than their original inherent right? What occasion 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 senate-house.

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

4. It certainly offends them that you breathe, that you speak, that you have the shapes of men. Nay, but to make a commoner a consul, would be, say 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 son 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 conspicuous, was rejected or despised on account of his race and descent. And did the state prosper the less for that? Were not these strangers the very best of our kings? And supposing now, that a Plebeian should have their talents and merit, must not he be suffered to govern us?

7. But, "we find, that upon the abolition of the legal power, no commoner was chosen to the consulate." And what of that? Before Numa's time, there were no pontiffs in Rome. Before Servius Tullius's days, there was no census, no division of the people into classes and centuries. Who ever heard of consuls before the expulsion 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 Patricians and Plebeians, is not that a new thing? Was there any such law before the decemvirs enacted it? And a most shameful one it is, in a free state.

9. Such marriages, it seems, will taint the pure blood of the nobility! Why, if they think so, let them take care to match their sisters and daughters with men of their own sort. No Plebeian will do violence to the daughter of a Patrician. Those exploits for our prime nobles.

. There is no need to fear that we shall force any body

into a contract of marriage. But to make an express law to prohibit marriages of Patricians with Plebeians, what is this but to show the utmost contempt of us, and to declare one part of the community to be impure and unclean?

11. They talk to us of the confusion there will be in families if this statute should be repealed. I wonder they don't make a law against a commoner's living near a nobleman, or going the same road that he is going, or being present at the same feast, or appearing at the same market place.

12. They might as well pretend that these things make confusion in families, as that intermarriages will do it. Does not every one know that their children will be ranked according to the quality of their father, let him be a Patrician or a Plebeian? In short it is manifest enough that we have nothing in view but to be treated as men and citizens; nor can they who oppose our demand, have any motive to do it, but the love of domineering.

13. I would fain know of you, Consuls and Patricians, is the sovereign power in the people of Rome, or in you? I hope you will allow, that the people can at their pleasure, either make a law or repeal one.

14. And will you, then, as soon as any law is proposed to them, pretend to list them immediately for the war, and hinder them from giving their suffrages by leading them into the field?

15. Hear me, Consuls. Whether the news of the war you talk of be true, or whether it be only a false rumor spread abroad for nothing but a color to send the people out of the city, I declare as tribune, that this people who have already so often spilt their blood in our country's cause, are again ready to arm for its defence and its glory, if they may be restored to their natural rights, and you will no longer treat us like strangers in our own country.

16. But if you account us unworthy of your alliance by intermarriages, if you will not suffer the entrance to the chief offices in the state to be open to all persons of merit indifferently, but will confine your choice of magistrates to the senate alone; talk of wars as much as ever you please; paint, in your ordinary discourses, the league and power of our enemies, ten times more dreadful than you do now, I declare, that this people whom you so much despise, to whom you are nevertheless indebted for all your victòries, shall never more enlist themselves; not a man of them shall take arms! not a man of them shail

expose his life for imperious lords, with whom he can neither share the dignities of the state, nor in private life have any alliance by marriage.

SPEECH OF PUBLIUS SCIPIO TO THE ROMAN ARMY, BEFORE THE BATTLE OF THE TICIN.

WERE you, soldiers, the same army which I had with me in Gaul, I might well forbear saying any thing to you at this time; for what occasion could there be to use exhortation to cavalry that had so signally vanquished the squadrons of the enemy upon the Rhone; or to legions, by whom the same enemy, flying before them to avoid a battle, did in effect confess themselves vanquished ?

2. But, as these troops having been enrolled for Spain are there with my brother Cneus, making war under my auspices (as was the will of the Senate and people of Rome) I, that you might have a Consul for your Captain against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, have freely offered myself for this war. You then have a new General; and I a'new army. On this account, a few words from me to you will be neither improper nor unseasonable.

3. That you may not be unapprised of what sort of enemies you are going to encounter, or of what is to be feared from them; they are the very same, whom in a former war, you vanquished both by land and sea; the same from whom you took Sicily and Sardinia, and who have been these twenty years your tributaries.

4. You will not, I presume, march against these men with only that courage with which you are wont to face other enemies; but with a certain anger and indignation, such as you would feel if you saw your slaves on a sudden rise up against you. 5. Conquered and enslaved, it is not boldness, but necessity that urges them to battle; unless you can believe that those who avoided fighting when their army was entire, have acquired better hope by the loss of two thirds of their horse and foot by passing the Alps.

6. But you have heard, perhaps, that, though they are few in number, they are men of stout hearts and robust bodies; he roes of such strength and vigor, as nothing is able to resist.Mere effigies! Lay, shadows of men! wretches emaciated ith hunger, and benumbed with cold; bruized and butterto pieces among the rocks and craggy cliffs! their weapons

broken, and their horses weak and foundered! Such are the cavalry, and such the infantry, with which you are going to contend; not enemies, but the fragments of enemies.

7. There is nothing which I more apprehend, than that it will be thought Hannibal was vanquished by the Alps before we had any conflict with him. But, perhaps, it was fitting it should be so; and that, with a people and a leader who had violated leagues and covenants, the gods themselves, without man's help, should begin the war, and bring it to a near conclusion ; and that we, who, next to the gods, have been injured and offended, should happily finish what they have begun.

8. I need not be in any fear that you should suspect me of saying these things merely to encourage you, while inwardly I have different sentiments. What hindered me from going to Spain? That was my province, where I should have had the less dreadful Asdrubal, not Hannibal to deal with.

9. But hearing, as I passed along the coast of Gaul, of this enemy's march, I landed my troops, sent the horse forward, and pitched my camp upon the Rhone. A part of my cavalry encountered, and defeated that of the enemy. My infantry, not being able to overtake theirs which fled before us, I returned to my fleet; and, with all the expedition I could use in so long a voyage by sea and land, am come to meet them at the foot of the Alps.

10. Was it then my inclination to avoid a contest with this tremenduous Hannibal? And have I met with him only by accident and unawares ? Or am I come on purpose to challenge him to the combat?

11. I would gladly try, whether the earth, within these twenty years, has brought forth a new kind of Carthagenians; or whether they be the same sort of men who fought at the Egates, and whom at Eryx, you suffered to redeem themselves at eighteen denarii a head: whether this Hannibal, for labors and journies, be as he would be thought, the rival of Hercules; or whether he be, what his father left him, a tributary, a vassal, a slave of the Roman people.

12. Did not the consciousness of his wicked deed at Saguntum torment him and make him desperate, he would have some regard, if not to his conquered country, yet surely to his own family, to his father's memory, to the treaty written with Amilcar's own hand. We might have starved him in Eryx; we might have passed into Africa with our victorious fleet; and in a few days have destroyed Carthage. At their humble suppli

cation, we pardoned them, we released them, when they t closely shut up without a possibility of escaping; we co peace with them when they were conquered.

The

13. When they were distressed by the African war, ey considered them, we treated them as a people under our pa tection and what is the return they made us for all thes favors? Under the conduct of a hair-brained young man, the come hither to overturn our state, and lay waste our countr

14. I could wish, indeed, that it were not so; and that the war we are now engaged in concerned only our own glory, f not our preservation. But the contest at present is not f the possession of Sicily and Sardinia, but of Italy itslf; or o there behind us another army, which, if we should not pro conquerors, may make head against our victorious enemies

15. There are no more Alps for them to pass, which migh give us leisure to raise new forces: no, soldiers, here yel must take your stands, as if you were just now before the wa of Rome. Let every one reflect, that he is now to defend of his own person only, but his wife, his children, his helples P infants.

16. Yet let not private considerations alone possess our mind let us remember that the eyes of the senate and people of Rom are upon us; and that, as our force and courage shall no prove, such will be the fortune of that city and of the Rom empire.

CAIUS MARIUS to the Romans; shewing the absurdity of the hesitating to confer on him the rank of General, merely account of his extraction.

1.

IT

Tis but too common, my countrymen, to observe a ma terial difference between the behavior of those who stan candidates for places of power and trust, before and after the obtaining them.

2. They solicit them in one manner, and execute them in another. They set out with a great appearance of activity, humility, and moderation; and they quickly fall into sloth pride, and avarice.

3. It is, undoubtedly, no easy matter to discharge, to the general satisfaction, the duty of a supreme commander in trou blesome times.

4. To carry on, with effect, an expensive war, and yet be frugal of the public money; to oblige those to serve, whom