on the use of money and the value of labour; but Hume was the first to sketch
an outline of some branches of the benevolent system of political economy
framed by his illustrious friend, Adam .Smith. He laid down labour as the only
criterion of all value, made a near approach to an ascertainment of the true
value of the precious metals, a point not yet fully fixed among- economists; discovered the baneful effects of commercial limitations as obliging the nation to
trade in a less profitable manner than it would choose to do if unconstrained, and
predicted the dangerous consequences of the funding system. The essay on the
populousness of ancient nations, was a sceptical analysis of the authorities on that
subject, doubting their accuracy, on the principle of political economy that the
number of the inhabitants of a nation must have a ratio to its fruitfulness arid
their industry. The essay was elaborately answered by Dr Wallace, in a Dissertation of the Numbers of Mankind, but that gentleman only produced a host of those "authorities," the efficacy of which Mr Hume has doubted on principle.
This essay is an extremely useful practical application of the doctrines in the Essay on Miracles. Mr Hume's ' idea of a perfect common wealth,' has been objected to as an impracticable system. The author probably had the wisdom to make this discovery himself, and might have as soon expected it to be applicable to practice, as a geometrician might dream of his angles, straight lines, and points, being literally accomplished in the measurement of an estate, or the building of a house. The whole represents men without passions or prejudices working like machines; and Hume no doubt admitted, that while passion, prejudice, and habit, forbade the safe attempt of such projects, such abstract structures ought to be held up to the view of the legislator, as the forms into which, so far as he can do it with safety, he ought to stretch the systems under his administration. Plato, More, Harrington, Hobbes, and (according to some accounts,) Berkeley[1] had employed their ingenuity in a similar manner, and Hume seems to have considered it worthy of his attention.
In February, 1752, David Hume succeeded the celebrated Ruddiman, as librarian to the Faculty of Advocates. The salary was at that time very trifling, somewhere we believe about £40, but the duties were probably little more than nominal, and the situation was considered an acquisition to a man of literary habits. It was, with this ample field of authority at his command, that he seems to have finally determined to write a portion of the History of England. In 1757, he relinquished this appointment on his removing- to London, when preparing for publication the History of the House of Tudor.
In 1752, appeared the first (published) volume of the History of England, embracing the period from the accession of the house of Stuart, to the death of Charles the First; and passing over intermediate events, we may mention that the next volume, containing a continuation of the series of events to the period of the Revolution, appeared in 1756, and the third, containing the History of the house of Tudor, was published in 1759. "I was, I own," says the author with reference to the first volume, "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, Scottish, 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 Stratford; and after the first ebullitions of their fury were over, what was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink
- ↑ In the anonymous adventures of Giovanni de Lucca.
