Then comes the passage in his letter on the strength of which Mr. Forsyth has condemned Cicero, not without abstract truth in his condemnation: "They, indeed, have consented"--that is the Salaminians--"but what will befall them if some such governor as Paulus should come here? And all this I have done for the sake of Brutus!" AEmilius Paulus was the Consul, and might probably have Cilicia as a province, and would no doubt give over the Salaminians to Brutus and his myrmidons without any compunction. In strictness--with that assurance in the power of law by means of which our judges are enabled to see that their righteous decisions shall be carried out without detriment to themselves--Cicero should have caused the delegates from Salamis instantly to have deposited their money in the temple. Instead of doing so, he had only declared the amount due according to his idea of justice--in opposition to all Romans, even to Atticus--and had then consented to leave the matter, as for some further appeal. Do we not know how impossible it is for a man to abide strictly by the right, when the strict right is so much in advance of all around him as to appear to other eyes than his own as straitlaced, unpractical, fantastic, and almost inhuman? Brutus wanted his money sorely, and Brutus was becoming a great political power on the same side with Pompey, and Cato, and the other "optimates." Even Atticus was interfering for Brutus. What other Roman governor of whom we have heard would have made a question on the subject? Appius had lent a guard of horse-soldiers to this Scaptius with which he had outraged all humanity in Cyprus--had caused the councillors of the city to be shut up till they would come to obedience, in doing which he had starved five of them to death! Nothing had come of this, such being the way with the Romans in their provinces. Yet Cicero, who had come among these poor wretches as an unheard-of blessing from heaven, is held up to scorn because he "trifled with equity!" Equity with us runs glibly on all fours. With Appius in Cilicia it was utterly unknown. What are we to say of the man who, by the strength of his own conscience and by the splendor of his own intellect, could advance so far out of the darkness of his own age, and bring himself so near to the light of ours!