"Miss ----, yesterday morning declared her marriage with Dr. Armstrong; but we were surprised in the afternoon to find Mr. Short the optician, come in and challenge her for his wife. It seems she has been married privately for some time to both of them. Her sister has been much more prudent, whom we find to have confined herself entirely to gallantry, and to have privately entertained a correspondence with three gallants. I am, dear Ruat, with great truth, your most sincere friend and humble servant."[65:1]
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.