Note 596 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

Clarendon speaks of this impeachment as an unhappy precedent, made to gratify a private displeasure. This expression seems rather to point to Buckingham than to Coke; and some letters of Bacon to the favourite at the time of his fall display a consciousness of having offended him. Yet Buckingham had much more reason to thank Bacon as his wisest counsellor, than to assist in crushing him. In his works (vol. i. p. 712) is a tract, entitled "Advice to the Duke of Buckingham," containing instructions for his governance as minister. These are marked by the deep sagacity and extensive observation of the writer. One passage should be quoted in justice to Bacon. "As far as it may lie in you, let no arbitrary power be intruded; the people of this kingdom love the laws thereof, and nothing will oblige them more than a confidence of the free enjoying of them: what the nobles upon an occasion once said in parliament, 'Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari,' is imprinted in the hearts of all the people." I may add that with all Bacon's pliancy, there are fewer over-strained expressions about the prerogative in his political writings than we should expect. His practice was servile, but his principles were not unconstitutional. We have seen how strongly he urged the calling of parliament in 1614: and he did the same, unhappily for himself, in 1621. Vol. ii. p. 580. He refused also to set the great seal to an office intended to be erected for enrolling prentices, a speculation apparently of some monopolists; writing a very proper letter to Buckingham, that there was no ground of law for it. P. 555.

I am very loth to call Bacon, for the sake of Pope's antithesis, "the meanest of mankind." Who would not wish to believe the feeling language of his letter to the king, after the attack on him had already begun? "I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice; howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the times."—P. 589. Yet the general disesteem of his contemporaries speaks forcibly against him. Sir Simon d'Ewes and Weldon, both indeed bitter men, give him the worst of characters. "Surely," says the latter, "never so many parts and so base and abject a spirit tenanted together in any one earthen cottage as in this man." It is a striking proof of the splendour of Bacon's genius, that it was unanimously acknowledged in his own age amidst so much that should excite contempt. He had indeed ingratiated himself with every preceding parliament through his incomparable ductility; having take an active part in their complaints of grievances in 1604, before he became attorney-general, and even on many occasions afterwards while he held that office, having been intrusted with the management of conferences on the most delicate subjects. In 1614, the Commons, after voting that the attorney-general ought not to be elected to parliament, made an exception in favour of Bacon. Journals, p. 460. "I have been always gracious in the lower house," he writes to James in 1616, begging for the post of chancellor; "I have interest in the gentlemen of England, and shall be able to do some good effect in rectifying that body of parliament-men, which is cardo rerum." Vol. ii. p. 496.

I shall conclude this note by observing, that, if all Lord Bacon's philosophy had never existed, there would be enough in his political writings to place him among the greatest men this country has produced.