Thursday, February 19, 2009
In the meantime, while they are not addressing their fellow senators on the subject of more public baths and more circuses and more free housing for the motley mobs of Rome, and more free food for the mobs who dislike work, they furtively oversee businesses such as the making of uniforms and arms for the military, clothing and blanket factories, or help to subsidize relatives who are in those businesses or throw government contracts in their direction. I have not yet seen a senator whose hand is not sticky with bribes, or who does not extort bribes. The Senate has become a closed organization of scoundrels who loot the Treasury in the name of the general welfare, and who have a rabble-following of hungry bellies and avaricious thieves they call their clients, and about whom they express the most touching solicitude. The fate of Rome, the fate of the desperate taxpayers, is nothing to such as these. Let the public debt mount! Let the middle class be crushed to death under taxes, extortions, and exploitation! Why did the gods create the middle class if not to serve as oxen drawing the chariots of senators followed by multitudes of ravenous beggars? An honest man, a man who works and honors Rome and the Constitution of the Republic, is not only a fool. He is suspect. Send the tax collector to him for fresh robberies! He is probably not paying his ‘just’ share of taxes.
— Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician p. 174-175 #
