Chapter 8 - Political Transformations during the Seven Years’ War: Hume and Burke

Summary

This chapter is partly contextual, considering the political changes ushered in by the unexpected death of Henry Pelham in 1754, and partly textual, as it deals with Hume’s last essay on party (‘Of the Coalition of Parties’, 1758) and Edmund Burke’s first, unpublished essay on party (1757). Both essays were commentaries on high politics at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, as well as wider reflections on the meaning of partisanship and its problems for historical writing, the place of party in a constitutional system, and, in the case of Burke, the distinction between party and faction.