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 Hallam, and Ricardo. Mackintosh obtained briefs before parliamentary committees, especially in cases involving constitutional and international law. Basil Montagu as a young barrister, who first made his acquaintance at the Wedgwoods', became an admiring disciple, and persuaded him to join the Norfolk circuit, where there was an opening for leading counsel, although little business. Montagu describes (ib. i. 169-66) a circuit in which they visited in the intervals of business places associated with the memoir of Cowper, and in which Mackintosh made a conspicuous success in a case of libel. Beginning to speak late at night he gave a long discourse, starting from philosophical reflections upon the nature of power and knowledge, and ending with a pathetic appeal to the parties concerned, which melted half his audience to tears, and secured a verdict at four in the morning (ib. p. 146). His greatest performance was the defence of Peltier (21 Feb. 1803), accused of a libel in a paper called 'L'Ambigu,' intended to suggest the assassination of Napoleon, then first consul. Mackintosh, besides suggesting a different meaning for the alleged libel, gave a long harangue upon (Constitutional principles and the history of England since Elizabeth. Both Perceval, prosecuting as attorney-general, and the judge paid the highest compliments to his ' almost unparalleled eloquence' [see ], and he was highly praised by Erskine. The defendant, however, was instantly convicted, but, in consequence of the war, never called up for judgment. Mackintosh's speech was published, and is a fine literary composition, though it hardly seems so well designed to secure a verdict (Report on Twenty-Eight State Trials, pp. 529-620).

Mackintosh made 1,200l. during his last year at the bar (Life, i. 187). In the spring of 1803, however, he accepted an offer from Addington of the recordership of Bombay. Canning and [q. v.] had supported his claims. He had already (in 1800) thought of accepting a judgeship in Trinidad, and had been a candidate for the office of advocate-general in Bengal, conferred upon his Mend 'Bobus' Smith. At an earlier period he had been invited by Lord Wellesley to become head of a projected college at Calcutta. He was anxious, it seems, to obtain leisure for executing schemes of literary work incompatible with an active professional career, and expected to save enough to make him, with the addition of a pension, independent for life. Similar motives induced Macaulay to accept a position in India, but Mackintosh unfortunately had not Macaulay's businesslike capacity for work. He was exposed to some very unjust abuse for accepting an office from the ministry. Two letters to Fox (in the 'Morning frost' of 4 Nov. 1802) denouncing his French proclivities, really written by Coleridge (Essays on his own Times, ii. 652-92), were supposed to have been inspired by Mackintosh (Life, i. 326). He was knighted on his appointment, and spent some months at Tenby, near his father-in-law's house at Cresselly. He sailed with his wife and his five daughters on 14 Feb. 1804, landing at Bombay on 26 May. He received in 1806 a commission as judge in the court of vice-admiralty, then first instituted at Bombay for the trial of prize and maritime cases. He lived at Parell, a country house belonging to the governor, who as a bachelor did not require it. He had brought a library with him, and read much during his stay. He soon, however, found his anticipations disappointed. He regretted the breaking off of a promising career and the loss of his social recreations. Communications with home were so slow that at one period (ib. ii. 97) he notes that the last news from London was seven months old. Few people in the small society of Bombay could share his intellectual interests, and they seem to have regarded him as above his work, and suspected him of despising them. The pecuniary results were equally disappointing. He had to give judgment in some delicate cases where officials were charged with corruption, and incurred obloquy in a small society which was still .tainted with abuses of the old order. His freedom from the demands of English society, instead of being favourable to study, encouraged his natural indolence by removing the stimulus of congenial minds. He read very widely, though in a desultory way. He kept up with English and French literature, studied Kant and Fichte—then known to very few Englishmen—and the schoolmen, of whom he had taken a large collection to India (ib. i. 190, 332); and read not only Scott but Wordsworth, of whose poems he was an early admirer. He produced nothing, however, except designs for future work, and frequently expresses a fear that his will be a 'life of projects' (ib. i. 395). He founded the 'Literary Society of Bombay' (26 Nov. 1805), of which he became president, and tried to promote the study of Indian languages and philosophies. He made some tours to different parts of the country, and was much interested in the antiquities and the manners and customs of the natives.

His health suffered from the climate. His wife was compelled to return to England for