3749. HISTORY (English), Hume's.—[further continued].
This single book[Hume's
History of England] has done more to sap the
free principles of the English constitution than
the largest standing army of which their patriots
have been so jealous. It is like the
portraits of our countryman Wright, whose eye
was so unhappy as to seize all the ugly features
of his subject, and to present them faithfully,
while it was entirely insensible to every lineament
of beauty. So Hume has concentrated, in
his fascinating style, all the arbitrary proceedings
of the English Kings, as true evidences
of the constitution, and glided over its Whig
principles as the unfounded pretensions of
factious demagogues. He even boasts, in his
life written by himself, that of the numerous
alterations suggested by the readers of his work,
he had never adopted one proposed by a Whig.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 46.
(P.F.,,
18161816)gt;
