Would note my wild demeanor; Miriam, yes, SPEECH OF CAIUS CASSIUS TO HIS COLLECTED FORCES, AFTER THE DEATH OF CESAR. Soldiers and fellow citizens, TH HE unjust reproaches of our enemies we could easily disprove, if we were not, by our numbers, and by the swords which we hold in our hands, in condition to despise them. While Cesar led the armies of the republic against the enemies of Rome, we took part in the same service with him; we obeyed him; we were happy to serve under his command. But when he declared war against the commonwealth, we became his enemies; and when he became an usurper and a tyrant, we resented, as an injury, even the favours which he presumed to bestow upon ourselves. Had he been to fall a sacrifice to private resentment, we should not have been the proper actors in the execution of the sentence against him. He was willing to have indulged us with preferments and honors; but, we were not willing to accept, as the gift of a master, what we were intitled to claim as free citizens. We conceived, that, in presuming to confer the honors of the Roman republic, he encroached on the prerogatives of the Roman people, and insulted the authority of the Roman senate. Česar cancelled the laws, and overturned the constitution of his country; he usurped all the powers of the commonwealth, set up a monarchy, and himself affected to be a king. This our ancestors, at the expulsion of Tarquin, bound themselves and their posterity, by the most solemn oaths, and by the most direful imprecations, never to endure. The same obligation has been entailed upon as a debt by our fathers; and we have faithfully paid and discharged it, have performed the oath, and averted the consequences of failure from ourselves, and from our posterity. In the station of soldiers, we might have committed ourselves, without reflection, to the command of an officer, whose abilities and whose valor we admired; but, in the character of Roman citizens, we have a far different part to sustain. I must suppose, that I now speak to the Roman people, and to citizens of a free republic; to men who have never learned to depend upon others for gratifications and favours; who are not accustomed to own a superior, but who are themselves the masters, the dispensers of fortune and of honor, and the givers of all those dignities and powers by which Cesar himself was exalted, and of which he assumed the entire disposal. Recollect from whom the Scipios, the Pompeys, and even Cesar himself derived his honors; from your ancestors, whom you now represent, and from yourselves, to whom, according to the laws of the republic, we, who are now your leaders in the field, address ourselves as your fellow-citizens in the commonwealth, and as persons depending on your pleasure for the just reward and retribution of our services. Happy in being able to restore to you what Cesar had the presumption to appropriate to himself, the power and the dignity of your fathers, with the supreme disposal of all the offices of trust that were established for your safety, and for the preservation of your freedom; happy in being able to restore to the tribunes of the Roman people the power of protecting you, and of procuring to every Roman citizen that justice, which, under the late usurpation of Cesar, was withheld, even from the sacred persons of those magistrates themselves. An usurper is the common enemy of all good citizens; but the task of removing him could be the business only of a few. The senate and the Roman people, as soon as it was proper for them to declare their judgment, pronounced their approbation of those who were concerned in the death of Cesar, by the rewards and the honors which they bestowed upon them; and they are now become a prey to assassins and murderers; they bleed in the streets, in the temples, in the most secret retreat, and in the arms of their families; or they are dispersed, and fly wherever they hope to escape the fury of their enemies. Many are now present before you, happy in your protection, happy in witnessing the zeal which you entertained for the commonwealth, for the rights of your fellow citizens, and for your own. These respectable citizens, we trust, will soon, by your means, be restored to a condition in which they can enjoy, together with you, all the honors of a free people; concur with you, in bestowing, and partake with you in receiving, the rewards which are due to such eminent services as you are now engaged to perform. PART OF MR. ERSKINE'S SPEECH AGAINST MR. PITT, 1784. Τ Mr. Speaker, IT becomes us to learn, not from the ministry, but from the throne itself, whether this country is to be governed by men, in whom the House of Commons can confide, or whether we, the people of England's Representatives, are to be the sport and football of any junto that may hope to rule over us, by an unseen and unexplorable principle of government, utterly unknown to the Constitution. This is the great question, to` which every public-spirited citizen of this country should direct his view. A question which goes very wide of the policy to be adopted concerning India, about which very wise and very honest men, not only might, but have, and did materially differ. The total removal of all the executive servants of the crown, while they are in the full enjoyment of the confidence of that House, and, indeed, without any other visible or avowed cause of removal, than because they do enjoy that confidence; and the appointment of others in their room, without any other apparent ground of selection than because they enjoy it not, is, in my mind, a most alarming and portentous attack on the public freedom; because, though no outward form of the government is relaxed or violated by it, so as instantly to supply the constitutional remedy of opposition, the whole spirit and energy of the government is annihilated by it. If the Right Honorable Gentleman retain his own opinions, and if the House likewise retain its own, is it not evident that he came into office without the most distant prospect of serving the public? Is it not evident that he has brought on a struggle between executive and legislative authority, at a time when they are pointing with equal vigor, unity, and effect, to the common interests of the nation? The Right Honorable Gentleman may imagine that I take pleasure in making these observations. If so, I can assure him, upon my honor, that it is far from being the case. So very far the contrary, that the inconveniences which the country suffers at this moment, from the want of a settled government, are greatly heightened to my feelings, from the reflection that they are increased by his unguided ambition. Our fathers were friends; and I was taught, from my infancy, to reverence the name of Pitt; an original partiality, which, instead of being diminished, was strongly confirmed by an acquaintance with the Right Honorable Gentleman himself, which I was cultivating with pleasure, when he was taken from his profession, into a different scene. Let him not think that I am the less his friend, or the mean envier of his talents, because they have been too much the topic of panegyric here already; and both I and the public are now reaping the bitter fruits of these intemperate praises. N "It is good," said Jeremiah, "for a man to bear the yoke in his youth;" and if the Right Honorable Gentleman had attended to this maxim, he would not, at so early a period, have declared against a subordinate situation; but would have lent the aid of his faculties to carry on the affairs of his country, which wanted nothing but stability to render them glorious, instead of setting up at once for himself to be the first. of my How very different has been the progress honorable friend, who sits near me; who was not hatched at once into a minister, by the heat of his own ambition; but who, as it was good for him to do, in the words of the prophet, "bore the yoke in his youth;" passed through the subordinate offices, and matured his talents, in long and laborious oppositions; arriving, by the natural progress of his powerful mind, to a superiority of political wisdom and comprehension, which this House had long, with delight and satisfaction, acknowledged., To pluck such a man from the councils of his country in the hour of her distresses, while he enjoyed the full confidence of the House, to give effect to vigorous plans for her interest; and to throw every thing into confusion, by the introduction of other men, introduced, as it should seem, for no other purpose than to beget that confusion, is an evil, which, if we cannot rectify, we may at least have leave to lament. These evils are, however, imputed, by the Right Honorable Gentleman and his colleagues, to another source; to the bill for the regulation of the East Indies; from the mischiefs of which they had stepped forth to save the country; a language most indecent in this House of Commons, which thought it their duty to the public to pass it by a majority of above one hundred; but which was, however, to be taken to be destructive and dangerous, notwithstanding that authority: because it had been disapproved by a majority of eighteen votes in the House of Lords. Some of whose opinions I reverence as conscientious and |