enquire into "the abuses of Courts of Justice. "A report of this committee charged the Lord Chancellor with corruption and specified two cases; in the first of which Aubrey, a suitor in his court, stated that he had presented the Lord Chancellor with a hundred pounds and Egerton, another suitor in his court, with four hundred pounds in addition to a former piece of plate of the value of fifty pounds; in both cases decisions had been given against the parties whose presents had been received (Lord Campbell asserts that in the case of Eger. ton both parties had made the Chancellor presents)'. His enemies, it is said, estimated his illicit gains at a hundred thousand pounds; a statement which, it is more than probable, is greatly exaggerated. "I never had," said Bacon in his defense, bribe or reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced sentence or order". This is an acknowledg ment of the fact; and perhaps an aggravation of the offense. He then addressed "an humble submission to the House, a kind of general admission in which he invoked as a plea of excuse vitia temporis. แ How widely different from this is his own language! It is fair justice to appeal from the judge to the tribunal of the philosopher and moralist; it is appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober; unhappily it is likewise to have the engineer Hoist with his own petar. He says in his Essay of Great Place, "For corruption : do not only bind thine own hands, or thy servant's hands from taking, but bind the hands of suitors from offering. For integrity used doth the one; but integrity professed and with a manifest des testation of bribery, doth the other and avoid not only the : 'Decisions being given against the parties is no proof of uncorruptness; it is always the party who loses his suit that complains; the gainer receives the price of his bribe and is silent. The exactions of his servants appear to have been very great; their indulgence in every kind of extravagance and the lavish profuseness of his own expenses were the principal causes of his ruin. Mallet relates that one day, during the investigation into his conduct, the Chancellor passed through a room where several of his servants were sitting; as they arose from their seats to greet him, "Sit downmy masters," exclaimed he, "your rise hath been my fall." fault, but the suspicion1." He says again in the same Essay: "Set it down to thyself, as well to create good precedents as to follow them." But the allegation that it was a custom of the times requires examination. It was a custom of the times in reality to make presents to superiors. Queen Elizabeth received them as New Year's gifts from functionaries of all ranks, from her prime minister down to Charles Smith, the dust-man (V. note 1, page 6), and this custom probably continued under her successor and may have been applied to other high functionaries; but it does not appear to have been in legitimate use in the courts of judicature. Coke, himself Chief Justice, was Bacon's principal accuser; and, although an enemy, he has been said to have conducted himself with moderation and propriety on this occasion only. Lord Campbell, Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, and author of the Lives of the Chancellors and Chief Justices of England, repels the plea, as inadmissible. It cannot be denied that if Bacon extended the practice to the courts of Justice, he has heaped coals of fire on his head; for applied to his own case personally it would be sufficiently odious; but what odium would not that man deserve who should systematize, nay, legitimize a practice that must inevitably poison the stream of justice at its fountain-head! What execration could be too great, if that man were the most intelli gent, the wisest of his century, one of the most dignified in rank in the land, clad in spotless ermine, the emblem of purity, in short the Minister of Justice! The Lords resolved that Bacon should be called upon to put in a particular answer to each of the special charges preferred against him. The formal articles with proofs in support were communicated to him. The House received the "confession and humble submission of me, the Lord Chancellor." In this document Bacon acknowledges himself to be guilty of corruption; and in reply to each special charge admits in every instance the receipt of money or valuable things from the suitors in his court; but alleging in some cases that it was after judgment or as New Year's gifts, a custom of the times, or for prior services. • Essay XI. A committee of nine temporal' and three spiritual lords was appointed to ascertain whether it was he who had subscribed this document. The committee repaired to his residence, were received in the hall where he had been accustomed to sit as judge and merely asked him if the signature affixed to the paper they exhibited to him was his. He passionately exMy lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.' The committee withdrew overwhelmed with grief at the sight of such greatness so fallen. claimed 66 Four commissioners despatched by the king demanded the Great Seal of the Chancellor, confined to his bed by sickness and sorrow and want of sustenance; for he refused to take any food. He hid his face in his hand and delivered up that Great Seal for the attainment of which he "had sullied his integrity, had resigned his independence, had violated the most sacred obligations of friendship and gratitude, had flattered the worthless, had persecuted the innocent, had tampered with judges, had tortured prisoners, had plundered suitors, had wasted on paltry intrigues all the powers of the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men ". All this he did to be Lord High Chancellor of England; and, had he not been the unworthy minister of James, he might have been, to use the beautiful language of Hallam, "the high priest of nature. On the 3rd May he was unanimously declared to be guilty, and he was sentenced to a fine of forty thousand pounds, to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure, to be incapable of holding any public office, and of sitting in parliament or of coming within the verge of the court *. Such was the sentence pronounced on the man whom three months before the king delighted to honour for "his integrity in the administration of justice." 'Lay Peers. The Bishops. 3 Macaulay's Essays. He was not, as has been erroneously supposed, stripped of his titles of nobility; this was proposed; but it was negatived by the majority formed by means of the bishops. The fatal verdict affected his health so materially that the judgment could not receive immediate execution; he could not be conveyed to the Tower until the 31st of May; the following day he was liberated. He repaired to the house of Sir John Vaughan, who held a situation in the prince's household'. He wished to retire to his own residence at York House; but this was refused. He was ordered to proceed to his seat at Gorhambury, whence he was not to remove and where he remained, though very reluctantly, till the ensuing spring. The heavy fine was remitted. But as he had lived in great pomp he had economized naught from his legitimate or illgotten gains. As he was now insolvent a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was bestowed on him; from his estate and other revenues he derived thirteen hundred pounds per annum more. On the 17th October his remaining penalties were remitted. It cannot but strike the reader as a most remarkable circumstance that within eighteen months of the condemnation all the penalties were successively remitted. Would this induce the belief that he was but the scape-goat of the court, that the condemnation was purely political? It is, we believe, to be explained ostensibly by the advanced age of Bacon, but really by the circumstance that the king's favourite Buckingham was an accomplice. Bacon discovered, alas! when it was too late that the talent God had given him he had "misspent in things for which he was least fit; " or as Thomson has beautifully expressed it2: Hapless in his choice, Unfit to stand the civil storm of state, And through the smooth barbarity of courts, Kind Nature form'd; deep, comprehensive, clear, Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul, The prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I., was before he ascended the throne the patron of Bacon, who said of him in his will "my most gracious sovereign who ever when he was prince, was my patron. 2 The Seasons. It is gratifying to turn from the melancholy scenes exhibited by the political life of Bacon to behold him in his study in the deep search of truth; no contrast is more striking than that between the chancellor and the philosopher or, as Macaulay has well termed it, "Bacon seeking for truth and Bacon seeking for the Seals Bacon in speculation and Bacon in action." From amidst clouds and darkness we emerge into the full blaze and splendour of mid-day light. We now find Bacon wholly devoting himself to the pursuits for which nature adapted him and from which no extent of occupation could entirely detach him. The author redeemed the man; in the philosopher and the poet there was no weakness, no corruption. Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Here the writer yielded not to vitia temporis; but combated them with might and main, with heart and soul. In 1623 he published the Life of Henry VII. In a letter addressed to the Queen of Bohemia with a copy, he says pathetically: "time was I had honour without leisure, and now I have leisure without honour." But his honour without leisure had precipitated him into "bottomless perdition;" his leisure without honour retrieved his name and raised him again to an unattainable height. In the following year he printed his Latin translation of the Advancement of Learning under the title of De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. This was not however a mere translation; for he made in it omissions and alterations; and appears to have added about one third new matter; in short he remodelled it. His work, replete with poetry and beautiful imagery, was received with applause throughout Europe. It was reprinted in France. 1624; one year after its appearance in England. It was immediately translated into French and Italian and was published in Holland, the great book-mart of that time, in 4645, 1650 and 1662. In 1624 he solicited of the king a remission of the sentence, to the end, says he, that blot of ignominy may be removed |