A Lamp to the Path / Or, The Word of God in the Heart, the Home, the Workshop and the Market-Place

by W. K. Tweedie

EMPLOYED BY LORD BACON.

It were a weariness to trace all the instances of Bacon’s meanness in place-hunting, and his fulsome adulation of those who appeared likely to promote his views. He even went so far as to prosecute a clergyman named Peacham, for a sermon alleged to contain treason, but never either preached or published. Bacon was then Attorney-General. THE
TORTURE. He tampered with the judges, says Lord Campbell, and had the unhappy man put to the torture, to wring a confession from him, without success. “He was examined before torture, between torture, and after torture.”—These are Bacon’s own words, and according to the biographer of the Chancellors, EMPLOYED
BY LORD
BACON. there is reason to believe that he even presided at the rack. He thus outraged the law and the constitution of England to gratify James I., then upon the throne. But the Lord Chancellor of the day was aged and infirm. Lord Campbell says, “he could not much longer hold the seals, and Bacon was resolved to be his successor.” That was his aim, and is not Lord Campbell right in adding, “there are stronger contrasts of light and shade in the character of Bacon, than probably of any other man who ever lived?” The instances of meanness, of subserviency, of adulation to those from whom he expected favours, as proved by his own letters, convict this philosopher and sage of conduct which would have degraded a menial; while to the whole he could add a malignity never surpassed, all under pretence of acting a Christian part. His biographer says that he poured oil of vitriol into the wounds he had inflicted, and it was in perfect keeping with this that that Attorney-General of England, in consequence of some offence which he had unwarily given, flung himself on the floor, kissed the feet of such a man as Buckingham, the profligate favourite of James, and vowed never to rise till he was forgiven.

BACON’S BRIBES—

But he could not always proceed unchecked. Nemesis was not forgetful of the right. Bacon had reached the summit of his ambition; he was Lord High Chancellor of England, and in that character soon became notorious for the bribes which he accepted for his judgments. BACON’S
BRIBES— This more than European philosopher, this author of a new logic, and of works which brought the learned from all parts of Christendom to converse with him, was known to take bribes as a judge! A committee of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate such corruption. The Chancellor shuffled, equivocated, denied, but at last confessed, because the evidence was such as no partiality could escape. A great number of charges of bribery were established. The whole have been supposed to amount to £100,000. Bacon was about to be impeached. He broke down under the load of infamy, and appealed to the King to interpose; but all was unavailing, and the Lord High Chancellor of England, one of the profoundest thinkers of modern times, gave in to his peers, “His confession and humble submission.” It says, “I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption; and do renounce all defence and put myself upon the grace and mercy of your Lordships.” When visited at his house, where he lay in shattered health, to ascertain the genuineness of his signature to the confession, he exclaimed, “My lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed;” and he subsequently surrendered the great seal, the bauble for which, Macaulay says, 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, and 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.

HIS DISGRACE.

HIS
DISGRACE. Bacon’s sentence from his peers was, a fine of £40,000; he was to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s pleasure; to be for ever incapable of holding any public office, place, or employment, and never to sit in Parliament, or come within the verge of the court. The king was eventually moved to rescind the judgment, but Bacon was then too old to profit by the clemency—he was on the eve of passing away to meet the just and merciful Judge of the skies.

Now, this glimpse at the rise and fall of this great lawyer, proclaims aloud the insufficiency of all but the grace and truth of God to keep man morally erect. Not gigantic intellectual powers—had these sufficed, Bacon would have been steadfast as a rock. Not worldly success—Bacon sat at the right hand of royalty, and kept the conscience of a king. Not great trust—the Lord High Chancellor of England was the foremost subject in that respect. Not celebrity—with that, Bacon might have been satiated. Not greatness—without goodness, that is a tinkling cymbal. What then? The answer which experience, history, and the Word of God combine to give, is this, “I am what I am by the grace of God that is in me.” The man who dims the light of that lamp which was kindled in heaven, has already tottered to his fall.

But truth would have “fallen in the streets,” had all lawyers acted thus. There have been some, however, who repelled such things with high-toned integrity and honour, and we now turn to a contrast to Lord Chancellor Bacon—to one

“In whom

The British Themis gloried with just cause.”