ge had made an attempt in Italy, when Rhegium and Tarentum
were about to be occupied by the Romans, to acquire these cities for
itself, and had only been prevented from doing so by accident, so in
Sicily an opportunity now offered itself for Rome to bring the city of
Messana into its symmachy; should the Romans reject it, it was not to
be expected that the city would remain independent or would become
Syracusan; they would themselves throw it into the arms of the
Phoenicians. Were they justified in allowing an opportunity to
escape, such as certainly would never recur, of making themselves
masters of the natural tete de pont between Italy and Sicily, and of
securing it by means of a brave garrison on which they could, for good
reasons, rely? Were they justified in abandoning Messana, and thereby
surrendering the command of the last free passage between the eastern
and western seas, and sacrificing the commercial liberty of Italy?
It is true that other objections might be urged to the occupation of
Messana besides mere scruples of feeling and of honourable policy.
That it could not but lead to a war with Carthage, was the least of
these; serious as was such a war, Rome might not fear it. But there
was the more important objection that by crossing the sea the Romans
would depart from the purely Italian and purely continental policy
which they had hitherto pursued; they would abandon the system by
which their ancestors had founded the greatness of Rome, to enter upon
another system the results of which no one could foretell. It was one
of those moments when calculation ceases, and when faith in men's own
and in their country's destiny alone gives them courage to grasp the
hand which beckons to them out of the darkness of the future, and
to follow it no one knows whither. Long and seriously the senate
deliberated on the proposal of the consuls to lead the legions to the
help of the Mamertines; it came to no decisive resolution. But the
burgesses, to whom the matter was referred, were animated by a lively
sense of the greatness of the power which their own energy had
established. The conquest of Italy encouraged the Romans, as that of
Greece encouraged the Macedonians and that of Silesia the Prussians,
to enter upon a new political career. A formal pretext for supporting
the Mamertines was found in the protectorate which Rome claimed the
right to exercise over all Italians. The transmarine Italians were
received into