26 T H E E NGLI SH E SS AY AND E SS AY I S T S

the highest point attained by English opinion a fter a n e xpe ri

ence o f three centuries I t is immeasurably superior to that
.

whi ch was lately exempli fied in what w a s sardo nically called

the Congo F ree S tate O f the es sence o f wisdom as well as
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,

o f huma ni ty is the denu n ciation o f the b ase and hasty

“
,
”
drawing o f profit in th e first years and the declaration that ,

it is a shameful and u n b lessed thi ng to take the scum o f the

people and wicked condemned men to be the people with
, ,

whom you plant ”

Bacon s countrymen learnt this only
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’

when the colonies showed that they would no longer endur e

the treatment which he had condemned We have to bear .

such facts in mind in order to do justice to the marvellous

prescience and elevation o f mind shown in this essay I n .

/ his capacity o f political moralist Bacon seems t o shake o ff the

.

fetters which cramp hi m when he 13 de ali n g with individual

morality ; o r rather perhaps it is the fact that he is always
, , ,

at heart a political moralist that lowers his tone in the other

,

class o f cases The accepted standard o f the ethics o f public

.

life is to thi s day even outside Germany lower tha n that o f

, ,

private life I n Bacon s time the difie r e n ce was still wider— b o w

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’

wide may be gathered fr om the bitter irony of More s Utop i a

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for there had been no great improvement in the century inter

v e n in g between More and Bacon .

There is no other o f the political essays whi ch shows Baco n

s o immeasurably superior to hi s time a s that O f P la n ta tio ns .

Mr R ey n olds in his edition o f the Es s ay s h a s shown that in

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, ,

the e s say Of Us u y Bacon has n o t only fallen into fallacies

r
,

but that they are fallacies some o f which had been transcended
by at least one contempora r y Mun Th e subj ect o f the essay
, .

Of Em p ir e monarc hs and their policy towards their subj ects

,

and towards rival monarchs has lost much o f its interest and
,

importance Of zbe Tr ue Gr ea tn es s of K i ngdo m s a n d Es ta tes

.

is to the modern mind t o o exclusively concerned with war

, ,

and military policy ; and even t h e essay Of S e diti o ns a n d