An occasion which calls the
attention to a spot so distinguished, so connected with interesting
recollections, as Greece, may naturally create something of warmth and
enthusiasm. In a grave, political discussion, however, it is necessary
that those feelings should be chastised. I shall endeavor properly to
repress them, although it is impossible that they should be altogether
extinguished. We must, indeed, fly beyond the civilized world; we must
pass the dominion of law and the boundaries of knowledge; we must, more
especially, withdraw ourselves from this place, and the scenes and
objects which here surround us,--if we would separate ourselves entirely
from the influence of all those memorials of herself which ancient
Greece has transmitted for the admiration and the benefit of mankind.
This free form of government, this popular assembly, the common council
held for the common good,--where have we contemplated its earliest
models? This practice of free debate and public discussion, the contest
of mind with mind, and that popular eloquence, which, if it were now
here, on a subject like this, would move the stones of the
Capitol,--whose was the language in which all these were first
exhibited? Even the edifice in which we assemble, these proportioned
columns, this ornamented architecture, all remind us that Greece has
existed, and that we, like the rest of mankind, are greatly her
debtors.[1]
But I have not introduced this motion in the vain hope of discharging
any thing of this accumulated debt of centuries.
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