History of the Peloponnesian War

"Your anger towards me cometh not unlooked for, for the cause of it I know. And I have called this assembly, therefore, to remember you and reprehend you for those things wherein you have either been angry with me or given way to your adversity without reason.

For I am of this opinion, that the public prosperity of the city is better for private men than if the private men themselves were in prosperity and the public wealth in decay.

For a private man, though in good estate, if his country come to ruin, must of necessity be ruined with it; whereas he that miscarrieth in a flourishing commonwealth shall much more easily be preserved.

Since then the commonwealth is able to bear the calamities of private men, and everyone cannot support the calamities of the commonwealth, why should not everyone strive to defend it and not, as you now, astonished with domestic misfortune, forsake the common safety and fall a-censuring both me that counselled the war and yourselves that decreed the same as well as I?

And it is I you are angry withal, one, as I think myself, inferior to none either in knowing what is requisite or in expressing what I know, and a lover of my country and superior to money.

For he that hath good thoughts and cannot clearly express them were as good to have thought nothing at all. He that can do both and is ill affected to his country will likewise not give it faithful counsel. And he that will do that too yet if he be superable by money will for that alone set all the rest to sale.

Now if you followed my advice in making this war, as esteeming these virtues to be in me somewhat above the rest, there is sure no reason that I should now be accused of doing you wrong.