squandered, a Consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people trampled on! But his prætorship in Sicily has crowned his career of wickedness, and completed the lasting monument of his infamy. His decisions have violated all law, all precedent, all right. His extortions from the industrious poor have been beyond computation. Our most faithful allies have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. Men the most worthy have been condemned and banished without a hearing, while the most atrocious criminals have, with money, purchased exemption from the punishment due to their guilt.

2. I ask now, Verres, what have you to advance against these charges? Art thou not the tyrant prætor, who, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, dared to put to an infamous death, on the cross, that ill-fated and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus? And what was his offence? He had declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against your brutal persecutions! For this, when about to embark for home, he was seized, brought before you, charged with being a spy, scourged and tortured. In vain did he exclaim: "I am a Roman citizen! I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and who will attest my innocence !" Deaf to all remonstrance, remorseless, thirsting for innocent blood, you ordered the savage punishment to be inflicted! While the sacred words, "I am a Roman citizen," were on his lip--words which, in the remot

est regions, are a passport to protection,--you ordered him to death, to a death upon the cross!

3. O liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred,-now trampled on! Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture, and put to an infamous death, a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, the tears of pitying spectators, the majesty of the Roman Commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the merciless monster, who, in the confidence of his riches, strikes at the very root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance? And shall this man escape? Fathers, it must not be! It must not be, unless you would undermine the very foundations of social safety, strangle justice, and call down anarchy, massacre, and ruin on the Ccmrionwealth!

A.OKER'S FINANCIAL PLAN, SEPT. 26, 1789.-Mirabeau.

Necker, the minister of finance, having proposed an income tax of twenty-five per cent., with other measures, in view of the desperate state of the financial affairs of France, the proposition was advocated by Mirabeau, who did not, however, profess to comprehend or endorse all its details. Although a known enemy to the minister, he magnanimously made two speeches in behalf of his measure; without, however, inducing the Assembly to pass it, until, on the eve of its being rejected, Mirabeau rushed to the Tribune, and poured forth a last appeal, an abridgment of which is here given. This speech proved effectual. The Assembly received it with shouts of enthusiasm; and Necker's plan was adopted. Madame de Staël (Necker's daughter), who was near Mirabeau at the time of the delivery of this speech, says that "its effect was prodigious."

The minister of finance has presented a most alarming picture of the state of our affairs. He has assured us that delay must aggravate the peril ; and that a day, an hour, an instant, may render it fatal. We have no plan that can be substituted for that which he proposes. On this plan, therefore, we must fall back. But, have we time, gentlemen ask, to examine it, to probe it thor oughly, and verify its calculations? No, no! a thousand times no! Hap-hazard conjectures, insignificant inquiries, gropings that can but mislead,—these are all that we can give to it now. Shall we therefore miss the decisive moment? Do gentlemen hope to escape sacrifices and taxation by a plunge into national bankruptcy? What, then, is bankruptcy, but the most cruel, the most iniquitous, most unequal, and disastrous of imposts? Listen to me for one moment!

2. Two centuries of plunder and abuse have dug th abyss which threatens to engulf the Nation. It must be filled up-this terrible chasm. But how? Here is a list of proprietors. Choose from the wealthiest, in order that the smallest number of citizens may be sacrificed. But choose! Shall not a few perish, that the mass of the people may be saved? Come, then! Here are two thousand Notables, whose property will supply the deficit. Restore order to your finances, peace and prosperity to the Kingdom! Strike! Immolate, wi!hout mercy, these unfortunate victims! Hurl them into the abyss!It closes!

3. You recoil with dismay from the contemplation. Inconsistent and pusillanimous ! What! Do you not perceive that, in decreeing a public bankruptcy, or, what is worse, in rendering it inevitable without decreeing it, you disgrace yourselves by an act a thousand times more criminal, and-folly inconceivable!—gratuitously criminal? For, in the shocking alternative I have supposed, at least the deficit would be wiped off. But do you imagine that, in refusing to pay, you shall cease to owe? Think you that the thousands, the millions of men, who will lose in an instant, by the terrible explosion of a bankruptcy, or its revulsion, all that formed the consolation of their lives, and perhaps their sole means of subsistence,-think you that they will leave you to the peaceable fruition of your crime? Stoical spectators of the incalculable evils which this catastrophe would disgorge upon France; impenetrable egotists, who fancy that these convulsions of despair and of misery will pass, as other calamities have passed,

-and all the more rapidly because of their intense violence,—are you, indeed, certain that so many men without bread will leave you tranquilly to the enjoyment of those savory viands, the number and delicacy of which you are so loath to diminish? No! you will perish; and, in the universal conflagration, which you do not shrink from kindling, you will not, in losing your honor, save a single one of your detestable indulgences. This is the way we are going. And I say to you, that the men who, above all others, are interested in the enforcement of these sacrifices which the Government demands, are you yourselves! Vote, then, this subsidy extraordinary; and may it prove sufficient! Vote it, inasmuch as whatever doubts you may enter tain as to the means,-doubts vague and unenlightened, -you can have none as to the necessity, or as to our inability to provide-immediately, at least a substitute. Vote it, because the circumstances of the country admit of no evasion, and we shall be responsible for all delays. Beware of demanding more time! Misfortune accords it never. Why, gentlemen, it was but the other day, that, in reference to a ridiculous commotion at the Palais-Royal,*-a Quixotic insurrection, which never had any importance save in the feeble imaginations or perverse designs of certain faithless men, you heard these wild words: "Catiline is at the gates of Rome, and yet you deliberate!" And

* The 8 in Palais is mute, and the diphthong ai has the sound of ai in air, before the r is reached. The French pronunciation of Royal may be expressed in English thus: Roh-ah-ce-ahl; but the syllables must be fused rapidly in the utterance.