And so, with the deepest interest in the continued success of the Brazilian experiment in self-government, I am most deeply impressed with the honor you have done me. The encomiums which have been passed here upon my country are such that to know of them must in itself be an incentive to deserve them. I hope that every word which has been spoken here about that dear republic from which I come, may go to the knowledge of every citizen of the United States of America, and may lead him to feel that it is his duty to see that this good opinion of our sister republic is justified.
Senator Ruy Barbosa has justly interpreted the meaning of my visit. I come not merely as the messenger of friendship; I come as that, but not merely as that. When democratic institutions first found their place in the protests of the New World against a colonial government that bound us all hand and foot; when the plain people undertook to govern themselves without any Heaven-sent superior force to control them, how gloomy were the prognostications, how unfriendly were the wishes, how uncomplimentary were the expressions which, upon the other side of the Atlantic, greeted the new experiment--that we should have rule by the mob, that disorder and anarchy would ensue, that plain men were incapable and always would be incapable, of maintaining an orderly and peaceful government. Lo, how the scene has changed! The conception of man's capacity to govern himself, gaining year by year credit, belief, demonstration, in the new fields of virgin lands, north and south, has been carried back across the Atlantic until the old idea of a necessary sovereign is shaken to the base. No longer is it man's conception of government that it must be by a superior force, pressing down what is bad; but that the pressure shall be from beneath, with all the good impulses and capacities of human nature pressing upward what is good. I come here not only to hold out the right hand of friendship to you from my country, but also to assert in the most positive, the most salient way the solidarity of republican institutions in the New World, the similarity of results, the mutual confidence that is felt by my country in yours, and by yours in mine; to assert before all the world that the great experiment of free self-government is a success north and south, the whole New World over. From the realization of this fact--this certain and indisputable fact--that republican institutions are successful, will come that confidence which underlies wealth, the security of property that is the basis of our civilization, the certainty that the fruits of enterprise will be secure, which is the incentive to activity, the independence of the people from the hard stress of poverty--the independence that comes from ample means of support, and is a condition of growth and enjoyment in life. More than wealth, more than production, more than trade, more than any material prosperity, there will come with them learning, universal education, literature, arts, the charms and graces of life. I would think but little of my country if it had merely material wealth. I would think but little of my country if the conception of its people was that we were to live like the robber baron of the Middle Ages, who merely gathered into his castle for his own luxury the wealth that he had taken from the surrounding people.