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Rh our notions, a man could reasonably complain. Success came to him very early in life. He was, as we should say, in large practice at the bar when he was considerably under thirty—an age at which a young English barrister hardly hopes for a brief. Doubtless, at Athens there were opportunities for displaying oratorical ability which do not exist in England. One thoroughly successful speech before the popular assembly might well make the fortune of a man as an advocate. To make such a speech required, we may be sure, marked ability and considerable training; but once made, it must at least have opened a career in the law courts. Athenian law, too, was probably less intricate and difficult than English. It had not such a variety of branches, as seem to be indispensable in so complex a community as our own. The study of it must thus have been a much less arduous task than that which lies before the English lawyer. But it was an admirable preparation for political life. Law and politics were intermingled at Athens very much more than among ourselves; and a lawyer was almost necessarily something of a politician. There, questions which we regard as purely political, and which would be discussed with us only in Parliament, might come before a law court. An accusation, for instance, might be preferred against a man for proposing a law or a decree quite at variance with the spirit of the constitution. Such cases were frequent. It was in a prosecution of this nature that Demosthenes, who for some few years had had a good practice as a barrister in civil and criminal causes, made what we may fairly call his first appearance as a political adviser.