may be accused
of any crime at pleasure which he has or has not committed, and will be
certainly condemned." Numerous pleadings in criminal causes
have been preserved to us from this epoch; there is hardly one of them
which makes even a serious attempt to fix the crime in question
and to put into proper shape the proof or counterproof.(31)
That the contemporary civil procedure was likewise in various respects
unsound, we need hardly mention; it too suffered from the effects
of the party politics mixed up with all things, as for instance
in the process of Publius Quinctius (671-673), where the most
contradictory decisions were given according as Cinna or Sulla
had the ascendency in Rome; and the advocates, frequently non-jurists,
produced here also intentionally and unintentionally abundance
of confusion. But it was implied in the nature of the case,
that party mixed itself up with such matters only by way of exception,
and that here the quibbles of advocates could not so rapidly or so deeply
break up the ideas of right; accordingly the civil pleadings
which we possess from this epoch, while not according
to our stricter ideas effective compositions for their purpose,
are yet of a far less libellous and far more juristic character
than the contemporary speeches in criminal causes. If Caesar permitted
the curb imposed on the eloquence of advocates by Pompeius(32)
to remain, or even rendered it more severe, there was at least
nothing lost by this; and much was gained, when better selected
and better superintended magistrates and jurymen were nominated
and the palpable corruption and intimidation of the courts
came to an end. But the sacred sense of right and the reverence
for the law, which it is difficult to destroy in the minds
of the multitude, it is still more difficult to reproduce.
Though the legislator did away with various abuses, he could not heal
the root of the evil; and it might be doubted whether time,
which cures everything curable, would in this case bring relief.

Decay of the Roman Military System

The Roman military system of this period was nearly in the same condition
as the Carthaginian at the time of Hannibal. The governing classes
furnished only the officers; the subjects, plebeians and provincials,
formed the army. The general was, financially and militarily,
almost independent of the central government, and, whether
in fortune or misfortune, substantially left to himself
and to the resourc