Note 187 — Chapter IX

Cicero, however, declares that he has made a difference between traitors to their country and other criminals. Pro P. Sulla, ca. iii.: "Verum etiam quædam contagio sceleris, si defendas eum, quem obstrictum esse patriæ parricidio suspicere." Further on in the same oration, ca. vi., he explains that he had refused to defend Autronius because he had known Autronius to be a conspirator against his country. I cannot admit the truth of the argument in which Mr. Forsyth defends the practice of the English bar in this respect, and in doing so presses hard upon Cicero. "At Rome," he says, "it was different. The advocate there was conceived to have a much wider discretion than we allow." Neither in Rome nor in England has the advocate been held to be disgraced by undertaking the defence of bad men who have been notoriously guilty. What an English barrister may do, there was no reason that a Roman advocate should not do, in regard to simple criminality. Cicero himself has explained in the passage I have quoted how the Roman practice did differ from ours in regard to treason. He has stated also that he knew nothing of the first conspiracy when he offered to defend Catiline on the score of provincial peculations. No writer has been heavy on Hortensius for defending Verres, but only because he took bribes from Verres.