public credit, their
debts may be paid off out of the Gallic treasures, which it is alleged
the leading patricians are secreting. To which proceeding so far am I
from being any obstruction, that on the contrary, Marcus Manlius, I
exhort you to free the Roman commons from the weight of interest; and to
tumble from their secreted spoil, those who lie now brooding on those
public treasures. If you refuse to do this, whether because you yourself
desire to be a sharer in the spoil, or because the information is
unfounded, I shall order you to be carried off to prison, nor will I any
longer suffer the multitude to be disquieted by you with delusive
hopes." To this Manlius replied, "That it had not escaped him, that it
was not against the Volscians, who were enemies as often as it suited
the interests of the patricians, nor against the Latins and Hernicians,
whom they were driving into hostilities by false charges, but against
him and the Roman commons, that he was appointed dictator. Now the war
being dropped, which was only feigned, that an attack was being made
against himself; that the dictator now professed to defend the usurers
against the commons; that now a charge and destruction was sought for
him out of the favour of the multitude. Does the crowd that surrounds my
person offend you," said he, "Aulus Cornelius, and you, conscript
fathers? Why then do you not draw it away from me, each of you by your
own acts of kindness? by becoming surety, by delivering your
fellow-citizens from the stocks, by preventing those cast in law-suits,
and assigned over to their creditors, from being dragged away to prison,
by sustaining the necessities of others out of your own superfluities?
But why do I exhort you to expend out of your own property? Fix some
capital; deduct from the principal what has been paid in interest; soon
will my crowd not be a whit more remarkable than that of any other
person. But [I may be asked] why do I alone thus interest myself in
behalf of my fellow-citizens? I have no other answer to give, than if
you were to ask me, why in the same way did I alone preserve the Capitol
and the citadel. Both then I afforded the aid which I could to all
collectively, and now I will afford it to each individually. Now with
respect to the Gallic treasures, the mode of interrogation renders
difficult a matter which in itself is easy. For why do you ask that
which you know? why do you order that which is in your own laps to be
s