Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/420

402 402 HISTORY OF GREECE and certainty of trial before judges identified in interest wit ,iif. people themselves. Such were the securities which the Grtciau democracies, especially that of Athens, tried to provide ; in a manner not always wise, still less always effectual, but assuredly justified, in the amplest manner, by the urgency and prevalence of the evil. Yet in the common representations given of Athe- nian affairs, this evil is overlooked or evaded ; the precautions taken against it are denounced as so many evidences of demo cratical ill-temper and injustice ; and the class of men, through whose initiatory action alone such precautions were enforced, are held up to scorn as demagogues and sycophants. Had these Pel- oponnesian generals and trierarchs, who under the influence of bribes wasted two important months in inaction, been Athenians, there might have been some chance of their being tried and pun- ished ; though even at Athens the chance of impunity to offend- ers, through powerful political clubs and other sinister artifices, was much greater than it ought to have been. So little is it con- sistent with the truth, however often affirmed, that judicial accu- sation was too easy, and judicial condemnation too frequent. When the judicial precautions provided at Athens are looked at, as they ought to be, side by side with the evil, they will be found imperfect, indeed, both in the scheme and in the working, but certainly neither uncalled for nor over-severe.