Against Timocrates

But if at the time of the ninth presidency neither he nor his sureties shall have paid in the money, the man who gave sureties shall be imprisoned, and the property of the sureties shall be confiscated. In this final clause, you will find, he has at last become the accuser of his own iniquities in the fullest sense. He did not forbid imprisonment on the broad ground that to imprison a free citizen is something shameful or terrible; but he stole from you your chance of catching your criminal in the place where he is, and so he left to you, who are the party aggrieved, the empty name of retribution, but robbed you of the reality. Without your consent he gave a discharge to people who forcibly appropriate your money; and he was within an ace of adding a clause enabling an action at law against the juries that had imposed the penalty of imprisonment.

But of all the objectionable enactments of his law, that of which I will now speak deserves our most vehement indignation. From beginning to end it is addressed to delinquents who put in sureties; but there is neither prosecution nor penalty for the man who offers no sureties, good or bad, but simply defies you. For that man he has provided the fullest imaginable impunity. The days of grace, defined as extending to the ninth presidency, he offers to the man who has put in bail.