Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/322

64 docile wife. In 1741, Mr Home published the well known Dictionary of the Decisions of the Court of Session, afterwards continued and perfected by his friend and biographer, lord Woodhouselee; a very laborious work, and of great practical utility, though now superseded by the gigantic compilation of Morison, and the elaborate digest of the late Mr Brown. During the rebellion of 1745, the business of the court of session was suspended for eleven months, and those lawyers whose minds were not engaged in the feverish struggles of the times, had to seek some occupation in their retirement. Mr Home seems at no time to have busied himself in active politics, excepting such as came within the range of his judicial duties and the early predilection of his family to the support of the Stuart dynasty, may have been an additional motive for his preserving a strict neutrality during that disorderly period. In the midst of his retirement, he gathered into a few short treatises, which, in 1747, he published under the title of "Essays upon several subjects concerning British Antiquities," some facts and observations intended to allay the unhappy differences of the period, although it is rather doubtful whether the Highlanders or their intelligent chiefs found any solace for their defeat and subjection to the laws, in discussions on the authority of the Regiam Majestatem, or nice theories of descent. The subjects discussed are of a highly useful and curious nature ; and had the author brought to the work an extensive collection of facts, and a disposition to launch into no theories but such as his own good sense dictated to be applicable and sound, the country might have had to thank him for a just and satisfactory account of her ancient laws and customs, and the rise of the constitution, which the talent of her bar has not yet produced. But these essays are brief and desultory, the facts are few and paltry, and the reasoning fanciful and unsatisfactory. The arguments against "the Hereditary and Indefeasible Right of Kings," if they ever produced any good effect, would certainly constitute a proof that the human mind, as exhibited in any arguments which might be used by his opponents, was then more perverted by prejudice, than it is generally believed to have been in any civilized country. To the truisms contained in that essay, the refinements on hereditary descent form a curious converse; where the feudal system has its origin from the tendency of bodies in motion to continue in a straight line, and the consequent tendency of the mind to pursue its objects in a course equally direct, which proves that, "as in tracing out a family, the mind descends by degrees from the father first to the eldest son, and so downwards in the order of age, the eldest son, where but one can take, is the first who presents himself."

The next production of Mr Home's pen, was one .of a nature more congenial to his habits of thought : in 1751, he published "Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion." One of the grand leading aims of this work, is the maintenance of innate ideas, or principles of right and wrong, in opposition to the opinions of Locke and Hume. After the clear logical deductions of these great men, the duty of an opponent was a task of difficulty; while it is at the same time generally allowed by both parties in this grand question, that the view adopted by lord Kames, while it agrees more happily with the general feelings of the world, cannot bear the application of the same chain of clear and subtle reasoning which distinguishes the position of his antagonists. Like too many of the best works on metaphysics, the Essays on Morality give more instruction from the ingenuity of the arguments, and the aspects of the human mind brought before the reader in the course of deducing them, than in the abstract truths presumed to be demonstrated. It has been frequently noticed, to the prejudice of most of the works of the same author, that, instead of arranging his arguments for the support of some general principle, he has subdivided his principles, and so