Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/257

 ÆESCHINES but the greatest assemblies in the state, are bound to submit to the sentence of our tribunals. First, the law directs that the council of the Areopagus shall stand accountable to the proper officers and submit their august transactions to a legal examination; thus our greatest judicial body stands in perpetual dependence on your decisions. Shall the members of this council, then, be precluded from the honor of a crown? Such has been the ordinance from times the most remote. And have they no regard to public honor? So scrupulous is their regard, that it is not deemed sufficient that their conduct should not be notoriously criminal; their least irregularity is severely punished—a discipline too rigorous for our delicate orators.

Again, our lawgiver directs that the senate of five hundred shall be bound to account for their conduct; and so great diffidence does he express of those who have not yet rendered such account, that in the very beginning of the law it is ordained "that no magistrate who has not yet passed through the ordinary examination shall be permitted to go abroad." But here a man may exclaim, "What! in the name of Heaven, am I, because I have been in office, to be confined to the city?" Yes, and with good reason; lest, when you have secreted the public money and betrayed your trust, you might enjoy your perfidy by flight. Again, the laws forbid the man who has not yet accounted to the state to dedicate any part of his effects to 193