philosophical essay; and being relied on for a particular purpose with the
most unqualified confidence, and being alleged in opposition to the very
highest authority [viz. the authority of an eminent person contemporary
with the fact] it must be looked on as involving a peremptory defiance to
all succeeding critics who might hesitate between the authority of Mr.
Hume at the distance of a century from the facts and Sir William Temple
speaking to them as a matter within his personal recollections. Sir
William Temple had represented himself as urging in a conversation with
Charles II., the hopelessness of any attempt on the part of an English
king to make himself a despotic and absolute monarch, except indeed
through the affections of his people. [5] This general thesis he had
supported by a variety of arguments; and, amongst the rest, he had
described himself as urging this--that even Cromwell had been unable to
establish himself in unlimited power, though supported by a military force
of _eighty thousand men_. Upon this Hume calls the reader's attention
to the extreme improbability which there must beforehand appear to be in
supposing that Sir W. Temple,--speaking of so recent a case, with so much
official knowledge of that case at his command, uncontradicted moreover by
the king whose side in the argument gave him an interest in contradicting
Sir William's statement, and whose means of information were paramount to
those of all others,--could under these circumstances be mistaken.
Doubtless, the reader will reply to Mr. Hume, the improbability _is_
extreme, and scarcely to be invalidated by any possible authority--which,
at best, must terminate in leaving an equilibrium of opposing evidence.
And yet, says Mr. Hume, Sir William was unquestionably wrong, and grossly
wrong: Cromwell never had an army at all approaching to the number of
eighty thousand. Now here is a sufficient proof that Hume had never read
Lord Clarendon's account of his own life: this book is not so common as
his 'History of the Rebellion;' and Hume had either not met with it, or
had neglected it. For, in the early part of this work, Lord Clarendon,