"I think, Gorgias," says Socrates, "that you have had experience of many discussions, and must have perceived this: that men seldom know how jointly to examine and mark out the things about which they attempt to discuss; and having learnt and instructed themselves, so to break off the conversation. But if they dispute on any matter, and one of them charges the other with not speaking rightly, or not clearly, they are angry, and think that it is said in envy, and for the sake of victory, and not in the pursuit of the proposed object of discourse; and they sometimes end by shamefully reproaching one another, and bandying such words as make the bystanders ashamed of themselves for having desired to listen to such men." Consequently, to obtain such a discussion as Socrates and Franklin might have approved of in the English Parliament, the only thing required is to muzzle the men who make inordinately long harangues, by limiting their speeches to a quarter of an hour.

It may be shown from innumerable passages in

* Plat. Gorg. p. 26. Βip. Οἶμαι, ὦ Γοργία, καὶ σὲ ἔμπειρον, εἶναι πολλῶν λόγων και καθεωρακέναι ἐν αὐτοῖς τὸ τοιόνδε, ὅτι οὐ ῥᾳείως δύνανται οἱ ἄνθρωποι, περὶ ὧν ἂν ἐπιχειρήσωσι διαλέγεσθαι, διορισά μενοι ποὺς ἀλλήλους καὶ μαθόντες καὶ διδάξαντες ἑαυτοὺς, οὕτω διαλύεσθαι τὰς συνουσίας ἀλλ' ἐὰν περὶ του ἀμφισβητήσωσι καὶ μὴ στὶ ὁ ἕτερος τὸν ἔτερον ὀρθῶς λέγειν ἢ μὴ σαφῶς, χαλεπαίνουσί τε καὶ κατὰ φθόνον οἴονται τὸν ἑαυτῶν λέγειν, φιλονεικοῦντας, ἀλλ ̓ οὐ ζητοῦντας τὸ προκείμενον ἐν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ ἔνεσί γε τελευτώντες αίσχιστα ἀπαλλάσοντας λουρηθέντες τε καὶ εἰποντες καὶ ἀκούσαντες περὶ τοῶν αὐτῶν τοιαῦτα, οἷα καὶ τοὺς παρόντας εχθεσθαι ὑπὲρ σφῶν GÜTÜN, ÖTL TOLDurum andgurun jžiwdan akpvarai perestial

the writings of Plato that, in the opinion of the wisest man Athens ever produced, it was the orators who, in their adulation of the people for their own purposes, destroyed the Athenian commonwealth. And if the passages cited in this chapter from Demosthenes be considered as showing that his oratory was certainly not all adulation, since he told them many bitter truths, the orators who preceded him had already done so much mischief that a much greater man than Demosthenes-a man like Epaminondas, a first-rate general as well as a first-rate statesman-would probably have been quite as unable as Demosthenes to save Athens.

Even in a government like that of England, the power of orators has been great for the last 200 years. How much greater it would become if that government were assimilated much more than it is at present to the Athenian democracy, may be inferred from the known power of the orators in the latter days of Athenian independence. Socrates, in Plato's Dialogues, uses the word Orator as equivalent sometimes to Sophist, and sometimes to Despot. He represents orators as men having, without being either wise or just men, the absolute power of life and death, confiscation and ruin, over their fellowcitizens.

If the field for the exercise of rhetoric and sophistry in the deliberative national assembly of England were effectually checked, the extension of

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sure.

the suffrage might be a safe and a beneficial meaBut if such a measure is carried out to any considerable extent before the other measure of preventing the rhetorical sophists from working their mischief, we shall only exchange one set of bad and dangerous rulers for another set of rulers still worse and still more dangerous.

51

CHAPTER IV.

THE ROMANS.

THE Romans were not less attentive than the Greeks to athletic exercises. Plutarch relates what pains Cato the Censor took in training his son in throwing the javelin, in riding, in swimming rapid rivers, in enduring heat and cold; how Marius, throwing off his old age and his infirmities, went daily to the Campus Martius, where he took his exercises with the young men ; and how Julius Cæsar did not make his feeble health an excuse for indulgence, but by unwearied exercise and frugal diet, by constantly keeping in the open air and enduring fatigue, struggled with his malady, and kept his body proof against its attacks. The effect of the Roman system of athletic exercises in strengthening and hardening their bodies, appears from the fact that a Roman soldier usually carried a load of sixty pounds weight, besides his arms; that under this load the soldier commonly marched twenty miles a day, sometimes more, usually completing the day's march in five hours, that is, marching twenty miles in five hours, some

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times twenty-four miles in that time. Roman system of training, while, like the Spartan, it cultivated the physical qualities of bodily strength, activity, and endurance, with the moral qualities of fortitude and patriotism, did not cultivate in the least degree, like the Spartan also, the moral qualities of justice and humanity. Their leading principle, to which all others gave way, was the extension of the empire; in other words, universal dominion and universal plunder.

Nevertheless, the Roman constitution, or system of government, possessed elements of duration which did not belong either to the Spartan or Athenian system. The Spartan government was, as we have seen, an almost pure oligarchy, the Athenian an almost pure democracy; each of which worked out rapidly its own destruction, without check or counterpoise. On the other hand, the Roman system of government had in it the two elements of oligarchy and democracy, which acted as checks on one another; for a time at least. It is true that they mostly acted in such a way that now the one predominated, and now the other. At last, however, after great struggles, the government of Rome was brought to a just equilibrium, under which there was no insurmountable obstruction to merit. The republic was thus managed for several ages without internal discord. But as wealth and luxury increased, especially after the destruction of Carthage, the more wealthy ple