MACKINTOSH, SIR JAMES ( , Scottish publicist, was born at Aldourie on Oct. 24, 1765, and was edu cated at Aberdeen and at Edinburgh, where he took his degree in medicine in 1787. In 1788 he removed to London, and becoming interested in politics, in 1791 published his Vindiciae Gallicae, a reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. It was the only worthy answer to Burke that appeared, and won him a Euro pean reputation and many friends, including Burke himself. Its success finally led him to take up the legal profession. He was called to the bar in 1795. In 1797 his wife died, and next year he married Catherine Allen, sister-in-law of Josiah and John Wedg wood, through whom he introduced Coleridge to the Morning Post. His greatest legal successes were his lectures (5799) at Lincoln's Inn on the law of nature and nations, and his defence (1803) of Jean Gabriel Peltier, a French refugee, tried at the instance of the French government for a libel against the first consul. In 1803 he was knighted, and received the post of recorder at Bombay, but he returned to England in 1812. He entered parliament in the Whig interest as member for Nairn, and he sat for that county, and afterwards for Knaresborough, till his death. He opposed the
reactionary measures of the Tory government, supported and afterwards succeeded Romilly in his efforts for reforming the criminal code, and took a leading part both in Catholic emanci pation and in the Reform Bill. From 1818 to 1824 he was pro fessor of law and general politics in the East India Company's College at Haileybury. His Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, prefixed to the 7th edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica, and published in 1831, was severely attacked in 1835 by James Mill in his Fragment on Mackintosh. About the same time he wrote for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia a "History of England from the Earliest Times to the Final Establishment of the Reformation." His more elaborate History of the Revolution was published after his death. Already a privy councillor, Mack intosh was appointed commissioner for the affairs of India under the Whig administration of 1830. He died on May 3o, 1832.
The History of the Revolution in England, breaking off where William of Orange is about to intervene, is chiefly interesting be cause of Macaulay's essay on it and its author.
A Life, by his son R. J. Mackintosh, was published in 5836.