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?

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, questors. Within those 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 show 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They talk to us of the confusion there will be in families, if this statute should be repealed.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 market-place: 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 oppose 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 tri

bune, 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 inlist 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. From Hooke.

HANNIBAL'S ADDRESS TO SCIPIO AFRICANUS, AT THEIR INTERVIEW PRECEDING THE BATTLE OF ZAMA.

SINCE fate has so ordained it, that I, who begun 'the war, and who have been so often on the point of ending it by a complete conquest, should now come of my own motion to ask a peace: I am glad that it is of you, Scipio, I have the fortune to ask it. Nor will this be among the least of your

glories, that Hannibal, victorious over so many Roman generals, submitted at last to you.

I could wish, that our fathers and we had confined our ambition within the limits which nature seems to have prescribed to it; the shores of Africa, and the shores of Italy. The gods did not give us that mind. On both sides we have been so eager after foreign possessions, as to put our own to the hazard of war. Rome and Carthage have had, each in her turn, the enemy at her gates. But since errours past may be more easily blamed than corrected, let it now be the work of you and me to put an end, if possible, to the obstinate contention. For my own part, my years, and the experience I have had of the instability of fortune, inclines me to leave nothing to her determination, which reason can decide. But much I fear, Scipio, that your youth, your want of the like experience, your uninterrupted success, may render you averse from the thoughts of peace. He whom fortune has never failed, rarely reflects upon her inconstancy. Yet, without recurring to former examples, my own may perhaps suffice to teach you moderation. I am that same Hannibal, who, after my victory at Cannæ, became master of the greatest part of your country, and deliberated with myself what fate I should decree to Italy and Rome. And now see the change! Here, in Africa, I am come to treat with a Roman, for my own preservation and my country's. Such are the sports of fortune! Is she then to be trusted because she smiles? An advantageous peace is preferable to the hope of victory. The one is in your own power, the other at the pleasure of the gods.

Should you prove victorious, it would add little to your own glory, or the glory of your country; if vanquished, you lose in one hour all the honour and reputation you have been so many years acquiring. But what is my aim in all this?-that you should content yourself with our cession of Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and all the islands between Italy and Africa. A peace on these conditions will, in my opinion, not only secure the future tranquillity of Carthage, but be sufficiently glorious for you, and for the Roman name. And do not tell me, that some of our citizens dealt fraudulently with you in the late treaty-it is I, Hannibal, that now ask a peace: I ask it, because I think it expedient for my country; and, thinking it expedient, I will inviolably maintain it.

From Hooke.

Scipio's Reply.

I KNEW very well, Hannibal, that it was the hope of your return which emboldened the Carthaginians to break the truce with us, and to lay aside all thoughts of a peace, when it was just upon the point of being concluded; and your present proposal is a proof ofit. You retrench from their concessions every thing but what we are, and have been long, possessed of. But as it is your care that your fellow-citizens should have the obligations to you, of being eased from a great part of their burden, so it ought to be mine that they draw no advantage from their perfidiousness. Nobody is more sensible than I am of the weakness