Beside the
violence and openness of the Jacobite party, another reason has
perhaps contributed to produce so sudden and so visible an
alteration in this part of Britain. There are only two ranks of men
among us; gentlemen who have some fortune and education, and the
meanest slaving poor; without any considerable number of that
middling rank of men, which abound more in England, both in cities
and in the country, than in any other part of the world. The
slaving poor are incapable of any principles; gentlemen may be
converted to true principles, by time and experience. The middling
rank of men have curiosity and knowledge enough to form principles,
but not enough to form true ones, or correct any prejudices that
they may have imbibed. And it is among the middling rank of people
that Tory principles do at present prevail most in England."--(III.
80, _note_.)
Considering that the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 broke out only four
years after this essay was published, the assertion that the Jacobite
party had "almost entirely vanished in 1741" sounds strange enough: and
the passage which contains it is omitted in the third edition of the
_Essays_, published in 1748. Nevertheless, Hume was probably right, as
the outbreak of '45 was little better than a Highland raid, and the
Pretender obtained no important following in the Lowlands.
No less curious, in comparison with what would be said nowadays, is
Hume's remark in the Essay on the _Rise of the Arts and Sciences_ that--
"The English are become sensible of the scandalous licentiousness
of their stage from the example of the French decency and
morals.
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