HUME,
a surname, a corruption of HOME, which see.
_____
Alexander
Hume of Kennetsidehead, portioner of Hume, was one of the martyrs of
the Covenant, and his execution was perhaps the most cruel and
unprovoked of the judicial murders, which led the way to the
Revolution of 1688. Taken prisoner in 1682, by a brother of the earl
of Home, he was conveyed, sorely wounded, to the castle of
Edinburgh, and at first tried only on the charge of having held
converse with some of the party who took the castle of Hawick in
1679. The proof, however, being defective, the diet was deserted. On
November 15, he was again indicted, and accused of levying war
against the king in the counties of Berwick, Roxburgh, and Selkirk.
The diet was again deserted. On December 20, however, he was once
more indicted for having gone to the house of Sir Henry MacDougall
of Mackerstoun, besieged it, and demanded horses and arms, of having
entered Kelso, &c., in search of horses and armour, of resisting the
king’s forces under the master of Ross, &c. The whole of these
formidable charges were founded on the simple fact that Mr. Hume,
riding with sword and holster pistols, the usual arms worn by all
gentlemen at that period, after attending a sermon had, on his way
home, called, with his servant, at Mackerstoun House, and offered to
buy a bay horse. This his counsel, Sir Patrick Hume, offered to
prove, but the court repelled the defence. He was found guilty, on
these unproved charges, and condemned to be hanged at the market
cross of Edinburgh on 29th December, between 2 and 4
afternoon. He petitioned for time that his case might be laid before
the king, but this was refused, and the day of execution hastened.
Interest, however, had previously been made at court in his favour,
and a remission reached Edinburgh in time, but was kept up by the
chancellor, the earl of Perth. On the day of his execution his wife,
Isobel Hume, went to Lady Perth, and earnestly besought her to
interpose for her husband’s life, pleading his five small children,
but she was inhumanly repulsed. His last speech on the scaffold will
be found in Wodrow (Hist. Of Sufferings of Church of Scotland,
vol., ii., pp. 268-270). His estate was forfeited, but restored
at the Revolution, and it is remarkable, that his family was
singularly prosperous. His lineal descendants still possess
extensive property in Berwickshire – his heir male and direct
descendant is Patrick Home of Gunsgreen and Windshiel, and in the
same degree in the female line are Mrs. Milne Home of Wedderburn,
and Mr. Robertson Glasgow, of Montgrennan, Ayrshire.
HUME, ALEXANDER,
a sacred poet of the reign of James VI., was the second son of
Patrick, fifth baron of Polwarth, and is supposed to have been born
about the year 1560. He studied at St. Andrews, where he took the
degree of bachelor of arts in 1574. After spending four years in
France, studying the law, he returned to his native country, and was
duly admitted advocate. His professional progress is related by
himself in an ‘Epistle to Maister Gilbert Montcrief, Mediciner to
the King’s Majestic.’ Not succeeding at the bar, he sought
preferment at court. But failing in this also, he entered into holy
orders, and was appointed minister of Logie, near Stirling. He now
devoted himself to writing religious songs and poems with the view
of correcting the popular taste, and displacing the “godlie and
spiritual sangis and ballattis” of that age, which were nothing more
than pious travesties of the profane ballads and songs then most in
vogue. In 1599 he published ‘Hymnes, or Sacred Songs, where the
right use of Poetry may be Espied,’ dedicated to “the faithful and
vertuous Lady Elizabeth Melvil,” generally styled Lady Culros, who
wrote ‘Ane Godlye Dream, compylit in Scottish Meter,’ printed at
Edinburgh in 1603, and at Aberdeen in 1644, which was a great
favourite with the Presbyterians. The ‘Hymnes, or Sacred Songs’ have
been reprinted by the Bannatyne Club. The best of these is ‘The Day
Estivall,’ being a description of a summer day in Scotland, from
dawn to twilight. Hume was also the author of a poem on the defeat
of the Spanish Armada, entitled ‘The Triumph of the Lord after the
Manner of Men,’ which has been praised by Dr. Leyden, but never
hitherto printed. He died in 1609.
His works
are:
A treatise
of Conscience, quhairin divers secreats concerning that subject are
discouvered. Edin. By Rob. Walgrave, 1594, 8vo.
Hymnes, or
Sacred Songes; wherein the right Use of Poesie may be espied: be
Alexander Hume. Whereunto are added, the Experience of the Author’s
Youth, and certaine Precepts serving to the practice of
Sanctification. Edin. By Rob. Walgrave, 1599, 4to.
Alexander
Hume, Scot, his rejoinder to Dr. Adam Hill, concerning the Descent
of Christ into Hell, wherein the answer to his Sermon is justly
defended, and the rust of his Reply scraped from those Arguments, as
if they had never been touched with the canker, 4to.
Alexander
Hume
An Early Poet-Pastor of Logie and His Intimates Sir William
Alexander and John Shearer by R. Menzies Fergusson (1899) (pdf)
HUME, DAVID,
of Godscroft, a well-known controversial writer, historian, and
Latin poet, was the second son of Sir David Hume of Wedderburn, by
his wife, Mary, daughter of Johnston of Elphinston, and is supposed
to have been born about 1560. He was educated with his elder brother
at the public school of Dunbar, and afterwards went to France,
intending to make the tour of Italy, but had reached no farther than
Geneva, when he was recalled by the dangerous illness of his
brother, on which he returned to Scotland about the beginning of
1581`. In 1583 he became confidential secretary to his relative,
Archibald, “the Good Earl” of Angus, whom he accompanied on his
retirement into England. He availed himself of the opportunity to
visit London, and during his residence there he maintained a
constant correspondence with the earl, who, with the other exiled
lords, remained at Newcastle. In 1585 he returned to Scotland with
Angus, and till the earl’s death, which happened in 1588, he
continued in the capacity of his secretary, and was engaged in some
of the public transactions of the time.
In 1605 he
published the first part of a Latin treatise, ‘De Unione Insulae
Britanniae,’ which he dedicated to James VI., advocating his
majesty’s favourite project of a union between England and Scotland.
The same year he published his ‘Lusus Poetici,’ afterwards inserted
in the ‘Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum.’ In 1608 Hume entered upon a
correspondence on the subject of episcopacy and presbytery with Law,
bishop of Orkney, afterwards archbishop of Glasgow, and, in 1613, he
began a controversy of the same nature with Cowper, bishop of
Galloway. About 1611 he wrote the ‘History of the House of
Wedderburn, by a Son of the Family,’ which has been printed for the
Abbotsford Club. On the death of Prince Henry in 1612, he lamented
his fate in a poem, entitled ‘Henrici Principis Justa.’ In 1617 he
composed a congratulatory poem on the king’s revisiting Scotland,
entitled ‘Regi Suo Graticulatio.’ The same year he wrote, but did
not publish, a prose work in reply to the injurious assertions
relative to Scotland which Camden had asserted in his Britannia,
also answered by Drummond.
Hume’s
principal work, supposed to have been written about 1625, is his
‘History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus,’ first printed
at Edinburgh by Evan Tyler in 1644, and several times reprinted. He
is conjectured to have died about 1630.
HUME, SIR
PATRICK, Bart.
Of Polwarth, first earl of Marchmont, a distinguished patriot and
statesman, was born January 13, 1641. He succeeded his father in his
estates and the title of baronet in 1648, and was educated by his
mother, the daughter of Sir Alexander Hamilton of Innerwick, as a
strict Presbyterian. In 1665 he was elected member of parliament for
the county of Berwick, He took a decided part against the tyrannical
administration of the duke of Lauderdale, and went to London in 1674
with the duke of Hamilton and others, to lay before the king the
grievances of the nation. In September 1675, for his opposition to
the measures of the government, he was imprisoned in the Tolbooth of
Edinburgh. He was afterwards removed to the castle of Dumbarton, and
finally to Stirling castle, from whence he was liberated by order of
the king, in July 1679. He subsequently went to England, and had
many conferences on the state of the nation with the duke of
Monmouth, the earl of Shaftesbury, and Lord Russell, who was his
near relative. In the autumn of 1684, finding that the government
was bent on his destruction, Sir Patrick withdrew from his house,
and concealed himself in the family burial vault, under the parish
church of Polwarth, where he remained for several weeks, supplied
every night with food by his celebrated daughter, Grizel, afterwards
Lady Grizel Baillie, then only 12 years of age. As winter
approached, he removed to a concealed place made by his lady beneath
the floor of an under apartment in his own house, where he lived for
some time; but, water flowing in to the place of his retreat, he
decided on quitting the kingdom, and accordingly departed in
disguise. He had only been gone a few hours, when a party of
soldiers came to his house in search of him. He succeeded in getting
safely to Holland, where he was received with great respect by the
prince of Orange.
In 1685 he
accompanied the earl of Argyle in his unfortunate expedition to
Scotland, and in May of that year his estate was confiscated, and a
decree of forfeiture passed against him. On the failure of that
ill-concerted enterprise he was concealed for three weeks in the
house of his friend Montgomery of Lainshaw, in Ayrshire. He also lay
for a time concealed at Kilwinning, where he wrote a narrative of
the expedition, which was first printed in Mr. Rose’s Observations
on Fox’s Historical Work, and is inserted in the Marchmont papers,
published in 1831. A report of his death was spread abroad to throw
the authorities off their guard, and induce them to relax in the
search for him, and he effected his escape by a vessel from the west
coast, first to Ireland, and then to Bordeaux, whence he proceeded
to Geneva, and thence to Holland, where he was joined by his wife
and ten children. He settled at Utrecht, where, under the borrowed
name of Dr. Wallace, he remained three years and a half, and during
that period endured many privations. His necessities prevented him
from keeping a servant, and frequently compelled him to pawn his
plate to provide for the wants of his family. Not being able to
afford the expense of a tutor, he educated his children himself.
It appears
that whilst at Bordeaux, he gave himself out for a surgeon, as he
had done on the occasion of his former exile, and as he could bleed,
and always carried lancets, he well represented the character, and
that he travelled on foot across France to Holland. His estates,
forfeited in 1686, was given to the earl of Seaford. In June 1688 he
addressed from Utrecht a letter, powerful both in style and
argument, to his friend Sir William Denholm, written to be
communicated to the Presbyterian ministers, to put them on their
guard against an insidious plan, which was then in agitation, to
induce them to “petition King James for a toleration, which would
have included the papists.”
At the
Revolution of 1688 he came over with the prince of Orange, and took
his seat in the Convention parliament, which met at Edinburgh, March
14, 1689, as member for Berwickshire. In July 1690 his forfeiture
was rescinded by act of parliament; he was soon after sworn a privy
councillor, and December 26, 1690, he was created a peer of Scotland
by the title of Lord Polwarth. In October 1692 he was appointed
sheriff of Berwickshire, in November 1693 one of the four
extraordinary lords of session, and May 2, 1696, was constituted
high-chancellor of Scotland. In April 1697 he was created earl of
Marchmont; the same year he was appointed one of the commissioners
of the treasury and admiralty; and, in 1698, he was appointed
lord-high-commissioner to the parliament which met in July of that
year. In 1702 he represented King William as high-commissioner to
the General Assembly, when the death of the king interrupted the
proceedings. After the accession of Queen Anne he brought in a bill
for securing the Protestant succession in the house fo Hanover,
which was defeated by the prorogation of parliament, and he was soon
after deprived of the great seal. He was, subsequently, one of the
most influential promoters of the treaty of union. After a long life
spend in the service of his country, he died at Berwick, August 1,
1724, in the 84th year of his age. Besides the Narrative
of the expedition under the earl of Argyle, already mentioned, his
correspondence has been published in the Marchmont Papers. He wrote
also an Essay on Surnames in Collier’s Dictionary. His lady,
daughter of Sir Thomas Kerr of Cavers, died in 1703. He wrote in her
Bible a very affecting testimony to her virtues. He had a son,
Alexander, who succeeded him. (See MARCHMONT, earl of).
HUME, PATRICK,
a learned commentator on Milton, and supposed to have belonged to
the Polwarth branch of the family of Home or Hume, lived about the
close of the seventeenth century. The sixth edition of Paradise
Lost, published by Tonson in 1695, is illustrated with Notes by him.
In the fourth volume of Blackwood’s Magazine, page 658, number for
March 1819, will be found a series of extracts from Hume’s
Commentary, contrasted with the Notes of Mr. Callender of Craigforth,
appended to the First Book of Paradise Lost, published by Foulis of
Glasgow in 1750.
HUME, DAVID,
a celebrated historian and philosopher, was born at Edinburgh, April
26, 1711, old style. He was the second son of Joseph Home of
Ninewells, near Dunse, Berwickshire, and was the first member of the
family who adopted the name of Hume. His father’s family was a
branch of the earl of Home’s, but of reduced fortune. He lost his
father in his infancy, and, along with a sister and elder brother,
he was reared and educated under the care of his mother, the
daughter of Sir David Falconer, Lord Newton, president of the court
of session. He studied at the university of Edinburgh, and was
destined for the law, but his strong passion for literature gave him
an insuperable aversion to the legal profession; and, – as he
informs us in the memoir called ‘My Own Life,’ which he wrote
shortly before his death, and first published in 1777 by Mr. Strahan,
to whom he left the manuscript, – while his family believed him to
be poring over Voet and Vinnius, he was exclusively occupied with
Cicero and Virgil. In 1734, at the persuasion of his friends, he
went to Bristol, and entered the office of a respectable merchant in
that city; but in a few months he discovered that commercial
business was as irksome as the law, and, retiring to France, he
resided for some time at Rheims, and afterwards lived for two years
at La Fleche, in Anjou, quietly improving himself in literature, and
subsisting frugally on his small fortune.
In 1737 he
went to London with two volumes of his ‘Treatise on Human Nature,’
which he had composed in his retirement. The work was published in
1738, but, as he himself remarks, it “fell dead-born from the
press.” In 1742 he printed at Edinburgh two volumes of his ‘Essays,
Moral, Political, and Literary,’ prepared while he resided at his
brother’s house at Ninewells, which met with a more favourable
reception. In 1745 he was invited to reside with the young marquis
of Annandale, whose state of mind at that period rendered a guardian
necessary. In this situation he remained for a year, and, on the
death of Professor Cleghorn, he became a candidate for the vacant
chair of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, but failed
in his application, on account of his known infidelity.
In 1746
Mr. Hume accompanied General St. Clair as his secretary in an
expedition avowedly against Canada, but which ended in an incursion
on the French coast. In 1747 he attended the same officer in an
embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin, where he wore the
military uniform, in the character of aide-de-camp to the general.
His appearance at this time is thus described by Lord Charlemont,
who met with him at Turin: “Nature, I believe, never formed any man
more unlike his real character than David Hume. The powers of
physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most
skilful in that science pretend to discover the smallest trace of
the faculties of his mind, in the unmeaning features of his visage.
His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other
expression than that of imbecility. His eyes vacant and spiritless;
and the corpulence of his whole person was far better fitted to
communicate the idea of a turtle-eating alderman than of a refined
philosopher. His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the
broadest Scottish accent, and his French was, if possible, still
more laughable; so that wisdom, most certainly, never disguised
herself before in so uncouth a garb. His wearing a uniform added
greatly to his natural awkwardness, for he wore it like a grocer of
the train bands. St. Clair was a lieutenant-general, and was sent to
the courts of Vienna and Turin as a military envoy, to see that
their quota of troops was furnished by the Austrians and
Piedmontese. It was, therefore, thought necessary, that his
secretary should appear to be an officer; and Hume was accordingly
disguised in scarlet.” (Hardy’s Life of Lord Charlemont, page
8.)
Believing
that the neglect of his ‘Treatise upon Human Nature’ proceeded more
from the manner than the matter, he reconstructed the first part of
it, and cause it to be published, while he resided at Turin, with
the title of an ‘Inquiry concerning Human Understanding.’ It was,
however, at the outset, equally unsuccessful with the treatise.
On his
return from the Continent in 1749, he retired to his brother’s house
at Ninewells, where he resided for two years. In 1751 he repaired to
London, where he published the second part of his Treatise
remodelled, under the name of ‘Inquiry concerning the Principles of
Morals,’ which of all his writings he considered “incomparably the
best.” The public, however, thought otherwise, and the work, on its
appearance, was totally neglected. In 1752 he published his
‘Political Discourses,’ which, says the author, “was the only work
of mine that was successful on its first publication.” In the same
year he succeeded Ruddiman as librarian to the faculty of advocates
at Edinburgh, an office which gave him the command of an extensive
collection of books and MSS., and he now formed the plan of writing
the History of England. He commenced with the History of the House
of Stuart, and on the appearance, in 1754, of the first volume, it
was received, to use his own words, “with one cry of reproach,
disapprobation, and even of detestation.” All sects and parties
“united,” he says, “in their rage against the man who had presumed
to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. And the earl of
Strafford.” But his equally contemptuous mention of the opposing
religious parties, and what Fox calls “his partiality to kings and
princes,” may rather be considered as the true cause of this outcry.
Some time afterwards he brought out at London his ‘Natural History
of Religion,’ which was answered in a pamphlet written by Warburton,
but attributed to Dr. Hurd. In 1756 he published the second volume
of his History, embracing the interval from the death of Charles I.
To the Revolution, which was more favourably received than the first
had been. He now resolved to go back to an earlier period; and in
1759 he published his History of the House of Tudor, which excited
nearly as much clamour against him as his first volume had done. His
reputation, however, was now gradually increasing, and he completed
his History by the publication of two additional volumes, in 1761.
His History of England thenceforth became a standard work. Its
statements and representations have, however, been ably examined and
answered by writers belonging to all parties, and not only his
impartiality but his accuracy has frequently with justice been
called in question.
In 1757 he
had relinquished the office of librarian to the faculty of
advocates, the salary of which at that time was only about £40
sterling, and by the interest of Lord Bute, he obtained a
considerable pension from the Crown. In 1763 he attended the earl of
Hertford on his embassy to Paris, where he was gratified by a most
enthusiastic reception in the fashionable and literary circles of
that capital. In the summer of 1765 Lord Hertford was recalled to be
lord-lieutenant of Ireland, when Mr. Hume was appointed secretary to
the embassy, and he officiated as charge d’affaires, until the
arrival of the duke of Richmond about the end of the same year. In
the beginning of 1766 he returned to England, accompanied by Jean
Jacques Rousseau, to whom he behaved with a delicacy and generosity
which that eccentric individual requited with his usual suspicion
and ingratitude. He obtained for him from government a pension of
£100 a-year, which Rousseau declined to receive, and when he
quarrelled with Hume, the latter published the correspondence that
had passed between them, with a few explanatory observations.
In 1767
Mr. Hume was appointed under secretary of state under General
Conway, which post he held until the resignation of that minister in
1769. Being now possessed of an income of a thousand per annum, he
finally retired to Edinburgh, where he became the head of that
brilliant circle of eminent literary men, who then adorned the
Scottish metropolis. In the spring of 1775 he began to be afflicted
with a disorder in his bowels, and for the benefit of his health he
went to Bath, accompanied from Morpeth by his attached friends, John
Home the author of Douglas, and Dr. Adam Smith, who had arrived
there from London to be with him. On his return to Edinburgh he gave
a farewell dinner to his literary friends on the 4th of
July, 1776. After a tedious illness, sustained by him with singular
cheerfulness and equanimity, he died at Edinburgh, August 26th,
the same year, in the 65th year of his age. His portrait
is subjoined.
[portrait of David Hume]
He
bequeathed a certain sum for building his tomb, which was afterwards
erected in the Calton burying-ground, Edinburgh.
Regarding the spelling of his surname he had a good-humoured
controversy with John Home, the author of the tragedy of Douglas,
and on one occasion he proposed to the latter that they should cast
lots to see which name should be adopted by them both. “Nay, Mr.
Philosopher,” said the dramatist, “that is a most extraordinary
proposal indeed; for if you lose, you take your own name; and if I
lose, I take another man’s name.” The historian professed to have
found authority for Hume instead of Home in the inscription on an
old tombstone, and in some other memorials of past times. His own
brother, Mr. Home of Ninewells, retained the original spelling of
the name. Another point of difference between the dramatist and
himself was as to port or claret being the better liquor. The
historian preferred port, and the dramatist advocated claret as the
beverage of the old Scottish gentleman, previous to the Union,
before either of them was taxed. In reference to these two points of
dispute the historian, in a codicil to his will, written with his
own hand, thus expresses himself: “I leave to my friend John Home of
Kilduff, ten dozen of my old claret, at his choice, and one single
bottle of that other liquor, called port. I also leave to him six
dozen of port, provided that he attests, under his hand, signed John
Hume, that he has himself alone finished that bottle at two
sittings. By this concession he will at once terminate the only two
differences that ever arose between us concerning temporal matters.”
This writing is preserved, but not entered on record. It is dated 7th
August 1776, eighteen days before his death. His brother died
November 14, 1786. The subject of the following memoir was his
second son.
David Hume’s works are:
Treatise of Human Nature; being an Attempt to Introduce the
Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects; with an
Appendix, wherein several passages of the foregoing Treatise are
illustrated and explained. London, 1739, 1740, 3 vols. 8vo.
Essays, Moral and Political. Edin. 1741, 12mo.
Inquiry concerning Human Understanding.
Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. Lond. 1751, 12mo.
Edin. 1752, 12mo.
Political Discourses. Edin. 1752, 8vo. 3d edition, with
additions and corrections. Lond. 1754, 12mo.
The History of Great Britain. Vol. i, containing the Reigns of
James I. and Charles I. Lond. 1755, 4to. Vol. ii, containing the
Commonwealth, and the Reigns of Charles II and James II. Lond.
1756-7, 2 vols. 4to.
The History of England, under the House of Tudor;
comprehending the Reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI.,
Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. Lond. 1759, 2 vols. 4to.
The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to
the Accession of Henry VII. Lond. 1761-2, 2 vols, 4to.
The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to
the Revolution in 1688. A new edition, corrected. To which is added,
a Complete Index. Dublin, 1775, 8vols. 8vo. Other editions. With the
Author’s last corrections and improvements, and a short Account of
his Life, written by himself. Lond. 1778, and 1786, 8 vols. 8vo.
Two New Essays: 1st, Of the Jealousy of Trade; 2d,
Of the Coalition of Politics. Lond. 1760.
Essays and Treatises on several Subjects. Vol. I, containing
Essays Moral, Political, and Literary. Lond. 1768, 4to. Vol. ii,
containing an Inquiry concerning Human Understanding; an Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Morals; and the Natural History of
Religion. Lond. 1768, 4to. Lond. 1777, 2 vols, 8vo. Lond. 1788, 2
vols, 8vo.
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Edin. and Lond. 1779,
8vo.
Essays on Suicide, and the Immortality of the Soul, ascribed
to the late David Hume, Esq. Lond. 1783, 12mo.
Life, written by himself; published by Adam Smith. London,
1777, 8vo.
HUME, DAVID,
an eminent writer on the criminal jurisprudence of Scotland, the
second surviving son of John Home, Esq. of Ninewells, the brother of
David Hume the historian, by his wife Agnes, daughter of Robert
Carre, Esq. of Cavers, Roxburghshire, was born in 1756. He studied
for the bar, and in 1779 passed advocate. In 1784 he was appointed
sheriff of Berwickshire, and in 1786 professor of Scots Law in the
university of Edinburgh. Sir Walter Scott, when studying for the
bar, attended his classes. He copied over his lectures twice with
his own hand from notes taken in the class, and he describes Mr.
Hume, as a lecturer, as “neither wandering into fanciful and
abstruse disquisitions which are the more proper subject of the
antiquary, nor satisfied with presenting to his pupils a dry and
undigested detail of the laws in their present state, but combining
the past state of our legal enactments with the present, and tracing
clearly and judiciously the changes which took place, and the causes
which led to them.” In 1793, he became sheriff of Linlithgowshire;
in 1811 a principal clerk of the court of session, and in 1822 one
of the barons of Exchequer in Scotland, which latter office he held
till 1834, when he retired on the statutory allowance. The court of
Exchequer has been merged in the court of session since 1837. His
great work on the criminal law of Scotland has long been considered
the text book in that department of jurisprudence, and is constantly
referred to as authority both by the bench and the bar. It was
published in 1797 in two volumes quarto, under the title of
‘Commentaries on the Law of Scotland, respecting the Description and
Punishment of Crimes.’ Baron Hume died at Edinburgh, August 30,
1838. He left in the hands of the secretary of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh a valuable collection of manuscripts, and letters
belonging or relating to his celebrated uncle, the greater part of
which were published in a Life of the historian, by John Hill
Burton, Esq. advocate, Edinburgh, 1846, 2 vols. 8vo.
Baron Hume’s contributions to the Mirror and Lounger were
published in Alexander Chalmers’ edition of the British Essayists
(1802), and will be found scattered here and there in vols. 33 to
40. Not many in number, nowadays they would be considered but of
average merit.
HUME, JOSEPH,
an eminent financial reformer and politician, was born in Montrose,
Forfarshire, in January, 1777. A full length statue of him was
erected to his memory in his native town in September 1859. His
father was the master of a coasting vessel trading from that port,
and, after his death, his mother, who was early left a widow, with a
large family, kept a little stall in the marketplace, for the sale
of brown ware, cheap delph, and other articles of “crockery,” as
such goods are called in Scotland. Joseph was a younger son. His
son, Mr. Joseph Burnley Hume, in a memorial of filial piety, written
after his father’s death, and dated at his grave, says of him:
“Benevolent himself, in quenchless hope the earl he
trod,
His being one continued act of thanksgiving to God!
And thus a long charmed life he lived, that scarce knew
check or fall,
Successful as but few can be, and happy beyond all,
Nor will I doubt that e’en on earth, by many a grateful
tongue,
At fitting times and seasons shall his meed of praise be
sung!
For to his simple soul was given a sturdy common sense
That seized what finer feelings missed, with striking
prescience.
To him, by intuition, came high thoughts and bold and
new;
And all unawed by custom he embraced the right and true;
And from afar, alone, despite a gibing, roaring throng,
He urged reforms and claimed redress of many a freeman’s
wrong.”
He acquired the rudiments of education, with a little Latin,
in his native town. About the age of thirteen he was placed
apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary there, and remained with him for
three years. He afterwards studied medicine, first at Aberdeen, and
then at Edinburgh, and subsequently “walked the hospitals” in
London. In 1796 he was admitted a member of the College of Surgeons,
Edinburgh, and at the commencement of the following year he was
appointed assistant surgeon in the marine service of the East India
Company. It is stated that, on his second voyage out, when the
vessel was crammed with passengers of all classes, conditions, and
professions, on the accidental death of the purser, he volunteered
to supply his place during the remainder of the voyage, and
fulfilled the duties so much to the satisfaction of all on board
that, on the arrival of the vessel in Calcutta, the captain,
officers, and passengers gave him a public testimonial in
acknowledgment of his gratuitous services.
He soon gained patrons in India. Observing that few of the
Company’s servants acquired the native languages, he lost no time in
studying them, and soon made himself master of the Hindostanee and
Persian. He also studied the religions of the East, and the
superstitions of that vast and mixed Asiatic population under our
sway, a knowledge of whose succession of creeds, moulded into so
many sects, is so essential for the proper rule of the millions of
India.
The authorities early recognised in young Hume a valuable and
laborious servant. In 1802-3, on the eve of Lord Lake’s Mahratta
war, much consternation at the seat of government occurred. On a
discovery that the gunpowder in store was useless from damp, Mr.
Hume’s knowledge of chemistry came fortunately in aid of bad
administration. He undertook the restoration of this all-important
munition of war, and he succeeded. He joined the army in Bundelcund
in 1801, as surgeon of the 18th native regiment, and was
almost immediately selected by Major-general Powell as the
interpreter to the commander-in-chief. Besides continuing his
medical duties, he filled successively important posts in the
offices of paymaster and postmaster of the forces, in the
prize-agencies, and the commissariat. Not only did he gain high
reputation by these multifarious civil employments, but he realized
large emoluments, and was publicly thanked by Lord Lake for his
efficiency.
At the termination of the war in 1807, Mr. Hume returned to
the Presidency, and having amassed a fortune of about £40,000,
sufficient to justify his retirement from his profession, he
resigned his civil employments, and arrived in England in 1808. It
was his first intention to settle in the immediate neighbourhood of
his native town, but being disappointed in his views of purchasing
one of two estates in that vicinity, then in the market, he turned
his attention to the active pursuit of mental improvement and the
acquirement of practical knowledge. In 1809 he made a tour of the
United Kingdom, visiting all the principal ports and manufacturing
towns of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the greater portion of
the years 1810 and 1811 he devoted to tours on the Continent,
extending his travels to Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, the
Ionian Isles, and the shores of the Mediterranean.
In 1812 he published an English translation, in blank verse,
of Dante’s “Inferno,” 8vo. In January of the same year, on the death
of Sir John Lowther Johnstone, Bart., the patron of the borough and
one of its members, Mr. Hume was elected, under the old unreformed
system, M.P. for Weymouth, and entered the House of Commons as a
tory, taking his seat on the Treasury bench, as a supporter of the
Perceval administration. The deceased baronet’s solicitor, who was
one of his trustees, introduced him to the constituency for a
valuable consideration. In parliament he soon distinguished himself,
particularly by his opposition to the Frame-work Knitters’ Bill,
which was a formidable attempt to coerce the masters of
Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire to the orders of the workmen, on
which occasion he received the thanks of the manufacturers.
On the dissolution of parliament the following autumn, the
patrons of the borough refused him re-election, although he had
bargained for a second return. The matter was submitted to
arbitration, when he obtained a portion of the money back, for the
breach of contract.
He did not again obtain a seat in parliament till 1818, when
he was returned for the Aberdeen burghs. In the interval he was not
idle. He was an active member of the Central Committee of the
Lancastrian school system, and became deeply interested in the
promotion of the moral and intellectual interests of the working
classes, and in the improvement of their physical condition. He also
published a pamphlet advocating the establishment of savings’ banks.
He was very ambitious of a seat in the directorship of the East
India Company, and although invariably unsuccessful in his efforts
for election, he was indefatigable, in the meetings of the
proprietary, in the constant exposure of Indian abuses, and in
asserting the right of free trade to India, when the charter of the
East India Company of 1793 was expiring. He was the first man in
London who had the courage to maintain that the trade to India ought
to be free to the British merchants, and that the opening of the
trade would be advantageous to the Company and the nation. In a
speech which he made at the India house in 1813, he foretold that,
instead of the exports and imports between British India and Great
Britain being limited to 15 or 18,000 tons, they would, by the
opening of the trade, increase to 100,000 tons in a few years. From
papers laid before parliament it appears that in 1817, four years
after even the conditional and restricted opening of the trade, the
free tonnage to India had actually exceeded the latter amount. The
entire opening of the trade did not take place till the 22d April
1834.
During his canvass for a seat in the direction at the India
house, he became acquainted with the lady destined to be his wife.
He had obtained an introduction to a proprietor who had four votes,
Mr. Burnley of Guildford Street, London, a gentleman of great
influence, and his forcible representation of Indian abuses, and of
the advantages that would accrue to the stockholders by his being
elected a director, established him in the good graces of the old
gentleman, and, what was of more value, in those of his daughter,
whom he afterwards married.
In the parliament which met on the 14th January
1819, Mr. Hume represented the Aberdeen district of burghs,
comprehending, besides that city, his native town of Montrose, with
Brechin, Bervie, and Arbroath. The whole electors of these then
self-elect burghs, members of close corporations, did not at that
time exceed a hundred persons. When formerly in parliament, Mr.
Hume, fresh from India, and accustomed to regard the existing tory
administration as the perfection of government, gave it his
strenuous support. But his reforming and progressive tendencies had
since then detached him from the ranks of the tories, and aided by
the first Lord Panmure and by the liberal party of the north of
Scotland, in a desperate struggle he beat the boroughmongers, and
obtained his return. This was the stepping-stone to his permanent
and independent position in the House of Commons.
In 1830, he was elected, without opposition, member for the
county of Middlesex, for which he continued to sit till the
dissolution of parliament in 1837. In July of that year, Colonel
Wood defeated him by a small majority. In the same month, on the
nomination of Mr. Daniel O’Connell, whose influence was unbounded in
Ireland, he was returned for Kilkenny. At the general election of
1841, Mr. Hume was a candidate for Leeds, but without success. In
the following year, on the retirement of Mr. Chalmers of Auldbar
from Montrose, he was elected for that burgh, and he continued to
represent his native town till his death.
During the long period he was in parliament, he was one of the
most laborious and indefatigable members of the house. His speeches
alone, during thirty-seven years, occupy volumes of ‘Hansard’s
Debates.’ He was a strenuous and consistent reformer of abuses, an
enemy of monopoly, and the most determined and vigilant advocate of
economy and retrenchment that ever sat in the legislature. As a
financial reformer, indeed, he never had an equal. He proposed
sweeping and repeated plans of reform of the army, the navy, and the
ordnance, and of almost every civil department, of the established
churches and ecclesiastical courts, of the laws, civil and criminal,
of the system of public accounts, of general taxation, duties, and
customs. It was entirely owing to Mr. Hume’s exertions that the
public accounts came to be presented in an intelligible form, and
that the sinking fund system was abandoned. He early advocated the
abolition of flogging in the army, naval impressment, and
imprisonment for debt. He carried the repeal of the old combination
laws, the prohibition of the export of machinery, and the act which
prevented workmen from leaving the country. He gave his strenuous
aid to the Catholic emancipation act of 1829, the repeal of the test
and corporation acts, and the Reform Bill of 1832. In the latter
year, when the ministry of Earl Grey, who passed that act, was in
power, he declared in the House of Commons that he “would vote black
to be white rather than risk the existence of the ministry.” For
this he was exposed to much abuse at the time. He was a member of
every liberal and radical club and association that was then in
active operation.
Notwithstanding his stern denunciations of the waste of the
public money, he gave his warm and hearty support to every proposal
for voting the supplies in the cause of education, or to promote the
recreation of the people. In the public service he turned his house
into an office, and at times, at his own expense, engaged several
clerks to assist him in his labours. He was never without a
secretary. He took an active part in every public institution which
he thought might be useful to the country, and there was scarcely a
society for the improvement of the condition of the people but he
subscribed to, and paid his subscriptions. Among the last “motions”
placed by him on the notice book of the House of Commons was one for
more widely extending the benefits of the British Museum, and other
exhibitions of science and art. He served on more committees of the
House than any other member. In the Select Committee on the
Military, Ordnance, and Commissariat Expenditure, he astonished his
colleagues by the intelligence and acuteness of his examination of
witnesses. On some expression of surprise in the committee, he
observed, “You forget I was once commissary general to an army of
12,000 men in India!” Mr. Hume‘s political character was, on one
occasion, thus summed up on the hustings of Middlesex by Lord Robert
Grosvenor, “He is one of the fairest men in the House of Commons. He
has passed the whole of a long life in serving the people, without
fee or reward.”
Until the close of the session of 1854 his natural force
seemed unimpaired. He died at his seat of Burnley Hall, Norfolk, on
20th February 1855, aged 78. His last words were: “Thank
God, I have neither ache nor pain, nor any kind of uneasiness: –
only the machine is wearing out.” He was buried at Kensal Green
cemetery. At the time of his death, he was a deputy lieutenant of
Middlesex, a magistrate of Westminster and the counties of Middlesex
and Norfolk, a vice-president of the Society for the encouragement
of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, and a member of the board of
Agriculture. He was also a fellow of the Royal Society and of the
Royal Asiatic Society. As one of the Corresponding board of
directors of the Society for the Propagation of Christianity in the
Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and as governor of the Scottish
Corporation in London, he always evinced a lively interest in what
concerned his native country.
