Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/189

 DEMOSTHENES It is usual, when a speaker rises to ask him, "What are we to do?" Give me leave to propose the like question to you: "What am I to say?" For, if you neither raise contributions, nor take the field, nor spare the public funds, nor grant subsidies to Diopithes, nor approve of those provisions he has made himself, nor take the due care of our interests, I have nothing to say. If you grant such unbounded license to informers as even to listen to their accusations of a man for what they pretend he will do, before it be yet done, what can one say?

But it is necessary to explain to some of you the effect of this behavior (I shall speak with an undaunted freedom, for in no other manner can I speak.) It has been the constant custom of all the commanders who have sailed from this city (if I advance a falsehood let me feel the severest punishment) to take money from the Chians, and from the Erythrians, and from any people that would give it; I mean of the inhabitants of Asia. They who have but one or two ships take a talent; they who command a greater force raise a larger contribution; and the people who give this money, whether more or less, do not give it for nothing (they are not so mad); no, it is the price they pay to secure their trading vessels from rapine and piracy, to provide them with the necessary convoys, and the like, however, they may pretend friendship and affection, and dignify those payments with the name of free gifts. It is therefore evident,