provinces to which the liberties of the Constitution could not be imparted. But the doom was precipitated by the incapacity and the vices of the order from which the Senate was drawn. Cæsar had a loyal desire to give the Constitution a last chance. This was the motive of his legislation in his consulship. He was affirming the only principles on which the existing fabric could be sustained. The senators "groaned and foamed," but it was Cæsar who was trying to save them in spite of themselves. He did his best; but their incorrigible perversity was too much for his disinterested devotion to the task of healing the commonwealth. His effort failed; and then only one course remained.
The brilliant literary power with which Mr Froude has urged the case against the Senate would lend strength to a weak cause. It is the more impressive because, as every student of history knows, the charges which it enforces contain a large element of truth. The senators who regarded an election as an occasion for giving bribes, and a seat on the judicial bench as an opportunity for receiving them—the senators to whom a provincial government meant a boundless license of rapine, who used the highest offices of state in the unscrupulous service of party or family, who trifled with all grave matters, secular or sacred, and found the serious occupation of life in the superintendence of fishponds and aviaries—the senators whose habitual vices were not only those from which modern society revolts, but those which it has agreed not to name—-
