justice of you, Fathers, upon the robber of the public treasury, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the invader of the rights and privileges of Romans, the scourge and curse of Sicily. If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve-our authority, Fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public; but if his great riches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one point to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case was—not a criminal, nor a prosecutor-but justice and adequate punishment.

To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth— what does his quæstorship (the first public employment he held), what does it exhibit, but one continued scene of villanies-Cneius Carbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer ;--a consul stripped and betrayed ;—— an army deserted and reduced to want;-a province robbed ;-the civil and religious rights of a people violated. The employment he held in Asia Minor and Pamphyliawhat did it produce, but the ruin of those countries; in which houses, cities, and temples were robbed by him! What was his conduct in his prætorship here at home? Let the plundered temples, and public works neglected, that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying them on, bear witness. How did he discharge the office of a judge? Let those who suffered by his injustice answer. But his prætorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and finishes a lasting monument to his infamy. The mischiefs done by him in that unhappy country, during the three years of his iniquitous administration, are such, that many years, under the wisest and best of prætors, will not be sufficient to restore things to the condition in which he found them: for it is notorious, that during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither

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enjoyed the protection of their own original laws, of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman Senate, upon their coming under the protection of the commonwealth,-nor of the natural and inalienable rights of men. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily for these three years; and his decisions have broken all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary taxes and unheard-of impositions, extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies; Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures; the most atrocious criminals (for money) have been exempted from the deserved punishments; and men of the most unexceptionable characters, condemned and banished unheard. The harbours-though sufficiently fortifiedand the gates of strong towns, opened to pirates and ravagers; the soldiery and sailors, belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth, starved to death; whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish. The ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness-the statues of heroes and princes, carried off, and the temples stripped of the images. Having, by his iniquitous sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the people-he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman citizens to be strangled in the jails; so that the exclamation, "I am a citizen of Rome!" which has often, in the most distant regions, and among the most barbarous people, been a protection, was of no service to them; but, on the contrary, brought a speedier and more severe punishment upon them.

I ask now, Verres, what you have to advance against this charge? Will you pretend to deny it? Will you

pretend, that anything false, that even anything aggravated, is alleged against you? Had any prince, or any state committed the same outrage against the privileges of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for declaring immediate war against them? What punishment ought, then, to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked prætor, who dared (at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast) to put to the infamous death of crucifixion, that unfortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country, against a cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in prison at Syracuse, where he had just made his escape? The unhappy man (arrested as he was going to embark for his native country) is brought before the wicked prætor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance distorted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him, but without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspicion, of having come to Sicily as a spy. It was in vain that the unhappy man cried out, "I am a Roman citizen; I have served under Lucius Precius, who is now at Panormus, and will attest my innocence." The bloodthirsty prætor -deaf to all he could urge in his own defence-ordered the infamous punishment to be inflicted. Thus, Fathers, was an innocent Roman citizen publicly mangled with scourging; whilst the only words he uttered amidst his cruel sufferings were, "I am a Roman citizen!" With these he hoped to defend himself from violence and from infamy but of so little service was this privilege to him, that while he was thus asserting his citizenship, the order was given for his execution-for his execution upon the

cross!

O Liberty!-Oh, sound, once delightful to every Roman ear! Oh, sacred privilege of Roman citizenship!-once sacred-now trampled upon ! But what then? Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistratea governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people-in a Roman province-within sight of Italy— bind, scourge, torture with fire and red-hot plates of iron, and at last put to the infamous death of the cross, a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, nor the tears of pitying spectators, nor the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the licentious and wanton cruelty of a monster, who, in confidence of his riches, strikes at the root of all liberty; and sets mankind at defiance?

I conclude with expressing my hopes, that your wisdom and justice, Fathers, will not (by suffering the most atrocious and unexampled insolence of Caius Verres to escape the due punishment) leave room to apprehend the danger of a total subversion of authority, and introduction of general anarchy and confusion.

CICERO.

ONCE more the ceaseless cycle of the hours brings us the festival of the birth of Christ. As this morning breaks upon Christian land after Christian land, "Christmas Day" begins -the day whereon, so many years ago, so mysteriously, with such humility, was born the Syrian boy whose words have transformed the world. Not among us alone, with whom the evergreen holly is our poor one floral symbol of the undying story, but in a hundred nations near and far, where the sky smiles upon the season, and earth and sea are decked in bridal colours for the birthday of their Lord, and where a summer foliage waves, the day is sacred, sweet, and wonderful. Wherever on the globe there are Christian people, in name or in fact, there to-day this chief of all the holy days of Christendom is being kept; and there to-day arises a sense, more or less profound and adequate, of a common kindred and a common hope. Nay, the circle of that great common hope does not clasp Christian people alone in its divine round; it came into being for all, along with the song of the angels; it rose, as the sun rises this morning, to shine for all alike—on the evil and the good, on the just and the unjust. No man lives * Of Tuesday, December 25, 1866.