Sir James Mackintosh

Sir James Mackintosh 1765-1832, British writer and public servant, b. Scotland. He was trained as a physician, but after settling (1788) in London he became a writer and lawyer. His Vindiciae Gallicae (1791), a spirited reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, was the leading Whig statement in favor of the French Revolution, but from 1796 he grew hostile to French radicalism. Mackintosh served as recorder of Bombay (1804-6) and judge in Bombay vice-admiralty court (1806-12). As a member of Parliament after 1812, he supported penal and parliamentary reform. His writings include several historical works.

Mackintosh, Sir James (1765–1832), author of Vindiciae Gallicae (1791), a reasoned defence of the French Revolution. Mackintosh later recanted his views. He published a Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (1830) and wrote the first three volumes of a History of England (1830–1) for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, as well as an unfinished History of the Revolution in England in 1688 (1834).

Mackintosh, Sir James (1765–1832). Scottish philosopher, historian, lawyer, and politician. A man of many talents, Mackintosh read philosophy at Aberdeen University, qualified in medicine at Edinburgh in 1787, and was called to the bar in London in 1795. He contributed to literary journals, and wrote a celebrated critique of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, entitled Vindiciae Gallicae (1791). Mackintosh became recorder of Bombay in 1804, and returned to England to take up a parliamentary seat in 1813, speaking in defence of civil liberty against the authoritarian policies introduced by the post‐war Tory administration.