This Newfoundland stamp from 1910 honors Francis Bacon's significant and lasting
influence on the founding of the New World territories.
acon promoted colonization of the New World as a response to the Spanish quest for land, and as a way to preserve the English race and language. The drive to
found a new and better world was also driven by dissatisfaction with the Divine
Right of Kings, taxation without representation, and a religious intolerance. As part of new reformation, Bacon wrote the charter for the Virginia Colony. Both The
Tempest and Bacon's New Atlantis are allegorical descriptions of an ideal way of life.
The American Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence exactly 150
years after Francis Bacon's death. Bacon's vision of a better world was cherished by
Thomas Jefferson, who considered Bacon one of the three greatest thinkers of modern
times. In a sense, Bacon can be seen as the Godfather to the Founding Fathers.
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