[14]
I assure you with the most real sincerity, O Romans, that I applied myself to the reading
and understanding of this law with these feelings, that if I had thought it well adapted to
your interests, and advantageous to them, I would have been a chief mover in and promoter of
it. For the consulship has not, either by nature, or by any inherent difference of object, or
by any instinctive hatred, any enmity against the tribuneship, though good and fearless
consuls have often opposed seditious and worthless tribunes of the people, and though the
power of the tribunes has sometimes opposed the capricious licentiousness of the consuls. It
is not the dissimilarity of their powers, but the disunion of their minds, that creates
dissension between them.
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