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 ranks included ruined men of birth and dissatisfied men of wealth. The fact which gave the conspiracy a plausible significance and a dangerous cohesion was the general disrepute of the government. The trial of Clodius for sacrilege, resulting in his scandalous acquittal, brought fresh infamy on the Senate, causing Cicero, who believed that the Commonwealth had been founded anew in his own consulship, to say, "Unless some god looks favourably on us, all is lost by this single judgment." It was, in fact, the most glaring example which had yet illustrated the depravity of the law courts. The elections to the magistracies became every year more corrupt. Italy was parcelled out into vast estates cultivated by slaves. The colonists of the Gracchan system, the military settlers planted on the lands by Sulla, had alike disappeared, and the agrarian problem remained to be attacked anew. Thus in every department of the State there was a crying need of reform when Cæsar entered on his first consulship. The spirit in which he addressed himself to the task, as conceived by Mr Froude, shall be described in Mr Froude's own words (p. 171):—

"The consulship of Cæsar was the last chance for the Roman aristocracy. He was not a revolutionist. Revolutions are the last desperate remedy when all else has failed. They may create as many evils as they cure, and wise men always hate them. But if revolution was to be escaped, reform was inevitable, and it was for the Senate to choose between the alternatives. Could the noble lords have known then, in that their day, the things that belonged to their peace—could they have forgotten their