[20]
Oh what a splendid interpreter of the
law! what a fine authority on points of antiquity! what an admirable
corrector and reformer of our state, to imagine that treaties impose such a
penalty on those who are bound by them, as to make them all incapable of
receiving our rewards and kindnesses! For what can possibly be said more
ignorant than that it is requisite for the federate cities to ratify such a
transaction? For that is not a right peculiar to federate cities, but to all
free nations. But the whole of this, O judges, has at all times depended on
this consideration, and on this intention,—that when the Roman
people had ordered anything, if the allied peoples and the Latins had
adopted and ratified it, and if the law which we had among ourselves was in
this manner established among some people on a firm footing, then that
people should be bound by the obligations of that law; not in such a manner
as to detract in the least from our privileges, but that those
nations might enjoy either that law which was established among us, or some
other advantage and benefit.
