tors are the judges, a very guilty and a very rich man can be condemned.

On which account, in the first place, I beg this of the immortal gods, which I seem to myself to have hopes of, too - that in this trial no one may be found to be wicked except he who has long since been found to be such; secondly, if there are many wicked men, I promise this to you, O judges, I promise this to the Roman people, that my life shall fail rather than my vigor and perseverance in prosecuting their iniquity. But that iniquity, which, if it should be committed, I promise to prosecute severely, with however much trouble and danger to myself, and whatever enmities I may bring on myself by so doing, you, O Marcus Glabrio, can guard against ever taking place by your wisdom, and authority, and diligence. Do you undertake the cause of the tribunals? Do you undertake the cause of impartiality, of integrity, of good faith and religion? Do you undertake the cause of the senate, that, being proved worthy by its conduct in this trial, it may come into favor and popularity with the Roman people? Think who you are and in what a situation you are placed; what you ought to give to the Roman people and what you ought to repay to your ancestors. Let the recollection of the Acilian Law passed by your father occur to your mind, owing to which law the Roman people has had this advantage of most admirable decisions and very strict judges in cases of extortion.

I am resolved not to permit the praetor or the judges to be changed in this cause. I will not permit the matter to be delayed till the lictors of the consuls can go and summon the Sicilians, whom the servants of the consuls-elect did not influence before, when by an unprecedented course of proceeding they sent for them all; I will not permit these miserable men, formerly the allies and friends of the Roman people, now their slaves and supplicants, to lose not only

their rights and fortunes by their tyranny, but to be deprived of even the power of bewailing their condition; I will not, I say, when the cause has been summed up by me, permit them after a delay of forty days has intervened, then at last to reply to me when my accusation has already fallen into oblivion through lapse of time; I will not permit the decision to be given when this crowd collected from all Italy has departed from Rome, which has assembled from all quarters at the same time on account of the comitia, of the games, and of the census.

The reward of the credit gained by your decision, or the danger arising from the unpopularity which will accrue to you if you decide unjustly, I think ought to belong to you; the labor and anxiety to me; the knowledge of what is done and the recollection of what has been said by every one, to all. I will adopt this course, not an unprecedented one, but one that has been adopted before, by those who are now the chief men of our state-the course, I mean, of at once producing the witnesses.

What you will find novel, O judges, is this, that I will so marshal my witnesses as to unfold the whole of my accusation; that when I have established it by examining my witnesses, by arguments, and by my speech, then I shall show the agreement of the evidence with my accusation: so that there shall be no difference between the established mode of prosecuting, and this new one, except that, according to the established mode, when everything has been said which is to be said, then the witnesses are produced; here they shall be produced as each count is brought forward, so that the other side shall have the same opportunity of examining them, of arguing and making speeches on their evidence. If there be any one who prefers an uninterrupted speech and the old mode of conducting a prosecution without any break, he shall have it in some other trial. But for this time let

him understand that what we do is done by us on compulsion (for we only do it with the design of opposing the artifice of the opposite party by our prudence). This will be the first part of the prosecution. We say that Caius Verres has not only done many licentious acts, many cruel ones, toward Roman citizens, and toward some of the allies, many wicked acts against both gods and men; but especially that he has taken away four hundred thousand sesterces out of Sicily contrary to the laws. We will make this so plain to you by witnesses, by private documents, and by public records, that you shall decide that, even if we had abundant space and leisure days for making a long speech without any inconvenience, still there was no need at all of a long speech in this matter.

T

CHAPTER IX

THE MODERN ORATORS

HE need of orators is as great today as when John Hampden spoke against the exactions of Charles I, James Otis argued against writs of assistance, or Daniel Webster expounded the Constitution of his country. The need is here, but where are the orators? Questions of great moment now confront America and the world, but there is no Demosthenes to arouse men to the necessity of action, no Cicero to drive out the traitor Injustice, no Patrick Henry to consolidate the forces of Liberty. The power of the newspaper is great, and today it is doing noble work for progress; but this power can be used, and is being used, for evil as well as for good. A subsidized press is as dangerous as a Catiline or an Aeschines, and government by newspapers is as tyrannous as was the rule of Nero, Louis XI, or George III. The questions of the tariff, the trusts, finance, religion, education, and civic justice are burning, vital ones that closely affect the wellbeing of man on earth and his preparation for a larger existence in a hopeful spiritual future, and they should be plainly and honestly presented, clearly discussed, and justly settled. These results cannot be reached through papers that are owned by the great financiers and trust

magnates, and where the complaints and demands of the people receive scant consideration. Wherein, then, lie the hopes of the masses? In the power of the spoken word. All great reforms, through all ages, have been brought about by the voiced thoughts of men who not only knew their rights but had the courage that gave them the ability to enforce them. A band of noble missionaries should be created, composed of men and women who not only have ideas concerning the questions of today but who know how to express those ideas by word of mouth.

The eighteenth century produced oratorical giants that were undoubtedly equal in many cases to the orators of Greece and Rome in their palmiest days. Such men as the Earl of Chatham, Charles James Fox, Henry Grattan, Lord Brougham, Thomas Erskine, and William C. Plunket of Great Britain, and James Otis, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee of America, compare favorably with any group of ancient orators existing within a like period of time; while in behalf of the nineteenth century, America boasts of Pinkney, Prentiss, Wirt, Clay, Calhoun, Everett, Choate, Phillips, Lincoln, and Webster, and Great Britain points to Gladstone, Cobden, Curran, O'Connell, and Bright. The great rhetorician Burke is not placed among the foremost orators for the reason that he was a great constructor of speeches but not equally great in the art of delivery. His speeches are masterpieces of composition, and live today as such, but he was a poor speaker, and consequently should not be called an orator, because