ABSTRACT
'Scepticism' may be defined as an enquiring inclination to doubt whether knowledge has in fact been obtained or whether it is even attainable. People may, of course, be sceptical on some issues or in some areas but not in others. J.S. Mill suggests that what he describes and deplores as Hume's Toryism in politics might be explained by reference to Hume's general and indeed systematic scepticism. This was a notably insightful observation. For both in Mill's own day and since, it has been Hume's sceptical eschewing of all religious belief and practice which has so often prevented conservatives from recognizing that it was Hume rather than his younger contemporary Burke who was the founding father of the modern conservative intellectual tradition.
