hen open to the ambition of man. The Kings
of Greece, and of the East, and of Africa were supposed to be inferior
in their very rank to a Roman Proconsul, and this greatness was carried
on with a semblance of liberty, and was compatible with a belief in the
majesty of the Roman citizen. When Cicero began his work, Consuls,
Praetors, AEdiles, and Quaestors were still chosen by the votes of the
citizens. There was bribery, no doubt, and intimidation, and a resort to
those dirty arts of canvassing with which we English have been so
familiar; but in Cicero's time the male free inhabitants of Rome did
generally carry the candidates to whom they attached themselves. The
salt of their republican theory was not as yet altogether washed out
from their practice.

The love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern
races did not exist in the time of Cicero. The idea never seems to have
reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as were his sympathies,
that a man, as man, should be free. Half the inhabitants of Rome were
slaves, and the institution was so grafted in the life of the time that
it never occurred to a Roman that slaves, as a body, should be
manumitted. The slaves themselves, though they were not, as have been
the slaves whom we have seen, of a different color and presumed inferior
race, do not themselves seem to have entertained any such idea. They
were instigated now and again to servile wars, but there was no rising
in quest of freedom generally. Nor was it repugnant to the Roman theory
of liberty that the people whom they dominated, though not subjected to
slavery, should still be outside the pale of civil freedom. That boon
was to be reserved for the Roman citizen, and for him only. It had
become common to admit to citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and
further territories. The glory was kept not altogether for Rome, but for
Romans.

Thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very essence of
freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in the name of
liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot. With genuine
patriotism Cicero loved his country, and beginning his public life as he
did at the close of Sylla's tyranny, he was able to entertain a dream
that the old state of things might be restored and the republican form
of government maintained. There should still be two Consuls in Rome,
whose annual election would guard the State against regal dominion. And
there