Which, then, of us, O Labienus, is attached to the best interests of the people? you who think that an executioner and chains ought to be put in operation against Roman citizens in the very assembly of the people; who order a gallows to be planted and erected for the execution of citizens in the Campus Martius, in the comitia centuriata in a place hallowed by the auspices, or I, who forbid the assembly to be polluted by the contagion of an executioner who think that the forum of the Roman people ought to be purified from all such traces of nefarious wickedness who urge that the assembly ought to be kept pure, the campus holy, the person of every Roman citizen inviolate, and the rights of liberty unimpaired?

Of a truth, the tribune of the people is very much devoted to the interests of the people,—is a guardian and defender of its privileges and liberties! The Porcian law forbade a rod to be laid on the person of any Roman citizen. This merciful man has brought back the scourge. The Porcian law protected the freedom of the citizens against the lictor. Labienus, that friend of the people, has handed them over to the executioner. Caius Gracchus passed a law that no trial should take place affecting the life of a Roman citizen without your orders. This friend of the people has compelled the duumvirs (without any order of yours being issued on the subject) not only to try a Roman citizen, but to condemn a Roman citizen to death without hearing him in his own defence.

Do you dare to make mention to me of the Porcian law, or of Caius Gracchus, or of the liberty of these men, or of any single man who has really been a friend of the people, after having attempted to violate the liberty of this people, to tempt their merciful disposition, and to change the customs, not only with unusual punishments, but with a perfectly unheard-of cruelty of language? For these expressions of yours, which you, O merciful and people-loving man, are so fond of; “Go, lictor, bind his hands,” are not only not quite in character with this liberty and this merciful disposition, but they are not suited to the times even of Romulus or of Numa Pompilius. Those are the songs suited to the torments in use in the time of Tarquin, that most haughty and in human monarch; but you, O merciful man, O friend of the people, delight to rehearse, “Cover his head—hang him to the ill-omened tree,”—words, O Romans, which in this republic have long since been buried in the darkness of antiquity, and have been overwhelmed by the light of liberty

If, then, this had been a popular sort of proceeding, if it had had the least particle of equity or justice in it, would Caius Gracchus have passed it over? Forsooth, I suppose, the death of your uncle was a greater affliction to you, than the loss of his brother was to Caius Gracchus. And the death of that uncle whom you never saw is more painful to you, than the death of that brother, with whom he lived on the terms of the most cordial affection, was to him. And you avenge the death of your uncle just as he would have wished to avenge the death of his brother, if he had been inclined to act on your principles. And that great Labienus, your illustrious uncle, whoever he was, left quite as great a regret behind him in the bosoms of the Roman people, as Tiberius Gracchus left? Was your piety greater than that of Gracchus? or your courage? or your wisdom? or your wealth? or your influence? or your eloquence? And yet all those qualities, if he had had ever so little of them, would have been thought great in him in comparison of your qualifications.

But as Caius Gracchus surpassed every one in all these particulars, how great do you suppose must be the distance which is interposed between him and you? But Gracchus would rather have died a thousand times by the most painful of deaths, than have allowed the executioner to stand in that assembly—a man whom the laws of the censors considered ought not only to be ejected out of the forum, but even to be deprived of the sight of the sky, of the breath of the atmosphere, and of a home in the city. This man dares to call himself a friend of the people, and me an enemy to your interests; when he has hunted out all the cruelties of punishments and of harsh language, not only as supplied by your recollection, and by that of your fathers, but from all the records of our annals, and all the histories of the kings; and I, with all my power, and all my ingenuity, and all my eloquence, and all my energy, have opposed and resisted his cruelty. Unless, perhaps, you are fond of such a condition of existence as even slaves would not be able by any possibility to bear, if they had not the hope of liberty held out to them.