ORATORICAL
STATESMEN
361
he lives and moves and has his being. When the gods are angry, he can raise it to a hurricane and lay waste whole nations in ruin and revolution. It was said long ago, a man full of words shall not prosper upon the earth. Times have changed, for in these days no one prospers so well. Can he make a speech ? is the first question which the con足 stituencies ask when a candidate is offered to their suffrages. When the Roman commonwealth developed from an aristo足 cratic republic into a democracy, and, as now with us, the sovereignty was in the mass of the people, the oratorical faculty came to the front in the same way. The finest speaker was esteemed the fittest man to be made a consul or a praetor of, and there were schools of rhetoric where aspirants for office had to go to learn gesture and intona足 tion before they could present themselves at the hustings. The sovereign people and their orators could do much, but they could not alter facts, or make that which was not, to be, or that which was, not to be. The orators could pero足 rate and the people could decree, but facts remained and facts proved the strongest, and the end of that was that after a short supremacy the empire which they had brought to the edge of ruin was saved at the last extremity; the sovereign people lost their liberties, and the tongues of political orators were silenced for centuries. Illusion at last takes the form of broken heads, and the most obstinate credulity is not proof against that form of argument.