Here is the place at which it may be most convenient to consider Sir James Mackintosh’s former change; as well as the circumstances which led him back to his old connections. He had entered life violently democratical,—a strong upholder of the French Revolution; he became, so to speak, violently moderate, and a strong opponent of this same Revolution. He altered his politics, and this alteration was followed by his receiving an appointment.
Such is the outline which malignity might fill up with the darkest colours; but it would be unjustly. The machinery of human conduct is complex; and it would be absurd to say that a man’s interests are not likely to have an influence on his actions. But they who see more of our nature than the surface, know that our interests are quite as frequently governed by our character as our character is by our interests. The true explanation, then, of Mackintosh’s conduct is to be found in his order of intellect. His mind was not a mind led by its own inspirations, but rather a mind reflecting the ideas of other men, and of that class of men more especially to which he, as studious and speculative, belonged. The commencement of the French Revolution, the long-prepared work of the Encyclopedists, was hailed by such persons (we speak generally) as a sort of individual success. Burke did much to check this feeling; and subsequent events favoured Burke. But by far the greater number of those addicted to literary pursuits sympathized with the popular party in the States-General. Under this impulse the “Vindiciæ Gallicæ” was written. The exclusion of the eminent men of the National Assembly from power modified, the execution of the Girondists subdued, this impulse. At the fall of those eloquent Republicans the lettered usurpation ceased; and now literature, instead of being opposed to royalty, owed, like it, a debt of vengeance to that inexorable mob which had spared neither.
It was at the time, then, when everybody was recanting that Mackintosh made his recantation. Most men of his class and nature took the same part in the same events; for such men were delighted with the theories of freedom, but shocked at its excesses; and, indeed, it is difficult to conceive anything more abhorrent to the gentle dreams of a civilised philosophy than that wild hurricane of liberty which carried ruin and desolation over France in the same blast that spread the seeds of future prosperity.
We find, it is true, this beautiful passage in the “Vindiciæ Gallicæ:” “The soil of Attica was remarked by antiquity as producing at once the most delicious fruits and the most violent poisons. It is thus with the human mind; and to the frequency of convulsions in the commonwealths we owe those examples of sanguinary tumult and virtuous heroism which distinguish their history from the monotonous tranquillity of modern states.” But though these words were used by Mackintosh, they were merely transcribed by him; they belong to a deeper and more daring genius—they are almost literally the words of Machiavel, and were furnished by the reading, and not by the genuine reflections, of the youthful pamphleteer. He had not in rejoicing over the work of the Constituante anticipated the horrors of the Convention; the regret, therefore, that he expressed for what he condemned as his early want of judgment, was undoubtedly sincere; and no one can fairly blame him for accepting, under such circumstances, a post which was not political, and which removed him from the angry arena in which he would have had to combat with former friends, whose rancour may be appreciated by Dr. Parr’s brutal reply—when Mackintosh asked him, how Quigley, an Irish priest, executed for treason, could have been worse. “I’ll tell you, Jemmy—Quigley was an Irishman, he might have been a Scotchman; he was a priest, he might have been a lawyer; he was a traitor, he might have been an apostate.”
Thus much for the Bombay Recordership. But the feverish panic which the sanguinary government of Robespierre had produced—calmed by his fall, soothed by the feeble government which succeeded him, and replaced at last by the stern domination of a warrior who had at least the merit of restoring order and tranquillity to his country—died away.
A variety of circumstances—including the publication of the “Edinburgh Review,” which, conducted in a liberal and moderate spirit, made upon the better educated class of the British population a considerable impression—favoured and aided the reaction towards a more temperate state of thought. A new era began, in which the timid lost their fears, the factious their hopes. All question of the overthrow of the constitution and of the confiscation of property was at an end; and as politics thus fell back into more quiet channels, parties adopted new watchwords and new devices. The cry was no longer, “Shall there be a Monarchy or a Republic?” but, “Shall the Catholics continue proscribed as helots, or shall they be treated as free men?”
During the seven years which Sir James had passed in India, this was the turn that had been taking place in affairs and opinions. It is hardly possible to conceive any change more calculated to carry along with it a mild and intelligent philosopher, to whom fanaticism of all kinds was hateful.
Those whom he had left, under the standard of Mr. Pitt, contending against anarchical doctrines and universal conquest, were now for disputing one of Mr. Pitt’s most sacred promises, and refusing to secure peace to an empire, at the very crisis of its fortunes, by the establishment of a system of civil equality between citizens who thought differently on the somewhat abstruse subject of transubstantiation. Mr. Perceval, at the head of this section of politicians, was separated from almost every statesman who possessed any reputation as a scholar. Mr. Canning did not belong to his administration; Lord Wellesley was on the point of quitting it. There never was a government to which what may be called the thinking class of the country stood so opposed. Thus, the very same sort of disposition which had detached Sir James Mackintosh, some years ago, from his early friends, was now disposing him to rejoin them; and he moved backwards and forwards, I must repeat, in both instances—when he went to India a Tory,[88] and when he entered Parliament a Whig—with a considerable body of persons, who, though less remarked because less distinguished, honestly pursued the same conduct.
All the circumstances, indeed, which marked his conduct at this time do him honour. Almost immediately on his return to England, the premier offered him a seat in Parliament, and held out to him the hopes of the high and lucrative situation of President of the Board of Control. A poor man, and an ambitious man, equally anxious for place and distinction, he refused both; and this refusal, of which we have now the surest proof, was a worthy answer to the imputations which had attended the acceptance of his former appointment. Lord Abinger, who has since recorded the refusal of a seat from Mr. Perceval, was himself the bearer of a similar offer from Lord Cawdor;[89] and under the patronage of this latter nobleman Sir James Mackintosh first entered Parliament (1813) as the Member for Nairnshire, a representation the more agreeable, since it was that of his ancestral county, wherein he had inherited the small property which some years before he had been compelled to part with.[90]