Hume was the friend of Montesquieu, though twenty years his junior; and
the _Esprit des Lois_ travelled rapidly to Scotland. There it caught the
eye of Adam Ferguson, the author of a treatise on refinement, and by the
influence of Hume and Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh. Ferguson seems to have been immensely popular
in his time, and certainly he has a skill for polished phrase, and a
genial paraphrase of other men's ideas. His _Essay on the History of
Civil Society_ (1767), which in a quarter of a century went through six
editions, was thought by Helvétius superior to Montesquieu, though Hume
himself, as always the incarnation of kindness, recommended its
suppression. At least Ferguson read enough of Montesquieu to make some
fluent generalities sound plausible. He knows that the investigation of
savage life will throw some light upon the origins of government. He
sees the folly of generalizing easily upon the state of nature. He
insists, probably after conversation with Adam Smith, upon the social
value of the division of functions. He does not doubt the original
equality of men. He thinks the luxury of his age has reached the limit
of its useful growth. Property he traces back to a parental desire to
make a better provision for children "than is found under the
promiscuous management of many copartners." Climate has the new
importance upon which Montesquieu has insisted; or, at least, as it
"ripens the pineapple and the tamarina," so it "inspires a degree of
mildness that can even assuage the rigours of despotical government."
The priesthood--this is Hume--becomes a separate influence under the
sway of superstition. Liberty, he says, "is maintained by the continued
differences and oppositions of numbers, not by their concurring zeal in
behalf of equitable government." The hand that can bend Ulysses' bow is
certainly not here; and this pinchbeck Montesquieu can best be left in
the obscurity into which he has fallen. The _Esprit des Lois_ took
twenty years in writing; and it needed the immense researches of men