om office, to render an account of their stewardship and
hand in their accounts for public inspection. The Julian Laws also were
designed to prevent the plunder of the public revenues, the debasing of
the coin, the bribery of judges and of the people at elections. There
were laws also for the protection of citizens from violence, and sundry
other reforms which were enlightened and useful. In the passage of these
laws against the will of the Senate, we see that the people were still
recognized as sovereign in _legislation_. The laws were good. All
depended on their execution; and the Senate, as the administrative body,
could practically defeat their operation when Caesar's term of office
expired; and this it unwisely determined to do. The last thing it
wished was any reform whatever; and, as Mr. Froude thinks, there must
have been either reform or revolution. But this is not so clear to me.
Aristocracy was all-powerful when money could buy the people, and when
the people had no virtue, no ambition, no intelligence. The struggle at
Rome in the latter days of the Republic was not between the people and
the aristocracy, but between the aristocracy and the military chieftains
on one side, and those demagogues whom it feared on the other. The
result showed that the aristocracy feared and distrusted Caesar; and he
used the people only to advance his own ends,--of course, in the name of
reform and patriotism. And when he became Dictator, he kicked away the
ladder on which he climbed to power. It was Imperialism that he
established; neither popular rights nor aristocratic privileges. He had
no more love of the people than he had of those proud aristocrats who
afterwards murdered him.

But the empire of the world--to which Caesar at that time may, or may
not, have aspired: who can tell? but probably not--was not to be gained
by civil services, or reforms, or arguments in law courts, or by holding
great offices, or haranguing the people at the rostrum, or making
speeches in the Senate,--where he was hated for his liberal views and
enlightened mind, rather than from any fear of his overturning the
constitution,--but by military services and heroic deeds and the
devotion of a tried and disciplined regular army. Caesar was now
forty-three years of age, being in the full maturity of his powers. At
the close of his term as Consul he sought a province where military
talents were indispensable, and where he could have a long term of
offi