Page:The Children's Plutarch, Greeks.djvu/16

 each of them feel that he had the same stake in his country that he had in his own home that his country was his home. Under monarchical governments, where the freeman is still the subject of the prince and not the citizen of the state, the patriot's creed is King and Country, with the King first; but in a republic it is Country first, last, and always, and never Country and President or Governor, no matter how good and great such men may be. Even with our Mother England, where people are as free to think, to speak, to write as we are, and may say what they please of the sovereign, still the cry is King and Country, and men live in the superstition that a king is somehow sacred and somehow superhuman. Their words deny this, while their lives declare it; but in Greece, as long as the Greeks were free, they had no such superstition. They were great because they were democratic republicans and were once as the Americans and the French and the Swiss are now; and I would not have the children forget this. After the Macedonians conquered the true Grecians, and the Romans fell a prey to the tyrants whom their own luxury and ambition and riches had created, all was indeed changed, but it is not such Grecians or such Romans that Plutarch glorifies. &emsp;