The New Edinburgh Review: Hume Versus the Church

A new literary review is started in Edinburgh by Hume and a few of his younger friends.

Hume was the most distinguished man of letters then in Scotland.

He is neither asked to contribute to the periodical, nor even admitted to the secret of its origination.

When the first issue appeared, he was most surprised that:

• it was published without him knowing it.
• his name and writings were strangely and studiously ignored in its pages.

His History of the Stewarts was one of the last new books, having been published in the end of 1754.

It was unquestionably the most important recent Scotch work.

• But it remained absolutely unnoticed in this publication which aimed to give attention to Scotch authors

Why this complete boycott of Hume by his own household?

Henry Mackenzie has 2 reasons:

1. Hume was considered too good-natured to be a critic

He would have softened the remarks his colleagues. They determined to keep him out of the secret entirely because he could not keep a secret.[92]

But this explanation does not hold.

If Hume was so good-natured, he would be less difficult rather than more difficult to manage.

If he could not keep a secret, that, as Mr. Burton observes, is a very singular judgment to pass on one who had been Secretary of Legation already and was soon to be Secretary of Legation again, and Under Secretary of State, without having been once under the shadow of such an accusation. Besides, neither of these reasons will explain the ignoring of his writings.

2. A better explanation is in the intense odium theologicum which Hume excited

The publication had to distance itself from Hume to avoid injustice.

Scotland back then was in an exceptional ferment about his theological heresies.

The most respected country clergy, at the General Assembly of the Kirk, proposed to:

• summon Hume to their bar,
• visit his Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals with censure, and excommunicate Hume.

The wise heads of the Scotch Church courts threw out this inconvenient proposal through the favourite ecclesiastical device of passing an abstract resolution expressing concern at the growing evils of the day, without committing the Church to any embarrassing practical action.

Wedderburn said that Hume, as expected, was hardened enough to laugh at the very idea of their anathema.

The clergy prepared for a victory in the next Assembly in May 1756.

Between the two Assemblies, Hume wrote Allan Ramsay who was in Rome: “You may tell the Pope that there are men here who rail at him. Yet would be much greater persecutors had they equal power. The last Assembly sat on me.

They did not propose to burn me, because they cannot. But they intended to give me over to Satan, which they think they have the power of doing. However, my friends prevailed. My damnation is postponed for a year.

But next Assembly it will surely be upon me.”[93] And so in truth it was.

An overture came up calling for action regarding “one person calling himself David Hume, Esq., who hath arrived at such a degree of boldness as publicly to avow himself the author of books containing the most rude and open attacks upon the glorious Gospel of Christ,” a [Pg 128]motion was made to create a committee= “to inquire into his writings, to call him before them, and prepare the matter for the next General Assembly.” This motion was again defeated. The heresy-hunters passed on to= turn their attention to Lord Kames, and summon the printers and publishers of his Essays before the Edinburgh Presbytery to give up the author’s name (the book having been published anonymously) “that he and they may be censured according to the law of the Gospel and the practice of this and all other well-governed churches.”

I believe Hume’s friends contemplated no more than a temporary exclusion of him from their counsels until this storm should pass by.

They launched their frail bark in the very thick of the storm. It would have meant instant swamping at that juncture to have taken the Jonah who caused all the commotion and made him one of their crew. For the same reason, when they found that, for all their precautions, the clamour overtook them notwithstanding, they simply put back into port and never risked so unreasoning and raging an element again.

It might be thought that they declined Hume’s cooperation, because they= expressly hoisted the flag of religion in their preface, and professed one of their objects to be to resist the current attacks of infidelity. But there would have been no inconsistency in engaging the cooperation of an unbeliever on secular subjects, so long as they retained the rudder in their own hands. Men who were already Hume’s intimate personal friends were not likely to be troubled with such unnecessary scruples about their consistency.

The true reason both of Hume’s exclusion from their secret and of their own abandonment of their undertaking is undoubtedly the reason given by Lord Woodhouselee, that they wanted to live and work in peace. They did not like, to use a phrase of Hamilton of Bangour, to have “zeal clanking her iron bands” about their ears.[Pg 129]. On the other hand, Hume took pleasure in the din he provoked. He had he been a contributor the rest would have had difficulty—and may have felt so—in restraining him from gratifying that taste when any favourable opportunities offered.

While these things were going on in Edinburgh, the Criterion of Miracles Examined came out from the London press. It is said to have been written to convert Adam Smith to believing Christian miracles. It was written= by Smith’s Oxford friend Bishop Douglas, then a country rector in Shropshire. in the form of a letter to an anonymous correspondent. The correspondent had an unfavourable opinion of Christianity’s evidences despite= his good sense, candour, and learning, and the fact that his reasonings were peculiar to himself and not borrowed from books. Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary says this anonymous correspondent was Adam Smith. From Chalmers’s Dictionary the same statement has been repeated in the same words in subsequent biographical dictionaries and elsewhere, but neither Chalmers nor his successors reveal who it was to whom this was known, or how he came to know it; Macdonald was the son-in-law and biographer of Douglas. On the other hand, Macdonald does not mention Smith in connection with this work at all. He explicitly states that the book was written for the author’s friends. They had been influenced by the objections of Hume and others to the reality of the Gospel miracles.[94] This leaves the point undetermined.

Smith was certainly a Theist. But he most probably discarded the Christian miracles. If Douglas’s book is addressed to his particular position, discarded them on the ground that there is no possible criterion for= distinguishing true [Pg 130]miracles from false, and enabling you to accept those of Christianity if you reject those of profane history. The Earl of Buchan, apostrophising Smith, asks= “Oh, venerable and worthy man, why was you not a Christian?” He tries to let Smith down as gently as possible by suggesting that the reason lay in the warmth of his heart. It always= made him strongly express his friends’ opinions and carried him into sympathy with Hume’s. That is obviously a lame conclusion. Because Smith’s friendship for Hume never made him a Tory. Smith’s opinions on religion were not identical with those of Hume. But Lord Buchan’s words may be quoted as an observation by an acute man of a feature in Smith’s character not without biographical interest. Lord Buchan says “Had Smith been a friend of the worthy ingenious Horrox, he would have believed that the moon sometimes disappeared in a clear sky without the cloud, or of another truly honest and respectable man, that a professor of mathematics at Upsala had a tail of six inches long to his rump.”[95]

In 1756, the literary circle in Edinburgh was much excited by the performance of John Home’s tragedy of Douglas. Smith was not present at that performance. But he was present at some of its previous rehearsals. (Henry Mackenzie, Life of John Home) He was deeply interested in it.

Hume tells of the play’s success in London to Smith in Glasgow, while he was planning his work on history. Smith advised Hume to instead= follow up his History of the Stewarts by the history of succeeding periods, go back and write the history before the Stewarts.

After mentioning John Home, Hume proceeds= “I have heard that the play was not near so well acted in Covent Garden as in this place. But it is likely to be very successful. Its great intrinsic merit breaks through all obstacles. It shall soon be printed. It will be esteemed the best, and by French critics the only tragedy of our language!

“Did you ever hear of the recent madness and folly of our clergy? I expect that the next Assembly will excommunicate me. But it does not matter to me. what do you think?

“I am somewhat idle and indifferent as to my next undertaking. Shall I go backwards or forwards in my History? You used to tell me that you approved more of my going backwards. Going forward would be more popular. But I am afraid I cannot find enough materials to ascertain the truth without settling in London. I am reluctant to settle there. I am settled here very well. I do not wish to move out at my age.

“I have just now received a copy of Douglas from London. It will instantly be published. I hope to send you a copy in the same parcel with the dedication.”[96]

Hume was now very anxious to have his friend nearer him. In 1758, he thought to transfer Smith to a chair in the University of Edinburgh. There was then some probability of Professor Abercromby resigning the chair of Public Law. It was then styled the chair of the Law of Nature and Nations. Smith was not a lawyer.

But he was a distinguished professor of jurisprudence. His friends in Edinburgh immediately suggested his candidature, especially as they [Pg 132]believed that he would accept it. The chair of the Law of Nature and Nations was one of the best endowed in the College. It had a revenue of £150 a year independently of fees. But it had= been founded as a job, and continued ever since to be treated as a sinecure. No lecture had ever been delivered by any of its incumbents, despite repeated remonstrances on the part of the Faculty of Advocates. Hume believed that if the Town Council, as administrators of the College, could be got to press for the delivery of the statutory lectures, the present professor would prefer the alternative of resignation. In that event, the vacant office might easily be obtained by Smith, inasmuch as the patronage was in the hands of the Crown. Crown patronage in Scotland then was virtually exercised through Lord Justice-Clerk Milton. He was a nephew of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the patriot. He had been, ever since the death of Lord President Forbes, the chief confidential adviser of the Duke of Argyle, the Minister for Scotland, His daughter was Mrs. Wedderburn of Gosford. She was the friend of Robertson and John Home. Milton personally knew Smith through her.

Smith’s Edinburgh friends zealously joined Hume in his representations, especially the faithful Johnstone (afterwards Sir W. Pulteney).

He actually wrote Smith a letter on the subject along with Hume’s.

Hume’s letter is as follows= —

The postscript shows that Smith had not escaped the general hue and cry against heresy which was now for some years abroad in the country.

The Miss Hepburn is Miss Hepburn of Monkrig, near Haddington. She is one of those gifted literary ladies who were then frequently found in Scotland’s country houses. John Home was indebted to Miss Hepburn and her sisters for Douglas’ the first idea.

Robertson submitted to her the manuscript of his History of Scotland piece by piece as he wrote it. When it was finished, the historian sent her a presentation copy with a letter, in which he said=

Smith seems to have declined Hume’s suggestion about this chair of Law.

for we find Hume presently trying hard to secure the place for Ferguson. The difficulty may have been about the price, for though Hume speaks of £800. It seems Abercromby wanted more than £1000.

Ferguson also had no mind to begin life with such a debt on his shoulders. But the world is probably no loser by the difficulty which kept Smith five years longer among Glasgow’s merchants and commercial problems.