Pro C. Rabirio Perduellionis Reo Ad Quirites

For as for the trial for treason, which, when you accuse me, you say has been put an end to by me, that is a charge against me; and not against Rabirius. And I wish, O Romans, that I was the first or the only person, who had abolished that in this republic. I wish that that, which he brings forward as a charge against me, might be an evidence of my peculiar glory. For what can be desired by any one which I should prefer to being said in my consulship to have banished the executioner from the forum, and the gallows from the Campus? But that credit belongs, in the first instance, O Romans, to our ancestors, who, after the kings had been expelled, did not choose to retain any vestige of kingly cruelty among a free people; and in the second instance, to many gallant men, who thought it fit that your liberty should not be an unpopular thing from the severity of the punishments with which it was protected but that it should be defended by the lenity of the laws.