Let us look round and see what it is that the people really desire.

We shall find that there is nothing so dear to them as peace and quietness and ease.

You have handed over the city to me full of anxiety, depressed with fear, disturbed by these projected laws and seditious assemblies." (It must be remembered that he had only on that very day begun his Consulship) "The wicked you have filled with hope, the good with fear.

You have robbed the Forum of loyalty and the Republic of dignity.

But now, when in the midst of these troubles of mind and body, when in this great darkness the voice and the authority of the Consul has been heard by the people--when he shall have made it plain that there is no cause for fear, that no strange army shall enroll itself, no bands collect themselves; that there shall be no new colonies, no sale of the revenue, no altered empire, no royal 'decemvirs,' no second Rome, no other centre of rule but this; that while I am Consul there shall be perfect peace, perfect ease--do you suppose that I shall dread the superior popularity of your new agrarian law?
Shall I, do you think, be afraid to hold my own against you in an assembly of the citizens when I shall have exposed the iniquity of your designs, the fraud of this law, the plots which your Tribunes of the people, popular as they think themselves, have contrived against the Roman people?
Shall I fear--I who have determined to be Consul after that fashion in which alone a man may do so in dignity and freedom, reaching to ask nothing for myself which any Tribune could object to have given to me ?"[170] This was to the Senate, but he is bolder still when he addresses the people.