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And, if he was not, what could be a
more audacious thing than your putting his name to that bill? What could be
more desperate than your condition, when, even if you told a lie about it
you could not get up any more respectable authority? But if he was the first
person who voted for it as he easily might have been, as he was a man who,
for want of a house, slept all night in the forum, why should he not swear
that he was at Cadiz, when you have
proved so very distinctly that you were at Interamna? Do you, then,—you, a man devoted to
the people,—think that our rights as citizens, and our freedom,
ought to he established on this principle; so that when a tribune of the
people brings forward a motion, “Do you approve and
determine”
* * * *if a hundred Sedulii should say that they do approve and determine, any one of us may lose our privileges? Our ancestors, then, were not attached to the interests of the people, who with respect to the rights of citizenship and liberty established those principles which neither the power of time, nor the authority of magistrates, nor the decisions of judges, nor the sovereign power of the whole people of Rome, which in all other affairs is most absolute, can undermine.
* * * *if a hundred Sedulii should say that they do approve and determine, any one of us may lose our privileges? Our ancestors, then, were not attached to the interests of the people, who with respect to the rights of citizenship and liberty established those principles which neither the power of time, nor the authority of magistrates, nor the decisions of judges, nor the sovereign power of the whole people of Rome, which in all other affairs is most absolute, can undermine.