He was a zealous Hanoverian, and a favourite with Queen Anne in spite of his Whiggism.
The numerous editions of the various portions - for, despite Hume's wrath and grumblings, the book was a great literary success - gave him an opportunity of careful revision, which he employed to remove from it all the ' villainous seditious Whig strokes," and " plaguy prejudices of Whiggism " that he could detect.
His theories had a deep and broad basis in English whiggism; and though he may well have found at least confirmation of his own ideas in French writers - and notably in Condorcet - he did not read sympathetically the writers commonly named, Rousseau and Montesquieu; besides, his democracy was seasoned, and he was rather a teacher than a student of revolutionary politics when he went to Paris.
If Whiggism could be proved to entail Dissent, he was prepared to abandon it.