ced by his example,
appealed to the laws as they were laid down, according to the verbal
meaning of which they thought themselves bound to decide. Bacon
maintained that the Judges' oath was meant to include obedience to the
King also, to whom application must be made in every matter affecting
his prerogative. This is probably what Queen Elizabeth also thought,
and it was the decided opinion of King James. He made the man who
cherished similar views his Lord Chancellor, and dismissed Coke from
his service. Bacon when in office was responsible for a catastrophe
which, as we shall see, not only ruined himself, but reacted upon the
monarchy. The English, contemporaries and posterity alike, have taken
the side of Coke. Yet Bacon's industry in business is not therefore
altogether to be despised. He urged the King, who was disposed to
judge hastily, to take time and to weigh the reasons of both parties.
He gave the judges who went on circuit through the country the most
pertinent advice. The directions which he drew up for the Court of
Chancery have laid the foundations of the practice of that court, and
are still an authority for it. His scheme of collecting and reforming
the English laws still, even at the present day, appears to statesmen
learned in the law to be an unavoidable necessity; and the opinion is
spreading that steps must be taken in this matter in the direction
already pointed out by Bacon.

Bacon was one of the last men who identified the welfare of England
with the development of the monarchical element in the constitution,
or at all events with the preponderance of the authority of the
sovereign within constitutional limits. The union of the three
kingdoms under the ruling authority of the King appeared to him to
contain the foundation of the future greatness of Britain. With the
assertion of the authority of the sovereign he connected the hope of a
reform of the laws of England, of the establishment of a comprehensive
system of colonisation in Ireland, and of the assimilation of the
ecclesiastical and judicial constitution of Scotland to English
customs. He loved the monarchy because he expected great things from
it.

But it cannot be denied that he brought his ideas into a connexion
with his interests, which was fatal to the acceptance of the former.
His is just a case in which we feel relieved when we turn from the
disputes of the day to the free domain of scientific activity, in
which his true life was