corporal or pecuniary, as they consider him to deserve; and, if sentenced to a pecuniary penalty, he shall be imprisoned until he has paid whatsoever sum he was condemned to pay." Do you hear, men of the jury? Read them the last words again.

THE LAW.

"And if sentenced to a pecuniary penalty, he shall be imprisoned until he has paid—”

Enough. Is it possible to propose two more opposite enactments than these?—that convicted persons shall be kept in prison until they have paid, and that the same persons shall give bail and not be put in prison? Well this charge is brought against Timocrates by Timocrates, not by Diodorus, nor by any other of his countrymen, numerous as they are. But what temptation do you think a man could resist, or what would he scruple to do for lucre's sake, who has thought proper to legislate at variance with himself, when variance even with others is prohibited by law? Such a man, as it appears to me, is impudent enough to do anything. As therefore the laws command, that malefactors of other kinds, who confess, should be punished without trial; so, men of Athens, when you have caught the defendant playing foul tricks with the laws, you ought to find him guilty without allowing him to speak or to be heard: for he has confessed his crime by proposing this law at variance with the other which he passed before.

That his law is inconsistent with those just cited, and with those before mentioned, and, I may almost say, with every law of the country, is plain, I imagine, to you all. I wonder, indeed, what he can possibly venture to say upon the point. He will not be able to show that his law is not contrary to the other laws; nor can he persuade you that he overlooked it through inexperience, being no politician; for he has been seen long ago both framing decrees and introducing laws for hire. Nor yet is this course open to him, to confess that the thing is a crime and ask for pardon; for he is shown to have proposed his law not unintentionally, not in behalf of the unfortunate, not for relations and connexions of his own; but intentionally, and in behalf of persons who had grievously injured you, and who were in no way related to him, unless he means to say that he regards his hirers as relations.

In

I shall now proceed to show, that he has introduced a law not suitable or advantageous to the commonwealth. You will all agree, I take it, that a law, to be good and useful to the multitude, should, in the first place, be framed simply and intelligibly to all, and it should be impossible for one man to put this construction upon it, and another that; secondly, what is to be done by virtue of the law should be practicable; for, however well drawn, if it prescribed anything impossible, it would perform the work of a prayer, not of a law. addition to this, it should plainly appear that it allows no indulgence to wrong-doers. If any one thinks it is a feature of a popular government for the laws to be mild, let him consider to what persons they should be mild; and, if he takes the right view, he will see they should be mild to persons about to be tried, not to persons who have been convicted; for, in the former case, it is uncertain whether a man has not been unjustly calumniated, whereas the latter can no longer deny that they are rogues. Of the qualities which I have just mentioned, you will see that the law of Timocrates does not possess a single one, but exactly the opposite. This may be shown in many ways, but most clearly by going through the articles of the law itself; for it is not good in one part and faulty in another; but from the beginning, from the first syllable to the last, it is framed entirely to your prejudice. Take the indictment, and read them the statute as far as the first clause. That will be the easiest way for me to show, and for you to catch, what I mean.

THE LAW.

"In the first presidency, to wit, that of the Pandionian tribe, on the twelfth day thereof, Aristocles of Myrrhinus, of the committee of council, put the question, Timocrates moved: If any of the persons who are indebted to the state has been or shall hereafter be condemned, pursuant to a law or to a decree, to suffer the penalty of imprisonment, it shall be lawful for him, or for another person on his behalf, to put in such bail-"

Stop. You shall read clause by clause by and by.

This, men of the jury, is about the most shameful of all the articles in the statute. I believe no other man, introducing a law for the purpose of its being used by his fellow

citizens, would dare to rescind the judgments which have been pronounced according to the pre-existing laws. Yet Timocrates, the defendant, has done this, impudently and without the least disguise; for he says expressly, "If any of the persons who are indebted to the state has been or shall hereafter be condemned, pursuant to a law or a decree, to suffer the penalty of imprisonment." If he had only advised what was proper with respect to future cases, he would have done no wrong; but to introduce a law to rescind what a court of justice has decided, and what is definitively settled-is not this shameful conduct? As if a man, after suffering the defendant's law to be confirmed, were to frame another to the effect following:-"If any persons, having become debtors, and having been condemned to the penalty of imprisonment, have put in bail according to the law, they shall not have the benefit of their bail, nor shall it hereafter be lawful to release any person on bail." No sane man, I take it, would do this; and Timocrates, in doing what he did, committed a wrong. He ought, if he deemed the thing good, to have proposed his law in reference to the future; not to mix up future offences with past, certain with uncertain, and then prescribe the same judgment for all. Is it not shocking to award the same measure of justice to persons convicted of former crimes against the state, and to persons of whom it is not known whether they will ever do anything worthy of trial?

You may see in another way, how shamefully he has acted in passing a retrospective law, if you will only reflect what it is that makes law differ from oligarchy, and how it comes about that those who choose to be governed by laws are held to be honest and independent and worthy people, while those who live under oligarchies are unmanly and slavish. You will find this the true and obvious explanation; that, among people who live in oligarchies, every man has the right both to undo what has been done, and to order what

1 That is, there is no law to prevent him. What the orator says is not to be understood (as Schäfer thinks) of the rulers only. Every man has the right, if he can only enforce it. By putting it in this way, the orator makes the contrast between oligarchy and democracy the more striking. In the former there is no law, and therefore no security either for the past or the future. Compare the argument in the Leptinea, Vol. iii. page 9.

he pleases for the future; whereas laws give direction of what is necessary for the future, being enacted under the persuasion that they will benefit those who live under them. And yet Timocrates, legislating in a democratical state, carried into his law the iniquity of an oligarchy, and thought proper to assume over the past a power greater than that of the convicting jurors.

Nor is his arrogance confined to this. He goes on to say, or if any one shall hereafter be condemned to the penalty of imprisonment, it shall be lawful for him, on putting in bail as security for payment, to be released." He ought, if he regarded imprisonment as a cruel thing, to have enacted, that no man who offers bail to you shall be sentenced to imprisonment; not to give him his discharge on bail when he finds your sentence of imprisonment already passed, and a bad feeling excited against you in the convicted party. He introduced his law in this ostentatious manner, as if to show that he would release people though you had thought fit to imprison them. Does any one think a law beneficial to the commonwealth, which is to overrule the judgment of a legal tribunal, and which will require persons not on their oaths to rescind the verdicts of sworn jurors? I believe no one does. Well then; both these consequences, it is plain, are involved in the defendant's law; therefore, if each of you has a regard for the constitution, if you think that effect should be given to your verdicts upon matters which you have decided upon oath, you must repeal a law of this description, and not suffer it to receive confirmation now.

He was not content with invalidating the penal sentences of the courts. You will find that even the regulations which he himself made in his law, the terms which he imposed upon the condemned parties, even these he has not framed simply or honestly, but just as a man would do who was most anxious to cheat and delude you. Only see how he has drawn them up. "Timocrates moved "-it says-" If any of the persons

who are indebted to the state has been or shall hereafter be condemned, pursuant to a law or to a decree, to suffer the penalty of imprisonment, it shall be lawful for him, or for another person on his behalf, to put in such bail as the people shall approve, to be security for payment." Mark where he jumps to from the court and the sentence. To the people,

stealing off the guilty party, and preventing his delivery to the Eleven. For what magistrate will deliver up the debtor? which of the Eleven will receive him-when this statute orders that he shall put in bail before the people, and it is impossible that there should be an assembly and a court at once on the same day, and it nowhere directs that he shall be kept in custody until he has put in bail? What possible objection could there be to his inserting this express clause "and the magistrate shall keep the condemned party in custody until he has put in his bail"? Was it not a just provision? I am sure you will all say it was. But was it contrary to any law? No: it would have been the only legal clause in the statute. What was the reason then? Only one can be found: his object was, not that parties whom you condemn should pay the penalty, but that they should escape.

How does it go on after that? "He shall put in bail to be security for payment of the sum which he owed." Here again, he has filched away the decuple of the sacred monies, and the half of the public, in all cases where the double is given by the law. How does he do that? By saying, instead of "the penalty," "the sum," and instead of "which becomes due," "which he owed." What is the difference? If it had been "he shall put in bail to be security for payment of the sum which becomes due," he would have comprehended the laws by virtue of which some of the debts are decupled and some doubled; so that the debtors would have been legally compelled both to pay the amount sued for, and to satisfy the penalties accruing by law. Now however, by saying that the bail shall be put in "to be security for payment of the sum which he owed," he fixes the payment according to the plaint and written charge, upon which the party was brought to trial, in which the simple sum which a man owed is always inserted.

Again, after having knocked off so much by the change of words, he adds" and the committee of council are hereby required to take the votes of the assembly when any one

1 See my articles Epibole, Practores, Tamias, &c. in the Archæological Dictionary. And, for further information, the parts of Boeck's Public Economy of Athens there referred to.

2 Td yeypaμμévov, the sum set down in the plaint or written charge.