If to these perils be added a nefarious
conspiracy, to what god can we turn for help? War has laid prostrate our
institutions; you alone can restore them. The courts of justice need to be
reconstituted, credit to be recovered, license to be repressed, the
thinned ranks of the citizens to be repaired. The bonds of society are
relaxed. In such a war, and with such a temper in men's hearts, the State
must have lost many of its greatest ornaments, be the event what it would.
These wounds need healing, and you alone can heal them. With sorrow I have
heard you say that you have lived long enough. For nature it may be that
you have, and perhaps for glory. But for your country you have not. Put
away, I beseech you, this contempt of death. Be not wise at our expense.
You repeat often, I am told, that you do not wish for longer life. I
believe you mean it; nor should I blame you, if you had to think only of
yourself. But by your actions you have involved the welfare of each
citizen and of the whole Commonwealth in your own. Your work is
unfinished: the foundations are hardly laid, and is it for you to be
measuring calmly your term of days by your own desires?... If, Caesar, the
result of your immortal deeds is to be no more than this, that, after
defeating your enemies, you are to leave the State in the condition in
which it now stands, your splendid qualities will be more admired than
honored.
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