ABSTRACT

David Hume (1711-76) was born in Edinburgh and grew up on the family estate, Ninewells, near Berwick in the lowlands. He studied at the University of Edinburgh.1 At the age of twenty-three, he left Scotland for Bristol, where he attached himself to a merchant in order to learn about the world of commerce. After a brief attempt at a merchant’s career, Hume spent three years in France, during which he worked on his first book, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40). Having seen to the publication of his book in London, he returned to Scotland and turned his attention to essay writing, publishing Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1741-42). Denied a professorship at the University of Edinburgh, he authored the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) and the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). A couple of years later he added another section, The Political Discourses (1752), to his book of essays, now titled Essays Moral, Political, and Literary. Failing once again to obtain a university professorship, Hume was appointed librarian of the Advocates’ Library, which enabled him to research his next major project, the six-volume History of England (1754-62). Following publication of the last volume of this work, Hume served as secretary to the British ambassador in Paris. In this post he quickly gained notoriety among the French intelligentsia. In 1768, after a brief period in London, where he served as under-secretary of state, he returned to Edinburgh, where he lived until his death in 1776.

David Hume wrote about political economy in order to encourage debate about the best way to secure virtue and prosperity in a rapidly modernising commercial world. From the time of his first publication, A Treatise of Human Nature, in which he articulated his thoughts on how a society and its polity should be organised to reap the greatest benefits from commerce, he engaged in a lifelong effort to advise citizens and legislators on how to respond to political and economic concerns. Hume was motivated