Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/593

 Europe after the Congress of Vienna 555 We, descendants of the wise and noble peoples of Hellas, 464. Procla- we who are the contemporaries of the enlightened and civil- ™ atl0n 0I ized nations of Europe, we who behold the advantages issued by*** which they enjoy under the protection of the impenetrable the Greek aegis of the law, find it no longer possible to suffer without National cowardice and self-contempt the cruel yoke of the Otto- (January 27, man power which has weighed upon us for more than four 1822). centuries, — a power which does not listen to reason and knows no other law than its own will, which orders and dis- poses everything despotically and according to its caprice. After this prolonged slavery we have determined to take arms to avenge ourselves and our country against a frightful tyranny, iniquitous in its very essence, — an unexampled despotism to which no other rule can be compared. The war which we are carrying on against the Turk is not that of a faction or the result of sedition. It is not aimed at the advantage of any single part of the Greek people; it is a national war, a holy war, a war the object of which is to reconquer the rights of individual liberty, of property and honor, — rights which the civilized people of Europe, our neighbors, enjoy to-day; rights of which the cruel and unheard-of tyranny of the Ottomans would deprive us — us alone — and the very memory of which they would stifle in our hearts. Are we, then, less reasonable than other peoples, that we remain deprived of these rights? Are we of a nature so degraded and abject that we should be viewed as unworthy to enjoy them, condemned to remain crushed under a per- petual slavery and subjected, like beasts of burden or mere automatons, to the absurd caprice of a cruel tyrant who, like an infamous brigand, has come from distant regions to invade our borders? Nature has deeply graven these rights in the hearts of all men; laws in harmony with nature have so completely consecrated them that neither three nor four centuries — nor thousands nor millions of centuries — can destroy them. Force and violence have been able to re- strict and paralyze them for a season, but force may once more resuscitate them in all the vigor which they formerly