[76]
The outstanding
difference you will find to be really this: under oligarchical government
everybody is entitled to undo the past, and to prescribe future transactions
according to his own pleasure; whereas the laws of a free state prescribe what
shall be done in the future, such laws having been enacted by convincing people
that they will be beneficial to those who live under them. Timocrates however,
legislating in a democratically governed city, has introduced into his law the
characteristic iniquity of oligarchy; and in dealing with past transactions has
presumed to claim for himself an authority higher than that of the convicting
jury.
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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