conclusion I must again disclaim any want of veneration and entire
affection for the Established Church: the very prejudices and injustice,
with which I tax the English clergy, have a generous origin: but it is
right to point the attention of historical students to their strength and
the effect which they have had. They have been indulged to excess; they
have disfigured the grandest page in English history; they have hid the
true descent and tradition of our constitutional history; and, by
impressing upon the literature of the country a false conception of the
patriotic party in and out of Parliament, they have stood in the way of a
great work,--a work which, according to my ideal of it, would be the most
useful that could just now be dedicated to the English public--viz. _a
philosophic record of the revolutions of English History_. The English
Constitution, as proclaimed and ratified in 1688-9, is in its kind, the
noblest work of the human mind working in conjunction with Time, and what
in such a case we may allowably call Providence. Of this _chef d'oeuvre_
of human wisdom it were desirable that we should have a proportionable
history: for such a history the great positive qualification would be a
philosophic mind: the great negative qualification would be this [which to
the established clergy may now be recommended as a fit subject for their
magnanimity]; viz. complete conquest over those prejudices which have
hitherto discolored the greatest era of patriotic virtue by contemplating
the great men of that era under their least happy aspect--namely, in
relation to the Established Church.

Now that I am on the subject of English History, I will notice one of the
thousand mis-statements of Hume's which becomes a memorable one from the
stress which he has laid upon it, and from the manner and situation in
which he has introduced it. Standing in the current of a narrative, it
would have merited a silent correction in an unpretending note: but it
occupies a much more assuming station; for it is introduced in a