However, you will be the better for hearing them, and you will know that these people have debased the most honorable and the most sacred gifts, which are granted to the benefactors of the state. In the first place, there is a law imposed upon the people forbidding them to bestow Athenian citizenship upon any man who does not deserve it because of distinguished services to the Athenian people. In the next place, when the civic body has been thus convinced and bestows the gift, it does not permit the adoption to become valid, unless in the next ensuing assembly more than six thousand Athenians confirm it by a secret ballot.