exceed that which rescues our country from slavery. Our cause is
therefore just, and our purpose merciful, as both yourself and we may
be easily convinced. The amplest justice is on your side; for the
Florentines have not hesitated, after a peace concluded with so much
solemnity, to enter into league with those who have rebelled against
you; so that if our cause is insufficient to excite you against them,
let your own just indignation do so; and the more so, seeing the
facility of the undertaking. You need be under no apprehension from the
memory of the past, in which you may have observed the power of
that people and their pertinency in self-defense; though these might
reasonably excite fear, if they were still animated by the valor of
former times. But now, all is entirely the reverse; for what power can
be expected in a city that has recently expelled the greatest part of
her wealth and industry? What indomitable resolution need be apprehended
from the people whom so many and such recent enmities have disunited?
The disunion which still prevails will prevent wealthy citizens
advancing money as they used to do on former occasions; for though men
willingly contribute according to their means, when they see their own
credit, glory, and private advantage dependent upon it, or when there
is a hope of regaining in peace what has been spent in war, but not when
equally oppressed under all circumstances, when in war they suffer the
injuries of the enemy, and in peace, the insolence of those who govern
them. Besides this, the people feel more deeply the avarice of their
rulers, than the rapacity of the enemy; for there is hope of being
ultimately relieved from the latter evil, but none from the former.
Thus, in the last war, you had to contend with the whole city; but now
with only a small portion. You attempted to take the government from
many good citizens; but now you oppose only a few bad ones. You then
endeavored to deprive a city of her liberty, now you come to restore
it. As it is unreasonable to suppose that under such disparity of