thumb|James Maitland by [[Joseph Nollekens]]
thumb|260x260px|The Maitland tomb, [[St Mary's Collegiate Church, Haddington|St Mary's Church, Haddington]]
James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale, (26 January 1759 – 10 September 1839) was Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland, a Scottish representative peer in the House of Lords. and a writer on political economy.
Early years
Born at Haltoun House near Ratho, the eldest son and heir of James Maitland, 7th Earl of Lauderdale, whom he succeeded in 1789, he became a controversial Scottish politician and writer. His tutor had been the learned Dr. Andrew Dalzell and James Maitland then attended the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, completing his education in Paris where, it is said, he became radicalised.
Parliamentary career
Upon his return home in 1780, he was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates and his father paid £3000 to secure a seat in the House of Commons for his son. From 1780 until 1784 he was a member of parliament representing Newport and from 1784 to 1789, Malmesbury. In the House of Commons he supported the prominent Whig Charles James Fox and took an active part in debate and was one of the managers of the Impeachment of Warren Hastings.
From 1789, in the House of Lords, where he was a Scottish representative peer, he was prominent as an opponent of the policy of William Pitt the Younger and the English government with regard to France.
French Revolution
In 1792, in the company of John Moore, Lord Lauderdale travelled again to France. The attack on the Tuileries and the imprisonment of King Louis XVI took place three days after the earl's arrival in the French capital. After the massacres of 2 September, the British ambassador having left Paris, the earl left Paris on the 4th for Calais. However, he returned to Paris the following month and did not leave for London until 5 December. Upon his return from France, he published a Journal during the residence in France from the beginning of August to the middle of December 1792.
According to the antiquarian Andrew Thomson, "James Maitland 8th Earl of Lauderdale was known as 'Citizen Maitland'. An extremist, he was in Paris during the French Revolution and was a personal friend of Jean-Paul Marat. He rarely visited Scotland". The earl had helped to found the British Society of the Friends of the People in 1792.
New peerage
thumb|Shield of Arms of James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale, KT, PC
Upon the formation of the Grenville administration in February 1806, Lauderdale was made a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Lauderdale of Thirlestane and sworn a member of the Privy Council. For a short time from July 1806 he was keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland.
Napoleonic treaty
On 2 August 1806 the earl, fully fluent in French, departed for France, invested with full powers to conclude peace, the negotiations for which had been for several weeks carried on by the Earl of Yarmouth. Arriving on the 5th he and Yarmouth set about the arduous task of treating with Napoleon and Tallyrand. Yarmouth was recalled on the 14th and Lauderdale was left alone.
In his 'Memoirs ' Eugène François Vidocq wrote that circa Battle of Copenhagen (1807) Boulogne was also bombed. According to Vidocq at this moment Lauderdale was right in Boulogne, and was almost lynched by Frenchmen.
<blockquote>He was an Englishman, and the exasperated people were desirous of revenging themselves on him: they surrounded him, mobbed him, and pressed upon him; and in defiance of the protection of two officers who were attending him, they showered stones and mud upon him from all sides. Pale, trembling, and faltering, the peer thought he was about to fall a sacrifice, when sword in hand, I cleared my way through the rabble, crying 'Destruction to whoever strikes him!' I harangued the multitude, dispersed them, and led the way to the harbour, where, without being subjected to further insult, he embarked on board a flag of truce boat. He soon reached the English squadron, which the next evening renewed the bombardment.
</blockquote>
Following the renewal of hostilities he left Paris for London on 9 October. A full account of the progress and termination of the negotiations appeared in the London Gazette of 21 October 1806.
Lord Lauderdale was made a Privy Counsellor in 1806 and a Knight of the Thistle in 1821.
After acting as the leader of the Whigs in Scotland, Lauderdale became a Tory in 1821 This work, which was translated into French and Italian, produced a controversy between the author and Lord Brougham; The Depreciation of the Paper-currency of Great Britain Proved (1812); and other writings of a similar nature.