To his extreme opponents the same theory afforded the justification of the revolution.It meant that every institution was to be thrown into the crucible,and a new world to arise governed only by reason.The view very ably defended by Mackintosh was opposed to both.He looks upon the French revolution as a more complete application of the principles of Locke and the English Whigs of 1688.The revolutionists are,as he urges,48applying the principles which had been worked out by the 'philosophers of Europe'during the preceding century.They were not,as Burke urged,rejecting experience for theory.The relation between their doctrine and politics is analogous to the relation between geometry and mechanics.49We are now in the position of a people who should be familiar with Newton,but in shipbuilding be still on a level with the Esquimaux.The 'rights of man'appear to him to mean,not,as Burke and Bentham once agreed,a set of 'anarchical fallacies,'but a set of fundamental moral principles;and the declaration of them a most wise and 'auspicious'commencement of the 'regenerating labours'of the new legislators.The French revolution represented what Somers would now approve if he had our advantages.50A thoroughgoing change had become necessary in France.The church,army,and law were now 'incorrigible.'51Burke had seen,in the confiscation of church property,an attempt to abolish Christianity.To Mackintosh it seemed to be a reform justifiable in principle,which,though too roughly carried out,would reduce 'a servile and imperious priesthood to humble utility.'52A poor priesthood,indeed,might incline to popular superstition.We could console ourselves by reflecting that the power of the church,as a corporation,was broken,and that toleration and philosophy would restrain fanaticism.53The assignats were still 'almost at par.'54The sale of the national property would nearly extinguish the debt.France had 'renounced for ever the idea of conquest,'55and had no temptations to war,except her colonies,their commercial inutility and political mischievousness had been so 'unanimously demonstrated,'that the French empire must soon be delivered from 'this cumbrous and destructive appendage,'An armed people,moreover,could never be used like a mercenary army to suppress liberty,there was no danger of military despotism,and France would hereafter seek for a pure glory by cultivating the arts of peace and extending the happiness of mankind.56No wonder that Mackintosh,with these views,thought that the history of the fall of the Bastille would 'kindle in unborn millions the holy enthusiasm of *******';57or that,in the early disorders,he saw temporary aberrations of mobs,destined to be speedily suppressed by the true leaders of the revolution.
Mackintosh saw,I take it,about as far as most philosophers,that is,about as far as people who are not philosophers.He observes much that Burke ought to have remembered,and keeps fairly to the philosophical principle which he announces of attributing the revolution to general causes,and not to the schemes of individuals.58When assignats became waste paper,when the guillotine got to work,when the religion of reason was being set up against Christianity,when the French were conquering Europe,when a military despotism was arising,when,in short,it became quite clear that the French revolution meant something very different from a philosophical application of the principles of Locke and Adam Smith,Mackintosh began to see that Burke had not so far missed the mark.Burke,before dying,received his penitent opponent at Beaconsfield;and in 1800Mackintosh took the opportunity of publicly declaring that he 'abhorred,abjured,and for ever renounced the French revolution,with its sanguinary history,its abominable principles,and its ever execrable leaders.'He hoped to 'wipe off the disgrace of having been once betrayed into that abominable conspiracy against God and man.'59In his famous defence of Peltier (1803),he denounced the revolution in a passage which might have been adopted from Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace.60In a remarkable letter to Windham 61of 1806,Mackintosh gives his estimate of Burke,and takes some credit to himself for having discovered,even in the time of his youthful errors,the consistency of Burke's principles,as founded upon an abhorrence of 'abstract politics.'62Politics,he now thought,must be made scientific by recognising with Burke the supreme importance of prescription and historic continuity,and by admitting that the philosophers had not yet constructed a science bearing to practical politics the same relation as geometry to mechanics.He applied his theory to the question of parliamentary reform in the Edinburgh Review .63Here he accepts the doctrine,criticized by James Mill,that a proper representative system must be judged,not,as Mill maintained,solely by the identity of its interest with that of the community at large,but by its fitness to give power to different classes.It follows that the landowners,the professional classes,and the populace should all be represented.And he discovers that the variety of the English system was calculated to secure this end.Though it was only in a few constituencies that the poorest class had a voice,their vote in such places represented the same class elsewhere.