[53]
Now if you were asked for whom you would more
naturally do a service, for those who beg you or for those who bid you, I am
sure you would reply, for those who beg; for the former service is the outcome
of kindliness, the latter of cowardice. Well, the laws, all of them, command you
to do your duty; suppliants beg you to do a favour. Then where supplication is
forbidden, can it be permissible to introduce a law that contains a command? I
think not. In cases in which you conceived it to be your duty even to refuse
favours, it is shameful that you should allow the desires of certain people to
be fulfilled against your will.—Read the statute that comes next in
order.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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