Informants
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    * 1
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    * 11
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* 1


...the crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas the Athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments from their law-courts. That is why we started off with a basket, a stew-pot and some myrtle boughs and have come to seek a quiet country in which to settle.


* 2


EPOPS: Are you the law-court's judges?

EUELPIDES: No, if anything, we are anti-judge.


* 3


PISTHETAERUS: Then this bird is Callias! Why, what a lot of his feathers he has lost!

EPOPS: That's because he is honest; so the informers set upon him...


* 4


INFORMER: My friend, I am asking you for wings, not for words.

PISTHETAERUS: 'Tis just my words that give you wings.


* 5


Secret accusations are a manifest abuse, but consecrated by custom in many nations, where, from the weakness of the government, they are necessary. This custom makes men false and treacherous. Whoever suspects another to be an informer, beholds in him an enemy; and from thence mankind are accustomed to disguise their real sentiments; and, from the habit of concealing them from others, they at last even hide them from themselves. Unhappy are those who have arrived at this point! Without any certain and fixed principles to guide them, they fluctuate in the vast sea of opinion, and are busied only in escaping the monsters which surround them: to those the present is always embittered by the uncertainty of the future; deprived of the pleasures of tranquility and security, some fleeting moments of happiness, scattered thinly through their wretched lives, console them for the misery of existing.


* 6


But, were I to dictate new laws in a remote corner of the universe, the good of posterity, ever present to my mind, would hold back my trembling hand, and prevent me from authorizing secret accusations.


* 7


...in all governments, as well in a republic as in a monarchy, the punishment due to the crime of which one accuses another ought to be inflicted on the informer.


* 8


In some tribunals a pardon is offered to an accomplice in a great crime, if he discover his associates.... The disadvantages are, that the law authorizes treachery, which is detested even by the villains themselves, and introduces crimes of cowardice, which are much more pernicious to a nation than crimes of courage. Courage is not common, and only wants a benevolent power to direct it to the public good. Cowardice, on the contrary, is a frequent, self-interested, and contagious evil, which can never be improved into a virtue. Besides, the tribunal which has recourse to this method, betrays its fallibility, and the laws their weakness, by imploring the assistance of those by whom they are, violated.


* 9


"You see, Bill, if we don’t find anything out for ourselves in the next day or two, we’ve got to tell the police what we have found out, and then they can explore the passage for themselves. But I don’t want to do that yet."

"Rather not."

"So we’ve got to carry on secretly for a bit. It’s the only way." He smiled and added, "And it’s much more fun."


* 10


...he was a good liar, what more can you want in a police witness?


* 11


Why need the judges know what I have spoken among friends? If I had wished them to know, I should have said it to them as I said it to my friends. I will not have them know it. They force themselves into my confidence without my having called them to it and made them my confidants; they will learn what I will keep secret. Come on then, you who wish to break my will by your will, and try your arts. You can torture me by the rack, you can threaten me with hell and eternal damnation, you can make me so nerveless that I swear a false oath, but the truth you shall not press out of me, for I will lie to you because I have given you no claim and no right to my sincerity.


Events :
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     Informants -- Added : March 12, 2020

     Informants -- Updated : April 04, 2020

About This Textfile :
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