ESSAYS By DAVID HUME _With Biographical Introduction_ by Hannaford Bennett LONDON JOHN LONG LTD Contents BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION OF THE DELICACY OF TASTE AND PASSION OF THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS THAT POLITICS MAY BE REDUCED TO A SCIENCE OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT OF THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT OF THE INDEPENDENCY OF PARLIAMENT WHETHER THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT INCLINES MORETO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY OR TO A REPUBLIC OF PARTIES IN GENERAL OF THE PARTIES OF GREAT BRITAIN OF SUPERSTITION AND ENTHUSIASM OF THE DIGNITY OR MEANNESS OF HUMAN NATURE OF CIVIL LIBERTY OF ELOQUENCE Biographical Introduction The material facts in Hume's life are to be found in the autobiography which he prefixed to his _History of England_. _My Own Life_, as he calls it, is but a brief exposition, but it is sufficient for its purpose, and the longer biographies of him do little more than amplify the information which he gives us himself. The Humes, it appears, were a remote branch of the family of Lord Hume of Douglas. Hume's father was Joseph Hume, of Ninewells, a minor Scotch laird, who died when his son was an infant. David Hume was born at Edinburgh on April 26th, 1711, during a visit of his parents to the Scotch capital. Hume tells us that his father passed for a man of parts, and that his mother, who herself came of good Scottish family, "was a woman of singular merit; though young and handsome, she devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children." At school Hume won no special distinction. He matriculated in the class of Greek at the Edinburgh University when he was twelve years old, and, he says "passed through the ordinary course of education with success"; but "our college education in Scotland," he remarks in one of his works, "extending little further than the languages, ends commonly when we are about fourteen or fifteen years of age." During his youth, Mrs. Hume does not appear to have maintained any too flattering opinion of her son's abilities; she considered him a good-natured but "uncommon weak-minded" creature. Possibly her judgment underwent a change in course of time, since she lived to see the beginnings of his literary fame; but his worldly success was long in the making, and he was a middle-aged man before his meagre fortune was converted into anything like a decent maintenance.