(Was it right) that they, by sowing discord, should with impunity stir up the neighbouring states against us?
and then prevent the state from arming and defending itself against those evils which they may have brought on us?
and after they have almost sent for the enemy, not suffer the armies to be levied against the enemies?
But Canuleius may have the audacity to declare openly in the senate that, unless the patrician suffer the laws proposed by himself as victorious, to be enacted, he would prevent the levy from being held.
What else was this, but threatening that he would betray his country; that he would suffer it to be attacked and captured?
What courage would that expression afford, not to the Roman commons, but to the Volscians, AEquans, and the Veientians! would they not hope that, under the generalship of Canuleius, they should be able to scale the Capitol and citadel, if with the deprivation of privilege and majesty, the tribunes should rob the patricians of their courage also?
That the consuls were prepared to act against the wicked schemes of their countrymen, before they would act against the arms of the enemy." 3.

Just when these matters were going on in the senate, Canuleius thus declaimed in favour of his laws and against the consuls: "Frequently even before now I think I have observed how much the patricians despised you, Romans, how unworthy they deemed you to dwell in the one city and within the same walls with them; but on the present occasion most clearly, in their having risen up so determinedly in opposition to those propositions of ours: in which what else do we do, but remind them that we are their fellow citizens, and that though we possess not the same power, we inhabit the same city?
In the one we demand intermarriage, a thing which is usually granted to neighbours and foreigners: we have granted even to vanquished enemies the right of citizenship, which is more than the right of intermarriage.

In the other we propose nothing new; we only reclaim and demand that which is the people's; that the Roman people may confer honours on whomsoever they may please.

And what in the name of goodness is it for which they embroil heaven and earth?
why was almost an attack made on me just now in the senate?
why do they say that they will not restrain themselves from violence, and threaten that they will insult an office, sacred and inviolable?
Shall this city no longer be able to stand, and is the empire at stake, if the right of free suffrage is granted to the Roman people, to confer the consulship on whomsoever they may please, and if a plebeian, though he may be worthy of the highest honour, is not precluded from the hope of attaining that honour?
and is this of the same import, whether a plebeian be made a consul, as if any one were to propose a slave or the son of a slave to be consul?
Do you perceive in what contempt you live?
they would take from you a participation in this light, if it were permitted them.

That you breathe, that you enjoy the faculty of speech, that you possess the forms of human beings, excites their indignation.
Nay even, as I hope for mercy, they say that it is contrary to religion that a plebeian should be made consul.