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LORD CHANCELLOR BACON side, and renewed his prayer for a light sen tence. The Lords acted with great vigor and dispatch, yet as is apparent with considerable reflection and consideration. Their sentence appears to have been in a measure a compro mise between the extreme views of two parties in the body. The Lord Chancellor was found guilty of all the crimes and cor ruptions charged against him by the Com mons, and of sundry other crimes and cor ruptions of like nature, and sentenced r. To pay a fine of ^40,000; 2. To be imprisoned in the Tower at the King's pleasure; 3. To be forever incapable of filling any office, place, or employment of the State, and 4. Never to sit in Parliament or come within the verge of the Court. He was not deprived of his peerage, al though he lost part of its privileges, nor of his titles of honor. The rest of his sentence was less severe in its application than in its language. The King was not forgetful of his servant, who had so often sacrificed law and conscience to the fulfillment of the Royal behests and the Crown's advantage. Bacon was soon released from imprisonment, and even was mercifully dealt with as to the large fine, which was perhaps imposed not •without an eye to the Royal necessities. When his estates were sold, under Ex chequer proceedings for the levy of the fine, they were largely permitted to be bought up at low prices by Bacon's friends, so that his loss was by no means total, and a little later the King granted him a pension on his urgent entreaty. He survived his disgrace not quite six years, which he devoted prin cipally to the revision of his philosophic •works. Until recent years Bacon's admirers •were satisfied to separate the man from the author, and while they glorified the philos opher, to suffer as far as possible the mantle of oblivion to cover his personal life and character. Within the last few decades, how ever, a school of writers has arisen who are such intense worshipers of Bacon's genius,

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and of the great productions recognizedly from his brain and pen that they not only seek to snatch from the brows of other authors their laurels, but have undertaken the task of rehabilitating Lord Verulam's character as a man, a lawyer, and a judge. These defenders of Bacon claim that his offenses and crimes were only those of his time and surroundings, and that his most in defensible actions were the deeds of his friends and servants unjustly imputed to him. The misdoings of lesser men may be safely permitted to be forgotten, but to ex cuse or minimize the offenses of so great a man as Bacon has unhappily a tendency to lower the moral standard by which other lesser men are to be judged; and this at tempted rehabilitation of Bacon has, I think, had a distinctly lowering and degrading effect on the community in general and no the Bench and Bar in particular. It is not surprising that a large portion of the laity and the press, ever ready to disparage our profession as a body, and individually to pull down and besmirch the reputation of the best of us, for the fulfillment of unpopu lar duty, while always delighted to laud to the skies the popularity-hunting demagogue or the unprincipled blackmailer who de grades our profession should be found in the ranks of Bacon eulogists; but even law yers and judges have of late been found in this crowd of Bacon's worshipers, regardless of the fact that by this attempted rehabili tation they foul their own nest and lower the standards of their own calling. I will endeavor to state the position of the Baconians fairly. I understand their con tention to be, that the principle of the ab solute prohibition of the judiciary receiv ing personal compensation or reward from the suitors in their courts had not been thoroughly established in England in the time of James I, and that judges still looked, or might look, for a part of their compensa tion, to voluntary gratuities or thank offer ings from successful litigants; and the remark of the Duke of Venice to Bassanio,