David Hume Mausoleum in the Old Calton Cemetery

Waterloo Place, Edinburgh EH1 3DE

Having made the effort to get here, notice the grand resting-place of Scotland’s greatest philosopher, David Hume, who was a close acquaintance of one of America’s major figures of the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin. In 1759, Franklin became London agent for the province of Pennsylvania, and, having made the acquaintance of several expat Scots while down south, decided to visit Edinburgh. He lodged on that occasion in the Old Town, where he spent what he later described as “six weeks of the densest happiness I have ever met with in any part of my life.” Franklin encountered many of the famous figures of the Enlightenment, whom he described as “a set of as truly great men as have ever appeared in any age or in any country.”  Before leaving Edinburgh, he was installed as an honorary burgess of the city.

Benjamin Franklin returned to Edinburgh twelve years later, in 1771, and lodged with the famous philosopher David Hume, in his new house in South St David Street. This must have been a most exciting place to stay, for it was regarded as the meeting house for the leading men of the age. Even so, Hume and Franklin do not seem to have got on terribly well, and Hume later accused him of being a factious man, commenting “Faction, next to Fanaticism, is of all passions the most destructive of morality.” However, even brilliant minds can get things wrong on occasion, because five years later, in 1776, Benjamin Franklin made one of the greatest of anti-factious remarks as he added his signature to the American Declaration of Independence, when he said “Now we must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

Sources:

• From Benajmin Franklin to to Lord Kames, 3 January 1760.
• Atiyah, Michael. “Benjamin Franklin and the Edinburgh Enlightenment.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 150, no. 4, 2006, pp. 591–606. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4599027. Accessed 27 May 2025.
• From David Hume to Adam Smith, Feb. 13, 177(x).
• ‘Benjamin Franklin Joins the Revolution’ by Walter Isaacson in Smithsonian Magazine (2003).