the war out of Attica, which (let Phocion say what he will) was safer than meeting it there, you brought it, after all that had been done by the enemy to strengthen himself and weaken us, after the loss of Amphipolis, Olynthus, and Potidaea, the outguards of Athens, you brought it, I say, to the decision of a battle with equal forces.  When this could be effected there was evidently nothing so desperate in our circumstances as to justify an inaction which might probably make them worse, but could not make them better.  Phocion thinks that a state which cannot itself be the strongest should live in friendship with that power which is the strongest.  But in my opinion such friendship is no better than servitude.  It is more advisable to endeavour to supply what is wanting in our own strength by a conjunction with others who are equally in danger.  This method of preventing the ruin of our country was tried by Demosthenes.  Nor yet did he neglect, by all practicable means, to augment at the same time our internal resources.  I have heard that when he found the Public Treasure exhausted he replenished it, with very great peril to himself, by bringing into it money appropriated before to the entertainment of the people, against the express prohibition of a popular law, which made it death to propose the application thereof to any other use.  This was virtue, this was true and genuine patriotism.  He owed all his importance and power in the State to the favour of the people; yet, in order to serve the State, he did not fear, at the evident hazard of his life, to offend their darling passion and appeal against it to their reason.

Phocion.—­For this action I praise him.  It was, indeed, far more dangerous for a minister at Athens to violate that absurd and extravagant law than any of those of Solon.  But though he restored our finances, he could not restore our lost virtue; he could not give that firm health, that vigour to the State, which is the result of pure morals, of strict order and civil discipline, of integrity in the old, and obedience in the young.  I therefore dreaded a conflict with the solid strength of Macedon, where corruption had yet made but a very small progress, and was happy that Demosthenes did not oblige me, against my own inclination, to be the general of such a people in such war.

Aristides.—­I fear that your just contempt of the greater number of those who composed the democracy so disgusted you with this mode and form of government, that you were as averse to serve under it as others with less ability and virtue than you were desirous of obtruding themselves into its service.  But though such a reluctance proceeds from a very noble cause, and seems agreeable to the dignity of a great mind in bad times, yet it is a fault against the highest of moral obligations—­the love of our country.  For, how unworthy soever individuals may be, the public is always respectable, always dear to the virtuous.