Jefferson vs. Hume

O_ N March 2, 764, Thomas Jefferson, then a young law student in Williamsburg, Virginia, purchased an edition in six large quarto volumes of David Hume's History of England, a work he read through with great eagerness admiration. I remember well the enthusiasm with which devoured it when young, he wrote nearly fifty years later, and the length of time, the research reflection which were necessary to eradicate the it had instilled into my mind.' The poison was Hume's compelling presentation of certain aspects of English history that seriously the prevailing whig view of the British constitution, Jefferson's resentment toward Hume as a poisoner of unwary readers became more vocal more pronounced as he grew older. When during his presidency he read a book by John Baxter that appeared to correct republicanise (as well as plagiarize) Hume's history, he approved it later exerted himself to have it reprinted in America as an alternative to Hume. In his retirement right up to the end of his life, Jefferson continued in his correspondence to attack Hume his history, sometimes in extravagant terms, as when he claimed that Hume's history had undermined the free principles of the English government or when, in 824, he referred to the philosopher-historian as degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men.2 Though earlier generations paid little attention to Jefferson's rhetorical vendetta against Hume's history, in our own time it has earned him no small amount of criticism. For while many of the great nineteenth-century English historians liberals shared Jefferson's view of Hume, to present-day students his rage despair at the unquestioning acceptance of Hume hardly appear seemly, inasmuch as the historical interpretations

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