to tyranny?' _Letters_, v. 444. Hume
wrote in 1756:--'My views of _things_ are more conformable to Whig
principles; my representations of _persons_ to Tory prejudices.' J.H.
Burton's _Hume_, ii. 11. Hume's Toryism increased with years. He says in
his _Autobiography/_ (p. xi.) that all the alterations which he made in
the later editions of his _History of the Stuarts_, 'he made invariably
to the Tory side.' Dr. Burton gives instances of these; _Life of Hume_,
ii. 74. Hume wrote in 1763 that he was 'too much infected with the
plaguy prejudices of Whiggism when he began the work.' _Ib_. p. 144. In
1770 he wrote:--'I either soften or expunge many villainous, seditious
Whig strokes which had crept into it.' _Ib_. p. 434. This growing hatred
of Whiggism was, perhaps, due to pique. John Home, in his notes of
Hume's talk in the last weeks of his life, says: 'He recurred to a
subject not unfrequent with him--that is, the design to ruin him as an
author, by the people that were ministers at the first publication of
his _History_, and called themselves Whigs.' _Ib_. p. 500. As regards
America, Hume was with the Whigs, as Johnson had perhaps learnt from
their common friend, Mr. Strahan. 'He was,' says Dr. Burton, 'far more
tolerant of the sway of individuals over numbers, which he looked upon
as the means of preserving order and civilization, than of the
predominance of one territory over another, which he looked upon as
subjugation.' _Ib_. p. 477. Quite at the beginning of the struggle he
foretold that the Americans would not be subdued, unless they broke in
pieces among themselves. _Ib_. p. 482. He was not frightened by the
prospect of the loss of our supremacy. He wrote to Adam Smith:--'My
notion is that the matter is not so important as is commonly imagined.
Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our
manufactures.' _Ib_. p. 484. Johnson's charge against Hume that he had
no principle, is, no doubt, a gross one; yet Hume's advice to a
sceptical young clergyman, who had good hope of preferment, that he
should therefore continue in orders, was unprincipled enough. 'It is,'
he wrote, 'putting too great a respect on the vulgar and on their
superstitions to pique one's self on sincerity with regard to them. Did
ever one make it a point of honour to speak truth to children or madmen?
If the thing were worthy being treated gravely, I should tell him that
the Pythian oracle, with the approbation of Xenophon, advised every