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| Proclamation |
Of the Senate of Calamata, ''one of those local assemblies
which were organized in Greece, at the commencement of the
present struggle, and before the establisment of the General
Governmet.'' From the North American Review, for October,
1823
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Having formed the resolution
to live or die for freedom, we are drawn toward you by a just
sympathy; since it is in your land that Liberty has fixed here
abode, and by you that she is prized as by our fathers. Hence,
in invoking her name, we invoke yours at the same time, trusting
that in imitating you, we shall imitate our ancestors, and be
thought worthy of them if we succeed in resembling you. |
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Though separated from you by might
y oceans, your character brings you near us. We esteem your
nearer than the nations on our frontiers; and we possess, in
you, friends, fellow-citizens and brethren, because you are
just, humane and generous; just because free, generous and liberal
because Christian. Your liberty is not propped on the slavery
of other nations, nor your prosperity on their calamities and
sufferings. But, on the contrary, free and prosperous yourselves,
you are desirous that all men should share the same blessings;
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that all should enjoy
those rights, to which all are by nature equally entitled. It
is you, who first proclaimed these rights; it is you who have
been the first again to recognize them, in rendering the rank
of men to the Africans degraded to the levels of brutes. It
is by your example, that Europe has abolished the shameful and
cruel trade in human flesh, from you that she receives lessons
of justice, and learns to renounce her absurd and sanguinary
customs. This glory, Americans is yours alone, and raises you
above all the nations |
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which have gained a name for liberty
and laws.
It is for you, citizens of America, to crown this glory, in
aiding us to purge Greece from the barbarians, who for four
hundred years have polluted the soil. It is surely worthy of
you to repay the obligations of the civilized nations, and to
banish ignorance and barbarism from the country of freedom and
the arts. You will not assuredly imitate the culpable indifference
or rather the long |
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