Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/290

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS for it is shameful in an accuser not to be able to establish his assertions with full proof. But if such must be urged, surely it should not come from Demosthenes; it should be the observation of some military man, who had done important services, but was unskilled in speech; who repined at the abilities of his antagonist, conscious that he could not display his own actions, and sensible that his accuser had the art of persuading his audience to impute such actions to him as he never had committed. But when a man composed entirely of words, and these the bitterest and most pompously labored—when he recurs to simplicity, to artless facts, who can endure it? He who is but an instrument, take away his tongue, and he is nothing.

I am utterly at a loss to conceive, and would gladly be informed, Athenians, on what grounds you can possibly give sentence for the defendant. Can it be because this decree is not illegal? No public act was ever more repugnant to the laws. Or because the author of this decree is not a proper object of public justice? All your examinations of men's conduct are no more, if this man be suffered to escape. And is not this lamentable, that formerly your stage was filled with crowns of gold, conferred by the Greeks on the people (as the season of our public entertainments was assigned for the honors granted by foreigners); but now, by the ministerial conduct of Demosthenes, you should lose all crowns, all public honors, while he enjoys them in full