1823. Feb. 22

Greece J.B. to Greek Legislators

You are not afflicted by the plague of spurious representatives: hundreds chosen by the thousands /nominate by their own creatures and dependents/ to plunder and oppress the millions. You have none of these bloodsuckers, these unpunishable malefactors stigmatized and abhorred under the name of Borough©monger by all who are not their accomplices

Stationed on this eminence with the citizens of the Anglo©American United States on your side you will look down upon all these other nations, but with the best©deserved scorn and contempt upon England and upon France

In your struggle to free yourselves from the yoke of your Mahometan oppressors, you have no Monarchs, no Nobles, no Priests, nor retainers of Monarchs, Nobles or Priests to join with the arch©tyrants and do their utmost to preserve /keep/ if that can not be to restore /reestablish/ the tyranny /[...?] it on your necks/. Your delegates /newly appointed Agents/ have therefore neither reason nor pretext for screening their malpractices in any shape from censure, by restraints on the liberty of public discussion and of the press. From imputations false in fact, as in the station of a private citizen so in the situation of a public functionary in any department and any grade protection will be given to reputation by the hand of law: for damage in any assignable and specific shape compensation will be awarded if produced by rashness, and /to which/ if by wilful falshood appropriate punishment will be added. But as in the Anglo©American United States so with you every man by whom any such imputation has been cast will be admitted to prove the truth of it: and since /considering that/ mischief capable of being done by functionaries is great in proportion to the power of which they are possessors or partakers while defence against unjust imputation is in a correspondent degree easier, more indulgence will be shewn by you to ungrounded imputations upon public functionaries /men/ than by the like upon private Citizens. Legislators! the stronger the protection a man has from any other source whatever, the less not the greater is the need he has of that which is afforded by the hand of law.