John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

34 EXPOSURE OF HUME S HISTORY. 1820-1840.
tuations of prices. In the fourth number (Oct., 1824), he
reviews at length a work on English History, by George Brodie,
which is specially devoted to Hume s misrepresentations. He
enters fully into the exposure of Hume s disingenuous artifices;
and, at the present time, when Hume s metaphysical reputation
is so resplendent, his moral obliquity as a historian should not
be glossed over. No doubt his Toryism was his shelter from
"
the odium of his scepticism. Mill says of him : Hume pos
sessed powers of a very high order ; but regard for truth
formed no part of his character. He reasoned with surprising
acuteness ; but the object of his reasonings was not to attain
truth, but to show that it was unattainable. His mind, too,
was completely enslaved by a taste for literature ; not those
kinds of literature which teach mankind to know the causes of
their happiness and misery, that they may seek the one and
avoid the other ; but that literature which without regard for
truth or utility, seeks only to excite emotion."
I quote a few more sentences, to give some idea of the
charges that the article proposes to substantiate.
" Hume may very possibly have been sincere. He may,
perhaps, have been weak enough to believe, that the pleasures and
pains of one individual are of unspeakable importance, those of
the many of no importance at all. But though it be possible
to defend Charles I., and be an honest man, it is not possible
to be an honest man, and defend him as Hume lias done.
" A skilful advocate will never tell a lie, when suppressing
the truth will answer his purpose and if a ;
liejnust be_told, he
will rather, if he can, lie by insinuation than by direct assertion.
In all the arts of a rhetorician, Hume was a master : and it
would be a vain attempt to describe the systematic suppression
of the truth which is exemplified in this portion of his history ;
and which, within the sphere of our reading, we have scarcely,
if ever, seen matched. Particular instances of this species of
mendacity, Mr. Brodie has brought to light in abundance ; of
the degree in which it pervades the whole, he has not given,