ting to a precarious tenure of our
possessions. For all claims from an equal, urged upon a neighbour as
commands before any attempt at legal settlement, be they great or be
they small, have only one meaning, and that is slavery.

"As to the war and the resources of either party, a detailed comparison
will not show you the inferiority of Athens. Personally engaged in the
cultivation of their land, without funds either private or public, the
Peloponnesians are also without experience in long wars across sea, from
the strict limit which poverty imposes on their attacks upon each other.
Powers of this description are quite incapable of often manning a fleet
or often sending out an army: they cannot afford the absence from their
homes, the expenditure from their own funds; and besides, they have not
command of the sea. Capital, it must be remembered, maintains a war more
than forced contributions. Farmers are a class of men that are always
more ready to serve in person than in purse. Confident that the former
will survive the dangers, they are by no means so sure that the latter
will not be prematurely exhausted, especially if the war last longer
than they expect, which it very likely will. In a single battle the
Peloponnesians and their allies may be able to defy all Hellas, but they
are incapacitated from carrying on a war against a power different in
character from their own, by the want of the single council-chamber
requisite to prompt and vigorous action, and the substitution of a diet
composed of various races, in which every state possesses an equal vote,
and each presses its own ends, a condition of things which generally
results in no action at all. The great wish of some is to avenge
themselves on some particular enemy, the great wish of others to save
their own pocket. Slow in assembling, they devote a very small fraction
of the time to the consideration of any public object, most of it to the
prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile each fancies that no harm
will come of his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else
to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being
entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays.

"But the principal point is the hindrance that they will experience from
want of money. The slowness with which it comes in will cause delay; but
the opportunities of war wait for no man. Again, we need not be alarmed
either at the possibility of their