And
 thus this young man, full of ability, worked on the wealthy by fear, on the poor by bribes, on
 the stupid by leading them into mistakes; and by these means he extorted those beautiful decrees
 which have been read to you,—decrees which were not passed by any formal vote or regular
 authority, nor under the sanction of an oath, but carried by holding up the hand, and by the
 loud shouts of an excited multitude. 
 O for the admirable customs and principles which we received from our ancestors, if we could
 but keep them! but somehow or other they have slipped through our fingers. For our ancestors,
 those wise and upright men, would not permit the public assembly to have any authority to make
 laws; they chose that whatever the common people decided, or whatever the burgesses wished to
 enact should be ordered or forbidden, after the assembly was adjourned, and after all the parts
 had been properly arranged, by the different ranks, classes, and ages, distributed in their
 tribes and centuries, after having listened to the advocates of the proposal on which the vote
 was to be taken, and after the proposal itself had been for many days before the people, and had
 had its merits inquired into. But all the republics of the
 Greeks are governed by the rashness of the assembly while sitting. Therefore, to say no more of
 this Greece, which has long since been overthrown and crushed through the folly of its own
 counsels; that ancient country, which once flourished with riches, and rower, and glory, fell
 owing to that one evil, the immoderate liberty and licentiousness of the popular assemblies.
 When inexperienced men, ignorant and uninstructed in any description of business whatever, took
 their seats in the theatre, then they undertook inexpedient wars; then they appointed seditious
 men to the government of the republic; then they banished from the city the citizens who had
 deserved best of the state.