You doubtless think that I live at my ease in the world, that I can feel
no anxiety for the future about my bodily necessities. What would you
say were I to tell you that if I want another meal, a lodging for to-
night, a fresh robe for tomorrow, I must rob or flatter some great man
to gain them? Yet so it is. I am hopeless, friendless, destitute. In
the whole of the Empire there is not an honest calling in which I can
take refuge. I must become a pander or a parasite--a hired tyrant over
slaves, or a chartered groveller beneath nobles--if I would not starve
miserably in the streets, or rob openly in the woods! This is what I
am. Now listen to what I was. I was born free. I inherited from my
father a farm which he had successfully defended from the encroachments
of the rich, at the expense of his comfort, his health, and his life.
When I succeeded to his lands, I determined to protect them in my time
as studiously as he had defended them in his. I worked
unintermittingly: I enlarged my house, I improved my fields, I
increased my flocks.
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