OF

THE LIFE OF

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.

EDITED BY HIS SON,

ROBERT JAMES MACKINTOSH, ESQ.

FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, Oxford.

Second Edition.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET.

MDCCCXXXVI.

63.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

THE following pages consist almost exclusively of extracts from Letters and Journals, with little more care expended upon their arrangement than is necessary to make them afford of themselves a representation of the workings of a mind, which, it has been thought, might afford instruction to some, and interest

to more.

To his father's friends-and, if he may without impropriety call them so, his own also-Mr. Basil Montagu, Mr. George Moore, Sir James Scarlett (now Lord Abinger), Doctor Holland, Lord Jeffrey, and the Rev. Sydney Smith, the Editor takes this opportunity of returning his grateful thanks for what remains to engage the

reader's attention.

Upon the valuable assistance—more especially in connection with the residence in India-for which he has been obliged to his brother-in-law, Mr. William Erskine, he feels that it would be impertinent in this place to enlarge. An acknowledgment of the ready kindness, which placed much interesting correspondence at his disposal, would have here naturally followed, but for the event which has deprived his many attached friends of the late much esteemed Mr. Richard Sharp.

If the slight connecting narrative could bear the weight of an observation, he would remark, in explanation of what may appear to some as a cold style of expression, that he had not determined to prefix his name to these pages, till they were so far advanced as to make a subsequent change to one more natural to the relationship, then first avowed, between the writer and his subject,-scarcely worth while.