From this genuine portrait of the Roman manners, it is evident to a demonstration, that the fatal catastrophe of that republick (of which Sallust himself was an eye witness) was the natural effect of the corruption of their manners. It is equally as evident from our author, and the rest of the Roman historians, that the corruption of their manners was the natural effect of foreign luxury, introduced and supported by foreign wealth. The fatal tendency of these evils, was too obvious to escape the notice of every sensible Roman, who had any regard for liberty, and their ancient constitution. Many sumptuary laws were made to restrain the various excesses of luxury; but these efforts were too feeble to check the over-bearing violence of the torrent. Cato proposed a severe law, enforced by the sanction of an oath, against bribery and corruption at elections; where the scandalous traffick of votes was established by custom as at a publick market. But, as Plutarch observes,[282] he incurred the resentment of both parties by that salutary measure. The rich were his enemies, because they found themselves precluded from all pretensions to the highest dignities; as they had no other merit to plead but what arose from their superior wealth. The electors abused, cursed, and even pelted him as the author of a law which deprived them of the wages of corruption, and reduced them to the necessity of subsisting by labour.[283] But this law, if it really passed, had as little effect as any of the former; and like the same laws in our own country, upon the same occasion, was either evaded by chicane, or over-ruled by power. Our own septennial scenes of drunkenness, riot, bribery, and abandoned perjury, may serve to give us an idea of the annual elections of the Romans in those abominable times.[284] Corruption was arrived at its last stage, and the depravity was universal. The whole body of the unhappy republick was infected, and the distemper was utterly incurable. For those excesses which formerly were esteemed the vices of the people,[285] were now, by the force of custom fixed into habit, become the manners of the people. A most infallible criterion, by which we may ascertain the very point of time, when the ruin of the any free state, which labours under these evils, may be naturally expected.