Sir: As once Cineas the Epirote stood among the Senators of Rome, who, with a word of self-conscious majesty, arrested kings in their ambitious march--thus, full of admiration and of reverence, I stand amongst you, legislators of the new Capitol, that glorious hall of your people's collective majesty. The Capitol of old yet stands, but the spirit has departed from it, and is come over to yours, purified by the air of liberty. The old stands a mournful monument of the fragility of human things: yours as a sanctuary of eternal right. The old beamed with the red lustre of conquest, now darkened by the gloom of oppression; yours is bright with freedom. The old absorbed the world into its own centralized glory; yours protects your own nation from being absorbed, even by itself. The old was awful with unrestricted power; yours is glorious by having restricted it. At the view of the old, nations trembled; at the view of yours, humanity hopes. To the old, misfortune was introduced with fettered hands to kneel at triumphant conquerors' feet; to yours the triumph of introduction is granted to unfortunate exiles who are invited to the honour of a seat. And where Kings and Caesars never will be hailed for their power and wealth, there the persecuted chief of a downtrodden nation is welcomed as your great Republic's guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless, and poor. In the old, the terrible _voe victis!_ was the rule; in yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction to ambitious oppressors, and consolation to a vanquished just cause. And while from the old a conquered world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common federative interests of a territory larger than that old conquered world. There sat men boasting that their will was sovereign of the earth; here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge "the laws of nature and of nature's God," and to do what their sovereign, the People, wills. Sir, there is history in these contrasts. History of past ages and history of future centuries may be often recorded in small facts. The particulars to which the passion of living men clings, as if human fingers could arrest the wheel of Destiny, these particulars die away; it is the issue which makes history, and that issue is always coherent with its causes. There is a necessity of consequences wherever the necessity of position exists. Principles are the _alpha_: they must finish with _omega_, and they will. Thus history may be often told in a few words.