[62]
Read the next statute.“LawWhosoever, whether
magistrate or private citizen, shall cause this ordinance to be frustrated,
or shall alter the same, shall be disfranchised with his children and his
property.”You have heard the statute,
men of Athens, declaring in plain
terms that “whosoever, whether magistrate or private citizen, shall
cause this ordinance to be frustrated or shall alter the same, shall be
disfranchised with his children and his property.” Do you then count
this a trifling or worthless precaution taken by the author of the statute to
secure its validity, and to save it from being either frustrated or altered? Yet
the defendant Aristocrates, with very little regard for the lawgiver, is trying
both to alter it and to frustrate it. For surely, to permit punishment outside
the established tribunals and beyond the limits of the prohibited areas, or to
rob people of the right of fair hearing, and make them outcasts—what
is that but alteration? To draft a series of clauses, all of them exactly
contradicting the provisions of the statute-book—what is that but
frustration?
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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