States; that it arms nations against
each other, and makes them irreconcilable enemies; and that its power is
never more manifest than when error and lies triumph over truth.

Comic poets reproach Socrates with teaching how to make a bad cause
good, and Plato represents Lysias and Gorgias boasting the same thing.
To these may be added several examples of Greeks and Romans, and a long
list of orators whose eloquence was not only the ruin of private
persons, but even destructive to whole cities and republics; and for
this reason it was that eloquence was banished from Sparta and so
restricted at Athens that the orator was not allowed to make appeal to
the passions.

Granting all this as sound argument, we must draw this necessary
inference, that neither generals of armies, nor magistrates, nor
medicine, nor philosophy, will be of any use. Flaminius, an imprudent
general, lost one of our armies. The Gracchi Saturninus, and Glaucia, to
raise themselves to dignity, put Rome into an uproar. Physicians often
administer poisons, and among philosophers some have been found guilty
of the most enormous crimes. Let us not eat of the meats with which our
tables are spread, for meats frequently have caused disease. Let us
never go into houses; they may fall and crush us to death. Let not our
soldiers be armed with swords; a robber may use the same weapon against
us. In short, who does not know that the most necessary things in life,
as air, fire, water, nay, even the celestial bodies, are sometimes very
injurious to our well-being?

But how many examples can be quoted in our favor? Did not Appius the
Blind, by the force of his eloquence dissuade the Senate from making a
shameful peace with Pyrrhus? Did not Cicero's divine eloquence appear
more popular than the Agrarian law he attacked? Did it not disconcert
the audacious measures of Cataline? And did not he, even in his civil
capacity, obtain by it honors that are conferred on only the most
illustrious conquerors? Is it not the orator who strengthens the
soldier's drooping courage, who animates him amidst the greatest
dangers, and inspires him to choose a glorious death rather than a life
of infamy?

The example of the Romans, among whom eloquence always has been held in
the greatest veneration, shall have a higher place in my regard than
that of the Spartans and Athenians. It is not to be supposed that the
founders of cities could have made a united people of a vagabond
multitu