[10]
Allow that you were more worthy than
Plancius (though that point I will contest with you presently, though
without at all disparaging your pretensions or character,) still allow that
you were more worthy, yet it is not your competitor by whom you have been
defeated, but the people by whom you have been passed over, that is in
fault.
And in this affair you ought to recollect that at all comitia, and especially at those held for the election of
aediles, it is the party spirit of the people, and not their deliberate
judgment which bears sway, that their votes are coaxed out of them not
extorted by merit, that the voters are more apt to consider what obligations
they themselves are under to each individual, than what benefits the
republic has received at his hands. But if you insist on it that it is their
deliberate judgment, then you must not annul it but bear it.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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