Note 691 — Chapter V

What confirms me in this view, is the fact, that the older Hume grew, and the more he read on history, the more he became imbued with these errors; which would not have been the case if the errors had, as many of his critics say, been the result of an insufficient acquaintance with the evidence. Mr. Burton, by comparing the different editions of his History of England, has shown that he gradually became less favourable to popular liberty; softening, or erasing, in later editions, those expressions which seemed favourable to freedom. Burton's Life of Hume, vol. ii. pp. 74–77. See also pp. 144, 434. In his Own Life, p. xi (in vol. i. of Hume's Works Edinb. 1826), he says: ‘In 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 the Tory side.’ In one of his essays, he observes (Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 172) that ‘there is no enthusiasm among philosophers;’ a remark perfectly true, so far as he was concerned, but very unjust towards the class of men to whom it refers.