nt to gratitude or prudence, had
been already sanctified by the judgment of his country. The barbarous
practice of wearing arms in the midst of peace, and the bloody maxims of
honor, were unknown to the Romans; and, during the two purest ages, from
the establishment of equal freedom to the end of the Punic wars, the
city was never disturbed by sedition, and rarely polluted with atrocious
crimes. The failure of penal laws was more sensibly felt, when every
vice was inflamed by faction at home and dominion abroad. In the time
of Cicero, each private citizen enjoyed the privilege of anarchy; each
minister of the republic was exalted to the temptations of regal power,
and their virtues are entitled to the warmest praise, as the spontaneous
fruits of nature or philosophy. After a triennial indulgence of lust,
rapine, and cruelty, Verres, the tyrant of Sicily, could only be sued
for the pecuniary restitution of three hundred thousand pounds sterling;
and such was the temper of the laws, the judges, and perhaps the accuser
himself, that, on refunding a thirteenth part of his plunder, Verres
could retire to an easy and luxurious exile.

The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes and
punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst of his
sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the license, rather than
to oppress the liberty, of the Romans. He gloried in the arbitrary
proscription of four thousand seven hundred citizens. But, in the
character of a legislator, he respected the prejudices of the times;
and, instead of pronouncing a sentence of death against the robber or
assassin, the general who betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined
a province, Sylla was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by
the penalty of exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the
interdiction of fire and water. The Cornelian, and afterwards
the Pompeian and Julian, laws introduced a new system of criminal
jurisprudence; and the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian, disguised
their increasing rigor under the names of the original authors. But the
invention and frequent use of _extraordinary pains_ proceeded from
the desire to extend and conceal the progress of despotism. In the
condemnation of illustrious Romans, the senate was always prepared to
confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial and legislative
powers. It was the duty of the governors to maintain the peace of their
province, by the ar