which above all others concerns the people’s interests, because the same thing would be also salutary for the republic, now prefer being wicked to being friends of the people?  This noble cause of which I am the advocate has made me popular, a man who (as you know) have always opposed the rashness of the people.  And those men are called, or rather they call themselves, consulars; though no man is worthy of that name except those who can support so high an honour.  Will you favour an enemy?  Will you let him send you letters about his hopes of success?  Will you be glad to produce them? to read them?  Will you even give them to wicked citizens to take copies of?  Will you thus raise their courage?  Will you thus damp the hopes and valour of the good?  And then will you think yourself a consular, or a senator, or even a citizen?  Caius Pansa, a most fearless and virtuous consul, will take what I say in good part.  For I will speak with a disposition most friendly to him; but I should not consider him himself a consul, though a man with whom I am most intimate, unless he was such a consul as to devote all his vigilance, and cares, and thoughts to the safety of the republic.

Although long acquaintance, and habit, and a fellowship and resemblance in the most honourable pursuits, has bound us together from his first entrance into life; and his incredible diligence, proved at the time of the most formidable dangers of the civil war, showed that he was a favourer not only of my safety, but also of my dignity; still, as I said before, if he were not such a consul as I have described, I should venture to deny that he was a consul at all.  But now I call him not only a consul, but the most excellent and virtuous consul within my recollection; not but that there have been others of equal virtue and equal inclination, but still they have not had an equal opportunity of displaying that virtue and inclination.  But the opportunity of a time of most formidable change has been afforded to his magnanimity, and dignity, and wisdom.  And that is the time when the consulship is displayed to the greatest advantage, when it governs the republic during a time which, if not desirable, is at all events critical and momentous.  And a more critical time than the present, O conscript fathers, never was.

III.  Therefore I, who have been at all times an adviser of peace, and who, though all good men always considered peace, and especially internal peace, desirable, have desired it more than all of them;—­for the whole of the career of my industry has been passed in the forum and in the senate-house, and in warding off dangers from my friends; it is by this course that I have arrived at the highest honours, at moderate wealth, and at any dignity which we may be thought to have:  I therefore, a nursling of peace, as I may call myself, I who, whatever I am, (for I arrogate nothing to myself,) should undoubtedly not have been such without internal peace:  I am speaking in