The Founder of the New World
(By the Hon. Sir John A. Cockburn, President of the Bacon Society of Great Britain)
The establishment of a Bacon Society in America marks an important epoch in the interpretation of history. There are Bacon Societies in England and on the Continent of Europe, but for several reasons there is no country where such a society could be more appropriately formed than in the United States. It would be difficult to over-estimate the debt which the world at large owes to the Author of the Great Instauration. He it was who provided the keys by which the secrets of nature were unlocked and the treasures of earth made available for the service of man. By his philosophy of usefulness, as contrasted with the barren disquisitions of scholasticism, the wheels of modern industry were set in motion. He was the father of invention and well has America profited by his precepts, for it is through the facilities granted to inventive genius that the United States has attained her industrial greatness. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that it was Francis Bacon who advocated not only the fostering, but the protection of local industry, and denounced the policy of importing articles which could readily be produced at home.
But the claim of Francis Bacon to the gratitude of America has a still more substantial and special basis. The part played by him in founding the American Colonies has been hitherto overlooked. Until he took the helm in Transatlantic enterprise, all attempts to make a permanent settlement in Virginia had ended in disaster. It was after he became a prominent member of the Virginian Council, which included many of his most intimate friends, that success crowned its efforts. William Strachey, the first secretary of the Colony, dedicated his book on the "Historie of Traveile into Virginia Britannia" to Francis Bacon, and addressed him as "a most noble father of the Virginian Plantation." Strachey accompanied Sir Thomas Gates and Summers on the voyage to Virginia. The ship in which they sailed was wrecked on the shores of Bermudas, then known also as the island of devils. Their romantic adventures were chronicled by Strachey and were published by Purchas. Meantime, some of the episodes were worked into the Shakespeare play of the "Tempest," printed in the Folio of 1623.
In 1910, Newfoundland, when commemorating the tercentenary of its foundation, issued a postage stamp bearing the image of Francis Bacon, with the superscription "1610-1910, Lord Bacon, the guiding spirit in Colonisation Scheme." It may be remarked that the eastern fringe of the American Continent was at one time called the "New-found-land."
The Hon. James Beck, of the United States, in a recent speech in Gray's Inn Hall, remarked that the two charters of government, which were the beginning of constitutionalism in America, and therefore the germ of the Constitution of the United States, were drawn up by Lord Bacon, and added that Bacon, "the immortal treasurer of Gray's Inn," visioned the future and predicted the growth of America in the memorable words: "This Kingdom now first in His Majesty's times hath gotten a lot or portion in the New World by the plantation of Virginia and the Summer Islands. And certainly it is with the Kingdoms of Earth as it is in the Kingdom of Heaven, sometimes a grain of mustard seed proves a great tree." "Truly," added Mr. Beck, "the mustard seed of Virginia did become a great tree in the American Commonwealth."
In the view of Bacon, the New World appeared as a pledge of the dawn of a better age. He was constantly drawing a parallel between the inauguration of his philosophy and the passage through the formerly forbidding pillars of Hercules into the open ocean of discovery. These pillars were for centuries regarded by the circle-sailing seafarers of the Mediterranean as the limits of enterprise. Bacon chafed against the restrictions to enquiry imposed by the schoolmen. In the preface to the Great Instauration he says that "Sciences also have, as it were, their fatal columns." "Why," he remarks, "should we erect unto ourselves some few authors to stand like Herculesí Columns beyond which there should be no discovery of knowledge." The frontispiece to the "Advancement of Learning" represents a ship in full sail triumphantly passing through those barriers.
It is surely high time for the Republic of Republics to exalt the name of the greatest of its protagonists; and the president and promoters of the Bacon Society of America are to be congratulated on taking the initiative.
Hepworth Dixon lamented the oblivion into which the name of Francis Bacon as a founder of the United States had been permitted to fall. He looked forward to the day when "the people of the Great Republic would give the great and august name of Bacon to one of their splendid cities." In the light of new knowledge, they might well do even more than this. If the United States were to erect to the memory of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, a twin statue, as noble and impressive as that of "Liberty," which stands now at the portal of their ocean gateway, it would be no more than a just tribute to one to whom they owe so much, and whom the intelligence of the world delights to honour.
JOHN A. COCKBURN.