little personal intereft in the event as any one here. There is, Lbelieve, no member who will not think bis chance to be a witness of the confequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to reject, and a spirit should rife, as it will, with the public diforders to make confution worfe confounded, even 1, flender and almolt broken as my holi upon. Life is, may outlive the government and corstitution of my country.

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From CICERO'S Orations against VERRES.

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HE time is come, Fathers, when that which has long been wished for towards allaying the envy your order has been fubject to, and removing the imputations againft trials. is (not by human contrivance but fu-: perior direction) eff ctually put in our power.

2. An opinoin has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewife in foreign countries, both dangerous. to you, and pernicious to the state, viz. that in profecutions, men of wealth are always fafe, however clearly con victed.

3. There is now to be brought upon his trial before. you, to the confufion I hope of the propagators of this landerous imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of all impartial perfons, but who according to his own reckoning and declared/dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted; I mean Caius Verres...

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4. If that sentence is paffed upon him which his crimes deferve, your authority, fathers, will be venerable and fa-.: cred in the eyes of the public. But if his great riches should bias you in his favor, I shall till gain one point, viz. to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this cafe was not a criminal, nor profecutor, but justice and adequate punishment....

5. To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does his quæstorship, the first public employment her held, what does it exhibit, but one continued scene of villainies? Cneus Carbo plundered of the public money's by his own treasurer, a conful stripped and betrayed, an army deferted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious nights of a people violated

6. The employment he held in Afia Minor and Pam

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phylia, what did it produce, but the ruin of those coun tries ? 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 sarrying them on, bear witnefs. But his prætorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and furnishes a lafting monument of his infamy.

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

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&. For it is notorious, that during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither enjoyed the protection of their original laws, of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman fenate, upon their coming under the protection of the common wealth, nor of the natural and unalienablo rights of men.

His nod has decided all caufes in Sicily these three years; and his decifions have broken all law, all precedent, alt right. The funs he has by arbitrary taxes and unheard of impolitions 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 flaves, been put to death with tortures. The most atrocious criminals, for money,, have been exempted from deferved punishments; and men of the most unexceptionable characters condemned and banished unheard.

The harbors, though fufficiently fortified, and the gates of ftrong towns, opened to pirates and ravagers; the foldiory and failors belonging to a province under the prowoon of the commonwealth, starved to death; whole, feats, to the great detriment of the province, fuffered 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 fuch as decency forbids me to describe; nor will I by mentioning particulars, put these unfortunate perfons to fresh pain, who have not been able to fave their wives and daughters from his impurity.

13. And these his atrocious crimes, have been com mitted 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 iniquitous sentences, filled the prifons with the most induftrious and deserving of the people, he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman citizens to be ftrangled 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 alledged against you? Had any prince, or any state committed the fame outrage against the privilege of Ronan citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for declaring immediate war against them.

15. What punishment then ought to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked prætor, who dared, at no greater distance than Sicily, within fight of the Italian coaft, to put to the infamous death of crucifixion, that unfortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Savius Cofanus, only for his having afferted his privilege of his citizenship, and de clared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against a cruel oppreffor, who had unjustly confined him in prifon, at S, racufe, from whence he had just made his. elcape.

16. The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to em bark from his native county, is brought before the wicked prætor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance diftorted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be tripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him, but without the leaft shadow of evidence, or even of fuf picion of having come to Sicily as a spy.

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was in in vain that the unhappy man cried out 66 I am Roman Citizen-I have ferved served under Lucius. Pretius, who is now at Panormous, 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 indiced. Thus, fathers, was an inno

cent Roman citizen publicly mangled with scourging, whilst the only words he uttered amidst his cruel fufferings, 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 afserting his citizenship, the order was given for his execution for his execution upon the cross !

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

20. Shall an inferior magiftrate, a governor who helds his own power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within fight 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 or 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 fets mankind at defiance ?

22. I conclude with expreffing my hopes that your wif. dom, and justice, fathers, will not, by fuffering the atrocious and unexampled infolence of Caius Verres to escape the due punishment, leave room to apprehend the danger of a total fubversion of authority, and introduction of general anarchy and confufion.

SPEECH OF CANULES, a Roman tribune, to the consuls; in which bedemands that the Plebeians may be admitted into the Consulsbip; and that the law probibiting Patricians and Plebeians from intermarrying, may be repealed.

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HAT an infult upon us is this! If we are not fo rich as the Patricians, are we not citizens of Rome as well as they? inhabitants of the fame country? members of the fame community? The nations bordering upon Rome, and even strangers more remote, are admitted not only to marriage with us, but to what is of much greater importance, the freedom of the city.

2. Are we, because we are commoners, to be worfe treated than strangers? and when we demanded that the people may be free to bestow their offices and dignities on whom they please, do we ask any thing unreafonable or new? Do we claim more than their original inherent right? What occafion then for all this uproar, as if the universe was falling to ruin? They were just going to lay violent hands upon me in the fenate house.

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3. What! must this empire then, be unavoidably overturned? Must Rome of neceffity fink at once, if a Plebeian, worthy of the office, should be raised to the confulfhip? The Patricians, I am perfuaded, if they could, would deprive you of the common light.

4. It certainly offends them that you breathe, that you fpeak, that you have the shapes of men. Nay, but to make a commoner a conful, would be, fay they, a most enormous thing. Numa Pompilius, however, without being so much as a Roman citizen, was made king of Rome.

5. The elder Tarquin, by birth not even Italian, was nevertheless placed upon the throne. Servius Tullius, the fon of a captive woman, (nobody knows who his father was) obtained the kingdom as the reward of his wisdom and virtue.

6. In those days, no man, in whom virtue shone-confpicuous, was rejected or despised on account of his race and defcent. And did the state profper the less for that? Were not these strangers the very best of our kings? And fuppofing now, that a Plebeian should have their talents and merits, must not he be fuffered to govern us?.

7. But "we find, that upon the abolition of the regal power, no commoner was chosen to the confulate," And what of that? Before Numa's time there were no -pontiffs in Rome. Before Servius Tullius' days, there was no cenfus, no divifion of the people into classes and centuries. Who ever heard of confuls before the expulfion of Tarquin the proud? Dictators, we all know, are of modern invention; and so are the offices of tribunes, ædiles, quæstors.

8. Within these ten years we have made, decemvirs, and we have unmade them. Is nothing to be done but what has been done before? That very law, forbidding marriages of Patricias and Plebeians, is not that a ne