A lunatic might have entertained such a
scheme, but not a Caesar. The Senate knew him. They knew what he had done.
They knew what he would now do, and for this reason they feared and hated
him. Caesar was a reformer. He had long seen that the Roman Constitution
was too narrow for the functions which had fallen to it, and that it was
degenerating into an instrument of tyranny and injustice. The courts of
law were corrupt; the elections wore corrupt. The administration of the
provinces was a scandal and a curse. The soil of Italy had become a
monopoly of capitalists, and the inhabitants of it a population of slaves.
He had exerted himself to stay the mischief at its fountain, to punish
bribery, to punish the rapacity of proconsuls and propraetors, to purify
the courts, to maintain respect for the law. He had endeavored to extend
the franchise, to raise the position of the liberated slaves, to replace
upon the land a free race of Roman citizens. The old Roman sentiment, the
consciousness of the greatness of the country and of its mighty destinies,
was chiefly now to be found in the armies. In the families of veteran
legionaries, spread in farms over Italy and the provinces, the national
spirit might revive; and, with a due share of political power conceded to
them, an enlarged and purified constituency might control the votes of the
venal populace of the city.
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