f individuals, but of
inflicting public censure for any licentiousness of conduct, or violation
of decency. Thus both the civil and religious institutions concurred to
restrain the people within the bounds of good order and obedience to the
laws; at the same time that the frugal life of the ancient Romans proved
a strong security against those vices which operate most effectually
towards sapping the foundations of a state.

But in the time of Julius Caesar the barriers of public liberty were
become too weak to restrain the audacious efforts of ambitious and
desperate men. The veneration for the constitution, usually a powerful
check to treasonable designs, had been lately violated by the usurpations
of Marius and Sylla. The salutary terrors of religion no longer
predominated over the consciences of men. The shame of public censure
was extinguished in general depravity. An eminent historian, who lived
at that time, informs us, that venality universally prevailed amongst the
Romans; and a writer who flourished soon after, observes, that luxury and
dissipation had encumbered almost all so much with debt, that they beheld
with a degree of complacency the prospect of civil war and confusion.

The extreme degree of profligacy at which the Romans were now arrived is
in nothing more evident, than that this age gave birth to the most
horrible conspiracy which occurs in the annals of humankind, viz. that of
Catiline. This was not the project of a few desperate and abandoned
individuals, but of a number of men of the most illustrious rank in the
state; and it appears beyond doubt, that Julius Caesar was accessary to
the design, which was no less than to extirpate the Senate, divide
amongst themselves both the public and private treasures, and set Rome on
fire. The causes which prompted to this tremendous project, it is
generally admitted, were luxury, prodigality, irreligion, a total
corruption of manners, and above all, as the immediate cause, the
pressing necessity in which the conspirators were involved by their
extreme dissipation.

The enormous debt in which Caesar himself was early involved,
countenances an opinion that his anxiety to procure the province of Gaul
proceeded chiefly from this cause. But during nine years in which he
held that province, he acquired such riches as must have rendered him,
without competition, the most opulent person in the state. If nothing
more, therefore, than a (58) splendid establi