speculating in stocks to make them good again. Suddenly, the great South Sea Bubble burst, and there was a great loss. Masters and suitors were ruined; and a loud cry for reform became the rage of the day. The brunt of the storm fell on the head of the Lord Chancellor. Against the custom were paraded certain old obsolete Statutes of Richard II. and Edward VI., in unreadable law French, "several hundred years" forgotten, within the letter of which his case happened to fall, and did not happen to fall within the exception, as that of the Judges of the Law Courts did; and so Macclesfield was condemned to everlasting infamy for doing about the same thing that the Judges were doing, and had a right to do, without any thought of wrong. But it was all wrong, undoubtedly : offices never ought to have been sold at all, nor presents taken. On the trial, a witness was asked, if the Lord Chancellor Cowper, and Harcourt, had not done the same thing, in their times. "O yes," answered the witness. But, breaks in Lord Harcourt from his seat on the benches," Did I ever haggle for more?" and "Didn't they pay me out of their own money?" 1 In modern times, a rational remedy for such evils would be found in a new Statute, giving an ample fixed salary, with utter prohibition of all fees, perquisites, and presents, any custom to the contrary notwithstanding; but in these more ancient days, it was by summary outbreak - Off with the Chancellor's head! hurl his name and reputation into the bottomless pit! and let the bursting of South Sea bubbles forever cease! In the reign of James I., the Lord Chancellor had no fixed salary, or a merely nominal one, and yet his income was expected to be some £15,000 a year: it came from ancient perquisites and customary fees, not regulated by other law than the custom. But to such a pitch had grown all manner of abuses, in this reign, in monopolies, patents, prerogative exactions, fees, presents, and largesses, reaching 1 16 Howell's State Trials, 1151. all the Courts of Justice and nearly all the offices of State, that every Parliament opened with a thundering demand for reform and a redress of grievances, and was immediately prorogued and sent home because it did so, until at last reform had to come. Buckingham, the prime favorite, whose frown was fatal to all lesser dependants, did not scruple to write letters to the Lord Chancellor, urging upon him a favorable consideration of particular suitors in his Here was indeed danger that justice might be perverted, if the judge were really dishonest. There is no charge that Bacon was ever swerved under this pressure; and it is certain that he counselled in eloquent terms against a practice which he had no power to correct. And is it any matter of wonder that, yielding to the necessities of his actual condition, and unconscious of any dereliction of duty, or any falling from virtue and honor, he should adopt and continue the customs and usages of former Chancellors, or even slide into the common practices and abuses of the Court and time and throng in which he had to live and move? Birth-day presents, New Year's gifts, splendid offerings on various occasions, largesses of money, and magnificent favors, were common, and Bacon seems to have participated in these things in some small degree with the rest. Transition from the State functionary to the judge in the same person, or from the courtier to the suitor, was but a short distance to travel, and the distinction between a fee, a present, and a bribe was not well marked by any law, and more easily lost sight of than in our day. Practically, hardly any distinction existed, then. According to the researches of Mr. Dixon, the compensation of all the great officers of State, including the Chancellor, Judges, and Bishops, from the King down to the King's Sergeant, was derived from these indefinite fees, gifts, and perquisites, there being no such thing as a civil list, and such fixed salaries as there were being merely nominal.1 1 Pers. Hist. of Lord Bacon, 290. Most of the charges against Bacon were founded upon gifts accepted as usual after the cases had been determined, as a compensation justly due in the absence of fees fixed by law, of which there were none. Some were received by his servants, or under-officers, without his personal knowledge, before the cases had been decided; and in some of these instances, the money was ordered to be returned as improper, when reported to him. In other cases, he was not actually aware that the donors had causes pending in his court. In nearly all cases, the gifts were presented through eminent counsel and persons of high standing, and in most cases, openly, and with the knowledge of all concerned; and as Coke himself admitted, as it were, in the presence of witnesses. In general, they were received by his clerks and the officers whose business it was to collect and receive the fees and emoluments of his office. The grievance of the chief complainants was, that their cases had been decided against them, notwithstanding the gifts; nor does it appear that his judgments were at all affected by these alleged bribes. None of the cases were reversed on appeal; but appeals were not common in those days, says Lord Campbell. After a thorough scrutiny into the whole matter, Mr. Dixon comes to the conclusion, that there is no fair and just ground for supposing that Bacon "had done wrong, knowing it to be wrong," in a single instance; that "not a single fee or remembrance traced to the Chancellor can, by any fair construction, be called a bribe. Not one appears to have been given upon a promise; not one appears to have been given in secret; not one is alleged to have corrupted justice." This conclusion would almost bring the case within the precedent of the play, in which Bassanio offers the judge, after judgment.pronounced, the "three thousand ducats due unto the Jew" for his "courteous pains withal" : "Ant. And stand indebted, over and above, In love and service to you evermore. Por. He is well paid that is well satisfied: And therein do account myself well paid. Bass. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you farther: Por. You press me far, and therefore I will yield. Mer. of Ven., Act IV. Sc. 1. All this may be true; and yet it would seem to be clear from the recorded facts and his own admissions, that the gifts were too large, in some instances, to come under the head of ordinary fees, and the circumstances such as to make him, at least, a partaker in the abuses of the time. Indeed, the actual facts as formally confessed by himself would, undoubtedly, by strict legal construction, bring the case, in some instances, within the judicial offence of bribery as technically defined by law, where the intent would have to be inferred from the facts. Said Lord Macclesfield, "If you are to judge me by the strict rigor of the statute, all my fees were bribes; for the fees were no more lawful than the presents." And yet it would be absurd to charge the judge with the moral guilt of base corruption, in such case and under such circumstances. Considering the imperial nature of Bacon's mind, habitually soaring aloft amidst the highest contemplations, and intending, as he said, to move "in the true straight line of nobleness," and more or less constantly preoccupied, as he was, with other matters than the business of the court and the watching of servants, clerks, and chancery suitors, and blinded in some degree, perhaps, by the splendor of state which attended him, and never particularly attentive to money affairs, and always rather munificent than avaricious or griping, it is easy to see how he might insensibly fall into a somewhat negligent and inconsiderate indulgence in the common practices and abuses, especially with the example of illustrious predecessors before him to justify them, even to the extent of all the facts necessary to make out a case of bribery, in strict legal construction, without his conscience being aroused, though sensible to all honor and virtue, to any sense of wrong, much less to a consciousness of corrupt guilt in the perversion of justice at the fountain head, as it must be admitted, would, and should, be the case with any honest judge in our time, under any similar circumstances which could now take place. But no such case could now arise. Though it be difficult to make such " gross sins look clear," or wholly to justify or excuse them, on the highest moral grounds, when the whole matter is duly considered, it is perhaps still possible to believe that no corrupt intent, or thought, ever entered into his mind in these matters, and that what he said for himself may have been really true:-" And for the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the book of hearts shall be opened, 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." In a draft of a paper to be delivered to the King, before the formal proceedings in the House of Lords, and in which he appears carefully to have considered the real state of the case, he distinguished cases of gifts received into three degrees: 1. Of bargain or contract for reward to pervert justice; 2. Where the judge conceives the law to be at an end, by the information of the party, or otherwise, and useth not such diligence as he ought, to inquire into it; 3. When the cause is really ended, and the gift is sine fraude without relation to any precedent promise. Of the first, he declared his entire innocence; of the second, he doubted in some instances he might have been faulty; and of the third, he considered it to be no fault; but in this respect he desired to be better informed, that |