versal empire, when no one was any thing in the
world if he was not a Roman citizen, and with that little he was
every thing, the Italian people resolved to perish or acquire
that envied distinction. Being unable to attain this object by
prayers and remonstrances, they had recourse to arms: the whole
allies on the Eastern coast of the Peninsula revolted, those on
the Western side were about to follow their example. Rome,
obliged to combat as it were the hands by which it had conquered
the world, was lost; it was about to be reduced to its walls,
when it extricated itself from the difficulty by extending the
privilege to the allies who had remained faithful, and shortly
after to the whole.

"From that moment Rome ceased to be a city of which the people
had the same spirit, the same interest, the same love of freedom,
the same reverence for the Senate. The people of Italy having
become citizens, every town brought thither its dispositions, its
separate interests, its dependence on some neighbouring
protector. The city, torn with divisions, formed no longer a
whole; and as the vast majority of the citizens were so only by a
species of fiction, had neither the same magistrates, the same
walls, the same temples, the same gods, nor the same places of
sepulture, Rome was no longer seen with the same eyes; the
undivided love of country was gone; Rome was no more. The
inhabitants of whole provinces and cities were brought up to the
capital to give their suffrages, or compel others to give them;
the popular assemblies degenerated into vast conspiracies, a
troop or seditious band usurped the sacred name of Comitia; the
authority of the people, their laws, even themselves, became a
mere chimera; and the anarchy rose to such a point that it became
impossible to tell whether the people had made an ordinance, or
had not. Writers are never tired of descanting on the divisions
which ruined Rome; but they have not seen that those divisions
always existed, and ever must exist in a free community. It was
solely the greatness of the republic which was the cause of the
evil, by changing popular tumults into civil wars. Faction was
unavoidable in Rome; its warriors, so fierce, so proud, so
terrible abroad, would not be moderate at home. To expect in a
free sta