urround 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. I have not acted upon
the expectation, that we who have inherited this obligation from our
ancestors should now attempt to pay it to those who may seem to have
inherited from _their_ ancestors a right to receive payment. My object
is nearer and more immediate. I wish to take occasion of the struggle of
an interesting and gallant people, in the cause of liberty and
Christianity, to draw the attention of the House to the circumstances
which have accompanied that struggle, and to the principles which appear
to have governed the conduct of the great states of Europe in regard to
it; and to the effects and consequences of these principles upon the
independence of nations, and especially upon the institutions of free
governments. What I have to say of Greece, therefore, concerns the
modern, not the ancient; the living, and not the dead. It regards her,
not as she exists in history, triumphant over time, and tyranny, and
ignorance; but as she now is, contending, against fearful odds, for
being, and for the common privileges of human nature.

As it is never difficult to recite commonplace remarks and trite
aphorisms, so it may be easy, I am aware, on this occasion, to remind me
of the wisdom which dictates to men a care of their own affairs, and
admonishes them, instead of searching for adventures abroad, to leave
other men's concerns in their own hands. It may be easy to call this
resolution _Quixotic_, the emanation of a crusading or propagandist
spirit. All this, and more, may be readily said; but all this, and more