[60]
And there is another thing that
you cannot say,— that of all persons punished by imprisonment tax
farmers are the greatest offenders and do us the gravest wrong, and that that is
why you do not give them the benefit of your law. Surely men who are traitors to
the commonwealth, men who maltreat their own parents, men who enter the
market-place with unclean hands, offend far more heinously; and all those
criminals are threatened with imprisonment by the standing laws, while your law
offers them instant release. But here again you reveal the men in whose favour
you moved your law. They got into our debt not by tax-farming, but by
embezzling, or rather by plundering, our money; and that, I warrant you, is the
true reason why you had no consideration for the tax-farmers.
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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