HUME. 213 



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 Tudors' 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 



