Against Androtion (49-51)

Having you under his thumb, thanks to his promises, and having liberty of action owing to the state of affairs at the time, he did not think it necessary to employ the existing laws for his purpose, nor to make new laws, if he considered the old ones inadequate; but he proposed in your Assembly monstrous and unconstitutional decrees, by means of which he created a job for himself and has stolen a great deal that belongs to you, putting in a clause that the Eleven should attend on him.

Then, with the Eleven, he led the way to the homes of his fellow-citizens. Against Euctemon he could prove nothing, though he had said that he would get the taxes out of him or pay them himself; but it was from you that he levied them, as if his motive was hostility, not to Euctemon, but to you.

Let no one understand me to say that the money ought not to have been wrung from the defaulters. It ought; but how? Even as the law enjoins, for the benefit of the other citizens. That is the spirit of democracy. For what you, men of Athens, have gained by the exaction of such paltry sums of money in this way, is nothing to what you have lost by the introduction of such habits into political life. If you care to inquire why a man would sooner live under a democracy than under an oligarchy, you will find that most obvious reason is that in a democracy everything is more easy-going.