But Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, as the same Fox News relates, when asked whether he would refuse seats to the victors of the other party, answered that the story was nonsense and declared that he would follow the law. That remark is missing altogether from the other report. The Fox account also observes that the whole scheme hangs on the Speaker's discretion, who may, if he wishes, dismiss the challenge without debate.

I grant, citizens, that an oath is not a string of words poured out carelessly at a ceremony. "Good faith is the foundation of justice," and the man who swears to defend laws he intends to destroy deceives not only men but the immortal gods. Self, then, thinks rightly of the sanctity of the oath; and I, who as consul crushed the audacity of desperate men assaulting the Republic, would be the last to make light of the plagues of a state.

But who will inspect the heart of the man who swears? Who will measure his mental reservation, who his purpose of evasion? The faction that holds the most votes in the chamber? See where this road leads. Tiberius Gracchus, tribune of the plebs, had his colleague Octavius, lawfully elected by the people, stripped of office by a vote of the assembly because he stood in the way of his law; and what was then done for the sake of one tribune became thereafter a precedent for the ruin of all. What the majority decrees against the minority today, the minority, become the majority, will turn back upon it tomorrow; and there will be no seat so safe that the votes of its enemies cannot take it away.

I too, citizens, know what a law aimed at one man is: I saw my house on the Palatine pulled down, I was driven into exile by the bill of Clodius, which in the name of liberty avenged his hatred of me. And when I punished the conspirators, I laid before the public not platforms and talk but letters, weapons, the camp of Manlius, the envoys of the Allobroges. Here, however, no deed is alleged, no crime, only a faction's platform, which the reports themselves do not even quote word for word; nor do we hear the answer of any member-elect. This is to take opinion for a crime and suspicion for a verdict.

Let those who approve this scheme remember what our masters taught about the governing of a state: "Those who care for one part of the citizens and neglect another introduce into the state the most ruinous thing of all, sedition and discord." Citizens chose these men at the polls; whoever turns away the elected man rejects not the man alone but the votes of citizens, and drives the very people he complains are estranged from the Constitution to the conclusion that the Republic owes them nothing.

This being so, the remedy is neither new nor obscure. Let the elected swear in public, and let their words be entered in the public record; if anyone afterwards works against the Constitution by deed, not by word, let a prosecutor pursue him in a lawful court, just as our ancestors condemned men accused of treason in the standing courts, not at a public meeting. If any wish to change the laws, let them change them by the road the laws themselves allow, and let them be beaten by votes, not by exclusion. Johnson spoke rightly when he said he would follow the law: let him hold to that word, and sell his discretion to no man's faction. Leave perjury to the gods to avenge, crimes to the courts, opinions to the polls; for a republic that out of fear bars its own citizens from the chamber has already broken its own oath.