Our laws, language, religion, politics, & manners are so deeply laid in English foundations, that we shall never cease to consider their history as a part of ours and to study ours in that as it's origin. Every one knows that judicious matter & charms of stile have rendered Hume's history the Manual of every student. I remember well the enthusiasm with which I devoured it when young, and the length of time, the research & reflection which were necessary to eradicate the poison it had instilled into my mind. It was unfortunate that he first took up the history of the Stuarts, became their apologist and advocated all their enormities. To support his work, when done, he went back to the Tudors, and so selected and arranged the materials of their history as to present their arbitrary acts only, as the genuine samples of the constitutional power of the crown; and, still writing backwards, he then reverted to the early history, and wrote the Saxon & Norman periods with the same perverted view. Altho' all this is known, he still continues to be put into the hands of all our young people, and to infect them with the poison of his own principles of government. It is this book which has undermined the free principles of the English government, has persuaded readers of all classes that these were usurpations on the legitimate and salutary rights of the crown, and has spread universal toryism over the land.

(TJ letter to William Duane, 1810)
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