2. Politics and Culture in Hume's History Of

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2. POLITICS AND CULTURE IN HUME’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

Simon Kow

J.G.A. Pocock has remarked that “Hume is the only major philosopher to have produced a major work of historiography, and to have expounded his philosophy through the medium of historiography without the aid of a historicist philosophy of the kind appearing in the next century”.1 Nev- ertheless, while Hume’s History of England (1754–62) may have been con- sidered “for at least a hundred years, the standard history of the English nation”,2 it was relatively neglected thereafter until recent decades and is not as commented upon by interpreters of Hume as such works as A Trea- tise of Human Nature. Indeed, the relation between Hume’s history and his philosophy is far from clear, not least because Hume makes no explicit ref- erence in his history to the Treatise, the two Enquiries, or other such works regarded as central to his philosophical thought.3 At best, Hume’s status as the first “philosophical historian”4 should be taken in a broad sense; as Pocock points out, “philosophy” in Hume’s time “very often denoted a fixed determination to have nothing to do with epistemology, metaphys- ics or what could otherwise be termed ‘minute philosophy’ ”.5 Although the degree to which Hume’s “minute philosophy” and his historical work can be linked poses major difficulties for the interpreter, we

1 J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Volume 2: Narratives of Civil Government (Cam- bridge, Eng., 1999), p. 176. 2 David Fate Norton, “History and Philosophy in Hume’s Thought”, in David Fate Nor- ton and Richard H. Popkin, eds., David Hume: Philosophical Historian (Indianapolis, 1965), p. xxxii. 3 Norton, however, argues that history and philosophy are deeply connected in Hume’s thought, but that as a sceptic, Hume came to see that a science of human nature is impos- sible for both the philosopher and the historian. At best, historical judgement is a form of opinion. See Norton, “History and Philosophy”, pp. xlviii–l. More recently, Nicholas Phil- lipson has traced some ways in which Hume’s philosophical development culminated in his historical work. See Phillipson, Hume (New York, 1989). 4 See Hugh Trevor-Roper, “David Hume, Historian,” in History and the Enlightenment, ed. John Robertson (New Haven, 2010), p. 120. David Wootton notes the identification of “philosophical history” with “conjectural history” (Dugald Stewart’s term) and “natural history” (as in Hume’s The Natural History of Religion) in “David Hume, ‘the historian,’ ” in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., ed. David Fate Norton (Cambridge, Eng., 2009), p. 453 n. 14. 5 Pocock, Barbarism, p. 177. 62 simon kow can nevertheless elucidate the political theory underlying Hume’s History of England. There have been, however, conflicting interpretations of the character of Hume’s political philosophy as conveyed through the His- tory. Following upon Laurence Bongie’s careful study of Hume’s influence on French counter-revolutionary thought, which suggests the essentially conservative nature of Hume’s political thinking in the History,6 Donald Livingston and Nicholas Capaldi stress Hume’s proto-Burkean distrust of foundationalist and speculative theory and conception of all moral and political norms as contextually grounded (as opposed to concepts of rights, liberty, and so forth as eternal and unchanging principles).7 In contrast, Duncan Forbes describes Hume as a “sceptical Whig” who shared the Whiggish view that English history manifests the progress of European civilization but criticized the chauvinistic characterization of absolute monarchies in France and elsewhere on the continent as infe- rior to English government.8 John B. Stewart is more explicit in arguing for Hume’s liberalism: the History of England culminates, after all, in the liberty gained from the 1688 revolution and subsequent constitution. He would reject both conservative Toryism and the revolutionary republican- ism of sympathizers of the French Revolution; liberal Whiggism since the 1790s was closer to Hume’s position.9 What explains such divergent perspectives on the political theory in Hume’s historical work? Hume’s standard of impartiality on political and historical matters particularly lends itself to diverse readings of his historical work. Hume’s account especially of the reigns of the Stuarts and the Glorious Revolution—the first two volumes of the History to be published—seeks to steer between Whig and Tory interpretations of Eng- land’s political history. In a letter to John Clephane from 1756, two years after the first volume appeared, Hume remarked that in the History, “[m]y views on things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representations of

6 Laurence L. Bongie, David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution, 2nd ed. (Indian- apolis, 1998). 7 Nicholas Capaldi and Donald W. Livingston, eds., Liberty in Hume’s History of Eng- land (Dordrecht, 1990), pp. 105–53 and 195–224; and see also Donald W. Livingston, “David Hume and the Conservative Tradition,” The Intercollegiate Review 44 (2009), 30–41. 8 Duncan Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics (Cambridge, Eng., 1975), pp. 140–161; see also his “Introduction” to David Hume, The History of Great Britain, ed. Duncan Forbes (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 18–24. 9 John B. Stewart, Opinion and Reform in Hume’s Political Philosophy (Princeton, 1992), pp. 223–31. Similarly, David Wootton acknowledges the difficulty in categorizing Hume’s political stance in the History, but concludes that his revisions “brought him closer to the court Whig position.” Wootton, “Hume, ‘the historian’,” pp. 465–69.