"Mr. Mure told me that you had undertaken to get satisfaction with regard to the old English _subsidies_. I cannot satisfy myself on that head; but I find that all historians and antiquarians are as much at a loss. The nobility, I observe, paid according to their rank and quality, not their estates. The counties were subjected to no valuation; but it was in the power of the commissioners to sink the sums demanded upon every individual, without raising it upon others; and they practised this art when discontented with the court, as Charles complains of with regard to the subsidies voted by his third parliament: yet it seems certain that there must have been some rule of estimation. What was it? Why was it so variable? Lord Strafford raised an Irish subsidy from £12,000 to £40,000, by changing the rule of valuation; but the Irish Parliament, after his impeachment, brought it down again: if Mr. Harding undertakes the solution of this matter, it will be requisite to have these difficulties in his eye. I am glad to hear that we are to have your company here this summer, and that I shall have an opportunity of talking over this, and many other subjects, where I want your advice and opinion. The more I advance in my work, the more I am convinced that the history of England has never yet been written; not only for style, which is notorious to all the world, but also for matter; such is the ignorance and partiality of all our historians. Rapin, whom I had an esteem for, is totally despicable. I may be liable to the reproach of ignorance, but I am certain of escaping that of partiality: the truth is, there is so much reason to blame, and praise, alternately, king and parliament, that I am afraid the mixture of both, in my composition, being so equal, may pass sometimes for an affectation, and not the result of judgment and evidence. Of this you shall be judge; for I am resolved to encroach on your leisure and patience; Quem vero arripuit, tenet occiditque legendo. Let me hear of you as you pass through the town, that we may concert measures for my catching you idle, and without company, at Kirkcaldy. I am," &c.[381:1] The rapidity with which the first volume of the "History of England" was composed and printed, has been the object both of surprise and censure. Hume's labours at this time must have been intense; and during the whole of the period in which he was engaged in the different departments of this great work--from 1752 to 1763--his correspondence is more scanty than at other periods of his history. Four months elapse between the letter last printed, and the next in order which has been preserved; and in the latter, we find him very wittily alluding to those great labours which he finds absorbing the petty duties of social intercourse. HUME _to_ DR. CLEPHANE. "_28th October, 1753._