ever been done.  He saw where it wanted reforming, and set himself at once to reform.  The accumulation and delay of suits had become grievous; at once he threw his whole energy into the task of wiping out the arrears which the bad health of his predecessor and the traditional sluggishness of the court had heaped up.  In exactly three months from his appointment he was able to report that these arrears had been cleared off.  “This day” (June 8, 1617), he writes to Buckingham, “I have made even with the business of the kingdom for common justice.  Not one cause unheard.  The lawyers drawn dry of all the motions they were to make.  Not one petition unheard.  And this I think could not be said in our time before.”

The performance was splendid, and there is no reason to think that the work so rapidly done was not well done.  We are assured that Bacon’s decisions were unquestioned, and were not complained of.  At the same time, before this allegation is accepted as conclusive proof of the public satisfaction, it must be remembered that the question of his administration of justice, which was at last to assume such strange proportions, has never been so thoroughly sifted as, to enable us to pronounce upon it, it should be.  The natural tendency of Bacon’s mind would undoubtedly be to judge rightly and justly; but the negative argument of the silence at the time of complainants, in days when it was so dangerous to question authority, and when we have so little evidence of what men said at their firesides, is not enough to show that he never failed.

But the serious thing is that Bacon subjected himself to two of the most dangerous influences which can act on the mind of a judge—­the influence of the most powerful and most formidable man in England, and the influence of presents, in money and other gifts.  From first to last he allowed Buckingham, whom no man, as Bacon soon found, could displease except at his own peril, to write letters to him on behalf of suitors whose causes were before him; and he allowed suitors, not often while the cause was pending, but sometimes even then, to send him directly, or through his servants, large sums of money.  Both these things are explained.  It would have been characteristic of Bacon to be confident that he could defy temptation:  these habits were the fashion of the time, and everybody took them for granted; Buckingham never asked his good offices beyond what Bacon thought just and right, and asked them rather for the sake of expedition than to influence his judgment.  And as to the money presents—­every office was underpaid; this was the common way of acknowledging pains and trouble:  it was analogous to a doctor’s or a lawyer’s fee now.  And there is no proof that either influence ever led Bacon to do wrong.  This has been said, and said with some degree of force.  But if it shows that Bacon was not in this matter below his age, it shows that he was not above it.  No one knew better than Bacon that there were no more