and Representatives of the present General Assembly, because it is your high privilege to celebrate its opening and dedicate it to wise and patriotic legislation. I congratulate the State because in her assembled sons she has representatives worthy of this distinguished honor and capable of drawing from these auspicious surroundings renewed inspiration for the momentous duties before them. I congratulate the commissioners, because through patient investigation, untiring energy, wise prevision and conservative expenditure, they have achieved the almost unprecedented success of completing a great public work within the original appropriation. Above all else, I congratulate the people because the whole enterprise is clean, creditable and above suspicion. From the first bill passed by the Legislature to the expenditure of the last dollar by the commissioners, there has been neither jobbery nor thought of corruption. From granite base to iron dome, every chiseled block and moulded brick, every metallic plate and marble slab is as free from official pollution as when they lay untouched by mortal hand, in original purity in the bosom of Mother Earth. Every stroke of hammer, of trowel or brush is a record of labor honestly expended and justly rewarded. Built upon the crowning hill of her capital city, whose transformation from desolation and ashes to life, thrift and beauty, so aptly symbolizes the State's resurrection, this proud structure will stand through the coming centuries a fit memorial of the indomitable will and recuperative energies of this people, and of the unswerving fidelity and incorruptible integrity of their chosen representatives.

While we dedicate to the State's service this new political temple, we erect within it no new altars to strange

political gods; we preach from its pulpits no strange political gospel, we prescribe for its service no new liturgy or strange political faith. We consecrate it to the old-time doctrines promulgated by the fathers and early prophets of the republic; recorded in the written word of the declaration and the constitution, and sanctioned by the political experience of a century. We engrave upon this tempie's cornerstone our ancestral canons—a perpetual union of coequal States: The Federal constitution the supreme law of the land; "the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor"; "the support of the State governments in all their rights as the surest bulwarks against anti-Republican tendencies"; the equality of all men before the law; burdens and benefits impartially imposed and fairly distributed; equal encouragement and exact justice under the laws, State and Federal, for every class of citizens and every branch of industry.

We hang upon the outer walls of this new fortress the old banners inscribed with the additional and ever-living tenets of a political faith which, strengthening with its experience, has ripened into assurance-hostility to all sectional and class legislation; hostility to all laws and systems of law which impose unnecessary burdens upon the whole people in order to bring to the few undue advantages and unjust enrichment-opposition not only to trusts and monopolies and their constant evils, but undying hostility to the discriminating, high protective system and the unjust and unequal taxation which encourage, increase and perpetuate these evils. We war not only against the evils themselves, but against the governmental partiality which makes these evils so less hurtful and gall

ing in this free government than under the aristocratic favoritism of monarchical Europe.

Let no governmental policies repugnant to the great principles of natural equity upon which the republic was founded ever find abettors within these consecrated walls. Let no unworthy or unjust action, legislative, judicial or executive, ever mar the bright record made in the construction of this capitol. Let the pure winds of heaven play around its dome and along its corridors, and the untarnished sunlight linger in its chambers without the possibility of defilement. And may its shining spires, pointing heavenward, be a perpetual invocation, calling from the skies no fiery avenging bolt, but the divine guidance for the counsellors of the State and heaven's boundless benedictions upon its people.-Governor John B. Gordon.

[Extract from an address delivered before the General Assembly on the formal acceptance of the capitol building from the hands of the commission.]

GEORGIA.

When the sun tired of shining on the despotism of the Old World, and weary of his long journey across the sea, approaches these western shores consecrated to human freedom, his first rays light up the tops of gnarled oaks bearded with moss that stand "like Druids of old with voices sad and prophetic," while they keep watch and guard over long stretches of white sandy beach where the waves break into murmurs and then roll back into the silence of the deep.

Rising just a little higher, his horizontal beams spread over lowlands far and wide, redolent with the perfume of flowers and lulled into infinite peace by the soft music of the soughing pines.

After arching with rainbows the glistening cascades of a thousand streams as they leap over the foothills of the Piedmont escarpment, he floods the rolling hills and valleys with his golden glory, and gilds the far-off peaks of the Blue Ridge with the touch of his "sov'reign kiss."

And then pausing for an instant in rapt admiration, he beholds smiling beneath him this imperial State of Georgia, stretching from the Savannah to the Chattahoochee, and sweeping from the mountains to the sea, rich in almost every product of field and forest and mine needful for the comfort and happiness of man.

More weary of wing than Noah's dove would be the bird sent out in search of a land more fair and bright.

Even the waste-places which the elements have cut into her steep hillsides do not shame her, but serve rather as an inspiration for the genius of her loving sons. No Grecian poet in his country's palmiest days ever sang more sweetly and grandly of Mount Olympus than did Sidney Lanier of these old red hills of Georgia. Listen to him:

"Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hoary Lear,
Whom the divine Cordelia of the year,

E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer-
King, but too poor for any man to own,
Discrowned, undaughtered and alone.
Yet shall the great God turn thy fate,

And bring thee back into thy monarch's state,
And majesty immaculate;

Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn,
A vision of great treasuries of corn,

Thou bearest in thy vasty sides forlorn,
For largess to some future bolder heart,
That manfully shall take thy part,
And tend thee and defend thee,

With antique sinew and with modern art."
Thank God for that Georgia poet.

But the people who inhabit this goodly land-what shall I say of them? Generous, hospitable and industrious, intellectual, high-minded, filled with love of country, holding still to simple faith in the Bible, reverencing and worshiping God. The men, independent, self-reliant, brave almost to a fault. The women, beautiful, faithful, loving and true. And both men and women clinging to the belief as part of their creed that

"If there be on this earthly sphere

A boon, an offering that heaven holds dear,

'Tis the last libation that liberty draws

From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause."

On this proud day let us all resolve to hold our motherland still closer to our hearts, and make her future glory the inspiring purpose of our lives.

We of to-day will not halt the march of progress by idle and useless sorrowing over the glories of a sun that has set. Rather with faces turned to the morning will we joyfully hail the glowing dawn of a brighter day. But in laying broad and deep the foundation of our new South -never, never will we, or can we, forget or neglect the old South of our fathers. If we should cast it away rest assured the future philosopher and historian will write it down in everlasting characters that the stone which the new builders rejected, the same should have been the head of the corner.