Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/296

 been resented by the Senate, which at once robbed them of their protective and profitable privileges, handed them over to be tried by their rivals for their pleasant irregularities, and stamped them at the same time with the brand of dishonesty! How certainly must such a measure have been deserved, when neither consul nor tribune could be found to interpose his veto!" But the Senate were equal to the occasion, and acted after their kind. "Again, as ten years before, the noble lords armed their followers." Caius Gracchus was killed, and "the surviving patriots who were in any way notorious or dangerous were hunted down in legal manner and put to death or banished." From this point down to the Sullan Revolution, Mr Froude represents the Senate as merely going from bad to worse, giving more and more signal proofs, at each new crisis, of shameless selfishness and disastrous incapacity. Jugurtha bribes the senatorial commissioners sent to Africa, and then, "with contemptuous confidence," comes over to Italy, loaded with gold, and bribes the senators themselves at Rome. When the wave of Teutonic invasion comes surging down the northern plains, the prating Senate are as helpless as the howling mob, and the country is saved by Marius and the legions. When the Italians rise in the Social War, and claim the franchise, the Senate discover that they must come to terms if they would escape destruction. They yield, and so gain a breathing-space. Presently the terrible Mithridates crosses the Bosporus, and Greece is up in revolt.