7.12. 12. The same Subject continued.
In Rome the judges were chosen at first from the order of senators.
This privilege the Gracchi transferred to the knights; Drusus gave it to
the senators and knights; Sulla to the senators only: Cotta to the
senators, knights, and public treasurers; Csar excluded the latter;
Antony made decuries of senators, knights, and centurions.
When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of
remedying any of the growing evils, but by removing the corruption and
restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless
or a new evil. While Rome preserved her principles entire, the judicial
power might without any abuse be lodged in the hands of senators; but as
soon as this city became corrupt, to whatsoever body that power was
transferred, whether to the senate, to the knights, to the treasurers,
to two of those bodies, to all three together, or to any other, matters
still went wrong. The knights had no more virtue than the senate, the
treasurers no more than the knights, and these as little as the
centurions.
After the people of Rome had obtained the privilege of sharing the
magistracy with the patricians, it was natural to think that their
flatterers would immediately become arbiters of the government. But no
such thing ever happened. — It was observable that the very people who
had rendered the plebeians capable of public offices ever fixed their
choice upon the patricians. Because they were virtuous, they were
magnanimous; and because they were free, they had a contempt of power.
But when their morals were corrupted, the more power they were
possessed of, the less prudent was their conduct, till at length, upon
becoming their own tyrants and slaves, they lost the strength of liberty
to fall into the weakness and impotency of licentiousness.
