Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/259

 ÆSCHINES talents for the repair of our fortifications, you really expended but a small part of this great sum. Do not assume an honor to which you have no pretensions; do not wrest their suffrages from your judges; do not act in presumptuous contempt of the laws, but with due submission yield to their guidance. Such is the conduct that must secure the freedom of our constitution."

As to the evasions on which these men rely, I trust that I have spoken sufficiently. That Demosthenes really stood accountable to the state at the time when this man proposed his decree, that he was really a magistrate, as manager of the theatrical funds; a magistrate, as inspector of the fortifications; that his conduct in either of these offices had not been examined, had not obtained the legal approbation, I shall now endeavor to demonstrate from the public records. Read in whose archonship, in what month, on what day, in what assembly, Demosthenes was chosen into the office of manager of the theatrical funds. So shall it appear, that during the execution of this office the decree was made which conferred this crown on him.

If, then, I should here rest my cause without proceeding further, Ctesiphon must stand convicted—convicted, not by the arguments of his accuser, but by the public records. In former times, Athenians, it was the custom that the state should elect a comptroller, who in every 195