[72]
I ask now, suppose there is no one who is willing to
sell, what is to become of the money? The law says it is not to be brought into the treasury.
It forbids its being refunded. The decemvirs, then, will keep all that money. Land will not
be bought for you. After having alienated your revenues, harassed your allies, drained the
confederate kings and all nations of their whole property, they will have the money, and you
will not have the lands. Oh, says he, they will easily be induced by the magnitude of the
sums offered to sell the lands. Then the effect of the law is to be thus: that we are to sell
our property at whatever price we can get for it; and that we are to buy other men's property
at whatever price they choose to put upon it.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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