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 regime. 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 regime, 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
cooperation 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, cooperation, 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.