ned, we
find that it undoubtedly exerted itself with patriotism and energy to
check, and to a certain extent succeeded in checking, the spread of
decay--more especially the falling off of the farmer class and the
relaxation of the old strict and frugal habits--as well as the
preponderating political influence of the new nobility. But we fail
to discover any higher political aim. The discontent of the multitude
and the moral indignation of the better classes found doubtless in
this opposition their appropriate and powerful expression; but we do
not find either a clear insight into the sources of the evil, or any
definite and comprehensive plan of remedying it. A certain want of
thought pervades all these efforts otherwise so deserving of honour,
and the purely defensive attitude of the defenders forebodes little
good for the sequel. Whether the disease could be remedied at all by
human skill, remains fairly open to question; the Roman reformers of
this period seem to have been good citizens rather than good
statesmen, and to have conducted the great struggle between the
old civism and the new cosmopolitanism on their part after a somewhat
inadequate and narrow-minded fashion.

Demagogism

But, as this period witnessed the rise of a rabble by the side of the
burgesses, so it witnessed also the emergence of a demagogism that
flattered the populace alongside of the respectable and useful party
of opposition. Cato was already acquainted with men who made a trade
of demagogism; who had a morbid propensity for speechifying, as others
had for drinking or for sleeping; who hired listeners, if they could
find no willing audience otherwise; and whom people heard as they
heard the market-crier, without listening to their words or, in the
event of needing help, entrusting themselves to their hands. In his
caustic fashion the old man describes these fops formed after the
model of the Greek talkers of the agora, dealing in jests and
witticisms, singing and dancing, ready for anything; such an one was,
in his opinion, good for nothing but to exhibit himself as harlequin
in a procession and to bandy talk with the public--he would sell his
talk or his silence for a bit of bread. In reality these demagogues
were the worst enemies of reform. While the reformers insisted above
all things and in every direction on moral amendment, demagogism
preferred to insist on the limitation of the powers of the government
and the extension of