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⁴ For Ferguson as a “constitutional” or “conservative Whig,” see Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, 94, 109; Sher, Richard B., Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh, 2nd edn, (Edinburgh, 2015; first published 1985), 23–44, 187–212Google Scholar; Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Indianapolis, 2004; first published 1959), 194Google Scholar. The similarity between Ferguson, Hume, and Smith can be overstressed, however, and the latter two are better defined as exponents of “skeptical Whiggism,” which to some extent set them apart from Ferguson and the members of the so-called moderate literati of Edinburgh. On this see Forbes, Duncan, “Skeptical Whiggism, Commerce and Liberty,” in Skinner, Andrew and Wilson, Thomas, eds., Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford, 1975), 179–201Google Scholar.

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¹¹ Bourke, Richard, Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton, 2015), 257–67Google Scholar.

¹² de Rapin-Thoyras, Paul, Dissertation sur les Whigs et les Torys (The Hague, 1717), 181–3Google Scholar.

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¹⁸ Hume, David, “Of Parties in General,” in Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F. (Indianapolis, 1987), 54–63Google Scholar. This is one of the most controversial parts of Hume's contribution to this debate, since, as J. G. A. Pocock reminds us, “Party was for most men tolerable only when it embodied principle and so was capable of virtue,” whereas parties representing interests were seen as perpetuating “the reign of corruption”; see Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 2003; first published 1975), 483–4Google Scholar.

¹⁹ The emphasis of the present text differs from that of Duncan Forbes, who argued that Ferguson's “whole philosophy was designed for an age whose danger, as he saw it, consisted in the absence of danger.” See Forbes, Duncan, Introduction, in Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), ed. Forbes, Duncan (Edinburgh, 1966), xiii–xli, at xxxviGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ This was particularly the case with the Jacobite rebellion/invasion of 1745–6; see Ferguson, Adam, A Sermon preached in the Ersh [Gaelic] Language to his Majesty's first Highland Regiment of foot, commanded by Lord John Murray, at their cantonment at Camberwell, on the 18th day of December, 1745 (London, 1746)Google Scholar.

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²² It should be noted, however, that the two modern Stoic philosophers Ferguson most often referred to disagreed on the subject of party and partisanship; compare Hutcheson, Francis, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 2nd edn, ed. Leidhold, Wolfgang (Indianapolis, 2008; first published 1726), 141Google Scholar, with Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, “Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in a Letter to a Friend” (1709), in Lawrence E. Klein, ed., Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (Cambridge, 1999; first published 1711), 53.

²³ Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, 103, 116. For Ferguson's response to the French Revolution see Plassart, Anna, The Scottish Enlightenment and the French Revolution (Cambridge 2015), 57–8, 125–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Ferguson to Thomas Cadell, 16 Nov 1792, in Correspondence, 2: 350.

²⁵ Ferguson, Adam, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Oz-Salzberger, Fania (Cambridge, 2007; first published 1767) (henceforth Essay), 21Google Scholar. See also the following passage from his later work: “Persons may assemble for contest, as well as for concord. And there are few individuals who have not their enemies as well as their friends,” in Ferguson, , Principles of Moral and Political Science: being chiefly a Retrospect of Lectures delivered in the College of Edinburgh 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1792) (henceforth Principles), 1: 24Google Scholar.

²⁶ For Ferguson's very distinct take on sociability see McDaniel, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment, 64–91. Crucially, Ferguson's theory of sociability should be distinguished from Hume's and Smith's commercial sociability. On this see Hont, Istvan, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2005), esp. IntroductionGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ For Ferguson's critique of Rousseau see Ferguson, Essay, 7–16; Ferguson, Principles, 1: 198. See also McDaniel, Iain, “Philosophical History and the Science of Man in Scotland: Adam Ferguson's Response to Rousseau,” Modern Intellectual History, 10/3 (2013), 543–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Ferguson, Essay, 9, 25; Ferguson, Principles, 1: 33; Ferguson, Adam, Institutes of Moral Philosophy: for the use of Students in the College of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1769) (henceforth Institutes), 25–6Google Scholar.

²⁹ Ferguson, Essay, 21.

³⁰ Ibid., 13, 45, 185, 199; Ferguson, Institutes, 150; Ferguson, Principles, 1: 185.

³¹ As Iain McDaniel has pointed out, this might be an implicit criticism of Smith, Adam, who had emphasized “tranquility” in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis, 1982; first published 1759), 37, 120, 149, 230–32Google Scholar.

³² Ferguson, Essay, 209.

³³ Ferguson, Principles, 1: 124.

³⁴ Ferguson, Essay, 244–5, my emphasis.

³⁵ Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 166–7; Ferguson, Principles, 1: 5.

³⁶ Ferguson, Institutes, 155.

³⁷ For Ferguson's critique of Mandeville, see Ferguson, Essay, 36–7; Ferguson, Institutes, 103. For skepticism, see note 5 above and Ferguson, Adam, “Of the Principle of Moral Estimation: A Discourse between David Hume, Robert Clerk and Adam Smith” (1801–6), in The Manuscripts of Adam Ferguson, ed. Merolle, Vincenzo (London, 2006), 207–15Google Scholar. Both introductions to the two volumes of the Principles presented a comparison between Epicureanism and Stoicism, in a manner strongly approving of the latter. Ferguson included his hero Montesquieu along with Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and James Harris among the modern Stoics; see Ferguson, Principles, 1: 8. Ferguson also compared the two philosophical “sects” when contrasting the characters of Caesar and Cato the Younger in The History of the Roman Republic, 2: 347–57. On Stoicism in the history of political thought see Brooke, Christopher, Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau (Princeton, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Hutcheson, Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 103. “Benevolence” was the key concept for Hutcheson, professor in moral philosophy at Glasgow and sometimes referred to as the father of the Scottish Enlightenment. Ferguson used the term frequently and added the following passage to the revised edition of his Institutes: “Benevolence, or the love of mankind, is the greatest perfection; it is likewise the source of greatest enjoyment.” See Ferguson, Adam, Institutes of Moral Philosophy, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1773), 143Google Scholar. See also Ferguson, Principles, 2: 344. It is also interesting to note that Ferguson borrowed a copy of Hutcheson's Inquiry from his university library in 1766; see Fagg, J. B., “Ferguson's Use of the Edinburgh University Library: 1764–1806,” in Heath, Eugene and Merolle, Vincenzo, eds., Adam Ferguson: History, Progress and Human Nature (London, 2008), 39–64, at 60Google Scholar.

³⁹ Cicero, On Moral Ends, ed. Annas, Julia (Cambridge, 2012), Bk 3, 85Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Cicero, On Duties, ed. Griffin, M. T. and Atkins, E. M. (Cambridge, 2015), Bk 1, 28–9Google Scholar.

⁴¹ David Hume, “The Stoic” (1742), in Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, 146–54, at 146 n.

⁴² Ferguson, Principles, 2: 4.

⁴³ Ferguson, Essay, 54.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Ferguson, Principles, 1: 301, my emphasis.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 1: 139.

⁴⁷ David Kettler has written of the “conflict between activist and passivist elements in Ferguson's conception of virtue”; see Kettler, David, Adam Ferguson: His Social and Political Thought, new edn (New Brunswick and London, 2005; first published 1965), 198Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Ferguson, Essay, 28–9.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 29.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Ibid., 63.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ Sher, Richard B., “From Troglodytes to Americas: Montesquieu and the Scottish Enlightenment on Liberty, Virtue, and Commerce,” in Wootton, David, ed., Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649–1776 (Stanford, 1994), 368–402Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Ferguson, Institutes, 282; Ferguson, Essay, 66.

⁵⁵ Ferguson, Principles, 2: 413-19.

⁵⁶ Ferguson, Institutes, 291.

⁵⁷ Ferguson, Essay, 182.

⁵⁸ Ferguson, Institutes, 313.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ de Secondat, Charles-Louis, de La Brède, Baron et Montesquieu, de, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), ed. Cohler, Anne M., Miller, Basia and Stone, Harold (Cambridge, 2015), Part 3, Bk 19, chap. 27, 325Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Ibid., Part 2, Bk 11, chap. 5, 156; Part 3, Bk 19, chap. 27, 325.

⁶⁴ Ibid., Part 3, Bk 19, chap. 27, 325–6.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 326.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ Ibid.

⁶⁸ See note 15 above.

⁶⁹ Ferguson, Essay, 202–3.

⁷⁰ Ferguson, Adam, Remarks on a Pamphlet lately published by Dr. Price, intitled Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government and the Justice and Policy of the War with America, etc., in a Letter from a Gentlemen in the Country to a Member of Parliament (London, 1776) (henceforth Remarks), 13Google Scholar. On Ferguson's admiration for the British constitution see also his Sermon preached in the Ersh Language, 11–12. On the value of orders guarding and promoting their interest, “as far as is consistent with the welfare of the whole,” in a mixed system of government, see ferguson, Principles, 1: 303–4, 2: 464.

⁷¹ Ferguson, Essay, 124.

⁷² Ibid., 124–5. See also Ferguson, Principles, 1: 303–4. These remarks are slightly at variance with his insistence that “[t]he public spirit due from every member of any community” included a “continual preference of public safety, and public good, to separate interests, or particle considerations,” in Ferguson, Institutes, 251, original emphasis. One might wonder why virtue is needed, and why Ferguson was so keen to promote it, when it looks as if interest is doing all the work in the block quote just cited. However, this is not something that would have troubled Ferguson, who saw virtue as the highest good independent of any function.

⁷³ The “Burkean” conception of party can be seen a way for the gentry and nobility to counterweigh the king and his friends, and in that sense represent an order in the state; see Bourke, Empire and Revolution, 752, 781. However, there is little textual evidence to suggest that Ferguson was here thinking in similar terms, and we shall see in the following section that he was particularly critical of Burke's party connection, the Rockingham Whigs.

⁷⁴ Thomas Reid on Society and Politics: Papers and Lectures, ed. Haakonssen, Knud and Wood, Paul (Edinburgh, 2015), 49Google Scholar. See also Pocock, J. G. A., Introduction, in Pocock, , ed., Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1689, 1776 (Princeton, 1980), 3–20, esp. 5Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Montesquieu is likely to have derived his analysis from Bolingbroke's discussion of Court and Country parties; see Shackleton, Robert, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1961), 297–8Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ For this doctrine see Wootton, David, “Liberty, Metaphor, and Mechanism: ‘Checks and Balances’ and the Origins of Modern Constitutionalism,” in Womersley, David, ed., Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century (Indianapolis, 2006), 209–74Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ The passage was part of a section entitled “The History of political Establishment” in the second edition onwards, and “The History of Subordination” originally.

⁷⁸ Out of the eight definitions of “party” in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755), only one, the first, refers directly to political parties.

⁷⁹ Ferguson, Essay, 210.

⁸⁰ Ferguson, Principles, 2: 459; Ferguson, Institutes, 288–9. He used the terms “political liberty” and “civil liberty” interchangeably. See also Elazar, Yiftah, “Adam Ferguson on Modern Liberty and the Absurdity of Democracy,” History of Political Thought, 35/4 (2014), 768–87Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Ferguson, Principles, 2: 459.

⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 508.

⁸⁵ Ibid.

⁸⁶ Ibid., my emphasis. Ferguson was clear that people would better exercise their human faculties in boisterous than in tranquil environments, having earlier drawn a parallel between factional strife and the development of literature; see Ferguson, Essay, 170–71.

⁸⁷ Ferguson, Principles, 2: 508.

⁸⁸ Ibid.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 1: 265.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 2: 510. In his descriptions and condemnations of despotism, Ferguson was undoubtedly influenced by Montesquieu (see Ferguson, Essay, 66), who had famously conceptualized despotism as a distinct form of government. By contrast, Voltaire held that despotism was simply a corruption of monarchy; see Voltaire, Political Writings, ed. Williams, David (Cambridge, 1994), 97–8Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Ferguson, Principles, 2: 510.

⁹² Ibid., 503.

⁹³ Ibid., 509.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 510.

⁹⁵ Ferguson, Remarks, 14.

⁹⁶ Ibid. This is a crucial theme in Ferguson's History of the Roman Republic (1783).

⁹⁷ Sheila Mason mistakenly identifies “participatory democracy” as the political ideal for Ferguson; see “Ferguson and Montesquieu: Tacit Reproaches,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 11/2 (1988), 193–204, at 201–2.

⁹⁸ Ferguson, Principles, 2: 414–15, 468; Ferguson, Essay, 125. See also Elazar, “Adam Ferguson on Modern Liberty and the Absurdity of Democracy.”

⁹⁹ For Ferguson, as for John Millar (The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, 1771), the history of subordination was the history of political establishment; see Ferguson, Essay, 118. See also ibid., 63–4; Ferguson, Institutes, 289–90; Ferguson Principles, 1: 260, 2: 463; Ferguson, Roman Republic, 1: 370. Moreover, Ferguson can helpfully be seen in the context of his friends among the moderate literati of Edinburgh, for whom “it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between submission to Providence and submission to the existing system of social ‘ranks’ and orders”; see Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 185.

¹⁰⁰ Ferguson, Essay, 178.

¹⁰¹ Ferguson, Remarks, 13. See also Ferguson, Principles, 1: 303–4, 2: 367–75. In a letter to the reformer Christopher Wyvill in 1782, Ferguson emphasized the importance of being cautious if or when extending the franchise; see Correspondence, 2: 291–2, at 292.

¹⁰² On this, see Oz-Salzberger, “Ferguson's Politics of Action,” in Heath and Merolle, Adam Ferguson: History, Progress and Human Nature, 147–56.

¹⁰³ Hume, David, “Of the Parties of Great Britain” in Hume, , Essays, Moral and Political (Edinburgh, 1741), 64–72Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ We have to remember that the clearly defined two-party structure withered away around 1760; see Clark, J. C. D., “A General Theory of Party, Opposition and Government, 1688–1832,” Historical Journal 23/2 (1980), 295–325, esp. 305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Ferguson to John Macpherson, 1772, in Correspondence, 1: 95–7, at 96. Macpherson, who succeeded Warren Hastings as governor general of India for a brief spell in 1785–6, was a former pupil of Ferguson and one of his most loyal correspondents.

¹⁰⁶ Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 125. Rather than being connected with a grand Westminster party, the moderate party in the Scottish kirk owed its ascendency, at least initially, to the patronage of the Earl of Bute, who in turn had royal favor rather than party as his source of political power.

¹⁰⁷ Ferguson to John Macpherson, 1772, in Correspondence, 1: 95–7, at 96.

¹⁰⁸ For the dispute see Brewer, John, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1981; first published 1976), esp. 163–200Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Considerations on the Government of Poland and its projected Reformation (1772; first published 1782), in Rousseau, The Social Contract and other Later Political Writings, ed. Gourevitch, Victor (Cambridge, 2012), 177–260, at 204Google Scholar. Rousseau's brief analysis was similar to that of Burke: Wilkes was a “trouble-maker,” but expelling him would establish the bad precedent of only admitting Members of Parliament acceptable to the Court. For Johnson's and Burke's interventions see, respectively, Clark, J. C. D., Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge, 1994), 212–14Google Scholar, and Bourke, Empire and Revolution, 252–7.

¹¹⁰ The husband of Frances Pulteney, daughter and heiress of Daniel Pulteney (cousin of William Pulteney, first Earl of Bath). Ferguson and William Johnstone Pulteney were both early members of the Select Society and the Poker Club.

¹¹¹ O'Gorman, Frank, The Rise of Party in England: The Rockingham Whigs, 1760–82 (London, 1975), 231–57Google Scholar. The other main opposition group was the Chatham–Shelburne connection.

¹¹² Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Part 3, Bk 19, chap. 27, 326.

¹¹³ Ferguson to Pulteney, 4 Jan. 1770, in Correspondence, 1: 90–94, at 93. Ferguson also mentioned Sir George Savile, a member of the Rockinghamite cadre in Parliament, in the same context. The Rockingham Whigs are believed to have consisted of fifty-five MPs after the 1768 election, and forty-three after the election of 1774; see O'Gorman, The Rise of Party in England, 320.

¹¹⁴ The Letters of David Hume, ed. Greig, J. Y. T. (1932), 2 vols. (Oxford, 2011), 2: 302–3, at 303Google Scholar. See also Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 137–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baumstark, Moritz, “The End of Empire and the Death of Religion: A Reconsideration of Hume's Later Political Thought,” in Savage, Ruth, ed., Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain: New Case Studies (Oxford, 2012), 231–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Issue “forty-five” was also a reference to the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 with the insinuation that Bute, as a Scot whose surname was Stuart, was a closeted Jacobite. The North Briton (i.e. Scotland) was set up in reaction to the Briton, an administerial journal edited by the Scot Tobias Smollett. Lord Bute was said by Hume to have been a keen admirer of Ferguson's Essay; see Hume to Ferguson, 10 March 1767, in Correspondence, 1: 72–5, at 73.

¹¹⁶ Ferguson to Pulteney, 4 Jan. 1770, 92.

¹¹⁷ Ferguson to Pulteney, 7 Nov. 1769, in Correspondence, 1: 80–84, at 82. Ferguson echoes the sentiments of Samuel Johnson, who in The False Alarm (1770) criticized those who “are appealing from the Parliament to the rabble”; see Johnson, Samuel, Political Writings, ed. Greene, Donald J. (Indianapolis, 2000), 338Google Scholar. By contrast, Burke ridiculed the idea that the populace had become corrupted in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770).

¹¹⁸ I.e. “the landed Gentry, the beneficed Clergy, many of the more considerable Merchants and Men in Trade, the substantial and industrious Freeholders or Yeomen”; see Brown, John, Thoughts on Civil Liberty, on Licentiousness, and Faction, 2nd edn (London, 1765), 88Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Ibid., 87–8, 111–15.

¹²⁰ Ferguson to Pulteney, 7 Nov. 1769, 83.

¹²¹ Ibid., 82. Edward Spelman had cursorily but staunchly defended “opposition” earlier in the eighteenth century; see Spelman, Edward, A Fragment out of the Sixth Book of Polybius (London, 1743), viiiGoogle Scholar. The most substantial argument in favor of opposition in the first half of the century had been put forward by Bolingbroke in A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism (written in 1736, published in 1749).

¹²² Ferguson to Pulteney, 7 Nov. 1769, 83.

¹²³ Ibid., 82–3.

¹²⁴ Ferguson to Pulteney, 1 Dec. 1769, in ibid., 89.

¹²⁵ Ibid., 87.

¹²⁶ A year earlier, on 22 March 1775, Burke had delivered his first conciliation speech in Parliament; see Cobbett, William, ed., Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803, 36 vols. (London, 1813), 18: 478–540Google Scholar.

¹²⁷ Ferguson, Remarks, 16. Ferguson wrote the pamphlet after he had been granted an annual government pension of £200; see Ferguson to John Home, 27 Jan. 1776, in Correspondence, 1: 133–4, at 134. When denouncing the case made by Richard Price in favor of the American rebels, Ferguson was once again warning about the prospect of “military government,” “the fate that has ever attended Democracies attempted on too large a scale”; see Ferguson, Remarks, 23, 59. See also Ronald Hamowy, “Scottish Thought and the American Revolution: Adam Ferguson's Response to Richard Price,” in Womersley, Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century, 348–87.

¹²⁸ Ferguson, Remarks, 16.

¹²⁹ Ibid., 31–2.

¹³⁰ Ibid., 16–17.

¹³¹ Ibid., 17, original emphasis.

¹³² One of the central tenets of the Rockingham program was that they would take office as a corps in order to secure independence. For “not men, but measures” see McGee, Michael C., “‘Not Men, but Measures’: The Origins and Import of an Ideological Principle,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 64/2 (1978), 141–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³³ Ferguson, Remarks, 17.

¹³⁴ Ferguson's inclusion in the commission obliged him to moderate his stance on the American policy, but he remained hawkish; see Hamowy, “Scottish Though and the American Revolution,” 262–4; Ferguson to William Eden, 2 Jan. 1780, in Correspondence, 1: 226–32, at 227.

¹³⁵ Rockingham identified Ferguson as its author in the House of Lords; see Cobbett, Parliamentary History, 20: 3.

¹³⁶ The first letter was entitled “On certain perversions of political reasoning; and on the nature, progress, and effect of party spirit and of parties.”

¹³⁷ Eden, William, Four Letters to the Earl of Carlisle from William Eden, Esq. (London, 1779), 21, 22, 31, passimGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁸ Ferguson to Eden, 2 Jan. 1780, 226.

¹³⁹ Ibid.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid.

¹⁴¹ Ibid., 226–7. Ferguson echoed Hume, who had forty years earlier argued, “Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed”; see David Hume, “Of the Independency of Parliament” (1741), in Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, 42–6, at 43.

¹⁴² The Poker Club was founded by Ferguson in 1762 “to stir the flames of enthusiasm for a Scottish militia”; see Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue, 118.

¹⁴³ Ferguson to Eden, 2 Jan. 1780, 226.

¹⁴⁴ After the publication of Eden's “sequel,” A Fifth Letter to the Earl of Carlisle (1780), Ferguson wrote to Eden again, saying, “I am much Obliged to you for your fifth Letter & see with great Pleasure the same Tendency as in the former Letters to remove the gloomy Colours which Party is throwing upon our National Affairs.” See Correspondence, 1: 235–7, at 235.

¹⁴⁵ Buke, Edmund, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. Langford, Paul et al., 9 vols. to date (Oxford, 1981–), 2: 241–323, esp. 312–21Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁶ Ferguson, Remarks, 17.

¹⁴⁷ Ferguson to Pulteney, 1 Dec. 1769, in Correspondence, 1: 85–9, at 87.

¹⁴⁸ Ibid.

¹⁴⁹ Ibid. Samuel Johnson referred to the “rage of party” in his intervention in the Wilkes debate; see Johnson, Political Writings, 338.

¹⁵⁰ Ferguson to Pulteney, 1 Dec. 1769, 86. Burke and the Rockinghamites would later champion “economical reform,” i.e. a reduction of MPs dependent on the crown; see Bourke, Empire and Revolution, 419–32.

¹⁵¹ Ferguson, Remarks, 16. The classical formulation of the defense of corruption is found in David Hume's essay “Of the Independency of Parliament” (1741). It may well have been the case, however, that Hume had “borrowed” this argument from the ministerial press of the 1730s; see Kramnick, Isaac, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, MA, 1992; first published 1968), 123–4Google Scholar.

¹⁵² Ferguson, Principles, 2: 488.

¹⁵³ Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 187–212; Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, 252–3, 260.

¹⁵⁴ Ferguson to Pulteney, 1 Dec. 1769, 86.

¹⁵⁵ Hume, The History of England, 6: 54.

¹⁵⁶ This was a crucial theme in Ferguson's Reflections previous to the Establishment of a Militia (London, 1756).

¹⁵⁷ Hume to Hugh Blair, 28 March 1769, in The Letters of David Hume, 2: 196–8, at 197.

¹⁵⁸ Ferguson to Pulteney, 4 Jan. 1770, 92.

¹⁵⁹ Wilkes continued to be debarred from the Parliament elected in 1768, but was allowed to retain his seat when re-elected in 1774.

¹⁶⁰ Ferguson to [John Macpherson], 12 June 1780, in Correspondence, 1: 239–40, at 239.

¹⁶¹ Ibid. Montesquieu had been the great influence on the subject of Asiatic despotism and slavery; see Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 27–30, Part 1, Bk 3, chaps. 8–11, 59–67; Bk 5, chaps. 13–17, 211–12; Part 2, Bk 12, chaps. 29–30, 264–84, Bks 16–17. See also Venturi, Franco, “Oriental Despotism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963), 133–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶² Ferguson was arguably at one with Hume and the mainstream of the Scottish Enlightenment with regard to the interpretation and evaluation of “modern” liberty; see the preceding section. This is not to say that Ferguson and Hume agreed about everything; for important differences between the two thinkers see Raynor, David, “Why Did David Hume Dislike Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society?”, in Heath, Eugene and Merolle, Vincenzo, eds., Adam Ferguson: Philosophy, Politics and Society (London, 2009), 45–72Google Scholar.

¹⁶³ Ferguson, Institutes, 303.

¹⁶⁴ Cicero, On Duties, Bk 3, 111.

¹⁶⁵ Ferguson claimed that democracy and despotism, although complete opposite in spirit, were often similar in terms of form: “In either, a single person may rule with unlimited sway; and in both, the populace may break down every barrier of order, and restraint of law.” See Ferguson, Essay, 72.

¹⁶⁶ Ferguson, Remarks, 52.

¹⁶⁷ As has been seen, Ferguson also had many acquaintances associated with the Rockinghamite party. For Burke, the Rockinghamites, and the Court Whig tradition see Browning, Reed, “The Origin of Burke's Idea Revisited,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 18/1 (1984), 57–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Elofson, Warren M., “The Rockingham Whigs and the Country Tradition,” Parliamentary History 8/1 (1989), 90–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶⁸ As became clear after the outbreak of the French Revolution, Burke shared the fear of popular commotion and the power of demagogues. On this see Bourke, Richard, “Popular Sovereignty and Political Representation: Edmund Burke in the Context of Eighteenth-Century Thought,” in Bourke, Richard and Skinner, Quentin, eds., Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2016), 211–35, esp. 228–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶⁹ For the anti-party tradition see Rosenblum, Nancy, On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship (Princeton and Oxford, 2008), 25–107Google Scholar.

¹⁷⁰ Ferguson believed that the “people” were in principle represented under the British constitution, and while exclusions from voting based on sex, age or fortune were indeed arbitrary, liberty was more dependent on the quality of the representatives than on the number of voters; see Ferguson, Principles, 2: 467–75.

¹⁷¹ There has not been space to deal with Ferguson's History of the Roman Republic at length in the present study. For this and the theme of “Caesarism” generally see the work of Iain McDaniel, esp. “Ferguson, Roman History and the Threat of Military Government in Modern Europe,” in Heath and Merolle, Adam Ferguson: History, Progress and Human Nature, 115–30. See also note 10 above.

¹⁷² One of the innovative approaches of Hume was to reject such a distinction in opposition to Bolingbroke. By contrast, Thomas Reid followed Bolingbroke in making such a distinction; see Thomas Reid on Society and Politics, 50.

¹⁷³ Hill, The Passionate Society, 17; Kalyvas and Katznelson, Liberal Beginnings, 71, 73.

¹⁷⁴ Rousseau, The Social Contract, 60. Although Ferguson did not engage as closely with Du contrat social (1762) as with Rousseau's first and second Discourse (1750 and 1754–5), he presumably read it as he referred to it when discussing “original compact” theories; see Ferguson, Principles, 2: 218. The relative silence on Du contrat social in eighteenth-century Scotland is a fascinating subject.