As has emerged from the arguments in previous chapters, Hume's contemporaries’ evaluations of his works were far from unified. This last chapter deals in more detail with the reception of Hume in the late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century British context. Some explanation seems necessary as to why such receptions should occupy the final chapter of this book. Firstly, as we saw in Chapter 1, despite recent analysis of the relationship between Hume's philosophy and history (Norton 1965; Wertz 2000; Schmidt 2004; Holthoon 2013 and others), John Stuart Mill's evaluation of the relationship between Hume's sceptical philosophy and his political conservatism continues to exert influence. The image of Hume as conservative has also been reinforced by Hume's contemporaries’ evaluation of him as a Tory historian. Certainly, there are some significant differences between Toryism and political conservatism as technical terms. Livingston, for example, considers Hume not a Tory, but ‘the first conservative philosopher’, though he does not expatiate how different these two terms are (1998: 181, 286; see also Livingston 1984: 310; Livingston 1995). However, we do not need to dwell on this point now. When his contemporary and nineteenth-century readers casually labelled Hume as a Tory historian, they emphasised his alleged prejudicial support of monarchy, the established Church and the house of Stuart. It seems to have been easy to associate or sometimes confuse these factors with Hume's supposed endorsement of the status quo and his abhorrence of hasty reforms among later generations. Furthermore, Isaiah Berlin (1979; 2000) and Laurence Bongie ([1965] 2000) emphasise the wide acceptance in Germany and France respectively of Hume among those they class as Counter-Enlightenment or Counter-Revolutionary thinkers, although both admit that such acceptance does not imply any inclination of Hume's own thought towards the Counter-Enlightenment (see also Redmond 1987). These various strands have combined, intentionally or otherwise, to consolidate the view of Hume as a conservative thinker. To settle the issue of ‘liberal/ conservative’ readings of Hume is not the theme of this book, but how Hume's contemporaries and later generations attempt to integrate or adjust his images as philosopher and as historian seems to matter for our understanding of the ‘historical’ Hume.