[86]
Read the next one.“LawAnd it shall not be
lawful to propose a statute directed against an individual, unless the same
apply to all Athenians.”The statute
just read is not, like the others, taken from the Laws of Homicide, but it is
just as good—as good as ever law was. The man who introduced it was of
opinion that, as every citizen has an equal share in civil rights, so everybody
should have an equal share in the laws; and therefore he moved that it should
not be lawful to propose a law affecting any individual, unless the same applied
to all Athenians. Now seeing that it is agreed that the drafting of decrees must
conform to the law, a man who draws a decree for the special benefit of
Charidemus, such as is not applicable to all the rest of you, must evidently be
making a proposal in defiance of this statute also; of course what it is
unlawful to put into a statute cannot legitimately be put into a decree.
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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