he again and again expresses his own belief in the
glory and majesty of the Senate. In accusing Verres he accused the
general corruption of Rome's provincial governors; and as they were
always past-Consuls or past-Praetors, and had been the elite of the
aristocracy, he may be said so far to have taken the part of a democrat;
but he had done so only so far as he had found himself bound by a sense
of duty to put a stop to corruption. The venality of the judges and the
rapacity of governors had been fit objects for his eloquence; but I deny
that he can be fairly charged with having tampered with democracy
because he had thus used his eloquence on behalf of the people.

He was no doubt stirred by other political motives less praiseworthy,
though submitted to in accordance with the practice and the known usages
of Rome. He had undertaken to speak for Catiline when Catiline was
accused of corruption on his return from Africa, knowing that Catiline
had been guilty. He did not do so; but the intention, for our present
purpose, is the same as the doing. To have defended Catiline would have
assisted him in his operations as a candidate for the Consulship.
Catiline was a bad subject for a defence--as was Fonteius, whom he
certainly did defend--and Catiline was a democrat. But Cicero, had he
defended Catiline, would not have done so as holding out his hand to
democracy. Cicero, when, in the Pro Lege Manilia, he for the first time
addressed the people, certainly spoke in opposition to the wishes of the
Senate in proposing that Pompey should have the command of the
Mithridatic war; but his views were not democratic. It has been said
that this was done because Pompey could help him to the Consulship. To
me it seems that he had already declared to himself that among leading
men in Rome Pompey was the one to whom the Republic would look with the
most security as a bulwark, and that on that account he had resolved to
bind himself to Pompey in some political marriage. Be that as it may,
there was no tampering with democracy in the speech Pro Lege Manilia. Of
all the extant orations made by him before his Consulship, the attentive
reader will sympathize the least with that of Fonteius. After his
scathing onslaught on Verres for provincial plunder, he defended the
plunderer of the Gauls, and held up the suffering allies of Rome to
ridicule as being hardly entitled to good government. This he did simply
as an advocate, without political moti