Grattan, 'You would be
the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of
red tape, and tie up your bills and papers.' This was the fault or the
misfortune of your excellent father; he never knew the use of red
tape, and was utterly unfit for the common business of life. That a
guinea represented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter
for a quantity of cloth, he was well aware; but the accurate number of
the baser coin, or the just measurement of the manufactured article,
to which he was entitled for his gold, he could never learn, and it
was impossible to teach him. Hence his life was often an example of
the ancient and melancholy struggle of genius with the difficulties of
existence.
* * * * *
"A high merit in Sir James Mackintosh was his real and unaffected
philanthropy. He did not make the improvement of the great mass of
mankind an engine of popularity, and a stepping-stone to power, but he
had a genuine love of human happiness. Whatever might assuage the
angry passions, and arrange the conflicting interests of nations;
whatever could promote peace, increase knowledge, extend commerce,
diminish crime, and encourage industry; whatever could exalt human
character, and could enlarge human understanding, struck at once at
the heart of your father, and roused all his faculties.
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