It
was the beautiful remark of a distinguished English writer that
"in the Roman senate Octavius had a party and Anthony a party, but
the Commonwealth had none." Yet the senate continued to meet in
the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the
Commonwealth and gaze at the statues of the elder Brutus and of
the Curtii and Decii, and the people assembled in the forum, not,
as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free
votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate,
but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective
parties their share of the spoils and to shout for one or the
other, as those collected in Gaul or Egypt and the lesser Asia
would furnish the larger dividend. The spirit of liberty had fled,
and, avoiding the abodes of civilized man, had sought protection
in the wilds of Scythia or Scandinavia; and so under the operation
of the same causes and influences it will fly from our Capitol and
our forums. A calamity so awful, not only to our country, but to
the world, must be deprecated by every patriot and every tendency
to a state of things likely to produce it immediately checked.
Such a tendency has existed--does exist. Always the friend of my
countrymen, never their flatterer, it becomes my duty to say to
them from this high place to which their partiality has exalted me
that there exists in the land a spirit hostile to their best
interests--hostile to liberty itself.
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