Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/255

 ÆSCHINES for more than thirty days; those who are entitled to preside in a tribunal." But the inspectors of works are entitled to this privilege. What then does the law direct? That all such should assume not their "commission" but their "magistracy," having first been judicially approved (for even the magistrates appointed by lot are not exempted from this previous inquiry, but must be first approved before they assume their office). These are also directed by the law to submit the accounts of their administration to the legal officers, as well as every other magistrate. And for the truth of what I now advance, to the laws themselves do I appeal.

Here, then, you find that what these men call commissions or agencies are declared to be magistracies. It is your part to bear this in memory; to oppose the law to their presumption; to convince them that you are not to be influenced by the wretched sophistical artifice that would defeat the force of laws by words; and that the greater their address in defending their illegal proceedings, the more severely must they feel your resentment; for the public speaker should ever use the same language with the law. Should he at any time speak in one language, and the law pronounce another, to the just authority of law should you grant your voices, not to the shameless presumption of the speaker.

To that argument on which Demosthenes relies as utterly unanswerable I would now briefly