[15]
Now just see the boundless and
intolerable licentiousness of all these measures. Money has been collected for the purchase
of lands. More-over, the lands are not to be bought of people against their will. Suppose all
the owners agree not to sell, what is to happen then? Is the money to be refunded? That
cannot be. Is it to be collected? The law forbids that. However, let that pass.
There is nothing which cannot be bought, if you will only give as much as the seller asks.
Let us plunder the whole world, let us sell our revenues, let us exhaust the treasury, in
order that, whether men be owners of wealth, or of odium, or even of a pestilence, still
their lands may be bought.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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