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A39837 The imperfection of most governments taken out of the Epitomy of the Roman history written by Lucius Annæus Florus : where it plainly appears that the liberty of the most flourishing common-wealth of the Romans destroyed written by Roger Trusty.; Epitomae de Tito Livio bellorum omnium annorum DCC libri II. English. Selections Florus, Lucius Annaeus.; Trusty, Roger. 1680 (1680) Wing F1381A; ESTC R3394 7,338 6

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and his dispairing Party in Rome commit new slaughters not sparing the Temples Sylla returns and perseveres in Cruel Slaughters when the War was ended they were numberless whose Throats were Cut in the Town till Fursidius told Sylla that he must leave some alive to be Commanded Sylla then made a Roll of two thousand of the flower of Senators and Knights which with several sorts of torturing Deaths finished the Cruelry at Rome but not in other miserable Cities of Italy Spain had also a share of this Confusion in a long War under Sertorius proscribed by Sylla The next ill effect of this Dissention was Catalines Conspiracy to have burnt Rome who was hardly destroyed in a great Battel after the Discovery Notwithstanding the Romans Victory over the Usurping Cataline which seemed to have resetled their Common-wealth by the good Conduct of Cicero the wise and Eloquent Consul Cato and other bold Senators yet the World was grown so weary of their weak and factious Government with the bloody mischiefs it produced that there was a continued succession of Usurpers on it For the second Chapter of the fourth Book of Florus tells us That Pompey Caesar and Crassus uniting themselves together did so over-awe the Jealous Senate and People of Rome that without any Bloodshed they Governed as three Princes for ten years together but Crassus being slain in the Parthian War and Julia the Daughter of Caesar and Wife of Pompey dying also the Link of the Triumvirat was broken and Caesar and Pompey who both aimed at Soveraign Power were now to dispute for the great Stake of the World together Caesar had fewer Nations and less numerous Forces to follow him but having made only the difficult Conquest of Gaul and Germany for the Romans he knew those Nations united to his invincible Courage Conduct and Fortune might give a bold Defiance to all the rest of the World his success answerred his expectation for he beat Pompeys Lieutenant in Spain and subdu'd it drove him and the Senate together out of Italy and at Pharsalia made the Victorious Pompey fly his Fury and by his personal Valour got more difficult Victories of his Warlike Enemy in Africk and Spain and returned Triumphant to Rome But Brutus and Cassius ambitious to restore their Common-wealth cut down Caesar the greatest and gallantest Usurper that ever lived in the Senate and Pompey being Dead before him one would have thought that the Common-wealth of Rome must have been restored But the dead Caesar had more Friends than the living Senate The People of Rome were grown so weary of the Miseries of their own exorbitant Power that Brutus and Cassius were forced to fly from Rome to other Nations to raise an Army to recover their last Common-wealth But the Major part of the Romans fought against them and their Old Government and beat them under their Conduct of Augustus Caesar and Anthony and so ended this prodigious Common-wealth Augustus Anthony and Lepidus afterwards set up a most Bloody Triumvirat destroying by Proscription all the adverse Faction and all that had Power or Wealth to hurt them and Augustus was the Cruellest of the three whilst he could lay the Faults upon his Colleagues but when he prevailed upon them both and became sole Emperour He prov'd a Wise Just and Merciful Prince which is a Note to me that the Absolute Government of many Interests or Rulers in an Aristocracy is a greater Tyranny and Oppression then single Persons commonly are But some wicked Emperours succeeded and at last the Armies Usurped upon them sold and murdered them at Pleasure till their Variety of Elections brought the Empire to decay but the great Constantine Victorious over them all though he advanced Christianity quite Ruined the Empire by dividing it into Eastern and Western By all which it appears That Elective Empires Usurping Powers and Factious Common-wealths will be Governed and ruined by their or Forraign Armies which makes the World affect Hereditary Crowns And now I shall add some brief Comments of my own on this Historical Pamphlet or Epitomy of the Roman Government When they threw off Kings they made the most careful Provision against Oppression and Cruelty that a most Ingenious People could do for they chose two Consuls lest one should Usurp or Tyranize and lest time should give them too much power to Combine together they made a yearly Relation or Change of those two chief Magistrates and yet farther to serve all on that side they made Appeals from their Sentences to the People as the supream Power But they could not make such an Annual Rotation or Alteration in the whole Body of the Senate or Council of State for if that Power be not fixed in known wise Persons improved by Practice and Experience no Treaties of War and Peace could go on no private Leagues of weaker Nations against a stronger or Intelligence from Forrain Counsels could be had for it cannot be thought where Mens Lives and Fortunes depends upon Secrecy that they will trust new Ministers of State every year who come in ignorant of the past Correspondances and Transactions nor can the Executive power of a Nation betray Secrets by giving a publick Account to the Legislative power and if the Romans had not Lodg'd the Supream Power and last Appeals to themselves they had set up an Aristocracy or Confederacy of many interressed Families with their Kindred Friends and Relation to them But they did not consider that the poorest sort of the people is the greatest number and that they must necessarily turn Levellers for two weighty Reasons The first is because they want what other Men have And the other because none can Usurp their Government but Rich men And therefore all Industrious men that have gotten Estates must be taken down to the destruction of all Traffick and Industry for who will Labour for others to take their gains from them This having been the practise of the Roman Common-wealth and the reasons seeming apparent that all great Nations replenishment with poor People will doe the same by themselves or Trustees I must Conclude as I began with deploring the Insufficiency with most or all Governments and wishing we may all agree to strengthen our old fabrick since we may be knocked on the Head in the pulling it down but shall never agree on a new Building though Our potent Enemies should let us alone And this was too evident in Our own Government in 1641. where the Lords and Commons deposed the King the peoples Trustees the Commons deposed the Lords House and then deposed of men Lives and Fortunes by their Votes as a perpetual standing Aristocratical Tyranny despising the Last fo● a Triennial Succession of Parliaments as much as the other Laws of the Land till after many years sitting they were first Weeded and then Rooted out by their own Army by which it appears that the Peoples Trustees can destroy Liberty and Poverty as well as the People themselves the more to confirm the Imperfection of all Governments when once the Rule of the Law is broken This Popular Army Governed as the Romans Army did and used the Name of a Common-wealth somtimes but were setled in nothing but their own Divisions till the Major part of them and the people agreed to return to the ancient Law and Government of the Nation FINIS LONDON Printed for Langley Curtiss