But to the very last there was one stinging jest on the lips of the Spartan,—­the very same which the modern slaveholder flings with so great gusto against the unfortunate Yankee,—­and that was Athenian cupidity.  The ancient and the modern jester are alike condemned on their own indictment, since upon cupidity the most petulant, upon cupidity the most voracious in its greedy demands, rested the whole Spartan polity, as does the system of slaveholding in the South.  The Spartan, like the Southern planter, might protest that money was of no consequence whatever, that to him it was only so much iron,—­but why?  Only because that, by the satisfaction of a cupidity more profound, he was able to dispense with the ordinary necessities of an honest democrat.

In peace, Sparta was a nonentity; in the resources which enrich and glorify the time of peace she was a bankrupt.  Fine arts or education she had none:  these centred in Athens.  These were elements of progress, and could no more be tolerated in Peloponnesus than in our Gulf States.  Taking our Southern civilization or that of Lacedaemon, we must say of each that it is thoroughly brutalized; we may challenge either to show us a single master-piece of intellect, whether in the way of analysis or of construction,—­but none can they show.

Even in a military sense, the forces which Democracy could marshal, either in ancient Greece or in modern America, were more than a match for the corresponding oligarchical factions.  Athens, like New England, was a commercial centre, and therefore a prominent naval power; and this naval prominence, in each instance, was so great as to give a decisive superiority over a non-commercial rival.  Sparta used her influence and power to establish oligarchic institutions in the various provinces of Greece, which generally corresponded to our Territories,—­in which latter the South has, with an equally unworthy zeal, been for several years seeking to establish her peculiar institutions.  Epidamnus proved a Grecian Kansas.  As in our own country, the hostile factions refrained from war as long as human nature would allow; but, once engaged in it, it became a vital struggle, that could be terminated only by the exhaustion of one of the parties.

Athens was the stronger:  why, then, did she not conquer her rival?  With equal pertinence we might ask, Why have not we, who are the stronger, subjugated the South?  The answer to both questions is the same.  Political prejudice overmasters patriotism.  Neither ourselves nor the ancient Athenians appear to have the remotest idea of the importance of the cause for which we are contending.  To us, as to them, the avenue to future glory lies through the blood-red path of war, of desperate, unrelenting war.  Nothing else, no compromise, no negotiations of any sort, would suffice.  This the Athenians never realized; this we do not seem to understand.  Among ourselves, as among them, the peace-party—­a