3. Sallust, Jurgurtha 1.5.
262 ST. AUGUSTINE something I do not know and that I might think
I ought to intercede for someone in a case where
I could be deceived, but you could not, because
I believed that a man did not possess what you knew that he did possess. Thus it could be that we might not have the same idea of a man's guilt, but neither of us would approve a failure to make restitution. As men we have different ideas about a man, but in the concept of justice we are one.
In the same way it is also possible for me to know that someone has nothing, while you are not too sure that he has, but you have good grounds for suspecting him and in this way it seems to you that I intercede for a man "who wishes to have the punishment of his crime remitted and to keep the profit which he gained by his evil deed." To sum up, then, neither to you, nor to men such as we rejoice to find you—if any others can be found nor to those who "with great eagerness pursue interests foreign to them, utterly unprofitable and even extremely dangerous and deadly," ^ nor to my own heart would I dare to say, as I would not think or decide that intercession should be made for anyone to enable him to possess unpunished what he has wrongfully taken, but I hold rather that he should restore what he has taken, when his offense has been pardoned, always supposing that he still has either what he took or some other means of making restitution.
It is not true, however, that everything which is taken from an unwilling donor is wrongfully taken. Most people do not want to give due credit to their doctor, or to pay a workman his hire, yet when these receive their due from unwilling debtors they do not acquire anything unlawfully; on
3. Sallust, Jurgurtha 1.5.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 263 the contrary, it would be wrong to deprive them of it. But tiiere is no reason for a judge to take money for a just judgment or a witness for true testimony, because the advocate is paid for legal protection and the lawyer for truthful advice; the two former have to make an inquiry into both sides, the latter stand on one side. But when verdicts and testimony are sold, they are unfair and untrue, because just and true ones are not to be sold, and it is much more infamous for money to be taken when it is infamously even if willingly paid. The one who pays for a just verdict usually demands his money back on the ground that it was wrongfully taken from him, since justice ought not to be for sale; while the one who pays for an unjust verdict would hke to demand his money back, if he were not afraid or ashamed of having paid it. There are other personages of lower rank who not uncommonly take pay from both sides, such as a court attendant by whom a service is performed or on whom it devolves. What is extorted by these with excessive dishonesty is usually demanded back, but if paid according to accepted custom it is not asked back, and those who do demand it contrary to custom we disapprove of more vigorously than those who accept it according to custom, since many ofl&cials, necessary to human affairs, are influenced or attracted by gains of this kind. If these latter change their way of life and attain to a higher degree of virtuous living, they are more ready to distribute to the poor, as if it were their own, what they have acquired in this way than they are to pay it back to those from whom they have received it as a form of restitution of what is not their own. However, we think that those who have done an injury to human