subject to those, to whom, if the state were in a sound condition, we
should be a terror. Hence, all influence, power, honor, and wealth, are
in their hands, or where they dispose of them: to us they have left only
insults,[122] dangers, persecutions, and poverty. To such indignities,
O bravest of men, how long will you submit? Is it not better to die in
a glorious attempt, than, after having been the sport of other men's
insolence, to resign a wretched and degraded existence with ignominy?

"But success (I call gods and men to witness!) is in our own hands.
Our years are fresh, our spirit is unbroken; among our oppressors, on
the contrary, through age and wealth a general debility has been
produced. We have therefore only to make a beginning; the course of
events[123] will accomplish the rest.

"Who in the world, indeed, that has the feelings of a man, can endure
that they should have a superfluity of riches, to squander in building
over seas[124] and leveling mountains, and that means should be wanting
to us even for the necessaries of life; that they should join together
two houses or more, and that we should not have a hearth to call our
own? They, though they purchase pictures, statues, and embossed plate;
[125] though they pull down now buildings and erect others, and lavish
and abuse their wealth in every possible method; yet can not, with the
utmost efforts of caprice, exhaust it. But for us there is poverty at
home, debts abroad; our present circumstances are bad, our prospects
much worse; and what, in a word, have we left, but a miserable existence?

"Will you not, then, awake to action? Behold that liberty, that
liberty for which you have so often wished, with wealth, honor, and
glory, are set before your eyes. All these prizes fortune offers to
the victorious. Let the enterprise itself, then, let the opportunity,