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Ideology and Partiality in David Hume's History of England
Ideology and Partiality in David Hume's History of England
Ideology and Partiality in David Hume's History of England
Laird Okie
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HISTORY OF ENGLAND
this history,
perhaps the best ever
Mr. Hume,
written in any language...
in
his
History,
is
neither
Parliamentarian
nor
Royalist,
nor
Anglican nor Presbyterian -- he is
simply judicial .1
1
2
find acceptable.
Similarly, John J.
Burke, Jr.
"dogmatic" Whiggery.
The
most
thoroughgoing
and
influential
masterpiece:
it is essential and vintage Hume.4
He
sees Hume's
historical writing,
especially his
"philosophical politics."
According to Forbes, Hume
Whigs away
from their
archaic and potentially
subversive adherence to
the shibboleths of social
--
--
'
In his endeavor
to fashion a unifying,
philosophical history, Hume centered his discussion on
two interrelated themes: liberty and civilization:
political concept,
meaning law and
is
the
history
of
civilization
"liberty" and the conditions which make
rank of men."9
the
progress
of
society
and
wise
and
moderate'
men
who
best
served
the
Whig interpretation
the patriotic and Protestant
affirmation of England's
birthplace of freedom, the crude "heroes and villains"
British historiography.
Hume did in fact write a
--
of the age,'
cultural and artistic,
as well as
economic.
The tone of the work is refreshingly
history.
Did Hume in his History of Great BKitain in
Paul de Rapin-Thoyras.
It was this work above all
Anglo-Saxon conquest. l4
Power was shared between king
and parliament.
This system reached its apogee in the
James I,
who tried to roll back the power of
parliament.
The early Stuarts threatened the consti
innovations.
blamed for the nation's slide into civil war after the
king.
Rapin's sympathies rested unmistakably with the
Presbyterian theocracy.
Civil War.
Published posthumously in the Tory
Charles I;
it depicted religious dissidents as
as a Tory historian,
aided and encouraged by Tory
politicians.
He was attacked as such by Whig critics
clear of Jacobitism.
Thomas Carte had no such
inhibitions.
An avowed Jacobite, Carte's History of
monarchy,
implicitly supporting the King over the
Water.
plenty.
And they also perceived the same social basis
to
the
Civil
War
rabble
and
commonalty,
--
Richard
archivist
and
David
Hume
the
kingship.20
Profligate and tactless, James I, according to Hume,
was a man of absolutist principles who lacked the
personality and revenues to rule with an iron fist.21
James inherited a monarchy that had grown increasingly
authoritarian under the Tudors:
he was no more
arbitrary than his immediate predecessor.
Hume
describes the Puritans as the cutting edge of a
political movement designed to establish liberty and
limited government. He criticizes James for the forced
loans and other financial expedients.
Hume's objections to royal policies extend into
The forced
10
5:81)
Hume views the personal government of Charles
"Peace too,
5:93)
36 1
Parliament's claim that it guarded the ancient
11
the
Puritans
were
the
"greatest
innovators."
5:289)
Hume calls Henry Ireton a "tyrant" and while
granting Cromwell's
genius
even greatness
-deprecates the Roundhead general as a self-seeking
who supported the two sides in the Civil war are also
..."
--
12
I
I
multitude.
(HE 5:229)
The Royalists clung to that
(HE 5:219)
Like Clarendon
vigor
and
dexterity
needed
to
overcome
"the
His virtues
predominated
extremely
light,
it may be affirmed that his
from rashness,
his temperance from
(HE 5:379)
I
powers of the Church.
I
Hume's blinkered perception of
13
especially
the latter,
were the
Sabbath....
On account of these were
the government
into such violent
mostly,
proceed from so mean and
contemptible an origin. (HE 5:145)
Here is how Hume describes the typical Puritan
.
Roundhead:
The saint, resigned over to superior
guidance,
was at full liberty to
gratify all his appetites, disguised
14
selfishness
and
ambition
which
5:331)
Given Hume's shift toward a distinctly antiParliamentarian, and thus anti-Whig, perspective in his
narrative of the 1630s and ' ~ O S , the question becomes,
why did this change in emphasis occur.
The answer is
to be found by considering the remarkable political
developments of 1628-29, including the assassination of
Buckingham, the truculence of the Commons, and, above
Hume viewed Charles 1's
all, the Petition of Right.
acquiescence to the Petition as a momentous political
concession:
It
may
be
affirmed,
without
equivalent to a revolution:
and by
circumscribing,
in so many articles,
15
'
government."
(HE 5:65)
Whatever blemishes Charles
by Hume.
In light of the ungovernable posture assumed
16
Hume preached
the virtues of political
partisan falsehoods.
On the contrary, Hume rehearsed
"perverse ineptitude'
are well known to modern
Hume simply
Parliamentarian historians,
his account of the
17
Pym,
in a long studied discourse,
5:130)
lamented
the
miserable
state
and
their purpose,
it was moved,
in
taken,
that
Strafford
should
be
against him.
It was ingeniously
answered by Pym,
that such a delay
..
18
(HE 5:131)
moved,
according
to
the
secret
be
forthwith
impeached
of
high
..
19
concealed.
The most active officers
direction.
the principal persons of the House of
to do,
they would send him to the
Clarendon closely:
long
deceived
those
who,
being
others.
At every intelligence of
the highest
pitch
of
grief
and
creatures,
the parliamentary leaders
him,
and he should be sent to the
..
20
Another
instance
of
Hume's
reliance
on
Clarendon is to be found in Hume's discussion of the
Self-Denying Ordinance.
Starting with Cromwell's
attack on 'the Earl of Manchester,
Hume's six-page
account is drawn entirely from The History of the
Rebel 1 ion , with much of Clarendon's
phraseology
repeated almost verbatim. 31
And echoes of Clarendon
can be found in Hume's character of Lord Falkland.
Hume praised Falkland lavishly,
as had Clarendon.
Among other things,
Hume noted that "from the
commencement of the war, his natural cheerfulness and
vivacity became clouded, and even his usual attention
to dress, required by his birth and station, gave way
to a negligence which was easily observable." (HE
5:257)
In Clarendon's famous portrait of Falkland he
commented that
from
the
entrance
into
this
unnatural war, his natural cheerfulness
and vivacity grew clouded, and a kind
of sadness and dejection of spirit
stole upon him which he had never been
used to...,
In his clothes and habit,
which he had intended before always
with more neatness and industry and
expense than is usual to so great a
mind, he was ny$ now only incurious but
too negligent.
....
....
21
desires,
they took it out of the
Exchequer way,
(contrary to the
The
method
of
keeping
accounts
practised
in the exchequer,
was
put
under
the
management
of
a
--
their
lives
in
defence of
the
part,
they were freed from all
1
22
5:353)
sentence;
and had
even employed
murderers.
Cromwell and Ireton,
of this murder,
had taken up (as
execution.
This being suspected or
23
paraphrasing Perrinchief.
The execution of Charles I,
duty
and
affection;
while
each
cause.
On weaker minds, the effect of
those
complicated
passions
was
prodigious.
Women are said to have
thundered
out
the
most
violent
24
this passage.
ideology.
Hume
rejected what
he
identified
philosophy.
Hume, as Wexler points out, had an axe to
grind:
The History was, in part, a "vehicle" for
--
--
25
He
"totally despicable. n 3 8
Intent on repudiating Whig historiography, Hume
As David Miller
restated classic Tory positions.
observes in his recent study of Hume's political
interpretations. 3 9
Hume said as much in an oft-quoted
passage from My Own Life.
Responding to Whig
...
1
26
27
century.
Hume's pro-Stuart sympathies no longer
Laird Okie
Ottawa University
Ottawa, Kansas
1
28
The Life of
1.
Quoted in Ernest Campbell Mossner,
David Hume, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
19801, p. 318.
2.
Thomas Preston Peardon, The Transition in English
3.
Mossner, Life of David Hume, p. 316.
Popkin and
4.
For this reevaluation see Richard H.
David Fate Norton, eds., David Hume: Philosophical
Historian (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Werrill,
1965);
the
English
Revolution,"
Eighteenth
Centur
Stockton,
"Economics
and
the Mechanism
of
David
Hume
and
the
History
of
England
Forbes, "Introduction," p. 8.
7.
Ibid., pp. 10-11.
8.
See Forbes,
125-92.
Hume's -Philosophical
Poli-,
pp.
29
10.
11.
u,
p. 283.
12.
m.,pp.
285-86.
14.
371-455.
15.
(1976/77): 195.
1
i
See Forbes,
272-75.
pp.
30
(London:
24.
...
25.
26.
Clarendon, 1:222.
27.
Clarendon, 1:225.
28.
4:223.
31
30.
4: 261-62.
31.
See Hume,
3 :451-60.
32.
Clarendon, 3:187-88.
p. 57.
pp.
228-29.
This
36. Perrinchief, W a J - M a r t y r ,
passage is among several instances of plagiarism
disclosed in George Brodie,
A History of the
British Empire,
4 vols.
(Edinburgh:
Bell &
Bradfute, 18221, 2:54; 3:183-84; 4:206-7, 212-15,
226-27.
37. The latest historian of Toryism faults Hume for
19811, p. 173.
, 40.
Colley, p. 115.
Firth,
"The Development of the Study of
41. C.H.
Seventeenth-Century History" in Transactions of the
42.
19821, p. 45.
I
_
43.
Ii
I
Paul Langford,
"Old Whigs,
Old Tories and the
32
counter-revolution
(Oxford:
Oxford University