II
The father of Sir James was a Scotch country gentleman, who, having a small hereditary property, which he could neither part with nor live upon, entered the army early, and passed his life almost entirely with his regiment. Young Mackintosh was born on the 24th of October, 1765, in the county of Inverness, and was sent as soon as he could be to a school at Fortrose; where he fell in with two books which had a permanent influence on his future career. These books were “Plutarch’s Lives” and the “Roman History,” books which, by making him ambitious of public honours, rendered his existence a perpetual struggle between that which he desired to be and that for which he was best suited. At Aberdeen, then, where he was sent on quitting Fortrose, he was alike remarkable for his zeal in politics, and his love for metaphysics—that is, for his alternate coquetry between an active and a meditative life. At Edinburgh, also, where he subsequently went to study medicine, it was the same thing. In the evening he would go now and then to a “spouting” club and make speeches, while the greater part of his mornings was spent in poetical lucubrations. To the medical profession he paid little attention, till all of a sudden necessity aroused him. He then applied himself, with a start, to that which he was obliged to know; but his diligence was not of that resolute and steady kind which insures success as the consequence of a certain period of application; and after rushing into the novelties of the Brunonian System,82 which promised knowledge with little labour, and then, rushing back again, he resolved on taking his countrymen’s short road to fortune, and set out for England. His journey, however, did not answer. He got a wife, but no patients; and on the failure of his attempts to establish himself at Salisbury and at Weymouth, retired to Brussels—ill, wearied, and disgusted. The Low Countries were at that time the theatre of a struggle between the Emperor Joseph and his subjects; the general convulsion which shortly afterwards took place throughout Europe was preparing, and the agitation of men’s minds was excessive. These exciting scenes called the disappointed physician back to the more alluring study of politics; and to this short visit to the Continent he owed a knowledge of its opinions and its public men, which first served him as the correspondent of a newspaper, The Oracle; and, subsequently, furnished him with materials for a pamphlet which in an instant placed him in the situation he so long occupied as one of the most promising men of his day. This celebrated pamphlet, published in 1791, and known under the name of “Vindiciæ Gallicæ,” whether we consider the circumstances under which it appeared, the opponent whom it combated, or the ability of the composition itself, merited all the attention it received, and was the more successful because it gave just the answer to Burke which Burke himself would have given to his own Reflections.
Thus, the club of Saint James’, the cloister of Trinity College, had a writer to quote, whose sentiments were in favour of liberty, and whose language, agreeable to the ear of the gentleman and the scholar, did not, in defending the patriots of France, advise their imitation or approve their excesses.
“Burke,” he says, “admires the Revolution of 1688; but we, who conceive that we pay the purest homage to the authors of that Revolution, not in contending for what they then did, but for what they would now do, can feel no inconsistency in looking on France—not to model our conduct, but to invigorate the spirit of freedom. We permit ourselves to imagine how Lord Somers, in the light and knowledge of the eighteenth century, how the patriots of France, in the tranquillity and opulence of England, would have acted.
“We are not bound to copy the conduct to which the last were driven by a bankrupt exchequer, and a dissolved government; nor to maintain the establishments which were spared by the first in a prejudiced and benighted age.
“Exact imitation is not necessary to reverence. We venerate the principles which presided in both, and we adapt to political admiration a maxim which has long been received in polite letters, that the only manly and liberal imitation is to speak as a great man would have spoken, had he lived in our times, and been placed in our circumstances.”
There is much even in this passage to show that the adversary was still the imitator, imbued with the spirit and under the influence of the genius of the very writer whom he was bold enough to attack. Many, nevertheless, who, taken by surprise, had surrendered to the magisterial eloquence of the master, were rescued by the elegant pleading of the scholar. Everywhere, then, might be heard the loudest applause, and an applause well merited. On the greatest question of the times, the first man of the times had been answered by a young gentleman aged twenty-six, and who, hitherto unknown, was appreciated by his first success.
The leaders of the Whig party sought him out; they paid him every attention. His opinions went further than theirs; for he was an advocate of universal suffrage, an abolitionist of all titles, an enemy to a senate or second assembly. No persons practically contending for power could say they exactly sanctioned such notions as these; but all praised the style in which they were put forth, and, allowing for the youth, lauded the talent, of the author. Indeed, “the love to hatred turned” ever repudiates moderation, and the antagonist of Burke was certain of the rapturous cheers of those whom that great but passionate man had deserted. In this manner Mackintosh (who was now preparing for the bar) became necessarily a party man, and a violent party man. Mr. Fox praised his abilities in Parliament; the famous Reform Association called the “Friends of the People” chose him for their honorary secretary. A great portion of the well-known declaration of this society was his composition; and in a letter to the Prime Minister of the day (Mr. Pitt), he abused that statesman with a fierceness and boldness of invective which even political controversy scarcely allowed.
Here was the great misfortune of his life. This fierceness and boldness were not in his nature; in becoming a man of action, he entered upon a part which was not suited to his character, and which it was certain therefore he would not sustain. The reaction soon followed. Amongst its first symptoms was a review of Mr. Burke’s “Regicide Peace.” The author of the review became known to the person whose writing was criticised: a correspondence ensued, very flattering to Mr. Mackintosh, who shortly afterwards spent a few days at Beaconsfield (1796).
It was usual for him to say, referring to this visit, that in half an hour Mr. Burke overturned the previous reflections of his whole life. There was some exaggeration, doubtless, in this assertion, but it is also likely that there was some truth in it. His opinions had begun to waver, and at that critical moment he came into personal contact with, and was flattered by, a man whom every one praised, and who praised few. At all events, he was converted, and not ashamed of his conversion, but, on the contrary, mounted with confidence a stage on which his change might be boldly justified.
The faults as well as the excellences of the English character arise from that great dislike to generalise which has made us the practical, and in many instances the prejudiced, people that we are. Abroad, a knowledge of general or natural law, of the foundations on which all laws are or ought to be based, enters as a matter of course into a liberal education. In England lawyers themselves disregard this study as useless or worse than useless.83 They look, and they look diligently, into English law, such as it is, established by custom, precedent, or act of Parliament. They know all the nice points and proud formalities on which legal justice rests, or by which it may be eluded. The conflicting cases and opposing opinions, which may be brought to bear on an unsound horse, or a contested footpath, are deeply pondered over, carefully investigated. But the great edifice of general jurisprudence, though standing on his wayside, is usually passed by the legal traveller with averted eyes: the antiquary and the philosopher, indeed, may linger there; but the plodding man of business scorns to arrest his steps.
When, however, amidst the mighty crash of states and doctrines that followed the storm of 1791—when, amidst the birth of new empires and new legislatures, custom lost its sanctity, precedent its authority, and statute was made referable to common justice and common sense,—then, indeed, there uprose a strong and earnest desire to become acquainted with those general principles so often cited by the opponents of the past; to visit that armoury in which such terrible weapons had been found, and to see whether it could not afford means as powerful for defending what remained as it had furnished for destroying what had already been swept away.