Will you then, O my countrymen! listen to the mad dictates of men, who are aiming, by every artifice and falsehood, which the emissaries of hell can invent, to effect your total destruction and overthrow? who wish to ascend the chariot of anarchy, and ride triumphant over your smoking ruins, which they hope to effect, by their more than hellish arts: in your misery they hope to glory, and establish their own greatness “on their country's ruin.”
If they can effect this, they will laugh at your calamity, and mock your misfortunes—the language of each brother in iniquity, when they meet, will be, “hail damn'd associates,” see our high success!
Think, O my countrymen! think, before it is too late!—The important moment approaches, when these states must, by the most wise of all conduct, forever establish their glory and happiness, on the firmest basis, by adopting the constitution, or by the [pg 048] most foolish and inconsistent of all conduct, in rejecting it, entail on themselves and on their posterity, endless infamy.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallowness.”——
If you embrace not the golden moment now before you, and refuse to receive that which only can establish the dignity of your towering Eagle, this and generations yet unborn, will curse, with an anathema, your dying fame, and breathe, with imprecations and just indignation, vengeance and insults on your sleeping ashes! But should you, on the contrary, with energy and vigour, push your fortune, and, with earnestness and gratitude, clasp to your arms this great blessing which Heaven has pointed to your view, posterity, made happy by your wisdom and exertions, will honour and revere your memories. Secure in their prosperity, they will weep for joy, that Heaven had given them—Fathers!
Cassius.