[220]
In the next place, see, O judges, what a
boundless licence for plundering people of money you will he giving to men. If the
man who exacts three denarii is acquitted, some one
else will exact four, five, presently ten, or even twenty. What reproof will he meet
with? At what degree of injury will the severity of the judge first begin to make a
stand? How many denarii will it be that will be quite
intolerable? and at what point will the iniquity and dishonesty of the valuation be
first arraigned? For it is not the amount, but the description of valuation that
will be approved of by you. Nor can you decide in this manner, that it is lawful for
a valuation to be made when the price fixed is three denarii, but not lawful when the price fixed is ten; for when a
departure is once made from the standard of the market price, and when the affair is
once so changed that it is not the advantage of the cultivators which is the rule,
but the will of the praetor, then the manner of valuing no longer depends on law and
duty, but on the caprice and avarice of men.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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