23 Facts About James Mackintosh

Sir James Mackintosh FRS FRSE was a Scottish jurist, Whig politician and Whig historian.

James Mackintosh was trained as a doctor and barrister, and worked as a journalist, judge, administrator, professor, philosopher and politician.

James Mackintosh's mother was Marjory MacGillivray, a daughter of Alexander MacGillivray and his wife Anne Fraser, who was a sister to Brigadier-General Simon Fraser of Balnain.

James Mackintosh was raised by his grandmother, and schooled at Fortrose Seminary academy.

James Mackintosh went in 1780 to King's College, University of Aberdeen, where he made a lifelong friend of Robert Hall, later a famous preacher.

James Mackintosh participated to the full in the intellectual ferment, became friendly with Benjamin Constant, but did not quite neglect his medical studies, and took his degree in 1787.

In 1788, James Mackintosh moved to London, then agitated by the trial of Warren Hastings and the first lapse into insanity of George III.

James Mackintosh was much more interested in these and other political events than in his professional prospects.

James Mackintosh was a founder member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

James Mackintosh was absorbed in the question of the time, the French Revolution.

James Mackintosh was called to the bar in 1795 and gained a considerable reputation there as well as a tolerable practice.

James Mackintosh was the first to see Burke's Reflections as "the manifesto of a counter revolution".

Charles James Fox singled out Mackintosh's book as that which did most justice to the French Revolution, and he preferred it over Burke and Thomas Paine.

When James Mackintosh visited Paris in 1802 during the Peace of Amiens, he responded to compliments from French admirers of his defence of their revolution by saying: "Messieurs, vous m'avez si bien refute".

James Mackintosh was however not at home in India, where he became ill, was disappointed by his literary progress with the mooted History of England, and was glad to leave for England in November 1811.

James Mackintosh declined the offer of Spencer Perceval to resume political life under the wing of the dominant Tory party, despite prospects of office.

James Mackintosh entered Parliament in July 1813 as a Whig.

James Mackintosh was the member for Nairn until 1818, and afterwards for Knaresborough, till his death.

James Mackintosh's liberalism was firmly Whiggish in orientation - alongside reformers like Thomas Babington Macaulay, Mackintosh was disdainful of the Utilitarian approach to reform, launching an attack on Jeremy Bentham's 'Plan of Parliamentary Reform' in the Edinburgh Review in 1818, and criticising the philosophy of human nature which underpinned the ideas of Bentham, James Mill, and other leading Utilitarians.

James Mackintosh's notes stopped in the year of 1701, where Macaulay's History ends.

Sir James Mackintosh died at home, 15 Langham Place, London at the age of 66.

In 1789 James Mackintosh married Catherine Stuart, whose brother Daniel later edited the Morning Post.

In 1797 Catherine died, and next year James Mackintosh married Catherine Allen, sister-in-law of Josiah II and John Wedgwood, through whom he introduced Samuel Taylor Coleridge to the Morning Post.