l
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.[135]

No 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 freedom';[136] or 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.[137] When 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 1800 Mackintosh 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.'[138] In 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_.[139]

In a remarkable letter to Windham[140] of 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.'[141] Politics, he now thought, must be made scientific by
recognising with Burke the