For us the descendants of the wise and philanthropic Greek Nation, contemporary with the enlightened and favoured countries of Europe and spectators of the good acts which the latter enjoy under the unbreakable aegis of the laws, it was no longer possible for us to bear until heartlessness and credulity the hard plague of the Ottoman State which already for about four centuries oppressed us harshly and was opposed to reason pretending that it knew of the law, persecuted and ordered everything in a tyrannical and arbitrary manner. After a long slavery we were finally forced to take up arms and defend ourselves and our country from such a horrifying and unjust - from the beginning - oppression, similar or capable of being compared to no other.

Our war against the Turks, far from being based on demagogic and mutinous or selfish principles of the Greek Nation, is a national war, a sacred war, the sole purpose of which is the regaining of the rights of our personal liberty, property and honour. Despite the fact that today all the favoured and neighbouring peoples of Europe enjoy these rights, only the harsh and unprecedented oppression of the Ottomans attempted violently to eliminate and stifle these. As if we had less reasons from the other nations to be deprived of those rights or as if we were by nature inferior and more infamous to be considered unworthy of these rights and condemned to eternal slavery, to crawl like animals and automatically to the irrational desire of an unrelenting tyrant who had come from far away as a brigand and with no terms to subjugate us. Rights which nature sowed deep in the heart of people and which the laws in accordance with nature established cannot be eliminated by three neither four, not even thousands and millions of centuries of tyranny. And if the violence or power crushes them temporarily, these, still new and indelible, can be restored and elevated by power, that is those which existed previously and centuries ago, rights that we did not cease defending with the arms within Greece as the times and conditions permitted.

Motivated by these principles of the natural rights, and intending to be equated with our other confreres, the European Christians, we started a war against the Turks. United we gave all together all the wars, we unanimously went to war against the Turks, after having decided either to succeed in our objective and be ruled by just laws or to perished entirely, judging life unworthy, we, the descendants of the glorious Nation of the Greeks, under this slavery, which resembles more that of the dumb animals than that of rational beings. [...]

This is what the National Assembly declares to all Greeks, concluding with one point: that the work of the Assembly is completed and that the Assembly dissolves today. Moreover, the work and duty of the Greek people is to appear docile and submissive to the Laws and the executive Ministers of the Laws. The Greeks, you previously said that you do not want slavery and that the tyranny fades everyday from your heart. But the only peace among you and the true subjection to the Administration can consolidate your independence. May the almighty God elevate the ruled and the rulers, the entire Greek state, with His wisdom, so that they could acknowledge their true mutual interests. And to consolidate the much desired happiness of our common Country the first by providence, and the people by docility.

Epidauros, January 15. First National Assembly of Independence. 1822".

The complete text of the declaration of the First National Assembly is published, among others, in: D. Kokkinos, I elliniki epanastasis, vol. 2, Athens, Melissa Publications, 1974, p.383-385.