Privileged and sectarian bodies never willingly consent to a surrender of pecuniary benefits for a mere public end.

But among the vices of a popular assembly, it possesses the redeeming virtue to be generous.

Upon a grand and unconscious principle of selfishness, a democracy rarely grudges a sacrifice endured for the service of the state.
The money thus obtained was devoted to the augmentation of the maritime force to two hundred triremes--an achievement that probably exhausted the mine revenue for some years; and the custom once broken, the produce of Laurion does not seem again to have been wasted upon individuals.

To maintain and increase the new navy, a decree was passed, either at that time [37], or somewhat later, which ordained twenty triremes to be built yearly.
VII.

The construction of these vessels, the very sacrifice of the citizens, the general interest that must have attached to an undertaking that was at once novel in itself, and yet congenial not more to the passions of a people, who daily saw from their own heights the hostile rock of Aegina, "the eyesore of the Piraeus," than to the habits of men placed in a steril land that on three sides tempted to the sea--all combined to assist Themistocles in his master policy--a policy which had for its design gradually to convert the Athenians from an agricultural into a maritime people.