e same
blue sky, the same inlets and harbors, the same AEgean, the same
Olympus; there is the same land where Homer sung, where Pericles spoke;
it is in nature the same old Greece--but it is living Greece no more.

"Descendants of the same people inhabit the country; yet what is the
reason of this vast difference? In the midst of present degradation we
see the glorious fragments of ancient works of art-temples, with
ornaments and inscriptions that excite wonder and admiration--the
remains of a once high order of civilization, which have outlived the
language they spoke--upon them all, Ichabod is written--their glory has
departed. Why is this so? I answer, their institutions have been
destroyed. These were but the fruits of their forms of government, the
matrix from which their great development sprang; and when once the
institutions of a People have been destroyed, there is no earthly power
that can bring back the Promethean spark to kindle them here again, any
more than in that ancient land of eloquence, poetry and song.

"The same may be said of Italy. Where is Rome, once the mistress of the
World? There are the same seven hills now, the same soil, the same
natural resources; the nature is the same, but what a ruin of human
greatness meets the eye of the traveler throughout the length and
breadth of that most down-trodden land! why have not the People of that
Heaven-favored clime, the spirit that animated their fathers? Why this
sad difference?

"It is the destruction of their institutions that has caused it; and, my
countrymen, if we shall in an evil hour rashly pull down and destroy
those institutions which the patriotic hand of our fathers labored so
long and so hard to build up, and which have done so much for us and the
World, who can venture the prediction that similar results will not
ensue? Let us avoid it if we can. I trust the spirit is among us that
will enable us to do it. Let us not rashly try the experiment, for, if
it fails, as it did in Greece and Italy, and in the South American
Republics, and in every other place wherever liberty is once destroyed,
it may never be restored to us again.

"There are defects in our government, errors in administration, and
short-comings of many kinds; but in spite of these defects and errors,
Georgia has grown to be a great State. Let us pause here a moment.

"When I look around and see our prosperity in everything, agriculture,
commerce, art, science, a