Speculative Society was dedicated, and it provided a channel of
expression for that radical Whiggishness which characterized not only
many of its members but also the intellectual atmosphere of the city.
It is regrettable that the practice of taking detailed notes of what was said at the
Society’s debates was not yet in force during Constant’s period in Edinburgh, nor was it
permissible to record in the Minutes on which side an individual member voted. The only
clear indication of a member’s voting intentions comes from his being named in the
Minutes as a teller for the Ayes or the Noes. Nonetheless the Minute Book gives us a
valuable insight into the political and moral preoccupations of Constant and his
associates; in it we see a very wide range of political, historical, philosophical and ethical
subjects dealt with. Entries take the form of a list of members present, preceded by the
President’s (i.e. chairman’s) name; petitions from men wishing to be admitted as
members; the results of ballots on the applications for membership received the previous
week; the title and author of a ‘Discourse’ or essay read to the Society; the ‘Question for
this Evening’s debate’; the names of the member who opened the debate and those who
spoke to the motion; the tellers for the Ayes and Noes; the voting figures and whether the
motion was passed in the affirmative or negative. What we can glean from the Minute
Book is meagre but significant: that the young Constant had regicidal and perhaps proto-
feminist leanings, for on 6 January 1784 he voted retrospectively for the execution of
Charles I, and on 21 December 1784 in favour of giving women a ‘learned education’.^26
Among Constant’s close friends at the Speculative Society, James Mackintosh—
afterwards the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832)—was, like several
other Edinburgh acquaintances, a student of medicine when he was admitted to the
Speculative Society on 21 December 1784. Mackintosh had been drawn to Edinburgh by
its reputation as having the finest teachers of ‘physic’ and science in Europe. Medicine
was not his first love, however, and he would have preferred to be a bookseller
(‘conceiving that no paradise could surpass the life spent among books’)^27 or a lawyer,
but was persuaded otherwise by financial considerations. Later, however, he was to
pursue a career closer to his desires: in 1795 he was called to the English Bar, and in
1803 appointed Recorder of Bombay and given a knighthood. Towards the end of his life
he was to become a Member of Parliament and Privy Councillor.^28 All commentators on
Mackintosh’s life agree on the breadth of his reading, the retentiveness of his memory
and the clarity of his understanding in fields which interested him, politics, legislation,
history, philosophy—fields which were, of course, also beginning to occupy Constant’s
mind. But his character at this period was very different from Constant’s. He was, despite
his claim to have been ‘speculative, lazy, and factious’,^29 a rock of moral integrity,
kindness and practical sense set in the midst of the turbulent and sometimes murky seas
of metaphysics and political philosophy on which his fellow students were driven hither
and thither. He was a polymath who immediately assumed an easy authority over his
contemporaries by the strength of his personality and by his mental powers. That this
model of discipline and intellectual effort made a lasting impression on Constant and, no
doubt, encouraged him to persevere in fields remote from the writing of fiction is clear
from a letter Constant wrote to Mackintosh twenty years later. Assuring him that his
opinion is still ‘of so great value’ to him, Constant continues:
Benjamin constant 48Benjamin constant 48