[75]
The defendant, however, admitted no exception; he simply makes an outcast of
any man who kills Charidemus, even though he kill him justly or as the laws
permit. And yet to every act and to every word one of two epithets is
applicable: it is either just or unjust. To no act and to no word can both these
epithets be applied at the same time, for how can the same act at the same time
be both just and not just? Every act is brought to the test as having the one or
the other of these qualities; if it be found to have the quality of injustice,
it is adjudged to be wicked, if of justice, to be good and honest.—But
you, sir, used neither qualification when you wrote the words, “if any
man kill.” You named the mere accusation, without any definition, and
then immediately added, “let him be liable to seizure.”
Thereby you have evidently ignored this tribunal and its usages as well as the
other two.
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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