Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 93, No. 570, April, 1863

by Various

“With regard to the general charge of untruthfulness, I have said that nobody has yet attempted to specify any particular untruth expressed or implied in the Government Declaration. And it is singular that Mr Jardine himself does not form an exception; for though he does specify, as contradicted by one of the omitted passages, a particular statement which he assumes to be contained in the Declaration, it is certain that there is no such statement there; but that, on the contrary, the precise import of that passage, as Mr Jardine himself infers it, is represented in the body of the narrative with delicate exactness. In the absence of such specification, I can only oppose to the general charge a general expression of my own conviction; which is, that the narrative put forth by the Government was meant to be, and was by its authors believed to be, a narrative strictly and scrupulously veracious. It is true that it was written under the excitement and agitation of that last and most portentous disclosure, which, in proving that Essex had been capable of designs far worse than anybody had suspected him of, suggested a new explanation of all that had been most suspicious and mysterious in his previous proceedings; and it may be that things which before had been rejected as incredible were now too easily believed. In so dark a thing as treason it is impossible to have positive evidence at every step. Many passages must remain obscure, and fairly open to more interpretations than one; and in one or two of those points which are and profess to be ‘matter of inference or presumption,’ as distinguished from ‘matter of plain and direct proof,’ there is room, probably, without setting aside such indisputable facts, for an interpretation of Essex’s conduct more favourable than that adopted by the Queen and her councillors.... In my own account of the matter I have abstained, in deference to so general a prejudice, from using the Declaration as an authority; and have assumed as a fact nothing for which I cannot quote evidence independent of it. For the rest, I shall let it speak for itself. It will be found to be a very luminous and coherent narrative, and certainly much nearer the truth than any which has been put forth since it became the fashion to treat it as a fiction.”

Having elected to serve the Queen, and not his former friend (and he probably never hesitated a moment on this subject; he probably would have thought it mere idle romance to sacrifice the actual life and duties before him to the memory of a dead friendship)—having elected to serve the Queen, we do not find that in assisting to conduct the prosecution Bacon behaved with undue harshness towards the accused. The allusion to the Duke of Guise, which Macaulay blames so severely, appears to be one very natural to arise to a speaker on such an occasion. Essex did intend, like the Duke of Guise, to overawe his sovereign. In one respect the parallel pays an undeserved compliment to Essex. The Duke of Guise had the support of a great party—the zealous Catholics; if Essex could have attained the like support from the zealous Protestants, the Puritans, his scheme might, at least, have worn a more rational aspect. Perhaps he fondly conceived that the Puritans would adopt him as their representative. He thought himself a very good Puritan. This bad citizen was highly indignant when Coke cast a slur upon his religion.

Here we lose for the present the guidance of Mr Spedding. We wait with interest for such disclosures as he may make for us in the great charge that burdens the memory of Bacon—that of judicial corruption. There are, indeed, two or three broad facts which, we apprehend, no historical investigation can materially alter, and which, we think, enable us to come to a safe conclusion in this subject. But still there is much we should like to have cleared up to us; especially we should like to know what had been the custom of previous Chancellors in this matter of the reception of presents. Could, for instance, the same charges which were brought against Bacon have been brought against the father, Sir Nicholas Bacon?

The two or three broad facts we allude to are these: 1. After a considerable interval Parliament had met, and “grievances had been gone into.” Monopolies were first attacked, and their attention was called to certain corrupt practices in the Court of Chancery. Bacon was impeached before the House of Lords. 2. The Lord Chancellor no longer stood in an amiable footing with the favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, who was very willing to have the Great Seal to bestow on some other client. The impeached Chancellor was not likely to receive any assistance from the Court. The King advised Bacon to throw himself on his royal mercy. 3. Under these circumstances Bacon did plead guilty, and threw himself on the mercy of the King; who certainly fulfilled his part of the compact by remitting all that he possibly could of the sentence passed by the House of Lords.

Now we cannot suppose that Bacon would plead guilty unless there were really some corrupt practices of which his conscience told him he was culpable. To suppose otherwise would, as Macaulay has argued, convict him of a dastardly conduct almost as infamous as judicial corruption. But although it is impossible to suppose that there was not something to confess—something culpable and illegal to plead guilty to—yet it is very possible that, by showing that he was not more culpable than others, he might have defended himself successfully before the House of Lords. A man of sterner stuff would have adopted this line of defence; he would have carried the war into other territories. Of this the Court was not at all desirous, and Bacon, a lover of peace, thought it the better bargain to plead guilty and keep the King for his friend.

We do not accuse the Lord Chancellor of pleading guilty, and being conscious of perfect innocence; we say that he resigned a line of defence which might have been successful with his judges, in obedience to the wishes of the Court. In the position in which he found himself, submission was better policy than defence.

It is idle to suppose that Bacon received no presents but such as would be classed under the head of fees or customary donations: there was the element of secrecy in the transactions which were now brought to light, and which were to be made the subject of investigation before the House of Lords. The money was given, it is true, to an officer of the Court; it was not slipped into the hand, or dropped stealthily into the sleeve of the judge himself: but the officer of the Court did not talk about such transactions as these; he had the proper esprit de corps, if he had no other motive for silence. But still there are many cases in which a custom, acknowledged to be bad and immoral even by those who fall into it, is yet so prevalent that it seems an injustice to single out any one individual, and punish it in him; and this seems to be the position in which Bacon stands. An illustration occurs to us in some of the vicious customs of trade. The illustration may not be very dignified, but it is apposite. A little time ago the public was suddenly made aware of divers impositions that had been long practised on it. Some articles of commerce were systematically adulterated; others were sold under false descriptions. Here were reels of cotton warranted to contain 300 yards, which did not contain say more than 200; and it was reported at the time (we of course do not vouch for the truth of a statement which we use only by way of illustration) that respectable houses of trade gave orders to the manufacturers for reels of cotton which should be marked as having a greater number of yards than were actually wound on them. Now let us suppose that a custom of this kind prevails, and that suddenly one man, and he not the most flagrant offender, is singled out for punishment. You cannot say the man is guiltless—he will not say himself that he is guiltless; he never approved of the custom, though he fell into it; he knew that it could not bear the light of day; he knew that though his own class did not condemn the custom, the moral opinion of society at large would unhesitatingly denounce it. He pleads guilty—as Bacon did—and throws himself upon the charitable construction of the public. And the public, if it cannot pardon, will not be disposed to punish severely.

The difference between a prevalent bad custom, and a custom which society at a given time does not pronounce to be bad, is stated by Lord Macaulay with his usual force and precision. We shall be glad to hear, from the further investigation of Mr Spedding, which of these most strictly applies to the practice of which Bacon stands accused.

We cannot leave our subject without expressing our assent (with certain reservations) to the estimate which Lord Macaulay has formed of Bacon in his character of philosopher—in that character in which there can be only the difference of more or less admiration.

We admire—as who does not?—the eloquent and far-seeing man who perceived that too much of our time was spent over books, and too little in the study of that nature which appeals at each moment to our senses, and promises to those who will investigate her laws new powers as well as new knowledge. But we agree with Macaulay in setting little store upon the rules of a new logic by which he offered to aid the investigation of those laws. No logic of any kind ever taught a man to reason. No truth was ever discovered by either Aristotelian or Baconian logic. It may be fit and proper to make the process of reasoning a subject of subtle analysis; but just as the poet must come before the critic, and never yet was formed by the critic, so the reasoner comes before the logician, and never yet was an able reasoner made so by rules of logic. It was a glorious word spoken in season, to tell men to observe and to experiment—to take nothing upon mere tradition or authority that could possibly be tested by experiment. But the rules Bacon gives for conducting observation and experiment have never made a good observer, or contributed themselves to our scientific discoveries. “The inductive method,” as Macaulay says, “has been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being.... Not only is it not true that Bacon invented the inductive method, but it is not true that he was the first person who correctly analysed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle had long before pointed out the absurdity of supposing that syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the discovery of a new principle—had shown that such discoveries must be made by induction, and by induction alone; and had given the history of the inductive process, concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and precision.”