This text is part of:
[77]
Nor is
this the only example of his arrogance. It is further enacted that “if
hereafter the additional penalty of imprisonment shall have been imposed, the
prisoner may be released on producing sureties for payment of his
fine.” If he really thought imprisonment such a dreadful infliction,
his proper course was to enact that no man who produces sureties shall be
committed to prison; but not, having first found that you have passed sentence
of imprisonment and so incurred the resentment of the convict, then to give him
a discharge on bail. In fact, he has introduced his law in this fashion by way
of advertising himself as one who will, on his own authority, release prisoners,
though you may have decided to keep them in jail.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.