date

1823 Feb. 21 Greece. J.B. to Greek
1823 Feb. 21

Greece. J.B. to Greek Legislators

J.B. to Greek Legislators

Regeneration

Legislators of Greece

You enter upon your career under the most favorable auspices /auspicious circumstances/. Nothing to match them is to be found in history; Nothing to match them is to be found in present times. Obstacles which in other nations set up a bar to good government, and that bar an insuperable one, have no place in yours /your case/ You are not cursed with Kings You are not cursed with Nobles Yor minds are not tyrannized by /under the tyranny/ Priests. Your minds are not under the tyranny of Lawyers

Legislators! It is now more than five and fifty years since he now addresses you first devoted himself to the service of mankind. He has served faithfully: he has toiled hard: he has suffered something /had his sufferings/ and he has not gone unrewarded! He complains of no man. he is contented with his lot © he has no complaint to make. The [...?] is never out of his sight: [...?] his cheerfulness [...?] diminished by it.

The sort of attention which on pain of not serving /in his endeavour to serve/ you, he must call for at your hands, others in your place in place correspondent to yours, have given to him before

In whose /Never/ is the day labourer, never is the helpless pauper an object of contempt to me: I can not say the same thing of the purse proud noble /aristocrat/ I can not say the same thing of the ancestry©proud noble /aristocrat/: I can not say the same thing of the official bloodsucker: I can not say the same thing of the man loaded /covered/ with the tokens of factitious honor least of all can I say the same of the /a/ Kings. When a Monarch has thought to enslave /corrupt/ me and delude me, to degrade me to a level with the Castlereaghs the Metternichs the Hardenbergs and the Gentzs, you may see at any time what he has got by it
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    Trials 1. Cupidity. 2. Revenge

    Appetite for 1. money. 2. power 3 Revenge

    1. Cupidity for Office

    Cupidity [...?] out to your grasp needless offices, useless offices overpay of needful and useful ones and to ones called sinecures: revenge the ruin of all who by appeals to the people your constituents shall presume to call in question your faultless excellence © that faultless and matchless excellence, which men in your situation have no where failed to arrogate to themselves. If, under these temptations, if you sink, you will fall with others; if you stand firm, you will stand alone. To prove their fitness for command men have been seen in various countries subjecting themselves to the bodily torture none who could revenge themselves have as yet endured patiently that torture which by obloquy, always the severer the more merited, especially if merited is inflicted on the mind.

    Legislators! the occupier of every office /place/ which is over and above those which are /is not/ absolutely needful as well as are useful, is a public robber: so is the receiver of whatever emolument /pay / is over and above that which is needful, in every needful and useful place. Every occupant of a sinecure Office is moreover a swindler: receiver of money extorted from the people on a pretence altogether false.

    When I say to you, endure with patience whatever obloquy is cast upon you © treat with nothing but silent contempt any appellatives of vague reproach © defend yourselves against specific imputations defend yourselves with no other arms than counterargument and disproof, I call not upon you for any thing more than what for these á³á á³á years does been done by others in your place © I speak of the /all/ constituted authorities in the Anglo©American United States.