[72]
Stop; you shall
read it clause by clause presently. This, gentlemen of the jury, is very nearly
the most scandalous provision of the whole statute. I do not think that any
other man, when introducing a law for the use of his fellow-citizens, ever
ventured upon an attempt to rescind judgements passed under earlier statutes.
Yet that is what the defendant Timocrates has done without shame and even
without concealment, inserting these plain words: “if the additional
penalty of imprisonment has been or shall hereafter be inflicted in pursuance of
any law or decree upon any person in debt to the treasury.”
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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