Montesquieu's appreciation of some of Hume's ethical works will be read
with interest. Hume appears to have made the first advances towards an
intimacy; and the great Frenchman, then in his sixtieth year, seems to
have hailed with satisfaction the appearance of a kindred spirit, and to
have received his proffers with warm cordiality. This is the
commencement of that intercourse with his eminent contemporaries in
France, which we shall hereafter find to occupy a prominent feature in
Hume's literary and social history.
At this period we find Hume taking much interest in the conduct of a
certain James Fraser, in connexion with the Westminster election of
1749--one of the marked epochs in the parliamentary history of that
renowned constituency. The candidates were Lord Trentham the eldest son
of Earl Gower, and Sir George Vandeput, of whom the former was returned
by the high bailiff. Sir George Vandeput was the "independent"
candidate, representing the "English interest." Lord Trentham was a
placeman, and was accused of a partiality for French interests. Though
the Jacobites were ranged on the Vandeput side, Lord Trentham was by
implication accused of having favoured the exiled family; as by one of
the election placards issued on the occasion, the voters are desired to
"ask Lord Trentham, who had his foot in the stirrup in the year 1715?"
He was charged with having sacrificed his country or Jacobite principles
for a place, and with being that most abhorred of all political
characters, an ex-patriot, who has ratted to obtain office. Shortly
before the election, a riotous attack had been made on a small French
theatre, which had become peculiarly unpopular by obtaining a licence,
when some English establishments had been suppressed under Walpole's
act. It appears that Lord Trentham had, with some others, endeavoured to
preserve the friendless foreigners from the fury of the mob. So
un-English an act, as this harbouring and protecting of foreign
vagabonds, against the just indignation of true born Britons, was very
successfully displayed as an overt act in favour of Popery, Jacobitism,
and French ascendency; and the skilful manner in which it was improved,
in the hand-bills, and pasquinades of the Vandeput party, shows that
this department of the electioneering art was not then far from its
present state of maturity.[306:1]
A pretty minute investigation has not enabled me to discover what
precise conduct in connexion with this affair was important enough to
elicit from Hume the elaborate joke against Fraser embodied in the
following papers. He was evidently a medical man, but he does not appear
in the list of those who attested Mr. Murray's health, or were appointed
to visit him. He certainly acted on the Vandeput side, yet his name is
nowhere mentioned, in connexion with it, in a pretty large collection of
documents relating to this election, which I have had an opportunity of
consulting.[307:1]