The Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence has intrusted me
with the most gratifying task of expressing in its name its good wishes
for your safe arrival in our midst, and of voicing the joy it
experiences at being afforded the opportunity of publicly testifying to
the high respect and esteem in which it holds the great statesman, the
eminent jurisconsult, and the illustrious orator who in his position as
Secretary of State of the United States of America is now amongst us,
the distinguished guest of the Mexican nation.
Had I taken into account solely my own merits, notably deficient,
especially when measured by the side of those possessed by the other
members composing our academy, I should have refused such a high
distinction. I thought, however, I could discern in its resolution the
marked purpose that its homage should reach your ears through the echoes
of a friend's voice, and so be all the more welcome to you. With this
reason, therefore, in mind, I did not hesitate to accept it. Nay, more;
this has made me think once and again that the abundant proofs of your
good-will--for which I shall ever remain indebted to you--the very base
and foundation of our friendship, were those which you earnestly desired
to convey to Mexico in the person of him who was then its representative
in Washington.
The Mexican people, from the very moment in which you set foot on their
soil, and our Government from the time it tendered you the invitation
that your visit to Latin America should have in Mexico its fitting end
and crowning point, have proved to you, in abundant measure, by
manifestations of every kind, that their earnest desire is that the ties
which have for so many years bound us to your country, united by common
interests and strengthened by common ideals, should every day grow
closer and closer. They have also applauded the constant zeal shown by
your Government in fostering relations more and more cordial with the
republics of America, so that, inspired by the same spirit and guided by
the same policy, they should make this western continent of ours the
arena of the peaceful struggle of human effort. Nor do we deny you the
enthusiastic and universal praise of which your labor as Secretary of
State of the United States of America is deserving, since the program of
your international policy, later incorporated by President Roosevelt
into his last message to Congress, found a sympathizing echo in every
Mexican heart; that program which you made known to the world when,
having the Pan American conference for your tribune and the whole of
America grouped around you for your audience, we were all welcomed on
the hospitable soil of the noble and heroic Brazilian people.
Nevertheless, the Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence,
while recognizing your merits as a statesman, has desired to confine
itself to honoring the lawyer who has brought fame and glory to the
American bar, the jurisconsult who has won the unstinted admiration of
all the nations ruled by democratic institutions, and the orator whose
eloquence takes us back to the times of the Latins, be his voice
resounding in the courts of justice, or heard in the academies and
universities, or pealing forth clear and inspired in the popular
tribune.
You, honored sir, we regard as the perfect type of the lawyer who has
known how to perform the sacred task commended to him by modern society.
The lawyer is a priest whose duty it is, in the bitter battles of life
waged by human conflicting interests, to fulfill a mission of peace and
harmony. He is indeed, the champion of homes when persecuted by human
cruelty; he who strengthens the bonds of love which maintain the family
union untainted, when the depravity of customs threatens its downfall.
In stretching out a helping hand to the toiler he is ever a master; in
carrying out an equitable distribution of fortunes made, an adviser; in
proclaiming the respect due to the law, an example and an authority in
maintaining its prestige in the social community. His knowledge should
be an arsenal from which to arm the weak and a shield with which to
protect the powerful; his voice should be beseeching in its pleading for
pardon from society for those who by their crimes undermine its
foundations, but inexorable in its demand when in the name of society he
calls for punishment. To the poor who strive to defend the bread earned
for their children, he is a stay; to the rich who worry over productive
investment for their fortunes, a guide; and if, in the errors committed
by both sides and which ever tend to separate them, he should be equity;
then to put an end to the struggles into which they will irreparably be
drawn, he must ever be justice itself.
And you have been all this in your exemplary life of lawyer; this is
what has won for you the love of the poor, the confidence of the rich,
and the respect of the whole of society; which has placed you in the
fore rank of the distinguished men of the American bar, from which only
the pressing need of serving the greater political interests of your
country could draw you.
Your important labors as a statesman and jurisconsult do not call forth
our admiration any the less.
The jurisconsult of our days is not only he who in the Roman Forum _ex
solio tanquam ex tripode_ solved the conflicts which arose from the
applying of the law; because now the part taken by the people in
governmental affairs and the ever-increasing necessities of democratic
life have widened his sphere of influence, and he has become to society
what the lawyer has been to the individual and the family. The
jurisconsult is a mentor of nations; in the midst of our eagerness to
achieve greater prosperity and in our constant wrestle as citizens to
form part of the public administration, he it is who points out the path
of our social and political life, and has to dictate the laws which
should conform to our customs as well as those which should be necessary
to determine its evolution. He it is who, standing in the prow, with
gaze fixed on the distant horizon, steers the ship through the paths
which guide nations to the haven of greater prosperity.
And you belong to the assembly of jurisconsults who are the glory and
pride of the American continent.
Still fresh in men's minds are the honors you reaped in Yale University
with the course of lectures you delivered on the part to be taken by
citizens in the government. Your lessons have taught what are the rights
to be exercised by citizens in nations ruled by democratic institutions
and what their duties in order that governments should be the true
representatives of the people's will.
But again, the academy deems it but just to accord all honor to the
great orator whose voice all America has been heeding with universal
approval for more than a year; heeding, because that voice has ever been
the expression of the lofty ideals which America has been pursuing from
the earliest days of her freedom and independence.
Nor is your eloquence the fruit of meditation and study; it savors not,
like that of Demosthenes, of the midnight oil. It is fresh and
spontaneous, such as ought to be at the command of men ever ready to
speak to the people of their rights and duties in democracies. It
abounds always in that cold reasoning and that inflexible logic which
alone can persuade and convince.
But your eloquence contains, besides, all the warmth, all the majesty,
and all the sparkle of the Latin eloquence.
Plutarch relates, in his life of Cicero, that when the great orator
thrilled the inhabitants of Rhodes with his speeches, Apollonius Molon,
after listening to him one day, showed no sign of admiration, but that
when Cicero had finished he said: "Cicero, I, no less than the others,
praise and admire thee; but I weep for the fate of Greece, for thou hast
taken to Rome the best that was left to Greece--wisdom and eloquence."
We in Latin America, less selfish than Apollonius Molon, do not weep;
rather do we cheer and reward the orator from whose lips we have heard
resound the accents of the Latin eloquence.
The Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence, on presenting you
today with the diploma which confers upon you the degree of honorary
member, has desired to make known to the whole country your undoubted
merits as lawyer, jurisconsult, and orator, and on this solemn occasion
to bestow upon you its highest possible distinction.
Welcome to our midst. May your visit to Mexico be fruitful in good
results to both countries; may it be, above all, one more tie to bind
the sincere and unshaken friendship which unites them both; and, since
it is the end of your triumphal journey to Latin America, may it add, in
your great career as a statesman, fresh fame to your labor and glory to
your illustrious name.