ve of any kind--in the days in
which he was supposed to be currying favor with democracy--governed by
private friendship, looking forward, probably, to some friendly office
in return, as was customary. It was thus that afterward he defended
Antony, his colleague in the Consulship, whom he knew to have been a
corrupt governor. Autronius had been a party to Catiline's conspiracy,
and Autronius had been Cicero's school-fellow; but Cicero, for some
reserved reason with which we are not acquainted, refused to plead for
Autronius. There is, I maintain, no ground for suggesting that Cicero
had shown by his speeches before his Consulship any party adherence. The
declaration which he made after his Consulship, in the speech for Sulla,
that up to the time of Catiline's first conspiracy forensic duties had
not allowed him to devote himself to party politics, is entitled to
belief: we know, indeed, that it was so. As Quaestor, as AEdile, and as
Praetor, he did not interfere in the political questions of Rome, except
in demanding justice from judges and purity from governors. When he
became Consul then he became a politician, and after that there was
certainly no vacillation in his views. Critics say that he surrendered
himself to Caesar when Caesar became master. We shall come to that
hereafter; but the accusation with which I am dealing now is that which
charges him with having abandoned the democratic memories of his youth
as soon as he had enveloped himself with the consular purple. There had
been no democratic promises, and there was no change when he became
Consul.

In truth, Cicero's political convictions were the same from the
beginning to the end of his career, with a consistency which is by no
means usual in politicians; for though, before his Consulship, he had
not taken up politics as a business he had entertained certain political
views, as do all men who live in public. From the first to the last we
may best describe him by the word we have now in use, as a conservative.
The government of Rome had been an oligarchy for many years, though much
had been done by the citizens to reduce the thraldom which an oligarchy
is sure to exact. To that oligarchy Cicero was bound by all the
convictions, by all the practices, and by all the prejudices of his
life. When he speaks of a Republic he speaks of a people and of an
Empire governed by an oligarchy; he speaks of a power to be kept in the
hands of a few--for the benefit of the f