 It has often been noticed that Macaulay’s history was read as a response to the popular history of the period published by David Hume, and certainly, Macaulay’s understanding of the significance of the English Civil War, the virtues of the republicans, and the grounds of morality, challenge Hume. Their ideas belong to two diametrically opposed strands of Enlightenment thought. Her religious and ethical views belong to the “moderate enlightenment”, as characterised by Jonathan Israel, while her politics are radical. By contrast, Hume is a naturalist and sceptic whose religious views are in line with those that Israel associates with the “radical enlightenment”, yet he is a political conservative (Israel 2010, 2011; Green 2011; Green 2020). As mentioned above, a tension exists in Locke’s philosophy between his political ideals, which propose the existence of a natural law, which can be known by reason, and his general commitment to an empiricist epistemology. Hume develops Locke’s empiricism in the direction of its sceptical implications, resulting in rejection of the existence of God, immutable moral truth and causal necessity. By contrast, Macaulay follows Locke the political philosopher, and accepts the existence of God, and immutable moral truth, without concerning herself too deeply with regard to the question of how it is that an “abstract fitness of things” can “enable us to compare and perceive the agreement and disagreement of our sensitive and reflex ideas”.