We shall soon have to inquire what were the real nature and character of the change which he confessed that his language at this time exaggerated. Suffice it here to say that, amidst the sighs of his old friends, the applauses of his new, and the sneering murmurs and scornful remarks of the stupid and the envious of all parties, his eloquence (for he was eloquent as a professor) produced generally the most flattering effects. Statesmen, lawyers, men of letters, idlers, crowded with equal admiration round the amusing moralist, whose glittering store of knowledge was collected from the philosopher, the poet, the writer of romance and history.
“In mixing up the sparking julep,” says an eloquent though somewhat affected writer, “that by its potent application was to scour away the drugs and feculence and peccant humours of the body politic, he (Mackintosh) seemed to stand with his back to the drawers in a metaphysical dispensary, and to take out of them whatever ingredients suited his purpose.”[86]
In the meanwhile (having lost his first wife and married again) he pursued his professional course, though without doing anything as an advocate equal to his success as a professor.
M. Peltier’s trial, however, now took place. M. Peltier was an émigré, whom the neighbouring revolution had driven to our shores; a gentleman possessing some ability, and ardently attached to the royal cause.
He had not profited by the permission to return to France, which had been given to all French exiles, but carried on a French journal, which, finding its way to the Continent, excited the remarkable susceptibility of the first consul. This was just after the peace of Amiens. Urged by the French government, our own undertook the prosecution of M. Peltier’s paper. The occasion was an ode, in which the apotheosis of Bonaparte was referred to, and his assassination pretty plainly advocated. So atrocious a suggestion, however veiled, or however provoked, merited, no doubt, the reprobation of all worthy and high-minded men; but party spirit and national rancour ran high, and the defender of the prosecuted journalist was sure to stand before his country as the enemy of France and the advocate of freedom.
A variety of circumstances pointed out Mr. Mackintosh as the proper counsel to place in this position; and here, by a singular fortune, he was enabled to combine a hatred to revolutionary principles with an ardent admiration of that ancient spirit of liberty, which is embodied in the most popular institutions of England.
“Circumstanced as my client is,” he exclaimed, in his rather studied but yet powerful declamation, “the most refreshing object his eye can rest upon is an English jury; and he feels with me gratitude to the Ruler of empires, that after the wreck of everything else ancient and venerable in Europe, of all established forms and acknowledged principles, of all long-subsisting laws and sacred institutions, we are met here, administering justice after the manner of our forefathers in this her ancient sanctuary. Here these parties come to judgment; one, the master of the greatest empire on the earth; the other, a weak, defenceless fugitive, who waives his privilege of having half his jury composed of foreigners, and puts himself with confidence on a jury entirely English. Gentlemen, there is another view in which this case is highly interesting, important, and momentous, and I confess I am animated to every exertion that I can make, not more by a sense of my duty to my client, than by a persuasion that this cause is the first of a series of contests with the ‘freedom of the press.’ My learned friend, Mr. Perceval, I am sure, will never disgrace his magistracy by being instrumental to a measure so calamitous. But viewing this as I do, as the first of a series of contests between the greatest power on earth and the only press that is now free, I cannot help calling upon him and you to pause, before the great earthquake swallows up all the freedom that remains among men; for though no indication has yet been made to attack the freedom of the press in this country, yet the many other countries that have been deprived of this benefit must forcibly impress us with the propriety of looking vigilantly to ourselves. Holland and Switzerland are now no more, and near fifty of the imperial crowns in Germany have vanished since the commencement of this prosecution. All these being gone, there is no longer any control but what this country affords. Every press on the Continent, from Palermo to Hamburg, is enslaved; one place alone remains where the press is free, protected by our government and our patriotism. It is an awfully proud consideration that that venerable fabric, raised by our ancestors, still stands unshaken amidst the ruins that surround us. You are the advanced guard of liberty,” &c.
After the delivery of this speech, which, after being translated by Madame de Staël, was read with admiration not only in England, but also on the Continent, Mr. Mackintosh, though he lost his cause, was considered no less promising as a pleader, than after the publication of the “Vindiciæ Gallicæ” he had been considered as a pamphleteer. In both instances, however, the sort of effort he had made seemed to have exhausted him, and three months had not elapsed, when, with the plaudits of the public, and the praise of Erskine, still ringing in his ears, he accepted the Recordership of Bombay from Mr. Addington, and retired with satisfaction to the well-paid and knighted indolence of India. His objects in so doing were, he said, to make a fortune, and to write a work.
We shall thoroughly understand the man when we see what he achieved towards the attainment of these two objects. He did not make a fortune; he did not write a work. The greater part of his time seems to have been employed in a restless longing after society, and a perpetual dawdling over books; during the seven years he was absent, he speaks continually of his projected work as “always to be projected.” “I observe” he says, in one of his letters to Mr. Sharpe, “that you touch me once or twice with the spur about my books on Morals. I felt it gall me, for I have not begun.”