HUME. 2J3 



after the first publication. " Though I had been 

 taught," he says, "that the Whig party were in pos- 

 session of bestowing all places,, both in the State and 

 in literature, I was so little inclined to yield to their 

 senseless clamour, that in above a hundred alterations, 

 which further study, reading, or reflection, engaged 

 me to make in the reigns of the. two first Stuarts, I 

 have made all of them invariably to. the Tory side," 

 We have here indeed a double confession. To the first 

 volume is confined the reign of the first two^ Stuarts, 

 and to that consequently is this remarkable admission 

 limited. Now, if that volume had been written with 

 any " care/' could subsequent reading and reflection have 

 suggested above a hundred alterations, all admitted to 

 be material, by the statement that they affected the 

 complexion of the political opinions conveyed in those 

 passages ? But again, if the author's mind was in 

 a state of impartiality when he thus finally com-, 

 posed his book, how could it happen that every one of 

 his corrections should be on one side, and not a single 

 correction on the other, unless he had written the 

 work originally with a strong bias towards the Whig 

 side, instead of which his bias is, on all hands, allowed 

 to have been strongly the other way ? 



The ' History of the Tudor s' has the same cardinal 

 imperfection of carelessness and haste, but in a lesser 

 degree, because he had fewer controverted points to con- 

 sider, and a smaller mass of authorities to examine. He 

 had also less temptation to give his narrative and reflec- 

 tions a bias from the leaning of his opinions, because, 

 excepting the questions relating to Mary Queen of 

 Scots, there are few passages from Henry VII. to 



