Born, at Aldourie, Loch Ness, 24 Oct. 1765. At school at Fortrose, 1775–80; at King’s Coll., Aberdeen, Oct. 1780 to Oct. 1784. To Edinburgh, to study Medicine. To London, 1788. Married Catherine Stuart, 18 Feb. 1789. Visit to Brussels, 1790. Contrib. to “The Oracle,” 1790; to “Monthly Review,” 1795–96. Called to Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, 1795. Wife died, 8 April 1797. Married Catherine Allen, 10 April 1798. Lectured on Philosophy at Lincoln’s Inn, 1799 and 1800. Appointed Recorder of Bombay, 1803. Knighted, same year. Arrived in Bombay, May 1804. Founded Literary Society of Bombay, 1805. Judge in Vice-Admiralty Court, Bombay, 1806. Returned to England, owing to ill-health, April 1812. M.P. for Nairn, 1813–19. Lived near Aylesbury, 1813–1818. Prof. of Law and General Politics at Haileybury College, Feb. 1818 to 1824. Settled at Mardocks, near Ware. M.P. for Knaresborough, 1819–32. Contrib. “History of England,” vols. i.–iii., and “Life of Sir Thomas More” to “Cabinet Cyclopædia,” 1830; “Ethical Philosophy” to “Encyclopædia Britannica,” 1830. Commissioner of Board of Control, Nov. 1831. Died, in London, 30 May 1832. Buried at Hampstead. Works: “Disputatio … de Actione Musculari,” 1787; “Vindiciæ Gallicæ,” 1791; “Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations,” 1799; “Speech in defence of Peltier,” 1803; “Plan of a Comparative Vocabulary of Indian Languages,” 1806; “Speech…. on the Bill for disfranchising the Borough of East Retford,” 1828; “Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy” (priv. ptd.), 1830; “Speech … on the … Bill to amend the Representation of the People,” 1831. Posthumous: “History of the Revolution in England in 1688,” 1834; “Tracts and Speeches” (priv. ptd.), 1840. He edited: Rev. R. Hall’s “Works,” 1832, etc. Collected Works: in 3 vols., 1846. Life: by R. J. Mackintosh, 1836.

Personal

  Nothing has pleased me more in London than the conversation of Mackintosh. I never saw so theoretical a head which contained so much practical understanding. He has lived much among various men, with great observation, and has always tried his profound moral speculations by the experience of life. He has not contracted in the world a lazy contempt for theorists, nor in the closet a peevish impatience of that grossness and corruptibility of mankind which are ever marring the schemes of secluded benevolence. He does not wish for the best in politics or morals, but for the best which can be attained; and what that is he seems to know well.

  I confess the more I see of this wonderful man, the more I am led to believe that modern times have not degenerated from the genius of antiquity, and there is an amiable simplicity, natural to great minds, in M.’s dispositions, which commands esteem as well as admiration.

  He has been an intellectual master to me, and has enlarged my prospects into the wide regions of moral speculation, more than any other tutor I have ever had in the art of thinking; I cannot even except Dugald Stewart, to whom I once thought I owed more than I could ever receive from another. Had Mackintosh remained in England, I should have possessed ten years hence, powers and views which are now beyond my reach. I never left his conversation, but I felt a mixed consciousness, as it were, of inferiority and capability; and I have now and then flattered myself with this feeling, as if it promised that I might make something of myself.

  Mackintosh, who is a rare instance of the union of very transcendent talent and great good-nature.

  Sir James Mackintosh is a little too precise, a little too much made up in his manners and conversation, but is at the same time very exact, definite, and logical in what he says, and, I am satisfied, seldom has occasion to regret a mistake or an error, where a matter of principle or reasoning is concerned, though, as he is a little given to affect universal learning, he may sometimes make a mistake in matters of fact. As a part of a considerable literary society, however, he discourses most eloquent music, and in private, where I also saw him several times, he is mild, gentle, and entertaining. But he is seen to greatest advantage, and in all his strength, only in serious discussion, to which he brings great disciplined acuteness and a fluent eloquence, which few may venture to oppose, and which still fewer can effectually resist.

  Sir James Mackintosh is the king of the men of talent. He is a most elegant converser. How well I remember his giving breakfast to me and Sir Humphry Davy, at that time an unknown young man, and our having a very spirited talk about Locke and Newton, and so forth! When Davy was gone, Mackintosh said to me, “That’s a very extraordinary young man; but he is gone wrong on some points.” But Davy was, at that time at least, a man of genius; and I doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an eminently original man. He is uncommonly powerful in his own line; but it is not the line of a first-rate man. After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can rarely carry off anything worth preserving. You might not improperly write on his forehead, “Warehouse to let!” He always dealt too much in generalities for a lawyer. He is deficient in power in applying his principles to the points in debate. I remember Robert Smith had much more logical ability; but Smith aimed at conquest by any gladiatorial shift; whereas Mackintosh was uniformly candid in argument. I am speaking now from old recollections.

  He spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; but the House of Commons (we dare aver it) is not the place where the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth can be spoken with safety or with advantage…. There wanted unity of purpose, impetuosity of feeling to break through the phalanx of hostile and inveterate prejudice arrayed against him. He gave a handle to his enemies; threw stumbling-blocks in the way of his friends. He raised so many objections for the sake of answering them, proposed so many doubts for the sake of salving them, and made so many concessions where none were demanded, that his reasoning had the effect of neutralizing itself; it became a mere exercise of the understanding without zest or spirit left in it; and the provident engineer who was to shatter in pieces the strong-holds of corruption and oppression, by a well-directed and unsparing discharge of artillery, seemed to have brought not only his own cannon-balls, but his own wool-packs along with him to ward off the threatened mischief.

  Whatever was valuable in the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh, was the ripe fruit of study and of meditation. It was the same with his conversation. In his most familiar talk there was no wildness, no inconsistency, no amusing nonsense, no exaggeration for the sake of momentary effect. His mind was a vast magazine, admirably arranged; everything was there, and everything was in its place. His judgments on men, on sects, on books, had been often and carefully tested and weighed, and had then been committed, each to its proper receptacle, in the most capacious and accurately constructed memory that any human being ever possessed. It would have been strange indeed, if you had asked for anything that was not to be found in that immense storehouse. The article which you required was not only there. It was ready. It was in its own proper compartment. In a moment it was brought down, unpacked, and displayed. If those who enjoyed the privilege—for privilege indeed it was—of listening to Sir James Mackintosh, had been disposed to find some fault in his conversation, they might perhaps have observed that he yielded too little to the impulse of the moment. He seemed to be recollecting, not creating. He never appeared to catch a sudden glimpse of a subject in a new light. You never saw his opinions in the making,—still rude, still inconsistent, and requiring to be fashioned by thought and discussion. They came forth, like the pillars of that temple in which no sound of axes or hammers was heard, finished, rounded, and exactly suited to their places.

  His range of study and speculation was nearly as large as that of Bacon; and there were, in fact, but few branches of learning with which he was not familiar. But in any attempt at delineating his intellectual character, it is necessary to bear in mind, that his mastery was in mental philosophy, not merely in its recondite or metaphysical departments, but in its still more important application to conduct and affairs, and in their higher branches of politics and legislation, which derive their proofs and principles from history, and give authority to its lessons in return. Upon all these subjects, he was probably the most learned man of his age; and in maturing and digesting his views of them, I am persuaded that there have been few, in any age, who ever brought a more powerful and disciplined understanding to bear with so much candour, caution, and modesty, upon so large a collection of materials.

  If we might venture to conclude, that in these pages have also been revealed more abiding endowments, and such as death does not cancel;—sympathy with the triumph of truth, and justice, and liberty, and with whatever is loftiest and noblest in our nature; active devotion, through a life of labour, disappointment, some sorrow, and much sickness, to the interests of his kind, whether in struggling for their liberty, or in the still higher vocation of teaching them worthily to enjoy it; a political career, in troubled times, which, on retrospect, certainly offered no action, and probably no word, directed against an enemy, which need be recalled; an admiration of excellence in others so pure, as to be one of the principal sources of his own enjoyment, joined to an unaffected humility in estimating his own merits; warm affections, quick sensibility, and generous confidence; religious sentiments, such as might be embodied in his own confessions, “that there was nothing in this world so right as to cultivate and exercise kindness—the most certainly evangelical of all doctrines—THE principle of Jesus Christ,” and which led him to look forward with ardent hope, and humble faith, to the day when tears shall be “wiped from all eyes:”—if these, or any of them shall have been made duly manifest, then will the labour of the present work have been amply rewarded, and its object not wholly unattained.

  Porson disliked Mackintosh; they differed in politics, and their reading had little in common.

  Mackintosh told me that he had received in his youth comparatively little instruction,—whatever learning he possessed he owed to himself. He had a prodigious memory, and could repeat by heart more of Cicero than you would easily believe. His knowledge of Greek was slender. I never met a man with a fuller mind than Mackintosh,—such readiness on all subjects, such a talker!

  Sir James Mackintosh had a very Parson-Adams-like forgetfulness of common things and lesser proprieties, which was very amusing. On his arrival at Bombay, there being no house ready for his reception, the Governor offered his garden-house for the temporary accommodation of Sir James and his family, who were so comfortable in their quarters, that they forgot to quit, month after month, till a year had elapsed, when the Governor took forcible possession of his own property. Again, Sir James and his Lady, on requesting to inspect the seat of Lord Melville, in Perthshire, were invited to stay two or three days, which were protracted to as many months, till every species of hint was thrown away upon them.

  No man doing so little ever went through a long life, continually creating the belief that he would ultimately do so much. A want of earnestness, a want of passion, a want of genius, prevented him from playing a great part amongst men during his day, and from leaving any of those monuments behind him which command the attention of posterity. A love of knowledge, an acute and capacious intelligence, an early and noble ambition, led him into literary and active life, and furnished him with materials and at moments with the energy by which success in both is obtained. An amiable disposition, a lively flow of spirits, an extraordinary and various stock of information made his society agreeable to the most distinguished persons of his age, and induced them, encouraged by some occasional displays of power, to consider his abilities to be greater than they really were.

  I saw much afterwards of Madame de Staël at her own house in Argyll Street, in those literary and political circles which she gathered round her, and where she declaimed or argued with all who could meet her with her own weapons and in her own language. Sir J. Mackintosh was the most frequent and expert of these intellectual combatants: and it was the combat most congenial to his own tastes. In some points there was a certain intellectual likeness between them; such as the power of putting an argument into its most pithy shape—what may be called a wit of speech, apart from that gift of humour, to which neither of them could lay much claim.

  The great Whig leader was grandly eloquent—at times; but it seemed as hard to rouse him to exertion as it would have been to move the half-torpid sloth. His exordiums were sluggish; not so his perorations. He spoke, however, like a machine, that, once set moving, will go on doing its allotted work effectually to the end. He would sway backward and forward, as if his head were too heavy for his body. Those who remember him before his actual decay will recall him as altogether Scottish in manner and mind: his accent retained the smack of early training. Lacking grace and dignity, the spirit of earnestness that pervaded his speeches almost supplied the places of both…. Mackintosh was usually sluggish—often as much so as his proverbially sleepy neighbor, Charles Grant—afterwards Lord Glenelg; but when suddenly excited, he poured forth a torrent of eloquence, majestic in its wrath; when indignation roused him, it was generally an instant outburst—at least in his latter days. It would not seem exaggeration, to those who remember him in his decadence, to liken it to a volcanic fire.

General

  Read Mackintosh’s “Vindiciæ Gallicæ.” His style and manner, in this piece, are magnificent, but uniformly cumbrous, and occasionally warm. He has infinitely improved both in his “Preliminary Discourse,” though some of the ponderosity still remains. There can hardly be a more express and full contradiction than in two passages,—p. 265 of the “Vindiciæ” and p. 49 of the “Discourse.”

  As an author, Sir James Mackintosh may claim the foremost rank among those who pride themselves on artificial ornaments and acquired learning, or who write what may be termed a composite style. His “Vindiciæ Gallicæ” is a work of great labour, great ingenuity, great brilliancy, and great vigour. It is little too antithetical in the structure of its periods, too dogmatical in the announcement of its opinions. Sir James has, we believe, rejected something of the false brilliant of the one, as he has retracted some of the abrupt extravagance of the other. We apprehend, however, that our author is not one of those who draw from their own resources and accumulated feelings, or who improve with age. He belongs to a class (common in Scotland and elsewhere) who get up school-exercises on any given subject in a masterly manner at twenty, and who at forty are either where they were—or retrograde, if they are men of sense and modesty…. All his ideas may be said to be given preconceptions. They do not arise, as it were, out of the subject, or out of one another at the moment, and therefore do not flow naturally and gracefully from one another. They have been laid down before hand in a sort of formal division or frame work of the understanding; and the connexion between the premises and the conclusion, between one branch of a subject and another, is made out in a bungling and unsatisfactory manner. There is no principle of fusion in the work; he strikes after the iron is cold, and there is want of malleability in the style.

  The present work [“Ethical Philosophy”] is distinguished by a similar affluence of rare learning, acute and delicate discrimination of thought, great force of argument, and singular candor and urbanity in the discussion of systems, which are at war with the opinions of the author himself, and which it is his purpose pointedly to condemn. We cannot say so much of the style of Sir James Mackintosh, as the expression of philosophical reasoning. It is elaborate to excess; but too visibly elaborate to be perfectly agreeable; and in many instances, his love of condensation betrays him into obscurity. In those passages which contain a long train of reasoning, the transition from one step to another, is usually far from being evident; and the enunciation of the propositions upon which he depends, as well as of the conclusions at which he arrives, is presented in such abstract terms, that we are often uncertain, whether we have rightly apprehended his meaning. We miss the variety and playfulness of illustration, which make the style of Hume so attractive, and which will always give him the rank of a most entertaining as well as acute writer on subjects of abstract speculation. Neither do we find any resemblance to the full and graceful flow of transparent diction, by which Dugald Stewart is quite as favorably distinguished as by the variety of his learning and the soundness of his understanding. With these abatements, which we could not in conscience omit, we regard Sir James Mackintosh as entitled to a high rank among the philosophical writers of the present and the last age, who have given an imperishable charm to the fruits of deep speculation, and erected a splendid monument to their names, in the history of English literature.

  In these memorials of Sir James Mackintosh, we trace throughout the workings of a powerful and unclouded intellect, nourished by wholesome learning, raised and instructed by fearless though reverent questionings of the sages of other times (which is the permitted Necromancy of the wise), exercised by free discussion with the most distinguished among the living, and made acquainted with its own strength and weakness, not only by a constant intercourse with other powerful minds, but by mixing, with energy and deliberation, in practical business and affairs; and here pouring itself out in a delightful miscellany of elegant criticism, original speculation, and profound practical suggestions on politics, religion, history, and all the greater and the lesser duties, the arts and the elegances of life—all expressed with a beautiful clearness and tempered dignity—breathing the purest spirit of good-will to mankind—and brightened not merely by an ardent hope, but an assured faith in their constant advancement in freedom, intelligence, and virtue.

  As a writer, he will ever be highly esteemed by a chosen few—but he is, we fear we must admit, not likely to sustain an extensive popularity with posterity.

  I must now, however, mention to you the three octavo volumes on English History that were drawn up by Sir James Mackintosh, for Dr. Lardner. There is little pretension in the appearance of these volumes: do not be deceived by this circumstance; they are full of weighty matter, and are everywhere marked by paragraphs of comprehensive thought and sound philosophy, political and moral; they are well worthy their distinguished author. The sentences are now and then overcharged with reflection, so as to become obscure, particularly in the first volume. But do not be deterred by a fault that too naturally resulted from the richly stored and highly metaphysical mind of this valuable writer.

  We do not think his works are fair and full exponents of his nature; and his reputation was always justly greater for what he was, than for what he performed, valuable as were most of his performances.

  He is full of information and suggestion upon every topic which he treats. Few men have so much combined the power of judging wisely from a stationary position with the power of changing that station under changing circumstances in the age or in the subject. He moves slowly, or with velocity, as he moves amongst breakers, or amongst open seas. And upon every theme which he treats, in proportion as it rises in importance, the reader is sure of finding displayed the accomplishments of a scholar, the philosophic resources of a very original thinker, the elegance of a rhetorician, and the large sagacity of a statesman, controlled by the most sceptical caution of a lawyer.

  Much he learned—thought much—collected much treasure; but the greater part of it was buried with him. Many a prize, hung on high in the intellectual firmament, he could discern with eyes carefully purged from the films of ignorance and grossness; he could discern the steps even by which he might have mounted to the possession of any one which he had resolutely chosen and perseveringly sought—but this he did not. And though many a pillar and many a stone remain to tell where he dwelt and how he strove, we seek in vain for the temple of perfect workmanship with which Nature meant so skillful an architect should have adorned her Earth.

  Mackintosh has been already discussed in these pages as a senator; but his merits as an essayist, and as one of the original contributors to the Edinburgh Review, are too considerable to render any apology necessary for again making him the subject of discussion. His mind was essentially philosophical; his soul was imbued with principle, his memory stored with knowledge. He was fitted to have been a great teacher of men, rather than their powerful ruler. These characteristics are strongly apparent in his writings; and the English language cannot present a more perfect example of philosophical disquisition than some of his political essays, particularly that on Parliamentary Reform, exhibit.

  If he had only had the courage to devote himself to what he knew to be his forte, but which could not bring him immediate fame; had he read systematically, instead of discursively, and made himself as well acquainted with the higher forms of the Greek and German philosophy, as he did with the later forms and of British philosophy,—he might have ranked with the highest thinkers of his age. As it is he has left us little that will endure beyond these able and candid sketches of ethical writers.

  In one sense Mackintosh can hardly be regarded as an historian; in another sense he is the most philosophic historian that ever lived. He accomplished so little that his fame rests on a small basis; but the little which he accomplished is remarkable for so much knowledge, research, and discrimination, that his studies deserve especial attention.

  His style is elegant and carefully wrought, but somewhat languid and wanting in pith and power.

  This [“Vindiciæ Gallicæ”] should be read in connection with Burke’s essay. Its purpose is sufficiently indicated by its title. Perhaps Mackintosh was the only man at the time in England who by his literary skill and his political sympathy was qualified to review the work and break the force of its great influence. Through the whole essay there runs a strong current of liberal thought, which gives to it a constant value. As a presentation of the view opposed to that of Burke, it has had no superior, and, perhaps, has never been equalled. Its appearance in England raised the author at once to a position of supreme influence among the members of the Whig party.

  Mackintosh’s historical writings, though tending to discourse rather than narrative, show reading and a judicial temper, but have been superseded by later books. The “Dissertation upon Ethical Philosophy” is perfunctory, except in regard to the English moralists since Hobbes, and greatly wanting in clearness and precision. It is intended to be eclectic, accepting Hume’s doctrine of utility as the “criterion” of morals, and Butler’s doctrine of the supremacy of the conscience, while the formation of the conscience is explained by Hartley’s doctrine of association. In substance it seems to be a modification of utilitarianism, and suggests some important amendments in the theory. James Mill, however, attacked it with excessive severity in his “Fragment on Mackintosh,” 1835, and exposed much looseness of thought and language.

  The “Dissertation” is not faultless either in matter or style. The position of Kant for example, could hardly be properly understood from it; nor do we learn much when we are told that the system of Hobbes was like a “palace of ice gradually undermined by the central warmth of human feeling, before it was thawed into muddy water by the sunshine of true philosophy.” Mackintosh could use the language of common life when he chose. The question whether a simple representative legislature is better than a constitution of mutual control, is (he says in the Vind. Gall.) simply the question “whether the vigilance of the master, or the squabbles of the servants, are the best security for faithful service.” A little more of this plainness of speech would have enhanced the value of his writings; but formed habits were too strong for him.

  To pass from Burke to Mackintosh is to make the descent from genius to talent with more suddenness, not to say violence, than one would naturally prefer. Yet Mackintosh is perhaps the only other prose writer who can be even mentioned in the period overshadowed by Gibbon and Burke; for Robertson, though an historian of merit, can hardly be said as a prose writer to be anything more than an echo of his English models. Mackintosh has undoubtedly more individuality. The “Vindiciæ Gallicæ” can still be read with pleasure; and did it not everywhere challenge a disastrous comparison with the monumental work to which it is the very inadequate answer, it would win more admiration than it does. As it is, one cannot help reading it with a feeling that with all its more than respectable merit it is thoroughly characteristic of that universal genius whom partial friends regarded as an Admirable Crichton and posterity has clean forgotten.

  His range of acquirements was most wide—too wide and too unceasing for the persistency which goes with great single achievements. His histories are fragments. His speeches are misplaced treatises; his treatises are epitomes of didactic systems. When we weigh his known worth, his keenness of intellect, his sound judgment, his wealth of language, his love for thoroughness—which led him to remotest sources of information—his amazing power in coloquial discourse, we are astonished at the little store of good things he has left.

  There has been a certain tendency, both in his own time and since, to regard Mackintosh as a sort of philosopher thrown away. If he was so, he would probably have made his mark rather in the history of philosophy than in philosophy itself, for there are no signs in him of much original depth. But he wrote very well, and was a sound and on the whole a fair critic.

  In James Mackintosh the school of Stewart stepped from its academic seclusion into the world of politics and law, only to betray more obviously its academic quality; its capacity for learned and luminous exposition of principles, but not for the philosophy that shapes lives and transforms states.