Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) was a Scottish jurist, politician and historian. He is said to have been one of the most cultured and catholicminded men of his time. He was trained as a doctor and barrister, and worked also as a journalist, judge, administrator, professor, philosopher and politician. His Vindiciae Gallicae was the verdict of a philosophic Liberal on the development of the French Revolution up to the spring of 1791. As a lawyer his greatest public efforts were his lectures (1799) at Lincoln's Inn on the law of nature and nations, of which the introductory discourse was published and ran to several editions. His History of the Revolution in England (1834), breaking off at the point where William of Orange is preparing to intervene in the affairs of England, is chiefly interesting because of Macaulay's admiring essay on it and its author.