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were removed by the treaty, but are not forgotten. Then they deemed war nearly inevitable, and would not this adjustment have been considered at that day as a happy escape from the calamity? The great interest and the general desire of our people was to enjoy the advantages of neutrality. This instrument, however misrepresented, affords America that inestimable security. The causes of our disputes are either cut up by the roots, or referred to a new negociation, after the end of the European war. This was gaining every thing, because it confirmed our neutrality, by which our citizens are gaining every thing. This alone would justify the engagements of the government. For when the fiery vapors of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentrated in this one, that we might escape the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the space where it was raging, and afforded at the same time the sure prognostic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colors will grow pale, it will be a baleful meteor, portending tempest and war.

23. Let us not hesitate then to agree to the appropriation to carry it into a faithful execution. Thus we shall save the faith of our nation, secure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confidence and enterprise that will augment its prosperity. The progress of wealth and improvement is wonderful, and some wlil think too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and vast, and if peace and good government should be preserved, the acquisitions of our citizens are not so pleasing as the proof of their industry, as the instruments of their future success. The rewards of exertion go to augment its power. Profit is every hour becoming capital. The vast crop of our neutrality is all seed-wheat, and is sown again to swell, almost beyond calculation, the future harvest of prosperity. And in this progress what seems to be fiction is found to fall short of experi

ence.

24. I rose to speak under impressions that I would have resisted if I could. Those who see me will believe that the reduced state of my health has unfitted me, almost equally, for much exertion of body or mind. Unprepared for debate by careful reflection in my retirement, or by long attention here, I thought the resolution I had taken to sit silent was imposed by necessity and would cost me no effort to maintain. With a mind thus vacant of ideas, and sinking, as I really am, under a

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sense of weakness, I imagined the very desire of speaking was extinguished by the persuasion that I had nothing to say. Yet when I come to the moment of deciding the vote, I start back with dread from the edge of the pit into which we are plunging. In my view, even the minutes we have spent in expostulation have their value, because they protract the crisis, and the short period in which alone we may resolve to escape it.

25. I have thus been led by my feelings to speak more at length than I had intended. Yet I have perhaps as little personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, wi the public disorders to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the government and constitution of my country.

1. THE

FROM CICERO'S ORATION AGAINST VERRES.

'HE time is come, fathers, when that which has long been wished for towards allaying the envy your order has been subject to, and removing the imputations against trials, is (not by human contrivance but superior direction) effectually put in our power,

2. An opinion has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewise in foreign countries, both dangerous to you, and pernicious to the state, viz. that in prosecutions, men of wealth are always safe however clearly convicted.

3. There is now to be brought upon his trial before you, to the confusion I hope of the propagators of this slanderous imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him in the opini on of all impartial persons, but who according to his own reckoning and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted-I mean Caius Verres,

4. If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve, your authority, fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public. But if his great riches should bias you in his favor, I shall still gain one point, viz. to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case was not a criminal, nor prosecutor, but justice and adequate punish

ent.

Topass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what is quastorship, the first public employment he held, what

does it exhibit, but one continued scene of villanies? Cneus Carbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people violated.

6. The employment he held in Asia Minor and Pamphylia, what did it produce, but the ruin of those countries, in which houses, cities and temples were robbed by him. What was his conduct in his prætorship here at home? Let the plundered temples, and the public works, neglected, that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying them on, bear witness. But his prætorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and furnishes a lasting monument to his infainy.

7. The mischiefs done by him in that country, during the three years of his iniquitous administration, are such, that many years, ander the wisest and best of prætors, will not be sufficient to restore things to the condition in which he found them.

8. For it is notorious, that during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither enjoyed the protection of their original la vs, of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman senate upon their coning under the protection of the commonwealth, nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men.

9. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily these three years; and his decisions have broken all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has by arbitrary taxes and unheard of impositions extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies.

10. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. The most atrocious criminals, for money, have been exempted from deserved punishments; and men of the most unexceptionable characters condemned and banished unheard.

11. The harbors, though sufficiently fortified, and the gates of strong towns, opened to pirates and ravagers; the soldiery and sailors belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth, starved to death; whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish; the ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes, carried off; and the temples stripped of their images.

12. The infamy of his lewdness has been such as decency.

forbids me to describe; nor will I, by mentioning particulars, put those unfortunate persons to fresh pain, who have not been able to save their wives and daughters from his impurity.

13. And these his atrocious crimes have been committed in so public a manner, that there is no one who has heard of his name, but could reckon up his actions. Having, by his iniqui tous sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the people, he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman citizens to be strangled in the goals; so that the exclamation, “I am a citizen of Rome," which has often, in the most distant regions, and among the most barbarous people, been a protection, was of no service to them, but on the contrary, brought a speedier and more severe punishment upon them. 14. I ask now, Verres, what you have to advance against this charge? Will you pretend to deny it? Will you pretend that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated is alledg ed against you? Had any prince, or any state committed the same outrage against the privilege of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for declaring immediate war against them?

15. What punishment then ought to be inflicted upon atyrannical and wicked prætor, who dared, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, to put to the infamous death of crusifixion, that unfortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of his citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against a cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in prison, at Syracuse, from whence he had just made his escape

16. The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to embark for his native country, is brought before the wicked prætor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance distorted with crue'ty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him, but without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspicion, of having come to Sicily as a spy.

17. It was in vain the unhappy man cried ont—“ I am a Roman citizen-I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and will attest my innocence." The blood-thirsty prætor, deaf to all he could urge in his own defence, ordered the infamous punishment to be inflicted. Thus, thers, was an innocent Roman citizen publicly mangled with

Scourging; whilst the only words he uttered amidst his cruel sufferings were, "I am a Roman citizen!"

18. With these he hoped to defend himself from violence and infamy: but of so little service was this privilege to him, that while he was thus asserting his citizenship, the order was given for his execution-for his execution upon the cross!

19. liberty!O sound, once delightful to every Roman ear!-O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred, now trampled upon! But what then? Is it come to this?

20. Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor who holds his own power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture with fire and red hot plates of iron, and at last put to the infamous death of the cross, a Roman citizen?

21. Shall neither the cries of innocence, expiring in agony, nor the tears of pitying spectators, nor the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the licentious and wanton cruelty of a monster, who, in confidence of his riches, strikes at the root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance?

22. I conclude with expressing my hopes, that your wisdom and justice, fathers, will not, by suffering the atrocious and unexampled insolence of Caius Verres to escape the due punishment, leave room to apprehend the danger of a total sub version of authority, and introduction of general anarchy and confusion.

SPEECH of CANULES, a Roman tribune, to the Consuls; in which he demands that the Plebians may be admitted into the Consulship; and that the law, prehibiting Patricians and Plebians from intermarrying, may be repealed.

1. WHAT an insult upon us is this! If we are not so rich

as the Patricians, are we not citizens of Rome as well as they? inhabitants of the same country? members of the same community? The nations bordering upon Rome, and even strangers more remote, are admitted not only to marriages with us, but to what is of much greater importance, the freedom of the city.

2. Are we, because we are commoners, to be worse treated than strangers? and when we demand that the people may be free to bestow their offices and dignities on whom they please do we ask any thing uareasonable or new? Do we claim more

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