For a prince to be reduced, by villany, to my distressful circumstances, is calamity enough; but my misfortunes are heightened by the consideration, that I find myself obliged to solicit your assistance, Fathers, for the services done you by my ancestors, not for any I have been able to render you in my own person. Jugurtha has put it out of my power to deserve any thing at your hands, and has forced me to be burdensome before I could be useful to you. And yet, if I had no plea but my undeserved misery, who, from a powerful prince, the descendant of a race of illustrious monarchs, find myself, without any fault of my own, destitute of every support, and reduced to the necessity of begging foreign assistance against an enemy who has seized my throne and kingdom; if my unequalled distresses were all I had to plead, it would become the greatness of the Roman commonwealth, the arbitress of the world, to protect the injured, and to check the triumph of daring wickedness over helpless innocence. But, to provoke your vengeance to the utmost, Jugurtha has driven me from the very dominions which the senate and people of Rome gave to my ancestors, and from which my grandfather and my father, under your umbrage, expelled Syphax, and the Carthaginians. Thus, fathers, your kindness to our family is defeated; and Jugurtha, in injuring me, throws contempt on you.

O wretched prince! O cruel reverse of fortune! O father Micipsa! is this the consequence of your generosity, that he whom your goodness raised to an equality with your own children, should be the murderer of your children! Must then the

royal house of Numidia always be a scene of havoc and blood? While Carthage remained, we suffered, as was to be expected, all sorts of hardships from their hostile attacks; our enemy near; our only powerful ally, the Roman commonwealth, at a distance; while we were so circumstanced, we were always in arms, and in action. When that scourge of Africa was no more, we congratulated ourselves on the prospect of established peace. But instead of peace, behold the kingdom of Numidia drenched with royal blood, and the only surviving son of its late king flying from an adopted murderer, and seeking that safety in foreign parts, which he cannot command in his own kingdom.

Whither-O whither shall I fly? If I return to the royal palace of my ancestors, my father's throne is seized by the murderer of my brother. What can I there expect, but that Jugurtha should hasten to imbrue in my blood those hands which are now reeking with my brother's? If I were to fly for refuge, or for assistance, to any other courts, from what prince can I hope for protection, if the Roman commonwealth gives me up? From my own family or friends I have no expectations. My royal father is no more: he is beyond the reach of violence, and out of hearing of the complaints of his unhappy son. Were my brother alive, our mutual sympathy would be some alleviation: but he is hurried out of life in his early youth, by the very hand which should have been the last to injure any of the royal family of Numidia. The bloody Jugurtha has butchered all whom he suspected to be in my interest. Some have been destroyed by the lingering torment of the cross; others have been given a prey to wild beasts, and their anguish made the sport of men more cruel than wild beasts. If there be any yet alive, they are shut up in dungeons, there to drag out a life more intolerable than death itself.

Look down, illustrious senators of Rome! from that height of power to which you are raised, on the unexampled distresses of a prince, who is, by the cruelty of a wicked intruder, become an outcast from all mankind. Let not the crafty insinuations of him who returns murder for adoption, prejudice your judgment. Do not listen to the wretch who has butchered the son and relations of a king, who gave him power to sit on the same throne with his own sons.-I have been

informed that he labours by his emissaries to prevent your determining any thing against him in his absence, pretending that I magnify my distress, and might for him have staid in peace in my own kingdom. But, if ever the time comes when the due vengeance from above shall overtake him, he will then dissemble, as I do. Then he who now, hardened in wickedness, triumphs over those whom his violence has laid low, will in his turn feel distress, and suffer for his impious ingratitude to my father, and his blood-thirsty cruelty to my brother.

O murdered, butchered brother! O dearest to my heart-now gone for ever from my sight!-But why should I lament his death? He is indeed deprived of the blessed light of heaven, of life, and kingdom, at once, by the very person who ought to have been the first to hazard his own life in defence of any one of Micipsa's family. But as things are, my brother is not so much deprived of these comforts, as delivered from error, from flight, from exile, and the endless train of miseries which render life to me a burden. He lies full low, gored with wounds, and festering in his own blood; but he lies in peace: he feels none of the miseries which rend my soul with agony and distraction, whilst I am set up a spectacle to all mankind, of the uncertainty of human affairs. So far from having it in my power to revenge his death, I am not master of the means of securing my own life: so far from being in a condition to defend my kingdom from the violence of the usurper, I am obliged to apply for foreign protection for my own person.

Fathers! Senators of Rome! the arbiters of the world!-to you I fly for refuge from the murderous fury of Jugurtha.-By your affection for your children, by your love for your country, by your own virtues, by the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, by all that is sacred, and all that is dear to you-deliver a wretched prince from undeserved, unprovoked injury, and save the kingdom of Numidia, which is your own property, from being the prey of violence, usurpation, and cruelty. Sallust.

§ 20. Speech of CANULEIUS, a Roman Tribune, to the Consuls; in which he demands that the Plebeians may be admitted into the Consulship, and that the

Law prohibiting Patricians and Plebeians from intermarrying, may be repealed.

What an insult upon us is this! If we are not so rich as the patricians, are we not citizens of Rome as well as they? inhabitants of the same country? members of the same community? The nations bordering upon Rome, and even strangers more remote, are admitted not only to marriages with us, but to what is of much greater importance, the freedom of the city. Are we, because we are commoners, to be worse treated than strangers ?---And, when we demand that the people may be free to bestow their offices and dignities on whom they please, do we ask any thing unreasonable or new: do we claim more than their original inherent right? What occasion then for all this uproar, as if the universe were falling to ruin !---They were just going to lay violent hands upon me in the senate-house.

Nay,

What! must this empire then be unavoidably overturned? must Rome of nocessity sink at once, if a plebeian, worthy of the office, should be raised to the consulship? The Patricians, I am persuaded, if they could, would deprive you of the common light. It certainly offends them that you breathe, that you speak, that you have the shapes of men. 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: the elder Tarquin, by birth not even an 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. 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 less for that? were not these strangers the very best of all our kings? And supposing now, that a plebeian should have their talents and merit, must not he be suffered to govern us?

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But, we find that, upon the abolition "of the regal 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. 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 with 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 estate, 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 are 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 shew the utmost contempt of us, and to declare one part of the community to be impure and unclean?

They talk to us of the confusion there will be in families, if this statute should be repealed. I wonder they do not 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 in the same marketplace: they might as well pretend, that these things make confusion in families, as that intermarriages will do it. Does not every one know, that the child will be ranked according to the quality of his 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 op. pose our demand, have any motive to do it, but the love of domineering. 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. 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?

Hear me, consuls: whether the news of the war you talk of be true, or whether it be only a false rumour, spread abroad for nothing but a colour 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: 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, and to whom you are nevertheless indebted for all your victories, shall never more enlist themselves; not a man of them shall take arms; not a man of them shall 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. Hooke.

§ 21. Mr. PULTENEY's Speech on the Motion for reducing the Army.

We have heard a great deal about parliamentary armies, and about an army continued from year to year; I have ulways been, Sir, and always shall be, against a standing army of any kind. To me it is a terrible thing; whether under that of parliamentary or any other designation, a standing army is still a standing army, whatever name it be called by: they are a body of men distinct from the body of the people; they are governed by different laws; and blind obedience, and an entire submission to the orders of their commanding officer, is their only principle. The nations around us, Šir, are already enslaved, and have been enslaved by those very means: by means of their standing armies they have every one lost their liberties; it is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people can be preserved in any country where a numerous standing army is kept up. Shall we then take any of our measures from the examples of our neighbours? No, Sir; on the contrary, from their misfortunes we ought to learn to avoid those rocks upon which they have split.

It signifies nothing to tell me, that our army is commanded by such gentlemen as

cannot be supposed to join in any measures for enslaving their country. It may be so; I hope it is so; I have a very good opinion of many gentlemen now in the army; I believe they would not join in any such measures; but their lives are uncertain, nor can we be sure how long they may be continued in command; they may be all dismissed in a moment, and proper tools of power put in their room. Besides, Sir, we know the passions of men, we know how dangerous it is to trust the best of men with too much power. Where was there a braver army than that under Julius Cæsar? Where was there ever any army that had served their country more faithfully? That army was commanded generally by the best citizens of Rome, by men of great fortune and figure in their country, yet that army enslaved their country. The affections of the soldiers towards their country, the honour and integrity of the under-officers, are not to be depended on: by the military law the administration of justice is so quick, and the punishment so severe, that neither officer nor soldier dares offer to dispute the orders of his supreme commander; he must not consult his own inclinations: if an officer were commanded to pull his own father out of this house, he must do it; he dares not disobey; immediate death would be the sure consequence of the least grumbling. And if an officer were sent into the court of requests, accompanied by a body of musketeers with screwed bayonets, and with orders to tell us what we ought to do, and how we were to vote, I know what would be the duty of this house; I know it would be our duty to order the officer to be taken and hanged up at the door of the lobby; but, Sir, I doubt much if such a spirit could be found in the house, or in any house of commons that will ever be in England.

Sir, I talk not of imaginary things: I talk of what has happened to an English house of commons, and from an English army; not only from an English army, but an army that was raised by that very house of commons, an army that was paid by them, and an army that was commanded by generals appointed by them. Therefore do not let us vainly imagine, that an army raised and maintained by authority of parliament will always be submissive to them: if any army be so numerous as to have it in their power to overawe the parliament, they will be submis

sive as long as the parliament does nothing to disoblige their favourite general; but when that case happens, I am afraid that in place of the parliament's dismissing the army, the army will dismiss the parliament, as they have done heretofore. Nor does the legality or illegality of that parliament, or of that army, alter the case; for, with respect to that army, and according to their way of thinking, the parliament dismissed by them was a legal parliament; they were an army raised and maintained according to law, and at first they were raised, as they imagined, for the preservation of those liberties which they afterwards destroyed.

It has been urged, Sir, that whoever is for the Protestant succession, must be for continuing the army: for that very reason, Sir, I am against continuing the army. I know that neither the Protestant succession in his Majesty's most illustrious house, nor any succession, can ever be safe, as long as there is a standing army in the country. Armies, Sir, have no regard to hereditary successions. The first two Cæsars at Rome did pretty well, and found means to keep their armies in tolerable subjection, because the generals and officers were all their own creatures. But how did it fare with their successors? Was not every one of them named by the army without any regard to hereditary right, or to any right? A cobbler, a gardener, or any man who happened to raise himself in the army, and could gain their affections, was made emperor of the world. Was not every succeeding emperor raised to the throne, or tumbled headlong into the dust, according to the mere whim or mad frenzy of the soldiers?

We are told this army is desired to be continued but for one year longer, or for a limited term of years. How absurd is this distinction! Is there any army in the world continued for any term of years? Does the most absolute nionarch tell his army, that he is to continue them for any number of years, or y number of months? How long have we already continued our army from year to year? And if it thus continues, wherein will it differ from the standing armies of those countries which have already submitted their necks to the yoke? We are now come to the Rubicon; our army is now to be reduced, or it never will; from his Majesty's own mouth we are assured of a profound tranquillity abroad; we know there

is one at home. If this is not a proper time, if these circumstances do not afford us a safe opportunity for reducing at least a part of our regular forces, we never can expect to see any reduction; and this nation, already overburdened with debts and taxes, must be loaded with the heavy charge of perpetually supporting a numer ous standing army; and remain for ever exposed to the danger of having its liberties and privileges trampled upon by any future king or ministry, who shall take it in their heads to do so, and shall take a proper care to model the army for that purpose.

§ 22. Sir JOHN ST. AUBIN's Speech for

repealing the Septennial Act.

The subject matter of this debate is of such importance, that I should be ashamed to return to my electors, without endea vouring, in the best manner I am able, to declare publicly the reasons which induced me to give my most ready assent to this question.

The people have an unquestionable right to frequent new parliaments by ancient usage; and this usage has been confirmed by several laws which have been progressively made by our ancestors, as often as they found it necessary to insist on this essential privilege.

Parliaments were generally annual, but never continued longer than three years, till the remarkable reign of Henry VIII. He, Sir, was a prince of unruly appetites, and of an arbitrary will; he was impatient of every restraint; the laws of God and man fell equally a sacrifice, as they stood in the way of his avarice, or disappointed his ambition: he therefore introduced long parliaments, because he very well knew that they would become the proper instruments of both; and what a slavish obedience they paid to all his measures, is sufficiently known.

If we come to the reign of king Charles the First, we must acknowledge him to be a prince of a contrary temper: he had certainly an innate love for religion and virtue. But here lay the misfortune; he was led from his natural disposition by sycophants and flatterers; they advised him to neglect the calling of frequent new parliaments, and therefore, by not taking the constant sense of his people in what he did, he was worked up into so high a notion of prerogative, that the commons, in order to restrain it, obtained that inde

pendent fatal power, which at last unhap pily brought him to his most tragical end, and at the same time subverted the whole constitution; and I hope we shall learn this lesson from it, never to compliment the crown with any new or extravagant powers, nor to deny the people those rights which by ancient usage they are entitled to; but to preserve the just and equal balance, from which they will both derive mutual security, and which, if duly observed, will render our constitution the envy and admiration of all the world.

King Charles the Second naturally took a surfeit of parliaments in his father's time, and was therefore extremely desirous to lay them aside: but this was a scheme impracticable. However, in effect, he did so; for he obtained a parliament which, by its long duration, like an army of veterans, became so exactly disciplined to his own measures, that they knew no other command but from that person who gave them their pay.

This was a safe and most ingenious way of enslaving a nation. It was very well known, that arbitrary power, if it was open and avowed, would never prevail here; the people were amused with the specious form of their ancient constitution: it existed, indeed, in their fancy; but, like a mere phantom, had no substance nor reality in it: for the power, the authority, the dignity of parliaments were wholly lost. This was that remarkable parliament which so justly obtained the opprobrious name of the Pension Parliament; and was the model, from which, I believe, some later parliaments have been exactly copied.

At the time of the Revolution, the people made a fresh claim of their ancient privileges; and as they had so lately experienced the misfortune of long and servile parliaments, it was then declared, that they should be held frequently. But, it seems, their full meaning was not understood by this declaration; and, therefore, as in every new settlement the intention of all parties should be specifically manifested, the parliament never ceased struggling with the crown, till the triennial law was obtained: the preamble of it is extremely full and strong; and in the body of the bill you will find the word declared before enacted, by which I apprehend, that though this law did not immediately take place at the time of the Revolution, it was certainly intended as declaratory of