93 



deliberation, sympathy or aversion triumphs over impartiality, and 

 party spirit over justice. Ail these evils are of course aggravated in 

 political trials, where the people are judge and party at the same 

 time. We can hardly conceive how it was possible to adhere to such 

 a system for any length of time. Apart from the practical incon- 

 venience of assembling the whole people, or even a portion only 

 (as at Athens) as jurors to decide criminal cases, the inevitable corrup- 

 tion of justice should Imve suggested some remedy to the great states- 

 men of antiquity. But they found none, and even when the frequency 

 of crimes in the later periods of the republic made it imperative to estab- 

 lish (122 B.C.) regular tribunals (the Qusestioues Perpetuse) for the 

 trial of offences, the two fundamental defects of the old system were 

 in the main preserved, for the presidents of these courts were taken 

 from the magistracy, and the jurors were a numerous body of political 

 partisans. At first they were taken from the senators ; their corruption 

 and party spirit led to the Sempronian law of C. Gracchus, which 

 deprived them of this right (or as we should say duty), and gave it to 

 the knights. From this time forward to the end of the republic, every 

 party triumph in the fearful oscillations of its downward course, was 

 accompanied by a change in the constitution of the jury lists, and, it 

 appears, every new arrangement was productive of the same vices of a 

 partial and corrupt administration of justice. The long habit of 

 looking at the merits of a case through a political medium, of con- 

 sidering the family, the connections, the political influence, the party 

 of an accused offender rather than his guilt or innocence in the case 

 before the court, had totally vitiated in Eome not only the practice in 

 the administration of justice, but the very notions of right and wrong. 

 The speeches of Cicero give a faithful picture of this deplorable state 

 of things, and they are sufficient evidence, if there were no other, that 

 all healthy action of republican life was gone, that the body politic had 

 become diseased in all its vital parts, that a regeneration became 

 necessary, and that the establishment of the monaixhy, although 

 accompanied by a total extinction of political freedom, became a 

 blessing to mankind. 



The position of the Emperors differed from that of any of the 

 political parties in this respect, that they were powerful enough to be 

 not a party themselves, but elevated above them all. This alone was 

 an immense boon to a people, that had suffered so much from civil 

 wars, but its full realization was not i)Ossible at once with the means 

 at the Empci'or's disposal. As all political reforms have to be worked 

 out with the machinery of the abolished system, with the same men, 

 imbued with the same principles, prejudices and habits, it often happens 



