Bay. A true philosopher, like an impartial historian, must be of no sect. Locke. Is there no medium between the blind zeal of a sectary, and a total indifference to all religion? Bay. With regard to morality, I was not indifferent. Locke. How could you then be indifferent with regard to the sanctions religion gives to morality? how could you publish what tends so directly and apparently to weaken in mankind the belief of those sanctions? Was not this sacrifieing the great interests of virtue to the little motives of vanity? Bay. A man may act indiscreetly, but he cannot do wrong, by declaring that, which, on a full discussion of the question, he sincerely thinks to be true. Locke. An enthusiast, who advances doctrines prejudicial to society, or opposes any that are useful to it, has the strength of opinion, and the heat of a disturbed imagination, to plead in alleviation of his fault. But your cool head, and sound judgment, can have no such excuse. I know very well there are passages in all your works, and those not a few, where you talk like a rigid moralist. I have also heard that your character was irreproachably good. But when, in the most laboured parts of your writings, you sap the surest foundations of all moral duties: what avails it that in others, or in the conduct of your life, you appeared to respect them? How many, who have stronger passions than you had, and are desirous to get rid of the curb that restrains them, will lay hold of your scepticism, to set themselves loose from all obligations of virtue! What a misfortune it is to have made such a use of such talents! It would have been better for you and for mankind, if you had been one of the dullest of Dutch theologians, or the most credulous monk in a Portuguese convent. The riches of the mind, like those of fortune, may be employed so perversely, as to become a nuisance and pest, instead of an ornament and support, to society. Bay. You are very severe upon me. --But do you count it no merit, no service to mankind, to deliver them from the frauds and fetters of priesteraft, from the deliriums of fanaticism, and from the terrors and follies of superstition? Consider how much mischief these have done to the world! Even in the last age, what massacres, what civil wars, what convulsions of government, what confusion in society, did they produce! Nay, in that we both lived in, though much more enlightened than the former, did I not see them occasion a violent persecution in my own country? and can you blame me for striking at the root of these evils? Locke. The root of these evils, you well know, was false religion: but you struck at the true. Heaven and hell are not more different, than the system of faith I defended, and that which produced the horrors of which you speak. Why would you so fallaciously confound them together in some of your writings, that it requires much more judgment, and a more diligent attention, than ordinary readers have, to sepa arate them again, and to make the proper distinctions? This indeed, is the great art of the most celebrated freethinkers. They recommend themselves to warm and ingenuous minds by lively strokes of wit, and by arguments really strong a gainst superstition, enthusiasm, and priesteraft. But, at the same time, they insidiously throw the colours of these upon the fair face of true religion; and dress her out in their garb with a malignant intention to render her odious or despica ble, to those who have not penetration enough to discern the impious fraud. Some of them may have thus deceived them selves as well as others. Yet it is certain, no book that ev er was written by the most acute of these gentlemen, is st repugnant to priesteraft, to spiritual tyranny, to all absurd superstitions, to all that can tend to disturb or injure socie ty, as that gospel they so much affect to despise. Bay. Mankind are so made, that, when they have been over-heated, they cannot be brought to a proper temper again, till they have been over-cooled. My scepticism might be nécessary, to abate the fever and frenzy of false religioll Locke. A wise prescription, indeed, to bring on a paralyt ical state of the mind, (for such a scepticism as yours is palsy which deprives the mind of all vigour, and deadens its natural and vital powers) in order to take off a fever, which temperance, and the milk of the evangelical doctrines, would probably cure P Bay. I acknowledge that those medicines have a great power. But few doctors apply them untainted with the mix ture of some harsher drugs, or some unsafe and ridiculous nostrums of their own. Locke. What you now say is too true. - God has given a most excellent physic for the soul in all its diseases; b bad and interested physicians, or ignorant and conceited quacks, administer it so ill to the rest of mankind, that much of the benefit of it is unhappily lost. LORD LYTILETON. CHAP. VIII. PUBLIC SPEECHES. SECTION I. CICERO against VERRES. THE time is come, Fathers, when that which has long jeen wished for, towards allaying the envy your order has een subject to, and removing the imputations against trials, effectually put into your power. An opinion has long preailed not only here at home, but likewise in foreign counties, both dangerous to you and pernicious to the state, that, prosecutions, men of wealth are always safe, however cleary convicted. There is now to be brought upon his trial before ou, to the confusion, I hope, of the propagators of this slanlerous imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him ■ the opinion of all impartial persons? but who according o his own reckoning and declared dependence upon his rich8, is already acquitted; I mean Caius Verres. I demand ustice of you, Fathers, upon the robber of the public treasry, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the inva er of the rights an and privileges of Romans, the scourge and urse of Sicily. If that sentence is passed upon him which is crimes deserve, your authority, Fathers, will be venerale and sacred in the eyes of the public: but if his great ches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one oint, to make it apparent to all the world, that what was anting in this case, was not a criminal nor a prosecutor, at justice and adequate punishment. To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what Des his quæstorship, the first public employment he held, hat does it exhibit, but one continued scene of villanies? CneiCarbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer, consul stript and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to ant, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a peoe violated. The employment he held in Asia Minor and amphylia, what did it produce but the ruin of those counes? in which houses, cities, and temples, were robbed by n. What was his conduct in his prætorship here at home? et the plundered temples and public works neglected that might embezzle the money intended for carrying them bear witness. How did he discharge the office of a judge ? t those who suffered by his injustice answer. But his etorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and finishes a lasting monument to his infamy. The mischiefs done by him in that unhappy country, during the three years of his iniquitous administration, are such, that many years, under the wisest and best of prætors, will not be sufficient to restore things to the condition in which he found then:: for it is notorious, that during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither enjoyed the protection of their own origin al laws; of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman Senate, upon their coming under the protection of the commonwealth; nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily for these three years. And his decisions have broken all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary tax es and unheard of impositions, extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. The most atrocious criminals, for money, have been exempted from the deserved punishments; and men of the most un exceptionable characters, condemned and banished unheard. The harbours, though sufficiently fortified, and the gates of strong towns, have been opened to pirates and ravagers. The soldiery and sailors, belonging to a province under the proteetion of the commonwealth, have been starved to death. Whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish, The ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes, have been carried off; and the temples stript of the images.---Having by his iniquitous sentences: filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the people, he then proceeded to or der numbers of Roman citizens to be strangled in the gaols: so that the exclamation, " I am a citizen of Rome!" which has often in the most distant regions, and among the most barbarous people, been a protection, was of no service to them, but, on the contrary, brought a speedier and a more severe punishment upon them. I ask now, Verres, what thou hast to advance against this charge ? Wilt thou pretend to deny it? Wilt thou pre tend that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated is alledged against thee? Had any prince, or any state con mitted the same outrage against the privilege of Roman cil izens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for de manding satisfaction? What punishment ought, then, to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked prætor, who dared. at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Ital ian coast, to put to the infamous death of crucifixion, that unfortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country, against the cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in prison at Syracuse, whence he had just made his escape? The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to embark for his native country, is brought before the wicked præter. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance dister ted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him, but without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspicion, of having come to Sicily as a spy. It was in vain that the unhappy man cried out, " I am a Roman citizen: I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and will attest my innocence." The blood-thirsty prætor, deaf to all he could urge in his own defence, ordered the infamous punishment to be inflicted. Thus, Fathers, was an innocent Roman citizen publicly mangled with scourging: whilst the only words he uttered amidst his cruel sufferings, were, "I am a Roman citizen!" With these he hoped to defend himself from violence and infamy. But of so little service was this privilege to him, that while he was thus asserting his citizenship, the order was given for his execution, for his Execution upon the cross! : i O liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear! -0 sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred ! -now-trampled upon!-But what then! Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture with fire and red-hot plates of iron, and at last put to the infamous death of the Cross, a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, nor the tears of pitying spectators. nor the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the licentious and wanton cruelty of a monster, who, in confidence of his riches, strikes at the root of liberty, and sets mankind at defianes, I conclude with expressing my hopes, that your wisse and justice, fathers, will not, by suffering the atrociou unexampled insolence of Caius Verres to escape due pi ment, leave room to apprehend the danger of a total su sion of authority, and the introduction of general anareky and confusion. CICERO'S ORATION. L |