In truth, Cicero's political convictions were the same from the beginning to the end of his career, with a consistency which is by no means usual in politicians; for though, before his Consulship, he had not taken up politics as a business he had entertained certain political views, as do all men who live in public. From the first to the last we may best describe him by the word we have now in use, as a conservative. The government of Rome had been an oligarchy for many years, though much had been done by the citizens to reduce the thraldom which an oligarchy is sure to exact. To that oligarchy Cicero was bound by all the convictions, by all the practices, and by all the prejudices of his life. When he speaks of a Republic he speaks of a people and of an Empire governed by an oligarchy; he speaks of a power to be kept in the hands of a few--for the benefit of the few, and of the many if it might be--but at any rate in the hands of a few. That those few should be so select as to admit of no new-comers among them, would probably have been a portion of his political creed, had he not been himself a "novus homo." As he was the first of his family to storm the barrier of the fortress, he had been forced to depend much on popular opinion; but not on that account had there been any dealings between him and democracy. That the Empire should be governed according to the old oligarchical forms which had been in use for more than four centuries, and had created the power of Rome--that was his political creed. That Consuls, Censors, and Senators might go on to the end of time with no diminution of their dignity, but with great increase of justice and honor and truth among them--that was his political aspiration. They had made Rome what it was, and he knew and could imagine nothing better; and, odious as an oligarchy is seen to be under the strong light of experience to which prolonged ages has subjected it, the aspiration on his part was noble. He has been wrongly accused of deserting "that democracy with which he had flirted in his youth." There had been no democracy in his youth, though there had existed such a condition in the time of the Gracchi. There was none in his youth and none in his age. That which has been wrongly called democracy was conspiracy--not a conspiracy of democrats such as led to our Commonwealth, or to the American Independence, or to the French Revolution; but conspiracy of a few nobles for the better assurance of the plunder, and the power, and the high places of the Empire. Of any tendency toward democracy no man has been less justly accused than Cicero, unless it might be Cæsar. To Cæsar we must accord the merit of having seen that a continuation of the old oligarchical forms was impracticable This Cicero did not see. He thought that the wounds inflicted by the degeneracy and profligacy of individuals were curable. It is attributed to Cæsar that he conceived the grand idea of establishing general liberty under the sole dominion of one great, and therefore beneficent, ruler. I think he saw no farther than that he, by strategy, management, and courage might become this ruler, whether beneficent or the reverse. But here I think that it becomes the writer, whether he be historian, biographer, or fill whatever meaner position he may in literature, to declare that no beneficence can accompany such a form of government. For all temporary sleekness, for metropolitan comfort and fatness, the bill has to be paid sooner or later in ignorance, poverty, and oppression. With an oligarchy there will be other, perhaps graver, faults; but with an oligarchy there will be salt, though it be among a few. There will be a Cicero now and again--or at least a Cato. From the dead, stagnant level of personal despotism there can be no rising to life till corruption paralyzes the hands of power, and the fabric falls by its own decay Of this no proof can be found in the world's history so manifest as that taught by the Roman Empire.