Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/305

 DINARCHUS faithful counselors. With all the generous severity of our ancestors, let us exterminate the man whose bribery, whose treason, are evidently detected; who could not resist the temptation of gold; who hath involved his country in calamities the most grievous; let us destroy this pest of Greece; let not his contagion infect our city; then may we hope for some change of fortune, then may we expect that our affairs will flourish.

And now, my fellow citizens, consider how you are to act. The people have returned to you an information of a crime lately committed. Demosthenes stands first before you to suffer the punishment denounced against all whom this information condemns. We have explained his guilt with an unbiased attention to the laws; will you then discover a total disregard of all these offenses? Will you, when intrusted with so important a decision, invalidate the judgement of the people, of the Areopagus, of all mankind? Will you take on yourselves the guilt of these men? or will you give the world an example of that detestation in which this state holds traitors and hirelings that oppose our interests for a bribe? This entirely depends on you.

Despising, then, the entreaties. the false artifices of this man, let justice and integrity be your only objects. Consider the good of your country, not that of Demosthenes. This is the part of honest, upright judges. And should any man rise to plead in favor of Demosthenes,