Let not our ambition carry us to be more learned than they were in these killing and destructive arts. Great wisdom it will be in your lordships, and just providence for yourselves, for your posterities, for the whole kingdom, to cast from you into the fire these bloody and mysterious volumes of arbitrary and constructive trea sons, as the primitive christians did their books of curi ous arts, and betake yourselves to the plain letter of the statute, which tells you where the crime is, and points out the path by which you may avoid it. Let us not, to our own destruction, awake those sleeping lions, by rattling up a company of old records, which have for so many ages hung by the wall forgotten and neglected. To all my afflictions add not this, my lords, the most severe of any, that I, for my other sins, not for my treason, be the means of introducing a precedent, so pernicious to the laws and liberties of my native country. However, these gentlemen at the bar say they speak for Le commonwealth, and they believe so. Yet, under favour, it is I who in this particular speak for the commonwealth. Precedents like those which are endeavoured to be established against me, must draw along such inconveniences and miseries, that in a few years the kingdom will be in the condition expressed in a statute of Henry the fourth; and no man shall know by what rule to govern his words and actions. Impose not, my Fords, difficulties insurmountable upon ministers of state; nor disable them from serving with cheerfulness their king and country. If you examine them, and under such severe penalties, by every grain, by every little weight, the scrutiny will be intolerable. The public affairs of the kingdom must be left waste: and no wise man, who has any honour or fortune to lose, will ever engage himself in such dreadful, such unknown.perils.

My lords, I have now troubled your lordships a great deal longer than I should have done. Were it not for the interest of these pledges, which a saint in heaven left me, I should be loth-What I forfeit for myself is nothing but I confess, that my indiscretion should for. feit for them; it wounds me very deeply. You will be pleased to pardon my infirmity; something I should have said, but I see I shall not be able, therefore I shall leave it.

And now, my lords, I thank God I have been, by his blessing, sufficiently instructed in the extreme vanity of all temporary enjoyments, compared to the importance of our eternal duration. And so, my lords, even so, with all humility and with all tranquillity of mind, I submit clearly and freely to your judgement. And whether that righteous judgment be to life or death, I shall repose myself, full of gratitude and confidence, in the arms of the great author of my existence.

XVI. Atherbal against Jugurtha.

CONSCRIPT FATHERS,

Ir was my father's orders to me, in his last moments, that I should consider myself as vested only with the administration of Numidia, since the title and sovereignty were, indeed, yours. He added, that I should endeavour to render all possible aid to the Roman people, whether in peace or in war; should esteem you as my kindred, consider you as supplying the place of relations and affiances. If I observed these conditions, he said, that in your friendship I should find armies and wealth, with every stay and support to my monarchy. Whilst I was setting myself strictly to perform these injunctions of my father, Jugurtha, a man, of all that the earth bears, the most barbarous and sanguinary, despoiled me of my kingdom, with whatever else I possessed, in utter defiance of your authority; not regarding that I am the grandson of Massinissa, and, from my birth, a friend and confederate of the Roman people.

The truth is, conscript fathers, seeing I was to fall to this degree of wretchedness, I earnestly wish I could have sought your aid, rather on account of my own merit, than those of my forefathers; especially that I could have merited such aid from the Roman people, without wanting it, or at worst have received it, as my due. But, since innocence rarely proves its own defence, and as it lay not in my breast to direct the heart of Jugurtha, to you, conscript fathers, I have fled for refuge.

What is my severest misery, I am constrained to be burthensome to you, without ever having been serviceable. Other kings, your confederates, have been either subdued by your arms, and then received into your alli. ance, or, urged by perils at home, have implored your friendship. Our family commenced allies to the Roman people, during the war with Carthage;-a period when the Roman honour was more to be courted than the Roman fortune.

Consider me, conscript fathers, as sprung from that family; nor suffer the grandson of Massinissa to apply to you in vain for succour. If, in order to obtain it, I had no argument to urge, besides my deplorable fortune, that I, very lately a king, redoubtable in my descent, in my wealth, and in royal renown, am now covered with variety of wretchedness, beggarly, forlorn, and waiting for assistance from others; it shall become the majesty of the Roman people, to curb oppression, and to suffer no man to extend his dominion by iniquity and violence. Consider me in yet a stronger light, driven out of the very possessions which the Roman people conferred, as their gift, upon my ancestors;-those very possessions, from whence my father, and his father, joining their forces to yours, expulsed Syphax and the Carthaginians. They are the effects of your bounty, that are rent from me, conscript fathers :-in my sufferings you are insulted..

Alas my deplorable fate! Is this the return to thy generosity and favour, O my father! that Jugurtha, he whom thou didst place upon the same footing with thy own children; he whom thou didst leave equal partner with them in thy kingdom, is, of all others, the bloody instrument to extinguish thy race for ever? Shall our house never enjoy tranquillity and rest? Shall we be for ever visited with a bloody lot; with the murdering sword, with flight and expulsion?

Whilst the power of Carthage subsisted, we were of course exposed to hostility and violence. The enemy was at our doors; you, our friends, were far from us ;--our whole reliance upon our arms. After Africa was rescued from that pestilent tyranny, we cheerfully enjoyed a state of peace; for, indeed, we had no enemies, though still disposed to treat as such whomsoever you

should command us; when, on a sudden, Jugurtha, hardening his heart to cruelty, and glorying in pride and butchery, murders my brother, who was also his near kinsman, and seizes his principality, as the prize of the murderer. Then, seeing he could not circumvent me by the same bloody snares, he attacked me openly, whilst I (confiding in your supreme power) apprehended any thing rather than violence and war; drove me from my household, and my country; reduced me to be an exile, and a wanderer; such as you behold me, destitute of all comfort, and so overwhelmed with every species of wretchedness, as to find more safety any where than in my own dominions.

XVII, Tarquinius Superbus, against his father-inlaw Servius Tullus, before the senate.

My answer, Tullus, will be short, and founded on justice; and for that reason I chose to lay it before the senate. Tarquinius, my grandfather, obtained the sove reignty of the Romans by fighting many considerable battles in their defence: he being dead, Lam his successor, according to the laws received by all the Greeks and barbarians; and I ought, in justice, to inherit, not only his fortunes, but his kingdoms, in the same manner as all other successors inherit the estates of their grand, fathers. You have, indeed, delivered up to me the fortunes he left; but you deprive me of the kingdom, and have kept possession of it for so long a time, after you have obtained it in an unjustifiable manner: for neither did the Interreges appoint you king, nor the senate pass a vote in your favour; neither did you obtain this power by a legal election of the people, as my grandfather, and all the kings before him, obtained it;-but you gained the sovereignty by hiring, and corrupting by every method you could devise, a number of vagabonds and beggars, men rendered infamous by being condemned, or burthened with debts, who had no regard for the public; and by declaring, even then, that you did not seek the power for yourself; and pretending that you reserved it for us, who were then orphans, and infants;

and you engaged before all the world that, when we arrived to manhood, you would surrender the power to me, as to the elder brother: you ought, therefore, if you desired to do justice, when you delivered up to me the palace of my grandfather, to have restored his kingdom, together with his fortunes, after the example of those honest and good guardians, who, having taken upon themselves the care of royal orphans, have, truly and justly, restored to them the kingdoms of their fathers and ancestors, when they came to be men. But, if you thought I had not yet attained a proper degree of prudence, and that, by reason of my youth, I was unequal to the government of so considerable a city, yet, when I arrived to the age of thirty years, and my body and mind were in the greatest vigour, you ought to have put the government of the city into my hands, at the same time you gave me your daughter in marriage: for, at that age, you also first took upon yourself the administration both of our family and of the kingdom.

And if you had done this, you would, in the first place, have gained the character of a pious and just man; and, after that, you would have been my counsellor, and have had a share in all honours; you would have been called my benefactor, my father, and my preserver; and have received every other distinguishing appellation, which mankind give to the authors of worthy actions; instead of depriving me of my right for four-and-forty years together, without being able to charge me with any defect either in my person or understanding. After this usage, you have the assurance to ask me, what ill treatment provokes me to look upon you as my enemy, and for what reason I accuse you? But answer me, yourself, Tullus, and say for what reason you think me unworthy to inherit the honours of my grandfather, and what specious pretence you have to alledge for depriving me of them. Is it that you look upon me as supposititious, and illegitimate, and not his lawful son? If so, why did you act as guardian to one who was a stranger to his blood, and why did you restore his palace to him, as soon as he came to be a man? Or is it, that you still look upon me as an orphan child, and incapable of administering the affairs of the public, when I am near fifty