CHAPTER XXIX.

"JULIUS CÆSAR."

Sec. 399. English statutes of "Laborers and Mechanics."

400. Idealism the basis of Brutus' crime.

401. Cassius the typical criminal revolutionist.

402. Cassius' suggestion of the crime.

403.

Brutus' struggle with his conscience.

404. The people's cause, the motive for Brutus' murder. "The Law of children."

405.

Sec. 399. English statutes of laborers and mechanics."Flavius. Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you

home.

Is this a holiday? What: know you not,
Being mechanical, you ought not walk
Upon a labouring day without the sign
Of your profession?"

The regulation of the rights of laborers, mechanics and artisans was a frequent source of legislation in England, at an early day. During the reign of Edward III, because of the scarcity of mechanics and laborers, they took occasion to demand exorbitant wages and refused to work unless they received wages commensurate with their ideas of the value of their services. It became necessary to reduce them to subordination, as the nobility supposed, so various statutes were enacted with this end in view.

By statute, 23 Edw. III, c. 2, every able-bodied male or female, without land and able to work, was required to work at the wages customary, the six preceding years of the king's reign; they were required to bring their implements of trade into town and there be hired at a common, public 1 Julius Cæsar, Act I. Scene I.

place; any workman or artisan failing to comply with the act, was to be punished by imprisonment, and the justices for the execution of the act were to hold sessions four times a year, at the Annunciation, on St. Margaret, St. Michael and St. Nicholas's day; they were required to regulate the conduct of laborers, and artisans and laborers, or mechanics, absenting themselves before the termination of their contract, were to be branded on the forehead with a red hot iron, containing the letter "F," to denote their falsity. By statute during the reign of Richard II, (12 Richard II, c. 6) it was ordained that no servant, laborer nor artificer should carry a sword or buckler, except in time of war, or when traveling with their masters, but they were allowed bows and arrows and such other small trifles, on Sundays and public holidays.2 By 13 Richard II, c. 8, the justices at their sessions between Easter and St. Michael were to make proclamation of how many and what kind of victuals all masons, carpenters, tilers and others craftsmen should take by the day, and by 7 Henry IV, c. 17, it was provided that, whereas, "for the pride of clothing and other evil customs that servants do use in the same," the crafts in cities and buroughs had become depleted and laborers of this class most scarce, the act proceeded to remedy this evil, resulting from "the pride of clothing," etc.* It was no doubt to some of these English acts that the Poet refers in the above lines, for he always gave the foreign countries of which he wrote, the laws and manners and customs of England.

Sec. 400. Idealism the basis of Brutus' crime."Bru.

long?

3

But wherefore do you hold me here so

What is it that you would impart to me?

1 III Reeve's History Eng. Law, pp. 132, 133.

2 III Reeve's History Eng. Law, 366, 367. Ante idem.

4 III Reeve's History Eng. Law, pp. 413, 414.

If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honour in one eye, and death i' the other,
And I will look on both indifferently:

For, let the gods so speed me, as I love

The name of honour more than I fear death."

In analyzing the motives which led Brutus to murder his friend, the expert criminologist, August Goll, observes: "This is precisely the nature of the pronounced theorist. His train of ideas amounts almost to a rubric. He cannot concur in anything, unless it is founded on a theory, a principle, a syllogism. . . . From the moment the voice of his feelings seems to him to be prompted by his reason, his freedom of action is practically at an end. Without this theory he can do nothing, with it he can do all. Once formed, he must follow it and take the consequences of it. It becomes the highest moral duty to himself. No consideration of wife, friends, his own welfare, can shake him a hair's breadth from the responsibility, the duty, which his theory lays upon him, which appears to have become one, with his innermost ethical self. If the theory lead him to outrage all human feelings, so much the more it is his duty to follow it and to conquer sentiment. That is what his honour demands; and 'I love the name of honour more than I fear death.'

On no account must one think that Brutus's feeling of gratitude and friendship for Cæsar must have been false and insincere, or that they were not deep, because he can find it in his heart to kill him. . The greater we

picture to ourselves Brutus's love of and gratitude to Cæsar, the greater he himself is, because his altruism has had the more to conquer, and the nearer he attains to the absolutely heroic."

1 Julius Cæsar, Act I, Scene II.

'Goll's Criminal Types in Shakespeare, pp. 54, 55, 57.

Goll points out that Brutus will not even desert his ideals, after the misfortunes of his private life and the strokes of adversity have blasted all his hopes, for "in purity of thought he is the

Sec. 401. Cassius the typical criminal revolutionist.—

"Cas.

I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

I was born free as Cæsar; so were you:
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he."1

This portrayal of Cassius, shows the envy and hatred of the typical criminal revolutionist, who cannot brook the sight of one grown greater than himself. Considering the criminal character of this conspirator, as presented by the Poet, Goll said: "Cassius, with his mixture of polit

same: he carries the banner of the ideal as high as ever. He belongs to those whom adversity does not make smaller, nor experience more clever. He has learned nothing from his earlier errors, because they were the outcome of his innermost nature, not of insufficint knowledge." (Goll's Criminal Types in Shakespeare, p. 70.)

Illustrating the high ideals of Brutus, where the public interest was in issue, Plutarch describes how he had taken sides with Pompey, as against Cæsar, although his father had been put to death by Pompey. He said: "Thinking it his duty to prefer the interest of the public to his own private feelings, and judging Pompey's to be the better cause, he took part with him; though formerly he used not so much as to salute or take any notice of Pompey, if he happened to meet him, esteeming it a pollution to have the least conversation with the murderer of his father." (Plutarch's Life of Marcus Brutus.)

And referring to the object of the conspirators in urging Brutus to take part with them, Plutarch said: "Their opinion was that the enterprise wanted not hands or resolution, but the reputation and authority of a man such as he was, to give, as it were, the first religious sanction, and by his presence, if by nothing else, to justify the undertaking; that without him they should go about this action with less heart and should lie under great suspicions when they had done it, for, if their cause had been just and honorable, people would be sure that Brutus would not have refused it." (Plutarch's Life of Marcus Brutus.)

1 Julius Cæsar, Act I, Scene II.

ical and personal hatred, with his power to let the one strengthen the other, is the type of one of the groups of which the adherents of revolution consists, the great haters, those who, as Auguste Comte says, about the followers of the great French Revolution, are perpetually in a condition of 'chronic rage' which enables them, whenever they consider the right moment has come, to perform the most horrible actions-the men of whom the anarchists of the present time, are the lineal descendants. Cassius possesses the energy proper to this hatred, to gather, lead, and agitate, to compel the others to follow. Always active, reconnoitering, intriguing, enlisting followers, considering chances, quick of mind and subtle of reason, he disports himself like a fish in water at nightly conferences, at solemn meetings; caring nothing about thunderstorms and warnings, never losing sight of his aim, always working to gain ground, always discerning where something may be won, what is worth troubling about, where the chances lie."

Sec. 402. Cassius' suggestion of the crime.—

"Cas. Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world,
Like a Colossus; and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

There was a Brutus once, that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome,
As easily as a king.

1 Goll's Criminal Type sin Shakespeare, pp. 43, 44.

And it is this very characteristic, noted by this criminologist, that the Poet makes Cæsar also note, when he said to Antony: "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous." And history affords evidence that this remark was really made of this criminal revolutionist by the discerning Cæsar. (Plutarch's Life of Marcus Brutus.)