The death and burial of so distinguished a fellow citizen, were naturally the objects of much attention among the inhabitants of Edinburgh. On the one hand his unpopular opinions; on the other, the blameless character of his life and his great genius, excited conflicting opinions, and these giving zest to public attention and curiosity, attracted crowds to witness his funeral, and to look with mingled feelings, on the spot where his remains were, by the injunctions of his will, deposited.[517:2]
On the declivity of the Calton Hill there is an old grave-yard, which seventy years ago was in the open country beyond the boundary of the city of Edinburgh, and even at the present day, when it is the centre of a wide circumference of streets and terraces, has an air of solitude, from its elevated site, and the abrupt rocky banks that separate it from the crowded thoroughfares. There, on a conspicuous point of rock, beneath a circular monument built after the simple and solemn fashion of the old Roman tombs, lies the dust of David Hume. Whither the immortal spirit that gave life to it is gone, let no man too presumptuously pronounce; but let us rather contemplate with respectful awe, that unseen essence which the Deity had imbued with so great a power over the intellects of men, and believe that this wide sway over the destinies of the human species had its own wise and beneficent design, and was no produce of malign influences or untoward accidents. Fallacies may be the brilliant insects of a day, but truth is eternal; and when the searcher in philosophy groping amid the darkness of man's imperfect reason, produces falsehoods, they are speedily forgotten; but if he develop great truths, they live to bless his species for ever. There are few who will now deny that mankind have learned many valuable truths of David Hume. The wide influence of his mind over thought and action, during the last hundred years, is expressed in the mere naming of the systems of which he was the author or suggester.
His Metaphysical labours gave birth to two great
schools of philosophy. The one rising at his own door, endeavoured by powerful and earnest efforts to reconstruct in a more rational and substantial form the old system which he had sapped—the other in a distant land, where new lights of science had begun to burn, sought to raise mental philosophy from its original elements, purified of the dross and rubbish that had rendered the old materials cumbrous and unsafe, and to endow the whole with fresh life and a new form and structure.[519:1]
In Ethics he was the first to make an Utilitarian morality assume the aspect of a theoretical system, which it was the task of a great successor, aided by subordinate labourers, to apply to the practical operations of mankind, and to spread widely over the earth.
In History he was the first to divert attention from wars, treaties, and successions, to the living progress of the people, in all that increases their civilization and their happiness. The example thus set has been the chief service of the "History of England;" yet, with all the faults of its matter, its purely literary merits have been so great, that, as a classical and popular work, it has hitherto encountered no rival.[519:2]
But his triumphs in Political Economy are those
which, in the present day, stand forth with the greatest prominence and lustre. In no long time, a hundred years will have elapsed from the day when Hume told the world, what the legislature of this country is now declaring, that national exclusiveness in trade was as foolish as it was wicked; that no nation could profit by stopping the natural flood of commerce between itself and the rest of the world; that commercial restrictions deprive the nations of the earth "of that free communication and exchange, which the author of the world has intended by giving them soils, climates, and geniuses, so different from each other;" and that, like the healthy circulation of the blood in living bodies, Free Trade is the vital principle by which the nations of the earth are to become united in one harmonious whole.[520:1] Those who, with a reverential eye, have marked the wonders of the animal structure, and discovered beauty, utility, and harmonious purpose, where presumptuous ignorance has found uselessness or deformity; or have seen the lower animals, each working in its own blind ignorance, gregariously constructing a fabric more perfect, on philosophical principles, than human science can create,—have thence drawn vivid pictures of the wisdom and goodness with which the world is ordered. May we not extend
this harmony to the social economy of the globe, and say, that the spirit of activity and enterprise, harmonizing with the dispersal of the different bounties of Providence in the distant regions of the globe, are part of the same harmonious system; that the love of commerce and the desire of aggrandisement, which in the eye of a narrow philosophy assume the air of selfish and repulsive passions, represent themselves, when they are left to their legitimate course, as motives implanted in us for the great purposes of securing mutual dependance and kind offices, and their fruits, peace and good-will, throughout the great family of mankind. To be the first to teach that the earth is not doomed to the eternal curse of rivalry and strife, and to open up so wide a prospect of beneficence, may be an atonement for many errors, and in the eye of good taste may justify the brief assumption of conscious superiority, in which the subject of this memoir indulged, when he desired that the inscription on his monument should contain only his name, with the year of his birth and of his death. Leaving it to posterity to add the rest.