found guilty; and, when brought up for judgment, Sir James, having addressed them, at considerable length, on the nature of their offence, and with great earnestness and solemnity, proceeded thus: "I consider every pang of the criminal, not necessary to the ends of amendment and example, as a crime in the judge; and in conformity with these principles, I was employed in considering the mildest judgment which public duty would allow me to pronounce on you, when I learned, from undoubted authority, that your thoughts of me were not of the same nature. I was credibly, or rather certainly informed, that you had admitted into your minds the desperate project of destroying your own lives at the bar where you stand, and of signalizing your suicide by the destruction of at least one of your judges. If that murderous project had been executed, I should have been the first British magistrate who ever stained with his blood the seat on which he sat to administer justice. But I never can die better than in the discharge of my duty. When I accepted the office of a minister of justice, I knew that I must be unpopular among the enemies of justice. I knew that I ought to despise unpopularity, and slander, and even death itself. Thank God, I do despise them." Sentence was passed of a year's imprisonment. Very absurd versions of the drama in which Sir James acted what his inconsiderate eulogists call this "godlike part," have been made public. The young criminals are sometimes represented as natives who concealed knives about their persons to assassinate their judge. The present biographer regards the whole as a piece of mystification played off on the judge. The Bombay Courier told the awful story of four pistols, loaded with slugs, placed in a case made to resemble a writing-desk. "There is reason," says the author, "to believe, from other sources of information, that the communication made to Sir James was a misapprehension; that M'Guire protested against the remotest idea of such a purpose; and that he submitted to inspection his writing-desk, which, from mere singularity, he had caused to be so constructed as to serve the double purpose of a writing-desk and pistol-case, and that his pistols, when examined, were not charged." There are some improbable circumstances in the version above cited. If the communication was made to Sir James before he began to pronounce judgment, it appears to have been an inconceivable im prudence to remain gratuitously exposed, even for a second, to assassination; if it was made to him in the course of his address, and he believed that the purpose of a crime so heinous was really entertained, the impunity of the criminals, and the lenity of the sentence, was not magnanimity, but weakness. The probability is, that M'Guire may have swaggered, and threatened, and that the whole story arose from the recklessness of his language. That Sir James sate in godlike serenity, delivering a long address, expecting every moment when the pistols were to go off, outrages common-sense, and exceeds all probability. In India, Sir James commenced a sketch of his own life, of which no more has been heard, and his History of England. He instituted a literary society at Bombay; and occasional papers of his appeared in the journals. One, a sketch of Charles James Fox, which appeared in the Bombay newspapers, after the death of the great orator, though intended as a mark of homage and respect, rather offended than conciliated the Whigs. "This sketch would have been more worthy of its subject," the biographer remarks, "had it been more single-minded." Dr. Parr was offended by allusions to the opinions of Burke, which he imagined depreciated Fox. "If he," says Parr," meant to exalt Mr. Burke, as I suspect he did, his attempt was not wise. His present partiality in favour of Mr. Burke's politics, is greater than my own-his habitual admiration of Mr. Burke's talents is not." Sir James, in short, in trying to please everybody, failed in that impossible attempt. In 1812 he returned to England, after a period of bad health, originating in the climate. Lady Mackintosh had preceded him some years, and influence and his reputation procured him the representation of the small county of Nairn, which was then the likest thing possible to a close borough. Mr. Charles Grant, the East India Director, had, for several Parliaments, represented the neighbouring county of Inverness, and exercised considerable influence in the adjoining counties of Nairn and Moray. In him, his friend and countryman, Sir James found a useful political friend; for the opinions he was understood to have taken out and brought back from the East, could not have operated to his prejudice with any moderate Tory whatever. Lord Moira had even offered him a seat, through the influence of the Court. A pension of L.1200 a-year from the East India Company, and the appointment of the law professorship in Hertford College, furnished the means of life. In Parliament he was understood to occupy neutral ground; but a circumstance attending his first appearance inflicted a mortification, which, by stirring his spleen, kept him aloof from the Minister of the day. It was on the occasion-so interesting to every new member who enjoys a previous celebrity "out of the House" of delivering his first speech. We have this account of it: His first speech, without any failure of talent yet failed wholly of effect. It was de-. livered by him on the 14th December, 1813. The French empire now trembled to its centre. The Rhine was passed, and France invaded by the Allies on the one side; the Duke of Wellington was approaching the barrier of the Pyrenees on the other; and the English Guards were already arrived in Holland. Pending events so momentous, Lord Castlereagh gave notice of a long adjournment of Parliament, and Sir James Mackintosh announced that he would resist the motion. On the 13th December the Minister moved the adjournment of the House to the 1st of March following, without adding a single reason or observation in support of his motion, the propriety of which was, he said, too obvicus to require proof.' Sir James came prepared to tear and trample the flimsy web of oratory which made up that Minister's Parliamentary speeches, his mind and memory charged with an oration, in which he should pass the state of Europe in review. He was taken by surprise ; the manœuvre of the Minister left him no ground to stand upon; he had to discharge his speech in the air; and thus a speech, redundant with eloquence and information, delivered without spirit, under a sense of disappointment and surprise, dropped cold and lifeless, as a prelection, upon a thin and dull auditory." Still it was necessary to do something besides projecting and promising a great deal; and Sir James wrote those occasional articles for the Edinburgh Review, which his biographer gives us an opportunity of ascertaining with more certainty than has yet been done, though the best of them are, in general, well known. The first was on Dugald Stewart's account of the boy born blind and deaf, James Mitchell. It appeared in 1812, and was followed in the next year by a review of Rogers, which afforded the writer opportunity for some discriminating remarks on the living poets, and especially for a few fine" oleaginous touches" to those he was daily meeting in society. The moral defects of Lord Byron's poetry, his "strains of sublime satire," are traced to impatience of the imperfections of living men, to that "worship of perfection which is the soul of all true poetry." Moore is handled with even more delicacy. "The national genius of Ireland at length found a poetical representative, whose exquisite ear and flexible fancy, wantoned in all the varieties of poetical luxury-from the levities to the fondness of love, from polished pleasantry to ardent passion, and from the social joys of private life, to a tender and mournful patriotism, taught by the melancholy fortunes of an illustrious country; with a range adapted to every nerve in the composition of a people susceptible of all feelings which have the colour of generosity, and more exempt, probably, than any other, from degrading and unpoetical vices." Sir James sought golden opinions from all sorts of writers who made a figure in society, by this kind of good-natured flattery; but the unmitigated ardour of his praise was reserved for Madame de Stael. To her he owed a considerable portion of his European celebrity. She had translated his defence of Peltier, and this kindness was now returned with triple compound interest. His review of Madame de Stael's This situation was the more distressing, as the Whigs did not feel it incumbent on them to come to the rescue. Sir Samuel Romilly and Mr. Abercromby alone countenanced the discomfited new Member, who long felt this failure, and from it was, probably, the more disposed to cultivate popularity in society. The following passage appears to us exceedingly just, and of wider application than to its immediate subject:-" The failure was confined within the walls of Parliament. His continuation of Hume's History of England was announced. The talents of the author, and the merits of the work were estimated by the magnificent price he was to receive; and the public, upon his word, placed him, by anticipation, as the classic historian of his age and country, by the side of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. He possessed the talent of conversation; and his reputation in society raised still higher the expectations of the world. Society is said to be less cultivated in London than in other great capitals. It attained at this period its greatest eclat since the age of Anne; the genius and popularity of English living poets; the high estimation of the art, the marvellous events and extraordinary excitement of the time, the influx of distinguished foreigners from the different countries of Europe, rendered certain circles in London brilliant beyond example. Lord Byron was now at the height of his eccentric career; and Madame de Stael, after having paraded herself and her grievances, during ten years, from city to city, on the Continent, came to London, for the purpose of gathering homage through every gradation, from Grub Street to Holland House. Sir James Mackintosh squandered his mornings, his evenings, his faculties, on those dazzling circles. He did the honours of the genius of Madame de Stael; he escorted, introduced, and exhibited her; he was himself among those whose acquaintance is sought by strangers, as one of the leading intellects of his nation; his presence was thought necessary wherever distinguished talents and the best company' were combined for social enjoyment, or for ostentation. But what were those frivolous successes of society-those perishable vanities of an hour-neral View of Ethical Philosophy is the work compared with the sacrifice of so large a portion of the small compass of human life, which might have been devoted, in the solitude of his cabinet, to the production of lasting monuments to his reputation ?" Germany" was published as a pamphlet ; such was its immediate vogue. The most memorable of the contributions of Sir James Mackintosh to the Review, between 1812 and 1824, when he ceased to write for it, are the above, his article on Dugald Stewart's " View of the Progress of Metaphysical Science," in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Sismondi's History of the French. His other writings are well known. The most important are the General View of Ethical Philosophy, written for the Encyclopædia Britannica, the History of England, from the Roman conquest of Britain to the nineteenth year of the Reign of Elizabeth,—and a delightful Life of Sir Thomas More, the only fault of which is, that it wants the easy undress freedom of biography, and, indeed, maintains throughout the stately pace of history. The latter works were published in the Cabinet Cyclopædia. The Ge most characteristic of the mind of the author. It is a useful contribution to literature, and is of the best description of Encyclopædia writing in Britain; where, with rare exceptions, authors, instead of broaching original theories, and pro mulgating novel opinions, have subdued them- | selves into historians of other men's productions, and guarded commentators on their doctrines. On no topic, save those quite abstracted from the immediate business and interests of society, has any man of powerful intellect and original views been permitted to write in the British Ency-decent courtesy towards seats of national dignity, clopædias. The French Encyclopædias were the project of philosophers desirous to unite their forces for the promotion of certain objects, -those of Britain, speculations of traffic, intended to be safe and saleable, with as great a degree of excellence as might be combined with those preliminary conditions. The first intellects of the age were thus excluded from their pages. The morals and jurisprudence of Bentham, and the philosophy of Godwin, would have been inadmissible, expounded by themselves; the science of Priestley would probably have been considered as tainted by what Sir James Mackintosh calls the "unhappy impression which Priestley has made." These large works are, in fact, respectable compilations, but they have never been the vehicles of original opinion or bold speculation in any region of morals, politics, or philosophy. Nor is Sir James Mackintosh any exception to the fixed and necessary principle on which they must be conducted. state, but against the national honour and public affections of a people. After twenty-five years of the fiercest warfare, in which every great capital of the European Continent had been | spared, he had almost said respected, by enemies, it was reserved for England to violate all that which, in the midst of enmity, manifests the respect of nations for each other, by an expedition principally directed against palaces of government, halls of legislation, tribunals of justice, repositories of the muniments of property, and of the records of history; objects, among civilized nations, exempted from the ravages of war, and severed as far as possible even from its accidental operation,-because they contribute nothing to the means of hostility, but are consecrated to purposes of peace, and minister to the common and perpetual interest of all human society." But we leave this speech to the study of Major Pringle and his advocates. It made Sir James exceedingly popular with the Americans; for men of all shades of opinion in the United States sympathized, in warm indignation, at the wanton outrage and premeditated insult to the national feelings and honour which he eloquently stigmatized. If Dr. Parr was the wholesale epitaph-monger, Sir James Mackintosh was not less the obituaryorator of the last generation. Some of his funeral orations were delivered in Parliament, as that on Grattan-others through the press. To friend, Hall, are indebted for eulogies. A species of composition and oratory, unavoidably pervaded by pedantry and exaggeration, if not tainted with falsehood, flattery, and execrable taste, could not be rendered tolerable even by the talents of Mackintosh. His most elaborate effort, the character of Canning, published in the "Keepsake," is his happiest attempt in a difficult branch of literature, already languishing and soon to be proscribed. History and Time remain to pronounce their impartial fiat on character. Until that is done, public men, in modern days, must be content to let their deeds speak for them. The greatest distinction in Parliament which Sir James Mackintosh attained, in his first years of public service, was being the fellow-labourer of Sir Samuel Romilly, in the mitigation of the sanguinary horrors of the penal law, and parti-him the memories of Fox, Canning, and his early cularly the unchristian and inhuman barbarities which attended executions for treason. His early studies gave him the desire and power of speaking on all questions relating to international law; which were of frequent occurrence about the conclusion of the war, and during the first movements of the Holy Alliance. His views of foreign policy were gradually becoming more liberal; and after he came into Parliament for the Duke of Devonshire's borough of Knaresborough, if not a violent he was a decided Whig, and often appeared on the liberal side of popular questions. He opposed the Foreign Enlistment Bill, which is now about expiring; and against the Alien Act he made a yearly protest. Against large standing armies Sir James spoke in the best spirit of the ancient Whigs; he was the enemy of the slave-trade, and the advocate of Catholic emancipation. The transfer of Genoa, the blockade of the ports of Norway, and the state of Poland, furnished occasions for eloquent and popular declamation; and his strenuous efforts to ameliorate the criminal law relating to Bank forgeries, after the death of Sir Samuel Romilly, to whom he and Mr. Brougham succeeded as reformers of this branch of our faulty institutions, may be set down as positive and tangible benefits conferred on humanity. None of his speeches in Parliament gained more universal approbation than that which he delivered on the conduct of the British army at Washington, which he denounced with just reprobation :-" It was," he said, " tack not against the strength or the resources of a an at During the Canning administration, the Goderich abortion, and the vigorous Catholic-Emancipation period of Wellington and Peel, Sir James Mackintosh lent ministers the general support given by all the moderate Whigs. Though his opi nions on the popular, but often inconclusive topics we have specified, were liberal, the early Secret-ry of "The London Corresponding Society of the Friends of the People" had as completely forgotten the necessities of a sweeping reform in the House of Commons, as others of his associates of that period. To effect a thorough and effectual reform in the representation of the people was to begin at the beginning :-to aim at the root of the Upas-tree of corruption was demanded;-they thought it safer to nibble at a few of the rotten branches, or the excrescences on its trunk. Earl Grey came into office; and Sir James, now for a dozen years, a Whig nominee in Parliament, was appointed Commissioner for the Affairs of In But riage airing,) and his state became worse. His debility increased, with pains in the head and limbs. Those pains gave way to brain fever and delirium. His condition became hopeless. He fell into a state of insensibility, which continued to his death, on the 30th of May." Sir James Mackintosh was, at his death, in his sixty-sixth year. He was buried at Hampstead. On being elected member for Nairnshire, Sir James Mackintosh, in full-blown reputation, visited Scotland. He again returned in 1822, when he was chosen Lord Rector of Glasgow University. This honorary office he filled in the succeeding year. dia; and when the time came, supported the Reform Bill. "Sir James Mackintosh," says his biographer, "now returned, or was borne back, to the principles of the Vindicia Gallica of his youth, after forty years' renunciation of them. It was understood that he relapsed into his early creed, not from experience, conviction, the force of popular opinion, or the spirit of the time, but from being bound in the wake of the administration. This is not improbable. It is not in the decline of life that men enlarge their views of popular privilege, and catch the fearless spirit of democracy; and opinions once entertained and renounced, are ever regarded with something like disgust."-This is humiliating. Sir James Mackintosh, after forty years, affected to acquiesce in the opinions he had renounced and stigmatized, because the appointment of Commissioner for the Affairs of India had "bound him in the wake of an administration," which could not exist for a day without embracing those dangerous opinions and untried theories, which, for a selfish cause, now found in him and others strenuous advocates! But whatever were the actuating motives, the doctrines advanced were sound, and the pleading forcible. To the boroughmongers, whom Sir James, averse to uncourtly phrase, uniformly termed "the great proprietors," he addressed this memorable advice," Above all other considerations, I should dare to advise these great proprietors to cast from them those reasonings which would involve property in the approaching downfal of political abuse. If they assent to the doctrine, that political privilege is property, they must be prepared for the inevitable consequence, that it is no more unlawful to violate property than to resume a delegated trust. The suppression of the dependent boroughs is at hand. It will be the truest wisdom of the great proprietors, the natural guardians of the principle of property, to maintain, to inculcate, to enforce, the essential distinction between it and political trust, if they be desirous not to arm the spoilers whom they dread with arguments which they can never consistently answer." In the winter of 1831-2, Sir James Mackintosh took almost no part in the business before Parliament. His time was divided between his official duties and the composition of his great work, and his health was delicate. "The proximate cause of his last illness was accidental. About the middle of March, 1832, he experienced at dinner a sudden difficulty of deglutition and respiration." A morsel of chicken which he was eating was supposed to remain in his throat. The proper remedies were tardily ap-nical temper, nor an impracticable virtue. Many a plied, and the obstruction removed, but his health suffered, as the surgeon first called in seems to have mistaken the case, if, as is stated, he said no such obstruction existed as that afterwards removed by proper treatment. IIe rallied after this but never recovered farther than the dangerous stage, when the feeling of returning health and strength prompts to undue exertion. "Presuming too much upon returning health, he, in one instance, remained out too long, (on a car VOL. INO. IV. The notices that have appeared of the life of Sir James have hitherto been almost unqualified panegyric, such as he often dealt out unsparingly himself, to the living and the successful. The present memoir, which avoids the besetting sin of works of this nature, may, on some points, be deemed harsh or acrimonious. It seems to us as if a few crude softening effects had been thrown in, under this impression, for they do not harmonize well with the tone of the production. The writer appears to have begun his task with the idea, that his subject was over-estimated as a lawyer, an orator, and a man of general learning and accomplishment; and to have written under the conviction, that truth is the great end of all biography. He has analyzed the different works of Sir James, examined his conduct at the great epochs of his life, and come to the conclusion that, though "he assuredly deserved his high reputation, the world or the public has rarely been so liberal;" that "he was estimated by what he promised, rather than by what he achieved. Constitutionally indolent, and condemned to pass, under a distant enervating sun, seven years of that precious stage of life and intellect, which combines vigorous manhood with mature experience, he has left only sketches and fragments to sustain the reputation of a firstrate publicist, philosopher, critic, and historian." As a public character, in a trying period for public virtue, we may at least affirm, that his opinions never, at any one time, stood in the way of his advancement. Nor is it necessary that a philosopher or a literary character should not be permitted to retain his political neutrality inviolate; but the man who, at one period a violent reformer, could so suddenly be converted into an alarmist, and again, much later, return to the early faith he had openly deserted, and bitterly inveighed against, every change being to the thriving side, does not evince a very stoical or cy public man has fallen into similar errors. The world teems with renegade Whigs; as, if Whig rule be protracted for seven years, or for less time, it will inevitably do with turn-coat Tories; but considerable literary talent, some power as an orator, a mild and urbane temper, and great social good nature, does not always, as in the case of Sir James Mackintosh, raise them, whether a Scarlett or a Lyndhurst, into "first-born of earth," "demigods of Fame." In this consisted his peculiar feli T His voice was monotonous and untunable at all times; and when he became energetic, or rather unguarded, a provincial ennunciation impaired the correctness and vulgarized the dignity of his vocabulary and style. city; the wo pronounced against the man, of whom | expression. Our author concludes with an estimate of Sir James Mackintosh as an historian, an orator, and a talker. The notice, it is obvious, has been drawn out to the length it occupies, more by the consideration of the high place assigned to its subject, as a leading intelligence and ornament of his age and nation, than from the writer's personal conviction of the validity of those claims. As a politician, we have already cited his opinion of the leading points in the career of Sir James. "As an historian," it is said, "he thought too much of discoursing and too little of narrating. Instead of relating events and circumstances, he takes them up as subjects of disquisition. He is luminous and copious, but diffuse, and only not irrelevant..........He was not formed by nature, or by discipline, in person or in faculty, for an accomplished orator. His person and gestures were robust and graceless, but without awkwardness or embarrassment. His countenance was strongly marked, without flexibility or force of .He wanted the oratorical temperament. He was vehement without passion, humane without pathos; he took comprehensive and noble views, without imagination or fancy. For a vigorous dialectican, he was too diffuse. He did not employ either the artifices of rhetoric, or the forms of logic; the syllogism of Canning, or the dilemma like Brougham. Conversation was a talent in the last century. It has become an art............ Few arts are more difficult, and Sir James Mackintosh had the reputation of a master in it. He was rich and various, without being ambitious or prolix. He had known many eminent or remarkable persons in public life, literary and political, of whom he related anecdotes and traits of character, with facility and precision." We are compelled to close abruptly, and before approaching the history. The mystery connected with it is, Why a writer so frequently opposed in opinion to Sir James Mackintosh, and so opposite in feeling and predilection, should have been chosen to conclude his great labour? and why, above all, one should have assumed the task who so little sympathises in his admiration of the Hero of the Revolution, and its chiefs, as to betray partiality as strong on the one hand as Sir James does on the other. ON THE PECULIAR BURDENS AFFECTING LAND. which amounted in England and Wales, in the L.688 261 37 14 1000 ONE of the arguments the most frequently | burdens, are the poor-rates and county-rates, urged in defending the restrictions upon the importation of corn, is, that land is taxed in a peculiarly severe manner, and that therefore, the landholders are entitled, as a matter of right, to have such a duty imposed on corn imported as will compensate them for these peculiar burdens. The obvious answer to this argument is, that if such peculiar burdens exist, they ought to be removed; and not, that because the corn of this country is taxed, that imported from other countries should be equally taxed. In the present state of Europe, it is of the utmost importance to this country that food should be procured for our manufacturers as cheaply as possible; for it is by having cheap food alone, that they can compete for any number of years, with the increasing activity and industry of their rivals on the Continent. It is therefore of much consequence to ascertain whether there are any peculiar burdens on the land, which tend to enhance the price of food; for if there are, their speedy removal is of paramount importance to the country. POOR-RATES AND COUNTY RATES. Now, it will be remarked, that the assertion so often made, that nearly the whole of the poorrates and county-rates falls on the land is incorrect, for a considerable proportion of them is paid by the proprietors of dwelling-houses and factories. But in reality, the burden of the poorrates is much less than it appears. Of the L.7,036,969 expended in 1832 in England and Wales for the relief of the poor, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that one-half of that sum is in reality the wages of labour. This arises from the pernicious manner in which the poor-laws are administered throughout a great part of Eng The first, and most important of these alleged land. In 1795, the price of grain rose more than |