4.
[11]
Which, then, of us, O Labienus, is attached to the best interests of the people? you who
think that an executioner and chains ought to be put in operation against Roman citizens in
the very assembly of the people; who order a gallows to be planted and erected for the
execution of citizens in the Campus Martius, in the
comitia centuriata in a place hallowed by the auspices, or I,
who forbid the assembly to be polluted by the contagion of an executioner who think that the
forum of the Roman people ought to be purified from all such traces of nefarious wickedness
who urge that the assembly ought to be kept pure, the campus holy, the person of every Roman
citizen inviolate, and the rights of liberty unimpaired?
[12]
Of
a truth, the tribune of the people is very much devoted to the interests of the
people,—is a guardian and defender of its privileges and liberties! The Porcian law
forbade a rod to be laid on the person of any Roman citizen. This merciful man has brought
back the scourge. The Porcian law protected the freedom of the citizens against the lictor.
Labienus, that friend of the people, has handed them over to the executioner. Caius Gracchus
passed a law that no trial should take place affecting the life of a Roman citizen without
your orders. This friend of the people has compelled the duumvirs (without any order of yours
being issued on the subject) not only to try a Roman citizen, but to condemn a Roman citizen
to death without hearing him in his own defence.
[13]
Do you
dare to make mention to me of the Porcian law, or of Caius Gracchus, or of the liberty of
these men, or of any single man who has really been a friend of the people, after having
attempted to violate the liberty of this people, to tempt their merciful disposition, and to
change the customs, not only with unusual punishments, but with a perfectly unheard-of cruelty
of language? For these expressions of yours, which you, O merciful and people-loving man, are
so fond of; “Go, lictor, bind his hands,” are not only not quite in
character with this liberty and this merciful disposition, but they are not suited to the
times even of Romulus or of Numa Pompilius. Those are the songs suited to the torments in use
in the time of Tarquin, that most haughty and in human monarch; but you, O merciful man, O
friend of the people, delight to rehearse, “Cover his head—hang him to the
ill-omened tree,”—words, O Romans, which in this republic have long since
been buried in the darkness of antiquity, and have been overwhelmed by the light of liberty
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