which depends on the ability of the man who has violated the law, and
not with reference to the law which you have sworn to administer.
Then, too, one must point out that all principles on which judges are
to judge, and citizens are to live, will be thrown into confusion if
the laws are once departed from; for the judges will not have any
rules to follow, if they depart from what is set down in the law, and
no principles on which they can reprove others for having acted in
defiance of the law. And that all the rest of the citizens will be
ignorant what they are to do, if each of them regulates all his
actions according to his own ideas, and to whatever whim or fancy
comes into his head, and not according to the common statute law of
the state.

After that it will be suitable to ask the judges why they occupy
themselves at all with the business of other people;--why they allow
themselves to be harassed in discharging the offices of the republic,
when they might often spend the time in promoting their own ends and
private interests;--why they take an oath in a certain form;--why they
assemble at a regular time and go away at a regular time;--why no
one of them ever alleges any reason for being less frequent in his
discharge of his duty to the republic, except such as is set down in
some formal law as an exception. And one may ask, whether they think
it right that they should be bound down and exposed to so much
inconvenience by the laws, and at the same time allow our adversaries
to disregard the laws. After that it will be natural to put the
question to the judges whether, when the party accused himself
endeavours to set down in the law, as an exception, that particular
case in which he admits that he has violated the law, they will
consent to it. And to ask also, whether what he has actually done is
more scandalous and more shameless than the exception which he wishes
to insert in the law;--what indeed can be more shameless? Even if the
judges were inclined to make such an addition to the law, would the
people permit it? One might also press upon them that this is even a
more scandalous measure, when they are unable to make an alteration in
the language and letter of the law, to alter it in the actual facts,
and to give a decision contrary to it; and besides, that it is a
scandalous thing that anything should be taken from the law, or that
the law should be abrogated or changed in any part whatever, without
the peopl