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upon the mercy of the Lords. A few days later (April 22), Bacon, who had ascertained privately the particulars of the charge, wrote to the Lords: ‘I find matter sufficient and full, both to move me to desert my defence, and to move your Lordships to condemn and censure me.’ Why he thus avoided the trial is a mystery which has never yet been solved. He wished to resign the Seal, urging as a motive for clemency, ‘Neither will your Lordships forget, that there are vitia temporis as well as vitia hominis; and the beginning of reformation hath the contrary power to the pool of Bethesda; for that had strength to cure him only that was first cast in, and this hath strength to hurt him only that is first cast in; and, for my part, I wish it may stay there and go no farther.’ His confession was regarded as insufficient, and it was ordered that the articles of the charge, now increased in number to twenty-three, should be laid before him. On the 30th of April his full confession, with the answers to the articles in detail, was read before the Lords. ‘I do plainly and ingenuously confess,’ he says, ‘that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence.’ As after the severe self-examination which he underwent, he did not find himself blameless, it would be doing an ill service to his memory to excuse him. But, in confessing himself guilty of corruption, we must have regard to his own language. That Bacon took bribes for the perversion of justice no one has ventured to assert. Not one of the thousands of decrees which he made as Chancellor was ever set aside. None of his judgements were reversed. Even those who first charged him with accepting money admitted that he decided against them. What his own opinions were concerning judicial bribery we know from many passages in his writings, and it would argue him a hypocrite of the deepest dye. to suppose that he openly practised what he as openly denounced. In his speech in the Common Pleas (May 3, 1617) to Justice Hutton, he admonishes him: ‘That your hands, and the hands of your hands (I mean those about you) be clean, and uncorrupt from gifts, from meddling in titles, and from