to very many even now--had not as yet been born: that care for freedom
which springs from a desire to do to others as we would that they
should do to us. It required Christ to father that idea; and Cicero,
though he was nearer to Christianity than any who had yet existed, had
not reached it. But this liberty, though it was but of a few, was so
dear to him that he spent his life in an endeavor to preserve it.
The kings had been expelled from Rome because they had trampled on
liberty. Then came the Republic, which we know to have been at its
best no more than an oligarchy; but still it was founded on the idea
that everything should be done by the votes of the free people. For
many years everything was done by the votes of the free people. Under
what inducements they had voted is another question. Clients were
subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. We have heard
of that even in England, where many of us still think that such a way
of voting is far from objectionable. Perhaps compulsion was sometimes
used--a sort of "rattening" by which large bodies were driven to the
poll to carry this or the other measure. Simple eloquence prevailed
with some, and with others flattery. Then corruption became rampant,
as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and votes were
bought in various ways--by cheap food as well as by money, by lavish
expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of bribery
more or less overt. This was bad, of course. Every freeman should have
given a vote according to his conscience. But in what country--the
millennium not having arrived in any--has this been achieved? Though
voting in England has not always been pure, we have not wished to do
away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to personal
rule. Nor did Cicero.

He knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that were
very evil. He had lived through the dominations of Marius and Sulla,