Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/252

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS presiding tribe which contains a full tenth part of the community.

As to the general nature of this prosecution, thus far have I promised, and, I trust, without offense. Let me now request your attention to a few words about the laws relative to persons accountable to the public, which have been violated by the decree proposed by Ctesiphon.

In former times there were found magistrates of the most distinguished rank, and intrusted with the management of our revenues, who in their several stations were guilty of the basest corruption, but who, by forming an interest with the speakers in the senate and in the popular assembly, anticipated their accounts by public honors and declarations of applause. Thus, when their conduct came to a formal examination, their accusers were involved in great perplexity, their judges in still greater; for many of the persons thus subject to examination, tho convicted on the clearest evidence of having defrauded the public, were yet suffered to escape from justice; and no wonder. The judges were ashamed that the same man, in the same city, possibly in the same year, should be publicly honored in our festivals, that proclamation should be made "that the people had conferred a golden crown on him on account of his integrity and virtue"; that the same man, I say, in a short time after, when his conduct had been brought to an examination, should depart from the tribunal condemned of fraud. In their