cils of national representation, with a mind attempered with those mild and benevolent feelings which the calmness of philosophical studies is well suited to promote, invigorated by unremitted exercise, accustomed to thoughtful and laborious investigations, rich with the materials of collective wisdom, instructed by the experience of history, heightened and adorned with all the noblest creations of poetry, elevated above local prejudices and temporary passions, and anxious to ameliorate the condition and to increase the happiness of mankind; not by pointing out views of unattainable perfection, nor hazarding the fortunes of the human race on wild and unpractised theories, but by bringing the experience of the past to the improvement of the future, by guarding and surrounding the application of abstract principles in government and legislation by practical policy and expedient prudence; by duly estimating the weight of high authorities and venerable opinions; by securing the advancement and well-being of society on the solid basis of justice and liberty; and seeing the future prospects of mankind widening and enlarging, as these principles of civil and religious freedom, by the progressive wisdom of individuals and governments, were acknowledged and enforced.

The Society of the Friends of the People was instituted in 1792, for the purpose of obtaining a Parliamentary Reform, under the auspices of that illustrious person, to whose lot it has fallen, years after, to carry into execution the ardent aspirations of his youth. Sir J. Mackintosh wrote several of the manifestoes, and conducted with great ability the correspondence of the Friends of the People. The declaration of the Friends of the People was written by him, and a pamphlet on the defection of Mr. Pitt from the cause of Reform, procured him a vote of thanks from the Society. So dangerous was the supposed influence of his writings, that Lord Eldon called on the House of Commons to continue the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, as they feared the writings of Paine, Mackintosh, Wolstencroft, and the Friends of the People. To compensate the denunciations of the Attorney-General, he received the spontaneous tribute of a panegyric by Mr. Fox, on the acknowledged merits of his work. Mackintosh had renounced Medicine, and taken a profession more connected with politics than that which belongs to the College of Physicians: he entered himself of Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the Bar in 1795. By the death of an an annuitant he became possessed of some property, which he mortgaged, and, but for his wife's dissuasion, would have sold. He contributed to the periodical press; but was too improvident not to be continually in a state of pecuniary embarrassment. Now, however, came a change; it is said that, after a few days' visit to Burke, the political opinions of his guest were found much modified and mellowed, if not materially altered. It seems doubtful whether Burke solicited the acquaintance of the author of the Vindiciæ, or whether Sir James was the first to begin the correspondence: however, it is certain that the conversation of that venerable and retired statesman produced a strongly marked effect on him. It is well known that he was subject to the severity of those animadversions which are plentifully lavished by an angry party on all who appear the least to recede from the extreme violence and impetuosity of their designs. surely is more honourable and wise to confess an error than to persevere in it. A consistency in wrong becomes only a wicked obstinacy; and they are not hastily to be censured who, in maturer years, and with more experience of life and deeper knowledge of mankind, have relinquished the opinions which were entertained in the impetuosity of pasGENT. MAG. VOL. I.

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sion and inexperience of youth. Who is the man who would be rash enough to avow that his opinions should be fixed and unchangeable? Perhaps, from the frenzied atrocities of the revolutionary governments, he turned with abhorrence and disgust; perhaps his naturally mild and humane disposition, and his calm dispassionate judgment, had time gradually to prevail over the hasty though generous impulses of his earlier years; perhaps he considered that the moderation of his conduct, and his acting not on party motives, or professional interests, but on large and comprehensive views, and on statesmanlike principles, with a free and prospective wisdom, and with a reverence for the instruction of experience, would ensure his motives from being viewed with contempt, or attributed to sordid and interested purposes. Strong signs (says the author of the present narrative) of the new faith of Mackintosh, may be observed in his anonymous contributions at this period to the reviews of the day. He wrote a great number of papers, and upon a great variety of subjects, in the Monthly Review. Among these are notices of Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord, and Thoughts on a Regicide Peace. They are indeed splendid specimens of the union of philosophy and eloquence; and are infinitely superior to his former works in the solidity of their reasoning, the variety of their illustration, the elegance of their language, and the richness and beauty of the composition.

Mr. Erskine's "Views of the Causes and Consequences of the War" were subject to a friendly and partial criticism;-and Mackintosh again rejoined the forsaken walks of literature in passing his judgment on the Posthumous Works of Gibbon, and the Life of Lorenzo de Medici. In the review of the former, the observations which he makes on historical composition, and on style in general, are worthy of attention; but perhaps a little national pride may be pardoned, in the somewhat exalted station allotted to Robertson, and in the estimate of comparative excellence between the Historian of Mary, and the Author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In 1797 Sir James Mackintosh put forth the prospectus of a Course of Lectures to be delivered on the Law of Nature and of Nations. Here, free from the agitations of party and the allurements of politics, or even the engagements of a profession, the calm and disinterested views of the scholar and the legislator might be advanced; here his stores of constitutional wisdom, of historic research, and legislative polity might be unveiled and examined; here he might delight in expounding the eloquent disquisitions of Grotius, or enforcing the learned decisions of Vattel. The practise of law, and the struggles of the bar, and solicitations for business, were all alien to the tranquillity and thoughtfulness of his calm abstracted mind. "My nature,” he says in a letter to Hall, " would have been better consulted, if I had been placed in a quieter station, where speculation might have been my business, and visions of the fair and good my chief recreation." He requested the use of the Hall from the Benchers, who feared that Jacobinism lurked under the mask of temperate discussion and philosophic enquiry-" the voice (they said) is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. Lord Rosslyn, however, and Sir John Scott, who were better informed, stept in, and the favour was conceded. His lectures received high applause, and were frequented by the most eminent persons at the Bar and in the Senate. Pitt wrote him letters of compliment; near thirty peers were counted on the benches; and with the just and great increase of his reputation, the way of fortune seemed for the first time to be opening before him; Mr. Canning called on him with the offer of official patro

nage and place from the minister :—while, on the other hand, those who had so long been watching his altered opinions, and mistrusting his more guarded and moderate language, now openly used the language of reproach, charged him with the dereliction of his principles, and stigmatized him as the deserter of the cause of Freedom, and the renegade from the cause of the new Whigs; to use his own words," the warm language of his youth was cited against his more mature opinions."

Mackintosh obtained but little practice in the Courts of Westminster; his business lay chiefly in Parliamentary Committees: but the memorable and well-known trial of Peltier was the occasion of bringing forth one of the most splendid productions of forensic oratory. Passages of it were got by heart and quoted, and M. de Stael translated it into French, and spread it over Europe. The only objections that have been made to it were, that the knowledge is too abstracted, the political philosophy too refined, and the eloquence too elaborate and redundant; but it may be said, on the other hand, that while many orations that have produced great immediate effects, and "wielded at will the democracies of intellect" and feeling, appear to have expired like flames that have exhausted the fuel they fed on, and are cold, dull, and uninstructive to the unimpassioned reader, this speech still delights, from the copiousness of its thoughts, the vast variety of its knowledge, the beauty of its illustrations, and the chastened force of its eloquence. Its political principles are those which he adopted after his acquaintance and connection with Burke.

In April 1797 he was visited by a severe domestic affliction in the death of his esteemed and beloved wife; and the letter, in which he poured out his sorrows into the warm and affectionate bosom of Dr. Parr, is a composition of great beauty, feeling, and eloquence. After remaining two years a widower, he married Miss Allen, the daughter of a gentleman residing in Pembrokeshire; and, to procure a better provision for his family, than arose from the precarious income of his profession, he became a shareholder in the Morning Post, and wrote for it at a yearly salary. Mr. Addington was at the head of the Administration. The war with France recommenced; the policy of its renewal was vindicated by Mackintosh in the columns of his paper; and the Minister, sensible of his merit and talents, offered him the vacant Recordership of Bombay. In his situation, to decline such an offer would have been the height of imprudence. He had a young family to provide for, heavy embarrassments to struggle against, little professional business, and he stood in a kind of neutral or equivocal situation as regarded the political parties in the State. There must also have been inducements in the comparatively calm and tranquil character of the judicial office; in new and more extended spheres of action and views of society opening before him; in the hope of being able to secure the future civilization and prosperity of India on the broad and solid basis of laws better understood, justice more equally distributed, and the rights of property and person, even to the poor Hindoo idolater, acknowledged and established; and, lastly, in the natural expectation, after his duties to society had been performed, and his projects of benevolence had been realized, of retiring to his native country, with such an honourable independence as would afford him the future means of assisting her by his great political knowledge and legislative wisdom.

We must rapidly pass over this period of his life, and abridge as much as we are able the remainder of our narrative. Sir James was unacquainted with Oriental literature, and never gained any knowledge of the languages

of the East. Short as his residence was destined to be, comprehensive as were his views, and great his attainments in science, in history, and European politics, it would have been an accomplishment procured at too costly a sacrifice of time and thought, and he did wisely to abstain from the seductions that to his imaginative mind such a new field of literature spread before him. In his first official charge he openly avowed his strong repugnance to Capital Punishments; he affirmed that he had no opinion of the efficacy of transportation for reformation or example; and he wished all places of punishment to be so constructed as to prevent the loss of liberty being aggravated by unnecessary severities. He conceived it to be the first duty of a criminal judge to exert and strain every faculty of his mind to discover, in every case, the smallest possible quantity of punishment that may be effectual for the ends of amendment and example. He considered every pang of the criminal, not necessary for those objects, as a crime in the judge. To these sentiments, which did honour to him as a citizen and as a man, and which were in full accordance with his belief as a Christian, he was through life consistent; and to him was given the high and enviable privilege of extending those principles by his influence as a legislator, which he had firmly enforced by his authority as a judge.*

It is said that while in India he commenced the History of England, beginning with the Revolution. He sketched some of the principal characters, and leading passages in the work; and though these sketches were stolen from him, and offered for sale in France, he subsequently recovered them. He wrote a very beautiful and masterly sketch of the character of Fox in the Bombay Courier; a sketch so just in its ideas, so elegant in its language, so honourable in its feeling, as at once to rise into an undisputed superiority over numerous competitors. He returned to Europe in 1812, and received a pension of 1,2007. a-year from the Company, and a Law Professorship in the College. In the same year he was returned to Parliament through the interest of Lord Camden, as the representative of the small county of Nairn. We cannot follow him through the details of his political life, the effect of his first speech was undermined by a manoeuvre of Lord Castlereagh, and it is said that the failure was long felt by him. As a politician he appeared to stand on neutral ground. The Whigs did not desert nor disclaim him, and yet the Court offered him a seat through the medium of Lord Moira. He wrote many able articles for the Edinburgh Review, and unfolded his philosophical principles of criticism on works of taste and science; and in society he was distinguished for the brilliancy and amenity of his conversational powers.

The annexation of Genoa to Sardinia called forth in one splendid display the varied argumentative powers of his mind; his established maxims of civil jurisprudence; his knowledge of the great fundamental principles of the constitution-his acquaintance, deep and wide, with municipal and international law-and his warm interest in the independence of nations, and

To this praise of simplicity, one passage pointed out by the Biographer is certainly an extraordinary exception. "The moral and political system of Hobbes was a palace of ice, transparent, exactly proportioned, majestic, admired by the many as a delightful dwelling, but gradually undermined by the central warmth of human feeling, before it was thawed into muddy water by the sunshine of true philosophy."

There is a strangely worded sentence in this part of the narrative: "After his return to England he was requested to sit for a bust of him, to be placed in the Society's library, and was regarded with the reverence due to one who was its chief or.

nament."

the sacred liberty of mankind. The remaining literary works of Sir James Mackintosh were a general view of Ethical Philosophy, published in the Encyclopædia Britannica; a life of Sir Thomas More in Lardner's Cyclopædia, and a History of England from the Roman Conquest to the Reign of Elizabeth. The dissertation on Ethics is more occupied with the review of the different systems that have appeared, than in advancing original opinions. His views are comprehensive, acute, and impartial: his style generally clear, and such as is suited to works of philosophy, but not equal to Dugald Stuart's in the grace and finish of the composition. His comprehensive examination extends from the remotest dawn of knowledge and civilization to the present day; from the schools of Plato and Epicurus, to those of Bentham and of Brown; and, as we move along the direction of his work, the brilliancy of every ingenious theory, and the grandeur of every elaborate system, the favourite paradox of every school, and the subtle speculation of every private moralist, rise and expand themselves before us. The character of Hume seems to be drawn with great precision of knowledge and taste, as well as impartiality of feeling. With what a mild and forbearing dignity are the sceptical opinions of the Philosopher approached in the following paragraph :

"To those who are strangers to the seductions of paradox, to the intoxication of fame, and to the bewitchment of prohibited opinions, it must be unaccountable, that he who revered benevolence should cease to see it on the throne of the universe. It is a matter of wonder, that his habitual esteem for every fragment and shadow of moral excellence, should not lead him to envy those who contemplated its perfection in that living and paternal character which gives it a power over the human heart."

Alas! what coarseness of invective, what brutality of insult, have been lavished against the very passages and declaratious which are here viewed only with the serene eye of the philosopher, and treated with that compassionate tenderness which is best adapted to remark the infirmities of genius, and to lament the inconsistencies and absurdities of the human heart.

The Life of Sir T. More is a beautiful specimen of biography, and although the History of England may not always be precise in its dates, or accurate in its facts; though it may have added nothing from the hidden record, or the forgotten roll, to the mass of our historical materials; yet the judicious and skilful manner in which the narrative is conducted, and the refined graces with which it abounds, are deserving of high praise; and the inferences and reflections are such as we should have expected from a wise and benevolent mind.

Among the tributes of honour bestowed upon Mackintosh's high literary character, the degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the University of Oxford; and he was twice elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. In 1830, on Lord Grey's taking office, he was appointed Commissioner for the Affairs in India. He took but little part in the proceedings of Parliament; but his speech on the 4th of July, 1831, on the Reform Bill, was among the ablest spoken. It was not a speech calculated to propitiate the people; it was not directed to attack the aristocracy; it was not constructed on party motives; it was not guided by personal antipathies; but it conveyed the deliberate conviction of the man of years and of wisdom, of the philosophic statesman and the experienced politician, on one of the most important and awful propositions that could be considered in the councils of a nation.

During the winter of 1831 and 1832, his health was delicate and uncer