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Hume were almost boundless, and he was indefatigable in exposing every kind of extravagance and abuse, but he particularly devoted himself to financial questions, and it was chiefly through his efforts that `retrenchment' was added to the words `peace and reform' as the party watchword. He spent much time and money on analysing the returns of public expenditure, and maintained a staff of clerks for the purpose. His speeches were innumerable. He spoke longer and oftener and probably worse than any other private member, but he saw most of the causes which he advocated succeed in the end (see Notes and Queries, 6th ser. i. 15, 200). He secured the abandonment of the policy of a sinking fund, urged the abolition of flogging in the army and pressing for the navy, and of imprisonment for debt; he carried the repeal of the combination laws, and those prohibiting the emigration of workmen and the export of machinery; was an earnest advocate of catholic emancipation, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and of parliamentary reform. In 1824 he became a trustee of the loan raised for the assistance of the Greek insurgents, and was subsequently charged with jobbery in connection with it. All, however, that he appears to have done was to press for and obtain from the Greek deputies terms by which, on the loan going to a discount, he was relieved of his holding advantageously to himself (see, Chronicles of the Stock Exchange, ed. 1855, ch. xiv.; Quarterly Review article on the 'Greek Committee,' vol. xxxv.; , Life of Scott, vi. 383). When he died he had served on more committees of the House of Commons than any other member. He was a privy councillor, deputy-lieutenant for Middlesex, a magistrate for Westminster, Middlesex, and Norfolk, a vice-president of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, a member of the Board of Agriculture, and a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Asiatic Society, and was twice lord rector of Aberdeen University. Though of an excellent constitution, his health began to fail as early as 1849 (, Letters, September 1849); in 1854 he was taken ill when in Caithnessshire, and died at his seat, Burnley Hall, Norfolk, on 20 Feb. 1855, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. He married a daughter of Mr. Burnley of Guilford Street, London, a wealthy East India proprietor, by whom he had six children, of whom one, Joseph Burnley Hume, was secretary to the commission to inquire into abuses at the mint.

[Hansard's Parliamentary Debates are the best record of Hume's incessant political activity. See Speech of Lord Palmerston, 26 Feb. 1855, for an estimate of his character and career. See also Anderson's Scottish Nation;Greville Memoirs; Harris's Radical Party in Parliament; Times, 22 Feb. 1855; an obituary poem by his son, J. B. Hume, in Brit. Mus., Lond. 1855; Ann. Reg. 1855; Fitzpatrick's Correspondence of D. O'Connell; Buckingham's Memoirs of the Court during the Regency and Reigns of George IV and William IV, and authorities cited above. There is a description of his personal appearance in the People's Journal, iv. 37, and a ludicrously hostile article in the United States Review, iv. 291, which seems to collect all the gossip ever uttered against him.]  HUME, PATRICK (fl. 1695), commentator on Milton, said to have been a member of the family of Hume of Polwarth, Berwickshire, was a London schoolmaster. In 1695 he edited for Jacob Tonson the sixth edition of Milton's ‘Paradise Lost,’ in folio, with elaborate notes, and is said to have been the first to attempt exhaustive annotations on the works of an English poet. On the title-page he calls himself P. H. φιλοποιητῆς. Dr. Newton, in his preface to the edition of ‘Paradise Lost’ published in 1749, says: ‘Patrick Hume, as he was the first, so is the most copious annotator. He laid the foundation, but he laid it among infinite heaps of rubbish.’ Warton, however, called Hume's work ‘a large and very learned commentary’ (Pref. to Poems upon Several Occasions, by John Milton, edit. 1791). Callandar, who edited the first book of ‘Paradise Lost’ in 1750, plagiarised Hume's notes.

[Chambers's and Thompson's Biog. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen; Blackwood's Mag. iv. 658; Hawkins's edit. of Milton's Poems; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.; authorities in text.]  HUME or HOME, PATRICK, first  (1641–1724), eldest son of Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, Berwickshire, by Christina, daughter of Sir Alexander Hamilton of Innerwick, was born on 13 Jan. 1641. The earliest of the Homes of Polwarth was Sir Patrick, knight, son of David Home of Wedderburn, and comptroller of Scotland from 1499 to 1502. The Earl of Marchmont's great-grandfather, Sir Patrick Hume or Home, was among the more prominent supporters of the Reformation in Scotland, and his grandfather, also Sir Patrick, was master of the household to James VI, and warden of the marches. His father, whom he succeeded in April 1648, had been created a baronet by Charles I in 1625. The son owed his zeal for the principles and traditions of presbyterianism chiefly to the care exercised by his mother in