[24]
All the magistrates who
are chosen from you by lot, as soon as the attendant cries “Strangers
must withdraw,” control the laws which they were appointed to
administer and cannot be disturbed by the most unruly. There are thousands of
other benefits. All the noble and reverend qualities that adorn and preserve our
city,—sobriety, orderliness, the respect of your younger men for
parents and elders—hold their own, backed by the laws, against the
base qualities of indecency, audacity, and shamelessness. For vice is vigorous,
daring, and grasping; on the other hand probity is peaceful, retiring, inactive,
and terribly liable to come off second-best. Therefore those of you who sit upon
juries ought to protect and strengthen the laws, for with the help of the laws
the good overcome the bad.
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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