1792-1800] Sir James Mackintosh 3 



was entirely high-minded in all questions relating to money. 

 Sydney Smith wrote the following appreciation of Mackin- 

 tosh's character, addressed to Robert Mackintosh, when he 

 was collecting materials for the life of his father : 



" Curran, the Master of the Rolls, said to Mr Grattan: 

 ' You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you 

 would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and 

 papers.' This was the fault or the misfortune of your 

 excellent father ; he never knew the use of red tape, and was 

 utterly unfit for the common business of life. That a guinea 

 represented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter 

 for a quantity of cloth, he was well aware ; but the accurate 

 number of the baser coin, or the just measurement of the 

 manufactured article, to which he was entitled for his gold, 

 he could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him. 

 Hence his life was often an example of the ancient and 

 melancholy struggle of genius with the difficulties of exist- 

 ence. ... A high merit in Sir James Mackintosh was his 

 real and unaffected philanthropy. He did not make the 

 improvement of the great mass of mankind an engine of 

 popularity, or a stepping-stone to power, but he had a 

 genuine love of human happiness. Whatever might assuage 

 the angry passions, and arrange the conflicting interests of 

 nations ; whatever could promote peace, increase knowledge, 

 extend commerce, diminish crime, and encourage industry; 

 whatever could exalt human character, and could enlarge 

 human understandings, struck at once at the heart of your 

 father, and roused all his faculties. I have seen him in a 

 moment when this spirit came upon him like a great ship 

 of war cut his cable, and spread his enormous canvas, and 

 launch into a wide sea of reasoning eloquence." 1 



The first Earl Dudley, in his Letters to Ivy, wrote of 

 Mackintosh: " If I were a king I should make an office for 

 him in which it should be his duty to talk to me two or three 

 hours a day. . . . He should fill my head with all sorts of 

 knowledge, but, out of the great love I should bear towards 

 my subjects, I would resolve never to take his advice about 

 anything." 



My father used to tell us that of all the great talkers he 

 had ever known Carlyle, Macaulay, Huxley, and others 

 he held Mackintosh to be the very first. 



Caroline Allen married Edward Drewe, a Devonshire 

 parson, brother of the Squire of Grange, near Honiton. 

 Mr Edward Drewe died early, and she was for many years 



1 Life of Sir James Mackintosh, by his son. Vol. II., p. 501. 



