual is the attempt of Dr. Reid to enlist Newton of his part. “It is true” he says, “that a great deal may be considered as done, when we have discovered some laws of nature, by which a cause acts in producing the phenomena, although that cause itself may remain unknown. In this respect also his views were accurate and profound. Is not much accomplished by him, when from having discovered a few general laws of motion by which bodies gravitate towards each other, he has determined the sizes, ­distances, periodical revolutions, and all other phenomena of the heavenly b ­ odies, although the occult cause of all these outward appearances remains unrevealed? But could the Grand Agent that produces these results be developed, would not this be making still greater advances towards perfection in the science of physical nature? Wonders have been performed by philosophers in natural science, but still greater wonders might be accomplished, could we once

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be so fortunate as to attain access to that great Moving Spring that sets into operation the whole vast machinery. Let us now briefly enter into the merits of Dr. Reid’s opinions, and test their own truth without reference to the sentiments of others. On what ground do we conclude that matter is incapable of exerting active power, and that in natural philosophy we have nothing to do with efficient causes. We feel the heat of fire, and perceive the light of the sun. The natural impression of a mind untutored in the language of system is, “that fire is,” as Cicero says, “the real efficient cause of the heat, and the sun of light.” Dr. Reid, however, approaches and informs us that we are all this time mistaken, that it is not the fire which warms us or the sun which gives us light, since matter cannot act; but it is the Creator himself who produces these results by the laws of nature. We stand astonished at the intelligence, and find a difficulty in comprehending it. It is a mystery too deep to be penetrated except by adepts in the new system of philosophy. If the question were, whether matter possesses in itself the power of originating motion or could become a primary cause, I conceive the case would be entirely altered. We have arguments enough to demonstrate that mind alone could be the originator of motion, and that there must be an immaterial and Intelligent Being, who alone can have been eternal and the Great Cause of all other things. But is there any good ground to infer that it is not in the power of the Almighty, or that this power has not been exercised, to communicate to matter efficacy sufficient to enable it to produce certain results? In fact, have we not incontestible proof that it does produce them? Sir Isaac Newton, we have seen, professed himself unable to ascertain the efficient cause of gravity, and merely conjectures that it may be produced by a thin and elastic fluid; but does he say the same of the rainbow and other optical phenomena? Are not the rays of light the real efficient cause of these beautiful appearances? If we suppose the Supreme Being or mind to be the immediate cause of light that issues from the sun, is it mind also that is refracted and reflected in drops of rain falling from the clouds, so as to spread upon them, in vision, that variety of colours? There seems to be an evident absurdity in supposing mind to be the only agent throughout the whole chain of causes acting in nature. The heat of the sun between the tropics rarefies the air and occasions the trade-​winds; the trade-​winds act upon the sails of the vessel so as to propel her in her course; the vessel bears the navigator to his port: Now, it is easy to conceive of the creator as the first link in this chain of causes, and that he communicates to the sun the power to diffuse abroad his heat; but how shall we conceive that it is he himself who acts immediately in rarefying the air, exciting the wind, filling the sails of the vessel, and wafting the navigator to his haven? No doubt all these

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operations are performed by his appointment and under his superintendance and controul, and all the agents in physical nature, the light, heat, winds, seas, and clouds, when performing the various functions allotted them in creation, are only fulfilling his wise purposes. He has impressed upon all physical principles the laws or rules of their action; but there is a manifest absurdity in supposing him the sole agent in the whole train of events. Is not the wind that fills the sails of the vessel, the efficient cause of its motion in the deep, and the heat that rarefies and excites the air, the efficient cause of the winds? Thousands of other cases might be stated, in which the absurdity of making mind the sole agent in the operations of nature might be displayed; but, we cannot but be of opinion, it would be unnecessary, as those we have already alleged must be sufficient. The doctrine, therefore, of God’s acting by means of instruments or second causes, upon which he has originally impressed their several laws, seems to have a deep foundation in nature and the necessary train of our ideas, and is conformable to the first suggestions of the human mind and the unsophisticated sentiments of all mankind. We construct a complicated piece of machinery, and prepare it for its operations. By the turning of a single wheel we set the whole in motion, one wheel moving a second, and that a third, and so on. Now, although we are ourselves the principal and responsible movers, has not the second wheel the power communicated to it of moving the third, and the third the fourth, and so forth? So it is evidently with God. He made and arranged the vast machinery of the universe, and under his superintendance it is preserved in order, and performs its diversified operations; but does it not exalt our ideas of his wisdom and greatness to suppose, that he has so adjusted its parts to each other, and so exquisitely wrought the whole into a regular system, as that: his immediate interference in the scheme, except where he originally contemplated such interference, shall seldom, if ever, be necessary? There are two particulars in the opinions of Dr. Reid, which it will be worth while to examine a little more minutely; the one, why we should deny to matter the possibility of having active power, even when that power is considered as derived; the other, why we should deny that efficient causes are to be traced in natural events, and yet allow moral agents to be true efficients. As to the first particular, why we should deny to matter the possibility of possessing active power, even when that power is considered as derived, there would seem to be no just ground in nature, or in the connection of our ideas for such an opinion. We have the same reason to believe that material substances possess a power, under the influence of which they act from necessity, as that mind is also endowed with a power, under the influence of which we act voluntarily. The only

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distinction between them is, that our knowledge and belief of the one is derived from sensation, our knowledge and belief of the other is derived from reflection. From the earliest period of life, we observe the operations of bodies upon one another, and the changes and modifications, which by their applications to each other, they produce. We remark also, when we turn our attention inward and reflect upon the operations of our own minds, that we can fix our attention upon any one subject or change, at pleasure, the train of our thoughts; and moreover, that by the determinations of our will, we can put our bodies into any motion we choose. By sensation, therefore; that is, by observing the actions of bodies upon each other and the results of those actions, and by reflection also, that is, by observing the operations of our minds and the influence which our wills possess over our bodily actions, we arrive at ideas of power, active power, efficiency. Mr. Locke thinks, indeed, and perhaps not without reason, that we have a clearer idea of active power from reflection, than from sensation. However this may be, we cannot but remark that there is a very wide difference between the power which we exercise in thinking and acting, and that which is exercised by the objects of the external world that surround us. When we move our limbs or direct the attention of our minds to any subject, we are conscious that these are voluntary acts appertaining to a being that is possessed of understanding and discretion. When, on the other hand, the cloud rises in the air and is borne along by the wind, when the stream flows in its banks, or the vessel is wafted on its bosom, we are sensible that these things are effected by a very different process from that of which we had been conscious in our own actions. Thus we derive very distinct conceptions of voluntary and involuntary, or necessary agents. But the proof is as complete and satisfactory, that matter acts or exercises powers under the controul of necessary laws, as that mind acts or exercises its powers, under the influence of its own choice or determinations. Why, then, to merge the second question in the first; why should we deny that efficient causes are to be traced in natural philosophy, and yet allow moral agents to be true efficients? Father Mallebranche consistently maintains, that God is the sole operating cause throughout the universe, as well in the moral as the physical world. This theory, however indefensible we may deem it, and clogged with insuperable difficulties, has at least the merit of being consistent with itself in its various parts. If God be regarded as the sole operating cause of the appearances in the natural world, why not make him the sole operating cause of the thoughts and actions of men? No reason can be given for the one theory, which will not apply with equal force in the establishment of the other. But matter is not capable of exercising active power. Neither do we suppose that our minds possess

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power, which is underived or independent. But the Creator has endowed them with the privilege of originating motion. Why not, then, since he has made mind capable of voluntary action, make matter capable of necessary action? I have no more difficulty in conceiving that God should communicate to fire the power of reducing wood to charcoal, than that he should convey to a rational creature the power of voluntary action.

BOOK I. CHAPTER VI. The Opinions of Professor Stewart. I shall conclude this statement of the opinions of different writers on the subject of cause and effect, with that of Dugald Stewart, professor or moral philosophy, in the University of Edinburgh. He treads so closely in the footsteps of Dr. Reid, that when we have exhibited the opinions of the one, we have, at the same time, as to all material points, given those of the other also. What the one, had obscurely intimated as his system, the other assumes and promulges as established doctrines, merely throwing into the whole compound some slight admixtures of his own. In the first place, Professor Stewart agrees with Dr. Reid in asserting, that we cannot arrive at the truth, for every effect there must be an efficient cause, from intuition, reason or experience, but that it is to be traced only to an original and instinctive principle in the constitution of our nature. Secondly, he agrees with Dr. Reid in maintaining, that no such thing as an efficient cause is to be ascertained in the material world, and that the province of natural philosophy is not to trace the series of causes and effects, but merely to note the constant conjunctions of objects, and the connection between the signs and the things signified by them; and moreover, as the pupil is always more daring than his master in hazarding and supporting extraordinary tenets, he actually recommends the exclusion of the terms from the pursuits of physical science. With principles, thus accordant with those of Dr. Reid, and Mr. Hume also, in the last particular, he kneads a few peculiar sentiments of his own. He allows, what Dr. Reid probably would have been reluctant to admit, that in espousing these opinions they advance half way with Mr. Hume on the road towards his sceptical conclusions, and there desert him. Finally, he asserts, that from premises similar to those of Mr. Hume, Father Mallebranche deduced the inference,

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that God is the sole operating cause throughout the universe. I shall animadvert upon each of these items in his doctrine in regular order. In the first place, Professor Stewart agrees with Dr. Reid in asserting, that we cannot arrive at the truth, for every effect in nature there must be an adequate cause, by intuition, reason, or experience, but that it is to be traced only to an original and instinctive principle in the constitution of our nature. His opinion on this point is expressed in the following passages. “In stating the argument for the existence of the Deity, several modern philosophers have been at pains to illustrate that law of our nature, which leads us to refer to every change in the universe to the operation of an efficient cause. This reference is not the result of reasoning, but necessarily accompanies the perception, so as to render it impossible for us to see the change, without feeling a conviction of the operation of some cause, by which it is produced.” Again. “If this part of his system be admitted, and at the same time we admit the authority of that principle of the mind, which leads us to refer every change to the operation of an efficient cause, Mr. Hume’s doctrine seems to be more favourable to theism than even the common notions upon this subject, as it keeps the Deity always in view, not only as the first, but as the constantly operating efficient cause in nature, and as the great connecting principle among all the various phenomena which we observe.” Those who have taken the trouble to toil through the dark abyss of the Treatise of Human Nature, and at the same time have at heart the great interests of truth and mankind, will be somewhat startled to hear it seriously asserted, that there is any process by which Mr. Hume’s principles may be made to undergo such a thorough transformation, as to come out more favourable to the theism than even the common notions upon this subject, and to keep the Deity always in view, not only as the first, but as the constantly operating cause in nature. If such a miracle as this can be performed, they are ready to exclaim, surely that ancient and inveterate war which has been waged, from time immemorial, between the great contending powers of atheism and theism, may now be brought to an amicable termination. Mr. Hume’s principles reconcileable to those of theism! Placidis coeant immitia, serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni. What pity is it, that old Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, Spinoza, Hobbes, and a long list of others of a similar stamp, had not been made acquainted with this wonderful secret? How completely might they have escaped that load of obloquy and odium, with which their memories have been burthened, and mankind, that long train of mischievous effects that have resulted from their writings? For, surely, if by any contrivance the doctrines of Mr. Hume can be brought to accord with the principles of theism, the same may be done for those of any other

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atheist that ever lived. A  ranker and more poisonous weed of atheism never sprang from the teeming garden of Epicurus, than that which has been planted and brought to maturity, and distributed among mankind in various infusions, by the great modern sceptick of Scotland. And by what art and address is it, that this deleterious drug, is not only to be rendered innocuous but wholesome to the patient? Forsooth, by a slight decoction of that rare exotick, unknown to the walks and unrevealed to the curiosity of the scientifick inquirer, called an instinctive and original principle of our constitution, which, antecedently to reason and reflection, leads us to the prodigiously important conclusion, that for every change in nature there must be an adequate cause. The voice of this single instinct is to supersede the exercise of reason, vacate the lessons of experience, and silence the clamours of atheism. Hobbes may prove by unanswerable arguments, if he please, that the universe is subjected to the controul of an irresistible fate; Spinoza, that the universe is itself God; Epicurus, that it was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms; Mr. Hume, that it was not formed at all, since there is no good ground of reasoning from the effect to the cause; and we have only to admit the existence of this small instinct which so infallibly guides us, and all their systems are reconciled to theism. In addition to what I have already said about this wonder working instinct, upon the decision of whose oracular voice the Scottish metaphysicians are willing to rest the infinitely important truth of the Being of a God, suppose we should ask the question, what proof have we of the existence of such a distinct principle in our constitution? The question, I shrewdly conjecture, would put the advocates of the theory to a nonplus; for, singular as it may appear, not one proof has been exhibited of the existence of such an instinct. It has been gratuitously assumed, merely to answer the purposes of a system, while not a single fact has been alleged to show that it has a real existence in our constitution. Will it be said that the fact of our having arrived at the conclusion, that for every change in nature there must be an adequate cause, is a proof of its existence in rerum natura? But has nature, or rather nature’s God, found it necessary to confer upon us a separate instinct, in order that we might attain this single maxim, and which as soon as it has accomplished this sole object, drops its commission and never again appears upon the scene? Is this consistent with the usual simplicity of nature? There would be as good ground in reason and a right understanding of nature to conclude, that so many distinct principles are given us by the Creator, in order that we might attain to a knowledge of all the rules of philosophising prescribed by Newton, as well as the fundamental truths in all the branches of science. Besides, to conclude our account of this part of the subject, by presenting

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it in another point of light. We are told by the professor, and his master before him, that we have an original and instinctive principle which leads us to the conclusion, that for every event in nature there must be an efficient cause. Now, does not this instinct as powerfully lead us to conclude, that those causes, which operate to produce their effects in the physical world, are really and truly efficient causes; or is this instinct so profound a metaphysician as to draw the line of discrimination between physical and efficient causes? If it cannot draw this distinction, what purpose can it serve in our constitution, but to lead us directly into error; since the first and unbiassed impressions of all mankind, as allowed by the professor is, that the causes which operate in the natural world are real efficients, or, as they have been fancifully denominated without any license from authority, metaphysical causes. The conclusion which we conceive ourselves at liberty to draw, therefore, is, that this instinct, hitherto unknown to the philosophical world, has none of the marks or lineaments of the genuine offspring of nature, but the most decisive proofs of its being a spurious bantling, born, nursed and educated in the school of a false and mistaken metaphysick. Without further ceremony, therefore, we give it its dismission without a single benediction; and consign it to that oblivion, from which it has just emerged, to become the disgrace of its parents, the outcast of nature, and the scorn of philosophy. The second particular in the doctrine of the professor, which also he has assumed without proof from Dr. Reid, is, that no such thing as an efficient cause is to be ascertained in the natural world, and that the province of natural philosophy, is not, as all mankind have hitherto supposed, to trace the series of causes and effects, but merely to note the conjunctions of objects, or ascertain the relations between the signs and the things signified by them. He even recommends the rejection of the terms causes and effects from the investigations of natural science. As to this recommendation, however respectable the authority from which it proceeds, we are inclined to think that philosophers are likely to prove refractory in the matter, and refuse their compliance with a demand, which requires them to relinquish the use of terms at once so expressive of their ideas, so well suited to their unsophisticated views of things, and that have been consecrated to the same purpose by the immemorial usage of the soundest and best interpreters of nature; more especially when it is understood, that they are to substitute in their stead that unintelligible jargon of signs and the things signified by them, that have gained such general prevalence in the recent school of metaphysicks. But to proceed with the sentiments of the professor. It is but just in the first instance to display, too, the merits of the author of the doctrines he espouses.

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“I am very ready to acknowledge, “says he,” that this doctrine concerning the object of natural philosophy is not altogether agreeable to popular prejudices. When a man unaccustomed to metaphysical speculations, is told for the first time, that the science of physicks gives us no information concerning the efficient causes of the phenomena, about; which it is employed, he feels some degree of surprise and mortification. The natural bias of the mind is surely to conceive physical events as somehow linked together, and material substances as possessed of certain powers and virtues, which fit them to produce particular effects. That we have no reason to believe this to be the case, has been shown in a very satisfactory manner by Mr. Hume and by other writers.” Here we are told that there is a natural prejudice or bias among mankind to conceive of physical causes and effects as somehow linked together, and material substances as possessed of certain powers and virtues which fit them to produce particular effects. Now is it not strange that there should be such a natural bias as this among the vulgar, to imagine the causes that operate in the physical world to be real efficients, if we are all possessed of an instinctive principle which leads us, antecedently to reflection, to ascribe all effects to true efficient causes? We presume that this must be a previous effort of instinct in its unenlightened state, before it has received its instruction in the schools, and is rendered a profound metaphysician. Are the natural biasses and prejudices of mankind usually in favour of, or in opposition to, their instincts, which are generally regarded as discriminated from the other constituent powers of our nature, by the circumstance, that they conduct us strongly and infallibly to their objects, without being subject to the errors and failures even of our higher faculties? But Mr. Hume has discovered that this natural bias of the mind, to conceive that material substances are possessed of certain powers and virtues which fit them to produce particular effects, is altogether fallacious. That is to say, looking at the candle which is now before me, when I perceive the flame consuming the wick and spermaceti, and diffusing light upon my paper, I, and all persons, who like myself are uninstructed in the tenets of the new philosophy, am silly enough to conclude, that: there is a real power or virtue communicated to the flame to enable it to consume the wick, and shed abroad its light; but Mr. Hume has shown in a very satisfactory manner, that in this belief we are entirely mistaken, and that the flame possesses no such power or virtue. If then, we ask the question, what is the cause of the consumption of the wick, and the diffusion of the light from the flame? Mr. Hume, with a smile of indifference, would tell us that we have no reason to conclude that there is any cause in the case, as all we can know of the matter is, that these objects, the consumption of the wick, and

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the diffusion of light, and the appearance of the flame, are contiguous and conjoined to each other. If, dissatisfied with this solution, we turn to the Professor, he resolves all our difficulties by informing us, that although it be true, as Mr. Hume has asserted, that we have no just reason to conclude that there is any power or virtue residing in the flame to produce these results, yet they are to be referred to the efficient cause himself, that is to the Creator. Thus, God himself is brought in as the immediate and sole operating cause throughout the natural world; and one of the least defensible, though not the most dangerous parts of the doctrine of Father Mallebranche, is obtruded upon us, without the relief and advantage of its consistency and harmony with itself. When by the poison of a rattlesnake we are killed, or torn to pieces by the tiger; when the lightning darts upon our houses and the hurricane destroys us in the ocean; when the earthquake opens the earth and swallows us alive, or the lava of the volcanoe overwhelm us with ruin; in all these cases, there is no power in the poison of the snake to cause our end; no strength in the tiger to destroy us; no force in the lightning, the winds or those agents that cause earthquakes and volcanoes; but all these results are produced by the immediate operative agency of God himself. Such a philosophy partakes too much of the unintelligible jargon of the schoolmen; and offers too great an outrage to the principles of common sense and sound understanding, not to be disclaimed by the sober inquirer after truth, with indignation and scorn. But we have a much greater exploit of Mr. Hume to relate, in the next place, than the discovery that there is no power in fire to burn us; no force in lightning to destroy us; no strength in the tiger to rend and devour us. “Mr. Hume,” says the professor, “had the merit of showing that our common language, with respect to cause and effect, is merely analogical, and that if there be any links among physical events they must forever remain invisible to us.” This too, to be sure, was a notable discovery, and an admirable effort of genius for the great historian of England! “When we speak of a chain of causes and effects, we are informed by Mr. Hume,” says the Professor, “who seems to have attained to such deep knowledge without any aid from supernatural light, as he never laid claim to any, that there is no real chain in the case, but that the expression is merely figurative, or, if you prefer the term, analogical. For instance, the vessel moves in the stream by the force of the tide; the tide rises and falls from the approach and recess of the waters of the ocean; the ocean is influenced in its mass of fluid by the attraction of the sun and moon; attraction is occasioned by some unknown cause; this unknown cause derives its power from the hand of the Almighty. Here, we are in the habit of speaking of a chain of causes and

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effects, the first link of which, is, as usual, traced to the throne of the Almighty. But Mr. Hume has discovered, by mere dint of natural penetration, that there is in reality no material chain, connecting the vessel with the throne of the Almighty. If any persons ever thought so, in all good will and charity, we leave them to be corrected by Mr. Hume; but, for ourselves, although we would make it a matter of conscience not to withhold his due praise even from an atheist and sceptic; yet we cannot conceive how any one in his senses, could be so simple as to imagine that he was using, in such modes of expression, any other than a metaphorical language. We have already displayed in the works of Mr. Hume a much more daring and gigantic effort, than that which is ascribed to him by the Professor. Not contented with discovering (if he has done so) that our language about cause and effect, is merely analogical, we find him endeavouring by one great exertion to break the chain that binds his race and all created nature to the throne of the Almighty. Like the Titans of old, he wages impious war against the throne and government of God, and essays to obliterate from the minds of men a belief in his existence, and all trust in his province. Let us see, however, with what cool indifference and philosophick sang-​froid, a modern philosopher can allude to this serious and atrocious attempt of Mr. Hume. “This language,” says our Professor, “has even been adopted by philosophers, and by atheists as well as theists. The latter have represented natural events as parts of a great chain, the highest link of which is supported by the Deity; the former have pretended that there is no absurdity in supposing the number of links to be infinite.” This it must be confessed is a very polite and complacent allusion to the doctrine of a perpetual succession of causes, upon which all the best philosophers, both of ancient and modern times, have agreed in setting the seal of their reprobation, and the absurdity of which Dr. Clarke, in his demonstration of the being and attributes of God, has so completely exposed. For our part, we cannot but regret to say, that professor Stewart, popular a writer as he has rendered himself in some circles, and favourable as has been the reception with which his works have generally met; in our estimation as the advocate of virtue and religion, assumes a very questionable shape. If he be the real friend of virtue and religion, and have at heart the great interests of truth and mankind, could he refer with the same apparent approbation and satisfaction to the works of the enemies of truth and its abettors, of atheists and theists? How gently does he touch the abominable doctrines of Mr. Hume; sometimes even endeavouring to palliate them and appropriate them to himself! No matter whether men approve themselves the true interpreters of nature, or its corruptors and falsifiers; the supporters

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of morals and religion, or their subverters; sound politicians, or anarchists and disorganizers; the propagators of the most just and sublime lessons of philosophy, or the retailers of a miserable jargon; they all have equally respectful and honourable mention in his pages. Newton, Locke, Bacon, Clarke, Aristotle, Des Cartes, Mallebranche, Butler, successively appear upon the stage, in company with Rousseau, D’Alembert, Helvetius, Condorcet, Diderot, Godwin, and a host of worthies of a similar description, while they are all received with the most obsequious homage and courtesy, crowned with undistinguished honours, and dismissed with a like philosophick suavity and grace. This may all be regarded as appertaining to the office, and comporting with the pretensions of the modern philosopher; but we cannot withhold the observation, that it appears to us to be neither consistent with the sprit, nor indicative of those moral feelings, which should characterize the faithful friend and zealous advocate of truth and righteousness. To proceed from this short digression in stating the opinions of the Professor. “It seems now,” says he, “to be pretty generally agreed among philosophers, that there is no instance in which we are able to perceive a necessary connection between two successive events, or to comprehend in what manner the one proceeds from the other as a cause. From experience we learn that there are many events which are constantly conjoined, so that the one invariably follows the other; but it is possible, for any thing that we know to the contrary, that this connexion, though a constant one, may not be a necessary connexion; nay, it is possible, that there may be no necessary connexions among any of the phenomena which we see; and if there be any such connections existing, we may rest assured that we shall never be able to discover them.” Again —​“the word cause is used, both by philosophers and the vulgar, in two senses, which are widely different: when it is said that every change in nature indicates the operation of a cause, the word cause expresses something which is supposed to be necessarily connected with the change, and without which it could not have happened. This may be called the metaphysical meaning of the word, and such causes may be called metaphysical or efficient causes. In natural philosophy, however, when we speak of one thing being the cause of another, all that we mean is, that the two are constantly conjoined, so that when we see the one we may expect the other. The causes which are the objects of our investigation in natural philosophy, may, for the sake of distinction, be called physical causes.” Such is the doctrine held upon this subject, and such the ground upon which it is defended. “It seems now,” says the professor, “to be pretty generally agreed among philosophers, that there is no instance in which we are able to perceive a

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necessary connection between two successive events, or to comprehend in what manner the one proceeds from the other as a cause.” As to the last part of this proposition, which relates to the possibility of our comprehending the manner in which one event proceeds from the other as its cause; if he considers this a part of the new system, he is entirely mistaken, since no philosopher, who understood the limited nature of the human faculties, ever supposed himself able to discover the mode in which any one cause gives rise to its effect. The water which we drink quenches our thirst, and the food which we eat relieves us from hunger and sustains our bodies, and we know that there must be a power or virtue in water and food to produce these effects, or they would not have taken place; but as to the manner in which they operate upon our bodies to accomplish these purposes, philosophy acknowledges that to be unknown to her. Many passages to this purport might be adduced from Mr. Locke, but it cannot be necessary, as it is regarded in science, as an established and incontrovertible truth. The peculiarity in the Professor’s doctrine, may, therefore, be considered as contained in the first part of the proposition. “It is now pretty generally agreed among philosophers, that there is no instance in which we are able to perceive a necessary connexion between two successive events.” And again, he explains. “From experience, indeed, we learn that there are many events which are constantly conjoined, so that the one invariably follows the other; but it is possible, for any thing we know to the contrary, that this connexion, though a constant one, as far as our observation has reached, may not be a necessary connexion. Nay, it is possible, that there may be no necessary connexions among any of the phenomena which we see; and if there be any such connexions existing, we may be assured we shall never be able to discover them.” This is the argument, or one of the arguments, by which Mr. Hume endeavours to overturn the doctrine of causality or efficiency in objects to produce their effects; and which the professor admits to be unanswerable, as far as it relates to the natural world. The professor has evidently allowed himself to be entrapped in the snare, which Mr. Hume has laid for his victims. The whole force of the reasoning is sapped, and the subtilty of Mr. Hume revealed, by adverting to the ambiguity with which he chooses to employ the terms necessary connexion between causes and effects, which he would consider as equivalent to the expressions, efficiency in causes to produce their effects. We find the Professor imbibing his notions from Mr. Hume, and accordingly giving this as the usual acceptation of the term cause. “When it is said that every change in nature indicates the operation of a cause, the word cause expresses something necessarily connected with the change, and without which it could not have happened.” Here we find an entirely new definition of

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the term cause, embracing a wider latitude of meaning than any before annexed to it. Now, is it possible for the narrow mind of man to decide, that there are any two events in the whole compass of the moral and physical world, which are so necessarily connected together that the one could not have existed without the other? The only single object which we are able to conceive, that could not possibly have existed without another, is the universe without a God to create it; for we are sure that God might exist without the universe, as it was not an act of necessity that he formed it, but of choice. So then, if it be true, that a cause is something so necessarily connected with its effect, that without it that effect could not have happened, it is evident that there can be but one such single and sole cause in the universe, and that is the Creator himself. For put the matter, for a moment, to the trial of a few examples, taken from the physical and moral world. Fire burns us, and we are sure from our sensation, that there must be in the fire power to produce that effect upon us; but can we be certain, that the sensation of heat in us, and the operation of that power in fire, are so inseparably connected together, that the one could not have happened without the action of the other? Could not God have contrived other methods of affecting our senses in the same way, or have done it by his own immediate agency? The same reasoning will apply with equal force in reference to mind. Not a thought, volition, desire, voluntary exertion, of which God himself could not be the author, without the exercise of our powers. Not one of those effects, which are always regarded to be caused by the exertion of our mental powers, which God himself might not have brought about in a way different from that which he has now established, and which, of consequence, cannot be considered as so necessarily connected with the exertion of those powers, that, without them, they could not have happened. I repeat it, therefore, if by the word cause be meant something so necessarily connected with its effect that, without it, that effect would not have taken place, there can be but one great cause both in the physical and moral world, and we are completely landed in the mystical and incomprehensible theory of Father Mallebranche. Here, then, God, who was before, as we have seen, made the immediate operating cause of both evil and good in the physical world, is now made equally the immediate operating cause of all evil as well as good in the moral; and the free agency of man together with all accountability to his Maker are at once uprooted. When the traitor betrays his country, or the child puts his father to death; when the assassin cuts off his benefactor, or the suicide throws back indignantly into the face of his Creator that existence which he had communicated; all these culprits are become irresponsible agents, and are no longer criminal, for God is the sole and immediate operating cause in all these

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transactions. In a word, under a theory of this kind, God is the true author of all the blasphemies, treacheries, adulteries, murders, and the whole train of enormities which are perpetrated among mankind. Father Mallebranche laboured hard, indeed, to relieve his doctrine from these formidable objections; but, although we cannot but award him the praise of having connected with his system great sincerity and zeal in its cause, together with an ardent, though mystical piety, yet it is not to be denied that he was unable to defend it. We had thought, that this mystical theory had passed away as the tale of other times, until we find principles stated, that lead to it by inevitable consequence in the writings of the Professor. Does the Professor, then, show himself in his works to be a disciple of Mallebranche? Evidently not: for neither do we find in his productions, any of that spirit of piety which breathes through the works of that venerable father, nor does his language in any part imply, that he intends to extend his doctrine farther than to exclude all causation from the events of the physical world; and as to Mr. Hume, nothing could be more remote from his views or his principles than to acknowledge the immediate action of the Creator throughout the universe. The Professor certainly does not perceive the consequences to which this doctrine of Mr. Hume, which he unwarily adopts, unavoidably conducts him. He, in one of his notes, indeed, informs us that Mallebranche deduced his conclusion from premises very nearly the same with Mr. Hume’s, the fallacy of which in the extent to which it is applied, we shall soon detect; but he no where avows himself to have embraced the principles of that father. The fallacy of Mr. Hume, on this point, consists in confounding two things that are entirely distinct, necessary connection between causes and effects, with efficiency in causes to produce their effects. We may be perfectly satisfied that a cause has power and efficiency to produce its effect, and that in the exercise of that power it operates under the influence of necessary laws, or laws over which it has no controul, without there being supposed between it and its effect, in the nature of things, such a necessary connection, that the one could not have taken place without the other. The sun gives us light and heat, and we are sure as things are now constituted there must be a power in that luminary to produce these results; but it is impossible for the mind of man to say, that these things are so inseparably united, that the infinite power and wisdom of the Creator might not have occasioned the one without the intermediation of the other. When we witness any effect, indeed, we are sure of one thing only; and that is, that there must be some cause, as this is a truth confirmed by invariable experience, and by the abstract conclusions of the understanding; but of what nature that cause is, we can derive only from observation, or, in the case of the Creator, from

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an examination of his works and from revelation. Neither is it possible to the human mind to determine a priori, or by any strict rules of demonstration that the efficiency which we have found in causes, in one or two or more cases, will always inhere in that collection of sensible qualities. This is a lesson to be learnt only from experience; and upon our continued experience it must rest as its foundation, as there are no abstract arguments that can minister in this case to its support or confirmation. But does this consideration render the proof less satisfactory to a reasonable mind, diminish its confidence in the stability of the order of nature, or justify the scepticism of Mr. Hume when he maintains, that we have no good ground of reasoning from the past and present to the future, would vacate all the lessons of experience, destroy the force of the whole argument from induction, and, thereby upturn the foundation of experimental and moral science? We cannot strictly demonstrate that fire will burn us to-​morrow, or water drown us, the sun rise and set, or the tides ebb and flow in our rivers; but does this consideration lesson our confidence that all these events will take place? This view of the matter will serve to explain to the Professor, what he has quoted from Dr. Barrow and others, in a note on this subject, and seems not rightly to have understood; and will convince him that that Great Philosopher and eloquent preacher, instead of agreeing with him and Mr. Hume in asserting, that there is no efficiency in natural causes, expressly recognizes in his very modes of expression an opposite doctrine. “That the object of the physical inquirer, “says the Professor,” is not to trace necessary connections, or to ascertain the efficient causes of phenomena (here we see to trace necessary connections, and ascertain efficient causes, are considered by Mr. Stewart equivalent expressions), is a principle which has been frequently ascribed to Mr. Hume as its author, both by his followers and his opponents; but it is in fact of a much earlier date, and has been maintained by many of the most enlightened, and the least ­sceptical of our modern philosophers: nor do I know that it was ever suspected to have a dangerous tendency until the publication of Mr. Hume’s writings. It we except, says Dr. Barrow, the mutual causality and dependence of a mathematical ­demonstration, I do not think that there is any other causality, in the nature of things, wherein a necessary consequence can be founded. Logicians do indeed boast of, I do not know what kind of demonstration from external causes either efficient or final, but without being able to show one genuine example of any such; nay, I imagine it is impossible for them to do so. For there can be no such connection of an external efficient cause with its effect, through which, strictly speaking, the effect is necessarily supposed by the supposition of the efficient cause, or any determinate cause by the supposition of the effect. Therefore, there

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can be no argumentation from an efficient cause to the effect, or from an effect to the cause, which is strictly necessary.” The observations before made, afford a sufficient key to explain this opinion of Dr. Barrow, and show that it is perfectly just and true; but at the same time instead of answering the purpose for which it was brought by the Professor, namely, to prove that causes in the natural world are not considered by Dr. Barrow as efficient causes, that it is in direct hostility to it. Dr. Barrow all along speaks of external causes as efficient or final, of demonstration from external efficient causes, thereby proving, beyond any doubt, that he considers external causes as true efficients. But Dr. Barrow, it is said, avows, that there can be no such connection of an external efficient cause with its effect, through which, strictly speaking, the effect is necessarily supposed by the supposition of the efficient cause, or any determinate cause by the supposition of the effect.” This is true, and amounts to the doctrine we have before inculcated. That is to say, Dr. Barrow maintains, that although by an evidence satisfactory to the mind, we have ascertained that the influence of the sun and moon causes the rising and falling of the tides in our river, we cannot prove by strict demonstration or necessary consequence, that although the cause or influence of the sun and moon should subsist, it must unavoidably produce that effect, or the rising and falling of the tides in future, or, if we suppose the effect to have taken place, it must unavoidably have resulted from that determinate cause. This, no person who understands the subject will pretend to deny; and to maintain a contrary doctrine would be to confound the different degrees of evidence upon which our knowledge rests. We can no more attain to strict demonstration in the science of nature, than we should be contented with the ground on which inductive reasonings rest in pure mathematicks. The only proof we have that the sun will rise to-​morrow, and the tides flow, or that the whole course of nature may not undergo a complete change, is derived from an experience of the uniformity of its operations hitherto; and if we are not contented with this degree of proof, the Creator furnishes us with no better; and if we repose not confidence in the order of nature, until we shall prove its stability by strict and mathematical demonstration, we shall never do so. But, if any one is inclined to think that I have given a wrong interpretation to Dr. Barrow’s meaning, hear him speak further in illustration of his doctrine. In his sixth mathematical lecture, after expressing himself as has been already mentioned, he proceeds. “For every action of an efficient cause, as well as its consequent effect, depends upon the free will and power of Almighty God, who can hinder the influx and efficacy of any cause, at his pleasure; neither is there any effect so confined to one cause, but it may be produced by perhaps innumerable

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others. Hence it is possible that there may be such a cause without a subsequent effect, or such an effect and no peculiar cause. Because there is fire, it does not necessarily follow that there is fuel for it to feed on or smoke sent from it, since history relates that, in fact, it has happened otherwise. Neither, on the contrary, is the necessary existence of fire inferred from ashes or smoke. For who doubts but God can immediately create ashes and smoke, or produce it by other means? In like manner, from that most celebrated and trite example of a demonstration from the efficient cause which is used by Aristotle and other writers of logick, of the Earth’s interposition between the sun and moon, it does not follow that the moon undergoes an Eclipse; for if God please, the Solar rays may pass through the body of the Earth, or reach the moon by an indirect passage, without touching the Earth; or otherwise the moon may be enlightened some other way. Nay, the sun itself does not infer light; for at the death of our Lord, the setting of the better light of the world, the sun, as if struck with fear and confounded with shame, drew in his rays and hid his face, and even at noon day suffered an Eclipse without any moon to intercept his light, or any cloud to darken his brightness. A defect of light, then, cannot be concluded from the interposition of an opaque body, nor this from that. I own, according to the law and custom of nature, that such effects do always proceed from such causes; but, in reality, it is one thing to happen naturally, and another to exist of necessity. For necessary propositions have an universal, immutable and eternal truth, subject to nothing, nor to be hindered by any power. Because, therefore, the efficacy of agents may be stopped or changed, and every effect may proceed from various causes, there can be no demonstration from an efficient cause, or from an effect.” We shall conclude these strictures upon the doctrines of the Professor upon cause and effect, by briefly descanting upon his peculiarities. “In consequence of the inferences,” says he, “which Mr. Hume has deduced from this doctrine concerning cause and effect, some late authors have been led to dispute its truth; not perceiving that the fallacy of Mr. Hume’s system does not consist in his premises, but in the conclusion which he draws from them.” This to be sure, is speaking in very complacent terms of the premises of Mr. Hume, and greatly calculated to palliate their atrocious nature in the estimation of his readers; and at the same time paying no very flattering compliment to the ingenuity of that celebrated atheist, since it implies, that he has constructed his premises with so little address, that two directly contradictory conclusions may be drawn from them, that there is a God, and that there is no God. Mr. Hume, thick as is the cloud in which he frequently chooses to involve himself, and full of jargon as is his metaphysical language, knew better than all this how to draw his readers

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towards his sceptical conclusions. Which of the premises of Mr. Hume would the Professor admit, and yet avoid the force of his conclusion? Does he imagine, that all the premises of Mr. Hume are concentrated in those two propositions, we can discover no power or efficacy in causes to produce their effects, and there is no necessary connexion between effects and causes? This seems to be implied in what he remarks on this subject relative to Father Mallebranche, “this accordingly was the conclusion which Mallebranche deduced from premises very nearly the same with Mr. Hume’s.” The shade of that venerable and truly philosophick Father, methinks, would frown with indignation upon any one who should presume to accuse him of abetting such abominable principles as those of Mr. Hume. How easy a task to throw philosophical subjects into confusion and obscurity; how difficult the task to present them in a clear and satisfactory point of light! Let us hear Mallebranche speak for himself, and we shall then be able to discover how nearly his principles approach Mr. Hume’s* —​“Il y a,” says he, “bien des raisons qui m’empechent d’attribuer aux causes secondes ou naturelles, une force, une puissance, une efficace pour produire quoi que ce soit —​Mais la principale est que cette opinion ne me paroit pas meme concevable. Quelq’effort que je fasse pour la comprendre, je ne puis trouver en moi d’idee qui me represente ceque ce peut-​etre que la force ou la puissance qu’on attribue aux creatures. Et je ne crois pas meme faire de jugement temeraire d’assurer qui soutiennent que les creatures sont en elles-​memes de la force et de la puissance, avancent ce qu ils ne conçoivent point clairement. Car, enfin, si les philosophes concevoient clairement que les causes secondes ont une veritable force pour agir et pour produire leur sembable, etant homme aussi bien que’ux et participant comme eux a la souveraine raison; je pourrois apparement decouvrir l’idee qui leur represente cette force. Mais quelq’ effort d’esprit que je fasse, je ne puis trouver de force, d’efficace, de puissance, que dans la volunte de l’etre infinement parfait.” Again, he says, “Mais non seulement les hommes ne sont point les veritables causes des mouvemens qu’ils produisent dans leur corps, il semble meme qu’il y ait contradiction qu’ils puissent l’etre. Cause veritable, est une cause entre laquelle et son effet l’esprit apperçoit une liaison necessaire, c’est ainsi que je l’entens. Or, il n’y a que l’etre infiniment parfait, entre la volunte du quel et ses effets l’esprit apperçoive une liaison necessaire. Il n’y a done que Dieu qui soit veritable cause, et qui ait veritablement la puissance de mouvoir les corps. Je dis de plus, qu’il n’est pas concevable que Dieu puisse communiquer aux hommes ou aux Anges la puissance, qu’il a de remuer les corps:  et que ceux qui pre-​tendent, que le * Book 6, part 2, ch. 3. Touchant l’efficace attribuees aux causes secondes.

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pouvoir que nous avons de remuer nos bras, est une veritable puissance, doivent avouer que Dieu peut aussi donner aux esprits la puissance de creer, d’anneantir, de faire toutes les choses possibles; et en un mot, qu’il peut les rendre tout-​ puissans.” However indefensible we may deem the principles of Mallebranche, and the extravagant and absurd lengths to which he extends them, render their refutation altogether superfluous, we cannot but perceive the very essential and important distinction between them, and those which are maintained by Mr. Hume. Those of the one, introduce God as immediately and constantly operating throughout the whole structure and course of nature; those of the other totally exclude him, and lead to a denial of his being and providence. You cannot admit the premises of Mallebranche, without allowing his conclusion, neither can you those of Hume. And what are the points which constitute this essential distinction? They are the following  —​Mallebranche cannot discover an idea which represents to him any force, efficacy or power in finite beings, and can clearly conceive of these as subsisting only in the will of a perfect Being. Mr. Hume denies, that we have any idea of power or efficacy in any being whatever. Mallebranche defines a true cause to be a cause, between which and its effect, the mind perceives a necessary connection, (une liaison necessaire) and asserts that this necessary connection can subsist only between God and the universe; Mr. Hume gives the same definition of a cause, but supposes that this necessary connection can in no case be perceived. Mallebranche confines all efficiency to one sole cause; but Hume maintains that we have no reason to conclude that there is any efficiency in any cause whatever, and reduces us to the necessity of admitting an eternal succession of objects. Mallebranche recognises in the very structure of his argument the immutable truth, that for every effect there must be a cause, but concludes that this cause in all cases is God alone; Hume denies the truth of that maxim, and endeavours to demonstrate that we have no good reason to admit it, and of course uproots the very foundation of the argument in proof of God. So little ground, therefore, is there for the representation of the Professor, that the conclusions of the one are deduced from premises very nearly the same with those of the other! They are as widely different from each other, as the principles of a mistaken and mystical theism can be from those of a rank and unblushing atheism. The account which the professor gives of “that bias of the mind,” which leads us to conceive that physical events are somehow linked together, and that material substances are possessed of certain powers and virtues which fit them to produce particular effects, is really a philosophical curiosity, and on this account alone worthy of insertion here. “It is a curious question,” says he, “what gives

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rise to this prejudice? In stating the argument for the existence of the Deity several modern philosophers have been at pains to illustrate that law of our nature, which leads us to refer every change we perceive to the operation of an efficient cause. This reference is not the result of reasoning, but necessarily accompanies the perception, so as to render it impossible for us to see the change without feeling a conviction of the operation of some cause by which it was produced; much in the same manner, in which we find it impossible to conceive a sensation without being impressed with a belief of the existence of a sentient Being. Hence, I apprehend it is, that when we see two events constantly conjoined, we are led to associate the idea of causation or efficiency with the former, and to refer to it that power or energy by which the change was produced; in consequence of which association we come to consider philosophy as a knowledge of efficient causes, and lose sight of the operation of mind in producing the phenomena of nature. It is by an association somewhat similar, that we connect our sensation of colour with the primary qualities of body. A moment’s reflection must satisfy any one, that the sensation of colour can only reside in the mind (by the by, it took philosophers some time and study to discover this); and yet our natural bias is surely to connect colour with extension and figure, and to conceive white, blue, yellow as something spread over the surfaces of body. In the same way we are led to associate with inanimate matter the ideas of power, force, energy and causation, which are all attributes of mind.” By those persons who read merely for amusement, and who are entirely satisfied, if they find in the author, whose pages they are perusing, sounding phrases and well turned periods; and who, when they cannot comprehend his meaning from the obscurity of his illustrations, imagine it to be very profound for that very reason, this account of the phenomenon supposed to exist, and attempted to be explained, may be deemed satisfactory. But to those whose province it is to study and understand what they read, and develop, faithfully and truly, the operations of nature, never surely could there be presented a specimen of a more abortive attempt to philosophise. To make good our assertions, let us examine, for a moment, the solution here attempted to be furnished of a phenomenon in the moral world. These writers of the late school of metaphysics, having discovered in the structure of our nature an instinct perspicacious enough to induce us to refer every effect to an efficient cause, and moreover to penetrate into the deep and mysterious doctrine, that mind alone can be the efficient cause of any thing; have now to explain by what bias or prejudice it is, that when we approach the fire, we are so childish as to conclude that there is any power in fire to produce in us the sensation of heat, instead of referring the sensation at once to mind, the

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real cause. Mark now, the solution; although I am afraid it will not be found so satisfactory as that of Gallileo above referred to. From finding that fire and our sensation of heat are always conjoined together, we associate the idea of power in fire with that element, as we do sensation with the existence of a sentient Being; or as we do colours, for instance, white, blue, yellow, with the primary qualities of body as extension, figure, solidity, &c.” Such is the solution, which is certainly entirely original; and if any one feels disposed to be satisfied with it, we have only to recommend to him, to pore over the pages of Newton, Locke, Bacon and Clarke, and he will learn to repudiate fruitless disquisitions. We have only one single view more to take of the doctrines of the Professor on cause and effect, and we have done; but this view is a very serious one. We may be thought singular in our opinion, but we do not hesitate to consider his doctrines upon this point, as having a portentous aspect towards religion and morality, and verging strongly towards atheism. The immediate reference of all the phenomena of nature in the physical world to the agency of mind or the Supreme Being, spreads over his system a specious appearance of truth and orthodoxy, but it is only a specious appearance, and delusive. We will not say that atheism was ever intended to be inculcated by the Professor, although we cannot relish the very favourable and softened terms in which he always refers to the principles of Mr. Hume. Independently of this consideration, however, we do assert, that the ground taken by him is a very dangerous one, and that his system carries in its bosom the seeds of its own speedy destruction; and if confided in, in its ruins might be buried the interests of those truths to which it ostensibly essays to extend a feeble and ineffectual support. He admits in their utmost extent the premises of Mr. Hume; avowing that the fallacy of his argument does not consist in his premises, but in the conclusions which he draws from them. He adopts, to all intents and purposes, the principles of Mr. Hume, as far as relates to the physical world; and maintains, that we have no reason to believe that there are any such things as efficient causes to be found in it. We have already shown that, by parity of reasoning, we may deny all efficacy in all moral causes, save the Deity alone. He allows that Mr. Hume has shown that the maxim, for every effect in nature there must be a cause, can be proved neither from intuition, reason, or experience; and asserts, that we derive it solely from an instinctive and original principle in the constitution of our nature. The whole foundation of the argument, upon which is constructed the infinitely important truth of the existence of God, is thus made to rest upon the evidence we derive from this single instinct. All, therefore, that is left to the Atheist, is the easy task of proving, that we are possessed of no such instinctive principle, and his mighty

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fabrick of pretended theism crumbles to dust and confusion. Never surely was a wider door thrown open, by those who pretend to be the champions of theism, for the admission of atheistical principles. To make such broad concessions to the enemies of truth, and yet expect to retain the infinitely important doctrine of the Being of a God, appears to us, like expecting to sustain the superstructure, after we have allowed the foundation to be demolished. And yet we find the Professor, as if totally unapprised of the dangerous tendency of his own doctrine, expressing himself in the following language. “For however important,” says he, “the positive advantages may be, which are to be expected from the future progress of metaphysical science, they are by no means so essential to human improvement and happiness, as a satisfactory refutation of that sceptical philosophy which struck at the root of all knowledge and belief. Such a refutation seems to have been the principal object which Dr. Reid proposed to himself in his metaphysical inquiries, and to this object his labours have been directed with so much ability, candour, and perseverance, that, unless future scepticks should occupy a ground very different from that of their predecessors, it is not likely that the controversy will be ever renewed.” From the sentiment expressed in the concluding part of this paragraph, we crave leave entirely to dissent. The controversy with scepticks, it is true, has been removed from the ground on which it was formerly maintained, and with triumphant success; but we cannot withhold the opinion, that it has been removed from a place of safety to that of extreme danger, where it is protected by very insufficient guards and fortifications; and we must still be excused for giving a decided preference to enlisting under the banners and submitting to the guidance of such men as Locke, Clarke, Mallebranche and Des Cartes, to any of those who have succeeded them, and have undertaken the task of filling the world with an account of their errors and miscarriages.* We cannot take leave of this subject of cause and effect, in language more expressive of the sentiments we entertain, than is that of Mr. Locke, in his reply to the unintelligible jargon of Mr. Norris, a follower of Mallebranche. “Whether the ideas of light and colour come in by the eyes or no; it is all one as if they * Thomas Brown, M.D.  professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, carries the

principles of Mr. Stewart to their ultimate excess. He says, that when we use the term power, we as much make use of a term without any idea annexed to it, as the Peripateticks did when they spoke of substantial forms and occult qualities. He affirms that what can be meant by power, is only immediate invariable antecedence. He defines cause to be the immediate invariable antecedent in any sequence; while the immediate invariable consequent is the correlative effect. Upon the principles of Dr. Brown, we should soon see all the ridiculous jargon of the schools revived. Never surely since the days of the Schoolmen have there been published such works as his upon any philosophical subject.

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did, for those who have no eyes, never have them. And whether or no God has appointed that a certain modified motion of the fibres, or spirits in the optic nerve, should excite or produce, or cause them in us, call it what you please, it is all one as if it did; since where there is no such motion, there is no such perception or idea. For I hope they will not deny God the privilege to give such a power to motion, if he pleases. “Yes,” say they, “they be the occasional but not the efficient cause, for that they cannot be, because that is in effect to say, he has given this motion in the optic nerve a power to operate on himself, but cannot give it a power to operate on the mind of man. It may by this appointment operate on himself, the impassible infinite Spirit, and put him in mind when he is to operate on the mind of man, and exhibit to it the idea which is in himself of any colour. The infinite Eternal God is certainly the cause of all things, the fountain of all being and power. But because all being was from him, can there be nothing but God himself? Or because all power was originally in him, can there be nothing of it communicated to his creatures? This is to set very narrow bounds to the power of God, and by pretending to extend it, takes it away. For which, I beseech you, as we can comprehend, is the greatest power; to make a machine, a watch for example, that when the watchman has withdrawn his hands, shall go and strike by the fit contrivance of the parts; or else requires that whenever the hand by pointing to the hour, minds him of it, he should strike twelve upon the bell? No machine of God’s making can go of itself. Why? Because the creatures have no power, can neither move themselves nor any thing else. How, then, comes about all that we see? Do they do nothing? Yes —​they are occasional causes to God, why he should produce certain thoughts and motions in them. The creatures cannot produce any idea or thought in man. How, then, comes he to perceive or to think? God, upon the occasion of some motion in the optic nerve, exhibits the colour of a marygold or a rose to his mind. How came that motion in his optic nerve? On occasion of the motion of some particles of light striking on the retina, God producing it, and so on. And so, whatever a man thinks, God produces the thought, let it be infidelity, murmuring or blasphemy. The mind doth nothing  —​his mind is only the mirror that receives the ideas that God exhibits to it, and just as God exhibits them. The man is altogether passive in the whole business of thinking. A man cannot move his arm or his tongue; he has no power; only upon occasion the man willing it, God moves it. The man wills, he doth something; or else God upon the occasion of something he did before, produced the will and this action in him. This is the hypothesis that clears all doubts, and brings us at last to the religion of Hobbes and Spinoza, by resolving all, even the thoughts and will of men, into an irresistible fatal necessity. For

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whether the original of it be from the continued motion of eternal, all-​doing matter, or from an omnipotent immaterial Being, who having begun matter and motion, continues it by the direction of occasions which he himself has also made; as to religion and morality, it is just the same thing. But we must know how every thing is brought to pass, and thus we have it resolved without leaving any difficulty to perplex us. But, perhaps, it would better become us to acknowledge our ignorance, than to talk such things boldly of the Holy One of Israel, and condemn others for not daring to be as unmannerly as ourselves.” END OF BOOK FIRST. …

BOOK II. CHAPTER VI. Mr. Hume’s Principles. FROM Berkeley let us proceed very briefly to advert to the principles of Mr. Hume. Nothing can be more certain, than that the system of the former leads by unavoidable consequence to that of the latter. It may be remarked also, that the Bishop has not taken any pains, or discovered any solicitude to fortify his theory against invasions from this quarter. If by our senses we cannot attain to a knowledge of the existence of material substances without, by our consciousness, we can, with no greater degree of certainty, ascertain the existence of an immaterial principle within. If the whole outward world consists of a mere train of perceptions and ideas, surely there is good reason to infer, that the whole of the inward world consists of another train of perceptions and ideas. The whole universe, therefore, upon the principles of this sublime philosophy, is resolved into a succession of fleeting ideas, following each other according to certain laws of association. The metaphysicians of the Scottish school, and particularly Reid and Stewart, are lavish of their encomiums upon Mr. Hume; and undoubtedly, as an elegant historian, too much praise cannot be bestowed upon him. His history, as a production of genius, stands unrivalled, except by Thucydides and Livy; and I think, taking it altogether, considering it in reference to the simplicity and beauty of the composition, the lively and agreeable narration which it contains of matters of fact, the masterly delineation of characters, and the mass of important and useful information he has included in it, it is to be preferred to all others. But as a metaphysician, I utterly deny his claims, either to a just comprehension of his subject, or to propriety and perspicuity in his modes of expression. He had

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read on this subject, as he had on those connected with religion, without having studied and understood them. Let me, however, in order to justify my strictures give a brief sketch of his opinions, in his own language. He divides all our perceptions into impressions and ideas, without any license from the received philosophy of his time, or any ground in nature for such a distinction, and yet he gives us no reason for it. The difference betwixt impressions and ideas, consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with the most force and violence, we may name impressions, and under this head he comprehends all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas, he means the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning. All our simple ideas are in their first appearance derived from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent. He finds by experience that the simple impressions, always take the precedence of the correspondent ideas, but never appear in the contrary order. This appears both from the order of their appearance, and from the phenomenon, that wherever by accident the faculties which give rise to any impressions are obstructed in their operations, as when one is born blind or deaf, not only the impressions are lost, but their correspondent ideas.” Again he proceeds —​“Impressions may be divided into two kinds, those of sensation and those of reflection. The first kind arises in the soul, originally from unknown causes. The second is derived in a great measure from our ideas, and that in the following order. An impression first strikes upon the senses, and makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain of some kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains after the impression ceases, and this we call an idea. This idea of pleasure or pain, when it returns upon the soul, produces the new impressions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, which may properly be called impressions of reflection, because derived from it. These again are copied by the memory and imagination, and become ideas; which perhaps in their turn give rise to impressions and ideas.” Thus is laid the foundation of a theory, which has received such frequent and honourable mention, in the works of most metaphysicians of the Scottish school. First, impressions beget ideas, their images or copies, and distinguished from them only by having a less degree of force and vivacity; then these ideas again beget other impressions, having a greater degree of force and vivacity than themselves; then again, to carry on the work of procreation in regular line, these new impressions beget new ideas, and so on. We have heard a great deal of the jargon and intellectual fooleries of the

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schoolmen, and Mr. Hume is as ready as any one to join in the cry against them; but we defy any one to produce from their voluminous works, any specimen of a more complete Babylonish dialect, than that which we have presented from the Treatise of Human Nature. For our part, we must confess, that we are utterly at a loss to account for the repeated panegyrics bestowed by Dr. Reid and others upon this author, as when he is called the acute metaphysician, one of the acutest metaphysicians that ever lived, and his works and opinions are made to occupy as large a share of attention, and considered as entitled to the same respect as those of Locke, Aristotle, Des Cartes, and Mallebranche. We think that all that he has written on these subjects, have detracted from his reputation, instead of making any addition to his, in other respects, well deserved fame. He had read Mr. Locke, Berkeley and others, with just sufficient care, to obtain crude and indigested ideas of the subjects treated of by them, but he evidently discovers that he never understood them; and with the crude materials thus collected by a cursory perusal, he has attempted to rear a ridiculous superstructure of scepticism and foolery. In order to justify animadversions that may appear to be severe, let me briefly state some of the points attempted to be maintained in the Treatise of Human Nature, and the language in which they are conveyed. I would premise, however, this statement of his doctrine with this single observation, that it will readily be perceived, if the account before mentioned be regarded as a true one, then his sceptical inferences are irresistible. For if our original impressions are derived from unknown causes, and these impressions beget ideas their copies, these copies of external impressions, again produce impressions of reflection, and these again ideas of reflection; it is clear that all the objects of human perception and knowledge are resolved at once into fleeting trains of ideas, and there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a material or immaterial principle in man. To proceed with our proposed statement of his opinions. Mr. Hume maintains, that we have no idea of substance, space, time, extension, or of a mathematical point, and no abstract ideas. He says, a straight line is not: well defined to be the shortest distance between two points, and thinks that more than one right line, may be drawn between two points; as for instance, supposing two lines to approach at the rate of an inch in twenty leagues, he perceives no absurdity in asserting, that upon their contact they become one. He asserts, that we are incapable in geometry, of telling when two figures are equal, when a line is a right one, and when a surface is a plain one. He maintains, that it is impossible for us to form any idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions; that all our arguments concerning causes and effects, consist both of an

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impression of the memory or senses, and of the idea of that existence, which produces the object of the impression, or is produced by it. “He asserts, that it is impossible to distinguish the memory and imagination; that the belief or assent which always attends the memory and senses, is nothing but the vivacity of those perceptions they present; that the necessity which makes two times two equal to four, or the three angles of a triangle equal to two right ones, lies only in the act of the understanding, by which we compare these ideas; and that in like manner, the necessity or power which unites causes and effects, lies in the determination of the mind to pass from the one to the other. Mr. Hume maintains, that any thing may produce any thing, creation, annihilation, motion, reason, volition, &c. defines reason to be nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations. He asserts, that all our reasonings concerning causes and effects, are derived from nothing but custom; and belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the cogitative part of our nature. Finally, to hasten to the conclusion of this list of absurdities, he asserts, that the doctrine of the immateriality, simplicity, and indivisibility of a thinking substance is true atheism, and will serve to justify all the sentiments, for which Spinoza is so universally infamous; that we have no idea of self or personal identity; that the true idea of the human mind, is to consider it as a system of different perceptions or different existences, which are linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other; that identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion; and lastly, he defines belief to be a lively idea associated to a present impression.” Was ever such a chaos of absurdity, such a despicable jargon attempted to be imposed upon the world, under the respectable name of philosophy! And this too in a writer, who in his metaphysical disquisitions had promised the literary world, “to throw some light upon subjects, from which uncertainty had hitherto deterred the wise, and obscurity the ignorant,” to unite the boundaries of the different species of philosophy, by reconciling profound inquiry with clearness, and truth with novelty, and “to banish all that jargon, which has so long taken possession of metaphysical reasonings, and drawn such disgrace upon them.” He says himself, of the Treatise of Human Nature, that it fell still-​born from the press, and was not called into life, until buoyed up into notice, by his next publication, its more fortunate brother; and it would have been better for it, if it had been allowed by the literary world, to make its peaceful exit unnoticed and unknown, than to have been ushered into light, only

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to drag out a miserable existence, with a distempered constitution and a crazy brain; and at the same time uttering a language blasphemous and confused, to expose it to the contempt and enmity of both God and man. Happy would it be for this author, if those portions of his works which relate to metaphysics, to morals and religion, could be erased. His reputation would then be untarnished, and his name descend to future ages, with unsullied and continually increasing honours. …

BOOK III. CHAPTER VIII. Upon Miracles. “EXPERIENCE, it is said, is our only guide, in reasoning concerning matters of fact. Experience is in some things variable, and in some things uniform. A variable experience gives rise only to probability; an uniform experience amounts to a proof. Our belief or assurance of any fact from the report of eye-​witnesses, is derived from no other principle than experience; that is our observation of the veracity of human testimony, or of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses. But this experience is variable, since mankind sometimes tell us the truth, and at other times, impose upon us by falsehood. Now, our experience of the established laws of nature, is uniform and invariable, since nature never deceives us. In the case, therefore, of a miracle reported by witnesses, which is acknowledged to be a violation of the established laws of nature, there is a contest between two opposite experiences; our experience of the veracity of human testimony, which is variable, and our experience of the established laws of nature, which is invariable. Now, when our variable experience of the veracity of human testimony, which inclines us to the belief of a miracle, is placed in one scale; and our invariable experience of the established laws of nature, which would lead us to reject it, is placed in the other, which scale ought to preponderate? In other words, is it not always more probable, that mankind will impose upon us by false reports, than that the established laws of nature have been violated?” This, I conceive, is a true statement, without any abatement of its force, of this celebrated and much vaunted argument, which all the writers who have undertaken to answer it, have agreed in ascribing to Mr. Hume. Into this too ready concession in favour of Mr. Hume, they appear to me to have been incautiously betrayed, by the pompous expressions, with which that author ushers

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in his claims, assumes to himself the merit of a new invention, and sets off the advantages, which may be expected to result from the application of it. We shall first state his pretensions, and then see if it be not in our power to strip him of his plumes. “I flatter myself,” says he, in the commencement of his treatise, “that I have discovered an argument, which, if just, will with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures.” And when writing to his friend Dr.  Campbell, we find the following romantic account of the circumstances under which this hint was suggested to him, by which he seems to expect to perform miracles, while he refuses that power to all other persons. “It may, perhaps, amuse you to learn the first hint, which suggested to me that argument which you have so strenuously attacked. I  was walking in the cloisters of the Jesuit’s College of La Flêche, a town in which I passed two years of my youth, and engaged in a conversation with a Jesuit of some parts and learning, who was relating to me, and urging some nonsensical miracle performed in their convent, when I was tempted to dispute against him; and as my head was full of the topics of my Treatise of Human Nature, which I was at this time composing, this argument immediately occurred to me, and I thought it very much gravelled my companion; but at last, he observed to me, that it was impossible for that argument to have any solidity, because it operated equally against the Gospel as the Catholic miracles, which observation I thought proper to admit as a sufficient answer. I believe that you will allow, that the freedom at least of this reasoning makes it somewhat extraordinary, to have been the produce of a convent of Jesuits, though you may think the sophistry of it, savours plainly of the place of its birth.” Such are the pretensions of Mr. Hume. Let us now ascertain, whether they are as unquestionable as he would have us believe. It is evident from his frequent references to the works of Mr Locke, and more especially, to those which are metaphysical, that he had read the Treatise upon Human Understanding, although it is equally certain, that, as was the case with the evidences of Christianity, he had neither taken the pains completely to understand it. Hear, then, the language of Mr. Locke on this very topic, when treating of the degrees of assent in the last part of his second volume. “Thus far the matter goes easy enough,” says Mr. Locke, “and probability upon such grounds carries so much evidence with it, that it naturally determines the judgment, and leaves us as little liberty to believe or disbelieve, as a demonstration does, whether we will know or be ignorant. The difficulty is when testimonies contradict common experience, and the reports of history and witnesses clash with the ordinary

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course of nature, or with one another; there it is where diligence, attention, and exactness, are required to form a right judgment, and to proportion the assent to the different evidence, and probability of the thing, which rises and falls according as the two foundations of credibility, viz. common observation in like cases, and particular testimonies in that particular instance, favour or contradict it.” Here we have both that mystical balance of contradictory evidences, with which Mr. Hume makes such a display, and the substance of that argument by which some are willing to believe he has sapped the foundations of Christianity. But to make the matter still more clear, that this objection was felt and understood by Mr. Locke, hear him proceed in the same chapter. “Though the common experience, and the ordinary course of things, have justly a mighty influence upon the minds of men, to make them give or refuse credit to any thing proposed to their belief; yet there is one case wherein the strangeness of the fact lessens not the assent to a fair testimony given of it. For where such supernatural events are suitable to ends aimed at by him, who has the power to change the course of nature; there, under such circumstances, they may be the fitter to procure belief, by how much more they are beyond, or contrary to ordinary observation. This is the proper case of miracles, which, well attested, do not only find credit themselves, but give it also to other truths which need such confirmation. From these passages it is evident, that Mr. Locke perceived and stated Mr. Hume’s objection in all its force, but with that deep insight into things, which always distinguished him, discerned at the same time, in what manner the argument in favour of miracles might be relieved from it. Mr. Hume stopped short in the objection, and endeavoured with all the subtilty and address, which he could summon to his aid, to set it off to advantage; Mr. Locke with clearer views and deeper penetration perceived, that although the objection is natural and not without its weight, yet a satisfactory answer might be furnished to it; thereby verifying the excellent apothegm of lord Bacon; certissimum est et experientia comprobatum, leves gustus in philosophia movere fortassè ad atheismum, sed pleniores haustus ad religionem reducere.* * The reader will perceive, that the only difference between the argument here stated by Mr. Locke, and that of Mr. Hume, consists merely in the artful manner, in which the latter has dressed it off to advantage. They are in substance the same; but Mr. Hume has contrived to render it more imposing, by his mode of exhibiting it. Mr. Locke allows, that, a great difficulty which we find in receiving the report of witnesses, lies in that report clashing with the ordinary course of nature; Mr. Hume states, in substance, the same objection; but discovers his utmost skill and adroitness, in representing the evidence of testimony, as always resting upon a variable experience only, while the course of nature is found to be established by an invariable experience. Of course, he concludes, that that evidence which we have of the established laws of nature, which is derived from an invariable experience,

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Let us now proceed to answer this celebrated objection, which Mr. Hume has thus purloined from Mr. Locke, and endeavoured to palm upon the world as his own invention; while at the same time he has infused into it all the venom of his own subtilty, and recommended it by all the parade of language, and embellishments of fancy and illustration, of which he was capable. From the account which we have before given of the progress of the human mind, in its advancement in knowledge, and the grounds of our assent to truth, we doubt not, that we shall render the solution of this difficulty, about the proof of miracles from human testimony, extremely easy and completely satisfactory. In our entrance upon this inquiry, which is undoubtedly of fundamental importance to mankind, we cannot but remark, how little solicitous a professed sceptic is, whether one part of his works coheres with another, and whether opinions hazarded at one time, be in exact coincidence with those he had delivered at another. In this treatise upon miracles, we hear Mr. Hume talking of, “experience giving us assurance of the uniform course of nature,” and of “the laws of nature being established, (or rather shown to be established,) by a uniform experience.” And yet this is the same writer, who, as we have shown, in his Treatise of Human Nature, maintains the atheistical doctrine, that we have no reason to believe that in any case, there is any power in causes to produce their effects, that there is no ground for that universally received maxim, that for every effect there must be a cause, that all we can know from experience in reference to cause and effect, is, that they are objects bearing towards each other the relations of contiguity and conjunction; and finally, that even in regard to these, we have no reason to draw any conclusion beyond our own experience.” Now, if after a complete course of observation in regard to the order of nature, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning the past or future, what ground has Mr. Hume for deducing any conclusion from his own experience, in reference to those events which took place in the days of the Apostles, and the early ages of Christianity? Upon his own principles, for aught he can know, at any period before his time, nature may have produced all sorts of monsters, centaurs, giants, pigmies, gorgons, hydras, and chimæras, and have sported herself with the violation of her own laws. If we have no right to reason from our own experience, to what in all probability has taken place in time past, or may take place in future, then, the slightest degree of evidence derived from the testimony of others, and he allows must, in all cases, preponderate over that which we derive from the testimony of witnesses, which, at best, can be substantiated only by a variable experience. How far this view of the subject is well-​ founded, we have undertaken to show in the text; but we take this opportunity of endeavouring to illustrate still further, the objection of Mr. Hume, as perhaps, no subject was ever more grossly misunderstood and misrepresented.

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that testimony affords us probability as to matters of fact, should lead us with the blindest credulity, to embrace all the fabulous tales of heathen mythology, as well as the wildest stories of faction and romance. Into such absurdities and contradictions, are men driven by the wanton spirit of scepticism! Dr. Campbell, in his answer to Mr. Hume’s Essay upon Miracles, pays him the very high-​wrought and unmerited compliment of remarking, that, “he has not only been much entertained and instructed by his works, but if he possessed any talent for abstract reasoning, he was not a little indebted to what he (Mr. Hume,) hath written on human nature, for the improvement of that talent.” He then concludes, in the following terms. “If, therefore, in this tract, I have refuted Mr. Hume’s essay, the greater share of the merit is, perhaps, to be ascribed to Mr. Hume himself. The compliment which the Russian monarch, after the famous battle of Pultowa, paid the Swedish generals, when he gave them the honourable appellation of his masters in the art of war, I  may with great sincerity pay my acute and ingenious adversary.” This it must be admitted is very courteous treatment of the Arch-​Atheist, and the inveterate enemy of all religion and morals. What advantage Dr. Campbell could have derived from reading Mr. Hume’s Treatises upon the Principles of Human Nature, which, as far as we have become acquainted with them, as represented by him, are false, hollow and counterfeit, we cannot imagine; but we certainly must be indulged in thinking that there would have been no difficulty in recommending him to much more able masters in abstract reasoning, in whose school he might have imbibed much more wholesome, and certainly not less profound lessons of instruction, than the author of the Treatise of Human Nature. Must he pass by Bacon, Locke, Clarke, Chillingworth, Barrow, Stillingfleet, Butler, Warburton, and a host of others of similar pretensions, in whose presence Mr. Hume twinkles but as a dim star, in the midst of so many suns, to obtain his views of human nature, and cultivate his powers of abstract reasoning from the great perverter, and falsifier of reason? Could he not have obtained from these champions of the truth, much more invincible arms with which to subdue an enemy to the faith, than those with which he was furnished by that enemy himself? To hold such language is certainly one of the best expedients, by which to give currency, and authority too, to the most pernicious productions that ever issued from the press in any age or country. The compliment too, as I have said, is as unmerited as it is far-​fetched and over-​strained. There is not a single treatise of Mr. Hume, which his warmest friends and admirers, if they have just conceptions of such matters, could consider as a master-​piece of abstract reasoning. Where is it? Which of his works deserves that praise? His merits as an historian, although even in this respect his fidelity and accuracy have been impeached, I am willing to admit;

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and to this I  might add, that he sometimes discovers considerable acuteness and erudition as a critick, and polite scholar. But his claims to distinction and superiority, as a metaphysician or profound reasoner, I  utterly deny. His logick is obscured and enfeebled by subtilty, his notions of metaphysicks are crude and unconcocted, a vein of cold and deadly scepticism pervades all his writings, together with the most abandoned profligacy of moral principles. Is this the author from whose works alone, a Christian Theologian could derive the weapons with which to subdue him? But to pass from a discussion of the character and pretensions of Mr. Hume, let us proceed to the consideration of his objection to miracles. Never surely has any subject been more egregiously misconceived and misrepresented. Passing by all minor considerations, such as the ambiguous use of words with which this author is so frequently chargeable, and the inconsistencies with himself in which he has been detected in this essay, I shall enter immediately upon that objection, which every rational mind will perceive to be by no means destitute of force, and which of consequence, it is important to obviate. The whole force of the objection which has been so largely dilated upon by Mr. Hume, may be collected into a single point, and consists in this. Should we ever place such confidence in the veracity of human testimony, of which we can be assured only by a variable experience, since men sometimes tell truth, and sometimes falsehood, as to believe in a miracle, which is a violation of the laws of nature; when by an uniform and invariable experience, we know that those laws are established? In other words, will it not forever remain more probable that men should impose upon us by falsehood, than that the laws of nature should be violated? This is the pith and substance of the argument, and we trust we shall be able completely to refute it upon those principles of science and philosophy before stated. It is to be observed, that with the error contained in this argument, there is also an admixture of truth, and that it is this ingredient in the mixture which renders it so palatable to some men, and so likely to impose upon the understanding. Error would gain no credit or countenance among the virtuous and reflecting part of mankind, unless she assumed the semblance, and wore the habiliments of truth; and her form becomes still more imposing and deceptive, when their resembling features are so intimately blended together, that it is difficult to mark the lines or unfold the lineaments that distinguish them. Let us now, with all imaginable candour, proceed to weigh this objection against miracles in the scales of a just philosophy, ascertain its true force, how far the rule proposed for testing the truth of miracles will properly extend, when it ceases to be a just

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criterion of their authenticity; and determine if possible, that degree of evidence in human testimony upon which, in such instances, a rational mind ought to repose with full and entire confidence. As the contest here lies between the evidence of experience, and that of testimony, or as Mr. Hume represents it of two kinds of experience, viz: that which we have of the established order of nature, and that which we have of the veracity of human testimony; let us endeavour in the first place, accurately to determine the weight of these two kinds of evidence, so that we may be able fairly to balance them against each other, and see in what cases the one or the other ought to preponderate. First, let us speak of the evidence of experience. When it is alleged that from uniform experience we derive proof that the order of nature is established, we enunciate a true proposition; but we must carefully note, in this case, what is implied in the term proof. We have before shown that all that portion of our information which we properly denominate knowledge, may be divided into intuitive, sensitive and demonstrative. Now it will not be contended that, either from intuition, or demonstration we derive proof, that that portion of the past or future course of nature which falls not under our own observation, has been, or will be, the same as we have always found it. There are no lights with which we are furnished, either by nature or philosophy, which will enable us to determine with any thing like demonstrative or undoubted certainty, that any portion of the past course of nature, of which we were not ourselves witnesses, was like that which has fallen under our own observation, or that any portion of the future will be like it. The inhabitants of Lisbon and the Caraccas, as we before remarked, remained in as perfect security that the order of nature was established, and that the ground would remain stable beneath their feet, but a moment before they were swallowed by an earthquake, as they had done for centuries before. And here we see their uniform experience deceived them. There are no principles of science, at this time in possession of the philosophick world, by which we could prove that at any moment from the one on which we touch, the whole frame of the solar system may not have its springs unloosed, and sink to ruin. From this view of the subject, which we venture to assume as founded in the deepest philosophy, it will be perceived, that all the proof, which we can derive from the most invariable experience of the past course of nature, can amount at best to only strong and satisfactory probability. If we could arrive at what might be called knowledge, or demonstrative proof, that the past has always been like the present, the argument would be brought to a summary conclusion, and Mr. Hume’s objection obtain a speedy and complete triumph. But this can never be done by the feeble and limited faculties of man. But have we not sufficient

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reason to believe from our own experience, that the past course of nature has been invariably like the present? If we had no evidence presented to us of the contrary, and supposing ourselves reasoning from the unaided lights of our own minds, we should certainly say that we have. We entertain no doubt, although we cannot prove it, and know that it rests upon probable evidence only, that the sun has risen and set, from the beginning of the world as it does now; that the Earth has rolled round that luminary, and the tides risen and fallen in regular succession. And had we no proof to the contrary, we should say, from the exercise of our own powers, that the same had taken place in all the other departments and laws of nature. While we are propelled by a regard to truth, and the principles of science, to make this concession to our adversary, in order to come immediately to the point in controversy, the question may be asked; since it is admitted that the evidence which we derive from experience, that the order of nature has always been the same, supposing that no proof were alleged to the contrary, would amount to strong and satisfactory probability, is there any evidence which can be derived from human testimony which should overcome this probability, and lead us to conclude, that in any cases whatever the laws of nature have been violated? As the two kinds of evidence, that derived from experience, and that from testimony, which are sui generis, distinct from each other, are here attempted to be poised the one against the other; the intelligent reader will perceive, that the subjects not being homogeneous, it will be extremely difficult to determine by a test of this nature, what degree of weight should be respectively assigned to them, and how far the one may preponderate over the other. This observation has been made by Dr. Campbell. Where the subjects are homogeneous to each other, it would be a fair mode of reasoning, and consistent with the true spirit of the Baconian philosophy, to allow the judgment to be determined by the more frequent experiences we have had of the fact. For example, to give the instance adduced by Dr. Campbell, suppose a ferry-​boat to have passed a river in safety, thousands of times within our knowledge, and but once or twice had been known by an accident to be carried down the stream, and the passengers drowned. Here the very frequent instances of the safe passage of the boat, and the very rare ones in which it had been subject to any unpleasant accident, would, when the first were weighted against the last, render the probability so strong, that they would pass in safety as to awake no apprehensions in the minds of the passengers. But suppose that, instead of the boat being carried down the stream, and all persons on board having been lost twice out of thousands of times, this fatal accident should have taken place every fourth or fifth time, would not every person on board feel extreme anxiety, and be in painful doubt

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of his fate? In cases of this kind, where the subjects compared are homogeneous, or alike in nature to each other, the rule of Mr. Hume, by which experience is weighed against experience, would be a good one, and the result would afford a tolerable calculation of chances in favour, or against us. But by what process shall we be able to balance the evidence of testimony against that of experience in a similar mode? It is evident to the most superficial thinker, that although the above mentioned ferry-​boat had within our experience, passed the river in safety thousands of times, and never been known to be subjected to any disaster, yet the testimony of any one man in whose veracity we confided, would overturn the evidence of all past experience, and lead us to believe in the fact without doubt or hesitation. Of this statement of the matter no rational mind can doubt. At the same time, to pursue the argument with the same candour, and impartial regard to truth with which we commenced it, if the question were asked, how we come, from the testimony of a single witness, to believe in a fact that contradicts all our former experience in the matter, our answer would undoubtedly be that, although the loss of the boat and passengers, was contrary to all our former experience in this case, yet it was not contrary to our former experience of the ordinary course of nature in similar cases. We know that boats are liable to be borne down the stream, and the passengers to be drowned. We have, perhaps, been witnesses of similar casualties. The agents producing these results exist in nature. The ready assent, therefore, which we should give to a fact of this kind, would not depend solely upon our confidence in the veracity of the relator, but also upon our previous knowledge of the constitution and laws of nature. On this account it is, I  am inclined to think, that while the example adduced by Dr. Campbell goes conclusively to show, that the two kinds of evidence, that of testimony, and that of experience, being heterogeneous, cannot be well balanced against each other, until, by a sort of metaphysical reduction, we shall be able to bring all kinds of proof to a similar denomination; yet that by the answer he has given to Mr. Hume, when he refers to the case of the ferry-​boat, he has not reached the very heart and marrow of the argument. The passages and losses of the ferry-​boat and passengers, are all events acknowledged to come within the compass of the ordinary laws of nature; while the case of a miracle is admitted to be a suspension or violation of those laws. To illustrate the case by an example in point. Suppose, in passing to this same river, we had met the same man whose integrity was known to us, and instead of informing us that the ferry-​boat had been carried down the stream, which we should believe upon his word without a moment’s hesitation, he should give us intelligence, that he had just returned from witnessing a most extraordinary scene, that of a Being who had raised a

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man from the grave, after he had been dead four days, and was in a state of putrefaction. Should we now yield assent to the truth of his story, however confident we might have felt before of the integrity and veracity of the narrator? Certainly not. We should require much stronger evidence, than the testimony of any man, to convince us of such a miraculous fact. Here, then, we are truly brought to the point at issue. Is there any evidence which can be derived from human testimony, the veracity of which must always rest upon a variable experience, that can so far vanquish our confidence in the established laws of nature, as to lead us to give credit to a miracle, which is a violation of them? We have before remarked with Dr. Campbell, that as the evidence of testimony, and that of experience are not homogeneous to each other, it is impossible in many, or even most cases, to reduce them to a common standard, and by placing them in the same scales determine which will overbalance the other; or in other words, decide what quantum of testimony will be able to outweigh a given portion of experience, and vice versa. Notwithstanding this difficulty, however, which meets us in coming to settled and determinate conclusions in these matters, and which, in all probability, will forever preclude the possibility of our being able nicely to graduate a scale, by which the force of these two kinds of evidence shall be ascertained; yet, there is one consideration which makes us some amends for our deficiency in this respect, and that is this, viz. that we are able, I think, with tolerable certainty to decide, what degree of evidence ought to be regarded by every rational mind, as inadequate to the proof of a miracle, and what degree should be considered adequate. In the first place, then, to hasten forwards in the prosecution of our inquiry, we are willing to admit that a miracle can never be sufficiently substantiated by the simple testimony of any man or any ordinary set of men. By simple testimony, I mean testimony which is uncorroborated by any other circumstances or proofs, but the attestation of the parties concerned; and by any ordinary set of men, I  would be understood to signify a number of persons selected from the bulk of mankind without choice or discrimination. I say, then, I am willing to admit, that a miracle can never be considered as substantiated by the simple testimony of any man, or any ordinary set of men. Let us now compare this concession with the statement of that argument usually ascribed to Mr. Hume, and it will be readily perceived that we have allowed its full force, as far as it can be legitimately extended. The substance of that objection is, that we should never allow our confidence in human testimony, of the veracity of which we can be assured only by a variable experience, to lead us to believe in

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a violation of the established order of nature, of which we are assured by an invariable experience. Now this objection invalidates that kind of testimony, of the veracity of which we have had proof only from a variable experience, that is, simple and uncorroborated testimony. We have had, it is alleged, only a variable experience of the veracity of human testimony, since men sometimes tell us truth, and at other times impose upon us by falsehood. It is evident, this could be justly asserted only of the bulk of mankind, with whom we casually meet in the intercourses of life. Add to this general proposition some of those circumstances of corroboration to which I have alluded, and the maxim has no longer its force or justness of application. It is certain that, when we speak generally of mankind, the proof which we have of the veracity of their testimony rests only on a variable experience; but have we a like variable experience of the veracity of good men, or of men who have afforded us all the outward and inward demonstrations of unsullied purity, and excellence of character? Is it by a variable experience only, we are assured, that men who have given every possible proof of probity, will not suddenly change their religion, shake off all their early prejudices and prepossessions, embrace the tenets, and enlist as the champions of a new faith, in order to become the propagators of a string of falsehoods? Is it by a variable experience only, we are assured, that men of undoubted probity will not, after they have relinquished their own religion and embraced a falsehood, to promulgate that falsehood, relinquish all the sweets of home and a peaceful life, and voluntarily encounter hardships, toils, ignominy, perils, persecutions, and even persevere unto death in attesting it? Is it by a variable experience only, we are convinced, that those men could not have been impostors, and the propagators of a string of falsehoods, who not only changed their religion and all their views, and habits of thinking and acting, and subjected themselves to all kinds of sufferings and death, from attachment to their new faith; but who, by some wonderful influence, induced hosts of others to make the same sacrifices as themselves; made converts of all nations; without power, wealth or influence, effected a complete moral change in the world; planted the standard of the cross, upon the ruins of paganism and idolatry; and in spite of the most furious opposition of Jews and Gentiles, backed by the whole force of civil and ecclesiastical power, made their way triumphantly through the earth? In fine, is it by a variable experience only, we are assured, that these men could not have been deceivers, who not only deserted their own faith, and embraced another, spent their lives in suffering, and died the most painful deaths in promulging the tenets of the last, made converts of a host of others of all ranks and conditions; but who also had the address

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and good fortune, to have the great events of their lives annually celebrated by a succession of followers from their times to the present, and monuments erected to perpetuate the remembrance of them? Under such circumstances as these, can it be said with any show of reason, or rather without an outrage upon the principles of right reason, that of the veracity of the testimony furnished by the first promulgers of Christianity in favour of those miracles by which it is supported, we have only a variable experience? Would human testimony, when thus corroborated by circumstances and facts, be liable to any exception; or subject even to the chance of error or imposition? Would courts of justice admit, that they have only a variable experience of the veracity of testimony, which is offered to them by men of unblemished reputation, and acknowledged probity and good sense? Do they not feel themselves perfectly secure, in resting upon the ground of such evidence, those decisions that effect the fortunes and lives of their fellow creatures? How much stronger, then, would be the case, if to the single circumstance of acknowledged probity in the character of the witnesses, we add those important considerations to which I have before alluded, their change of religious habits and views of things, the privations and difficulties they encountered in promulging the doctrines of their new faith, the horrid deaths which they calmly and triumphantly underwent, the wonderful success of their ministry, and to crown the whole, the institutions founded upon the great events of their lives, and the monuments erected to perpetuate them? Here then, from this view of the subject, we have unexpectedly arrived at a conclusion, which allows us to admit the whole force of Mr. Hume’s argument, when rightly understood and justly applied, and yet open no door by which any danger can be introduced to the christian religion. He avers, that no human testimony can establish a miracle, because of the veracity of human testimony we are assured only by a variable experience, and we have an invariable experience against a miracle. We avow, and think we have now proved that, in the case of Christianity, we have a testimony in favour of its miracles, not resting upon a variable, but invariable experience. We can be liable to no possible deception in the case. The accumulated evidence which is afforded us in this matter, is stronger and more conclusive, than any evidence which we can derive from our own experience, of what may have been the past course of nature; and we should, upon better principles of reason, admit any the most stupendous violations of the established laws of the physical world, than allow a testimony so corroborated by circumstances and facts to be false. The thinness and impalpable nature of the whole frame and constitution of the moral world, render it extremely difficult to determine with precision

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and accuracy, at what points its regular and ordinary laws cease their operation, and the violations or suspensions of them commence. But, on this subject, we may, I think, arrive at tolerable certainty, that to suppose all this compound and strongly corroborated testimony, in favour of the gospel miracles to be false, would be to suppose as great a violation of the established laws of the physical world, as to admit its veracity, is to allow the violations of the established laws of the physical world. So that upon this view of the subject, we know not that any detriment could result to Christianity, if the truth of Mr. Hume’s maxim were admitted in its utmost extent, as before we have admitted it, as far as it is grounded in reason and philosophy, viz. that we should never believe a miracle, unless it would be as great a miracle, that the evidence which supports it should be false, as that the fact itself should be true. It would be as great a departure from the ordinary laws of the moral world, that such a stupendous imposture as Christianity must be, if it be false, should have been embraced, propagated, and palmed upon the world as a system of divine truth, in the manner in which it was done; as it was a departure from the ordinary laws of the physical world, that all the miraculous works recorded in the gospel, should have been performed. In this view of the subject, however, it is proper for us to remark, we do not acquiesce. We do not agree that this is a proper, and the only test of a miracle. Let us now see, whether the principles we have stated, are conformable to the views of Christ and his Apostles, as disclosed to us in the sacred scriptures. We have admitted, in treating of the subject, that no miracle can be sufficiently authenticated, by the simple testimony of any witness, or any ordinary number of witnesses. There can scarcely remain a doubt, that there is a natural and well founded prejudice, existing in the mind of every intelligent man against marvellous stories, that cannot be overcome, and should not be overcome, when they become so serious as to be miraculous, by such slight evidence, as the mere declaration of any individual, or a few individuals. The conduct of the king of Siam was very natural, who refused to believe the report of the Dutch ambassador, when he informed him that in Europe, water could become so hard by the influence of cold, as to sustain upon its surface a loaded wagon. He followed the dictates of nature, in refusing his assent in this instance, as he had never seen water in any other condition than a fluid state, and supposed it impossible, so to change its consistence as to make it hard; but in this business he did not act the part of the philosopher. He ought to have known that experience and observation, alone, can give us information of the effects, which the different agents in nature produce upon each other; and until he had tried the operation of the utmost influence of cold upon water, he could come to no probable conclusion

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about it. That we do, however, naturally and properly make our own experience, in a degree, a criterion or standard, by which we judge of the probability or improbability of the tales related by others, we have just seen acknowledged by Mr. Locke, and of the fact there cannot be a shadow of doubt. Even the credulity of children, and the most ignorant persons may be shocked by stories too improbable, or contrary to experience to be credited. Suppose, then, a man should present himself to us, at this time, alleging that he had been connected with a being, who had performed miracles, who had raised the dead, cured the sick by his word, controlled the winds and waves, fed thousands of a hungry multitude with a few loaves and fishes, should we give credit to his simple testimony? Undoubtedly no rational person would. The answer to him, in such case, would be entirely satifactory [sic], we have proof from our uniform experience of the established order of nature, and we shall not believe that it has been violated at your word, of whose veracity the probability can never be so strong, as that derived from our own invariable experience. No apparent sincerity or earnestness of asseveration on his part, would ever persuade us, or should ever persuade us, that he was not either deceived himself, or attempting to practice an imposition upon us. Thus far we readily admit the conclusive force of this argument, and yield our understandings willing captives to its influence. But, in reference to the miracles ascribed to Christ and his Apostles, does this objection go, in the smallest degree, to the falsification of them? Was there ever a time, in which the truth of these miracles, rested solely upon the simple testimony of men? When Numa, following the example of other lawgivers, in order to give authority to his laws, pretended that he received them from the goddess Egeria, and Mahomet declared that the Koran was communicated to him by successive revelations from the angel Gabriel; these men rested the truth of their pretensions upon their own declarations; and upon this proof alone no rational mind, not blinded by ignorance and superstition, could have reposed confidence. But the course of the Divine Founder of the Christian faith, presents us with a fine contrast to such flimsy pretences. He, indeed, laid claim to a divine mission, and had any objector, such as those with whom we have to contend, been present and put to him the interrogatory, how can you prove to us, that you have been thus supernaturally endowed? To admit that God has thus interposed in your behalf, would be to allow a miracle or violation of the laws of nature. Now, is it not much more probable, that you should impose upon us by a false declaration, than that the established laws of nature should be violated? We doubt not, that the great author of our religion, would have felt and acknowledged the force of the objection. He has felt and explicitly acknowledged the force of the objection, when in

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some conversations with his disciples and hearers, he declared, “if I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true,” and again, “if ye believe not me, (that is upon my simple declaration,) believe me for my work’s sake.” Here we perceive the true ground, upon which Christ, during his own life, rested his claims to a divine mission. He was not contented, as were the ancient lawgivers, and the impostor Mahomet, with simply declaring his heavenly mission, but made the appeal to the evidence of their senses, those very senses from which they derived their knowledge of the uniform laws of nature. Here was a criterion that was infallible, and could not mislead them. Thus we perceive, that our holy religion in its outset, did not rest its pretensions upon the simple declarations of its author. Nor after his death, did his successors the Apostles, who became the promulgers of his system of faith and doctrine, repose their claims to the confidence of their fellow-​men, upon their own testimony. As if anticipating an objection like that with which we are now combatting, they renewed the miracles which their Lord had performed, and thus by continuing the appeal to the senses, silenced all opposition from this quarter. Hence the necessity of the performance of miracles by the Apostles. And even in the third and last stage of evidence in this matter, in the days immediately succeeding the Apostles, we find Christianity, instead of grounding its pretensions to truth and divine authority upon the simple testimony of its professors, reposing itself in safety upon all that accumulated evidence in its confirmation, which we derive from the character and conduct of its propagators; from their unblemished purity of intention, and uprightness of conduct; from their relinquishing all the comforts and satisfactions of life, to devote themselves to perpetual toils, hardships, imprisonments, dangers and death; from the wonderful success of their exertions, and their triumphant progress in the promulgation of the faith, in the midst of difficulties, which appeared insurmountable. But besides all these considerations usually urged in this case, we find at this period of the church, a moral phenomenon presented to our inspection, for which no rational solution can be furnished, but the prevailing influence of miraculous power. A  large proportion of mankind have, from some cause or other, been induced to abandon the religion in which they had been educated, and in opposition to all those motives, which generally operate most powerfully upon the minds of men, to become christians. The fact is, that besides all this proof which may be exhibited in favour of Christianity, and which every unprejudiced mind must deem satisfactory, there is another of a peculiar nature, and which of itself, would frustrate the force of Mr. Hume’s objection. We are in the habit of considering intuition, experience,

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and testimony, as the three distinct grounds of human knowledge, and undoubtedly they are so; intuition being the ground of demonstrative certainty, experience the ground of natural and moral science, and testimony that of historical information. Science knows no other distinctions but these. But at the same time, is it not worthy of remark, that there is a kind of knowledge which we possess, that is not derived from what we properly call experience, and yet does not depend for its certainty upon testimony alone, but partakes of the force of both, and may be regarded as a compound mixture, composed of both these ingredients? Such facts, for example, as the following; that there were once such republics as those of Athens and Lacedæmon, such an empire as the Roman, and that such men a Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and Cato, once lived in them, cannot be justly considered as resting solely upon the testimony of the Greek and Roman writers. Have we not the productions of their genius, and their monuments of art remaining? We can visit the capitals of Greece and Rome, and find the accounts of their philosophers, historians, orators, and poets, confirmed by the venerable ruins still to be perceived of their ancient grandeur. Have we not here a proof of the former existence of these nations, and that such illustrious men once adorned them, as we have above enumerated, much stronger than that which can be derived from mere testimony, and which if it cannot be regarded as amounting to our own experience, very nearly approximates to it? If all the monuments of the ancient greatness of these nations, could be supposed so completely erased, as that not a vestige of them was to be seen, the evidence of these facts would be totally changed, and there might be found some better excuse, than is to be discerned at present, for the opinion of Father Harduin, that almost all the classics are the supposititious productions of the middle ages. To illustrate our meaning by reference to a case exactly in point. Plato informs us in his Timæus and Critias, that when Solon was in Egypt, into which country he went in pursuit of knowledge, as was the custom among the philosophers of Greece, and Egyptian priests informed him, that the Greeks were as yet but children in matters of antiquity, for that at a period long anterior to that to which their records extended back their history, there lived a great and flourishing nation, inhabiting an island called Atlantis, beyond the pillars of Hercules, the present straits of Gibraltar; that this island was connected with other islands in the Atlantic ocean, and these with a large continent; and that this powerful nation passed over into Africa and Europe, and conquered the greater part of them. Now this whole account of the island Atlantis, and the powerful nation of the Atlantidæ, may be considered as described by Plato, as resting upon the simple testimony of the Egyptian priests. But suppose an island and a continent,

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of the kind mentioned above, had been discovered by modern navigators in the Atlantic ocean, inhabited by a people tracing their origin to a great and powerful nation, from whom they professed to derive their improvements, usages, laws, and institutions; that the remains of their ancient glory were still perceptible in their cities, temples, and other specimens of architecture, sculpture, and painting; would not such circumstances strongly confirm the truth of this Egyptian story, and, in fact, render credible what at present, is justly regarded only as a romantic and fabulous tale? Take this mode of reasoning, and apply it to the case of Christianity. Have we not undoubted proof that Moses and Christ once lived, and performed the actions which are ascribed to them in the circumstances, that from the very times in which they lived, there has been a continued succession of men, who have submitted to their laws, and professed themselves their followers; that great and mighty empires have been erected on the foundations which they laid; that the monuments of these empires are still existing, and that institutions arising out of the great events of their lives, continue to be observed in sacred commemoration of them? When the whole of this species of evidence is classed under the general appellation historical, it is certainly throwing into one confused heap, things which, if not discrepant from each other in kind, are certainly greatly discrepant in their degree of force. Science, indeed, furnishes us with no term to designate this degree of proof, by which important facts and events may be authenticated, but its superior weight and influence upon the understanding, are no less perceptible on that account. The evidence which we derive from considerations of this kind, when taken in connection with the other proofs of Christianity to which we have before alluded, affords a clear, intense, and irresistible light, which cannot fail to flash conviction upon every unprejudiced mind. Under this view of the subject, and in the full possession of such satisfactory proof, what shall we say of that bold, though unfounded declaration of Mr. Volney, in a work very descriptively and characteristically entitled his Ruins, as it may emphatically be styled a chaos of follies, fantasies, and absurdities; “that there are absolutely no other monuments of the existence of Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus, a single phrase in Tacitus and the gospels; and that the existence of Jesus is no better proved, than that of Osiris and Hercules, and that of Fo or Bedou.” Is there any extravagance of opinion or impudence of assertion, of which the impugners of the gospel are not capable, when it happens to suit their purpose at the time, and more especially, when the prospect is presented to them, by the boldness of their assumptions, to dupe the ignorant and ensnare the unsuspecting? It is impossible that Mr. Volney could have been ignorant of the egregious

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mistatement, and even palpable fallacy of a declaration of this kind. After the view which we have already taken of the subject, it is certainly unnecessary to enter into the refutation of an assumption so glaringly unfounded, as the answer to it must by this time be obvious to the reader. The same view of the matter which we have exhibited above, serves also, as we have asserted, completely to sap the force, and defeat the purpose of the much vaunted argument ascribed to Mr. Hume, although, as we have already shown, he was not entitled to the merit of inventing it. Even supposing his reasoning upon the point to be conclusive, and we have proved, we trust, by unanswerable arguments it is not, it would not accomplish the object he had in view. The fact, that: the miracles of Christ and his Apostles were performed, rests not solely upon the testimony of the Apostles and Evangelists, unimpeachable as it is, and corroborated as it is moreover, by circumstances that render it satisfactory. It is written in deep and legible characters, if I may speak so, upon the moral order of the world. Effects were produced at that time, by the miracles of Christ and his Apostles, of which such extraordinary acts alone could have been the adequate cause. The more remote results of them are discernible at the present day. Thus we have endeavoured to refute this celebrated argument against miracles, to separate what is true from what is false in it, and to show that when properly understood, instead of proving of any detriment to the interests of our holy religion, it is rather a confirmation of its truth; since after a scrutiny of this kind, it is found impregnable also upon this quarter, in which it at first appeared to be most vulnerable. We shall conclude the subject by a few brief observations, in the form of scholia, connected with the foregoing investigation. In the first place, it will be an abuse of the doctrine we have held on this subject, if it should be said, that we regard every miracle as incredible, which has not been substantiated by such proof as that which we have required above. When we have obtained in the manner described, sufficient evidence of the interference of God as the conductor of any dispensation, as that of the Jewish or Christian, every insulated miracle which may be exhibited, will not require the same evidence to prove it, as was necessary in the first instance, to establish that important fact; as after we have conclusively deduced from an examination of some of the most important parts of the works of the Creator, the existence of a contriver, we readily refer the less important portions of creation to the same original. Under this description, would be included many of the insulated miracles, both of the Old and New Testament. When Moses and Christ had established their claims to a divine commission, and we are convinced of the validity of those claims, our belief in such miraculous interferences becomes easy.

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Secondly. As Mr. Hume promised himself, that he had discovered an argument which would put an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, under which he no doubt included Judaism and Christianity, we think we may avail ourselves of the principles we have prescribed, to put an end to superstitious delusion, without having an ill aspect upon the system of our holy religion. Before we believe any miracles in future, let us put them to the same test, which we have seen the scripture miracles so well sustain, and if they can bear it we will receive them. I need scarcely remark, that so severe a test as this will at once exclude the pretensions of all those impostors who have attempted thus to trifle with the interests of mankind, commencing with Simon Magus, and continuing down through the whole line of his successors to the present day. This view of the subject, renders an object of ridicule rather than serious consideration, those stories of a blind man cured by the emperor Vespasian in Egypt; and that of a lame one cured at Saragossa, as related by the cardinal De Retz, as well as the tales of the cures, which were said to be performed at the tomb of the Abbe de Paris. These accounts, under this philosophical view of the subject, are too frivolous to be rendered worthy of a serious discussion; and could have been brought forward, and considered by Mr. Hume in connexion with the scripture miracles, only from the mere wantonness of opposition, and pruriency of debate. Finally: If the fact be established, that miracles were performed by Christ and his Apostles, the infallibility of their doctrines results by necessary consequence. Knowledge is power, says lord Bacon. And with equal justness and propriety, we may reverse the maxim, and declare that the existence of extraordinary power, indicates the possession of extraordinary wisdom. It is not to be presumed for a moment, that any being will be allowed to exercise the prerogatives of deity, or be invested with his awful authority, who is not delegated by God himself. To suppose that God would enable one commissioned by himself, to perform miracles in the confirmation of error, is to suppose him to give his awful sanction to deceive mankind. END OF BOOK III.

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Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, 1836); selection from “Chapter VI. Miracles are Capable of Proof from Testimony,” pp. 65–​88. Archibald Alexander Archibald Alexander (1772–​1851) was born near Lexington, Virginia, and educated at Liberty College. In the early 1790s Alexander ministered as an itinerant Presbyterian in Virginia and North Carolina before accepting the presidency of Hampton-​Sydney College in 1797. In 1812 Alexander was elected the first professor of the newly created Princeton Theological Seminary. There, Alexander introduced his students to Scottish common sense philosophy. Alexander published A Brief Outline of the Evidences of the Christian Religion in 1825. An enlarged edition with a new title, whence the selection reprinted below has been taken, contained twenty-​three chapters. The aim of that book, as its title suggests, was to show that the Bible was a source of true knowledge. On Archibald Alexander see Lefferts A. Loetscher, Facing the Enlightenment and Pietism: Archibald Alexander and the Founding of Princeton Theological Seminary (Westport and London, 1983); James H. Moorhead, “Archibald Alexander,” ANB, vol. 1, pp. 260–​62; Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768–​1822 (Princeton, 1989). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

CHAPTER VI. MIRACLES ARE CAPABLE OF PROOF FROM TESTIMONY. I DO not know that any one has denied that a miracle would be credible if exhibited to our senses. A  man might, indeed, be deceived by an illusion

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arising from some disorder in his senses; but if he were conscious of being in a sound state of body and mind, and should witness not only one, but a variety of miracles; not only a few times, but for years in succession; and if he should find that all around him had the same perceptions of these facts as himself, I need not say that it would be reasonable to credit his senses, for the constitution of his nature would leave him no choice: he would be under the necessity of believing what he saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, and handled with his hands. But are there facts which a man would credit on the evidence of his senses, which cannot possibly be rendered credible by the testimony of any number of witnesses. Then there might be facts, the knowledge of which could never be so communicated as to be worthy of credit. According to this hypothesis, the constitution of our nature would require us to withhold our assent from what was true, and from what others knew to be true. If a thousand persons of the strictest veracity should testify that they had repeatedly witnessed a miracle, and if all circumstances should concur to corroborate their testimony, yet upon this principle it would be unreasonable to credit them, even if they should consent to die in confirmation of what they declared to be the fact. This is the ground taken by Mr. Hume, in his boasted argument against miracles. But it appears to me that every man, even before examination, must be convinced that it is false; for it is contrary to common sense and universal experience of the effect of testimony. The true principle on this subject is, that any fact which would be believed on the evidence of the senses, may be reasonably believed on sufficient testimony. There may be testimony of such a nature as to produce conviction as strong as any other conceivable evidence; and such testimony in favour of a miracle would establish it as firmly as if we had witnessed it ourselves. But though this is the conclusion of common sense and experience, the metaphysical argument of Mr. Hume has had the effect of perplexing and unsettling the minds of many: and as he boasts that “it will be useful to overthrow miracles as long as the world endures,” it seems necessary to enter into an examination of his argument, that we may be able to expose its fallacy. This has already been done in a convincing manner, by several men,* eminent for their learning and discrimination; and if their works were read by all who peruse Hume, I should think it unnecessary to add a single word on the subject. But it may not be without its use to present a refutation in a condensed form, for the sake of those who will not take the trouble to go through a minute and extended demonstration. * Dr. Campbell, Prof. Vince, Mr. Adam, Dr. Douglas.

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The argument of Mr. Hume will be best exhibited in his own words. “A miracle,” says he, “supported by any human testimony, is more properly a subject of derision, than of argument. No testimony for any kind of miracle can ever possibly amount to a probability.” —​“We establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make a just foundation for any system of religion.” —​“Our belief or assurance of any fact from the report of eye witnesses, is derived from no other principle than experience; that is, our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses. Now, if the fact attested partakes of the marvellous, if it is such as has seldom fallen under our own observation; here is a contest of two opposite experiences, of which the one destroys the other as far as its force goes. Further, if the fact affirmed by the witness, instead of being only marvellous is really miraculous; if, besides, the testimony considered apart, and in itself, amounts to an entire proof; in that case there is proof against proof, of which the strongest must prevail. A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. And if so, it is an undeniable consequence, that it cannot be surmounted by any proof whatever from testimony. A miracle, therefore, however attested, can never be rendered credible, even in the lowest degree.” Here we have the substance of Mr. Hume’s argument, on which I propose to make some remarks, intended to show that its whole plausibility depends on the assumption of false principles, and the artful use of equivocal terms. 1.  Some prejudice is created in the mind of the unsuspecting reader, by the definition of a miracle here given. It is called “a violation of the laws of nature,” which carries with it an unfavourable idea, as though some obligation were violated and some injury done. But the simple truth is, that the laws of nature are nothing else than the common operations of divine power in the government of the world, which depend entirely for their existence and continuance of the divine will; and a miracle is nothing else than the exertion of the same power in a way different from that which is common; or it may be a mere suspension of that power which is commonly observed to operate in the world. 2.  Mr. Hume’s argument will apply to the evidence of the senses as well as to that derived from testimony, and will prove (if it prove any thing) that it would be impossible to believe in a miracle, if we should witness it ever so often. “The very same principle of experience,” says he, “which gives us a certain degree of assurance in the testimony of witnesses, gives us also, in this case, another

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degree of assurance against the fact which they endeavour to establish, from which contradiction there arises necessarily a counterpoise, and mutual destruction of belief and authority.” The very same counterpoise and mutual destruction of belief must also occur between the assurance derived from the senses and that derived from experience. The reason why testimony cannot be believed in favour of a miracle, is not, according to Mr. Hume, because it has no force, for taken by itself it may be sufficient to produce assurance; but let this assurance be as strong as it may, it cannot be stronger than that derived from universal experience. “In that case,” says he, “there is proof against proof.” It is evident that, upon these principles, the same equilibrium from contradictory evidence must take place between experience and the senses. If one evidence be stronger than another, “the stronger must prevail, but with a diminution of force in proportion to that of its antagonist.” But in the case of the senses and a firm and unalterable experience, the evidence is perfect on both sides, so that the “counterpoise and mutual destruction of belief ” must occur. According to this metaphysical balance of Mr. Hume, a miracle could not be believed if we witnessed it ever so often; for though there is a great weight of evidence on each side, yet as there is an equilibrium, nether can have any influence on our assent. Whether Mr. Hume would have objected to this conclusion does not appear; but it is manifest, that it logically follows from his argument, as much as in the case to which he has applied it. And here we see to what a pitch of skepticism his reasoning leads. 3.  Mr. Hume makes an unnecessary distinction between that which is marvellous and that which is miraculous; for though there is a real difference, there is none as to his argument. The force of his reasoning does not relate to events as being miraculous, but as being opposite to universal experience. If the conclusion therefore be correct, it will equally prove, that no testimony is sufficient to establish a natural event which has not before been experienced. If ever so many witnesses should aver that they had seen meteoric stones fall from the clouds, or the galvanic fluid melt metals, yet if we have never experienced these things ourselves we must not believe them. 4. The opposite or contrary experience of Mr. Hume in regard to miracles, can mean nothing more than that such things have not been experienced. There is no other opposite experience conceivable in this case, unless a number of persons present at the same time should experience opposite impressions. The distinction which he artfully makes in relation to “the king of Siam, who refused to believe the first reports concerning the effects of frost,” between that which is contrary to experience and that which is not conformable to experience, is without foundation. For a fact cannot be contrary to experience in any other way

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than by being not conformable to it. There neither is nor can be any experience against miracles, except this, that they have not occurred in our own experience or that of others. When the proposition of our author is expressed in language free from ambiguity, it will amount to this, that what has never been experienced can never be believed on any testimony; than which nothing can easily be conceived more false. In what a situation must man have been at the beginning of the world, if he had adopted the principles of this skeptic! 5.  Mr. Hume uses the word experience in a two-​fold sense, changing from one to the other as best suits his purpose. Sometimes it means personal experience, and at other times, and more commonly, the experience of the whole world. Now if it be taken to mean our own individual experience, the argument will be that no fact which we ourselves have not witnessed can be established by testimony, which, if correct, would cut off at a stroke the greater part of human knowledge. Much the most numerous class of facts are those which we receive upon testimony of others, and many of these are entirely different from any thing that we have personally experienced. Many learned men never take the trouble to witness the most curious experiments in philosophy and chemistry; yet they are as well satisfied of their truth as if they had personal experience of it. But though an argument founded on an opposition between testimony and experience, in order to be of any validity, must relate to personal experience; yet Mr. Hume commonly uses the term to signify the experience of all men in all ages. This extensive meaning of the term must be the one which he affixes to it in most places of his essay; because it is experience by which we know that the laws of nature are uniform and unalterable; and he has given an example which clearly determines the sense of the word. “That a dead man should come to life,” says he, “has never been witnessed in any age or country.” Now, according to this use of the word, what he calls an argument is a mere assumption of the point in dispute, what logicians call a petitio principii, a begging of the question. For, what is the question in debate? Is it not whether miracles have ever been experienced? And how does Mr. Hume undertake to prove that they never did exist? By an argument intended to demonstrate that no testimony can establish them; the main principle of which argument is that all experience is against them. If miracles have ever occurred, they are not contrary to universal experience; for whatever has been witnessed at any time, by any person, makes part of universal experience. What sort of reasoning is it then to form an argument against the truth of miracles, founded on the assumption, that they never existed? If it be true, as he says, that it has never been witnessed in any age or country, that a dead man should come to life, then indeed it is useless to adduce testimony to

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prove that the dead have on some occasions been brought to life. If he had a right to take this for granted, where was the use of such a parade of reasoning on the subject of testimony? The very conclusion to which he wished to come is here assumed as the main principle in the argument. It is however as easy to deny as to affirm; and we do utterly deny the truth of this position; so that after all we are at issue precisely on the point where we commenced. Nothing is proved by the argument which promised so much, except the skill of the writer in sophistical reasoning. 6.  Our author falls into another mistake in his reasoning. The object is to prove that testimony in favour of miracles can never produce conviction, because it is opposed by uniform and unalterable experience. But how do we know what this universal experience is? Is it not by testimony, except within the narrow circle of our own personal experience? Then it turns out that the testimony in favour of miracles is neutralized or overbalanced by other testimony. That is, to destroy the force of testimony he assumes a principle founded on testimony. It is admitted that when testimony is adduced to establish any facts, if other and stronger testimony can be brought against them, their credibility is destroyed. But if I bring testimony for a fact, and some one alleges that he can show that this testimony is unworthy of credit because he can bring witnesses to prove that many persons in different countries and ages never saw any such thing; to such a person I would reply, that even if these witnesses declared the truth, it could not overthrow the positive testimony which I had adduced, as they did not contradict the facts asserted; and besides, it must be determined which witnesses are the most credible, yours or mine. Just so it is in the case of Mr. Hume’s argument. He sets up uniform experience against testimony, and gives a preponderance to the former, on the ground that witnesses are known sometimes to lie; but all that he knows of what has happened in other ages and countries, is by testimony; and they who give this testimony are as fallible as others; therefore, there existed no ground for preferring the evidence of experience to testimony. Besides, he is not in possession of testimony to establish a thousandth part of what has been experienced; and as far as it goes, it amounts to no more than non-​experience, a mere negative thing which can never have any weight to overthrow the testimony of positive witnesses. In a court of justice, such a method of rebutting testimony would be rejected as totally inadmissible. If we had sufficient evidence of a fact of any kind, that testimony would not be invalidated, if it could be proved that no person in the world had ever witnessed the like before. This want of previous experience naturally creates a presumption against the fact, which requires some force of evidence to overcome: but in all cases, a sufficient number of witnesses,

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of undoubted intelligence and veracity, will be able to remove the presumption and produce conviction. 7.  Mr. Hume lays it down as a principle, that our belief in testimony arises from “experience, that is, observation of the veracity of human testimony.” But this is not correct. Our belief in testimony is as natural and constitutional as our belief in our senses. Children at first believe implicitly all that is told them, and it is from experience that they learn to distrust testimony. If our faith in testimony arose from experience, it would be impossible to acquire any knowledge from instruction. If children were to believe nothing that was told them until they had made observations on the veracity of human testimony, nothing would be believed; for they would never arrive at the maturity and judgment necessary to make observations on a subject so complicated. But although Mr. Hume’s object in wishing to establish this false principle was, to exalt the evidence of what he calls experience above testimony; yet, if we should concede it to him, it could answer him no purpose, since we have shown that this experience itself depends on testimony. Whatever use he can make of this principle therefore against testimony, can be turned against himself, since his knowledge of what the experience of the world is, can only be obtained by the report of witnesses, who, in different ages, have observed the course of nature. 8.  Mr. Hume, on reflection, seems to have been convinced that his argument was unsound; for in a note appended to his Essay on Miracles, he makes a concession which entirely overthrows the whole. But mark the disingenuity (or shall I  not rather call it the malignity?) which is manifested in this only evidence of his candour. He concedes that there may be miracles of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony, in direct contradiction to his reiterated maxim, and in complete repugnance to all his reasoning; but he makes the concession with the express reservation that it shall not be applied to the support of religion. He however not only makes this concession, but gives an example of such miracles, and of the testimony which he admits to be sufficient to establish it. “Suppose,” says he, “all authors in all languages agree, that from the first of January, 1600, there was a total darkness all over the earth for eight days; suppose that the tradition of this event is still strong and lively among the people; that all travellers bring us accounts of the same tradition, &c. —​IT IS EVIDENT THAT OUR PHILOSOPHERS OUGHT TO RECEIVE IT FOR CERTAIN.” And this is a part of the same Essay, in which it is said that “a miracle supported by any human testimony, is more properly a subject of derision than of argument.” “No kind of testimony for any kind of miracle can possibly amount to a probability, much less to a proof!”

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It might appear that after so complete a renunciation of the principle which at first he so strenuously asserted, we might have spared ourselves the pains of a formal refutation But not so. The author is resolved that his concession shall be of no service whatever to religion. Hear his own words: “But should this miracle be ascribed to any new system of religion; men in all ages have been so imposed upon by ridiculous stories of that kind, that, this very circumstance would be full proof of a cheat and sufficient with all men of sense, not only to make them reject the fact, but even reject it, without further examination.” I have heard of a maxim which I believe the Jesuits introduced, that what is false in theology may be true in philosophy; but I never could have expected that a philosopher, a logician, and a metaphysician too, would utter any thing so unreasonable and so marked with prejudice as the declaration just quoted. The fact is admitted to have such evidence, that even philosophers ought to receive it as certain; but not if it is ascribed to a new religion. On this subject no evidence is sufficient. It is perfectly unexceptionable in philosophy; but in religion a sensible man will reject it, whatever it may be, even without further examination. The circumstance of its being a miracle connected with religion is sufficient, in his opinion, to prove it a cheat, however complete the testimony. The world, it seems, has been so imposed on by ridiculous stories of this kind, that we must not even listen to any testimony in favour of religious miracles. This author would indeed reduce the advocates of religion to an awkward dilemma. They are called upon to produce evidence for their religion, but if they adduce it sensible men will not notice it; even if it is good every where else, it must go for nothing in religion. Upon these principles, we might indeed give up the contest; but we are not willing to admit that this is sound logic, or good sense. The reason assigned for proscribing, in this summary way, all the testimony in favour of religion, will apply to other subjects. Men have been imposed on by ridiculous stories in philosophy, as well as in religion; but when evidence is proposed, shall we not even examine it, because there have been impositions? This is the very reason why we should examine with care, that we may distinguish between the true and the false. If it were true, that miracles had often been ascribed to new religions, it would not prove that there never were any true miracles, but rather the contrary; just as the abounding of counterfeit money is evidence that there is some genuine; for that which has no existence is not counterfeited. But the clamour that has been raised by infidels about new religions being commonly founded on miracles, or the pretence of miracles, has very little foundation in fact. Beside the Jewish and Christian religions, (which are indeed parts of the same,) it would, I believe, be difficult to designate any other, which claims such an origin.

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After all that has been said of the false maxims of the Jesuits, I doubt whether any one could be selected so perfectly at war with reason, as this of the philosopher; nay, I think I may challenge all the enemies of revelation, to call from any Christian writer a sentence so surcharged with prejudice. But, to do justice to Mr. Hume —​though he seems to have closed the door against all discussion on our part  —​yet, in one of his general maxims, he leaves us one alternative. The maxim is that, “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless it be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact.” An ingenious writer* has undertaken to meet Mr. Hume on his own ground, and has endeavoured to prove, that the testimony of the apostles and early Christians, if the facts reported by them were not true, is a greater miracle than any which they have recorded. But the maxim, as stated by Mr. Hume, is not correct. With the change of a single word, perhaps it may be adopted, and will place the question on its proper ground. The change which I propose, is to substitute the word improbable for miraculous. And it will then read: No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more improbable, than the fact which it endeavours to establish. The ground of objection to the word miraculous, is, that it involves a false principle, which is, that facts are incredible in proportion as they are miraculous; which principle he in several places avows, and which is indeed a cardinal point in his system of evidence. But it is not true. There are many cases which might be proposed, in which, of two events, one of which must be true, that which is miraculous is more probable than the one which is merely natural. I will mention only one at present. Man was either immediately created by God, or he proceeded from some natural cause. Need I ask, which of these is more probable? and yet the first is miraculous; the second is not. The plain truth is, that in all cases, the fact which has most evidence is most probable, whether it be miraculous or natural. And when all evidence relating to a proposition is before the mind, THAT IS TRUE WHICH IS EASIEST TO BE BELIEVED, because it is easier to believe with evidence than against it. We are willing, therefore, that this maxim, as now stated, should be the ground of our decision, and we pledge ourselves to prove that the falsehood of the miracles of the gospel would be more improbable, and consequently more incredible, than the truth of the facts recorded in them. But this discussion will be reserved for another place.

* Dr. Gleig.

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To conclude; since it has been shown that there is no antecedent presumption against miracles from the nature of God, or from the laws by which he governs the universe; since a miraculous fact is not more difficult to be accomplished by omnipotence than any other; since miracles are no further improbable than as they are unusual; since they are the most suitable and decisive evidences which can be given of a revelation; since even by the concession of Mr. Hume himself, there may be sufficient testimony fully to establish them; and since the many false pretences to miracles, and the general disposition to credit them, are rather proofs that they have existed than the contrary; we may safely conclude, that Mr. Hume’s argument on this subject is sophistical and delusive; and that so far from being incredible, whatever may be their evidence, when brought to support religion, this is, of all others, the very case in which they are most reasonable and credible. In a recent popular, but anonymous publication, entitled, “ESSAYS ON THE PURSUITS OF TRUTH, ON THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE, AND THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF ALL EVIDENCE AND EXPRECTATION, BY THE AUTHOR OF ESSAYS ON THE FORMATION AND PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS,” the doctrine of Hume, on the subject of testimony, has been exhibited in a form somewhat new and imposing. And as this writer has acquired considerable celebrity in England, and his Essays have been published in Philadelphia, and recommended strongly to the public upon the authority of the Westminster Review it seems necessary to guard the public against the insidious design of the writer. The ingenious author, indeed, never brings the subject of divine revelation directly into view, in all that he has written; and I believe, the word “miracles” does not occur in either of the volumes which he has published. It is a fact, however, that in the last of his Essays he has revived, in substance, the famous argument of Hume on miracles; and has, with even more concealed sophistry than the celebrated infidel employed, endeavoured to prove that no testimony, however strong, is sufficient to establish any fact which involves a deviation from the regular course of the laws of nature. That I may not be suspected of misrepresenting the sentiments of this discriminating and popular writer I will here insert an extract from the essay before mentioned, which contains the substance of the whole argument. “Testimony must be either oral or written. As far as the mere physical circumstances are concerned, we evidently commence our use of it by reasoning from effects to causes. We infer, for example, that the writing before us has been the work of some human being, in doing which we of course assume the uniformity of causation. If from the circumstances attending the testimony we infer that it is

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entitled to be received as veracious; if, for instance, we find that it has proceeded from a man of tried integrity, and who acted under the influence of motives which render it unlikely that he should deceive, our inference still proceeds on the assumption of the same principle. I may have, in other cases, found these circumstances to have been the precursors or causes of true testimony; but how can I or any one tell that they have operated in the same way in the instance before me? The reply must evidently be, that it is impossible to avoid assuming that the same causes have invariably the same effects. “In fact, if we examine any of the rules which have been laid down for the reception of the testimony, or any of those marks which have been pointed out as enabling us to judge of its credibility, we shall find them all involving the uniformity of causation. It is allowed on all hands, that the concurrence of a number of witnesses in the same assertion, their reputation for veracity, the fact of the testimony being against their own interest, the probability of detection in any false statements, are all circumstances enhancing the credibility of what they affirm. These are considered as general principles on the subject gathered from experience, and we apply them instinctively to any new case which may be presented to us, either in the course of our own observation, or as having taken place at some former period. But it is obvious from what has just been said, that unless we assume a uniformity in the succession of causes and effects, we cannot transfer our experience from any one case to another. That certain circumstances have produced true testimony in one or a hundred instances, can be no reason why they should produce it in a different instance, unless we assume that the same causes have necessarily the same effects. “It is clearly shown by this reasoning, that in the reception of testimony and the use of physical evidence we proceed on the same principle. But in the case of testimony there is a peculiarity not belonging to physical evidence. In the former we not only have certain effects from which it is our task to infer the causes, or certain causes from which to infer the effects; as when we judge the writing before us to have been the work of some human being, or the testimony to be true on account of the circumstances under which it was given; but the testimony itself consists of the assertion of facts, and the nature of the facts asserted often forms part of the grounds on which the veracity of the testimony is determined; it frequently happens, that while external circumstances tend to confirm the testimony, the nature and circumstances of the facts attested render it highly improbable that any such facts should have taken place, and these two sets of circumstances may be so exactly equivalent as to leave the mind in irremediable doubt. In the consideration of both, however, the same

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assumption is involved. We think the facts improbable, because we have found them rarely occurring under the circumstances stated; we think the testimony likely to be true, because we have generally found true testimony to proceed from witnesses acting under the influence of similar motives, and what we have found to happen in other cases we are irresistibly led to conclude must also happen in the case before us. “The opposition of the circumstances of the evidence and the nature of the facts may be carried still further. Assertions are frequently made which in themselves imply a breach of uniformity of causation. From such cases the conclusions already established remove all difficulty. To weigh probabilities, to determine what credit is due to two sets of conflicting circumstances, neither of which as far as our knowledge extends, is irreconcilable to the usual course of nature, is often a nice and arduous task; but if the principles of this essay are correct, it is easy to see what reception ought to be given to assertions professedly implying a deviation from the uniform succession of causes and effects. “Suppose, for instance, any person to affirm that he had exposed a cubic inch of ice to a temperature of two hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, and that at the expiration of an hour it had retained its solidity. Here is a sequence of events asserted which is entirely at variance with the admitted course of nature; and the slightest reflection is sufficient to show, that to believe the assertion would involve a logical absurdity. The intrinsic discrepancy of the facts could never be overcome by any possible proofs of the truth of the testimony. “For let us put the strongest case imaginable; let us suppose that the circumstance of the ice remaining unmelted, rests on the concurrent testimony of a great number of people, people too of reputation, science, and perspicacity, who had no motive for falsehood, who had discernment to perceive, and honesty to tell the real truth, and whose interests would essentially suffer from any departure from veracity. Under such circumstances false testimony it may be alleged is impossible. “Now mark the principle on which this representation proceeds. Let us concede the positions, that what is attested by a great number of witnesses must inevitably be true,  —​that people of reputation and intelligence without any apparent motive for falsehood are invariably accurate in their testimony, and that they are above all, incapable of violating truth, when a want of veracity would be ruinous to their interests. Granting all this, I ask the objector, how he knows that these things are so; that men of this character and in these circumstances speak truth? He will reply that he has invariably found them to act in this manner: but why, because you found them to act in this manner in a few

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or even in many cases, within your own experience or in the experience of ages, do you conclude that they have acted so in all cases and in the case before us? The only answer is, that it is impossible not to take for granted, that in precisely similar circumstances similar results will ensue, or that like causes have always like effects. “Thus on the ground of unifomrity [sic] of causation, he would be maintaining the competency of testimony to prove a fact which implies a deviation from that uniformity.” It will abbreviate the answer to this specious argument, to acknowledge, that the general principle which this author takes so much pains to establish, and on which he builds his reasoning, is freely admitted to be not only correct, but self-​evident. That the same causes uniformly produce the same effects, is a truth so obvious, and so generally admitted, that it was unnecessary for the ingenious author of this essay, to spend so much time in rendering it evident. And I am willing to admit its certainty to be as undoubted in moral, as in physical subjects. But while I  freely admit, that the same causes will uniformly be followed by the same effects, I do by no means accede to the proposition, which our author seems to consider as of the same import; namely, that the course of nature, or the laws of nature, never have been interrupted, or suspended: and the whole appearance of force and plausibility which the argument of this writer possesses, arises from the artful confounding of these distinct propositions. I agree, that no testimony can be strong enough to induce a rational man to believe that the same causes will not be attended with the same effects; for this would be to assent to an evident absurdity. But it is an entirely different thing to believe that the laws of nature have sometimes been suspended; for in this case, we suppose that an extraordinary cause has intervened. To believe that a divine power has interposed to change the course of nature, is surely not the same thing, as to believe that the same cause which commonly produced one effect, is now attneded [sic] by another entirely different. The natural causes, it is true, remain the same, but the general proposition stated above, is not true, if confined only to these. If there exist supernatural causes, or a power superior to the laws of nature —​and this our author does not profess to deny  —​then the laws of nature, or mere natural causes may remain the same; and yet, by the operation of these supernatural causes, effects entirely diverse from those that would be the sequence of natural causes, may take place. And the author himself seems in one place to have been aware of this distinction, and to admonish the reader of its existence; and yet, through the whole of the argument he proceeds, as if the two propositions were identical. He ought, however, to have recollected, that while no man

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in his senses disbelieves the first proposition, much the greater number of men have believed, that in some cases the laws of nature have been suspended; not, that they thought that the same causes did not, in these instances, produce the same effects, but that other causes of greater potency than natural causes, were put into operation. When our author, therefore, infers from the uniformity of causation, that no testimony is sufficient to be the foundation of a rational belief, that there has been a deviation from the common course of nature, he applies a correct principle to a case to which it evidently does not belong. Because the same cause must produce the same effects, does it follow, that when another and superior cause operates, the same effects must be produced? This would be in direct repugnance to his own maxim. Then, before this principle of the uniformity of causes and effects can be applied, it must be demonstrated. That in the case under consideration, no other causes operate, but such as are usual and natural, and whenever he shall be able to establish this, there will be no further contest respecting the matter. That I do not misrepresent the argument of the author will appear satisfactorily, by considering the cases which he had adduced. “Suppose, for instance,” says he, “any person to affirm, that he had exposed a cubic inch of ice to a temperature of two hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, and that at the expiration of an hour, it had retained its solidity. Here is a sequence of events asserted, which is entirely at variance with the admitted course of nature; and the slightest reflection is sufficient to show, that to believe the assertion, would involve a logical absurdity. The intrinsic discrepancy of the facts could never be overcome by any possible proofs of the truth of testimony.” In another page, he says, “If a number of men were to swear, that they had seen the mercury of the barometer remain at the height of thirty inches, when placed in the exhausted receiver of an air-​pump, their testimony would be instantly rejected. The universal conclusion would be, that such an event was impossible.” What is here confidently asserted, would only be true upon the supposition, that no causes but such as were natural operated in the cases adduced; but on the hypothesis of the operation of a supernatural cause, there would neither be absurdity nor impossibility in either of the facts. What! could not He, who established these laws and gave to heat and air, respectively, their peculiar power and qualities, suspend their usual operation? Could not He cause the ice to remain unmelted in any temperature; and the mercury to remain suspended, without the pressure of the atmosphere? But the sophistical nature of the argument used, is most evidence. The principle is, that similar causes must have similar effects. Very good —​what then? Why, if ice remain unmelted at two

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hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, then this principle would be violated? I answer, not at all, provided another cause is in operation, of such potency as to counteract the usual effects of caloric; or to counteract the gravity of the quicksilver, in vacuo. And it: will not do to allege, that God, who established these laws, will not contravene them, on any occasion; for this would be an entire change of the ground of the argument, and a relinquishment of the principle on which the reasoning of our author is founded. Besides, it would be a mere begging of the question in dispute. Now, in both the cases adduced by this writer, to illustrate and confirm his argument, on which he pronounces so confidently, that the judgment of men would universally reject any testimony, I beg leave to be of a different opinion, and will appeal to the common sense of all reflecting men, whether, on the supposition, that a dozen men, of perspicacity and undoubted integrity, should solemnly affirm that they had seen a cubic inch of ice remain an hour unmelted at two hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, whether they could refuse their assent, even if they knew of no good reason why the laws of nature should be suspended? But if they knew that an important purpose in the divine government could be answered by such a miracle, much less testimony would be sufficient to produce unwavering conviction of the truth of the extraordinary fact. And while they assent to such facts, on sufficient testimony, they are guilty of no absurdity, and violate no rule of common sense. It is true, that the credibility of the event reported, may be reduced to this question —​whether it is more probable, that the laws of nature should, for a good end, be suspended, or that twelve men of tried veracity, should agree to assert a falsehood, without any motive to induce them to do so? And here our ingenious author revives the metaphysical balance of Mr. Hume; and after admitting that the evidence from testimony may be so strong that nothing is wanting to give it force, yet the maxim that the same causes may have the same effects, is also a truth so certain, that no evidence can countervail it. We have, therefore, according to this statement, the equipoise of evidence, which we have already considered, in Mr. Hume’s argument. The rational mind, in such circumstances, must remain neutral; it can neither believe nor disbelieve; for the evidence for the one exactly counterbalances that for the other. But after stating this hypothesis, our author finds that the evidence from testimony never can be so convincing, as that which we have for the uniformity of causation. His words are —​“If the rejection and the admission of the testimony equally implied a deviation from the uniform terms of causes and effects, there could be no reason for rejecting or admitting it.” “But the rejection of the testimony is not in this predicament. The causes of testimony, or in other words,

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those considerations which operate on the minds of the witness, cannot always be ascertained; and as we are uncertain as to the causes in operation, we cannot be certain of the effect; we cannot be sure that the circumstances of the witness are such as have given rise to true testimony, and consequently we cannot be sure that the testimony is true.” On this whole subject I have several remarks to make. First, this method of destroying the equipoise of evidence granted by Mr. Hume, and conceded by our author, is not altogether fair; because it does not admit what is obviously true, that in regard to some kinds of testimony, the evidence is so certain, that we might as soon doubt our own existence as the truth of the facts attested. Now, this being the case, there was no propriety in representing all testimony as being involved in some degree of uncertainty. Again, what is here said of testimony will apply just as fully to what we ourselves witness, and for the truth of which we have the testimony of our own senses. I mean, that if the argument of our author is at all valid, it will prove, that if we saw the ice remain unmelted in the heat, and beheld it ever so often, and found that thousands around us received the same impression, we must not credit our own senses, nor believe what we saw with our own eyes, because, however certain this kind of evidence may be, it cannot be more certain than the principle, that the same causes will uniformly produce the same effects. Therefore, although we should, under all manner of circumstances, see such events, they could not be believed; for to believe them would be a logical absurdity. And thus would these men, by their metaphysics, reason us out of the evidence of our very eye-​sight. I know, indeed, that neither Hume, nor the author whose reasoning we are now considering, has pushed the argument to this its just consequence; but I would defy any man to show, that it is not as applicable to the evidence of the senses as to that derived from testimony. Now, as the kind of evidence which will invariably command assent, is not learned by metaphysical reasoning, but by experience, I would leave the matter to be decided by every man of impartial judgment, for himself. Every man knows whether or not he would believe his own eyes, if he should see ice remain unmelted in two hundred degrees of temperature, according to Fahrenheit: or whether he would say, “it seems to be so, but it cannot be true, because it contradicts a self-​evident principle, that the same causes must always be followed by the same effects.” To which a man of plain, unsophisticated common sense would reply, “I must believe my own senses; if doing so contradicts a thousand abstract principles, I care not —​ ‘seeing is believing.’ “And the same may be said in regard to testimony. Suppose a thousand persons entirely disinterested to aver, that they had seen ice remain

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unmelted in a very high temperature, we could not but believe them, account for the fact as we might. But we have already proved, that believing in such an event violates no maxim, but only supposes that some extraordinary power or cause is in operation; and when it is understood, that this deviation from the laws of nature is intended to confirm the declarations of some person who claims to be a messenger of God, there is not only no absurdity in the thing, but all presumption against the probability of such supernatural interposition is removed, as has been shown in the argument on that subject. It might also be demonstrated, that upon the principles of this author, it would be absurd, upon any evidence, to believe not only in a fact which involved a real deviation from the laws of nature, but in any one which was entirely different from all our own experience of the laws of nature. For if it would be absurd to believe, on the testimony of thousands of unconnected witnesses, that ice did not melt in a certain case when placed in the fire; then it was altogether rational for the king of Siam, and all others in similar circumstances, to disbelieve the fact that water had been known to become as hard as a stone, so that men and animals could walk upon it. Persons so situated never could know that such an effect existed, but by testimony; yet as this testimony contradicted all their own experience about the laws of nature, in relation to water, they ought rather to reject the testimony, however strong, than to credit a fact which seemed to involve a deviation from “the sequence of cause and effect,” to use the language of this author. And thus we should be reduced to the necessity of rejecting all facts not consonant to our own personal experience; for to receive them on the ground of testimony, would be to violate the principle that causation is uniform. But the zeal of our author to establish his favourite point, has led him, not only to assert that a deviation from the regular succession of the laws of nature was incredible on the ground of testimony, but that it is, in the nature of things, impossible. In this assertion he certainly may lay claim to originality; for I believe no one before him, not even Hume, has gone so far in bold affirmation. His words are —​“An event is impossible which contradicts our experience, or which implies that the same causes have produced different effects, or the same effects been preceded by different causes. Thus, when we pronounce that it was impossible for a piece of ice to remain in the midst of burning colas without being dissolved, our conclusion involves a complete knowledge of this particular effect of fire on ice.” And he is so confident that this is the true import of the word impossible, that he says, “If I  am not greatly deceived, the acutest reasoner, the closest thinker, the most subtle analyser of words, will find himself unable to produce

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any other meaning of the term impossible, than that which is here assigned to it.” But he seems to have felt that he had gone too far in this dogmatical, and I must say, irrational assertion; for in a note he himself gives another, and one of the true meanings of the word impossible. But as confident assertion, accompanied by no proof nor reason, is sufficiently answered by a confident denial, I would take the liberty of saying, therefore, that if I am not greatly mistaken, no accurate philologist will admit that this is the true meaning of the word impossible. And certainly, men of plain common sense never can be persuaded, that it is impossible for the succession of events according to the laws of nature, to be changed. It is true, when we confine our ideas to the mere powers and qualities of nature, we do assert that their effects will be uniform, and that it is impossible that the same causes should produce different effects; but when we extend our views to the Great First Cause, it is not only absurd, but impious, to assert that he cannot suspend or alter the laws of nature. Nothing is impossible to him which does not imply a contradiction, or is not repugnant to his attributes. The conclusion which is rational on this subject, is, that all things are possible to God, and whatever is possible may be believed on sufficient testimony, which testimony, however, must be strong, in proportion to the improbability of the event to be confirmed.

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CHALMERS ON HUME

“ART. VII. —​NATURAL THEOLOGY,” Quarterly Christian Spectator. Conducted by An Association of Gentlemen, vol. 10, no. 2 (May 1838), pp. 319–​37; selection from pp. 322–​4. Anonymous Published in New Haven, Connecticut, the Quarterly Christian Spectator was an orthodox magazine of the New England Presbyterians. Its first number was published in 1819, and apparently had been planned a few years earlier by Timothy Dwight and Lyman Beecher. The book under review, On Natural Theology was written by Thomas Chalmers (1780–​1847). Chalmers was a St. Andrews educated Scottish theologian and preacher who lived and ministered in Kilmeny, Fife, and then Glasgow before taking up the chair of moral philosophy at the University of St. Andrews in 1823. Natural Theology had an American edition in New York in 1836. See Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), pp. 786–​9; API, pp. 187–​8. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ In the two chapters immediately succeeding, the metaphysics which have been employed by Dr. Clarke in the proof of God, and by Hume in evading the proof, are considered. The argument of Clarke, that infinite space and eternal duration are necessary, involving a contradiction in the very supposition of their non-​existence, and that consequently they must be the properties of a being, who is alike necessary, involving a like contradiction in the very supposition of his non-​existence, —​that is, of a self-​existence and infinite being, —​is represented as being subtle, rather than conclusive, and as operating, even if it were conclusive, by its very abstruseness, to impede, rather than favor conviction in the mass of minds. To the reply which is given to the argument of Hume, the

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author, in his preface, has requested the judgment of the more thoughtful of his readers. The argument of that infidel and atheistic writer is based on the position, that experience is necessary in order to ascertain the actual sequences in nature. The sequences are admitted to be established and invariable; but it is claimed, that the conjunction between any two terms in such a sequence, must be first observed by us, before we can infer at a future time, from the observation of only one of them, the existence of the other. Hence, as we never saw an instance of world-​making, we have no experience on which we can found the conclusion, that the world has an antecedent or a maker. Reid and Stewart, in replying to this argument, have denied, that the inference of design, from its effects, is a result either of reasoning or experience, but have claimed, that it is founded on an intuitive judgment of the mind. But our author objects to the course taken by these philosophers, and chooses rather to base his reply on the very position of Hume, as being, in his view, the ground of truth: ‘We concede to him his own premises —​even that we are not entitled to infer an antecedent from its consequent, unless we have before had the completed observation of both these terms and of the succession between them. We disclaim the aid of all new or questionable principles in meeting his objection, and would rest the argument a posteriori for the being of a God, on a strictly experimental basis.’ Vol. I. p. 138. Passing over the slow process by which Dr.  Chalmers strips, one after another, the non-​essentials, first from the antecedent, and next from the consequent, in a specific sequence, we will present barely the sum of the a­rgument: —​An individual sees, in his own case, by consciousness, the connection between his own mind and some contrivance which springs from it; and from this experience he infers, when he sees a like contrivance executed by another, that it proceeded from a like antecedent, —​a thinking and contriving mind in him; or when he sees the contrivance itself only, he infers, that some designing mind gave it its origin. Nor is the inference which thus began in his own experience, confined to one kind of mechanism or one kind of artificer; it matters not whether it be a watch, a house, or a steamboat, that is before him, or whether it proceeded from a carpenter, a joiner, or watchmaker; his inference, that it proceeded from a mind of commensurate wisdom and power, is but applying to the given case, the generality which lay in the germ of his first and constant experience of causation in the actings of his own mind. Though, therefore, the world is a singular and special effect, which he has not competent power to produce, and which he never saw produced

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by one that is competent; yet, his experience in its general conclusion,  —​ that the adaptation of means to an end, springs from an intelligent mind, —​ clearly carries with it as a consequent, that it is an effect. He ascends by a sure stepping-​stone, “from the seen handi-​work of man, to the unseen handi-​work of God;” for, the adaptation of means to an end, —​that which is the essential thing in the sequent, established by his experience, —​is as discernible in the framework of the world, as in any frame-​work of human art. In our view, the position of Hume, as he himself states and defends it, is untrue; for it implies, that for every special effect we must have observed the antecedent; whereas mankind universally infer from the inspection of a particular species of mechanism, that it sprung from an intelligent author, whether they ever contrived the same species themselves, or saw the same made by others. But as the position is modified and restricted by Chalmers to refer to a general sequent, —​to the essential and not the circumstantial, found in special sequent, —​it passes into a verity. At least, the power of the mind to produce mechanical contrivance, is so far a matter of experience at least, as that the power must first be called into exercise, either in adjusting the parts of some contrivance ourselves, or in comprehending some contrivance that is presented to us, before we see, by intuition, that the mind is the proper and real cause of contrivance. But, we think, the belief may be originated and sustained by the action of our minds in comprehending a piece of mechanism presented to our view, as truly as by the direct act of striking out an original contrivance. For the general truth, that it is mind which plans, which thinks, is as obvious to consciousness in comprehending, as it is in striking out a plan, —​in following, as it is in guiding a train of thought. And the order of the world favors most the idea of this method of receiving our earliest convictions. For we begin existence, not as planners, contrivers, and inventors, so much as pupils; not in workshops, to perform or witness the varied elaborations of art, but in the family, with all the means and appliances of busy life around us.

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KANT EXPANDS UPON HUME’S SCEPTICISM

“ART. II. —​Critick of Pure Reason; translated from the Original of IMMANUEL KANT. London:  William Pickering. 1838. 8vo. pp.  655,” The North American Review, vol. 49, no. 104 (July 1839), pp. 44–​68; selection from pp. 54–​5. [Alexander Hill Everett] Alexander Hill Everett (1790–​1847) was educated at Harvard College, graduating top of his class in 1806. He studied law under John Quincy Adams, and accompanied Adams to Russia as his private secretary in 1809. From 1818 to 1825 Everett was charge d’affaires in the Netherlands; from 1825–​9, U.S. minister to Spain. Everett had been an editor of the North American Review from 1830 to 1835 and was a frequent contributor to various American journals. In the selection from his review of Immanuel Kant’s Critick of Pure Reason reprinted below, Everett draws a line of influence from Hume’s scepticism to transcendental philosophy. Everett’s authorship is attributed in William Cushing, Index to the North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p. 127. On Everett see J. Chris Arndt, “Alexander Hill Everett,” ANB, vol. 7, pp. 628–​9. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ The writings of Kant gave utterance to the philosophical tendencies of his country and age, and the speculatists who succeeded him owe much of their success to a similar adoption of the prevailing sentiments of the thinking public into their respective systems. Under the guise of a new faith, they created a philosophy of unbelief; under a dogmatical mask, they proclaimed what was, at least in reference to revelation, a theory of total skepticsm. This fact, though commonly admitted, so far as it relates to the opinions of Fichte, Shelling, and Hegel, is denied in respect to the creator of the transcendental philosophy. But the denial only shows how

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imperfectly, out of the limits of his own country, his system is understood. The speculations of Hume, as he repeatedly admits, gave the first hint for the formation of his new scheme of belief; “they first interrupted my dogmatical slumber, and gave a wholly different direction to my inquiries in the field of speculative philosophy.” Though commonly understood as aiming at the refutation of his predecessor, he extended, in fact, the sphere of Hume’s skeptical arguments, generalizing them so far that they covered the whole field of knowledge. “I first inquired, whether the objection of Hume might not be universal, and soon found, that the idea of the connexion between cause and effect is far from being the only one by which the understanding, a priori, thinks of the union of things; but rather, that metaphysics are entirely made up of such conceptions. I endeavoured to ascertain their number, and when, guided by a single principle, I had succeeded in the attempt, I proceeded to inquire into the objective validity of these ideas; for I was now more than ever convinced, that they were not drawn from experience, as Hume had supposed, but that they came from the pure understanding.” —​ Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik. Vorrede, p. 13. That this expansion of Hume’s principles, though conducted on a different method, leads to the same skeptical conclusions that he deduced from them, will be more clearly seen in the development of the theory. The impression that it led to very different results, is founded on the arrogant pretensions of the new school, and the difficulty of analyzing the system far enough to detect its real character. The name of Transcendentalism seems to imply, that it is the scheme of a higher philosophy, rising above the objects of sense, and over-​leaping the narrow limits within which the exercise of our faculties had formerly been confined; when, in fact, its leading doctrine is, that our knowledge is necessarily restricted to objects within the domain of experience, —​that all super-​sensual ideas are to us characterless and devoid of meaning, and in attempting to cognize them the reason is involved in endless contradictions. We do not state this fact as in itself a reproach upon the speculations of Kant, but only to correct the unfounded notions, which most persons among us entertain, of their character and tendency. All innovations in the theory of science, all new views in philosophy, must stand or fall on their logical and intrinsic merits. There may be a presumption against them from the degrading conception which they offer of human nature; but this is insufficient to justify their immediate rejection. Of two hypotheses, the more ennobling is not necessarily the true one, and too great advantage is given to the skeptic, by a hasty preference awarded to it, before the grounds on which it rests are satisfactorily determined. Our business is with argument, and not with declamation.

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AN EXAMINATION OF HUME’S ARGUMENT ON THE SUBJECT OF MIRACLES

An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles (Washington, 1845). A.H. Lawrence Alexander Hamilton Lawrence (1812–​57) is at least as obscure today as he claimed he was in 1845. Lawrence offers a reasoned and original consideration of Hume’s “Of Miracles.” An Examination shows Lawrence to be knowledgeable of past answers to Hume by William Paley, George Campbell, William Ellery Channing Douglass, and Thomas Starkie; answers with which Lawrence was unsatisfied and upon which he built his own case against Hume. There is no modern scholarship on Lawrence. The only other publication on record for Lawrence appears to be the Speech of A.H. Lawrence, esq., at a meeting of Whigs in Washington city, May 31st, 1852 (Washington, Printed by J.T. Towers, 1852). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ The celebrated argument of Hume upon the subject of Miracles has long occupied the attention of theologians, and called forth various ingenious and learned arguments in reply; and it may be thought highly presumptuous in an unknown individual to thrust himself into a controversy which has been maintained by Paley, Campbell, Douglass, and others distinguished for intellect and learning; and still more presumptuous to dissent from those writers upon some of the grounds they have taken. Yet, if the positions here assumed shall be found to be correct, they will not lose their interest from the obscurity of their origin; and, on the other hand, if they shall prove to be erroneous, they will do the less injury from not being ushered before the world under the influence of a great name.

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Although in all the replies to Hume’s essay which we have seen there is much sound philosophy, as well as praiseworthy zeal, yet many of the writers have examined the question from one position only; whilst others, who have set themselves in array against his whole doctrine, have, as we think, misconceived his argument, and consequently have fallen short of the anticipated effects of their own reasoning, from the fact of its being an answer to the supposed, rather than to the full and real meaning of Hume. We shall not refer to what we take to be misconceptions of this sort from any captious spirit, far less from any purpose of injuring, were it possible, the just effects of what is really excellent and sound in the writings referred to; but because we have thought that an unfair answer in the cause of truth ought not to be sheltered from scrutiny by the advocates of truth, and because we have always felt that Hume had not been fully met in some of his positions, and there was always a secret conviction that what we wished to be true, and believed to be true, had not been fully made out; and a further secret conviction that a good and sufficient answer could be given, in the widest scope his argument could take. With these remarks we shall proceed to state briefly the argument of Hume, and some of the answers which have been made, at the same time pointing out wherein we consider them defective, and then to examine the argument, and, as we hope, expose its unsoundness. It may however be well to premise, that although the laws of nature cannot philosophically be considered as causes of action, but only as the established modes or rules of action, yet in order to give the utmost scope to the language of those who reason respecting those laws as if they were absolute and self-​ acting principles, we may in some cases assume the same language for the sake of argument; without however intending to recognise its correctness. The following has been well stated to be the substance of Mr. Hume’s reasoning: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. But we learn from experience that the laws of nature are never violated. Our only accounts of miracles depend upon testimony, and our belief in testimony itself depends upon experience. But experience shews that testimony is sometimes true and sometimes false; therefore, we have only a variable experience in favor of testimony. But we have an uniform experience in favor of the uninterrupted course of nature. Therefore, as on the side of miracles there is but a variable experience, and on the side of no miracles; a uniform experience, it is clear that the lower degree of evidence must yield to the higher degree, and therefore no testimony can prove a miracle to be true.”

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In answer to this, reliance has been placed upon the following arguments, among others. Douglass, in his “Errors concerning Religion,” after stating Hume’s conclusion to be, that miracles can never be proved, because they are contrary to experience, says: “There is sophistry in the use of the word ‘contrary,’ inasmuch as a fact stated to have happened would not be contrary to one’s experience, unless that person was actually present at the time and place, and experienced the contrary of what is asserted.” “Miracles, philosophically speaking, are not violations of the laws of nature.” Mr. Starkie, in his practical treatise on the law of evidence, holds the following language: “but the question is, whether mere previous inexperience of an event testified is directly opposed to human testimony, so that the mere inexperience as strongly proves the thing is not, as previous experience of the credibility of human testimony proves that it is. Now a miracle, or violation of the laws of nature, can mean nothing more than an event or effect which has never been observed before; and, on the other hand, an event or effect in nature never observed before is a violation of the laws of nature: thus, to take Mr. Hume’s own example, ‘it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country;’ precisely in the same sense the production of a new metal from potash, by means of a powerful and newly discovered agent in nature, and the first observed descent of meteoric stones, were violations of the laws of nature; they were events which had never before been observed, and to the production of which the known laws of nature are inadequate. But none of these events can, with the least propriety, be said to be against or contrary to the laws of nature, in any other sense than that they have never been before observed; and that the laws of nature, as far as they were previously known, were inadequate to their production. The proposition, then, of Mr. Hume ought to have been stated thus: Human testimony is founded on experience, and therefore is inadequate to prove that of which there has been no previous experience, &c.” Others have reasoned in this manner, viz: “That Hume’s argument proves too much, as it would be just as strong against many things which we know to have happened as it is against miracles. Any extraordinary event is improbable from experience until it has actually been experienced. Thus it was improbable before hand that such men as Cæsar and Napoleon should ever live,” &c. Now all this is founded on a misapprehension, either of the reasoning of Mr. Hume, or else of the legitimate consequences of the principles which he assumes. And, first, as to there being an inherent sophism in the use of the word “contrary” to experience. We think that an event which has never been observed before may, in some cases, be properly said to be contrary to experience even by

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those who were not present at the time or place at which that event is alleged to have happened. Our experience of the relation of cause and effect is a positive experience —​ an universal experience. And whether our belief in the necessity of a cause for the production of every effect be the result of this universal experience of such relation, or whether it be a simple intuition, an instinctive conclusion, it matters not; the fact is undeniably true that we feel just as sure that every effect that we witness had its cause, and its proper and adequate cause too, as that we witness the effect itself. It is a matter of positive and universal experience also, that like causes produce like effects, and the same cause the same effects. If, then, it is asserted in general terms that an effect has taken place without any cause, or by an inadequate cause, or that dissimilar effects have been produced by like causes, or opposite effects by the same cause, we properly reply that it is contrary to experience. Or if a particular fact is alleged which militates in any way against the relation of cause and effect, or the relation of any well known principle in nature and its hitherto invariable results, we say properly that is contrary to experience; not to our experience in person of the contrary of what is asserted, but contrary to universal experience of the results of uniform principles, and of the truth of a fundamental axiom in all philosophy. It is perfectly true, as Mr. Starkie says, that “our inexperience of an event ought not to weigh against positive testimony,” when that event is a probable one, or even a possible one, under the ordinary laws of nature. But we do not think that this doctrine can extend to events which are not explicable according to our previous experience of the laws of nature. But in the latter case our disbelief is not based upon our not having experienced the particular fact at the particular time alleged; we do not discredit it simply because we did not see it, but our disbelief is grounded upon our positive experience of different results in similar circumstances under the ordinary laws of nature. If a man tells me that he can extract a metal from potash by some powerful chemical agency, I may well believe him although I may never have seen the thing done, and for this reason, I know that most substances are compounds, I  know the power of chemical agents in decomposing these substances, and all this in perfect consistency with the laws of nature. An effect is produced by an adequate cause. The thing itself then being possible, nay highly probable, I may well believe the simple fact of an individual’s ability to do it upon his own assertion. But if the same man tells me that by his mere volition he can draw out a metal from potash, I certainly would not, under ordinary circumstances, believe him. And why? Because experience teaches us that no effect takes place without an adequate cause. We intuitively refuse our assent to testimony respecting events which are said to have taken place without the intervention of

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some cause sufficient to produce them. In extracting a metal from potash there is only a new effect brought to light by a known and competent cause; and although the precise fact had not been within our experience, yet it was not in its nature inconsistent with the experienced power of chemical agency. But in the other case there is an event asserted to have taken place without an adequate cause, without any physical agency —​an effect which is both new and not the result of any known laws. Such an event is contrary to our experience of the laws of cause and effect in the general, and of the power of human volition in particular. Again, as to the argument that “Hume’s reasoning proves too much, inasmuch as it is just as strong against many things which we know to have happened, as it is against miracles; that a thing (according to Hume,) is improbable until it has actually been experienced; thus it was improbable beforehand that such men as Cæsar, Napoleon, &c., ever should live.” Now this argument seems to suppose Mr. Hume to mean nothing more than that there may be chances against the happening of an event, which event in itself would be nothing marvellous if it were to happen. This we conceive to be neither a fair understanding of Mr. Hume’s meaning, nor a proper, philosophical, distinction between different states of improbability, or rather the different sources from which improbability may arise. An event may be improbable in itself, or it may be improbable from some circumstances which may control it. It is improbable that yonder blind, lame, and penniless beggar will visit Europe this season, and it is improbable that he will walk across the neighboring river on the surface of the water. Yet no one will contend that the improbability in these cases is of the same character. Blind, lame, penniless though he be, and without the least ray of expectation of visiting Europe, it is nevertheless possible that he may do it. It is improbable, but not from any thing marvellous in the thing itself, but because in his case circumstances (if I may so speak) have heaped up in his way chances against it. But to walk over the river on the surface of the water, the known laws of nature have shown to be improbable, because UNDER THEIR ORDINARY operation it is impossible. Enough we think has been said to show that what Mr. Hume really meant by “being contrary to experience” was, not that the very identical fact had never been before experienced, and therefore could never be believed, but that such fact was inconsistent with the known operation of principles which had been deduced from a long course of observation and experience. We have been thus careful in giving what we believe to be his true meaning, because we wish to approach the subject with perfect fairness, and because we believe that an argument founded upon a false or uncandid statement of his reasoning not only fails

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to convince us of its fallacy, but reacts on the cause it was intended to support, and in the end does much harm. And besides, we believe that his argument may be successfully combatted, at least to the minds of all who believe in the existence of a “Great First Cause.” In the discussion of this question we do not hold ourselves obliged to yield to all the postulates of atheism, nor to admit the doubts of those who deny those maxims on which we instinctively act, because they cannot be proved by absolute demonstration. We intend our remarks for those, who believe in a Great First Cause, but who reject both Christianity and the miracles, which were the accrediting evidences of it. We shall assume the existence of a God for the following reasons: 1st.  Because upon the principles of absolute atheism or skepticism, although neither miracles nor any thing else could be certainly proved, yet neither could their impossibility or improbability. Nothing could be proved either to exist or not to exist, without assuming IN the reasoning, some of those very maxims which the object of the reasoning is to disprove. 2nd.  Because Mr. Hume himself says, that “though the Being to whom the miracle in this case” (any new system of religion) “is ascribed, be almighty, it does not upon this account become a whit more probable; since it is impossible for us to know the attributes of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience which we have of his productions in the usual course of nature.” 3d.  Because the greatest number of those who have sheltered themselves under the reasoning of Hume, have not been Atheists but Theists, and have made his arguments their boast and reliance, in rejecting Christianity, and fortifying modern infidelity. Hume does not deny the possibility of miracles. His argument is not a metaphysical one, founded on the nature or essence of the thing considered, but is entirely a practical one, touching only the reasonableness of our belief in miracles. He no where attempts to prove that miracles cannot be, but that upon principles of reason we cannot believe them to be. Nor would it comport with his philosophical opinions to assert that miraculous events, or any events, could not occur, inasmuch, as he referred all our knowledge to experience; consequently, he could only infer from the past what would probably, not what would certainly, take place in the future. The most that Mr. Hume could say, respecting the possibility of miracles, would be, that as they never had happened, so they never could reasonably be expected to happen. It is the want of a proper observance of this distinction between that which may reasonably be expected to be, and that which must of necessity be, which

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has led to considerable irrelevant reasoning in answer to a misconceived notion of Mr. Hume’s meaning. His argument (as we have said,) we understand to be entirely a practical one, touching only the reasonableness of our belief in miracles. It does not consist of, nor is it: dependent on, the peculiar philosophical notions of its author, as developed in other works. If it did, we should have but little fear of it in its practical effects; for however plausible and ingenious asspeculations, the ideal theories of Berkley [sic] and Hume, and the destruction of all connection between cause and effect, so strenuously maintained by the latter, when applied to our every day affairs, and our temporal or eternal interests, they can have but little influence. We do not much fear the theories of those who, to sustain themselves, must deprive us of those instinctive impressions, and those spontaneous operations of the mind, and those self-​evident axioms, which are the foundation not only of all reasoning, but of all action. But the great error in most of the reasoning in relation to miracles —​both in that of Hume and of those who have replied to him —​is, in overlooking the true nature of miracles, and attempting to reason on them in the same manner as on ordinary circumstances. They have been treated as facts which must have taken place through the agency of, or in accordance with, the laws of nature; or, in other words, the arguments seem to suppose NATURE to be the cause of their happening. And it is this erroneous view of miracles that Mr. Hume’s reasoning overthrows, and none other. But it should be remembered, that miracles are opposed to the ordinary laws of nature, because if they were explicable upon any known laws, they would cease to be miracles. And to speak of the raising of the dead, the turning of water into wine, &c., as of the same kind of improbabilities as the exploits of Cæsar or Napoleon, is certainly a loose mode of reasoning. But, as we have said, Mr. Hume argues that a miracle cannot be proved, because it is against those laws which experience has shewn to be immutable —​ which means, that an event cannot be proved to have happened by the operations of nature, which is against all our experience of the operations of nature. Or, in other words, he does not take into view any other agent (as causing an event,) than nature, or any other “modus operandi” than the ordinary course of nature. But if we suppose an independent and higher power brought into exercise, which can even set aside the laws of nature, then all such reasoning falls to the ground, because we cannot circumscribe within any laws either the acts, or the manner of acting, of a being who is superior to, and independent of, all laws. For instance, if we were told that a rock had separated itself from the earth, and by the force of gravitation had raised itself in the air, we should disbelieve it, because it is against our uniform experience of the effects of gravitation, which

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draws heavy bodies to the earth. But if we had been told that the rock had been hurled into the air, by some extraordinary force, which for the time had counteracted the power of gravitation, we might readily believe it. And in this latter case we should not think of reasoning about the uniformity of the law of gravitation, and our want of any experience of a violation of the order of nature, &c., but we should at once perceive that a force had acted independently of the law, and had done something which the law itself would never have done. Just so with miracles. When we are told by Mr. Hume that we ought not to believe them because they are contrary to the laws of nature —​we are told truly, if it is meant that they are caused simply by the operations of nature —​but we are not told truly, if they are considered as the acts of a power superior to the laws of nature, and entirely independent of them. In this view of the case, let us examine a little more particularly the argument of Mr. Hume. He says, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. But we learn from experience that the laws of nature are never violated, &c. Upon the truth of this proposition the whole of his argument depends, and the conclusion derived from it depends entirely on the truth of each part of the proposition. He asserts experience to prove that the laws of nature are never violated, and that experience proves human testimony to be often fallacious; so that we have an uniform experience opposed to a variable experience, and of course the latter should always give way to the former. The truth of this argument then, and the soundness of its conclusion, depend upon the fact that the laws of nature are never violated. If this proposition be not true, the conclusion is good for nothing. We assert then without fear of contradiction, and as a fact established by experience, that the laws of nature are often violated; nay more, that they are daily and hourly violated in the same manner, though not to the same extent, as they are violated in the case of miracles. When a stone is thrown into the air, the law of gravitation is violated. When a bird takes wing, the law of gravitation is violated. When two bodies in certain states of electricity, are brought near each other, they mutually repel, and the law of attraction is violated. And so in thousands of instances. Nor will it suffice to say, that these are not violations of the laws of nature because they are of frequent occurrence, and may be explained in a natural way; that the law does not cease, but is only overcome for a time. The law is violated for the time as much as a law can be violated. A different effect is produced, from what the law would produce. And it matters not whether the law is overcome by another law, or by an extraneous force, the result is the same, and the law is violated. The “vis inertiæ” may be called a law of matter; that is, it is a law of matter that it shall remain at rest unless put in motion by some superior

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force. A superior force may overcome that law. Now we would ask, wherein does this differ in principle from raising the dead. It is a law of our nature that when we are dead we remain at rest, have no power of motion, nothing of sensation, or of life. Yet may not this law be overcome by sovereign power, in the same way that the “vis inertiæ” of matter is overcome by human force? If the question were, whether the dead were ever raised into life by the ordinary operations of the laws of nature, uniform experience of the operation of those laws would lead us to a denial of the fact. But such an inference is not contended for. What we contend for is this, that it is unphilosophical and wrong to adduce the acknowledged uniformity of the operations of nature, when uncontrolled, in opposition to positive testimony in favor of different results where nature is not uncontrolled. We know that effects are every day produced, different from what would have been produced, by the uninterrupted course of nature. Let it always be kept in mind that we are not attempting to show that the laws of nature ever violate themselves, or that a law of nature in its free operation ever produces any effect contrary in its character to those effects which are the ordinary consequences of that law. When a heavy body is thrown into the air the law of gravitation is violated, but not by the law itself, but by an independent force. And all we contend for is, that the laws of nature are often opposed, overcome, and in this sense “violated” by some extraneous power, and in the same sense in which they are violated in the case of miracles, and that, therefore, Mr. Hume’s assertion is not true, and of course the proposition founded on it false. We do not pretend that the laws of nature produce miracles, but that an Almighty power suspends, overcomes those laws, and introduces other effects which are in no other sense miracles, than that they are not caused by the ordinary active powers of nature, but by an extraordinary and unusual exertion of omnipotent power. Nor let it be said that in this reasoning we are giving an improper meaning to the word “violated.” We defy the most zealous advocate of Hume’s infallibility, to point out any difference (except in the degree of power required, and the time of its continuance,) between a violation of a law by that power, which produces a miracle in the sense of Mr. Hume, and that power which causes a stone to ascend. What we call a miracle is no more in the hands of the Almighty, than the smallest exertion of power in the hands of man. There is no difference in principle between the act of the Almighty in exerting omnipotent power, and suspending or overcoming the laws of nature —​and the act of a human being in overcoming them for a time by an exertion of limited power —​save that the former exerts his control over laws which he himself has ordained, whilst the other opposes his feeble arm against laws which he can not long resist. The one

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can act upon the law itself, and suspend both the law its effects —​the other can only for a moment suspend its effects. There is another of Mr. Hume’s propositions essential to the establishment of his doctrine, which we also think incorrect, viz: “That our belief in human testimony depends upon experience.” This doctrine has been most successfully assailed by Mr. Campbell in his celebrated reply to Hume upon the supposition that Hume’s meaning is, that our belief originates in experience. Mr. Campbell has very clearly shown, that experience leads us to a distrust, rather than to a belief of human testimony; but in our opinion Mr. Campbell’s doctrine does not avert the ultimate conclusion of Mr. Hume, (his proposition standing as it does in general terms,) inasmuch as it makes no difference as to the result, whether our belief or our distrust of testimony is founded in experience, since our experience is in either case against the infallibility of human testimony. Mr. Hume has certainly shown great dexterity in the management of his argument. But though standing as it does in abstract terms, Mr. Campbell’s reasoning (which is undoubtedly correct,) may not reach it with much effect in this particular point; still we think that he has put us on the right track for a proper understanding of the subject. Mr. Hume treats the “laws of nature” as a whole, and in this case very properly, because his proposition is as true of each and every, as of any or all the laws of nature. He also treats human testimony as a whole, in the aggregate, without reference to its parts or qualifications. He says, “our experience is against the infallibility of testimony,” meaning testimony as a whole. Now we say that experience is not against all testimony, because our experience is in favor of much, perhaps most testimony. All that can be said is, that human testimony is not always found to be true. Hume would have the exceptionable vitiate the unexceptionable. Taking the character of all testimony from the character of one class or species, and stamping testimony as a whole as therefore doubtful, he concludes that all the testimony in the world would not be sufficient to establish the truth of a miracle. Now we would observe, that testimony derives its character mainly from the character of the individuals from whom it comes, and the circumstances under which it is given. Our experience is in favor of the testimony of some men and against that of others. There are some men whom we have never known to tell a lie, and others whom we have scarcely ever known to speak the truth. We almost instinctively trust the one and distrust the other. But to bring into one mass all human testimony and brand it as unreliable, because a part is uniformly bad, and only a part uniformly good, is very much like saying that this world is in physical darkness because it is not uniformly clothed in light.

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Our senses sometimes deceive us; and the reasoning of Mr. Hume is just as strong, therefore, against the evidence of our senses as against human testimony, both taken as a whole; yet, there are some circumstances in which the evidence of our senses must be considered as absolutely certain. But it may be said, admit the truth of all this, admit that experience is in favor of some testimony and against other, still may not those who have never yet deceived us possibly deceive us hereafter? Is there an absolute certainty that those who have never yet deceived us, never will deceive us? If a man of unimpeached veracity should tell you that he had lately seen a brook, which had from time immemorial run down a hill, without any known or perceptible cause run up the hill, would you be as certain from that man’s testimony that the brook did flow up the hill, as you would be from your experience of the laws of gravitation that it did not flow up the hill? These questions we think present the doctrine in their fairest and strongest light, and we wish to answer them fairly, and at the same time to make known the ground on which we stand. We answer, then, that a man who has never yet deceived us, may nevertheless deceive us. The laws of human conduct are not as open to the view as the laws of physical nature; and in the case of the brook just mentioned, if required to believe the statement without any other circumstance than the bare word of the informant, we should hardly feel convinced of the fact. But our doubts in such case arise from what we suppose the possibility of variance in the one case, and the impossibility of variance in the other. Testimony depends entirely upon the will or choice of the witness, which circumstances may vary. But the laws of nature can only be changed by the will of Him who ordained them, “in whom there is no variableness neither shadow of turning.” The presumptions are strongly against any deviation from the ordinary operations of the laws of nature. Experience would lead us to expect the same results that had hitherto been witnessed to continue, but it could properly go no further. No one would be so bold as to say that the Almighty could not for a time change the laws of his own establishing, or that he might not by possibility see sufficient occasion for so doing. Experience, in this view of the case, is not a proper guide to the truth, for it only makes known what may be fairly anticipated, but not what must of necessity actually happen. But of this hereafter: we wish at present only to say, that evidence itself (as shewn by Mr. Starkie) admits of various degrees; it is strengthened by concurrence of testimony; it is still further strengthened by concurrence of circumstances; and it is possible that there should be such a concurrence of testimony and circumstances as to render the falsity of the evidence as improbable, nay, as impossible, as the facts which it asserts. Nay

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further, there may be circumstances in which the violation of a law of nature shall be a more probable event (even judging by experience in its proper sense) than that the evidence and the circumstances brought to support it, should be untrue. For example, if on the 8th March I started for New York to take passage for Europe, and just before leaving W., a man whom I had never known to deviate from the truth, told me that at 12 o’clock in the night previous, in the midst of total darkness, the sun appeared in meridian brightness at the zenith for one hour, and had then suddenly disappeared, I should probably think that he had seen a meteor, or had been dreaming, or that he wished to frighten me, or that he was telling a lie; but I should hardly believe that the sun had been seen by him at the time and in the manner described. If the man seemed terrified, I should suppose that at least he believed what he was telling, but I should still attribute it to delusion. But if I heard others talking of the same event, and saying that they had seen it, I could not doubt that some remarkable luminary had thus appeared, but could not believe it to be the sun. If on arriving at New York, the same thing were talked of and believed, all agreeing that it was the sun, that the light and heat were those of the sun, I should be still more staggered. I set sail immediately for Europe, and ours is the first vessel that arrives after the 8th March from the United States. On our arrival, the first topic of inquiry is, whether the sun was seen at midnight on the American side of the Atlantic. Persons assert on all hands that at the precise hour it was seen in Europe. On looking at the newspapers of the 9th, I find full accounts of the phenomenon, and all agreeing that the object seen was the sun. Now I ask, could I doubt this concurrence of evidence? If so, on what principle could I doubt it? Mr. Hume tells us that it is against our experience of the uniformity of the laws of nature. But is it not equally against our experience to find such evidence as this false? But Mr. Hume would say, though the witnesses may not be false, it is still probable that they were deceived. To this we reply, that they could not be deceived as to the reality of some remarkable phenomenon, but only as to the fact of its being actually the sun. Well now suppose, further, the evidences of the truth of the New Testament to be just as they now are, and suppose there were contained therein certain prophecies that the Messiah should again appear on earth about this time; that there should be certain signs and wonders in the Heavens and on the earth, just preceding his appearance, among which prophecies should be contained one, that the sun should appear at midnight and shine with its usual splendor, and that other of the predicted signs and wonders had absolutely taken place, would not this place the evidence that we have before spoken of in a state of absolute unassailability?

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Again, suppose that the inventor of the Magnetic Telegraph had concealed within his own bosom its principles and effects, but had at the same time constructed his fixtures from Quebec to New Orleans. Suppose that he had then announced to the world (without however making known any thing of the manner in which it was to be done,) that in the space of two minutes he would communicate a message from Quebec to New Orleans, and also the answer to it. Suppose, too, that he proposed to communicate what any friend in one of those places was doing, his looks, his dress, his actions, his conversation, &c., provided that friend would visit a particular room. Suppose the thing to be tried over and over again, by different persons, and at different times, and that the evidence of thousands could be brought to establish the fact. How would Mr. Hume act in regard to such testimony? He would be bound on his own principles to reject it. The facts would be as clearly against our experience as the fact of the child’s restoration to health by our Saviour, even before he had reached the dwelling. According to Mr. Hume, here would be an event asserted, which militates against all our ideas and experience of time and space. We hear that said to have been accomplished in a moment, which reason and experience tell us must have required weeks to accomplish. We are told of a conversation being carried on at the distance of some 2,000 miles with nearly as much facility and rapidity as it could be if the parties were face to face. To Hume this would be really as miraculous an event as could be conceived, and against our belief of which all his arguments would apply with just as much force as against the miracles recorded in the Scriptures. True, when the theory is unfolded, it is explicable on natural principles —​that is, the effect is produced by the operation of a well known agent. But so is it in the case of miracles. Superior force is a well known agent, though sometimes (like the galvanic fluid in the case just cited) it produces unwonted and astonishing effects. So far as our belief is concerned, the two cases stand upon the same ground. Besides, even now, not one person in a thousand understands the rationale of the thing, or has ever actually seen the experiment made. It is taken entirely on trust. But at any rate, before the principle was unfolded, and whilst it appeared a supernatural affair, on Mr. Hume’s principles we were bound to disbelieve it, and yet it was nevertheless a fact susceptible of absolute certainty. We believe, then, that those extraordinary acts called miracles are, in themselves, when considered with reference to the established laws of nature, in the highest degree improbable, though upon the supposition of an independent and superior power, perfectly possible. We say in themselves improbable, because we could in no way suppose a miracle possible without the intervention of such

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controlling force. They contain within themselves no explication of their causes, in unison with the uninterrupted operations of nature, but are referrible only to arbitrary, absolute, and unaccustomed power. If then we were once to suppose an Almighty Sovereign and moral Governor of the universe, whose character and attributes were somewhat shadowed forth in the works of nature, but who was about to give a revelation for the proper conduct and final salvation of men, it would then become probable, or at least not incredible, that he would give evidence of the genuineness of this revelation, and of the source whence it emanated, by the performance of acts which should in themselves be extraordinary and improbable. That he would approve the revelation as coming from the omnipotent God, by the exhibition of omnipotent acts; because, in the same proportion as the acts were improbable or supernatural, so would the probability be of their divine origin; and in the same proportion as their improbability should be diminished, would the probability of their being in the usual course of things be increased. Circumstances then may render it probable that the Almighty would arbitrarily perform acts, which in themselves would not only not be probable, but violently improbable under the known course of nature. Whenever an occasion for miraculous power shall be seen, then we may reasonably expect a manifestation of that power; and we see no reason why the expectation thus raised, may not counterpoise the expectation induced by experience, that the manifestations in the natural world shall be as they have hitherto been. It is but an inference, not a certainty, in either case. Thus, that water should by the force of gravitation rise above the level of its fountain, is in itself an event as improbable as well could be. And yet, if the Almighty were to send an accredited messenger from Heaven, it is very probable that he would enable him to perform acts as unusual and unaccountable as that of raising water above its level by a word, for such acts would be the vouchers of his mission. Under such circumstances, miracles would be the very best, if not the only satisfactory evidence; and inasmuch as from their natural improbability (judging by the ordinary course of events,) they would be the best evidence of supernatural power, so they would be the most probable means that we can conceive of by which a divine revelation would be accompanied. The question would then become entirely a question of fact. The probability arising out of the occasion, the circumstances, the demand for them, would neutralize the improbability growing out of the nature of the miracles themselves; and as to their susceptibility of proof they would be on the same footing with other remarkable facts.

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We have thus endeavored to set forth the true and legitimate meaning and effect of Mr. Hume’s argument, by pointing out some of the particulars in which he may have been misunderstood —​to show that his argument in its utmost force can apply only to those events which are, or are alleged to be, natural or from natural causes —​to show that our experience of the course of nature under prescribed laws cannot reasonably be set against the acts or manifestations of a Being who is superior to all laws —​to show that the inference of Mr. Hume is not legitimate, because one of the essential propositions on which it stands is not true, viz: that the laws of nature are never violated —​and lastly, to show that there may exist even a probability that a Being who is independent of all laws should act in direct opposition to the laws of nature, whenever he should wish to manifest himself to mankind, or to accredit any created being as a messenger from himself.

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REVIEW OF LAWRENCE ON HUME ON MIRACLES

“6 —​ An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles. By A.H. Lawrence. Washington: Printed by J. & G.S. Gideon. 1845. 12mo. pp. 20,” The North American Review, vol. 62, no. 130 (Jan. 1846), pp. 263–​4. Anonymous The author of this review for the North American Review is not identified in William Cushing, Index to the North American Review (Cambridge, 1878). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ HUME’S famous argument against the credibility of miracles has been so often exposed and confuted, that a fresh examination of it at the present day seems to be little more than an exercise of logical ingenuity. As its proper effect is to establish not the impossibility of a miracle, but the impossibility of believing in one, it is practically confuted by the belief actually entertained by the bulk of mankind, —​by all persons, in fact, whose skeptical ingenuity does not transcend their sober judgment. It affords a good field, however, for legitimate metaphysical discussion, and a severe scrutiny of the nature and applicability of different kinds of evidence; and it is as an exercise of this character that Mr. Lawrence has treated it. He has viewed the subject more as a lawyer than a theologian, and his remarks are therefore free from that professional bias which has injured the effect, if it has not impaired the soundness, of many replies to Hume. His criticisms are not confined to the reasoning of the arch skeptic, but extend over the ground occupied by most of these replies; and they evince a clear understanding of the subject, great logical acumen, and a remarkable power of stating his arguments and conclusions in concise, forcible, and distinct language. It is quite

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refreshing to find a little pamphlet so free from the verbiage, irrelevancy, and indistinctness which deform most argumentative discussions of the present day. If the writer will cultivate his powers, and choose a broader field for their exercise, he can hardly fail to acquire distinction in the practice of any profession which affords play for the nobler faculties of the intellect.

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HOPKINS ON HUME

“HOPKINS’ LECTURES BEFORE THE LOWELL INSTITUTE,” The New-​ Englander, vol. 4, no. 15 (July 1846), pp. 401–​10; selection from pp. 405–​409. [Noah Porter, Jr.] The New-​Englander was begun in 1843 by Edward Royall Tyler. It was a religious quarterly with a Congregationalist center, but published articles on a range of miscellaneous topics. The book under review here was by Mark Hopkins (1802–​87), President of Williams College from 1836 to 1872. The full-​title of Hopkins’s book is Lectures on the evidences of Christianity, before the Lowell Institute, January, 1844 (Boston, 1846). These were the first of Hopkins’s four Lowell lectures. The reviewer, Noah Porter (1811–​92), was one of the magazine’s editors at the time of the review. Porter graduated from Yale College in 1831 and was called to the Clark Professorship of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics at Yale in 1847. On The New-​Englander see API, p.  156; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1850–​1865 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 312–​15. On Hopkins see Robert D. Cross, “Mark Hopkins,” ANB, vol. 11, pp. 182–​3; John Hopkins Denison, Mark Hopkins, a biography (New  York, 1935)  and Leverett Wilson Spring, Mark Hopkins, Teacher (New York, 1888). On Porter see Louise L. Stevenson, Scholarly Means to Evangelical Ends: The New Haven Scholars and the Transformation of Higher Learning in America, 1830–​1890 (Baltimore, 1986). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ We come next to the consideration of Hume’s argument against the credibility of miracles, of which the author thus speaks: “Shall I then go on to state and answer that argument? I am not unwilling to do so, because it will, I presume, be expected; and because it is still the custom of those who defend Christianity to do so, just as it was the custom of British ships to fire a gun on passing the port of Copenhagen,

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long after its power had been prostrated, and its influence had ceased to be felt.” This illustration is a pleasant one, and with the author’s view of the thing to be illustrated, is very happy. It would not be so happy, however, if it should prove that his estimate of the position of the antagonist should be seen to be underrated, and the charge of his gun should prove to have been prepared under this impression. Nothing in our view can be more untrue, than that the power of this argument has “been prostrated, and its influence has ceased to be felt.” Hume’s argument is the argument, which is the back-​bone of the current infidelity, both vulgar and refined, both unlearned and philosophical. You can not hear a low scoffer attempt to argue, who does not, in fact, advance it, even if he does not in form. And certainly the Rationalism of the present day —​whose influence, we have heard, is not unfelt at Boston —​rests upon it, as on its strong and almost its only ground. Whether unacknowledged or confessed, it is always proceeded upon. In meeting this argument, Dr.  Hopkins observes, “that Hume takes it for granted, that what we call a miracle is contrary to the uniformity of nature. Indeed, his own definition of a miracle is, that it is a violation of the laws of nature. But how can we know that what we call a miracle is not, in the highest and most proper sense, as natural as any other work? By the term natural, we mean stated, fixed, uniform. Whatever happens statedly, under given circumstances, is natural. In accordance with this definition, we call an event natural, though it happened but once in a thousand years, provided it come round statedly at the end of that time. But who can tell whether in the vast cycles of God’s moral Government, miracles may not have been provided for, and come in, at certain distant points, as statedly and uniformly, and therefore as naturally, as any thing else?” &c. This argument has become not uncommon of late, with writers of a certain class. We confess we do not see its force. We can not understand its drift. If it be put in good faith, as an expression of the real opinion of him who gives it as an answer, it is exposed to the very strong objection, that it countenances that reverence for the laws of nature, which, as Dr. Hopkins says, the opponents of Hume have so often conceded. “They permitted him, while arguing the question ostensibly on the ground of theism, to involve positions that are really atheistic. They have permitted him to give surreptitiously, to the mere physical laws of nature, a sacredness and permanence, which put them in the place of God.” What can tend to do this more effectually, than the justification of miracles on the ground, that they may be, for aught that we know, stated, uniform, and natural? This, however, is not the most serious objection to this argument. The whole value and force of a miracle, as giving credit to the man who works it, or the truth for which it is wrought, lies in the fact, that it

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is not “stated,” nor “uniform,” nor “natural,” but that for a specific object —​the causa causarum can and does suspend the operation of his stated and uniform and natural way of action, in order to attest his sanction of a truth or a messenger. There is no need that provision should have been made beforehand, by interlocking into the machinery of the natural universe, an extra and accidental wheel, that should have been contrived from eternity to come in just at this critical moment, and yet revolve regularly and uniformly, only so as always to happen just when amiracle is needed. Not only is there no need of this contrivance, but the very suggestion of it destroys the force and interpretation which men put upon a miracle when wrought. If a friend of ours were raised from a sick bed, or called up from the sleep and corruption of death, and we were to say and to feel this is the direct agency of God, and to interpret its moral significance; and if just at this moment a philosopher should suggest, that it was occasioned by some law of the vital fluid, or some mysterious animal magnetism, which happened, in all regularity, to be present then, and effected this result; it would destroy the significance of the miracle, in spite of ourselves and of him. It is the ground also, which the anti-​super-​naturalism of the age rests upon. Its argument is, a miracle is a wonder. Whatever is a wonder to the eye of the observer, produces the effect of a miracle. Christ and his disciples wrought miracles, by their knowledge of laws which were hid from the knowledge of those ages, but which were natural and fixed notwithstanding. The suggestion of this, as an interpretation of the past, destroys the significance of the act, and robs it of its power to attest to us the truth of God. We feel that if this is so, there was a pious jugglery unworthy of God; a jugglery in his deeds which destroys our confidence in his words. It makes no difference, that in the one case the miracle worker knew the law of which to avail himself, and in the other both the worker and the spectators were ignorant of both, except that in the one case it is God, and in the other it is his messenger that imposes on us. The same impression is produced by such an argument as this of Dr. Hopkins, though for other reasons not in the same degree, as is wrought by the explanations of the miracles of Christ in Paulus, or Furness’ Life of Jesus. In this last book, the argument most frequent, is, that the sick were healed by the naturally curative power of faith, excited by the virtuous life and confident manner of Jesus. We ought to say here, that Dr. Hopkins, in another place, takes precisely the view of the matter which we have done. When he asks, p. 34, “Do we believe in the existence of a personal God, intelligent and free? —​not a God who is a part of nature, or a mere personification of the powers of nature, but one who is as distinct from nature as the builder of the house is from the house? Then we

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can find no difficulty in believing, that such a God may, at any time, when the good of his creatures requires it, change the mode of his operations and suspend those laws.” What is a little surprising to us is, that in the illustration designed to exhibit the other view, i.e. that of the possibility of miracles being natural, he in fact abandons the ground, and illustrates the very opposite doctrine. The provision for the reversal of the action of the locomotive, is, in no sense, designed for “stated and uniform and natural” use; nor does it call itself into action, just when this action is needed. It does not hold back the engine by self-​adjustment, when the train pushes too hard, down a descending grade; or suddenly hold it up, when a collision is at hand; but it supposes an engineer to use it in junctures “neither stated, nor uniform, nor natural.” The illustration is fine, and it is a pity it was not put in the right place in the argument. We are sorry not to see, in Dr. Hopkins’ direct consideration of Hume’s argument, what we conceive to be the real and the only sufficient answer to that argument. The argument is this —​“It is contrary to experience, that the laws of nature should be suspended or reversed. But it is not contrary to experience, that men should be deceived, and utter falsehood. Moreover, it is according to experience, that, in respect to religion, men are prone to be credulous, to be imposed upon and to deceive. When, therefore, a miracle is said to have been performed, we set our experience of the uniformity of nature —​against our experience of the fallibility of human testimony, and the former must weigh down the latter; or if it do not in respect to prodigies in nature, it must in respect to prodigies in religion.” The true answer to the argument, we think, to be this. “The argument is good in all ordinary cases; and not only is it sound, but it is the one which mankind unconsciously employ. We use it ourselves, in respect to the miracles of Mahomet, and of Joseph Smith, and of the ‘Holy coat of Treves.” But whenever it may be shown, that a miracle is demanded by the nature of the case, and that the doctrine revealed is worthy of the interposition, then not only may a miracle be believed, but not to believe it implies a spirit, not only unphilosophical but wicked. This is the case with the Christian miracles.” We are sorry that Dr. Hopkins did not assert and expand this argument. It is at once adapted to a miscellaneous audience, as it commends itself to the conscience and common sense of all thinking men. It is capable of endless expansion and illustration, and is altogether coincident with the favorite line of argument of the lecturer. This would have been a gun worth firing, at a fortress by no means dismantled or nominal; least of all in Boston. We observe farther, in respect to this argument of Hume’s, that it was designed as an explanation of the practical rules of belief or disbelief, in regard

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to prodigies and miracles, or, in other words, the law of evidence, as employed by thinking men. It does not bear upon its face the finished assertion of ultimate and fundamental principles, in regard to the foundations of our confidence in the uniformity of nature, or in human testimony; but rather the law of actual procedure, for practical judgment, in specific cases. Taken in this view, it is a sound and useful canon, as it seems to us; and although we like not the sneer and heartlessness of the manner, there is great force in Hume’s cautions, in respect to miracles, said to be wrought for religion, as especially suspicious. Had it been answered as it should have been, as a practical canon, rather than made a metaphysical puzzle, it would have been well. Had Hume’s opponents conceded the truth of what he said, and then retorted upon him the complex argument, from the nature of the doctrine as worthy of God; as commended to the conscience of man, and as thus enforcing a belief, on the grounds both of our confidence in nature and in testimony; this spectered ghost of an argument would long since have ceased to haunt the dreams of theologians, and to provoke their passes at its metaphysic shadow, which has proved “as the air invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.”

Had the fortress been thus attacked, it would have long ago been a worse condition than that of Copenhagen, and would not have required the recognition of its former greatness, by the compliment even of a passing gun. But this was not done, and for three reasons:  —​First, the doctrines were discussed metaphysically and not practically. Much learned dust was raised, to show what are the true grounds of our belief in the uniformity of nature; and extreme cases were ingeniously supposed, to prove that we might in some cases withdraw our confidence from her. The force of human testimony was dwelt upon, as being, under certain circumstances never likely to occur, absolutely overwhelming. Whereas, however useful this discussion has been in indirectly casting light on the dark places of metaphysical inquiry, and however potent the ghost of Hume was seen to be, in leading to the invention, as Chalmers says, of two instinctive laws of nature, in order to lay it, the argument was a practical one and ought to have been so considered. Secondly, the friends of Christianity were less used to metaphysics than their adversaries. Then, as now, it was the fashion to decry metaphysics, as useless if not wicked, and so to discourage the study of them; and in the time of need to rush to their aid, and find the ally, which in the time of security had been reproached and scorned, was slow to come to the rescue. Third, the sneer of Hume in the words, “our most holy religion is founded

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on Faith, not on reason, and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no means fitted to endure,” was but too completely justified by the current language of many divines of his day. When they complained of it, he could point them to too many passages in their own writings, to leave them ground for complaint. To rest religion on reason, was then, as now, deemed by many dangerous and profane; and when the scoffer retorted, that there was no occasion for complaint against him for showing that it had no reason on which to rest, for that on their own principles reason was not necessary, he had the better of them for the moment. It is remarked with great justice by Mill, in a critique on Hume’s argument, Logic, pp.  376, 7, Am. Ed., “It is now acknowledged, by nearly all the ablest writers on the subject, that natural religion is the necessary basis of revealed; that the proofs of Christianity presuppose the being and moral attributes of God; and that it is the conformity of a religion to those attributes, which determines whether credence ought to be given to its external evidences; that (as the proposition is sometimes expressed) the doctrine must prove the miracles, not the miracles the doctrine.”* After showing that these are the views of the New Testament, he adds, “There is no reason therefore that timid Christians should shrink from accepting the logical canon of the grounds of disbelief. And it is not hazarding much to predict, that a school which peremptorily rejects all evidences of religion, except such as, when relied upon exclusively, the canon in question irreversibly condemns; which denies to mankind the right to judge of religious doctrine, and bids them depend on miracles as their sole guide; must, in the present state of the human mind, inevitably fail, in its attempt to put itself at the head of the religious feelings and convictions of this country,” &c.

* We suppose the meaning of this last clause to be, that the doctrine must be such as to remove all

presumption against the miracles, and thus fully to counteract all opposing evidence from the uniformity of nature’s laws, against the divine authority of the teacher; and that thus, while the truth of the doctrines does not, in all cases at least, depend on the miracles, it derives from them, the fuller confirmation of the divine sanction.

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EARLY AMERICAN RESPONSES TO HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

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During the last half of the eighteenth century, Hume was best known in America, as in Britain and continental Europe, for his History of England. Hume’s History originally was published in six volumes from 1754 to 1762: The history of Great Britain. Vol. I. Containing the reigns of James I and Charles I (Edinburgh, 1754); The history of Great Britain. Vol. II. Containing the Commonwealth, and the reigns of Charles II and James II (London, 1757); The history of England, under the house of Tudor. Comprehending the reigns of K. Henry VII. K. Henry VIII. K.  Edward VI. Q.  Mary, and Q.  Elizabeth, 2 vols (London, 1759); The history of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the accession of Henry VII, 2 vols (London, 1762). In 1762 all six volumes were offered in a “new edition corrected” published in London as The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the revolution in 1688.1 Hume’s earliest American purchasers, like Charles Carroll of Carrollton, tended to put off purchasing the history “by peace meals,” preferring to wait until the six volumes were available as a complete set. From 1762 when James Rivington advertised the complete History for sale in his New York bookstore, Hume’s volumes were a regular offering in the stock of colonial booksellers. Rivington billed Hume’s History as “a Work of the first Class,” and David Hall, John Mein, William Bradford, Noel Garret & Ebenezer Hazard, Edward Cox & Edward Berry, Robert Bell, Henry Knox, and John Sparhawk all carried British editions of the History. Had imported editions not flooded the colonial market, Robert Bell’s extensively advertised subscription edition proposed in 1771 would almost certainly have seen its way to print.

For the early publication details of Hume’s History see T.E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy from Francis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (1938; reprinted New  York, 1983). William B.  Todd has edited a reliable modern edition of Hume’s The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to The Revolution in 1688, 6 vols (Indianapolis, 1983) [hereafter History].

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Bell’s proposed edition of Hume’s “vehicle of KNOWLEDGE and LIBERTY,” however, apparently could not compete with the established and thriving trade in imports. By 1776, Hume’s History was available to many colonial readers at important libraries like the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Providence Library, the Charleston Library Society, Harvard University Library, and the New York Society Library. At Harvard, where lending records survive, Hume’s History was the most frequently borrowed book in the library for the period from 1773 to 1782. In the decade of the 1780s, even more booksellers carried Hume’s History than had been the case earlier. Some, like Daniel Boinod & Alexander Gaillard of Philadelphia, offered not only editions in English but also the Histoire de Angleterre, contenant la Maison de Tudor, de Stuart & de Plantagent, par M. D. Hume. When James Madison was asked in 1782 to draw up a core list of books for a Congressional library, Hume’s History was included as essential reading. By 1790 Harvard University Library held the History in four complete sets:  a 6-​ volume first complete edition of 1762, an 8-​ volume 1767 set, and two 8-​volume sets of 1786. When Thaddeus Mason Harris drew up the contents of an “ideal” social library in 1793, Hume’s History was included as one “of the most esteemed publications in the English language.” By the time of its first American edition in 1795–​6, Hume’s History of England was already an American classic. American presses would continue to turn out reprints of the History during the first half of the nineteenth century. These came in a variety of different formats, from complete sets, often with continuations, to abridged versions for use in schools. It is difficult to establish with certainty, but Hume’s History was perhaps the most widely read history of England in America through until at least the 1850s. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century would Hume begin to lose ground to Thomas Babington Macaulay.2 From as early as 1758, when Benjamin Mecom reprinted passages from Hume’s sketch of Oliver Cromwell in his New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, Hume’s History was the subject of debate in America.3 Part of the History’s popularity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was owing to the fact that the genre of history was considered as very important. In the British colonies, as in Britain, Hume’s History, like other histories, was often

See Mark G.  Spencer, “The Reception of David Hume's Political Thought in Eighteenth-​Century America,” 2 vols (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, 2001), volume 2, for some statistical evidence related to the circulation of Hume’s History. For strikingly similar trends in Scotland, see Mark R.M. Towsey, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment:  Books and their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750–​1820 (Leiden, 2010). 3 Reprinted below. 2

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looked to for its lessons on morals and politics. And in the heated atmosphere of pre-​Revolutionary and Revolutionary America, it was the History’s political lessons which colonial readers and commentators singled out for examination. That was the case with Daniel Dulany, Jr. who quoted from Hume in 1765. In his pamphlet attacking the Stamp Tax, Dulany referred to Hume as a “very penetrating gentleman” who had recommended “a mild government as a proper measure for preserving the dominion of England over her colonies.”4 In 1767 Jonathan Dickinson also found and popularized political lessons drawn from Hume’s History. Dickinson’s “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the inhabitants of the British Colonies,” were extremely influential and were printed and reprinted not only in Pennsylvania but in scores of colonial newspapers up and down the coast. In the “Letters” Dickinson referred to Hume’s writings more than to any others. When the “Letters” came to see their first collected edition in 1767 the frontispiece hailed Dickinson as “The Patriotic American Farmer,” and pictured the lawyer standing in his library, an elbow resting on the “Magna Charta” and “Hume’s History of England” clearly visible on the spine of a book prominently displayed on the shelf behind. For Dickinson, it was the “elegant and ingenious Mr. Hume” whose History established the importance of the English privilege of taxing themselves. It was “this great man, whose political reflections are so much admired,” said Dickinson, who “makes this power one of the foundations of liberty.”5 John Adams was another colonist who found political lessons about liberty in Hume’s History. For Adams, Hume’s narrative was one which traced the “spirit of liberty” in English history. Writing in the pages of the Boston Gazette, for instance, Adams openly quoted Hume to help support his case against Jonathan Sewall’s defense of Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard.6 Adams employed Hume’s History in similar ways in a later newspaper debate, with William Brattle in 1773.7 Hume’s History provided Adams and other colonists with a storehouse of political case studies that were extracted freely to be applied to contemporary issues in colonial politics.8 Daniel Dulany, Jr., Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, For the Purpose of raising a Revenue, by Act of Parliament (North America, 1765), p. 49, not reprinted below. 5 For examples of Dickinson’s use of Hume see, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the inhabitants of the British Colonies (New York, 1903; reprinted New York, 1970), pp. 38–​9, 51, 78, 88, 96, 120, not reprinted below. 6 See “[Remainder of Governor Winthrop’s Second Letter to Governor Bradford, begun in our last.],” Boston Gazette, 16 February 1767, selection reprinted below. 7 See John Adams, “On the Independence of the Judges,” in Robert J. Taylor, ed., The Papers of John Adams (Cambridge, 1977–​), vol. 1, pp. 255, 265–​6, not reprinted below. 8 See, for instance, Josiah Quincy, Jr., Observations on the Act of Parliament commonly called the Boston Port-​Bill; with Thoughts on Civil Society and Standing Armies (Boston, 1774), p. 411, not reprinted 4

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Hume’s thought on the English constitution was especially well known to his colonial American audience. While some eighteenth-​century Americans, like Samuel Adams writing as “Candidus” in the Boston Gazette in 1772, were critical of Hume’s constitutional thought,9 others accepted it wholeheartedly. That the constitutional message in Hume’s History was a hotly debated topic in Revolutionary America is clear from a 1773 letter exchange in the Maryland Gazette between Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Daniel Dulany, Jr.10 For Carroll and many other reluctant revolutionaries, Hume’s constitutional message was one that vindicated the colonial drift towards independence. By exposing the counterfeit origins of Whig claims to liberty grounded on an “ancient, fixed constitution,” Hume’s History offered a way for the colonists to divorce themselves from the sway of the English constitution. That was the case when Hume’s conclusion to the second Anglo-​ Saxon volume was reprinted as “Progress of the human Understanding, from the Extinction of the Saxons, to the Accession of the House of Tudor, From Mr. Hume,” in the pages of the Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum in 1776.11 The Pennsylvania Magazine reprinted a passage with Hume’s message, which Charles Carroll had cited, that “the constitution of the English government . . . has experienced the same mutability, that has attended all human institutions.” After independence was declared, Hume’s History continued to be read by Americans for political instruction on a variety of topics. Deferential references to Hume’s History abound in American writings of the 1780s, even though there has not been space to reprint many of these below. Examples might be cited in the writings of Aadanus Burke, or John Gardiner, or essays in newspapers like the Pennsylvania Packet.12 A little later, the eighteen volumes of the first American edition of the Encyclopadeia Or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, below. Loyalist writers, like “Candidus” in Plain Truth, a pamphlet that responded to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, also referred to Hume’s History. 9 For Samuel Adams see Hary Alonzo Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams (New York, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 322–​6. See, also Charles Lee on Hume as an historian in The Lee Papers, vol. 1 (1754–​1776) in Collections of the New-​York Historical Society for the Year 1871 (New York, 1872). Neither of these sources have been reprinted below. 10 Selections reprinted below. 11 “Progress of the human Understanding, from the Extinction of the Saxons, to the Accession of the House of Tudor From Mr. Hume,” Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum, vol. 2 (1776), pp. 274–​7, reprinted below. 12 See Aadanus Burke, An Address to the Freemen of the State of South Carolina Containing Political Observations . . . (Charleston, 1783; reprinted Philadelphia, 1783); John Gardiner, An Oration, delivered July 4, 1785, at the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, in Celebration of the Anniversary of American Independence (Boston, 1785); “Remarks on the Memorial of the Grand Jury of the City of Philadelphia, praying for that the Legislture would grant a Charter to the said city,” Pennsylvania Packet (30 August 1786). None of these selections are reprinted below.

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and Miscellaneous Literature were littered with quotations from Hume’s History. Many other passages in the Encyclopadeia had Hume’s History as their base; some of these were referenced but more were not. We might begin to see that when James Madison drew from Hume’s History he was a long way from being unique. Madison’s pamphlet from 1785, A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, and his famous discussion of the causes, nature, and remedy for faction in Federalist #10, both evidence the impact of Hume’s History of England.13 In the 1790s the History continued to be read and praised in the new United States. In America, as was the case in Britain, Hume’s writings were often compared and contrasted on points of style and narrative with the histories of Edward Gibbon and William Robertson.14 Interest in the History was refreshed in 1795–​6 with the publication of its first American edition by Robert Campbell in Philadelphia. In a review of Campbell’s subscription edition, The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Chronicle expressed sentiments held by many when it argued that “For accuracy and depth of reasoning, for neatness, and frequency of elegance, of diction, HUME is deservedly celebrated.”15 While it is true that Hume’s anti-​religious stance had a negative effect on the History’s reception with some readers, one ought not to overemphasize that effect. As a writer in The Monthly Magazine, and American Review put it in 1799, “Hume was the enemy not of any particular form of religion, but of religion itself. His inferences are, therefore, much too large to be admitted by a Christian reader; but, under certain obvious limitations, they will not be rejected by one who, while he believes in the truth and excellence of religion in general condemns the abuses of enthusiasm and hypocrisy. Hume, therefore, is not without his claims to respect, even from religious readers; while readers of a different kind will hasten to assign him the first place among sages and historians.”16 As an anonymous writer in The Port Folio put it in 1809, “Whatever may be thought Not reprinted below. See “O.,” “Original Communications. Parallel between Hume, Robertson and Gibbon,” The Monthly Magazine, and American Review, vol. 1 (May 1799), pp. 90–​94; “Anonymous,” “Variety,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 2] (1806), pp. 44–​5 “Anonymous,” “Rhetoric —​for the Port Folio. Lecture X, Of the peculiarities attached to the correct reading and recitation of Narration, Dialogue, Soliloquy, Address, and works of Sentiment and Imagination,” The Port Folio, vol. 3 [series 3] (1810), pp. 488–​90; “Anonymous,” “For the Port Folio. Hume and Robertson Compared,” The Port Folio, vol. 4 [series 3] (1810), pp. 330–​33; “Juverna,” “A Parallel Between Hume and Robertson, as Historians,” The Irish Shield and Monthly Milesian, vol. 1 (1829), pp. 403–​407; all reprinted below. 15 The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, “Art. V. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. In Six Vols. Octavo. Illustrated with Plates. By David Hume, Esq. Vol. I.  Philadelphia, 1795. Campbell. Boards, 1 Dol. 67 cents to Subscribers,” vol. 3 (1795), pp. 29–​43, reprinted below. 16 “Original Communications. Parallel between Hume, Robertson and Gibbon,” The Monthly Magazine, and American Review, vol. 1 (May 1799), p. 91. 13 14

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of his demerits by the scrupulous, or the pious, as an author, unhappily inclining to the side of infidelity, his talents, as an historian and politician, cannot be too strenuously applauded.”17 In the early nineteenth century, Hume’s History continued to have its defenders and advocates and was the subject of frequent debate and of numerous anecdotes.18 But increasingly in the nineteenth century, the American reception of Hume’s History was a negative one. Thomas Jefferson’s criticisms of Hume as a “Tory” historian are well known,19 and are representative of a much wider disapproval. There has not been space to include all of these critical assessments below, of course, but selections are offered by Edward Brooks, Charles Francis Adams, Leonard Withington, and others.20 Still, what worried Jefferson and many of Hume’s nineteenth-​century critics was that “Hume was a Tory; Hume was a Deist; Hume was fond of sly insinuations against purity and piety; and yet, Hume’s history is read by every body, by Whig as well as by Tory, by Americans as well as by Englishmen.”21

“Anonymous,” “The Literary World,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series  3] (1809), pp.  98–​ 100, reprinted below. 18 “Anonymous,” “Hume and Burnet,” The Philadelphia Repository, vol. 5 (9 March 1805), p.  76; “Anonymous,” “Variety,” The Port Folio, vol. 3 [series 2] (1807), p. 27; “Anonymous,” “Coincidences. Hume and Dryden,” The Port Folio, vol. 2, [series 5] (1816), p. 126; “Anonymous,” “Variety,” Saturday Magazine:  National Recorder, vol. 5 (17 March 1821), p.  174; “Anonymous,” “Hume’s History of England,” The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, vol. 1, second series (1824), p. 85; all reprinted below. 19 Letters from Jefferson to John Norvell (11 June 1807), to William Duane (12 August 1810), to Horatio G. Spafford (17 March 1814), to [George Washington Lewis] (25 October 1825); selections reprinted below. 20 [Edward Brooks], “ART. II —​The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, to which is added an Historical View of the Affairs of Ireland. By Edward Earl of Clarendon. A new Edition, exhibiting a faithful Collation of the original MS.; with all the suppressed Passages; also the unpublished Notes of Bishop Warburton. Oxford, at the Clardendon Press. Reprinted by Wells & Lilly, Boston,” North American Review, vol. 27 (Oct. 1828), pp. 300–​17; [Edward Brooks], “Constitutional History. Art. X. —​1. History of England from the first Invasion of the Romans. By John Lingard, D.D. London. 1825. 2. History of the British Empire from the Accession of Charles the First, to the Restoration. By George Brodie. Edinburgh. 1822. 3. A Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry the Seventh to the Death of George the Second. Second Edition. 3 vols. 8vo. London. 1829. 4. History of the Commonwealth. By William Godwin,” North American Review, vol. 29 (July 1829), pp. 265–​ 81; [Charles Francis Adams], “Art. VII.  —​Vaughan’s Memorials of the Stuarts. Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, including the Constitutional and Ecclesiastical History of England from the Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II. By Robert Vaughan. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1831,” The North American Review, vol. 37 (1833), pp.  164–​89; Leonard Withington, “Hume, as a Historian,” The American Quarterly Observer, vol. 1 (1833), pp.  189–​205; “Anonymous,” “Art. IV.  —​The Life of Belisarius. By Lord Mahon. London. John Murray. 1829. 8vo. pp. 473,” Christian Examiner, vol. 7 (1829), pp. 202–​12; “Anonymous,” “Review of New Publications. Dean KENNEY’s Principles and Practices of pretended Reformers,” Christian Observer and Advocate, vol. 19 (1820), pp. 666–​93; all reprinted below. 21 See, “The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Cœsar to the Abdication of James the Second, 1688. By David Hume, Esq. A new edition, with the Author’s last corrections and improvements. To which is prefixed a short account of his life, written by himself. Vols. I, II, III. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 82 Cliff Street. New Haven: T. H. Pease. 1850,” The New Englander, vol. 8 (1850), pp. 322–​3, reprinted below. 17

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“The famous Oliver Cromwel’s private Life  —​his Sickness  —​Death  —​and Character; from a certain Historian of our own Times,” The New-​ England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, no. 2 (October 1758), pp. 3–​12; and “The Duty of Authors,” The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, no. 2 (October 1758), pp. 13–​18. [Benjamin Mecom] Published in Boston by Benjamin Mecom (1732–​ 76?) under the pseudonym “Urbanus Filter,” The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure survived for only three numbers. Its contents were truly miscellaneous. In the selections reprinted below, Mecom reprinted Hume’s character sketch of Cromwell as a fanatical enthusiast. (See History, vol. 6, pp. 55–​58, 105–​10.) Hume’s text is reproduced unadorned but for a single paragraph in which Mecom quietly added (set off in square parenthesis) a contrasting assessment of Cromwell. An elusive editorial comment on Hume was tucked away in a footnote to the journal’s next article, also reprinted below. Reprinting “Of the Duty of Author’s,” an essay from Thomas Gordon’s 1725 collection of essays, The Humourist, Mecom added in a footnote a passage from John Brown’s An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times that ridiculed Hume as an author “bent upon Popularity and Gain.” On Benjamin Mecom see Kevin J. Haynes, “Benjamin Mecom,” ANB, vol. 15, pp.  232–​3. On The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure see API, p. 155; BAP, p. 114; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 26, 40–​41; Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, pp. 140–​41, 283–​4. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Cromwel’s private Life —​his Sickness —​Death — and Character. 1653.

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[From Hume’s History of Britain.] OLIVER CROMWEL, in whose hands the dissolution of the Parliament had left the whole power civil and military of three kingdoms, was born at Huntington, the last year of the former century, of a very good family; tho’ he himself, being the son of a second brother, inherited but a small estate from his father. In the course of his education he had been sent to the university; but his genius was found little fitted for the calm and elegant occupations of learning; and he made small proficiency in his studies. He even threw himself into a very dissolute and disorderly course of life; and in gaming, drinking, debauchery, and country riots, he consumed the more early years of his youth, and dissipated part of his fortune. All of a sudden the spirit of reformation seized him; he married, affected a grave and composed behavior, entered into all the zeal and rigor of the puritanical party, and offered to restore to every one whatever sums he had formerly gained by gaming. The same vehemence of temper, which had transported him into the extremes of pleasure, now distinguished his religious habits. His house was the resort of all the zealous clergy of the party; and his hospitality, as well as his liberalities to the silenced and deprived ministers, proved as chargeable as his former debaucheries. Tho’ he had acquired a tolerable fortune by a maternal uncle, he found his affairs so injured by his expences, that he was obliged to take a farm at St. Ives, and apply himself, for some years, to agriculture as a profession. But this expedient served rather to involve him in further debts and difficulties. The long Prayers which he said to his family in the morning and again in the afternoon, consumed his own time and that of his ploughmen; and he reserved no leisure for the care of his temporal affairs. His active mind, superior to the low occupations to which he was condemned, preyed upon itself; and he indulged his imagination in visions, illuminations, revelations; the great nourishment to that hypocondriacal temper, to which he was ever subject. Urged by his wants and his devotions, he had formed a party with Hampden, his near kinsman, who was pressed only by the latter motive, to transport himself into New England, now become the retreat of the more zealous among the puritanical party; and it was an order of council, which obliged them to disembark and remain in England. The earl of Bedford who possessed a large estate in the Fen Country, near the Isle of Ely, having undertaken to drain these morasses, was obliged to apply to the King; and by the powers of royal prerogative, he got commissioners appointed, who conducted that work, and divided the new acquired land among the several proprietors. He met with opposition from

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many, among whom Cromwel distinguished himself; and this was the first public opportunity, which he had met with, of discovering the factious zeal and obstinacy of his character. From accident and intrigue he was chosen, by the town of Cambridge, member of the long Parliament. His domestic affairs were then in great disorder; and he seemed not to possess any talents, which could qualify him to rise in that public sphere, into which he was now at last entered. His person was ungraceful, his dress slovenly, his voice untuneable, his elocution homely, tedious, obscure, and embarrassed. The fervor of his spirit frequently prompted him to rise in the house; but he was heard with no attention: His name, for above two years, is not to be found oftener than twice in any committee; and those committees, into which he was admitted, were chosen for affairs, which would more interest the zealots than the men of business. Amidst the eloquent speakers and fine gentlemen of the house, he was entirely overlooked; and his friend Hambden alone was acquainted with the depth of his genius, and foretold that, if a civil war should ensue, he would soon rise to eminence and distinction. Cromwel himself seems to have been conscious where his strength lay; and partly from that motive, partly from the uncontroleable fury of his zeal, he always joined that party, which pushed every thing to extremity against the King. He was very active for the famous remonstrance, which was the signal for all the ensuing commotions; and when, after a long debate, it was carried by a small majority, he told lord Falkland, that, if the question had been lost, he was resolved, next day, to have converted into ready money the remains of his fortune, and immediately to have left the kingdom. Nor was this resolution, he said, peculiar to himself: many others of his party he knew to be equally determined. He was no less than forty-​three years of age, when he first embraced the military profession; and by force of genius, without any master, he soon became an excellent officer; tho’ perhaps he never reached the fame of a consummate commander. He raised a troop of horse, fixed his quarters in Cambridge, exerted great severity towards that university, which zealously adhered to the royal party; and showed himself a man who would go all lengths, in favour of that cause which he had espoused. He would not allow his soldiers to perplex their heads with those subtilities of fighting by the King’s authority against his person, and of obeying his Majesty’s orders signified by both houses of Parliament: he plainly told them, that if he met the king in battle, he would fire a pistol in his face as readily as against any other man. His troop of horse he soon augmented to a regiment, and first instituted that discipline and inspired that spirit, which rendered the parliamentary armies, in the end, victorious. Your troops (said he to Hambden,

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according to his own account —​—​—​Conference held at Whitehall) are, most of them, old decayed serving-​men and tapsters, and such kind of fellows; the king’s forces are composed of gentlemen’s younger sons, and persons of good quality. And do you think, that the mean spirits of such base and low fellows as ours, will ever be able to encounter gentlemen, that have honor and courage and resolution in them? You must get men of spirit; and take it not ill that I say, of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go; or else I am sure you will still be beaten, as you have hitherto been, in every encounter. He did as he proposed. He inlisted free-​holders and farmers sons. He carefully invited into his regiment all the zealous fanatics thro’out England. When collected in a body, their enthusiastic spirit still rose to a higher pitch. Their colonel, from his own natural character, as much as from policy, was sufficiently inclined to increase the flame. He preached, he prayed, he fought, he punished, he rewarded. The wild enthusiasm, along with valour and discipline, still propagated itself; and all men cast their eyes on so pious and so successful a leader. From low commands he rose with great rapidity to be really the first, tho’ in appearance only the second, in the army. By fraud and violence, he soon rendered himself the first in the state. In proportion to the increase of his authority, his talents seemed always to expand themselves; and he displayed every day new abilities, which had lain dormant till the very emergence, by which they were called forth into action. All Europe stood astonished to see a nation, so turbulent and unruly, who, for encroachments on their privileges, had dethroned and murdered an excellent Prince, descended from a long line of monarchs, now at last subdued and reduced to slavery by one, who, a few years before, was no better than a private gentleman, whose name was not known in the nation, and who was very little regarded even in that low sphere, to which he had always been confined. 1658  —​All composure of mind was now forever fled from Cromwel, the Protector. He found that the grandeur which with so much guilt and courage he had attained, could not ensure him that tranquility, which it belongs to virtue alone and moderation fully to ascertain. Overwhelmed with the load of public affairs, dreading perpetually some fatal accident in his distempered government, seeing nothing around him but treacherous friends or enraged enemies, possessing the confidence of no party, resting his title on no principle civil or religious, his power he found to depend on so delicate a poise of factions and interests, as the smallest event was able, without any preparation, in a moment to overturn. Death too, which with such signal intrepidity he had braved in the field, being incessantly threatened by the poniards of fanatical or interested assassins, was

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ever present to his terrified apprehension, and haunted him in every scene of business or repose. Each action of his life betrayed the terrors under which he laboured. The aspect of strangers was uneasy to him: with a piercing and anxious eye he surveyed every face to which he was not daily accustomed. He never moved a step without strong guards attending him:  he wore armor below his cloaths, and farther secured himself by offensive weapons; a sword, falchion, and pistols, which he always carried about him. He returned from no place by the direct road, or by the same way which he went. Every journey he performed with hurry and precipitation. Seldom he slept above three nights together in the same chamber: and he never let it be known beforehand what chamber he intended to choose, nor entrusted himself in any which was not provided with back-​ doors. Society terrified him, while he reflected on his numerous, unknown, and implacable enemies: solitude astonished him, by withdrawing that protection, which he found so necessary for his security. Cromwel’s Sickness. —​His body also, from the contagion of his anxious mind, began to be affected; and his health seemed very sensibly to decline. He was seized with a slow fever, which changed into a tertian ague. For the space of a week no dangerous symptoms appeared; and in the intervals of the fits he was able to walk abroad. At length the fever increased, and he himself began to entertain some thoughts of death, and to cast his eye towards that future existence, whose idea had once been intimately present to him; thô since, in the hurry of affairs and the shock of wars and factions, it had, no doubt, been considerably obliterated. He asked Goodwin, one of his preachers, if the doctrine was true, that the elect could never fall or suffer a final reprobation. Nothing more certain, replied the preacher. Then am I safe (said the Protector) for I am sure that once I was in a state of grace. His physicians were sensible of the perilous condition, to which his distemper had reduced him: but his chaplains by their prayers, visions and revelations, so buoyed up his hopes, that he began to believe his life out of all danger. A favourable answer, it was pretended, had been returned by heaven to the petitions of all the godly; and he relied on their asseverations much more than on the opinion of the most experienced physicians. I tell you (he cried with confidence to the latter) I shall not dye of this distemper: I am well assured of my recovery. It is promised by the Lord, not only to my supplications, but also to that of men who hold a stricter commerce and more intimate correspondence with him. Ye may have skill in your profession, but nature can do more than all the physicians in the world, and God is far above nature. Nay, to such a degree of madness did their enthusiastic assurances amount, that upon a fast day which on his account was observed, as well at Hampton Court as at Whitehall, they did not so much pray for his health, as

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give thanks for the undoubted pledges which they had received of his recovery. He himself was overheard offering up his addresses to heaven; and so far had the illusions of fanaticism prevailed over the plainest dictates of natural morality, that he assumed more the character of a mediator, in interceding for his people, than that of a criminal, whose atrocious violation of social duty had, from every tribunal human and divine, merited the severest vengeance. Meanwhile all the symptoms began to wear a more fatal aspect; and the physicians were obliged to break silence, and to declare that the Protector could not survive the next fit, with which he was threatened. The council was alarmed. A deputation was sent to know his will with regard to his successor. His senses were gone, and he could not now express his intentions. They asked him whether he did not mean that his eldest son Richard should succeed him in the Protectorship. A simple affirmative was or seemed to be extorted from him. Soon after, on the third of September, that very day which he had always considered as the most fortunate for him, he expired. A violent tempest, which immediately succeeded his death, served as a subject of discourse to the vulgar. His partizans, as well as his opponents, were fond of remarking this event; and each of them endeavoured by forced inferences, to interpret it as a confirmation of their particular prejudices. Cromwel’s Character, &c. —​The writers attached to the memory of this wonderful person, make his character, with regard to abilities, bear the air of the most extravagant panegeric: his enemies form such a representation of his moral qualities as resembles the most violent invective. Both of them, it must be confessed, are supported by such striking circumstances in his conduct and fortune, as bestow on their representation a great air of probability. “What can be more extraordinary [it is said by Cowley’s Discourses] “than that a person, of private birth and education, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, nor shining talents of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt and the abilities to execute so extraordinary a design as the subverting one of the most ancient and best established monarchies in the world? That he should have the power and boldness to put his Prince and master to an open and infamous death? Should banish that numerous and strongly allied family? Cover all these temerities under a seeming obedience to a Parliament, in whose service he pretended to be retained? Trample too upon that Parliament in their turn, and scornfully expel them so soon as they gave him ground of dissatisfaction? Erect in their place the dominion of the saints, and give reality to the most visionary idea, which the heated imagination of any fanatic was ever able to entertain? Suppress again that monster in its infancy, and

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openly set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England? Overcome first all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice? Serve all parties patiently for a while, and command them victoriously at last? Over-​run each corner of the three nations, and subdue with equal felicity both the riches of the south, and the poverty of the north? Be feared and courted by all foreign Princes, and be adopted a brother to the Gods of the earth? Call together Parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth? Reduce to subjection a warlike and discontented nation, by means of a mutinous army? Command a mutinous army by means of seditious and factious officers? Be humbly and daily petitioned, that he would be pleased, at the rate of millions a year, to be hired as master of those who had hired him before to be their servant? Have the estates and lives of three nations as much at his disposal as was once the little inheritance of his father, and be as noble and liberal in the spending of them? And lastly (for there is no end of enumerating every particular of his glory) with one word bequeath all his power and splendor to his posterity? Dye possessed of peace at home, and triumph abroad? Be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity? And leave a name behind him not to be extinguished but with the whole world; which, as it was too little for his praise, so might it have been for his conquests, if the short line of his mortal life could have stretched out the extent of his immortal designs?” My intention is not to disfigure this picture, drawn by so masterly a hand:  I  shall only endeavour to remove from it somewhat of the marvellous; a circumstance which, on all occasions, gives so much ground for doubt and suspicion. It seems to me, that the occurrence of Cromwel’s life, where his abilities are principally discovered, is his rising from a private station, in opposition to so many rivals, so much advanced before him to a high command and authority in the army. His great courage, his signal military talents, his eminent dexterity and address were all requisite for this important acquisition. Yet will not this promotion appear the effect of supernatural abilities, when we consider that Fairfax, himself a private gentleman, who had not the advantage of a seat in Parliament, had, through the same steps, attained even a superior rank, and, if endued with common capacity and penetration, had been able to retain it. To incite such an army to rebellion against the Parliament, required no uncommon art or industry: to have kept them in obedience had been the more difficult enterprize. When the breach was once formed betwixt the military and civil powers, a supreme and absolute authority is from that moment devolved on the general; and if he is afterwards pleased to employ artifice or policy, it may be regarded, on most occasions, as great condescension, if not a superfluous

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caution. That Cromwel was ever able really to blind or over-​reach either the King or the Republicans, does not appear: as they possessed no means of resisting the force under his command, they were glad to temporize with him, and, by seeming to be deceived, wait for opportunities of freeing themselves from his dominion. If he seduced the military fanatics, it is to be considered, that their interest and his evidently concurred; that their ignorance and low education exposed them to the grossest imposition, and that he himself was at bottom as frantic an enthusiast as the worst of them, and, in order to obtain their confidence, needed but to display those vulgar and ridiculous habits which he had early acquired, and on which he set so high a value. An army is so forcible and at the same time so coarse a weapon, that any hand, which wields it may, without much dexterity, perform any operation and attain any ascendant in human society. The domestic administration of Cromwel, tho’ it discovers great ability, was conducted without any plan either of liberty or arbitrary power: perhaps his difficult situation admitted of neither. His foreign enter-​prizes, tho’ full of intrepidity, were pernicious to national interest, and seem more the result of impetuous fury or narrow prejudices, than of cool foresight and deliberation. An eminent personage, however, he was in many respects, and even a superior genius; but unequal and irregular in his operations. And though not defective in any talent, except that of elocution, the abilities which in him were most admirable, and which most contributed to his marvellous success, were the magnanimous resolution of his enterprizes, and his peculiar dexterity in discovering the characters, and practising on the weaknesses of mankind. If we survey the moral character of Cromwel with that indulgence which is due to the blindness infirmities [sic] and imperfection of the human species, we shall not be inclined to load his memory with such violent reproaches as those which his enemies usually throw upon it. Amidst the passion and prejudices of that time, that he should prefer the parliamentary to the royal cause, will not appear very extraordinary; since, even at present; many men of sense and knowledge are disposed to think, that the question with regard to the Justice of the quarrel, may be regarded as very doubtful and ambiguous. The murder of the king, the most atrocious of all his actions, was to him covered under a mighty cloud of republican and fanatical illusions; and it is not impossible that he might believe it, as many others did, the most meritorious action which he could perform. His subsequent usurpation was the effect of necessity, as well as of ambition; nor is it easy to see how the various factions could at that time have been restrained without a mixture of military and arbitrary authority. The private deportment of Cromwel as a son, a husband, a father, a friend, is exposed to no considerable censure, if it does not rather merit praise. And, upon the whole, his character does

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not appear more extraordinary and unusual by the mixture of so much absurdity with so much penetration, than by his tempering such violent ambition, and such enraged fanaticism, with so much regard to justice and humanity. [Another author, speaking of Cromwel, says “He is owned to have been a person of singular courage, and of great abilities. It is said he was an enthusiast. But the good sense that appeared in all his actions, public and private, is a sufficient testimony that enthusiasm had not the ascendant over him. It seems more probable that he suited his dissimulation to all parties and tempers. The worst of his enemies call him a lover of justice, for whatever arbitrary proceedings he has been charged with, were only where his authority was controverted, which, as things then were, it was necessary to have established, in order that the law, in other cases, might have due course. And how well did he maintain the honour of the English nation in foreign parts! He retrieved the credit of it that had been gradually sinking through too long reigns of near fifty years; acquired the real mastery of the British channel, extended his dominions into remote parts; and, in fine, rendered himself the arbiter of Europe. We may, then, venture to say, that he was most eminently qualified for the power he usurped.”] Cromwel was in the fifty-​ninth year of his age when he died. He was of a robust frame of body, and of a manly, though not an agreeable aspect. He left only two sons and three daughters. His father died when he was young. His mother lived till after he was Protector; and, contrary to her orders, he buried her with great pomp in Westminster abbey. She could not be persuaded that his power or person was ever in security. At every noise which she heard, she exclaimed that her son was murdered; and was never satisfied that he was alive, if she did not receive frequent visits from him. She was a decent woman; and by her frugality and industry had raised and educated a numerous family upon a small fortune. She had even been obliged to set up a brewery at Huntingdon, which she managed to good advantage. Hence Cromwel, in the invectives of that age, is often stigmatized with the name of the Brewer. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

From the HUMOURIST. Of the Duty of Authors. THE different Notions that different Men usually entertain of the same Thing, have made it a Question among some sanguine Philosophers, whether Virtue and Vice are not merely imaginary Beings, or have any other Existence than what

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Climates, Customs, Opinions, and frequently Caprice and Humour, are pleased to give them. Moral Good and Evil (say they) are confined to Countries; they vary according to the Turn of Mind, Temper and Manners of the Inhabitants, to the Form of Government under which they live, to the Nature of its Religion and Laws. In some Places a Man would be punished with Death, for an Action which in others would entitle him to the highest Honour and Reward. Our Weakness, our Want of Resolution, of Sagacity, of Knowledge, of Abilities to receive it, render it impossible for us to fix any Criterion whereby to judge of Right and Wrong, Truth and Falsehood, Justice and Injustice, to distinguish between Reality and Appearances, to search beyond the Surface of Things; and therefore it is that we can never agree in our Opinions concerning them, nor free our Minds from the Errors which in a great Measure occasion all the Follies, Infelicities, and Misfortunes of Life. Whatever Foundation there may be in Reason or Nature for this Hypothesis, those Gentlemen who confidently advance it, shew themselves by that Means to have but little Regard for Mankind, or the Good of Human Society. All Truths are not fit to be told. The Bulk of the People should be taught no more than what immediately concerns the Purposes of Living: To be industrious, to be peaceable, to be obedient to their Governors, to be content with their Condition, is all they ought to be acquainted with; every Thing else is idle and impertinent to them, and will make them either Enthusiasts or Madmen; it will make them dangerous to the State and uneasy to themselves; and, as it always happens to ordinary Capacities, the more they endeavour to know, the less will they be able to understand. In too great a Thirst after Knowledge they seldom fail to lose their common Sense; it occasions them to be lazy, insolent and proud, and while they busy themselves about vain and fruitless Speculations, which they can never satisfy themselves in, or which would signify Nothing if they did, they neglect all the Business and Duties of Life. However Circumstances or Times may alter the Nature of Things, and whether there be any Reality in Virtue or no, it is certain that it is the Duty of every Man to conform himself to the Laws and Customs of the Community in which he lives, and not out of a wretched Affection of superior Talents and Understanding to others, to advance new Notions and new Opinions, and endeavour to render the old received Ones ridiculous to the Rabble: Man must be kept ignorant to be happy; they must be deceived and ensnared like Children into their own Good; they are in no Wise capable of judging of Things abstracted, and out of the common Road; and therefore the Authors who trouble themselves or others with such kind of Writings, can have no End in it either prudent or honest;

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every Hour that a Tradesman or a Labourer spends from his Business, except in lawful and necessary Recreations, is an Injury done to his Country, as well as to himself and Family; he ought to consider what Advantage the Nation reaps from his Work, and that to be a good Patriot (a Character that at present every Body seems to be fond of) he must be an industrious Pains taking Man. It has been often observed, that when once People begin to throw off the Prejudices of Education, and set up to think for themselves, they seldom stop there; that from disbelieving the Stories of Witches and Apparitions, without we proceed with the greatest Caution, we shall be apt to carry our Doubts a little farther, and so by Degrees (however averse we might have been to it at first) bring ourselves to believe the whole Business of Religion a Fable. This, it is much to be feared, is pretty near the Case at present; that general Dissolution and Corruption of Manners which prevails among the People, perhaps more now than ever, could be hardly owing to any other Cause except this; Religion will still be some Check with Vice, while it continues to have any Footing at all in the World, and therefore Men would act at least with more Fear and Restraint if its Power was not almost at an End. The remedying of this Evil; the bringing People to a due Sense of Religion and Virtue again, would be worth the While of some of us sage Instructors of the Times to attempt, if we could find Leisure from our more important political Concerns to turn our Tho’ts that Way: I cannot indeed but acknowledge that it is expected of us, that we should keep a watchful Eye over the Administration; that we should from Time to Time make the strictest Inquiries into their Conduct, and lay it before our worthy Patrons and Readers, with proper Reflections and Animadversions thereupon; and therefore that it would be beneath even the Meanest among us to write dull and heavy Lectures of Morality (for every Thing of that Kind must be so) which no Body would read; or if any did, which would be more becoming Pedants than Politicians to give. I will farther allow that it might tend in a good Measure to spoil the SALE of our Works,* the first and most * In

Confirmation of this Truth, we may illuminate this Part of our Subject with a not incurious Anecdote. —​ —​—A ​ certain Historian of our own Times, bent upon Popularity and Gain, published a large Volume and omitted no Opportunity that offered, to disgrace Religion: A large Impression was published and a small Part sold. The Author being asked, Why he had so larged his Work with Irreligion? his Answer implied, He had done it that his Book might sell. —​It was whispered him, that he had totally mistaken the Spirit of the Times: that no Allurements could engage the fashionable infidel World to travel through a large Quarto: and that as the few Readers of Quartoes that yet remain, lie mostly among the serious Part of Mankind, he had offended his best Customers, and ruined the Sale of his Book. This Information had a notable Effect: for a second Volume, as large and instructive as the first, hath appeared; not a Smack of Irreligion is to be found in it; and an Apology for the first concludes the Whole. B’s E. T.

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immediate Concern of an Author, and afford a favourable Opportunity for some new Writer to sit up; who by pursuing the contrary Scheme, might get the Start of us in the Esteem of the Town, and live and flourish upon our Ruin. And yet methinks notwithstanding all these Difficulties that lie in our Way, we ought to employ the good Opinion that our Readers and Admirers have of us to their own Advantage, and try if we cannot with as much Ease make them honest Men, as we have made them deep Politicians; if we cannot as well teach them their own Duty, as that of Princes and Ministers of State; if they will not as readily learn to manage their own Families at Home, as to settle the Affairs of the Nation. Indeed if we would put our excellent Talents to a proper Use, we might by our Writings promote, in a great Measure, the Cause of Religion and Virtue. Our Genius is very well adapted to that of our Readers, and if we were not to use them to Treason and Nonsense, they might find Entertainment in better Things; the Fault is chiefly on our own Side. Let us then, to make Atonement for what is past, endeavour to alter our Conduct for the future; we should soon perceive the good Effects of it, and by this Means might have a Share in healing those Divisions and Distractions which we have occasioned. To turn the Hearts of the People against the Government, to set them at Variance with one another, to stir them up to Tumult and Sedition, to create Disturbances in the State, and Schisms in the Church; to vilify and blacken the Characters of innocent Men upon account of their religious or political Principles, and to breed Feuds and Dissentions in private Families, have been the Means that we have hitherto pursued to acquire Wealth and Reputation: Let us put in Practice the contrary Methods, and see if the Taste of the Town is so absolutely depraved, that they will endure Nothing which is not stuffed with Treason, Blasphemy, and Nonsense.

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“[Remainder of Governor Winthrop’s Second Letter to Governor Bradford, begun in our last.],” Boston Gazette, (16 February 1767); selection. [John Adams] In this lead article from the Boston Gazette for Monday, 16 February 1767, John Adams (1735–​1826) continued a newspaper debate with Jonathan Sewall (1729–​ 96) who wrote as “Philanthrop.” The debate had begun with Sewall’s letters in the Boston Evening-​Post which attempted to defend Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard’s attempt to veto the election of Whig councilors. In the selection reprinted below, Adams placed Bernard’s actions within the historical context of the British House of Commons’s privilege of judging of elections and returns. Adams’s story came largely, although not always fully acknowledged, from the pages of the first Stuart volume of Hume’s History of England. See History, vol. 5, pp.  3–​18. On the Adams-​Sewall debate see “Editorial Note,” in “Replies to Philanthrop, Defender of Governor Bernard,” in Papers of John Adams, series III, General Correspondence and other Papers of the Adams Statesmen, edited by Robert J. Taylor (Cambridge, 1977–​), pp. 174–​6. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ IF we go back as far as the reign of Elizabeth, we find her, on one occasion, infringing on this priviledge, of the Commons, of judging solely, of their own elections and returns. This attempt was however so warmly resented by the Commons, that they instantly voted “That it was a most perilous precedent, when two knights of a county were duly elected, if any new writ should issue out, for a second election, without order of the house itself; that the discussing and adjudging of this and such like differences, belonged only to the house; and that there should be no message sent to the Ld. Chancellor, not so much as to enquire what he had done, in the matter; because it was conceived to be

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a matter derogatory to the power and priviledge of the house.” After this vote, which had in it something of the spirit of liberty and independency, we hear of no more disputes upon that subject, till we come to the reign of James the first, whose whole life was employed in endeavouring to demolish every popular power, in the constitution, and to establish the awful and absolute sovereignty of Kingship, that, as he expres’d himself to the convocation, Jack and Tom, and Dick and Will, might not meet and censure him and his Council  —​And in order to accomplish the important purpose of his reign, he thought that nothing could be more useful, than to wrest from the Commons, into his own hands, or those of his creature, the Chancellor, the adjudication of their elections and returns. Outlaws, whether for misdemeanours or debts, had been declared by the judges, in the reign of Henry the sixth, incapable by law of a seat in the house, where they themselves must be lawgivers. Sir Francis Goodwin was now chosen for the county of Bucks, and his return was made as usual into Chancery. The Chancellor decreed him an outlaw, vacated his seat, and issued writs for a new election. Sir John Fortesque was chosen in his room. But the first act of the house was to reverse the decree of the Chancellor, and restore Goodwin to his seat. At James’s instigation the Lords desired a conference on this subject, but were absolutely refused by the Commons, as the question regarded intirely their own priviledges. They agreed however to make a remonstrance to the King, by their speaker: where they maintained that tho’ the returns were by form made into chancery, yet the sole right of judging with regard to elections belonged to the house itself. James was not satisfied, and ordered a conference between the house and the judges. The Commons were in some perplexity. Their eyes were now opened, and they saw the consequences of that power, which had been assumed, and to which their predecessors had in some instances blindly submitted. This produced many free speeches in the house, “By this course, said one member, the free election of the counties is taken away, and none shall be chosen but such as shall please the King and Council. Let us therefore with fortitude, understanding and sincerity, seek to maintain our priviledges. This cannot be construed any contempt in us, but merely a maintenance of our common rights, which our ancestors have left us, and which is just and fit for us to transmit to our posterity.” Another said, this may be called a quo warranto to seize all our liberties. “A Chancellor, added a third, by this course may call a parliament consisting of what persons he pleases. Any suggestion by any person, may be the cause of lending a new writ. It is come to this plain question, whether the Chancery or Parliament ought to have authority.” The Commons however, notwithstanding this watchful spirit of liberty, appointed a committee to confer with the judges

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before the King and Council. There the question began to appear a little more doubtful than the King had imagined, and to bring himself off, he proposed that Goodwin and Fortesque should both be set aside, and a writ be issued by the house, for a new election. Goodwin consented, and the Commons embraced this expedient; but in such a manner, that while they shewed their regard for the King, they secured for the future, the free possession of their seats, and the right which they claimed of judging solely of their own elections and returns. Hume who will not be suspected of prejudice against the Stuarts, and in whose words very nearly this story is related, remarks at the conclusion, “Power like this, so essential to the exercise of all their other powers, themselves so essential to public liberty, cannot fairly be deemed an encroachment in the Commons, but must be regarded as an inherent priviledge, happily rescued from that ambiguity, which the negligence of former parliments had thrown upon it.” . . . Now if we compare the attempt of King James, with the attempt of the Governor, who can discern a difference between them? James would have vacated the seat of Sir Francis Goodwin, because his election was against law, i.e. because Sir Francis was an outlaw; The Governor would have vacated the seats of Col. Gerrish and Capt. Little, because their election was against law, i.e. because they were both chosen and returned by a town, which by law was to choose and return but one. The King in one case, the Governor in the other, made himself judge of the legality of an election, and usurped authority to vacate the seats of members. —​I consider the power of the Chancellor here, which the King contended for as the power of the King, because there is no great difference in such cases, as has been very well known from the time of James to this day, between the power of the creator and that of the creature.

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HUME ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

“Antilon-​First Citizen Letters,” in the Maryland Gazette for 11 March 1773; 8 April 1773; 6 May 1773; 3 June 1773; 1 July 1773; selections. [Charles Carroll and Daniel Dulany, Jr.] In 1773 the Maryland Gazette carried a debate between Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737–​1832), as “First Citizen,” and Daniel Dulany, Jr. (1722–​97), as “Antilon.” In a series of eight letters (dating from 7 January 1773 to 1 July 1773), Carroll and Dulany argued about the constitutional right of Maryland Governor Robert Edens’s 1770 attempt to maintain, by proclamation, the level of officers’ fees. The debate aroused a good deal of contemporary attention precisely because it circumscribed the constitutional options available to the colonists in their debate with the British parliament. As shown by the selections reprinted below, Hume’s History played a central role in that debate. Both Carroll and Dulany turned to Hume’s text for the narrative of their historically based arguments. But for Carroll, as for Hume, the English constitution was a fragile product which could not (even once established) be safely put aside; rather it needed to be continually monitored and carefully guarded. On Carroll, Dulany, and the “Anitlon-​First Citizen Letters,” see Ronald Hoffman, “Charles Carroll of Carrollton,” ANB, vol. 4, pp. 467–​9; Peter S. Onuf, ed., Maryland and the Empire, 1773:  The Antilon-​First Citizen Letters (Baltimore and London, 1974); George A. Stiverson, “Dulany, Daniel, Jr.,” ANB, vol. 5, pp. 522–​3. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ First Citizen to the Maryland Gazette, 11 March 1773 I shall now examine Antilon’s reasons in justification of the Proclamation, and after his example, I shall first compare the two transactions, the Proclamation,

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and the assessment of ship-​money.  —​—​That the latter was a more open, and daring violation of a free constitution(B) will be readily granted; the former, I  contend, to be a more disguised, and concealed attack, but equally subversive, in its consequences, of liberty. —​—​Antilon’s account of the levy of ship-​ money,  though not quite so impartial as he insinuates, I  admit in the main to be true. —​“The amount of the whole tax was very moderate, little exceeding £.200,000; it was levied upon the people with justice and equality, and this money was entirely expended upon the navy, to the great honour and advantage of the kingdom.” —​—​​At that period the boundaries between liberty and prerogative were far from being ascertained; the constitution had long been fluctuating between those opposite, and contending interests, and had not then arrived to that degree of consistency and perfection, it has since acquired, by subsequent contests, and by the improvements made in later days; when civil liberty was much better defined, and better understood. The assessment of ship-​money received the sanction of the judges —​“After the laying on of ship-​ money, Charles, in order to discourage all opposition, had proposed the question to the judges, “whether in a case of necessity, for the defence of the kingdom, he might not impose this taxation; and whether he was not sole judge of the necessity.” —​—​​These guardians of law and liberty, replied with great complaisance (reflect on this, good reader) that in a case of necessity, he might impose that taxation, and that he was sole judge of the necessity.” The same historian speaking of that transaction concludes thus: “These observations alone may be established on both sides, That, the appearances were sufficiently strong in favour of the King, to apologize for his following such maxims; and that, publick liberty must be so precarious, under this exorbitant prerogative, as to render an opposition, not only excusable, but laudable in the people.” —​—​​But I mean not to excuse the assessment of ship-​money, nor to exculpate Charles, his conduct will admit of no good apology. . . . The most open and avowed attacks on liberty are not perhaps the most dangerous. When rigorous means —​“the arbitrary seizure of property and the deprivation of personal liberty are employed to spread terror, and compel submission to a tyrant’s will” they rouse the national indignation, they excite a general patriotism, and communicate the generous ardor from breast to breast; fear and resentment, two powerful passions, unite a whole people, in opposition to the tyrant’s stern commands; the modest, mild, and conciliating manner, in which the latent designs of a crafty minister come sometimes recommended to the publick; ought to render them the more suspected “timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes”: The gifts, and smiles of a minister should always inspire caution, and diffidence. There is no attempt, it is true, in the Proclamation “to subject the people indebted to the officers for services performed to any execution of their effects or imprisonment of their persons —​on any account” —​If the judges however should determine costs to be paid, according to the rates of the Proclamation, execution of a person’s effects, or imprisonment would necessarily follow his refusal to pay those rates.

(B)

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Antilon to the Maryland Gazette, 8 April 1773 In my former letter I laid before the reader for his examination, and comparison, the two transactions of the ship-​money tax, and the proclamation, and shewed that the former imposed a direct tax on the people, and enforced the payment of it by the rigorous means of execution affecting the property, and personal liberty of the subject, and that the latter contained the sanction only of the Governor’s threats of displeasure to officers dependant, and removeable without any enforcement extended to the people beyond that, which the ordinary courts might confer on the very ground of its legality. I also proved that without some settled rate, or standard no exaction of an officer could be punishable as extortion, and that judges and others not vested with a legislative authority, had settled, and ascertained the fees of officers for the very purpose of preventing the oppression of the subject, and concluded, the two transactions, were not only not equally arbitrary infractions of the constitution, but were entirely dissimilar. The Citizen professes his design to consider my reasons in defence of the proclamation, and after having “granted that the assessment of ship-​money was a more open, and daring violation of the constitution, still contends that the proclamation, though more disguised, is equally subversive in its consequence of liberty.” The reader will remember that the Citizen to support the character he has attributed to the proclamation, must prove it to be an arbitrary tax. He allows that the tax of ship-​money was an “open and avowed attack on liberty” and seems to apply to the proclamation the epithets, “modest, mild, and conciliating.” He acknowledges that the methods pursued in levying the ship-​money were the “arbitrary seizure of property and deprivation of personal liberty” and that there “is no attempt in the proclamation to subject the people to any execution;” but, notwithstanding his admission of so great difference, he endeavours to maintain his position, that the proclamation is as subversive, in its consequence, of liberty, as the levy of ship-​money was. “The most daring attacks on liberty, he says, are not perhaps the most dangerous,” because extreme violence excites general indignation, and opposition; but the “modest, mild, conciliating manner, in which the latent designs of a crafty minister come sometimes recommended, ought to render them the more suspected, and should always inspire caution, and diffidence,” let the operation, and effect of the proclamation determine its character; but, because the manner is modest &c.  —​let not suspicion at once infer, that the design of it is to violate the peoples rights; for if one measure is to be opposed, because expressed in an imperative stile, and attended with the most rigorous enforcements, and another measure is also to be opposed, because it is “modest, mild, &c.” in the manner, and unattended by any enforcement, except

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what it derives from the law, it would be difficult, indeed, for the best intentions to escape censure. In speaking of the ship money exaction, the Citizen admits my account of it to be, “in the main true,” but intimates that “it is not impartial,” “it is in the main true.” In what was it then not impartial? The exility of the insinuation shall not protect the principle of it, nor shall contempt so entirely extinguish indignation, as to hinder me from exposing the subdolous attempt. The appellation, “Tyrant” has, I suspect, rubbed the fore. “The tax (says he) was very moderate little exceeding, £.200,000 sterling —​it was levied with justice and equity, &c.” “moderate?” When the people were plundered of every farthing of it? “levied with justice and equity;” when extorted by the rigours of distress, and imprisonment, in the most direct violation of every principle of liberty? The moderation, justice, and equity of a robber, who should suffer the plundered passenger to retain half a crown for his dinner, might be celebrated with equal grace and propriety. Again he whines —​“the boundaries between liberty, and prerogative were far from being ascertained.” What, had not Magna Charta so often (at least thirty-​two times) confirmed; the statute (he has referred to on another occasion) de Pallagio non concedendo, the petition and act of rights (to mention no other) most clearly established the principle, that “the people could not be taxed without their consent?” The boundary could not have been more clearly marked out by the utmost precaution of jealous prudence or more outrageously transgressed by the most determined, and lawless tyranny, and yet the Citizen, the generous friend of liberty, though he has adopted the pretences of a notorious apologist, has advanced them without any view to “excuse the assessment of ship-​money, or exculpate King Charles” —​he means not to apologize, though he has adopted the very principles of the tyrants apologist —​again “James the IId by endeavouring to introduce arbitrary power, and subvert the ESTABLISHED church deserved to be deposed, and banished, and the revolution rather” says the Citizen, “brought about, than followed King James’s abdication of the crown.” . . . First Citizen to the Maryland Gazette, 6 May 1773 Antilon has vented part of his spleen on Mr. Hume; the censured passage is taken from that author, acknowledge by a sensible writer,(B) and thorough whig, to be an instructing, and entertaining historian. To exculpate the notorious apologist, and myself, it is necessary to observe that the words “levied with justice, and equality” (not equity as cited by Antilon) mean, the tax was equally Danes Barrigton —​Observations on the statutes chiefly the more ancient.

(B)

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divided among, or assessed upon the subjects without favour and affection to particular persons, that the imposition, though applied to a good and publick use, was contrary to law, the historian has acknowledged in the most forcible and express words. Has the Citizen any where insinuated, that the assessment of ship-​money was legal? Has he not expressly declared, that he does not mean to excuse that assessment? That the conduct of Charles will admit of no good apology? Yet that there were some appearances in his favour, the passages already quoted, candid men, I think, will admit, if not as a proof to convince, at least as an inducement to incline them to that opinion; mine, I confess, it is, and I make the acknowledgment, without fear of incurring the odious imputation of abetting arbitrary measures, or of being a friend to the Stuarts. What means the insinuation, Antilon, conveyed in this sentence, “The appellation “tyrant” has I suspect rubbed the sore.” Your endeavours to defame, excite only pity, and contempt; your heaviest accusations, thank God, have no better foundation than your own suspicions. But to return. I again assert, that notwithstanding all the acts ascertaining the subjects rights, cited in your last admirable, and polite performance, that the boundaries between liberty and prerogative were far from being ascertained in Charles’s reign, with that precision, and accuracy, which the subsequent revolutions, and the improvements o[u]‌r constitution in later times have introduced.(C) I must trouble my readers with a few more quotations from the obnoxious historian abovementioned, submitting the justice of his observations, and the inference drawn from them to their decision, and better judgment. “Those lofty ideas of monarchical power which were very commonly adopted during that age and to which the ambiguous nature of the English constitution gave so plausible an appearance, were firmly riveted in Charles.” Again, speaking of illegal imprisonment, “But the Kings of England (says he) who had not been able to prevent the enacting these laws, (in favour of personal liberty) had sufficient authority, when the tide of liberty was spent, to hinder their regular execution, and they deemed it superfluous to attempt the formal repeal of statutes, which they found so many expedients, and pretences to elude.” “The imposition of ship-​money (the same historian remarks) is apparently one of the most dangerous invasions of national privileges, not only which Charles was ever guilty of, but which the most arbitrary princes in England, since any “The later years, says Blackstone, of Henry VIII. were the times of the greatest despostism, that have been known in this island, since the death of William the Norman: the prerogative, as it then stood by common law (and much more when extended by act of parliament) being too large to be endured in a land of liberty.”

(C)

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liberty had been ascertained to the people, had ever ventured upon.” He subjoins in a note, “It must however be allowed, that Queen Elizabeth ordered the sea-​ ports to fit out ships, at their own expence, during the time of the Spanish invasion.” Elizabeth treated her parliaments with haughtiness, and assumed a tone of authority in addressing those assemblies, which even the tyrant Charles did not exceed, —​her father governed with despotic sway. To these opinions, and unsettled notions of the kingly power, and to the prejudices of the age, candour perhaps will partly ascribe the determination of the judges in favour of ship-​ money, and not solely to corruption. . . . Antilon to the Maryland Gazette, 3 June 1773 . . . I have no spleen against Mr. Hume (as you have foolishly supposed) by whom I have often been entertained, and whose ingenuity, and literary talents I admire; but that his history is a studied apology for the Stuarts, and particularly Charles the first, all men, conversant with the English history, and constitution, and not blinded by prejudice must acknowledge. Without having recourse to the “letters written upon his history,” I could point out very many instances to fix this character, if suitable to the design, and limits of this reply. The bill of rights, which Charles the first endeavoured to evade by mean prevarication, shews that the constitution was most clearly settled in the very point infringed by the ship money levy. That the abdication “rather followed, than preceded the revolution,” is the assertion of ignorance, or prejudice —​the very defence of jacobitism. The principle of it was stated in my former letter, from the reasoning of Hampden, Sommers, Holt, Maynard, and Treby. . . . First Citizen to the Maryland Gazette, 1 July 1773 . . . The liberties which the English enjoyed under their Saxon kings, were wrested from them by the Norman conqueror; that invader intirely changed the ancient constitution by introducing a new system of government, new laws, a new language and new manners. The contest, which sometime after ensued between monarchy, and aristocracy, not between liberty, and prerogative; the common people remained in a state of the most abject slavery, a prey to both parties, more oppressed by a number of petty tyrants, than they probably would have been by the uncontrouled power of one . . . Equally unfortunate, and equally unfit for improving the constitution, was the reign of Richard the 2d. Hume teaches us what idea we ought to form of the

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English government under Edward the 3d —​—​“Yet, on the whole it appears that the government at best was only a barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims, nor bounded by any certain undisputed rights, which were in practice regularly observed. The king conducted himself by one set of principles, the barons by another, the commons by a third, the clergy by a fourth; all these systems of government were contrary and incompatible; each of them prevailed according as incidents were favourable to it.” This short historical deduction may seem foreign to my subject, but it really is not. The frequent and bare faced violations of laws favourable to the people, the pardoning offences of the deepest dye, committed by men of the first distinction, or the inability to punish the offenders, the corruption and venality of the judges, all tend to discover that practices as subversive to liberty, as a discretionary power in the judges to impose fees, went unnoticed, or remained unredressed. From the deposition of Richard the 2d to the battle of Bosworth, the English were continually involved in wars, foreign, or domestick. Silent inter arma leges. We may presume, during that period, the courts of justice were but little frequented, and the business transacted in them inconsiderable; from whence we may infer, that the rules of practice, and orders established by the judges in their courts being slightly known to the nation at large, escaped the notice of parliament, in a time of general poverty; and confusion. Frequent insurrections disturbed the peace of Henry the 7th. The fist parliament of his reign was chiefly composed of his creatures, devoted to the house of Lancaster, and obsequious to their sovereign’s will. The 2d parliament was so little inclined to inquire into abuses of the courts of law, or into any other grievances, that the commons took no notice of an arbitrary taxation, which the king a little before their meeting, had imposed on his subjects. His whole reign was one continued scene of rapine and oppression on his part, and of servile submission on that of the parliament. “In vain (says Hume) did the people look for protection from the parliament; that assembly was so overawed, that at this very time, during the greatest rage of Henry’s oppression, the commons chose Dudley their speaker, the very man, who was the chief instrument of his oppressions.” Henry the 8th governed with absolute sway; parliaments in that prince’s time, were more disposed to establish tyranny than to check the exercise of unconstitutional powers.(E) During the reigns of Edward the 6th, Mary and Elizabeth, these assemblies were busily An Act was passed in his reign to give proclamations the force of laws.

(E)

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engaged in modelling the national religion to the court standard: their obsequiousness in conforming to the religion of the prince upon the throne, at a time, when the nation was most under religious influence, leaves us no room to expect a less compliant temper in matters of more indifference. . . . “Hume’s history is a studied apology for the Stuarts, particularly of Charles the first.” Has the historian suppressed any material facts? If not; but has given an artificial colouring to some, softened others, and suggested plausible motives for the conduct of Charles, all this serves to confirm the observation, that an account may in the main be true, and not intirely impartial; the principal facts may be related, yet the suppression of some attendant circumstance will greatly alter their character and complexion. I asserted that the constitution was not so well improved, and so well settled in Charles’s time, as at present. In answer to this, Antilon remarks, that the constitution was clearly settled in the very point infringed, by the levy of ship money. To this I reply, that the petition of right was only a confirmation of former statutes against the same unconstitutional power, which had been assumed by most preceding kings in direct violation of those statutes.

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PROGRESS OF FREEDOM

“Progress of the human Understanding, from the Extinction of the Saxons, to the Accession of the House of Tudor. From Mr. HUME,” Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum, vol. 2 (1776), pp. 274–​7. David Hume The Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum was published in Philadelphia by Robert Aitken (1735–​1802) who was also an editor, along with Thomas Paine. Other contributors to this widely-​read magazine included Francis Hopkinson, David Rittenhouse, Benjamin Rush, William Smith, and John Witherspoon. The contents of its two volumes focused largely on the War for Independence. In the essay reprinted below, the Pennsylvania Magazine reprinted a passage from the conclusion to Hume’s second Anglo-​Saxon volume. (See History, vol. 2, pp. 518–​24.) Offering no editorial comment, the magazine clearly felt Hume’s demystification of the English constitution helped the colonists built their Revolutionary cause. On the Pennsylvania Magazine see API, pp. 175–​6; BAP, p. 133; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), pp. 27–​8, 48–​53. See entry on Aitken in EAE, vol. 1, pp. 33–​4. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ —​“THUS have we pursued the history of England through a series of many barbarous ages; till we have at last reached the dawnings of civility and science, and have the prospect, both of greater certainty in our historical narrations, and of being able to present to the reader a spectacle more worthy of his attention. The want of certainty, however, and of circumstances is not alike to be complained of throughout every period of this long narration. This island possesses many ancient historians of good credit, as well as many historical monuments: and it

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is rare, that the annals of so uncultivated a people, as were the English as well as the other European nations, after the decline of Roman learning, have been transmitted to posterity so complete, and with so little mixture of falsehood and of fable. This advantage we owe entirely to the church of Rome, who, founding their authority on their superior knowledge, preserved the precious literature of antiquity from a total extinction; and under shelter of their numerous privileges and immunities, acquired a security, by means of the superstition, which they would in vain have claimed, from the justice and humanity of those turbulent and licentious ages. Nor is the spectacle altogether unentertaining and uninstructive, which the history of those times presents to us. The view of human manners and actions, in all their variety of appearances, is both profitable and agreeable; and if the aspect in some periods seems horrid and deformed, we may thence learn to cherish, with the greater anxiety, that science, and civility which has so close a connection with virtue and humanity, and which, as it is a sovereign antidote against superstition, is also the most effectual remedy against vice and disorders of every kind. The rise, progress, perfection, and decline of art and science, are curious objects of contemplation, and intimately connected with a narration of civil transactions. The events of no particular period can be fully accounted for, but by considering the degrees of advancement, which men have reached in those particulars. Those who cast their eye on the general revolutions of society, will find, that as all the improvements of the human mind had reached nearly to their state of perfection about the age of Augustus, there was a sensible decline from that point or period; and men thenceforth relapsed gradually into ignorance and barbarism. The unlimited extent of the Roman empire, and the consequent despotism of the monarchs, extinguished all emulation, debased the generous spirits of men, and depressed that noble flame, by which all the refined arts must be cherished and enlivened. The military government which soon succeeded, rendered even the lives and properties of men insecure and precarious; and proved destructive to those vulgar and more necessary arts of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; and in the end to the military art, and genius itself, by which alone the immense fabrick of the empire could be supported. The irruption of the barbarous nations, which soon followed, overwhelmed all human knowledge, which was already far in its decline; and men sunk every age deeper into ignorance, stupidity, and superstition; till the light of ancient science and history had very nearly suffered a total extinction in all the European nations.

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But there is an ultimate point of depression, as well as of exaltation, from which human affairs naturally return in a contrary progress, and beyond which they seldom pass either in their advancement or decline. The period, in which the people of Christendom were the lowest sunk in ignorance, and consequently in disorders of every kind, may justly be fixed at the eleventh century, about the age of William the Conqueror; and from that æra, the sun of science, beginning to re-​ascend, threw out many gleams of light, which preceded the full morning, when letters were revived in the fifteenth century. The Danes and other northern people, who had so long infested all the coasts, and even the inland parts, of Europe, by their depredations, having now learned the arts of tillage and agriculture, found a settled subsistence at home, and were no longer tempted to desert their industry, in order to seek a precarious livelihood by repine and by the plunder of their neighbours. The feudal governments, also, among the more southern nations, were reduced to a kind of system; and though that strange species of civil polity was ill fitted to ensure either liberty or tranquility, it was preferable to the universal licence and disorder, which had every where preceded it. But perhaps there was no event which tended farther to the improvement of the age, than one, which has not been much remarked, the accidental finding a copy of Justinian’s Pandects, about the year 1130, in the town of Amalfi in Italy. The ecclesiastics, who had leisure, and some inclination to study, immediately adopted with zeal this excellent system of jurisprudence, and spread the knowledge of it in every part of Europe. Besides the intrinsic merit of the performance, it was recommended to them by its original connexion with the imperial city of Rome, which, being the seat of their religion, seemed to acquire a new lusture and authority, by the diffusion of its laws over the western world. In less than ten years after the discovery of the Pandects, Vacarius, under the protection of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, read public lectures of civil law in the university of Oxford; and the clergy every where, by their example as well as exhortation, were the means of spreading the highest esteem for this new science. That order of men, having large possessions to defend, where [sic] in a manner necessitated to turn their studies towards the law; and their properties being often endangered by the violence of the princes and barons, it became their interest to enforce the observance of general and equitable rules, from which alone they could receive protection. As they possessed all the knowledge of the age, and were alone acquainted with the habits of thinking, the practice as well as science of the law, fell mostly into their hands: And tho’ the close connexion, which without any necessity they formed between the canon and civil law, begot a jealousy in the laity of England, and prevented the Roman jurisprudence from becoming

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the municipal law of the country, as was the case in many states of Europe, a great part of it was secretly transferred into the practice of the courts of justice, and the imitation of their neighbours, made the English gradually endeavour to raise their own law from its original state of rudeness and imperfection. It is easy to see what advantages Europe must have reaped by its inheriting at once, from the ancients, so complete an art, which was of itself so necessary for giving security to all other arts, and which, by refining, and still more, by bestowing solidity on the judgment, served as a model to farther improvements. The sensible utility of the Roman law both to publicand [sic] private interest recommended the study of it, at a time when the more exalted and speculative sciences carried no charms with them; and thus the last branch of ancient literature, which remained uncorrupted, was happily the first transmitted to the modern world. For it is remarkable, that in the decline of Roman learning, when the philosophers were universally infected with superstition and sophistry, and the poets and historians with barbarism, the lawyers, who in other countries are seldom models of science or politeness, were yet able, by the constant study and close imitation of their predecessors, to maintain the same good sense in their decisions and reasonings, and the same purity in their language and expression. What bestowed an additional merit on the civil law, was the extreme ignorance and imperfection of that jurisprudence, which preceded it among all the European nations, especially among the Saxons or ancient English. What absurdities prevailed, at that time, in the administration of justice, may be conceived from the authentic monuments which remain of the ancient Saxon laws; where a pecuniary commutation was received for every crime, where stated prices were fixed for men’s lives and members, where private revenges were authorized for all injuries, where the use of the ordeal, corsnet, and afterwards of the duel, was the received method of proof, and where the judges were rustic freeholders, assembled of a sudden, and deciding a cause from one debate, or altercation, of the parties. Such a state of society was very little advanced beyond the rude state of nature: Violence universally prevailed, instead of general and equitable maxims: The pretended liberty of the times, was only an incapacity of submitting to government: And men, not protected by law in their lives and properties, sought shelter, by their personal servility and attachments, under some powerful chieftain, or by voluntary combinations. The gradual progress of improvement, raised the Europeans somewhat from this uncultivated state; and affairs, in this island particularly, took very early a turn, which was more favourable to justice and to liberty. Civil employments and occupations soon became honourable among the English: The situation of

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that people rendered not the perpetual attention to wars so necessary as among their neighbours, and all regard was not confined to the military profession: The gentry, and even the nobility, began to deem an acquaintance with the law, a requisite part of education: They were less diverted than afterwards from studies of this kind by other sciences, and in the age of Henry VI. we are told by Fortescue, there were, in the inns of court, about two thousand students, most of them men of honourable birth, who gave application to this branch of civil knowledge. A circumstance which proves, that a considerable advance was already made in the science of government, and which prognosticated still a greater. One chief advantage, which resulted from the introduction and progress of freedom; and this consequence affected men both in their personal and civil capacities. If we consider the ancient state of Europe, we shall find, that the far greater part of the society were every where bereaved of their personal liberty, and lived entirely at the will of their masters. Every one, that was not noble, was a slave: The peasants were sold along with the land: The few inhabitants of cities were not in a better condition: Even the Gentry themselves were subjected to a long train of subordination under the greater barons, or chief vassals, of the crown; who, tho’ seemingly placed in a high state of splendor, yet, having but a slender protection from the law, were exposed to every tempest of state, and by the precarious condition, in which they lived, paid dearly for the power of oppressing and tyrannizing over their inferiors. The first incident which broke in upon this violent system of government, was the practice, begun in France, of erecting communities and corporations, endowed with privileges and a separate municipal government, which gave them protection against the tyranny of the barons, and which the prince himself deemed it prudent to respect. The relaxation of the feudal tenures, and an execution, somewhat stricter, of the publick law, bestowed an independance on vassals, which was unknown to their forefathers. And even the peasants themselves, though later than other orders of the state, made their escape from those bonds of villenage, or slavery, in which they had formerly been retained. It may appear strange, that the progress of the arts, which seems, among the Greeks and Romans, to have daily encreased the number of slaves, should in later times, have proved so general a source of liberty: But this difference of the events proceeded from a great difference in the circumstances, which attended those institutions. The ancient barons, being obliged to maintain themselves continually in a military posture, and little emulous of elegance, or splendor, employed not their villains as domestick servants, much less as

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manufacturers, but composed their retinue of free-​men, whose military spirit rendered the chieftain formidable to his neighbours, and who were ready to attend him in every warlike enterprize. The villains were occupied entirely in the cultivation of their master’s land, and paid their rents either in corn and cattle and other produce of the farm, or in servile offices, which they performed about the baron’s family, and upon the farms which he retained in his own possession. In proportion, as agriculture improved, and money encreased, it was found, that these services, though extremely burthensome in the villain, were of little advantage to the master; and that the produce of a large estate could be much more conveniently disposed of by the peasant himself, who raised it, than by the landlord, or his bailiff, who were formerly accustomed to receive it. A  commutation was therefore made of rents for services, and of money rents for those in kind; and as men, in a subsequent age, discovered, that farms were better cultivated where the farmer enjoyed a security of possession, the practice of granting leases to the peasant began to prevail, which entirely broke the bonds of servitude, already much relaxed from the former practices. Thus villenage went gradually into disuse throughout the more civilized parts of Europe: The interest of the master, as well as that of the slave, concurred in this alteration. The latest laws which we find in England for the enforcing or regulating this species of servitude, were enacted in the reign of Henry VII. And though the ancient statutes on this subject remain still unrepealed by parliament, it appears, that, before the reign of Elizabeth, the distinction of villain and freeman was totally, though insensibly abolished, and that no person remained in the state to whom the former laws could be applied. Thus personal freedom became almost general in Europe; an advantage which paved the way for the encrease of political or civil liberty, and which, even where it was not attended with this salutary effect, served to give the members of the community some of the most considerable advantages of it. The constitution of the English government, ever since the invasion of this island by the Saxons, may boast of this pre-​eminence, that, in no age, the will of the monarch was ever entirely absolute and uncontrouled: But, in other respects, the balance of power has extremely shifted among the several orders of the state; and this fabric has, experienced the same mutability, which has attended all human institutions.

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REVIEW OF FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“Art. V. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. In Six Vols. Octavo. Illustrated with Plates. By David Hume, Esq. Vol. I. Philadelphia, 1795. Campbell. Boards, 1 Dol. 67 cents to Subscribers,” The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, vol. 3, no. 1 (September 1795), pp. 29–​43. Anonymous The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal was a literary miscellany, published in Philadelphia by S.[amuel] H.[arrison] Smith. It survived for only one year. Reprinted below is the only known review of the first American edition of Hume’s History of England. Published by Robert Campbell (1769–​1800) in Philadelphia, the first American edition was a subscription edition produced over two years (1795–​6) and in six volumes. Reprinting Hume’s autobiographical “My Own Life,” as it appeared in Campbell’s edition, the reviewer shows how early American assessments of Hume’s writings were linked with appraisals of his life and character, a theme explored in Part IV below. For brief mentions of The American Monthly Review see API, p. 23; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp.  122, 789; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), p. 75. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ THE rapid progress of the citizens of the United States in manufactures, affords a topic of general felicitation. Among those, which lay claim to the most Successful rivalship with European industry, is the art of Printing. Our country has, for a long time, abounded with publications chiefly designed to enlighten

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the public mind on political points; hence the unequalled number and circulation of newspapers, which, in concurrence with other causes, have universally excited a disposition in the mind to read and think for itself. This thirst for information has produced a demand for most of the works of established merit, and has invigorated the enterprize of our printers and booksellers; who have already republished a great many European performances of merit. Among these the subject of this article may be reckoned. For accuracy and depth of reasoning, for neatness, and frequently elegance, of diction, HUME is deservedly celebrated. He may, in most cases, be considered as an impartial historian, though in some instances he has, without doubt, sacrificed truth to party-​attachments. But, even in these, he has given his reader sufficient materials to enable him to deduce true inferences; and there are few works which so eminently cherish independence of thinking as his. For while every man of letters reads Hume’s History of England, almost every reader condemns many of its author’s principles, and yet recommends it to general perusal. This edition contains, besides the History of England, a short life of the author, written by himself; which, together with a letter from Dr. Adam Smith on his death, we select for the amusement of our readers. ‘IT is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore I shall be short. It may be thought an instance of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this Narrative shall contain little more than the History of my Writings; as, indeed, almost all my life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations. The first success of most of my writings was not such as to be an object of vanity. ‘I WAS born the 26th of April 1711, old style, at Edinburgh. I was of a good family, both by father and mother: My father’s family is a branch of the Earl of Home’s, or Hume’s; and my ancestors had been proprieters of the estate which my brother possesses for several generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, President of the college of Justice: The title of Lord Halkerton came by succession to her brother. ‘MY family, however, was not rich, and being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an infant, leaving me with an elder brother and sister, under the care of our mother, a woman of singular merit, who, though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children. I passed thro’ the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments. My

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studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an unsurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring. ‘MY very slender fortune, however, being unsuitable to this plan of life, and my health being a little broken by my ardent application, I was tempted, or rather forced, to make a very feeble trial for entering into a more active scene of life. In 1734 I went to Bristol, with some recommendations to eminent merchants; but in a few months found that scene totally unsuitable to me. I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat; and I there laid that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply by [sic] deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature. ‘DURING my retreat in France, first at Rheims, but chiefly at Le Fleche, in Anjou, I composed my Treatise of Human Nature. After passing three years very agreeably in that country, I came over to London in 1737. In the end of 1738, I  published my Treatise, and immediately went down to my mother and my brother, who lived at his country-​house, and was employed himself very judiciously and successfully in the improvement of his fortune. ‘NEVER literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-​born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots. But being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the blow, and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country. In 1742 I printed at Edinburgh the first part of my Essays: The work was favourably received, and soon made me entirely forget my former disappointment. I continued with my mother and my brother in the country, and in that time recovered the knowledge of the Greek language, which I had too much neglected in my early youth. ‘IN 1745 I received a letter from the Marquis of Annandale, inviting me to come and live with him in England; I found also that the friends and family of that young nobleman were desirous of putting him under my care and direction, for the state of his mind and health required it. —​I lived with him a twelvemonth. My appointments during that time made a considerable accession to my small fortune. I then received an invitation from General St. Clair to attend him as a secretary to his expedition, which was at first meant against Canada, but ended in an incursion on the coast of France. Next year, to wit, 1747, I received

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an invitation from the General to attend him in the same station in his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. I then wore the uniform of an officer, and was introduced at these courts as aid-​de-​camp to the General, along with Sir Harry Erskine and Captain Grant, now General Grant. These two years were almost the only interruptions which my studies have received during the course of my life:  I  passed them agreeably, and in good company; and my appointments, with my frugality, had made me reach a fortune, which I  called independent, though most of my friends were inclined to smile when I said so: In short, I was now master of near a thousand pounds. ‘I had always entertained a notion, that my want of success in publishing the Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded more from the manner than the matter, and that I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in going to the press too early. I therefore cast the first part of that work anew in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, which was published while I was at Turin. But this piece was at first little more successful than the Treatise of Human Nature. On my return from Italy, I had the mortification to find all England in a ferment, on account of Dr. Middleton’s Free Enquiry, while my performance was entirely overlooked and neglected. A new edition, which had been published at London, of my Essays, moral and political, met not with a much better reception. ‘SUCH is the force of natural temper, that these disappointments made little or no impression on me. I went down in 1749, and lived two years with my brother at his country house, for my mother was now dead. I there composed the second part of my Essay, which I called Political Discourses, and also my Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which is another part of my Treatise that I cast anew. Meanwhile my bookseller, A. Millar, informed me that my former publications (all but the unfortunate Treatise) were beginning to be the subject of conversation; that the sale of them was gradually increasing, and that new editions were demanded. Answers by Reverends and Right Reverends came out two or three in a year, and I found, by Dr. Warburton’s railing, that the books were beginning to be esteemed in good company. However, I had a fixed resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body; and not being very irascible in my temper, I have easily kept myself clear of all literary squabbles. These symptoms of a rising reputation gave me encouragement, as I was ever more disposed to see the favourable than unfavourable side of things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a-​year. ‘IN 1751, I removed from the country to the town, the true scene for a man of letters. In 1752 were published at Edinburgh, where I then lived, my Political Discourses, the only work of mine that was successful on the first publication.

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It was well received abroad and at home. In the same year was published at London, my Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals; which, in my own opinion (who ought not to judge on that subject), is of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best. It came unnoticed and unobserved into the world. ‘IN 1752 the Faculty of Advocates chose me their Librarian, an office from which I received little or no emolument, but which gave me the command of a large library. I  then formed the plan of writing the History of England; but being frightened with the notion of continuing a narrative through a period of 1700 years, I commenced with the accession of the house of Stuart, an epoch when I  thought the misrepresentations of faction began chiefly to take place. I was, I own, sanguine in my expectations of the success of this work. I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the earl of Strafford; and, after the first ebullitions of their fury were over, what was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion. Mr. Millar told me, that in a twelve-​month he sold only forty-​five copies of it. I scarcely, indeed, heard of one man in the three kingdoms, considerable for rank or letters, that could endure the book. I must only except the primate of England, Dr. Herring, and the primate of Ireland, Dr. Stone, which seem two odd exceptions. These dignified prelates separately sent me messages not to be discouraged. ‘I WAS, however, I confess, discouraged; and had not the war been at that time breaking out between France and England, I have certainly retired to some provincial town of the former kingdom, have changed my name, and never more have returned to my native country. But as this scheme was not now practicable, and the subsequent volume was considerably advanced, I  resolved to pick up courage and to persevere. ‘IN this interval, I published at London my Natural History of Religion, along with some other small pieces: Its public entry was rather obscure, except only that Dr. Hurd wrote a pamphlet against it, with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility, which distinguish the Warburtonian school. This pamphlet gave me some consolation for the otherwise indifferent reception of my performance.

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‘IN 1756, two years after the fall of the first volume, was published the second volume of my History, containing the period from the death of Charles I. till the Revolution. This performance happened to give less displeasure to the Whigs, and was better received. It not only rose itself, but helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother. ‘BUT though I had been taught by experience, that the Whig party were in possession of bestowing all places, both in the state and in literature, I was so little inclined to yield to their senseless clamour, that in 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. It is ridiculous to consider the English constitution before that period as a regular plan of liberty. ‘IN 1759 I published my History of the House of Tudor. The clamour against this performance was almost equal to that against the History of the two first Stuarts. The reign of Elizabeth was particularly obnoxious. But I was no callous against the impressions of pubic folly, and continued very peaceably and contentedly in my retreat at Edinburgh, to finish, in two volumes, the more early part of the English History, which I gave to the public in 1761, with tolerable, and but tolerable success. ‘BUT, notwithstanding this variety of winds and seasons to which my writings had been exposed, they had still been making such advances, that the copy-​money given me by the booksellers much exceeded any thing formerly known in England; I was become not only independent, but opulent. I retired to my native country of Scotland, determined never more to set my foot out of it; and retaining the satisfaction of never having preferred a request to one great man, or even making advances of friendship to any of them. As I was now turned of fifty, I thought of passing all the rest of my life in this philosophical manner, when I received, in 1763, an invitation from the Earl of Hertford, with whom I was not in the least acquainted, to attend him on his embassy to Paris, with a near prospect of being appointed secretary to the embassy; and, in the meanwhile, of performing the functions of that office. This offer, however inviting, I at first declined, both because I was reluctant to begin connexions with the great, and because I was afraid that the civilities and gay company of Paris would prove disagreeable to a person of my age and humour: But on his Lordship’s repeating the invitation, I accepted of it. I have every reason, both of pleasure and interest, to think myself happy in my connexions with that nobleman, as well as afterwards with his brother General Conway.

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‘THOSE who have not seen the strange effects of modes, will never imagine the reception I met with at Paris, from men and women of all ranks and stations. The more I resiled from their excessive civilities, the more I was loaded with them. There is, however, a real satisfaction in living in Paris, from the great number of sensible, knowing and polite company with which that city abounds above all places in the universe. I thought once of settling there for life. ‘I WAS appointed secretary to the embassy; and, in summer 1765, Lord Hertford left me, being appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. I  was Charge d’Affairs till the arrival of the Duke of Richmond, towards the end of the year. In the beginning of 1766, I left Paris, and next summer went to Edinburgh, with the same view as formerly, of burying myself in a philosophical retreat. I returned to that place, not richer, but with much more money, and a much larger income, by means of Lord Hertford’s friendship, than I left it; and I was desirous of trying what superfluity could produce, as I  had formerly made an experiment of a competency. But in 1767 I received from Mr. Conway an invitation to be Undersecretary; and this invitation, both the character of the person, and my connexions with Lord Hertford, prevented me from declining. I  returned to Edinburgh in 1769, very opulent (for I  possessed a revenue of 1000l. a year), healthy, and though somewhat stricken in years, with the prospect of enjoying long my ease, and of seeing the increase of my reputation. ‘IN spring 1775 I as struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I  apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name a period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-​five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation’s breaking out at last with additional lustre, I knew I could have but a few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present. ‘TO conclude historically with my own character. I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments); I was, I say, a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding

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my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men, any wise eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked by her baleful tooth; and though I  wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct: Not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.’ April 18, 1776. [The review here reprinted Adam Smith’s letter to William Strahan about Hume’s death. For the text of this letter see below Part IV: “Contrast Between the Death of a Deist and a Christian”] The contracted size of this edition renders it cheaper, as well as more commodious, than the London edition. One volume only has yet appeared: but the bookseller promises, in his proposals, to complete the printing of the whole work in a few months; —​when he proposes, if encouraged, to publish the continuation of Hume, by Smollet.

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“ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. Parallel between HUME, ROBERTSON and GIBBON,” The Monthly Magazine, and American Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (May 1799), pp. 90–​94. “O.” The Monthly Magazine, and American Review was a monthly miscellany and review magazine published in New York by T. and J. Swords. Charles Brockden Brown was the editor and a frequent contributor. The essay reprinted below is an early example of American interest in comparing the historical writings of three great historians:  Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. On The Monthly Magazine and American Review see API, p.  145; BAP, pp.  106–​7; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 218–​22. For Campbell’s edition of Hume’s History, see Mark G.  Spencer, David Hume and Eighteenth-​Century America, esp. pp. 259–​69, 424–​63. On Campbell more generally, see also EAE, vol. 1, p. 189; and Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment & the Book: Scottish Authors & Their Publishers in Eighteenth-​Century Britain, Ireland & America (Chicago, 2006), esp. pp. 554–​5, 582–​9. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Parallel between HUME, ROBERTSON and GIBBON. AMONG English writers of history, common consent seems to have assigned the first place to Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon.—​The merit of each of these, compared with that of their contemporaries and their predecessors, is undoubtedly

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illustrious. That each has numerous defects will as readily be granted; but it will not be easily or unanimously decided to which, when compared with each other, the pre-​eminence is due. The eloquence and skill of an historian may be considered distinctly from the truth or falsehood, the utility or hurtfulness, of that system of opinions which he has happened to adopt, and to the inculcation of which his performance is wholly or chiefly devoted. The last consideration is of chief moment; and the judgment that we form of these writers will, of course, be influenced by the texture of that creed which we have previously embraced. The studious or lettered part of mankind may, at present, be divided into two sects, one of which is friendly, and the other hostile to religion. The first will regard any attempt to undermine the sacred edifice with horror and aversion. This abhorrence will be proportioned to the malice, dexterity and perseverance of the assailant. In these three qualities, Edward Gibbon will be thought to have excelled all former and contemporary writers. History is that kind of composition which, for obvious causes, will find most readers, and logical deductions and comprehensive argumentation are not suitable in this sphere. These, therefore, are not to be found in the works of Gibbon. His subject required him to explain the origin and progress of the Christian system; and, in performing this, he has attacked the truth of this system with the dangerous weapons of sarcasm and irony. The charms of his composition, the dignity and popularity of the theme, and the ingenuity and learning which he cannot be denied to have displayed, have made his book circulate far and wide, and given him uncommon power over the opinion of the thoughtless and precipitate. Hence, from those who esteem the Christian faith essential to the happiness of mankind, he must claim a large share of disapprobation. Those who embrace anti-​christian tenets will not, of course, applaud every attempt favourable to their cause. If they be candid and upright, they will discern the importance of this subject, and perceive that irony, and sarcasm, and partial inferences, and narrow views, have no tendency but to propagate error, to deprave the moral sentiments of mankind, and to vitiate their reason, by supplying them with a fallacious standard of belief. Nothing, to an ingenuous mind, is more hateful than the tricks and artifices of dispute, masked allusions, sarcastic hints, and ambiguous irony: these, if possible, must be hated more, when employed upon the side of what he deems truth, than when in opposition to it. They are indirect confessions of the weakness of the cause, and proofs of hypocrisy and malice in its advocates. Such, I am afraid, is the light in which the writings of Gibbon deserve to be viewed by impartial readers of both sects.

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David Hume was led, by the nature of his subject, into somewhat different tracts. He had, indeed, ample room for noting the effects of superstition and priestcraft; but he is, at least, open and explicit in the avowal of his sentiments. He does not debase his theme by frigid and unseasonable mirth, and is exempt from the preposterous exaggerations of the satirist, and the ignoble artifices of the hypocrite. Hume was the enemy not of any particular form of religion, but of religion itself. His inferences are, therefore, much too large to be admitted by a Christian reader; but, under certain obvious limitations, they will not be rejected by one who, while he believes in the truth and excellence of religion in general condemns the abuses of enthusiasm and hypocrisy. Hume, therefore, is not without his claims to respect, even from religious readers; while readers of a different kind will hasten to assign him the first place among sages and historians. Robertson, in his greatest work, had occasion to deduce the history of the reformation, and to mark, in a thousand instances, the effects of religion on the human mind. I believe there is little room for censure afforded by this historian to either class of readers. His distinctions will be allowed to be correct, between the substance and the semblance of religion; between the doctrines contained in the Christian records, and the forgeries and misinterpretations which were substituted in their place by the ignorance and ambition of the middle ages; between the deductions of reason and the dictates of self-​interest, on one hand, and the illusions of fanaticism on the other. The dignity, moderation and candour of his sentiments will be admired by all. Unchristian readers will not condemn him as a dealer in artifices and jests: they will applaud him for having said so much truth, and regret that he has not said (what they must deem) the whole truth. There are other modes by which the systems of historians may be supposed to influence the merit of their compositions. Their skill in deducing one event from another, and marking the influence of political transactions on the condition of those who are subject to that influence, are things disconnected with religion, and may be judged without biasses derived from that source. In this respect the sagacity and comprehensives of Hume is great beyond example. Compared with him, Gibbon and Robertson sink into inferiority. It is easier to determine their comparative than their absolute merit. That one is less skilful than the other in his selection and arrangement of events; in assigning the causes of events either in precedent occurrences or in the motives of the actor: in tracing the influence of laws and government on manners and arts, and exhibiting the genuine tendencies of wars and revolutions, may be safely asserted. The absolute quantity of

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the skill of each, and the exact degree of their inequality, are points of difficult solution. There is one circumstance which constitutes a palpable difference between Gibbon and his rivals. Decency is not the most worthless quality in an historical narration. It should seem, that the want of decency is a want not easily compensated. Wit, learning, and ingenuity, divorced from decency, seem to lose the greater part of their value. By indecency I do not mean the mention of objects and actions which custom has excluded from popular and mixed intercourse, but the mention of these in a way that indicates a polluted taste and debauched imagination in the writer, and that tends only to infuse depravity and vileness into the mind of the reader. No reader can fail to mark the enormous prevalence of this fault in the Roman history of Gibbon. The reader is continually shocked by these gross perversions. No opportunity in which they can possibly be admitted is supposed to escape. If they cannot be foisted into the text they are stuffed into a note. It is seldom, however, that he finds himself reduced to this expedient. He is deaf to the most obvious incoherences and discords, and will introduce lascivious allusions on occasion the most unsuitable and incongruous imaginable. He seldom forgets to subjoin a note, in which the nauseous image is further amplified and dwelt upon; in which, perhaps, the original manufacturer of the jest is pointed out, and the learned letcher is gratified with seeing the same image expressed in the bolder idiom of Latin or Greek. The substance of these allusions is not more disgustful than the manner. Voltaire, his great rival in obscenity, has joined wit, elegance and gaiety to his lasciviousness; but Gibbon’s style testifies nothing but the influence of depraved habits. His jests are unseasonable, out of place, dull, witless, and loathsome. We are astonished by what links images so dissimilar are connected, and allusions so remote brought into view; and our astonishment ceases only when we recollect the inveteracy of sensual habits, and their aptness to envenom and gangrene the whole soul of him over whom they tyrannize. When I have been able to forget my disgust, I have drawn amusement from marking the processes of this writer’s fancy, and the influence of habit to modify and tincture his ideas. In lately perusing his work, I could not but smile to see him step out of the way in order to amuse his readers with a long quotation from “La Pucelle d’Orleans;” a work which his extraordinary modesty will not allow him so much as to name, though he finds no difficulty in inserting ten or fifteen lines of it in the pages of what ought to be a serious history.

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It is scarcely necessary to observe, that Robertson and Hume are totally exempt from this odious blemish. That decorum and solemnity, are rigorously maintained, which are worthy of the narrator of great events, and a moral painter of the errors and calamities of mankind. The different spirit of these writers is forcibly illustrated in a passage of Gibbon. The topic of discussion is the turbulence of the Romans under the Papal government. These suggest a remark with what different degrees of reverence the Pope was regarded by his immediate and his distant subjects, and occasion is needlessly taken to introduce a quotation from Hume, in which the same remark is more diffusely expressed. The name of Hume instantly suggested to this quoter an incident in the life of Geoffrey, the father of Henry II. related by the former, over which he, no doubt, had often secretly chuckled. This is quoted in a note, and a remark is subjoined to the quotation, which would never have been made by Hume, and which shows the contrast, in this respect, between their characters.* As to style, these writers essentially differ from each other. Gibbon seems not to have constructed his style upon any known model. There is no example, among English writers, of the same species of composition; and his admiration of Tacitus is only to be found in his own assertions, and not in any resemblance which subsists between the styles of the two historians. It is distinguished by a certain loftiness and uniformity, from which he never stoops or relaxes. His loftiness is artificial and obscure. It is not the result of classical terms and polished phrases, but of circumlocution, and a kind of poetical exhibition of his meaning. He is difficult to understand, not from the inaptitude and ill selection of his words, but from epigrammatic brevity and unnatural arrangement of his thoughts. Uniformity can scarcely ever please; but a uniformity in defect, in artificial pomp and elaborate obscurity, must be eminently obnoxious. No writer is more tiresome than Gibbon. To read his book is not only a task from its sameness but a toil from its obscurity. You must pause at every step, and analize every sentence before it can be understood. Nothing is expressed in simple terms. Whatever would suggest itself to one ambitious merely of imparting his thoughts in a direct and perspicuous manner, is carefully avoided. Does he mean to tell you that Azo lived nearly the whole of the eleventh century, he will say, that the term of his mortal existence was almost commensurate with the lapse of the eleventh century. Does he desire to inform us, that Fontenelle, at his death, only wanted * Gibbon’s History, vol. vi. p. 486. Dublin edition.

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a fortnight of being an hundred years old, and that Aurengzebe and Cardinal Fleury died before their ninetieth year, he expresses it thus: Had a fortnight more been given to the philosopher, he might have celebrated his secular festival; but the lives and labours of the Mogul king and the French minister were terminated before they had accomplished their ninetieth year. It would not be easy to conceive a more powerful contrast to the obscurity and pomp of Gibbon, than the clear, flexible, and simple language of Hume. Extremes are difficult to shun; and, therefore, Hume is sometimes found to sink into careless and disjointed phrases —​into mere talk. His simplicity is sometimes incorrect, and his perspicuity destitute of vigour. At first sight, it should seem that Robertson adhered to the happy mean where lies true excellence; but an attentive examination will discover numerous defects. He prolongs his sentences, and multiplies his epithets without use. He is verbose and wanting in precision: still there is a dignity, simplicity, and clearness in his composition. He is looser and less accurate than Gibbon, more flowing and luxuriant than Hume. You read without efforts or pauses; and all is equable, lucid, and smooth. Hume and Robertson accomplish the true end of writing, which is, to impart our meaning swiftly and clearly. This end is thwarted and missed by Gibbon; and in him, therefore, whatever be his claim to respect for sagacity, fidelity and perseverance, one of the most essential attributes of a just style is wanting. The eloquence of any narrative relates to that property in it by which it fastens the attention, awakens the passions, and illuminates the imagination of the reader. That writer is eloquent who creates distinct images of characters and objects, who snatches us away from external things, and makes us spectators of the scenes which he describes. This is effected by selecting and arranging the parts of objects and the circumstances of events which are requisite to constitute the picture, and by cloathing them in language always perspicuous, and sometimes ornamental. Gibbon is, in this respect, excelled by many writers, who, in other particulars, are greatly inferior. The nature of his tale, indeed, obliges him to be concise; but his figures are trite and injudicious: his objects are obscured, instead of being illuminated by his style; and his characters are vaguely delineated and faintly coloured. Hume excels all men in pourtraying the heroes of the scene. His narrative is coherent and luminous. It affords pleasure to the old and the young, and fiction itself is outdone in its power to command and delight attention by the seductions of his tale.

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Robertson is scarcely inferior, in this respect, to Hume, and immeasurably surpasses Gibbon. His narrative, whether compendious or circumstantial, lays hold of the mind, and, when it is at an end, we awake, as from a pleasing dream, with reluctance. The whole series of American and Scottish history is a specimen of this. The military operations between Francis and the Emperor Charles; the expedition of the latter to Algiers; the conspiracy of Fiesco; the rebellion of Padilla; and the insurrection of the Anabaptists, are all related with a vividness and perspicuity that cannot be excelled. How far these writers are faithful to the truth it is not the purpose of this essay to investigate. Different opinions have been formed on this head. In Hume some have supposed that they discovered an inclination to depreciate the freedom of the English constitution, under Henry VIII.  and Elizabeth, and to degrade the heroes and patriots who contended for civil and religious liberty against Charles I. —​Robertson is said to have maligned the character of Mary of Scotland; to have misstated the spirit and progress of the feudal system; and to have palliated the cruelties of the Spaniards in America. Gibbon has been charged with misrepresentation, as well as sophistry; with suppressing and disguising those facts which are favourable to the Christian cause. These are points which I  shall not, at present, discuss. The end that I  proposed was no more than to compare their claims to the praise of eloquence and genius. If any defects are to be found in this comparison, I hope some of your readers will gratify me by detecting them.   O.

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HUME AND BURNET

“HUME AND BURNET,” The Philadelphia Repository, vol. 5, no. 10 (9 March 1805), p. 76. Anonymous The Philadelphia Repository was an eight-​page weekly. It was edited first by D[avid] Hogan and later by John. W. Scott, surviving for almost 6 years. One of its early historians described it as being both “popular and original.” On the Philadelphia Repository see API, p.  193; BAP, pp.  136–​7; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), p. 127; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), p. 152. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ I am no admirer of Hume. In conversation he was very thick; and I do believe hardly understood a subject till he had written upon it. Burnet I like much. It is observable, that none of his facts has been controverted, except his relation of the birth of the Pretender, in which he was certainly mistaken —​but his very credulity is a proof of his honesty. Burnet’s style and manner are very interesting. It seems as if he had just come from the king’s closet, or from the apartments of the men whom he describes, and was telling his reader, in plain honest terms, what he had seen and heard.

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ON HUME AND ROBERTSON

“VARIETY,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 2] (January 1806), pp. 44–​5. Anonymous The Port Folio was a monthly published in Philadelphia from 1801 to 1827. It was one of the longest running, best produced, and most widely circulated magazines in early America. Joseph Dennie (1768–​1812), as “Oliver Oldschool, Esq.,” was its first editor, serving from the magazine’s inception through until January 1812. The selection reprinted below, and the next item, are illustrative of the anecdotal nature of many early American comments on Hume. On The Port Folio see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), pp.  217–​20; Harold Milton Ellis, Joseph Dennie and His Circle: A Study in American Literature from 1792–​1812 (Austin, 1915); Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp.  223–​46; Albert H.  Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), pp. 92–​151. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ VARIETY. Variety is charming, Constancy is not for me, So, ladies, you have warning.         OLD BALLAD.

That profound philosopher and elegant scholar, Dugald Stewart, in his masterly account of the Life and Writings of Dr. Robertson, introduces the following comparison between the style of the historian of Mary, and the historian of England. No preference is given; and, though the caution of Mr. Stewart is visible,

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yet there is not the least glimpse of partiality. The quotation from Quintilian well illustrates the difference between the genius of Hume and Robertson. It is not my intention to attempt a parallel of these two eminent writers: nor, indeed, would the sincerity of their mutual attachment and the lively recollection of it, which still remains with many of their common friends, justify me in stating their respective merits in the way of opposition. Their peculiar excellencies, besides, were of a kind so different, that they might be justly said (in the language which a Roman critic employs in speaking of Livy and Sallust) to be pares magis quam similes. They divide between them the honor of having supplied an important blank in English literature, by enabling their countrymen to dispute the palm of historical writing with the other nations of Europe. Many have since followed their example in attempting to bestow interest and ornament on different portions of British story [sic]; but the public voice sufficiently acquits me of any partiality when I say, that hitherto they have only been followed at a distance. In this respect, I may with confidence apply to them the panegyric which Quintilian pronounces on the two great historians of ancient Greece; and, perhaps, if I were inclined to characterize the beauties most prominent in each, I might without much impropriety avail myself of the contrast with which that panegyric concludes: “Historiam multi scripsêre, sed nemo dubitat duos longe cæteris præferendos, quorum diversa virtus laudem pene est parem consecuta. Densus et brevis et semper instans sibi Thucydides. Dulcis et candidus et fusus Herodotus. Ille concitatis, hic remissis affectibus melior. Illi vi, hic voluptate.” Gibbon in his ‘Memoirs’ has very generously praised his rival and contemporary historians, and, as might be expected from the peculiarities of his own style, gives a decided preference to Hume. The opinion is so well expressed, that it is worth quoting. ‘The old reproach that no British altars had been raised to the muse of History, was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts. I will assume the presumption of saying that I was not unworthy to read them: nor will I disguise my different feelings in the repeated perusals. The perfect composition, the nervous language, the well-​ turned periods of Dr. Robertson inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps: the calm philosophy, the careless inimitable beauties, of his friend and rival, often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair.’ We cannot, however, imitate the discreet silence of Mr. Stewart, or Mr. Gibbon’s partiality to Hume. The style of this latter author, owing perhaps to his long residence in France, is extremely infected with Gallicisms, and a complete

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list would astonish the English critic and scholar. Hume, moreover, is often loose and careless in construction; and though he is unquestionably a graceful and an elegant writer, and, perhaps, unrivalled in the clearness and fluency of his narrative; yet in dignity, in strength, in harmony and in purity, he is surpassed by Robertson, who in his History of Scotland, his first and, in our opinion, his happiest production, has exhibited a model of English composition superior to the style of any of his countrymen.

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HUME ON TYRANNY: THE TUDORS AND THE STUARTS

“VARIETY,” The Port Folio, vol. 3 [series 2] (January 1807), p. 27. Anonymous See History, vol. 4, pp. 285–6. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ HUME insists with all the force of reason and truth, that the Tudors were more tyrannical in their temper than the Stuarts. The following is a curious picture of the imperiousness of Elizabeth. When the speaker, Sir Edward Coke, made the three usual requests of freedom from arrest, of access to her person, and of liberty of speech, she replied to him by the mouth of Puckering, Lord Keeper, that liberty of speech was granted to the commons, but they must known what liberty they were entitled to: not a liberty for every one to speak what he listeth, or what cometh in his brain to utter —​their privilege extended no farther than a liberty of aye or no. That she enjoined the speaker, if he perceived any idle hands so negligent of their own safety as to attempt reforming the church, or innovating in the commonwealth, that he should refuse the bills exhibited for that purpose, till they were examined by such as were fitter to consider of these things, and could better judge of them: that she would not impeach the freedom of their persons; but they must beware, lest, under colour of this privilege, they imagined that any neglect of their duty could be covered or protected.

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JEFFERSON ON HUME’S HISTORY

Letters from Jefferson to John Norvell (11 June 1807), to William Duane (12 August 1810), to Horatio G. Spafford (17 March 1814), to [George Washington Lewis] (25 October 1825); selections. Thomas Jefferson In the 1760s and 1770s a young Thomas Jefferson purchased, read, commonplaced, re-​ purchased, re-​ read, and otherwise absorbed Hume’s History of England. He even recommended to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., Peter Carr, and Robert Skipworth, that they read Hume’s History too. But from 1807 until his death in 1826, Jefferson’s recorded comments on Hume were negative ones. Reprinted below are illustrative selections from four of Jefferson’s letters. Here, Jefferson shows his preference for John Baxter’s A new and impartial history of England; from the most early period of genuine historical evidence, to the end of the present year; written on a plan entirely new, agreeable to the true principles of liberty and the British constitution (London, 1796). For Jefferson’s differences from Hume on the topic of history, see Craig Walton, “Hume and Jefferson on the Uses of History,” in Donald W. Livingston and James T. King, eds., Hume: A Re-​ evaluation (New York, 1979), pp. 389–​403. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell (11 June 1807): . . . History in general only informs us what bad government is. But as we have employed some of the best materials of the British constitution in the construction of our own government, a knolege of British history becomes useful to the American politician. There is however no general history of that country which

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can be recommmended. The elegant one of Hume seems intended to disguise & discredit the good principles of the government, and is so plausible & pleasing in it’s style & manner, as to instil it’s errors & heresies insensibly into the minds of unwary readers. Baxter has performed a good operation on it. He has taken the text of Hume as his ground work, abridging it by the omission of some details of little interest, and wherever he has found him endeavoring to mislead, by either the suppression of a truth or by giving it a false coloring, he has changed the text to what it should be, so that we may properly call it Hume’s history republicanised. He has moreover continued the history (but indifferently) from where Hume left it, to the year 1800. The work is not popular in England, because it is republican:  & but a few copies have every reached America. It is a single 4to. volume. Adding to this Ludlow’s Memoirs, Mrs. M’Cauley’s & Belknap’s histories, a sufficient view will be presented of the free principles of the English constitution. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Thomas Jefferson to William Duane (12 August 1810): . . . I have been long intending to write to you as one of the associated company for printing useful works. Our laws, language, religion, politics, & manners are so deeply laid in English foundations, that we shall never cease to consider their history as a part of ours and to study ours in that as it’s origin. Every one knows that judicious matter & charms of stile have rendered Hume’s history the manual of every student. I remember well the enthusiasm with which I devoured it when young, and the length of time, the research & reflection which were necessary to eradicate the poison it had instilled into my mind. It was unfortunate that he first took up the history of the Stuarts, became their apologist and advocated all their enormities. To support his work, when done, he went back to the Tudors, and so selected and arranged the materials of their history as to present their arbitrary acts only, as the genuine samples of the constitutional power of the crown, and, still writing backwards, he then reverted to the early history, and wrote the Saxon & Norman periods with the same perverted view. Altho’ all this is known, he still continues to be put into the hands of all our young people, and to infect them with the poison of his own principles of government. It is this book which has undermined the free principles of the English government, has persuaded readers of all classes that these were usurpations on the legitimate and salutary rights of the crown, and has spread universal toryism over the land. And the book will

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still continue to be read here as well as there. Baxter, one of Horne Tooke’s associates in persecution, has hit on the only remedy the evil admits. He has taken Hume’s work, corrected in the text his misrepresentations, supplied the truths which he suppressed, and yet has given the mass of the work in Hume’s own words. And it is wonderful how little interpolation has been necessary to make it a sound history, and to justify what should have been it’s title, to wit, ‘Hume’s history of England abridged and rendered faithful to fact and principle.’ I cannot say that his amendments are either in matter or manner in the fine style of Hume. Yet they are often unperceived, and occupy so little of the whole work as not to depreciate it. Unfortunately he has abridged Hume, by leaving out all the less important details. It is thus reduced to about one half it’s original size. He has also continued the history, but very summarily, to 1801. The whole work is of 834 quarto pages, printed close, of which the continuation occupies 283. I have read but little of this part. As far as I can judge from that little, it is a mere chronicle, offering nothing profound. This work is so unpopular, so distasteful to the present Tory palates & principles of England that I believe it has never reached a 2nd edition. I have often inquired for it in our book shops, but never could find a copy in them, and I think it possible the one I imported may be the only one in America. Can we not have it reprinted here? It would be about 4 volumes 8vo. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford (17 March 1814): . . . In truth Blackstone and Hume have made tories of all England, and are making tories of those young Americans whose native feelings of independence do not place them above the wily sophistries of a Hume or a Blackstone. These two books, but especially the former, have done more towards the suppression of the liberties of man, than all the millions of men in arms of Bonaparte and the millions of human lives with the sacrifice of which he will stand loaded before the judgment seat of his maker. I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs, among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our Agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independence and their power if called on to crush the Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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Thomas Jefferson to [George Washington Lewis] (25 October 1825): Dear Sir, I do not know whether the Professors to whom ancient and modern history are assigned in the University have yet decided on the course of historical reading which they will recommend to their schools. If they have, I wish this letter to be considered as not written, as their course, the result of mature consideration, will be preferable to any thing I could recommend. Under this uncertainty, and the rather as you are of neither of these schools, I may hazard some general ideas, to be corrected by what they may recommend hereafter. In all cases I prefer original authors to compilers. For a course of ancient history, therefore, of Greece and Rome especially, I should advise the usual suite of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus, Livy, Cæsar, Suetonius, Tacitus and Dion, in their originals, if understood, and in translations if not. For it’s continuation to the final destruction of the empire we must then be content with Gibbons, a compiler, and with Segur, for a judicious recapitulation of the whole. After this general course, there are a number of particular histories, filling up the chasms, which may be read at leisure in the progress of life. Such is Arrian, Q. Curtius, Polybius, Sallust, Plutarch, Dionysius, Halicarnassus, Micasi, &c. The ancient universal history should be on our shelves as a book of general reference, the most learned, and most faithful perhaps that ever was written. It’s style is very plain, but perspicuous. In modern history, there are but two nations with whose course it is interesting to us to be intimately acquainted, to wit: France and England. For the former Millot’s general history of France may be sufficient to the period when 1 Davila commences. He should be followed by Perefixe, Sully, Voltaire’s Louis XIV and XV, la Cretelle’s XVIIIme siècle, Marmontel’s Regence, Foulongion’s French revolution, and Madame de Staël’s, making up by a succession of particular history, the general one which they want. Of England there is as yet no general history so faithful as Rapin’s. He may be followed by Ludlow, Fox, Belsham, Hume and Brodie. Hume’s, were it faithful, would be the finest piece of history which has ever been written by man. It’s unfortunate bias may be partly ascribed to the accident of his having written backwards. His maiden work was the history of the Stuarts. It was a first essay to try his strength before the public. And whether as a Scotchman, he had really a partiality for that family, or thought that the lower their degradation the more fame he should acquire by raising them up to some favor, the object of his work was an apology for them. He spared nothing, therefore, to wash them white, and to palliate their misgovernment. For this purpose he suppressed truths, advanced falsehoods, forged authorities, and falsified records. All this is proved

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on him unanswerably by Brodie. But so bewitching was his style and manner, that his readers were unwilling to doubt anything, swallowed every thing, and all England became Tories by the magic of his art. His pen revolutionised the public sentiment of that country more completely than the standing armies could ever have done, which were so much dreaded and deprecated by the patriots of that day. Having succeeded so eminently in the acquisition of fortune and fame by this work, he undertook the history of the two preceding dynasties, the Plantagenets and Tudors. It was all important in this 2nd work to maintain the thesis of his 1st, that ‘it was the people who incroached on the sovereign, not the sovereign who usurped on the rights of the people.’ And again, chapt 53rd, ‘the grievances under which the English labored [to wit: whipping, pillorying, cropping, imprisoning, fining, &c.,] when considered in themselves, without regard to the constitution, scarcely deserve the name. Nor were they either burthensome on the people’s properties, or any wise shocking to the natural humanity of mankind.’ During the constant wars, civil and foreign, which prevailed while these two families occupied the throne, it was not difficult to find abundant instances of practices the most despotic, as are wont to occur in times of violence. To make this 2rd epoch support the 3rd, therefore required little garbling of authorities. And it then remained, by a 3rd work, to make of the whole a compleat history of England, on the principles on which he had advocated that of the Stuarts. This would comprehend the Saxon and Norman conquests, the former exhibiting the genuine form and political principles of the people constituting the nation, and founded in the rights of man, the latter build on conquest and physical force, not at all affecting moral rights, nor even assented to by the free will of the vanquished. The battle of Hastings indeed was lost but the natural rights of the nation were not staked on the event of a single battle. Their will to recover the Saxon constitution continued unabated, and was at the bottom of all the unsuccessful insurrections which succeeded in subsequent times. The victors and vanquished continued in a state of living hostility, and the nation may still say after losing the battle of Hastings,    ‘What tho’ the field is lost? All is not lost, the unconquerable will And study of revenge, immortal hate And courage never to submit or yield.’

The government of a nation may be usurped by the forcible intrusion of an individual into the throne. But to conquer its will, so as to rest the right on

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that, the only legitimate basis, requires long acquiescence and cessation of all opposition. The whig historians of England therefore have always gone back to the Saxon period for the true principles of their constitution, while the tories and Hume, their Coryphæus, date it from the Norman conquest, and hence conclude that the continual claim by the nation of the good old Saxon laws, and the struggles to recover them, were ‘encroachments of the people on the crown, and not usurpations of the crown on the people.’ Hume, with Brodie, should be the last histories of England to be read. If first read, Hume makes an English tory, from whence it is an easy step to American toryism. But there is a History, by Baxter, in which, abridging somewhat by leaving out some entire incidents as less interesting now than when Hume wrote, he has given the rest in the identical words of Hume, except that when he comes to a fact falsified, he state it truly, and when to a suppression of truth, he supplies it, never otherwise changing a word. It is in fact an editic expurgation of Hume. Those who shrink from the volume of Rapin, may read this first, and from this lay a first foundation in basis of truth.

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HUME’S HISTORY: AN ENGLISH CLASSIC

“THE LITERARY WORLD,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series  3] (January 1809), pp. 98–​100. Anonymous The selection reprinted below, and the three following, are all from The Port Folio. They show a miscellaneous and mixed reception for Hume as historian. On The Port Folio see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), pp.  217–​20; Harold Milton Ellis, Joseph Dennie and His Circle: A Study in American Literature from 1792–​1812 (Austin, 1915); Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp.  223–​46; Albert H.  Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), pp.  92–​151. That Hume constantly revised his History as some of his critics claimed, is certainly true: see Fredric van Holthoon, “Hume and the 1763 Edition of His History of England,” Hume Studies, vol. 23, no. 1 (1997), pp. 133–​52. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

THE LITERARY WORLD The booksellers of Philadelphia having long contemplated the publication of the most celebrated histories of England, it was deemed by the Editor no impertinent service to the cause of elegant letters concisely to state the pretensions, and modestly to vindicate the reputation of Hume and Smollet. Without impertinently discoursing upon the utility of historical narrative, a topic, which must be obvious to every reflecting reader, we may be permitted to

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remark that the name of Hume is an ample passport to celebrity. Whatever may be thought of his demerits by the scrupulous, or the pious, as an author, unhappily inclining to the side of infidelity, his talents, as an historian and politician, cannot be too strenuously applauded. Although nearly half a century has elapsed, since the commencement of his literary career, his fame is still augmenting. Among the Scotch, even in the opinion of those who are acrimoniously disposed towards him as a sceptic, he is considered as the prince of modern historians. Nor does the jealousy of South Britain dispute his precedency. Gibbon, a competent judge, and himself a skilful artificer of language, thus nobly compliments his illustrious predecessor: “The old reproach that no British altars had been raised to the Muse of History, was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the Histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts. I will assume the presumption of saying, that I was not unworthy to read them: nor will I disguise my different feelings in the repeated perusals. The perfect composition, the nervous language, and well-​turned periods of doctor Robertson enflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps: the calm philosophy, the careless inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair”. Doctor Johnson, a high and commanding authority, objects to the Gallicisms, which, he avers, sometimes pollute the page of Mr. Hume. As this opinion of a mighty critic has been generally credited, both abroad and at home, the writer of this article hopes that he shall not be taxed with arrogant presumption, if he modestly attempt to vindicate the purity of the style of a favourite writer. Long before the arrival of the literary manhood of our historian, oppressed by Indigence and mortified by Neglect, he had, in a sort of despair, abandoned his own country, and sequestered himself for three years in a provincial town in France. At subsequent periods he passed much of his time on the continent, and as he was a passionate admirer both of the literature and the character of the Parisians, it is by no means wonderful that his style should occasionally be slightly tinged with the peculiarities of a foreign idiom. Accordingly, in the first editions of his invaluable history, we may discover, on a strict scrutiny, a few phrases which are corrupted by a French infusion. Doctor Priestly, in his ingenious Grammar, one of the most instructive books he ever published, was, after the usual procession of the periodical critics, the first to discover and indicate these Gallicisms. But though he searched for them with all the perspicacity of a philologer, his zeal and industry could detect but a few, and these of trivial importance. All this criticism is now perfectly nugatory or worse. It must he remembered that Hume’s History has run through repeated editions; that after

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its celebrity was sufficiently diffused, the industrious author resided, for periods of long duration, in the capital, where, from the examples of the purest writers and speakers, he could not fail to adjust the accuracy of his diction. Moreover, it is notorious to all, who have the slightest acquaintance with polite literature, that the History of England, as it now appears, is perfectly English. The author, an ambitious aspirant after literary renown, whose ruling passion was the love of fame, to whom study was the greatest source of enjoyment, and who “regarded every object as contemptible, except the improvement of his talents as a writer,” would not and could not fail, after repeated revisions of his work, so to prepare his pages as to defy all the assaults of verbal criticism. In fact Hume is now justly considered as an English classic, and his narrative as a fine model of composition. The beauties in his History are innumerable. He commands all our attention. He has a claim for all our applause, whether he describes the projects of the duke of Normandy, or the battle of Hastings, the glories of the house of Plantagenet, or the tyranny of the Tudors, the insolence of Becket, or the pageantry of Wolsey, the primitive simplicity of Latimer, or the archiepiscopal dignity of Laud, the loyalty of Falkland, the wisdom of Strafford, the spirit of Derby, the fidelity of Clarendon, or the murder of Charles. Let an ambitious student imprint on his memory, Mr. Hume’s narrative of the martial maid of Orleans, the battle of Agincourt, the approach of the Armada, the cruelties of Mary, the execution of lady Gray, the fanaticism of the covenanters, the habitual hypocrisy of Cromwell, and the gross credulity of his Roundheads, and he will scarcely find his mind stored with finer passages by any historian. In a spirit of false and malignant criticism, certain carpers among the French, have rashly pronounced Smollet, “but an indifferent writer.” They have audaciously averred that he is both partial and passionate, and makes no atonement for these faults by the elegance of his style. They ignominiously brand him as a dry writer, who touches neither the imagination nor the heart. Just admiration of an accomplished Scotchman, urges us to inform these French critics, that their opinion of his literary pretensions is utterly destitute of a shadow of foundation. It is partial, unjust, and absurd. His History, though avowedly written in haste, and sometimes in the spirit of a partizan, is full of vivacity and vigour. It is never dull, monotonous or fatiguing. It abounds in reflections. Its tones are various and harmonious; and by the energy of some passages, and the eloquence of others, it affects both the imagination and the heart. A critic must be wholly destitute of discernment, as well as of candour, who pronounces the style of Smollet devoid of energy and grace. Few are more gloriously distinguished than this nervous and fluent writer.

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HUME’S PROSE: “TAME AND UNINTERESTING”

“RHETORIC  —​FOR THE PORT FOLIO. LECTURE X, Of the peculiarities attached to the correct reading and recitation of Narration, Dialogue, Soliloquy, Address, and works of Sentiment and Imagination,” The Port Folio, vol. 3 [series 3] (June 1810), pp. 488–​99; selection from pp. 488–​90. Anonymous For the quotation from Hume, see History, vol. 3, pp. 165–​6. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ GENTLEMEN, The application of the essential principles of correct Elocution to the reading and recitation of the different species of Verse, constituting the subject of my last address to you, I shall, this evening, direct your attention to the application of the same principles to the various kinds of composition in Prose. The principles of correctness both as to reading and recitation having been inculcated in my preceding lectures, this, and the two following, will of course chiefly consist of exemplifications of those principles, in extracts from some of our best authors, which, if judiciously effected, will not only exhibit specimens of varied Elocution, but also present to the mind some of the most brilliant beauties of English composition. In the reading or recitation of every species of composition, Expression constitutes its life and energy; and that cannot be given, without a perfect comprehension of the author’s meaning, and at the same time such a degree of sensibility as to feel or awaken those passions which his sentiments are calculated to excite. In Narration the field is very ample and diversified —​from the calm recital of historical events, to the animated declaration of personal incident: in all of

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which, the reader or speaker, to express himself justly, must express himself naturally. The degree of animation or expression in the reader, must be accommodated to the nature of the subject, and the style of the author. I will exemplify this position by contrasting two narratives of an interesting historical event, in which the diversity of style, as it must produce different degrees of emotion in the reader, must also produce correspondent effects in the hearer. One example will, I conceive, sufficiently exemplify and prove my position; particularly as it will be drawn from two of our most celebrated modern historians, Hume and Robertson. The sack of Rome, by Bourbon, in 1527, is thus described by those two eloquent writers; and tho’ the recital of both is critically correct as to language, and highly descriptive of that interesting event, yet the glowing and animated style of the latter excites an interest in the mind of the reader, and of course gives a degree of energy to the expression and vivacity to the tones of the voice, which the former description neither requires, nor can awaken. The following is Mr. Hume’s account: “The duke was himself killed as he was planting a ladder to scale the walls; but his soldiers rather enraged than discouraged by his death, mounted to the assault with the utmost valour, and entering the city sword in hand, exercised all those brutalities which may be expected from ferocity excited by resistance, and from insolence which takes place when that resistance is no more. This renowned city, exposed by her renown alone to so many calamities, never endured in any age, even from the barbarians, by whom she was often subdued, such indignities as she was now constrained to suffer. The unrestrained massacre and pillage, which continued for several days, were the least ills to which the unhappy Romans were exposed. Whatever was respectable in modesty, or sacred in religion, seemed but the more to provoke the insults of the soldiery. Virgins suffered violation in the arms of their parents, and upon those very altars to which they had fled for protection. Aged prelates after enduring every indignity, and even every torture, were thrown into dungeons and menaced each moment with the most cruel death, in order to engage them to reveal their sacred treasures or purchase liberty by exorbitant ransoms. Clement himself, who had trusted for protection to the sacredness of his character, and neglected to make his escape in time, was taken captive, and found that his dignity, which procured him no regard from the Spanish soldiers, did but draw on him the insolent mockery of the Germans, who being generally attached to the Lutheran principles, were pleased to gratify their animosity by the abasement of the sovereign pontiff.” Hume’s History of England.

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How tame and uninteresting is this narration, compared with that given by Dr. Robertson! “Bourbon’s troops, notwithstanding all their valour, gained no ground, and even began to give way; when, their leader, perceiving that on this critical moment the fate of the day depended, threw himself from his horse; pressed to the front; snatched a scaling ladder from a soldier; planted it against the wall; and began to mount it, encouraging his men with his voice and hand to follow him. But, at that very instant, a musket bullet from the ramparts pierced his groin with a wound which he immediately felt to be mortal. It was impossible to conceal this fatal event from the army. The soldiers soon missed their general whom they were accustomed to see in every time of danger: but, instead of being disheartened by the loss, it animated them with new valour. The name of Bourbon resounded along the line accompanied with the cry of blood and revenge. The veterans who defended the walls were soon overpowered by numbers; the unrestrained body of city recruits fled at the sight of danger; and the enemy with irresistible violence rushed into the town. It is impossible to describe or even to imagine the misery and horror of that scene which followed. Whatever a city taken by storm can dread from military rage unrestrained by discipline  —​whatever excesses the ferocity of the Germans, the avarice of the Spaniards, or the licentiousness of the Italians could commit, these the wretched inhabitants were obliged to suffer. Churches, palaces, and the houses of private persons, were plundered without distinction. No age, or character, or sex, was exempt from injury. Cardinals, nobles, priests, matrons, virgins, were all the prey of soldiers, and at the mercy of men deaf to the voice of humanity. Nor did these outrages cease, as is usual, in towns which are carried by assault, when the first fury of the storm was over: the imperialists kept possession of Rome several months; and, during all that time, the insolence and brutality of the soldiers scarce abated. Their booty in ready money amounted to a million of ducats: what they raised by ransoms and exactions far exceeded that sum. Rome, though taken several different times by the northern nations, who overran the empire in the fifth and sixth centuries, was never treated with so much cruelty by the barbarous and heathen Huns, Vandals, and Goths, as now by the bigotted subjects of a Catholic monarch.” Robertson’s History of Charles 5th. Here all is activity, energy, and animation. The mind of the reader is hurried into the very scene of action; and the emotion excited by so vivid a description, of course requires a corresponding expression of tone, and vivacity of manner,

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which in reading the former account would appear bombastic and absurd. The elevation of language is admirably accommodated to the solemnity and importance of the event, and the harmonious construction of the sentences kindles a glow of enthusiasm that a reader of sensibility will instinctively impart to his enunciation.

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“For the Port Folio. Hume and Robertson Compared,” The Port Folio, vol. 4 [series 3] (October 1810), pp. 330–​33. Anonymous _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

HUME AND ROBERTSON COMPARED. MR. OLDSCHOOL, In your Port Folio for June last, I observed a comparison drawn between the accounts given by Hume and Robertson, of the sack of Rome by Bourbon, much to the disadvantage of the former historian.  —​If critics would be content to express their opinions with moderation, and avoid extravagance both of censure and praise, the nature of taste affords such a range for peculiar modes of thinking, that an ample indulgence of opinion might be taken without danger. The question on the general comparative merits of these celebrated historians is gone to rest, although for a time it excited much agitation and interest in the world of letters. The general superiority of Hume over his rival is settled into a tranquil undisturbed sentiment, without any detraction from the genius and talents of Robertson. The two passages selected for comparison in the Port Folio, are both so unexceptionable and fine, that a man might have preferred either or neither, without the hazard of heresy or absurdity —​But when we are told that Hume’s description neither requires nor awakens any energy of expression or vivacity of tone in reciting it; that the narration is “tame and uninteresting,” one is led to a more particular inquiry into the justice of the criticism —​I have scanned the two passages

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with attention, and cannot hesitate to say, that if Robertson has more vivacity in his narration, Hume has more energy —​Robertson’s description has less originality of thought, figure and expression; dealing more in the common terms and images for similar events. —​Speaking of the effect of the fall of Bourbon upon his soldiers, Hume says, they were “rather enraged than discouraged by his death,” —​Robertson gives the same idea with more words, but less discrimination and force. —​“Instead of being disheartened by the loss, it animated them with new valour.” —​Now the feeling excited by the loss of a favourite commander, is rather of rage and revenge, than of valour. —​The conduct of the conquerors, is described by Hume in a sentence full of fine reflection and strong expression. —​ “This renowned city, exposed by her renown alone to so many calamities, never endured in any age, even from the barbarians, by whom she was often subdued, such indignities as she was now constrained to suffer.”  —​In a preceding sentence he tells us, the soldiers, “entering the city, sword in hand, exercised all those brutalities which may be expected from ferocity excited by resistance, and from insolence which takes place when that resistance is no more.” —​Look then to his description of virgins violated in the arms of their parents, and on the altars to which they had fled for protection; of the tortures inflicted upon aged prelates, for the discovery of their sacred treasures, and if it be found tame and uninteresting, it must be to nerves differently organized from mine. Is not the very first sentence of Robertson, deficient of elegance both of construction and expression? “Bourbon’s troops, notwithstanding all their valour;” Here is a long, painful and unnecessary parenthesis, for we know, without this parenthetical information, that whatever happened to Bourbon’s troops, did happen notwithstanding their valour —​But what did happen? they “gained no ground, and even began to give way.”  —​Here are two as common and vulgar phrases as are to be found in any gazette account of a battle, and, lest they should not be mean enough, they are linked together by that paltry “even.” —​Bourbon’s throwing himself from his horse, leading and encouraging his men, and mounting the wall, is indeed full of animation, but not very new —​I do not see the necessity of marking with so much exactness the place of the wound —​To have said it was mortal was enough for the historian; the surgeon might require more particulars of its nature, its length, depth and position; which precision would have been also necessary in an indictment against the man who shot the gun, as appears by a Virginia case lately published in our newspapers —​Robertson then proceeds with his favourite even. “It is impossible to describe or even imagine the misery,” &c. It would have given the whole force of his idea to have said, it is impossible to imagine, &c. I have, however, no desire to depreciate this excellent

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historian, or to treat him disrespectfully, although I think his style is frequently too florid and diffuse for a recorder of facts, and sometimes wanting in energy and precision. —​The rest of the extract introduced in the Port Folio, is worthy of all commendation. Without making invidious and unnecessary comparisons, permit me to direct the attention of your readers, to Gibbon’s account of the siege of Rome, by the Goths in 537, and its defence by Belisarius. —​I would make a full extract of it, but it would be too long —​you will indulge me in transcribing a part —​ Belisarius was, by the misconduct of some of his troops, suddenly surrounded with a small party of horse, by the innumerable squadrons of the barbarians —​ After a most animated account of the assault made upon his little band, and of the particular efforts used to destroy him by pointing out the horse on which he rode, the historian proceeds. —​“The Roman general was strong, active, and dexterous: on every side he discharged his weighty and mortal strokes; his faithful guards imitated his valour, and defended his person; and the Goths, after the loss of a thousand men, fled before the arms of a hero. —​They were rashly pursued to their camp; and the Romans, oppressed by multitudes, made a gradual, and at length a precipitate retreat to the gates of the city: the gates were shut against the fugitives; and the public terror was increased, by the report, that Belisarius was slain —​his countenance was indeed disfigured by sweat, dust, and blood; his voice was hoarse, his strength was almost exhausted; but his unconquerable spirit still remained; he imparted that spirit to his desponding companions; and their last desperate charge was felt by the flying barbarians, as if a new army, vigorous and entire, had been poured from the city —​The Flaminian gate was thrown open to a real triumph.”  —​The description of the first general assault made upon the city, begins in a fine style, uniting historical truth with the exploits and passions of chivalry —​“On the morning of the nineteenth day a general attack was made from the Prænestine gate to the Vatican: seven Gothic columns, with their military engines, advanced to the assault, and the Romans who lined the ramparts, listened with doubt and anxiety to the cheerful assurances of their commander. As soon as the enemy approached the ditch, Belisarius himself drew the first arrow, and such was his strength and dexterity, that he transfixed the foremost of the barbarian leaders —​a shout of applause and victory was reechoed along the wall —​He drew a second arrow, and the stroke was followed with the same success and the same acclamation.” —​The whole account of this memorable siege is glowing, yet not fanciful; and brings us into the scene of action with all the anxieties and passions of those engaged in it, without the tediousness of minute detail.

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“COINCIDENCES. Hume and Dryden,” The Port Folio, vol. 2 [series  5] (July 1816), p. 126. Anonymous _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ The sly sarcasm of Hume against the clergy, seems quite in character, but it is not original. He says, in note i. to the first volume, “the ambition of the clergy can often be satisfied only by promoting ignorance and superstition, and implicit faith, and pious frauds; and having got what Archimedes only wanted (namely, another world on which he could fix his engine) no wonder they move this world at their pleasure.” In Dryden’s Don Sebastian, Dorax thus addresses the Musti: Content you with monopolizing Heav’n, And let this little hanging ball alone; For, give you but a foot of conscience there, And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.

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HUME ON RELIGION AS A CAUSE OF THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

“REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Dean KENNEY’s Principles and Practices of pretended Reformers,” Christian Observer and Advocate, vol. 19, no. 226 (October 1820), pp. 666–​93; selection from pp. 669–​82. Anonymous The Christian Observer and Advocate was a London monthly that was reprinted in a number of American cities including Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Hume’s discussion of the causes of the English Civil War, and especially the role played by religion, was frequently discussed and debated in early America. On the Christian Observer see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 199–​208; API, p. 58. For more on Hume and the Puritans, see selection #118. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ [A]‌man may be not only a Calvinist, but a Calvinist and a Disciplinarian too, and yet retain, with his love of liberty, respect and attachment to the throne. The remark may be extended to the Presbyterians of Scotland. Undoubtedly there is much of their conduct, as well as of the proceedings of their brethern in England, which every enlightened friend of rational liberty, and every generous mind, must reprobate, and condemn. But if they are indeed to be stigmatized through all coming ages for the harsh treatment with which they repaid the unsuspecting confidence of their sovereign, when he fled to their camp at Newark, and, in addition to all their other offences, to bear the reproach “of selling their king, and betraying their prince for money,” let it also be remembered, that when the intention of brining him to trial became known,

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“the Scots exclaimed, and protested against the violence:”* and afterwards, although “invited by the English Parliament to model their government into a republican form, they resolved still to adhere to monarchy, which had ever prevailed in their country, and which, by the express terms of their Covenant, they had engaged to defend.” “The execution, therefore, of the king, against which they had always protested, having occasioned a vacancy of the throne, they immediately proclaimed his son and successor, Charles the Second,”† &c. These facts we take to be undisputed; and so little was the conduct of the Presbyterians in England approved by Hugh Peters, that he charged them in the pulpit, according to the cant of the day, with the intention of crucifying Christ, and releasing Barabbas. “It would, however,” says the Dean, “be a contradiction to the evidence of authentic history to attribute their wish for the preservation of the king’s life at the period when Mr. Peters uttered his pious reproaches against them, to any just feeling of loyalty.” (p. 203.) And to the same purport he tells us (p. 266,) that “though the numerous faction of Presbyterian saints, which had begun the rebellion, were now extremely hostile to the execrable measure of putting their sovereign to death,” yet they deserve no credit for their moderation: “they seem to have been brought, in a great degree, to reason, by their terror of the violent faction of Independent saints,” (p. 266:) and he refers to a note D, comprising Nelson’s statement on the subject, as incontrovertible. Some of our readers may probably smile, when they find that the notes intended to be subjoined to this work are, by reason of its length, wholly omitted. But it is not difficult to discover, that, in the opinion of the Dean, the Presbyterians, having at first begun the rebellion, were driven into something like loyalty by their hatred and horror of the Independents. These motives may easily be supposed to have very greatly invigorated the spirit of loyalty where it was languid, and perhaps in not a few cases to have created it. Lord Clarendon supposes that many of the Scottish preachers, in presuming to pray for the king, and generally, though secretly, exasperating the minds of the people against the then overbearing domination of Cromwell, were influenced more by the affront that was offered to Presbytery, than the conscience of what was due to majesty:‡ and Mr. Hume intimates something of the same kind. The thing is so probable in itself, that we have little scruple in ascribing to the impression produced by the violence of fanatical sectarians, as Baxter§ has done before us, that universal spirit of combination * Hume †

Hume; year 1649. Book XIV. § Life, part II. p. 207. ‡

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which at length united in one cause both the old friends of the king and the party of the Parliament. But we cannot so readily admit, what the Dean seems to intimate, that this was the main or the chief reason or [sic] their desiring to preserve the life of the king: the republican faction was that of the Independents; whereas Mr. Hume asserts, (however contrary it may be, as the Dean of Achonry insists, to the evidence of authentic history,) that the project of the Presbyterians was, not that of destroying royalty, but that “of confining to very narrow limits the power of the crown, and reducing the king to the rank of first magistrate.”* Their plan was to reduce the authority of the king far below the standard which was necessary for the liberties of the people; and the government, which they sought to establish, would have stripped royalty of many of those appendages which are requisite for the proper dignity of the crown: but they were not generally, and, in the proper sense of the word, favorable to a republic; and there is a wide difference between aiming to establish monarchy, however limited, and seeking the destruction of the king:† and if certain individuals of the party were conspicuous for their violence, this can with no colour of justice be adduced in condemnation of the whole body. Some of them were probably hostile to royalty, and to the person of the sovereign: yet so difficult was it, notwithstanding the alleged prevalence of the Presbyterian, and the Independent or Republican faction in the Long Parliament, and notwithstanding all the exertions of regicidal and fanatical preachers, to procure a vote for the trial of their king, that, according to the admission of Dean Kenney himself, seven eighths of the members, on account of their hostility to that nefarious measure, were excluded from the house by the bayonets of the conspirators; and nearly half of the remainder, even under these circumstances of terror, opposed the ordinance for trial!‡ So that, after all we have heard of the fatal influence of the Calvinistic doctrines and a Puritan Parliament, the measure was carried at last by the “base refuse of a faction surrounded by Cromwell’s bayonets!” (p.  261.) One would suppose, if Calvinism be regicidal, that almost all the Calvinists in England had been suddenly annihilated.

* Lord Clarendon, in speaking of the state of the Parliament at the time when Monk was on the point

of effecting the restoration, observes, “It was thought these men (some of the men elected after the war,) with others who had been lawfully chosen, were willing and desirous that the concessions made by the late king at the Isle of Wight, might be accepted; which in truth did, with the preservation of the name and life of the king, nearly as much establish a republican government, as was settled after his murder; and because they would insist upon that, they were, with those circumstances of force and violence, which are formerly mentioned, excluded from the House; wihout which that horrid villany could never have been committed.” Book XVI. † Hume; year 1644. ‡ Of forty-​six members then in the House, only twenty-​six voted for it.

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But were not the enemies of the church and the throne exclusively Calvinistic? And is not this an evidence of the tendency of these tenets? . . . Without pledging ourselves for the literal correctness of this statement, it may at least justify the remark, that those persons who attempt to draw a clear boundary between the friends of the King and the friends of the Parliament, as if all churchmen were on one side of the line, and all Presbyterians on the other, are under a manifest error; and that not less erroneous is the supposition, which refers the discontents of those unhappy times exclusively to motives of religion. It is probable, indeed, that the seeds of discontent had been sown at the Reformation. So long as the papal authority was dominant in England, it checked the progress of inquiry; and notwithstanding the arrogance of its claims, and the insolence with which it sometimes trampled upon the rights of sovereigns, as well as of their subjects, it served powerfully to retain the people at large in a blind and unreflecting submission to the authority of the state. So little, at that period, were the principles of civil liberty understood or regarded, that measures which would seem now to be extremely oppressive, excited not a murmur of dissatisfaction: and if the papal authority could have been upheld, a free constitution would probably have been as much beyond the wishes of Englishmen as beyond the possibility of attainment. It was not Calvinism, but the progress of the Reformation, and the revival of letters, which first gave a shock to the existing establishment.* The very circumstance of appealing to the judgment of the people on the points of debate between the Romish hierarchy and the Reformers, combined as it was with disgust at the restraints of the old religion, and indignation at the tyranny of the ecclesiastics, naturally served to open the minds of men, and to give to their inquiries a scope and freedom hitherto unknown. This spirit of inquiry, being once excited, was very speedily directed toward the civil constitution and the rights of the people. So intimate was the connexion in this country between civil and ecclesiastical tyranny, that an inquiry into the abuses of the ecclesiastical system led almost necessarily to the wish for political reform. The increasing intelligence of the community was naturally unfavourable to the arbitrary rights of the throne; and it was moreover obvious that the religion of the Protestants never could be safe, while subjected to the wayward caprices of a single individual. Hence arose a wish for a greater degree of civil liberty than the subject had hitherto enjoyed: and a struggle presently commenced, which was never wholly laid aside till it issued in the glorious Revolution of 1688. * See McCrie’s Life of Knox.

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Mr. Hume adverts to this point at so early a period as 1534. Apprehensions, which he considers to have been well founded, were even at that time entertained, that political innovations were likely to follow the attempts against the authority of the pope. The spirit of the Reformers in those days he states to have been republican. * We are not to infer, from this remark, as the Dean of Achonry would conclude from similar data against the Calvinists, that Protestantism is but another word for disloyalty:  Mr. Hume expressly guards against the inference:  neither are we to suppose that the republican mania was universal among the Reformers; for we know the contrary. But under the circumstances of the times, this spirit would probably be cherished by many friends of the Reformation; and where the principle of loyalty still remained, it was doubtless associated with an ardent desire for a government less despotic in its character, under which they might be able to serve God according to their consciences, without the hazard of degradation, imprisonment, and death. The reign of Queen Mary was little calculated to conciliate men either of this or any other description. It compelled several of the most distinguished of our Reformers to seek an asylum in a foreign land; and of these some were so affected by persecution, and others so delighted with the liberty enjoyed by their brethren abroad, that we cannot be much surprised, if, even after the re-​establishment of our Protestant Church, they looked to the reformed churches, which had received and sheltered them, with an undue and overweening regard. It was not their attachment to Calvinism, but to Protestantism, which banished them from their homes: and the civil privileges which they found upon the continent had probably as great an effect in alienating them from the institutions of their own country as any subject of theological debate. The principles thus imported and confirmed gathered strength in the following reigns; and the explosion which took place in the time of Charles the First was produced not merely by hypocrites and enthusiasts and fanatics, but by political as well as religious advocates for a change; —​by the co-​operation of men who cared little about religion, with others to whom religion, according to the way in which they professed it, was all in all; —​by the union of discontented spirits of every description, whether honestly contending against measures inconsistent with civil liberty, or enthusiastically fighting for a peculiar discipline, or hypocritically availing themselves of the passions and prejudices of others to further their own projects of unprincipled and criminal ambition. * Perhaps the term Republican may be used here, in a loose and indefinite sense, as opposed to arbitrary power. We find it adopted in this way in other instances.

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In speaking of the Puritans, who make so conspicuous a figure in those pages of our history, we are apt to apply the name simply to that class of persons, who, with high doctrinal pretensions, and a rigid profession of religion, finally took the lead in every act of violence and outrage. But the word Puritan, as we are told by Hume, “stood for three parties, which, though commonly united, were yet actuated by very different views and motives. There were the political Puritans, who maintained the highest principles of civil liberty; the Puritans in discipline, who were averse to the ceremonies and episcopal government of the church; and the doctrinal Puritans, who rigidly defended the speculative principles of the first Reformers. In opposition to all these stood the court party, the hierarchy, and the Arminians; only with this distinction, that the latter sect, being introduced a few years before, did not as yet comprehend all those who were favourable to the church and monarchy.”* By the term doctrinal Puritans, we are therefore not to understand Dissenters of any class exclusively; but likewise conformists to the Church, who still retained the views of Whitgift, and the Reformers generally, on the contested points. The translator of Mosheim confirms this distinction: “All the Protestant divines of the Reformed Church, whether Puritans or others, seemed indeed hitherto of one mind about the doctrines of faith. But towards the latter end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, there arose a party that first wished to soften, and then to overthrow, the received opinions concerning predestination, perseverance, freewill, effectual grace, and the extent of Christ’s redemption.” “The clergy of the Episcopal Church began to lean towards the notions concerning those intricate points which Arminius propagated some time after this; while, on the other hand, the Puritans adhered rigorously to the system of Calvin. Several episcopal doctors remained attached to the same system; and all these abetors of Calvinism, whether Episcopal or Presbyterian, were called doctrinal Puritans.”† The inventor of this reproachful term was that renowned and respectable personage the Archbishop of Spalato, who, after abusing the credulity of the English by his pretended conversion to the Protestant faith, apostatized once more to the Church of Rome, died miserably, and was dishonoured after death by a papal sentence of excommunication. “We must not forget says Fuller, “that Spalato (I am confident I am not mistaken therein) was the first, who, professing himself a Protestant, used the word Puritan to signify the defenders of matters doctrinal in the English Church. Formerly the word was only taken to denote such as dissented from the hierarchy in discipline and church government, which now extended to brand such as were Anti-​Arminians in their judgments. As Spalato * Hume; year 1629. †

Mosheim, cent. XVI. Sect. III. part II. Note.

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first abused the word in this sense, so we could wish he had carried it away with him in his return to Rome. Whereas now leaving the word behind him in this extensive signification thereof, it hath since by others been improved to asperse the most orthodox in doctrine and religious in conversation.”* It was indeed an evil day when this term was introduced; and happy would it be for the Church of England, if opprobrious epithets of this kind were no longer heard within her walls! But it must needs be: the spirit of Spalato still hovers by the venerable pile; and in addition to the epithet by which he branded the advocates for the principles of the Reformation, his successors in the art have enriched the vituperative vocabulary, in reference not to Calvinists alone, but to many Anti-​Calvinists, with the popular titles of the saints and the godly, and Calvinistic and Evangelical preachers, —​expressions which are every day employed “to asperse the most orthodox in doctrine and religious in conversation.” According to Hume, the Puritans (by which term he seems to mean in this place chiefly the political Puritans) possessed considerable influence in all the Parliaments, even from the reign of Elizabeth:  and in the progress of discontent many persons united with them, who at the same time declined all connexion with the Disciplinarians. Thus the reformers of the state gradually augmented their numbers; and, highly as we respect the personal character of King Charles —​a prince who, under different circumstances, and with a different education, and above all with wiser counsellors, would have been among the best sovereigns that ever sat upon a throne —​we cannot be surprised at this fact, or at the symptoms of discontent which eventually became so generally and dangerously prevalent. Our object in these remarks is not so much to state the grounds of discontent, as to notice the general existence of it. We shall therefore say nothing of the unbounded power exercised by the Crown;† of the manifest violation of the laws;‡ of the necessity under which Parliament was laid, unless it meant to abandon all hopes of preserving the freedom of the constitution, to find a speedy remedy for abuses on the part of the Crown —​abuses apparently reduced to system, exerted without interruption, and studiously sought for to supply the place of laws.§ We shall be silent also concerning those exorbitant claims of prerogative, which, according to the historian, were sufficient to render an opposition not only excusable, but laudable in the people.¶ We leave to others * Church Hist. Book X. p. 99. †

Hume, 1625. Ibid. 1626. § Ibid. 1627. ¶ Ibid. 1634. ‡

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to sing the praises of Hampden;* to descant upon the unjustifiable revival of monopolies, after the solemn abolition of them by an Act of Parliament,† upon the demerits of tonnage, and poundage, and ship money, and compositions for knighthood,‡ and enlargements of forests, and the decrees of the star chamber and high commission courts, &c. &c. &c. We are willing to concede, for the sake of argument, what the Dean of Achonry most assuredly does not require of us —​ for here we are agreed —​that the conduct of the King was uniformly right, and of his Parliaments, whenever they opposed him, uniformly wrong: yet surely it is undeniable, and this is the point at which we aim, that the spirit of discontent was not confined to any one class of the community, but pervaded generally the great body of the people. Mr. Hume cannot be suspected of any remarkable dislike to the court, or any excessive attachment to the popular party. What then is his language? “It may safely be affirmed, that except a few courtiers or ecclesiastics, all men were displeased with this high exertion of prerogative, and this new spirit of administration.”§ “There was reason to apprehend some disorder or insurrection from the discontents which prevailed among the people in England. Their liberties, they believed, were ravished from them; illegal taxes extorted; and these ills * “John

Hampden has merited great renown with posterity for the bold stand which he made in defence of the laws and liberties of his country.” —​Hume, 1637. † Hume, 1640. ‡ This expedient had a direct tendency to render the court contemptible: and if we may judge by a burlesque song written on the occasion, and of the following description, such was the effect. “Come all you farmers out of the country, Carters, ploughmen, hedgers, and all, Tom, Dick and Bill, Ralph, Roger and Humphrey, Leave off your gestures rusticall: Bid all your home-​spun fashions adieu, And suit yourselves in the fashions new: Honour invites you to delights: Come to the court, and be all made knights. ..................... Shepherds leave singing your pastoral sonnets, And to learn compliments shew your endeavours: Cast off for ever your ten-​penny bonnets, And cover your coxcombs with three pound beavers: Sell cart and wagons, new coaches to buy, And then, ‘Good your Worship,’ the vulgar will cry. Honour invites, &c. ..................... Now to conclude, and shut up my sonnet, Leave off the cart, whip, hedge-​bill, and flail: This is my counsel, think well upon it, Knighthood and honour are now put to sale; Then make haste quickly and let out your farms, And take my advice in blazing your arms. Honour invites, &c.” §

Hume, 1627.

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were ascribed not to the refractory disposition of the two former Parliaments, to which they were partly owing, but solely to Charles’s obstinacy in adhering to Buckingham.”* “Hampden obtained by the trial the end for which he had so generously sacrificed his safety and his quiet. The people were roused from their lethargy, and became sensible of the dangers to which their liberties were exposed. These national questions were canvassed in every company; and the more they were examined, the more evidently did it appear to many, that liberty was totally subverted, and an unusual and arbitrary authority exercised over the kingdom. Slavish principles, they said, concur with illegal practices. Ecclesiastical tyranny gives aid to civil usurpation: iniquitous taxes are supported by arbitrary punishments: and all the privileges of the nation, transmitted through so many ages, secured by so many laws, and purchased by the blood of so many heroes and patriots, now lie prostrate at the feet of the monarch.”† These remarks of the historian, it will be observed, apply to successive years, and prove not only that among the chief sources of dissatisfaction‡ were the supposed arbitrary measures of the crown, but that the feeling was very general throughout the whole kingdom. Under these circumstances of irritation came on the election of the Long Parliament; and “no wonder,” says Hume, “when the nation was so generally discontented, and little suspicion was entertained of any design to subvert the church and monarchy, that almost all elections ran in favour of those who, by their high pretensions to piety and patriotism, had encouraged the national prejudices.”§ The spirit in which this Parliament commenced its proceedings, represented but too faithfully the exasperated dispositions of the people:  and so prevalent was the feeling, that members of unimpeached character, and of unquestionable loyalty, were found among the foremost in the contest with the Crown. “So little apology would be received for past measures, so contagious the general spirit of discontent, that even men of the most moderate temper, and the most attached to the church and monarchy, exerted themselves with the utmost vigour, in the redress of grievances, and in prosecuting the authors of them. The lively and animated Digby displayed his eloquence on this occasion, the firm and undaunted Capel, the modest and candid Palmer. In this list too of patriot royalists are found the virtuous names of Hyde and Falkland. Though, in their ultimate views and intentions, these men differed widely from the former; in * Hume, 1628. †

Ibid. 1637. Dean Kenney distinctly admits that other causes, besides religion, aided the progress of discontent; but he by no means attaches to them their due importance. § Hume, 1640. ‡

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their present actions and discourses, an entire concurrence and unanimity was observed.”* The excessive love of liberty, by which this Parliament was influenced, and the indignation generally felt by the members at the arbitrary measures, as they supposed, with which they had for so many years been contending, undoubtedly drew closer the bonds which in some degree united all the enemies of unlimited prerogative. The political Puritans were glad to avail themselves of the help afforded to the common cause by the abettors of liberty among the popular preachers: and as the dominant party in the church had, by the avowal of doctrines incompatible with civil liberty, offended the advocates of reform, and become extremely unpopular, we can scarcely be surprised at the appointment of such persons as Marshall and Burgess to preach before the Commons. It is true that Hume adverts to this fact as an evidence of the prevalence of the Presbyterian sect among them: but his own statements are decisive in proof, that the House consisted of persons whose leading characteristic was an ardent love of liberty, rather than attachment to a sect. For a time, according to the admissions of this very historian, with the exceptions “of Strafford’s attainder, which was a complication of cruel iniquity, their merits, in other respects, so much outweigh their mistakes, as to entitle them to praise from all lovers of liberty:”† he even finds an apology for their early exorbitances, in the supposition, that factions once excited can neither firmly regulate the tempers of others nor their own; and adds (1642,) not only that “the king had possessed a great party in the lower house, but that this party, if every new cause of disgust had been carefully avoided, would soon have become the majority, from the odium attending the violent measures embraced by the popular leaders.” It is unnecessary to point out to the reader how much these statements tend to confirm the assertion of Baxter concerning the origin of the war, and the composition of the Parliament; and how little they appear to countenance the position of the Dean, that the Presbyterians (except in common with persons of a different description) began the rebellion. But do we not, it may be said, discover the Presbyterian and Puritanical spirit of the Parliament in their treatment of the episcopal clergy? To understand this part of the subject, it is necessary to advert to the character and circumstances of the times. There was a general outcry for liberty:  and how was it met by the higher clergy? Look at the sermons of Sibthorpe and Mainwaring  —​sermons which were industriously spread by the court over the kingdom. “Passive * Ibid. †

Hume, 1641.

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obedience was there recommended in its full extent; the whole authority of the state was represented as belonging to the king alone, and all limitations of law and a constitution were rejected as seditious and impious. So openly was this doctrine espoused by the Court, that Archbishop Abbot, a popular and virtuous prelate, was, because he refused to license Sibthorpe’s sermon, suspended from the exercise of his office, banished from London, and confined to one of his country seats. Abbot’s principles of liberty and his opposition to Buckingham had always rendered him very ungracious at court, and had acquired him the character of a Puritan. For, it is remarkable, that this party made the privileges of the nation as much a part of their religion, as the church party did the prerogatives of the crown; and nothing tended farther to recommend among the people, who always take opinions by the lump, the whole system, and all the principles of the former sect.”* —​Was there a very general desire in the more serious and strict part of the community, for the better observance of the Lord’s day? There comes out, under the sanction of the Court and the Archbishop, the Book of Sports;† a book enjoined to be read in all parish churches. And what is its burden? “Our pleasure likewise is, that the bishop of that diocese take the like straight order with all the Puritans and Precisians within the same, either constraining them to conform themselves or to leave the country, according to the laws of our kingdom, and canons of our church, and so to strike equally on both hands against the contemners of our authority and adversaries of our church. And as for our good people’s recreation, our pleasure likewise is, that, after the end of Divine service, our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation; such as dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation; nor from having of May-​games, Whitson-​ales, and Morris-​dances, and the setting up of May-​ poles, and other sports therewith used,” &c. This doubtless was as well calculated to recommend the religion of the church as Mainwaring’s sermon was its love of liberty. Again:  Did the stream at that day run strongly against Popery? the policy of Laud was to brave general opinion:  and such was his conduct, “that not only the discontented Puritans believed the Church of England to be relapsing fast into Romish superstition; the court of Rome itself entertained hopes of * Hume, 1626. Mainwaring was for this sermon impeached, and punished by the House; but “no

sooner was the session ended, than this man, so justly obnoxious to both houses, received a pardon, and was promoted to a living of considerable value. Some years after he was raised to the see of St. Asaph’s.” Vide Hume’s reflections on this subejct, 1628. † First published in 1618, and again in the 9th year of Charles I.

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regaining its authority in this island; and in order to forward Laud’s supposed good intentions, an offer was twice made him in private of a cardinal’s hat, which he declined accepting. His answer was, as he says himself, that something dwelt within him, which would not suffer his compliance till Rome were other than it is.”* —​It is obvious that not only must the existing evils of those times have been lamentably exasperated by this most impolitic conduct, but that it was “the sure way to bring odium upon the church.”† Accordingly we find that all lovers of civil liberty were disgusted at the doctrines and proceedings of the clergy: and so little were they inclined to suppress their indignation, that in the early days of the Long Parliament, there appeared to be no distinction between such as desired only to repress the exorbitances of the hierarchy, and such as intended to annihilate episcopal jurisdiction.‡ The intolerant measures of the Archbishop inspired his opponents with a thorough hatred of his religious opinions; and Arminianism was subjected to far greater abuse than it would otherwise have encountered, from the circumstance of its being supported by the advocates of passive obedience, and unlimited submission to the will of the prince. That we are not singular in the judgment which we have expressed of the mischievous effects arising from the measures of Laud and his adherents, must be well known to every one at all conversant with the common histories of those times. “It may safely be affirmed,” says Hume, “that the high monarchical doctrines, so much inculcated by the clergy, had never done Charles any real service.”§ . . . Mr. Hume seems to think, that since the king had granted every thing that could reasonably be demanded of him, and rebellion was therefore left without excuse, the war must be considered throughout as a war of religion. We greatly doubt the justice of this conclusion. The King and the Commons had long been proceeding upon principles of mutual exasperation: and the triumph of the Parliament and the people, after contentions like these, was almost sure to end in the destruction of the throne. The events of the French Revolution are not usually * Hume, ad ann. 1630. “A court lady,” says the same writer, “having turned Catholic, was asked by Laud the reason of her conversion, ’Tis cheifly, said she, because I hate to travel in a crowd. The meaning of this expresison being demanded, she replied, ‘I perceive your grace and many others are making haste to Rome; and therefore, in order to prevent my being crowded, I have gone before you.’ The senseless puritanical cry raised long before this time against the church as papistical, was on account of the maintaining of the episcolpal order,” &c. † See Hume, year 1629, concerning the views and practices of Neile, Montague, &c. ‡ Hume, 1640. § Hume, 1642.

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explained upon Calvinistic principles:¶ we find other reasons for the atrocities committed in that country; and hence satisfy ourselves with adverting to the ambition of some men, and the passions and jacobinical principles of others. Are these considerations to be omitted in our review of the Great Rebellion? “Early reformations,” says Mr. Burke, “are amicable arrangements with a friend in power; late reformations are terms imposed upon a conquered enemy: early reformations are made in cool blood; late reformations are made under a state of inflammation. In that state of things the people behold in government nothing that is respectable. They see the abuse, and they will see nothing else. They fall into the temper of a furious populace, provoked at the disorder of a house of ill fame: they never attempt to correct or regulate; they go to work by the shortest way . . . . . . they pull down the house.” Mr Hume also himself gives countenance to the idea, that the fears of the Parliament afforded quite as strong a stimulus to war, as their zeal, whether civil or religious. “The Commons were sensible that monarchical government, which during so many ages had been established in England, would soon regain some degree of its former dignity after the present tempest was overblown:  nor would all their new invented limitations be able totally to suppress an authority to which the nation had ever been accustomed. The sword alone, to which all human ordinances must submit, could guard their acquired power, and fully ensure to them personal safety against the rising indignation of their sovereign. This point, therefore, became the chief object of their aim,” &c. (Year 1612.)

The privileges obtained by the Protestants of France during the existence of the Republic, and under the authority of Bonaparte, may perhaps at some future period be alleged as evidence by a zealous Roman Catholic, that the Revolution in that country was strictly Protestant; and to the Protestants may hereafter be ascribed, by some papistical dignitary, all its horrible excesses.

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HISTORY AND HUME

“Variety,” Saturday Magazine: National Recorder, vol. 5 (17 March 1821), p. 174. Anonymous The Saturday Magazine: National Recorder was published in Philadelphia as a weekly from January 1819 to June 1822. Edited by Eliakim Littell, the magazine reprinted many items from British papers, but its focus was also on internal improvements in an expanding America. It is interesting to see Hume’s History commented upon in that context. On The Saturday Magazine see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), p. 232; API, p. 199; BAP, p. 136. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

HISTORY. We read history, not to indulge the frivolous inquisitiveness of a dull antiquary, but to explore the causes of the miseries and prosperities of our country. We are more interested in the progress of the human mind, than in that of empires. A Hearne would feel a frigid rapture, if he could discover the name of a Saxon monarch unrecorded in our annals; and of whom as little should remain, as of the doubtful bones of a Saxon dug out of a tumulus. Such are his anecdotes! A Hume is only interested with those characters who have exerted themselves in the cause of humanity, and with those incidents which have subverted or established the felicities of a people.

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HUME Says, in the slight sketch he gives of his life:  “My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an insurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy, and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring.”

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HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

“HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND,” The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, vol. 1, series 2 (15 April 1824), p. 85. Anonymous The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines was published in Boston from April 1817 to March 1833. This weekly carried both reprinted and original material. When reprinting material from British sources the editorial policy was to select those items that would be of particular interest to its American audience. See Neal L.  Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​ 1820 (Metuchen, 1975), pp. 106–​107; API, pp. 33–​4; BAP, pp. 17–​18. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. It is not generally known how much Hume revised his History. When living in Edinburgh, busy with that classical composition, he was intimate with an old Jesuit, who, like most of the order, was a scholar, and a man of taste; to his opinion, as the parts were finished, the manuscript work was submitted. Soon after the publication of Elizabeth’s reign, the priest happened to turn over the pages, and was astonished to find on the printed page sins of the Scottish queen that never sullied the written one; Mary’s character was directly the reverse of what he had read before. He sought the author, and asked the cause: “Why, (answered Hume,) the printer said he should lose 500l. by that story; indeed be [sic] almost refused to print it: so I was obliged to revise it as you saw.” It is needless to add, the Jesuit reviewed no more manuscripts.

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REVIEW OF HUME AND SMOLLET ABRIDGED

“Hume and Smollet Abridged, and Continued to the Accession of George IV. By John Robinson, D.D. With 160 Engravings. New York. 1824. 12mo. pp. 501,” The United States Literary Gazette, vol. 1, no. 13 (15 October 1824), p. 196. [James G. Carter?] The United States Literary Gazette had a Boston imprint and was published from April 1824 to September 1826. One of its first editors, and the most likely author of the review reprinted below, was James G. Carter (1795–​1849). Carter was an educational reformer. He came from humble beginnings and was educated at Groton Academy and Harvard College. At the time the review reprinted below was first published, Carter was teaching at the school he had founded in 1820 at Lancaster, Massachusetts. On Carter see Frederick M. Binder, “James Gordon Carter,” ANB, vol. 4, pp. 487–​8. On The United States Literary Gazette see API, p. 213; BAP, p. 165. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ WE think the true principles of education —​both the science and the art —​are as well understood here, as in England, or elsewhere. The attention of scholars, and of practical men, is directed quite as much to that important subject; and it is reasonable to believe, that our best books for schools, and for domestic instruction, will soon cease to be the re-​prints of English works. This is already the case in a considerable degree. Many of the schoolbooks now in most common use, are of home manufacture; and of the new works which the press of this country is pouring forth with a profusion which will soon wipe away all reproach of literary barrenness, the number of those which relate, in some way or other, to the work of education, bears a very large proportion to that of the

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whole. In astronomy, in geography, and, more than all, in arithmetic, we think that Wilkins, Worcester, and Colburn, have fairly driven from the field competitors, who had all the advantage of established and extensive usage. In other branches, less has been done, and in history, little indeed is yet accomplished. We must, therefore, be contented with using works provided for us in foreign lands;  —​and may be glad that the supply from abroad is in a good measure satisfactory, in respect of quality as well as quantity. The pretensions, and the merit of the work now under notice, may be stated in few words. From all the examination we have been able to make, it appears to be a faithful abridgment of Hume and Smollet, as to facts; and with respect to the style of a work like this, it is, perhaps, praise enough to say, that it has no striking characteristics. Many expressions —​even many periods and paragraphs, appear to be copied verbatim from the originals; and the author’s own style, in those parts which are wholly re-​written or added, is animated, and, generally speaking, in good taste. The prejudices of Hume —​if prejudices they were —​which, in the opinion of those whose political views differ from his, have influenced and falsified his account of the Commonwealth, and of the reigns of the last of the Stuarts, are still more prominent in this abridgment; —​either because the sentiments of the author are necessarily stated in an abridgment with less periphrasis or qualification, or because Mr Robinson agrees in opinion with Hume, and is willing to say just what he thinks. The engravings are from the most valuable and celebrated pictures, or rather from miniature copies by Mr Craig. The drawing of them is very good; but the American publishers did not employ the best of our artists, or else the engravings of the copy now before us were not struck off until the plates had been considerably worn. Miss Edgeworth says, that the young learn more readily, and more effectually, from pictures than from books; but both together, form perhaps a better instrument of instruction, than either alone. These engravings are numerous, and represent strikingly the most important facts in English history; and, with the correctness of the statements and general liveliness of the style, make the work very well suited to the domestic reading of children.

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“ART. II  —​ The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, to which is added an Historical View of the Affairs of Ireland. By EDWARD EARL of CLARENDON. A  new Edition, exhibiting a faithful Collation of the original MS.; with all the suppressed Passages; also the unpublished Notes of Bishop Warburton. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. Reprinted by Wells & Lilly, Boston,” North American Review, vol. 27, no. 61 (October 1828), pp. 300–​317. [Edward Brooks] In the essay reprinted below, the first American edition of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, provides an opportunity for a critical assessment of Hume’s History. Brooks’s assault on Hume continued in a review essay published the next year, on “Constitutional History,” which is reprinted as the next item below. Edward Brooks is attributed as the author of both reviews in William Cushing, Index to the North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p.  122. On The North American Review see Neal L.  Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, N.J., 1975), pp.  203–​206; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, Volume II: 1850–​1865 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 219–​61. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ WE shall make no apology for the few remarks we have to offer, on the appearance of the first American edition of ‘The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars.’ The demand for books of this description is one of the best proofs of the progress of good taste, and the spirit of inquiry. It is in the works of contemporary writers that true history is to be found; and this of Lord Clarendon is most valuable of its kind; whether we consider the importance of the events

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treated of, their peculiar relation to the early history of our own country, or the character and talents of the historian. That it has great faults is admitted; but in the very admission is implied no small compliment to the author, since, in spite of them, it is universally acknowledged to be one of the noblest works in our language. ‘His diction,’ says Johnson, ‘is neither exact, nor in itself suited to the purpose of history. It is the effusion of a mind crowded with ideas, and desirous of imparting them; and therefore always accumulating words, and involving one clause and sentence in another. But there is in his negligence a rude, inartificial majesty, which, without the nicety of labored elegance, swells the mind by its plenitude and diffusion. His narration is not perhaps sufficiently rapid, being stopped too frequently by particularities, which, though they might strike the author who was present at the transactions, will not equally detain the attention of posterity. But his ignorance or carelessness of the art of writing, is amply compensated by his knowledge of nature and of policy; the wisdom of his maxims, the justness of his reasonings, and the variety, distinctness, and strength of his characters.’ However we may be disposed to agree in the truth of these remarks, there are serious defects in Lord Clarendon’s History, as we shall presently show, which the political bias of Johnson led him to overlook. The ‘particularities,’ which he thinks objectionable, do not appear so to us, excepting perhaps in a few instances. On the contrary, one of the great charms of the history, consists in the vivacity, and even humor, with which this great man dilates on the personal adventures of himself and his friends. ‘The object of history,’ says Voltaire, ‘is the human mind;’ and if the work before us be examined by this standard, it will be found that these episodes are full of the most useful as well as delightful matter. We see in them, not only the hearts of other men, but that of the historian himself, laid open to our view. What true lover of history would willingly give up any part of the spirited account of the surrender of Colchester, or of the truly romantic siege and capture of Pontefract Castle, or the curious details of the exiled Charles’s little court, where many a politician may read his own character, and many a family its own history? Still more highly do we value those effusions of tenderness which the author pours out, whenever he has occasion to deplore the loss of a friend in the contests of that dreadful period. His description of the character and death of Lord Falkland is not surpassed in any language. Never did a friend more faithfully fulfil the duties of friendship, and never was a character more deserving of such devotion. Led on by his feelings, the historian runs out into many little details and anecdotes, which at once illustrate the character he is

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describing, and do honor to the goodness of his own heart. The reader, yielding to the irresistible force of genius, is carried back to the time and place of action. He sees Lord Falkland in the House of Commons, urging with all the eloquence of conviction the cause of conciliation. When it is resolved to decide the contest by arms, he seems to watch his manly form, wasting with anxiety and distress for the fate of his country; he hears his perpetual and mournful ejaculation of ‘Peace, Peace.’ He marks the alacrity with which he prepares for the fatal battle, goes with him to the field, sees him fall before his eyes; and for the moment forgets, even the cause he espoused, in sympathy with his fate. It may be worth while to stop for a moment to compare this character with that of Hambden, an equally great and virtuous man of the opposite party, as drawn by the same hand. It is curious in this latter character, to observe the force of prejudice contending in the mind of the historian with a sense of justice and the love of truth. Dr Warburton truly observes, in a note on the character of Hambden, that while the author applies to him in conclusion what was said of Cinna, ‘that he had a head to contrive, a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute any mischief,’ every line shows that the historian believed him to be a man of honor and virtue, acting on wrong principles. There is a singular train of resemblance running through the fortunes and characters of these two interesting and ill-​fated individuals. They were both distinguished by birth and fortune; Lord Falkland being allied to the greatest names in the kingdom; and Hambden, as Lord Clarendon tells us, ‘of an ancient family and fair estate in the county of Buckingham.’ They were both men of great bravery and accomplishments, distinguished talents, and most winning address. They were both remarkable for a certain frankness and openness of demeanor, as well towards those they despised, as those they esteemed. What is said of Lord Falkland in this particular, is also true of Hambden, as appears from his well known course of conduct. Of the former the following characteristic anecdote is related by lord Clarendon. ‘The truth is, as he was of a most incomparable gentleness, application, and even a demissness and submission to good, and worthy, and entire men; so he was naturally (which could not but be more evident in his place, which objected him to another conversation and intermixture than his own election had done) adversus malos injucundus; and was so ill a dissembler of his dislike and disinclination to ill men, that it was not possible for such not to discern it. There was once, in the House of Commons, such a declared acceptation of the good service an eminent member had done to them, and, as it was said, to the whole kingdom, that it was moved, he being present, “that the speaker might, in the name

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of the whole House, give him thanks;” “and then, that every member might, as a testimony of his particular acknowledgment, stir or move his hat towards him;” the which (though not ordered) when very many did, the Lord Falkland (who believed the service itself not to be of that moment, and that an honorable and generous person could not have stooped to it for any recompense), instead of moving his hat, stretched both his arms out, and clasped his hands together upon the crown of his hat, and held it close down to his head; that all men might see how odious that flattery was to him, and the very approbation of the person, though at that time most popular.’ To pursue the comparison; the difference between them in political opinions is by no means so great, as the circumstance of their both meeting death, the one in the king’s army, the other in that of the parliament, would seem to indicate. In this, as in every other revolution, the shades of difference in opinion are as various as the characters of individuals. In the early part of the long parliament, as in the preceding one, Hambden was remarkable for mildness and moderation. This, of course, is imputed by different writers to different motives. That he was sincere, may be inferred from the evidence of Lord Clarendon himself, who says, ‘that after he was among those members accused by the king of high treason, he was much altered, his nature and carriage seeming much fiercer than it did before.’ This the historian sets down to deliberate design, and his former dispassionate conduct, to ‘observation that the season was not ripe, rather than that he approved the moderation.’ An unprejudiced writer would have adopted the obvious solution, that the absurd conduct of the king in the impeachment of the five members, satisfied Hambden, as well as every other clear-​sighted man, that the die was cast, and that either the king or themselves must be reduced by force. As Hambden in the first stages of the dispute, excited the distrust of his party by attempting, to use lord Clarendon’s expression, ‘to moderate and soften the violent and distempered humors,’ so the Lord Falkland, as the same historian tells us, ‘by some sharp expressions he used against the archbishop of Canterbury, and his concurring in the first bill to take away the votes of the bishops in the House of Peers, gave occasion to some to believe, and opportunity to others to conclude, that he was no friend to the church and the established government.’ He further says, ‘The great opinion he had of the uprightness and integrity of those persons who appeared most active, especially of Hambden, kept him from suspecting any design against the peace of the kingdom, and though he differed from them commonly in conclusion, he believed long their purposes were honest.’ It is worth observing upon how slight a difference in the outset these two disinterested lovers of their country were driven to take arms against each other; and to complete the parallel between

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them, if any thing were wanting to add to the horrors of civil war, it is the reflection that two such men, formed to esteem and respect each other, to walk hand in hand in a noble emulation for the good of their country and the happiness of mankind, should each have fallen in arms against his own countrymen, in a petty skirmish, and by an unknown hand. The fate of Hambden is thus related by lord Clarendon in describing the engagement of Chalgrave Field. ‘And one of the prisoners who had been taken in the action said, he was confident Mr Hambden was hurt, for he saw him ride off the field before the action was done, which he never used to do, and with his head hanging down, and resting his hands upon the neck of his horse;” by which he concluded he was hurt. But the news of the next day made the victory much more important than it was thought to have been. There was full information brought of the great loss the enemy had sustained in their quarters, by which three or four regiments were utterly broken and lost. The names of many officers, of the best account, were known, who were either killed upon the place, or so hurt as there remained little hope of their recovery; of which Mr Hambden was one, who would not stay that morning till his own regiment came up, but put himself a volunteer in the head of those troops who were upon their march, and was the principal cause of their precipitation, contrary to his natural temper, which, though full of courage, was usually very wary; but now carried on by his fate, he would by no means expect the general’s coming up; and he was of that universal authority, that no officer paused in obeying him. And so, in the first charge, he received a pistol shot in the shoulder, which broke the bone, and put him to great torture; and after he had endured it about three weeks or less time, he died to the most universal grief of parliament that they could have received from any accident.’ The death of Lord Falkland, in an action near Glocester, occurred shortly afterwards, in the same year. ‘In the morning before the battle,’ says Lord Clarendon, ‘as always upon action, he was very cheerful, and put himself in the first rank of the Lord Byron’s regiment, who was then advancing upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on both sides with musketeers; from whence he was shot with a musket in the lower part of the belly, and in the instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next morning, till when there was some hope he might have been a prisoner; though his nearest friends, who knew his temper, received small comfort from that imagination. Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the four and thirtieth year of his age, having so much despatched the business of life, that

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the oldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocence. Whosoever leads such a life, need not care upon how short warning it be taken from him.’ Our regret at the untimely fall of Falkland and Hambden is lessened, when we call to mind, that the former was spared the disgrace and ruin which overwhelmed his party; while the latter was taken away before those clouds arose, which soon after veiled the hopes of the friends of liberty. What effects their influence might have produced on succeeding events, it is useless now to conjecture. We have been the more minute in following out this parallel, as it illustrates not only the characters of the two individuals, but the progress of public opinion in the course of the dispute between the king and the parliament. At the opening of the long parliament, the discontent caused by the arbitrary and illegal conduct of the king and his ministers was universal. The impeachment of the Earl of Strafford, which may be considered as the declaration of hostilities, was carried in the House of Commons by an unanimous vote. No fact can more clearly speak out the state of public feeling. A  most able and powerful minister, possessing, besides his great personal accomplishments, the highest favor with his sovereign, and the fullest assurance of his protection, is impeached in an unusually full house, without one dissenting voice. ‘Save only,’ says Clarendon, ‘that the Lord Falkland (who was well known to be far from having any kindness for him), when the proposition was made for the present accusing him of high treason, modestly desired the house to consider, “whether it would not suit better with the gravity of their proceedings, first to digest many of those particulars which had been mentioned by a committee; (declaring himself abundantly satisfied that there was enough to charge him;) before they sent up to accuse him.” ’ To this a decisive answer was given by Mr Pym, that the delay would be fatal, as the earl would either persuade the king to dissolve the parliament, or make his escape, and thus frustrate their design. Even Mr Hume, in speaking of the state of opinions at this juncture, has the following remarks. ‘So little apology would be received for past measures, so contagious the general spirit of discontent, that even men of the most moderate tempers, and the most attached to the church and monarchy, exerted themselves with the utmost vigor in the redress of grievances, and in prosecuting the author of them. The lively and animated Digby displayed his eloquence on this occasion, the firm and undaunted Capel, the modest and candid Palmer. In this list, too, of patriot royalists, are found the virtuous names of Hyde [Lord Clarendon] and Falkland.

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Though, in their ultimate views and intentions, these men differed widely from the former [Pym, Hambden, and others], in their present actions and discourses an entire concurrence and unanimity observed.’ A little further on the same writer adds; ‘Every meeting of the Commons produced some vehement harangue against the usurpations of the bishops, against the high commission, against the late convocation, against the new canons. So disgusted were all lovers of civil liberty, at the doctrines promoted by the clergy, that these invectives were received without control; and no distinction at first appeared between such as desired only to repress the disorders of the hierarchy, and such as pretended totally to abolish episcopal jurisdiction.’ After some farther observations, Mr Hume, with what seems to us strange inconsistency, closes his remarks on the subject of religious disputes with the following paragraph. ‘It may be worth observing, that all historians, who lived near that age, or what perhaps is more decisive, all authors, who have casually made mention of those transactions, still represent the civil disorders and convulsions as proceeding from religious controversy, and consider the political disputes about power and liberty, as entirely subordinate to the other. It is true, had the king been able to support government, and, at the same time, to abstain from all invasion of national privileges, it seems not probable that the Puritans ever could have acquired such authority as to have over-​turned the whole constitution. Yet so entire was the subjection into which Charles was now fallen, that had not the wound been poisoned by the infusion of theological hatred, it must have admitted of an easy remedy. Disuse of parliaments, imprisonments and prosecutions of members, ship money, an arbitrary administration; these were loudly complained of; but the grievances which tended chiefly to inflame the parliament and nation, especially the latter, were the surplice, the rails placed about the altar, the bows exacted on approaching it, the breach of the Sabbath, embroidered copes, lawn sleeves, the use of the ring in marriage, and of the cross in baptism. On account of these were the popular leaders content to throw the government into such violent convulsions; and to the disgrace of that age, and of this island, it must be acknowledged that the disorders of Scotland, entirely, and those in England mostly, proceeded from so mean and contemptible an origin.’ How this last quotation is to be reconciled with the fact stated in the foregoing, that the friends of the church in the outset were as eager for redress of

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grievances in general, as the most rigid of the Puritans, we leave to others to determine. We shall not undertake to expose minutely the sophistry and misrepresentations of Mr Hume in relation to this portion of English history. That task has already been thoroughly performed by several writers, particularly by Mr Brodie in his ‘History of the British Empire from the Accession of Charles the First, to the Restoration,’ a work which wants nothing but the spirit and elegance of Mr Hume, to be one of the most entertaining, as it is one of the most valuable productions of the present day. With regard, however, to the particular class of grievances on which Mr Hume is so sarcastic, we have a few remarks to make. We agree entirely with that historian, that all writers who have made mention of the transactions of that age, have attached great importance to the religious controversies which then agitated the nation. The violent and oppressive proceedings of the High Commissioners had swelled up a dispute, in its origin trivial and unimportant, into a grave question, involving the liberties and lives of a considerable portion of the community. In this point of view it is immaterial whether the act of oppression is one which affects mind, body, or estate. If the rights of either are invaded, resistance is as justifiable in the one case as the other. We cannot, therefore, perceive the propriety of Mr Hume’s distinction between this class of grievances and the other encroachments on the liberty of the subject. Whatever the extent of the evil may have been, it formed a perfectly just ground of remonstrance; although we have been unable to discover the authority on which Mr Hume asserts, that it was the dispute about religious ceremonies which chiefly tended to inflame the parliament and people. Lord Clarendon, who is of the same party, in describing the state of feeling on the opening of the long parliament, gives a very different account, so far as regards that body. ‘In truth,’ says this historian, ‘in the House of Peers, there were only at that time taken notice of, the lords Say and Brooke, and they believed to be positive enemies to the whole fabric of the church, and to desire a dissolution; the Earl of Warwick himself having never discovered any aversion to episcopacy and much professed the contrary. In the House of Commons, though of the chief leaders, Nathaniel Fiennes, and young Sir Harry Vane, and shortly after Mr Hambden (who had not before owned it) were believed to be for root and branch, which grew shortly after a common expression and discovery of the several tempers; yet Mr Pym was not of that mind, nor Mr Hollis, nor any of the northern men, or those lawyers who drove on most furiously with them; all who were pleased with the government itself of the church.’

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Among the leaders of the same party were John Selden and Algernon Sydney. The author of Table Talk will not be charged with fanaticism, and Sydney is thought to have been a free-​thinker. Whatever causes of exasperation may have arisen afterwards, it is certain that the evils growing out of the aggressions of the church, were not then looked upon as of paramount importance. To make this appear, we shall in the first place point out some of the leading causes of discontent, independent of religion, and afterwards endeavor to show, that whatever may have been the origin of the theological controversy, it had come, in the year 1640, to involve something more than the rails at the altar, the ring, the cope, and the lawn sleeves. It will require an authority greater even than Mr Hume, to convince the world in our time, that the degree of exasperation which is admitted on all hands to have then pervaded the British empire, is to be attributed to matters of this sort. It is an anomaly which is contradicted by all experience. We will now take a nearer view of the state of England at the period in question, and see what were the causes of uneasiness, as they are gathered from public documents and the testimony of historians of all parties. We shall thus be able to form our own judgment as to the importance of those political disputes about power and liberty, which Mr Hume would have us believe were entirely subordinate to religious controversy. First on the list, we shall place monopolies, because they constitute the most obnoxious and impolitic of all grievances. It hardly need be stated, that it had been the habit of English sovereigns to provide for a rapacious favorite, or raise a sum of money on any sudden emergency, by granting to individuals or companies the exclusive right of making and selling certain articles, without the least regard to the claims of those who had gained their livelihood by the same means. This abuse had by degrees become so intolerable, that in the reign of James the First, monopolies were declared illegal by act of parliament. Charles, however, in his necessities, not only revived them, but went beyond any of his predecessors in this odious species of exaction. To show the effect of this one item in its full force, it may not be amiss to give the articles thus granted to monopolists in the time of Queen Elizabeth, to which soap and linen rags were added by king Charles. The following is the list of them, as enumerated by Mr Hume. ‘Currants, salt, iron, powder, cards, calfskins, felts, pouldavies, ox-​shin-​bones, train oil, lists of cloth, potashes, aniseeds, vinegar, sea-​coals, steel, aquavitæ, brushes, pots, bottles, saltpetre, lead, accidence, oil, calamine stone, oil of blubber, glasses, paper, starch, tin, sulphur, new drapery, dried pilchards, transportation of iron ordnance, of beer, of horn, of leather, importation of Spanish wool,

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of Irish yarn.’ ‘These monopolists were so exorbitant in their demands,’ continues Mr Hume, ‘that in some places they raised the price of salt from sixteen pence a bushel to fourteen or fifteen shillings.’ ‘In order to secure themselves against incroachments, the patentees were armed with high and arbitrary powers, from the council, by which they were enabled to oppress the people at pleasure, and to exact money from such as they thought proper to accuse of interfering with their patent.’ ‘And while all domestic intercourse was thus restrained, lest any scope should remain for industry, almost every species of foreign commerce was confined to exclusive companies, who bought and sold at any price that they themselves thought proper to offer or exact.’ Besides all this, King Charles’s privy council, without consent of parliament, had not only continued the rude species of impost, called tonnage and poundage, but, by its own authority, added fifteen per centum to the Tariff, or Book of Rates. In addition to these burdens, the city of London had been, in the most arbitrary manner, deprived of its charter, which it was obliged to repurchase by the payment of a heavy fine. If these were vexatious impositions on the trading and commercial classes, we shall find that the other orders of citizens were by no means exempted. One of the well known expedients of this monarch to supply his necessities, was that of forced loans, by which every subject in the kingdom was doomed to pay any sum the privy council should think proper to exact. At the period in question, many of the first men in England were lying in prison for having refused to submit to this oppression. Ship money too had been introduced, under pretence of public danger, in time of profound peace, and each county was assessed a given sum to provide the king a ship. The nobility and gentry were vexed with the obsolete demands of knight’s fees and wardships; the landlords generally were in a state of alarm, in consequence of the seizure of large tracts of country to make additions to the king’s forests; while the tenantry were equally exasperated, by the billeting of soldiers upon them without consent or remuneration. To complete the general disgust, commissions had been issued in the several counties with authority to supersede the established tribunals, and to try and punish offences by martial law. When it is considered that most or all the foregoing were matters cognizable in the Court of Star Chamber, and that the king by consenting to the petition of right in 1628, twelve years before, had expressly abolished them; it cannot but strike every man of reflection with surprise, that Mr Hume should so far have lost sight of the duty of an historian, as to throw these circumstances into the shade. It was the obvious design of this accomplished writer to justify the Stuarts, particularly Charles the First, by seeking precedents in the preceding reigns for all

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the odious measures of that unhappy and misguided prince. In order to bring about this object, he is obliged to resort to some unworthy expedients. All the enormities of Queen Elizabeth’s government are enumerated by him with great exactness, and condemned in the broadest terms, while the instances in which the Stuarts went beyond that princess in the exercise of the prerogative, are either palliated, or passed wholly by. We shall cite one instance out of many. It is that of ship money. In relating the events of the year 1626, the second of King Charles’s reign, Mr Hume says, ‘In order to equip a fleet, a distribution by order of the council was made to all the maritime towns; and each of them was required, with the assistance of the adjacent counties, to arm so many vessels as were appointed them. The city of London was rated at twenty ships. This is the first appearance, in Charles’s reign, of ship money; a taxation which had once been imposed by Queen Elizabeth, but which afterwards, when carried a few steps farther by Charles, created such violent discontents.’ Here is a statement which is not absolutely untrue, and yet it is not difficult to prove, that Charles is the first English monarch who ever exacted ship money of his subjects as a source of revenue. A faint resemblance to this tax is found in the ancient Dane-​gelt, a primitive kind of tax, resorted to when the kingdom was threatened with an incursion of the Danes; the proprietor of a given number of acres being called on to provide a horseman, those of a greater amount to furnish a ship. This had, however, been long disused, and no precedent can be found later than the reign of Edward the Third, for anything resembling it. Even the writs of that period merely authorized the crown to impress ships in the seaports on any sudden emergency, to be paid for by the public. The only precedent then was to be found, according to Mr Hume, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and what was it? That most dreadful exigency, the invasion of England by the Spaniards; one of those emergencies when all laws are suspended, —​when the lives and properties of all are surrendered up for the general defence. That great princess, in this appalling crisis, did no more than second the zeal of her subjects, every class of whom was called on to contribute its share to the public service. The only question was, how it could be most effectually employed, all men seeing that their liberties and property were at stake. ‘At this time,’ says Mr Hume, ‘the royal navy consisted only of twenty-​eight sail, many of which were of small size, while the Spanish fleet amounted to one hundred and thirty galleons. All the commercial towns in England were required to furnish ships to reënforce this small navy; and they discovered, on the present

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occasion, great alacrity in defending their liberty and religion, against the imminent perils with which they were menaced. The citizens of London, in order to show their zeal in the common cause, instead of fifteen vessels which they were commanded to equip, voluntarily fitted out double the number. The gentry and nobility hired, and armed, and manned, forty-​three ships at their own charge; and all the loans of money which the queen demanded were frankly granted by the persons applied to.’ This is Mr Hume’s precedent; which, it may be observed, extends equally to forced loans, as to ship money, the former of which, he himself expressly states, was once recommended by Lord Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, but never carried into effect. This is a most extraordinary authority to bring forward for a tax of any sort. Upon the same principle, the military associations formed throughout the kingdom, when threatened with invasion by Bonaparte, would at any time be a sufficient precedent for a levy en masse. But allowing Mr Hume the advantage of it as far as it will serve him, we will proceed to examine the few steps taken by King Charles in advance of Queen Elizabeth, in this species of taxation. The first and by no means a trifling one, as will be seen by and by, is not thought worth mentioning at all by the historian; namely, the alerting of the patents by which the judges held their offices, from the tenure of good behavior, to that of the king’s pleasure. Another very important step, was demanding this tax at a time when no immediate danger existed, which certainly could not be said in the case of Queen Elizabeth. The first writs in the reign of Charles were directed to the seaport towns only, demanding, not ship money, but a given number of vessels. The next step was in 1634, to levy ship money upon the whole kingdom; each county being rated at a particular sum, which was afterwards assessed upon the individuals. This caused universal discontent; insomuch that the king, in order to discourage all opposition, proposed this question to the judges; ‘Whether in case of necessity, for the defence of the kingdom, he might not impose this taxation; and whether he were not the sole judge of the necessity?’ ‘These guardians of the law and liberty,’ says Mr Hume, ‘replied with great complaisance, “that in a case of necessity, he might impose that taxation, and that he was the sole judge of the necessity.” ’ Here was a stride which at once overstepped all the boundaries of law, and left the subject completely at the mercy of the crown. In this stage of the question it was, that Mr Hambden resolved, rather than tamely submit to so illegal an imposition, to stand a prosecution, and expose himself to all the indignation of the court. The case was argued twelve days in the exchequer chamber before the twelve judges, who gave judgment for the crown, four of

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them dissenting. The observations of Lord Clarendon on this decision, and on the characters of Noy and Finch, principally in reference to the matter of the ship money, although too long to be here inserted, discover a candor and sincerity we in vain look for in Mr Hume, and are enough of themselves to refute the proposition of the latter, in regard to the main origin of the civil wars. We will now proceed to take a very general view of the progress of this controversy, and the actual state of the question, when the long parliament was convened; by which we think it will appear, that so far from being the puerile affair Mr Hume would be glad to represent it, the narrow policy of King Charles and his predecessors had raised up, from a small beginning, a system of persecution, which was only equalled by the enormities already enumerated. The complaint of the nonconformists, from the accession of Queen Elizabeth, had always been, the compelling by laws, the use of habits and ceremonies in themselves indifferent. When the Protestant religion was reëstablished, on the accession of that princess, very little difference of opinion existed among the members of the English church in regard to articles of belief. A large body, however, both of the clergy and laity, were disposed to follow the example of their neighbors, the Scotch, and the reformed churches on the continent, in laying aside, not only the faith, but the vestments and ceremonies of the Romish church. A very strong party was equally bent on retaining them, among whom was the queen herself, who so far forgot her usual good sense, as to enter warmly into the controversy. In the first year of her reign were passed the acts of supremacy and uniformity, by the former of which the queen was authorized to establish a Court of High Commission, ‘with full power in ecclesiastical matters, to visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend all errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offences, and enormities whatsoever.’ By virtue of this act, a Court of High Commission was soon raised, and not long after, the clergy were assembled in convocation, to settle the articles of belief, as well as the rites and ceremonies of the church. The vote for retaining the ceremonies passed the lower house of convocation by a single voice. The parochial clergy, however, were not very rigid in their adherence to all the forms prescribed, which gave so great offence to some of the bishops, that the matter was laid before the queen. Among other things equally momentous, it was represented to her majesty, ‘that some administer the communion with surplice and cope; some with surplice alone; others with none; some with chalice, others with a communion cup; others with a common cup; some with unleavened bread, and some with leavened. That some receive kneeling, others standing, others sitting; some baptize in a font, some in a bason, some sign with the sign of the cross, others sign not; some minister

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in a surplice, others, without; some with a square cap, some with a round cap, some with a button cap, some with a hat; some in scholars’ clothes, some in others.’ The queen was highly displeased with this report, and gave orders that all ministers who did not comply with the act of uniformity, should be deprived of their livings, or otherwise dealt with, as the Court of High Commission should direct. Here was a door opened for the most serious disputes, both parties as usual being tenacious and intolerant, just in proportion as the matter in question was futile and insignificant. The nonconforming ministers were hunted and vexed, until they began, to use Mr Neal’s expression, ‘to break off from the public churches, and to assemble as they had opportunity, in private houses, or elsewhere, to worship God in a manner that might not offend against the light of their consciences.’ ‘Here,’ he adds, ‘was the era or date of the separation,’ the inevitable consequence of the previous coercive measures. Thus matters went on for nearly twenty years, until the vexations of the nonconformists were become so intolerable, that notwithstanding the well known prejudice of the queen, in the year 1593, the subject was brought before parliament. ‘Morice, chancellor of the dutchy, and attorney of the court of wards, made a motion for redressing the abuses in the bishops’ courts, but above all in the High Commission; where subscriptions, he said, were exacted to articles at the pleasure of the prelates; where oaths were imposed, obliging persons to answer to all questions without distinction, even though they should tend to their own condemnation; and where every one, who refused entire satisfaction to the commissioners, was imprisoned without relief or remedy.’ This step threw her majesty into a great rage; ‘she charged the speaker,’ says Mr Hume, ‘on his allegiance, if any such bills were offered, absolutely to refuse them a reading, and not so much as to permit them to be debated. This command of the queen was submitted to without further question. Morrice was seized in the house itself, by a sergeant at arms, discharged from his office of chancellor of the dutchy, incapacitated from any practice in his profession as a common lawyer, and kept some years prisoner in the Tilbury Castle.’ ‘The queen,’ continues the same historian, ‘having thus expressly pointed out both what the house should and should not do, the commons were as obsequious to the one as the other of her injunctions. They passed a law against recusants; such a law as was suited to the severe character of Elizabeth, and to the persecuting spirit of that age. It was entitled, An act to restrain her majesty’s subjects in their due obedience; and was meant, as the preamble declares, to obviate such inconveniences and perils, as might grow from the wicked practices of seditious sectarians and disloyal persons; for these two species of criminals were always at that time confounded together, as equally

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dangerous to the peace of society. It was enacted, that any person, above sixteen years of age, who obstinately refused, during the space of a month, to attend public worship, should be committed to prison; that if, after being condemned for this offence, he persist three months in his refusal, he must abjure the realm; and that, if he either refuse this condition, or return after banishment, he is to suffer capitally as a felon, without benefit of clergy.’ This act should have been entitled, ‘An act for the encouragement and propagation of heresy and nonconformity.’ It is unnecessary to recite the instances of suffering and injustice during the remainder of this, and a part of the subsequent reign, resulting from this law; but it should never be forgotten, that it was shortly after the passing of it, that the migration to Holland took place, which more than twenty years afterwards led to the settlement of New England. We have just seen Mr Hume’s opinion on his subject in the reign of Elizabeth. In that of Charles, he thinks resistance to such measures reflects disgrace upon the age; an age in which the very paragraph just cited might have cost the free-​thinking historian his head. King James, with all his faults, was not of a persecuting temper, and happily, not long after his accession, on the death of Dr Bancroft, the primacy fell into the hands of Dr Abbott. During the life of this mild and judicious prelate, the church enjoyed a state of comparative peace. In the year 1633, the bigoted and intolerant Laud succeeded Abbott in the primacy, and, as if the unhappy Charles was doomed to inevitable destruction, rekindled the slumbering fires of religious persecution. This haughty prelate went beyond any of his predecessors in his zeal for conformity, insomuch that great numbers of the Puritans were driven to seek relief in exile. Even this, which was permitted by the act of Elizabeth, was denied them at last, and nothing was left for them, but to wait with patience for some favorable turn of affairs. This was the state of things with regard to religion, in 1640, when the long parliament met. Now, that the origin of this controversy was altogether trivial, we readily grant. The omitting to wear a cope or a surplice, is certainly a small matter; what then are we to think of a government, which punishes such an offence with fine, pillory, and imprisonment? The more insignificant the question, the more atrocious the oppression. If anything marks the utmost refinement in despotism, it is the interference of the state in the common concerns of life, and punishing as crimes, actions in themselves innocent. We have seen in our own days an example of this species of legislation. The late Emperor Paul the First carried his paternal care of his subjects so far, as to regulate the most

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minute article of dress by an imperial decree. Instances occurred during his reign, of persons of the first rank being executed or sent to Siberia, for appearing in the streets with a shoe-​tie of an illegal shape, or with the cock of the hat a little out of the line of the nose. Upon Mr Hume’s principle, what had the gentlemen to complain of? They knew the law, or might have known it, and had nothing to do but wear their clothes agreeably to statute. Yet can there be the least question, if we may suppose such a thing as a Russian House of Commons, that these would there have been insisted on, and justly, as the worst of all grievances? Would not the minister who recommended, and the officers who enforced them, have been the first objects of popular vengeance? No man can doubt it; and yet some Russian Hume one hundred years afterwards, might with great plausibility, after enumerating some of the grosser measures of the government of that day, observe, that ‘these were loudly complained of; but the grievances which tended chiefly to inflame the nation, were shoe-​strings, and cocked hats.’ This state of affairs in policy and religion may well account for the unanimity which prevailed at the opening of the long parliament. Beyond that period we have not room to extend our remarks. From what has already been said, it will be seen that Mr Hume’s account of this epoch in English history, is to be received with great caution. Lord Clarendon, with all his bigotry, is a much safer authority. He avows his object to be the defence of the royal cause. Mr Hume, with equal prejudice and partiality, has a great show of fairness and candor. The former supports his side of the question after the fashion of his day, upon the basis of divine right. He advances his creed with an honest bluntness which puts the reader at his ease. He confesses many things of his party, without any expression of disapprobation, which no party at the present time would have the effrontery to acknowledge. Accordingly we find that Mr Hume makes but little use of Lord Clarendon in the early stages of the dispute. He prefers to cite the popular historians even for undisputed facts. The change which had taken place in public opinion when Mr Hume’s work appeared, will easily account for this circumstance. That sagacious writer well knew, that the Stuarts were not to be defended at that time of day, by the doctrines of Sir Robert Filmer. The most he could hope for was to palliate and gloss over, what he had not the hardihood to defend, a task which he has accomplished with an address worthy of a better end. The train by which the reader is led on, is laid so far back, and followed up with such adroitness, that, before he is aware, the wily historian has him in his toils. When the mind has been thus deluded, the sympathies are artfully plied with the sufferings, in themselves sufficiently moving, of the individuals who fell a sacrifice to popular vengeance. The fates of Strafford, of Laud, and of Charles

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himself, are placed before us, by the partial historian, in so moving a way as to disarm our resentment at enormities which, if presented in their proper colors, would make even the ‘True blue Club’ turn pale in their seats. It must not be inferred from these remarks, that we are insensible to the merits of Mr Hume as an historian. His exquisite skill in unravelling the labyrinth of early British history; the masterly discrimination with which he has exposed the absurdities of monkish invention; his clear and lucid view of the progress of the English constitution; his able developement of the foreign policy of Great Britain; and the pure and elegant language in which he has clothed his ideas, entitle him to be classed among the best writers of ancient or modern times. His authority, on most points, may be relied on until we come down to the rise of the party distinctions, which have existed in England under various modifications for more than two hundred years; since which time, it is but justice to Mr Hume to say, that an impartial English history is not to be found. We should be glad to pursue the subject still further, and to trace the progress of opinion during the stormy period which succeeded the assembling of the long parliament; the events of which are feelingly and minutely described by Lord Clarendon. We have, however, only room to add, that the American impression of Lord Clarendon’s history is a reprint of the late Oxford edition, excepting that the passages in the original manuscript, which were suppressed in former editions, are, in the American copy, incorporated with the text. This we think an improvement upon the English edition, in which these passages are placed by themselves in the margin. The notes of Bishop Warburton are inserted at the foot of each page, instead of being collected at the end of the volume, as in the English copy. These notes seem not to have been intended for publication. We should suppose them to be cursory observations, noted down, as they suggested themselves, in the margin of the book. They are for the most part of no great value, excepting as they discover a degree of liberality, which the general tenor of the Bishop’s writings would hardly lead one to expect.

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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

“Constitutional History. ART. X. —​1. History of England from the first Invasion of the Romans. By JOHN LINGARD, D.D. London. 1825.  2. History of the British Empire from the Accession of Charles the First, to the Restoration. By GEROGE BRODIE. Edinburgh. 1822. 3.  A Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry the Seventh to the Death of George the Second. Second Edition. 3  vols. 8vo. London. 1829. 4.  History of the Commonwealth. By WILLIAM GODWIN,” North American Review, vol. 29, no. 64 (July 1829), pp. 265–​81. [Edward Brooks] _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ THERE is scarcely any topic more noble in itself, or more interesting to the human race, than Constitutional History; by which is meant the history of the progress of nations in the art of self-​government. This term is no longer confined, as it once was, to the annals of Great Britain, and a few states which have sprung from her. Within the last half century, a great change has been brought about in this, as in many other particulars. Principles of government which were once treated as fanciful and absurd, or at least as suited only for the atmosphere of the British Islands, are now diffused, not as idle theories and shadowy speculations, but soberly and practically, over the fairest portions of both hemispheres. Constitutional liberty now beams on all North America, and a large portion of South America; and in the old world, is shedding its light over the ‘gay regions’ of France, and glances on the wretched remnant of the devoted population of Greece. Even in those countries of Christendom where free principles of government are not avowedly adopted, their influence is felt and acknowledged; the shackles of superstitution [sic] and ignorance are yielding to the grasp of free inquiry; the two conflicting systems are placed in fair opposition, and we cannot

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doubt that the result will be such as the friends of rational liberty ardently hope for, and confidently expect. While we contemplate this state of things with exultation, we are naturally led to look backward, and trace the progress of this giant power, from infancy to its present state. Our minds are involuntarily carried back to a remote period of English history. We watch with anxious gaze the frail barks which bear a few Saxon adventurers from the mouths of the Elbe, who carry with them that dauntless spirit, and those simple and primitive laws, which are to expand and flourish in the British Isles. One thousand years afterwards, a band composed of the descendants of these rude invaders, is seen preparing for a bolder voyage, by which this spirit and these institutions are to be transplanted to a still wider field, where we fondly hope they are destined to arrive at full perfection. To follow the Constitution, through the different stages of its progress, from the establishment of the Saxon power in England, is a most interesting subject of inquiry, and one which, by a singular fatality, has been reserved for our day. The English nation has been in nothing more unfortunate than in her historians. While she was advancing step by step in the attainment of freedom, it was hardly possible that history should keep pace with her. In times of excitement, we do not look for philosophical history from contemporary authors. The actors in those great events which for half a century agitated the nation, could not be expected to be impartial narrators of them. That Clarendon should have leaned to one side, and Whitelock and Burnet to the other, is saying no more than that they were subject to the infirmities of humanity. Unhappily, however, passion and prejudice long survived the contest which produced them. The moment which seemed most favorable for the appearance of a British historian, after the House of Brunswick had become quietly established on the throne, was seized upon by Mr Hume; who possessed almost every requisite for the undertaking, but that without which all the rest are worthless —​a fair and candid mind. At this time of day it is unnecessary to enlarge on the faults of Mr Hume’s History of England. Like all great evils, this one has at length wrought its own cure. His misrepresentations are now so glaring, that the very party he intended to aid, has been obliged to turn against him in self-​defence. In nothing is the progress of liberal opinions more clearly shown than in the fate of this historian. Notwithstanding the charms of his style, and the vigor of his intellect, no Englishman of sense pretends now-​a-​days to justify or defend him. Having devoted several pages in a late number to this subject,* we shall merely add, that the works placed at the * See North American Review, No. 61, for October, 1828.

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head of this article, are among the best antidotes to the subtle poison of this artful casuist. Dr Lingard, roused to indignation by the injury done to the Catholic Church, has taken the field in its defence. Mr Brodie has entered the lists as the champion of the English nation in general, against the assertion of Mr Hume that the condition of that people under the Tudors was much like that of Turkey at the period when he wrote. Both these writers are led by their zeal into some extravagance and occasional inaccuracy. In the ordinary style of partisans, they make the most of their respective cases, and leave the reader to his own deductions. Mr Hallam has had the courage to take the most dangerous ground of all, that of umpire between the parties, and of course must lay his account with blame from all sides. He has aimed at impartiality, and seems to have attained it, as far as it is attainable on such a subject. The wish to be impartial shows a liberal and honest mind, and such a mind can hardly fail to incline to what may be called the popular side of the grand question. He pursues with a steady eye the clew of the constitution, through the labyrinth of feudal tyranny and fanatical fury; when snapped by prerogative, or entangled by anarchy. His object is to exhibit the English people, and the ground they have stood upon, in all the changes of the government. A theme more worthy can hardly be imagined; compared with it, how poor are the stories of the Continental states. The miserable squabbles of Guelph and Ghibeline, which for centuries fill up the annals of Europe, appear almost too trifling to be read. The rise of the Houses of Hapsburg and Brandenburg is but little better. One usurper succeeds to another; one elector takes his fellow elector prisoner, and carts him over Europe as a show. The blood of the people is shed to secure an appanage for the son of some needy potentate; while the people themselves are handed over from one ruler to another, with as little ceremony as cattle change owners at a fair. The history which has obtained the name of constitutional, is just the reverse of this. It is the only true history of man; and being founded on the principles of our nature, stirs up within us an irresistible interest. Time, instead of diminishing this interest, adds a value to the most remote event connected with it. The transactions of the reign of Charles the First, are infinitely more studied now than they were one hundred years ago; while the Spanish war of the succession, and the campaigns of Marlborough, which in their day filled the world with wonder, and shook Europe to the centre, are fast passing into insignificance. Mr Hallam, has of course, confined himself to the constitutional History of Great Britain. In the foregoing remarks we have considered this but as one branch of the subject. He treats of the progress made by the English people in

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constitutional liberty. The same principles modified by the peculiarities of climate and national character, apply to all governments which recognise certain rights on the part of the people; whether under the form of a limited monarchy, restrained by the delegated voice of the nation, as in France and England, or under that of a pure republic, as in the United States. To follow up the subject, and point out the steps by which the vast revolutions now going on in the world have been brought about, is reserved for some other hand. To the citizens of these states, inquiries of this nature have a peculiar value, standing as we do on a middle ground; tracing back our history on the one hand to the settlement of our own country, and thence to the infancy of British story [sic]; while on the other, we have before us events certainly momentous, either for ‘weal or woe.’ Whether we consider then the importance of a correct knowledge of our own institutions, as citizens of a free state; or the desire natural to all men to look forward and speculate on the probable condition of coming generations, the subject is full of interest. It becomes us to inquire by what means information in relation to it, can best be disseminated; and particularly to ask ourselves whether it has hitherto had its proper share of attention in our places of education. At this moment there is no occasion to say anything in recommendation of the advantages of knowledge in general. All judicious observers are convinced, that the institutions under which we live, must owe their support to an enlightened, sober, and industrious population. The fate of our country is in the hands of its inhabitants; and it must rise or fall as the character of the people is elevated or debased. In this point of view, the importance of a right education is incalculable; and in no department of it is correct information more necessary, than in that of Constitutional History in its widest sense. It is the great excellence of republican forms of government, that they adapt themselves to the wants and circumstances of mankind. To know what those wants are, and what the experience of other nations has taught in regard to government, is essential to every man who would understand his duties, not only as a legislator, but as a citizen called on to judge of the conduct of his representatives. The advantages of right notions on this point are so obvious, and the application of them so perpetually occurring, that it would seem as if no seminary which pretended to furnish a liberal education, should be without some provision for instruction in regard to it. Yet, strange as it may seem, there is no branch which has been so entirely neglected. We will not undertake to assert, that there is no professorship of History in the United States; but we are quite sure that in no seminary in Massachusetts has provision been made until very lately for instruction in this department. Something may have been done for history in

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general; but we are not aware that any steps have yet been taken to correct the ill effects which have resulted form the want of proper direction to students in English history. We infer this from the fact, which is sometimes mentioned as an evidence of improvement, ‘that where one student read Hume’s History of England twenty years ago, ten read it now;’ that is to say, that ten times as much prejudice, falsehood, and sophistry is imbibed, to be eradicated in after life, as was imbibed twenty years ago. That a young man might not be worse employed than in reading Hume, we will not undertake to assert; but that any instructer in our day should place his work in the hands of a youth, leaving him to suppose that it contained the truth, is to us matter of no little surprise. It is certain that in England, his authority as to any event subsequent to the accession of the Tudor dynasty, would be received with ridicule. His misstatements are the more dangerous, because they are not the effect of passion or honest zeal; but cool, deliberate, and artful. The weapons he wields are sophistry and sarcasm. He does not assail openly, but with a plausible affectation of impartiality, blasts a character by some sneering insinuation, at the close of a pretended encomium. This is the most dangerous of all modes of attack, because most captivating to the young and inexperienced reader. An instance may be cited in the character of Hampden; whom he has not the effrontery openly to abuse, but insinuates that his high qualities were obscured by a morbid fanaticism, which would have evaporated in psalm-​singing among the wilds of America, whither he was on the point of going; and ‘where,’ says Mr Hume, ‘he could only propose the advantage of puritanical prayers and sermons.’ So says Mr Hume; but history tells us, that Mr Hampden’s ground of complaint was, not only that he was not allowed to pray after his own way, but that if he did not conform, in this respect, to the prescriptions of my Lords Bishops, he was liable to punishment as a felon. To Mr Hume it no doubt seemed a small matter; being indifferent to both creeds, he thought it a mighty foolish thing to quarrel with genteel people about such a trifle. If the student wishes, however, to see both sides of the question, as between the Church and the Puritans, let him look into Neal. Nay, if he would make up a cool and deliberate judgment as to the ecclesiastical history of England from the Reformation, to the great measure which has carried gladness to the hearts of all friends of the human race, in the emancipation of the Catholic population of Great Britain; he must consult Dr Lingard and Mr Hallam. He must go back to the religious condition of England, before the dissolution of monasteries; not as it is represented by Protestants, but as he finds it on a fair comparison of conflicting authorities. He will there see that what is called the English Reformation, like all other human events, is one of a mixed character. He will see in those religious

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communities, which have been held up to execration, a great deal to admire and commend. The celibacy of the clergy, which has been the theme of so much reprehension, will appear to be not unsusceptible of plausible defence. That time which the married clergyman devotes to the care of his family, was supposed to be given up to the duties of charity and exercises of religion. If the testimony of Catholic writers may be relied on, these were much more regularly performed than we have been led to suppose. At all events, the estates which by the gifts of the pious had been appropriated to the poor through the medium of these establishments, were certainly in most instances devoted to their relief. Whether these estates were not much greater than was consistent with good policy, is of no moment; nothing could justify the conduct of Henry the Eighth in seizing on this property, and distributing it among his needy favorites, in violation of every principle of justice and humanity. As this measure grew out of his rapacity, so the Reformation had its origin in a still more unworthy motive. His resentment at the firmness of the Pope, in the matter of his divorce, transported him beyond the bounds of reason or decency. So determined was he to bring about an entire separation from the See of Rome, that the scruples of the most conscientious, and the services of the most faithful of his subjects, were equally disregarded. We have had the sufferings of Protestant martyrs rung in our ears from our cradles; but the two most illustrious English martyrs, the enlightened Sir Thomas More, and Bishop Fisher, died, rather than abjure the faith of their ancestors, at the bidding of a tyrant. The student will not have proceeded far in this inquiry, before he will begin to suspect that it is one thing to protest and another to reform. The English Reformation (setting aside religious belief, with which we have nothing to do at this time; and looking at its effects on the grand object of constitutional inquiry, toleration) was anything but a change for the better. It has been well said by an ancient wag, that Henry the Eighth was a king with a pope in his belly. The power of the Papal See in England, had long been on the wane, and the natural jealousy of the interference of a foreign power kept it within bounds. Transferring the supremacy in religious affairs from the Pope to the King, added to the immense patronage arising from the disposal of the estates of the sequestered religious houses, gave a power to the crown which nothing could resist. The ferocious tyrant, who would trample on all rights to obtain this ascendency, was not likely to be very scrupulous in the use of it. All writers agree in condemning the measures which followed the establishment of the Protestant religion in this reign. In the short one of Edward the Sixth, something was done towards the settlement of the church, but the accession of Mary brought about the reaction which such

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excesses are calculated to produce. This princess has become so proverbial for ferocity and bigotry, that one can hardly be allowed to suppose that any good quality had a place in her character. It may, however, be remarked that she gave one proof of sincerity, not very common among sovereigns, in relinquishing sixty thousand pounds a year, which had been taken to the crown, out of the plunder of the church. Whatever may have been her character considered by itself, she has been most unjustly dealt with in the comparisons that have been drawn between her and her sister Elizabeth. What Mary did from bigotry, Elizabeth did from policy and pride of opinion. The first inquisition established in England, was the Court of High Commission, which took its rise in an act of the first year of the reign of this Protestant princess. A  more odious and oppressive tribunal never existed in any country. The fury of Mary’s resentment fell upon those who had distinguished themselves in favor of the new religion. Her sister persecuted both Catholics and Protestants. She was a Catholic in all points, except the acknowledgement of the Pope’s supremacy. She had mass in her private chapel, and ordered her bishops to expel all ministers who differed ever so little from the discipline of the church by law established. The treatment of the Catholics was still more iniquitous than that of the Puritans. Camden and Hume, with other writers of the same stamp, would have it believed that no one suffered death for his religious sentiments under Elizabeth. What will be the indignation of the student, when he learns, that this is a miserable prevarication. No one was put to death expressly for professing the Catholic religion; but by an act of parliament, the professing of that religion under certain circumstances was declared to be treason, and for this species of treason many suffered; some writers make them amount to two hundred. Now, that the good Protestants of those days should have thought it treason to be a Jesuit, as honest Dogberry in his zeal ruled it to be flat perjury to call Prince John a villain, is one of those extravagances which party sprit is constantly committing. As to the man, who, two hundred years afterwards, under pretence of writing an impartial history, leaves such a fact unexplained, it may certainly be said that his statements should be received with the utmost caution. We have not room to follow up this part of the subject at much length; but cannot quit it without remarking, that as in the early stages of the Reformation, the professors of the old and new religions pursued each other with unrelenting fury; so Churchman and Puritan, who had heartily concurred in the measures of severity against the Catholics, soon turned with equal rage upon each other. The result of this controversy is too well known to be dwelt upon. The Presbyterians, when they had demolished the church, found a sturdy band of Independents all

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ready to be persecuted; and the Independents themselves, who had fled to the rocky shores of New England for religious freedom, had hardly time to shelter themselves in their new country, when they fell foul on the refractory of their own number. By the time the student has proceeded thus far, he will begin to ask himself, why it is that the Catholic religion has been always identified with persecution, while Protestantism and toleration have been considered synonymous. The answer seems to us a simple one. —​Because the Catholic religion has been the most powerful. Wherever the power of the church and that of the state are the same, there will be intolerance. The cause lies not in this creed or that, but in man. A weak sect is always liberal, but we never have yet heard of any which used power with moderation. The farther this inquiry is pursued, the more apparent will be the good sense which induced the enlightened framers of our constitution, to leave this matter where alone it belongs, —​to the conscience of each individual. If there is anything of which the United States may justly boast, it is that they have brought this great question to the test of experiment with the most triumphant success. We have moreover the satisfaction to believe that other nations are advancing in the same path. The glorious event to which we just alluded, by which the Catholics of England have been resorted to the right of citizens, is but a harbinger of better things. To all true friends of religious freedom, it is a joyful event; while it carries disquiet and alarm to those who profit by the abuses of the church of England. A reform in that establishment will be the inevitable result of the repeal of the test acts, and the Catholic disabilities. Not that the accession of votes in parliament will alone have this effect; but the same spirit which obliged the government to become the instrument of emancipation, will oblige it to go farther. The church itself is in no danger, if reasonable and just; but something will erelong be done to equalize the tythes, and the incomes of the bishops. Pluralities, non-​residence, and sale of livings, by which the revenues of the church have been diverted from their proper use, and have become a mere temporal property, like any other estate, will fall before the influence of good sense and justice. Parliamentary reform is not far behind; and the mention of it leads us to another very important consideration, which should stimulate the youth of our country to the study of constitutional history. For want of correct information in this particular, very erroneous ideas have been entertained among us in relation to the character of the American Revolution. To judge from some of the orations we hear on the fourth of July, one would infer that our ancestors had been subjected to the most debasing slavery, from which they had suddenly emerged

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to the happy state of light and liberty we now enjoy. On occasions like that just mentioned, a considerable latitude of expression is allowable; but the sort of rhodomontade which was once fashionable, and is not yet wholly banished, does great injustice to the characters of those who achieved the independence of this country. The inhabitants of these provinces had always enjoyed the rights of British subjects. So jealous were they of those rights that the mere attempt to wrest from them what they held so dear, roused them to the most determined resistance. In all the state papers of that period, it will be seen that the provincial legislatures, and afterwards the Congress, contended for the enjoyment of the plain right of British subjects; namely, that no tax should be laid upon them, unless at the same time they were admitted to the privilege of representation in parliament. This is the principle which runs through the whole controversy, and which the friends of American rights, both here and in England, laid down as the basis of their argument. In order, then, to understand what was the ground on which the resistance of the colonies to the mother country was defended in the first instance, it is necessary that the student in American politics, should turn to the constitutional history of England, and inquire into the nature and origin of the British parliament. It was admitted on all hands that so far as the inhabitants of the British islands were concerned, the principle was undeniable, that representation and taxation should go together. To understand what is meant by this expression; to what extent it was literally carried into effect in the early period of parliamentary history; and how it has by degrees become rather a nominal, than a real privilege, the student must go back as before, to the time of the Plantagenets. He will not be long in finding, that the notion which has been supported in England, and finds some defenders in this country, that the rotten boroughs are a part of the constitution, and an essential part, is about as well founded as that pluralities and non-​residence are at the foundation of all church discipline and church doctrine. Mr Hume defends the Stuarts on the ground that they did no more than all their predecessors had done; and that the English nation at that day, were no more free, than the subjects of the Grand Seignior. This accomplished writer was not well versed in English law; and was very apt to infer, because a thing had been done, that therefore it had been lawfully done. Mr Hallam is too much of a lawyer for an historian, but has greatly the advantage of Mr Hume on constitutional questions, from his accurate legal knowledge. He does not rest satisfied with saying, Henry the Eighth did this, and Queen Elizabeth did that; but he goes on to inquire, Did they so because the people admitted their right to do it, or because they were too weak to resist? For the present purpose, it will not

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be necessary to go farther back than the reign of Henry the Seventh; and here we shall find, as in the case of religion, that we have been in the habit of looking but at one side. If religious zeal has portrayed ecclesiastical history, poetry has been employed on the characters and measures of sovereigns. Richard the Third has been taken upon trust, from Shakespeare. A  bad man he certainly was; and yet, if we may judge from the statute book, he was far from being the worst of English kings. An act passed in this reign, abolishing forced loans and benevolences, had more of spirit and sound policy in it, than any passed from that time to the meeting of the long parliament. An usurper he was; but his successor was equally an usurper, quite as worthless a man, and a much more mischievous king. Under both these reigns, and part of that of Henry the Eighth, we find parliaments exercising a good deal of power, and sometimes showing not a little spirit. The immense accession of strength acquired by the crown, after the seizure of the church property, broke down the House of Commons, partly by intimidation, and partly by influence. If we would understand the ancient constitution of parliament, it will be necessary to look at it before this event. In the first place, by the mere act dissolving the monasteries, thirty-​six mitred abbots who had been called to the House of Lords, were disfranchised. The House of Commons did not then vary much from its constitution at the present day, excepting that a considerable number of boroughs and some counties have been admitted to the right of representation, which did not at that time enjoy it. On the other hand, many places which then possessed a population to warrant this privilege, have since fallen into decay, and become rotten boroughs; though several of them were created as rotten boroughs by Queen Elizabeth and other sovereigns, expressly for the purpose of political influence. This was the case with many of the Cornish boroughs which were particularly subject to coercion through the Stannary court. There can be no doubt that the rotten boroughs are an excrescence on the constitution, and as perfectly within the control of parliament as any other abuse whatever. On this point we shall quote the opinion of Mr Hallam, as to the origin and true nature of the House of Commons. He says, ‘I must so far concur with those, whose general principles as to the theory of parliamentary reform leave me far behind, as to profess my opinion, that the change which appears to have taken place in the English government towards the end of the thirteenth century, was founded upon the maxim, that all who possessed landed or moveable property, ought, as freemen, to be bound by no laws, and especially by no taxation, to which they had not consented through their representatives. If we look at the constituents of the House of Commons, under Edward the First, or Edward the Third, and consider the state of landed

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tenures and of commerce at that period; we shall perceive that, excepting women who have generally been supposed capable of no political right but that of reigning, almost every one who contributed towards the tenths and fifteenths granted by the parliament, might have exercised the franchise of voting for those who sat in it. Admitting that in corporate boroughs the franchise may have been usually vested in the freemen, rather than in the inhabitants, yet this distinction, so important in later ages, was of little consequence at a time, when all traders, that is, all who possessed any moveable property worth assessing, belonged to the former class. I do not pretend that no one was contributary to a subsidy, who did not possess a vote; but that the far greater portion was levied on those, who, as freeholders and burgesses, were reckoned in law to have been consenting to its imposition. It would be difficult, probably, to name any town of the least consideration in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which did not at some time or other, return members to parliament. This is so much the case, that if, in running our eyes along the map, we find any seaport, as Sunderland or Falmouth, or any inland town, as Leeds or Birmingham, which has never enjoyed the elective franchise, we may conclude at once, that it has emerged from obscurity, since the reign of Henry the Eighth.’ We here see the British parliament in the vigor of its youth. The maxim that taxation and representation go together, is here carried into practice. It was no doubt intended that this principle should be kept up, and that the constitution should shape itself to the changing exigencies of the state. Can any man in his senses, suppose that the right to send members to parliament, was meant to be a property, saleable on ’change, like an exchequer bill? It is impossible not to see that it is an abuse, which has grown up so gradually as to have escaped notice, until the holders of this species of stock were strong enough to keep ministers on their side, and prevent a reform. But like many other absurdities, it will pass away, not by the hand of violence, but by that resistless force of public opinion, which carries the government with it, in spite of itself. The student in English history cannot but observe, that just in proportion as parliament lost its influence under the Tudors and Stuarts; just in the same proportion, the other institutions of the country languished or became perverted. Judges were intimidated; juries were punished for daring to give verdicts according to evidence; and in some instances these very tribunals were converted into the worst engines of tyranny. No man of the least reflection will hesitate to condemn the conduct of Charles the First, in his systematic attempt to dispense with parliament altogether; nor will there be much more difference of opinion as to the maxim in the abstract, that taxation and representation should go together. And yet, when

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it is attempted to test the principle by a reform in parliament; there are many in England, and some theorists in this country, who think it a most dangerous experiment, if not an absolute violation of the constitution. To us, there seems to be no medium in theory, between dispensing altogether with the House of Commons, and admitting the propriety of parliamentary reform. The House of Commons, as now constituted, can be defended on no principle of representation. It has clearly not the sanction of antiquity in its favor, as appears by the paragraph just quoted; and the most devoted admirer of things as they are, not even my Lord Eldon himself, will pretend, that if he were going to lay down a just and equal basis of representation, he would adopt that of the British Empire as it now exists. The argument drawn from the danger of innovation, is exceedingly weak and poor; for when it is once admitted that some change is desirable, provided it could be made with safety, the question then presents itself,  —​By whom is this change to be made? Surely the parliament which has power to keep up the system as it is, has power to limit reform within such bounds as it may think prudent. Whenever a change is made, it must be by the regular constitutional course; unless we suppose a degree of blindness which seems not to belong to this age. In our time, as in all times, some men are wiser than others; but in matters of government we believe the mass are grown wiser than of yore. Mr Canning foresaw years ago, what the optics of Mr Peel and the Duke of Wellington have but just discerned; that they had to choose between Catholic emancipation and revolution. The prophetic mind of Fox foretold it all, and much more; to him the abolition of the slave trade, Catholic emancipation, and reform in parliament seemed certain events thirty years ago. There can be but little danger in any reform which parliament will inflict upon itself. But the opposers of reform, after every other argument has failed, beg the question after this manner.  —​The present system must be the best, because under it the British Empire has risen to an unparalleled height of prosperity and renown. The only mode of answering this objection, is by analyzing it, to see what is meant by the assertion. If it is meant that the British nation is so wise and so happy, that it can by no possibility be made wiser or happier, there is no more to be said. If it do not go this length, it means nothing. If we considered the question of reform in parliament as a merely theoretical one, and that so long as there is a parliament, it is of no moment whether it represent one class of the community, or twenty; we certainly should think that the time and talents which have been spent upon it, might have been better employed. We take, however, a very different view of the subject; and we are confident that he who diligently and impartially gives up his mind to the

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study of constitutional history, will perceive, that as, in the prostration of the House of Commons, fell the liberties and character of the English nation, so the abuses and defects (and they are many) which still exist in the government of that country, are owing to the want of a fair and equal representation in that house. The only practical attempt at reform in parliament, was that made by Oliver Cromwell, in conformity with the scheme adopted by the long parliament just before their dissolution. ‘This model,’ says Mr Hallam, ‘limited the number of representatives to four hundred, to be chosen partly in the counties, according to their wealth, or supposed population, by electors possessing either freeholds, or any real or moveable property to the value of two hundred pounds; partly by the more considerable boroughs, in whose various rights of election no change appears to have been made.’ In two parliaments summoned by the Protector, this basis was adopted; but the views then entertained by him, no parliament was likely to fall in with. Clarendon says of this measure, ‘It was then generally looked upon as an alteration fit to be more warrantably made, and in a better time.’ But Clarendon in exile at Montpelier, had many good ideas which never occurred to him while keeper of the king’s conscience and manager of parliament. What is called the convention parliament, which recalled Charles the Second, was convened by Richard Cromwell after the old mode; and thus ended parliamentary reform. From that time to this, the unequal operation of the system has been daily becoming more and more apparent. If in the reign of Charles the Second, parliamentary reform was thought necessary; what must be thought of it at the present time, when interests have grown up from inventions which were then unheard of, and cities have sprung into existence, whose population is greater than was then that of the counties to which they belong. Can a system be right which refuses to conform itself to the advancing condition of mankind? Can it be believed that the East India Company would have procured repeated renewals of its charter, since the revolution of 1688, if the commercial interest had been fairly represented in parliament? Would the odious monopoly of the corn laws have been allowed to go on as it has done, if the power of the landed proprietors in parliament had not been altogether disproportionate? One abuse upholds another; the owners of rotten boroughs get places in the Company’s service for friends and relations, and the Company’s servants think there is no occasion for reform in parliament. He who sits for old Sarum, feels tender on the mention of pluralities and non-​residence in the church. The country gentlemen make a great point of upholding the game laws; and the lawyers will not quarrel for that, if there is nothing said about the enormous abuses of the court of chancery, one

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of the greatest curses that ever lighted on any nation. The national debt, and the poor laws, are not strictly constitutional questions, because they might have grown up under any form of government. It may be observed, however, that the latter evil has been enormously increased by the restrictions on industry, arising from abuses we have enumerated. Nothing but a thorough acquaintance with the history of the British constitution, will give right views of this great question, and this knowledge can only be acquired in the works of English writers. Mr Hallam’s is decidedly the best work on the subject we have yet seen. As to De Lolme and other foreigners, who have undertaken to handle it, they certainly inform those who knew nothing before; but an accurate, discriminating account of the constitution, can only be given by one who knows practically the operation of it. We have said that a thorough acquaintance with the constitutional history of England, is requisite to those who would understand our own. It will be found, moreover, that as we advance in the knowledge of it, we shall appreciate our own institutions more justly. The end of government being the equal protection of life, liberty, and property, to every individual, we shall ask ourselves, where is this object more perfectly accomplished, than in our own country? Seeing that no human institution can be perfect, we shall not show our patriotism by vaporing and rant; nor on the other hand, shall we be prone to regard with nervous apprehension, the jars and animosities which arise from party violence or sectional prejudice. Some very worthy persons, who are sincerely attached to our government, are thrown from time to time into alarm, lest it should crumble under us, and leave us exposed to anarchy and violence. Such apprehensions do not seem to us to be founded either in sound views of the state of things at home, or a just appreciation of our condition in comparison with that of other nations. Ours is a government of opinion; it was well understood to be so in the outset. It is on public sentiment that its safety must rest. Bringing the question then to this test, what will be the conclusion as to the probable continuance of our present form of government? Forty years have now passed, since the United States have lived under the existing constitution. With what difficulty it was carried into effect: what prejudices it had to encounter, it is unnecessary to repeat. It was an experiment of a delicate nature; but one which happily has succeeded beyond the expectations of the most sanguine. When we look back at the fears and forebodings of that period, and compare them with the result of experience, the conclusion should inspire anything rather than despondency. The union was then a bugbear to some, and even the most confident could not but look

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forward with anxiety. What has the experience of forty years brought to pass? To say that the union is popular, is an expression so feeble as to excite a smile. Whatever difference may exist among us as to other questions, on this there is but one sentiment. The moment that the idea of a dissolution of the confederacy enters the mind, such a train of mischief succeeds, that we are glad to turn from it, let the evils on the other side be what they may. So far, then, as public feeling is concerned, unless some very improbable change should take place, the permanency of our government seems, to say the least, as likely, as at any time since its adoption. If we turn to other countries, we shall have no less reason to be satisfied with the state of things at home. Those who are disposed to undervalue our institutions, have only to cast their eyes, even towards those nations which are justly regarded as the most distinguished for civil and religious liberty. We have factions and political contests; but what other nation can look back forty years, and say, our factions and our contests have never ended in the shedding of each other’s blood? Acts are sometimes passed by which the interest of one class or section is sacrificed to that of another; but the frequent return of elections is sure to work the cure. Abuses are not sanctioned by time, and incorporated in the body of the Constitution. Religious heats prevail among us, but they waste themselves in words. If any one wishes to see the contrast between our condition in this respect, and that which a church establishment brings with it, let him read the speech of the Duke of Wellington, in which he describes the state of parties in Ireland. The worst consequences of the dissolution of our government could scarcely exceed the state of things actually existing at that moment in that ill-​fated country. If we would inculcate just views of our own government, and liberal and enlarged notions with respect to those of other countries, we should encourage the study of constitutional history, —​not by a text-​book, not as it presents itself to the mind of a single individual, but as a science. The subject of education is now fully appreciated, and we cannot doubt that this most important and delightful branch of it, will receive its full share of attention.

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“ART. IV. —​ The Life of Belisarius. By LORD MAHON. London. John Murray. 1829. 8vo. pp.  473,” Christian Examiner, vol. 7, no. 2 (November 1829), pp. 202–​12; selection from pp. 204–​205, 208–​11. Anonymous The Christian Examiner was founded, as the Christian Disciple, in Boston in 1813. It survived, under various titles, through to 1869. In 1829 the magazine was edited by Francis Jenks. On the Christian Examiner see API, p. 54; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 284–​92. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ We hope it will not be out of place to say a few words on the subject of true greatness, of which Belisarius, according to the moral sentiment of the world, would pass for a shining example. It should be mentioned, however, that much of the interest attached to his name, is owing to the statue in the Villa Borghese, to the well known picture of Vandyck, prints of which are so common, and perhaps more than all to the romance of Marmontel. The decision of our faith on the subject of greatness is conveyed in a few impressive words. When the disciples were contending which should be the greatest, their Master said, ‘Whoever would be chief among you, let him be your servant.’ Now by ‘servant,’ we understand one who performs a service for another in hope of a reward; and as to his being ‘chief,’ we understand it as referring to a future life, where they that have been humble on earth shall be exalted, and the proud brought low. But this is a wretched limitation of its meaning. To us these words seem to be meant as a definition of true glory. Their meaning spreads and deepens beneath our view, and instead of applying to a single relation of human life, they are found to be a guide to human greatness, and a measure for

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human applause. They show that the things commonly supposed to be high, are not so in reality; and in this new dialect of Christianity, to be respectable means to be useful, and they that are of most service to others, are actually the chief among men. . . . It may be a question, whether more decided usefulness meets as yet with its due measure of applause. But the name of Howard is now a title of honor; and that of Wilberforce, though it has been too much appropriated by a party, is one of those by which the age will be remembered. We could mention other living names which the world delights to honor. And we are not sure that he who adds to the treasures of science, enlarges the boundaries of thought, and inspires in others an ambition to cherish and use the intellectual gifts of God, is less a benefactor to his race, than he who removes the immediate pressure of evils. To make known the laws of the heavens, confers as substantial benefits on the mariner, as building lighthouses or retreats for the shipwrecked along the shore. But our admiration grows warmer, not according to the benefits received, but the dangers and hardships encountered. This is as it should be. For he is the best friend of man, who promotes the happiness of others at the greatest expense of his own. No one certainly has more to do than the historian, with this great principle of Christianity. He must regard it in order to keep up with his age. All intellectual improvement throws the religion into bolder relief, and shows how plainly it was intended for a living letter; meant to govern, not only in the action of life, but in the more peaceful province of the mind. If he has the least spark of that interest in his race, without which history should not be written, every page will glow with the spirit of religion; not the cold, unsocial, gloomy spirit that too often bears the name, but with the spirit of philanthropy, with an earnest desire to record every benevolent deed with honor, with a heart that burns within him as he writes it down; and he will do all he can, to dispel that insane delusion, to prevent that mad suicide of its best interests, which makes the world worship those who fill it with suffering and drench it with blood. This would interest every historian as a curious problem in moral feeling —​that men should regard conscience and duty as a restraint which the humble must obey, and the great may break violently through, regarding these offenders, as astronomers once looked on the vagrant orbs that sometimes shoot through the system, treating their disastrous revolutions as subject to no heavenly law; that men, generally so wide awake to sympathy with the oppressed, should on these occasions always take part with the destroyer, follow him with curses neither loud nor deep, cheer

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him onward in the blaze of his fame, and weep with thoughtful sensibility over his fall. We believe that there is no power like that the historian possesses, to remove these venerable errors, and establish better feelings in their stead. The poet, like Shakespeare or Scott, may do more with one bright touch of his celestial pencil. Witness the character of Richard, struck off with seeming carelessness by the former, which neither the doubts of the coxcomb Walpole, nor the industry of later sceptics can alter. But we do not give implicit faith to poetical inspiration; while, if the historian shows but a decent fairness, we are ready to adopt his partialities and aversions, and welcome whatever impression he chooses to give. For days or weeks, we are employed in reading his work; we lay it down reluctantly, and take it up with fondness in the next leisure hour; we feel towards him as a friend who has helped us to while away some of the weary moments of existence; and thus we are apt to surrender our judgment with perfect confidence to his direction, as a just return for the pleasure and instruction he has given. Now when we consider that the subject is one of universal interest, and one in which no person of education can well be wanting, it is plain that the historian has almost unrivalled power to remove or confirm old prejudices and delusions. We are happy in believing, that in our country, and we presume in others, the works of historians are read by those who never think of resorting to poetry or the last new novel. The page of history, which the laborer reads at night, forms his meditation all the next day. Its events and characters, with the coloring that happens to be given, thus wear into his mind with a depth and reality which it is hopeless to attempt to alter. Hume affords us an illustration much to the purpose. Every one has been struck with the fact, more generally true twenty years ago than it is now, that while our home prejudices were all on the side of freedom, our historical partialities were all for absolute power. We used to think with indignation of the first resistance offered to Charles I. His death might reasonably be deplored as a great and useless crime; but the patriotism of Hampden seemed to us like vulgar turbulence, and the descendants of the Pilgrims were enemies of everything that looked like resistance to the throne. This fact, which no one whose memory is twenty years old will deny, is explained by the popularity of Hume. He was an elegant historian, a cool and sceptical observer, never led away by his enthusiasm, and to all appearance the very perfection of philosophical impartiality. Now, this spell is completely broken, and the imperfect and partial character of his work is generally understood; but it lasted long enough to show, that if a man of superior powers, a manly and devoted lover of his race, a constitutional friend

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of freedom entirely separate from party, one whose judgments are so sincere that they rise into the earnestness and dignity of feelings, should pour out his soul in this channel, his mastery would be complete. Such there certainly will be; such, we might almost say, are some of the present historians of constitutional freedom. But their influence is weakened by the impression, whether just or not, that, in their triumphs at the advance of liberty, they are only recording the interested verdict of a party.

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“A PARALLEL BETWEEN HUME AND ROBERTSON, AS HISTORIANS,” The Irish Shield and Monthly Milesian, vol. 1, no. 9 (November 1829), pp. 403–​407. “JUVERNA.” Edited by George Pepper, The Irish Shield and Monthly Milesian was published in Philadelphia for an Irish audience. There were four volumes published from January 1829 to August 1831. On the Irish Shield see API, p. 107. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ To The EDITOR of the IRISH SHIELD: Sir —​The tenth number of your excellent work, reflects, I can conscientiously aver, credit on your talents and research. —​Proceed undeviatingly, with your HISTORY OF IRELAND, and fame and emolument, will, and must, ultimately reward your labours. I cordially, as an Irishman, commend your inflexible boldness and fearless courage, in denouncing all those unthinking and lukewarm Irishmen, who would wish to diminish the merit of the successful, and unexampled efforts of a genuine PATRIOT, with whom the zealous, but imprudent personages, who, unfortunately for our country, figured in the bloody events of 1798 and 1803, are no more to be compared, than the honest and disinterested patriotism of the virtuous CATO, with the vicious, iniquitous, and profligate career of CATALINE. The idea is too absurd to be entertained. The future historian will applaud O’CONNELL, as the fortunate liberator of his country, while he shall reprobate the reckless and intemperate enthusiasm of men, who cannot, like Marius, appeal to the victories they had gained for their country. No. If they boast of their triumphs, you can remind them of the conflagrations and tortures that attended them; —​if they allege that they paved the way for O’Connell to

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emancipation, you may tell them, that it was with the slaughtered carcasses of the best and bravest of the Irish youth; —​if they demand monuments, bid them cast a retrospective glance at the bloody scaffolds of the SHEARS, the ORRS, the PORTERS, RUSSELLS, EMMETS, and the countless victims, whom they consigned to immolation. I was greatly pleased with your biography of Dr. Thomas Leland; but I will be so candid as to tell you, that on Plowden’s authority, you ascribe prejudices to him, which I think, never influenced his mind, as a historian: he was a man too enlightened, to follow in the wake of bigotry. That his history has faults, I am willing to concede; and where he censures the Roman Catholics, I have no doubt but he was led to do so, by the representations of men whose candour he unthinkingly trusted. That he was a “libellous, venal historian, who vilified his country for a mitre,” is a sweeping charge, which rests only on the solitary ipse dixit of PLOWDEN and PEPPER. Plowden’s anecdote is, I think, unfounded in fact. —​ “Non vultus non color.” If you consider the following attempt to strike a line of comparison between HUME and ROBERTSON, is worthy of a place in your periodical, it is at your service. I am, sir, your friend, JUVERNA.

A PARALLEL BETWEEN HUME AND ROBERTSON, AS HISTORIANS The task I have assigned myself, is one of difficulty, one that would, to arrive at accuracy, require the gigantic intellect of Doctor Johnson, and the acute discrimination of that genius, that so long shed its critical splendour, on the pages of the Edinburgh Review —​it is almost unnecessary to say, I mean FRANCIS JEFFREY, ESQ. An attempt to ascertain the comparative merits of Hume and Robertson —​ those models, next to perfection, of historical composition —​will, it is hoped, be acceptable to the readers of the IRISH SHIELD, and received with that indulgence, which is due to a man, hitherto not much occupied in writing philological dissertations. This collation, if exhibited by a master hand, is the more necessary, as the celebrated Dr. Blair, one of the ablest critics of the last age, when delineating, in his lectures, the characters of other historians, both ancient and modern, only gives us a brief outline of the excellencies of Hume and Robertson. He, indeed, bestows on their compositions, summary applause; but abstained from

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analyzing their respective merits. This arose probably from motives of delicacy towards them, as his countrymen and then living cotemporaries. The name of BLAIR, indeed, suggests every thing that is profound and precious in criticism, as well as in pulpit eloquence. His critical estimates are admitted on all hands to be orthodox; and if we except his dissertation on Ossian, which he wrote to prop his opinion. If NATIONAL VANITY had not led him into the Ossianic heresy, no oracle would have merited more deservedly general commendation, for impartiality and fairness, in delivering the ordinances of the high judicature of Apollo, than Dr. Blair. What I intend to say of the great historians, shall be the dictation of my private sentiments. Now, after a careful perusal of their works, which have been often to me a substitute for corn, wine, and oil, and many other necessary luxuries, the following are the conclusions, that have progressively been concatenated in my own mind, concerning them. The philosophic author of the history of England, is superior in judgment, industry, and acuteness; but the author of the history of Scotland, carries away the palm in the graces of diction, in genius and eloquence. Both of these writers are eminent for political information, general erudition, knowledge of human nature, skill of narration, and facility of language —​and such language, though not so polished as Gibbon’s, or so pompous as Johnson’s, as is drawn from the richest sources of the classic spring. Besides the fundamental and gramatical excellencies, common to the style of each —​the style of Hnme [sic], rich, copious, and magnificent —​of Robertson, intense, glowing, and pathetic. Here is the classic stream, that labours to flow; there is the floating mirror, that shines to the very bottom. The one is fine by apparent study; the other is fine without any visible effort. Robertson, likewise, frequently indulges himself in original and animated turns of expression, that rouse attention, or enforce conviction; Hume proceeds more uniformly and methodically in his narration, with a kind of majestic march, over a beaten track. Yet, if he want the flame and vehemence, the thunder and lightening of his rival, he has the art of excelling him infinitely, in insinuation, and irony, and all the modes of ridicule, when ridicule becomes a necessary historical weapon. This ridicule he used, it must be granted, too severely against the conduct of the Roman Catholics; but when we cannot effect our purpose, by the means supplied by reason and argument, we generally resort to the arsenals of sophistry and satire, for light missiles, to hurl at our adversaries. But when Hume wrote, there was nothing so pleasing to the voracious appetite of the popular prejudice of the time, than the defamation of the Catholic creed. Ridicule, however, is a rhetorical machine that ought not to be employed, by the historian, against the living world, since it only inflames the animosities already, alas! too prevalent.

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In history, it is more admissible —​where, by indirect strokes, it may prevent us from reviving the follies of our forefathers. It should be the aim of the historian, to inspire the mind with the love of goodness, and with an abhorrence of vice —​to confirm the decisions of truth, and expose the deformities of hypocrisy and prejudice. Fiction, also, is another great field, where the legitimate satirist may run, as with drawn sword or Lucilius, striking terror into the hearts of the wicked, and making them blush for their secret sins. Hume and Robertson, are indeed, eminently distinguished for political sagacity  —​that is, for penetration into the reasons of the transactions which they record. The just exercise of such discernment, together with a faithful display of characters and manners, is what forms the soul of true history, of which the facts and the language are but the body. Robertson has given us many fine specimens of intuition into the principles of human events, and the phenomena of the human will, as in his developements of the Gowry conspiracy —​of the hostile machinations of the French government, and of the motives, which swayed in the vicissitudes of the beautiful, imprudent, but still wronged and injured Mary, the unfortunate Queen of Scots. Perhaps no historian, either ancient or modern, has painted the charms and misfortunes of a Queen, in such tender and touching colours, as he has done, in his graphic and affecting picture of the lovely and hapless Mary. In his Charles V. also, his greatest work, he frequently goes to the very head of the Nile, by disclosing the latent sources of the measures of Princes and Governors; as his preliminary dissertations to that work, are a continued stream of historical and political wisdom. But, of the two historians, the expositor of English affairs, was by far the most conspicuous for talent of this kind. He, therefore, suffers nothing to escape his unvaried perspicuity; he inserts every thing in its proper place and connexion; he traces causes in their effects, and effects to their causes; he follows a hero, or a tyrant, through all the motives of their conduct; he unravels the web of policy with a masterly hand; and, with the matters of fact, which he relates frequently, mingles the most solid and useful reflections. In questions of genealogy —​in the solution of difficult points —​in topographical descriptions of the scenes of battles —​and in the discussion of royal claims, he is also remarkably luminous and happy. In these great essentials of history, I am glad to perceive that you follow his plan of illustration, by throwing light on the abstruseness of our KEATING and explaining the obscurities of the still learned and profound O’HALLORAN, whom you justly and appropriately styled, the “LIVY OF IRELAND.” Hume’s details are so clear and intelligent, that we might imagine he had lived at the

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times, when such topics were agitated, so that his readers have no difficulty in understanding him. When, therefore, to this analytical and didactic method, we add the freedom, evidence, harmony, dignity, and rotundity of his periods, his acknowledged and eminent historical character is advanced almost to a perfection which no other historian has yet reached. It would, in my opinion, be advanced altogether to the highest point of superiority, but for some following circumstances, which have precluded him from mounting above all competitors, as the eagle above all birds. He is blamed for doing injustice to our country: he is blamed, by grave and profound critics, for being too partial to the Stuarts, (just as you will hereafter, for being too partial to the O’Neils) and that one of his objects in writing the previous history of England, was to show that the encroachments of the royal power were not without precedent in the reigns of the Tudors. Though the question might be referred to principles of general policy and justice, yet if the mind should receive an undue bias from such representations, it may easily recover its bent, by application to the narrative of Macauley; or if that be thought too favourable to the republican party, every prejudice, (except a religious one) may be removed, by reading the truly learned and powerful DR. LINGARD, who, if divested by his strong religious bias, might fairly enter the lists, as an accomplished historian, with any writer of modern times. It has been sarcastically observed by Voltaire, that the best history of England was written by a foreigner, Rapin; but whether Lingard’s history may not wrest the laurel from Rapin and Hume, future ages will probably determine. With respect to fidelity and impartiality —​the most essential requisites in those who undertake to inform posterity of past transactions —​there seems to be in the English historian, abundant ground for believing his reports. The philosophic historian, though a philosopher, is sometimes less solicitous about the truth of his narrative, and less credible in his statements; for not to mention his unhappy prejudices against the bible and the doctrines of christianity, he has too frequently exalted and vindicated the royal prerogatives, at the expense of popular rights, and the fundamental laws of the English realm; and in particular, his blind and excessive partiality to the Scottish dynasty, though the least deserving dynasty of any in the English monarchy; —​all is certainly a great drawback from his history. He poised and supported the constitution, as Atlas is said to have sustained the celestial sphere, with a relaxed effort. Yet, with all these defects, which cannot be palliated, much less justified, his history of England, taken altogether, is equal to any that has been published, of that great and powerful nation. In making this assertion, let it not be supposed, that

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I wish to overlook or depreciate Dr. Lingard. His history, if not so highly fermented with the leaven of religious zeal, might be pronounced a master-​piece. There is one particular more, concerning Hume and Robertson, which must not be omitted in a disquisition of this kind. When the latter describes astonishing events, he, like a christian, recognizes the supreme hand of providence, because he felt as a believer and a theologian: whereas Hume, on the contrary, writes as a politician only, ascribing every revolution to the sole exertion of visible agency. Concerning the great and predominant merit of either in history and composition, there is no dispute, but which of them was the greater master is more uncertain. When you read Hume, you willingly assign to him the historic palm; and again, when you lay down his volumes, and take up Robertson’s, you are in as great a dilemma, as if you were called upon to determine, whether there is more poetic merit in the poems of BRYANT, than in those of HALLECK, and you reluctantly revoke your first decision, and transfer the laurel of superiority to Robertson. Yet, if one of them must be esteemed as the superior historian, the author of the history of England, wins the suffrage of impartial criticism, by the majority of ONE vote. I cannot dismiss this article, without imagining how much students and others might improve themselves in the elegancies of knowledge, by a careful perusal of these two eminent British classics. Except GIBBON and LINGARD, no such writers as these are, in their province, have modern times produced; they are superior even to the ancient historians, in the science of civil government, in national inquiry, and correct taste; and inferior to them only, in original genius, strength of description, and graceful simplicity. Robertson is a safe guide, that always carries a bright torch; Hume leads you through metaphysical mazes, where you will require all your judgment and discrimination, to guard you from falling into the sophistical sloughs of MISS FANNY WRIGHT. But the acute reader can feel the palpable and tangible substances of authenticity. Let, then, every one desirous of possessing a historical knowledge of English affairs, repair to these rich and balmy fountains of eloquence. The fame of Titus Livius drew to Rome, from the extremity of the empire, a generous Spaniard, merely for the sake of seeing a person so renowned and extraordinary; and yet, we may say, in a qualified sense, that if Hume and Robertson were his contemporaries, they would have eclipsed the lustre of his celebrity, and attracted an equal degree of admiration. JUVERNA.

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EDITORIAL NOTE. If our respected correspondent will have the goodness of referring to O’DRISCOL’s History of Ireland, or to BARLOW’s, he shall find that the “sweeping charge,” of Leland being a “venal and libellous historian,” is fully sustained by the creditable and unimpeachable authorities of these recent and respectable writers, who were, he must know, sturdy protestants, and zealous supporters of church and state. Therefore, there cannot exist a doubt, in any dispassionate mind, of Leland’s having, for sordid motives, and the hope of encircling his brows with a mitre, perverted and defiled, with deliberate calumnies and flagitious misrepresentations, the stream of his stagnant and putrescent HISTORY. JUVERNA must be also aware that Hume, as a historian, has been arraigned for falsehood, injustice, and calumny, by some of the ablest English writers; particularly Dr. Johnson, the bulwark of morality and literature, who broadly charges Hume with “writing his history, to serve the interests of a party, and mislead the people of England.” That he was the wilful and hired traducer of Ireland, is an established fact, which even our correspondent would hardly have the boldness to contravene. But it is not to Ireland alone, that he has dealt out injustice, if the following anecdote, recorded by Plowden, in his postliminous preface, is true: —​“While Mr. Hume was writing his history of England, a certain lord of Session supplied him with several original documents concerning Elizabeth’s cruel conduct towards Mary, Queen of Scots: they tended to render the character of Elizabeth less amiable, in the eyes of the English, than it is generally represented. Mr. Hume worked them faithfully into his manuscript, which having been perused by Mr. Andrew Millar, his publisher, he was informed that this new and less favourable portrait of the virgin Queen, would be, by £500, less saleable, than a highly finished copy of that, to which the British eye had been so long accustomed. Mr. Hume took back his manuscript, and complied with the prudential suggestions of his bookseller, observing, with philosophic pleasantry, ‘that £500 was a valuable consideration, for settling differences between two old friends, about two royal w—​—​—​s, that had been dead nearly two hundred years.’ ” If this anecdote is founded in verity and authenticity, it must reflect eternal disgrace on Hume’s memory. The moment a historian becomes venal, then impartiality, truth, and candour, are given to the winds; and the sacred deposit of historic evidence, torn, mangled, and divided, is carried, like Leland’s assertions, down the rapid currents of partiality, power, and prejudice. Leland’s

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History of Ireland, is now regarded by every liberal and enlightened man, with contempt, as the innoxious offspring of a mind, warped and perverted, by base venality; it is like the eyeless Polyphemus groping in his cave, malignant, but harmless. “Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.”

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“LITERARY NOTICES: Dermot Mac Morrogh, or the Conquest of Ireland; an Historical Tale of the Twelfth Century. In Four Cantos. By John Quincy Adams,” The New-​England Magazine, vol. 3 (December 1832), pp.  503–​507; selection from pp. 504–​506. Richard Hildreth Richard Hildreth (1807–​65), a miscellaneous writer and lawyer, was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father was a professor of mathematics. Graduating from Harvard College in 1826, Hildreth studied to become a lawyer and practiced in Boston and Newburyport. In 1832 he founded the Boston Daily Atlas. Besides contributing to the New-​England Magazine, Hildreth also submitted pieces to the American Monthly Magazine and the Ladies’ Magazine. In his later years he wrote and published history and philosophy. The New-​England Magazine was founded in Boston in 1831 and edited by Joseph T. Buckingham. In 1835 it was merged into The American Monthly Magazine. On Richard Hildreth see Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck, eds., Cyclopaedia of American Literature (reprinted Philadelphia, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 298–​301; Kenneth B. Murdock, “Richard Hildreth,” DAB, vol. 5, part 1, pp. 19–​20. On the New-​ England Magazine see API, p. 155; BAP, p. 114; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 599–​603. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Having thus despatched the title page, which, as we have before remarked, is, by far, the most important portion of the book, let us now proceed to the “Preface and Dedication.” The chief part of this portion of the work, consists of two extracts from that very rare book, —​Hume’s History of England, the first of which, contains the historian’s summary of the events of the Irish conquest, ending, be it remembered, in this manner: —​

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“By these trivial exploits, scarcely worth relating, except for the importance of the consequences, was Ireland subdued, and annexed to the English crown.” The other extract is Hume’s character of Henry II. the king in whose reign this conquest was achieved. It is only at the beginning and conclusion of the “Preface and Dedication,” that our author blesses us, with the light of his own bright intellect. It must be confessed, however, that when he does shine out, it is with his accustomed fierceness and brilliancy. The following paragraph is the commencement of the “Preface and Introduction,” and introduces the extracts from Hume. We consider it a great curiosity, and give it entire: —​ “History, it hath been said, is Philosophy, teaching by example. This aphorism has made a greater fortune in the world than it deserves. The examples which history presents to the contemplation of mankind, if they teach any philosophy at all, it is that of the philosopher Apemantus in Shakspeare’s Timon of Athens. To test this truth I would ask the young men and women of my native country, who may charge an idle evening with the perusal of the History which I now dedicate to them, what sort of philosophy would be taught by the example of Henry the Second of England, or of Dermot Mac Morrough, king of Leinster, which resulted in the conquest of Ireland by the English monarch. History, as it should be written and read, is the school of morals, teaching sometimes by example, but much more frequently by admonition. It is a narrative of a few prosperous voyages and multitudes of shipwrecks. But how is history written? How is history read? David Hume passes for a philosophical historian; and he is much celebrated for the interest which he infuses into his narrative, and for his skill and discernment in the delineation of characters. Now listen to his account of the conquest of Ireland by the murderer of Becket, and then mark the character which he gives of the man.” What a nice distinction does our author make, and how grandly does he put down that dull fellow, David Hume! Now, to our limited intellect, the word philosophy, in the aphorism, which our author criticises, and the phrase, “school of morals,” in his own, would seem to be perfectly synonymous; and should one relate a tale of crime and blood, by way of warning to his auditors, we should consider it mere verbal quibbling, to dispute, whether the narrator taught, by example, or by admonition. But the acuteness of our author has enabled him to take a refined distinction, just, no doubt, but to ordinary intellects, totally invisible. The mild manner, and bland modesty, too, with which he announces his discovery, and denounces the stupidity of poor Hume, will serve as a fine example, or —​admonition, to the young men and women, to whom he particularly addresses himself.

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After giving us the extracts from Hume, our author proceeds as follows: —​ “So much for Hume’s philosophy, teaching by the example of Henry the Second. If there be in the annals of the human race, a transaction of deeper and more melancholy depravity than the conquest of Ireland by Henry the Second, it has not fallen under my notice. It would seem as if it could not be accomplished but by a complication of the most odious crimes, public and private. Dermot Mac Morrogh, for insupportable tyranny over his subjects, aggravated by the violation of the most sacred of human ties, the seduction of another’s wife, is justly expelled from his kingdom. He immediately repairs to “the greatest prince of his time, for wisdom, virtue, and abilities,” and sells his country for the price of being restored by the foreign invader to his principality. The English king, to cover the basest of aggressions with the mantle of religion, applies to Pope Adrian the Fourth, an Englishman, for authority to ravage Ireland with fire and sword, under pretence of reforming the inhabitants, and reducing them to the orthodox faith of paying tribute to the Roman See. This authority Poor Adrian grants him without scruple. You may read in Rapin the brief itself. And with this sacrilegious abuse of religion, Henry, reeking with the blood of Becket, and Dermot, the russian builder of monasteries, achieve the conquest of Ireland, in vassalage to the crown of England. And this is the tenure by which Ireland is held, as an appendage to the sister island, at the present day.” And this is the subject, too, which John Quincy Adams, late President of the United States, but now, poet, and teacher of morality, has especially chosen for the edification, instruction, and moral improvement of the young men and women of his country! a subject, which affords such ample opportunities to illustrate and inculcate all those mild and gentle virtues, those tender and delicate emotions, on which the happiness of private life so essentially depends, and in which the “young men and women” of our author’s country are so principally interested. . . . The very truth of the case is, that Dermot Mac Morrogh, though divided into four cantos, each with its separate title, and though written in a stanza of eight lines, which we do not distinctly recollect to be used elsewhere, except occasionally in a collection of Methodist Hymns, has no pretensions whatever to be called a poem. It is a sort of chronicle in rhyme, and, so far, resembles the first rude efforts of the English muse. It is a dull, and tedious versification, in some ninety pages, of the same story which Hume tells in five pages of prose; and tells, too, plainly and perspicuously, and without the omission of a single incident contained in the rhyming version, —​except, indeed, some few

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corruptions of the story, which our author probably intended as embellishments, but which add neither dignity nor interest to the narration. We think he has acted with great judgement in prefixing Hume’s version of the story to his own; for though he is guilty of no such flights of imagination as might distract the thought and divert the attention of his readers, from the tenor of his narrative, yet he drawls it out in such a tiresome, sleepy way, that very few people, by the time they had reached the end of the poem, would be able to tell what they had been reading about.

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CRITICISMS OF HUME ON THE PURITANS AND CHARLES I

“ART. VII.  —​ Vaughan’s Memorials of the Stuarts. Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, including the Constitutional and Ecclesiastical History of England from the Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II. By ROBERT VAUGHAN. 2  vols. 8vo. London. 1831,” The North American Review, vol. 37, no. 80 (July 1833), pp. 164–​89; selection from pp. 165, 173–​7. [Charles Francis Adams] Charles Francis Adams (1807–​86), the son of John Quincy Adams (1767–​1848), was a Boston born politician, diplomat, and miscellaneous writer. Adams wrote on a number of historical topics. Authorship of this review is attributed to C. F. Adams in William Cushing, Index to the North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p.  117. On C.F. Adams see Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Charles Francis Adams (1900; reprinted New York and London, 1980); Kinley Brauer, “Charles Francis Adams,” ANB, vol. 1, pp.  74–​7; Martin B.  Duberman, Charles Francis Adams (1960). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ At this time of day, nobody thinks of placing reliance upon the account of the British revolution given by Mr. Hume. Many writers have within a few years combined to expose his inaccuracies of fact and his partiality of judgment. He was a Scotch tory of the last century in politics, and a skeptic in religion. He was bred up in attachment to that law which made the Roman Emperors absolute sovereigns in their dominions, and he nursed in himself a supreme contempt for every thing that savored of devotion. Admirable, therefore, as the literary acquirements of Mr. Hume certainly were, he was by no means the person to compose a textbook upon English history. He is to be heard not as a judge, but

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as an attorney pleading a cause, and his arguments are worth no more from him, than they would be coming from Clarendon himself. Indeed, they are not worth so much, for Clarendon was a religious man. He could understand the sincerity of religious belief, even when it did not come exactly within the line of his own practice. Numerous as the corrections of Hume have been, few, we might say not one, has been directed particularly to the point where he was most unjust, —​the history of the Puritans. We are therefore delighted at last to take up a work which undertakes to supply this deficiency; which proposes, in a brief compass, to review and rectify what has heretofore been written. ... We must now pass to the consideration of the critical reign of Charles the First. The history of England furnished to each of the great parties which divided the kingdom, the precedents upon which they rested their opposite claims. And each began to revive those practices, which were best likely to serve their present design. Charles and his lawyers found themselves sustained by the examples of the Tudors, while the other party looked beyond, to the reign of the Plantagenets. The monarch set in operation his forced loans, his benevolences, ship money, forest laws, the honor of arbitrary knighthood, Star Chamber and High Commission Courts, forming together a complete net-​work of despotism over the country, while his opponents claimed the support of the Charter of Runymede and the authority of Parliament. Precedent has great influence in the way of restraining the passions of men, and is therefore always of considerable value as a support to justice. But we cannot admit that the case of the resisting party could have been a whit less just, if every one of the acts of Charles had been practised from time immemorial, and there had been no offset against them to be shown on the face of the statue book. Man has rights beyond the bar of limitation, and it is only necessary for him to claim them understandingly, to place his cause upon an eternal basis. The British people had arrived so far in the reign of the first Charles, —​and it was the wrong-​headed resistance of that king which destroyed him, and drove them to madness. It will be perceived, from this view of the case, that we are disposed to rely very little, for a justification of the Revolution, upon the mere records of ancient times, —​nor are we at all aware that such reliance is necessary, excepting perhaps in a single point. A doubt might reasonably be entertained, whether forcible resistance was justifiable by the degree of oppression, that had yet been experienced by the people at large. The well known rule is, that the danger of suffering by submission must exceed that likely to result from any attempt at

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change. Clarendon has drawn a striking picture of the national prosperity at this time, for the purpose of illustrating that question; and even Mr. Fox, whose partialities are by no means on the same side, has, in his Historical Fragment, treated as a doubtful case the propriety of the appeal to the ultima ratio, at the time when it was made. There is always a disadvantage attending measures of prevention. Men look back after a danger has passed harmlessly over, and wonder how they could have been so much alarmed, without reflecting that their own acts had dispelled it. In this way it is, that a skeptical nature, like that of Hume, has every advantage. The actual consequences of a measure do not appear to correspond with the dread entertained of it previously. Immediately, such an author attributes personal motives to the leaders for ‘so unnecessarily’ exciting the public feeling. Charles on the throne, having dissolved three Parliaments in less than his three first years, and reigning for twelve more without calling one, with Strafford for his right and Laud for his left hand man, and with all the instruments which the ingenuity of the crown lawyers were devising to support his tyranny, might well be deemed an enemy to the public peace, fit to be resisted. But apart from this consideration, so far as the Puritans constituted the popular party, they had no other resource. Archbishop Laud required conformity to that which their consciences would not permit them to conform to, —​and the only peaceable alternative, that of secession from the State, he as resolutely refused to them. Cromwell, Hampden, Haselrig and others were prevented, by his interposition, from sailing to this country, after they were actually on board a vessel. The choice, therefore, was to them between war or total humiliation. It seems difficult to suppose a case in which a struggle is justifiable, if this attack upon religious opinions and civil rights together do not make one. Mr. Fox seems to us to have erred, as many other writers have done, —​by placing the contest of 1640 too exclusively in a popular light. Had resistance been confined strictly to the defenders of civil liberty, it may well be doubted, whether at that stage it was completely justifiable. We must be permitted to add a doubt, whether it would have happened. The Puritans and they alone felt the double motive. It has been said, that the king was willing to concede, and did concede enough to satisfy reasonable men, but that his opponents never relaxed in their enmity, —​and this has been brought as an argument to show their ambitious views. Nobody who judges fairly of the character of Charles, can be long blinded upon this point. It has been the practice of such writers as Hume, to cover this monarch’s failings, under the mantle of sympathy for his hard fate. Yet it cannot be denied, that dissimulation and double dealing were his peculiar

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characteristics. The consequences were exceedingly unfortunate for himself. The popular leaders could never rely upon him, even when he was most sincere. They felt themselves embarked in a new and adventurous undertaking. Loyalty had all the power hat European prescription could give it. The popular idea of ‘the divinity that doth hedge a king,’ was not then worn away. If they had submitted, and Charles had been false to his word, their cause would have been almost irrecoverably lost. Now that Charles would have been in fact false, there is every reason to believe. His letters found at Naseby prove it; his mode of treating the petition of right proves it; his first appearance before Parliament to bolster up Buckingham’s false account of the business of the Spanish Marriage proves it; his voluntary and violated promise to impose a restriction upon his wife’s religious establishment proves it. Throughout all his history, if we consider it by the aid of private documents that have since reached the light, it would be difficult to fix upon one act of his reign, that can be called a sincere concession to the feelings of his people. Yet this is the man, whose cause Mr. Hume takes up against what he considers the hypocrisy of the Puritans. This is the man in whose favor that historian ventures to make an insinuation against the memory of Hampden, and in justification of another of whose acts, he coolly pens the following paragraph. ‘Because Sir John Eliot happened to die while in custody, a great clamor was raised against the administration, and he was universally regarded as a martyr to the liberties of England.’ Now Sir John Eliot was ‘in custody’ three years on account of his performing a certain portion of his duty in Parliament; his physician declared his health to be affected by the imprisonment, and the king knew it, yet refused him any indulgence. We are somewhat at a loss to know, what claim short the stake or the axe, could be stronger to the title of a martyr. And withal the philosophical historian proceeds to generalize, and quotes with approbation some old royalist writer, who says that the Puritans, though they would not swear and drink, yet would lie and deceive. In just such a spirit does Mr. Achille Murat remark of the people of New England at this day, that they go to church, and are strict in the performance of religious exercises, while, at the same time, they do not stick at a fraudulent bankruptcy. The sweeping character of such charges ought always to inspire a doubt, not only of their correctness, but also of the authority that pretends to make them. All bodies of men are necessarily composed unequally. Some members will have gross vices. It is manifestly unjust to judge of the mass by the exceptions. The proper method

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of arriving at a conclusion, would be to compare the general character for morality of one portion of the community with that of another. New England need not shrink from such a comparison with any portion of the earth, nor will the character of the Puritans, even by Hume’s own admission elsewhere, suffer by comparison with that of the cavaliers. But it is hardly worth while to grow indignant against Hume. His work has much merit, even if he did forget the old rule, ne quid falsi dicere audcat, ne quid veri non audeat. We will close our notice of him, by quoting, as strikingly applicable to condemn him, the words of one of his contemporaries. ‘The man,’ says Dr. Johnson, ‘who considers himself as constituted the ultimate judge of disputable characters, and entrusted with the distribution of the last terrestrial rewards of merit, ought to summon all his fortitude to the support of his integrity, and resolve to discharge an office of such dignity with the most vigilant caution and scrupulous justice. To deliver examples to posterity, and to regulate the opinion of future times, is no slight or trivial undertaking; nor is it easy to commit more atrocious treason against the great republic of humanity, than by falsifying its records and misguiding its decrees.’

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HUME, AS HISTORIAN

“HUME, AS A  HISTORIAN,” The American Quarterly Observer, vol. 1, no. 2 (October 1833), pp. 189–​205 [pp. 190–​91 skipped in numbering of original]. Leonard Withington Leonard Withington (1789–​1885), an author of miscellaneous essays and books, was a Yale graduate who had studied at Andover Theological Seminary and was ordained in 1816 as a Congregational minister. When the essay reprinted below was published, Withington was a pastor at Newbury, Massachusetts. The American Quarterly Observer was published in Boston by Perkins & Marvin. There were three volumes from July 1833 to October 1834. In 1835 the American Quarterly Observer was merged into the Biblical Repository and Classical Review. The magazine’s editor was Bela B. Edwards of Andover. On Withington see The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New  York, 1907), vol. 5; Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck, eds., Cyclopaedia of American Literature (reprinted Philadelphia, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 45–​6; James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New  York, 1889), vol. 6, p. 586. On the American Quarterly Observer see API, p. 25; BAP, p. 13; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), p. 367. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

HUME, AS A HISTORIAN IT may be a prejudice, but I have always regarded it as a matter of gratitude, that I was born and educated under the influence of English literature. Books are destined to have a powerful influence over men; they are the only weapons

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which achieve the permanent victories that alter the face of our globe; and, on the whole, English literature is the purest, and most impregnated with the spirit of the gospel, of any which has existed. In Germany, the human mind wanders in vagaries; every thing is pushed to extravagance; and they seem to have no sense of the absurd or ridiculous, either in forming theories, or painting characters. They seem to need the lash of such satirists as Swift and Pope, to tame them from the vagaries of enthusiasm, to the plain realities of common sense.* In France, they are all economists and sensualists; never unlocking the secrets of our spiritual nature; never soaring into the regions of moral grandeur and beauty; and their literati still write and act as if they half believed, what no man can entirely believe, that death is an eternal sleep. Italy has her pastorals, and Spain has her ballads; but England, blessed old England, has poured on us the treasures of some of the greatest geniuses, combined with the purest hearts, that ever wrote. It is a privilege to say, that the language of Milton is your mother tongue; that the songs of Watts were sung over your cradle; and that your religious sentiments were formed by such writers as Hooker, and Owen, and Baxter, and Edwards, and Butler, who often combine the warmest piety with the most rigid demonstration, and sometimes with the most persuasive eloquence. These are stars, whose lustre I never look to see surpassed; and I repeat it, it is the richest blessing to be born under the beneficent influence of these constellations of our northern sky. There was one department of literature, which, for a long time, the English were supposed to be deficient in, and that is, historical composition. It is now believed, however, since Hume, and Gibbon, and Dr.  Robertson, of Scotland,

* It may be a dream of mine, but it has always appeared to me, that such writers as Swift, Pope, and

Addison, with all their faults, have had a powerful influence in giving to the English nation that common sense character, for which they have been distinguished, and the more distinguished, the more they are compared with some of their neighbors. Other causes have indeed co-​operated. The manner in which many of the high-​flying dreams in politics and religion, in the days of Cromwell, terminated; their commercial character, and their government; have tended to make them calculators of the earth, rather than soarers into the clouds. But certainly their satirists, though, in swinging their promiscuous scythes, they have cut down many a fair flower as well as many a hurtful weed, have had a hand in keeping them from that wild spirit of theory and speculation, which prevail in Germany. It seems to me, that the value of German literature has been vastly overrated. No doubt their biblical critics have brought some new lights to illustrate the Scriptures. But strip them of their extravagant theories, and how little will remain. The same erudition, brought to a subject, when it is shown enlarged through the mists of some ingenious hypothesis, appears much greater than when arranged to establish the antiquated dictates of common sense. Whatever value these German geniuses may have, it has always been lost in the importing. Their worth is too fugitive to endure the ordeal of a translation. Whatever is their own, is false; and whatever is true, we have heard before. Their dramatic writers are too little like Shakspeare, and their critics and commentators too much like Warburton. As I am somewhat an enemy to their reputation, I have malice enough to wish they might all be translated.

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have produced their elaborate performances, that this reproach has been wiped away. Each of these authors have a high name, not certainly to be acquired without great merit; but I am afraid, if the removing of the reproach of our historical deficiency depends on them, it must still remain. If the merit of history depends upon holding up an unwrinkled mirror, to reflect, in perfection, past events, it is certain this praise must be withheld from two of them, at least. Besides, the whole style and character which they have given to historical writing, in my opinion, is wrong. Written history should flow over the events of time, like a silver current over the pebbles of its bed, without a shaking of the water, to make it turbid, and almost without a refraction. The language should glide with the sweetest simplicity; proper words in proper places; for the object of history is not to color or magnify, but, like a glass window, to convey the conception of the landscape as it is, with all its beauties and imperfections. It is the last place in the world to indulge in what is erroneously called fine writing, which is but another name for fine deceiving. I wish to see Old Time arrayed in the multician and coan garments of antiquity,* and not wrapped in surplices and robes, like a bishop at the altar, or a lord on a court day, when the dress and the ceremony hide the shape and the character which we are most curious to see. History professes to give us facts; and, therefore, if it misstates or misinterprets those facts, it becomes tenfold more deceiving. All our wisdom comes from experience; and whatever is not within the compass of our own experience, comes from the testimony of others. The Ruler of the world is constantly reading us a lesson, in the execution of his providential laws. Now the transmission of this lesson depends upon the faithfulness of the record; and, had history always been written as it ought, had moral causes and effects been always brought up before the mind, just as God, in his eternal laws, has connected them, I can conceive nothing more calculated to give the mind all the instruction that this world can afford. Unhappily, however, we are compelled, except in the pages of revelation, to see past time through a fallible medium. The objects surveyed are the works of God, performed indeed through the agency of man, but the medium is always artificial; we see them enlarged, diminished, distorted, through the prejudices of the writer —​or, what is the greatest source of deception, we often have the truth, but not the whole truth. In such cases, truth itself has the effect of falsehood. It is a melancholy circumstance, that history has so often fallen into the hands of men acute, rather than wise; willing rather to show their own intellectual * Juvenal, Sat. II. 65 line.

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omnipotence, than to give us a fair representation of real events; men of perverted intellects and depraved hearts. Such men will certainly never reach the sublime and beautiful of history. No man can write well, unless his soul speaks; unless his passions prompt his pen. He may be master of a very fine style; he may draw his characters with much delicacy and discrimination; he may satirize folly, and sometimes make truth ridiculous; he may show great intellectual power; power which we should admire in an ancient orator, or a modern lawyer. But, after all, he is not a good historian. He misleads the world, and perhaps himself. Of all the men who have led the way in this perverted style of history, perhaps none have been more popular and successful than DAVID HUME. The remark of Dr. Johnson, that no man ever became great by imitation, is not always true; for when a great genius condescends to imitate an inferior model, he only shows how surprizingly he can surpass his pattern. Hume, in the general tenor of history, was an imitator of Voltaire; and, although he wanted Voltaire’s varied talents—​ Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes Augur, schænobates, medicus, magus: omnia novit. Greculous esuriens in cœlum, jusseris, ibit.

—​Yet, in every requisite of a historian, he was greatly his superior. Seizing on the most enchanting period of English history, and writing in the careless and graceful style of a man of the world, he has produced a work which must always be read, and is calculated to have no small power over the public mind. This book is in all our libraries; is read by the young, in the course of their education; and, though the errors of the book have been elaborately pointed out by acute reviewers, yet something, perhaps, may be said, profitable to our own country. It would be a matter of sorrow, in this late day, if one mind should be misled by sophistry so flimsy, though produced by abilities so great. The happiest literary productions are, when a peculiar man is brought to the execution of a task peculiarly fitted to his genius. There is an affinity between some minds and some subjects; they seem to revel on them, as congenial themes; there is an exquisite harmony between the author and his book; and we close the volume, saying, ‘This man was born for this purpose, and no other.’ The words flow as unlaboriously from his pen, as water from a fountain; and every impression we receive, is a picture transmitted from soul to soul. Thus every reader rejoices that Milton’s mind lighted on such a theme as Paradise Lost. Cervantes tells that he held that Don Quixote was born for him, and he for Don Quixote; and all can see, that no matter ever more completely matched the

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mind that produced it. As the blossoms of some plants effuse the very smell of the root, so does every page of that unrivalled production savor of the character of its author’s mind. But every one sees that Pope was not at home in translating Homer —​it was a forced marriage between discordant parties. Trace the whole circle of literature, and you will find, that those books which are pure honey —​ which touch the very centre of delight and profit in our bosoms —​are formed, when some peculiar mind lights on some congenial theme. In such cases, invention riots in her task, and accomplishes her work with the least labor, and the greatest success. The history of England, from the days of Henry VIII. down to the passing the reform bill, is very peculiar, and calls for an author of peculiar powers to represent it. It presents the grandest spectacle ever witnessed on our globe. Greater battles may have been fought; broader kingdoms may have been established, or melted into air; more conquerors may have appeared, and rolled to richer thrones on more splendid cars; but I take it, as no tragedy is estimated by the size of the stage on which it is acted, or the splendor of the scenery, but wholly by the excellence of the dialogue, so it is the conflict of mind with mind, which gives the sublimest interests to the records of time. This is the very character of the period to which I have alluded. I know not how better to designate it, than by using the language of Scripture in the visions of the prophet: The four winds of heaven strove on the great sea. It is a conflict of principle —​it is a debate, in which the great interests of mankind are at stake. Every thing to be sure, is thrown into commotion; the old foundations of society are torn up from their bottom, and cast about in every direction. The mind seems to wake from the slumber of ages; to catch new ideal images; to gaze on a new sun; to breathe a new air; and to form the bright conception of a higher and holier state. It is true, the path to the prize lies through suffering, and every furlong of the journey is dyed with blood. It is not a measurement of corporeal strength; it is not a conflict which may be settled by powder and ball —​but the invisible nature of man steps forth on the scene, religion combines with politics, and liberty asserts her long forgotten and disregarded claims. On the one side, there is a set of tyrants, who have established their thrones on the ignorance of mankind; and suck their nourishment from the secondary vices which their own primary ones have helped to foster. On the other hand, there springs up a little band of Christian patriots, determined to be free. The press begins to be unshackled, the Bible is translated, and the conflict commences. Truth blows her trumpet, and flashes her torch over the caves and palaces where the giants of superstition have long enjoyed their repose. They start; they rise; they roar; they attempt to open the bottomless pit,

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and fill the whole atmosphere with the locusts, and the smoke. In the language of the old Gnostics, we may say it is a conflict between light and darkness; between the demon of matter and the god of light. The heart is kept in constant agitation, by the long and doubtful struggle of the balanced powers. Now the sun of truth seems breaking from the clouds; now the darkness returns, and the storm redoubles its violence; wind meets wind; wave crosses wave; and the whole surface ferments, and foams, and heaves, with the dreadful agitation. The cause of Protestantism seems to make some incipient struggles in the days of Henry VIII. It seems to be fully established in the days of Edward VI. The blackest night of popery and persecution returns with Queen Mary. A doubtful struggle is maintained in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Then arose the puritans —​noble minds —​men who knew how to act and suffer, as well as to write and preach. A systematic attempt is made to oppress the liberties of the nation and the rights of conscience, under the Stuarts. Then the human mind puts on all its armor, and bursts forth in all its grandeur and importance. Never was there a greater age. The stage almost seems peopled with a different order of beings from common men. It was an age of delusion, to be sure, and of enthusiasm; but it was an age of greatness. Even the torpid feelings of Hume, who can see martyred liberty and religion led to the stake without a tear, and speculate on their tombs —​even he seems to kindle for a moment at the thrilling sight. “Now was the time when genius and capacity, of all kinds, freed from the restraint of authority, and nourished by unbounded hopes and projects, began to exert themselves, and be distinguished by the public. Then was celebrated the sagacity of Pym, more fitted for use than ornament; matured, not chilled, by his advanced age and long experience. Then was displayed the mighty ambition of Hampden, taught disguise, not moderation, from former constraint; supported by courage, conducted by prudence, embellished by modesty; but whether founded in love of power, or zeal for liberty, is still, from his untimely end, left doubtful and uncertain. Then, too, were known the dark, ardent, and dangerous character of St. John; the impetuous spirit of Hollis, violent and sincere, open and entire, in his enmities and in his friendships; the enthusiastic genius of young Vane, extravagant in the ends which he pursued, sagacious and profound in the means which he employed, incited by the appearances of religion, negligent of the duties of morality.”* It is impossible to write the history of this period with fidelity, without an extensive acquaintance with the books and pamphlets of that day. In these, we trace the causes of the movements which shook the throne, and emancipated for * Hist. of Great Britain, Charles I. ch. v.

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a time the nation. It is true, there was much rubbish; much enthusiasm; much unintelligible nonsense. But there was also the deepest wisdom, the fruit and the evidence of the deepest feeling. I hardly ever opened an author of that period, without tracing the effect of the excitement of that day, in the amazing fertility and eloquence of the animated page. Pope, Swift, Addison, write well; but they are at their ease; their faculties are tranquillized by the repose of an elbow-​chair. Not so, Milton, Harrington, Taylor, South, &c. It is doubtful whether a mariner can bring forth all his faculties, until the storm comes. So it is with respect to the dormant powers of the human mind. “Behold,” says Milton, “this vast city; a city of refuge; the mansion house of liberty; encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shops of war hath not more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation; others are fast reading, trying all things, apparently, to the force of reason and convincement. What can a man require more from a nation, so pliant, and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful laborers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up; the fields are white already”.* It is true, the waves of darkness rolled back, and seemed, to a superficial eye, to cover the land. But liberty, after all, liberty of thought, is the very genius of our ancestors. It flows in the blood of English and Americans. As Webster says, it is imbedded in our soil; and it is a sober liberty, because it has always walked hand in hand with religion. After many trepidations, and ebbings and flowings of the public tide of oppression and independence, we may consider liberty as established in the reign of King William. Now I say there never was a time when such an interesting conflict was exhibited. The history of most ancient nations is the history of oppression. Mind is sunk —​there is nothing like principle —​the internal nature of man is subjected to outward force. Even the liberty of Greece and Rome, so often vaunted, was a very partial and defective liberty. It was combined with no high moral principle; it was the ambition of a selected corps against one, while, at the same time, both parties should combine to crush the many. When Christianity woke the world from the slumbers of paganism, it seemed for a while as if great scenes were to * Areopagitica.

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be exhibited, and great principles were to be discussed; and, true enough, the Christian religion did for a while struggle with the torporific tendency of the age; it kept alive whatever was great and good in the character of the times. But Christianity, instead of inspiring the world, sunk under its corruptions. It burst on mankind healthful and fresh, like a mountain stream, rolling down the rock, scattering coolness and freshness in its path; but, as that same stream, however fresh and pure at its origin, may roll into the level plain, and, amidst its saline and bituminous sands, become calm, polluted and sluggish, so did Christianity linger and languish in our world, until the days of Luther. Then she started from her sleep; and England has been the spot of her most genuine operations. RELIGION and LIBERTY! these are the greatest names that ever arrested the attention of mankind; and such are the themes of our history, since the days of Henry the VIII. Say, then, was there ever a subject more worthy of an eloquent pen —​the organ of a just and glowing heart! All this requires a historian to relate it, who should be, whatever David Hume was not. Sometimes I have felt a transient wish that Milton had completed his design, and given us a full body of English history. He had all the glow of soul, all the high conception of the sublime and beautiful in morals, which was necessary. But Milton was born for a poet, and not for a historian. His prose is poetry; and his diction is too ponderous and encumbered for common readers. He might have given a good narrative for those who would have studied it out; but that number would have been small. Besides, Milton, though having a strong intuitive insight into truth, yet was no reasoner; his deductions are perfect, but his premises are often laid in the imagination. He was not the man to balance probabilities, to sum up the argument, and to lead the reader’s mind through a narrow path, to retiring truth. The same subject was attempted by Burke. His vast capacity and his unbounded eloquence would no doubt have left us an English history of great value. No man knew, better than he, how to seize hold of a leading fact, or principle, which should shed light on all the complex entanglements of annexed events. Thus, in his speech on American affairs, he has thrown out a thought, which goes farther to explain why Britain could not conquer America, than all the narratives and speculations which may be found in the professed historians. He just asks the ministry to state to themselves, what it would be to conquer America? Taking a town, was not conquering America; marching through the country, was not; surveying it, was not; and as for occupying a space of so many millions of square miles, it was out of the question. There was not one vital spot, at which they could strike, and say that the provincials would be subdued. Now this was the true secret, notwithstanding all the flattering unctions

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addressed to our vanity, on the fourth of July, about our invincible arms —​this is the true secret why we were not conquered. The wide surface of our country, and the intelligent yeomanry spread over it, was, under God, our salvation. No man, therefore, had more of some of the most splendid requisites of a historian, than the bright-​minded Edmund Burke. But, after all, this orator hardly answers to one’s conception of a historian. His diction is too splendid, and his mind roves too far after the gaudy images of his own fertile conception, to pursue the beaten path of narrative. It is dangerous to say what a great man can do, or to attempt to limit his power; but it is not, perhaps, superfluous superstition, to express a fear that Burke’s history, like Homer’s Fame, would not even have walked the ground, without sometimes hiding its head in the clouds. But never was there a mind, of equal power, less fitted for the task, than that of David Hume. I can imagine Sir Isaac Newton writing novels, in the style of Richardson; I can imagine Thomas Moore writing pious hymns, as he did, though it must be confessed he makes sad work of it; I can imagine Mr. Locke translating the epigrams of Martial; I can almost imagine Milton, (horresco referens,) writing a comedy, in the style of Congreve —​I say I can imagine all these things, more easily than I could imagine the supersensuous and high-​principled history of England, with all its spiritual lights and shades, falling into the grasp of such an animalized being as David Hume —​if it had not actually taken place. What is it? It is the serpent of seduction, crawling beneath the flowers of paradise. In the first place, his unfitness for the task was seated in the very tissue of his soul. He had no perception of the sublime and beautiful in morals. He could follow the patriot to his agony of glory, and the martyr to his stake, without one touch of sympathy with the generosity of the one, or the devotion of the other. His conception, as well as his heart, seems to have been defective. We often find that men of very imperfect lives, and gross in their pleasures, still preserve a bright apprehension of moral beauty. Thomson, the poet, if his biographers have not been unjust to his memory, was on the whole a luxurious and sensual man, loving a good supper better than the morning landscape, which he so finely describes. However low his pleasures might have been, (and I am afraid they were much lower than we should be willing to remember, while reading the Seasons,) he still preserved in his mind the bright ideal of moral beauty. There was a discord and divorce between his fancy and his heart. But it was not so with Hume. There was a dreadful harmony between them. No glowing forms of spiritual life flitted before his mind; no high conceptions of man’s final destiny and social improvement visited his waking or sleeping dreams. He was the most impassive being that ever crawled among the reptiles of lower life. It was said

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by Rosseau, that when a man begins to reason, he ceases to feel; and I believe it is strictly true, that when a man begins to reason sophistically, he loses his heart in his sophistry. Hume never seems to sympathize with the self-​sacrifices which the patriot makes; he sees men pleading, suffering, dying, in the cause of the best interests of mankind, and never catches one spark of the flame. He puts down, with a caustic satire, some of the most generous hearts that ever beat and bled for the elevation or felicity of the human race. He loves repose; he wants all things to continue as they were; he is always ready to make a treaty with bigots and tyrants, on the terms of uti possidetis. Now such a man has abilities, and is fit for something. Let him go and write his metaphysical essays; let him prove to his own satisfaction, if he can, that it is doubtful whether bread will nourish, or the next morsel of meat, however, well killed and cooked, may not prove rank poison; let him raise his skeptical doubts, until he doubts his own being; and give a skeptical solution of these doubts, until he begins to think he does exist —​all this is legitimate quarry for such a mind —​but oh, let him not come within the awful limits of English history! It is consecrated ground. There are suns which he never saw, and flowers which he cannot smell. He can scarce write a line, without satirizing the subject, and throwing a deeper satire on his own heart. In the second place, Hume was, by nature and disposition, a sophist —​a race of men who have always existed, but the last men who ought to deal in facts. The sophists are a sort of men, who arose in Greece, and are often alluded to by the best writers of antiquity. A  sophist is not a man who, misled by subtleties and the darkness of his own mind, falls into error because he honestly mistakes it for truth. Such a man is the dupe of sophistry. But he is one, who considers words as counters, to prove any sum which he may wish to pass current. He is one, who has no object but to excite admiration by showing his ingenuity. He purposely chooses the wrong side, and defends it with all the plausibility in his power. A paradox is his delight; he covets and purloins the robes of truth, only to polish them, and fit them, with the nicest adjustment, to the wen-​spotted and distorted limbs of delusion. An idea of the sophist may be obtained from the speeches of Hippias, in the 5th book of the Memorabila of Xenophon, 4 c. When Hippias came to Athens, Socrates was, as usual, discoursing on moral subjects; and was lamenting that, while every man knew where to send his son to learn to make a shield, or tame a horse, yet it was so very hard to know where to go to learn righteousness. O, said Hippias, laughing and jeering at him, you are sawing on the same old string; I think I have heard all this before. Yes, said Socrates, and what is worse, O Hippias, when my subject is the same, I always treat it in the same manner, that is, I always use the same arguments to accomplish the same

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conviction. But you, Hippias, are an original genius. You, I suppose, never support the same truth by the same arguments.* No, by no means, replied Hippias, I always try to say something new. Πειοωμαι χαινον Τι λεγειν δει. Well, now, said Socrates, let us take a subject most level to our faculties. Suppose, now, a painter were to ask you how big I am, and what is my color and shape. Would you answer one thing at one time, and another at another? Or, suppose an arithmetician were to ask you how much twice five is. Would you say to-​day it is ten, and to-​morrow fifteen? O, said Hippias, on these subjects, to be sure, I always say the same thing. But when I come to the essence of morals, I think I can show you that it is right to vary. Socrates goes on to show him, by irresistible induction, that here, too, truth is immutable. He appeals to the laws of all nations, and especially to the unwritten laws of eternal justice. I quote this, to show, from the mouth of Hippias, the very spirit of a sophist —​χαινον Τι—​that is his sole object. He is a kind of intellectual rope-​dancer, whose only aim is to astonish mankind at the feats he can perform. Now, this propensity was engraved in the very genius of Hume. It was an impulse, which, though sometimes he tries to suppress it, is always rising to overpower his resolution, and fill the channel of his favorite passion. Now sophistry, on some subjects, is harmless and amusing. It is pleasant to trace the vagaries of the human mind, and to see to what startling conclusions our deductions may lead us. I, for my part, never read a novel, with half the interest that I have some of the dialogues of Bishop Berkley, who was a sophist, with an honest heart. But the sophist and the historian are incompatible characters. Facts are plain things; the moment you throw fine-​spun speculation around them, they cease to be facts. What a broad, plain, round-​about mind had Thucydides and Xenophon; and this constitutes their excellence. They seem to talk like an honest witness on the stand in a court of law; and the chief elegance of their language is its simplicity. Hume was a different man; he was used to refining; and if he had tried to be honest, I doubt whether it would have been possible. The last fault in Hume was, his want of diligence. He had not the spirit of an antiquarian. His mind was too acute and mercurial for that. It is very rare, that a man of genius is a good searcher. Hume differed from Gibbon, in this respect. He supplied, by rapid surmises, the place of that knowledge which only investigation can bestow. It is not my intention to enter into detail;† but his partial * It will be seen by the Greek scholar, who chooses to consult the original, that my translation is

intentionally free. It is well known, that his history of the Stuarts was written before the previoius narrative. He ran it over very hastily —​wrote it merely to help out his other work. Cretan against Cretan; Gibbon despatches his critique on Hume in three words: Ingenious, but superficial.

†

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statements and his absurd omissions have, by recent abler writers, been fully exposed. Yet, after all, there are few books which contain their own confutation more fully than Hume’s history. He admits on one page, what would require all his acute powers to reconcile with what he says on another. Thus he says, in drawing the character of Charles the First, that the most malignant scrutiny will find no reason to question his sincerity and good faith. In short, that he was a man who always kept his word. Yet, on another page, he acknowledges* that he only intended to comply with his engagements, as far as he easily could. A fine instance of good faith in a monarch, whose throne might have been preserved, if his people could have had confidence in his keeping his word! On one page, he laughs at the parliament, “for pretending to handle questions, for which the greatest philosophers, in the tranquillity of retreat, had never been able to find a satisfactory solution.” But, on another page, we find there never were greater men than the leaders of this very parliament.† Sometimes the people are actually aggrieved, and have reason to suppose their liberties are snatched from them; and anon, these grievances amount to nothing. Sometimes the ancient charters are sufficiently clear in favor of liberty; and then again all pretences to a free constitution are innovations. It is not necessary, here, to enter into the thorny question, so much debated in England, and so useless in this country, whether English liberty can be supported by precedents. I  have always supposed, that consulting their ancient statues and precedents, is very much like consulting the ante-​nicene fathers, in supporting a doctrine. You are always sure to seek successfully what you are determined to find; and, thanks to God, liberty rests on reason and religion, and not on the parliaments of a half enlightened age. But, however this may be, we lose some of our confidence in the historian who crosses his own track, and admits of facts at war with his own conclusions. Like Buonaparte, Hume’s tactics depend on one great manœuvre; and it would be easy to give a recipe for writing history on his plan, which, whenever it is understood, ceases to deceive. Set up an unfounded hypothesis; then admit half a dozen facts, which overthrow that hypothesis; and then go on and reason as if the hypothesis must be true, and you are totally unconscious of your own concessions. For example: the death of Stephen M. Clark, the boy who fired the town of Newburyport, is well known; and no one, in that vicinity, I suppose, doubts his guilt, or that he was legally and justly executed. Now, suppose I should wish to * See Hist. Great Britain, chap. ii. page 180, London ed. 1769. †

See page 136, London ed. 1769.

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impress on my readers the conviction that he was unjustly hanged, and should imitate the style of Hume —​I should write thus: ‘It was about this time that this youthful and unfortunate victim was sacrificed to the absurd bigotry and groundless fears of the inhabitants of Newburyport. He was led, a sad and silent spectacle, to the place of execution, in despite of his blooming youth, his fine talents, his enterprising abilities, and the tears and agonies of his afflicted parents and friends. We may venture to say, there has seldom been committed a greater outrage on the feelings of justice and humanity. His guilt is more than doubtful. Indeed, the only evidence we have that he committed the crime at all, is the sentence of the court; and though no open bribery was there proved, yet when we consider the defenceless condition of the boy, the uncertainty of the law, and the chicanery of the lawyers, together with the strength of the popular odium, there can scarcely remain a doubt on the reader’s mind, that this unhappy youth died to appease those passions which demand an atonement, but are careless to find the right victim.’ Yet this book, with all the talents and malignity with which it is written, may be made one of the most harmless volumes that was ever delivered by hoary wisdom into the hands of unsuspecting youth. The bubbles of Hume’s history vanish at a touch; and a single note, at the bottom of a page, might blow them into the air of which they were originally made. Thus, when he makes us pity the innocent Mary, weeping before the brutal Knox, it is only necessary to state a few facts of which that innocence was composed, (facts of the historian’s own concession,) and the scene may safely be left to speak for itself. The tears of a beautiful young queen, are of great account, no doubt, in romance and tragedy. But when we remember that a woman’s tears are sometimes her most effectual weapons; that Mary was a papist, and in league with her uncles, the Guises, the most determined papists Europe ever saw, in a plot actually to put down the protestants; that they even went so far as to think of dethroning Elizabeth; that power, and wealth, and treachery, and arms, are on one side, and that a solitary and intrepid spirit, in the form of a Christian minister, stands on the other —​ the griefs of Mary, though a youthful queen, will not be thought very pathetic, except by those who have chivalry enough to place the tears of a woman above the destinies of mankind. How potent is truth, when the sophistry of Hume only serves at last more clearly to reveal it!

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KNICKERBOCKER’S REVIEW OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from the invasion of JULIUS CÆSAR to the Abdication of JAMES THE SECOND, 1688. By DAVID HUME, Esq. Boston: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.” The Knickerbocker, or New-​York Monthly Magazine, vol. 34, no. 3 (September 1849), p. 257. Anonymous The Knickerbocker, or New-​York Monthly Magazine was founded in 1833. By 1849, under the editorship of Lewis Gaylord Clark (1810–​78), the readership for “Old Knick” was extensive. On Clark see Evert A.  Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck, eds., Cyclopaedia of American Literature (reprinted Philadelphia, 1965), vol. 2, pp.  400–​402. On the Knickerbocker see Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 606–​14. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ THIS new edition, which is well executed in a typographical point of view, contains the author’s last corrections and improvements in the history proper, together with an account of his life, written by himself. Of the history itself nothing is now required to be said. It has passed the ordeal of contemporary as well as later criticism, and has long been considered a model of simple yet graceful and comprehensive literary composition. The brief memoir of the writer’s life, written by himself, is a delightful piece of autobiography; and as we perused it, we pencilled a few sentences which, with our readers’ permission, we shall proceed to lay before them. Speaking of the lack of success of some of his first attempts at authorship, HUME says: ‘Such is the force of my natural temper, that these disappointments made little or no impression on me.’ In relation to the attacks which

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were made upon one or two of his works upon moral themes, he observes: ‘I had a fixed resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body; and not being irascible in my temper, I have easily kept myself clear of all literary squabbles. I was ever more disposed to see the favorable than unfavorable side of things; a turn of mind,’ he adds, ‘which it is more happy to possess than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year.’ In 1763, HUME was attached to the English embassy at Paris; and he thus bears his testimony to the attractions of the gay capital: ‘Those who have not seen the strange effects of modes, will never imagine the reception I met with at Paris from men and women of all ranks and stations. The more I resiled from their excessive civilities, the more I was loaded with them. There is, however, a real satisfaction in living at Paris, from the great number of sensible, knowing and polite company with which that city abounds above all places in the universe.’ If we may take for veritable HUME’S exposition of himself, he was a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social and cheerful humor, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all his passions. Even his love of literary fame, his ruling passion, never soured his temper, notwithstanding his frequent disappointments. He wholly escaped the baleful tooth of calumny, and never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of his character or conduct. He was for some time aware of the existence in his person of a mortal and incurable disease, and he reckoned, he tells us, upon a speedy dissolution; and yet he never suffered a moment’s abatement of his spirits. An excellent engraved portrait of HUME, by Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, fronts the title-​page. One can hardly help fancying, while surveying carefully the expression of the features, that the original was a man of at least sinister sentiments; and it would be scarcely too much to assume, from this prima facie evidence, that he was a confirmed skeptic.

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GRAHAM’S REVIEW OF VOLUMES 1–​4 OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“History of England from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Abdication of James the Second. By David Hume. Boston:  Phillips, Sampson & Co. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 12mo,” Graham’s American Magazine, vol. 35 (1849), p. 379. Anonymous Graham’s American Monthly Magazine of Literature, Art, and Fashion was published in Philadelphia. It began as The Casket and over the years saw a number of other title variants, including Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. In 1849 the editors were J.R. Chandler and J.C. Taylor. On Graham’s American Magazine see API, pp. 95–​6. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ This edition of Hume is uniform with the same publishers’ edition of Macaulay. It is neatly printed in good sized type, and is placed at a price sufficiently cheap to bring it within the reach of the humblest reader. It is reprinted from the last and best London edition, and is prefaced by Hume’s delightful autobiography. It is needless to inform our readers that the work is a classic, and ranks with the greatest historical works ever written in this world. But though its fame is wide, we doubt if the generality of the reading public give it their attention. This is really abstinence from pleasure as well as instruction, for Hume is among the most fascinating of narrators. His style is simple, clear, racy, and flowing, beyond that of almost any English historian, and being but a translucent mirror of events and reflections, it attracts no attention to itself, and therefore never tires. The wonder of the book is its happy union of narration and reflections and the skill with which every thing is brought home to the humblest capacity. It belongs to

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that class of works in which power is not paraded, but unobtrusively insinuated in thoughts carelessly dropped, as it were, in the course of a familiar narration of interesting incidents. “Easy writing,” said Sheridan, “is cursed hard writing.” The easy style of Hume is an illustration. The reader, at the end, feels that he has been keeping company with a great man, gifted with an extraordinary grasp and subtlety of mind, but during the journey he thought he was but chatting with an agreeable and intelligent familiar companion.

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GRAHAM’S REVIEW OF VOLUME 5 OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“The History of England. By David Hume. Vol. 5. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co.” Graham’s American Magazine, vol. 36 (1850), p. 223. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ This volume of the cheap Boston edition of Hume is devoted to Charles I. and the Commonwealth; contains the principal alleged offences of the author against the principles of civil and religious liberty, and is, accordingly, that part of his great work which has been made the subject of the most vehement controversies. It is, perhaps, the ablest in style and matter of the whole, and may be profitably read in connection with Macaulay’s views on the same subjects.

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THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW’S REVIEW OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“2. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius CÆSAR to the Abdication of James the Second, 1688, By DAVID HUME, Esq. A  New Edition, with the Author’s Last Corrections and Improvements, and a Short Account of his Life, written by himself. Vols. I. and II. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1849. 12mo,” The North American Review, vol. 69, no. 145 (October 1849), pp. 527–​8. [Francis Bowen] Francis Bowen (1811–​90) was an author and philosopher. As editor of The North American Review from 1843 to 1853, Bowen wrote dozens of reviews on a wide range of subjects. A  few years after this review was published, Bowen was appointed Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard. In his Lowell Lectures, on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science (Boston, 1849), Bowen was critical of Hume’s philosophical thought. Bowen’s authorship of this review is attributed in William Cushing, Index to the North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p. 120. On Bowen see Evert A.  Duyckinck and George L.  Duyckinck, eds., Cyclopaedia of American Literature (reprinted Philadelphia, 1965), vol. 2, p.  483; R.  Douglas Geivett, “Francis Bowen,” ANB, vol. 3, pp. 276–​7. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Boston Edition of Hume’s History THE estimation in which Hume’s great work is held is rather remarkable. It is the fashion to abuse it; every year or two we have a fresh expression of its

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errors, its deficiencies, and its mis-​statements. If we are to heed the critics, it is one of the most untrustworthy books ever published, almost every page betraying either the carelessness or the political bias of the writer. But with all its faults, the book is immortal; it has pushed its predecessors off the shelves of ordinary libraries, and has not given place, even for a time, to one of the numerous histories that have since appeared under the pretence of correcting its blunders and imperfections. And the best advice that can be given even now to the diligent student of English history is to read Hume first, and Henry, Lingard, Hallam, Brodie, Guizot, Aikin, and a host of others, afterwards. Any one of these later candidates for public favor may be omitted without material loss; Hume alone is indispensable. The secret and inimitable beauties of his style, his fascinating manner as a narrator, the consummate finish and vivacity of his sketches of character, the admirable distribution of his work, no part being overloaded and the proper historical perspective being always preserved, and the distinct and vivid impressions which are given of the course of events, are qualities that will secure him readers as long as the English language endures. He is also a philosophical writer, though he does not overlay his pages with vague speculation in the manner which is now so much in vogue. His general remarks on character and life, his observations on the peculiarities of an age or a race, and his indications of the causal connection of events, are always shrewd and entertaining, and most frequently just; yet they are insinuated without parade, and never interrupt the flow of the narrative. But the greatest compliment that Hume’s work ever received is that which has just been paid to it perforce by the most brilliant and captivating of English writers of our own day. The all-​accomplished Mr. Macaulay, who seems to have been born for the sole purpose of making English history as fascinating as one of Scott’s romances, durst not enter into competition with his great predecessor, but modestly begins his history almost at the point where Hume’s terminates. It is not that this later period which he has chosen offers a more tempting field for the historian, or that his previous studies had rendered him more familiar with it; on the contrary, the reigns of Elizabeth and of the first three Stuarts are far more varied in interest, open a wider range of characters and events, and are altogether a more suitable theme for the exercise of Mr. Macaulay’s talents than the period beginning with the accession of James the Second. Hume’s account of the last of the Stuarts is confessedly a mere sketch, thrown in at the end of a work which properly terminates at the death of Charles the Second, and is certainly executed with less care and finish than the body of the history. Yet here only does Macaulay venture to come in competition with him, and the progress

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of the former’s work will lead him far out of the track of his formidable rival. He evidently prefers to be a continuator of Hume rather than to wrestle with him on his own ground. It is with great propriety, then, that the Boston publishers have put forth a very neat library edition of Hume, to match in every respect with their popular reprint of Macaulay. The size of the volumes is that which is most convenient to be held in the hands, and read without support either from table or desk; and their mechanical execution is quite elegant enough to satisfy the modest taste of those who are obliged to count the cost in their purchases of books. They are not rich enough to serve as ornaments to the drawing-​room and centre-​table, a use to which too many good books are now degraded; but they will not disgrace the corner of a book-​shelf, and they can be read without peril to the eyesight. To multiply serviceable editions of standard works, being a greater service to literature in this country than to publish novelties which have nothing to recommend them but their novelty, we have thought it right to say thus much in commendation of the publishers’ enterprise.

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THE NEW ENGLANDER’S REVIEW OF THE 1850 NEW YORK EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Cœsar to the Abdication of James the Second, 1688. By DAVID HUME, Esq. A new edition, with the Author’s last corrections and improvements. To which is prefixed a short account of his life, written by himself. Vols. I, II, III. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 82 Cliff Street. New Haven: T. H. Pease. 1850,” The New Englander, vol. 8, no. 30 (May 1850), pp. 322–​3. Anonymous The New Englander was begun by Edward Royall Tyler who edited the magazine until his death in 1848. In 1850, when the review of Hume reprinted below was published, the New Englander was conducted by the “New Englander Association,” a group which, like Tyler, was centered in Yale College. Although it was primarily a religious magazine, its contents were far ranging. On The New Englander see API, p. 156; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 312–​15. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ HUME’S History is a proof at once of the potency and the impotency of good writing. Hume was a Tory; Hume was a Deist; Hume was fond of sly insinuations against purity and piety; and yet, Hume’s history is read by every body, by Whig as well as by Tory, by Americans as well as by Englishmen. But, although almost every one derives his first knowledge of English history from Hume, yet the charm of his style has not been potent enough permanently to distort the transactions which he records or the characters of the personages whom he describes.

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The ultimate opinion of the majority of his readers, at least in this country, and we think in England, is not far from correct as to the great events and the great men of English history. This edition is to be followed in quick succession by similar editions of Gibbon and Macaulay. We are not displeased at the conjunction, though no three historians are more unlike. Each has great excellencies, but as it respects the manner in which the several histories are composed, we give the decided preference to Hume’s history. Between the style of Hume, and of Gibbon and Macaulay, there is, as it seems to us, all that difference which exists between nature and art, or, perhaps, we should rather say, between art which has become natural, and the merely artificial. The volumes are well printed and on good paper; but we must not omit to mention  —​what in our ignorance of book-​publishing, seems little short of a miracle, —​that the volumes are sold at thirty cents each, and the whole number of volumes is to be only six.

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EARLY AMERICAN RESPONSES TO HUME’S CHARACTER AND DEATH

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Hume’s autobiographical essay, My Own Life, was widely read by its earliest audiences. Originally published in the Scots Magazine in January 1777, Hume’s Life was accompanied by a letter about his character and death written by his friend, Adam Smith. Two months after the Scots Magazine printing, Hume’s London publisher, William Strahan, published a pamphlet edition of Hume’s Life that also included Smith’s “Letter.” Strahan’s edition was immediately reviewed in both the Critical Review and the Monthly Review and copies of the pamphlet soon made their way to American shores where it was reprinted. The first American edition of My Own Life was published by Robert Bell in Philadelphia in 1778. Bell reprinted the text of Hume’s Life along with Strahan’s short introductory “Advertisement” and Smith’s “Letter.” Curiously, Bell coupled this Hume material with Pierre Poivre’s Travels of a Philosopher in a book entitled The Life of David Hume, Esq; the philosopher and historian, written by himself. To which are added, the Travels of a philosopher, containing observations on the manners and arts of various nations, in Africa and Asia (1778). Later that year Bell included Hume’s Life in an even more miscellaneous, and larger, collection which he called Miscellanies for Sentimentalists. There, Hume’s autobiography was the first of seven selections comprised of Lord Chesterfield’s Principles of Politeness, the Duke de la Rochefoucault’s Maxims and Moral Reflections, Philip Freneau’s American Independence, Poivre’s Travels of a Philosopher, J.  Murry’s Travels of the Imagination; a true Journey from Newcastle to London, and The humble Confession, Declaration, Recantation, and Apology of Benjamin Towne. Bell advertised the Miscellanies for Sentimentalists in his book sale catalogue of 1778, but it is difficult to know how widely circulated Bell’s American printings of Hume’s Life were. The town library of Foster, Rhode Island, had a copy of Bell’s Miscellanies by 1781 and The Library Company of Philadelphia recorded by 1789 a donation by

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Zachariah Poulson, Jr. of Bell’s first edition of Hume’s Life. American and British editions of the Life were also to be found in other American libraries in the early years of the nineteenth century. Harwood’s Circulating Library in Philadelphia had a copy, for instance, as did Harvard University Library. Much more significant for circulating descriptions of Hume’s life and character, however, was the inclusion of My Own Life in Thomas Ewell’s Philosophical Essays (Philadelphia, 1817) and, even more so, the printing of the Life in almost every posthumous edition of Hume’s History of England, including the first American edition published by Robert Campbell in 1795–​6. Hume’s Life was perhaps the most widely circulated of all of his writings in early nineteenth-​century America.1 Before 1776, the year Hume died, discussions of Hume’s life and character are found scattered in American writings that aimed to assess Hume as essayist, historian and philosopher. American newspapers, like the Virginia Gazette for instance, occasionally noted details of Hume’s life such as his falling out with Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, a point the Gazette brought to light as early as 1767.2 After Hume’s death, Americans were able to read about his character not only in the autobiography but also when Hume’s life was sketched in other publications. For example, the first American edition of the Encyclopedia; Or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature had an entry for Hume.3 Accounts of Hume’s life and character written by British writers (like Hannah More and James Caufeild) circulated in the United States in their originals and in American reprintings.4 Americans, like James Murdoch, also made original contributions; in Murdoch’s case that came in a balanced assessment of Hume’s life, thought, and character published in The New-​England Magazine.5 Some accounts of Hume’s life that circulated in America were fictional ones, such as Henry Mackenzie’s “The Story of La Roche,” a tale which first appeared in Mackenzie’s periodical, The Mirror. “La Roche” was reprinted in American periodicals and also saw a separate See volume 2 of Mark G. Spencer, “The Reception of David Hume's Political Thought in Eighteenth-​ Century America,” 2 vols (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, 2001). 2 Not reprinted below. 3 “David Hume,” Encyclopœdia; or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature . . . . ([vols VII, VIII, IX, and X] Philadelphia, 1793), vol. 8, pp. 708–​10, reprinted below. 4 See “Spirit of Magazines. Character of Hume, by the Earl of Charlemont,” The Analectic Magazine: containing selections from Foreign Reviews and Magazines, together with original miscellaneous compositions; and a naval chronicle, vol. 1 (1813), pp. 419–​25; “Character of Hume, by the Earl of Chrlemont,” The Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, vol. 2 (April 1813), pp. 333–​7; “Character of Hume’s Writings,” Missionary Herald at Home and Abroad, vol. 1 (January 1805), pp. 352–​3; “For the Literary Magazine,” The Literary Magazine & American Register, vol. 4 (July 1805), pp. 208–​11; “Caharcter [sic] of Hume’s Writings,” The Literary Tablet, vol. 3 (July 1806), p. 94; “For the Port Folio,” Portfolio, vol. 4, new series (1807), pp. 118–​19, not reprinted below. 5 [James Murdoch] “Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau,” The New-​Englander, vol. 1 (1843), pp. 169–​83; selection reprinted below. 1

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eighteenth-​century American edition published in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1796.6 But it was the events surrounding Hume’s infamous death which provided the most sustained focus for those Americans writing about Hume’s life and character. In 1779, when the United States Magazine reprinted Adam Smith’s “Letter” and contrasted Hume’s death with Samuel Finley’s,7 it did so, in part, to counteract the wide spread American circulation of Hume’s Life and Smith’s “Letter.” Smith’s account of Hume, as a virtuous infidel who died a good death, was one which was unsettling to many in eighteenth-​century America. The measured and searching early reactions of Benjamin Rush eventually gave way, in the nineteenth century, to more dogmatic retorts leveled by Hume’s numerous American critics. Not content with the implied “Contrast” of the United States Magazine, for instance, the Rev. John Mitchell Mason reprinted in his Christian’s Magazine the “Contrast between Hume and Finley;” but also offered further “Remarks on the accounts of the death of David Hume, Esqr. and Samuel Finley, D.D. in the last No.”8 Mason’s version of “The Contrast,” in which Hume “must be accounted one of the most flagitiously immoral men that ever lived,” circulated widely in nineteenth-​century America, not only in the Christian’s Magazine but also in many other journals which reprinted Mason’s essay.9 Although Hume had his occasional defenders, such as the poet who shed “A Tear to Hume” in 1803, letter writers in The Ordeal in 1809, and a reviewer in the North American Review in 1850,10 most nineteenth-​century American commentators on Hume’s The Story of La Roche: A Protestant Clergyman of Switzerland. Extracted from a work entitled, the Mirror, published in Edinburgh, in the years 1779 and 1780 (Stockbridge, [MA]: [Loring Andrews], 1796), not reprinted below. 7 Reprinted below. 8 Reprinted below. 9 See, for example, “A Contrast between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian: Being a Succinct Account of that Celebrated Infidel, David Hume Esq.; and of that Excellent Minister of the Gospel, Samuel Finley, D.D. in their Last Moments,” The Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine United, vol. 1, new series (Nov. 1808), pp. 241–​57; “A Contrast between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian: Being a Succinct Account of that Celebrated Infidel, David Hume Esq.; and of that Excellent Minister of the Gospel, Samuel Finley, D.D. in their Last Moments,” The Adviser; or, Vermont Evangelical Magazine, vol. 1, no. 5 (May 1809), pp. 101–​108; “Remarks on the Accounts of the Death of David Hume Esq. and Samuel Finley, D.D.,” The Adviser; or, Vermont Evangelical Magazine, vol. 1, no. 6 (June 1809), pp. 130–​3; Hume and Finley: A contrast between the death of a deist and the death of a Christian; being a succinct account of David Hume, Esq. and of Samuel Finley, D.D. in their last moments (Evangelical Tract Society: Boston, 1824); and “Remarks on the Accounts of the Death of David Hume Esq. and Samuel Finley, D.D. [Supposed to be from the pen of Dr. Mason, late president of Dickinson College],” The Religious Monitor, vol. 1 (November 1824), pp. 294–​302, not reprinted below. 10 See “The Philanthropist,” “Original Poetry,” Medley; or Monthly Miscellany, vol. 1 (1803), p.  249; “Anonymous,” “The Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian’,” The Ordeal, (21 January 1809), pp. 42–​5; “Anonymous,” “Considerations on the Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and of a Christian,’ contained in the Panoplist of November last,” The Ordeal (28 January 1809), pp.  63–​4; “B.,” “More of the Contrast.’,” The Ordeal, (4 February 1809), pp.  72–​3; [William Bourn Oliver Peabody]; “Art. II. —​Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in 6

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death saw it as a negative reflection on his character.11 Still, Hume’s life and personality continued to be the subject of lighter anecdotes of one sort or another. These, too, often poked fun at Hume’s irreligion,12 but, like the anecdote concerning Bishop Horne (reprinted in this volume below) did so in a manner that was often partly endearing of Hume.13 Other anecdotes saw in Hume a guide for life,14 criticized his history15 and his philosophical outlook,16 noted inconsistencies in his behavior,17 and portrayed Hume as the jovial “Bon David”.18 Letters to editors depicted Hume as a fanatic,19 and saw Hume as a pernicious writer with an immoral character.20 Although there has been no space to reprint any of the time of George the Third. By Henry, Lord Brougham, F.R.S. Second Series. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1846. 12mo. pp.  302;” The North American Review, vol. 64 (1847), pp.  59–​97, selections reprinted below. See also “Anonymous,” “Belief and Unbelief,” Christian Examiner, vol. 7 (January 1830), pp. 358–​65; selection pp. 363–​4, reprinted below. 11 “Anonymous,” “Adversaria: ‘Hume and Finley’,” The Ordeal, (11 February 1809), p. 94; “G.,” “On the Death of David Hume,” The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine, or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 2 (1806), pp. 32–​ 4; “Anonymous,” “Striking Evidence of the Divinity of the Scriptures. I. Examples of Dying Infidels,” The Moral and Religious Cabinet, vol. 1 (26 March 1808), pp. 193–​8; “Anonymous,” “Miscellanies. Death of Hume,” The Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine United, vol. 2 (March 1810), pp. 462–​4; Frederick Beasley, A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (Philadelphia, 1822); Book IV: pp. 559–​61; “Anonymous,” “Death-​Bed of Hume,” The Spirit of the Pilgrims, vol. 5 (1832), pp. 172–​3. 12 For instance, “N.Y. Amer,” “Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume,” The Gospel Trumpet, vol. 2 (1823), p.  63, reprinted below. 13 See, “Anecdotes,” The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; and Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (July 1800), pp. 38–​9, reprinted below. Similar versions of this anecdote were reprinted often in early America: see, for instance, “Anecdote of Hume the Deist,” The Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine, vol. 1 (September 1803), p.  25; “[Anecdote of David Hume],” Advisor, or, Evangelical Magazine, vol. 7 (February 1815), p.  58; “Miscellaneous,” Christian Herald, vol. 4 (20 November 1821), p.  119; “Anecdotes of Distinguished Characters. David Hume,” Saturday Evening Post, (12 January 1822), pages not numbered; “Anecdotes,” The Friendly Visitor, Being a Collection of Select and Original Pieces, Instructive and Entertaining. Suitable to be Read in All Families, vol. 1, no. 7 (12 February 1825), p. 54. 14 See “Anonymous,” “For the Port Folio . . . the Farrgo,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 1] (1801), p. 66; “T.,” “The American Lounger, By Samuel Saunter, Esq. No. 158,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series  2] (1806), pp. 113–​14, both reprinted below. 15 “Anonymous,” “Hume and Burnet,” The Philadelphia Repository, vol. 5 (9 March 1805), p.  76, reprinted below. 16 “Anonymous,” “Skepticism,” The Christian Examiner and Theological Review, vol. 1 (1824), p.  35, reprinted below. 17 “Anonymous,” “For the Port Folio. Art. XV. —​The Adversaria,” The Port Folio, vol. 9, series 4 (1820), pp. 131–​5; selection p. 135, reprinted below. 18 “Anonymous,” “Desultory Gleanings, and Original Communications. Translated from ‘Memoires et correspondence de Madame D’Epinay’ [section “Anecdote of David Hume”],” The New-​England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine, (18 June 1819), p. 144; “Anonymous,” “Variety . . . Anecdote of Hume,” Ladies’ Literary Cabinet, vol. 4 (1821), p. 126; “Anonymous,” “Varieties. Original Anecdotes, Literary News, Chit Chat, Incidents, &c,” Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, vol. 1, series 2 (1824), pp. 362–​8; selection p. 365, reprinted below. 19 “S.P.,” “Letters to the Editor,” Christian Observer and Advocate, vol. 1 (October 1802), pp. 650–​51, reprinted below. 20 [John Watkins], “Anecdotes of Infidel Morality,” Robinson’s Magazine, A weekly Repository of Original Papers; and Selections from the English Magazines, vol. 2 (1819), pp.  164–​8; selection pp.  164–​5, 167–​8, reprinted below.

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them below, nineteenth-​century American periodicals also frequently reprinted letters by Hume both for their style and substance.21

21

See “Epistolary. for the Port Folio [Hume to Tobias Smollett, 21 September 1768],” Portfolio, vol. 1 (1801), pp. 2–​3; “Unpublished Letter to Mr. Hume [Hume to Lord Hardwick, 23 July 1764],” The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, Containing Sketches and reports of Philosophy, Religion, History, Arts and Manners, vol. 7 (1809), pp.  175–​7; “From the Annual Register. Controversy Between Hume and Rousseau,” Select Review of Literature, and Spirit of Foreign Magazines, vol. 8 (1812), pp. 47–​81; “From the Literary Gazette. Original Letter from David Hume to the Comtesse de Boufflers,” Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, vol. 2 (1818), pp. 332–​3; “David Hume. The following Letters are selected from the Correspondence of the historian Hume, lately published in Great Britain,” New-​England Galaxy and United States Literary Advertiser, (29 December 1820), p. 48; “Hume’s Private Correspondence,” Saturday Magazine: National Recorder, vol. 4 (1820), pp. 313–​15; “Letter from David Hume to Dr. Campbell,” Saturday Magazine: National Recorder, vol. 5 (27 January 1821), p. 60; “From the London Literary Gazette. Original Letters of David Hume to Adam Smith,” Saturday Magazine, vol. 1 (15 December 1821), pp. 557–​60; “Original Letters. David Hume,” Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazine, vol. 10 (15 January 1822), pp. 314–​18, 346–​7, 405; “David Hume at Paris. Extract from a Letter to Dr. Robertson,” Saturday Magazine, vol. 2 (2 February 1822), pp. 109–​10. Periodicals also reprinted letters of other individuals which made reference to Hume: see “Original Letters from Cowper,” Portfolio, vol. 5 [series 1] (1805), p. 346; “Extracts from Mrs. Carter’s Letters,” vol. 5 [series 2] (October 1808), pp. 533–​4. None of the items listed in this footnote are reprinted below.

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CONTRAST BETWEEN THE DEATH OF A DEIST AND A CHRISTIAN

“CONTRAST between the Death of a DEIST and a CHRISTIAN, David Hume, and Samuel Findley [sic],” The United States Magazine, A Repository of History, Politics, and Literature, vol. 1 (February 1779), pp. 65–​72. [Benjamin Rush] The United States Magazine was published in Philadelphia by Francis Bailey and edited by Hugh H. Brackenridge. Its one volume included writings by Brackenridge, as well as Philip Freneau, William Livingston, and John Witherspoon. The essay reprinted below, signed “B—​—​” was probably written by Benjamin Rush (1745–​ 1813). Samuel Finley (1715–​66) was Rush’s uncle, with whom Rush had lived and studied at West Nottingham Academy. Finley was a Presbyterian minister of some note and president of the College of New Jersey from 1761 until his death in 1766. On Benjamin Rush see L.H. Butterfield, “The Reputation of Benjamin Rush,” Pennsylvania History, vol. 17 (1950), pp. 3–​22; George W. Corner, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush:  His ‘Travels Through Life’ Together with His Commonplace Book for 1789–​1813 (Princeton, 1948); Donald J. D’Elia, Benjamin Rush: Philosopher of the American Revolution, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 64 (1974); and Nina Reid-​Maroney’s entry on him in EAE, vol. 2, pp.  918–​28. On The United States Magazine see Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763–​1783 (Chapel Hill, 1941), p. 409; API, p.  213; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp.  27; Albert H.  Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​ 1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), pp.  53–​ 61; Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-​Century America (Cambridge and London, 1990), pp. 138–​41. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​

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CONTRAST between the Death of a DEIST and a CHRISTIAN, David Hume, and Samuel Findley [sic]. Letter from Adam Smith, LL.D. to William Strahan, Esq. giving some Account of Mr. Hume, during his last Sickness. Kirkaldy, Fife-​shire, Nov. 9. 1776. Dear Sir, IT is with a real, though a very melancholy pleasure, that I sit down to give you some account of the behaviour of our late excellent friend, Mr. Hume, during his last illness. Though, in his own judgment, his disease was mortal and incurable, yet he allowed himself to be prevailed upon, by the entreaty of his friends, to try what might be the effects of a long journey. A few days before he set out, he wrote that account of his own life, which, together with his other papers, he left to your care. My account therefore, shall begin where his ends. He set out for London towards the end of April, and at Morpheth met with Mr. John Home and myself, who had both come down from London on purpose to see him, expecting to have found him at Edinburgh. Mr. Home returned with him, and attended him during the whole of his stay in England, with that care and attention which might be expected from a temper so perfectly friendly and affectionate. As I had written to my mother that she might expect me in Scotland, I was under the necessity of continuing my journey. His disease seemed to yield to exercise and change of air; and when he arrived in London, he was apparently in much better health than when he left Edinburgh. He was advised to go to Bath to drink the waters, which appeared for some time to have so good an effect upon him, that even he himself began to entertain, what he was not apt to do, a better opinion of his own health. His symptoms, however, soon returned with their usual violence, and from that moment he gave up all thoughts of recovery, but submitted with the utmost cheerfulness, and the most perfect complacency and resignation. Upon his return to Edinburgh, tho’ he found himself much weaker, yet his cheerfulness never abated, and he continued to divert himself, as usual, with correcting his own works for a new edition, with reading books of amusement, with the conversation of his friends; and, sometimes in the evening, with a party at his favourite game of whist. His cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements run so much in their usual strain, that, notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. “I shall tell your friend, Col. Edmonstone,” said doctor Dundas to him one day, “that I left you much better, and in a fair way of recovery.” –​–​–​–​“Doctor,” said he,

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“as I believe you would not chuse to tell any thing but the truth, you had better tell him, that I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.” Colonel Edmonstone soon afterwards came to see him, and take leave of him; and on his way home, he could not forbear writing him a letter, bidding him once more an eternal adieu, and applying to him, as to a dying man, the beautiful French verses in which the Abbe Chaulieu, in expectation of his own death, laments his approaching separation from his friend, the Marquis de la Fare. Mr. Hume’s magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate friends knew, that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as to a dying man, and that so far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room while he was reading this letter, which he had just received, and which he immediately showed me. I  told him, that though I  was sensible how very much he was weakened, and that appearances were in many respects very bad, yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of life seemed to be still so very strong in him, that I could not help entertaining some faint hopes. He answered, “Your hopes are groundless. An habitual diarrhœa of more than a year’s standing, would be a very bad disease at any age: at my age it is a mortal one. When I lie down in the evening, I feel myself weaker than when I rose in the morning; and when I rise in the morning, I feel myself weaker than when I lay down in the evening. I am sensible, besides, that some of my vital parts are affected, so that I must soon die.” “Well, said I, if it must be so, you have at least the satisfaction of leaving all your friends, your brother’s family in particular, in great prosperity.” He said, that he felt that satisfaction so sensibly, that when he was reading a few days before, Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which are alledged to Charon for not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one that fitted him; he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself. “I could not well imagine, said he, what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do, and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them; I, therefore, have all reason to die contented.” He then diverted himself with inventing several jocular excuses, which he supposed he might make to Charon, and with imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of Charon to return to them. “Upon further consideration, said he, I thought I might say to him, Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. Allow me a little time that I may see how the public receives the alterations.” But Charon would answer, “When you

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have seen the effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of such excuses; so honest friend, please step into the boat.” But I might still urge, “Have a little patience, good Charon, I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfal of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.” But Charon would then lose all temper and decency. “You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years: Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy loitering rogue.” But, though Mr. Hume always talked of his approaching dissolution with great chearfulness, he never affected to make any parade of his magnanimity. He never mentioned the subject but when the conversation naturally led to it, and dwelt no longer upon it than the conversation happened to require: it was a subject indeed which occurred pretty frequently, in consequence of the inquiries which his friends, who came to see him, naturally made concerning the state of his health. The conversation which I mentioned above, and which passed on Thursday the 8th of August, was the last, except one, that I ever had with him. He had now become so very weak, that the company of his most intimate friends fatigued him; for his cheerfulness was still so great, his complaisance and social disposition were still so entire, that when any friend was with him, he could not help talking more, and with greater exertion, than suited the weakness of his body. At his own desire, therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, where I was staying partly upon his account, and returned to my mother’s house here, at Kirkaldy, upon condition that he would send for me whenever he wished to see me; the physician who saw him most frequently, Dr. Black, undertaking, in the mean time, to write me occasionally an account of the sate of his health. On the 22d of August, the doctor wrote me the following letter: “Since my last, Mr. Hume has passed his time pretty easily, but is much weaker. He sits up, goes down stairs once a day, and amuses himself with reading, but seldom sees any body. He finds that even the conversation of his most intimate friends fatigues and oppresses him; and it is happy that he does not need it, for he is quite free from anxiety, impatience, or low spirits, and passes his time very well with the assistance of amusing books.” I received the day after a letter form Mr. Hume himself, of which the following is an extract: Edinburgh, 23d August, 1776. “My dearest Friend, I am obliged to make use of my nephew’s hand in writing to you, as I do not rise to-​day

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–​  –​  –​  –​  –​  –​ –​  –​  –​  –​  –​  –​

“I go very fast to decline, and last night had a small fever, which I  hoped might put a quicker period to this tedious illness, but unluckily it has, in a great measure, gone off. I cannot submit to your coming over here on my account, as it is possible for me to see you so small a part of the day, but Doctor Black can better inform you concerning the degree of strength which may from time to time remain with me. Adieu, &c.” Three days after I received the following letter from Dr. Black: Edinburgh, Monday, August 26. 1776. “Dear Sir, “Yesterday about four o’clock afternoon, Mr. Hume expired. The near approach of his death became evidence in the night between Thursday and Friday, when his disease became excessive, and soon weakened him so much, that he could no longer rise out of his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible, and free from much pain or feelings of distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always did it with affection and tenderness. I  thought it improper to write to bring you over, especially as I heard that he had dictated a letter to you, desiring you not to come. When he became very weak it cost him an effort to speak, and he died in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it.” Thus died our most excellent, and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known. Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary frugality never hindered him from exercising upon proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded, not upon avarice, but upon the love of independency. The extreme gentleness of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind, or the steadiness of his resolutions. His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good nature and good humour, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. It never was the meaning of his raillery to mortify; and therefore,

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far from offending, it seldom failed to please and delight, even those who were the objects of it. To his friends who were frequently the objects of it, there was not perhaps any one of all his great and amiable qualities, which contributed more to endear his conversation. And that gaiety of temper, so agreeable in society, but which is often accompanied with frivolous and superficial qualities, was in him certainly attended with the most severe application, the most extensive learning, the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his life-​ time and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit. I ever am, dear Sir, Most affectionately yours, ADAM SMITH. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ Some of the last choice Words of that eminently Pious Servant of God, Samuel Finley.* Friday, July 11. 1766. THE Rev. Mr. Richard Treat came to visit the Doctor, who desired that he would pray by him. Being asked what he should pray for; he answered, “Beseech God that he would be pleased to let me feel, just as I  did at that time when I  first closed with Christ, at which time I could scarce contain myself out of heaven.” Dr. S—​— acquainted him that he could live but a few days longer; at which he lifted up his eyes with much composure, saying, “Then welcome Lord Jesus.” He declared himself under the greatest obligations to the Doctor for his kind and diligent attendance during his illness, and said, “I owe a large catalogue of debts to my friends, which will never be charged to my account; God will discharge them for me.” July 13th, Sunday noon. Dr. C—​— came to his bed-​side, and told him there appeared a very visible alteration in his countenance, by which he judged death was not far off. He raised himself from his pillow, and broke out, “Then may the Lord bring me near to himself -​-​-​I have waited with a Canaan hunger for the promised land -​-​-​I have often wondered that God suffered me to live -​-​-​I have wondered more that ever he called me to be a minister of his word. He has often afforded me much strength, and though I  have abused it, he has returned in mercy. O! how sweet are the promises of God! Oh! that I could see him as I have * The late Dr. Finley, President of the college of New Jersey.

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seen him heretofore in his sanctuary! Although I have earnestly desired death as the hireling pants for the evening shade, yet will I wait my appointed time. I have struggled with principalities and powers, and have been almost brought to despair -​-​-​Lord let it suffice.” He now closed his eyes, and fervently prayed that God would shew him his glory before he departed hence, -​-​-​that he would enable him to endure patiently to the end -​--​​and, particularly, that he might be kept from dishonouring the ministry. He resumed his discourse saying, “I can truly say that I have loved the service of God -​-​-​-​I know not in what language to speak of my own unworthiness: I have been undutiful: I have honestly endeavoured to act for God, but with much weakness and corruption.” Here he lay down, and spoke as follows -​--​ ​“A Christian’s death is the best part of his existence. The Lord has made provision for the whole way, provision for the soul and for the body. O! that I could recollect Sabbath blessings. The Lord has given me many souls as a crown of my rejoicing. Blessed be God, eternal rest is at hand: Eternity is long enough to enjoy my God. This has animated me in my severest studies. I was ashamed to take rest here. O! that I could be filled with the fulness of God! that fulness which fills heaven.” One asked him, if it was in his choice either to live or die, which he would prefer; he replied, “To die. Though I cannot but say I feel the same difficulty with St. Paul. But should God by a miracle prolong my life, I will still continue to serve him: His service has ever been sweet to me. I have loved it much. I have tried my Master’s yoke, and will never shrink my neck from it -​-​-​-​His yoke is easy, and his burden light.” You are more cheerful, Sir, said one of the company: “Yes, I rise or fall as eternal rest appears nearer or farther off.” It being observed to him, that he always used that expression ‘Dear Lord,’ in his prayers; he answered “Oh! he is very dear, very precious indeed! how pretty for a minister to die upon the Sabbath! I expect to spend the remaining part of this Sabbath in heaven.” One said, You will soon be joined to a blessed society; you will for ever converse with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob -​-​-​with the spirits of just men made perfect -​-​-​with old friends, and many old fashioned people. “Yes, Sir (he replied with a smile) but they are a most polite people now.” He frequently expressed great gratitude to his friends around him, but very particularly to the kind family he was in; and said. “May the Lord repay you for your tenderness of me -​-​-​May he bless you abundantly not only with temporal but spiritual blessings,” Addressing himself to all that were present, he said, “Oh! that each of you may experience what, blessed be God, I do, when ye come to die! may you have the pleasure of reflecting in a dying hour, that with faith and patience, zeal and sincerity, you have endeavoured to serve the Lord; that each

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of you may be impressed, as I have been, with God’s word, looking upon it as substantial, and not only fearing, but unwilling to offend against it.” To a person about to return to Princeton, he said, “Give my love to the people of Princeton: tell them I am going to die, and that I am not afraid of death.” He would sometimes cry out, “The Lord Jesus take care of his cause in the world.” Monday 14th, Waking this morning, “Oh! what a disappointment have I met with; I expected this morning to have been in heaven.” His great weakness prevented his much speaking to day: what few words he uttered, breathed the language of triumph. Tuesday 15th. With a pleasing smile and strong voice he cried out, “O! I shall triumph over every foe! The Lord hath given me the victory -​-​-​I exult, I triumph, O! that I could see untainted purity! Now I know that it is impossible that faith should not triumph over earth and hell -​-​-​I think I have nothing to do now but to die. Perhaps I have; Lord shew me my task.” After expressing some fears that he did not endeavour to preserve his remaining life, through eagerness to depart; and being told he did nothing inconsistent with self-​preservation, he said, “Lord Jesus into thine hands I commit my spirit. I do it with confidence -​-​-​I do it with full assurance. I know that thou wilt keep that which I have committed unto thee. I have been dreaming too fast of the time of my departure. I find it does not come; but the Lord is faithful, and will not tarry beyond his appointed time.” When one who attended him told him his pulse grew weaker, he expressed with pleasure “That it was well.” He often would put forth his hand to his physicians, and ask them how his pulse beat; and would rejoice when he was told it was fluttering or irregular. In the afternoon the Rev. Mr. Spencer came to see him, and said, I am come, dear Sir, to hear you confirm by facts the gospel you have preached. Pray how do you feel? The Doctor replied, “Full of triumph. I  triumph through Christ. Nothing clips my wings but the thoughts of my dissolution being prolonged. O! that it was to night. My very soul thirsts for eternal rest.” Mr. Spencer asked him what he saw in eternity to excite such vehement desires in his soul? He replied, “I see a God of love and goodness -​-​-​-​I see the fulness of my Mediator -​-​-​I see the love of Jesus. O to be dissolved to be with him! I long to be cloathed with the compleat righteousness of Christ, not only imputed but inherent.” He desired Mr. Spencer to pray before they parted, “Pray that God would preserve me from evil -​-​-​that he would keep me from dishonouring his great name in this critical hour, and support me in my passage through the valley of the shadow of death.” He spent the remaining part of the day, in bidding farewell to, and blessing his

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friends, and exhorting such of his children as were with him. He would frequently cry out, “Why move the tardy hours so slow.” July 16th. His speech failed him; he made many efforts to speak, but seldom so distinct as to be understood. Mr. R–​b–​rd–​–​u desired him to give some token whereby his friends might know whether he still continued to triumph; he lifted up his hand, and said, “Yes.” This afternoon he uttered several sentences, but little could be collected from them. Some of his very last words concerning himself were, “After one or two more engagements the conflict will be over.” About nine o’clock he fell into a sound sleep, and appeared much freer from pain than for several days before. He continued to sleep without moving in the least till one o’clock; when he expired without a sigh or a groan, or any kind of motion, sufficient to alarm his wife, and those friends who were about his bed. During his whole sickness, he was never heard to utter one repining word. He was at times tortured with the most excruciating pains; yet he expressed in all his behaviour an entire resignation to the Divine will. In all his affecting farewells to his relations and friends, he was never seen to shed a tear, or shew the least mark of sorrow. He often checked his affectionate wife when she was weeping; and he expressed his unshaken confidence in the promises of God, whenever he spoke of his dear children. His truly polite behaviour continued to the last, and manifested itself whenever he called for a drop of drink to wet his lips -​-​-​Every one around him was treated with that same sweetness and ease that were so peculiar and natural to him. In fine, he was a most striking example of that faith which kindles love in the heart, and produces the sweet fruits of meekness, gentleness, patience, and every Christian grace and virtue. B—​—​

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HUME (DAVID, ESQ;) A LATE CELEBRATED PHILOSOPHER AND HISTORIAN

“David Hume,” Encyclopædia; or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature . . . . ([vols 7, 8, 9, and 10] Philadelphia, 1793), vol. 8, pp. 708–​10. Anonymous The Encyclopaedia Britannica was first published in three volumes in Edinburgh (1768–​71). This was followed by an expanded second edition (1777–​84) and a third edition (1787–​97). The first American edition of the Encyclopaedia was based on the third British edition, but with additions. It was published in Philadelphia by Robert Dobson in eighteen volumes (1789–​98) with a three volume Supplement (1800–​1803). See Robert D. Arner, Dobson’s Encyclopaedia: The Publisher, Text, and Publication of America’s First Britannica, 1789–​1803 (Philadelphia, 1991). —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ HUME (David, Esq;) a late celebrated philosopher and historian, was born in the south part of Scotland on the 26th of April O. S. in the year 1711. Being the younger son of a country gentleman of good family, but no great fortune, his patrimony was of consequence insufficient to support him. For this reason he was destined for the bar, and passed through his academical courses in the university of Edinburgh; but being more inclined to studies of a different nature, he never put on the gown, nor even took the introductory steps necessary for that purpose. The writings of Locke and Berkely had directed the attention of the generality of learned men towards metaphysics; and Mr Hume having early applied himself to studies of this kind, published in 1739 the two first volumes of his Treatise of human nature, and the third the following year. He had the

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mortification, however, to find his book generally decried; and to perceive, that the taste for systematic writings was now on the decline. He therefore divided this treatise into separate Essays and Dissertations, which he afterwards published at different times with alterations and improvements. In 1742, Mr. Hume published two small volumes, consisting of Essays moral, political, and literary. These were better received than his former publication; but contributed little to his reputation as an author; and still less to his profit; and his small patrimony being now almost spent, he accepted an invitation from the marquis of Annandale to come and live with him in England. With this nobleman he staid a twelve-​month; during which time his small fortune was considerably increased. He then received an invitation from General St. Clair, to attend him as a secretary on his expedition, which was at first meant against Canada, but afterwards ended in an excursion against the coast of France. [In] 1747, he received an invitation from the general to attend him in the same station in his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. He then wore the uniform of an officer; and was introduced at these courts as aid decamp to the general, along with Sir Harry Erskine and captain Grant, afterwards general Grant. In 1749 he returned to Scotland, and lived two years with his brother at his country-​house; where he composed the second part of his essays, called Political Discourses. And now the general approbation of his performances was indicated by a more extensive sale than formerly, and likewise by the numerous answers published by different persons in order to counteract their supposed pernicious tendency. In 1752, were published at Edinburgh his Political Discourses, the only work of his which was well received on its first appearance; and the same year, at London, his Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which in his own opinion was incomparably the best of his performances. This year also he was appointed librarian to the faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh; the principal advantage resulting from which employment was, that he had by that means the command of a large library. He then formed the plan of writing the History of England; but deeming the whole to be too extensive, he confined his history to that of Britain under the house of Stuart. The book as almost universally decried on its first appearance, and soon after seemed to sink in oblivion. Dr Herring primate of England, and Dr Stone primate of Ireland, were the only literati of the author’s acquaintance who approved of the work, and sent him messages not to be discouraged. Notwithstanding the approbation of these eminent men, however, Mr Hume’s spirits were so much sunk by his bad success, that he had some thoughts of retiring to France, changing his name, and bidding adieu to his own country for ever;

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but his design was rendered impracticable by the breaking out of the war of 1755 between France and Britain. He then published his Natural History of Religion; to which an answer was published, soon after its appearance, in the name of Dr Hurd bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, of which, however, he hath since disclaimed being the sole author. In 1756, the second volume of the History of the Stuarts was published, two years after the appearance of the first. This was better received, and helped to retrieve the character of the former volume. Three years after, his History of the House of Tudor made its appearance; which was almost as ill received as the History of the Stuarts had been, the reign of Elizabeth being particularly obnoxious. The author, however, had now learned to despise popular clamours; and continued to finish at his leisure the more early part of the English history, which was published in 1761, and was received with tolerable success. Mr Hume being now turned of fifty, and having obtained by the sale of his books a competent and independant fortune, retired into his native country of Scotland, determined never more to set his foot out of it. From this resolution, however, he was diverted by the earl of Hertford; whom he attended as secretary on his embassy to Paris in 1763. In 1765, the earl being appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland, Mr Hume was entrusted with the sole management of the business of the state till the arrival of the duke of Richmond towards the latter end of the year. In 1767, he returned to Edinburgh, with a much larger income, procured to him by the earl of Hertford, than he formerly had; and now formed the same design he had formerly entertained, namely, of burying himself in his philosophical retreat. In this, however, he was again disappointed, by receiving an invitation from general Conway to be under secretary; and this invitation he was prevented from declining, both by the character of the person, and his connections with lord Hertford. In 1769 he returned to Edinburgh, possessed of L. 1000 a-​year, healthy, and though somewhat striken in years, yet having a prospect of long enjoying his ease, and of seeing the increase of his reputation. Of his last illness and character, he himself gives the following account:  “In spring 1775, I  was struck with a disorder in my bowels; which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I  apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I  now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I  have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this latter period. I possess the same ardour as ever

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in study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-​five, be dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation breaking out at last with an additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present. “To conclude, historically, with my own character. I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments); I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I  took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men any wise eminent have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked, by her baleful tooth; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct: not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.” His fears concerning the incurableness of his disorder proved too true. He died on the 25th of August 1776; and was interred in the Calton burying-​ground, Edinburgh, where a monument is erected to his memory.

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HUME AND BISHOP HORNE

“ANECDOTES,” The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; and Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (July 1800), pp. 38–​9. Anonymous The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; and Religious Intelligencer was published in Hartford from 1800 to 1815, and then was superseded by the Religious Ingelligencer. Its monthly numbers contained a variety of religious pieces, essays, and anecdotes. The anecdote concerning Hume and Bishop George Horne (1730–​92) reprinted below was a popular one in early American periodicals, being reprinted often. Horne was the author of A Letter to Dr. Adam Smith LL.D. on the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his friend David Hume Esq. By one of the People called Christians (1777, London). On the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 294–​9; API, p. 68. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ DAVID HUME, observed, that all the devout persons he had ever met with were melancholy. On this Bishop Horne remarked; This might very probably be: for in the first place, it is most likely that he saw very few, his friends and acquaintance being of another sort; and, secondly, the sight of him would make a devout man melancholy at any time.

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HUME, WHO PRACTISED WHAT HE PREACHED

“FOR THE PORT FOLIO . . . THE FARRGO,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 1] (28 February 1801), p. 66. Anonymous On The Port Folio see Neal L.  Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), pp.  217–​20; Harold Milton Ellis, Joseph Dennie and His Circle: A Study in American Literature from 1792–​1812 (Austin, 1915); Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 223–​46; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), pp. 92–​151. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ Though rarely displaying it myself, I have always admired, in others, that indifference to the how and when in life, which is the first axiom in a Frenchman’s philosophy . . . When the burden of life galls us, it is in vain to curse and swear. By laughing, we shall lighten the load . . . The philosophic HUME, who practised what he preached, tells us, that such a disposition is better than an estate of ten thousand a year . . . Let us, therefore, no longer wear the straight-​laced stays of systems, which cannot enable us to walk more uprightly than our unconfined neighbours. Let us no longer eat the bread of carefulness: but drink our wine with a merry heart.

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HUME A FANATIC

“Letters to the Editor,” Christian Observer and Advocate, vol. 1 (October 1802), pp. 650–​51. “S.P.” The Christian Observer and Advocate was a London monthly that was reprinted in a number of American cities including Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. On the Christian Observer see Gaylord P.  Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 199–​208; API, p. 58. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. SIR, I HAVE somewhere read that Mr. Hume, being in France, passed a day in the society of certain French atheistical philosophers, with whom he had much conversation, but to whose confident denial of the existence of a supreme intelligence he hesitated to accede. On his quitting their company, the discourse turned on the character of the British sage, who, in his own land, as your readers know, was esteemed to be at the very head of the sceptics and unbelievers. One French atheist observed (and some of the others agreed in the sentiment) that their visitor was unquestionably a considerable philosopher, but that it was greatly to be regretted that he was so much of a FANATIC. The story serves to shew the fruitlessness of attempting to exempt ourselves from that charge of fanaticism, or in other words, of a puritanic twist, a taste for methodism, a leaning towards enthusiasm, &c. &c. which is continually brought

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by less religious against more religious persons. By some, to believe in the influence of the Holy Spirit, to any practical purpose, is deemed fanaticism. Unless the doctrine be so modified (vide the writings of Mr. Fellowes and many others) as to render faith the sole effect of reason, and all holy dispositions the mere result of the exercise of our own powers, the assertor of the doctrine is termed by some an enthusiast. But Mr. Fellowes also appears tinctured with enthusiasm in the eyes of Dr. Priestly, and others of the same class, and they in their turn would be deemed fanatics by Mr. Hume. But alas, poor Hume! He also, when in France, is something of a fanatic! He shares in our disgrace when he crosses the channel, though he merely ventures to intimate a doubt respecting the possibility of the existence of him, “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.” It would be wrong to infer from this story that there is no such thing as fanaticism and enthusiasm. Undoubtedly these evils of the mind not only exist, but have an extensive prevalence, and they ought to be carefully guarded against. But we may learn from it not to be ashamed of our principles, merely because in the estimation of certain persons they are visionary or methodistical. We ought to satisfy ourselves that the opinions we hold are strictly conformable to the word of God; but having done so, let us not concede to irreligious men any one truth of the Gospel, for besides the folly and wickedness of such a conduct, there is great danger, and experience proves the truth of the observation, that that man will at length become an atheist, who sets out upon the plan of being accounted a rational and philosophic Christian. S.P.

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A TEAR TO HUME

“ORIGINAL POETRY,” Medley; or Monthly Miscellany, vol. 1 (1803), p. 249. “THE PHILANTHROPIST” The Medley; or Monthly Miscellany was published in Lexington, Kentucky, and edited by D. Bradford. It is thought to have been the first miscellaneous monthly magazine to be issued west of Pittsburgh. On the Medley see API, p.  136; BAP, p.  99; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 32, 206. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​

A TEAR TO HUME.    IMMORTAL Hume! thy name shall shine sublime, And triumph, greatly o’er the car of Time; Thy fame will spread; while genius has a friend, Thy talents be admired, till time shall have an end. Let vain pretenders blight thy fairest fame, And musty schoolmen deprecate thy name; Let stupid priests thy mighty powers deride, And fools presumptious burst with turgid pride; The feeling soul, the sympathetic mind Will weep a tear, half-​o’er thy tomb reclin’d;    And say, while listening to the winter’s blast    That howls relentless o’er thy sacred manes, “Ah cruel death! why snatch this reverend prize, “And close it in unceasing darkness from our eyes?

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“Insatiate victor! spare the great, the good, “Bear in their place, the useless down the flood.” This is, immortal Hume! the sage’s dirge, Which ne’er will cease till worlds from worlds emerge. THE PHILANTHROPIST.

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HUME AND BURNET

“HUME AND BURNET,” The Philadelphia Repository, vol. 5 (9 March 1805), p. 76. Anonymous Published by David Hogan and E.  Conrad, The Philadelphia Repository, and Weekly Register was a weekly, edited by Hogan, John Welwood Scott, and Thomas Irwin. It contained mostly original material and was continued as The Repository and Ladies’ Weekly Museum. The anecdote reprinted below compares Hume to Gilbert Burnet (1643–​1715) who was the author of a three volume History of the Reformation. On The Philadelphia Repository see API, p. 193; BAP, pp. 136–​7; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), p. 152. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ I am no admirer of Hume. In conversation he was very thick; and I do believe hardly understood a subject till he had written upon it. Burnet I like much. It is observable, that none of his facts has been controverted, except his relation of the birth of the Pretender, in which he was certainly mistaken —​but his very credulity is a proof of his honesty. Burnet’s style and manner are very interesting. It seems as if he had just come from the king’s closet, or from the apartments of the men whom he describes, and was telling his reader, in plain honest terms, what he had seen and heard.

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ON THE DEATH OF DAVID HUME

“ON THE DEATH OF DAVID HUME,” The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine, or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 2 (January 1806), pp. 32–​4. “G.” Published in Philadelphia, the first volume of the Evangelical Intelligencer was printed in 1805. Essays submitted for publication to this magazine were supervised by the “Standing Committee of Missions” of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. That body included Samuel Blair, Ashbel Green, Elias Boudinot, Ebenezer Hazard, and Robert Smith. On The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer see Gaylord P.  Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 62, 339–​42. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ The arts and falsehood of infidels in propagating their destructive principles are but little understood by christians in general, and indeed they are often so dark and detestable that a charitable mind is scarcely able to believe them real. It appears, by the statement of the Abbé Baruel, that Voltaire approached his end with horror, and was endeavouring to return into the bosom of the church in which he had been educated, when his infidel friends, particularly D’Alembert and Diderot, kept from him the priest whom he wished to see. It is a well known fact, that Diderot himself, when he came to die, had the same compunctions, and was treated in a similar manner. It appears, in short, that the fraternity of deists are not willing to trust their system, to trust themselves, nor to trusteach [sic] other, to the impressions which may be produced by the near approach of death. Some have, as Voltaire intimates had been affirmed of him, protested beforehand, against all they should utter in a near view of death: and it seems

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to have been adopted, as a kind of system, by the infidels of Europe, to exclude christian witnesses from the death-​bed scenes of their distinguished friends, that thus the truth might be concealed and representations be made favourable to their own cause. From the statement which Adam Smith has published of the death of David Hume, and from the manner in which it has been treated in Europe, both by the friends and enemies of infidelity, the writer of this article was induced to believe that statement to be correct. But on suggesting this idea to the late Dr. Charles Nisbet, whose veracity and whose accuracy of information and narration were singularly unimpeachable, the Dr.  replied nearly in these words: “Let David Hume die as he might, the manner of his death was not personally known to Adam Smith. It is a pretty good specimen of infidel friendship, but yet I know it is true, that though Hume’s house was in sight of Adam Smith’s, he never saw him for several weeks* before his death. Hume’s infidel friends were careful to keep from him any witnesses but those of their own choice or character, and we do not know how he died, for they have reported what they pleased.” This information the writer believes to be strictly correct, and the opinion of judicious friends has corroborated his own, that it is of sufficient importance to be given to the public —​Not because it is believed, that either infidels or christians prove their sentiments to be true, by the manner in which they view them at death. At most, they prove no more, as bishop Watson has well remarked, than that they really believe what they can abide by at that “honest hour.” But it is plain, that infidels themselves do actually lay great stress on this circumstance, by their endeavours to suppress what is unfavourable to their cause, and by their zeal to publish and blazon what they think will serve it. And it is equally manifest, that they find themselves encumbered with no easy task, and furnished with very scanty materials for their work, when they set about the vindication of their system by bringing it to the death-​bed testimony of its friends and abettors. Hence their endeavours to make much of a little, to conceal the truth, and to furnish out tales of composure and serenity, which probably are greatly coloured, if not entirely fabricated. Do they wish to combat christians on their own ground? Let the following facts be attended to, and it will be seen, that, after all, they do not attempt a fair competition. Christians, when they come to die, are often afraid that they have not been sincere in the religion they have professed. But you cannot show one instance of a christian in these circumstances, whose fear arises from the apprehension that the system * The writer thinks that six weeks were mentioned, but he is not certain.

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he has embraced, the gospel of Christ, is not true in itself. He is then, more than ever, satisfied that his religious system is true. He is only afraid that he has not lived up to it. On the contrary, the infidel often fears, because he then suspects that his system is not true, and that he is going to be punished because he has lived up to it.       G.

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REMARKS ON HUME AND FINLEY

“Remarks on the accounts of the death of David Hume, Esqr. and Samuel Finley, D.D. in the last No,” Christian’s Magazine, designed to promote the knowledge and influence of evangelical truth and order, vol. 1 (January 1806), pp. 419–​36. John Mitchell Mason John Mitchell Mason (1770–​1829) was a Presbyterian clergyman and educator. Born and raised in New York City, Mason graduated from Columbia College in 1789 and then attended the University of Edinburgh for his theological training, graduating in 1792. In 1804 Mason established in New York a theological seminary that would become Union Theological Seminary. For many years, beginning in 1795, Mason was a trustee of Columbia College and also appointed as its first provost in 1811. From 1821 to 1824 Mason was the president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Founded by Mason in 1806, the Christian’s Magazine was published in New York from 1806 to 1811. Its contents were Calvinistic, and contained a variety of literary and news items. On the Christian’s Magazine see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 240–​41; API, p. 61. On Mason see Paul Patton Faris, “John Mitchell Mason,” DAB, vol. 6, part 2, pp. 368–​ 9; Jacob Van Vechten, Memoirs of John M. Mason, D.D., S.T.D. (New York, 1856). —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​

Remarks on the accounts of the death of David Hume, Esqr. and Samuel Finley, D.D. in the last No. THE common sense and feelings of mankind, have always taught them to consider death as a most awful and interesting event. If it were nothing more than a

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separation from all that we love in this world; the dissolution of our bodies; and the termination of our present mode of existence; there would be sufficient reason for approaching it with tender and solemn reflection. But when we add those anticipations of which very few, if any, can wholly divest themselves; that scene of “untried being,” which lies before us; and especially that eternity which the Christian revelation unfolds, death becomes an object of unutterable moment; and every sober thought of it bears upon the heart with a weight of solicitude which it is not in the power of unaided reason to remove. The mere possibility of our living hereafter, is enough to engage the attention of a wise man: the probability of it is too grave and affecting to leave an excuse for indifference: and the certainty with which the scriptures speak of it, as of an immortality of blessedness or of wo [sic], allows to light and ludicrous speculations concerning it, no other character than that of the insanity of wickedness. When that hour draws nigh which shall close the business of life, and summon the spirit to the bar of “God who gave it,” all the motives to deception cease, and those false reasonings which blind the judgment, are dissipated. It is the hour of truth, and of sincerity. Such, at least, is the general fact, which cannot be invalidated by the concession that, in some instances, men have been found to cherish their infatuation, and practise their knavery, to the very last. Their number in places which enjoy the pure gospel, the only ones in our present view, is too small to make any perceptible difference in the amount; or to disparage that respectful credence with which the rustic and the sage listen to the testimony of a dying bed. By this testimony, the “gospel of the grace of God,” has obtained, among every people and in every age, such strong confirmation, and has carried into the human conscience, such irresistible appeals for its truth, its power, and its glorious excellency, that its enemies have laboured with all their might, to discredit these triumphs. They have attacked the principle upon which the testimony of a dying believer rests. They have said that the mind, being necessarily enfeebled by the ravages of mortal disease upon the body, is not a competent judge of its own operations —​that the looks, the tears, the whole conduct of surrounding friends, excite artificial emotions in the dying —​that superstition has a prodigious ascendency over their imagination —​that their joyful impressions of heaven, are the mere reveries of a disturbed brain —​that their serenity, their steady hope, their placid faith, are only the natural consequence of long habit, which never operates more freely than when the faculty of reflection is impaired —​All this, and more like this, do unhappy mortals who take, or pretend to take, pleasure in putting an extinguisher upon the light of life, detail with

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an air of superiority, as if they had fallen upon a discovery which merits the plaudits of the world. But were it even so —​were the Christian victory over death only a dream, it is a dream so sweet and blessed, that with the scourger of lord Bolingbroke’s philosophy, I should “account that man a villain that awoke me —​ awoke me to truth and misery.”* But I am not going to discuss this question. The poor infidel does not believe himself, and why should others believe him? With one breath he endeavours to cry down the argument to be derived in favour of their religion, from the peaceful death of Christians; and with the next to enlist it in his own service. He omits no opportunity of celebrating the intrepidity or composure displayed by sceptical brethren in their last moments. Let the letter of Dr. Adam Smith, concerning the death of David Hume, Esqr. reprinted in our last number, be a proof. Every sentence betrays his anxiety to set off his friend to the best advantage. The dullest observer cannot but perceive his design to compare Mr. Hume dying an infidel, with a Christian dying in the faith of Jesus. Let us draw out, at length, that comparison which he has only insinuated; and that the effect may be more decisive, let us remember that the whole annals of unbelief do not furnish a more favourable example than he has selected. Mr. Hume was a man of undisputed genius. His versatile talent, his intense application, his large acquirements, and his uncommon acuteness, place him, perhaps, at the head of those enemies of revelation who attempt to reason; as Voltaire stands without a rival among those who only scoff. He had, besides, what rarely belongs to the ascertained infidel, a good moral reputation. We mean that he was not addicted to lewdness, to drunkenness, to knavery, to profane swearing†; or any * Hunter’s view of the philosophical character and writings of Lord Viscount Bolingbroke. †

On further recollection, we are compelled to deduct from Mr. Hume’s morality, his freedom from profane swearing. For, in an account of the life and writings of the Rev. Dr. Robertson, the great historian, drawn up by professor Dugald Stewart, there is a letter from Mr. Hume to the Dr. in which he descends to the coarse and vulgar profanity of the ale-​house, and the maindeck. To ask his reverend correspondent, the principal of the University of Edinburgh; the ecclesiastical premier of the church of Scotland, “What the devil he had to do with that old fashioned, dangling word, wherewith?” and to tell him, “I will see you d—​d sooner,” viz. than “swallow your ’hath” —​are such gross violations of decency, that unless Mr. Hume had been accustomed to adorn his speech with similar expletives, they never could have found their way into a familiar letter; much less into a letter designed for the eye of a man to whom, considering his profession only, they were a direct insult. We do not wonder that Mr. Stewart should “hesitate about the propriety of subjecting to, the criticisms of the world so careless an effusion.” But, knowing as we do, the urbanity of that Gentleman’s manners, the elegance of his mind, and his high sense of decorum, we much wonder that his hesitation had not a different issue. We fear that all men of sobriety, we are sure that all men of religion, will refuse to accept Mr. Hume’s “gayety and affection,” as an apology for his vileness; or to let it pass off under the mask of “playful and good-​natured irony.” If a philosopher’s “affection” must vent itself in ribaldry; if he cannot be “playful and good-​natured,” without plundering the waterman and scavenger of their appropriate phraseology, we own, that his conversation has no attractions for us. Such a “glimpse” as this letter affords, of the “writer and his correspondent in the habits of private intercourse,” is far from “suggesting not unpleasing pictures of the hours which they borrowed from business and study.”

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of those grosser vices which are the natural and ordinary companions of enmity to the Gospel. For otherwise, as he laboured to unsettle all fixed principles of belief; to overturn the whole system of moral obligation; to obliterate a sense of God’s authority from the conscience; and positively to inculcate the innocence of the greatest crimes, he must be accounted one of the most flagitiously immoral men that ever lived. His panegyrist, too, was a man of superiour parts and profound erudition. The name of Adam Smith will always rank high in the republic of letters; and will never be pronounced, but with respect, by the political economist. Mr. Hume can have lost nothing; has possibly gained much, by the pen of his friend. Taking him, therefore, as the letter to Mr. Strahan represents him, let us contrast him with that servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, Dr. Samuel Finley. Whatever be a man’s opinions, one of his most rational occupations in the prospect of leaving the world, is to look back upon the manner in which he has passed through it: to compare his duties with his conduct, and to inquire how far he deserves the approbation or the reproach of his own conscience. With a Christian this admits not of dispute. Nor will it be disputed by a Deist, who professes his faith in the being and providence of God, and a state of rewards and punishments hereafter, proportioned to the degree of crime or of virtue here. To such a one it is, upon his own principles, a question of unspeakable importance, whether he shall commence his future existence with hopes of happiness, or with fears of misery? especially as he relies much upon the efficacy of penitence and prayer, in procuring forgiveness of his faults, indulgence to his infirmities, and a general mitigation of whatever is unfavourable. Nay, the mortal deist, or the atheist himself, for they are not worth the trouble of a distinction, ought, for their own sakes in this life, to be so employed. If, with the rejection of all religious constraint, they have not also uprooted every affection of their nature, nothing could afford them more gratification in the evening of their days, than the consciousness of their having contributed something to the mass of human comfort. In short, whether we argue upon christian, or unchristian grounds, it can be the interest of none but the worthless and the malignant, to shut their eyes upon their own history, and sink down in death, as a bullock drops under the knife of his executioner. But the most melancholy reflection is, that such intimacies and correspondences furnish an index of Dr. Robertson’s own character. The infidels never allowed that he had any thing of the Christian minister but his canonicals and his sermons. With these exceptions they claimed him as their own, and their claim appears to have been too well founded.

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Yet strange as it may appear, and inconsistent as it certainly is with his high pretensions, there are few things so rare as a dying infidel taking a deliberate retrospect of life. We say a deliberate retrospect; for it is undeniable, that on many of those who, like the apostate Julian, waged implacable war with the Galilean, conscience recovering from its slumbers, has, at the hour of death or the apprehension of it, forced an unwilling and tormenting recollection of their deeds. The point of honour in their philosophy seems to be, and their utmost attainment is, to keep completely out of view, both the past and the future. This was evidently the case with Mr. Hume. Read over again Dr. Smith’s letter to Mr. Strahan, and you will not find a syllable from which you could gather that there is an hereafter, a providence, or a God —​not a sentence to indicate that Mr. Hume believed he had ever committed a sin; or was, in any respect, an accountable being. Turn now away from the philosopher, and hear what a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has to say:  Melting into gratitude for that mercy which he had received from his heavenly father, he goes back to the commencement of his Christian course, and desires his friend to pray, that God “would be pleased to let him feel just as he did at that time when he first closed with Christ,” and the rapture of his soul came near to the blessedness of heaven. With deep humility he owns his sinfulness: not a whisper of extenuation or apology does he utter —​ “I know not in what language to speak of my own unworthiness —​I have been undutiful.” But with great tenderness, as in the presence of the Omniscient, he attests his satisfaction with time spent in his Christian duties and enjoyments: “I can truly say that I have loved the service of God —​I have honestly endeavoured to act for God, but with much weakness and corruption —​I have tried my master’s yoke, and will never shrink my neck from it.” That he had been useful to others, and instrumental in their salvation, was to him a source of pure and elevated joy. “The Lord has given me many souls as a crown of my rejoicing.” What think you, now, reader, of Mr. Hume and Dr. Finley, with regard to their retrospect of life? Who evinces most of the good and the virtuous man? Whose reflections, is it reasonable to conclude, were the more delightful? His, who let none of them escape his lips? or his, whose words were inadequate to express their abundance or their sweetness? No; the one had not delightful recollections to communicate. High happiness is never selfish. The overflowing heart pours off its exuberance into the bosom of a friend. And had MR. H. had any thing of this sort to impart, his companions and encomiasts would have shared in his pleasure, and would not have forgotten to tell the world of its luxury. Their silence is a sufficient comment.

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Let us extend our comparison to a particular which, more than almost any thing else, touches the pride of philosophy: We mean the dignity displayed by the infidel and by the Christian respectively. Ask Dr. Smith. He will tell you that at the very time when he knew his dissolution was near, Mr. Hume continued to “divert himself as usual, with correcting his own works for a new edition; with reading books of amusement; with the conversation of his friends; and sometimes, in the evening, with a party at his favourite game of whist.” Behold the dying occupation of a captain of infidelity! Of one who is eulogized “as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as, perhaps, the nature of human frailty will admit” —​his most serious employment is “diverting himself.” Just about to yield up his last breath, and “diverting himself!” From what? Let them answer who know that there are apt to be troublesome visitors to the imagination and the conscience of one who has prostituted his powers to the purpose of spreading rebellion against the God who made him! “Diverting himself!” With what? With correcting his own works for a new edition! a considerable portion of which “works” is destined to prove that justice, mercy, faith, and all the circle of both the duties and charities, are obligatory only because they are useful; and, by consequence, that their opposites shall be obligatory when they shall appear to be more useful —​that the religion of the Lord Jesus, which has “brought life and immortality to light,” is an imposture —​that adultery is a bagatelle; and suicide a virtue! With what? With reading books of amusement. The adventures of Don Quixote; the tales of the genii; a novel, a tragedy, a farce, a collection of sonnets; any thing but those sober and searching treatises which are fit for one who “considers his latter end.” With what? With the conversation of his friends; such as Dr. Smith, and Dr. Black, another famous infidel, who, as they had nothing inviting to discuss about futurity, and Mr. H. could not bear the fatigue of abstruse speculation, must have entertained him with all that jejune small talk which makes great wits look so very contemptible, when they have nothing to say. With what? With an evening party at his favourite game of whist! A card table! and all that nauseous gabble for which the card table is renowned! The question is to be decided, whether such stupendous faculties as had been lavished upon Mr. Hume, were to be blasted into annihilation; or expanded to the vision and fruition of the INFINITE GOOD; or converted into inlets of endless pain, despair, and horrour? A question which might convulse the abyss, and move the thrones of heaven —​and while the decision is preparing, preparing for him, Mr. H. sits down to a gaming board, with gambling companions, to be “diverted” with the chances of the cards, and the edifying conversation to which they give rise! Such

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is the dignity of this almost “perfectly wise and virtuous man” —​Such a philosopher’s preparation for death! Let us leave him at the card-​table, and pay a second visit to Dr. Finley. From his gracious lips, not a trifling word escapes. In his ardent soul, now ready to speed its flight to the spirits of the just, there is no room for “diversion,” for “correcting” compositions; for “books of amusement;” or for “games of whist.” The everlasting life of those around him —​the spiritual prosperity of a congregation dear to him —​the interests of his Redeemer among the nations —​these, these are the themes which fill his thoughts and dwell upon his tongue. “Oh that each of you,” says he to the spectators of his pain, “may experience, what, blessed be God, I do, when ye come to die.” —​“Give my love to the people of Princeton: tell them that I am going to die, and that I am not afraid of death. The Lord Jesus take care of his cause in the world.” The manner in which Mr. H. and Dr. F. directly contemplated death, and the effects of death, presents another strong point of contrast. It is evident from the whole of Dr. Smith’s narrative, that the former confined, or wished to confine, his view to the mere physical event —​to the bodily anguish which it might create, and its putting a period to earthly enjoyments. The whole of the philosopher’s “magnanimity” centers here. Allowing to his composure under these views of death, as much as can reasonably be demanded, we do not perceive in it all that “magnanimity” which is perceived by Dr. S. Thousands who had no pretensions to philosophical pre-​eminence, have been Mr. H’s. equals on this ground. If he had succeeded in persuading himself, as his writings tend to persuade others, that the spirit of man, like the spirit of a beast, “goeth downwards;” that when the breath should leave his body, there would be an end of Mr. Hume —​that the only change would be to “turn a few ounces of blood into a different channel” —​ to vary the form of a cluster of corpuscles, or to scatter a bundle of perceptions up and down through that huge collection of impressions and ideas —​that stupendous mass of nothings, of which his philosophy had sagaciously discovered the whole material and intellectual world to be composed —​If this were all, we cannot discern in what his magnanimity consisted. It is chiefly as a moral event, that death is interesting —​as an event which, instead of putting an end to our existence, only introduces us to a mode of existence as much more interesting than the present, as eternity is more interesting than time. It is this view that chiefly engaged the attention of Dr. Finley. In common with others, he was to undergo the pains of dissolution. But he rested not in these. He fixed his eye upon that new form which all his relations to God, to holiness, to sin, and the inhabitants of the future world, were shortly to assume. The reader,

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we doubt not, perceives the immense disparity between these cases. Mr. H. looks at death as it affects the affairs of this world. Dr. F. as it involves eternal issues. Mr. H. according to his own notions, had nothing to encounter but the struggles of nature; and nothing to lose but a few temporal enjoyments. Before Dr. F. was the tribunal of God, and the stake at hazard was an immortal soul. An errour here is irretrievable; the very thought of its possibility is enough to shake every fibre of the frame; and proportionably precious and certain must be that religion which can assure the believer of his safety, and convey him with peacefulness and pleasure to his father’s house. This being the case, let us weigh the consolations of the philosopher against those of the Christian. Dr. Smith has made the most of them in behalf of the former; but a very little scrutiny will show that they are light and meagre indeed. “I am dying,” they are the words of Mr. H. “as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.” “When he became very weak,” says Dr. Black, “it cost him an effort to speak; and he died in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it.” We are not without suspicion, that on the part of Mr. H. there is some affectation here; and on the part of his friends, some pretty high colouring. In the mouth of a Christian, “composure,” “cheerfulness,” “complacency,” “resignation,” “happiness,” in death, have an exquisite meaning. But what meaning can they have in the mouth of one, the very best of whose expectations is the extinction of his being? Is there any “complacency” in the thought of perishing? any “happiness” in the dreary and dismal anticipation of being blotted out of life? It is a farce: It is a mockery of every human feeling: and every throbbing of the heart convicts it of a lie. But Mr. Hume expected a better state of existence —​Nay, talk not of that. There is not, either in his own expressions, or those of his friends, the faintest allusion to futurity. That glorious light which shines through the grave upon the redeemed of the Lord, was the object of his derision. No comfort from this quarter. The accomplishment of his earthly wishes, and the prosperity of his near relatives, are the only reasons assigned for his cheerfulness. But these are insufficient. In thousands, and ten thousands, they have not availed to preclude the most alarming forebodings; and why should they do more for Mr. Hume? In the next place, how shall we interpret his “resignation?” Resignation to what? To the divine will? O no! God was not in all his thoughts. But Death was at hand, and he could not escape; he submitted to a stroke which it was impossible to avoid. And all that is said of his “composure,” and “cheerfulness,” and “resignation,” and “complacency,” when measured by the scale of truth, amounts to no more than a sottish unconcern set off with a fictitious gayety. It is easy to

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work up a fine description; and it is often most fine, when most remote from the fact. Let any infidel between the poles produce, if he can, a reason that shall satisfy a child, why one who has lived without God, should find “complacency” in death. Nothing but that “hope which maketh not ashamed,” is a cause equal to such an effect. But “hope” beyond the grave, is a word which had no place in Mr. Hume’s vocabulary, because the thing had no place in his soul. It is plain, however, that he Felt his ruling passion strong in death.

Whatever his decay had weakened, his desire to see “the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition;” which, with Mr. Hume, meant neither more nor less than the destruction of Christianity, in every modification, retained its whole vigour. And thus, while venting his spite at the only “system” which ever could render death comfortable; he goes to Lucian’s dialogues, and edifies his friends with chattering nonsense about Charon and his boat! O cæcas hominum mentes! Nothing can be more blind and infatuated than the fanaticism of philosophy “falsely so called.” With this puerile levity before our eyes; and this contemptible babbling sounding in our ears, we must listen to tales of Mr. Hume’s magnanimity, complacency, and resignation! From a barren exhibition of Atheism, let us repair once more to the servant of God. In Dr. Finley, we see a man dying not only with cheerfulness, but with ecstasy. Of his friends, his wife, his children, he takes a joyful leave:  committing all that he held most dear in this world, not to the uncertainties of earthly fortune, but to the “promises of his God.” Although his temporal circumstances were very moderate; although he had sons and daughters to provide for, and slender means of doing it, he felt not a moment’s uneasiness —​Leave thy fatherless children with me; I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me, was in his estimation, a better security for their support, than any inheritance in lands or lucre. And as to death itself —​who but one “filled with hopes full of immortality,” could use such language as this —​“A Christian’s death is the best part of his existence” —​“Blessed be God! eternal rest is at hand.” —​“O I shall triumph over every foe,” (he meant sin, Satan, death, the grave,) “the Lord hath given me the victory —​I exult; I triumph! Now I know that it is impossible that faith should not triumph over earth and hell”  —​“Lord Jesus, into thy hands I commit my spirit; I do it with confidence; I do it with full assurance. I know that thou wilt keep that which I have committed unto thee.” We appeal to all the world, whether any thing like this, any thing that deserves so much as to be named in comparison, ever fell from the lips of an infidel? How poor, how

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mean, how miserable, does he look, when brought to the contrast! Let the reader review again the situation of Dr. Finley, ponder his words, and mark their spirit; and then let him go back to Mr. Hume’s “diversion” —​to his correcting his atheistical writings for a new edition —​to his “books of amusement” —​to his “game of whist” —​to his insipid raillery about Charon and his boat! Truly the infidels have cause to look big, and despise the followers of Jesus Christ! “Pray, sir,” said a young man to the late Dr. Black, in the presence of a juvenile company, at the Dr’s. own table, “Pray sir, how did Mr. Hume die?” “Mr. Hume,” answered the sceptical chymist, with an air of great significance, “Mr. Hume died, as he lived, a philosopher.” Dr. Black himself has aided Dr. Smith in telling us what the death of a philosopher is. It has taught us, if nothing before did, that the pathetic exclamation, “Let my soul be with the philosophers,” belongs to one who is a stranger to truth and happiness. If they resemble Mr. Hume, we will most devoutly exclaim, “Furthest from them is best.” Let our souls be with the Christians! with the humble believers in that Jesus who is “the resurrection and the life.” Let them be with Samuel Finley; let them not be with David Hume! We cannot close these strictures, without again reminding the reader, that no instance of composure in death is to be found more favourable to the infidel boast, than the instance of Mr. Hume. And yet, how jejune and forlorn does he appear, in comparison of Dr.  Finley. The latter longs for his departure, “as the hireling pants for the evening shade;” and when it comes, he pours around him his kindly benedictions; his eye beams with celestial brilliancy; he shouts, Salvation! and is away to “the bosom of his Father and his God.” But in the other all is blank. No joy sparkles in his eye:  no hope swells his bosom; an unmeaning smile is on his countenance, and frigid ridicule dishonours his lips. Be it never forgotten, that no infidels die in triumph! The utmost to which they pretend, is dying with calmness. Even this rarely happens; and, the scripture being judge, it is a part of their accursedness. It imparts the deeper horrour to the surprise of the eternal world. But, if you reverse the picture, and ask how many infidels close their career in anguish, in distraction, in a fearful looking-​for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the ADVERSARIES? how endless is the train of wretches, how piercing their cry! That arch blasphemer, Voltaire, left the world with hell anticipated:  and we hear so frequently of his disciples “going to their own place” in a similar manner, that the dreadful narratives lose their effect by repetition. It was quite recently that a youth in the state of New-​York, who had been debauched by the ribaldrous impiety of Paine, yielded up the ghost with dire imprecations on the hour when he first saw an infidel book, and on

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the murderer who first put it into his hand. But who ever heard of a dying man’s cursing the day in which he believed in Jesus? While such an instance, we are bold to assert, never occurred, nothing is more common than the peaceful death of them who have “tasted that the Lord is gracious.” They who see practical Christianity in those retreats which the eye of a profane philosopher seldom penetrates, could easily fill a long record of dying beds softened with that bland submission, and cheered with that victorious hope, which threw so heavenly a lustre round the bed of Dr. Finley. These things carry with them their own recommendation to the conscience which is not yet “seared as with a hot iron.” If our pages fall into the hands of the young, we affectionately entreat them to “remember their Creator in the days of their youth;” “to make their calling and their election sure,” before they be “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Rich are the tints of that beauty, and sweet the fragrance of those blossoms, on which, in the morning of life, the Lord our God sheds down the dews of his blessing. You would not wish to be associated with infidels in their death —​shun the contagion of their principles while you are in spirits and health. Your hearts cannot but sigh, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his” —​cast in then, your lot with him; choose for your own God the God of Samuel Finley; and like him, you shall have “hope in your death;” like him, you shall “be had in ever lasting remembrance,” when “the memory of the wicked shall rot.”

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HUME’S LIFE: THE TRUE PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

“THE AMERICAN LOUNGER, By Samuel Saunter, Esq. No. 158,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 2] (March 1806), pp. 113–​14. “T.” On The Port Folio see Neal L.  Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), pp.  217–​20; Harold Milton Ellis, Joseph Dennie and His Circle: A Study in American Literature from 1792–​1812 (Austin, 1915); Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 223–​46; Albert H. Smyth, The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, 1741–​1850 (1892; reprinted Freeport, 1970), pp. 92–​151. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ MR. SAUNTER, I AM peculiarly pleased with a passage I have lately met with in that short but interesting account of himself which has been left us by Mr. Hume. After mentioning the neglect with which his first writings were received, and the notice which after some time they excited, he says, “these symptoms of a rising reputation gave me encouragement, as I was ever more disposed to see the favourable than unfavourable side of things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year.” This is indeed the true practical philosophy, which yields more felicity than any wealth or external distinction; producing in the mind a calm and cheerful serenity, which remains unsubdued by adversity, and derives double comfort from prosperity; and no argument can be stronger to prove its happy influence than the history of that eminent man, whose sentiments I have quoted. His first works fell, as he strongly expresses it, dead born from the press, without attracting

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even censure. To one so eager for literary distinction, and after long preparation presenting the first fruits of his toil to the world, no event could have been more mortifying; and we owe to that cheerful bent of disposition, which could anticipate success in the midst of disappointment, a history which has rescued the English character from reproach, and has added new lustre to modern literature. But, for one who could congratulate himself on this disposition, how many have been made wretched merely from a turn of mind contrary to this! The history of literary men, particularly, will afford numerous instances; men of refined minds and ardent imaginations feeling its influence most powerfully. A person of this turn is depressed by the slightest failure or misfortune: every thing wears a dark and gloomy aspect; and he is constantly terrified with evils that have no existence, or dangers altogether imaginary. It is true that these men do not always continue in this melancholy mood. On the contrary, their minds occasionally receive a contrary impulse: and they are then elevated as much beyond the bounds of moderation as they were before depressed. But, as the evils of life are much more frequent than its joys, the balance upon the whole is much against them; and the raptures which they occasionally feel beyond other men are by no means equivalent to the pains. These flashes of pleasure dart a stronger light; but they only make the subsequent darkness more visible. While that calm and temperate serenity beams with a constancy and moderation, which never exhilarate, but diffuse uniform health and tranquillity. One remarkable victim to that gloomy turn of mind, which sees only the unfavourable side of things, was the poet Cowper: a writer who, for originality of thought, force and compass of expression, and justness of sentiment, will deserve to be marked in the first class of English poets; yet, as a man, who would be willing to take even his rich endowments of mind with that awful bent of toil that sowed with thorns every footstep of his life, and at last wholly “overthrew his noble mind.” The productions of most poets are the dreams of fiction, and should we attempt to ascertain their character from their works, we should probably err as widely as the lady who decided on Thomson from his Seasons. But the writings of Cowper are a faithful transcript of his own mind, and they are every where pervaded with that gloomy turn which had seized so strongly on the man. If so much of the happiness of individuals depend on their turn of mind, if a disposition to view the brighter side be more valuable than the inheritance of fortune or distinction, it were to be wished that writers who are endued with exalted talents, to whom we look up as our sources of amusement or instruction,

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should exert their powers in giving us rather pleasing than disagreeable views of human life. The temper of an individual who is not distinguished as a teacher, can affect only himself or the immediate circle around him. But the opinions of those who are the instructors of our youth, the companions of age, and the standards of composition, extend through the whole nation, and even to the latest posterity. I can never therefore read the moral writings of Johnson without imbibing a portion of their gloom and melancholy; a state of mind which, though it may have been eulogized by a Zimmermann or a Madame Roland, is by no means the object of my envy. On the contrary, the essays of Addison operate like a healing balsam to a wound:  they soothe every angry passion, lighten our cares, gently raise our spirits, and make us better satisfied with ourselves and the world. Reading the one is like retiring to a thick covert hid in shade and obscurity, where every object becomes ten times more sad and terrific. Perusing the other is like wandering in silent contemplation of the planetary system, where the heart gradually buries all low and petty resentments, and swells with gratitude and admiration at the Creator and his glorious works. T.

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LAST DAYS OF HUME

“STRIKING EVIDENCES OF THE DIVINITY OF THE SCRIPTURES. I. EXAMPLES OF DYING INFIDELS,” The Moral and Religious Cabinet, vol. 1 (26 March 1808), pp. 193–​8; selection pp. 196–​7. Anonymous The Moral and Religious Cabinet was published and printed by John C. Totten in New  York. The weekly’s emphasis was Methodist. See Gaylord P.  Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 639–​40; API, p. 147. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ The last days of David Hume, that celebrated deist, were spent in playing at whist, in cracking his jokes about Charon and his boat, and in reading Lucian and other entertaining books. —​This is a consummatum est worthy of a clever fellow, whose conscience was seared as with a hot iron! Dr. Johnson observes on this impenitent death-​bed scene —​“Hume owned he had never read the New Testament with attention. Here then was a man who had been at no pains to enquire into the truth of religion, and had continually turned his mind the other way. It was not to be expected that the prospect of death should alter his way of thinking, unless God should send an angel to set him right. He had a vanity in being though easy.” Dives fared sumptuously every day, and saw no danger: but, the next thing we hear of him is —​In hell be lifted up his eyes, being in torments!

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CONTRAST BETWEEN THE DEATH OF A DEIST AND THE DEATH OF A CHRISTIAN

“The Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian’, ” The Ordeal (21 January 1809), pp. 42–​5. Anonymous The Ordeal: a critical journal of politicks and literature was published in Boston and edited by Joseph T. Buckingham (1779–​1861). It was a weekly and survived only from 7 January 1809 to 1 July 1809. On Buckingham see Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck, eds., Cyclopaedia of American Literature (reprinted Philadelphia, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 12–​13. On The Ordeal see API, p. 172; BAP, p. 129. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ If the temper with which some good christians enter into controversies in speculative doctrines, bore any proportion in point of moderation, to that which is generally discovered among sceptical writers, we should stand a much better chance of discovering through the mist of errour and dispute, the great object of our enquiry. But unhappily there is a kind of intolerant zeal, and enthusiastick rage, operating in the minds of some orthodox people of really good intentions, and well disposed views, which counteract the beneficial tendencies of their virtues, their principles, and their actions. They have such an abhorrence of heresy, that they think they can discover it on the most common occasions; and a man is almost denounced by them, as an absolute infidel, who will not fully believe the doctrine of the natural corruption of human nature, and the depravity of all actions and habits previous to conversion:  who will not readily admit the necessity of special regeneration, the belief of election, and of course, everlasting

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punishment, by means of hell-​fire. In a periodical work, published in Boston, entitle “The Panoplist,” the paroxysms of zeal, which we have just referred to, are frequently very violent, and seem almost to choak the authors with their wrathful effects. Sometimes they exhibit themselves in philipicks against people “who call themselves christians;” at other times in a profuse, and we had almost said, impious use of the language of the sacred scriptures, upon trivial topicks, and an indiscriminate mixture of the inspired phraseology, with the tiresome, stale and trite expressions of the editors. A most ridiculous cant in style and sentiment, equally removed from genuine piety and good taste, affords another indication of the existence of these zealous effusions. We are not now disposed to enter at large into the tedious and unprofitable discussion, which an examination of the general merits of this work, would necessarily produce; nor should we have been induced to notice it all, if its reputation had rested solely on its intrinsick worth: but we are induced to make a few remarks on a particular article which has attracted our attention, as well because we think its tendendency is far from being beneficial to the cause of religion, which it undertakes to espouse, as because the work which contains it, astonishing as it may seem, has a very extensive circulation. We cannot but regret that these violent overboilings of the spirit which we so peculiarly distinguish it, are likely to quench the very fire of devotion, by which they were at first set in motion. The article to which we allude, is contained in “The Panoplist” of last November, entitled “a contrast between the death of a deist, and the death of a christian; being a succinct account of that celebrated infidel David Hume, Esq. and of that excellent minister of the Gospel, Samuel Finley, D.D. in their last moments.” This contrast, however, was written, it seems by the Rev. Dr. Mason, of New-​York, and published in the Christian’s Magazine, from which the editors of the Panoplist have extracted it, “first, to benefit their readers,” and “secondly, to make them acquainted with a periodical work,” which they affirm “is edited with peculiar ability, and does honour to our country.” We shall not be justly chargeable with unrelenting severity in making some animadversions on this article, as a part of the Panoplist, after the full and complete panegyrick the editors have lavished upon it, which we think, quite sufficient to make them responsible for all the absurdities which it may be found to contain. We would by no means be understood to step forward as vindicators of the deistical character of Hume; we trust we hold his works to be as dangerous, as the most enthusiastick bigot can imagine them to be; but we do say, that the manner of the death of that great writer, makes nothing for or against the doctrines

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of christianity, and that the attempt of Doctor Mason, to torture language into ambiguities of meaning to suit his purposes, is inconsistent with the dignity of the christian character, and not in any respect calculated to extend the diffusion of truth. Much less is the ridiculous account which is given of the death of Doctor Finley advantageous to the cause of religion. There is no rational man but must consider his language and conduct, in the light of incoherent jargon, and visionary delusion. The death of Mr. Hume is related by Dr. Adam Smith, in a letter to William Strathan [sic], Esq. in which he very plainly, and feelingly informs him of the circumstances which led to, and followed his dissolution; of the conduct of Mr. Hume, under his disease, the cheerfulness of his deportment, his agreeable conversation with his friends; and concludes by giving an estimate of the value of his moral and intellectual character. There is nothing throughout this account, which has a tendency to prove the christian religion either better or worse; it is a mere isolated fact, and has no bearing whatever on the truth or falsehood of the religious systems in the world. The account of Dr.  Finley’s decease, on the contrary, seems evidently prepared for the object, it is by no means likely to promote, a more general enthusiasm in religious opinions. The style of his conversation generally absurd, is often impious, and frequently ridiculous; and we are astonished that Dr. Mason, and the editors of the Panoplist, could not dispose of their talents in any more profitable way, than in making comparisons, which, if they have any effect whatever, are more calculated to defeat, than promote the interests which they so warmly espouse. We have said the language of Dr. Finley was often incoherent jargon, absurd, and frequently impious and ridiculous; we think the following expressions will warrant our assertions. Being asked by the Rev. Mr. Treat, who had visited him for the purpose of prayer, “what he should pray for,” he answered, “beseech God that he would make me feel just as I did at that time when I first closed with Christ, at which time I could scarce contain myself out of heaven!”* This is absurd enough, if not impious. One said, “you will soon be joined to a blessed society; you will ever converse with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with the spirits of just men made perfect; with old friends, and many old fashioned people.” “Yes sir,” he replied, with a smile, “but they are most polite people now.”† Now if this is not ridiculous, and joking with * Panoplist, p. 245. †

Ibid. p. 246.

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sacred things, language cannot convey meaning. He would sometimes cry out, “the Lord Jesus take care of his cause in this world.” Why? why clearly, because Mr. Finley was about to leave it; what is this but arrogance and presumption? Waking this morning, “Oh! what a disappointment have I met with; I expected this morning to have been in heaven!” In one place he says with a strong voice; “Oh I  shall triumph over every foe! The Lord hath given me victory! I  exult! I triumph! Now I know that it is impossible that faith should not triumph over earth and hell!” And yet directly underneath, he felt qualms of conscience, and desired Mr. Spencer to “pray that God would preserve him from evil, and keep him from dishonouring his great name at this critical hour.” What is this but incoherence? And to crown the whole, he is celebrated for his politeness and gentlemanly behaviour, as a special trait of christian faith and resignation. “His truly polite behaviour continued to the last, and manifested itself whenever he called for a drop of drink to wet his lips. Every one around him was treated with the same sweetness.” This is the last peculiarity, which in our opinion, could fairly be produced to determine the superiority of a christian to an infidel at the hour of dissolution. From what has already been extracted, we think our readers may be able to form some opinion of the value of Mr. Finely’s death, to the cause of rational religion. We shall notice in our next number, some of the inferences which the Rev. Dr. Mason, unwarrantably draws from the circumstances attending the deaths both of Mr. Hume and Dr. Finley, and shall use our endeavours to dissipate the thick cloud of superstition by which they are enveloped.

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CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CONTRAST

“CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CONTRAST ‘Between the Death of a Deist and of a Christian,’ contained in the Panoplist of November last,” The Ordeal (28 January 1809), pp. 63–​4. Anonymous —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ WE have proposed to notice some of the inferences which the Rev. Doctor Mason has unwarrantably drawn from the circumstances attending the respective deaths of Mr. Hume and Dr. Finley. There is no object more distressing than a zealous bigot; who strives to wrest all observations from their natural direction, in order to make them accord with his views, or array them in feeble opposition, that he may more easily overturn them. The reverend author we have just mentioned, affirms in the first place, that the letter of Dr. Adam Smith, concerning the death of Mr. Hume, is a proof of an infidel attempt to set off the intrepidity or composure of a sceptical brother, and shew him to the greatest advantage at the time of dissolution. We undertake to say, on the contrary, that the letter in question is exceedingly unguarded; what need would there have been (if Doctor Smith wished Mr. Hume’s reputation extended) to introduce Charon and his boat, and Lucian’s dialogues of the dead? The tendency of these passages, so far from setting Mr. Hume off to advantage, in the eyes of the world, has a directly contrary effect. If so, the whole ground work of Dr. Mason’s intolerant comparison is overturned. Let any one read the letter of Dr. Smith, and then let him declare whether there is, apparently, any attempt to distort or conceal circumstances, in order to make a more favourable impression of Mr. Hume’s moral character. What need, if that were the intention, of mentioning the game of whist; why not conceal it? The death of Mr. Finley, to

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which Dr. Mason turns with rapture, was the death of a superstitious enthusiast, and the death of Mr. Hume, that of a man who did not believe in the doctrine of the christian religion to be sure, but which can have no bearing upon the validity of those doctrines. Religion must rest upon its own basis: the breath of infidelity can no more overturn the fabrick, than the weak props of superstition can support it. It was not expected of Mr. Hume, that he should express a belief of the christian religion; he died consistently with his previous character. And we maintain that Dr. Mason has no right to infer any thing in favour of christianity, because Mr. Hume said nothing about a God, a providence, or an hereafter. If the composure of that great writer, at his death, intrinsically considered, has any bearing on the christian system, it is not in favour of it. But Dr. Mason, by begging the question in the first instance, rushes on afterwards in a stream of superstitious eloquence, against those passages in Dr. Smith’s letter, which merely described the consistency of Mr. Hume’s character. How does he prove the benefits resulting to christianity, from the death of Mr. Hume? why truly, by shewing him perfectly serene and composed in his disbelief. This is a novel mode of conviction to be sure; but he proceeds to argue from his dying without mentioning the subject, that religion was therefore triumphant. The death of Mr. Hume was corespondent to his character; but whether the death of a christian is not more honourable than that of an infidel, is a distinct subject of enquiry, and certainly very easy of solution. Dr.  Mason takes for granted as much of the account given of the death of Mr. Hume, as suits his purpose, and rejects, or distorts the rest, to gratify his pleasure or convenience. When Dr. Black describes Mr. Hume as saying, “I am dying as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire;” that “when he became very weak, it cost him an effort to speak, and that he died in such a happy composure of mind that nothing could exceed it,” Dr. Mason undertakes to disbelieve it. He declares all this “composure,” “cheerfulness,” [”]complacency,” “resignation,” “happiness,” to be affectation. “It is a mockery,” says he, “of every human feeling, and every throbbing of the heart convicts it of a lie.” Why is Dr. Mason thus violent in his rage? If the circumstances make in favour of Christianity, this effervescence of zeal is superfluous; but if the contrary, why then he should shew the superiority of Christian gentleness to infidel composure, and not denominate a gentleman a liar, in unqualified terms. The truth is, he thinks the argument makes against him, and he rages. He might, with equal propriety, have declared, the disbelief of certain tenets, expressed in the writings of Mr. Hume, to be a mockery and a lie; but would that assertion be a reply to the arguments this writer has made use of? If all those circumstances, in the life and

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death of an infidel, which are variant from the Christian doctrines, are proofs of the truth of those doctrines, then a man may prove, by a similar process, any contradiction in nature. Dr.  Mason says this resignation and complacency could not be, because it could not be; be opposes his inference to the assertion of Dr. Black, and there he leaves the argument. Dr. Mason expatiates upon the nonsense of Mr. Finley, with most extravagant and enthusiastick fervour; but we hope infidelity can be more easily refuted than by the ebullitions of such zeal, and Christianity be better supported, than by deviating from truth and candour, and in truth, by departing from the very rules of Christianity. The Christian religion derives support from its own intrinsick excellence; the light of revelation, and the tests of experience. The beams which are shed upon it, to shew the beauty of its structure, proceed directly from the source of light, and irradiate its inmost recess. Do not let us attempt to build up these adventitious supports, for the consequences, without overthrowing infidelity, may be detrimental to Christianity itself.

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MORE OF THE “CONTRAST”

“MORE OF THE ‘CONTRAST’,”  The Ordeal (4 February 1809), pp. 72–​3. “B.” —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ MESSRS. EDITORS, AFTER reading your late Remarks on Dr. Mason’s ‘Contrast between the death of a Deist and the death of a Christian,’ my curiosity was strongly excited to read the whole of that article. I accordingly purchased the Panoplist for November, and sat down to read it. My eyes could hardly keep pace with my astonishment. What could induce Mr. Mason to publish a ‘Contrast’ between the deaths of Hume and Finley, when, notwithstanding his own remarks and inferences, every line of the Contrast is an argument against the cause which he has undertaken to support? Suppose Dr. Finley did wish to ‘feel just as he did when he first closed with Christ?’ or that he had assurance of the ‘politeness of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?’ or that he wished for a substitute to take care of the cause of religion in this world, when he was about to leave it? What is this to the by-​standers or any body else? Does it prove that the Christian religion is truth, and Deism a lie? I cannot see that it proves any such thing. But the whole story proves, incontestibly, that David Hume died with a composure and serenity, becoming a man who had nothing to fear beyond the grave; and that Samuel Finley died either insane, or felt much regret for the past, and more anxiety for the future. From an attentive perusal of the ‘Contrast,’ I am convinced that it is calculated to do more hurt than good, be exhibiting the ‘Deist’ dying like a man, and the ‘Christian’ like a lunatick or a fool. I ask again, What could induce Dr. Mason to injure the cause, he pretends so warmly to have espoused? I must believe he is not the author of the ‘Contrast’  —​he has probably been imposed upon by some diabolical evil-​minded infidel, some wolf in sheep’s clothing, who wrote

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the ‘Contrast’ and procured its insertion in the Christian Magazine, before the Doctor had thoroughly examined it. Dr.  Mason will not be under very great obligations to the Panoplist editors, for asserting, in such unqualified terms, that it is from his pen. I think they ought, in justice to the Doctor, and the cause of religion, to contradict the assertion immediately, that the vindication may tread upon the heels of the calumny. Yours, &c. B.

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ADVERSARIA: “HUME AND FINLEY”

“Adversaria: ‘Hume and Finley’,” The Ordeal (11 February 1809), p. 94. Anonymous —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​

Hume and Finley ARE names oddly coupled; yet the closing circumstances of their lives strongly invited the contrast. If the Ordeal has exposed the lame logick of the Christian’s Magazine, the candid reader of the whole account will, however, see the point of the writer. A portion of honour was impliedly conceded to the skeptick for his calmness, or his death would not have been opposed to that of the Christian: yet that this little honour should finally be wrested from him by Dr.  Mason was hardly fair. To me, a plain-​spoken Christian, incapable of drawing such fine pictures as Dr. Mason, and fearing to treat the subject of religion with flippancy, the path of propriety seems to lie between the conduct of the two celebrated men. No Christian would wish for the skepticism of Hume; none dares thus trifle with futurity:  and every rational Christian cannot help being somewhat disgusted with the vanity and extravagance of Dr.  Finley. In the death of this man, we hear almost the ravings of fanaticism; in that of the deist, the sullen, cheerless monotony of the stoick. Dr. Mason says ‘no infidel dies a triumphant death.’ Infidelity loses nothing by this fact. Extatick feelings and expressions suit not with the sober sadness of a dying hour: there is nothing in them of natural reason, or religion. The death of Jesus Christ, showed as much of honour as of consolation. Hume affected to contemn death; Finley to triumph over it: the humble Christian does neither. The exit of the first, betrays

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the pride of a philosopher; of the last, the pride of a saint: an enemy of all pride whatever, I would wish living and dying to cherish the temper of unostentatious penitence. Nevertheless I would rather emulate the assurance of Samuel Finley, than be frozen with the rigours of David Hume. Most of all would I desire to die like my master, who had no will but God’s, and who, expiring, said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.’

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DEATH OF HUME

“MISCELLANIES. DEATH OF HUME,” The Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine United, vol. 2 (March 1810), pp. 462–​4. Anonymous The Panoplist was a long-​lived religious magazine founded in Boston by Rev. Jedediah Morse in 1805. In 1808 The Panoplist was merged with the Massachusetts Missionary Magazine. In 1810, when the essay reprinted below was published, Jeremiah Evarts was editor of the Panoplist. On the Panoplist see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), pp.  67, 187–​8; API, pp.  142, 174; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 262–​5. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ THE following admirable remarks on the death of the celebrated infidel, David Hume, are extracted from a critique on Ritchie’s Life of Hume:  in the Eclectic Review. ‘His death,’ as the Reviewer observes, ‘will probably be admitted, and even cited, by infidels, as an example of the noblest and most magnanimous deportment in the prospect of death, that it is possible for any of their class to maintain:  an example, indeed, which very few of them ever, in their serious moments, dare promise themselves to equal, though they may deem it in the highest degree enviable. It may be taken as quite their apostolic specimen, standing parallel in their history to the instance of St. Paul, in the records of the Christians, ‘I have fought a good fight,” &c. ‘For a short time previous to his death, he amused himself with playing at cards, making whimsical legacies, and other trifling occupations. As an instance of his ‘sportive disposition,’ ‘notwithstanding the prospect of speedy dissolution,’ his biographer relates, that, when reading Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, he

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diverted himself with inventing several jocular excuses which he supposed he might make Charon, and in imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of Charon to return to them: —​“Upon further consideration,” said he, “I thought I might say to him, ‘Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receive the alterations?’ But Charon would answer, “When you see the effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of such excuses; so honest friend, please to step into the boat.” But I  might still urge, ‘Have a little patience, good Charon: I have been endeavoring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfal of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.’ But Charon would then lose all temper and decency. “You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering rogue.” This anecdote is accompanied with the following just and striking reflections on the part of the Reviewer: —​‘1st. Supposing a certainty of the final cessation of conscious existence at death, this indifference to life, if it was not affected (which indeed we suspect it to have been in part) was an absurd undervaluation of a possession which almost all rational creatures, that have not been extremely miserable, have held most dear, and which is, in its own nature, most precious. To be a conscious agent, exerting a rich combination of wonderful faculties, —​ to feel an infinite variety of pleasurable sensations and emotions, —​to contemplate all nature, —​to extend an intellectual presence to indefinite ages of the past and future, —​to possess a perennial spring of ideas, —​to run infinite lengths of inquiry, with the delight of exercise and fleetness, even when not with the satisfaction of full attainment, —​and to be a lord over inanimate matter, compelling it to an action and an use altogether foreign to its nature, —​to be all this, is a state so stupendously different from that of being simply a piece of clay, that to be quite easy and complacent in the immediate prospect of passing from the one to the other, is a total inversion of all reasonable estimates of things; it is a renunciation, we do not say of sound philosophy, but of common sense. The certainty that the loss will not be felt after it has taken place, will but little sooth a man of unperverted mind, in considering what it is that he is going to lose. ‘2.  The jocularity of the philosopher was contrary to good taste. Supposing that the expected loss were not, according to a grand law of nature, a cause for melancholy and desperation, but that the contentment were rational; yet the approaching transformation was, at all events, to be regarded as a very grave and very strange event; and therefore jocularity was totally incongruous with the

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anticipation of such an event; —​a grave and solemn feeling was the only one that could be in unison with the contemplation of such a change. There was, in this instance, the same incongruity which we should impute to a writer who should mingle buffoonery in a solemn crisis of the drama, or with the most momentous event of a history. To be in harmony with his situation, in his own view of that situation, the expressions of the dying philosopher were required to be dignified; and if they were in any degree vivacious, the vivacity ought to have been rendered graceful, by being accompanied with the noblest effort of the intellect, of which the efforts were going to cease for ever. The low vivacity of which we have been reading, seems but like the quickening corruption of a mind whose faculty of perception is putrifying and dissolving, even before the body. It is true, that good men, of a high order, have been known to utter pleasantries in their last hours; —​but these have been pleasantries of a fine, ethereal quality, —​the scintillations of animated hope, —​the high pulsations of mental health, —​the involuntary movements of a spirit feeling itself free even in the grasp of death, the natural springs and boundings of faculties on the point of obtaining a still much greater and a boundless liberty. These had no resemblance to the low and labored jokes of our philosopher, jokes so labored as to give strong cause for suspicion, after all, that they were of the same nature, and for the same purpose, as the expedient of a boy on passing through some gloomy place in the night who whistles to lesson his fear, to persuade his companions that he does not feel it. ‘3.  Such a manner of meeting death was inconsistent with the skepticism to which Hume was always found to avow his adherence; for that skepticism necessarily acknowledged a possibility and a chance that the religion which he had scorned might notwithstanding, be found true, and might, in the moment after his death, glare upon him with all its terrors. But how dreadful to a reflecting mind would have been the smallest chance of meeting such a vision! Yet the philosopher could be cracking his heavy jokes; and Dr. Smith could be much diverted at the sport! ‘4.  To a man who solemnly believes the truth of revelation, and therefore the threatenings of divine vengeance against the despisers of it, this scene will present as mournful a spectacle as perhaps the sun ever shone upon. We have beheld a man of great talents and invincible perseverance, entering on his career with the profession of an impartial inquiry after truth, met at every stage and step by the evidences and expostulations of religion and the claims of his Creator, but devoting his labors to the pursuit of fame and the promotion of impiety, at length acquiring and accomplishing, as he declared himself, all he had intended and desired, and descending toward the close

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of life amidst tranquillity, widely-​extending reputation, and the homage of the great and the learned. We behold him appointed soon to appear before that Judge to whom he had never alluded but with malice or contempt; yet preserving to appearance an entire self-​complacency, idly jesting about his approaching dissolution, and mingling with the insane sport his references to the fall of ‘superstition:’ —​a term of which the meaning is hardly ever dubious when expressed by such men. We behold him at last carried off, and we seem to hear, the following moment, from the darkness in which he vanishes, the shriek of surprise and terror, and the overpowering accents of the messenger of vengeance! On the whole globe there probably was not acting, at the time, so mournful a tragedy as that of which the friends of Hume were the spectators, without being aware that it was any tragedy at all.’

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ANECDOTES OF INFIDEL MORALITY

“ANECDOTES OF INFIDEL MORALITY,” Robinson’s Magazine, A  weekly Repository of Original Papers; and Selections from the English Magazines, vol. 2, no. 11 (13 March 1806), pp. 164–​8; selection from pp. 164–​5, 167–​8. [John Watkins] Robinson’s Magazine was a weekly miscellany, published and printed in Baltimore from July 1818 to June 1819. Edited by Joseph Robinson, it reprinted most of its contents from British periodicals, showing a special interest in things Scottish. The essay from which a selection is reprinted below was written by John Watkins (fl. 1792–​1831) and published originally in The New Monthly Magazine for February 1817. On Robinson’s Magazine see API, p. 194; BAP, p. 147. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ MR. EDITOR, WHILE the zeal of believers in revealed religion is on the alert to spread its truths from one hemisphere to the other, the craft of infidelity is no less active in endevouring to undermine the influence of christianity at home. Hence obsolete tracts are dragged forth from the dormitory where they have been suffered to lie for years; and being newly vamped with other names, are obtruded upon the world as unanswerable performances. The old cant of philosophical morality is assumed for this attempt to rob men of their creed, and the maxims of Epicurus, and the doctrines of Mohammed, are put upon an equal footing with the laws of Christ! But though I trust there is no great danger to be apprehended from such miserable efforts to disseminate Deism, I think it right that the publick should be guarded against the poison now vending under the specious appellation of philosophy. “By their fruits, ye shall know them,” was the monition of Him who was wiser than men, when speaking of the arts of deceivers. If, therefore, the

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writers on the side of infidelity are better guides than Christian teachers, the excellence of their principles must be apparent in their conduct. Let us then examine the characters of these luminaries, and observe what chance of moral improvement there is in exchanging the Old Testament for the Shaster, the proverbs of Solomon for the precepts of Confucius, or the doctrines of the Gospel for the injunctions of the Koran. With this view I send you some anecdotes of leading infidel writers, purposing to follow them with others at a future time, if you should deem the present collection deserving a place in your Magazine. W.J. . . .

Hume. When this subtle metaphysician and self-​deceiving sceptick, published his first work, he at the same time printed a pamphlet for the purpose of exciting general attention to his book. The title of this tractate, is “An abstract of a book lately published, entituled, a Treatise of Human Nature, &c. wherein the chief argument of that book is farther illustrated and explained.” London, printed for C.  Borbet, (it should be Corbet) at Addison’s head, over against St. Dunstan’s church, in Fleet-​street: price, six-​pence.” The pamphlet consisting of two octavo sheets, is in fact, an abridgment of the work which it recommends; and in the preface are these modest remarks: “The book seemed to me to have such an air of singularity and novelty as claimed the attention of the publick; especially if it be found, as the author seems to insinuate, that were his philosophy received, we must alter, from the foundation, the greatest part of the sciences. Such bold attempts are always advantageous in the republick of letters, because they shake off the yoke of authority, accustom men to think for themselves, give new limits, which men of genius may carry further, and by the very opposition illustrate points wherein no one before suspected any difficulty. “The author must be contented to wait with patience for some time before the learned world can agree in their sentiments of his performance. ’Tis his misfortune that he cannot make an appeal to the people, who in all matters of common reason and eloquence are found so infallible a tribunal. He must be judged by the FEW whose verdict is more apt to be corrupted by partiality and prejudice, especially as no one is a proper judge in these subjects, who has not often thought of them; and such are apt to form to themselves systems of their own, which they resolve not to relinquish. I hope the author will excuse me for intermeddling in

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this affair, since my aim is only to increase his auditory, by removing some difficulties which have kept many from apprehending his meaning.” This may be called critical puffing, but as reviews were not then in request, the effects produced by it must have been inconsiderable. It is not generally known that Hume out of vanity and enmity to religion, caused two pamphlets, compiled from Spinosa’s Tractatus Politico Theologicus, to be reprinted at London in 1763. The first is entituled, “Tractatus de Miraculis auctore spectatissimo,” and the second, “Tractatus de primis duodecim Vet.” Both pieces are in Latin; but the first has an English dedication to David Hume, “the most accomplished man, the noblest and most acute philosopher of this age!” It is very remarkable, however, that both pamphlets, though taken from two obscure octavo volumes of miscellanies, printed at Amsterdam, are passed off as entirely original articles. Such is the honesty of moral philosophers, who take upon them to dispel the clouds of superstition, and to purge the visual organs of man’s understanding. Hume has been cried up by his admirers as a man of benevolence, and of the most equable temper, which he is said to have shewn most exemplarily in the prospect of dissolution. This sort of apathy, however, is of little value, and will hardly be any recommendation of Deism, when we see so many instances of a total want of feeling at the gallows. What must that man’s sensibility have been, who first undermined his mother’s faith in the doctrines of the Gospel; and when at the last she wanted the solace of his presence, and the comforts of his philosophy, to smooth the path of death, denied her both the one and the other? —​Yet such was David Hume, who artfully made a convert of his parent, and then avoided her sight when she stood in need of his consolation! How different was this from the conduct of Melancthon, whose mother asking him what she should believe amidst the religious divisions of the age, at the same time repeating her old prayers, the pious son cheered her by desiring that she would go on in the same course, and leave questions to disputants. Gray the poet, in a letter to Dr. Beattie, has given the following discriminating opinion of this celebrated writer: —​ “I have always thought David Hume a pernicious writer, and believe he has done as much mischief here as he has in his own country. A turbid and shallow stream often appears to our apprehensions very deep. A professed sceptick can be governed by nothing but his passions, (if he has any) and interests: and to be masters of his philosophy we need not his books or advice, for every child is capable of the same thing without any study at all. That childish nation, the French, have given him vogue and fashion, and we, as usual, have learned from them to admire him at second hand.”

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ANECDOTE OF DAVID HUME

“Desultory Gleanings, and Original Communications. Translated from ‘Mémoires et correspondence de Madame D’Epinay’ [section ‘Anecdote of David Hume’],’’ The New-​England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine (18 June 1819), p. 144. Anonymous The New-​England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine was a weekly, published and edited in Boston by Joseph T. Buckingham. On The New-​England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​1820 (Metuchen, 1975), p. 194; API, p. 153; BAP, pp. 113–​14; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 127, 169, 199. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ THE celebrated David Hume the great English Historiographer, known and esteemed by his works, was not so well gifted for that kind of amusement to which all our Ladies had decided him to be suitable. He made his debut at the house of Madame de T***; they had given him the part of a Sultan seated between two slaves, on which he should employ his eloquence to fix their love; when finding them inexorable, he was to seek out the cause of their pains and their resistance: They place him upon a sofa between two of the prettiest women in Paris; —​he looks at them attentively. He strikes his paunch and his knees repeatedly, and found nothing to say to them but —​“Eh! bien! mes demoiselles —​Eh, bien! vous donc —​Eh, bien! vous voila —​vous volila ici? —​* This phrase was continued for a quarter of an hour, and he could not get beyond or out of it. At * Well! Misses —​Well! you are here then —​Well! you are here —​You are here?

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length one of them rose up with impatience. Ah, said she, I doubt very much if that man is good for anything but to eat his veal! From that time he exiled himself for a spectator, but is not the less feasted or cajoled. It is indeed a very comical part that he plays here; but luckily for him, or rather for his philosophical dignity, because he appears to accommodate himself very well to this sort of life —​there has not been any ruling mania in this country since his arrival —​and thus circumstanced they have regarded him as a lucky thing (trouvaille,) and the effervescence of our young heads is altogether turned in his favor. All the beautiful women are taken with him; he is invited to all the fine suppers; and there is no good feast without him; in a word he is for our coquettes what the Genevan is for me.

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HUME A PESSIMIST

“For the Port Folio. ART. XV. —​The Adversaria,” The Port Folio, vol. 9 [series 5] (1820), pp. 131–​5; selection p. 135. Anonymous —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ In the brief relation which Hume gives of his life and writings, he begins with mentioning his natural disposition always to look on the bright side of events; a disposition, he says, worth more than a thousand pounds per annum.  —​ Speaking afterwards of the very dull sale of his first historical work, he says he was so mortified that he had serious thoughts of changing his name and leaving his country, to avoid shame and hide his chagrin. Was this looking at the bright side?

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ANECDOTE OF HUME

“VARIETY … Anecdote of Hume,” Ladies’ Literary Cabinet, vol. 4 (1821), p. 126. Anonymous The Ladies’ Literary Cabinet, being a repository of miscellaneous literary productions, both original and selected, in prose and verse, was published in New York from May 1819 to December 1822 by Nathaniel Smith & Co. and edited by Samuel Woodworth. On the Ladies’ Literary Cabinet see API, p. 114; BAP, p. 75. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ Anecdote of Hume. —​Hume often met with illiberal treatment from the clergy of Scotland, who took every opportunity to asperse his character on account of his free opinions. Observing a certain zealot of this class always leave the room when he entered it, he one day took an opportunity to address him as follows: “I am surprised, friend, to find you express an aversion to me; I wish to be upon good terms with you here, as it is very probable we shall be doomed to the same place hereafter —​you believe I shall be damned for want of faith, and I fear you will be damned for want of charity!”

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BEASLEY ON HUME’S DEATH

A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (Philadelphia, 1822); Book IV: pp. 559–​61. Frederick Beasley On Frederick Beasley (1777–​1845) and his A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (Philadelphia, 1822), see selection #22. Beasley’s passages on “Hume’s last moments,” reprinted below, concluded an extended attack on Hume’s philosophical writings. Those were often connected in the minds of Hume’s early American critics. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​

BOOK IV. I shall conclude this article by giving a single case more in point. From the account which is given us of Mr. Hume’s last moments by his friend, Dr. Adam Smith, it appears, that he made himself merry concerning a future state, conversing with great coolness and pleasantry about Charon and his boat, and the insufficiency of all those excuses which he should be able to allege to that celebrated ferryman for remaining longer upon earth. From these circumstances, we have reason to conclude, that both Mr. Hume and his friend, wished it to be understood, that he died with great philosophick firmness, and under a full conviction or belief of an extinction of his being at death. Now if this was the firm and sincere belief of Mr. Hume, I would not say that he still retained his unreasonable belief derived from the tales of the nursery, which prevailed over his belief as a philosopher and man of sense; but I would most decidedly maintain, that he has failed in demonstrating that philosophical fortitude and self-​possession, to

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which he pretended. Although he did not discover the agitation and anguish of his illustrious friend and coadjutor, Voltaire, under similar circumstances; yet, still in spite of all his studied efforts to conceal it, he has displayed a deep dread and apprehension about the event of death, which he affected to despise. Death is too solemn an event to all human beings, to become an object of sport and pleasantry to any man who is in a sound and natural state of mind. The very brutes appear to give up life with reluctance, and feelings of solemnity. Mr. Hume’s feelings, as affected to be exhibited, are too artificial and unnatural to impose upon those who have any insight into the constitution of human nature. His conduct on that occasion recalls strongly to mind, that of the timid boy who whistles, sings and makes merry as he passes the churchyard in order to keep up his courage. Mr. Hume’s fortitude and self-​possession would have appeared to be genuine, had he acted with at least that gravity which became the occasion. As the facts are related to us, notwithstanding that artificial veil which he has attempted to throw over his emotions, when by a close inspection we penetrate through it, and obtain access to the real state of his mind, we find it to be by no means an enviable one, or free from solicitude. Suppose Mr. Hume’s opinions to be well founded, and the matter ascertained, that, at death, we shall all fall into utter annihilation; would not that great event, under this view of it, be solemn and afflictive? Friends must still be parted from, the sweet light of the sun must never more visit our eyes, the sublimities and beauties of creation must become effaced to us, the joys of social intercourse, of the understanding and the heart, must be relinquished; and, added to all this, we must pass through the agonies of our expiring moments, be laid in the silent grave; and, then, have this pleasing consciousness of being dissolved into the shades of an eternal oblivion. Is there any one, in a sane state of mind, who could undergo such privations and encounter such evils, without sentiments of, at least, seriousness and solemnity? Is not he to be regarded as either partially mad, or having a mind by no means at ease, although artificially wrought up to a state of indifference and levity, who shall dare to make them a subject of derision and amusement? The intelligent reader will perceive that we have arrived at the conclusion of our volume, without having exhausted our subject. Many of the most important powers of the mind remain to be treated of, and its most interesting phenomena to be solved. The powers of abstraction, composition, comparison, imagination, reason, the will, the affections, together with all the social and moral faculties, will, on a future occasion, we trust, should our life and health be continued, open to us a large and interesting field of investigation. FINIS.

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GIBBON, VOLTAIRE, HUME

“GIBBON, VOLTAIRE, HUME,” The Gospel Trumpet, vol. 2 (1823), p. 63. “N.Y. Amer.” The Gospel Trumpet (Springfield and Dayton, Ohio) was published by Saul & Moses M. Henkle in 2 volumes from 1822 and 1823. On the Gospel Trumpet see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 481–​3; API, p. 95. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ The following singular facts were stated at a meeting of a public society in Sheffield, England: Gibbon, who in his celebrated history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, has left an imperishable memorial of his enmity to the gospel, resided many years in Switzerland, where with the profits of his works he purchased a considerable estate. This property has descended to a gentleman who out of its rents, expends a large sum annually in the promulgation of that very gospel which his predecessor insidiously endeavoured to undermine. Voltaire boasted that with one hand he could overthrow that edifice of christianity which required the hands of the twelve apostles to build up. At this day the press which he employed at Ferney to print his blasphemies, is actually employed at Geneva in printing the Holy Scriptures. It is a remarkable circumstance, also, that the first provisional meeting for the formation of the Auxiliary Bible society, at Edinburgh, was held in the very room in which Hume died. N.Y. Amer.

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ORIGINAL ANECDOTE

“VARIETIES. Original Anecdotes, Literary News, Chit Chat, Incidents, &c,” Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, vol. 1 [series 2] (1824), pp. 362–​8; selection p. 365. Anonymous The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines was published in Boston from April 1817 to March 1833. This weekly carried both reprinted and original material. When reprinting material from British sources the editorial policy was to select those items that would be of particular interest to its American audience. See Neal L.  Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–​ 1820 (Metuchen, 1975), pp. 106–​107; API, pp. 33–​4; BAP, pp. 17–​18. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​

DAVID HUME met Madame —​—​, a Dutch lady of rank and literary talents, at the house of the Earl of Fife, at Whitehall. They were exceedingly pleased with each other, and the native of Batavia observed, that where Mr. H. was, no one ought to think of eating. The justice of this remark was in some respects verified; for, although the dinner was excellent, some chickens, which had been reserved for a bonne bouche, were ordered to be removed, and placed at the fire; and the dissertation of Mr. H. was so long, that a cat actually ran away with them!

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HUME’S SCEPTICAL CHARACTER

“Skepticism,” The Christian Examiner and Theological Review, vol. 1 (1824), p. 35. Anonymous The Christian Examiner was founded, as the Christian Disciple, in Boston in 1813. It survived, under various titles, through to 1869. In 1824, when the item reprinted below was published, the editor was John Gorham Palfrey. On the Christian Examiner see API, p. 54; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–​1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 284–​92. See THN, p. 175. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ The following soliloquy, from Hume’s ‘Treatise of Human Nature,’ (vol. i. p. 458,) though expunged from the later editions, is a standing memorial of the mournful consequences of his principles. ‘I am affrighted, and confounded, with that forlorn solitude, in which I am placed by my philosophy. When I look abroad, I foresee, on every side, dispute, contradiction, and distraction. When I turn my eyes inward, I find nothing but doubt, and ignorance. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive existence, or to what condition do I return? I am confounded with these questions; and I begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness! —​ p. 332.

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HUME AN HONORABLE SCEPTIC

“Belief and Unbelief,” Christian Examiner, vol. 7 (January 1830), pp.  358–​65; selection from pp. 363–​4. Anonymous —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ There is, indeed, a kind of unbelief which does itself yield an artificial buoyancy and satisfaction; but it is not the unbelief of calm, reasonable, thoughtful, feeling human nature. It is a scornful, contemptuous, sneering unbelief. It is not the true philosopher, it is not the true man, that so disbelieves; but it is, if there ever were such a thing as demoniacal possession  —​it is a demon within the man, that sits mocking with insane laughter at the wreck it has made, or scowling with fiendish malignity over the desolation it has spread around it. Such a skeptic was Thomas Paine. But such was not Mr Hume. From that calm and clear, though mistaken mind, you hear the sighings of human nature over its doubts. ‘I am affrighted and confounded,’ says Mr Hume, ‘with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy. When I look abroad, I forsee on every side, dispute, contradiction, and distraction. When I turn my eyes inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive existence, or to what condition do I return? I am confounded with these questions, and I begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed in the deepest darkness’. Yes, human nature must feel this, amidst the gloom and cheerlessness of skepticism. Why should Mr Hume strike out this passage from the later editions of his Treatise on Human Nature? It is honorable to him. We can conceive of a man’s being a sincere and honest unbeliever. We can conceive of his entertaining such false views of Christianity, as to be induced to reject it. We can conceive of many influences at work upon his mind, to expose him to this result. But we

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could not conceive of being ourselves unbelievers, without being the most sorrowful and disconsolate of human beings. We should say with Job, in his season of gloomy doubt, ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born; let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; as for that night let darkness seize upon it, let it be solitary; let no joyful voice come therein.’ We might be wrong in this complaining, but we could not help it. The birthday of such an existence, would seem to us to deserve no joyful commemoration, if all the thoughts of the mind, if all the dear and cherished affections of the heart, if all the blessed aspirations and hopes of our nature were to perish in the grave. And whether they shall actually perish there or not, if we have no assurance given us, such as the scriptures contain, all, to our minds at least —​all that rests upon the tomb must be darkness and the shadow of death!

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DEATH-​BED OF HUME

“DEATH-​BED OF HUME,” The Spirit of the Pilgrims, vol. 5, no. 3 (March 1832), pp. 172–​3. Anonymous The Spirit of the Pilgrims was published in Boston from 1828 to 1833. Its first editor was Rev. Pond, a one-​time student of Nathaneal Emmons. It aimed to combat Unitarianism as found in publications like the Christian Examiner. This particular anecdote about Hume was reprinted often in American periodicals in the early 1830s. For a slightly later reprinting of it, and additional commentary, see selection #109. On The Spirit of the Pilgrims see Gaylord P. Albaugh, History and Annotated Bibliography of American Religious Periodicals and Newspapers (Worcester, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 894–​7; API, p. 205. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ In the London Christian Observer for November, we find the following letter addressed to the editor. I inclose a passage relative to the death-​bed of Hume, the historian, which appeared many years ago in an Edinburgh newspaper, and which I am not aware was ever contradicted. Adam Smith’s well known narrative of Hume’s last hours has been often cited, to prove how calmly a philosophical infidel can die; but if the inclosed account be correct, very different was the picture. I  copy it as I find it, thinking it possible that some of your numerous readers may be able to cast some light upon the subject. If the facts alledged in the following statement are not authentic, they ought to be disproved before tradition is too remote; if authentic, they are of considerable importance on account of the irreligious use which has been made of the popular narrative; just as was the case in regard to

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the death-​bed of Voltaire, which to this hour, in spite of well-​proved facts, infidel writers maintain was calm and philosophical. The following is the story: “About the end of 1776, a few months after the historian’s death, a respectable looking woman dressed in black came into the Haddington stage coach while passing through Edinburgh. The conversation among the passengers, which had been interrupted for a few minutes, was speedily resumed, which the lady soon found to be regarding the state of mind persons were in at the prospect of death. One gentleman argued that a real Christian was more likely to view the approach of death with composure, than he who had looked upon religion as unworthy his notice. Another (an English gentleman) insisted that an infidel could look forward to his end with as much complacency and peace of mind as the best Christian in the land. This being denied by his opponent, he bade him consider the death of his countrymen David Hume, who was an acknowledged infidel, and yet died not only happy and tranquil, but even spoke of his dissolution with a degree of gaiety and humor. The lady who had lately joined them, turned round to the last speaker and said, ‘Sir, this is all you know about it: I could tell you another tale.’ ‘Madam,’ replied the gentleman, ‘I presume I have as good information as you can have on this subject, and I believe that what I have asserted regarding Mr. Hume has never before been called in question.’ The lady continued; ‘Sir, I  was Mr. Hume’s housekeeper for many years, and was with him in his last moments; and the mourning I now wear was a present from his relatives for my attention to him on his death-​bed; and happy would I have been if I could have borne my testimony to the mistaken opinion that has gone abroad of his peaceful and composed end. I have, sir; never till this hour opened my mouth on this subject; but I think it a pity the world should be kept in the dark on so interesting a topic. It is true, sir, that when Mr. Hume’s friends were with him, he was cheerful, and seemed quite unconcerned about his approaching fate; nay, frequently spoke of it to them in a jocular and playful way; but when he was alone the scene was very different: he was anything but composed; his mental agitation was so great at times as to occasion his whole bed to shake. He would not allow the candles to be put out during the night, nor would he be left alone for a minute. I had always to ring the bell for one of the servants to be in the room, before he would allow me to leave it. He struggled hard to appear composed even before me; but to one who attended his bed-​side for so many days and nights, and witnessed his disturbed sleeps and still more disturbed wakings; who frequently heard his involuntary breathings of remorse and frightful startings; it was no difficult

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matter to determine that all was not right within. This continued and increased until he became insensible. I hope in God! I shall never witness a similar scene.” I leave your readers to weigh the probability of this narrative; for myself, I see nothing unlikely in it; for a man who had exerted all his talents to deprive mankind of their dearest hopes, and only consolation in the day of trial and the hour of death, might well be expected to suffer remorse in his dying hour: and the alleged narrator of the circumstance, who states herself to have been his housekeeper, is affirmed to have made the declaration on the spur of the occasion, from regard to truth, and by no means from only pique or dislike towards Mr. Hume or his family. Some of your northern readers may perhaps be able to inform me who was Mr. Hume’s housekeeper a[t]‌the time of h[i]s death, and whether there is any proof in writing, memory, or tradition, to the effect of her alleged statement.

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“HUME, VOLTAIRE, AND ROUSSEAU,” The New-​Englander, vol. 1, no. 2 (April 1843), pp. 169–​83; selection from pp. 169–​76. [James Murdoch] James Murdoch (1776–​1856) was a Congregational clergyman and miscellaneous author. He graduated from Yale in 1797. Murdoch taught at the University of Vermont and in the Theological Seminary at Andover. In 1829 he settled in New Haven, and was active in the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and, from 1844, the Philological Society of Connecticut. On Murdoch see Roland H. Bainton, “James Murdock,” DAB, vol. 7, part 1, p. 342. On The New-​ Englander see API, p. 156; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1850–​1865 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 312–​15. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​

HUME, VOLTAIRE, AND ROUSSEAU. THESE very talented men were the most active and successful advocates of infidelity during the last century; and a concise, impartial, and authentic account of their lives, and their assaults upon Christianity, is deemed worthy of a place in this journal.

HUME. DAVID HUME, Esq., was born at Edinburgh, April 26th, 1711, and was of a good family, but not opulent. His father died while he was an infant, and

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his education devolved on his mother. After the usual preparation, his friends wished him to pursue the study of law; but he was displeased with that pursuit, preferring poets and orators before the dry and thorny jurists. He next tried merchandise, but found that also irksome. In 1734 he removed to France, in order to pursue his favorite studies with less expense. At Rheims and at La Fleche in Anjou, he spent three years very agreeably. Returning to London, in 1737, he the next year published his Treatise of Human Nature; which, he says, “fell dead-​born from the press,” or attracted no notice. In 1742 he published the first part of his Essays, which was favorably received. In 1745 he spent a year in the family of the Marquis of Annandale; afterwards, during two years, he was private secretary to General St. Clair, on the coast of France, and at the courts of Vienna and Turin. While at Turin he rewrote the Treatise of Human Nature, and had it published at London in 1749, with the new title, an Inquiry concerning Human Understanding. But it was not much better received than before. The same year, he retired to the family estate in Scotland, and there composed the second part of his Essays, which he entitled Political Discourses. His works now began to receive attention, and to afford him a good income. In 1751 he removed to Edinburgh, and the next year he published his Political Discourses. He also published the same year, at London, his Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which he esteemed “incomparably the best of all his works,” but which was little noticed by the public. In 1752, he became librarian to the Advocates’ Library at Edinburgh, and commenced writing his History of England, which was published 1754–​1761. It was but indifferently received, in consequence of its partiality to the Stuart dynasty, and some other defects. He also published during this period, his Natural History of Religion, and some smaller pieces. In 1763, he went to France as secretary of embassy to the Earl of Hertford; was much caressed at Paris, was Chargé d’Affaires at that court in 1765; and returned to Edinburgh in 1766. The next year he was made under-​ secretary under General Conway; but in 1769 he returned again to Edinburgh, with a fortune of £1000 a year. In 1775, he was attacked with a bowel-​complaint; and, after languishing a year and a half, he expired on the 25th of August, 1776. According to his autobiography and the eulogy of Dr.  Adam Smith, he was aware of his approaching dissolution, and met the event with stoic indifference. Amusing himself a few days before his death with reading Lucian’s Dialogues, and, with jests, about passing the Styx, he described the dialogue he might hold with Charon, the infernal ferryman. After his death were published his Dialogue on Natural Religion, and his Essay on Suicide; the former in 1778, and the latter in 1783.

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Mr. Hume was a decided infidel, or a disbeliever in revealed religion; and he held that the evidence for natural religion has no scientific basis, but is derived merely from our instinctive apprehensions. In moral and mental philosophy, he held to what he calls mitigated skepticism; that is, he believed it impossible to prove, by metaphysical or speculative reasoning, the existence of a material world around us, of a God, a providence, a future state of rewards and punishments, &c. He did not deny the truth of these important facts; but he held that the truth of them rests upon probable grounds only, or upon moral evidence, and not upon evidence which is scientific and demonstrative. In his Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, (sec. xii, p. 173, 174,) he says: “It seems to me, that the only objects of the abstract sciences or of demonstration, are quantity and number; and that all attempts to extend this more perfect species of knowledge beyond these bounds, are mere sophistry and illusion.” —​“All other inquiries of man regard only matter of fact and existence; and these are evidently incapable of demonstration.” —​“The existence therefore of any being, can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effect; and these arguments are founded entirely on experience.” —​“It is only experience which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one object from another. Such is the foundation of moral reasoning, which forms the greater part of human knowledge, and is the source of all human action and behavior.” In another place, (sec. i, p. 10,) he says: “Here lies the justest and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics, that they are not properly a science.” Mr. Hume has been taxed with denying, altogether, the connection between cause and effect, and consequently, the validity of all our reasoning from such connection. But this is a false charge. He only denied the solidity of all metaphysical proofs of such connection, not the reality of the connection. In the work above cited, (sec. iv, p. 38,) he declares expressly: “None but a fool or madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience, or to reject that great guide of human life.” And in closing his argument on the subject, he says, (sec. v, p. 50,) “What then is the conclusion of the whole matter? A simple one; though it must be confessed, pretty remote from the common theories of philosophy. All belief of matter of fact or real existence, is derived merely from some object present to the memory or senses, and a customary conjunction between that and some other object.” —​“This belief is the necessary result of placing the mind in such circumstances. It is an operation of the soul, when we are so situated, as unavoidable, as to feel the passion of love when we receive benefits, or hatred when we meet with injuries. All these operations are a species of natural

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instincts, which no reasoning or process of thought and understanding is able either to PRODUCE, or to PREVENT.” Mr. Hume’s skepticism, therefore, did not call in question the conclusions we derive from experience and common sense, but merely the validity of all metaphysical or philosophical reasoning in regard to matters of fact and real existence in the natural and the spiritual worlds. In the work already named, (sec. xi, p. 144, &c.) where he introduces a disputant defending Epicurus’s idea, (viz. that we have no evidence of a particular providence, or of a future state of rewards and punishments,) he makes the person say, that by reasoning from effects to their cause, we may indeed prove the existence of an intelligent Creator of the world; but we can not ascribe to him any attributes or perfections beyond what he has visibly displayed, for we can only infer a first cause adequate to produce the world before us. And on this ground, we can not infer that God has any other and ulterior designs in regard to men, than what we now see. To this reasoning of his friend, Mr. Hume makes the objection, that when we see an unfinished building surrounded with materials, we infer that the building is to be completed, and is to become a very different thing from what it now is; and why may we not argue in a similar manner with regard to the world, as being God’s unfinished building? The friend replies: We can not do so, for this reason, that men are a class of beings with whom we are acquainted, so that we can judge from their incipient acts, what they are about to do; but that God is a solitary being in the universe, whom we know only from his works, and therefore we can never argue from his known character or attributes, what he is about to do, because we do not know him to possess any other attributes than he has already displayed. To this, Mr. Hume rejoins, that he doubts whether God is so unlike to all other rational beings, men, for example, as to forbid our reasoning from analogy, that, as a rational being, he must have such and such designs. He moreover says, that his friend’s principles are injurious to society, because the belief of a future state of retribution has a salutary influence on human conduct; so that, allowing Epicureans to be good reasoners, they can not be regarded as good citizens and politicians. In regard to natural theology, Mr. Hume’s mitigated skepticism consisted in denying the validity and certainty of all philosophical reasoning in this department of knowledge, and generally throughout the range of metaphysical discussions, because we have no certain and scientific knowledge of causation, or of the necessary connection between cause and effect. But in regard to revealed religion, or the religion of the Bible, Mr. Hume was not a mere skeptic; he was a decided infidel or disbeliever in supernatural revelation. In his Inquiry, so often quoted, (sec. x, of Miracles, p. 118,) he tells us, that

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he flattered himself he had discovered an argument, which would forever silence all reasoning from miracles in support of any religion. The argument is this. Experience is our only guide in judging of all matters of fact. We give credit to testimony, because we have found it generally to accord with facts; and we estimate the credibility of alleged facts, by their accordance or disagreement with the experience of mankind. The incredibility of a fact, may be such as to invalidate any testimony. And in all cases of doubt or uncertainty, we weigh the probabilities on both sides, strike a balance, and then yield assent strong or weak, according to the preponderating evidence. After these preliminary remarks, he proceeds thus, (p. 122, 123,) “Let us suppose, that the fact which the witnesses affirm, instead of being only marvellous, is really miraculous; and suppose also, that the testimony, considered apart and in itself, amounts to an entire proof; in that case there is proof against proof, of which the strongest must prevail, but with a diminution of its force, in proportion to that of its antagonist. A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.” —​ “The plain consequence is, (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention,) that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact which it endeavors to establish: and even in that case, there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force which remains after deducting the inferior.” The fallacy of this argument appears to consist in confounding two things which have not the least connection. The argument supposes the uniform experience of mankind respecting the mere course of nature, to be a uniform experience against the occurrence of miracles. Whereas the objects of experience, in the two cases, are altogether different. In the one case, the experience relates to the mere course of nature, or to those events which occur under and in obedience to the laws of nature; but in the other case, it relates to supernatural events, to occurrences altogether out of the course of nature, events produced immediately by the almighty power of God; for it is in this sense, and in this sense only, that “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.” Now it is admitted on all sides, that the experience of the world, so far as it has gone, has ever found nature to be uniform in her operations, or to work according to permanent and unchangeable laws. But what has this to do with miracles? The regular operations of nature, and the supernatural works of God are totally distinct things; and, of course, human experience in regard to the former, has no bearing whatever

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on the credibility or incredibility of the latter. The vaunted argument, in reality, amounts only to this: A miracle in the course of nature, is contrary to all human experience. And therefore, a miracle out of the course of nature, is contrary to all human experience. Such reasoning is what logicians call sophisma a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter; or, assuming that what is true, in some special cases, must he true in all possible cases, or be simply and universally true. That this is a fair statement of Mr. Hume’s sophistical argument, will perhaps appear more evident, if we repeat it in his own words, with the necessary explanations of ambiguous terms, thus: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, (or an event entirely out of the course of nature, and not produced by her laws,) and as a fixed and unalterable experience has established (the uniformity of) these laws, (throughout the course of nature,) the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, (that a miracle is out of the course of nature,) is as entire, as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.” But, although this appears to be the true import of Mr. Hume’s argument, provided we give any consistent meaning to his language, yet when read cursorily and superficially, the argument seems to be simply this:  “The uniform experience of the world, is directly opposed to all occurrence of miracles; and therefore, their occurrence is utterly incredible.” To this form of the argument the obvious reply is, that the voice of history contradicts this broad assertion respecting the experience of the world. For history, both sacred and profane, testifies that vast numbers of persons, in different ages and countries, have witnessed, or at least, have believed that they witnessed the occurrence of miracles; and it must first be proved, that all these persons were deceived, that not a single one of them ever witnessed what they all say they witnessed. Until this is proved satisfactorily, the broad assertion, that the experience of the world is opposed to all occurrence of miracles, is an unwarrantable assumption; it is a manifest petitio principii, a direct begging of the question. Mr. Hume himself could not but feel the necessity of rebutting the abundant testimony of history as to the occurrence of miracles. He therefore goes on to say, (p. 124,) “In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed, that the testimony upon which a miracle is founded may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy. But it is easy to show, that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concessions, and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence. For, I. There is not to be found in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of

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men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in case of being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time, attesting facts, performed in a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable: all which circumstances are requisite to give a full assurance in the testimony of men.” II. Most people too readily give credit to miracles. III. Miracles are found to be most abundant among ignorant and barbarous nations. IV. There is conflicting testimony on this subject; for all the popular religions claim to have the support of miracles, and it is impossible that God should have set his seal to religions so diverse.  —​These are only the common arguments of infidel writers against miracles; and they are all critically examined and answered by those writers who have undertaken to substantiate the miracles of the Bible; e.g. Sherlock, West, Lyttleton, Campbell, Leland, Paley, &c. The 1st of Mr. Hume’s objections, is denied altogether. The 2d only shows, that we should guard against deception, and should examine well the witnesses. The 3d is of no force against the miracles of the Bible, unless it can be shown that the Egyptian sages, the whole Jewish nation, all the early Christians, and great numbers of learned Greeks and Romans, were too ignorant and barbarous to give us credible testimony respecting things which they saw with their own eyes. The 4th is no argument against the miracles of the Holy Scriptures, unless the existence of counterfeits proves that there can be no genuine coin. After this attempt to fortify his main argument, Mr. Hume arrives at the following conclusion, (p. 135, 136,) “Upon the whole, then, it appears, that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability, much less to a proof; and that, even supposing it amounted to a proof, it would be opposed by another proof, derived from the very nature of the fact which it endeavored to establish,” and of sufficient force to annihilate it. “And therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any system of religion. I beg the limitations here made may be remarked, when I say, that a miracle can never be proved, so as to be the foundation of a system of religion. For I own, that otherwise, there may possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony; though, perhaps, it will be impossible to find any such in all the records of history.” So then, after all, human testimony may be good evidence of the actual occurrence of miracles, provided those miracles are not appealed to, in support of

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any system of religion! What inconsistency! According to Mr. Hume, a miracle, from the very nature of the fact it involves, can not be proved by human testimony; and yet he allows, that if can be thus proved, provided it does not go to confirm the truth of any religion! But what is there in the nature of religious miracles, to make them exceptions to the general rule of all miracles? Why, nothing at all: the ground for making them exceptions, is of quite another sort, and is wholly foreign from their nature, as being miraculous facts. It arises from the stupidity and credulity of men! For Mr. Hume says, (p. 137,) “Men, in all ages, have been so much imposed on by ridiculous stories of this kind, that this very circumstance would be a full proof of a cheat, and sufficient, with all men of sense, not only to make them reject the fact, but even reject it without farther examination.” Mr. Hume was aware of the fact, that on this point most men judge very differently from him. They think it far more probable, that God should work miracles in confirmation of a religion which he approves, than for any other object whatever. And to obviate this formidable objection to his views, Mr. Hume finds it necessary to assert, that a miracle in support of religion, can not be rendered a whit more probable, by any arguments drawn from the character and designs of the Almighty, “since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience which we have of his productions in the usual course of nature.” According to this mode of reasoning, (which Mr. Hume himself declared to be unsatisfactory, when it was used by his Epicurean friend to disprove a future state,) we must never believe, that God can or will work a miracle for any purpose, until we have experience of their occurrence among “his productions in the usual course of nature;” that is, until miracles cease to be miracles, and become a part of the usual course of nature. Complacently reviewing his mode of reasoning against miracles, Mr. Hume observes, (p.  138, 139,) “I am the better pleased with the method of reasoning here delivered, as I think it may serve to confound those dangerous friends or disguised enemies of the Christian religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason. Our most holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is, by no means, fitted to endure.” He then sketches a frightful picture both of the miracles and the historic narrations in the Pentateuch; and closes the essay thus, (p. 139, 140,) “What we have said of miracles may be applied, without any variation, to prophecies; and indeed, all prophecies are real miracles, and as such only, can be admitted as proofs of any revelation. If it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to foretell future events, it

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would be absurd to employ any prophecy as an argument for a divine mission or authority from heaven. So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day can not he believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity; and whoever is moved by faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.” Such is the vain attempt at wit, which crowns the arrant sophistry of Mr. Hume’s famous Essay on Miracles. Notwithstanding the disingenuousness and the bitterness of his hostility to Christianity, Mr. Hume, it is said, sustained a fair moral character. His principles, however, tended to the subversion of the foundations of morality. For he held that necessity governs all human conduct; and he maintains that all men admit the fact, though all are not aware that they do so. Necessity, he tells us, is nothing but “constant conjunction of similar objects.” And as men of the same character, if placed in the same circumstances, always act in the same manner, there is here the same necessity which we observe in the material world, namely, constant conjunction of similar things. “Thus it appears, not only that the conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as that between the cause and effect in any part of nature, but also, that this regular conjunction has been universally acknowledged among mankind, and has never been the subject of dispute, either in philosophy or common life.” (See his Inquiry, &c. sec. viii, p. 94.) This necessity, he maintains, is not inconsistent with human liberty, (ibid. p. 100.) “For, what is meant by liberty, when applied to voluntary actions? We can not surely mean, that actions have so little connection with motives, inclinations, and circumstances, that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other, and that one affords no inference by which we can conclude the existence of the other. For these are plain and acknowledged matters of fact. By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.” . . . . “Now this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains. Here then is no subject of dispute.” The doctrine of necessity, he thinks, does not destroy morality, but rather establishes it. Because it shows, that vicious conduct is the natural and necessary fruit of a bad temper and disposition in the perpetrator. To the objection that his doctrine makes the author of nature the real author of all the evil committed; whence it must follow that he delights in vicious conduct,

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and also, that he alone is responsible for it, Mr. Hume replies, in answer to the first consequence, that God ordained evil as being the necessary means of the greatest good; and in answer to the second, that he can find no satisfactory reply, and can therefore only say, that the doctrine of God’s prescience brings along with it the same insolvable difficulty. In his Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which Mr. Hume esteemed to be his best work, he makes virtue to be whatever is either useful or agreeable, to the person himself, or to others. He admits that there is a distinction in nature between what is virtuous and what is vicious; and he makes it the province of reason in part, and in part the province of feeling or the moral sense, to perceive the distinction. His moral system includes nothing that is of a religious nature; that is, it leaves entirely out of view all our relations, duties, and obligations to the Divine Being. At the same time, it classes many natural endowments, both intellectual and corporeal, among our moral qualities. In his treatise, entitled the Natural History of Religion, he says: “The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent Author; and no rational inquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment, with regard to the primary principles of genuine theism and religion.” Although he regards the origin of religion among mankind as involved in obscurity, yet he ventures to assert, that “polytheism was the primary religion of man.” This hypothesis he endeavors to prove from history; nearly all the world were polytheists until about seventeen hundred years ago, and from reason; men would naturally, as they began to look abroad, first conceive of a different God for every thing they saw, then, reasoning further, they would make all things depend on one God. Afterwards, to lighten the cares of the Deity, and to add to his grandeur, they would suppose him to have many ministers or demi-​gods; and thus they would come back to a species of polytheism. Not long before his death, and in full view of that event, Mr. Hume composed a concise history of his own life, which he calls a funeral oration of himself. This autobiography, together with a letter of Dr. Adam Smith, eulogistic of his character, and describing the closing scenes of his life, may be found prefixed to Mr. Hume’s History of England. The philosophical skepticism of Mr. Hume was vigorously assailed by Dr.  Thomas Reid, (in his Enquiry into the Human Mind, Edinburgh, 1764, 8vo; in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Edinburgh, 1785, 4to; and in his Essays on the Active Powers, Edinburgh, 1788, 4to;) by Dr. James Beattie, (in his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, Edinburgh, 1770, 8vo;) and by the Rev. James Oswald, (in his Appeal to Common Sense in behalf of Religion, Edinburgh, 1766–​72, 2 vols. 8vo.) His assaults on

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Christianity, especially in regard to miracles, were repelled by Dr.  William Adams, (in an Essay in answer to Mr. Hume’s Essay on Miracles, London, 1752;) by Dr. John Leland, (in his View of Deistical Writers, Vol. I, Letters 16–​21;) and especially, by Dr. George Campbell, (in his Dissertation on Miracles, 3d edition, Edinburgh, 1797, 2 vols. 8vo.)

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“ART. IV. —​ Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the Time of George the Third. By HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1845. 12mo. pp.  295,” The North American Review, vol. 61, no. 129 (October 1845), pp. 383–​421; selection from pp. 399–​405. [William Bourn Oliver Peabody] William Bourn Oliver Peabody (1799–​1847) was born in Exeter, N.H., and like his twin brother, Oliver William Bourn Peabody (1799–​1848), was a Unitarian clergyman. W.B.O. Peabody was also a miscellaneous writer and an amateur naturalist. Peadbody contributed numerous essays to the North American Review. Authorship of the essay reprinted below, and the next item, is attributed to W.B.O. Peabody in William Cushing, Index to the North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p. 142. Lord Brougham (1778–​1868) was born in Edinburgh and educated at Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh University. He helped organize the Edinburgh Review, to which he was also a main contributor. On W.B.O. Peabody see George Harvey Genzmer, “William Bourn Oliver Peabody,” DAB, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 343–​4. —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ The next person who appears in the Chancellor’s gallery was distinguished, if any thing so common could be regarded as a distinction, by a quarrel with Rousseau. There may be a doubt, however, whether that could be called a quarrel, which was conducted by one party without the least assistance from the other. A quarrel seldom travels far upon one leg; and a feud with one so easy and kind-​hearted as Hume must needs have proceeded in that inconvenient method, if it went on at all. How such a quarrel could arise appears from the history of the

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persecution suffered in Neuschâtel by the “self-​torturing sophist,” who declared that a quarry of stones was thrown into his house at night, endangering his life and filling his household with alarm; while it was stated by one of his friends, that the instrument of this revenge, found upon the floor the next day, was one solitary flint, and this discovery appears to have been marked by the singular, though not wholly unaccountable, circumstance, that the stone itself was larger than the hole in the glass which it came through. Hume suffered much from his generosity to this “interesting solitary,” as he was called by his friends, who seem to have urged the historian to invite him to England, simply in order to keep him out of France. When he arrived, Hume found him a delightful place of retreat, and also procured him a pension. But a letter having been written by that mischief-​making animal, Horace Walpole, purporting to be addressed by Frederic to Rousseau, pressing him to come to Berlin, and promising every blessing except those persecutions in which he so much delighted, the sophist, after mature deliberation, thought proper to ascribe this trick to a conspiracy on the part of Hume, and resented it with the utmost fury, even going so far as to throw up his pension, —​an act of resignation, however, which he recalled with great expedition. It is as an unbeliever in the Christian religion that Hume is generally remembered by those who hear his name; not only as a skeptic himself, but as the author of those doubts and suggestions, which, reproduced in various forms, still operate to prevent Christianity from finding admission into many minds. But the truth is, that religion, wherever it is found, has generally entered by the avenues of the heart; and a man of easy good-​nature, prosperous in his circumstances, exempt from humiliating and sorrowful changes, honored by the great and esteemed by all around him, free from those relations and responsibilities in life from which our greatest distresses as well as blessings come, was not so likely as others, of different constitution and differently situated, to feel those wants of the soul which that religion is intended to supply. Never fiercely assailed by temptations, he was not compelled to resort to it for strength to resist them; having no tendency to passion or revenge, he felt no need of its restraining power; enjoying every moment of the present life as he did, his thoughts were seldom carried forward to another existence; and as men seldom resort to it till they feel their need of its supports and consolations, it is easy to see why it was that the subject was never brought home to his heart. We can find in his temperament, then, the reason why he was so indifferent to Christianity, and so careless whether he undermined its foundations in men’s minds. For he was not a scoffer; though there was an occasional tone of bitterness,

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he never descended into buffoonery like that of Voltaire; but he evidently did not feel how much men need Christianity, what a blessing it is, and what a disastrous change the loss of its influence would be. He treats it as a subject of metaphysical discussion merely, nor could he understand the mighty argument for its truth which is found in its universal adaptation to the wants and sorrows of mankind. His doctrines are thus carried out as if nothing important was involved, and as if it was simply a gratification of curiosity to see how far they might be made to go. Having shown that miracles are not likely to take place, and that the error of falsehood of witnesses is more common than a departure from the usual order of things, he proceeds to infer that there can be no such thing as a miracle; which amounts to the assertion, that there is no such thing as Divine Providence, that the power which established is not competent to alter, and in fact excludes the Deity from all direct concern with the universe which he has made; —​consequences of his argument, which, of themselves, would be enough to show that it could not possibly be true, since they represent the creature as mightier than its creator, and speak of a God whose hands are bound. Lord Brougham remarks, that, had Hume lived to see the late discoveries in fossil osteology, which make it clear that there was at some period an exertion of power to form man and other animals not previously existing, he must either have rejected the science, which would be absurd, or have admitted the interposition of creative power. But this is equally true of the whole universe; it must either be self-​existent, or the time must have been when some power was exerted to bring it into being. Whoever, therefore, is neither atheist nor pantheist, if he admits that the usual order of things has once been suspended, cannot maintain that there is no power to depart from it again. But without entering into the discussion on the subject of miracles, which has already, at various times and in divers manners, been more than sufficiently extended, considering that the evidence in their favor has convinced clear-​ headed men without number, while the doubters have been comparatively few, we would simply remark, that most of those who take the skeptical side of this subject, while they think that they get rid of miracles, leave untouched the great miracle of all; and that is, Christianity itself; whence did it come? In tracing the history of other opinions and reforms, we can follow them like rivers to the earthly fountains from which they spring; we can see the imperfect attempts which went before them, the influences and tendencies which led to them; their unformed elements may be distinguished long before their living action manifests itself to the world. But here was a religion suddenly breaking out from the midst of darkness, breathing peace in a wild and martial time, teaching the

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largest charity and freedom from prejudice among a most narrow and bigoted people, resisting the habits of thought and feeling which had always prevailed, and itself giving the first impulse towards that improvement in which it would lead the nations on from glory to glory. It is idle to speak of it as an effort of genius or a happy discovery; for these are results of efforts and progress previously made, and no such elements can be found in the ancient world. Now, as nothing can come of nothing, and to every thing must be assigned a cause adequate to produce it, we do not know where to. look for any explanation of the existence of this religion but that which regards it as a direct gift of God. The skeptic, then, if he discredits the miracles, by showing to his own satisfaction that they could never have been wrought, cannot deny that Christianity exists and prevails, and thus leaves himself embarrassed with a difficulty greater than that which he explains away. The character of Hume has often been impeached in general terms, in consequence of his opinions, —​Christians having always taken the liberty, in defending their religion, to break all its laws of love. Archbishop Magee, for example, speaks of his writings as “standing memorials of a heart as wicked and a head as weak as ever pretended to the character of a philosopher and moralist”; a remark, which, lacking the essential grace of truth, is of the number of those which bless him who takes considerably more than him who gives, and which rather enlighten us as to the good sense and manners of him who uses them, than of those to whom they are applied. But Lord Brougham has inserted a letter into the appendix to his Life, which gives a more unpleasant impression of Hume than we have received from any other quarter. It contains the expression of a wish, that some clerical friend should remain in his profession, which he desired to abandon; for, says the author of the “Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,” —​ “It is putting too great respect on the vulgar and on their superstitions to pique one’s self on sincerity with regard to them. Did ever one make it a point of honor to speak truth to children or madmen? If the thing were worthy being treated gravely, I should tell him that the Pythian oracle, with the approbation of Xenophon, advised every one to worship the Gods ‘according to the law of the city.’ I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular; the common duties of society usually require it; and the ecclesiastical profession only adds a little more to an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without which it is impossible to pass through the world.” Such loose talk as this, the recommendation to a friend to be a hypocrite, the wish to be one himself, and the suggestion that duty may sometimes require

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it, argues an extraordinary indifference on these subjects, which are commonly regarded as important, whatever may be men’s opinions in other respects. Lord Brougham does great injustice to Paley in connecting his doctrine of expediency with any such application of it as this. It is not easy to conceive of a man of any moral principle speaking in this manner while in possession of his reason; and it is not doing injustice to one who does, to regard it as a sign of certain deficiencies of moral constitution, which would prevent his mind from apprehending the worth and beauty of Christianity, and, to the same extent, forbid its welcome in the heart. There is another respect in which the great historian is little beholden to his noble biographer. The impression has been, that Hume wrote with great rapidity; the harmonious and beautiful order of his narrative, and the free and manly grace of expression, indicate that it came from his pen with a swift and easy flow. This circumstance has been regarded as an explanation of many of his errors; for, admirable as his work is, and delightful to readers as it will ever be, it is wholly discredited as an authority; no one places the least reliance upon it; we resort to it for gratification, while we go to inferior writers to know the truth. But Lord Brougham gives the impression, that the act of composition to Hume was laborious and painful; his manuscripts still in existence are everywhere scored, interlined, and altered; indeed, he says himself, that he was slow, and not easily satisfied with what he wrote; a fact which deprives him of the apology, such as it is, which the extemporaneous manner of writing ascribed to him afforded for many of his errors. The Chancellor also declares, that, on some occasions, he sacrificed truth to effect, introducing striking circumstances without foundation, and altering statements from what he knew to be the correct version; and though these variations from the truth of history, so far as noticed, are not of any great importance, they are still sufficient to show, that his conscience was not strictly delicate, and that, acco[r]‌ding to the suggestion made to his clerical friend, he considered readers of history as among those inconsiderable persons to whom the truth needs not be told; either because he thought the article too rare and precious to be wasted, or that the invention of historical facts seemed a nobler and more inviting office than simply to record them. This distinguished man is generally spoken of as a skeptic; but Lord Brougham shows that his views come as near to atheism as it is possible for a man not of unholy life to go. Hume contends, not that there are doubts on the subject of God’s existence and the immortality of the soul, but that we have no evidence of either, and therefore no ground for believing in God and immortality. And thus with respect to miracles; his argument maintains that they cannot be proved;

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that a divine interposition is a thing impossible; and of this there is a certainty which no amount of testimony can outweigh. It therefore leads, not to doubt, but to a conviction of the falsehood of the religion which professes to come from on high. Perhaps the reason why he has thus been regarded, as one whose mind was balanced between the two opinions, is, that he never, like Voltaire, entered into a blind and furious warfare against Christianity. His reasonings against it are grave and decent, seldom defiled by unworthy language or feeling. So unlike is this to the bearing of most other infidels, that it gives the impression of undecidedness and neutrality; when, perhaps, there never was any one to whom the religion could have been presented with so little hope of success, since his regular life, his steady temper, and prosperous circumstances, had prevented his feeling the need of it as most men do; and when the intellect, which in him was infinitely stronger than the affections, reported against it, no voice in its favor was lifted up by his heart. Even if his views on the subject of our faith had been at first mere speculations, as soon as he published his arguments against it, he came into sympathy with its opposers. Indifference was no longer possible, and it was as an antagonist of Christianity, if not of all religion, that he lived and died. A statement was thrown out in the “Quarterly Review” many years ago, and we well remember the sensation it created, which represented the papers left by Hume as containing evidence that distinguished ministers of the gospel in Edinburgh were in full sympathy with him, practising on his suggestion with respect to deceiving the public, and having no more real faith than he had in the religion which they professed to preach. This incredible assertion, which doubtless proceeded from some narrow-​minded bigot, who regarded false witness against another sect as a virtue, and charity as a mortal sin, was not corrected at the time; but Lord Brougham informs us, that he has caused the most exact search to be made, and, finding no confirmation of the story, he gives it an unqualified contradiction.* * Notwithstanding this denial, and in full view of the evidence on which it is made, the charge is

repeated in the last number of the “Quarterly Review,” apparently by the same writer who first brought it forward. He says, Lord Brougham “produces no evidence except as to the actual contents of the Hume papers. They came but lately into the hands of their present possessors; and we think it might have occurred to Lord Brougham as not altogether impossible (considering the late Mr. Baron Hume’s refusal to let any use be made of them during his own lifetime), that the learned judge purified the collection before he bequeathed it to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.” The reviewer also cites the passage, which we have already quoted, from Hume’s letter to Colonel Edmonstone, advising a clerical friend not to abandon his profession because he had become a skeptic, as affording “an inference in tolerable harmony with the rumor so magisterially dismissed.” Our readers will observe, however, that this grave charge, first made upon the authority of mere rumor, is here repeated as a matter of inference only; and though the reviewer, it appears, has “had access to some of Hume’s unpublished letters,” it does not appear that he found in them any direct evidence of the truth of the accusation.

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HUME’S DEATH DEFENDED

“ART. II.  —​ Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the time of George the Third. By HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S. Second Series. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1846. 12mo. pp. 302,” The North American Review, vol. 64, no. 134 (January 1847), pp. 59–​97; selection p. 72. [William Bourn Oliver Peabody] —​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​—​ The letter of Adam Smith in which he describes the closing life of Hume has been the subject of much remark, not very complimentary in its tone; for in former days, many, who manifested no other interest in Christianity, were furious against unbelievers, and nothing could be more unscrupulous than the manner in which they abused those sinners, by way of giving them a taste of the religion of love. Few men have ever received so much of this friendly attention as Hume; his crime seemed to be, that he was not so wicked as, in their opinion, an infidel ought to be. Of this offence he was certainly guilty; and so odious did it make him, that it required some courage in the good-​ natured Boswell, even under Johnson’s broadside, to tell him that “he was better than his books,” —​a eulogy which, proceeding from such a quarter, might, one would think, have turned his brain for ever. Now, though religionists at the time had no patience with his serenity and cheerfulness, still, if he possessed that equanimity in his closing hour, there was no good reason why his friend should not mention it even in words of praise It is true, he had no right understanding of the religious relations in which he stood; but this should be dealt with as a misfortune, rather than as one of the seven deadly sins. Those who press their censures beyond the bounds of justice always throw the general sympathy on the opposite side. What Dr. Smith’s religious opinions were, it is not easy to say; there are none of his writings in which he has disclosed them.

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Lord Brougham thinks that there are allusions enough to a Divine Providence and the hopes of a future state to remove all doubts on the subject; but if he was alienated from Christianity, and we have some fears that he was, it was probably owing in part to the abuse which Christians, so called, had heaped without measure on his friend.

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PART V

ADDENDUM: ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE EXPANDED EDITION

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HUME, THE IDOL OF HISTORIC TASTE

“Character of Rapin, Hume, and Littleton’s Histories,” in “Poetical Essays, for July, 1784,” The Boston Magazine, containing, a collection of instructive and entertaining essays, in the various branches of useful, and polite literature, vol. 1 (July 1784), pp. 392–​3. William Hayley The Boston Magazine, a short-​lived monthly publication, survived long enough to produce only three volumes between October 1783 and December 1786. The magazine’s editors were John Eliot (1754–​1813), James Freeman (1759–​ 1835), and George R. Minot (1758–​1802). Sadly, little is known about all three of them; none have entries in the ANB, and the older DAB has only an entry for Minot. The Boston Magazine’s contents were miscellaneous and, along with “poetical essays,” like the one reprinted here, included prose fiction and biographical essays. “Mr. Hayley,” was the British author and poet William Hayley (1745–​1820) whose An Essay on History (London, 1780), from which the following extract was taken, was widely reprinted in eighteenth-​century Britain and America. Here, the poem was a part of the Boston Magazine’s “Poetical Essays, for July, 1784.” On The Boston Magazine, see Lyon N.  Richardson, A History of Early American Magazines, 1741–​1789 (New York, 1931), pp. 211–​25. On Hayley, see John Johnson, ed., Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Hayley (London, 1823) and, more recently, Vivienne W. Painting’s entry on him in the DNB. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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Character of Rapin, Hume, and Littleton’s Histories. By Mr. Hayley. THOU shall not want, RAPIN!     Thy well earn’d praise; The sage Polibius, thou of modern days! Thy sword, thy pen, have both thy name endear’d This join’d our arms, and that our story clear’d: Thy foreign hand discharg’d th’ historian’s craft, Unsway’d by party, and to freedom just. To letter’d fame we own thy fair pretence, From patient labour, and from candid sense.   Yet public favour, ever hard to fix, Flew from thy page, as heavy and prolix. For soon, emerging from the sophist’s school, With spirit eager, yet with judgment cool, With subtle skill to steal upon applause And give false vigour to the weaker cause; To paint a specious scene with nicest art, Re-​touch the whole, and varnish every part; Graceful in stile, in argument acute; Master of every trick in keen dispute! With these strong powers to form a winning tale, And hide deceit in moderation’s vale,

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Hume, the Idol of Historic Taste

High on the pinnacle of fashion plac’d, HUME shone the idol of historic taste. Already pierc’d by freedom’s searching rays, The waxen fabric of his fame decays. Think not, keen spirit! that these hands presume To tear each leaf of laurel from thy tomb! These hands, which, of a heart of human frame, Could stoop to harbor that ungenerous aim, Would shield thy grave, and give, with guardian care, Each type of eloquence to flourish there! But public love commands the painful task, From the pretended sage to strip the mask, When his false tongue, averse to freedom’s cause, Profanes the spirit of her ancient laws. As Asia’s soothing, opiate drugs, by stealth, Shake every slackened nerve, and sap the health; Thy writings thus, with noxious charms refin’d, Seeming to sooth its ills, unnerve the mind. While the keen cunning of thy hand pretends To strike alone at party’s abject ends, Our hearts, more free from faction’s weeds, we feel, But they have lost the flower of patriot zeal.

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Wild as thy feeble, metaphysic page, Thy hist’ry rambles into sceptic rage; Whose giddy, and fantastic dreams, abuse A HAMDEN’S virtue, and a SHAKESPEAR’S muse.   With purer spirit, free from party strife, To sooth his ev’ning hour of honour’d life, See candid LITTLETON at length unfold The deeds of liberty in days of old! Fond of the theme, and narrative with age, He winds the lengthen’d tale through many a page; But there the beams of patriot virtue shine; There truth and virtue sanctify the line, And laurels, due to civil wisdom, shield This noble Nestor of th’ historic field.

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TO BRING HOME YOUR HUME

Untitled Letter to the Editors, The New-​Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut Magazine, vol. 1, no. 5 (16 March 1786), p. 38. Anonymous The New-​Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut Magazine was a weekly paper published from 16 February 1786 through 18 June 1789. Its editors, to which this reprinted letter was addressed, were Josiah Meigs (1757–​1822) and Eleutheros Dana (1761–​88). Dana was the son of the Rev. James Dana (b. 1735)  of New Haven. Meigs, a Yale graduate and classmate of Joel Barlow and Noah Webster, had been admitted to the bar in New Haven in 1783. At the time of his editorship of the New-​Haven Gazette, he was also a city clerk. He would later make his way to Bermuda and then Georgia where, in 1801, he became the second president of the University of Georgia, teaching natural philosophy, among other subjects. On Meigs, see William Montgomery Meigs, The Life of Josiah Meigs (Philadelphia, 1887) and the entry on Josiah Meigs in the DAB. On the New-​ Haven Gazette see API, p.  116. This piece reminds us, humorously, that ideas circulated in early America when privately owned books were lent, even though evidence of that sort of dissemination is often difficult for historians to recover. It also reminds us that lending books is perennially dangerous. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Messrs. Meigs and Dana, A Gentleman in this city having lent, and by that means lost a volume of Hume’s works, found it a few mornings since, lying at his door, with the following verses.—​—​—​—​If you have no objection, I should be glad to see them in

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your entertaining paper: at the same time wishing every one possessed of books which do not belong to them would follow the example. SUCH conscious guilt,    I’ve long since felt, I’ve not return’d your book before;     To bring home your Hume     I dare not presume, Have therefore laid it at your door.    To lie here, Hume,    It is your doom, ’Till—​—​—​—​come and take you in:    Should he refuse,    And you ill use, I’ll come and take you back again.

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HUME ON CIVIL LIBERTY

“An ESSAY on CIVIL LIBERTY, By HUME,” The Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany Containing a View of the History, Literature, Manners & Characteristics of the Year, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1788), pp. 9–​13. David Hume Hume’s various essays were published in several eighteenth-​century editions (see “Introduction to Part I”). This American reprinting of Hume’s essay “Of Civil Liberty” was based on an early one, perhaps the 1758 Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, the first edition to use the title “Of Civil Liberty.” (In editions from 1741 through 1754 the essay was entitled “Of Liberty and Despotism.”) The text reproduced here differs from that of the 1777 posthumous edition of the Essays, which is the version best known to modern scholars as it is the copy text for the Liberty Fund edition (see Essays, pp. 87–​96). The Columbian Magazine was a prominent Philadelphia publication, appearing from September 1786 to February 1790 (and thereafter with a changed title). Over the years, its editors included Mathew Carey (1760–​1839), Francis Hopkinson (1737–​91), Alexander James Dallas (1759–​1817), and Charles Cist (1738–​1805). It is interesting to note that Hume’s warning about the dangers of public debt to free governments was of interest to early Americans at a time when they were facing their own fiscal challenges. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

An ESSAY on CIVIL LIBERTY, By HUME THOSE who employ their pens on political subjects, free from party-​rage, and party-​prejudices, cultivate a science, which of all others, contributes most to

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public utility, and even to the private satisfaction of those who addict themselves to the study of it. I am apt, however, to entertain a suspicion, that the world is still too young to fix many general truths in politics, which will remain true to the latest posterity. We have not as yet had experience of three thousand years; so that not only the art of reasoning is still defective in this science, as in all others, but we even want sufficient materials upon which we can reason. It is not fully known, what degrees of refinement, either in virtue or vice, human nature is susceptible of; nor what may be expected of mankind from any great revolution in their education, customs, or principles. MACHIAVEL [sic] was certainly a great genius; but having confined his study to the furious and tyrannical governments of ancient times, or to the little disorderly principalities of ITALY, his reasonings, especially upon monarchical government, have been found extremely defective; and there scarcely is any maxim in his prince, which subsequent experience has not entirely refuted. A weak prince, says he, is incapable of receiving good counsel; for if he consult with several, he will not be able to choose among their different counsels. If he abandon himself to one, that minister may, perhaps, have capacity; but he will not long be a minister:  He will be sure to dispossess his master, and place himself and his family upon the throne. I mention this, among many instances of the errors of that politician, proceeding, in a great measure, from his having lived in too early an age of the world, to be a good judge of political truth. Almost all the princes of EUROPE are at present governed by their ministers; and have been so for near two centuries; and yet no such event has ever happened, or can possibly happen. SEJANUS might project dethroning the CÆSARS; but FLEURY, though ever so vicious, could not, while in his senses, entertain the least hopes of dispossessing the BOURBONS. Trade was never esteemed an affair of state, till the last century; and there scarcely is any ancient writer on politics, who has made mention of it. Even the ITALIANS have kept a profound silence with regard to it; though it has now excited the chief attention, as well of ministers of state, as of speculative reasoners. The great opulence, grandeur, and military achievements of the two maritime powers, seem first to have instructed mankind in the importance of an extensive commerce. Having, therefore, intended in this essay to have made a full comparison of civil liberty and absolute government, and to have shewn the great advantages of the former above the latter; I began to entertain a suspicion, that no man in this age was sufficiently qualified for such an undertaking; and that whatever any one should advance on that head would, in all probability, be refuted by further experience, and be rejected by posterity. Such mighty revolutions have happened in

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human affairs, and so many events have arisen contrary to the expectation of the ancients, that they are sufficient to beget the suspicion of still further changes. It had been observed by the ancients, that all the arts and sciences arose among free nations; and, that the PERSIANS and EGYPTIANS, notwithstanding their ease, opulence, and luxury, made but faint efforts towards a relish in those finer pleasures, which were carried to such perfection by the GREEKS, amidst continual wars, attended with poverty, and the greatest simplicity of life and manners. It had also been observed, that, when the GREEKS lost their liberty, though they encreased mightily in riches, by means of the conquests of ALEXANDER; yet the arts, from that moment, declined among them, and have never since been able to raise their head in that climate. Learning was transplanted to ROME, the only free nation at that time in the universe; and having met with so favorable a soil, it made prodigious shoots for above a century; till the decay of liberty produced also the decay of letters, and spread a total barbarism over the world. From these two experiments, of which each was double in its kind, and shewed the fall of learning in despotic governments, as well as its rise in popular ones, LONGINUS thought himself sufficiently justified, in asserting, that the arts and sciences could never flourish, but in a free government: And in this opinion, he has been followed by several eminent writers in our own country, who either confined their view merely to ancient facts, or entertained too great a partiality in favour of that form of government, established amongst us. But what would these writers have said, to the instances of modern ROME and of FLORENCE? Of which the former carried to perfection all the finer arts of sculpture, painting and music, as well as poetry, though it groaned under tyranny, and under the tyranny of priests:  While the latter made the greatest progress in the arts and sciences, after it began to lose its liberty by the usurpation of the family of MEDICI. ARIOSTO, TASSO, GALILEO, more than RAPHAEL, and MICHAEL ANGELO, were not born in republics. And though the LOMBARD school was famous as well as the ROMAN, yet the VENETIANS have had the smallest share in its honours, and seem rather inferior to the other ITALIANS, in their genius for the arts and sciences. RUBENS established his school at ANTWERP, not at AMSTERDAM: DRESDEN, not HAMBURGH, is the centre of politeness in GERMANY. But the most eminent instance of the flourishing of learning in absolute governments, is that of FRANCE, which scarcely ever enjoyed any established liberty, and yet has carried the arts and sciences as near perfection as any other nation. The ENGLISH are, perhaps, greater philosophers; the ITALIANS better painters and musicians; the ROMANS were greater orators: But the FRENCH

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are the only people, except the GREEKS, who have been at once philosophers, poets, orators, historians, painters, architects, sculptors, and musicians. With regard to the stage, they have excelled even the GREEKS, who far excelled the ENGLISH. And, in common life, they have, in a great measure, perfected that art, the most useful and agreeable of any, l’Art de Vivre, the art of society and conversation. If we consider the state of the sciences and polite arts in our own country, HORACE’S observations, with regard to the ROMANS, may, in a measure, be applied to the BRITISH. —​Sed in longum tamen ævum Manserunt, hodieque manent vestigia ruris.

The elegance and propriety of stile have been very much neglected among us. We have no dictionary* of our language, and scarcely a tolerable grammar. The first polite prose we have, was writ by a man who is still alive. As to SPRAT, LOCKE and, even TEMPLE, they knew too little of the rules of art to be esteemed elegant writers. The prose of BACON, HARRINGTON, and MILTON, is altogether stiff and pedantic; though their sense be excellent. Men, in this country, have been so much occupied in the great disputes of Religion, Politics, and Philosophy, that they had no relish for the seemingly minute observations of grammar and criticism. And though this turn of thinking must have considerably improved our sense and our talent of reasoning beyond those of other nations; it must be confessed, that, even in those sciences above-​mentioned, we have not any standard-​book, which we can transmit to posterity: And the utmost we have to boast of, are a few essays towards a more just philosophy; which, indeed, promise well, but have not, as yet, reached any degree of perfection. It has become an established opinion, that commerce can never flourish but in a free government; and this opinion seems to be founded on a longer and larger experience than the foregoing, with regard to the arts and sciences. If we trace commerce in its progress through TYRE, ATHENS, SYRACUSE, CARTHAGE, VENICE, FLORENCE, GENOA, ANTWERP, HOLLAND, ENGLAND, &c. we shall always find it to have fixt its seat in free governments. The three greatest trading towns in the world, are LONDON, AMSTERDAM, and HAMBURGH; all free cities, and protestant cities; that is enjoying a double liberty. It must, however, be observed, that the great jealousy entertained of late, with regard to * This Essay was written before the publication of Johnson’s celebrated Dictionary.

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the commerce of FRANCE, seems to prove, that this maxim is no more certain and infallible, than the foregoing, and that the subjects of an absolute prince may become our rivals in commerce, as well as in learning. Durst I deliver my opinion in an affair of so much uncertainty, I would assert, that, notwithstanding the efforts of the FRENCH, there is something hurtful to commerce inherent in the very nature of absolute government, and inseparable from it: Though the reason I should assign for this opinion, is somewhat different from that which is commonly insisted on. Private property seems to me almost as secure in a civilized EUROPEAN monarchy, as in a republic; nor is danger much apprehended in such a government, from the violence of the sovereign; more than we commonly dread harm from thunder, or earthquakes, or any accident the most unusual and extraordinary. Avarice the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable. A subordination of ranks is absolutely necessary to the support of monarchy. Birth, titles, and place must be honoured above industry and riches. And while these notions prevail, all the considerable traders will be tempted to throw up their commerce, in order to purchase some of those employments, to which privileges and honours are annexed. Since I  am upon this head, of the alterations which time has produced, or may produce in politics, I must observe that all kinds of government, free and absolute, seem to have undergone, in modern times, a great change for the better, with regard both to foreign and domestic management. The balance of power is a secret in politics, fully known only to the present age; and I must add, that the internal POLICE of states has also received great improvements within the last century. We are informed by SALLUST, that CATILINE’S army was much augmented by the accession of the highwaymen about ROME; though I believe, that all of that profession, who are at present dispersed over EUROPE, would not amount to a regiment. In CICERO’S pleadings for MILO, I find this argument, among others, made use of to prove, that his client had not assassinated CLODIUS. Had MILO, said he, intended to have killed CLODIUS, he had not attacked him in the day-​time, and at such a distance from the city: He had way-​ laid him at night near the suburbs, where it might have been pretended, that he was killed by robbers; and the frequency of the accident would have favoured the deceit. This is a surprising proof of the loose police of ROME, and of the number and force of these robbers; since CLODIUS was at that time attended with thirty

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slaves, who were completely armed, and sufficiently accustomed to blood and danger in the frequent tumults excited by that seditious tribune. But though all kinds of government be improved in modern times, yet monarchical government seems to have made the greatest advances towards perfection. It may now be affirmed of civilized monarchies, what was formerly said in praise of republics alone, that they are a government of Laws, not of Men. They are found susceptible of order, method, and constancy, to a surprising degree. Property is there secure; industry encouraged; the arts flourish; and the prince lives secure among his subjects, like a father among his children. There are perhaps, and have been for two centuries, near two hundred absolute princes, great and small in EUROPE; and allowing twenty years to each reign we may suppose, that there have been in the whole two thousand monarchs or tyrants, as the GREEKS would have called them: Yet of these there has not been one, not even PHILIP II. of SPAIN, so bad as TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, NERO, or DOMITIAN, who were four in twelve amongst the ROMAN emperors. It must, however, be confessed, that, though monarchical governments have approached nearer to popular ones, in gentleness and stability; they are still inferior. Our modern education and customs instil more humanity and moderation than the ancient; but have not as yet been able to overcome entirely the disadvantages of that form of government. But here I must beg leave to advance a conjecture, which seems probable, but which posterity alone can fully judge of. I am apt to think, that, in monarchical governments there is a source of improvement, and in popular governments a source of degeneracy, which in time will bring these species of civil polity still nearer an equality. The greatest abuses, which arise in FRANCE, the most perfect model of pure monarchy, proceed not from the number or weight of the taxes, beyond what are to be met with in free countries; but from the expensive, unequal, arbitrary, and intricate method of levying them, by which the industry of the poor, especially of the peasants and farmers, is, in a great measure, discouraged, and agriculture rendered a beggarly and slavish employment. But to whose advantage do these abuses tend? If to that of the nobility, they might be esteemed inherent in that form of government; since the nobility are the true supports of monarchy; and it is natural their interest should be more consulted, in such a constitution, than that of the people. But the nobility are, in reality, the principal losers by this oppression; since it ruins their estates, and beggars their tenants. The only gainers by it are the Finançiers, a race of men rather odious to the nobility and the whole kingdom. If a prince or minister, therefore, should arise, endowed with sufficient discernment to know his own and the public

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interest, and with sufficient force of mind to break through ancient customs, we might expect to see these abuses remedied; in which case, the difference between that absolute government and our free one, would not appear so considerable as at present. The source of degeneracy, which may be remarked in free governments, consists in the practice of contracting debt, and mortgaging the public revenues, by which taxes may, in time, become altogether intolerable, and all the property of the state be brought into the hands of the public. This practice is of modern date. The ATHENIANS, though governed by a republic, paid near two hundred per cent. for those sums of money, which any emergent occasion made it necessary for them to borrow; as we learn from XENOPHON. Among the moderns, the DUTCH first introduced the practice of borrowing great sums at low interest, and have well nigh ruined themselves by it. Absolute princes have also contracted debt; but as an absolute prince may make a bankruptcy when he pleases, his people can never be oppressed by his debts. In popular governments, the people, and chiefly those who have the highest offices, being commonly the public creditors, it is difficult for the state to make use of this remedy, which, however it may sometimes be necessary, is always cruel and barbarous. This, therefore seems to be an inconvenience, which nearly threatens all free governments; especially our own, at the present juncture of affairs. And what a strong motive is this, to encrease our frugality of public money; lest for want of it, we be reduced, by the multiplicity of taxes, to curse our free government, and wish ourselves in the same state of servitude with all the nations that surround us?

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91

HUME’S HISTORY CLAIMS SUPERIOR NOTICE

“To the editor of the American Museum,” The American Museum; or, Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, &c, vol. 3, no. 2 (February 1788), pp. 183–​4. Anonymous The letter from this anonymous writer is illustrative of the general place of history in the world view of the Enlightenment. We don’t know if the letter’s recipient followed the advice to read Hume’s History, but evidence shows that many others in similar situations did. The History was read widely by those seeking a general, useful education in eighteenth-​century America  —​and elsewhere. Edited by Mathew Carey, the American Museum (it had several title variations) was one of early America’s most successful magazines. On Carey, see Michael S. Carter’s entry for him in EAE, vol. 1, pp. 192–​4. For an introduction to the reading of history in eighteenth-​century America, see Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Enlightenment (1965; reprinted Indianapolis, 1998), and Peter C.  Messer, “Historical Thought,” in EAE, vol. 1, pp. 530–​2. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ To the editor of the American Museum. The following is a copy of a letter, written lately by a gentleman of my acquaintance to a friend of his, who had requested some directions on the reading of history. If you think it worthy of a place in your useful miscellany, be pleased to insert it, which will oblige Your humbler servant, Kent county, Maryland,                   S.E. 4th Feb. 1788.

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To I***** R******, esquire. THAT the human mind is like a garden, which, unless it be cultivated and made to yield flowers, will soon be over-​run with weeds, is no new thought. Innumerable proofs might be adduced to evince, that all created nature, spiritual as well as corporeal, is supported by a principle of activity. We look not for health in one who is confined to a dungeon, nor for virtuous exertion in the relaxed mind of an eastern despot. If, from the book of nature, we turn our eye to the book of revelation, we behold him, who was the perfect model of the human character, continually going about doing good. And if the idea be just, as both reason and inspiration teach, that we are but stewards, and not absolute lords, of whatever worldly goods or mental talents we may possess, it is assuredly our duty to improve them to the utmost of our power; that by employing them for the promotion of virtue and happiness among men, we may answer the views of him who entrusted them to us. To prepare the human mind for virtuous action, to clear it from the rubbish of natural corruption, and to remove those impediments which, in its rude state, obstruct its beauty and usefulness, labour and diligent culture are necessary. By culture, however, the understanding and heart, though they must still be human, and consequently imperfect, may be greatly advanced above that degree in the scale of excellence, in which nature has placed them. How much clearness and strength may our intellectual powers acquire, by a course of mathematical investigation! What elevation may the mind of man derive, from the perusal of the book of nature and the splendid records of the government of providence! What justness of thinking may we acquire from the study of logic and a philosophical enquiry into the powers of the human mind! and what vigour may be added to every good principle, by contemplating in a course of ethics, those engaging pictures of virtue, which experience sometimes, and imagination always, can furnish! But I had almost forgotten that the intention of this paper was to give some hints upon the reading of history. This is a species of study which will justly claim the attention of those, who having no profession in view, wish to blend pleasure with improvement. If it be true, that experience is the mother of wisdom, history must be an improving teacher. In her school, we may learn that wisdom, which others have purchased in life at a dear rate. Under her direction, we may reap fruits, without partaking in the labour. History has been called a mirror; the reason of which, I conceive, is, that building on the immutability of the laws of nature, and reasoning from analogy, we are enabled from the past, to conjecture concerning the future —​as from appearances in a looking-​glass we infer the reality.

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True history, therefore, must ever be improving: romances would be equally so, were they faithfully copied from nature; but as that can be said of very few of them, they are to be regarded in respect of true narrative, as the wanderings of the ignis fatuus compared to the steady course of the heavenly luminaries. History may be divided into three kinds; natural, sacred and civil. Of the first, the province is external nature, animate, vegetable, and unorganized. Linnaeus, Buffon and Goldsmith, are the most faithful delineators. The short path from the field of nature, to that of religion, has been opened and beautified by Ray, Derham, and the preachers at Boyle’s lectures. Sacred history treats of the progress of religion. As we believe the Jewish and Christian systems to be the only true ones which ever existed, we will not, if our aim be improvement and pleasure, pry into the lamentable scenes of delusion and error. On this subject, then, a layman will find all he would wish to know in the sacred pages of inspiration, Josephus’s antiquities and history, and Mosheim’s compendium. Civil history has for its object the transactions and revolutions of empires, kingdoms and nations. A complete and uninterrupted history from the origins of the world in not to be had, nor would it be of any great use. The several shining periods in the annals of mankind, have been investigated by Thucydides, Livy, Hume, and Robertson; and such writers, like the splendid arbiter of the day, elicit the pure ore from the richer parts of this extensive mind, and diffuse a light thro’ the surrounding regions. What is called the universal ancient and modern history is, I conceive, a compilation like the dictionaries of arts and sciences; and who would drink in the polluted stream, who can have recourse to the fountain? The first-​rate historians, then, whose luminous pages, alone, are entitled to attention from the votary of polite learning, are generally known. Rollin’s ancient history, Goldsmith’s Greek and his Roman history, Ferguson’s Roman history, Robertson’s history of Charles V.  his history of Scotland, and history of America (last edition) and Hume’s history of England claim superior notice. Gibbon is respectable as a historian, and may be read with profit, by one whose religious principles are established. A general chronological view of the more important events and eras since the creation, is proper; and some accounts of the later periods of the history of Europe and America, and of the topography of those countries, is necessary to prepare one for political conversation. Memoirs, voyages, and travels, form another species of history. —​These are entertaining and highly instructive; as they represent nature on a lower scale, and more adapted to experience. Sully’s memoirs, Brydone’s and Moore’s travels, and Anson’s and Cook’s voyages are masterpieces in this way.

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The knowledge of the human character, and of the mental powers, actions and various fortune of particular men, being still more closely connected with experience, is, in the highest degree, useful in the conduct of life; and in this view, Plutarch’s lives may be esteemed one of the most entertaining and instructive books in the world. The paintings of Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton, afford, like wise, excellent lessons in the history of moral nature. These authors, in copying, truly represent the blemishes with the beauties. The book of inspiration, only accounts for these imperfections, describes their progress and tendency and proposes the remedies; and for this reason, it is entitled to the first place among the histories of the human mind, as well as of religion. December 17, 1787.

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WHAT THINK YOU OF DAVID HUME, SIR?

“ANECDOTE,” The Columbian Magazine, vol. 2, no. 5 (May 1788), p. 283. Anonymous The Columbian Magazine (1786–​90, and carried on thereafter as The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine) was one of the most prestigious of early America’s periodical publications. Its contents were miscellaneous with a leaning toward the historical. “Dr. Johnson” was Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709–​84), the famous English dictionary maker and contemporary of Hume. “Dr. Rose” was Dr.  William Rose (1719–​86); less well remembered today, he was a Scottish-​ born school teacher and literary man of note. Rose was also a frequent reviewer, including of several of Hume’s works among which was the second volume of Hume’s History for the Monthly Review, a periodical founded by Rose’s brother-​ in-​law, Ralph Griffiths. On Rose, see DNB. This particular anecdote circulated widely in America well into the nineteenth century. It should be read alongside other anecdotes reprinted in Part IV: “Early American Responses to Hume’s Character and Death.” _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

ANECDOTE. IT was an annual custom with Dr. Johnson’s bookseller (whose name I have forgot) to invite his authors to dine with him; and it was upon this occasion that Dr. Johnson, and Dr. Rose, of Chiswick, met, when the following dispute happened between them on the pre-​eminency of the Scotch and English writers. In the course of conversation Dr. Warburton’s name was mentioned, when Dr. Rose observed what a proud imperious person he was.  —​Dr.  Johnson answered,

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“Sir, so he was, but he possessed more learning than has been imported from Scotland since the days of Buchanan.” Dr. Rose, after enumerating a great many Scotch authors (which Johnson treated with contempt) said, ‘What think you of David Hume, Sir?’ —​“Ha! a deistical scribbling fellow?” —​Rose. ‘Well, be it so, but what say you to Lord Bute?’ —​Johnson. (with a surly wow wow) “I did not know that he ever wrote any thing.” —​Rose. ‘No! I think he has written one line that has out-​done any thing that Shakespeare, or Milton, or any one else ever wrote.’  —​ Johnson. “Pray what was that, Sir?”  —​Rose. ‘It was when he wrote an order for your pension, Sir.’ —​Johnson. (quite confounded) “Why that was a very fine line to be sure, Sir.” Upon which the rest of the company got up and laughed, and hallooed till the whole room was in a roar.

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HAUGHTY HUME

“Ode to Education,” The American Museum, or, Universal Magazine, vol. 5, no. 4 (April 1789), pp. 406–​8; selection from p. 408. Samuel Knox On Mathew Carey and his American Museum, see selection #91. Richard Ponsonby, from Bladensburg, Maryland —​who contributed the piece reprinted below  —​was a correspondent of Carey on other occasions as well. Samuel Knox (1756–​1832) was an Irish-​born Presbyterian minister who, after teaching at the grammar school in Bladensburg in 1788–​ 89, made his way to Scotland to study at the University of Glasgow. He later returned to America, publishing An Essay on the Best System of Liberal Education (Baltimore, 1799). Interestingly, the young student, master Allen Bowie Duckett (c. 1775–​1809) whose lines are reprinted below would later graduate from Princeton and was appointed by President Jefferson as associate justice of the circuit court of the District of Columbia. On Duckett, see his entry in J. Jefferson Looney and Ruth L. Woodward, Princetonians, 1791–​1794: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, 1991), although his attendance at Knox’s school goes unrecorded there:  “No information on Duckett’s earlier schooling has been found, but it was far enough advanced to get him into the junior class when he entered the College in November 1789” (p. 47). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ MR. CAREY, FROM your laudable exertions to promote virtue, patriotism, and literary merit, I am induced to crave your acceptance of the following elegant ODE to EDUCATION, written by mr. Samuel Knox, in seven stanzas, and spoken by an equal number of boys, alternately, on the conclusion of the elocutionary

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exercises of Bladensburgh grammar-​school, under his judicious care, at an exhibition held the 18th and 19th of December, 1788. To your approbation and well-​ known impartiality I trust for an early admission of it in your excellent museum. Bladensburg, February, 1789         RICHARD PONSONBY VII. By master Allen Bowie Duckett. Let learned LOCKE instruct the human mind Through each ideal labyrinth to steer, With pious WATT, to virtue be inclin’d Enslav’d by no enthusiastic fear. Ne’er let the ranting bigot’s frantic strain Blind or bewilder reason’s radiant ray—​ The freeborn soul rejects with just disdain Old cloyster’d superstition’s stupid sway. Yet if affliction’s wounded heart tho’dst heal Regard religion with a christian care, And more revere an honest HERVEY’S zeal, Than all the wit of infidel VOLTAIRE. Ne’er warp’d in metaphysic maze, presume On sceptic principles with haughty HUME; But with a BEATTIE’S zeal, defend the truth—​ Inspires the soul, when worldly joys decay, With hopes of heav’n to close life’s final day—​ Exalts her pow’rs, transporting thought I to gaze Where knowledge shines in one eternal blaze.

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HUME’S SKETCH OF JANE SHORE

“LANE SHORE,” The Christian’s Scholar’s, and Farmer’s Magazine, vol. 2, no. 6 (February/​March 1791), p. 707 David Hume Character sketches from Hume’s History of England were frequently extracted and reproduced as stand-​alone pieces in the eighteenth century and even through to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Few of Hume’s characters lived lives as unfortunate as the ill-​fated Jane Shore (1445–​1527, or “Lane” Shore as she appeared here —​the letters “L” and “J” were often considered interchangeable in the eighteenth century). The Christian’s Scholar’s, and Farmer’s Magazine has been described as an “encyclopedic repository” covering everything from “rhetoric, farming, theology, Greek history, music, [and] painting” to “current events”. It was published out of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, by Shepard Kollock (1750–​1839). The excerpt below was published in the magazine’s last volume. On Kollock’s publishing career, see John R. Anders, Shepard Kollock: Editor of Freedom (Chatam, NJ, 1975). See History, vol. 2, p. 502, for this passage and its wider context. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

LANE SHORE. THIS lady (says Hume) was born of reputable parents in London, was well educated, and married to a substantial citizen; but unhappily, views of interest, more than the maid’s inclinations, had been consulted in this match, and her mind, though framed for virtue, proved unable to resist the allurements of Edward, who solicited her favors. But while seduced from her duty by this gay and

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amorous monarch, she still made herself respectable by her other virtues; and the ascendant which her charms and vivacity long maintained over him, was all employed in acts of beneficence and humanity. She was still forward to oppose calumny, to protect the oppressed, to relieve the indigent; and her good offices, the genuine result of her heart, never waited the solicitation of presents, or the hopes of reciprocal favors; but she lived not only to feel the bitterness of shame imposed on her by a barbarous tyrant [the duke of Gloucester] but to experience in her old age and poverty the ingratitude of those courtiers who had long solicited her friendship, and been protected by her credit. No one, among the great multitudes whom she had obliged, appeared to bring her consolation or relief. She languished out her life in solitude and indigence, and amidst a court inured to the most atrocious crimes, the frailties of his woman justified all violations of friendship toward her, and all oblivion of former favors.

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READ HUME’S HISTORY

“DIRECTIONS to a STUDENT of LAW. [In a Letter from JOHN DUNNING, Esq. to a gentleman of the Inner Temple],” The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (August 1791), pp. 81–​2. John Dunning John Dunning (1731–​83) was a prominent English lawyer and, from 1768, Member of Parliament. Toward the end of his life, in 1782, he was created Baron Ashburton (see DNB). His “Directions to a Student of Law” was published in other early American magazines, including the New-​York Magazine (in April 1792). On the Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, see the headnotes to selections #90 and #92. For very different advice about reading Hume than that given here, see below selections #96, “Reading Hume equals Death, by Hanging,” and #100, “Hume took away all Foundation.” In the period covered by this volume, Hume’s History was common reading for young men intent on pursuing public and especially legal careers. There is some irony in that since, as a young man, Hume had flatly rejected a legal career. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

DIRECTIONS to a STUDENT of LAW. [In a Letter from JOHN DUNNING, Esq. to a gentleman of the Inner Temple.] DEAR SIR, The habits of intercourse in which I have lived with your family, joined to the regard which I entertain for yourself, makes me solicitous, in compliance with your request, to give you some Hints concerning the Study of the Law.

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Our profession is generally ridiculed as being dry and uninteresting; but a mind anxious for the discovery of truth and information will be amply gratified for the toil, in investigating the origin and progress of a jurisprudence which has the good of the people for its basis, and the accumulated wisdom and experience of ages for its improvement. Nor is the study itself so intricate as has been imagined; more especially since the labours of some modern writers have given it a more regular and scientific form. Without industry, however, it is impossible to arrive at any eminence in practice; and the man who shall be bold enough to attempt excellence by abilities alone, will soon find himself foiled by many who have inferior understandings, but better attainments. On the other hand, the most painful plodder can never arrive at celebrity by mere reading; a man calculated for success, must add to native genius an [sic] distinctive faculty in the discovery and retention of that knowledge only, which can be at once useful and productive. I imagine that a considerable degree of learning is absolutely necessary. The elder authors frequently wrote in Latin, and the foreign jurists continue the practice to this day. Besides this, classical attainments contribute much to the refinement of the understanding, and the embellishment of the style. The utility of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, is known and felt by every one. Geometry will afford the most apposite examples of close and pointed reasoning; and Geography is so very necessary in common life, that there is less credit in knowing, than dishonour in being unacquainted with it. But it is History, and more particularly that of his own country, which will occupy the attention and attract the regard of the great lawyer. A minute knowledge of the political revolutions and judicial decisions of our predecessors, whether in the more ancient or modern areas of our government, is equally useful and interesting. This will include a narrative of all the material alterations in the Common Law, and the reasons, and exigencies on which they were founded. I would always recommend a diligent attendance on the Courts of Justice, as by that means the practice of them (a circumstance of great moment) will be easily and naturally acquired. Besides this, a much stronger impression will be made by the statement of the case, and the pleadings of the counsel, than from a cold and uninteresting detail of it in a report. But above all, a trial at bar, or special argument, should never be neglected. As it is usual on these occasions to take notes, a knowledge of short-​hand will give such facility to your labour, as to enable you to follow the most rapid speaker with certainty and precision. Common-​place books are convenient and useful; and as they are generally lettered, a reference may be had to them in a moment. It

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is usual to acquire some insight into real business, under an eminent special pleader, previous to actual practice at the bar: this idea I beg leave strongly to second, and indeed I  have known but few great men who have not possessed this advantage. I here subjoin a list of books necessary for your perusal and instruction, to which I have added some remarks; and wishing that you may add to a successful practice, that integrity which can alone make you worthy of it, I remain, &c. &c. JOHN DUNNING. Read Hume’s History of England, particularly observing the rise of progress, and declension of the feudal system. Minutely attend to the Saxon government that preceded it, and dwell on the reigns of Edward I. —​Henry VI. —​ Henry VII.  —​Henry VIII.  —​James I.  —​Charles I.  —​Charles II.  —​and James II. Blackstone. On the second reading turn to the references. Mr. Justice Wright’s learned Treatise on Tenures. Coke Littleton, especially every word of Fee-​Simple, Fee-​Tail, and Tenant in Tail. Coke’s Institutes; more particularly the Ist and IId; and Serjeant Hawkins’ Compendium. Coke’s Reports. —​Plowden’s Commentary. —​Bacon’s Abridgment; and First principles of Equity. —​Pigott on fines. —​Reports of Croke, Burrow, Raymond, Saunders, Strange, and Peere Williams.  —​Paley’s Maxims.  —​Lord Bacon’s Elements of the Common Law. Lincoln’s-​Inn, March 3, 1779.

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READING HUME EQUALS DEATH, BY HANGING

“COPY of a LETTER written by a young Man under sentence of Death, for Forgery,” The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (September 1791), p. 168. Anonymous A version of this letter was published in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction:  containing Original Essays; Historical Narratives; Biographical Memoirs; Sketches of Society; Topographical Descriptions; Novels and Tales; Anecdotes; Select Extracts from New and Expensive Works (London, 1828), pp.  306–​7. There, the letter is said to be “Written in the Condemned Cells, Newgate, by Captain [J.] Lee, the night previous to his execution, being convicted of forging a bill of exchange for 15l. on the Ordnance Office.” John Lee’s story is also written up in The Newgate Calendar: Being Interesting Memoirs of Notorious Characters, 5 vols (London, n.d.), vol. 3, pp. 462–​4. This piece is interesting in the context of a number of selections from “Part IV: Early American Responses to Hume’s Character and Death.” _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

COPY of a LETTER written by a young Man under sentence of Death, for Forgery

Newgate, March 3d, 1784:

BEFORE this reaches you, the head that dictates, and the hand that traces these lines, shall be no more —​Earthly cares shall be swallowed up, and the death of an unthinking man shall have atoned for the trespasses he has committed against the laws of his country. But, ere the curtain be for ever dropped, or remembrance

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leave this tortured breast, let me take this last and solemn leave of one, with whom I have passed so many social and instructive hours, whose conversation I fondly cultivated, and whose friendship for me, I hope, will remain, even after the cold hand of death has closed my eyes in everlasting darkness. I cannot think you will view this letter with stoick coolness, or with listless indifference —​Absorbed as the generality of men are, in the pursuits of pleasure, or the avocations of business, there are times when the mind looks inward upon itself —​when a review of past follies induces us to future amendment —​and when a consciousness of having acted wrong, leads us to resolutions of doing right —​In one of those fortunate moments, I hope you may receive these last admonitions. Shun but the rock on which I have struck, and you will be sure to avoid the shipwreck I have suffered. Initiated in the army at an early period of life, I soon participated, not only of the follies, but the vices of my companions —​Before, however, I could share, with undisturbed repose, in the wickedness of others, it was necessary to remove from myself what the infidel terms, the prejudice of a christian education; in this I unfortunately succeeded, and, conceiving from my tenderest years a taste for reading, my sentiments were confirmed, not by the flimsy effusions of empty libertines, but by the specious sophistry of modern philosophers. It must be owned, that, at first, I was rather pleased with the elegance of their language, than the force of their reasoning. However, as we are apt to believe what we eagerly wish to be true, in a short time I became a professed deist. My favourite author was the celebrated David Hume. I constantly urged his exemplary behaviour in private life, as a strong argument in favour of his doctrines, forgetting that his literary life was uniformly employed in diffusing his pernicious tenets, and that his utmost endeavours were constantly exerted in extending the baneful influence of his philosophical principles —​Happy for me had I always been actuated by the considerations which fill my bosom at this moment, and which, I hope, will animate me in that awful part to-​morrow’s sun shall see me perform. But the die is cast, and I leave to the world this mournful memento —​that however much a man may be favoured by personal qualifications, or distinguished by mental endowments, genius will be useless, and abilities avail but little, unless accompanied by a sense of religion, and attended by the practice of virtue —​destitute of these, he will only be mounted on the wings of folly, that he may fall with the greater force into the dark abyss of endless despair. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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ILLUSTRATING HUME’S OBSERVATIONS OF ANNE BULLEN

“Anecdote of Anne Bullen,” The New  York Magazine, or Literary Repository, vol. 5, no. 9 (September 1794), p. 534. Anonymous Robert Campbell (1769–​ 1800) published by subscription in Philadelphia the first American edition of Hume’s History in 1795–​96. (See “Introduction to Part  III.” For more on the 326 subscribers, see Spencer, David Hume and Eighteenth-​Century America, including “Appendix B.”) By then, Hume’s History was firmly established as the standard account from which Americans learned their English history. Excerpts from the History, such as this one from The New  York Magazine, are scattered throughout eighteenth-​century American periodical publications. The New York Magazine was long-​lived, being published by Thomas and James Swords from 1790 to 1797. The Swords brothers, both Loyalists, had fled New York, for Halifax, in 1783. But in 1790 they returned to New York where they carried on their work as booksellers and publishers. Hume figured in several of their publications. This anecdote related to Anne Bullen (c. 1501–​36) circulated widely in nineteenth-​century publications, although not always accompanied by the Shakespeare quotation. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ IN Houssaie’s Memoires, Vol. i. p. 435, a little circumstance is recorded concerning the decapitation of the unfortunate Anne Bullen, which illustrates an observation of Hume. Our Historian notices, that her executioner was a Frenchman of Calais, who was supposed to have uncommon skill:  it is probable that the following incident might have been preserved by tradition in France, from the account of the executioner himself. —​Anne Bullen being on the scaffold, would

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not consent to have her eyes covered with a bandage, saying, that she had no fear of death. All that the Divine, who assisted at her execution, could obtain from her, was, that she would shut her eyes. But as she was opening them at every moment, the executioner, fearful of missing his aim, was obliged to invent an expedient to behead the Queen. He drew off his shoes, and approached her silently; while he was at her left hand, another person advanced at her right, who made a great noise in walking, so that his circumstance drawing the attention of Anne, she turned her face from the executioner, who was enabled by this artifice to strike the fatal blow, without being disarmed by that spirit of affecting resignation which shone in the eyes of the lovely Anne Bullen.     ‘The Common Executioner, Whose heart th’ accustom’d sight of     death makes hard, Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck, But first begs pardon.’        SHAKESPEARE

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HUME’S ESSAY “ON MIRACLES” HARROWED UP FROM THE GULPH OF OBLIVION

“ART. XXVII. An Enquiry into the Pretensions of Richard Brothers, in Answer to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed. By a Freethinker. 8vo. 18. Sterl. Parsons, &c,” The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, vol. 2, no. 2 (June 1795), pp.197–​8. Anonymous While Hume’s essay “On Miracles” was generally well-​known in colonial America, the 1790s witnessed a renewed interest in it that continued through to the 1840s. See, in Part II, selections #13, 15, 23, 26, and 27; and below, selection #116. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751–​1830) was a noted English Orientalist. The work to which “a Freethinker” responded, however, came out of Halhed’s discipleship of Richard Brothers (1757–​1824), an Anglo-​Israelite. Halhed’s Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of Richard Brothers was first published in London in 1795. The reference to “Dr. Adams” is to Dr. William Adams (1706–​89) who had published an early response to Hume in An Essay on Mr. Hume’s Essay on Miracles (1752). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ ART. XXVII. An Enquiry into the Pretensions of Richard Brothers, in Answer to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed. By a Freethinker. 8vo. 18. Sterl. Parsons, &c. NOTHING but extremes with some people! This Freethinker neither believes in Mr. Brothers as a prophet, nor in any prophets ancient or modern; no, nor in any alleged miracle whatever! To shew his enmity to and contempt of the miraculous powers that have been ascribed to human beings, he has added to his inquiry a new edition of David Hume’s Essay on that subject; which performance he has harrowed up from the gulph of oblivion, whither it had long ago been consigned by the learned labours of Dr. Adams, &c. &c.

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CRITICAL REMARKS ON HUME

“Critical Remarks on some of the most eminent Historians of England. [From Gardenstone’s Miscellanies.],” The New  York Magazine, or Literary Repository, (June 1797), pp. 295–​300. [Francis Garden, Lord Gardenstone] Francis Garden, Lord Gardenstone (1721–​93), a Scottish jurist, was Judge on the Scottish Courts of Session and Justiciary. “Critical Remarks on some of the most eminent Historians of England,” provided an excerpt from Garden’s Miscellanies in Prose and Verse; Including Remarks on English Plays, Operas, and Farces, And on a Variety of Other Modern Publications (Edinburgh, 1791). For another modern reprinting of this piece, and much else of value related to Hume’s History, see James Fieser, ed. Early Responses to Hume’s “History of England” (2002; revised edition, Bristol, 2005), pp. 188–​92; which is vol. 8 in his 10-​volume set, Early Responses to Hume. On The New York Magazine, see selection #97. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Critical Remarks on some of the most eminent Historians of England. [From Gardenstone’s Miscellanies.] THOUGH we are now in the close of the eighteenth century, the history of this island has never been studied with proper attention. That portion of it, in particular, which precedes the reformation, seems, at present, buried in profound neglect. For this misfortune, sufficient reasons may be assigned; an hundred and fifty years were wasted in theological frenzy, or in defeating the tyranny of the house of Stuart, and a modern compiler of general history is strongly tempted to rush with precipitation over the remoter periods, and to reserve his abilities and research for those later scenes, in which a reader of the present day is more heartily interested. —​On some of these modern authors, a few candid observations may repay a perusal.

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The name of RAPIN is now almost forgotten; and Mr. Hume in the end of this English History, has branded him as an author “the most despicable both in style and matter.” The censure is invidious, and unjust: His work contains an immense multitude of interesting circumstances, wholly omitted by the Scottish author. From his personal situation, a classical composition was not to be expected. He wrote a more complete General History of England than had ever appeared in this country; and whatever be his faults, it would be ungenerous to deny his uncommon merit. SALMON made an essay on the same subject. Though short, it contains much information, which is not to be found in more voluminous historians of England. His own reflexions are brief, lively, and sensible. It is usual to represent Richard III. as deformed and decrepid; yet these very authors inform us, that he unhorsed and killed with his own hand the standard-​bearer of Henry VII. who was reputed to be the strongest knight in the rebel army. The inconsistency of these two stories is pointed out by Salmon. He has left behind him no work of very superior value, yet he must have been an author of superior abilities; for, without becoming tiresome, he has written more than most of us have read. The same remarks apply with equal justice to Dr. SMOLLET. The immense bulk of his writings proves that he composed with greater facility than ordinary men are able to converse. By his own account, in the expedition of Humphrey Clinker, it appears that he very often wrote merely for wages; and on such occasions, nothing above mediocrity can with reason be demanded. The continuation of his English History, from 1748 to 1764, is a mere catchpenny chaos, without even a spark of merit. There is great reason to believe that he, or rather his journeymen, copied at random from somebody else, most of the quotations and references arranged with so much parade on the margin of his text. GUTHRIE has left behind him more than one ponderous fabric on British history. He had sense, learning, candour; and industry. He had an original manner, and wished to think for himself: But to elegance, he was an entire stranger, and to that happy choice of circumstances which forms an instructive historian; he was often familiar without perspicuity, and prolix without completeness. No writer is at present less popular. A geographical grammar has been printed under his name; but it is generally understood, that he had no share in tis composition. In point of style, Mr. HUME may be studied as a perfect model. Pure, nervous, eloquent, he is simple without weakness, and sublime without effect. In the art of telling an humorous story, he can never be excelled; and when he chose to exert himself, he was even a considerable master of the pathetic: But it was his misfortune to despise accuracy of research, and fidelity of citation. He was a bitter

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Tory; and while detection flashed in his face, he commonly adhered to whatever he had once written. His account of the house of Stuart is not the statement of an historian, but the memorial of a pleader in a Court of Justice. He sometimes asserts a positive untruth, contradicted by the very author whom he pretends himself to be quoting; but more commonly gains his purpose, by suppressing the whole evidence on the opposite side of the question. His conduct in the controversy with Mr. Tytler, can hardly be defended:  And his injurious treatment of Queen Mary of Scotland is not more disgusting than his farcical panegyrics on the virtues of her posterity. When we examine Mrs. Macaulay’s performance on the same period, we meet with a profusion of interesting intelligence, of which the mere reader of Hume has not the most distant conception. The Scottish historian gives but short and partial excerpts from the writers of the times. His female antagonist, on the other hand, gives large extracts from the original writers; and though to a superficial eye, her work assumes an air less pleasing and classical, what is lost in elegance is fully repaid in authenticity. He is a zealous advocate for the ceremonies of the Church of England. He censures those brave and able men who resisted and defeated her usurpations; and to whom we are, at this day, indebted for our liberties. He attempts to prove, that Episcopacy is preferable to Presbyterianism, and that Laud may be vindicated for persecuting the dissenters. Had Mr. Hume been serious in this opinion, he might have deserved an answer. But on turning over to his Essays, we are surprised by the most stupendous and unblushing contradiction. One chief end of his metaphysical writings is to extinguish every sentiment of religion. The same Court, therefore, which sent Bastwick and Prynne to the pillory, would, with far less injustice, have sent our historian himself to a more decided situation. What are we to think of a professed infidel defending the barbarous insolence of the priesthood? Mr. Hume has expressed much indignation at that memorable act of justice, the execution of Charles I. His two elder sons ought to have shared the same fate. Their annals are distinguished by endless usurpations, plots, rebellions, and massacres; by two foreign wars, and a revolution. We cannot but observe with the honest Dutchman, that their predecessor “was quite another man.” Had Cromwell survived but for ten years longer, we should have heard no more about the posterity of “the Holy Martyr.” James I. butchered Sir Walter Raleigh, without the form of a trial. Mr. Hume tells us, that his measure “was esteemed an instance of the utmost cruelty and injustice;” and his vindication of James is one of the most elaborate passages in his whole work. The best of his arguments appears to be, “that no jury would have found Raleigh guilty!”

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At the sentence of Lord Bacon, Mr. Hume adds, that James “conferred on him a large pension of eighteen hundred pounds a-​year, and employed every expedient to alleviate the weight of his age and misfortunes.” This pension would have been equivalent to six or eight thousand pounds sterling at the present day: And as his Majesty had nothing of his own, it must have been transferred from the pockets of his subjects. The transaction at best could have but resembled an apprentice interfering with his master’s till; a comparison which applies to most other examples of royal munificence. But the fact is, that Bacon, from the time of his sentence, lived as he died, in beggary. On this point, the reader may consult Mrs. Macaulay and her authorities. Mr. Hume has canted much about the death of Strafford, and claims the merit of having shed some “generous tears” on that subject. All that he says, put together, is not worth a single expression of honest Pym. When Strafford, then a leader of Opposition, for the sake of a place at Court, deserted the public cause; “you have left us,” said Pym, “but we shall not leave you while your head is on your shoulders;” and he kept his word. No part of our historian’s performance has been more controverted than that relative to Queen Mary. Perhaps the next age may consider her conduct in a light equally different from her present accusers and her apologists. I would met the former on their own ground, and frankly reply, that the brutal insolence of Darnly to his wife, his sovereign, his benefactress, deserved ten deaths; and that Mary, if connected with the conspirators, was at worst but an executioner of justice. If she wanted to depose and destroy Elizabeth, still the ruin of her country, the massacre of her friends, the loss of her kingdom, her liberty, and her child, justified her revenge. Let us, for example, suppose that Mr. Hume had been confined in one of the dungeons of the Holy Office at Lisbon, and that he had obtained a chance of escaping. Query, Would he have refused freedom, for fear of injuring the inquisitor who arrested him? Surely he could not have scrupled at knocking out the brains of the whole fraternity? Many modern historians, and among others, Mr. Hume, have fallen into the practice of quaint wiredrawn portraits. The virtues and literary genius of James I. for instance, are expanded by our author into a quarto page, which can be regarded but as waste paper. As a man of taste, Mr. Hume is often extremely singular. He affirms that Shakespeare “was totally ignorant of all theatrical art and conduct; that it is in vain we look either for continued purity, or simplicity of diction; and that he cannot for any time uphold a reasonable propriety of thought.” There is much more to the same purpose.

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Mr. Hume, in common with most of our historians, has omitted to give an account of his materials. A judicious reader, when he sees them perpetually referred to, will ask who is Froissart, and who is Rhymer? Till the accession of the house of Tudor, his narrative is abrupt. For example; the reign of Edward III. extended to almost half a century, and is one of the most busy and memorable in ancient or modern annals. It is compressed by Mr. Hume within an hundred octavo pages, while the reign of Elizabeth alone fills one of his largest volumes. His warmest admirers must allow, that he betrays a wide disproportion of parts in the execution of his plan: But in truth, it was by far too extensive to be completed by any single pen. It was necessary to write a book of a saleable size. As an epitome of English History, it is too large; but as a complete history, it is by far too short. We often see whole folios printed on the antiquities of a single town, or a single country parish. Why then should we think it tiresome to read twenty or thirty volumes on the national history of our ancestors? Mr. Hume, like many men of eminence, has performed too little, by attempting to perform too much; yet his writings afford universal and lasting pleasure. The distinctness of his manner, and the acuteness or plausibility of his general observations, cast a veil over the errors and deficiencies of his narrative.

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100

HUME TOOK AWAY ALL FOUNDATION

“Some Account of the Religious Exercises of David Hudson, written by himself,” The New-​York Missionary Magazine, and Repository of Religious Intelligence, vol. 2, no. 4 (4 January 1801), pp. 294–​302. David Hudson David Hudson (1761–​1836) here demonstrated a real-​life context for the fear, often expressed in less-​memorable ways by others who wrote in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, of the impact of Hume’s “Of Miracles” essay. The New-​York Missionary Magazine was produced by Cornelius Davis (dates unknown) of the New York Missionary Society. It was published from 1800 to 1803 in New York City by Thomas and James Swords (on them, see selection #97). On The New-​York Magazine, see Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, p. 133. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Some Account of the Religious Exercises of David Hudson, written by himself. I WAS born of religious parents, and received an early education in the principles of religion, according to the Calvinistic Presbyterian plan professed in the state. At a very early age I was taught the Assembly of Divines Catechism, and made the Bible a great part of my reading. I was taught a very great reverence for divine revelation, and the strict observance of the Sabbath. Unfortunately for me, when I was about nine years of age, my father embraced the sentiments of the Baptists, and made a public profession of their principles and worship. He then undertook to unlearn a part of the Catechism, which relates to Baptism, and taught his children, that although the Catechism was true in the main, yet some of the answers were utterly false. I had a brother of uncommon sagacity, about two years older than myself. This conduct of my father gave

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such a shock to our tender minds, that he never regained his authority over us in the belief of any religious sentiment. Children naturally look up to their parents for instruction. Their belief, in early life, is hereditary; and it is an indispensible duty in parents to be firm and consistent in their instructions, and to do their duty without wavering. From this period of time we began to be sceptical, and dispute upon the reasonableness of the eternity of punishment, and divine sovereignty, original sin, vicarious sufferings, &c. Our respect and reverence for the Bible, Catechism, holy time and ordinances, gradually diminished till another more severe shock assaulted us. When I was about fifteen years of age, my father quitted his Anabaptist sentiments, and embraced Quakerism; he was naturally dogmatical, and his being very confident in three different ways of thinking, naturally increased my suspicions of the truth of all religion. I now felt a disposition, if possible, to disprove the truth of divine revelation; I though the principle of self-​denial and mortifications unreasonable; and as pleasure was the natural pursuit of every human being, I viewed every abridgement as a kind of monastic penance. At about the age of twenty-​two years I read the Essays of Lord Kaimes, and was much pleased to find any thing in his writings which operated against the Mosaic account of the creation of the world. Soon after this, I  read Hume’s Essays, and drank deep of the poison of that subtle reasoner. I was peculiarly pleased with his Essay on Miracles, and from this date I was confirmed in infidelity. Hume took away all foundation, and left the belief of nothing. That artful sceptic slily undermined almost all principles, and left nothing certain. I almost doubted my very existence, and felt uncertain, whether all which I thought I saw, felt, or heard, was merely ideal, or whether I really existed. I disbelieved the existence of good or evil angles, the future state of retribution, &c. Upon the whole, I thought, I reasoned, that mankind came into the world with infant minds and bodies; that the mind and body acquired maturity together, and would probably perish together. I reasoned hard upon the very existence of God, whether the beautiful creation was occasioned by the fortuitous effect of chance. Upon the whole, I could not make myself an Atheist; the light of nature taught, that chance could not possibly produce the order of nature: indeed, the small knowledge which I had acquired in astronomy and the study of nature, and the wonderful works of God, naturally refer to an Almighty workman. Besides, a strong sense of accountability which I could not eradicate, and the desire of the soul for something which this world could not afford, exceedingly perplexed me.

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In this very uncomfortable state of mind I lived many years; I tried hard to establish myself in some foundation which would satisfy my own mind; and, upon the whole, I determined to live a moral life, and trust in the mercy of God for forgiveness of the failings I might fall into. But this plan did not satisfy me. I was not authorised, on my own principles, to trust in the mercy of God: human reason shewed me no way of reconciliation with an angry God. These thoughts, at times, gave me great trouble; but, however, I could not think of abandoning my sceptical principles, if an utter doubt of every principle can with propriety be called principles. I felt, or thought I felt myself an exceeding great friend to my country, and I  really thought all religion a barbarous mummery, and believed it to consist entirely of a mixture of superstition and enthusiasm, and, on that ground, I  heartily wished my country clear from the imposition. I  was much pleased when informed that the enlightened French had burnt their Bibles, and abolished the Sabbath; and entertained great hopes of seeing mankind completely good and happy, under the guidance of pure and illuminated reason. I was greatly confirmed in these sentiments, by comparing myself with many professing Christians, and I felt a degree of triumph, that my moral character was better, far better than some of theirs; I lived upon their failings and immoralities. In this temper of mind, I could read, with pleasure, Volney, Bolingbroke, the Oracles of Reason, the vile blackguardism of Thomas Paine, or the more uncandid and disingenuous squibs of Boulinger. I now meant to hold and keep my ground, valued myself on my abilities to argue against revelation, and did not design any event of providence should move me. I now waited the event with anxiety, expecting to behold, in the French nation, an example of morality, far exceeding any thing of the kind which had hitherto happened, and was a little disappointed to find some of their conduct exceptionable; but I endeavoured to excuse them by the plea of necessity: but how were my feelings shocked at their conduct in the sequel! Language fails in the description! The powers of rhetoric fail in accounting their enormities! Compared with some of their leaders, a Nero appears a saint, or a Cataline immaculate! The nation at large is sunk into the lowest imaginable degree of vice, and their enormities almost exceed belief. I was so exceedingly shocked at this disappointment, that before I was aware, I  found myself (if I  may use the expression) a Political Christian! I  sincerely lamented that I had ever used my influence to bring the Christian religion into disrepute, because I fully believed mankind could not be governed, or even civilized without it. I  had scarcely opened my Bible for 20  years:  I  now began to

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look into it again, to examine whether the principles of Christianity were of that intrinsic excellence, that mankind must be governed by its precepts or not at all. My knowledge of history and geography convinced me, that were Christianity was not known, the human race were completely wretched, and that where its precepts were most regarded, and Christianity practised in its greatest purity, the condition of mankind was most ameliorated, and that every intermediate state of happiness which mankind enjoyed, was in a pretty exact ratio to the degree of genuine Christianity which was professed and practised. These being the real facts, from whence is the cause of these things? Is it not fair and just to ascribe the reason to the superior excellence of Christianity itself? The transition from political Christianity to what is called speculative Christianity is short and easy. I now called to the bar of mature reason the evidences of Christianity, which I had formerly, but very partially examined, and that at a very early period of life; and, upon a re-​examination, I found I could not possibly account for the existence of the Jewish nation in its present divided state, scattered over the whole earth, upon any rational principles. It appeared without a parallel in history, and it is undoubtedly much of the nature of a standing miracle in support of divine revelation. There are other external evidences of great weight, but this appeared the most formidable —​it being an argument which I never did, or could disprove to my own satisfaction. I now found myself in a situation I had not experienced since my very childhood; I mean a speculative faith; and was astonished how mankind, professing to believe the bible, could possibly act so exceedingly inconsistent with themselves. The truth of the gospel appeared all-​important, and well deserving the immediate attention of every reasonable being; and yet mankind, professing to believe those truths, were as stupid and unconcerned as if they expected to continue in this world for ever. These feelings operated powerfully on my mind in the course of the summer of 1798. But I had not long time to stand amazed at the conduct of others. I soon found myself acting the inconsistent part which I inwardly so much censured in others. I felt an heavy weight of guilt accumulating upon me, for which I saw no forgiveness. I had spoken so many severe things and blasphemies against the gospel, against Jesus Christ, and the operations of the Spirit, and against divine revelation, that there appeared for me no mercy. In the autumn of 1798, my conviction increased upon me; but as I had formerly treated such feelings with ridicule, my pride would not permit me to unburden my soul to any person living. I hated company, but when in it I endeavoured to appear cheerful, and took pains to deceive the world. I felt a great desire to pray to God for his assistance

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and mercy, but I had been such a great sinner, that I felt as if it would be a gross piece of effrontery to address my Maker. I thought it would be a great privilege if I could feel a freedom to ejaculate the short prayer of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” In this state of despair I continued some time, until my feelings became so powerful, that one evening I unburdened myself to the Rev. Mr. Hooker, and in a few words told him my situation, which gave me a little relief. I now had to contend with a formidable enemy, namely the pride and naughtiness of my own heart. I felt it my indispensible duty immediately to begin a religious life: I felt some freedom in secret prayer, and at times a small ray of hope would penetrate the gloomy darkness. I felt a great desire to pray in my family, and to teach and instruct my children; but the cross was too great. I distrusted my ability to make a prayer which would be acceptable to God, or decent and proper before my family. I considered a formal one as mere mockery, and would, undoubtedly, be an “abomination in the sight of the Lord;” and I thought likewise, that it would be much better not to make the attempt than to begin and not persevere; but, above all, my pride was wounded: I had lived a long time in the open profession of infidelity, and could not willingly meet the scoffs of all my neighbours and acquaintance, who I expected would call me a turncoat, a fool, or an enthusiast:  indeed, “the fear of man, which bringeth a snare,” restrained me for months from coming openly forward in so unpopular a thing as experimental religion. In the midst of these cogitations, I, like Jonah of old, formed a design of fleeing from the presence of the Lord, and removing myself to the solitary wilds of the Connecticut western reserve, and there commence a life of religion, where my former way of thinking was unknown; and I conceived the cross would be much less there, than to confess Christ in this place. I had a number of times determined on some particular time when I  would commence family religion, but the above reasons deterred me. Still, however (although I  enjoyed some freedom in secret prayer), the burden of guilt increased; I felt my desire still continue to instruct my children to pray, but felt myself in an awkward situation in attempting to instruct them in what they never saw me practise. I now found that it was almost as easy for an Ethiopean to change his skin, or the leopard his spots, as for one who had got habits of evil fixed to learn to do well. I lamented exceedingly the hardness of my heart, and mourned, in vain, the loss of those days of childhood wherein my mind was tender, and feelings susceptible of religious impressions. The consciousness of being entirely alone added to the weight of my feelings and the darkness of the gloom. I felt hedged in on every side. My own morality forsook me: my righteousness appeared to me as filthy rags. I saw

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and realized myself as the chief of sinners. I had lived to the meridian of life in a most decided opposition to God, and had exerted my feeble influence entirely on the side of the grand adversary. I  felt the wonderful goodness and condescension of God, in sending his Son to die, the just for the unjust; and yet my heart was so proud I  could not submit to his government, and acknowledge him before men, or even engage in social prayer, for the vile fear of many which bringeth a snare. After much earnest, humble entreaty with God in private for his grace and assistance to perform all my Christian duties aright, and for perseverance therein (thanks to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ), I commenced family worship, and I think I may say, that in the first attempt at social prayer in my family, I  found that peace which passeth all understanding; a peace which the world cannot give nor take away, which was exceedingly refreshing indeed, after so long and tedious a night of gloomy fears and darkness. I most earnestly entreated the Almighty for his spirit to guide me into all truth, and I  had a strong faith that my prayers were well pleasing to God, as the humble petition of the prodigal is represented in the parable, who, “while he was yet a great way off, the Father had compassion on him, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” Indeed, the whole parable appeared to be strictly applicable to my case. I immediately sat down to breakfast with my family, admiring in my heart the goodness of God in giving such undeserved and unexpected comfort and serenity of mind; my thoughts turned on the dependence of my children, who came round my table lisping their wants; and feeling for them as I did for myself, the following text came to my mind as very deeply to affect me. “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father bestow the Holy Spirit to them that ask him,” I immediately felt strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, and felt as if I could hardly forgive myself the very idea of being ashamed of the cross. I felt my inclinations and desires entirely changed. I wanted all my neighbours to partake with me of the waters of life. I wanted them to cry out with me in the words of the Psalmist, “Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men.” I did not want now to flee five hundred miles into the wilderness to confess Christ in private; but I had an ardent desire, that as far as my deism had been published, my recantation might be known. “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will to men.” DAVID HUDSON. Goshen (Connecticut), April 8, 1799.

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HUME ON SPENSER’S FAERY QUEEN

“AN AUTHOR’S EVENINGS. FROM THE SHOP OF MESSRS. COLON AND SPONDEE,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 1] (7 February 1801), pp. 44–​5; selection p. 44. [Royall Tyler] In the early years of the nineteenth century, Hume was a frequent topic in the pages of The Port Folio magazine edited by Joseph Dennie (1768–​1812). In this instance, in the series “An Author’s Evenings,” submitted by Dennie’s friend and sometimes-​ collaborator, the author and jurist Royall Tyler (1757–​1826). As a playwright, Tyler is best remembered for The Contrast (first performed in New York in 1787 and published in 1790). The passage from the History referred to below is found in vol. iv, “Appendix III,” where Hume wrote in part: “The tediousness of continued allegory, and that too seldom striking or ingenious has also contributed to render the Fairy Queen peculiarly tiresome; not to mention the too great frequency of its descriptions, and the langour of its stanza. Upon the whole, Spencer maintains his place in the shelves among our English classics: But he is seldom seen on the table; and there is scarcely any one, if he dares to be ingenuous, but will confess, that, notwithstanding all the merit of the poet, he affords an entertainment with which the palate is soon satiated” (p. 386). On Tyler see Jason Shaffer’s entry on him in EAE, vol. 2, pp. 1056–​7; and Thomas G. Tanselle, Royall Tyler (Cambridge, 1967). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ FOR THE PORT FOLIO. AN AUTHOR’S EVENINGS. FROM THE SHOP OF MESSRS. COLON AND SPONDEE.

——“​ For you I tame my youth to philosophic cares, And grow still paler by the midnight lamps.” Dr. ARMSTRONG.

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I AM sorry to remark among the majority of readers, an indifference to the Faery Queen of Spenser. Mr. HUME, I  believe, is responsible for this neglect of the works of an old, but excellent poet. Men were told, in the most popular History of England, that Spenser’s stanza was tiresome, and his allegories task reading. But, we may question the authority of a metaphysician, dogmatizing in criticism, and that criticism too, affecting the works of a poet. The Faery Queen may be confidently recommended. It has a “mint of poetical phrases,” and the allegories, though sometimes tedious, are always vivid, and well supported. Above all, this poem may be highly praised for the excellency of tis sentiments. They are lofty, chivalric, and honourable. They eraze from the heart every thing that is mean and little. They excite the mind, as Sir Philip Sidney once said, like the sound of a trumpet. This poem was written, not in jacobinical times, nor addressed to levellers, nor to philosophers, nor to rebels, nor to farthing misers of the school of Franklin; but it was published in a HIGH TONED AGE, when honour, principle, loyalty, generosity and glory stood in the first rank; and the “rascal rabble” were coerced by the salutary restraints of potent authority. It was dedicated to “men of high erected thoughts, seated in a heart of courtesy.”

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HISTORY A PROPER OBJECT OF FEMALE PURSUIT

“History a proper object of Female Pursuit. (EXTRACTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF HUME.),” The Lady’s Magazine and Musical Repository (February 1801), pp. 91–​5. David Hume Hume’s short essay “Of the Study of History” was first published in the Essays, Moral and Political of 1741. It was included in every edition of the Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects through 1760, after which it was withdrawn, perhaps because writing his own history had led Hume to rethink what he had speculatively written on the topic earlier in life. (For a modern reprinting of it, see Essays, pp. 563–​8.) Nonetheless, it is interesting to find the essay reprinted in a periodical directed at early America’s female readers. The Lady’s Magazine and Musical Repository was a short-​lived monthly (published in New York by G. & R. Waite and B. Bell), with three volumes appearing between January 1801 and June 1802. For a discussion of other American reprintings of this and other of Hume’s essays, see “Introduction to Part I.” _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ History a proper object of Female Pursuit. (EXTRACTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF HUME.)

THERE is nothing I  would recommend more earnestly to my female readers than the study of history, as an occupation, of all others, the best suited both to their sex and education; much more instructive than their ordinary books of amusement, and more entertaining than those serious compositions which are usually to be found in their closets.

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Among other important truths, which they may learn from history, they may be informed of two particulars, the knowledge of which may contribute very much to their quiet and repose. That our sex, as well as their’s are far from being such perfect creatures as they are apt to imagine; and, That love is not the only passions that governs the male world, but is often overcome by avarice, ambition, vanity, and a thousand other passions. Whether they be the false representations of mankind in those two particulars, that endears romances and novels so much to the fair sex, I know not; but must confess, I am sorry to see them have such an aversion to matter of fact, and such an appetite for falsehood. I remember, I was once desired by a young beauty, for whom I had some passion, to send her some novels and romances for her amusement in the country; but was not so ungenerous as to take the advantage which such a course of reading might have given me, being resolved not to make use of poisoned arms against her. I therefore sent her Plutarch’s Lives, assuring her at the same time, that there was not a word of truth in them from beginning to end. She perused them very attentively, till she came to the lives of Alexander and Caesar, whose names she had heard by accident; and then returned me the book, with many reproaches for deceiving her. I may indeed be told, that the fair sex have no such aversion to history as I have represented, provided it be secret history, and contain some memorable transaction proper to excite their curiosity. But as I do not find that truth, which is the basis of history, is at all regarded in those anecdotes, I cannot admit of this as a proof of their passion for that study. However this may be, I see not why the same curiosity might not receive a more proper direction, and leave them to desire accounts of those who lived in past ages, as well as of their contemporaries. What is it to Cleora, whether Fulvia entertains a secret commerce of love with Philander or not? Has she not equal reason to be pleased, when she is informed (what is whispered about among historians) that Cato’s sister had an intrigue with Caesar, and palmed her son, Marcus Brutus, upon her husband for his own, though, in reality, he was her gallant’s? And are not the loves of Messalina or Julia, as proper subjects of discourse as any intrigue that this city has produced of late years? But I know not whence it comes, that I have been thus seduced into a kind of raillery against the ladies; unless, perhaps it proceeds from the same cause that makes the person who is the favorite of the company be often the object of their good-​natured jests and pleasantries. We are pleased to address ourselves after any manner to a person that is agreeable to us; and, at the same time presume, that nothing will be taken amiss by one who is secure of the good opinion and affection of every one present. I  shall now proceed to handle my subject

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more seriously, and shall point out many advantages that flow from the study of history; and shew how well suited it is to every one, but particularly to those who are debarred the severer studies, by the tenderness of their complexion, and the weakness of their education. The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue. In reality, what more agreeable entertainment to the mind, than to be transported into the remotest ages of the world, and to observe human society, in its infancy, making the first faint essays towards the arts and sciences:  to see the policy of government, and the civility of conversation, refining by degrees, and every thing that is ornamental to human life advancing towards its perfection: to remark the rise, progress, declensions, and final extinction of the most flourishing empires:  the virtues which contributed to their greatness, and the vices which drew on their ruin. In short, to see all the human race, from the beginning of time, pass, as it were, in review before us; appearing in their true colours, without any of those disguises, which, during their life time, so much perplexed the judgments of the beholders. What spectacle can be imagined so magnificent, so various, so interesting? What amusements, either of the senses or imagination, can be compared with it? Shall those trifling pastimes, which engross so much of our time, be preferred as more satisfactory, and more fit to engage our attention? How perverse must that taste be, which is capable of so wrong a choice of pleasures? But history is a most improving part of knowledge, as well as an agreeable amusement; and, indeed, a great part of what we commonly call erudition, and value so highly, is nothing but an acquaintance with historical facts. An extensive knowledge of this kind belongs to men of letters; but I  must think it an unpardonable ignorance in persons, of whatever sex or condition, not to be acquainted with the history of their own country, along with the histories of ancient Greece and Rome. A  woman may behave herself with good manners, and have even some vivacity in her turn of wit; but where her mind is so unfurnished, it is impossible her conversation can afford any entertainment to men of sense and reflection. I must add, that history is not only a valuable part of knowledge, but opens the door to many other parts of knowledge, and affords materials to most of the sciences. And, indeed, if we consider the shortness of human life, and our limited knowledge even of what passes in our own time, we must be sensible, that we should be for ever children in understanding, was it not for this invention, which extends our experience to all past ages, and to the most distance

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nations; making them contribute as much to our improvement in wisdom, as if they had actually lain under our own observation. A man acquainted with history, may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century. There is also an advantage in that knowledge which is acquired by history, above what is learned by the practice of the world, —​that it brings us acquainted with human affairs, without diminishing in the least, the most delicate sentiments of virtue. And, to tell the truth, I know not any study or occupation so unexceptionable as history in this particular. Poets can paint virtue in the most charming colours; but as they address themselves entirely to the passions, they often become advocates for vice. Even philosophers are apt to bewilder themselves in the subtilty of their speculations; and we have seen some go so far as to deny the reality of all moral distinctions. But I think it a remark worthy the attention of the speculative reader, that the historians have been, almost without exception, the true friends of virtue, and have always represented [it] in its proper colours, however they may have erred in their judgments of particular persons. Machiavel himself discovers a true sentiment of virtue in his history of Florence. When he talks as a politician, in his general reasonings, he considers poisoning, assassination, and perjury, as lawful acts of power; but when he speaks as an historian, in his particular narrations, he shews so keen an indignation against vice, and so warm an approbation of virtue, in so many passages, that I could not forbear applying to him that remark of Horace, —​That if you chance away nature, though with ever so great indignity, she will always return upon you. Nor is this combination of historians, in favour of virtue, at all difficult to be accounted for. When a man of business enters into life and action, he is more apt to consider the characters of men as they have relation to his interest, than as they stand in themselves: and has his judgment warped on every occasion by the violence of his passion. When a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet, the general abstract view of the objects leaves the mind so cold and unmoved, that the sentiments of nature have no room to play, and he scarce feels the difference betwixt vice and virtue. History keeps in a just medium betwixt these extremes, and places the objects in their true point of view. The writers of history, as well as the readers, are sufficiently interested in the characters and events to have a lively sentiment of blame or praise; and at the same time, have no particular interest or concern to prevent their judgment. D. HUME.

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HUME ON THE RISE OF AMERICA

“LONDON REVIEW,” The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review Containing Sketches and Reports of Philosophy, Religion, History, Arts, and Manners, vol. 1, no. 4 (1 May 1804), pp. 323–​5. Anonymous The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review was a relatively successful miscellany, published in ten volumes from November 1803 through June 1811. The editor for its first six months was David Phineas Adams, a Harvard graduate and Boston school teacher. Starting with the May 1804 issue, in which the piece reprinted below appeared, the editor was the Rev. William Emerson (1769–​1811), the father of then-​infant Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–​82). On the Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review, see Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, pp. 253–​5. On Hume’s advice to Edward Gibbon (1737–​94), referred to below, see his letter to Gibbon of 24 October 1767: “Let the French … triumph in the present diffusion of their tongue. Our solid and increasing establishments in America, where we need less dread the inundation of Barbarians, promise a superior stability and duration to the English language” (G.Y.T. Greig, ed. The Letters of David Hume, 2 volumes [Oxford, 1932], vol. 2, p. 171). As other selections in this volume also show, Hume’s American reception was influenced by the circulation of his private correspondence, once published. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

LONDON REVIEW. AS literary men are commonly curious to learn the opinion of foreigners respecting the scientific character of their country, the readers of the Monthly

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Anthology are here presented with an extract from the London Catalogue of the New London Review for part of the year 1799. DAVID HUME, to dissuade GIBBON from writing, rather in the French, than in the English language, foretold to him, with exultation, that the empire of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE would one day be prodigiously strengthened and enlarged by means of the British settlements in America and in India. It has happened as he foretold. From the port of London, from Glasgow, from Liverpool, there is a very large annual exportation of British books to NORTH AMERICA. In Philadelphia, at New-​York, and in the other more considerable towns of the American States, a very great diversity of English publications continually issue from the press; newspapers, magazines, reviews, and annual registers, the usual variety of periodical works, are all published, in great abundance, among the Americans. And, though much of the literary matter which they contain, is borrowed from European books; yet a great quantity of very excellent original communications likewise appears in them. The transactions of the American Philosophical Society are regularly published, after convenient intervals; nor can they fail to interest, in a very high degree, the curiosity of the philosophers of Europe. Morse has successfully laboured to illustrate the history and the geography of America. Smith, a philosopher of the school of Kaimes, Hume, and Robertson, has in some dissertations and sermons, exhibited a spirit of research, a vein of original thinking, and a manly vigour of composition, not unworthy of his masters, even where he contests their opinions and corrects their errours. Joel Barlow who came to Europe, as an apostle of democratical reform, had before distinguished himself, as the author of some excellent poesy, of genuine American growth. Dwight’s Conquest of Canaan, and other poems more recently written, are certainly not inferiour in merit, to much of the contemporary poetry of Britain. Trumbul’s MacFingal has risen to the rank of a classic in America, as a mock-​heroic poem; and is even well-​known in this country. Yet, in truth, it appears to us, not so surprising, that these poets have already thus adorned the English literature of America; as that a region where life is still so considerably rural, where the beauties of nature are so wild, so luxuriant; so sublime and picturesque, so endlessly varied, where there is so much to favour their melancholy musing which elevates the soul to poetic ecstasies; should not yet have produced poetical excellence even of a higher class than has appeared in the old world, either in ancient, or in modern times.

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Medical literature, too, has been very much cultivated in America, though the physicians of Philadelphia and New  York, have, indeed, been hitherto, unable, to extirpate those dreadful, epidemical disorders, by which the ranks of life are, there, from time to time, so terribly thinned; they have, however, recorded a number of very interesting medical facts respecting the oeconomy of human health; and have arranged these under several theories not destitute of ingenuity. Among those who have the most ardently cultivated the natural history of America in its connexion with medicine, is Dr Benjamin Smith Barton. His Materia Medica from America, is now in a train of publication. Some parts of it which we have seen in London, incline us to expect, that the whole work will prove highly valuable and useful. All the most classical works of English philosophy and literature are reprinted and read in America with the greatest fondness. Distance of place seems, here, to operate with somewhat of the same efficacy as remoteness of time; and contribute to make the Americans regard our best English authors, with a veneration greater than they have been able to command at home, and scarcely less than if they had been the contemporaries and rivals of a Homer or a Tully, or any others of the most illustrious writers of antiquity.

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TWO MEN TRAVELLING ON THE HIGHWAY

Untitled Essay, Prospect: or, View of the Moral World, vol. 4 (26 January 1805), pp. 30–​1. David Hume Prospect was an anti-​Christian weekly, published in New York from 1803 to 1805 and edited by Elihu Palmer (1764–​1806). One of the American Enlightenment’s most infamous deists, Palmer was described by G. Adolf Koch as a “militant deist” (DAB, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 177–​179, quotation on 177). While Palmer was widely known in the eighteenth century, he has been largely overlooked by modern historians. (There is no entry on him in Oxford’s American National Biography, for instance.) This untitled article, signed simply as “HUME,” was an excerpt of material focused on religion from Hume’s “Of Parties in General,” an essay that was first published in 1741. (For a reprint of the entire essay as it appeared in 1777, see Essays, pp. 54–​63. The excerpt begins with the text found at pp. 60–​62, incorporates part of footnote 9, on pp. 61–​62, and then concludes with some of the text at p. 59.) On Palmer, see Kerry Walters’s entry on him in EAE, vol. 2, pp. 782–​4, and, also in EAE, Peter S. Fosl’s entry on “Scepticism,” vol. 2, pp. 937–​9. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Two men travelling on the highway, the one east, the other west, can easily pass each other, if the way be broad enough. But two men, reasoning upon opposite principles of religion, cannot so easily pass without shocking; though one should think that the way were also, in that case, sufficiently broad, and that each might proceed without interruption in his own course. But such is the nature of the human mind, that it always takes hold of every mind that approaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified and corroborated by an unanimity of sentiments, so it is shocked and disturbed by any contrariety. Hence the eagerness which most

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people discover in a dispute; and hence their impatience of opposition, even in the most speculative and indifferent opinions. This principle, however frivolous it may appear, seems to have been the origin of all religious wars and divisions. But as this principle is universal in human nature, its effects would not have been confined to one age, and to one sect of religion, did it not there concur with other more accidental causes, which raise it to such a height as to produce the greatest misery and devastation. Most religions of the ancient world arose in the unknown ages of the government, when men were as yet barbarous and uninstructed, and the prince, as well as peasant, was disposed to receive with implicit faith, every pious tale of fiction, which was offered him. The magistrate embraced the religion of the people, and entering cordially into the care of sacred matters, naturally acquired an authority in them, and united the ecclesiastical with the civil power. But the Christian religion arising, while principles directly opposite to it were firmly established in the polite part of the world, who despised the nation who broached this novelty; no wonder that, in such circumstances, it was but little countenanced by the civil magistrate, and that the priesthood were allowed to engross all the authority in the new sect. So bad a use did they make of this power, even in those early times, that the persecutions of Christianity may, perhaps, in part, be ascribed to the violence instilled by them into their followers; though it must not be dissembled that there were laws against external superstition among the Romans, as ancient as the time of the twelve tables; and the Jews as well as Christians were sometimes punished by them; though, in general, these laws were not rigorously executed. Immediately after the conquest of Gaul, they forbad all but the natives to be initiated into the religion of the Druids; and this was a kind of persecution. In about a century after this conquest, the Emperor Claudius, quite abolished that superstition by penal laws; which would have been a very grievous persecution, if the imitation of the Roman manners had not, before hand, weaned the Gauls from their ancient prejudices. (Suetonius in vita Claudii.) Pliny ascribes the abolition of Druid superstitions to Tiberius, probably because that Emperor had taken some steps towards restraining them. This is an instance of the usual caution and moderation of the Romans in such cases; and very different from their violent and sanguinary method of treating the Christians. Hence we may entertain a suspicion, those furious persecutions of Christianity were in some measure owing to the imprudent zeal and bigotry of the first propagators of that sect; and ecclesiastical history affords us many reasons to confirm this suspicion. After Christianity became the established

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religion, the principles of priestly government continued; and engendered a spirit of persecution, which has ever since been the poison of human society, and the source of the most inveterate factions in every government. There is another cause (besides the authority of the priests, and the separation of the ecclesiastical and civil powers) which has contributed to render Christendom the scene of religious wars and divisions. Religions, that arise in ages totally ignorant and barbarous, consist mostly of traditionary [sic] tales and fictions, which may be very different in every sect, without being contrary to each other; and even when they are contrary, every one adheres to the tradition of his own sect, without much reasoning and disputation. But as philosophy was widely spread over the world at the time when Christianity arose, the teachers of the new sect were obliged to form a system of speculative opinions; to divide with some accuracy their articles of faith; and to explain, comment, confute, and defend, with all the subtlety of argument and science. Hence naturally arose keenness in dispute, when the Christian religion came to be split into new divisions and heresies. And this keenness assisted the priests in their policy, of begetting a mutual hatred and antipathy among their deluded followers. Sects of philosophy, in the ancient world, were more zealous than parties of religion; but in modern times, parties of religion are more furious and enraged than the most cruel factions that ever arose from interest and ambition. The civil wars which arose some years ago in Morocco between the blacks and whites, merely on account of their complexion, are founded on a pleasant difference. We laugh at them; but were things rightly examined, we afford much more occasion of ridicule to the Moors. For what are all of the wars of religion which have prevailed in this polite and knowing part of the world? They are certainly more absurd than the Moorish civil wars. The difference of complexion is a sensible and real difference: But the difference about an article of faith, which is utterly absurd and unintelligible, is not a difference in sentiment, but a difference in a few phrases and expressions, which one party accepts of without understanding them, and the other refuses in the same manner. HUME.

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HISTORICAL CHARACTERS: FALSE REPRESENTATIONS OF NATURE

“Historical Characters are false Representations of Nature,” The Literary Magazine, and American Register, vol. 5, no. 29 (February 1806), pp. 32–​6. “R.” The Literary Magazine, and American Register was a monthly published from October 1803 through December 1807. Its editor was Charles Brockden Brown (1771–​1810), a novelist and prodigious miscellaneous writer. While the author of this piece, “R.,” centered Hume out for his “shameful partiality,” the essay as a whole may be taken to be a broader critique of the Enlightenment historiography to which Hume’s History of England belonged. As “R.” shows, by the early years of the nineteenth century, historical sensibilities were beginning to turn toward romantic understandings of the past which would also give more attention to lesser figures, their deeds and sentiments. On Brown, see Philip Bernard, Mark L. Kamrath, and Stephen Shapiro, eds. Revising Charles Brockden Brown:  Culture, Politics, and Sexuality in the Early Republic (Knoxville, TN, 2004) and Philip Barnard’s entry on Brown in EAE, vol. 1, pp. 176–​7. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ WE accustom ourselves to pay too liberal an admiration to the great characters recorded in modern, to say nothing of ancient, history. It seems often necessary to be reminded, that the most interesting history is generally the most elegantly written, and that whatever is adorned by elegance is the composition of art. Charmed and seduced by the variegated tints of imagination, the scene is heightened, and the objects move into life; but while we yield ourselves to the captivating talent of the artist, we forget that the whole representation is but a picture, and that painters, like poets, are indulged with a certain agreeable

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licentiousness. Hence we form false estimates of the human character, and, while we exhaust our sensations in artificial sympathies, amidst characters and circumstances almost fictitious, for the natural events and the natural calamities of life, we suppress those warmer emotions we otherwise should indulge. The human character appears diminutive, when compared with those we meet with in history; yet am I persuaded that domestic sorrows are not less poignant, and many of our associates are characters not inferior to the elaborate delineations which so much interest in the deceptive page of history. The historian is a sculptor, who, though he displays a correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous of displaying the miracles of his art, and therefore enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension. Let us also reflect, how often a shameful partiality dictates to the historians who possess the best information. Procopius, in his Secret Anecdotes, portrays Justinian and Theodora as the most virtuous personages. Eginhard is a perpetual flatterer of Charles the Great; Eusebius of Constantine; Paulus Jovius of Cosmode Medicis; Sandoval of Charles V; and Hume of the Stuarts. The ancient historians compiled prodigies, to gratify the credulous curiosity of their readers; but since prodigies have ceased, while the same avidity for the marvellous exists, modern historians have transferred the miraculous to their personages. Children read fables as histories, but the philosopher reads histories as fables. Fabulous narratives may, however, convey much instruction. It is the pleasing labour of genius to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and to arrange the objects which occupy his meditations, with a secret artifice of disposition. Voltaire tells us, that no writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and catastrophe: an observation which has great truth, but which shows that there can be but little truth in such agreeable narratives. Every historian communicates his character to his history; if he is profound and politic, his statesmen resemble political deities, whose least motion is a stratagem, and whose plot contains the seeds of many plots. If he is a writer, more elegant than profound, he delights in descriptive grandeur; in the touching narratives of suffering beauty, and persecuted virtue. If he possesses a romantic turn, his heroes are so many Arthurs, and the actions he records put a modest adventurer into despair. No writers more than the historian, and the professed romancer, so sedulously practice the artifice of awakening curiosity, and feasting that appetency of the mind, which turns from simple truth to spirited fiction. We scarce glance at the glittering of a star, but we gaze with delight on the coruscations of

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a meteor. We therefore suffer ourselves to become interested with those objects which should interest us least. The historian, seizing this inclination of the mind, delights it with that imaginary force, and fantastic grandeur, of which, while pleased with the emotions, we perceive not the extravagance. Popular prejudice assists the illusion, and because we are accustomed to behold public characters occupy a situation in life that few can experience, we are induced to believe that their capacities are more enlarged, their passions more refined, and, in a word, that nature has bestowed on them faculties denied to obscurer men. But who, acquainted with human nature, hesitates to acknowledge, that most of the characters in history were persons whom accident had seated upon a throne, or placed with less favour around it? Had Alfred been a private person, like the Man of Ross, his various virtues might only accidentally have reached us; and had Richard III been a citizen of London, he had been led unnoticed to the gibbet. The pernicious prejudice, which peoples the mind with artificial beings, and enfeebles the sympathies of domestic life, will disappear when we come to those few facts in history, which the art of the historian can no longer disguise, and which, refusing the decorations of his fancy, present the sublime personages of history in the nudity of truth. Let the monarch lose his crown, and the minister his place; let the casque fall from the hero, and the cap from the cardinal; it is then these important personages speak in the voice of distress, are actuated by passions like our own, and come to us with no other claim on our feelings than that common sensibility which we owe to humanity. Here, indeed, the lessons of history become instructive, because they teach that every other portion of history has received the romantic gilding of the pencil; that the sagacity of the statesman is not so adroit, as not to be entangled in its own nets; that the ardour of the hero is often temerity which escaped, and, sometimes, temerity chastised; and that, in general, great characters owe much more to fortune than to nature; that singular coincidences have formed singular events; but that, whenever the delusion of the historian ceases, these illustrious persons appear to have been actuated by passions similar to our own, and that their talents are not superior to those whose obscure actions languished in a confined sphere. It is observed, by Montesquieu, that “most legislators have been men of limited capacities, whom chance placed at the head of others, and who have generally consulted merely their prejudices and their fancies.” It is, indeed, useful to pause over those passages which give the very feelings of the illustrious persons to whom they relate, and if, to some, these may seem to humble the great, they will also elevate us; or, rather, they will reinstate human

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nature in that just equality in which we are all placed. The phantom of history will vanish, but the human form will remain palpable and true. Few circumstances are more curious in history than the unadorned recitals of some memoirs. Thomas Heywood, in his “England’s Elizabeth,” has noticed an instance, that one of the most celebrated characters felt the same agitation, and expressed the same language, which an inferior prisoner would have experienced. This writer gives her mediations in the garden during her imprisonment, in which the natural passions are not entirely lost in the distortion of the language. During her confinement at Woodstock, hourly dreading assassination, she used to sit at the grate of her prison window, morning and evening, listening and shedding tears at the light carolling of the passing milkmaids. Among other insults she received in travelling, the high winds having discomposed her dress, she desired to retire to some house to adjust herself; but this she was refused, and was compelled to make her toilet under a hedge! A kindred anecdote is mentioned by sir Walter Raleigh, of Charles V, who, just after his resignation, having a private interview with some ambassador, and having prolonged it to a late hour after midnight, called for a servant to light the ambassador on the stairs; but they had all retired to rest; and the emperor, yet the terror of Europe, was compelled to snatch a candle and conduct the ambassador to the door. It is thus that majesty, unrobed of factious powers, convinces even the slow apprehension of the vulgar, that the breast of grandeur only conceals passions like their own; and that Elizabeth dressing under a hedge, and Charles lighting the ambassador on the stairs, felt the same bitter indignity, which they are doomed to feel much oftener. If it were possible to read the histories of those who are doomed to have no historian, and to glance into domestic journals as well as into national archives, we should then perceive the unjust prodigality of our sympathy to those few names, which eloquence has adorned with all the seduction of her graces. We should then acknowledge, that superior talents are not sufficient to obtain superiority, and that the full tide of opportunity, which often carries away the unworthy in triumph, leaves the worthy among the shoals. It is a curious speculation for observing men, to trace great characters in little situations, and to detect real genius passing through life incognito. How many mothers of great characters may address their sons in the words of the mother of Brasidas! he was indeed a great and virtuous commander, but she observed that Sparta had many greater Brasidas’s. Some obscure men, whom the world will never notice, had they occupied the situation of great personages, would have been perhaps even more illustrious. There are never wanting, among a polished people, men of superior talents or superior virtues; every great revolution evinces this truth; indeed, at

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that perilous moment, they show themselves in too great numbers, and become fatal to each other, by their rival abilities. Robertson, who is so pleasing a historian, and, therefore, whose veracity becomes very suspicious, confesses, however, that “in judging of the conduct of princes, we are apt to ascribe too much to political motives, and too little to the passions which they feel in common with the rest of mankind. In order to account for Elizabeth’s present, as well as her subsequent conduct towards Mary, we must not always consider her as a queen, we must sometimes regard her merely as a woman.” This is precisely what the refining ingenuity of this writer does as rarely as any historian; and Robertson appears to have been more adapted for a minister of state, than the principal of a Scots college. He explains projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place. We often admire the fertile conceptions of the queen regent, of Elizabeth, and of Bothwell, when, in truth, we are defrauding Robertson of whatever praise may be due to political invention. But we, who, however charmed with historic beauty, revere truth and humanity, must learn to reduce the aggravated magnitude of the illustrious dead, that we may perform an act of justice to the obscure living. The sympathy we give to a princess ravished by traitors to wet with tears the iron grates of her dungeon, we may with no less propriety bestow on that unfortunate female, whom unfeeling creditors have snatched from maternal duties, or social labours, to perish by the hour, in some loathsome prison. If we feel for the decapitation of a virtuous and long persecuted statesman, we are not to feel less for that more common object, a man of genius, condemned to languish in obscurity, and perish in despair. A great general dies in the embrace of victory, and his character reaches posterity in immortal language:  but he probably conducted hundreds whom nature intended for generals, but whom fortune made foot soldiers. What heroes may be found in hospitals! Katharine, the queen of Henry VIII, is an object of our tenderest sympathy; but why should our sensibility be diminished, when we look on those numerous females, not less gentle, nor less cruelly misused, who, without the consolations of sovereignty, are united to despots, not less arbitrary and brutal than Henry? The sorrows of the Scottish Mary, the refined insults of a rival sister, the grin of scorn, and the implication of infamy, may penetrate our hearts; but we forget that there are families, where scenes not less terrible, and sisters not less unrelenting, are hourly discovered; and that there are beauties, who, without being confined to the melancholy magnificence of a castle, or led to the dismal honour of an axe, equally fall victims, or to fatal indiscretion, or to fatal persecution.

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The fascination which thus takes possession of us in historical narratives is, therefore, the artifice of the historian, assisted by those early prejudices of that superiority which we attach to great characters. He who possesses the talent of fine writing is, indeed, in possession of a deceptive art; and I have often been tempted to think, that men of genius, who have ever appeared, by the energy of their complaints, to be endowed with a peculiar sensibility of sorrow, and who excel in the description of the passions, do not always feel more poignantly than others, who, without the power of expressing their sensations, expanding their sentiments, and perpetuating their anguish, are doomed to silent sorrow; to be crazed in love without venting effusions in verse, and to perish in despair without leaving one memorial of their exquisite torture. But I will not close this essay without observing, that it is not to every illustrious character, recorded in history, that we can pay too prodigal a tribute of admiration. There are men, who throw a new lustre on humanity, and hold a torch of instruction which brightens through the clouds of time. It has boldly been said, by old Montaigne, that man differs more from man, than man from beast. But speculations on human nature must not be formed on such rare instances. Besides, even of character like these, their equals may be found among obscure individuals, and some of the noblest actions have been performed by unknown persons; as that miner, who, in some Italian war, animated by patriotic fervour to direct the explosion, rushed into the mine he had formed. This action is the summit of heroism. Familiar objects of distress, and familiar characters of merit, want only, to form a spectacle as interesting as the pompous inflation of history can display, those powers of seducing eloquence, which disguise the simplicity of truth with the romantic grandeur of fiction. Nations have abounded with heroes and sages; but because they wanted historians, they are scarce known to use by name; and individuals have been heroes and sages in domestic life, whose talents and whose virtues are embellished in no historical record, but traced, in transient characters, on the feeble gratitude of the human heart. R.

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HANNAH MORE’S STRICTURE UPON HUME’S HISTORY

“For The Port Folio,” The Port Folio, vol. 4, no. 8 (22 August 1807), pp. 118–​9. Anonymous Hannah More (1745–​1833), one of the “bluestockings,” was a British educator, social reformer, and evangelical moralist author. Her Hints towards forming the Character of a Young Princess (London, 1805) wrapped up all of that and was an often reprinted work in the first half of the nineteenth century. The passages in Hints in which she was most critical of Hume —​especially as historian —​also circulated widely in America where they were excerpted in periodicals ranging from the Missionary Herald at Home and Abroad, to The Literary Magazine & American Register, and to The Port Folio, as reprinted here. There are several recent books on More, including Anne Stott’s Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford, 2003), but M.G. Jones’s biography, Hannah More (Cambridge, 1952), also still holds value. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

For The Port Folio. In a new work, ascribed to Mrs. H. More, and entitled “Hints for the education of a young Princess,” we find much moral instruction and much fine writing. In the following stricture upon HUME’S History of England, we are at a loss which most to admire, the justness of the sentiments, or the energy and beauty of the style. His political prejudices do not strikingly appear till the establishment of the House of Stuart, nor his religious antipathies till about the dawn of the

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Reformation, under Henry V. From that period to its full establishment, he is, perhaps, more dangerous, because less ostensibly daring than some other infidel historians. He is a serpent under a bed of roses. He does not so much ridicule religion himself, as invite others to ridicule it. There is in his manner a sedateness, which imposes; in his skepticism a sly gravity which puts the reader more off his guard, than the vehemence of censure or the levity of wit:  for we are always less disposed to suspect a man who is too wise to appear angry. That same wisdom makes him too correct to invent calumnies, but it does not preserve him from doing what is scarcely less disingenuous; he implicitly adopts the injurious relations of those annalysts who were most hostile to the reformed Faith; though he must have known their accounts to be aggravated and discoloured, if not absolutely invented. He thus makes others responsible for the worst things he asserts, and spreads the mischief, without avowing the malignity. When he speaks from himself, the sneer is so cool, the irony so sober, the contempt so discreet, the moderation so insidious, the difference between Popish bigotry and Protestant firmness, between the fury of the persecutor, and the resolution of the martyr so little marked; the distinctions between intolerant frenzy and heroick zeal so melted into each other, that though he contrives to make the reader feel some indignation at the tyrant, he never leads him to feel any reference for the sufferer. He ascribes such a slender superiority to one religious system above another, that the young reader who does not come to the perusal, with his principles formed, will be in danger of thinking that the reformation was really not worth contending for. But in nothing is the skill of this accomplished sophist more apparent than in the artful way in which he piques his readers into a conformity with his own views concerning religion. Human pride, he knew, naturally likes to range itself on the side of ability. He, therefore, skilfully, works on this passion, by treating, with a sort of contemptuous superiority (as weak and credulous men) all whom he represents as being under the religious delusion. To the shameful practice of confounding fanaticism with real religion, he adds the disingenuous habit of accounting for the best actions of the best men by referring them to some low motive; and affects to confound the designs of the religious and the corrupt, so artfully, that no radical difference appears to subsist between them. —​—​

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HUME’S HISTORY, DANGEROUS TO THE AMERICAN READER

“REMARKS ON HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND,” Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine, vol. 1, no. 4 (April 1818), pp. 159–​64. “C.” The Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine was published out of Richmond, Virginia, for the decade from 1818 to 1828. Published by N. Pollard, its long-​ time editor was the Rev. John Holt Rice (1777–​1831), who is referred to in a footnote in the “Remarks” reprinted below. Rice, who would become the First Professor of Christian Theology in the Union Theological Seminary (originally Hampden-​Sydney College), had been influenced heavily by the Rev. Archibald Alexander (1772–​1851). On Alexander, see selection #23. On Rice see Ernest Trice Thompson’s entry in DAB (vol. 8, part 1, pp. 541–​2); and for his thoughts on education compared with another American who came to think Hume dangerous, see David E. Swift, “Thomas Jefferson, John Holt Rice, and Education in Virginia, 1818–​25,” Journal of Presbyterian History, vol. 49, no. 1 (Spring 1971), pp. 32–​58. It is not known who “C.” was, but his Jeffersonian Age essay is interesting, not least for its perspective on the English and French Revolutions. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ For the Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine. REMARKS ON HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Few books are more generally read by people of education in the United States than Hume’s history of England. Hume was possessed of such distinguished talents, has so much historical merit, and occupies such an important field in that department of literature, that he bids fair to be long a standard book in our

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language; and yet, he is the subject of some important defects, against which his readers cannot be too faithfully cautioned. —​There are two things in particular, which make Hume’s history of England dangerous to the American reader; he is an enemy to republican liberty, and an enemy to religion. Considering that Mr. Hume is a philosopher, he generally treats the superstitions of popery with great forbearance and even complaisance. For freethinkers, whenever he meets with them, he makes the best apologies in his power. But against the puritans and other disciples of the Genevan School, he lets loose all the venom of his pen. His attacks on this class of christians, is characterized by a degree of insidiousness and artifice unworthy of a man of talents. He often misrepresents their motives; he holds them up to ridicule by detailing their queer and uncouth expressions, and in order to excite a general odium, he frequently sets down the crimes of a few individuals to the account of the whole fraternity. When he deals with prominent characters, he exhibits their faults with the whole force of his eloquence, whilst their virtues are either passed in silence, or deformed by detraction. This mode of writing, is very unfavorable to truth; it prevents our discovering what the disciples of Geneva have done for producing the present state of things, both in Britain and America; but Mr. Hume passed it off with the more plausibility, as his calumnies were supported by the whole weight of court influence, during the reign of the Stuarts; a length of time sufficient to give them something like the authority of prescription. But one of the most unmanageable characters with whom Hume seems to have met, was the celebrated John Knox. All our respect for the talents of this historian, could hardly keep us from being diverted with his complaint in behalf of Mary Queen of Scots, against this apostle of the reformation in Scotland. John Knox it seems, was rather an unpolished man. He felt but little respect for the errors and vices of a royal personage. He was a man of uncourteous phrase, and when admitted to the drawing room of such a princess as Mary, was rather an ungracious inmate. Now to understand all this the better, let us enquire a little who was Mary queen of Scots? and who was John Knox? Mary was no doubt in many respects, a most accomplished and fascinating princess. She had however, been educated in the court of France; the great seat of refinement, gallantry and pleasure —​in other words, in the most profligate and voluptuous court in Europe, when the superstitions and indulgencies of popery, operated as a hot bed to fructify the vices, and to annihilate all the principles of morality and religion.  —​Whatever apology Mary may derive from her situation, her subsequent conduct shews that she had drunk too deeply of that cup of pleasure which was poisoning the French metropolis.

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She was, however, a zealous devotee of the Roman Catholic church. She had her masses, crucifixes, and confessors in abundance. But under this mask of religion, she had her swarms of fiddlers and dancers, and all the apparatus of fashionable dissipation and corruption with which the French capital abounded. John Knox, on the other hand, was warm from the feet of Calvin, burning with the zeal and animated with the courage of an apostle. He had long witnessed and lamented the abuses and usurpations of popery; he had seen the piety and morality of the gospel buried under a cloud of unmeaning rites, or converted into a lucrative traffic by the Papal See. To reform these abuses, and to give to his country the christian religion in its purity, was the object of his life; and an object for the accomplishment of which he would have held his life as a cheap sacrifice. Between such a princess and such a reformer, what common sentiment could exist? What amicable conference could they hold, or who could expect that their altercations should be free from severity? But had this intrepid minister of Christ changed his conduct; had he become the smooth-​tongued courtier, or the cringing sycophant, in the presence of his queen; with what indignant sarcasm would the eloquent historian have trampled on his pusillanimity instead of reviling his audacity —​But let it be remembered that, under the divine blessing, Knox succeeded in his momentous enterprise. Without the advantages of wealth or high birth, aided by his eloquence, and relying on the goodness of his cause, he stemmed the torrent of opposition, and became the honored instrument of heaven in completing the reformation in Scotland. This reformation has been the principal cause of raising Scotland to that distinguished eminence of morals, science, and felicity, which she at present occupies; and Hume himself is indebted to Knox for that light of science, which developed his powers, and gave him his high standing as the historian of his country. One well attested fact strongly illustrates the importance of the Scots reformation. Previous to that event, the lower orders in Scotland were perhaps more profligate than those of England; since that time, the number of her criminals, in proportion to her population, are but as one to twelve to those of England; and even England is improving in this respect since her reformation. This change, so far as human means are considered, must be ascribed to the labors of John Knox; a degree of merit which might induce his countrymen to forgive his uncourteous manners, if they could not approve them; and which the historian of that day ought to have mentioned in connexion with the many faults he has though proper to affix to his name.

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Let us next enquire, to what merit the Puritans are generally entitled. Coming from the school of Calvin, and from the nature of their ecclesiastical government, they were essentially republican.* They had not carried out their ideas of religious liberty to the extent so happily exemplified at present in this country, but they certainly laid the foundation of the superstructure which has since been completed in the United States. Mr. Hume acknowledges that during the latter years of Elizabeth, when the royal prerogative was raised to the most formidable height, these Puritans were the only people who kept alive any thing like the spirit of liberty. At a subsequent period they shook the throne of the Stuarts, and kindled that flame of liberty which ultimately expelled that domineering and arbitrary family. To these people we are indebted for the English revolution, which perfected that system of jurisprudence from which we have borrowed so largely, and which gave to the representative principle that consideration and improvement which prepared it for becoming the foundation of all our civil institutions. That such a people should be calumniated in Britain, where their experiments were less successful, was more to be expected; but we trust that the U. States, which has enjoyed the full harvest of their labors and sufferings, will know better how to appreciated their services. These are the people, however, whom Mr. Hume wished to overwhelm with contempt, and to banish from his country; and in their place he would have filled that country with philosophers from his own school. Not with scientific philosophers; but with such as France abounded in, from the cobbler’s stall up to the princely hotel, previous to her revolution. How much he would have benefitted mankind by such a change, may be determined by comparing and contrasting the principal features in the English revolution, in the time of Charles the First, conducted by the disciples of Calvin, and the French revolution, conducted by the disciples of Hume and Voltaire. This comparison, if pursued into its details, might be very instructive, as it would exhibit men of different religious impressions, acting in scenes, which awakened all the passions of the human mind, and afford an opportunity of remarking the result. On this subject, however, we shall attempt but a few observations. Between the two revolutions just mentions, there are many strong points of resemblance. Each of those revolutions, in its turn, filled Europe with consternation. Each of them occasioned the death of a Monarch; made abortive efforts to establish a republic; sunk into military despotism; and ultimately * See this truth judiciously enforced in a pamphlet by the Rev. John H. Rice, of Richmond, which we hope to see generally circulated.

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rendered back the respective nations to the regal sceptres of those families so ignominiously expelled. So far the representation is complete; but the points of dissimilarity are no less obvious and striking. The force of the English revolution was directed against Charles the First. This Monarch had labored for years to establish absolute authority, and destroy the liberties of his people; when resisted, he waged a long and bloody war against his subjects; and when finally overcome, he was seized and led to the scaffold by the faction of a usurper, contract to the wishes of the nation. —​Lewis the Sixteenth met the discontents of his people in the spirit of concession. He summoned the wisdom of the nation to devise expedients for lightening the burdens of the state. He consented to change the absolute government of France into a constitution comprising as much liberty as the name of monarchy would admit. This conduct might have disarmed resentment, and yet his execution was singularly cruel. Not to mention other indignities, when on the scaffold and about to exercise a privilege granted from time immemorial, to the worst of criminals —​that of addressing the spectators; his voice was suddenly drowned by the thunder of drums and artillery, and the order given for his immediate decapitation. During the civil commotions of England, many of the nobility and gentry espoused neither party; they retired to their estates, and quietly waited the issue of the contest without molestation. In France the utmost ingenuity of tergiversation was often insufficient for the preservation of life. Power was every day shifting from faction to faction. Those who did not satisfy the present rulers by the warmest professions of loyalty and civism, incurred their suspicion; and those who did, incurred the resentment of their successors. In England, as has been common in all similar revolutions, the republican party continued united until the common danger was dissipated. When the revolutionary war was terminated, then, indeed, factions arose, and a scramble for power commenced, which defeated the object of the revolution itself. In France, so violent were the principles of discord, and so unfit the actors for any form of government, that whilst the most formidable armies in Europe were hovering on the frontiers, the factious in Paris were drilling the mobs, and waging incessant wars against one another. The machinations of ambition knew no pause. These men were able to falsify the old maxim, “that a powerful enemy could unite all whom he threatened.” The crown was no sooner hurled from the head of Lewis, than every demagogue seemed to view it as a prize at which he might aim, but to which he must wade through the blood of his competitors. And hence the French revolution was from first to last, a sea of blood, which seems to stand without a parallel in the annals of

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human nature. In England, proscriptions and executions were not frequent, and were generally confined to characters of rank and influence. In France, the rage of faction was let loose on the lowest of the people, and produced the most extensive scenes of indiscriminate and wanton slaughter. Such are the outlines of the difference between two great revolutions, the one conducted, by what some have termed religious enthusiasts; the other, by atheists. That the French revolution failed in the establishment of republicanism, may be variously accounted for; but its sanguinary excesses can be ascribed to nothing but the infidelity of the times. In this respect, it has left the world an awful lesson, and no people are more interested in reading that lesson aright, than the people of the United States. C.

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PROFESSING THEMSELVES TO BE WISE, THEY BECAME FOOLS

“REMARKS. On an Article in THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, in which the Doctrine of Hume on Miracles is maintained: By the Rev. James Somerville, Minister of Drumelzier,” Religious Monitor and Evangelical Repository, vol. 3, no. 9 (February 1827), pp. 428–​36; vol. 3, no. 10 (February 1827), pp. 466–​77. Anonymous The Religious Monitor and Evangelical Repository was printed in Philadelphia from May 1824 to May 1842. It was published by W. S. Young and specialized in reprinting what it took to be the most important materials from European publications. Among those, it included the piece reprinted below, by the Scottish minister, the Rev. James Somverville. First published in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, Sommerville’s “Remarks” were also published separately, as a thirty-​ four-​page pamphlet (Edinburgh, 1815), a work reviewed in the press of the day. Hume’s “On Miracles” was at the center of Sommerville’s account, but he also referred to the Rev. George Campbell’s (1719–​96) A Dissertation on Miracles (1762); Prof. John Playfair (1748–​1819) of Edinburgh (“the Reviewer,” whose university appointment was opposed by Moderates but not Evangelicals), and Pierre-​Simon, marquis de Laplace (1749–​1827), whose A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (in French) was first published in Paris in 1812. For more on Campbell see Jeffrey M.  Suderman, Orthodoxy and Enlightenment:  George Campbell in the Eighteenth Century (Montreal, 2001). No other American reprintings of Somerville’s “Remarks” are known besides this one in the Religious Monitor. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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REMARKS On an Article in THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, in which the Doctrine of Hume on Miracles is maintained: By the Rev. James Somerville, Minister of Drumelzier. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.  ST. PAUL

[One of the most powerful arguments, of the external kind, in support of a Divine Revelation, is derived from the miracles which were wrought for its confirmation. On these alone, were there no other argument, the truth of the Christian Revelation may be rested; as, indeed, it is by the Saviour himself. “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not; but if I do,” &c. John x. 25, and 37, 38. The infidel Hume, in his Essay on Miracles, first advanced the idea, that it is impossible to prove, by testimony, that there ever was a miracle: —​Because, there is greater probability, from experience, that any number of witnesses, testifying a violation of the laws of nature, should be deceived or falsify, than, that such a violation of these laws, as constitutes a miracle, should take place. By this redoubtable argument did he show, that the Bible, which records the miracles of our Saviour and his apostles, is unworthy of credit; no doubt, as much to his own satisfaction, as he did by other arguments, equally powerful, that there is neither Bible, nor witness, nor testimony, nor heaven, nor earth, nor matter, nor spirit, but only impressions and ideas, in the universe, —​affording evidence of the truth of one part of scripture, at least, that some men “professing themselves to be wise, became fools;” and that “the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.” This attack on the foundation of the Christian Revelation, was triumphantly repelled by Dr. Campbell, in his “Dissertation on Miracles,” published in 1762. This work remains unanswered and unanswerable to this day. The enemies of Divine Revelation, however, are not to be deterred, by any such obstacles, in manifesting their enmity to the truth. They go on, asserting again and again the same dogmas, as if they had never been refuted, and proving beyond a doubt, that philosophic pride, and folly, and enmity to the gospel, did not die with David Hume. In 1813 or 14, a work was published in France, by La Place, the most celebrated philosopher of the present day, in which Hume’s Doctrine of Miracles is revived and asserted; and in a review of this work, in the XLVI Number of the Edinburgh Review, written by Professor Playfair of Edinburgh College, it is again asserted, ex cathedra, as a truth, for the discovery of which, Hume is entitled to immortal honours. In this and the following number, we present our readers with the

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able reply, the Article in the Edinburgh Reviews, above mentioned, written by the Rev. James Somerville, Drumelzier, which appeared first in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor for December 1814, and was afterwards revised and published separately. We are not aware that it has ever been published in this country, though the Edinburgh Review has a wide circulation. But if it had not, we consider the paper valuable, as containing a brief statement and unanswerable refutation of the infidel argument against Divine Revelation upon the subject of Miracles.]

INTRODUCTION. The world has been much surprised at an article which appeared in Number XLVI. of the Edinburgh Review, on a work of La Place, Sur Les Probabilities, in which the doctrine of Hume, “that miracles cannot be proved by any testimony,” is revived. It was not expected that, after the complete exposure of the weakness of Hume’s arguments, his sophisms and self-​contradictions, by Dr.  Campbell and others, any person would again have asserted his doctrine. But this has been done in the broadest manner, in the above article, and a very high compliment paid to Hume, as having been the first who ever gave a fair view of that doctrine. It is true, their is a salvo added in favour of religion, but as it is certain that Hume intended his doctrine to militate against religion, and as not a word is said to shew how it does not apply to religion, there is reason to apprehend that this will be considered as a mere compliment to general opinion. —​The whole reasoning of Hume, of the Reviewer, and of the author whom he reviews, bears as strongly against miracles in support of religion, as against those of any other kind, and however it may be meant, there is reason to believe that both the friends and enemies of religion will consider it as an attack against the argument in favour of Christianity, arising from miracles. I cannot help observing here, the eagerness of the enemies of Christianity, in turning all sciences into weapons against religion. Natural philosophy, geography, geology, history, politics, chemistry, are all made vehicles for conveying infidel opinions. Geometry and algebra, one would have thought, could never have been so employed; yet such is the earnestness of infidels in promoting their cause, and such their dexterity, that even these sciences have been forced to contribute their aid; and so far do they carry it, that, in a pamphlet on Backgammon, or Whist, they will contrive to have something against religion.

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Some persons may consider it as quite superfluous to publish any thing on this subject, after what has been written by others, and particularly after the able work of Dr.  Campbell, which is so well known in this country. But when the enemies of revelation are found considering it as useful to their cause to publish anew their old and refuted arguments, it may also be useful to the cause of religion to meet them with new answers, suited to the present circumstances. New publications will always find some readers, who might be disposed to neglect old works, though of greater merit. This little tract is not to be considered as a full or elaborate discussion of the question, nor as intended to supercede the more extensive work of Dr. Campbell, —​a work which is earnestly recommended to every reader; —​but merely to furnish, in a small compass, an antidote to the poison so widely diffused by the Edinburgh Review.* It may be thought an arduous attempt to enter the lists with the first geometrician, whom France has produced in the present day, and with the Reviewer, who is also, perhaps, the first in his profession in this country. And, indeed, were it in any degree a question of geometry or calculation, I would leave it to others. But it is a question of pure reasoning; and it is well known that the most eminent geometricians, however gigantic their powers are in their own field, are often, when they leave that, less than other men.† The most moderate talents on the side of truth, have often been found an overmatch for the greatest on the side of error; and I apprehend there will be very little difficulty in this case, in showing the inconclusiveness of the whole reasoning. —​I shall, first, examine the reasoning of La Place, and then that of the Reviewer.

SECTION. I. Examination of the Reasoning of La Place. The following is the passage from La Place, on which the whole is built. * Dr. Campbell informs us, that it excited much surprise in his days, that Hume continued to publish

one edition after another of his Essays, without taking the least notice of the answer, though he had, in a letter to the author, expressed himself in terms very different from those of contempt, concerning that work. It has excited no less surprise at present, that the Reviewer has republished Hume’s doctrine, and maintained as profound a silence about any answer to it, as if none had ever been made. But there is no occasion for any surprise. They wish to produce a certain effect, and that effect is to be produced by promulgating their own doctrines, not by noticing the answers. They have, perhaps, taken the hint, from these persevering personages, the quack doctors, who continue year after year to advertise their nostrums, long after their pernicious effects have been detected. They persevere, because they hope that many will read and believe, and purchase and swallow, who never heard of the detection. † No man ever fell into crosser absurdities in general reasoning than Whiston.

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“Events may be so extraordinary, that they can hardly be established by any testimony. We would not give credit to a man who affirmed that he had seen an hundred dice thrown into the air, and all fall on the same faces. If we ourselves had been spectators of such an event, we would not believe our own eyes, till we had scrupulously examined all the circumstances, and assured ourselves that there was no trick nor deception. After such examination, we would not hesitate to admit it, notwithstanding its great improbability; and no one would have recourse to an inversion of the laws of vision, in order to account for it. This shows, that the probability of the continuance of the laws of nature, is superior, in our estimation, to every other evidence, and to that of historical facts the best established. One may therefore judge of the weight of testimony necessary to prove a suspension of the laws of nature, and how fallacious it is, in such cases, to apply the common rules of evidence.” Edinburgh Review, p. 327. The first remark I shall make on this paragraph, is, the author’s apparent hesitation and diffidence with regard to the doctrine he is advancing. He reminds us of a boy venturing on the ice, uncertain whether it will bear him or not. He first says, he would hardly believe extraordinary events:  then he gives a particular instance, and says, we would not believe it. There is certainly a wide difference betwixt hardly believing, and not believing at all; and though the author seems to use the first as a stepping-​stone to carry him on to the last, yet there is still so great a difference between them, that we may grant the first, and utterly deny the second. In order to sift his reasoning more thoroughly, it will be necessary to draw it out in a somewhat more logical form. I shall endeavor [to] do it all justice, under the conviction that this paper can be of no service, unless the argument is met both fairly and fully. —​There are three premises, and a conclusion, as follows. First, We would not believe a man who said that he had seen a hundred dice fall on the same faces. Secondly, We would believe our own eyes, if we actually saw such a event. Thirdly, The reason why we would believe our own eyes, is our belief of the immutability of the laws of vision. Therefore, our belief of the continuance of the laws of nature, is greater than our belief of any testimony. Now, I shall endeavour to show that both the first and third of these premises are false, and therefore the conclusion must be false also. The whole rests on the first assertion, that we would not give credit to a man who related that he saw such a wonderful event. The truth of that proposition is therefore to be examined most particularly. But before proceeding to the

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examination of it, I must take the liberty of introducing a little change into the statement. The author merely says, we would not give credit to a man, that is, literally, to one man; but, in using this language, he either did not intend to go so far as Hume and the Reviewer, or if he did intend to go so far, it must have been an oversight; for his argument required that he should have said, we would not believe any number of men, however great that number may be, and with whatever circumstances their testimony may be attended. His conclusion is universal, against our belief of any testimony; but that conclusion will not follow, though we had good ground not to believe one man. I suppose, therefore, he means to say, We would not believe any number of men, however intelligent, however disinterested, however circumstanced, who should tell us that they had seen an hundred dice fall on the same faces. Unless he says this, he says nothing to the purpose. If La Place intended to go the same length with Hume and the Reviewer, there must also be an oversight in the instance he has given in illustration of his doctrine. He meant to shew that no testimony can prove a suspension of the laws of nature. Now, the falling of a hundred dice on the same faces, is no suspension of any laws of nature. It is perfectly possible, in consistency with the laws of nature, and even in some degree probable. The author could easily have pointed out by numbers, the degree of its probability. I shall therefore, without taking advantage of this, strengthen his argument, by supposing a case which would really be a suspension of the laws of nature, such as the sun standing still, a dead person rising to life, a stone thrown into the air and not falling, or a piece of iron swimming in the water. La Place is to be understood, then, as saying, that we would not give credit to any number of witnesses, in any circumstances, who should assert that they saw an hundred dice thrown into the air, and all fall on the same faces, or a stone thrown up and remain suspended. On this I would make two observations; 1, That it is a mere assertion without proof; and, 2, That it is altogether unfounded. First, It is mere assertion without proof. The author has not so much as attempted any proof. In all sound reasoning, the premises from which any conclusion is drawn, ought either to be self-​evident, or be proved by others which are so. But here is a proposition which lies at the foundation of the whole fabric, which is neither a self-​evident axiom, nor supported by the shadow of proof. Secondly, It is an assertion altogether unfounded. —​In order to see this more clearly, we must examine it a little more particularly. It is an assertion respecting a matter of fact, “We would not believe.” But who are they who are included in this word we? Does it include only La Place, the Reviewer, and two or three

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more; or does it include mankind at large? If the former, it may be granted without any detriment to the cause; for as some men’s enmity to the truth has been so great as to cause them to believe a lie, so others, from the same cause, may work themselves up to disbelieve the truth, even when most clearly proved. If the latter, it is asserting a fact which he could not be sure of, unless he had examined all the people in the world, and found them unanimous, or at least, all of them who had any claims to be considered as possessed of any measure of understanding. It is a question concerning a fact in human nature, which is to be settled only by a very extensive induction of particulars, by a careful and extensive examination of existing individuals, and by a thorough knowledge of the history of mankind in times past. When La Place says, that we would not believe extraordinary or miraculous occurrences on any testimony whatever, he is contradicted by the whole history of mankind; for it is the unquestionable fact, that mankind have, in all ages, believed most extraordinary occurrences on what they considered as good testimony. Indeed, it never entered the head of one of the human race from the beginning of the world, to imagine that they ought not to believe extraordinary facts, when well attested, until about sixty years ago, this ideas was started by Hume; and even since that time, the great body of mankind think themselves warranted to believe in good testimony just as they did before, notwithstanding all the new light which that author has thrown upon the subject. So far as regards the past time, then, the assertion of La Place, that mankind will not, upon any evidence, believe extraordinary facts, appears completely contrary to truth. With regard to the present time, whether or not mankind would believe any number of witnesses in any circumstances, who should assert, that they had seen a stone remain suspended in the air, or a dead man rise to life, the fact can only be ascertained by a reference to mankind at large. It is a point on which every man must judge for himself, and, if we can by any means come to know what is the mind of mankind at large, we must abide by their decision. For, let it be observed, the question is not, what mankind ought to believe, but what they do, or will believe in a given case. It is a reference to the actual state of human nature, and to the existing constitution of the human mind, on the question, what mankind do believe, or will believe in any particular case. Now, there is not the shadow of a doubt, as was already stated, that in times past not only the vulgar, but the most enlightened of the human race, have believed miraculous facts when well attested. There is as little doubt, that the great body of mankind, learned as well as unlearned, still do the same, without being the least moved by the subtile arguments of Hume and his few followers. Thus far, belief in testimony appears to be an essential part of the constitution of human nature; and

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if it be so, we may depend upon it, that if any new extraordinary fact were to occur, such as a hundred dice falling on the same faces or a stone remaining suspended in the air, they would still believe such facts if supported by satisfactory evidence. It is not probable, that mankind will be put to an actual trial by the occurrence of any new miraculous fact; but if we may judge of what they would do in such a case, from what they have done in similar cases in all times past, we may be sure they would believe it if well attested. It was already stated, that what mankind will or will not believe in any given case, must be left to every individual to determine for themselves. We are apt to be imposed upon by great philosophical names, and to allow the dogmatical assertions of such men as La Place and the Reviewer to pass as unquestionable truths. This might be in some measure reasonable, if it were a point on which they were well qualified to judge, and the rest of the world quite unqualified, as any question concerning Jupiter’s satellites, or Saturn’s ring. But this is a question, in which every man is qualified to judge for himself, and where these philosphers [sic] can only decide for themselves as individuals. If the great body of mankind declare, that their minds are so constituted, that they would believe miraculous events when well attested, the whole reasoning of La Place falls to the ground; and, from such a decision there can be no appeal. An individual can speak only for himself, but, for my part, if La Place or the Reviewer had asserted that they had seen these events, I would be disposed to give much credit to them, especially if I  was sure they had artfully examined every circumstance, and had no particular interest to bias them. If, in addition to this, all the philosophers of Paris and Edinburgh, and all the intelligent people in both these cities, were to join in the same testimony, I believe, that, in fact, no person, unless void of understanding, would refuse his assent. We would act in this as we do in all cases which depend on testimony, first examine the capacity of the witnesses, and, when satisfied in that point, would next examine with great care, if they had any particular interest to serve by their testimony. We know that mankind will testify what they consider as falsehood for interest. An Infidel, we know, may be so destitute of common honesty, as to declare his belief of the Bible, and even the Scottish Confession of Faith, for a church living, or a professorship. Hume would not have scrupled at this, had he succeeded in his canvass for the moral philosophy chair. But if we found that the witnesses had capacity, and no interest to serve, I believe that no person would reject their testimony. And if, in addition to all these circumstances, we discovered that their interest was to be greatly hurt by their testimony; that they were quite certain of losing their situations of emolument, their ease and comfort; of incurring

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hatred, persecution and death; under such circumstances as these, their testimony would be altogether irresistible. I have proceeded all along on the supposition, that the author says, “We would not give credit to any number of men, in any circumstances, who declared, that they had seen an event which was a suspension or change of the great laws of nature;” because if he only means that we would not believe one man, it may be granted without the least detriment to the argument, for there are thousands of cases in which we do not give credit to a single witness, where our belief is compelled by a great number. The badness of the author’s logic is here also to be noticed. This, which is the first of his premises, is, in reality, the conclusion itself. It is assuming the very question in dispute, and then making that assumption the medium of proving it, which is just proving it by itself. The thing to be proved is, that we would not believe any number of witnesses, testifying what was inconsistent with the laws of nature, and he begins by laying it down as to be granted. I shall now examine the reason which he assigns why we would believe our own eyes in case of our seeing a hundred dice fall on the same faces, or a stone suspended in the air. It is, says he, our belief of the immutabillty [sic] of the laws of vision. This, like the former, is mere assertion, without an attempt towards proof, and, like the former, it must also be referred to general opinion. The question is, Why do we believe, in such a wonderful instance, that our eyes have not deceived us? That we do no see deuces on the dice when they are really aces? La Place says, Because we are persuaded of the immutability of the laws of vision. But the fact is, we are persuaded of no such matter; for we know that in many instances a man sees a single object as double; and in many cases, as of drunkenness and disease, he believes that he sees objects which have no existence at all. In any particular instance, therefore, whether common or extraordinary, a man believes his eyes, because he is convinced by a rapid, and perhaps unobserved process of reasoning, that the general laws of vision have not, in that particular instance, been changed or suspended. The process of reasoning on which he arrives at that conclusion, is, that on all other objects with which he has been long acquainted, his eyes are doing their office truly as usual. He looks up to the sky, and sees not two suns, but one; and he observes all the people who are about him, not having two heads, or four eyes, but the usual number. Finding his eyes testifying truly in all these matters, he believes that they are doing the same in the case of the dice or the stone. All this, like many other processes of reasoning, may be so rapid as to be unobserved;

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but that this is really the ground of belief, and the process by which a person arrives at it, will appear evident from this circumstance —​that if any doubt were formally to arise in his own mind, or to be suggested by another, this is the very plan he would have recourse to in order to be sure what was the fact. He would not rest on the general ground, that any change in the laws of vision was impossible; but knowing that such changes are not only possible, but frequent, he would proceed to try his eyes upon other objects, or to examine the objects in question by his other senses, that he might know whether or not any such change had taken place in the laws of vision in the present instance. The credit, therefore, which we give to our own eyes, when we see any wonderful appearance, is not founded on our persuasion of the immutability of the laws of vision but on this, that in that instance we have abundant proof that the laws of vision are not changed. Before La Place, therefore, can establish his theory, he must first prove, that we would not believe the greatest number of the most intelligent and upright witnesses who should assert that they had seen a hundred dice fall on the same faces; and he must prove, that when we believe the testimony of our own eyes we do it from a persuasion of the immutibility [sic] of the laws of vision. He has made no attempt to prove either the one or the other; and we believe he did not make the attempt, because he knew he had no such proofs to offer. He comes not forward here as a geometrician, but as an observer of human nature. Geometry could afford no proofs; and all the proofs which could be brought from the observation of the sense and conduct of man kind were against him; for in all ages mankind have actually believed the most astonishing events when well attested; and they will go on to do so, in spite of all that Hume and the enemies of revelation have said to the contrary. If it is a question which must be referred to the general judgement of mankind, —​there is no doubt of that being against them. [To be continued] _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

REMARKS On an Article in THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, in which the Doctrine of Hume on Miracles is maintained: By the Rev. James Somerville, Minister of Drumelzierˆ.

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Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. ST. PAUL (Continued from page 436.)

SECTION II. Examination of the Reasoning of the Reviewer. The passages in the Review on which it is intended to animadvert, are as follows: —​“The first author we believe who stated fairly the connection betwixt the evidence of testimony, and the evidence of experience, was Hume, in his Essay on Miracles; a work full of deep thought and enlarged views: and if we do not stretch the principles so far as to interfere with the truths of religion, abounding in maxims of great use in the conduct of life, as well as in the speculations of philosophy.” P. 329. “Conformably to the principles contained in it, and also to those in the Essay before us, if we would form some general rules for comparing the evidence derived from our experience of the course of nature, with the evidence of testimony, we may consider physical phenomena as divided into two classes, the one comprehending all those of which the course is known, from experience, to be perfectly uniform; and the other comprehending those of which the course, though no doubt governed by general laws, is not perfectly conformable to any law with which we are acquainted. The violation of the order of nature among phenomena of the former class, the suspension of gravity, for example, the deviation of any of the stars from their places, or their courses in the heavens, &c.; these are facts, the improbability of which is so strong, that no testimony can privail [sic] against it. It will always be more wonderful that the violation of such order should take place, than that any number of witnesses should be deceived themselves, or be disposed to deceive others.” “Against the uniformity of such laws (as the motions of the heavenly bodies, &c.) it is impossible for testimony to prevail.” P. 330. “Supposing the greatest antiquity to which history goes back is 5000 years, or 1,826,213 days, the probability that the sun will rise to-​morrow is, according to this rule, 1,826,214/​1,826,215, or there is, 1,826,214 to 1, to wager in favour of that event.” p. 333. One of the most common sophisms, is the substituting of one term in the place of another, which are totally different in their meaning, and then arguing

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from them as if they meant the same thing. Of this the Reviewer is glaringly guilty in his reasoning, as contained in these extracts. He calls that experience, which really is, and ought to have been called, testimony; and then he argues from it against testimony. Thus he asserts, that our knowledge of the great laws of nature, such as the rising and setting of the sun, gravity, &c. is founded on uniform experience. Now this is not the fact. The word experience can, with no propriety, be applied to any thing except what falls under the personal observation of an individual. The knowledge that any person has of the regular rising and setting of the sun, from experience, is exactly commensurate with his own life, or rather with that part of it, in which he has been able to make observations. With regard to all the time that elapsed before, he has no experience; if he knows any thing about it, he knows it solely by testimony. It might be experience with each of the successive generations which preceded the present one, but it comes to the present generation only in the shape of testimony, and must therefore be subjected to all the rules by which testimony is usually tried. Supposing history to reach back 5000 years, all the experience that exists in the world of the regular rising and setting of the sun, is only the experience of the oldest men who are alive, and the remainder of the 5000 years depends entirely on testimony. If it was owing to the want of acumen that the Reviewer did not perceive this confusion of ideas and terms, he must be placed very low in the class of reasoners. If he did perceive it, but adhered to it, because he easily saw that the distinction would overthrow all his reasoning, he must stand still lower as a man of integrity. Had he confined himself to the just sense of the word experience, his argument would have been, “No testimony can prevail against 70 or 80 years experience.” But such a conclusion would have little answered the purpose, which either Hume or he had in view. That the Reviewer has made this unwarranted use of the word experience, where testimony should have been used, will appear plain from the way in which the word is daily used in other cases. There are at present many discoveries making in chemistry. Would the Reviewer think himself warranted to say that he knew the truth of these by experience, if in fact he had never seen one of the experiments? We hear much of meteoric stones —​Would any man who understood language, say he had experience of stones falling from the air, who had never seen one of them? Equally false is to say, that it is from uniform experience we know the rising and setting of the sun from the remotest times to the present day. But if they are determined to call that by the name of experience, which comes to us by the testimony of persons who lived before our days, then they must in justice apply the same word to that testimony which has transmitted

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miracles to us. If it is by experience we know the rising and setting of the sun from the beginning of the world, it is also by experience we know that in the days of Joshua the sun did not set for a whole day, that in the days of Moses the Red Sea was divided, and many other facts of the same kind. The ordinary facts which happened in those times, and these extraordinary ones, come to us precisely in the same way, by the testimony of persons who declare that they were founded upon their personal experience. We must therefore give them all one denomination; either call them all experience, or call them all testimony; and whichever of the terms we adopt, uniformity is excluded, by the very fact of the record which is in our hands testifying to the deviations. The Reviewer, after Hume and La Place having falsly [sic] assumed, that all our knowledge of the great laws of nature is experience, and also that experience is perfectly uniform, goes on to state that no testimony can prevail against it. A most unquestionable truth, without doubt, if his premises are granted, and far from requiring the metaphysical talents of Hume, or the mathematical powers of La Place or of his Review to establish. For, if experience be uniform, that experience must consist of the personal experience of every individual of the human race in every age. Nothing less can constitute uniform experience; and if there be uniform experience on any point whatever, it is plain that no testimony can prevail against it, for this obvious reason, that no person could possibly be found giving such testimony. The uniformity of experience, which is assumed as the very basis of the argument, precludes the possibility of any opposite testimony. The proposition, therefore, which assumes that no testimony can prevail against perfect uniformity of experience, is a mere childish truism. It first of all assumes, that experience is perfectly uniform, and then argues, that if it is perfectly uniform, it must be perfectly uniform! But if it be true that a very small part of our knowledge of the laws of nature is founded on experience; that the far greater part of it depends on testimony; and that these gentlemen, by a dexterous manoeuver, have substituted experience for testimony, —​we must restore this word to its proper station, and then try their reasoning according to this view of the case. They ought then to have said, that uniform testimony, for 5000 years, or deducting the life of the present generation, which is justly placed under the head of experience, for about 4920 years, bore, that the sun had risen and set every day; and then their argument would have been, that no testimony can prevail against uniform testimony, —​just such a precious truism as we had in the former case. For if the testimony be uniform, where are the persons to be found to testify the deviations; and if there be any persons testifying the deviations, where is the uniformity of testimony?

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This will lead the reader to see why they have substituted experience for testimony. Real experience furnished too narrow ground for such an extensive conclusion as they wished to draw. Had they restricted the term experience to what is really experience, and called all the rest testimony, they would have been deprived of the plausible ground of opposing testimony to uniform experience; and instead of saying that no testimony is to be credited against uniform experience, they would have been obliged to say, that no testimony is to be credited against uniform testimony; —​a proposition too trifling and harmless to meet with any attention. Had they called that part of our knowledge testimony which really is testimony, then it would have followed, that the facts cenerning [sic] the ordinary laws of nature, and the facts concerning miracles, as all standing on the same ground, the ground of testimony, must all be tried by the same laws, the laws by which testimony is tried. Let them then confine the term experience to what is experience, and testimony to what is testimony, and they must either say, 1st, That no testimony is to be credited against a man’s personal experience; or, 2dly, That no testimony can prevail against uniform testimony. If they adopt the first, it will destroy all historical evidence, and all credibility of facts, except the few which have fallen under an individual’s personal observation. If the second, it is such a childish truism, as to be perfectly harmless, though the reasoning were allowed to be just; but it assumes what is not true, for testimony which attests the existence of miracles, whether that testimony be true or false, at all events exists, and therefore destroys the uniformity of testimony on the other side. These miracles, therefore, being thus attested, must be tried by the ordinary rules by which other testimony is tried. There actually is testimony for them: if there be any against them, let it be brought forward, and fairly weighted; but let them not be rejected by the sweeping assertion, that uniform testimony is against them, an assertion evidently false: nor by the more plusible [sic] assertion, that uniform experience is against them, which can mean no more than that no man living has had experience of them, —​a point which may readily be granted without the smallest injury to miracles, unless we are prepared to involve in one common destruction our belief of every fact which is beyond our personal observation. I argue, therefore, against Hume, La Place, and the Reviewer, that no argument can be brought against miracles from uniform experience of the regularity of the great laws of nature, because no such uniform experience exists, if by experience we understand, as they do, the knowledge that is conveyed to us by all mankind in all ages.

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If they give up the word uniform, and adopt the word general instead of it, and say that no testimony is to be credited against general experience and general testimony, this will as little serve them. This word, when deliberately adopted, supposes the want of uniformity, of universality; it supposes only a very lage [sic] majority of cases to be regular, but it also supposes a number of deviations, otherwise the word uniform would be adopted. Now the granting of any cases of deviation, leaves all the room for miracles which can be desired. They must therefore be compelled to give up the argument, or to say, that no testimony is to be credited beyond our own observation. I know not whether they will occupy this ground or not; but, as it is all that remains to them, it may be proper to shew that it is quite untenable. If we are to believe nothing but what agrees with our personal observation and experience, it will reduce our knowledge and belief within very narrow limits indeed. The records of history would in a great measure be useless: the greatest part of the inhabitants of this island could never believe the existence of volcanoes, earthquakes, or any of those natural phonomena [sic] which have not fallen under their own observation. The course of nature, according to their experience, has been as uniform against these, as against the sun standing still, or a dead person rising to life. The inhabitants of those regions where ice is never seen, ought not to believe in its existence. The readers of Mr Locke have generally been disposed to smile at his account of the king of Siam, who hearkened with great deference to the narrative of the Dutch ambassador concerning he wonders of Europe, until he came to mention, that at one period of the year the rivers became so hard as to bear the heaviest carriages; but, on hearing this stopt [sic] him, and said he had hitherto believed him, because he appeared to be a sober man, but now he could believe him no longer. According to the princples [sic] of the Reviewer, he was perfectly right; and Mr Hume expressly says so. Nor do I mean entirely to deny it; for he had only a single witness testifying it; and, moreover, that witness was a traveller, and perhaps the Siamese prince knew, that in all ages travellers have had the same priviledge [sic] to tell lies, as philosophers have had to maintain absurdities.* But on the principles of the Reviewer, he ought not to have believed that in this country the rivers freeze though a million of persons had gone from Europe to testify it —​though he had found all these to be men of the most perfect integrity in every thing else —​though they had offered to go to death, rather than deviate from their testimony —​and though, in addition to this, he had become acquainted with all the European books which take notice of that circumstance. All should have weighed * Cicero says, that in his days there was nothing so absurd which had not been maintained by some philosopher. Had he lived in the present times, he would not have been of a different opinion.

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as nothing in opposition to his own unvarying experience of the course of nature. Yea, though he and all his countrymen, except one, had come here to see it, and had gone home and unanimously declared that it was true, still that one ought not to have believed it. In fact, the inhabitants of those regions ought on no account to believe this, unless either they come here to witness it, or some of our professors go there to exhibit their experiments concerning the formation of ice. Such, without the least straining, is the doctrine of the Reviewer. We may safely leave this to the common sense of mankind. Perhaps the Reviewer will say, that the incredulity of these men would be unreasonable, because there is a wide difference betwixt their country and Europe; and as there is a degree of cold here which they have not experienced, so they could not know what might be the effects of that cold upon water. Very true. Neither has the Reviewer experienced the particular circumstances in which miracles were wrought, viz. when the divine authority of a particular religion was to be demonstrated; and, as he has no experience of these circumstances, he is not qualified to say what would take place under them. The sum of this Section is this. We have no knowledge of past events from experience, but wholly from testimony;† testimony does not bear that the course of nature has been uniform, but expressly bears that there have been many deviations. There is no other experience than an individual’s personal observation; and to say that we ought to believe nothing but what agrees with our personal observation, leads to absurdity, and contradicts common sense.‡

SECTION III. Examination of the Reviewer continued. The assertions which I intend to examine in this Section, are the following. “The suspension of gravity, the deviation of any of the stars from their places, &c. are facts, the improbability of which is so strong, that no testimony can prevail against it. —​It will always be more wonderful, that the violation of such order should take place, than that any number of witnesses should be deceived

†

Hume in a great measure acknowledges this in his letter to Dr Blair, printed in Dr Campbell’s work on miracles. ‡ The Reviewer himself shews, that he does not make experience his rule of judging. In the very article we are examining, he labours to establish the belief of meteoric stones, though it is presumed he never saw any of them fall.

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themselves, or be disposed to deceive others.” —​“Against the uniformity of such laws, it is impossible for testimony to prevail.” We might safely have left the subject with what is said in the last Section; but as both Hume and the Reviewer repeat these assertions so often, and lay them down in such an unqualified manner, it may be useful to give them a little farther consideration. I would first observe here, that the Reviewer has made a concession which appears to overthrow his whole argument. He computes the probability of the sun rising to-​morrow, is as 1826214/​1826215, or that a person may wager 1826214 to 1 in favour of it. This implies, that if a person should wager more, as, for instance, a hundred million to one, he would act against the laws of probability. Here it is taken for granted, that there is some probability of the sun not rising to-​morrow: it is very small, but still it is something. Now, I should be glad to know, by what mood or figure he will attempt to prove that an event which is not only possible, but to a certain degree probable, to-​morrow, cannot by any evidence be established to have happened in any past period. If he say, that it is in itself impossible, we deny it upon his own showing, for he has proved that it is possible, and even to a certain degree probable. If he say, that uniform experience is against it, we deny it, and say that only the experience of the present generation is against it. If he say that uniform testimony is against it, this we deny also; for it is testified by the author of the book of Joshua, that in his days the sun stood still for a whole day; and there is no testimony at all on the other side, as applicable to that particular day. The same observations may be applied to all the miracles recorded in Scripture. Experience is not applicable to them, for it is limited to the objects under our notice; and testimony is so far from being against them, that there is testimony for them, and none against them. Many persons testify that they saw them happen, and none testify that they were upon the spot, and examined all the circumstances, and saw that they did not happen. As to the testimony of those who were not there, however uniform it might be, it does not bear at all upon the subject. The principles of calculation, therefore, are more in support of miracles than against them. Hume’s metaphysics would readily excite that suspicion of sophistry which naturally arises in every mind acquainted with metaphysical reasoning, taken in connection with his inveterate enmity to revelation. But when the first mathematicians of the age are seen coming forward in support of the same doctrines, it might be by many taken for granted, that now something of the certainty of geometrical demonstration had been introduced into the subject. But this is mere deception; for after all that La Place and the Reviewer have said,

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they have not been able to bring their own science to bear upon the subject in this slightest degree. Perhaps the Reviewer will say, that the passage just now commented on, no doubt admits the possibility of the sun’s standing still; but there is no inconsistency in granting this, and yet maintaining that no testimony ought to lead us to believe it. The fact is possible: we ought to believe if we saw it; but no testimony ought to induce us to believe it. If he argues in this manner, he argues fairly upon his own principles; and this will bring us directly to the subject of this Section, —​ Can any testimony be sufficient to lead us to believe such facts? It is no small matter that the possibility of such facts is granted; we have only now to inquire if any testimony can be to us a sufficient ground of belief. Instead of using abstract arguments, I shall here send the Reviewer to his master, Hume, and leave the reader to common sense; and we would wish it to be particularly observed, that in appealing so often to the sense of mankind, we place the whole matter before the tribunal which alone is competent to give a final decision. For, as was already observed, in remarking on La Place, mankind at large are the only judges of what they will or will not believe —​what testimony is credible, and what is incredible —​what is sufficient to command their belief, and what not. Mr. Hume says, “I own there may possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of a proof from human testimony. Suppose all authors, in all languages, agree, that from the 1st of January, 1600, there was a total darkness over the whole earth for eight days; suppose that the tradition of this extraordinary event is still strong and lively among the people; that all travellers who return from foreign countries, bring us accounts of the same tradition, without the least variation or contradiction: it is evident, that our present philosophers, instead of doubting of that fact, ought to receive it for certain, and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived.”* Dr. Campbell, after quoting this passage, charges Hume strongly with inconsistency; and declares that he has given up the argument. “Was there ever,” says he, “a more glaring contradiction, than to declare, on the one hand, ‘that no testimony for any kind of miracle can ever possibly amount to a probability, much less to a proof,’ and yet supposing a case, the testimony for which would amont * The Reviewer has put a case, “that we would not believe the inhabitants of London, though they

should tell us that the moon had not set there for 24 hours;” but this is a case not in point, and therefore a mere sophism; for the moon could not be actually above the horizon at London, without being equally so in every other place from which it was visible. Any testimony then to prove that it had been in such a position at London alone, would not be a testimony to prove an extraordinary fact or a miracle, but to prove a contradiction, that the same thing might be, and might not be at the same time,—​an assertion which could not be the subject of any proof as an impossibility is not the object of any power. The above case from Hume is truly put; the Reviewer’s is quite sophistical.

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[sic] not only to proof but to CERTAINTY?” —​Whether the Reviewer will agree with Mr. Hume in the above quotation, or not, I cannot tell. If he agrees with him, then he gives up the argument, and stands contradicted by himself. If he disagrees with him, he contradicts common sense. Upon the supposition, that to preserve consistency, and maintain his principles, he disagrees with Hume, we shall put another case, though it is scarcely possible that a stronger one can be put than the one just now stated. Suppose that, fifty or sixty years ago, two hostile armies had been marching across this island; that they had come to Edinburgh, and marched to the sea-​side; that, at the word of one of the generals, the sea had opened, and allowed his army to pass on dry ground; that, at his word, the waters had returned, and swept away the opposing army; that this fact had been testified by every individual of the surviving army, and by a hundred thousand spectators who had seen it from the neighbouring shores; and that it had been mentioned by all contemporary writers; —​upon the principles of the Reviewer, we ought not to believe it. Nay, though it had happened last year —​though all the army which passed were still alive —​though all the inhabitants of the surrounding countries were to come forward and declare that they saw it  —​yes, though all the fraternity of the Edinburgh Reviewers had seen it, except the writer of the article we are examining, who had happened not to be present, he could not have believed all this accumulation of evidence. This is a very strong case, but we have a right to put the strongest possible case, because the assertion of Hume and of the Reviewer is most unqualified, “that no testimony can be a sufficient ground of belief in opposition to experience.” It is to no purpose to say, that none of the Scripture miracles are so strongly testified. These gentlemen are not attacking the testimony in favour of Scripture miracles, on account of its weakness; they declare that NO testimony, be it ever so strong, could induce them to believe the reality of a miracle. We may leave it here to the common sense of the reader. Had such a miracle, and so attested, taken place, even Hume declares he would have believed it, provided it had been wrought on any other account than for the support of religion. If any person feels disinclined to believe a miracle so strongly proved, as supporting religion, it only shows that his hatred of religion is so great, as in that particular instance to have suspended the right exercise of his reason. To render the above instance more striking, I have brought it very near our own times. But though our imagination is apt to impose on our judgment with regard to very distant facts, yet, if they were originally well attested, the distance of time makes no difference. On this point I  shall give a quotation from the

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Reviewer, which will be considered of great value by those who are disposed to view him as hostile to revelation. “It does not appear,” says he, “that the diminution of evidence is a necessary consequent of transmission from one age to another. It may hold in some instances; but in those which most commonly occur, no sensible diminution of evidence seems to be produced by the lapse of time. Take any ancient event that is well attested, such for example as the retreat of the ten thousand, and we are persuaded it will be generally admitted, that the certainty of that event having taken place, is as great at this moment as it was at the return of the Greek army, or when Xenophon published his history.”

CONCLUSION. Thus have I endeavoured to shew the inconclusiveness of the whole reasoning, both of La Place and the Reviewer. They have assumed the very point in debate, and then reasoned from it as if it had been granted. They have called that experience, which is really testimony, and they have asserted an uniformity in it which has no existence. There are several other matters in the article we have been considering, which would also deserve to be brought under review; but id does not enter into my present plan to do any think farther, than merely to point out the sophistry of the great argument which has been brought forward in such a triumphant manner. Neither is it any part of my present design, to bring into view the positive proofs by which the miracles of the Scriptures are supported. Those who wish for information on that point, will find it discussed in almost all the works on the evidences of Christianity. It may be sufficient here, for the sake of the general reader, to observe, that there are no presumptions against miracles being wrought in support of revealed religion; that there is a strong presumption in their favour, that the Supreme Being is the author of the laws of nature; that as it is by his power that these laws operate, so he just have the power of suspending or altering them when he sees meet;* that the establishment of revealed religion was an event of such importance to mankind, that it might have been expected that the Supreme Being would have interfered, and suspended or altered the laws * This argument must have irresistible force with those who believe in the existence of a God, but can

have no effect upon Atheists. It is probable, that the acute mind of Hume perceived this; and, therefore, which he laboured to undermine our belief of revealed religion by his doctrine about testimony, he laboured at the same time to undermine our belief of a great First Cause by his doctrine of cause and effect.

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of nature, to prove that it came from him. —​It is also to be observed, that the miracles which were wrought in support of revelation, particularly of the gospel, were very numerous; of carious kinds; of such a nature, that the witnesses could not have been deceived; that they were wrought before great numbers, —​before enemies as well as friends; that those who lived at the time, and had the strongest interest in denying them, never did so; that the witnesses were very numerous, had no worldly interest to serve by their testimony; on the contrary, a very great proportion of them underwent the greatest sufferings, and many of them were subjected to a cruel death on account of their testimony, and that nevertheless not one of them ever drew back, and acknowledged they had been testifying a falsehood, though by doing so they might have escaped their sufferings. —​We may here appeal to experience, and say, does our experience of human nature, and of the course of human affairs, give us any ground to suspect, that men in such circumstances were not testifying the truth?† It is a cause of deep regret, that any person should be found so hostile to the best interests of mankind, as to labour to make converts to infidelity. It is still more to be regretted, that a work which often displays such splendid abilities as the Edinburgh Review, should ever contain a single sentence which has even the appearance of such a tendency. The friends of humanity have been delighted with their zealous and persevering efforts in the cause of suffering Africa; and the friends of morality have been no less pleased with the sever chastisements which they have occasionally inflicted on licentious authors. What a pity is it, that they do not see that neither humanity nor morals have any firm basis but Christianity? What extensive good might be done, were these talents occasionally employed in behalf of religion? It is long since the Reviewers declared, “That they were ready, whenever a fair opportunity offered, to defend Christianity against the tiger-​spring of infidelity.” Six years have elapsed since that declaration was made, and yet they have not redeemed their pledge. Can they say, that during that period nothing has occurred in their pages of an opposite tendency? With regard to the final issue of any attack on Christianity, its friends have no occasion to feel any alarm. The attacks which hitherto have been made, have eventually been beneficial, inasmuch as they have given occasion to bring the evidences of its truth more clearly into view. It is still to be hoped, that every new attack will bring forward new talents in its defence. But though the general issue is perfectly safe, yet much partial mischief may be done, which ought to †

The reader may consult the work of Mr. Chalmers on Christianity, for a very masterly elucidation of this subject. Quere. Could it possibly be the appearance of this able work, which brought the long exploded doctrines of Hume again into view?

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be carefully guarded against by every possible means. If the most popular and widely circulating journal in Europe, shall become a vehicle for infidel sentiments, how much harm may thus be done to the cause of religion? If, in addition to this, persons who are hostile to Christianity, fill such stations as give them easy access to the ductile and unsuspecting minds of youth, it certainly ought to excite no small degree of alarm among those, whose highest wish for the welfare of their children is, that they may be Christians.

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HUME’S HOUSEKEEPER

“HUME THE HISTORIAN,” The Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal, vol. 5, no. 26 (7 April 1832), p. 204. Anonymous The first number of The Friend, a Quaker magazine, was published in Philadelphia in 1827. The anecdote printed below, about Hume’s death-​bed, is from the issue for April 1832. That piece appears to have been first published five months earlier in Britain, as a letter to the editor in The Christian Observer (London) for November 1831. There, it was signed, “O.B.” For commentary on the anecdote’s British circulation, see James Fieser, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Early Responses to Hume’s Life and Reputation, 2 vols (revised edition, Bristol, 2005), vol. 1, pp. xxv–​xxvi. For an earlier American printing of this short piece, see selection #84. Hume’s housekeeper was Margaret (Peggy) Irvine. She makes several appearances in E. C. Mossner’s The Life of David Hume (1954; revised edition, Oxford, 1980). Mossner’s is still the best birth-​to-​death biography of Hume, but he does not address this anecdote. The Friend was in continuous publication through to 1955. For other Humean anecdotes from its pages (and ones related to this one) see selections #110 and #113. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ For “The Friend.”

HUME THE HISTORIAN. The following statement relative to the death-​bed of the celebrated David Hume, is given by a correspondent of the London Christian Observer. The degree of credit with which it will be received by different persons, will, of course, vary

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according to their different temperaments; but we perceive no good reason for disbelieving it, and the inference drawn in favour of its validity from the fact of its having never been contradicted, seems to us reasonable and fair. I enclose a passage relative to the death-​bed of Hume the historian, which appeared many years ago in an Edinburgh newspaper, and which I am not aware was ever contradicted. Adam Smith’s well known narrative of Hume’s last hours has been often cited to prove how calmly and philosophically an infidel can die; but, if the inclosed account be correct, very different was the picture. I copy it as I find it, thinking it possible that some of your numerous readers may be able to cast some light upon the subject. If the facts alleged in the following statement are not authentic, they out to be disproved before tradition is too remote; if authentic, they are of considerable importance on account of the religious use which has been made of the popular narrative; just as was the case in regard to the death-​bed of Voltaire, which, to this hour, in spite of well-​proved facts, infidel writers maintain was calm and philosophical: The following is the story: “About the end of 1776, a few months after the historian’s death, a respectable looking woman, dressed in black, came into the Haddington stage coach while passing through Edinburgh. “The conversation among the passengers which had been interrupted for a few minutes, was speedily resumed, which the lady soon found to be regarding the state of mind persons were in at the prospect of death. One gentleman argued that a real Christian was more likely to view the approach of death with composure, than he who had looked upon religion as unworthy his notice. Another (an English gentleman) insisted that an infidel could look to his end with as much complacency and peace of mind as the best Christian in the land. This being denied by his opponent, he made him consider the death of his countryman David Hume, who was an acknowledged infidel, and yet died not only happy and tranquil, but even of his dissolution with a degree of gaiety and humour. The lady who had lately joined them turned round to the last speaker and said, ‘Sir, this is all you know about it: I could tell you another tale.’ ‘Madam,’ relied the gentleman, ‘I presume I have as good information as you can have on this subject, and I believe that what I have asserted regarding Mr. Hume has never before been called in question.’ The lady continued: ‘Sir, I was Mr. Hume’s housekeeper for many years, and was with him in his last moments; and the mourning I now wear was a present from his relatives for my attention to him on his death-​bed; and happy would I have been, if I could have borne my testimony to the mistaken opinion that has gone abroad of his peaceful and composed end. I have, sir, never till this hour, opened my mouth

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on this subject; but I think it a pity the world should be kept in the dark on so interesting a topic. It is true, sir, that when Mr. Hume’s friends were with him, he was cheerful, and seemed quite unconcerned about his approaching fate; nay, frequently spoke of it to them in a jocular and playful way; but when he was alone, the scene was very different: he was any thing but composed; his mental agitation was so great at times as to occasion his whole bed to shake. He would not allow the candles to be put out during the night, nor would he be left alone for a minute. I had always to ring the bell for one of the servants to be in the room, before he would allow me to leave it. He struggled hard to appear composed even before me; but to one who attended his bed-​side for so many days and nights, and witnessed his disturbed sleeps and still more disturbed wakings; who frequently heard his involuntary breathings of remorse and frightful startings; it was no difficult matter to determine that all was not right within. This continued and increased until he became insensible. I hope in God I shall never witness a similar scene.’ “I leave your readers to weigh the probability of this narrative; for myself I see nothing unlikely in it; for a man who had exerted all his talents to deprive mankind of their dearest hopes, and only consolation in the day of trial and the hour of death, might well be expected to suffer remorse in his dying hour; and the alleged narrator of the circumstance, who states herself to have been his housekeeper, is affirmed to have made the declaration on the spur of the occasion, from regard to truth, and by no means from any pique or dislike towards Mr. Hume or his family. Some of your northern readers may perhaps be able to inform me who was Mr. Hume’s housekeeper at the time of his death, and whether there is any proof in writing, memory, or tradition, to the effect of her alleged statement.

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HUME’S PRETENDED CALM

“HUME, THE HISTORIAN,” The Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal, vol. 5, no. 38 (30 June 1832), pp. 299–​300. Anonymous See selection #109 for an earlier anecdote from this same publication related to Hume’s death-​bed. The passage quoted from Hume below is said to be “found at the conclusion of Mr. Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature.” More accurately, it is from the conclusion of Book 1 of that work’s three books. For the entire passage, and the broader context in which it is situated, see THN, pp. 172–​3. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

HUME, THE HISTORIAN. The following passage is found at the conclusion of Mr. Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature: “Methinks I am like a man who, having struck on many shoals and narrowly escaped shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-​beaten vessel, and even carried his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. My memory of past errors makes me diffident of future; the wretched condition, weakness, and disorder of the faculties I must employ in the inquiry, increase my apprehensions; the impossibility of correcting or amending these faculties reduces me almost to despair, and makes me resolve to perish on the barren rock upon which I am at present, rather than venture upon that boundless ocean which runs out into immensity. This sudden view of my danger strikes me with melancholy, and I cannot forbear feeding my despair with all those desponding

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reflections which the present subject furnishes me with in such abundance. I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy myself some uncouth strange monster, who, not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate. Fain would I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth, but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I call upon others to join me, in order to make a company apart, but no one will hearken to me: every one shuns me, and keeps at a distance from that storm which beats upon me on every side:  I  have exposed myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians; and can I wonder at the insults I must suffer? —​I have declared my disapprobation of their systems; and can I be surprised if they should express their dislike of mine, and even their hatred of my person? When I  look abroad, I  see on every side dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny, and detraction: when I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to opposed and contradict me, though such is my weakness I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others; every step I take is with hesitation, and every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning; for with what confidence can I venture on such bold enterprizes, when, besides those numberless infirmities peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human nature! The intense view of manifold contradictions and infirmities in human reason has so worked upon my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than any other. Where am I, or what? from what causes do I derive my existence, or to what condition shall I return? whose favour shall I court, and whose anger shall I dread? what beings surround me, and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded by all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.” And is this the fruit of those philosophical inquiries; this the only end to which the most penetrating intellect could employ its powers; this the result of his laborious speculations? It is, by the philosopher’s own confession. Surely it is not improbable that the death-​bed of the man who wrote thus was wretched, whatever affectation of tranquility he may have assumed to disguise his real feelings, and however his pretended calm may have deceived his biographer. —​ Christian Observer.

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HUME AND HIS MOTHER

“DAVID HUME AND HIS MOTHER,” The Episcopal Watchman, vol. 7, no. 19 (14 September 1833), p. 76. Anonymous The Episcopal Watchman was a weekly, published in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1827 to 1833. The anecdote reprinted below, related to Hume’s mother, is identified as coming from “Silliman’s Travels in England.” Benjamin Silliman’s (1779–​1864) A Journal of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland, in the years 1805–​1806 was first published in New York in 1810. The best book on Silliman is Michael Chandos Brown’s Benjamin Silliman:  A  Life in the Young Republic (Princeton, 1989); for a shorter account, see Mark G.  Spencer, “Silliman, Benjamin” in EAE, vol. 2, pp. 963–​6. Silliman’s Travels was noticed by contemporaries —​including those in Britain, where the Quarterly Review, in 1816, drew attention to this same anecdote in its review. In fact, the concluding lines of the Episcopal Watchman’s essay (“A story like this requires no comment. Thus it is that false philosophy restores the sting to death, and gives again the victory to the grave!”) are the Quarterly’s (see July 1816, vol. 15, p. 562). For a critical remark on Silliman’s anecdote, see selection #117. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

DAVID HUME AND HIS MOTHER. Hume, the historian, received a religious education from his mother, and early in life, was the subject of strong and hopeful religious impressions; but as he approached manhood, they were effaced and confirmed infidelity succeeded. Maternal partiality, however, alarmed at first, came at length to look with less

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and less pain upon this declension, and filial love and reference seem to have been absorbed in the pride of philosophical skepticism; for Hume now applied himself with unwearied, and, unhappily, with successful efforts, to sap the foundation of his mother’s faith. Having succeeded in this dreadful work, he went abroad into foreign countries; and as he was returning, an express met him in London, with a letter from his mother, informing him that she was in a deep decline, and could not long survive; she said she found herself without any support in her distress; that he had taken away that source of comfort upon which, in all cases of affliction, she used to rely, and that she now found her mind sinking into despair: she did not doubt that her son would afford her some substitution for her religion; and she conjured him to hasten to her, or at least to send her a letter, containing such consolation as philosophy can afford to a dying mortal. Hume was overwhelmed with anguish on receiving this letter, and hastened to Scotland, travelling day and night; but before he arrived his mother expired. No permanent impression seems, however, to have been made on his mind by this most trying event; and whatever remorse he might have felt at the moment, he soon relapsed into his wonted obduracy of heart.  —​Silliman’s Travels in England. A story like this requires no comment. Thus it is that false philosophy restores the sting to death, and gives again the victory to the grave!

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CHARGEABLE WITH THE SINS OF OMISSION, AND COMMISSION

“HUME — AS A HISTORIAN,” The Episcopal Watchman, vol. 7, no.  24 (19 October 1833), p. 95. Anonymous On The Episcopal Watchman see selection #111. The first paragraph of this essay was original, but the reminder is an excerpt of Leonard Withington’s essay, “Hume, as a Historian,” first published in the American Quarterly Observer earlier in 1833. See selection #53 for Withington and his essay. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

HUME —​AS A HISTORIAN. We freely respond to the sentiments of a writer on this subject, in the last “American Quarterly Observer.” The grand object of history is to transmit to mankind the lessons which the good providence of God teaches, and it is of vital importance that the record should be found faithful. Whoever has read the History of England by Hume, knows how much he is chargeable with the sins of omission, and commission. By nature and disposition a sophist, his controling [sic] purpose seems to have been to gain admiration by showing his ingenuity. His style of writing is peculiarly fascinating, and had he always entered upon a candid and severe investigation of the facts and occurrences that came within his province, he would have been entitled to our highest respect and confidence. But he wanted a right perception of moral truth. He wanted a heart that could be more truly alive to the errors and vices of his fellow men, and a mind less disposed to pervert the real nature of moral obligation.

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“It is a melancholy circumstance that history has so often fallen into the hands of men acute; rather than wise:  willing rather to show their own intellectual omnipotence, than to give a fair representation of real events; men of perverted intellects and depraved hearts. Such men will certainly never reach the sublime and beautiful of history. No man can write well, unless his soul speaks; unless his passions prompt his pen. He may be a master of a very fine style; he may draw his characters with much delicacy and discrimination; he may satirize folly, and sometimes make truth ridiculous; he may show great intellectual power; power which we should admire in an ancient orator, or a modern lawyer. He misleads the world, and perhaps himself. Of all the men who have led the way in this perverted style of history, perhaps none have been more popular and successful than DAVID HUME. But never was there a mind, of equal power, less fitted for the task [of writing the history of Eng.] than that of David Hume. I can imagine Sir Isaac Newton writing novels, in the style of Richardson; I can imagine Thomas Moore writing pious hymns, as he did; though it must be confessed he makes sad work of it; I can imagine Mr. Locke translating the epigrams of Martial; I can almost imagine Milton (horresco referens,) writing a comedy, in the style of Congreve —​I say I can imagine all these things, more easily than I can imagine the supersensuous and high principled history of England, with all its spiritual lights and shades, falling into the grasp of such an animalized being as David Hume —​if it had not actually taken place. What is it? It is the serpent of seduction, crawling beneath the flowers of paradise. In the first place, his unfitness for the task was seated in the very tissue of his soul. He had no perception of the sublime and beautiful in morals. —​He could follow the patriot to his agony of glory, and the martyr to his stake, without one touch of sympathy with the generosity of the one, or the devotion of the other. His conceptions as well as his heart, seems to have been defective. We often find that men of very imperfect lives, and gross in their pleasures, still preserve a bright apprehension of moral beauty. Thompson, the poet, if his biographers have not been unjust to his memory, was on the whole a luxurious and sensual man, loving a good supper better than a morning landscape, which he so finely describes. However low his pleasures might have been (and I am afraid they were much lower than we should be willing to remember, while reading the seasons,) and he still preserved in his mind the bright ideal of moral beauty. There was a discord and divorce between his fancy and his heart. But it was not so with Hume. There was a dreadful harmony between them. No glowing forms of spiritual life flitted before his

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mind; no high conceptions of man’s final destiny and social improvement visited his waking or his sleeping dreams. He was the most impassive being that ever crawled among the reptiles of lower life. It was said of Rousseau, that when a man begins to reason sophistically, he looses his heart in his sophistry. Hume never seems to sympathize with the self-​sacrifices which the patriot makes; he sees men pleading, suffering, dying in the cause of the best interest of mankind, and never catches one spark of the flame. He puts down, with a caustic satire, some of the most generous hearts that ever beat and bled for the elevation or felicity of the human race.”

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AN INFIDEL! WHAT IS THAT?

“HUME, THE INFIDEL,” The Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal, vol. 10, no. 39 (1 July 1837), p. 311. Anonymous This anecdote on “Hume, the Infidel” had been published earlier in America, including in New Haven, Connecticut, in The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 10 (May 1826), p. 776, under the title, “THE INFIDEL STAGGERED BY A CHILD.” It circulated in other magazines in the 1830s and 1840s, and was also picked up by newspapers, such as The Pittsburgh Gazette (on 16 March 1837, p. 2). Hume’s reception was suffering from a change to sentimental and romantic attitudes. It is not just history which records those. On The Friend, see selection #110. It is very difficult to say how much if any truth there is in this account. For a readable account of Hume’s life that gives attention to sorting out his religious views, see Roderick Graham, The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume (East Lothian, 2004). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ For “The Friend.”

HUME, THE INFIDEL. Hume, the celebrated infidel, philosopher, and author of a history of England, was dinning at the house of an intimate friend. After diner the ladies withdrew, and, in the course of conversation, Hume made some assertions which caused a gentleman present to observe to him, “If you can advance such sentiments as those, you certainly are what the world gives you credit for being, an infidel.” A little girl, whom the philosopher had often noticed, and with whom he had become a favourite, by bringing her little presents of toys and sweetmeats,

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happened to be playing about the room unnoticed:  she, however, listened to the conversation, and on hearing the above expression, left the room, went to her mother, and asked her, “Mamma, what is an infidel?” “An infidel! my dear,” replied her mother, “why should you ask such a question? an infidel is so awful a character that I scarcely know how to answer you.” “Oh! do tell me, mamma,” returned the child, “I must know what an infidel is.” Struck with her eagerness, her mother at length relied, “An infidel is one who believes that there is no God, no heaven, no hell, no hereafter.” Some days afterwards, Hume again visited the house of his friend. On being introduced to the parlour he found no one there but his favourite little girl; he went to her, and attempted to take her up in his arms to kiss her, as he had been used to do; but the child shrunk with horror from his touch. “My dear,” said he, “what is the matter! do I hurt you?” “No,” she replied, “you do not hurt me, but I cannot kiss you, I cannot play with you.” “Why not, my dear?” “Because you are an infidel.” “An infidel! what is that?” “One who believes there is no God, no heaven, no hell, no hereafter.” “And are you not sorry for me my dear,” asked the astonished philosopher. “Yes, indeed, I am sorry!” returned the child with solemnity, “and I pray to God for you.” “Do you indeed? and what do you say?” “I say, O God, teach this man that thou art!” What a striking illustration of the words of sacred writ, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast ordained strength, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and avenger.” (Ps. viii. 2.) The infidel confessed himself so much struck with the seriousness and simplicity of the child, that it caused him some sleepless nights, and days of sharp mental conflict. However, it is to be lamented that he stifled his conviction, and went on to the very borders of eternity, vainly flattering himself that he should prove “like the beasts that perish.”

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INFIDELITY FOR THE MILLION

“HUME’S INFIDELITY,” Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Journal, vol. 15, no. 31 (31 July 1844), [p. 121]. [Francis Palgrave] This assessment of Hume was excerpted from Sir Francis Palgrave’s (1788–​1861) influential essay, “Hume and his Influence upon History,” first published in the Quarterly Review, vol. 73 (March 1844), pp. 536–​92. The Zion’s Herald was published in Boston from 1823. It was one of the most successful Methodists magazines in nineteenth-​century America and was published through to the twentieth century. The passages of Palgrave reprinted here were also reprinted in other American magazines, such as the Eclectic Magazine in July 1844 and the Christian Secretary in October 1844. We see that Hume’s reputation as historian was falling with some —​just as his reputation as philosopher was beginning to ascend with others. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

HUME’S INFIDELITY. “But all his powers  —​they were great, and might have been noble  —​are rendered useless by the consummate Rhetor’s continued perversion of history into a panegyric of infidelity. His metaphysical writings have always been more known than read —​so dull, that even the zest of doing a wrong thing can hardly now persuade a reader to grapple with their drowsy inanity. Even the warmth and talents of his opponents could never criticize them into popularity. At last he discovered his peculiar talent. It was this acquisition of self-​knowledge, and not the opportunities of his office, which induced him, like Voltaire, to adopt

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history as the more effective vehicle of his opinions; and he fully succeeded. “INFIDELITY FOR THE MILLION’ is the heading for HUME’S history, than which only one other —​and is it needful to name Gibbon? —​has exerted a more baneful influence upon English literature, and through English literature upon the civilized world. Antipathy to faith had become engrafted upon his moral constitution. Like Gibbon he was possessed with malignant hatred against all goodness and holiness. ‘Never lose an opportunity,’ was the advice given by a kindred spirit, ‘of placing gunpowder, grain by grain, under the gigantic head of superstition, until the mine shall be charged with a sufficient quantity to blow up the whole.’ Hume did not dare to fire the train. He would have dreaded the smoke and noise of an explosion. Adopting the coarse but forcible expression suggested by a crime unknown in the ‘dark ages,’ and generated in the full blaze of civilization, he always tried to burke religion. Temper, as well as prudence, had from the first beginning rendered him sober. Personal considerations had due influence: he courted not the honors of martyrdom. Opinion imposed some check; law more. In England there was a boundary which could not he quite safely passed. Some examples had occurred sufficient to warn him. Like Asgill or Toland or Woolston or Peter Annet he might be seduced beyond the bounds of conventional impunity, granted to free thinking, and find himself in the presentment of the grand jury, with a prospect of Newgate and the pillory in the background; far enough off, yet disagreeable objects, looming in the horizon. At Edinburgh an ecclesiastical prosecution brushed by him. ‘An overture’ was made in the General Assembly for appointing a committee to call the philosopher before the synod as the author of books ‘containing the most rude and open attacks upon the Gospel; and principles evidently subversive even of natural religion and the foundations of morality, if not establishing direct atheism.’ To this one object, the destruction of ‘religious fiction and chimeras,’ all Hume’s endeavors were directed. It was the one end and intent of the History which gives to the whole the epic unity whence its seductive merit is in a great measure derived. Hume’s mode of dealing with religion shows the cowardice of his heart: he dreaded lest conviction should come upon him against his will. He was constantly trying to stupify his own conscience lest the pain of perceiving any reality in things unseen should come on. The first object of Hume is to nullify religion. All the workings of Providence in worldly affairs are denied; or blurred, when he cannot deny them. All active operation of holiness, all sincerity, is excluded. He constantly labors to suppress any belief in belief as an efficient cause of action: he will rather infer any other influential motive.

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Silence, argumentation, equivocation, absolute falsity, are all employed with equal dexterity, and in sovereign contempt of all the laws by which the conscience of an historian should be ruled. But if he cannot blot out religion entirely he lowers, degrades, deforms it; yet he prefers to affect contempt rather than express absolute aversion; he treats faith rather as a meanness, which the enlightened philosopher is ashamed to notice, than as an enemy who needs to be actively expelled. Ever and anon, however, his hatred becomes apparent; and he forgets even the conventional decencies of language in the bitterness of his heart. When his so called History is not an inferential argument against religion it is an invective. Could the powers of Belial he described more forcibly than in the following remarkable passage?* ‘Hume, without positively asserting much more than he can prove, gives prominence to all the circumstances which support his case. He glides lightly over those which are unfavorable to it. His own witnesses are applauded and encouraged; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are controverted; the contradictions into which they fall are explained away; a clear and connected abstract of their evidence is given. Every thing that is offered on the other side is scrutinized with the utmost severity; every suspicious circumstance is a ground for comment and invective; what cannot be denied is extenuated or passed by without notice. Concessions even are sometimes made; but this insiduous candor only increases the effect of this vast mass of sophistry.’ And in every shape Hume is the Belial advocate of ­infidelity.” —​ Eclectic Magazine for July.

* From Mr. Macaulay’s article upon “History,” Edinburgh Review, No. xciv., p. 359. We have no hesita-

tion in affixing Mr. Macaulay’s name to this admirable and in most respects incontrovertible essay. Since he has not reprinted it in his collection we trust he will reproduce it in an enlarged form, perhaps reconsidering his judgment of the Greek historians.

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LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAVID HUME

“From the Dublin University Magazine. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAVID HUME. The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the papers bequeathed by his Nephew, Baron Hume, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other original sources. By John Hill Burton, Esquire, Advocate. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1846,” The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, vol. 8, no. 1 (May 1846), pp. 80–​94. Anonymous The contours of Hume’s reception in America changed as his literary canon grew and as more about his life and correspondence became publically available. While Hume’s “My Own Life” was first published in 1777, along with Adam Smith’s reflections on his friend’s life, it took time for Hume’s correspondence to be published and for fuller biographical accounts to be written. John Hill Burton’s (1809–​81) Life and Writings of David Hume was an important step forward in that regard. By the mid-​1840s, Hume’s American readers had access to considerable material related to Hume and his thought, as demonstrated by the following review of Burton’s book, reprinted from the Dublin University Magazine:  A  Literary and Political Journal, vol. 27 (March and May 1846), pp. 356–​71; 576–​91. For a modern assessment of Hume’s “Letter to a Physician (mocked by the reviewer as, “The Valetudinarian, or the Man who cannot live without a Physician”), see John P. Wright, “Dr. George Cheyne, Chevalier Ramsay, and Hume’s Letter to a Physician,” Hume Studies, vol. 29 (2003), pp. 125–​41. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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Hume’s Reception in Early America From the Dublin University Magazine. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAVID HUME. The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the papers bequeathed by his Nephew, Baron Hume, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other original sources. By John Hill Burton, Esquire, Advocate. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1846.

OF the life of Hume, his own memoir, Adam Smith’s letter to Strahan, and Mr. Ritchie’s narrative, have hitherto been the principle accounts. In the course of last year was published Lord Brougham’s lively sketch, with several of the letters which are preserved in one of the public libraries of Edinburgh, and which have been long accessible to any person interested in the subject. All these works, and especially the first, are of considerable interest; still, something more was wanting. If correspondence is to be at all published, and is referred to as authority, there is then the general fitness of at least as much of it being given as in any way bears on the subject, to illustrate which it is produced. Allusions, more or less distinct, have been repeatedly made to these letters, and to those of the Scottish divines with whom Hume lived in habits of friendliness, to prove that the infidelity with which Hume was infected extended its taint to them. If such fact can be established, (and we do not believe it,) it must be by other evidence; for from the parts of the correspondence given by Mr. Burton, no inference of the kind can be derived. That no such account of Hume as Scotland ought to have supplied to the general literature of the country should have before appeared, is easily to be accounted for. Till of late years, the strong feelings which any discussion of his views on religious subjects was sure to excite, would have rendered the publication, in all probability, a losing concern, and at all events be regarded by a great portion of the public as an offence. The Edinburgh publishers were not unlikely to remember the spirit in which, when in the General Assembly, a prosecution against Hume had failed, the parties who were his most active assailants immediately commenced proceedings against the publishers of an essay of Lord Kames’s, which essay —​so subtle was the zeal of the prosecutors in detecting latent infidelity —​was written for the purpose of confuting the principles, supposed to be involved in Hume’s doctrine, that we are unable to discover any real connection between cause and effect.* A prosecution for sorcery or witchcraft * The title of Kames’s book, which was prosecuted, was “Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion.” Kames’s theory is, that there is no real liberty to human beings, but that in our nature is implanted the feeling that we are free. It seems to be a statement, in the philosophical jargon of his day, of a doctrine that ought not to have been offensive to persons who would have, perhaps,

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was no pleasant thing a century ago; and in later times, proceedings against a man for blasphemy or heresy were no joke. It would, we fear, be regarded even now as an insufficient defence to such an accusation to be able to show that Lord Brougham has affirmed the first crime to be impossible, or to suggest that it would not be easy to find a tribunal, consisting of more than one individual, likely to agree in what constituted the second. That a serious offence against society was committed by the publication of Hume’s writings, was certainly the public feeling of the period in which they appeared; and under what name society was to punish it, was a matter that seemed of comparative indifference. Though the proceedings against Hume were defeated in the General Assembly, yet that against the publishers of Kames failed only by the death of the prosecutor. Of late years the total defeat and rout of speculative infidelity has rendered it possible to reprint all such works with no other danger than the unpleasant consequence of the sale being insufficient to pay the publisher’s expenditure. The result of inquiry has, in every instance, as far as we know, been directly opposed to that which the alarm of zealous but ignorant men suggested. Hume’s “Inquiry into the Doctrine of Cause and Effect” led to those investigations in Germany which have ended in the total demolition of all the Babels which in Paris and Edinburgh had affronted high heaven. The “Inquiry into Miracles” has issued not only in the signal triumph of the defenders of revelation on the particular subject of controversy, but in what is of almost as much moment —​in fixing attention to the fact, that what has been rashly assumed, and even expressed,* to be a violation of the laws of nature, is never, in any true sense, such, but is in reality a new phenomenon not within the range of our ordinary experience —​ most often the expression of some more general law, the constant operation of which would be perceptible, but for hindrances thus for a moment removed. There can, we think, never be danger in the full discussion of any subject of scientific inquiry. Of this how remarkable a proof is given in the fact that Butler’s “Analogy” and Hume’s “Treatise on Human Nature” were published within two been satisfied had the thought been expressed in the language of the theological schools. There can be no doubt that Kames thought he was answering Hume, though there is no distinct allusion to any particular passage in his essay, nor is he mentioned by name; and that Hume so understood his courteous adversary there is no doubt. In a letter to Ramsay, written in the year in which Kames’s book was published, we find the following passage:—​”Have you seen our friend Harry’s essays? They are well wrote, [written,] and are an unusual instance of an obliging method of answering a book. Philosophers must judge of the question, but the clergy have already decided it, and say he is as bad as me! Nay, some affirm him to be worse—​as much as a treacherous friend is worse than an open enemy. “Mr. Burton tells us, in a tone of grave humor, that “those who constituted themselves judges of the matter seem to have taken example from the stern father, who, when there is a quarrel in the nursery, punishes both sides, because quarreling is a thing not allowed in the house.” * “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.”—​Hume, Essays and Treatises. Edinburgh, 1793.

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years of each other. Hume’s essay is forgotten, or holds a doubtful place in such books as record the shiftings of opinion on topics of metaphysical inquiry. It certainly is not read; while there probably is no man who at all seriously thinks of his own present duties or future existence, to whom Butler’s work is not a frequent study; and yet, when the “Analogy” was first published, not only does Butler in his preface represent the prevalent opinion “of persons of discernment,” to be against the truth of Christianity, but, what is more strange, his own book was looked upon with jealous and distrustful eyes. Even Gray, the poet, spoke of it with dislike and apprehension. “He dissuaded me,” says Nichols, “from reading ‘Butler’s Analogy,’ and said he had given the same advice to Mason.” The true inference is, we think, that when the decencies of society are not invaded, no interruption whatever should be given to the publication of any work. The dull will fall, “swayed by the impulse of their own dead weight.” Undoubtedly, prosecutions, whether in the civil or ecclesiastical courts, do nothing but mischief. David Hume was born at Edinburgh, on the 26th of April (old style,) 1711. His father’s family was, he tells us, a branch of the Earl of Home’s. His mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, a successful advocate, compiler of books on Scottish law, and finally President of the Court of Session. Falconer was of a respectable family, and one of his sons succeeded, in the year 1727, to the title of Lord Halkerton. The father of Hume died while David was still an infant, leaving to his eldest son, Joseph, the lands of Ninewells, which had been for many generations in that branch of the family of Hume, or Home. The future historian, and Catherine, the sister, with whom at an after period Hume lived, were slenderly provided for. David had the feeling of family pride in more than its due strength. It is a feeling with which we do not fall out, for its tendency, in any rightly constituted mind, seems to be to lead the individual to regard rather his tribe than himself; and we think it —​on the whole, if a prejudice —​one that encourages the generous affections. In a letter to Alexander Home, of Whitfield, he tells him of Ninewells having been the scene of many a foray in the days of old. He has to trace the name of his paternal estate through the mazes of a spelling that would defy less diligent inquirers. In Hall’s Chronicle, he finds a statement that the Earl of Surrey, in an inroad upon the Merse, made during the reign of Henry the Eighth, after the battle of Flodden, destroyed, among others, the towers of “East Nisgate and Winwalls. The names,” adds Hume, “you see, are somewhat disfigured; but I cannot doubt but he means Nisbett and Ninewells —​the situation of the places leads us to that conjecture.” Ninewells, however, is not often mentioned in the records of such invasions, for the very sufficient reason that it lay near Berwick, “and

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our ancestors,” says Hume, “paid contributions to the governors of that place, and abstained from hostilities, and were prevented [protected?] from ravages.” It would almost seem that the historian is scarcely pleased with his ancestors for thus securing themselves from plunder, and thereby losing such distinction as is implied by names occurring in the records of the barbarities of older times. The historian tells that the early spelling of the name was Hume, which is that which represents the pronunciation. About the time of the Restoration, HOME became the way of writing it. The name often occurs in Rymer’s “Foedera,” and is always spelt Hume. There is no doubt of the connection of the family with that of the Earl of Home; and on one occasion, if it were not that they were near relations, and that a feudal lord had a right to do what he pleased with his own, we should think that a brother of the Earl’s pressed the privileges of kindred too far. The incident is given in Law’s “Memorials.” “December, 1683 —​About the close of the month, the Earl himself being from home, the Lairds of Hilton and Nynhools [Nineholes or Ninewells] came to make a visit to the Earl of Home his house, and went to dice and cards with Mr. William Home, the Earl’s brother. Some sharp words fell amongst them at their game, which was not noticed, as it seemed to them; yet when the two gentlemen were gone to their bed chambers, the foresaid Mr. William comes up with his sword, and stabs [Johnston of] Hilton with nine deadly wounds on his bed, that he dies immediately; and wounds [Hume of] Ninehools mortally, so that it was thought he would not live, and immediately took horse and fled to England.” Law does not tell the whole story. A feature which he omits is supplied by Lord Fountainhills: “William Home made his escape to England on Hilton’s horse.” From Kirkpatrick Sharpe we learn a little more of this romance. William Home, after many a long year, returned to Scotland, smitten with remorse, and anxious to ask pardon for what he had done, of the family of Johnstone. A near relative of Johnstone’s, a resident in Edinburgh, was, “in the dusk of the evening, called forth to the outside stairs of the house to speak with a stranger muffled in a cloak. As he proceeded along the passage, the door being open, he recognized the murderer; and, immediately drawing his sword, rushed towards him, on which the other leapt nimbly down from the stairs into the street, and was never again seen in Scotland.” Of such materials was the fabric of Hume’s family pride erected. “I am not of the opinion,” says David, speaking of his descent from the chieftains whom we have described, “that these matters are altogether to be slighted… I doubt that our morals have not much improved since we began to think riches the sole thing worth regarding.”

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Our readers may, perhaps, fancy that the Nine-​wells or Nine-​holes took its name from the tragedy enacted on poor Johnstone and his fellow-​suffers, one of whom was pierced with nine wounds —​no such thing —​“The estate of Ninewells is so called from a cluster of springs of that number. They burst forth from a gentle declivity in front of the mansion, which has on each side a semicircular rising bank, covered with fine timber, and fall, after a short time, into the bed of the river Whitewater, which forms a boundary in front. The place is worth going to look at if it were only that it was Hume’s residence in early boyhood, though never did a man look upon scenery with a less observing eye than Hume. Of imagination he cannot be regarded as wholly deficient who possesses in so high a degree as Hume did the power of animated and picturesque narrative; but the actions which he describes might as well have been “the battles of kites and crows” warring in the air, for any thing that we can ever learn from him of their locality. This is well stated by Mr. Burton. “It was not part of his mental character to find any pleasing associations in spots remarkable only for the warlike or adventurous achievements they had witnessed. Intellect was the material on which his genius worked: with it were all his associations and sympathies; and what had not been adored by the seats of the mind had no charm in his eye. Had he been a stranger of another land, visiting at the present, or some later day, the scenes of the Lay and of Marmion, they would, without doubt, like the land of Virgil, have lit in his mind some sympathetic glow; but the scenes illustrated solely by deeds of barbarous warfare, and by a rude illiterate minstrelsy, had nothing in them to rouse a mind which was yet far from being destitute of its own peculiar enthusiasm. He had often, in his history, to mention great historical events that had taken place in the immediate vicinity of his paternal residence, and in places to which he could hardly have escaped, if he did not court occasional visits. About six miles from Ninewells, stands Norham Castle. Three or four miles farther off, are Twisel-​bridge, where Surrey crossed the Till to engage the Scots, and the other localities connected with the battle of Flodden. In the same neighborhood is Holiwell Haugh, where Edward I. met the Scottish nobility, when he professed himself to be the arbiter of the disputes between Bruce and Baliol. In his notices of these spots, in connexion with the historical events which he describes, he betrays no symptom of having passed many of his youthful days in their vicinity, but is as cold and general as when he describes Agincourt or Marston Moor; and it may safely be said, that in none of his historical or philosophical writings does any expression used by him, unless in those cases where a Scoticism has escaped his vigilance, betray either the district or the country of his origin.” —​Vol. I. pp. 8, 9.

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The name of David Home (not Hume) appears in the matriculation book of the University of Edinburgh, as entering 27th of February, 1723. There is no record of his having taken a degree. In his seventeenth year he commenced, and scarcely commenced before he abandoned, the study of the law. “I found,” he says, “an insuperable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning, and while my friends fancied I was poring over Voet and Vennius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors I was secretly devouring.” Mr. Burton, himself a Scottish advocate, feels surprised that Hume should, in the days in which his lot was cast, have felt disgust for the study of the law. “The advocate of that day,” he tells us, “often commenced his pleadings with a quotation from the young philosopher’s favorite poet, Virgil, and then digressed into a speculative inquiry into the general of law and government; the philosophical genius of Themis long soaring sublime, until at last folding her wings she rested on some vulgar question about dry multures, or an irritancy of a tailzie to the settlement of which the wide principles so announced were applied!” “So much for blarney —​ now for business!” said Lord Byron, and we think it not impossible that it was the union of blarney and business that disgusted Hume. The passion for literary distinction, however, early awoke, and he appears to have wisely resolved on not giving a divided allegiance to the most repulsive of Black Graces. Among the letters of Hume, for the first time published, is one of exceeding length, which it would appear was written to an eminent physician consulting him on a state of health and spirits very minutely described. He describes himself as pursuing, after the age of fifteen, a very desultory course of study —​books of reasoning and philosophy, poetry, and the polite authors. “Every one,” he says, “who is acquainted with the philosophers or critics knows that there is nothing yet established in either of those two sciences, and that they contain little more than endless disputes, even in the most fundamental articles.” He tells of the nausea with which he regarded law, and of a fit of laziness which prevented any study of any kind for some months. Some feelings of anxiety followed about his circumstances which looked very blue, but “he took a dose of logic to compose him,” and read the philosophers again. “In this condition I remained for nine months, very uneasy to myself, as you may well imagine, but without growing any worse, which was a miracle. There was another particular which contributed, more than any thing, to waste my spirits and bring on me this distemper, which was, that having read many books of morality, such as Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, and being smit with their beautiful representation of virtue and philosophy, I undertook the improvement

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of my temper and will, along with my reason and understanding. I was continually fortifying myself with reflections against death, and poverty, and shame, and pain, and all the other calamities of life. These no doubt are exceedingly useful, when joined to an active life, because the occasion being presented along with the reflection, works it into the soul, and makes it take a deep impression; but in solitude they serve to little other purpose than to waste the spirits, the force of the mind meeting with no resistance, but wasting itself in the air, like our arm when it misses its aim. This, however, I did not learn but by experience, and till I had already ruined my health, though I was not sensible of it. Some scurvy spots broke out on my fingers the first winter I fell ill, about which I consulted a very knowing physician, who gave me some medicine that removed these symptoms, and at the same time gave me a warning against the vapors which, though I was labouring under at that time, I fancied myself so far removed from, and indeed from any other disease, except a slight scurvy, that I despised his warning. At last, about April 1730, when I  was nineteen years of age, a symptom, which I had noticed a little from the beginning, increased considerably; so that, though it was no uneasiness, the novelty of it made me ask advice; it was what they call a ptyalism or wateryness in the mouth. Upon my mentioning it to my physician, he laughed at me, and told me I was now a brother, for that I had fairly got the disease of the learned. Of this he found great difficulty to persuade me, finding in myself nothing of that lowness of spirit which those who labor under that distemper so much complain of. However, upon his advice I went under a course of betters, and anti-​hysteric pills, drank an English pint of claret wine every day, and rode eight or ten Scotch miles. This I continued for about seven months after.” —​pp. 32, 33. The letter continues with an account of symptoms which seem exceedingly like those of perfect health. He gets fat, walks sixteen miles a day, has put together the materials of many volumes, but is not satisfied with any words which present themselves. The letter is in Hume’s handwriting, and does not appear to have been ever sent. It is scarcely of the value that Mr. Burton ascribes to it; and is most remarkable for the exhibition of a turn of mind perceptible, we think in all of Hume’s writings, of at the same moment seeking to pursue two inconsistent trains of thought —​calling on his physician to treat him as a man in perfect health and in the deepest disease —​making this, in short, like every other subject, rather a sort of play of the intellect than the serious inquiry of a person really alarmed for his health. This view of the matter is not rendered less probable by the fact that there is no evidence of the statement having been sent to any

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physician; and, indeed, we cannot but think the evidence on which Mr. Burton thinks it probable that it was meant to be sent to Dr. Cheyne, is very slight. It occurred to Mr. Burton when he first read the letter, that it was for “Arbuthnot, whose fine genius was just then flickering in the socket,” the case was intended. Further consideration made Mr. Burton think that Cheyne was the favored correspondent. This notion arises from the circumstance that Cheyne was a Scotsman —​that in one of his books is an account of the case of a Scottish gentleman resident in Hume’s neighborhood, which accident might direct Hume’s attention to the book, and make him wish for Cheyne’s advice. Internal evidence fixes Hume’s letter to about the year 1734; and Mr. Burton looked over a book of Cheyne’s —​“Natural Method of curing Diseases of the Body and the Mind,” published in 1742  —​in some hopes of finding Hume’s case mentioned in it. Nothing is said of it there. We think it almost certain that Hume’s letter was never sent, and we are far from sure that the history of the symptoms of a dyspeptic patient is not a romance drawn up with little more regard to actual fact than his essay describing “The Stoic, or the Man of Action and Virtue” —​“The Epicurean, or the Man of Elegance and Pleasure” —​and so on. This, perhaps, had he published it, would have been called “The Valetudinarian, or the Man who cannot live without a Physician.” If Hume’s was more than a passing fear of ill-​health, or a student’s whimsical essay on an imaginary state of facts, he fortunately was too poor to indulge himself in the luxury of medical advice. He could not afford to be sick. His means were, however, too slender to have him live without making an effort for their improvement; and he made a feeble trial of mercantile life. In 1734, he went to Bristol, with some introductions to eminent merchants; but after a few moths he retired to France, determining “to make frugality supply the deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired his independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of his talents in literature.” He returned from France in 1737, and in 1738 published his first work —​“The Treatise on Human Nature.” Hume describes the work as having fallen dead-​ born from the press. This was not exactly the case. The screams of the infant were heard by some of the reviewers of that day, and it was dealt with severely in a publication still to be found in the dust and lumber of old libraries, called “The Works of the Learned.” Nothing is so likely to try the temper of a philosopher as reading a review; and we advise any men who have Celtic blood in their veins never to read what we may say of their works —​not that we think our honored publisher in as much danger from the excited feelings of any red-​haired brother whom we may think it necessary to sacrifice according to the most approved

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rites of our infernal magic,* as poor Jacob Robinson was, when one of his tribe dealt with David, on his return home after his sojourn in partibus infidelium, with his little pack of prohibited and plague tainted goods, consisting, for the most part, of old clothes from the shop of Benedict Spinoza —​(“I be the Jew that uses the Christians well”) —​looking as good as new, and with trimmings and tinsel of the most approved patterns from the manufactory of Bayle and Co. The philosopher rushed in anger to the bookseller’s. The bookseller thought he had an irresistible case. “No one, sir, but the old gentleman who wrote it, will every read that article. I am sure I won’t. I’d advise you, sir, not to say a word about it.” All would not do. “He kept poor Jacob Robinson, in the paroxysm of his anger, at his sword’s point, trembling behind the counter lest a period should be put to the life of a sober critic by a raving philosopher.† Hume was not often thus discomposed. He sought an introduction to Butler; but a letter which Kames gave him he had no opportunity of presenting till after Butler had become a bishop, and then he shrunk from giving it. We regret that they did not meet.‡ He wished to have Butler’s opinion of his book. “My own I dare not trust to; it is so variable, I know not how to fix it. Sometimes it elevates * See “The Sacrifice of the Red-​haired Christian,” in the first edition of Thalaba. †

Dr. Kenrick. London Review, vol. v. p. 200. Anno. 1777. That Hume was not without some distrust of that part of his speculations which relates to miracles, is exceedingly probable. Just before the publication of his book on Human Nature, he writes to Lord Kames:—​”I enclose some reasonings concerning miracles which I once thought of publishing with the rest, but which I am afraid will give too much offence, even as the world is disposed at present… . I beg of you to show it to nobody, except Mr. Hamilton, if he pleases, and let me know at your leisure that you have received it, read it, and burnt it. Your thoughts and mine agree with respect to Dr. Butler, and I would be glad to be introduced to him. I am at present mutilating my work—​that is, cutting of its nobler parts—​that is, endeavoring it shall give as little offence as possible, before which I could not pretend to put it into the doctor’s hands. This is a piece of cowardice for which I blame myself, though I believe none of my friends will blame me. I was resolved not to be an enthusiast in philosophy while I was blaming other philosophers’ enthusiasms.” Surely this looks like a feeling that on the subject of miracles his doctrine was unsound. He modifies the other parts of his work so as to fit them for Butler’s eye; but he omits altogether the Essay on Miracles. That essay, as afterwards published, contained nothing in the argumentative part so stated, as that it might not be shown to Butler. Hume’s argument is by anticipation answered in the Analogy, or, at least, the elements of an answer are given. It is a poor pretence to say the suppression arose from courtesy to Dr. Butler. The only thing likely to offend him or any right judging person is the paltry subterfuge with which the essay closes, in which he affects to patronize Christianity. The mean sneers and the tricks of ambiguous language—​suggesting in sarcastic allusion what the writer will not say in direct words—​a style borrowed from the French, and in Hume’s case wholly unrelieved by any thing like wit—​are, indeed, plague spots. The single excuse for this style was the state of the laws in most countries in Europe, and certainly in Scotland, which made such publications liable to prosecution. There can be no reasonable doubt, we think, that all subjects should be open to the freest discussion. And this we believe, on a fair interpretation of decided cases, to be the law of England: but all doubt on a subject of such moment should be removed. In our notion of the law, (in which, however, we differ from a writer who, under the name of JOHN SEARCH, brought the subject some years ago before the public, with arguments of great force,) any real danger of a successful prosecution in England would arise from a jury regarding those passages of mock reverence as an intended insult. This would bring the case within another principle.

‡

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me above the clouds —​at other times it depresses me with doubts and fears; so that whatever be my success, I cannot be entirely disappointed.” Some allowance is to be made for the formal courtesy of the period in fixing the value of the language used in Hume’s correspondence. Robertson and others have been unfairly judged by those who have not taken this into consideration. This phraseology never misled the persons to whom it was used; and to us it does not appear, that, in any fair interpretation of a gentleman’s conduct in the daily intercourse of life, this gives the slightest ground for the charge of infidelity, which has been daringly ascribed to the moderate party among the Edinburgh clergy of the period. Nothing whatever can be gained to the cause of truth by shutting out discussion, and that it should be carried on with the utmost courtesy secures not alone due attention to the statements of an antagonist, but the more important advantage of our own views being put forward without the disturbing influences of passion, or the temptation of appealing to any other test than that of pure intellect employed on its appropriate subjects. The temper in which Hume received from Dr. Blair Campbell’s “Dissertation on Miracles,” is highly creditable to him. We quote it in connection with his “Treatise on Human Nature,” because it incidentally tells us something of the origin of that work. He write to Campbell –​ “It may perhaps amuse you to learn the first hint which suggested to me that argument which you have so strenuously attacked. I was walking in the cloisters of the Jesuit’s College of La Flêche, a town in which I passed two years of my youth, and engaged in a conversation with a Jesuit of some parts and learning, who was relating to me, and urging some nonsensical miracle performed lately in their convent, when I was tempted to dispute against him; and as my head was full of the topics of my Treatise of Human Nature, which I was at that time composing, this argument immediately occurred to me, and I thought it very much gravelled my companion; but at last he observed to me, that it was impossible for that argument to have any solidity, because it operated equally against the Gospel as the Catholic miracles; —​which observation I though proper to admit as a sufficient answer. I believe you will allow, that the freedom at least of this reasoning makes it somewhat extraordinary to have been the produce of a convent of Jesuits, though perhaps you may think the sophistry of it savors plainly of the place of its birth. “This same Jesuit’s College of La Flêche,” adds Mr. Burton, “is familiar to the philosophical reader as the seminary in which Des Cartes was educated. The place which Hume had just left, has been seen to be associated with the birth and residence of a distinguished opponent of the Cartesian theory. We now find

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him perfecting his work in that academic solitude, where Des Cartes himself was educated, and where he formed his theory of commencing with the doubt of previous dogmatic opinions, and framing for himself a new fabric of belief. The coincidence is surely worthy of reflective association, and it is perhaps not the least striking instance of Hume’s unimaginative nature, that in none of his works, printed or manuscript, do we find an allusion to the circumstance, that while framing his own theories, he trod the same pavement that had upwards of a century earlier borne the weight of one whose fame and influence on human thought was so much of the same character as he himself panted to attain.” The booksellers were better able to pay for metaphysics in the days of David Hume than they have been since. If it be regarded as literally true that the Treatise on Human Nature fell dead-​born, we do not well see how John Noone, Hume’s ill-​starred publisher, was to get the fifty pounds which he paid David for the first edition, not to exceed a thousand copies. The author was, in addition, to receive twelve bound copies of the book, a number more than sufficient to supply the whole demand. The book consisted of two volumes, and included Book the first, “of the Understanding;” Book the second, “of the Passions;” to which was afterwards added a third volume, containing Book the third, “of Virtue and Vice in general.” This publication, re-​cast several times during Hume’s life, contains the germ of all his writings on subjects of metaphysics and morals. The system of Hume is in its principles identical with that of Locke and Berkeley, and it is in its application to subjects with which it is in reality unconnected —​and from such application Hume did not abstain —​that the charge of sophistry can be fairly made against it. The understanding, to use the language of this school, can have no ideas —​certainly can communicate none —​which are not ultimately referable to sensation. This has, we think, been demonstrated by Locke; but this surely is nothing more than to examine the structure of what may be called the material mind: and to affirm from such analysis any thing whatever of its faculties in ­exercise —​of its power, or of its want of power —​ would be as idle as to examine the dust of the earth for the purpose of denying that of it man’s body could have been framed, or to use the anatomist’s knife to find the residence of the vital principle. Did even the intellect constitute man’s whole inward being, and were the understanding the seat of the affections and the moral nature —​which Hume did not assert, and which we believe to be untrue —​we think absolutely nothing in the slightest degree favorable to infidelity could be deduced from such concession: and some mischief has arisen from what we regard as the very common mistake, that in his philosophical principles is to be found the root of Hume’s unbelief. We have little doubt that

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the true history of his state of mind on such subjects arose chiefly from the universal profligacy of the society in which he lived when in France, and in London too, where, we must remark, “religion was at the time set up as a principal object of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisal, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.”* To determine the boundaries of the human faculties was with Hume, as with more successful investigators, the object of inquiry; and we think he differs from other inquirers rather in the form in which his propositions —​varied in every successive edition of his essays —​are stated, than essentially. Even in that boldest of all this views —​the statement that we but learn the relation of cause and effect by experience, and that experience never shows us more than the facts of antecedence and sequence —​when he says that from antecedence and sequence, however constant and even invariable our observation may represent the succession, causation cannot be with certainty inferred, we really see nothing that is not implied in almost every investigation in which a scientific man can be engaged, for Hume cannot be supposed consistently to deny the relation of cause and effect as an idea, when that every idea is what he is examining. In the very strongest possible statement of Hume’s theory of this relation being one, not in things themselves, but in our mode of viewing them, and in its utmost consequence, it comes but to this, that without man’s perceptions there is no external world to man. Nothing can be more painful than the dull pleasantries of Hume on what he calls superstition; which, however, has no peculiar concern with his argument, for his skepticism would affect it only in common with every thing else —​i.e. would not affect it at all; and the wish to get his book into good company, as he would call it, seems to have been among the motives for these passages so interwoven with the context of his work, though not with the argument, that they are quite inseparable from it, and indeed render ambiguous, without considerable attention, much of what he says. It is not at present easy, without a command of the several editions of Hume’s writings, to determine in what degree they have been altered, or even which of the essays, as they now are arranged, were contained in a volume which he published in the year 1742, entitled “Essays, Moral and Political,” which had a very considerable sale, and which Hume tells us Butler every where recommended. Hume was a vain man, and never was man possessed so wholly by the demon that suggests literary distinction as the governing motive of a student’s life. There is something almost sublime in the sense of desolation and dreariness in which the solitary student who had  —​fortunately but for a * Butler’s Preface to Analogy.

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season  —​by abstruse research, stolen from his own nature all the natural man,* expresses his feelings at the close of the first book of the Treatise on Human Nature: –​ “Before I launch out into those immense depths of philosophy which lie before me, I find myself inclined to stop a moment in my present station, and to ponder that voyage which I have undertaken, and which undoubtedly requires the utmost art and industry to be brought to a happy conclusion. Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escaped shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky, weather-​beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. My memory of past errors makes me diffident for the future. The wretched condition, weakness, and disorder of the faculties I must employ in my inquiries, increase my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amending or correcting these faculties, reduces me almost to despair, and makes me resolve to perish on the barren rock on which I am at present, rather than venture myself upon that boundless ocean which runs out into immensity. This sudden view of my danger strikes me with melancholy; and as ’tis usual for that passion, above all others, to indulge itself, I cannot forbear feeding my despair with all those desponding reflections, which the present subject furnishes me with in such abundance. I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who, not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate. Fain would I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth; but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I call upon others to join me, in order to make a company apart; but no one will hearken to me. Every one keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm which beats upon me from every side. I have exposed myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians; and can I wonder at the insults I must suffer? I have declared my disapprobation of their systems; and can I be surprised if they should express a hatred of mine, and of my person? When I look abroad, I foresee on every side, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny, and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and * “And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural man,”            COLERIDGE

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ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me; though such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others. Every step I take is with hesitation; and every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning. For, with what confidence can I venture upon such bold enterprises, when, beside those numberless infirmities peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human nature? Can I be sure that in leaving all established opinions, I am following truth; and by what criterion shall I distinguish her, even if fortune should at last guide me on her footsteps? After the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can give no reason way [sic] I should assent to it; and feel nothing but a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view, under which they appear to me.”* A passage that follows is still more melancholy. Let it never be forgotten, however, that Hume is speaking but of the aspect which things assume as the result of the decomposition of our poor intellect in a philosopher’s crucible; and that he tells us that “since heaven is incapable of dispelling these clouds, it fortunately happens kind Nature herself suffices for the purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation or lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse and am merry with my friends; and when, after three or four hours’ amusement I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any further.” “Experience is a principle which makes us reason from causes and effects; and ’tis the same principle which convinces us of the continued existence of external objects, when absent from the senses. But though these two operations be equally natural and necessary in the human mind, yet in some circumstances they are directly contrary; nor is it possible for us to reason justly and regularly from causes and effects, and at the same time believe the continued existence of matter. How then shall we adjust those principles together? Which of them shall we prefer? Or in case we prefer neither of them, but successively assent to both, as is usual among philosophers, with what confidence can we afterwards usurp that glorious title, when we thus knowingly embrace a manifest contradiction? This contradiction would be more excusable were it compensated by any degree of solidity and * Treatise of Human Nature, book i. part 4; and Woodhouselee’s Life of Kames, vol. i.

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satisfaction in the other parts of our reasoning. But the case is quite contrary. When we trace up the human understanding to its first principles, we find it to lead us into such sentiments as seem to turn into ridicule all our past pains and industry, and to discourage us from future inquiries. Nothing is more curiously inquired after by the mind of man, than the causes of every phenomenon; nor are we content with knowing the immediate causes, but push on our inquiries till we arrive at the original and ultimate principle. We would not willingly stop before we are acquainted with that energy in the causes by which it operates on its effect; and how must we be disappointed, when we learn that this connection, tie, or energy lies merely in ourselves, and is nothing but that determination of the mind which is acquired by custom, and causes us to make a transition from an object to its usual attendant, and from the impression of one to the lively idea of the other? Such a discovery not only cuts off all hope of ever attaining satisfaction, but even prevents our very wishes; since it appears, that when we say we desire to know the ultimate and operating principle, as something which resides in the external object, we either contradict ourselves, or talk without a meaning —​The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favor shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.”* We have transcribed these passages, as we think it important to show that Hume regarded his own studies as exhibiting, not human nature as it actually exists, but rather the skeleton of man’s nature. In a letter to Hutcheson he expresses himself in much the same way. Hutcheson had complained of Hume’s book not having any warmth in the cause of virtue,  —​“a warmth which he thought all good men would relish, and which would not displease amid abstract inquiries.” Hume says—​ “I must own this has not happened by change, but is the effect of a reasoning either good or bad. There are different ways of examining the mind, as well * Human Nature, book i. part 4, sec. 7.

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as the body. One may consider it either as an anatomist or as a painter; either to discover its most secret springs and principles, or to describe the grace and beauty of its actions. I imagine it impossible to conjoin these two views. Where you pull off the skin, and display all the minute parts, there appears something trivial, even in the noblest attitudes and most vigorous actions; nor can you ever render the object graceful or engaging, but by clothing the parts again with skin and flesh, and presenting only their bare outside. An anatomist, however, can give very good advice to a painter or statuary. And, in like manner, I am persuaded that a metaphysician may be very helpful to a moralist, though I cannot easily conceive these two characters united in the same work.” —​Vol. i. p. 112. Hume had expressed, in a letter to Lord Kames, an unwillingness to return to his own country, without what he called some “settlement in life;” and it was probably not without reluctance that after the publication of the Treatise on Human Nature, he went to live with his mother and brother for a few years in Berwickshire. He says that he there recovered the knowledge of Greek. Mr. Burton tells us of some unsuccessful attempts he made to be appointed a tutor, or “governor,” as it was then called, to some young man of fortune, and he accepted a more delicate office, which attached him to the household of an insane nobleman. The Marquis of Annandale had been found a lunatic from the 12th of December, 1744 —​a few months after which date Hume engaged with him on the doubtful footing of a companion, receiving for his services three hundred a year. The engagement lasted but for a year, and there was a vexatious disposition to withhold part of the stipulated salary. At a later period of his life the marquis became calmer than when Hume lived with him; for it is still remembered that he used to walk about the neighborhood of Highgate with a keeper before him, and a footman behind. The latter would now and then tap him on the should, and hand him his snuff box. During Hume’s reign his imbecility was more active. Hume copied some of his epigrams, which he said were not inferior to Rousseau’s, though the versification was but middling. The marquis also wrote a novel, of which, to gratify him, thirty copies were printed; he being led to believe that thousands were circulated. Hume thought he had got him off the publication scheme, by leading him to believe that Lord Marchmont and Lord Bolingbroke had seen the manuscript, and were against its being printed. He, poor fellow, got suspicious, and replied in a tone that startled David into compliance with an insane wish, which, were it evidence of lunacy, would affect many now at large. “Pardie je crois que ces messieurs veulent ètre les seules Seigneurs d’ Angleterre qui eussent de l’ esprit, mais jè leur montrerai ce que le petit A—​—​peut faire aussi.”

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Mr. Burton feels that his reader is not unlikely to resent Hume’s accepting what seems to be so humble an appointment; and he presses on our consideration the peculiar circumstances of Scotland —​now the most industrious and far the best educated part of the empire, and with the greatest means of advancing its abundant population —​but in which they were at that period, to use Hume’s own words, but “two ranks of men —​gentlemen with some fortune and education, and the meanest starving poor.” We own that we do not quite agree with our author in regarding the office, under the circumstances in which it was accepted, altogether so humbling as he seems to think. The invitation which he accepted proceeded from Lord Annandale himself, and was suggested by his admiration of Hume’s essays. Hume’s early letters show that there was the strongest and apparently the best-​founded expectations of his recovery. The office was one which the conduct of Lord Annandale’s agent, whom Hume thought dishonest, and who feared the effect of such a mind as Hume’s on Lord Annandale’s, rendered intolerable; but this was scarcely to be anticipated. In fact it was the most respectable channel of subsistence open to a man whose habits were not active. “The only form in which a man poor and well-​born could retain the rank of a gentleman, if he did not obtain one of the learned professions, was by obtaining a commission in the army, or a government civil appointment.” David lived to have both, but probably would have had neither had he not added to his little fortune by such means as at this period offered. Mr. Burton gives some amusing accounts of the difficulty which a gentleman then found to make out the means of life at all in Scotland. In Erskine’s Institute of the Law of Scotland, a government situation is regarded as the sole way of advancing a young man of respectable connections. It is said there that it is “his guardian’s duty to advance a yearly sum far beyond the interest of his patrimony, that he may appear suitably to his quality, while he is unprovided of any office under government by which he can live decently.” “Goldsmith,” says Mr. Burton, “found a Scotch peer keeping a glove shop; and in the case of Lord Mordington, who had been arrested for debt, the bailiff made affidavit, that when he ‘arrested said lord he was so mean in his apparel, as having a worn-​out suit of clothes and a dirty shirt on, and but sixpence in his pocket, he could not suppose him to be a peer of Great Britain, and of inadvertency arrested him.’ (Fortescue’s Reports, 165.) This family was peculiarly celebrated —​Lady Mordington having raised the question, whether a Scottish peeress who kept a tavern, was protected, by privilege of peerage, from being amenable to the laws against keeping disorderly houses.” Mr. Burton does not state what we learn

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from the notes to the “Excursion,” that the trade of a travelling merchant —​by Southerns often called a pedlar  —​was a favorite occupation in such circumstances. “A young man going from any part of Scotland to England, of purpose to carry the pack, was considered as going to lead the life and acquire the fortune of a gentleman.* When, after twenty years’ absence in that honorable employment, he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded as a gentleman to all intents and purposes.”* This, to say the truth, is the mode of life we should have ourselves liked best of all that seemed to be then open to a young man in Hume’s circumstances; but for this, David was already getting too fat, and we think he chose wisely in preferring what we hope was to be called the place of private secretary; for if so, it would suggest a much pleasanter account of some execrable verses found in David’s handwriting, than that which Mr. Burton gives, who supposes them to be the philosopher’s own handiwork. Seventy-​five points of Hume’s salary remained unpaid. On this subject some unmeaning sentimentality had been uttered, as if Hume, in determining to enforce it at law, was acting shabbily. This is worse than nonsense. Hume’s chief, if not only object, in this sacrifice of his time and comforts, is the salary promised; and is he to make a present of it, or any part of it, to the estate of an insane nobleman?

* The

notion of a gentle trade went even farther than this. In King James’s amusing song of the Gaberlunzie Man, the young girl who left her home with the gaberlunzie man says:—​ “O kenned my minnie I were with you, Ill-​faredly would she crook her mou’, Sic a poor man she’d never trow,    After the gaberlunzie-​ man. My dear, quoth he, ye’re yet o’er young, And ha’e no learned the beggar’s tongue, So follow me frae town to town,     To carry the gaberlunzie on. “Wi’ cauk and keep I’ll win your bread, And spindles and whorles for them wha need, Which is a gentle trade indeeed,     To carry the gaberlunzie on. I’ll bow my leg, and crook my knee, And draw a black clout o’er my e’e; A cripple or blind they will call me,     While we shall be merry and sing.” The gaberlunzie—​a word of uncertain derivation—​is the bag in which the travelling tinker carried the implements of his trade, and “whatever he could lift.” We transcribe these stanzas from Cunningham’s Burns. The copy of the song in Percy’s Reliques, is in a dialect slightly different. See a passage from Scott, quoted in the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, Vol. XVIII., November, 1841—​Article on Burns.

* Heron’s Journey in Scotland, quoted by Wordsworth.

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In the course of the next year he became, at the invitation of General St. Clair, “secretary to his expedition, which was at first meant against Canada, but ended in an incursion on the coast of France.” “The office,” says David, “is very genteel —​ ten shillings a day, perquisites, and no expenses.” Hume was not only secretary to the general, but acted as judge-​advocate. In the course of the same year he returned to Ninewells, to remain but for a short time, as he was again invited by the general to attend him as secretary in his military embassy to Vienna and Turin. David now wore the uniform of an officer, and was introduced at court as aid-​de-​ camp to the general. At Turin the late Lord Charlemont became acquainted with him, and from Hardy’s Memoir of Charlemont’s Life, we transcribe a sentence: –​ “Nature, I believe, never formed any man more unlike his real character than David Hume. The powers of physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most skillful in that science pretend to discover the smallest trace of the faculties of his mind in the unmeaning features of his visage. His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility. His eyes, vacant and spiritless, and the corpulence of his whole person was far better fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-​eating alderman, than of a refined philosopher. His speech, in English, was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable; so that wisdom, most certainly, never disguised herself before in so uncouth a garb. Though now near fifty years old [Hume was but thirty-​seven,] he was healthy and strong; but his health and strength, far from being advantageous to his figure, instead of manly comeliness, had only the appearance of rusticity. His wearing a uniform added greatly to his natural awkwardness, for he wore it like a grocer of the trained bands. St. Clair was a lieutenant-​general, and was sent to the courts of Vienna and Turin, as a military envoy, to see that their quota of troops was furnished by the Austrians and Piedmontese. It was, therefore, thought necessary that his secretary should appear to be an officer, and Hume was accordingly disguised in scarlet.” —​Hardy’s Charlemont, vol. i. p. 15. The result of Hume’s campaign with Sir John Sinclair was, that after two years he found himself possessed of a fortune, “which,” says he, “I called independent, though most of my friends were inclined to smile when I said so; in short, I was now master of near a thousand pounds.” On his return from Italy, he re-​published parts of his old “Treatise of Human Nature” in some new shape. It never succeeded in any; and he was provoked at finding the theologians, who, he expected, would kick and cuff it into notice, otherwise, and probably much better employed. He went down to live in the

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country with his brother, and then composed one or two more essays, which had more success. “I found,” he says, “by Warburton’s railing, that the books were beginning to be esteemed in good company. However, I had a fixed resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body.” Quite right, David; if an opponent says any thing unanswerable, always let him have his own way. That same Dr. Warburton, the attorney bishop, is likely to have a good deal the best of it, as there is no one quality of mind in which he is not very much your superior. An unlucky squeeze of his hard hand might crush that poor Human Nature of yours out of existence. In 1751, Hume went to live in Edinburgh. In 1752, he published at Edinburgh his Political Discourses; and in the same year at London, his “Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,” “which,” he says, “in my opinion, (who ought not to judge on that subject,) is, of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best. It came unmarked and undiscovered into the world.” In that year he became “Keeper of the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh” —​an office of which the emolument was but forty pounds a year, but which gave him a great command of books. Some disputes with the curators of the library, as to the purchase of books, made him think of resigning the office. However, the convenience of the command of books was of great moment to Hume, who had now commenced his history of the House of Stuart, and his pride was satisfied by declining any longer to receive the salary, and transferring it to Blacklock, the blind poet, whose works are, we do not well know why, still included in every reprint of those collections which are called, by a strange misnomer, the British Poets. When Hume had the means of proving that he did not retain the office for the sake of the salary, the curators and he agreed better. At the end of 1754, appeared the first part of his great work, a quarto volume of four hundred and seventy three pages —​“The History of Great Britain, Volume I., containing the reigns of James I., and Charles I.” His own account of this event, and its effect on him, cannot be omitted: –​ “I was, I  own, sangu  ine in my expectations of the success of this work. I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and, as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation: English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford; and after the first ebullitions of their fury were over, what was

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still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion. Mr. Millar told me, that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-​five copies of it. I scarcely, indeed, heard of one man in the three kingdoms, considerable for rank or letters, that could endure the book. I must only except the primate of England, Dr. Herring, and the primate of Ireland, Dr. Stone, which seem two odd exceptions. These dignified prelates separately sent me messages not to be discouraged. I was, however, I confess, discouraged: and had not the war at that time been breaking out between France and England, I had certainly retired to some provincial town of the former kingdom, have changed my name, and never more have returned to my native country; but as this scheme was not now practicable, and the subsequent volume was considerably advanced, I  resolved to pick up courage and to persevere.” —​Own Life. That Hume’s history of the House of Stuart should have provoked all, was but natural. There is no one motive of action which unites men into parties, which Hume acknowledges with approbation; and with respect to religion —​the strongest influencing power that animates either individuals or bodies of men —​ Hume was, unhappily, utterly skeptical, if we are not to use a stronger word. Through his work there was another great and insuperable fault. His acquaintance with English literature was imperfect in a degree that, in our days, must be altogether incredible. In his day, nothing seems to have been called literature, except the showy publications that were addressed rather to the idle and disengaged portion of the public, than to the business mind of England. There is no country in the world in which the mind of the nation is less shown in that class of publications, which, except in accidental cases, are of little real value; nor is there any people whose men of business have been more the creators of its true literature than this same England. In the parliamentary history, in the state trials, in the law reports, in the pamphlets of the day, at almost all periods of our history of which we have any valuable records, are found masses of thought to which, in their real interest and importance, and often even in reference to the artistic skill with which arguments of great power are elaborated and exhibited, the works of our later literature bear no comparison whatever; and of all these, Hume was, except when by bare accident he looked father than the popular works by which he was directed to his authorities, altogether ignorant. Hume thought himself a Whig and perhaps the temper in which the French writers, whose tone he assumed, then spoke of proposed improvements in their political constitution, might have deceived him into the belief. In every government —​ the most tyrannical and absolute, as well as the most free —​the peace of society must be the first object; and, though Hume would not admit it in words, he

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seems to think that whenever this is attained all is accomplished. Had Hume written the history of the Church, as he once thought of doing, woe to the poor reformers, unless indeed Rome had, in the days of her first usurpations, put forward, instead of her claim of antiquity, that of development  —​the dream, it would, no doubt, have seemed to him, of wandering dotage, and a symptom of approaching change.* If Hume can be said to have had any sympathies, they were altogether with things as established; and to this, rather than to any thing else, are we to ascribe what we must regard as the entirely false spirit in which his narrative of the civil wars in the reign of the second king of the House of Stuart is conceived. The language of every early document whatever of our history, that can be brought to hear on the subject, proves that the claims of the popular party were not, as Hume would represent them, encroachments on the prerogative, but that the king of England was a limited power. The extent of his power was defined by the fact, that he could as king only act through responsible officers, no one of whom could, without a violation of law, exceed his proper duties. That the power of an English king had its legal limits, was expressed in the maxim so often strangely perverted into a meaning directly opposite to what was meant to be conveyed by it —​The king can do no wrong. From our early history we do not think that with all the confusion of occasional civil wars, and the loose language of documents drawn up without particular reference to a point not in dispute, any case can be plausibly made but the advocates of the doctrine that arbitrary power in the monarch was consistent with the constitution of government in England. The doubt with respect to the rightful limits of the prerogative arose, we think, chiefly from the arrogant claims of the House of Tudor, and were suggested by the anomalous position in which the crown, and a great and influential portion of its subjects, were placed by the king’s being declared Head of the Church, before the meaning of that new title, or the claims depending on it, were practically reduced to an assertion, that the clergy owed undivided allegiance to the state, and were subject to the same jurisdiction as the laity.† To the accession of the family of Stuart, and to the false notions which James, brought up under the laws of another country, from the first took of his position, we ascribe the contest between the crown and people being placed by any one on the grounds which Hume endeavored to take. All the notions which James brought with him from Scotland were essentially and in first principles opposed to the theory and the practice of the English constitution. All his notions were referable to the

* See Newman’s Essay on “Development” of Christian Doctrine—​1845. †

See Strype’s Life of Parker.

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civil law; and the effort to engraft on the English law and forms of government those of a system essentially and in every thing different, and to simplify despotism, was a thing not very easily borne. It was ease enough for Hume to make a plausible case for the Stuart kings, on the supposition that the names of king and parliament had the same meaning in England as in countries where the laws and mode of government were essentially different; and while we are willing to believe that the usurpations of the Stuarts arose from their never having fairly considered the true points of difference, it seems to us demonstrable that a practical change wholly unjustified was sought to be made by them, which it was an absolute duty in the people of England to resist. James’s talents had enable him to systematize into a sort of theory his notions of kingly government, and when the vanity of an author was added to that of a monarch, it is no wonder that he deceived himself. It is a sad delusion when the feeling of loyalty degenerates into a baseless superstition, and the claim of a divine right is stated, as it was then stated by James, for the purpose of extending the power of the crown beyond anything known by the name of kingly power in the government which he was called on by Providence to administer. To assert in argument, from the facts of a man being king, and of God, who rules in the affairs of men, having called him to that high trust, the further consequence that such man has a right to enlarge the powers committed to him whenever opportunity offers, is, we think, not only a doctrine wholly untenable, but offensive in the highest degree to those whose feeling of religion and loyalty are least questionable. Hume has been accused of a dishonest perversion of facts on evidence that, wherever it has been examined, has wholly failed. Of this we shall hereafter give proofs, to our own mind entirely decisive. —​Hume’s history has faults enough without the aggravation of intentional misstatement; but it has beauties of narrative more than sufficient, where the reader is sufficiently guarded against the errors which we have indicated, to redeem many of its imputed faults, and the book is calculated to give more instruction, as well as more pleasure, than any other single account of the same period. It cannot supply, and no book can, the place of the original authorities; but it certainly is, in every respect whatever, in which they can be fairly compared, superior “to the orderly and solid works” of Turner, Mackintosh, Lingard, and all those whom Mr. Landor describes in his amusing jingle of words —​which is not without some meaning too —​as “the Coxes and Foxes of our age.”

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REVIEW OF LAWRENCE’S EXAMINATION OF HUME ON MIRACLES

“AN EXAMINATION OF HUME’S ARGUMENT ON THE SUBJECT OF MIRACLES. BY ALEXANDER H. LAWRENCE,” Christian Register, vol. 25, no. 40 (3 October 1846), p. 157. Anonymous The Christian Register was published weekly in Boston from 1821. It was the leading voice of the American Unitarian Association. Among its contributors were several of the Republic’s most prominent writers, including  —​listed in order of their dates of birth —​William Ellery Channing (1780–​1842), Jared Sparks (1789–​1866), Edward Everett (1794–​1865), and George Bancroft (1800–​91). For a reprinting of Lawrence’s entire pamphlet, see selection #26. For another review of it (in the North American Review), see selection #27. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

AN EXAMINATION OF HUME’S ARGUMENT ON THE SUBJECT OF MIRACLES. BY ALEXANDER H. LAWRENCE, A very modest pamphlet of twenty pages, bearing this title, was published in Washington about eighteen months ago; and to our mind it is, we know not but we may say, the most complete and strictly philosophical confutation of Hume that we have seen. There is not a word said for effect, —​no rhetoric, no display of logic, but a simple, direct, lawyer-​like statement of the argument and its fallacies. We take pleasure in quoting a portion of it, for, we believe that Hume’s

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argument in one form or another is the real secret of nearly all the skepticism, which does not come from a bad heart. If any one who doubts the possibility of proving a miracle should cast his eye here, we beg him not to throw this article aside after a hasty perusal, but to study it till he has made himself master of the subject. Let him throw aside his prejudices, and ask only “what is reasonable, what is true!” After having thus mastered the article let him continue to think of it, till his mind is familiar with it from this new point of view. We may have it demonstrated to us that our idea of the Geographical position of places is wrong; but till we have learned not only to find them on the map, but to call them before us rightly, our old error is not fairly removed. So old doubts on religious subjects are not cast out entirely when the reason is convinced; but we must habituate ourselves to the correct view, till it has become the easy and natural position of subjects with respect to us. The following has been well state to be the substance of Mr. Hume’s reasoning: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. But we learn from experience that the laws of nature are never violated. Our only accounts of miracles depend upon testimony, and our belief in testimony itself depends upon experience. But experience shows that testimony is sometimes true and sometimes false; therefore, we have only a variable experience in favor of testimony. But we have an uniform experience in favor of the uninterrupted course of nature. Therefore, as on the side of miracles there is but a variable experience, and on the side of no miracles a uniform experience, it is clear that the lower degree of evidence must yield to the higher degree, and therefore no testimony can prove a miracle to be true.” * * * * * * * “Hume does not deny the possibility of miracles. His argument is not a metaphysical one, founded on the nature or essence of the thing considered, but is entirely a practical one, touching only the reasonableness of our belief in miracles. He no where attempts to prove that miracles cannot be, but that upon principles of reason we cannot believe them to be. Nor would it comport with his philosophical opinions to assert that miraculous events, or any events, could not occur, inasmuch, as he referred all our knowledge to experience; consequently, he could only infer from the past what would probably, not what would certainly, take place in the future. The most that Mr. Hume could say, respecting the possibility of miracles, would be, that as they never had happened, so they never could reasonably be expected to happen. It is the want of a proper observance of this distinction between that which may reasonably be expected to be, and that which must of necessity be, which has

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led to considerable irrelevant reasoning in answer to a misconceived notion of Mr. Hume’s meaning. His argument we understand to be entirely a practical one, touching only the reasonableness of our belief in miracles. It does not consist of, nor is it dependent on, the peculiar philosophical notions of its author as developed in other works. If it did, we should have but little fear of it in its practical effects; for however plausible and ingenious as speculations, the ideal theories of Berkley [sic] and Hume, and the destruction of all connection between cause and effect, so strenuously maintained by the latter, when applied to our every day affairs, and our temporal or eternal interests, they can have but little influence. We do not much fear the theories of those who, to sustain themselves, must deprive us of those instinctive impressions, and those spontaneous operations of the mind, and those self-​evident axioms, which are the foundation not only of all reasoning, but of all action. But the great error in most of the reasoning in relation to miracles —​both in that of Hume and of those who have replied to him —​is, in over-​looking the true nature of miracles, and attempting to reason on them in the same manner as on ordinary circumstances. They have been treated as facts which must have taken place through the agency of, or in accordance with, the laws of nature; or, in other words, the arguments seem to suppose NATURE to be the cause of their happening. And it is this erroneous view of miracles that Mr. Hume’s reasoning overthrows, and none other. But it should be remembered, that miracles are opposed to the ordinary laws of nature, because if they were explicable upon any known laws, they would cease to be miracles. And to speak of the raising of the dead, the turning of water into wine, &C., as of the same kind of improbabilities as the exploits of Caesar or Napoleon, is certainly a loose mode of reasoning. But, as we have said, Mr. Hume argues that a miracle cannot be proved, because it is against those laws which experience has shown to be immutable —​ which means, that an event cannot be prove to have happened by the operations of nature, which is against all our experience of the operations of nature. Or, in other words, he does not take into view any other agent (as causing an event,) than nature, or any other “modus operandi” than the ordinary course of nature. But if we suppose an independent and higher power brought into exercise, which can even set aside the laws of nature, then all such reasoning falls to the ground, because we cannot circumscribe within any laws either the acts, or the manner of acting, of a being who is superior to, and independent of, all laws. For instance, if we were told that a rock had separated itself from the earth, and by the force of gravitation had raised itself in the air, we should disbelieve it, because it is against our uniform experience of the effects of gravitation, which draws

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heavy bodies to the earth. But if we had been told that the rock had been hurled into the air, by some extraordinary force, which for the time had counteracted the power of gravitation, we might readily believe it. And in this latter case we should not think of reasoning about the uniformity of the law of gravitation, and our want of any experience of a violation of the order of nature, &c., but we should at once perceive that a force had acted independently of the law, and had done something which the law itself would never have done. Just so with miracles. When we are told by Mr. Hume that we ought not to believe them because they are contrary to the laws of nature —​we are told truly, if it is meant that they are caused simply by the operations of nature —​but we are not told truly, if they are considered as the acts of a power superior to the laws of nature, and entirely independent of them. In this view of the case, let us examine a little more particularly the argument of Mr. Hume. He says, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. But we learn from experience that the laws of nature are never violated, &c. Upon the truth of this position the whole of his argument depends, and the conclusion derived from it depends entirely on the truth of each part of the proposition. He asserts experience to prove that the laws of nature are never violated, and that experience proves human testimony to be often fallacious; so that we have an uniform experience opposed to a variable experience, and of course the latter should always give way to the former. The truth of this argument then, and the soundness of its conclusion, depend upon the fact that the laws of nature are never violated. If this proposition be not true, the conclusion is good for nothing. We assert then without fear of contradiction, and as a fact established by experience, that the laws of nature are often violated; nay more, that they are daily and hourly violated in the same manner, though not to the same extent, as they are violated in the case of miracles. When a stone is thrown into the air, the law of gravitation is violated. When a bird takes wing, the law of gravitation is violated. When two bodies in certain states of electricity, are brought near each other, they mutually repel, and the law of attraction is violated. And so in thousands of instances. Nor will it suffice to say, that these are not violations of the laws of nature because they are of frequent occurrence, and may be explained in a natural way; that the law does not cease, but is only overcome for a time. The law is violated for the time as much as a law can be violated. A different effect is produced, from what the law would produce. And it matters not whether the law is overcome by another law, or by an extraneous force, the result is the same, and the law is violated. The “vis inertiae” of matter is overcome by human force! If the question were, whether the dead were ever raised into life by the ordinary

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operations of the laws of nature, uniform experience of the operation of those laws would lead us to a denial of the fact. But such an inference is not contended for. What we contend for is this, that it is unphilosophical and wrong to adduce the acknowledged uniformity of the operations of nature, when uncontrolled, in opposition to positive testimony in favor of different results where nature is not uncontrolled. We know that effects are every day produced, different from what would have been produced, by the uninterrupted course of nature. * * * * * * * There is another of Mr. Hume’s propositions essential to the establishment of his doctrines which we also think incorrect, viz: “That our belief in human testimony depends upon experience.” * * * Mr. Hume treats the “laws of nature” as a whole, and in this case very properly, because his proposition is as true of each and every, as of any or all the laws of nature. He also treats human testimony as a whole, in the aggregate, without reference to its parts or qualifications. He says, “our experience is against the infallibility of testimony” meaning testimony as a whole. Now we say that experience is not against all testimony, because our experience is in favor of much, perhaps most testimony. All that can be said is, that human testimony is not always found to be true. Hume would have the exceptionable vitiate the unexceptionable. Taking the character of all testimony from the character of one class or species, and stamping testimony as a whole as therefore doubtful, he concludes that all the testimony in the world would not be sufficient to establish the truth of a miracle. Now we would observe, that testimony derives its character mainly from the character of the individuals from whom it comes, and the circumstances under which it is given. Our experience is in favor of the testimony of some men and against that of others. There are some men whom we have never known to tell a lie, and others whom we have scarcely ever known to speak the truth. We almost instinctively trust the one and distrust the other. But to bring into one mass all human testimony and brand it as unreliable, because a part is uniformly bad, and only a part uniformly good, is very much like saying that this world is in physical darkness because it is not uniformly clothed in light. Our senses sometimes deceive us; and the reasoning of Mr. Hume is just as strong, therefore, against the evidence of our senses as against human testimony, both taken as a whole, yet, there are some circumstances in which the evidences of our senses must be considered as absolutely certain. But it may be said, admit the truth of all this, admit that experience is in favor of some testimony and against other, still may not those who have never yet deceived us possibly deceive us hereafter? Is there an absolute certainty

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that those who have never yet deceived us, never will deceive us? If a man of unimpeached veracity should tell you that he had lately seen a brook, which had from time immemorial run down a hill, without any known or perceptible cause run up the hill, would you be as certain from that man’s testimony that the brook did flow up the hill, as you would be from your experience of the laws of gravitation that it did not flow up hill? These questions we think present the doctrine in its fairest and strongest light, and we wish to answer them fairly, and at the same time to make known the ground on which we stand. We answer, then, that a man who has never yet deceived us, may nevertheless deceive us. The laws of human conduct are not as open to the view as the laws of physical nature; and in the case of the brook just mentioned, if required to believe the statement without any other circumstance than the bare word of the informant, we should hardly feel convinced of the fact. But our doubts in such case arise from what we suppose the possibility of variance in the one case, and the impossibility of variance in the other. Testimony depends entirely upon the will or choice of the witness, which circumstances may vary. But the laws of nature can only be changed by the will of Him who ordained them, “in whom there is no variableness neither shadow of turning.” The presumptions are strongly against any deviation from the ordinary operations of the laws of nature. Experience would lead us to expect the same results that had hitherto been witnessed to continue, but it could probably go no further. No one would be so bold as to say that the Almighty could not for a time change the laws of his own establishing, or that he might not by possibility see sufficient occasion for so doing. Experience, in this view of the case, is not a proper guide to the truth, for it only makes known what may be fairly anticipated, but not what must of necessity actually happen. But of this hereafter: we wish at present only to say, that evidence itself (as shown by Mr. Starkie) admits of various degrees; it is strengthened by concurrence of testimony; it is still further strengthened by concurrence of circumstances; and it is possible that there should be such a concurrence of testimony and circumstances as to render the falsity of the evidence as improbably, nay, as impossible, as the facts which it asserts. Nay further, there may be circumstances in which the violation of a law of nature shall be a more probable event (even judging by experience in its proper sense) than that the evidence and the circumstances brought to support it, should be untrue. For example, if on the 8th March I started for New York to take passage for Europe, and just before leaving W., a man whom I had never known to deviate from the truth, told me that at 12 o’clock in the night previous, in the midst of total darkness, the

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sun appeared in meridian brightness at the zenith for one hour, and had then suddenly disappeared, I should probably think that he had seen a meteor, or had been dreaming, or that he wished to frighten me, or that he was telling a lie; but I  should hardly believe that the sun had been seen by him at the time and in the manner described. If the man seemed terrified, I should suppose that at least he believed what he was telling, but I should still attribute it to delusion. But if I heard others talking of the same event, and saying that they had seen it, I could not doubt that some remarkable luminary had thus appeared, but could not believe it to be the sun. If on arriving at New York, the same thing were talked of and believed, all agreeing that it was the sun, that the light and heat were those of the sun, I should be still more staggered. I set sail immediately for Europe, and ours is the first vessel that arrives after the 8th March from the United States. On our arrival, the first topic of inquiry is, whether the sun was seen at midnight on the American side of the Atlantic. Persons assert on all hands that at the precise hour it was seen in Europe. On looking at the newspapers of the 9th, I find full accounts of the phenomenon, and all agreeing that the object seen was the sun. Now I ask, could I doubt this concurrence of evidence? If so, on what principle could I doubt it? Mr. Hume tells us that it is against our experience of the uniformity of the laws of nature. But is it not equally against our experience to find such evidence as this false? But Mr. Hume would say, though the witnesses may not be false, it is still probable that they were deceived as to the reality of some remarkable phenomenon, but only as to the fact of its being actually the sun. Well now suppose, further, the evidence of the truth of the New Testament to be just as they now are, and suppose there were contained therein certain prophecies that the Messiah should again appear on the earth about this time; that there should be certain signs and wonders in the Heavens and on the earth, just preceding his appearance, among which prophecies should be contained one, that the sun should appear at midnight and shine with its usual splendor, and that other of the predicted signs and wonders had absolutely taken place, would not this place the evidence that we have before spoken of in a state of absolute unassailability?

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A SAINT AMIDST THE BENIGHTED PAGANS

“For the Register. DAVID HUME,” Christian Register, vol. 26, no. 35 (28 August 1847), p. 137. “H.G.E.” For a full review of Burton’s Life and Writings of David Hume, see selection #115. On the Christian Register, see selection #116. For more on Hume’s reception in France, see Laurence L. Bongie, David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-​Revolution (1965; second edition Indianapolis, 2000). _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ For the Register.

DAVID HUME. The recent comprehensive life of Hume, by J.  H. Burton, Esq., Advocate, leaves a more favorable impression of the philosopher than is entertained by the religious world. He was naturally amiable, humane, kindly, generous, cheerful, easily contented, easily appeased and forgetful of injuries. He possessed all the virtues belonging to health; competence, the possession of fame and all social enjoyments. Natural cheerfulness aided by varied and unbroken prosperity, made him less feel the need of the consolations of religion, as moderate passions, he thought, allowed him to forego its restrainments. He was preeminently the philosopher in temperament, and no one ever carried out the character more consistently through a long life and tedious illness to the last breath. His mistake was in overlooking that the mass of men are not constituted like him. Yet he

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was not irreligious, so much as sceptical; and sceptical not more about religion than about morals and metaphysics and all human inquiries. He was a universal doubter; or rather his philosophy was. He taught men to hesitate and feel uncertain about every thing and never come to a conclusion, while he often professed that he did not himself differ in believe from other people so much as they thought. He delighted, as a matter of taste and amusement, in sceptical speculations for the exercise of ingenuity and metaphysical acumen. This his friends called his passion for intellectual ropedancing. It was a fatal fault, for which many other minds have paid the penalty in unhappiness, if he escaped. But let us do him justice. Tho’ not only doubtful himself, but sill more the cause of doubt in others, he was not the monster fanaticism has represented him. He meant his speculations for studious philosophers. He carefully abstained from obtruding them into mixed society. His intimate associates were clergymen. He was a favorite with ladies, young and old, who never in his presence stood in dread of encountering any sentiment that might shock their feelings. Moreover, parents were not afraid to trust their children to his care and social attentions; and thought it a high privilege to obtain them. —​Both constitution and benevolence would have prevented his being a propagandist. “Indeed, he seems ever to have felt that a firm faith in Christianity, unshaken by any doubts, was an invaluable privilege, of which it would be as much more cruel to deprive a fellow creature than to rob him of his purse, as the one possession is more valuable than the other.” The story to which Prof. Silliman gave currency in his Travels, of Hume, converting his mother to infidelity, and his being overwhelmed with anguish on her dying hopeless and full of reproaches against him, is disproved in this work by dates and testimony; and the remark “is made that this foolish and improbable story, told, we may suppose after dinner, and invented on the spot, was at variance with Hume’s whole character.” Probably the foundation of the story was the Hon. Mr. Boyle’s saying to Hume on seeing him in deep affliction at his mother’s death, “My friend, you own this uncommon grief to having thrown off the principles of religion; for if you had not, you would have been consoled with the firm belief that the good lady, who was not only the best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, is completely happy in the realms of the just.” To this, Hume replied, “Though I  throw out my speculations to entertain the learned and metaphysical world, yet, in other things I do not think so differently from the rest of the world as you imagine.” Lord Charlmont [sic] testifies that he never say Hume as much displeased as by the conceited petulance of Mrs. Mallet. Though unacquainted with Hume, on meeting him one night at an assembly, she boldly accosted him in these words,

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“Mr. Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you; we Deists ought to know each other.” “Madam,” replied he, “I am no Deist; I do not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appellation.” He was not Parcus deorum cultor et infrequences, as might have been expected. He was fond of the preaching of Dr.  Robertson, and not averse to that of his opponent, the evangelical Erskine. Even in France he attended the ambassador’s chapel, and casually mentions in a letter home not having seen some one in church, in a manner to imply that he was there himself. He provided seats for all his domestics, and if they absented themselves, would inquire of them seriously the reason. Hume was of a different spirit from such unbelievers as Voltaire. Their inquiries were often on the same subjects in natural theology, and the arguments may be similar, but the tone of the English sceptic is grave and respectful, while the French mocker gibes and jeers with ribald jests at all that is venerable and sacred. Hume was certainly no Atheist. Even amid the philosophical and brilliant circles of Parisian anti-​religionists, with whom so much of his life was passed, he never gave in to the fashionable renunciation of a Deity, but boldly professed what he believed. Much as his genial temper and ready wit disposed him to enjoy the social ease and polished learning of those circles, he disliked their scornful infidelity and intolerance of all earnestness in belief. “I will tell you an anecdote of Hume,” said Diderot to Sir Samuel Romilly, “but it may scandalize you somewhat, for you English believe a little in God: we don’t at all. He was dining with a party at Baron d’Holbach’s. Sitting next to the Baron, they conversed on natural religion. ‘As for atheists,’ said Hume, ‘I don’t believe they exist; I never saw one.’ ‘You have been a little unfortunate,’ replied the other, ‘you are sitting at table with seventeen for the first time.’” The tone of his feelings sometimes rose almost to enthusiasm on this subject; and they seldom did on any. His friend Adam Ferguson relates, that walking home together one clear and beautiful night, Hume suddenly stopped, looked up to the starry sky and exclaimed in a manner worthy of Hervey’s Meditations, “Oh, Adam, can any one contemplate the wonders of that firmament, and not believe that there is a God?” One ground of his memorable friendship with Rousseau was sympathy on this point. He complains in a letter to Dr. Blair, of the French atheists being intolerant to the enthusiastic theist. “They are displeased with him because they think he ever-​ abounds in religion; and it is indeed remarkable that the philosopher of this age who has been most persecuted, is by far the most devout. I do not include such philosophers as are invested with the sacerdotal character. I  am, dear doctor, yours usque ad aras.”

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Hume’s reasoning about miracles, which has produced so much indignation and clamor, after all agrees very well with much of the declamation of ultra-​ Evangelicals. The disclaimers of reason as a blind, useless and perhaps pernicious guide in religion should not complain of Hume’s severing reason from religion. It should seem the act of a friend to rescue Christianity from a treacherous companion —​“non talibus defensoribus eget.” They believe that religion is too sacred to be allied with a poor miserable stumbler like man’s erring reason. “Our most holy religion,” says he, and say they, “is founded on faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no means fitted to endure.” Hume is no advocate for us who deny that reason and revelation are two disconnected things; that each must act alone, and that the one derives no aid from the other. He is the patron of the Orthodox. And whatever he or they may say, we can believe from reasoning both that a miracle is possible, and that faith in it is possible in the natural exercise of our minds; and if Campbell’s refutation of his sophistry is not sufficient for us, Geology is. Geology shows to our eyes that such “impossible” deviations from the established order of nature have taken place. Hume grieved in his old age at the publication of his Essays and softened the offensive terms in which he had spoken of religionists in the early editions of his History. He says in his description of his own character, that “plain as his manners were, and apparently careless of attention, vanity was his predominant weakness. That vanity led him to publish his Essays —​which he grieved over; not that he had changed his opinions, but that he thought he had injured society by disseminating them.” Yes, vanity was his foible, and we cannot blame it harshly when we consider that no one ever was more flattered. Abroad even more than at home he was an idol. In the glittering saloons of Paris nobles and beauties worshipped him. At court kings and princes did him homage. “Do you ask me about my course of life?” he writes. “I can only say, that I eat nothing but ambrosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe nothing but incense, and tread on nothing but flowers! Every man I meet, and still more every lady, would think they were wanting in the most indispensable duty, if they did not make a long and elaborate harangue in my praise. What happened last week, when I had the honour of being presented to the Dauphin’s children at Versailles, is one of the most curious scenes I  have yet passed through. The Duc de Berri, 10  years old, stepped forth and told me how many friends and admirers I had in this country, and that he reckoned himself in the number, from the pleasure he had received from the reading of many passages in my works. When he had finished, his brother, the Count

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de Provence, who is two years younger, began his discourse, and informed me that I had been long and impatiently expected in France; and that he himself expected soon to have great satisfaction from the reading of my fine History. But what is more curious, when I was carried thence to the Count d’Artoise, who is but four years of age, I heard him mumble something, which, though he had forgot it in the way, I conjectured from some scattered words, to have been also a panegyric dictated to him.” After all we must blame “le bon David,” good fellow as he was in all the social relations, for scattering fire brands, arrows and death, and saying, am I not in sport? But he was a saint amidst the benighted pagans among whom he lived in Paris, and of whom he wickedly gives the Rev. Dr. Blair the following satisfactory account. “The men of letters here are really very agreeable; all of them men of the world, living in entire, or almost entire harmony among themselves, and quite irreproachable in their morals. It would give you and Jardine and Robertson, great satisfaction to find that there is not a single deist among them.” H. G. E.

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HUME AND THE PURITANS

“HUME AND THE PURITANS,” The American Literary Magazine, vol. 5, no. 1 (July 1849), p. 33. S. G. Buckingham The American Literary Magazine was published between July 1847 and August 1849 in Albany, New York. Its editor was Timothy Dwight Sprague (c.1819–​49). For a review of Hume’s History in this same journal, see selection #121. The Rev. S. G. Buckingham appears to have been active in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was a member of the South Congregational Society. It is interesting to see that, for Buckingham (and despite his criticisms of Hume on the topic of the Puritans), Hume, “the Great Historian of England,” continued to hold the field as a political historian, even after the publication of the first two volumes of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s (1800–​59) History of England in 1848. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

HUME AND THE PURITANS. BY REV. S. G. BUCKINGHAM _​_​_​_​_​ WE are great admirers of Hume as a historian. We always feel, in reading him, as if we were conversing with a giant mind, and he has very much the same weight with us in what he says as our own Webster does in an argument. It is a mind equally acute and comprehensive, and one that constantly deals, and deals ably, with fundamental principles. He does not give us the philosophy of history without any facts in it, after the beau ideal of the German fashion, nor does he

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give us the facts merely without finding any philosophy to be derived from them, but there is a constant reference to first principles. As it is a political history, things are to be looked at in their bearings upon what the writer regards as the correct principles of civil government —​as they affect the fundamental laws of the British Constitution, and as they bear upon the progress of Constitutional Freedom in those Islands. His ideas of a perfect Government do not, to be sure, square exactly with our own. But we are satisfied that this is the way such a history should be written; that things should be tried and judged of by this standard of first principles; that events should be looked at as they favor or oppose what are assumed to be the correct principles of Government, and this we regard as the highest kind of history writing. This, it strikes us, is the great defect of Macaulay in his recent work. As a series of pictures of men and the times  —​ always vivid, and for the most part just, for aught we know —​it is a rich contribution to English literature. But as a political history, it is hardly to be put upon the same shelf with Hume’s. He does not try things by any settled first principles. Indeed, he does not seem to have any that he regards as very great importance; for what he would consider bad legislation now, was the very best in a previous age, though it violated the principles which would now be necessary to make it good. In Hume’s mind, however, political principles have been definitely settled, and, whether formally or unconsciously, things have always judged of by them, except where his prejudices are stronger than his intellectual convictions. He has long stood, and aught we see, is still likely to stand, as the Great Historian of England, though his History has been shown to be in many respects false and unjust, and in many more may be. As we remarked at the beginning, we admire Hume as a historian, and yet we can hardly forgive him the injustice he has done to the Puritans. He was peculiarly disqualified to write their history. They, as a class, were religious men, while he was an avowed unbeliever. They were the strictest Calvinists —​he the loosest Deist. They were full of faith in God and Providence, and this faith was in them an ever-​present, all-​controlling principle of action, while he had no practical and scarcely a speculative belief in either. The religious element was altogether the most predominant and the most influential in their character, while in his it was entirely wanting. How, then, could he be expected to understand such men —​much more to appreciate them? Had it not been for this broad gulf of separation which so completely cut him off from all sympathy with them, he never would have set down, as he so often has done, their most intelligent convictions as blind superstition, and their most conscientious scruples as so much bigotry.

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Then, again, these men were the unyielding opponents of his favorite Stuart Kings. He is a regular apologist for Charles I, in all his contests with the Puritan party. He thinks it hard that they would not grant him all the supplies he asked for when he first came to the throne, a young and untried monarch, though he well knew that this was the only way in which they could secure their rights —​ by withholding supplies until their rights were guarantied to them —​and that for twenty years this had been the ground on which they had maintained their struggle with his father, granting him no supplies until he should redress their wrongs. He wonders that they cannot place more confidence in the word and oath of a King, when he might have known so well that the word of a Stuart never was worth any thing, and that Charles owed his tragic end as much to his falsehood and fickleness as to his tyranny. We could not expect one with such over-​weening fondness for these Stuarts, to do justice to their enemies. We might as soon expect a warm admirer of Jefferson’s administration to do full justice to his opponents, or an old-​fashioned Federalist to appreciate fully Mr. Jefferson and his friends. Every careful reader of Hume must have noticed the inconsistencies into which he falls in his account of the Puritans. He tells us that the leaders of this party were “men of the most uncommon capacity and the largest views:” “men of the greatest parts and most extensive knowledge that the nation at this time produced;” and yet that these very men were so weak that they “could not enjoy any peace of mind, because obliged to hear prayers offered up to the Divinity by a priest covered with a white linen vestment,” (vol. 3, chap. L., p. 352.) He speaks of it, to be sure, as the weakness of great men; but the question at once suggests itself, how could such men be so weak? unless there was some important principle involved in the matter —​and then their weakness might be their wisdom. At the breaking out of the first civil war between Charles and his opponents, he represents the latter as so completely carried away by their religious fanaticism, as to exhibit neither reason nor principle in their proceedings. Though there “never was a people less corrupted by vice and more actuated by principle than the English, during this period, and never were there individuals who possessed more capacity, more courage, more public spirit, more disinterested zeal” —​still he says, that “the infusion of this one ingredient, in too large a proportion, had corrupted all these noble principles, and converted them into the most violent poison  —​and this fanatical spirit let loose, confounded all regard to ease, safety, interest, and dissolved every moral and civil obligation,” (vol. 3, chap. LV, p.  512.) Yet we are told again that, during that period, “they displayed great vigor as well as wisdom in their counsels, from

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the beginning, and a furious, headstrong body, broken loose from the restraints of laws, were retained in subjection under their authority, and finally united by zeal and passion, as by the most legal and established government,” (chap, LVI, p.  535,) and that “all the events of this period are less distinguished by atrocious deeds, either of treachery or cruelty, than were ever any intestine discords which had so long a continuance,” (chap. LVI, p. 528.) Although he uniformly represents the Protectorate of Cromwell as an usurpation and a tyranny, still “it must be acknowledged,” he says, “that the Protector in his civil and domestic administration displayed as great regard, both to justice and clemency, as his usurped authority, derived from no law, and founded only on the sword, could possibly permit. All the chief officers in the courts of judicature were filled with men of integrity. Amidst the virulence of faction, the decrees of the judges were upright and impartial. And to every man but himself, and to himself, except when necessity required the contrary, the law was the great rule of conduct and behavior,” (vol. 4, chap. LXI, p. 112.) We have always regarded this last admission of Hume’s in regard to the Protector and his party, as the highest eulogium he could have pronounced upon them. To have kept the courts of justice pure, when they might so easily have corrupted them, as Charles soon after did —​ to have filled them with able and upright judges, instead of inquisitors like Jefferies —​to have regarded the legal rights of their enemies, when they had the army at their control, and might have rode over them all, as their enemies did over theirs the moment they came into power, is in our view as complete a refutation as could be wished, of that charge of fanaticism which “dissolved every moral and civil obligation.” We are also struck, in reading Hume, with the silly grounds on which he often rests his judgment of the Puritans. They wore long faces and short hair. They had queer scripture names,* and sang through their noses. This, to be sure, was not exactly in good taste, but hardly enough to make them either fools or fanatics. But they were men of acknowledged ability in Parliament, and their prowess in the field none will deny, while for strictness of morals there never was such an army as Cromwell’s in the world. “It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists,” says Macaulay, (vol. 1, p. 114,) “that in that singular camp no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that during the long * Hume has made the most of this weakness of theirs, and exaggerated the matter, for the purpose of

ridiculing them, beyond all truth. In the list of “a jury, said to be enclosed in the county of Sussex,” and wholly made up of such names as, “Accepted, Faint-​not, Make-​peace, Kill-​sin, Fight-​the-​good-​ fight-​of-​faith,” (chap. LI, p. 93,) we take it no one without great simplicity supposes that such a jury was ever empannelled. It looks like a list which some wag of Charles the Second’s time got up, perhaps to amuse his monarch with after dinner.

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dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honor of woman were held sacred.” The Royalists may give themselves up to the most shameless profligacy, but if they do, it is because the Puritans are so rigid. They may make a holiday of the Sabbath, according to King James’ “Book of Sunday Sports,” and it is only because the Puritans spend it in such “melancholy indolence.” The Royal troops may be guilty of such license that their friends among whom they quarter fear the enemy less than they do them, and they are only a set of high-​born Cavaliers  —​a little too warm-​blooded, to be sure, but none of your low-​lived, canting knaves, like the Round-​heads. They had their weaknesses, but what were they compared with their devotion to God and to Liberty? Their faults, amid their sturdy virtues, seem no more than freckles on their faces, compared with the ulcers that blotched their enemies. Hume often does the Puritans injustice in the construction he puts upon their conduct. The same act will appear well, or ill, according to the view you take of the motives that dictated it. And it is within the power of a historian, without misstating or omitting any material fact, to put such a construction upon those facts as shall produce entirely a wrong impression, and shall be virtually falsehood. If a man prays, like Cromwell, it may be an evidence of his piety or a mark of his hypocrisy, as Hume regards it. As to the character of the act, and of the individual whose act it is, the views you take of it will depend upon the motives to which you ascribe it. It is in this respect preeminently that Hume wrongs the Puritans throughout his work. He does not do justice to their motives  —​ he does not appreciate their principles. Take their leaders, Hampden and Pym and others, whom Charles attempted to detach from their party by giving them offices under the crown, but failed. Hume attributes his want of success to his “want of skill” in managing the matter, or to the “slender preferments which it was then in the King’s power to confer” —​instead of ascribing it, as he ought in all justice, to their incorruptible virtue, which spurned the bridge, (vol. 3, chap. LV., p. 489.) When Cromwell came to the Protectorate, Hume says, he was “ambitious of forming connections with the nobility, and for this purpose united one of his daughters in marriage to Viscount Fauconberg, and another to Rich, grandson and heir of the Earl of Warwick.” Now, it so happens that among his letters which have lately come to light, is one from Mary, the former of these daughters, to her brother Henry in Ireland, which lets us into this matter. She apologises for not having written before, but really she has felt so bad about this “business of my sister Frances and Mr. Rich,” that she could not —​and she goes on to tell him that, after the affair had gone on well for several months, her father broke it off, and broke it off, not (as was generally supposed) because he

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and the Earl of Warwick could not agree about the settlement to be made upon the young people; but, “if I may say the truth, I think it was not so much estate, as from private reasons, which my father discovered to none, but to my sister Frances, and his own family —​which was, a dislike to the young person, which he had from some reports of his being a vicious man.” (Carlyle’s Cromwell, vol. 2, p. 211.) That is, he heard that his character was not good; and, desirable as such a connection might be in itself considered, he was not willing to strengthen his power by an alliance with an ancient and influential family, if it might involve in it the sacrifice of his daughter’s happiness. And but for this old family letter, which, after two centuries, has come to light, this connection might always have been quoted as one of the proofs of his ambition, and quoted on the authority of the Great Historian of England, when the truth in the case does him honor, and shows that his wise affection as a father, was superior to any selfish ambition he might have had as Lord Protector. The fact is, he has done Cromwell, throughout, the basest injustice. The idea he gives us of him —​and it is the one generally entertained of him until lately, and chiefly upon his authority —​is the grossest caricature that was ever sketched. He gives us the impression that he was a man of great abilities, but of just those abilities which make us despise one the more, the more he possesses of them —​the ability to manage others by arts and every mean device; whereas, in truth, the English Government never had such a man at its head before, and those eleven years of the Commonwealth are some of the brightest of its history. They seem like day itself between two nights, compared with what preceded and followed it. And as for his principles —​they are all summed up in a single word, and that is hypocrite. He is a hypocrite in politics, for while he professes to be actuated by a love of liberty, he is only aiming at absolute despotism. And his piety is all a cloak to cover his villanies. Is it not a little strange that, when his memory, like his bones, has been dug up and blackened, after two hundred years, his friends should be able with pious care to collect the fragments, and we be permitted to see, for the first time, that he was a man, and not a monster. The publication of his Letters by Carlyle, after two centuries, has reversed the judgment of the world in regard to him, and stamped on Hume the deepest blot that rests upon the Great Historian —​the crime of basely maligning the noblest character he had to treat of. Macaulay, we notice, gives up the idea of his being a hypocrite, and, admitting his abilities and sincerity, does him, in the main, justice. And it will be long, we imagine, before any respectable historian will again venture to adopt Hume’s views of him. The truth is, Hume hated the Puritans. He could not appreciate them; he could not understand them; and, more than all, he abhorred their faith and their

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worship. He meant to do them justice, and no doubt often thought he had, especially in attributing to them, as a party, such a steadfast love of liberty. But, looking at them individually and through the medium of his bitter prejudices, their faults were magnified, their misdeeds aggravated, and some of those little things which, to say the most, were only ridiculous, are made proofs of the deepest corruption, and hold such a place in the frame-​work of his otherwise noble History, and will, sadly to its marring, as long as it shall last. The character of those men, however, is becoming continually better understood, and each succeeding generation thinks more of those old English Puritans, and will till he who can trace his descent, however remote, back to that seed royal, shall ask for no prouder pedigree.

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THE INDEPENDENT ’S REVIEW OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the abdication of James the Second, 1688. By David Hume, Esq. A new edition, with the Author’s last corrections and improvements. To which is prefixed a short account of his Life, written by himself. Vol. I. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1849. Sold in New York by M. H. Newman, 199 Broadway,” The Independent, vol. 1, no. 37 (16 August 1849), p. 148. Anonymous A Boston publication, The Independent was long-​running. In its first years it was edited by the Reverends Leonard Bacon (1802–​81), J. P. Thompson, and R. S. Storrs (1821–​1900). Later years would see a particular focus on slavery (it published Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and always it was “devoted to the consideration of politics, social and economic tendencies, history, literature, and the arts.” _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ The singular merit of Hume’s History is its sufficient guaranty against being forgotten. That it is not impartial, in the high historic sense, that it is, rather, imbued and penetrated to a remarkable degree by his peculiarities of character and of opinion, —​all who have in turn assailed it have in turn announced. Yet Hume’s is by no means the partiality of the mere paid advocate, who for the stipulated fee, of reputation or of money, suppresses authorities which bear against his party, and falsifies those which he cannot suppress, and gives an undue and exaggerated prominence to those which suit his purpose. The equable and

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philosophic Librarian at Edinburgh would have shrunk we doubt not from such a deliberate treachery to the truth. His partiality was of a subtler and more spiritual character. It originated in his strong self-​consciousness, and his ardent attachment to the tenets which he maintained. Instead of throwing himself with the force of a fervent imagination into the minds of the actors as well as the midst of the scenes which had illustrated the Past, with the tenacity of a stubborn Scotchman addicted to toryism and infidelity, he held his own rules, measured all things by his own rules, and let the faiths and the follies of the Past, the noble efforts for liberty and truth, the desperate conflicts for present supremacy, the battles and the martyrdoms, the triumphs of right and the conquests of power —​ all pass like shadows before his calm unkindling eye. His partiality therefore, though real, is for the most part unconscious. It penetrates his work in its entire structure; in its very phraseology. It is sunken into it, like the blue into steel. And it would be impossible to eliminate it, by any expurgation of passages. Yet it rarely affronts one, as does that of the bald political partisan; and we may obviate its effects by bearing its existence continually in mind. But with what grace and beauty and dignity of style this work is written, who needs be told; how charming is the narrative; how acute and discriminating are the remarks on society; how clear and comprehensive are the views presented of literature or of gov erment [sic]. Never while England stands can this history be forgotten. It will be a memorial of her progress more durable than her cities. And never can it be read without admiration for the talents and the temper, the vast acquisition and the unruffled good humor, of him who produced it; admiration mingled with constant regret that the whole frame and spirit of his mind had not been subdued by the Gospel, and glorified by its life. Alas, if Christianity had had to him other representatives than those cool and witty moralists with whom he mingled, if it had been presented to him by personal intercourse with Howard or Henry Martyn, or in the earnest appeals of preachers like Chalmers or Hall, this might have been! Messrs. Phillips and Sampson, the enterprising publishers, have issued this edition in a style uniform with that of their edition of Macaulay; and the two together, —​if two such different works will bear to be put in the same style of binding, and to be arranged together on contiguous book-​shelves —​will make a complete and most readable history of the career of the English nation. Hume will be comprised in six volumes.

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THE CHRISTIAN REGISTER’S REVIEW OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND,” The Christian Register, vol. 28, no. 33 (18 August 1849), p. 131. Anonymous On The Christian Register, see selection #116. Reading Shakespeare in connection with Hume’s History, as the review recommended, would be an interesting project. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. We have received, through Messrs. Munroe & Co., Vol. II of this handsome reprint, by Messrs. Phillips, Sampson, & Co., which has just appeared. It embraces the period between A. D. 1216, and A. D. 1485, and the reigns of Henry III, and Edwards I, II, III, Richard II, the Henrys IV, V, and VI, the Edwards IV and V, and Richard III. It introduces also William Wallace, Robert Bruce, Wat Tyler and the Maid of Orleans, and details the battles of Bannockburn, Crecy, Poietiers [sic] and Azincour, the opposition of the barons, the quarrels of the houses of York and Lancaster, etc., etc. We recommend the reading of Shakespeare’s Richard III, the Henrys IV, V and VI, and Richard III, in connection with this volume of Hume.

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THE AMERICAN LITERARY MAGAZINE’S REVIEW OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“A NEW EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY,” The American Literary Magazine, vol. 5, no. 2 (August 1849), pp. 127–​8. Anonymous On The American Literary Magazine, see selection #118. This short review captures much about Hume’s reputation at the mid-point of the nineteenth century. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

A NEW EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY.* No one would think of writing about Hume’s History of England within the space ordinarily allotted to a literary notice. To announce the new edition is enough, without saying anything of the book. To tell the world in 1849 that Hume’s History is a work entitled to their favorable regard, would be like informing the public what are the peculiar features that render Niagara Falls a highly agreeable spectacle, or that George Washington was certainly a great patriot. One cannot take hold of a copy of Hume’s History in a new form, without being reminded of what it is to be a really great genius: to find favor in a distant future age: to be the fashion in spite of all the changes of empire or of costume: to be treated with consummate respect, while every new pretender to kindred rank, no matter how splendid his prestige, is subjected to damning censure or equally damning adulation, as he steps upon the stage. If David Hume’s spirit is now * Philips, Sampson & Co. of Boston, are the publishers of the edition referred to. It is designed to match their edition of Macaulay’s Continuation.

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conscious of the affairs of the world, and has any sympathy with them, he must enjoy this exquisite satisfaction of admitted superiority to the very full. Never did human author stand out in such grand and successful defiance of prejudice as Hume. No one dares to be his rival. Men of the highest talents for writing history, who do not scruple to enter into competition with the Millers and Smolletts and Hughes’  —​the historians of the period subsequent to that which Hume has handled  —​hesitate to travel over the ground which he has adorned with his footsteps. We have hosts of writers of English History, who confine their researches to the times commencing with the Restoration: comparatively few, who have written the earlier annals of England. Macaulay even —​ the last and noblest of the line, and one, who has received higher assurances of public admiration than any other author ever did during his own life —​prefers to write a continuation of Hume’s History rather than to expose himself to comparison with his predecessor. One may well ask, who is this wonderful historian who thus frightens down rivalry and stands facile princeps in his art? The answer makes him appear yet more wonderful. Hume has acquired and kept his fame by mere skill and genius. Lingard is treated coldly, because he was a zealous Papist and his work is a Romanist history. Hallam is not universally popular on account of his chilling impartiality —​the total absence of partisanship or zeal. But Hume, an infidel historian, —​who does not hesitate to exclude God from history and Christianity from among the virtues of human character, —​is applauded by the world. He not only overlooks, but attacks the views and feelings, which are most precious and deeply-​seated in the vast majority of intelligent minds. Yet no Christian writer of history has usurped the place of the sceptical philosopher. It can be proved that he has warped facts, neglected important researches, even been glaringly inconsistent with himself  —​thus as it were sapping the very foundations of the historian’s fame and shaking the confidence of his readers by wholesale —​and yet what truth is so charming as Hume’s falsehood? His marvellous facility and variety of style, his generous warmth of sympathy, his unequalled skill in grouping and selecting, are too much for the prejudices of mankind. His work is not thrown away as barbarian or excommunicated as heretical. Year by year, perhaps age by age, honest men will sigh to think, that they must find their most delightful treasures of historical knowledge in the keeping of one, who offends with his philosophy their most cherished belief and sees events and characters through a medium, which to them is despicable. Some people, we are told, find Hume dull. It must be, not that Hume is dull, but that history is dull. Persons, who cannot read his volumes with pleasure, would skip over the historical chapters of Walter Scott’s novels.

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THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER’S REVIEW OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

Untitled Review, The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany, vol. 48, no. 2 (March 1850), pp. 331–​2. Anonymous On The Christian Examiner, see selections #49, #82, and #83. As this piece shows, even religious magazines could recommend Hume’s History, although  —​like Gibbon’s Decline and Fall —​it needed to be read with “cautious watchfulness.” _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Messrs. Phillips, Sampson, & Co. have completed the publication of their valuable library edition of Hume’s History of England, unabridged, by the publication of the sixth volume, which contains a carefully prepared Index to the whole work. They were led to this undertaking by the success of their edition of Macaulay’s History, the best and cheapest that has appeared in this country. Their edition of Hume may now be purchased on fair paper and in good binding at a price less than the cost of a single volume of it, when the History first appeared in England. It is evident that only a very large sale can remunerate the publishers in such an undertaking. There is a charm in those Tory pages, which gives the work a claim to a place in every library, and the literary public should show an appreciation of the risk which publishers venture, when they offer sterling works at a price which rivals in cheapness the paper-​bound novels and trash of the day. The publication of Hume is now followed by Milman’s edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The work will appear in six volumes, two of which have been already issued. Mr. Milman has translated and copied nearly all

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the notes of M. Guizot upon Gibbon’s text, and these, together with the English editor’s own careful and valuable comments, give us this great work in a form which completes its value, and neutralizes its risk. Gibbon’s History never can be superseded. Its wealth of learning, its felicities of style, its vivid pictures and masterly generalizations, will insure it readers, let who may rewrite the annals of declining and falling Rome. The scattered sarcasms and innuendoes, unfavorable alike to Christianity and to morality, which, with all their humor and adroitness, made Gibbon’s work unsafe for some readers, are rendered harmless by the cautious pen of Milman. We cannot but commend these works to all who will read them with that cautious watchfulness which they required. The same publishers have issued nine numbers of their splendid edition of Shakspeare [sic], in which they give away gratuitously a whole play, with full notes and illustrations, in each number, and charge but twenty-​five cents for a steel engraving of its heroine. They also have in press two works with the following titles: —​“The Life and Religion of Mohammed. Translated from the Persian, by Rev. J. L. Merrick, a Missionary of Persia during eleven years”; a work which received the high commendation of the Oriental Society, before which it was read. “The Atheism of France,” by Alphonse de Lamartine; written for the purpose of showing the people of France why they have no better success in their attempts to sustain a republican government.

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SARTAIN’S UNION MAGAZINE’S REVIEW OF THE 1849 BOSTON EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“BOOK NOTICES. HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND,” Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art, vol. 6, no. 4 (April 1850), p. 308. Anonymous Published in Philadelphia for its first numbers, in 1850 Sartain’s Union Magazine was edited in New York by Mrs. Caroline M. Kirland (1801–​64), who, the daughter of bookseller and publisher Samuel Stansbury, was also an author of a range of material. On her, see Dorthy Anne Dondore’s entry in DAB, vol. 5, pp. 430–​1. On Sartain’s, see API, p. 198. This short piece was the lead notice. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

BOOK NOTICES. HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Messrs. Phillips & Sampson, of Boston, in issuing the sixth and last volume of their excellent edition of Hume, announce that it will be followed by an edition of Gibbon, in the same popular and commendable style. For sale by J. W. Moore, Philadelphia.

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124

THE MERCHANT’S MAGAZINE’S REVIEW OF THE 1850 NEW YORK EDITION OF HUME’S HISTORY

“20. History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James II. By David Hume. 6 vols, 12mo., pp. 470. New York: Harper & Brothers,” The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review, vol. 22, no. 6 (1 June 1850), p. 702. Anonymous The Merchant’s Magazine was published by Freeman Hunt in New York. It pitched Harper & Brothers’s new edition of Hume’s History as good value for its readers, noting in particular the value-​added scholarly apparatus. Interestingly, to this day no edition of the History has been published with a bibliography. For an interim report on an ongoing endeavour to produce one, see Roger L.  Emerson and Mark G. Spencer, “A Bibliography for Hume’s History of England: A Preliminary View,” Hume Studies, vol. 40, no. 1 (2014 [published in 2016]), pp. 53–​71. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ This edition of Hume’s history is contained in six volumes, which are a very convenient size for use; the type is clear, large, legible, and the paper good. The whole is bound is [sic] cloth, and offered to the public at the extremely low price of forty cents a volume, or two dollars and forty cents for the work. If we consider the high character of this history, the long period during which it has been a standard work in the English language, and the fullness and richness of its contents, we doubt if a cheaper book has ever been issued from the press in this country. It embraces, also, the appendix, the notes, and the authorities citied in former editions, and contains the author’s last corrections and improvements, with a short account of his life, written by himself.

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125

HUME’S SPLENDID TOMB

“LINES, Written on seeing the monument to the memory of David Hume at Edinburgh,” Ladies’ Garland and Family Wreath Embracing Tales, Sketches, Incidents, History, Poetry, Music, etc, vol. 4, no. 10 (October 1850), p. 114. Anonymous Ladies’ Garland and Family Wreath was published in Philadelphia from 1837 to 1850. Hume’s tomb was designed by his architectural friend and fellow Scot, Robert Adam (1728–​92), in 1777. It was erected in the Old Calton Burial Ground on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill, and then it was the only monument on the Hill, a thumb in the eye to pious Edinburgh. When I visited it for the first time in the late 1990s, it had fallen into a state of sad disrepair. It has since been restored so today’s visitors may once again capture a sense of its original dignity. Hume had directed in his will that a “Monument be built over my Body at an Expence not exceeding a hundred Pounds, with an Inscription containing only my Name with the Year of my Birth and Death, leaving it to Posterity to add the Rest.” Beneath this poet’s “LINES” lay a much more complicated tale of a hundred years worth of the dissemination of Hume’s writings and the ideas they contained. Travelling back and forth and within the British Atlantic world, their movement was often in revised forms and always within contexts that had changed and were changing. While these simple lines are as appropriate a place as any to conclude this volume on Hume’s Reception in Early America, all who read them are, in a way, parts of that still-​unfolding story. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

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L I N E S, Written on seeing the monument to the memory of David Hume at Edinburgh. I NEVER looked upon the tomb Erected there to DAVID HUME, Without reflecting—​—​Did not he, With all his deep philosophy, Deliberately try to load The minds of men with doubts of GOD? To poison, at the fountain’s source, The stream of life, throughout its course? To dash from suffering moral’s lip, The cup of comfort he would sip? To substitute for future life, A present scene of anxious strife? To tell us the oblivious wave Will roll upon the new-​made grave? To steal from man those brilliant hopes     Which thro’ life’s darkness sweetly shine, Exalting our imperfect state     Into a character divine? He did; and, with his latest breath, Proclaimed an everlasting death! Like Eden’s serpent would destroy What he, himself, could not enjoy. Yet, strange to say, that very HUME Was honored with a splendid tomb.

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Index Adam, Robert 759 Adams, Abigail 87 Adams, Baxter 77 Adams, Charles Francis 439 Review of Robert Vaughan’s Memorials of the Stuarts. Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, including the Constitutional and Ecclesiastical History of England from the Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II, in The North American Review (1833) 439–43 Adams, David Phineas 639 Adams, John 87 criticism of “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” 35–7 A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787–​1788) 6, 35–7 “Remainder of Governor Winthrop’s Second Letter to Governor Bradford, begun in our last,” Boston Gazette (1767) 307–9 Adams, Samuel 292 Adams, William 619 “The Adversaria,” in The Port Folio (1820) 547 “Adversaria: ‘Hume and Finley’,” The Ordeal (1809) 535–6 Ahlstrom, Sydney E. 107 Aitken, Robert 319 Albaugh, Gaylord P. 95, 111, 147, 257, 369, 493, 497, 503, 507, 523, 553, 561 Alexander, Archibald 88, 655 Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures (1836) 88, 239–56 The American Literary Magazine “Hume and the Puritans” (1849) 739–45 “A New Edition of Hume’s History” (1849) 751–2

The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies 9 “Dispute about the Tragedy of Douglas” (1758) 9–20 The American Monitor, or, Republican Magazine “Republicus.” “Observations on the Liberty of the Press” (1785) 27–34 The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal Review of David Hume’s The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 325–32 Review of Freethinker’s An Enquiry into the Pretensions of Richard Brothers, in Answer to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1795) 619 The American Museum, or, Universal Magazine “Ode to Education” (1789) 607–8 The American Museum; or, Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, &c “To the editor of the American Museum” (1788) 601–4 The American Quarterly Observer “Hume, as a Historian” (1833) 445–57 The Analectic Magazine 44 Review of James Ogilvie’s Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, Copious Notes, Critical and Explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix 90, 123–42 Anders, John R. 609 anecdotes “Anecdote of Anne Bullen,” in The New York Magazine, or Literary Repository (1794) 617–18

762

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Index

“Anecdotes of Infidel Morality,” in Robinson’s Magazine, A weekly Repository of Original Papers; and Selections from the English Magazines (1806) 541–3 in The Columbian Magazine (1788) 605–6 in The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; and Religious Intelligencer (1800) 493 “Desultory Gleanings, and Original Communications. Translated from Mémoires et correspondence de Madame D’Epinay,” The New-​England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine (1819) 545–6 “Varieties. Original Anecdotes, Literary News, Chit Chat, Incidents, &c,” in Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines (1824) 555 “Antilon-​First Citizen Letters,” in Maryland Gazette 311–18 Arndt, J. Chris 261 Arner, Robert D. 489 The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine, or Evangelical Intelligencer “The Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel” (1805) 111–16 “On the Death of David Hume” (1806) 503–5 Association Library Company of Philadelphia 4 The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines “Hume’s History of England” (1824) 385 “Varieties. Original Anecdotes, Literary News, Chit Chat, Incidents, &c” (1824) 555 “An Author’s Evenings. From the Shop of Messrs. Colon and Spondee,” in The Port Folio (1801) 633–4 Bacon, Leonard 747 Bailey, Francis 479 Bainton, Roland H. 565 Bancroft, George 725 Barnard, Philip 647 Bates, Ernest Sutherland 163 Baxter, John 349

Beasley, Frederick 90 A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (1822) 90, 163–237, 551–2 Beecher, Lyman 257 “Belief and Unbelief,” Christian Examiner (1830) 559–60 Bell, Robert 289–90, 473 Miscellanies for Sentimentalists 473 Bernard, Francis 307 Bernard, Philip 647 Binder, Frederick M. 387 Blair, Samuel 111, 503 Boinod, Daniel 290 Bongie, Laurence L. 733 “Book Notices. Hume’s History of England,” Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art (1850) 755 Boston Gazette 35 “Remainder of Governor Winthrop’s Second Letter to Governor Bradford, begun in our last” (1767) 307–9 Boston Weekly News-​Letter 4 Boudinot, Elias 111, 503 Bowen, Francis Lowell Lectures, on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science 465 Review of David Hume’s The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James the Second, in The North American Review (1849) 465–7 Brackenridge, Hugh H. 55, 479 Bradford, D. 499 Bradford, William 9 Brattle, William 291 Brauer, Kinley 439 Brooks, Edward Review of Edward Earl of Clarendon’s The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, to which is added an Historical View of the Affairs of Ireland, in North American Review 389–405 Review of John Lingard’s Constitutional History and works of Geroge Brodie and William Godwin, in North American Review (1829) 407–21 Brothers, Richard 619

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Index Brougham, Lord 577 Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the time of George the Third, second series, review in The North American Review (1847) 583–4 Brown, Chandos Michael 107 Brown, Charles Brockden 333, 647 Brown, John 295 Brown’s Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, review in The North American Review 151–62 Buckingham, Joseph T. 435, 525, 545 Buckingham, S. G. 739 “Hume and the Puritans,” The American Literary Magazine (1849) 739–45 Bullen, Anne 617 Burke, Aadanus 292 Burnet, Gilbert, and Hume, “Hume and Burnet,” The Philadelphia Repository (1805) 341, 501 Burton, John Hill 701 Butterfield, L.H. 479 Campbell, George 43, 661 Campbell, Robert 293, 325, 474, 617 Carey, Mathew 6, 593, 601, 607 Carroll, Charles 289, 292 and Daniel Dulany, Jr., “Antilon-​First Citizen Letters,” in Maryland Gazette (1773) 311–18 Carter, James G., Review of John Robinson’s Hume and Smollet Abridged, and Continued to the Accession of George IV, in The United States Literary Gazette (1824) 387–8 Carter, Michael S. 601 “The Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel,” in The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer (1805) 111–16 Chadwick, John White 147 Chalmers, James 5 Chalmers, Thomas 257 Natural Theology, review in Quarterly Christian Spectator (1838) 257–9 Chandler, J. R. 461 Channing, Edward Tyrrel 89 Review of James Ogilvie’s Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, copious

763

Notes, critical and explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix, in The North American Review 90, 143–4 Channing, William Ellery 88, 725 on Hume 147–50 Charleston Library Society 85, 290 Charvat, W. 143 Christian Examiner “Belief and Unbelief ” (1830) 559–60 Review of Lord Mahon’s The Life of Belisarius (1829) 423–6 The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany, Untitled Review (1850) 753–4 The Christian Examiner and Theological Review “Skepticism” (1824) 557 Christian Observer and Advocate “Letters to the Editor” (1802) 497–8 Review of new publications. Dean Kenney’s Principles and Practices of pretended Reformers (1820) 369–81 Christian Register “For the Register. David Hume” (1847) 733–7 Review of A. H. Lawrence’s An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles (1846) 725–31 Review of David Hume’s The History of England (1849) 749 The Christian’s Scholar’s, and Farmer’s Magazine “Lane Shore” (1791) 609–10 Christian’s Magazine 475, 507 “Remarks on the accounts of the death of David Hume, Esqr. and Samuel Finley, D.D. in the last No” 507–17 Cist, Charles 593 Clark, Lewis Gaylord 459 Clarendon’s The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, to which is added an Historical View of the Affairs of Ireland, review in North American Review 389–405 clergy, Hume’s attack on, “Hume and Dryden,” in The Port Folio (1816) 367 Colbourn, Trevor 601

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Index

The Columbian Magazine Anecdote in (1788) 605–6 “An Essay on Civil Liberty, by Hume” (1788) 593–9 A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (Smith) 117–21 The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine; and Religious Intelligencer, Anecdotes in (1800) 493 Conrad, E. 501 “Considerations on the Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and of a Christian,’ contained in the Panoplist of November last,” in The Ordeal (1809) 529–31 “Contrast between the Death of a Deist and a Christian, David Hume and Samuel Finley,” in The United States Magazine, A Repository of History, Politics, and Literature (1779) 479–87 “The Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian’,” The Ordeal (1809) 525–8 Conversations on the Science of the Human Mind (1819) (Ely) 90, 145–6 “Copy of a Letter written by a young Man under sentence of Death, for Forgery,” The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (1791) 615–16 Corner, George W. 479 Cox, Richard J. 77 Critick of Pure Reason (1838 translation), review in The North American Review 261–2 “Critical Remarks on some of the most eminent Historians of England [From Gardenstone’s Miscellanies],” in The New York Magazine, or Literary Repository (1797) 621–5 Cross, Robert D. 281 Cunningham, Charles E. 107 Dallas, Alexander James 593 Dana, Eleutheros 591

Dana, James 87–8, 591 An Examination of the late Reverend President Edwards’s “Enquiry on Freedom of the Will” (1770) 87–8, 91–4 contention of Jonathan Edwards a Humean on the topic of causation 91–4 “David Hume,” Encyclopaedia Britannica 489–92 “David Hume and his Mother,” The Episcopal Watchman (1833) 689–90 Davidson, Philip 479 Davis, Cornelius 95, 627 de Sismondi’s The Prospect of Reform in Europe, review in The North American Review 81–2 death of Hume 474–5 “Adversaria: ‘Hume and Finley’ ” (1809) 535–6 “The Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian’,” The Ordeal (1809) 525–8 “Miscellanies. Death of Hume,” The Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine United (1810) 537–40 “More of the ‘Contrast’ ,” The Ordeal (1809) 533–4 “On the Death of David Hume,” The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine, or Evangelical Intelligencer (1806) 503–5 “Remarks on the accounts of the death of David Hume, Esqr. and Samuel Finley, D.D. in the last No,” in Christian’s Magazine (1806) 507–17 Review of Henry, Lord Brougham’s Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the time of George the Third, second series, in The North American Review (1847) 583–4 A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (1822) (Beasley) 90, 163–237, 551–2 “Striking Evidences of the Divinity of the Scriptures. I. Examples of Dying Infidels,” The Moral and Religious Cabinet (1808) 523

  765

Index “Death-​Bed of Hume,” The Spirit of the Pilgrims (1832) 561–3 A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787–​1788) (Adams) 35–7 D’Elia, Donald J. 479 Denison, John Hopkins 281 Dennie, Joseph 87, 343, 633 “Desultory Gleanings, and Original Communications. Translated from Mémoires et correspondence de Madame D’Epinay,” The New-​England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine (1819) 545–6 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion 86 Dickinson, Jonathan 291 “Directions to a Student of Law [In a letter from John Dunning, Esq. to a gentleman of the Inner Temple],” in The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (1791) 611–13 “Dispute about the Tragedy of Douglas,” The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies (1758) 9–20 Dobson, Robert 489 Dondore, Dorthy Anne 755 Dowling, William C. 107 Duberman, Martin B. 439 Duckett, Allen Bowie 607 Dulany, Daniel, Jr. 291, 292 Charles Carroll and, “Antilon-​First Citizen Letters,” in Maryland Gazette (1773) 311–18 Dunning, John, “Directions to a Student of Law [In a letter from John Dunning, Esq. to a gentleman of the Inner Temple],” in The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (1791) 611–13 “The Duty of Authors,” in The New-​ England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure 303–6 Duyckinck, Evert A. 435, 445, 459, 465, 525 Duyckinck, George L. 435, 445, 459, 465, 525 Dwight, Timothy 86–7, 107, 257

765

The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy (1798) 86–7, 107–10 The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature “From the Dublin University Magazine. Life and Writings of David Hume. The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the papers bequeathed by his Nephew, Baron Hume, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other original sources. By John Hill Burton” (1846) 701–24 Edgar, Neal L. 55, 77, 81, 123, 145, 343, 355, 383, 385, 389, 495, 519, 537, 545, 555 Edgell, David P. 147 Edwards, Bela B. 445 Edwards, Jonathan 86, 88 Dana’s contention of Jonathan Edwards a Humean on the topic of causation 91–4 Eliot, John 587 Ellis, Harold Milton 343, 355, 495, 519 Ely, Ezra Stiles 90 Conversations on the Science of the Human Mind (1819) 90, 145–6 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 639 Emerson, Rev. William 639 Emerson, Roger L. 757 Encyclopadeia Or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature 292–3, 474 “David Hume” 489–92 An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding 54, 85–6 An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals 85–6 The Episcopal Watchman “David Hume and his Mother” (1833) 689–90 “Hume —​As A Historian” (1833) 691–3 Erskine, John 86 Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects 3–5, 85 Essays Moral and Political 3 Evangelical Intelligencer 111 Evarts, Jeremiah 537

766

766

Index

Everett, Alexander Hill, Review of 1838 translation of Critick of Pure Reason, in The North American Review 261–2 Everett, Edward 7, 725 Review of de Sismondi’s The Prospect of Reform in Europe, in The North American Review (1831) 81–2 Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures (1836) (Alexander) 88, 239–56 Ewell, Thomas 4, 7, 85, 89, 474 “Essay on the Laws of Pleasure and Pain” 43 “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” 52–4 Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics (1817) 43–54, 85 An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles (1845) (Lawrence) 88, 263–77 An Examination of the late Reverend President Edwards’s “Enquiry on Freedom of the Will” (1770) (Dana) 91–4 Faery Queen (Spenser), Hume on 633–4 “The Famous Oliver Cromwell’s private Life —​his Sickness —​Death —​and Character,” in The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure (1758) 295–303 fanaticism, Hume’s, “Letters to the Editor” in Christian Observer and Advocate (1802) 497–8 Faris, Paul Patton 507 The Farmer Refuted (1775) (Hamilton) 5, 23–6 “The Farrgo,” The Port Folio (1801) 495 Fieser, James 621, 683 Finley, Samuel 479 Fishwick, Marshall W. 55 Fiske, John 445 “For the Port Folio,” The Port Folio (1807) 653–4 “For the Register. David Hume,” Christian Register (1847) 733–7 Fosl, Peter S. 643

Freeman, James 587 The Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal “Hume, The Historian” (Hume’s housekeeper) (1832) 683–5 “Hume, The Historian” (Hume’s ­pretended calm) (1832) 687–8 “Hume, The Infidel” (1837) 695–6 “From the Dublin University Magazine. Life and Writings of David Hume. The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the papers bequeathed by his Nephew, Baron Hume, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other original sources. By John Hill Burton,” The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature (1846) 701–24 Fulton, Robert 7 “Mr. Fulton’s Communication,” in Albert Gallatin, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury (1808) 39–41 Gaillard, Alexander 290 Gallatin, Albert 39 Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, “Mr. Fulton’s Communication” 39–41 Garden, Francis (Lord Gardenstone), “Critical Remarks on some of the most eminent Historians of England [From Gardenstone’s Miscellanies],” in The New York Magazine, or Literary Repository (1797) 621–5 Gardenstone, Lord see Garden, Francis Gardiner, John 292 Garret, Noel 85 Geivett, R. Douglas 465 “Genius and Passion,” The Portico, a Repository of Science and Literature (1817) 55–71 Genzmer, George Harvey 577 Gibbon, Edward 293, 639 “Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume,” The Gospel Trumpet (1823) 553 Gilman, Samuel 89 Review of Thomas Brown’s Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, in The North American Review 151–62

  767

Index Gordon, Thomas 295 The Gospel Trumpet “Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume” (1823) 553 Graham, Roderick 695 Graham’s American Magazine 461 Review of David Hume’s The History of England (1849) 461–2 Review of David Hume’s The History of England (1850) 463 Green, Ashbel 111, 503 Griffiths, Ralph 605 Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey 619 Hamilton, Alexander 5, 6 The Farmer Refuted (1775) 23–6 Haroutunain, Joseph 91 Harris, C. M 39 Harris, Thaddeus Mason 290 Harvard University Library 4, 86, 290 Hatboro Library 4 Hayley, William 587 “Character of Rapin, Hume, and Littleton’s Histories,” in “Poetical Essays, for July, 1784,” in The Boston Magazine, containing, a ­collection of instructive and ­entertaining essays, in the various branches of useful, and polite literature (1784) 587–90 Haynes, Kevin J. 295 Hazard, Ebenezer 111, 503 Heath, Trudy 27 Hildreth, Richard, Notice of John Quincy Adams’ Dermot MacMorrogh, or The Conquest of Ireland; an Historical Tale of the Twelfth Century. In Four Cantos, in The New-​England Magazine (1832) 435–8 “Historical Characters are false Representations of Nature,” The Literary Magazine, and American Register (1806) 647–52 “History a proper object of Female Pursuit. (Extracted from the writings of Hume.),” The Lady’s Magazine and Musical Repository (1801) 635–8 History of England (Hume) 35, 44, 289–93, 385

767

“Antilon-​First Citizen Letters,” in Maryland Gazette (1773) 311–18 “Book Notices. Hume’s History of England,” Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art (1850) 755 The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany, Untitled Review (1850) 753–4 “Directions to a Student of Law [In a letter from John Dunning, Esq. to a gentleman of the Inner Temple],” The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (1791) 611–13 “The Famous Oliver Cromwell’s private Life —​his Sickness —​Death —​and Character,” in The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure (1758) 295–303 “For the Port Folio,” The Port Folio (1807) 653–4 “Hume, as a Historian,” in The American Quarterly Observer (1833) 445–57 “Hume’s History of England,” The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines (1824) 385 Thomas Jefferson on 349–54 “The Literary World,” The Port Folio (1809) 355–7 “A New Edition of Hume’s History,” The American Literary Magazine (1849) 751–2 Notice of John Quincy Adams’ Dermot MacMorrogh, or The Conquest of Ireland; an Historical Tale of the Twelfth Century. In Four Cantos (1832) 435–8 “Remainder of Governor Winthrop’s Second Letter to Governor Bradford, begun in our last” (1767) 307–9 “Remarks on Hume’s History of England,” in Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine (1818) 655–60 Review of John Lingard’s Constitutional History and works of Geroge Brodie and William Godwin, in North American Review (1829) 407–21

768

768

Index

Review of Lord Mahon’s The Life of Belisarius, in Christian Examiner (1829) 423–6 reviews of see Review of David Hume’s The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the abdication of James the Second, 1688 “To the editor of the American Museum,” The American Museum; or, Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, &c (1788) 601–​4 “Variety,” in Saturday Magazine: National Recorder (1821) 383–4 Hoffman, Ronald 311 Hogan, David 341, 501 Home, John 5, 9 Hoornstra, Jean 27 Hopkins, Mark 281 “Lectures before the Lowell Institute,” review in The New-​Englander (1846) 281–6 Hopkinson, Francis 593 Horne, Bishop 476 Horne, George 107 Howe, Daniel Walker 81, 151 Hudson, David, “Some Account of the Religious Exercises of David Hudson, written by himself,” The New-​York Missionary Magazine, and Repository of Religious Intelligence (1801) 627–32 Hume, David and Bishop Horne 493 and Burnet 341, 501 on cause and effect 143–4 Chalmers on 257–9 on civil liberty 593–9 comments on Africans 5, 21–2 on Constitution 5, 311–18 death of, see death of Hume and Dryden 367 on experience 117–21 and Finley 507–17 and his mother 689–90 Hopkins on 281–6 idol of historic taste 587–90 last days of 523 life and writings of 701–24 as literary critic 5

as a lubricous philosopher 151–62 and Madison 5 philosophical historian 435–8 political and economic views 5–6, 23–6, 39–41 on race 22 on Religion as a Cause of the English Civil War 369–81 on the rise of America 639–41 sophistry and misrepresentations of 389–405 on tyranny 347 writing attitudes discussed 43–54 “Hume —​As A Historian,” The Episcopal Watchman (1833) 691–3 “Hume and Burnet,” The Philadelphia Repository (1805) 341, 501 “Hume and Robertson Compared,” The Port Folio (1810) 363–5 “Hume and the Puritans,” The American Literary Magazine(1849) 739–45 “Hume, as a Historian,” The American Quarterly Observer (1833) 445–57 “Hume, The Historian,” (Hume’s housekeeper), The Friend (1832) 683–5 “Hume, The Historian” (Hume’s pretended calm), The Friend (1832) 687–8 “Hume, The Infidel,” The Friend (1837) 695–6 “Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau,” in The New-​Englander (1843) 565–75 “Hume’s History of England,” The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines (1824) 385 “Hume’s Infidelity,” in Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Journal (1844) 697–9 Hunt, Freeman 757 “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” 6 A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787–​1788) (Adams) 35–7 Ewell’s editorial note to 52–4 Immerwahr, John 22 The Independent Review of The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the abdication of James the Second, 1688 (1849) 747–8 The Irish Shield and Monthly Milesian

  769

Index “A Parallel between Hume and Robertson, as Historians” (1829) 427–34 Irving. Washington 123 Irwin, Thomas 501 Jefferson, Thomas 4, 85, 294 letter to George Washington Lewis (25 October 1825) 352–4 letter to Horatio G. Spafford (17 March 1814), 351 letter to John Norvell (11 June 1807) 349–50 letter to William Duane (12 August 1810) 350–1 Johnson, John 587 Johnson, Samuel 605 Jones, M.G. 653 Kamrath, Mark L. 647 Kenney’s Principles and Practices of pretended Reformers, review in Christian Observer and Advocate (1820) 369–81 King, James T. 349 Kirland, Caroline M. 755 The Knickerbocker, or New-​York Monthly Magazine 459 Review of David Hume’s The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James the Second 459–60 Knox, Henry 86 Knox, Samuel 607 “Ode to Education,” in The American Museum, or, Universal Magazine (1789) 607–8 Koch, G. Adolf 643 Kollock, Shepard 609 Lach, Edward L. 117 Ladies’ Literary Cabinet “Variety . . . Anecdote of Hume” (1821) 549 The Lady’s Magazine and Musical Repository “History a proper object of Female Pursuit. (Extracted from the writings of Hume.)” (1801) 635–8 Lago, Enrico Dal 24

769

“Lane Shore,” The Christian’s Scholar’s, and Farmer’s Magazine (1791) 609–10 Laplace, Pierre-​Simon 661 Lawrence, A.H., An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles (1845) 88, 263–77 review in Christian Register (1846) 725–31 review in The North American Review (1846) 279–80 “Letters to the Editor” in Christian Observer and Advocate (1802) 497–8 Library Company of Philadelphia 4, 85, 290 The Life of David Hume (Mossner) 10 “Lines, Written on seeing the monument to the memory of David Hume at Edinburgh,” Ladies’ Garland and Family Wreath Embracing Tales, Sketches, Incidents, History, Poetry, Music, etc (1850) 759–60 Lingard’s Constitutional History and works of Geroge Brodie and William Godwin, in North American Review (1829) 407–21 The Literary Magazine, and American Register “Historical Characters are false Representations of Nature” (1806) 647–52 “The Literary World,” The Port Folio (1809) 355–7 Littell, Eliakim 383 Livingston, Donald W. 349 Loetscher, Lefferts A. 239 “London Review,” The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review Containing Sketches and Reports of Philosophy, Religion, History, Arts, and Manners (1804) 639–41 Looney, J. Jefferson 607 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 290, 739 Mackenzie, Henry, “The Story of La Roche,” 474–5 Madison, James 290, 293 Mahon’s The Life of Belisarius, review in Christian Examiner (1829) 423–6 Marshall W. 55 Maryland Gazette 4 “Antilon-​First Citizen Letters” 311–18

770

770

Index

Mason, John Mitchell 475 “Remarks on the accounts of the death of David Hume, Esqr. and Samuel Finley, D.D. in the last No,” in Christian’s Magazine (1806) 507–17 May, Henry F. 117 McHenry, James 5n9 Mead, Joel K. 73 Mecom, Benjamin 290 “The Duty of Authors,” in The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure 303–6 “The Famous Oliver Cromwell’s private Life —​his Sickness —​Death —​and Character,” in The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure (1758) 295–303 Medley; or Monthly Miscellany, “Original Poetry” 499–500 Meigs, Josiah 591 Meigs, William Montgomery 591 Mein, John 89 “Memorandums for an Essay against Luxury,” in The National Register (1817) 7, 73–4 The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review Review of The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the abdication of James the Second (1850) 757 Messer, Peter C. 601 Minot, George R. 587 “Miscellanies. Death of Hume,” The Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine United (1810) 537–40 The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review Containing Sketches and Reports of Philosophy, Religion, History, Arts, and Manners “London Review” (1804) 639–41 The Monthly Magazine, and American Review “Original Communications. Parallel between Hume, Robertson and Gibbon” 333–9 Moore, James 73 Moorhead, James H. 239

The Moral and Religious Cabinet “Striking Evidences of the Divinity of the Scriptures. I. Examples of Dying Infidels” (1808) 523 “More of the ‘Contrast’ ,” The Ordeal (1809) 533–4 More, Hannah 653 on Hume’s History 653–4 Mossner, Ernest Campbell, The Life of David Hume 10 Mott, Frank Luther 27, 55, 77, 81, 95, 123, 281, 295, 325, 333, 341, 343, 355, 389, 423, 435, 445, 459, 469, 479, 495, 499, 519, 537, 545, 557, 565, 627, 639 “Mr. Fulton’s Communication,” in Albert Gallatin, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury (1808) 39–41 Murdoch, James 474 “Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau,” in The New-​Englander (1843) 565–75 Murdock, Kenneth B. 435 My Own Life 473–4 National Register 7 “Memorandums for an Essay against Luxury” 73–4 The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy (1798) (Dwight) 107–10 Neal, John 55 “A New Edition of Hume’s History,” The American Literary Magazine (1849) 751–2 The New York Magazine, or Literary Repository “Anecdote of Anne Bullen” (1794) 617–18 “Critical Remarks on some of the most eminent Historians of England [From Gardenstone’s Miscellanies]” (1797) 621–5 New York Society Library 4, 85, 290 The New-​England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine “Desultory Gleanings, and Original Communications. Translated from Mémoires et ­correspondence de Madame D’Epinay” (1819) 545–6

  771

Index The New-​England Magazine Notice of John Quincy Adams’ Dermot MacMorrogh, or The Conquest of Ireland; an Historical Tale of the Twelfth Century. In Four Cantos (1832) 435–8 The New-​England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure “The Duty of Authors” 303–6 “The Famous Oliver Cromwell’s private Life —​his Sickness —​Death —​and Character” (1758) 295–303 The New-​Englander “Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau” (1843) 565–75 Review of David Hume’s The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James the Second (1850) 469–70 Review of Mark Hopkins’ Lectures before the Lowell Institute (1846) 281–6 The New-​Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut Magazine Untitled Letter to the Editors 591–2 The New-​York Missionary Magazine, and Repository of Religious Intelligence “Some Account of the Religious Exercises of David Hudson, written by himself ” (1801) 627–32 Nisbet, Richard 5, 22 Noll, Mark A. 117 The North American Review 77, 81 Review of 1838 translation of Critick of Pure Reason 261–2 Review of A. H. Lawrence’s An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles(1846) 279–80 Review of David Hume’s The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James the Second (1851) 465–7 Review of Edward Earl of Clarendon’s The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, to which is added an Historical View of the Affairs of Ireland 389–405 Review of de Sismondi’s The Prospect of Reform in Europe 81–2

771

Review of Henry, Lord Brougham’s Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the Time of George the Third (1845) 577–82 Review of Henry, Lord Brougham’s Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the time of George the Third, second series (1847) 583–4 Review of James Ogilvie’s Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, copious Notes, critical and explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix 90, 143–4 Review of John Lingard’s Constitutional History and works of Geroge Brodie and William Godwin 407–21 Review of Robert Vaughan’s Memorials of the Stuarts. Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, including the Constitutional and Ecclesiastical History of England from the Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II (1833) 439–43 Review of Thomas Brown’s Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect 151–62 Notice of John Quincy Adams’ Dermot MacMorrogh, or The Conquest of Ireland; an Historical Tale of the Twelfth Century. In Four Cantos, in The New-​England Magazine (1832) 435–8 “Observations on the Liberty of the Press” (adaptation), The American Monitor, or the Republican Magazine (1785) 27–34 “Ode to Education,” in The American Museum, or, Universal Magazine (1789) 607–8 “Of Civil Liberty” “An Essay on Civil Liberty, by Hume” (1788) 593–9 “Of the Independency of Parliament” The Farmer Refuted (1775) 23–6 “Of Liberty and Necessity” 91 “Of Luxury” 73 “Of Miracles” “The Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel,” in The

772

772

Index

Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer (1805) 111–16 A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion 111, 117–21 Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures (1836) 88, 239–56 Ewell’s editorial note to 54 An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles (1845) (Lawrence) 88, 263–77 “Remarks upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles; more especially upon the Arguments advanced in the first part of this Essay” (1796) 88, 95–105 “The Rev. Dr. Channing’s Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion” (1821) 88, 147–50 Review of A. H. Lawrence’s An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles(1846) 279–80 Review of Freethinker’s An Enquiry into the Pretensions of Richard Brothers, in Answer to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, in The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal (1795) 619 Review of Mark Hopkins’ Lectures before the Lowell Institute (1846) 281–6 “Of National Characters” Ewell’s editorial note to 51–2 Personal Slavery Established (1773) 21–2 “Of Refinement in the Arts” 74–5 “Memorandums for an Essay against Luxury,” in The National Register (1817) 73–4 “Of Some Remarkable Customs” 27 “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion” 7 “Genius and Passion,” The Portico (1817) 55–71 “Of the Liberty of the Press” 27 “Of the peculiarities attached to the correct reading and recitation of Narration, Dialogue, Soliloquy, Address, and works of Sentiment and Imagination,” in The Port Folio (1810) 359–62

“Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” Review of Edward Everett’s Oration, in The North American Review (1825) 77–9 Ogilvie’s Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, copious Notes, critical and explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix, review in The North American Review 90, 123–42, 143–4 “On Refinement in the Arts” 7 “On the Death of David Hume,” The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine, or Evangelical Intelligencer (1806) 503–5 Onuf, Peter S. 311 Oration (Everett), Review of, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” 77–9 The Ordeal “Adversaria: ‘Hume and Finley’ ” (1809) 535–6 “Considerations on the Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and of a Christian,’ contained in the Panoplist of November last” (1809) 529–31 “The Contrast ‘Between the Death of a Deist and the Death of a Christian’ ” (1809) 525–8 “More of the ‘Contrast’ ” (1809) 533–4 “Original Communications. Parallel between Hume, Robertson and Gibbon,” The Monthly Magazine, and American Review 333–9 “Original Poetry,” Medley; or Monthly Miscellany 499–500 Paine, Thomas 319 Painting, Vivienne W. 587 Palfrey, John Gorham 557 Palgrave, Francis 697 “Hume’s Infidelity,” in Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Journal (1844) 697–9 Palmer, Elihu 643 Palter, Robert 22 The Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine United “Miscellanies. Death of Hume” (1810) 537–40

  773

Index “A Parallel between Hume and Robertson, as Historians,” The Irish Shield and Monthly Milesian (1829) 427–​34 “Genius and Passion,” The Portico, a Repository of Science and Literature (1817) 55–​71 “Passion the Soul of Genius —​(in Reply to ‘R.’),” The Portico 62–​8 Peabody, William Bourn Oliver Review of Henry, Lord Brougham’s Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the Time of George the Third, in The North American Review (1845) 577–​82 Review of Henry, Lord Brougham’s Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the time of George the Third, second series, in The North American Review (1847) 583–​4 Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum “Progress of the human Understanding, from the Extinction of the Saxons, to the Accession of the House of Tudor. From Mr. HUME,” 319–​24 Pepper, George 427 Perkins, John Theory of Agency: Or, An Essay on the Nature, Source and Extent of Moral Freedom (1771) 87 Personal Slavery Established, by the Suffrages of Custom and Right Reason: Being a Full Answer to the Gloomy and Visionary Reveries, of all the Fanatical and Enthusiastical Writerson that Subject (1773) 5, 21–​2 pessimism, Hume’s, “The Adversaria,” in The Port Folio (1820) 547 Petersen, Richard J. 143 The Philadelphia Repository “Hume and Burnet” (1805) 341, 501 Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics (Ewell) 7, 43–​54, 85 philosophical views, of Hume The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy (Dwight) 107–​10 A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (1822) (Beasley) 90, 163–​237, 551–​2

773

Pierpont, John 55 Playfair, John 661 Poivre, Pierre 473 Pollard, N. 655 Pond, Rev. 561 Ponsonby, Richard 607 Popkin, Richard H. 22 Porter, Noah, Jr., “Hopkin’s Lectures before the Lowell Institute,” The New-​ Englander (1846) 281–​6 The Port Folio “The Adversaria” (1820) 547 “An Author’s Evenings. From the Shop of Messrs. Colon and Spondee” (1891) 633–​4 “Coincidences. Hume and Dryden” (1816) 367 “The Farrgo” (1801) 495 “For the Port Folio” (1807) 653–​4 “Hume and Robertson Compared” (1810) 363–​5 “The Literary World” (1809) 355–​7 “Of the peculiarities attached to the correct reading and recitation of Narration, Dialogue, Soliloquy, Address, and works of Sentiment and Imagination” (1810) 359–​62 Review of “The American Lounger” 519–​21 “Variety” (Hume on tyranny) 347 “Variety” (on Hume and Robertson) 343–​5 The Portico, a Repository of Science and Literature “Genius and Passion” (1817) 55–​71 “Passion the Soul of Genius —​(in Reply to ‘R.’)” 62–​8 Poulson, Zachariah, Jr. 474 “Progress of the human Understanding, from the Extinction of the Saxons, to the Accession of the House of Tudor. From Mr. HUME,” in Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum 319–​24 Prospect: or, View of the Moral World, Untitled Essay (1805) 643–​5 Providence Library 290 Puritans, Hume and “Hume and the Puritans,” The American Literary Magazine (1849) 739–​45

774

774

Index

Review of Robert Vaughan’s Memorials of the Stuarts. Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, including the Constitutional and Ecclesiastical History of England from the Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II, in The North American Review (1833) 439–43 Quarterly Christian Spectator 257 Review of Thomas Chalmer’s Natural Theology (1838) 257–9 Randolph, John 85 Reid-Maroney, Nina 479 religion and civil war, Hume’s view on, Review of new publications. Dean Kenney’s Principles and Practices of pretended Reformers, in Christian Observer and Advocate (1820) 369–81 Religious Monitor and Evangelical Repository 661 “Remarks on an Article in The Edinburgh Review, in which the Doctrine of Hume on Miracles is maintained: By the Rev. James Somerville, Minister of Drumelzier” (1827) 661–82 “Remainder of Governor Winthrop’s Second Letter to Governor Bradford, begun in our last,” Boston Gazette (1767) 307–9 “Remarks on an Article in The Edinburgh Review, in which the Doctrine of Hume on Miracles is maintained: By the Rev. James Somerville, Minister of Drumelzier,” in Religious Monitor and Evangelical Repository (1827) 661–82 “Remarks on Hume’s History of England,” in Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine (1818) 655–60 “Remarks on the accounts of the death of David Hume, Esqr. and Samuel Finley, D.D. in the last No,” in Christian’s Magazine (1806) 507–17 “Remarks upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles; more especially upon the Arguments advanced in the first part of this Essay,” in The Theological Magazine, or Synopsis of Modern Religious Sentiment (1796) 88, 95–105

“Republicus.” “Observations on the Liberty of the Press,” The American Monitor, or the Republican Magazine 27–34 “The Rev. Dr. Channing’s Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion,” The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor (1821) 88, 147–50 Review of David Hume’s The History of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the abdication of James the Second, 1688 in The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal 325–32 in Christian Register (1849) 749 in The Independent (1849) 747–8 in The Knickerbocker, or New-​York Monthly Magazine 459–60 in The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review (1850) 757 in The New Englander (1850) 469–70 in The North American Review (1849) 465–7 in Graham’s American Magazine (1849) 461–2 in Graham’s American Magazine (1850) 463 Rice, Rev. John Holt 655 Richardson, Lyon N. 587 Riley, I. Woodbridge 107, 117, 147, 163 Rivington, James 289 Robertson, William 293 “Hume and Robertson Compared,” The Port Folio (1810) 363–5 “A Parallel between Hume and Robertson, as Historians,” The Irish Shield and Monthly Milesian (1829) 427–34 “Parallel between Hume, Robertson and Gibbon,” The Monthly Magazine, and American Review (1799) 333–9 “Variety,” in The Port Folio (1806) 343–5 Robinson, Joseph 541 Robinson’s Hume and Smollet Abridged, and Continued to the Accession of George IV, review in The United States Literary Gazette (1824) 387–8 Robinson’s Magazine “Anecdotes of Infidel Morality” (1806) 541–3

  775

Index Rose, William 605 Rush, Benjamin 22, 43, 89, 475 “Contrast between the Death of a Deist and a Christian, David Hume and Samuel Finley,” in The United States Magazine, A Repository of History, Politics, and Literature (1779) 479–87 Russell, Ezekiel 5, 27, 28 Ryerson, Richard Alan 35 Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art “Book Notices. Hume’s History of England” (1850) 755 Saturday Magazine: National Recorder “Variety” (1821) 383–4 Saunter’s “The American Lounger,” review in The Port Folio 519–21 scepticism, Hume’s “Belief and Unbelief,” Christian Examiner (1830) 559–60 Review of 1838 translation of Critick of Pure Reason 261–2 “Skepticism,” The Christian Examiner and Theological Review (1824) 557 Scherer, Lester B. 22 Schneider, Herbert W. 117, 145, 147, 163 Scott, John W. 341 Seabury, Samuel 23 A View of the Controversy Between Great-​Britain and her Colonies 23 A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (1822) (Beasley) 90 Book I, Chapter IV 164–74 Book I, Chapter V 174–95 Book I, Chapter VI 195–215 Book II, Chapter VI 215–19 Book III, Chapter VIII 219–37 Book IV 551–2 Sewall, Jonathan 307 Shaffer, Jason 633 Shapiro, Stephen 647 Sher, Richard B. 333 Shook, John R. 163 Shore, Jane (Lane) 609 Simpson, Stephen 55 “Skepticism,” The Christian Examiner and Theological Review (1824) 557

775

Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture (Nisbet) 5 Smith, Adam 475, 701 Smith, Robert 111, 503 Smith, S. H. 325 Smith, Samuel Stanhope 88, 111, 163 “The Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel,” in The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer (1805) 111–16 A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion 111, 117–21 Smith, William 5, 9 “Dispute about the Tragedy of Douglas,” The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies (1758) 9–20 Smyth, Albert H. 123, 145, 319, 325, 341, 343, 355, 479, 495, 501, 519 “Some Account of the Religious Exercises of David Hudson, written by himself,” The New-​York Missionary Magazine, and Repository of Religious Intelligence (1801) 627–32 Somverville, Rev. James 661 South-​Carolina Gazette 27 Sparks, Jared 7, 725 Review of Edward Everett’s Oration, in The North American Review (1825) 77–9 Spencer, Mark G. 22, 333, 757 The Spirit of the Pilgrims “Death-​Bed of Hume” (1832) 561–3 Sprague, Timothy Dwight 739 Spring, Leverett Wilson 281 Starr, Harris Elwood 91 Stevenson, Louise L. 281 Stewart, John B. 77 Stiles, Ezra 4, 87 Stiverson, George A. 311 Storrs, R. S. 747 Stott, Anne 653 Stourzh, Gerald 23 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 747 Strahan, William 473 “Striking Evidences of the Divinity of the Scriptures. I. Examples of Dying Infidels,” The Moral and Religious Cabinet (1808) 523

776

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Index

Suderman, Jeffrey M. 661 Swift, David E. 655 Swords, Thomas and James 95, 333, 617, 627 Syrett, Harold C. 23 Tanselle, Thomas G. 633 Taylor, J.C. 461 Taylor, Robert J. 307 “That Politics may be Reduced to a Science” 23, 27–34 theism, Hume’s view, “Natural Theology,” Quarterly Christian Spectator (1838) 257–9 The Theological Magazine, or Synopsis of Modern Religious Sentiment “Remarks upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles; more especially upon the Arguments advanced in the first part of this Essay” (1796) 88, 95–105 Thomas, Isaiah 28, 295 Thompson, C. Bradley 35 Thompson, Ernest Trice 655 Thompson, J. P. 747 “To the editor of the American Museum,” The American Museum; or, Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, &c (1788) 601–4 Todd, E. H. 143 Totten, John C. 523 Treatise of Human Nature 86 Tyler, Royall 281, 469, 633 “An Author’s Evenings. From the Shop of Messrs. Colon and Spondee,” in The Port Folio (1801) 633–4 Uhler, John Earl 55 Union Library Company 4 The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor “The Rev. Dr. Channing’s Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion” (1821) 88, 147–50 The United States Literary Gazette Review of John Robinson’s Hume and Smollet Abridged, and Continued to the Accession of George IV (1824) 387–8

The United States Magazine, A Repository of History, Politics, and Literature “Contrast between the Death of a Deist and a Christian, David Hume and Samuel Finley” (1779) 479–87 The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine “Copy of a Letter written by a young Man under sentence of Death, for Forgery” (1791) 615–16 “Directions to a Student of Law [In a letter from John Dunning, Esq. to a gentleman of the Inner Temple]” (1791) 611–13 Untitled Letter to the Editors, in The New-​ Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut Magazine 591–2 van Holthoon, Fredric 355 Van Vechten, Jacob 507 “Varieties. Original Anecdotes, Literary News, Chit Chat, Incidents, &c,” in Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines (1824) 555 “Variety . . . Anecdote of Hume,” in Ladies’ Literary Cabinet (1821) 549 “Variety” (Hume’s view on religion and civil war), in Saturday Magazine: National Recorder (1821) 383–4 “Variety” (Hume on tyranny), in The Port Folio 347 “Variety” (on Hume and Robertson), in The Port Folio 343–5 Vaughan, Benjamin 86 Vaughan’s Memorials of the Stuarts. Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, including the Constitutional and Ecclesiastical History of England from the Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II, review in The North American Review (1833) 439–43 Vernier, Richard B. 23 A View of the Controversy Between Great-​ Britain and her Colonies (Seabury) 23 Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine “Remarks on Hume’s History of England” (1818) 655–60

  777

Index Virginia Gazette 4, 27 The Virginia Religious Magazine 111 Vose, Roger 87 Walters, Kerry 643 Walton, Craig 349 Warner, Michael 479 Watkins, John, “Anecdotes of Infidel Morality,” in Robinson’s Magazine, A weekly Repository of Original Papers; and Selections from the English Magazines (1806) 541–3 Watkins, Tobias 55 Welwood Scott, John 501 Westcott, Allan 44 Wharton, Thomas Isaac 123 “Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic” 7

Review of de Sismondi’s The Prospect of Reform in Europe, in The North American Review (1831) 81–2 Wilson, James Grant 445 Witherspoon, John 4, 85 Withington, Leonard 691 “Hume, as a historian,” in The American Quarterly Observer (1833) 445–57 Woodward, Ruth L. 607 Woodworth, Samuel 549 Wright, John P. 701 Young, W. S. 661 Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Journal “Hume’s Infidelity” (1844) 697–9

777

778

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780