Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/22

 destroyed the constitution. The general line nowadays adopted in defending him for this is something of this sort: The constitution had become a sham. The assemblies of the people were not assemblies of the people, but of the city proletariat, corrupt, ignorant, and disorderly. The real power was in the hands of a clique. A few families monopolized office: enriched themselves at the expense of the provinces: controlled the senate and manipulated the comitia. It was to free the state from this oppressive oligarchy that Cæsar stepped into the place of the Gracchi, of Saturninus, of Marius, and perhaps of Catiline, and determined that a sham, which had become the means of endless oppression, injustice, and rapacity, should cease. However much may be said for this view of the case&#8212;-and each point in it admits and indeed requires very large modification&#8212;-it was not the light in which it appeared in Cicero's eyes. No one was more conscious than he of the need of reform. He had the greatest contempt for the idle "fish-breeding" nobles, the most hearty indignation for the oppressors and plunderers of the provinces. But reform with him did not mean destruction. The constitution&#8212;-the res publica&#8212;-under which he, "a new man," had risen from a moderate position to the highest rank; under which the power of Rome had been extended over the orbis terrarum; the Republic consecrated by so many memories, adorned by so many noble names, such heroic actions, such signal reverses, and such brilliant successes&#8212;-to annihilate that was worse than parricide. Every feature in the constitution had its charm for Cicero-&#8212;the complexity of its legal code, the conflicting powers of its magistrates, the curious mixture of religion and imposture known as the science of augury, the traditional ceremonies in the working of the comitia-&#8212;he had studied them all, and was prepared substantially to defend them all. To sweep them all away, or rather to reduce them all to mere unmeaning forms by the personal supremacy of a king or a dictator&#8212;whose powers were only known to the constitution under strict limit of time&#8212;-was to him the worst of crimes. Now Cæsar had not only beaten Cicero's party in the field&#8212;-that might have been forgiven: he had not only accepted a dictatorship which had no precedent except the ill-omened one of Sulla-&#8212;that perhaps might have been endured as a