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62.
"As for the toil of the war, that it may perhaps be long and we in the end never the nearer to victory, though that may suffice which I have demonstrated at other times touching your causeless suspicion that way, yet this I will tell you, moreover, touching the greatness of your means for dominion, which neither you yourselves seem ever to have thought on nor I touched in my former orations, nor would I also have spoken it now but that I see your minds dejected more than there is cause for.
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That though you take your dominion to extend only to your confederates, I affirm that of the two parts of the world of manifest use, the land and the sea, you are of one of them entire masters, both of as much of it as you make use of and also of as much more as you shall think fit yourselves.
Neither is there any king or nation whatsoever of those that now are that can impeach your navigation with the fleet and strength you now go.
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So that you must not put the use of houses and lands wherein now you think yourselves deprived of a mighty matter into the balance with such a power as this nor take the loss of these things heavily in respect of it, but rather set little by them as but a light ornament and embellishment of wealth, and think that our liberty as long as we hold fast that will easily recover unto us these things again;
whereas subjected once to others, even that which we possess besides will be diminished.
Show not yourselves both ways inferior to your ancestors, who not only held this (gotten by their own labours not left them) but have also preserved and delivered the same unto us (for it is more dishonour to lose what one possesseth than to miscarry in the acquisition of it), and encounter the enemy not only with magnanimity but also with disdain.
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For a coward may have a high mind upon a prosperous ignorance;
but he that is confident upon judgment to be superior to his enemy doth also disdain him, which is now our case.
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And courage in equal fortune is the safer for our disdain of the enemy where a man knows what he doth;
for he trusteth less to hope, which is of force only in uncertainties, and more to judgment upon certainties, wherein there is a more sure foresight.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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