M. Tullius Cicero, On the Consular Provinces
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

Do not you think that you ought to recall these men from their provinces even if you had no one to send thither in their places? Would you, could you retain there these two pests of the allies, these men who are the destruction of the soldiers, the ruin of the farmers of the revenue, the desolators of the provinces, the disgracers of the empire? But you, yourselves, in the preceding year did recall these very men when they had only just arrived in the provinces. And if at that time your judgment had been unfettered and if the matter had not been so frequently adjourned and at the last taken wholly out of your hands you would have restored your authority, as you were most anxious to do recalling those men by whom it had been lost and compelling them to render up the rewards which they had received and whom had been conferred on them in return for their wickedness and for the overthrow of their country. And if they at that time escaped from that punishment, through no merit of their own, but through the influence of others, greatly against your consent, still they have undergone a much greater and severer punishment.