been quite as
intolerable to them as we are, and would have been compelled, for the
sake of your own safety, to rule with a strong hand. An empire was
offered to us: can you wonder that, acting as human nature always
will, we accepted it, and refused to give it up again, constrained by
three all powerful motives, ambition, fear, interest? We are not the
first who have aspired to rule; the world has ever held that the
weaker must be kept down by the stronger. And we think that we are
worthy of power; and there was a time when you thought so too; but now
when you mean expediency you talk about justice. Did justice ever
deter any one from taking by force whatever he could? Men who indulge
the natural ambition of empire deserve credit if they are in any
degree more careful of justice than they need be. How moderate we are
would speedily appear if others took our place; indeed, our very
moderation, which should be our glory, has been unjustly converted
into a reproach.

"For because in our suits with our allies, regulated by treaty, we do
not even stand upon our rights, but have instituted the practise of
deciding them at Athens and by Athenian law, we are supposed to be
litigious. None of our opponents observes why others, who exercise
dominion elsewhere and are less moderate than we are in their dealings
with their subjects, escape this reproach. Why is it? Because men who
practise violence have no longer any need of law. But we are in the
habit of meeting our allies on terms of equality, and, therefore, if
through some legal decision of ours, or exercise of our imperial
power, contrary to their own ideas of right, they suffer ever so
little, they are not grateful for our moderation in leaving them so
much, but are far more offended at their trifling loss than if we had
from the first plundered them in the face of day, laying aside all
thought of law. For then they would themselves have admitted that the
weaker must give way to the stronger. Mankind resents injustice more
than violence, because the one seems to be an unfair advantage taken
by an equal, the other is the irresistible force of a superior. They
were patient under the yoke of the Persian, who inflicted on them far
more grievous wrongs; but now our dominion is odious in their eyes.
And no wonder: the ruler of the day is always detested by his
subjects. And should your empire supplant ours, may not you lose the
good-will which you owe to the fear of us? Lose it