ous
visitings of conscience', which might be found prejudicial to the
interests of the gang, and beneficial to the rest of mankind. Take,
for example, the conduct of this atrocious gang under Aemilius
Paulus, against Epirus and Greece generally after the defeat of
Perseus, all under the deliberate decrees of the senate: take that of
this gang under his son Scipio the younger, against Carthage and
Numantia; under Cato, at Cyprus--all in the same manner under the
_deliberate decrees of the senate_. Take indeed the whole of her
history as a republic, and we find it that of the most atrocious band
of robbers that was ever associated against the rest of their
species. In her relations with the rest of mankind Rome was
collectively devoid of truth; and her citizens, who were sent to
govern conquered countries, were no less devoid of truth
individually--they cared nothing whatever for the feelings or the
opinions of the people governed; in their dealings with them, truth
and honour were entirely disregarded. The only people whose
favourable opinion they had any desire to cultivate were the members
of the great gang; and the most effectual mode of conciliating them
was to plunder the people of conquered countries, and distribute the
fruits among them in presents of one kind or another. Can any man
read without shuddering that it was the practice among this atrocious
gang to have all the multitude of unhappy prisoners of both sexes,
and of all ranks and ages,--who annually graced the triumphs of their
generals, taken off and murdered just at the moment when these
generals reached the Capitol, amid the shouts of the multitude, that
their joys might be augmented by the sight or consciousness of the
sufferings of others? (See Hooke's _Roman History_, vol. iii, p. 488;
vol. iv, p. 541.) 'It was the custom that, when the triumphant
conqueror tumed his chariot towards the Capitol, he commanded the
captives to be led to prison, and there put to death, that so the
glory of the victor and the miseries of the vanquished might be in
the same moment at the utmost.' How many millions of the most
innocent and amiable of their species must have been offered up as
human sacrifices to the triumphs of the leaders of this great gang!
The women were almost as brutalized as the men; lovers met to talk
'soft nonsense', at exhibitions of gladiators. Valeria, the daughter
and sister of two of the first men in Rome, was beautiful, gay, and
lively, and