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32“These matters, then, should be referred by you to the senate, and also those others which are of the greatest importance to the state. For interests which are shared in common should be administered in common. Besides, it is doubtless a quality implanted by nature in all men that they take delight in any marks of esteem received from a superior which imply that they are his equals, and that they not only approve of all decisions made by another in consultation with themselves, as being their own decisions, but also submit to them as having been imposed by their own free choice. 2Therefore I say that such business ought to be brought before the senate. Furthermore, all the senators alike, that is, all who are present, should vote on all other matters; but when one of their own number is accused, not all of them should do so, unless the one who is on trial is not yet sitting as a senator or is still in the ranks of the ex-quaestors. 3For it is absurd that one who has not yet been a tribune or an aedile should cast a vote against men who have held those offices, or, worse yet, that any one of the latter should vote against men who have been praetors, or one of these last against men who have been consuls. Rather, let the ex-consuls alone have authority to render decisions in the case of all senators, and let the rest of the senators vote only in the cases of senators of a rank equal or inferior to their own.
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