Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/538

 LORD CHANCELLOR BACON

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SOME QUESTIONS OF LEGAL ETHICS SUGGESTED BY THE LIFE AND CAREER OF LORD CHANCELLOR BACON, VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS BY RICHARD THE name of Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord Chancellor of England, is illustrious in Science, Literature, and Philosophy. In his own time and the next ensuing genera tion, it acquired, owing to his principal scientific works having been published in Latin as well as English, even greater re nown on the continent of Europe than in England. In his own country, owing to his conviction of the disgraceful offense of receiving fees from suitors while upon the wool-sack as Lord Chancellor, his sun went down in darknees; while abroad, where the doings of the English courts were little known, his honor and celebrity, based on the splendid products of his brain, pub lished in the language of learning, continued to flourish and shine with increasing luster despite the dark clouds which shadowed his reputation in England. For many years after his decease, in 1626, no attempt was made in English -speaking countries to redeem his reputation or re habilitate his character, but people were satisfied to speak of him in the language of the poet as "the wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind." Within the last half of the iQth century, however, carried away by the brilliancy of his achievements in Science and Philosophy, a school of writers has been developed, who, unwilling to see any thing blamable in the character or conduct of a personage whose gigantic intellect they so rightly revere and admire, have undertaken to minimize and explain away Francis Bacon's misdoings, so that he has recently been presented to us as a man of lofty principles, as well as a mighty genius; as one whose essential purposes were right and good, and whose ill deeds are to be ac counted for, as due to his lack of attention

L. ASHURST to the smaller matters of law and justice while his head was absorbed in lofty specu lation, and to his indulgence and affection for his friends and servants. While such a spirit of charitable judgment is to be in some respects commended, it is attended with this danger, particularly when it is a man of conspicuous greatness whose tran scendent abilities have won him a distin guished position in history, whose character is discussed; that to minimize and excuse his misdeeds, which from his eminence can not be forgotten, tends to obscure the moral judgment and blind or mislead us as to ethical principles when the example set by the great man of the past is on the wrong side. It becomes therefore necessary that from time to time some one should under take the invidious duty of again showing that the feet of the great image, or perhaps even higher parts of the splendid figure, are of clay, and of warning his companions in life's journey not to be so misled by the glamor of splendid talents and great achieve ment as to overlook essential defects in character and conduct, where truth and jus tice have been lacking or disregarded. In Francis Bacon's case it is especially the duty of a lawyer to perform this task, since it was in the practice of our profession, first at the Bar and afterwards on the wool sack, that he left behind him so distressing a record of misdoing, that no brilliancy of achievement in Literature, Science, or Phil osophy can obliterate its darkness. Francis Bacon, son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper in the early days of Queen Elizabeth, was born, in 1561, graduated from Cambridge about 1576 and being in feeble health was sent in the suite of his father's friend, Sir Amyas Paulet, when he was Ambassador to France. The change