ill open the eyes of that
deluded people; though were they alone concerned, I think it is no
matter what becomes of them.... Our government has become a
chimera, and is too perfect, in point of liberty, for so rude a
beast as an Englishman; who is a man, a bad animal too, corrupted
by above a century of licentiousness. The misfortune is that this
liberty can scarcely be retrenched without danger of being entirely
lost; at least the fatal effects of licentiousness must first be
made palpable by some extreme mischief resulting from it. I may
wish that the catastrophe should rather fall on our posterity, but
it hastens on with such large strides as to leave little room for
hope.

I am running over again the last edition of my History, in order to
correct it still further. I either soften or expunge many
villainous seditious Whig strokes which had crept into it. I wish
that my indignation at the present madness, encouraged by lies,
calumnies, imposture, and every infamous act usual among popular
leaders, may not throw me into the opposite extreme."

A wise wish, indeed. Posterity respectfully concurs therein; and
subjects Hume's estimate of England and things English to such
modifications as it would probably have undergone had the wish been
fulfilled.

In 1775, Hume's health began to fail; and, in the spring of the
following year, his disorder, which appears to have been haemorrhage of
the bowels, attained such a height that he knew it must be fatal. So he
made his will, and wrote _My Own Life_, the conclusion of which is one
of the most cheerful, simple, and dignified leave-takings of life and
all its concerns, extant.

"I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very
little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have,
notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a
moment's abatement of spirits; insomuch that were I to name the
period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I
might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same
ardour as ever in study and the same gaiety in company; I consider,
besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few
years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary
reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know
that I could have b