As Secretary of State Mr. Root was ex-officio chairman of the Governing Board of the Bureau of American Republics, now called the Pan American Union. As chairman, he took a very great interest in considering and arranging the program of the third conference which was to meet in Rio de Janeiro on July 23, 1906. Indeed, he was so deeply interested in the conference of the American republics upon the eve of the meeting of the Second Hague Peace Conference, that he decided to visit Rio de Janeiro during the meeting of the conference. The American republics welcomed this decision as soon as it was made known and urged him to visit them, and it was with great regret that Mr. Root found himself unable to visit all of the republics. He was made honorary president of the conference and in that capacity delivered the following address.
It is proper to state, in this connection, that all the American republics were invited to attend and to participate in the Second Hague Peace Conference and that the Conference was set for 1906. Mr. Root was unwilling that either conference should interfere with the other, and through his intervention with the European Powers the Second Hague Peace Conference was postponed to the summer of 1907, in order not to interfere with the Pan American Conference held at Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1906, and the participation of the American republics in that conference. Only three American republics were invited to the First Hague Peace Conference, namely, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. Through the efforts of the United States, and particularly through Mr. Root's efforts as Secretary of State, all of the American republics were invited to the Second Hague Peace Conference.
The noble passage in Mr. Root's address as honorary president of the conference, proclaiming the equality of American states, and quoted by President Roosevelt in his message to Congress, reproduced in the preface to this volume, was constantly referred to by Latin American delegates in the Hague Peace Conference, and was quoted by Mr. Ruy Barbosa, the Brazilian delegate, who added, "These words reverberated through the length and the breadth of our continent, as the American evangel of peace and of justice."[1]
Speech of His Excellency Joaquim Nabuco
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from the United States of Brazil to the United States of America, President of the Conference
You do not come here tonight as a stranger to take your place as an honorary president of this conference. You were the first to express a desire that the conference should meet this year; it was you who, in Washington, brought to a happy conclusion the difficult elaboration of its program and of its rules. Neither can we forget that at one time you expected to be one of us, a plan you abandoned in order that you might divide your time among all the republics that claimed the honor of your visit. The meeting of this conference is thus to a great extent your own work. In nothing else since you came to your high post have you taken a more direct and personal interest. You seem to divine in the spirit that animates you with regard to our continent the mark that your name will leave in history.
I believe that you and the conference understand each other fully. The periodical meeting of this body, exclusively composed of American nations, assuredly means that America forms a political system separate from that of Europe—a constellation with its own distinct orbit.
By aiming, however, at a common civilization and by trying to make of the space we occupy on the globe a vast neutral zone of peace, we are working for the benefit of the whole world. In this way we offer to the population, to the wealth, and to the genius of Europe a much wider and safer field of action in our hemisphere than if we formed a disunited continent, or if we belonged to the belligerent camps into which the Old World may become divided. One point specially will be of great interest for you, who so heartily desire the success of this work. The conference is convinced that its mission is not to force any nation belonging to it to do anything she would not be freely prepared to do upon her own initiative; we all recognize that its sole function is to impart our collective sanction to what has already become unanimous in the opinion of the whole continent.
This is the first time, sir, that an American Secretary of State officially visits a foreign nation, and we all feel happy that the first visit was to Latin America. You will find everywhere the same admiration for your great country, whose influence in the advance of moral culture, of political liberty, and of international law has begun already to counterbalance that of the rest of the world. Mingled with that admiration you will also find the sentiment that you could not rise without raising with you our whole continent; that in everything you achieve we shall have our share of progress.
There are few rolls of honor so brilliant in history as that of men who have occupied your high position. Among them any distinction on the ground of their merits would be fated to be unjust; a few names, however, that shine more vividly in history, such as those of Jefferson, Monroe, Webster, Clay, Seward, and Blaine—the latter the creator of these conferences—suffice to show abroad that the United States have always been as proud of the perfection of the mould in which their Secretaries of State have been cast and as zealous in this respect as they have been in the case of their Presidents. We fully appreciate the luster added to this conference by the part you take in it tonight. It is with sincere gratification that we welcome you. Here, you may be sure, you are surrounded by the respect of our whole continent for your great nation; for President Roosevelt, who has shown himself during his term of office, and will ever remain, whatever position he may choose to occupy in public life, one of the leaders of mankind; and for yourself, whose sound sense of justice and whose sincere interest in the welfare of all American nations reflect the noblest inspiration that animated the greatest of your predecessors.
This voyage of yours demonstrates practically to the whole world your good faith as a statesman and your broad sympathy as an American; it shows the conscientiousness and the care with which you wish to place before the President and the country the fundamental points of your national external policy.
You are now exploring political seas never navigated before, lands not yet revealed to the genius of your statesmen and toward which they were attracted, as we are all attracted one to another, by an irresistible continental gravitation. We feel certain, however, that at the end of your long journey you will feel that, in their ideals and in their hearts, the American republics form already a great political unit in the world.
Speech of the Secretary of State
Honorary President of the Conference
I beg you to believe that I highly appreciate and thank you for the honor you do me.
I bring from my country a special greeting to her elder sisters in the civilization of America.
Unlike as we are in many respects, we are alike in this, that we are all engaged under new conditions, and free from the traditional forms and limitations of the Old World in working out the same problem of popular self-government.
It is a difficult and laborious task for each of us. Not in one generation nor in one century can the effective control of a superior sovereign, so long deemed necessary to government, be rejected, and effective self-control by the governed be perfected in its place. The first fruits of democracy are many of them crude and unlovely; its mistakes are many, its partial failures many, its sins not few. Capacity for self-government does not come to man by nature. It is an art to be learned, and it is also an expression of character to be developed among all the thousands of men who exercise popular sovereignty.
To reach the goal toward which we are pressing forward, the governing multitude must first acquire knowledge that comes from universal education; wisdom that follows practical experience; personal independence and self-respect befitting men who acknowledge no superior; self-control to replace that external control which a democracy rejects; respect for law; obedience to the lawful expressions of the public will; consideration for the opinions and interests of others equally entitled to a voice in the state; loyalty to that abstract conception—one's country—as inspiring as that loyalty to personal sovereigns which has so illumined the pages of history; subordination of personal interests to the public good; love of justice and mercy, of liberty and order. All these we must seek by slow and patient effort; and of how many shortcomings in his own land and among his own people each one of us is conscious!
Yet no student of our times can fail to see that not America alone but the whole civilized world is swinging away from its old governmental moorings and intrusting the fate of its civilization to the capacity of the popular mass to govern. By this pathway mankind is to travel, whithersoever it leads. Upon the success of this our great undertaking the hope of humanity depends.
Nor can we fail to see that the world makes substantial progress toward more perfect popular self-government.
I believe it to be true that, viewed against the background of conditions a century, a generation, a decade ago, government in my own country has advanced, in the intelligent participation of the great mass of the people, in the fidelity and honesty with which they are represented, in respect for law, in obedience to the dictates of a sound morality, and in effectiveness and purity of administration.
Nowhere in the world has this progress been more marked than in Latin America. Out of the wrack of Indian fighting and race conflicts and civil wars, strong and stable governments have arisen. Peaceful succession in accord with the people's will has replaced the forcible seizure of power permitted by the people's indifference. Loyalty to country, its peace, its dignity, its honor, has risen above partisanship for individual leaders. The rule of law supersedes the rule of man. Property is protected and the fruits of enterprise are secure. Individual liberty is respected. Continuous public policies are followed; national faith is held sacred. Progress has not been equal everywhere, but there has been progress everywhere. The movement in the right direction is general. The right tendency is not exceptional; it is continental. The present affords just cause for satisfaction; the future is bright with hope.
It is not by national isolation that these results have been accomplished, or that this progress can be continued. No nation can live unto itself alone and continue to live. Each nation's growth is a part of the development of the race. There may be leaders and there may be laggards; but no nation can long continue very far in advance of the general progress of mankind, and no nation that is not doomed to extinction can remain very far behind. It is with nations as it is with individual men; intercourse, association, correction of egotism by the influence of others' judgment; broadening of views by the experience and thought of equals; acceptance of the moral standards of a community, the desire for whose good opinion lends a sanction to the rules of right conduct—these are the conditions of growth in civilization. A people whose minds are not open to the lessons of the world's progress, whose spirits are not stirred by the aspirations and the achievements of humanity struggling the world over for liberty and justice, must be left behind by civilization in its steady and beneficent advance.
To promote this mutual interchange and assistance between the American republics, engaged in the same great task, inspired by the same purpose, and professing the same principles, I understand to be the function of the American Conference now in session. There is not one of all our countries that cannot benefit the others; there is not one that cannot receive benefit from the others; there is not one that will not gain by the prosperity, the peace, the happiness of all.
According to your program, no great and impressive single thing is to be done by you; no political questions are to be discussed; no controversies are to be settled; no judgment is to be passed upon the conduct of any state, but many subjects are to be considered which afford the possibility of removing barriers to intercourse; of ascertaining for the common benefit what advances have been made by each nation in knowledge, in experience, in enterprise, in the solution of difficult questions of government, and in ethical standards; of perfecting our knowledge of each other; and of doing away with the misconceptions, the misunderstandings, and the resultant prejudices that are such fruitful sources of controversy.
And some subjects in the program invite discussion that may lead the American republics toward an agreement upon principles, the general practical application of which can come only in the future through long and patient effort. Some advances at least may be made here toward the complete rule of justice and peace among nations, in lieu of force and war.
The association of so many eminent men from all the republics, leaders of opinion in their own homes; the friendships that will arise among you; the habit of temperate and kindly discussion of matters of common interest; the ascertainment of common sympathies and aims; the dissipation of misunderstandings; the exhibition to all the American peoples of this peaceful and considerate method of conferring upon international questions—this alone, quite irrespective of the resolutions you may adopt and the conventions you may sign, will mark a substantial advance in the direction of international good understanding.
These beneficent results the Government and the people of the United States of America greatly desire.
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no territory except our own; for no sovereignty except sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede to every American republic. We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit; but our conception of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity and a common growth, that we may all become greater and stronger together.
Within a few months, for the first time, the recognized possessors of every foot of soil upon the American continents can be and I hope will be represented with the acknowledged rights of equal sovereign states in the great World Congress at The Hague. This will be the world's formal and final acceptance of the declaration that no part of the American continents is to be deemed subject to colonization. Let us pledge ourselves to aid each other in the full performance of the duty to humanity which that accepted declaration implies; so that in time the weakest and most unfortunate of our republics may come to march with equal step by the side of the stronger and more fortunate. Let us help each other to show that for all the races of men the liberty for which we have fought and labored is the twin sister of justice and peace. Let us unite in creating and maintaining and making effective an all-American public opinion, whose power shall influence international conduct and prevent international wrong, and narrow the causes of war, and forever preserve our free lands from the burden of such armaments as are massed behind the frontiers of Europe, and bring us ever nearer to the perfection of ordered liberty. So shall come security and prosperity, production and trade, wealth, learning, the arts, and happiness for us all.
Not in a single conference, nor by a single effort, can very much be done. You labor more for the future than for the present; but if the right impulse be given, if the right tendency be established, the work you do here will go on among all the millions of people in the American continents long after your final adjournment, long after your lives, with incalculable benefit to all our beloved countries, which may it please God to continue free and independent and happy for ages to come.
Speech of Mr. Mariano Cornejo
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the Republic of Peru to the Kingdom of Spain, Former President of the Chamber of Deputies, Delegate from Peru
[The President. There is before me a motion presented by the Peruvian delegation.
The motion was then read:
"The Peruvian delegation moves that the minutes of the grand session of today, signed by all the delegates, be presented to the Department of State at Washington as an expression of the great pleasure with which the Pan American Conference has received its honorary president, the Honorable Elihu Root."]
The delegation from Peru desires that there may remain a mark of this solemn session, in which all America has saluted as a link of union the eminent statesman who has honored us with his presence, and, in his person, the great American who, for the elevation of his ideas and for the nobleness of his sentiments, is the worthy chief magistrate of the powerful republic which serves as an example, as a stimulus, and a center of gravitation for the political and social systems of America.
Honorable Minister, your country sheds its light over all the countries of the continent, which in their turn, advancing at different rates of velocity, but in the same direction, along the line of progress, form in the landscape of American history a beautiful perspective of the future, reaching to a horizon where the real and the ideal are mingled, and on whose blue field the great nationality that fills all the present stands out in bold relief.
These congresses, gentlemen, are the symbol of that solidarity which, notwithstanding the ephemeral passions of men, constitutes, by the invincible force of circumstances, the essence of our continental system. They were conceived by the organizing genius of the statesmen of Washington, in order that the American sentiment of patriotism might be therein exalted, freeing it from that national egotism which may be justified in the difficult moments of the formation of states, but which would be today an impediment to the development of the American idea, destined to demonstrate that just as the democratic principle has been to combine liberty and order in the constitution of states, it will likewise combine the self-government of the nations and fraternity in the relations of the peoples.
Honorable Minister, your visit has given impulse to this undertaking. The ideas you have presented have not only defined the interests, but have also stirred in the soul of America all her memories, all her dreams, and all her ideals.
It is as if the centuries had awakened in their tombs to hail the dawn of a hope that fills them with new vigor and light.
It is the wish of Peru that this hope may never be extinguished in the heart of America, and that the illustrious delegates who will sign these minutes may remember that they are entering into a solemn engagement to strive for the cause of American solidarity.
Speech of Honorable A. J. Montague
Former Governor of Virginia, Delegate from the United States of America
If in disparagement of our modesty, yet in recognition of our gratitude, the delegates from the United States have just requested me to express our profound appreciation of the extraordinary courtesy you have extended to our country in the person of her distinguished and able Secretary of State, whose wise and exalted address we have all heard with delight and satisfaction.
However, the honors you have paid him, and which come so graciously from a polite and hospitable people, convey a deeper meaning, for in them we must see a gratifying evidence of that American solidarity which unites our republics in the common development of popular government, energized by liberty, illumined by intelligence, steadied by order, and sustained by virtue. The liberty of law, and the opportunity for duty, and the dignity of responsibility come to us by the very genius of our institutions. Therefore, in recognition of the fraternity which inspires the greatest tasks which have yet fallen to the lot of so many peoples, working together for a common end, we receive your compliment to our country, and for this purpose I have thus detained you to hear this imperfect expression of our thanks.
Speech of His Excellency Baron do Rio Branco
Minister for Foreign Affairs of the United States of Brazil
Honorary
President of the Conference
I have risen merely to make a statement which I am sure will be received with pleasure by this illustrious assembly.
His Excellency the President of the Republic, in remembrance of the visit paid by His Excellency President Roosevelt to this building in St. Louis, and in order to perpetuate the memory of the coming of the distinguished Secretary Elihu Root to this country, has resolved by a decree bearing today's date to give to this edifice in which the International Pan American Conference is now in session the name of Palacio Monroe.
[The Conference then adjourned.]
Speech of His Excellency Baron do Rio Branco
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Rio de Janeiro, July 28, 1906
The enthusiastic and cordial welcome you have received in Brazil must certainly have convinced you that this country is a true friend of yours.
This friendship is of long standing. It dates from the first days of our independence, which the Government of the United States was the first to recognize, as the Government of Brazil was the first to applaud the terms and spirit of the declarations contained in the famous message of President Monroe. Time has but increased, in the minds and hearts of successive generations of Brazilians, the sympathy and admiration which the founders of our nationality felt for the United States of America.
The manifestations of friendship for the United States which you have witnessed come from all the Brazilian people, and not from the official world alone, and it is our earnest desire that this friendship, which has never been disturbed in the past, may continue forever and grow constantly closer and stronger.
Gentlemen, I drink to the health of the distinguished Secretary of State of the United States of America, Mr. Elihu Root, who has so brilliantly and effectively aided President Roosevelt in the great work of the political rapprochement of the American nations.
I thank you again and still again for the generous hospitality which is making my reception in Brazil so charming.
Coming here as head of the department of foreign affairs of my country and seated at the table of the minister of foreign affairs of the great Republic of Brazil, where I am your guest, I am forcibly reminded of the change which, within the last few years, has taken place in the diplomacy of the world, leading to a modern diplomacy that consists of telling the truth, a result of the government of the people by the people, which is in our days taking the place of personal government by sovereigns. It is the people who make peace or war; their desires, their sentiments, affections, and prejudices are the great and important factors which diplomacy has to consult, which diplomats have to interpret, and which they have to obey. Modern diplomacy is frank, because modern democracies have no secrets; they endeavor not only to know the truth, but also to express it.
And in this way I have come here as your guest; not because the fertile or ingenious mind of some ruler has deemed it judicious or convenient, but because my visit naturally represents the friendship which the eighty million inhabitants of the great Republic of the North have for the twenty million people of Brazil; and it is a just interpretation of that friendship. The depth of sentiment which in me corresponds to your kind reception results from the knowledge I have that the cordiality which I find here represents in reality the friendship that Brazilians entertain for my dear country. Not in my personal name or as representative of an isolated individual, but in the name of all the people of my country and in the spirit of the great declaration mentioned by you, Mr. Minister, the declaration known by the name of Monroe, and which was the bulwark and safeguard of Latin America from the dawn of its independence, I raise my glass, certain that all present will unite with me in a toast to the progress, prosperity, and happiness of the Brazilian Republic.
Speech of Dr. James Darcy
The same deep and profound emotion which I, as a Brazilian and an American, feel in this hour is undoubtedly felt by all here on the floor—representatives of the nation, and identical with the nation itself. When the Chamber of Deputies sees the Secretary of State of the United States of America in the gallery it cannot go on with its regular work even for a minute longer. So great and extraordinary have been the demonstrations occasioned by the presence in our country of the eminent envoy of the great republic of the United States that it is necessary that the Chamber, in this hour unequaled in the whole life of the American Continent, manifest without delay its feelings of sympathy with the work for the closer rapprochement of the American nations.
In Scandinavia, the land of almost perpetual fogs and mists, there died not long ago an extraordinary man. Ibsen, by some called revolutionary, by others evolutionary, dreamed in all his works of a new day of peace and concord for all mankind. This dream did not exist in the poet's brain alone, for it has imbedded itself in the mind and heart of a great American politician—Elihu Root.
From the moment he set foot on Brazilian soil he has been received with loud acclamations of joy, in which all Brazilians have joined. The demonstration which the student-body of Brazil made a short time ago, which for enthusiasm and spontaneity of feeling has never been equaled, manifested our feeling toward Mr. Root.
In his speech at the third Conference of the American Republics, the statesman, the philosopher, the sociologist, the great humanitarian that Elihu Root is, opened up a new era for the countries of the continent of such an order that the old standard of morality has fallen to the ground in ruins. On the public buildings, on the fortresses and masts of war vessels, waves the same flag—a white flag, reminding the American people that a new epoch of fraternity has risen for them.
Nothing has ever done so much for peace as this visit of Elihu Root among us. It forms a spectacle that must mark an epoch in our national life. The Chamber of Deputies, interpreting the unanimous sentiment of the nation, from north to south, of old and young alike, has suggested that I offer a motion, which is already approved in advance, and make the request that Mr. Elihu Root be invited to take a seat on the floor of the Chamber, as a mark of homage in return for the honor he has done us in making a visit to this House.
The memory of this visit will live forever in our hearts. He who bestows all favors will undoubtedly reward those who have done so much for American peace and fraternity by setting them up as models for the whole world.
Reply of Mr. Root
I thank you sincerely for the flattering expressions which, through your able and happy spokesmen, you have made regarding myself. I thank you still more deeply for the expressions of friendship for my country. I beg you to permit me in my turn to make acknowledgment to you, the representatives of the people of Brazil—acknowledgment which I can make to the President of the Republic, which I can make personally to your distinguished and most able Secretary for Foreign Affairs, but which I wish to make on this public occasion to the people of Brazil. I wish to thank the Brazilian people for sending to my country a man so able and so successful in interpreting his people to us as my good friend Mr. Nabuco. I wish to thank the people of Brazil—its legislators, its educated men of literature and of science, its students in their generous and delightful enthusiasm, and its laboring people in their simple and honest appreciation—for the reception which they have given me, overwhelming in its hospitality and friendship; for the courtesy, the careful attention to every detail that could affect the comfort, the convenience, and the pleasure of myself and my family; for the abundant expressions of friendship which I have found in your streets and in your homes; for the bountiful repasts; for the clouds of beautiful flowers with which you have surrounded us; and, more than all, for the deep sense of sincerity in your friendship which has been carried to my heart. I wish to make this acknowledgment directly to you, the direct and immediate representatives of the people.
We, who in official life have our short day, are of little consequence. You and I, Mr. President, Baron Rio Branco, the President of the Republic himself—we are of little consequence. We come and go. We cannot alter the course of nations or the fate of mankind; but the people, the great mass of humanity, are moving up or down. They are marching on, keeping step with civilization and human progress; or they are lapsing back toward barbarism and darkness. The people today make peace and make war—not a sovereign, not the whim of an individual, not the ambition of a single man; but the sentiment, the friendship, the affection, the feelings of this great throbbing mass of humanity, determine peace or war, progress or retrogression. And coming to a self-governing people from a self-governing people, I would interpret my fellow-citizens—the great mass of plain people—to the great mass of the plain people of Brazil. No longer the aristocratic selfishness, which gathers into a few hands all the goods of life, rules mankind. Under our free republics our conception of human duty is to spread the goods of life as widely as possible; to bring the humblest and the weakest up into a better, a brighter, a happier existence; to lay deep the foundations of government, so that government shall be built up from below, rather than brought down from above. These are the conceptions in which we believe. True, our languages are different; true, we draw from our parent countries many different customs, different ways of acting and of thinking; but, after all, the great, substantial, underlying facts are the same, humanity is the same. We live, we learn, we labor, and we struggle up to a higher life the same—you of Brazil and we of the United States of the North. In the great struggle of humanity our interests are alike, and I hold out to you the hands of the American people, asking your help and offering you ours in this great struggle of humanity for a better, a nobler, and a happier life. You will make mistakes in your council, that is the lot of humanity; no government can be perfect—till the millennium comes; but year by year and generation by generation substantial advance toward more perfect government, more complete order, more exact justice, and more lofty conceptions of human duty will be made.
God be with you in your struggle as He has been with us. May your deliberations ever be ruled by patriotism, by unselfishness, by love of country, and by wisdom for the blessing of your whole people, and may universal prosperity and growth in wisdom and righteousness of all the American republics act and react throughout the continents of America for all time to come.
Speech of Senator Ruy Barbosa
In the Federal Senate of Brazil, at Rio de Janeiro, August 2, 1906
If your excellency will permit me, Mr. President, I will call your attention and that of the Senate to the fact that at this moment this House is honored by the presence of Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State of the United States.
For a week his stay among us has been spreading interest throughout the country and filling the capital with joy, causing excitement among the neighboring nations, and fixing the eyes of Europe on this obscure part of the world. The fact is that we are not only in the presence of an individual of great renown, who is one of the highest personages among contemporaneous statesmen, with a reputation which is dear to the western hemisphere, but we are experiencing an event of the most far-reaching international importance, in the sense in which this word corresponds to the common interests of the human race.
In the organization of the Government of the United States, the portfolio of Secretary of State constitutes a notably characteristic and peculiar feature. The Secretary is not merely a minister for foreign affairs, but is the guardian of the seals of state, the medium through whom the laws are promulgated, the depositary of the government archives, and the first assistant of the Chief Executive. Tradition has conferred upon him a dignity next to that of President, the law making him second in the order of succession to the presidency by vacancy of the office, while it has become the custom for the President to invite him to participate in the performance of his duties rather as a colleague and associate than as an adviser and servant. The triumphant candidate in a presidential election has at times called to this office his vanquished opponent, thus showing the homage paid by party spirit to the value of merit. Being popularly designated as head of the Cabinet, and granted the honors of precedence at diplomatic functions, his high political entity inscribes him, together with the head of the nation, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the chairmen of the two great financial committees of Congress, among the five or six personalities whose influence usually directs the Government of the United States.
But a true idea of this eminent position cannot be formed without some light on its history; for the line of Secretaries of State sparkles with the almost continuous luster of a long, luminous zone, in which irradiate the dazzling names of Jefferson, one of the patriarchs of independence in the foundation and organization of the United States, the philosopher, the writer, the statesman, the creator of parties, the systematizer of popular education, and the twice-elected successor of Washington; of Randolph, through whose initiative the stain produced by the word "slavery" was effaced from the provisional draft of the American Constitution; of Marshall, the most eminent jurist in the Republic, the oracle of the Constitution and the constructor of the Federal law; of Madison, the emulator of Hamilton in the editing of The Federalist; of Monroe, the asserter of the international doctrine of the independence of this continent; of John Quincy Adams, the pioneer of abolitionism in his radical condemnation of slavery; of Clay, the warm defender of the South American colonies in their struggle for emancipation; of Webster, the Demosthenes of the Union and of American liberty; of Seward, the rival for election of Lincoln, but who, being defeated by the latter, was invited by him to form part of his Cabinet; of Forsyth, Calhoun, Everett, Marcy, Evarts, Blaine, Bayard, and Hay. It is a path of stars, at the termination of which the administration of Mr. Elihu Root does not pale.
The annals of the United States could be traced by the route of this numerous constellation, whose radiant points sparkle around yon apex, to send forth their beams today from yon gallery, illumining the Brazilian Senate, transfiguring the scene of our ordinary deliberations, and realizing, with the pomp of the evocation of this glorious past, the spectacle of the visit of one nation to the other which the illustrious Secretary of State presented before our eyes when, a few days ago, he said in response to our eminent and worthy Minister for Foreign Relations, that his coming in the official capacity of his office to the land of the Cruzeiro constitutes a natural expression of the friendship which the eighty millions of inhabitants of the great Republic of the North feel toward the twenty million souls of the Republic of Brazil.
It is not, then, a diplomatic representation; it is not an embassy. It is the Government of the United States itself in person, in one of its predominant organs—an organ so exalted that it holds almost as high a position there in the national sentiment as the Presidency itself. For the first time is the North American Union visiting another part of the continent—Latin America. And this direct, personal and most solemn visit of one America to the other has now as its scene the Brazilian Senate, assuming, within the brief dimensions of this chamber, the magnificent proportions of a picture for which our nation constitutes the frame and the attentive circle of the nations the gallery.
For the modest importance of our nation, the event is of incomparable significance. None other can be likened to it in the history of our existence as a republic. After sixteen years of embarrassments, perils, and conflicts, the latter appears to be receiving its final consecration in this solemnity. It is the grand recognition of our democracy, the proclamation of the attainment of our majority as a republic. The stability of the government, its prestige, its honor and its vigor, could not have received a greater attestation before the world. Replying to the doubts, the negations, and the affronts with which our '89 was received, amidst passions at home and prejudices abroad, it signifies the irrevocable triumph of our revolution, closes forever the era of monarchical reassertions and opens up our future to order, confidence, and labor.
Almost all of us who compose this assembly, Mr. President, belong to that generation who were opening their eyes to public life, or were preparing for it by their higher studies, when the struggle was going on in the United States between slavery and freedom—that campaign of Titans which tore the entrails of America and shook the globe for many years.
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison had died, despairing of the extinction of slavery. This being openly proclaimed as the corner stone of the Confederacy, which gloried in having as its basis and in holding as a supreme truth the subjection by Providence of one race to the other, it looked as if the work of the patriarchs of 1787 was doomed to inevitable destruction against the black rock, thus consummating the Jeffersonian prophecy.
But Christian order prevailed against the chaos of servile interests, showing that the Constitution of the United States was not that "league with death" and that "compact with hell," as was boldly declared by Garrison upon the breaking out of the abolitionist reaction. And when the Union rose again, still clinging to liberty, on the ruins of slavery and dismemberment, we who had heard the earthquake, we who had witnessed the opening of the abyss, we who had seen swallowed up in it a million lives and an incalculable amount of wealth, and knew of the misfortunes and tears it had caused, were surprised by the divine dawn which finally appeared with the consoling victory of justice; and we felt the penetration of its rays here into the depths of the Brazilian conscience, realizing, with a holy horror of the tragedy of which we had just been the witnesses, that we were still a country of slaves.
Very soon, however, the law of September 28, 1874, immediately thereafter Brazilian abolitionism, and shortly thereafter the brilliant stroke of abolition in 1888, responded to the splendid American lesson by our purification from this stigma.
And if we adopted this lesson in 1889 and 1891, when we embraced the federal system and framed a republican constitution, it was not, as has been said, in obedience to the wishes, caprices, or predilections of theorists. Ever since the beginning of the past century, the liberal spirit among us had become imbued with Americanism through reading The Federalist. The idea of federation carried away the Brazilian Liberals in 1831. The condemnation of the monarchy in Brazil involved fundamentally that of administrative centralization and the single-headed form of government which were embodied in that régime. The United States gave us the first model, and up to that time had furnished us the only example of a republican form of government, extending over a territorial expanse such as only monarchies had previously shown themselves capable of governing. The dilemma was inevitable. We had either to adhere to the European solution, which is a constitutional monarchy, or else establish a republic on the American model.
We are still today as far from the perfect model which the United States present of a federal republic, as we were from a likeness to England under the parliamentary monarchy, although England was the example we followed in that régime, just as the United States is our example in our present government. But just as our backwardness in parliamentary customs was no cause for us to revert from a constitutional to an absolute monarchy, so the insufficiency of our republican customs constitutes no reason for abandoning the federal republic. There are no conditions more favorable for the political education of a nation than those presented by our constitutional mechanism, modeled after the American type; nor could a practical schooling be offered us for such education equal to that of an intimate approximation between us and our great model, our relations of all kinds with the United States being drawn closer and multiplied.
Between them and us there was interposed the stupid, sullen wall of prejudices and suspicions with which weakness naturally imagines to shelter and protect itself from force. But this wall is cracking, tottering, and beginning to crumble to ruins under the action of the soil and the atmosphere—under the influx of the sentiments awakened by this great movement of friendship on the part of the United States toward the other American nations.
In this attitude, in the transparent clearness of its intentions, in the eloquence of its language, and in the manifest frankness of its promises, there stands forth a broad image of truthfulness, which may be likened to those breezes in the sky on bright and sunny days which clear the horizon, cause the azure of the firmament to pervade our souls, and communicate the energy of life to our lungs. May God sustain the strong spirit of magnanimity, which is as advantageous to themselves as to the weak; and may He illumine the minds of the weak with an understanding of a situation which, mutually comprehended and maintained with firmness and honesty, will be productive of incalculable benefits for both parties!
The United States would already, long ago, have exhausted the admiration of the universe by the constant marvels of their greatness, if they were not continually surpassing themselves.
I do not allude to their wonderful fecundity, which in a hundred years has raised their population from five to eighty millions of souls. I do not speak of the greatness of their expansion, which has almost quintupled their territorial area in one century; I do not refer to the greatness of their military prowess, which has never yet met a conqueror either by land or sea. Neither am I occupying myself with the greatness of their opulence, which is tending to transfer from London to New York the center of capital and the money market of the world. I am thinking only of their benefits to democracy, to right, and to civilization.
Their fundamental principles as colonies were based on religious freedom. Their first charters embodied the essence of liberty in the British constitution. Their Federal Constitution is considered by the best judges as the highest product of political genius extant among mankind. The five years of their civil war constituted a most tremendous sacrifice, made by the superhuman heroism of a nation in the higher interests of humanity, for the principle of human freedom. Their international influence is frequently exerted in the great causes of Christianity and civilization, first struggling as they did against piracy in the Mediterranean; then opening the doors of Japan to the commerce of the world in the Pacific, or fighting for the Armenians against Ottoman despotism, or intervening in behalf of the Jews against the tyranny of the Muscovite; here sympathizing with South America against Spain, with Greece against Turkey, and with Hungary against Austria; there promoting that memorable peace between the Russians and Japanese at Portsmouth, which terminated one of the most horrible hecatombs of peoples on record in the history of warfare. The methods and rules of their teaching, the inspiration of their inventors, the penetrating nature of their institutions, the reproductive influence of their example, the contagious activity of their doctrines, the active proselytism of their reforms, the irresistible fascination of their originality, the exuberant florescence of their Christianity, all exert a profound influence upon European culture and on the morals, the politics, and the destinies of the world, and guide, improve, and transform the American nations.
Nothing, however, could be conceived which would more magnificently crown this miraculous career and assure forever to that nation the title, par excellence, of the civilizer among nations, serving the interests of its own prosperity as well as ours by a sincere, effective, and tenacious adherence to the doctrine announced by Mr. Root, namely the doctrine of mutual respect and friendship, of progressive coöperation among the American States, large or small, weak or strong; abandoning foolish race prejudices and admitting the superior power of imitation, science, and modern inventions, which are the moral factors in the development of peoples; and recognizing the natural truth that the growing evolution of the human race must embrace in its orbit of light all the civilized nations on this and the other continents.
Everything in the visit of Mr. Root, everything in his words, in his acts, in the impressions left among us by his person, everything speaks to us with absolute sincerity and resolute mind of devotion to this auspicious program. Our eminent guest has seen how Brazil receives the living message of the people of the United States; and, when he returns, a faithful witness of our civilization, which is so little known, so ill-treated, and so calumniated abroad, he will in all probability carry with him a conviction of having found in this disliked South America, between the Oyapoc and the Plata, the Atlantic and the Andes, a non-indigenous, although new sister of the United States, in which the opinion of public men and popular sentiment have but one ambition in regard to the policy now inaugurated—that it may become rooted for centuries and that it may shelter our future under its branches.
I wished, gentlemen—and all the members of this Senate wished—that Mr. Root might hear from the mouth of the man of experience, authority, and austere demeanor who is to preside over us, the most eloquent and highest of these expressions of good wishes.
For this purpose I move that the Senate do now resolve itself into a committee of the whole, and that the Secretary of State of the United States be invited to take the post of honor in this assembly. In this manner the proceedings of the Brazilian Senate and its traditions will preserve the memory of this date forever. For it is not one of those dates which flash and vanish into the past like falling meteors, but it is of those which seek the future by luminously furrowing the horizon of posterity like ascending stars.
And if the future is to be a substitution of right in place of might, of arbitration in place of war, of congresses in place of armies, of harmony, coöperation, and solidarity among the American peoples, in place of hostile rivalries, we may, on seeing seated here today at the right of our President, the Secretary of State of the United States, affirm to him, as Henry Clay did on the reception of Lafayette, with a different intention but just as truthfully, that he is seated in the midst of posterity.