[30]
Surely this system must be abandoned.
You must be once more your own masters, and must give to all alike the same
chance to speak, to counsel, to act. But if you authorize one class of men to
issue orders like absolute monarchs, and force another class to equip the
galleys and pay the war-tax and serve in the field, while yet a third class has
no other public duty than to vote the condemnation of the latter, you will never
get anything essential done at the right time. There will always be some class
with a grievance, who will fail you, and then it will be your privilege to
punish them instead of the enemy.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1930.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.