[16]
Therefore, men of Athens, seeing
that warships have such weight in either scale, you nave done rightly to set
this strict limit to the Council's claim to the reward. For if they should
discharge all their other duties satisfactorily, but fail to build these ships,
by which we gained our power at the first and by which we retain it today, all
their other services are of no avail, for it is the safety of the whole State
that must be ensured for the people before every thing. Now the defendant is so
obsessed with the idea that he can make any speech or proposal he wishes, that
though the Council has discharged its other duties in the way that you have
heard, but has not built the warships, he moved to grant them their reward.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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