Hume never entirely abandoned this claim. He was not in a position to
urge it forward immediately after his dismissal, as another and more
agreeable official appointment called him abroad. So late as 1760 and
during the next ensuing year, we find him urging his demand, and
allusion is made to an action having been raised in the Court of
Session. "The case," says Dr. Murray, "must have been settled
extrajudicially or by reference; for, after a careful search in the
minute book of the Court of Session, we do not find that it was ever
enrolled."
There has been a general tendency to consider this pertinacious
adherence to a pecuniary claim, as a proceeding unworthy of a
philosopher. In any ordinary man, whether wise or foolish after the
wisdom of the world, such conduct would have appeared but just and
natural; but a philosopher is presumed to have no more respect for money
and its value, than the generous and sympathizing gentleman on the
stage, who on the impulse of the moment, always tosses a heavy purse to
somebody, without having any more distinct notion of its contents than
the admiring audience can have. Hume's notions of these matters were
different. "Am I," he said, "in a condition to make the Marquis of
Annandale a present of £75, that of right belongs to me." It is true
that in the interval between the debt being incurred, and his insisting
on its payment, he had by frugality and industry made himself
independent. In 1747, he tells us that he was possessed of £1000, and in
1760, his fortune had probably considerably increased, though the
sources of emolument which made him subsequently worth £1000 a-year, had
not been then opened up. The surplus of the Marquis of Annandale's
estate had in the mean time accumulated in the manner that has been
already mentioned, and Hume probably thought it was an action more truly
worthy of a philosopher, to make over his salary of librarian to the
poor blind poet Blacklock, than to abandon a claim of £75, justly due
by an estate which had developed a surplus of £400,000.
* * * * *
Early in the year 1746, Hume received an invitation from General St.
Clair, "to attend him as a secretary to his expedition, which was at
first meant against Canada, but ended in an incursion on the coast of
France."[208:1] Before his departure, and while he expected to have to
cross the Atlantic, he wrote the following letter, addressed to "Mr.
Alexander Home, Advocate, His Majesty's Solicitor for Scotland, at
Edinburgh." The concluding remarks evidently relate to the state
prosecutions following on the insurrection in Scotland.
"_Portsmouth, May 23, 1746._