Crossword-Solution: AWARDERS 8 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 12

The upper classes! This community of semi-imbeciles, who secretly lived like dogs, but showed one another respect as long as there was no public scandal; that was to say as long as one did not honestly revoke an agreement and wait until it had lapsed before one made use of one’s newly-regained freedom! And these vicious upper classes were the awarders of social position and respect, according to a scale on which honesty ranked far below zero.

Let me see; you have for awarders two Dukes, three Mouldies, and two Players.’ Such, in the office, is the familiar classification of the Académie Française! ‘Duke’ is the name applied to all members of the nobility and episcopacy; Mouldies’ includes the professors and the learned men generally; while a ‘Player’ denotes a lawyer, dramatic author, journalist, or novelist.

Wherever public games were held, there the twins were the masters of the course and the field, and the awarders of the prizes.

When, however, my worst enemies give me the chance of a second trial, surely you, the impartial awarders of justice, will never pronounce on the present issue a premature verdict of murder.

But those whose moral character fits them to be the awarders of punishment are often the victims of it.+ The natural and right order of things in this respect is often exactly the reverse of what it ought to be, and just and noble men are treated as transgressors and suffer the punishment which ought to fall upon their persecutors.