About the commencement of November, Hume returned to Scotland, for he writes to Millar on 18th December that he has been six weeks in Edinburgh. He states, that he is correcting his "History of the Stuarts;" and says, "I fancy that I shall be able to put my account of that period of English history beyond controversy. As soon as this task is finished, I undertake the ancient English history. I find the Advocates' Library very well provided with books, in this period: but before I finish, I shall pass a considerable time in London, to peruse the manuscripts in the Museum."[65:2]
On his return he left behind him, to be published in London, the two volumes of his "History of England, under the House of Tudor," of which he says in his "own life,"—"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."
He had now published the whole of that department of his History, from which his opinions on the later progress of the British constitution can be derived; and the epoch of this publication calls for some notice of the manner in which subsequent inquirers have found that he performed his task.[65:3] He was not
like such writers as Clarendon and Brady, the interested or prejudiced advocate of the crown against
the people; and we must look for the causes of his erroneous views in what he did not know, or did not believe, rather than in what he wilfully misrepresented. In his "Essay on Commerce," published in 1752, we find him thus foreshadowing the principle on which he was to treat the History of Britain:—"Lord Bacon, accounting for the great advantages obtained by the English in their wars with France, ascribes them chiefly to the superior ease and plenty of the common people among the former; yet the government of the two kingdoms was at that time pretty much alike." This assertion has been satisfactorily proved to be erroneous. The spirit of credulity in historical inquiry makes out every thing ancient to be better and greater than its modern representative. The spirit of scepticism questions whatever is said in favour of antiquity. The sceptic cannot throw doubt on the existing wonders of modern times. If one nation is far beyond another in arts, arms, civilization, or wealth, the facts cannot be denied; but when he looks back into past ages, the pliability of the evidence admits the influence of the levelling principle of scepticism, the tendency of which is to make all mankind seem much alike; and Hume, who would not have ventured to say that in his own day the constitutions of France and England were very much alike, considered it but a piece of proper caution to discard as fallacious the evidence that there was any great difference between them in former times.
Unquestionably the doubting or inquiring spirit is a valuable quality in a historian; for the narratives of
human affairs are full of falsehoods, which it is the philosophical historian's function to discard. But the sifting will not be satisfactory, if the materials subjected to it have not been largely and laboriously collected; and the charge against Hume is, that he applied it to imperfect data. Where the data are insufficient, credulity and scepticism are merely the counterparts of each other, and produce erroneous results nearly alike. Those who proclaimed Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, to be a liar, for statements which have now been authenticated, believed in the account given of a fictitious people, in an impudent forgery, called Psalmanazer's Formosa, which would not now impose for a moment on any educated person. Our enlarged knowledge of the matters to be subjected to sceptical analysis, has now, in both cases, brought us to the right conclusion.
An inquirer into the structure of the earth, who should know nothing of its crust but the sandy plains of Germany, would, were he of a sceptical spirit, discredit all those geological wonders which the most sceptical of scientific men now believe.[68:1] In relation to some parts of the British constitution, Hume was in the position of such an investigator. His early prejudice against the study of the law, prevented him from being fully acquainted with a
science, the knowledge of which is essential to any man who would clearly develop the progress of our constitution,—the common law of England. He did not understand its stubborn immovable nature, its solid impregnable masonry, against which the ambitious violence of monarchs, and the fury of popular tumults raged in vain. From the day when Gascoigne committed Henry V. to prison, to that when surly tyrannical old Sir Edward Coke argued face to face with King James against the interference of the prerogative with the independent authority of his court, those who were the honest administrators of the common law held that they were no man's servants, and no man's masters, but the sworn expounders of a settled rule of action, which no power within the realm could sway. It might be full of strange conceits, of passages hard to determine, of unreasonable and often cruel rules: but what this oracle bade them, that were they bound to do, be the consequences what they might.
To a mere onlooker, this system appeared to be clumsy and barbarous, and unendowed with that philosophical symmetry which characterized the rival system of the civil law. It required that one should have a full knowledge of its massive structure, and passive power of resistance, to appreciate its value in a country where king, nobles, and common people, were alike characterized by party spirit, courage, and restless activity. A philosopher, indulging in a distant contemplation, would at once prefer the nice philosophical adaptation to the wants of a state, and the fine logical structure, with which a despotic power, able to manipulate the laws at its own will, had endowed the system of Justinian; and if he found that the administrators of the rude common law waged a determined