On the Treaty with Alexander (11-15)

But we ourselves are parties to the peace, which instructs us to treat as enemies those who are guilty of such acts. Now in view of this, are we to obey these joint instructions and treat them as enemies, or will anyone be blackguard[*] enough to say no—one of the hirelings in the pay of the Macedonian king, one of those who have grown rich at your expense.

For you may be sure they are not ignorant of these facts; but they have grown so insolent, with the tyrant’s troops for their bodyguard, that they insist on your observing the already violated oaths, as if Alexander’s absolute sovereignty extended over perjury also; and they compel you to rescind your own laws, releasing men who have been condemned in your courts and forcing you to sanction numberless other illegalities.

And their conduct is natural; for men who have sold themselves to a policy antagonistic to the interests of their country cannot trouble themselves about laws and oaths; they are to them mere terms which they employ to lead astray the citizens who come to the Assembly for diversion and not for careful inquiry, and who forget that present inaction will some day result in wild confusion.

My own advice, as I said at the start, is to believe them when they say that we ought to abide by the joint agreement, unless, when they insist on our abiding by the oaths, they interpret them as not forbidding any act of injustice, or imagine that no one will be sensible of the change from democracy to tyranny or of the overthrow of a free constitution.

Now for a still greater absurdity. For it is provided in the compact that it shall be the business of the delegates at the Congress and those responsible for public safety to see that in the states that are parties to the peace there shall be no executions and banishments contrary to the laws established in those states, no confiscation of property, no partition of lands, no cancelling of debts, and no emancipation of slaves for purposes of revolution. But these speakers are so far from seeking to prevent any of these evils, that they join in promoting them. And do they not then deserve death—the men who promote in the various states those terrible calamities which, because they are so serious, this important body has been commissioned to prevent[*]