85
Aristocrates dismisses those persons scot-free, and takes no account of them whatever, but proposes to put under a ban those who, in obedience to that common law of mankind which enjoins hospitality to a fugitive, have harbored the culprit, who, as I will assume, has already gone into exile, if they refuse to surrender their suppliant. Thus, by omitting to specify the mode of the homicide, by not providing for a trial, by omitting the claim of redress, by permitting arrest in any place whatsoever, by punishing those who harbor the fugitive, and by not punishing those in whose house the death took place,—in every respect I say that his proposal is in manifest contravention of this statute also.
86
Read the next one.
86
And it shall not be lawful to propose a statute directed against an individual, unless the same apply to all Athenians.
86
The statute just read is not, like the others, taken from the Laws of Homicide, but it is just as good—as good as ever law was. The man who introduced it was of opinion that, as every citizen has an equal share in civil rights, so everybody should have an equal share in the laws; and therefore he moved that it should not be lawful to propose a law affecting any individual, unless the same applied to all Athenians. Now seeing that it is agreed that the drafting of decrees must conform to the law, a man who draws a decree for the special benefit of Charidemus, such as is not applicable to all the rest of you, must evidently be making a proposal in defiance of this statute also; of course what it is unlawful to put into a statute cannot legitimately be put into a decree.
87
Read the next statute,—or is that all of them?
87
The Statute
87
No decree either of the Council or of the Assembly shall have superior authority to a statute.
