Such a decree was accordingly made; and he who had now spoken about half an hour, said that he was Julius Cæsar, the first emperor of the Romans. “Under the pretext of the liberty of our common country,” continued he, “Brutus and Cassius, to gratify their ambition, assassinated me in the midst of the senate, their enmity was not directed against the empire and monarchy, which were, on the contrary, the object of their desires; but they hated the emperor, who had magnified the Roman power, and extended its dominion both north and east. Was the government better administered in the hands of those senators, who, by their feuds and personal dislikes, perilled the salvation of the republic, by resigning it into the hands of a perpetual dictation, whom they were obliged shortly afterwards to elect? Rome having once tasted the benefits of monarchy, preferred rather to obey a Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, or a Heliogabulus, than to re-establish this pretended public liberty, for which Brutus and Cassius, those two traitors, took up arms against the father of their country.” He continued his discourse in this strain, and concluded by moving, that they should be treated in hell as assassins, public disturbers, and traitors. Brutus then arose, and with a trembling voice, said: “Senators, you have heard Cæsar; have you not been biassed by his eloquence? But will you forget the services I have rendered? Remember the advice you privately gave me, to encourage the glorious design I had conceived in favour of your liberty? Answer then to Cæsar, that it was by your advice I gave the fatal stab; that if the laws had not been abrogated and violated by the formidable power of tyranny, you would, yourselves, have put him to death under the forms of justice; and that your silence, after the execution of my project, was an evidence of your approbation.” Cassius, assuming the discourse, said he would not undertake to plead his own cause if Cicero was present. “I will not,” said Cæsar, “listen to this timid sycophant; this cowardly soul; this selfish orator: when he feared my power, he said, in full senate, that he would be my buckler against enemies, and, at the same time, conspired against my life, and defends the act of Brutus and Cassius. His cupidity was so eager, that for money, he might be bought on the same day to speak upon both sides of a case; and so sober-tongued, that there was not a soldier in the army, who would have bestowed upon his greatest foe one tittle of the scurrility he heaped upon Anthony. You recollect, Signors, his phillipics: he had not the courage to support a change of fortune; and the common cause was abandoned by this patriotic man before he was slain by Anthony.”