45
My forebodings and expostulations were unceasing; I uttered them in the Assembly and in every city to which I was sent. But all the cities were demoralized. The active politicians were venal and corrupted by the hope of money: the unofficial classes and the people in general were either blind to the future or ensnared by the listlessness and indolence of their daily life; in all the malady had gone so far that they expected the danger to descend anywhere but upon themselves, and even hoped to derive their security at will from the perils of others.
46
In the result, of course, the excessive and inopportune apathy of the common people has been punished by the loss of their independence, while their leaders, who fancied they were selling everything except themselves, discover too late that their own liberty was the first thing they sold. Instead of the name of trusty friend, in which they rejoiced when they were taking their bribes, they are dubbed toad-eaters and scoundrels, and other suitable epithets. What did they expect?