As you examine this speech you will notice that the speaker himself was moved by deep conviction.  His own belief stamped itself upon his words, and throughout there is the unmistakable mark of sincerity.

You are impressed by the comprehensive treatment of the subject.  The orator here speaks out of a full mind, and you feel that you would confidently trust yourself to his leadership.

“When we reflect on what has been and what is, how is it possible not to feel a profound sense of the responsibilities of this Republic to all future ages?  What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts!  What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiasm!  What solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance and moderate our confidence!  The Old World has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and the end of all marvelous struggles in the cause of liberty.

“Greece! lovely Greece! ‘the land of scholars and the nurse of arms,’ where sister republics, in fair processions chanted the praise of liberty and the good, where and what is she?  For two thousand years the oppressors have bound her to the earth.  Her arts are no more.  The last sad relics of her temples are but the barracks of a ruthless soldiery; the fragments of her columns and her palaces are in the dust, yet beautiful in ruins.

“She fell not when the mighty were upon her.  Her sons united at Thermopylae and Marathon; and the tide of her triumph rolled back upon the Hellespont.  She was conquered by her own factions—­she fell by the hands of her own people.  The man of Macedonia did not the work of destruction.  It was already done by her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions.  Rome! whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun, where and what is she!  The Eternal City yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death.

“The malaria has but traveled in the parts won by the destroyers.  More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of the empire.  A mortal disease was upon her before Caesar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the senate-chamber.  The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the North, completed only what was begun at home.  Romans betrayed Rome.  The legions were bought and sold, but the people offered the tribute-money.

“And where are the republics of modern times, which cluster around immortal Italy?  Venice and Genoa exist but in name.  The Alps, indeed, look down upon the brave and peaceful Swiss in their native fastnesses; but the guaranty of their freedom is in their weakness, and not in their strength.  The mountains are not easily crossed, and the valleys are not easily retained.

“When the invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path.  The peasantry sink before him.  The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest.  Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition.  And Switzerland remains with her simple institutions, a military road to climates scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy of her neighbors.