spent the greater part of 1789 in Brussels. They | returned to London early in the subsequent year, "without money or means of living." The French Revolution was now in progress, and Dr. Mackintosh had not been an uninterested spectator of its workings and tendencies, nor blind to its consequences to Europe. One of his brothers-in-law, Mr. Charles Stuart, wrote for the theatres and the public press; and by him Dr. Mackintosh was introduced to John Bell, and became editor of The Oracle. His first labours were task-work: he was paid by measure, and produced quantities which frightened Mr. Bell. One week he extended to a L.10 length, which must have included many feet of columns; and this occasioned his reduction to a fixed salary. The Oracle attracted notice. The Editor became known to the notorious Felix Macarthy, an Irish compound of rake, gladiator, writer, and politician, the companion of Sheridan in his orgies and election scenes, and the humble follower of Lord Moira." This character introduced him to the unfortunate Joseph Gerald; and by Gerald, who had been a favourite pupil with Dr. Parr, he was made known to that luminary. His brothers-in-law now became proud of their relative. They wished him to attempt something higher than The Oracle, and Mr. Bell's measured employment; and as everything must have a beginning, having had some previous experience as a speaker in Edinburgh, he attended a public meeting of the county of Middlesex, and made a speech which " was received with great applause," especially by Felix Macarthy, and his own personal friends. The death of his father placed Dr. Mackintosh in possession of a little money about this time, and he took a house at Ealing, and sought and found deserved celebrity, by writing his answer to Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," his Vindicia Gallicæ, the foundation of his future literary fame and prosperity. Instead of a pamphlet, as he had originally intended, it appeared in April 1791, as a volume of nearly 400 Fages. He sold the copyright for L.30; but three editions being called for in the same year, "The publisher," says the biographer, "had the liberality [honesty] to give the author more than triple the sum." The enlightened spirit in which the life of Mackintosh is composed may be inferred from the following passage relating to this work : "The period of composing it was probably the happiest of his life. The more generous principles and brighter views of human nature, society and government, of his own ambition and hopes, which then engaged his faculties, and exalted his imagination, were assuredly not compensated to him by the commendations which he afterwards obtained for practical wisdom, matured experience, and those other hackneyed phrases, which are doubtless often justly bestowed, but which are still oftener but masks for selfish calculation, and grovelling ambition. His domestic life was, at the same time, the happiest that can be conceived. He had indulged, by his own avowal, in the vices of dissipation, up to the period of his marriage; but now his life was spent in the solitude of his house at Ealing, without seeking or desiring any other enjoyment, than the composition of his works, and the society of his wife, to whom, by way of recreation in the evening, he read what he had written during the day." Dr. Mackintosh had already been introduced, by his brother-in-law, to Sheridan, who is here called "Manager of the Press to the Whig party." The opponent of Burke also became known to Fox, Grey, Lauderdale, Erskine, Whitbread, and all the leading Whigs; and was, on the other side, as an Inverness-shire gentleman of literary talent, invited to the Duchess of Gordon's routs. He also shared the abuse of the Tories; and this completed his triumph, as the defender of the French Revolution, and the champion of its admirers in England. In the following year, the "Corresponding Society of the Friends of the People," was organized under the auspices of Lord Grey. Dr. Mackintosh, a member from the first, became its secretary, managed its correspondence with great ability, and carefully composed its leading manifesto,-"The Declaration of the Friends of the People." The Society voted him thanks for a pamphlet on the apostacy of Pitt from the cause of reform; and the Attorney-General, Sir John Scott, the present Lord Eldon, did him the honour to become as alarmed at his writings and revolutionary principles, as he was at those of Paine, Mary Wolstoncroft, and "the Friends of the People," and denounced them in common in Parliament. Now an active politician, Mackintosh entirely gave up his original profession; and, entering at Lincoln's Inn, he was in 1795 called to the bar. As a barrister, he does not appear to have had any professional success whatever. He continued to write for the newspapers and periodical works; and though his patrimonial inheritance still afforded some resource, with "his want of prudence and economy, and the expenses of a family he was often embarrassed." This too frequent episode, in the life of all politicians struggling into public notice, was attended by the almost unfailing consequences, the desertion of those principles which, as things are ordered in this country, are soon seen to impede success in life. The biographer of Mackintosh states the case with candour and fairness. "His political principles now underwent a change which was variously judged. It has been assigned to a visit of some days to Burke. There are two versions of his acquaintance with his great adversary. According to one account, he was induced to write Burke, without having had any personal intercourse with him, a letter of recommendation of some third person; according to the other, Burke charged Dr. Lawrence with a long letter to him, containing an invitation to Beaconsfield." However this might be, the barrister threw off the faith of the doctor. The horrors of the French Revolution became, at this time, a scape-goat for the renegades. "He might," says his biographer, five to thirty Peers, double the number of Commoners, and a crowd of the most learned and accomplished persons in the metropolis, were attracted to Lincoln's Inn Hall," as if it had been the Opera House on the first night of a new singer, whose fame has long preceded her. Mem "have recollected that, if the Revolution produced men of blood, religion had generated persecutors, and monarchy tyrants, to become a bloody scourge of the human race. The supposition, that his political opinions were made thus suddenly to veer about, would shake his claim to that depth, firmness, and force of prin.bers of the Government were among the audience ciple, which are the growth of the first order of minds. Other disgusts than those of Jacobinism and the Revolution may be easily conceived to have been felt by him. With talents and ambition, he had his fortune to make. Notwithstanding his intimacy with the leading Whigs, and their estimation of him, he was still but the pioneer of a party; and he must have found the cause of liberty and the people a barren service. The man who would attach himself to the Whigs, or serve the people, must not be dependent for his fortune upon either, if he would aspire to political station, or escape disgusts. What was Burke but the subaltern-the very slave of a party-the pensioner of Lord Rockinghamdegraded rather than distinguished by the paltry title of a Privy Counsellor? If Huskisson became a leading Cabinet Minister, and Canning the chief of an administration, it was because they renounced Whiggism at the threshold of public life. Thus humanity, ambition, and necessity might have predisposed Sir James Mackintosh to become a convert; and the knowledge of this predisposition would account for the spontaneous advances of Burke." It is not, however, evident that Burke's advances were spontaneous, or that he made advances at all; though it would have been something to the nobler apostate, to see another fox, of some mark, cut off his tail. Nor is it unlikely that Mackintosh first won his way to Burke by very courtly reviews, in the Monthly Review, of the LETTER to a NOBLE LORD, and THOUGHTS ON A REGICIDE PEACE. at the introductory lecture, which was the only one published. It drew forth letters of compliment from Lords Melville and Rosslyn, Mr. Addington, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Pitt himself. But the lectures, though they continued to be praised, ceased to be followed by the distinguished personages who patronized the lecturer. There were other persons present to whom the biographer has not alluded, and one judge has left on record an opinion on the spirit, scope, and effect of these lectures, which is entitled to great deference. Hazlitt, in noticing a celebrated speech of Sir James's on the transfer of Genoa, delivered long after this, thus reverts to the more celebrated lectures:-"There was a greater degree of power, or of dashing and splendid effect (we wish we could add, an equally humane and liberal spirit) in the Lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations, formerly delivered by Sir James, then Mr. Mackintosh, in Lincoln's Inn Hall. He showed greater confidence; was more at home there. The effect was more electrical and instantaneous; and this elicited a prouder display of intellectual riches, and a more animated and imposing mode of delivery. Dazzling others by the brilliancy of his arguments,—dazzled himself by the admiration they excited, he lost fear as well as prudence, dared every thing, carried every thing before him. The MODERN PHILOSOPHY, Counterscarp, outworks, citadel, and all, fell without a blow, by the whiff and wind of his fell doctrine,' as if it had been a pack of cards. The volcano of the French Revolution was seen expiring in its own flames, like a bonfire made of straw; the principles of Reform were scattered in all directions, like chaff before the keen northern blast." It was not surprising that peers and commoners trooped to Lincoln's Inn Hall, and that Tory ministers sent complimentary letters. "The havoc was amazing, the desolation was complete. As to our visionary sceptics and Utopian Philosophers, they stood no chance with our lecturer;—he did not carve them as a dish fit for the gods, but hewed them as a carcass fit for hounds. Poor Godwin, who had come, in the bonhommie and candour of his nature, to hear what new light had broken in upon his old friend, was obliged to quit the field ; and slunk away, after an exulting taunt thrown out at such fanciful chimeras,' as a golden mountain, or a perfect man.' Mr. Mackintosh had something of the air, much of the dexterity and self-possession of a political and philosophical He was still so much connected with the Whig party as to be obliged to defend that odious, time-serving, rapacious personage, the founder of the House of Russell, whom Burke had eloquently attacked, and whom the Whig literati should really give up to judgment. Sir James, in these reviews, trimmed between the Foxites and the Alarmists, with the ambidextrous policy which rarely succeeds. If the Pitt party did not now gain him on their own terms, it was because they were not very anxious about the bargain. He had receded from Fox, without making any efficient way with Pitt; though the members of the Tory Government were seen among his friends, when, in 1797, he put forth a prospectus of a course of Lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations, to be delivered at Lincoln's Inn. For this he had the double motive of gaining money for the maintenance of his family and extending his reputation. His understood thorough change of creed, if not of faith, is seen in the circum-juggler; and an eager and admiring audience stance of the Benchers' refusing him the use of their Hall as a Lecture Room, until the present Lord Eldon, and the Chancellor, Lord Rosslyn, signified their pleasure. Previous care must have been taken to make friends. "From twenty gaped and greedily swallowed the gilded bait of sophistry, prepared for their credulity and wonder. Those of us who attended day after day, and were accustomed to have all our previous notions confounded and struck out of our heads by some metaphysical legerdemain, were at last at some loss to know whether two and two made four, till we heard the lecturer's opinion on this head." As the introductory lecture alone has been printed, there is now probably no account of the scope of the whole course to be obtained equal to this of Hazlitt, who, it appears, attended daily. "It seemed," he continues, "to be equally his object, or the tendency of his discourses, to unsettle every principle of reason or of common sense, and to leave his audience, at the mercy of the dictum of a lawyer, the nod of a minister, or the shout of a mob. To effect this purpose he drew largely on the learning of antiquity, on modern literature, on history, poetry, and the belles lettres, on the schoolmen, and on writers of novels, French, English, and Italian. Mr. Mackintosh's lectures, after all, were but a kind of philosophical centos. They were profound, brilliant even to his hearers; but the profoundity, the brilliancy, the novelty, were not his own. He was like Dr. Pangloss, (not Voltaire's but Coleman's,) who speaks only in quotations; and the pith and marrow of Sir James's reasoning, at this time, might be put within inverted commas. It, however, served the purpose, and the loud echo died away. We are only sorry for one thing in these lectures,-the tone and spirit in which they seemed to have been composed, and to be delivered. If all that body of opinions and principles, of which the orator read his recantation, was confounded, and there was an end to all those views and hopes that pointed to future improvement, it was not a matter of triumph or exultation to the lecturer, or any body else, to the young or the old, the wise or the foolish; on the contrary, it was a subject of regret,—of slow, reluctant, painful admission." The biographer of Sir James says, that these lectures, which propitiated the friends of social order, so called, procured the lecturer the offer of an Under Secretaryship from Mr. Pitt; and that it is certain Canning, his personal friend, called upon him with an offer of official place and patronage from the Minister. Though he did not yet obtain place, "his name was placed on the Minister's list, among those who were to be provided for." In the meanwhile, Robert Hall, the Baptist preacher, a man of a far more original and powerful mind than Mackintosh, made his lapse; and in defending his friend, in the British Critic, from Benjamin Flower, the Editor of the Cambridge Chronicle, who had made some just strictures upon Hall's political sermon, we would defy any Tory party writer of the period to have exceeded in violence, unfairness, and gross cant, the late Secretary of "The London Corresponding Society." He denounces Diderot and D'Alembert, and refers, as authorities, to the Abbé Baruel, and Professor Robison ! one specimen :-" Has he (Mr. Flower) never heard that the miners of Cornwall were instigated to sell their clothes to purchase the impious ravings of Tom Paine? or that they were gratuitously distributed among the people of Scotland, with such fatal effects that a large Take body of that once religious people made a bonfire of their Bibles, in honour of the new apostle ?"— "Does he perceive the mischievous and infernal art with which Deism is preached to the deluded peasantry of Scotland, while Atheism is reserved for the more illuminated ruffians of London ?" Let us stretch our charity "to the crack of doom," it is not possible to believe that Mr. Mackintosh was a believer in the bugbears invented to discredit the cause of Reform, which he lent his pen to dress up in fresh horrors. His biographer gives him up. "It might have occurred to him, that though the union of ferocity with irreligion may have been, to use his own words, agreeable to the reasoning' of an alarmist of that period, the union of ferocity with fanaticism was much more congenial, frequent, and cruel; that the French philosophy of the eighteenth century, thus stigmatized by him, with the imputation of an immoral, anti-social, barbarizing spirit, and savage appetite for blood, expunged the torture from the criminal procedure persecution from the criminal jurisprudence of France, and brought the French Protestant within the pale of Christian society. He should have remembered that the obloquy of irreligion was cast upon himself, before he became reconciled to the self-called champions of the altar and the throne; and that mere railing, even where the reproach of infidelity may be well-founded, is the resource of dispute usually employed by persons of mean capacity and base nature." This is well said. Sir James Mackintosh was not of base nature; but, at this time, he betrayed himself, and he felt with the acrimony of a sensitive mind, that could not have been wholly unconscious of wilful error, and that was liable to the imputation of sordid motives. We turn to Mr. Mackintosh in his best aspect,-in domestic life. In 1797, he lost his wife, after a union of eight years. He wrote Dr. Parr with much better taste and feeling than dictated those remarks on Benjamin Flower, "which more resemble the rant by which priests inflame the languid bigotry of their fanatical adherents, than the calm, ingenuous, and manly criticism of a philosopher and a scholar."* It would seem that Dr. Parr had written him a letter of condolence, and he thus addresses the Doctor :"I use the first moment of composure to return my thanks to you for having thought of me in my affliction. It was impossible for you to know the bitterness of that affliction; for I myself scarce knew the greatness of my calamity till it had fallen upon me; nor did I know the acuteness of my own feelings till they had been subjected to this trial. Alas! it is only now I feel the value of what I have lost. Allow me, in justice to her memory, to tell you what she was, and what I owed her. I was guided in my choice only by the blind affection of my youth, and might have formed a connexion in which a short-lived passion would have been followed by repentance and disgust; but I found an intelli Said by Mackintosh himself, in animadverting on Burke's "rant" about the English Free-thinkers. gent companion, a tender friend, a prudent monitress; the most faithful of wives, and as dear a mother as ever children had the misfortune to lose. Had I married a woman who was easy, or giddy enough to have been infected by my imprudence, or who had rudely and harshly attempted to correct it, I should, in either case, have been irretrievably ruined: a fortune, in either case, would, with my habits, have been only a shorter cut to destruction. But I met a woman who, by the tender management of my weaknesses, gradually corrected the most pernicious of them, and rescued me from the dominion of a degrading and ruinous vice. She became prudent from affection; and, though of the most generous nature, she was taught economy and frugality by her love for me. During the most critical period of my life, she preserved order in my affairs, from the care of which she relieved me; she gently reclaimed me from dissipation; she propped my weak and irresolute nature; she urged my indolence to all the exertions that have been useful and creditable to me; and she was perpetually at hand to admonish my heedlessness and improvidence. To her I owe that I am not a ruined outcast; to her, whatever I am; to her, whatever I shall be. In her solicitude for my interest, she never for a moment forgot my feelings and my character. Even in her occasional resentment, for which I but too often gave just cause, (would to God that I could recall those moments!) she had no sullenness or acrimony. Her feelings were warm and impetuous,-but she was placable, tender, and constant. united the most attentive prudence with the most generous and guileless nature, with a spirit that disdained the shadow of meanness, and with the kindest and most honest heart. Such was she whom I have lost; and I have lost her when her excellent natural sense was rapidly improving, after eight years of struggle and distress had bound us fast together, and moulded our tempers to each other; when a knowledge of her worth had refined my youthful love into friendship, before age had deprived it of much of its origi. nal ardour. I lost her, alas! (the choice of my youth and the partner of my misfortunes,) at a moment when I had the prospect of her sharing my better days. This, my dear Sir, is a calamity which the prosperity of the world can never repair. To expect that any thing, on this side the grave, can make it up, would be a vain and delusive expectation. If I had lost the giddy and thoughtless companion of prosperity, the world could easily repair the loss; but I have lost the tender and faithful partner of my misfortunes; and my only consolation is that Being under whose severe but paternal chastisement I am cut down to the ground." The bereaved widower, after adverting to the usual topics of consolation, in a tone of Christian hope and resignation, and mild philosophy, proceeds to consult the learned Doctor about a suitable inscription for his wife's monument. English he thought the best adapted to the purpose, but he requested a Latin epitaph from his friend. Dr. Parr was She " I charmed with the letter and the office. never," he says, "received from mortal man a letter which, in point of composition, can be compared with that you wrote me the other day; and were you to read it yourself, at some very remote period, you would be charmed with it, as I have been, and you would say of it, as Cicero did of his work, De Senectute, Ipse, mea legens, sic afficior interdum, ut Catonem, non me, loqui existemem.'” What follows is amusingly characteristic,-" I have myself sometimes experienced a similar effect from the less objectionable parts of my own writing, long after their pub lication. My opinion is, that an inscriptionsuch a one, I mean, as would be most worthy of your character, most adapted to your feelings, and most satisfactory to your ultimate judgment, calls for the Latin language. You know my sentiments, and from mine, probably, have you borrowed your own, on the best forms of epitaphs." Finally, the inscription on this admirable wife stands in St. Clement's Church, in the Doctor's most choice Latin. The amusing mixture of pedantry and bonhommie, ever conspicuous in this learned personage, has tempted us aside. Mr. Mackintosh married, after an interval of about two years, Miss Allan, the daughter of a Pembrokeshire gentleman. He, about this time, to increase his precarious income, became a shareholder and writer for the Morning Post, at a fixed salary. This print had been commenced by his brother-in-law, Mr. Stuart. The professional life of Sir James afforded so few memorable events, that a good deal of noise, and not to speak it profanely-getting up, attended those that did occur. Like those young barristers, who are more celebrated in public life, than trusted by keen-sighted, cautious attorneys, Mr. Mackintosh's cases were chiefly Committee ones, arising from contested elections. A great case is often of far more consequence to a young barrister than he is to it. It is not difficult to place the finger on the precise case which, by giving scope to the powers of the struggling advocate, and drawing attention to their display, has created, or paved the way for his future prosperity and eminence. The case in which Mr. Mackintosh found a temporary forensic distinction, which, however, speedily melted into his general literary and lecturing reputation, was that of Peltier, an emigrant agent of the Bourbons, who, in London, published a newspaper in French, entitled The Ambigu, for the purpose of dissemination in France. After the Peace of Amiens," The Regicide Peace," this ambiguous print contained a poem, pretending to be written by Chenier, which instigated the French people to the assassination of our then ally, the First Consul. Buonaparte applied for redress to the English Government; and the Attorney-General filed a criminal information against the editor of The Ambigu, who, we are told, "selected Mackintosh for his leading counsel, in order to afford a splendid opportunity to a friend." The trial took place before Lord Ellenborough, in February, 1803. In one word, we shall say, that Sir James, with great pains of preparation, spoke on this celebrated trial, a complete "Anti-Vindicia Gallicæ, a pamphlet, almost a volume, which shews a considerable degree of literary talent and general reading, without much individual or profound thinking; and a very fair —an almost undue allowance of fustian-of claptrap oratorical passages, and of palpable aims at the one-shilling gallery of the public. One passage we shall cite, as the biographer says it " is not only elegant, but has a direct and dexterous bearing on the case, and is, therefore, one of the best in the speech. "One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society; where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants; the press of England is still free." It is guarded by the It is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen; and I trust I may venture to say, that if it is to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British empire." free constitution of our forefathers. "It is an awful consideration, gentlemen. Every monument of European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric, which has been gradually reared by the wisdom and virtue of our fathers, still stands. It stands, thanks be to God! solid, and entire,—but it stands alone, and it stands amidst ruins." Of the Revolution, the converted author of the Vindicia Gallicæ says, "Gentlemen, the French Revolution!I must pause after I have uttered the words which present such an overwhelming idea. But I have not now to engage in an enterprise so far beyond my force, as that of examining and judging that tremendous Revolution. I have only to consider the character of the factions which it left behind it-The French Revolution began with great and fatal errors. These errors produced atrocious crimes. A mild and feeble monarchy was succeeded by bloody anarchy, which very shortly gave birth to military despotism. France, in a few years, described the whole circle of human society. All this was in the order of nature: when every principle of authority and civil discipline, when every principle which enables some men to command, and disposes others to obey, was extirpated by atrocious theories, and still more atrocious examples,when every old institution was trampled down with impunity, and every new institution covered in its cradle with blood,-when the principle of property itself, the sheet-anchor of society, was annihilated,-when, in the persons of the new possessors, whom the poverty of language obliges us to call proprietors, it was contaminated in its source by robbery and murder; and it became separated from that society, and those manners, from that general presumption of superior knowledge, and more scrupulous probity, which form its only liberal titles to respect." "Under such circumstances, Buonaparte usurped the supreme power n France. usurped, because an illegal assumption of power is an usurpation. But usurpation, in its strongest moral sense, is scarcely applicable to a period of lawless and savage anarchy. The guilt of military usurpation, in truth, belongs to the authors of those confusions, which sooner or later give birth to such an usurpation." I say This, and much more in the same speech, might not unaptly furnish tropes and figures to those few superannuated alarmists and antiJacobins, who, in the Tory periodicals, are still endeavouring to shew, that the French Revolution was the exact prototype of the Reform Bill. Messrs. Bell, Grant, Barrett, and Cohen, are at this moment ready to attest this! The Marshalsea of London, and Dublin, and Chelmsford jail, may witness to it-with some fifty of the London newsmen. When Pitt, who could not stoop to make peace with regicide France, went in 1801 out of office, in connivance, as is believed, with his successor, Mr. Addington, Canning obtained a promise from the new Minister, that his friend, Mackintosh, shouid be provided for. In the meanwhile, he defended the measures of the Government in the columns of the Morning Post, and at length reap.. ed the tardy reward of his merits and services, in the appointment of Recorder of Bombay. At one time he might have looked upon this appointment as an impediment in his progress, or a kind of honourable banishment; "but his want of fortune, his embarrassments, the necessity and present duty of future maintenance for his young family, the equivocal position in which he stood between the two great political parties, which then divided opinion in England and Europe, the neutral character of a judicial office; all those considerations prevailed with him." He received, what his biographer says "is called the honour of Knighthood," and sailed for India in 1804. During his residence in the East, Sir James laid aside politics in a great measure. His favourite studies were morals and the philosophy of jurisprudence; his main object, the promotion of civilization and science. Already he appears to have adopted those mild and merciful ideas of the objects of criminal jurisdiction and of punishment, which he afterwards developed in the British senate. His charges to the grand jury of Bombay have been preserved; and they redound greatly to his honour. In the year of his arrival, we notice a passage in his charge very apposite to the present state of feeling in Britain. Several of the Indian provinces had, in that year, been visited by famine. The causes of the frequent famines in India he avoided, as unapt and difficult of investigation to a stranger; but he alluded to the same unfortunate state of things in Europe in former times, when the causes that now occasion at worst scarcity, produced famine. Free commerce he assigned as the main antidote in modern times. "For only one of two expedients against dearth can be imagined: either we must consume less food or must procure more; and, in general, both must be combined; we must have recourse both to retrenchment and to importation. So powerful and so beneficial are the energies of the great civilizing principle of commerce, which counteracted as it everywhere is, by the stupid prejudices of the people, and by the absurd and mischievous interference of governments, has yet accomplished so great a revolution in the condition of so large a part of mankind, as totally to exempt them from the dread of the greatest calamity which afflicted their ancestors!" A singular event which occurred while Şir James was Recorder of Bombay, is stripped of much of its romance, and restored to its proper dimensions, in this Life. Two lieutenants in the British service, named M'Guire and Cauty, were tried before the tribunal of the Recorder, for waylaying, with intent to murder, two Dutchmen, who had excited their anger. They were |