ove your lordships to condemn and censure
me."

[36] _Ibid._ vii. 252-262.

[37] _Ibid._ vii. 261.

[38] _Ibid._ vii. 270.

[39] _Letters and Life_, vii. 235-236: "The first, of bargain and contract
for reward to pervert justice, _pendente lite_. The second, where the judge
conceives the cause to be at an end, by the information of the party or
otherwise, and useth not such diligence as he ought to inquire of it. And
the third, where the cause is really ended, and it is _sine fraude_ without
relation to any precedent promise.... For the first of them I take myself
to be as innocent as any born upon St Innocent's Day, in my heart. For the
second, I doubt on some particulars I may be faulty. And for the last, I
conceived it to be no fault, but therein I desire to be better informed,
that I may be twice penitent, once for the fact and again for the error."

[40] _Ibid._ vii. 242.

[41] _Ibid._ vii. 244: "Neither will your lordships forget that there are
_vitia temporis_ as well as _vitia hominis_, and that the beginning of
reformations hath the contrary power to the pool of Bethesda, for that had
strength to cure only him that was first cast in, and this hath commonly
strength to hurt him only that is first cast in."

[42] See, among many other passages, _Essays_, "Of Great Place ": "For
corruptions do not only bind thine own hands or thy servant's hands from
taking, but bind the hands of suitors also from offering; for integrity
used doth the one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation
of bribery, doth the other; and avoid not only the fault but the
suspicion."

[43] Cf. _Letters and Life_, vii. 560: "I was the justest judge that was in
England these fifty years; but it was the justest censure in Parliament
that was these two hundred years."

[44] Or on the ground that there was a distinct rule forbidding chancellors
and the like officials to take presents. This does not seem to have been
the case, if we may judge from what Bacon says _Letters and Life_, vii.
233.

[45] Not only do the cases, so far as they are known, support Bacon's plea
of innocence, but it is remarkable that no attempt at a reversal of any of
his numerous decrees appears to have been successful. Had his decrees been
wilful perversions of justice, it is scarcely conceivable that some of them
should not have been overturned. See _Letters and Life_, vii. 555-562.

[46] The peculiarities of Bacon's style were noticed very ear