Although David Hume is known primarily as a philosopher, it was with his essays and his monumental History of England that he achieved the bestseller and recognition he longed for. The edition that we present here includes, in addition to the essay On history, the three Appendices that he wrote for his History of England, in which we can find the main lines of a project that in its original edition occupied six large volumes. The reader will be able to verify that, in contrast to most of the illustrated historiography, Hume was not a naive believer in the progress of humanity. Freedoms were developed over time. The institutions that make them possible, the norms that shape and delimit them, are the presumed English national character, nor, on many occasions, the intentions of the very subjects of history.