[89]
However, you will be the better for hearing them, and you will know that these
people have debased the most honorable and the most sacred gifts, which are
granted to the benefactors of the state.In the
first place, there is a law imposed upon the people forbidding them to bestow
Athenian citizenship upon any man who does not deserve it because of
distinguished services to the Athenian people. In the next place, when the civic
body has been thus convinced and bestows the gift, it does not permit the
adoption to become valid, unless in the next ensuing assembly more than six
thousand Athenians confirm it by a secret ballot.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by Norman W. DeWitt, Ph.D., and Norman J. DeWitt, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1949.
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