best contribution that your
training as American citizens, that the traditions of centuries of
American life enable you to give, toward the maintenance of law and
order, toward the promotion of all ideas that you have been taught in
your youth to consider sacred, toward holding up the hands of authority,
toward the inculcation of the sentiment of loyalty, toward the
perpetuity of the government which gives you security for your lives
and your property in your new home.

I have one prominent thought in meeting you today; it is, while you
continue to be good, loyal American citizens, you should be good and
loyal Mexican residents. I can no better voice the sentiment of all of
my countrymen here I know, and I can no better represent the feelings of
our friends who remain at home, than by asking you to rise and join me
in drinking to the long continuance of life, strength, and usefulness
for the man who, more than any other, or all others, has given you the
opportunities that you now enjoy, President Porfirio Diaz.

MEXICAN ACADEMY OF LEGISLATION AND JURISPRUDENCE

SPEECH OF LICENTIATE LUIS MENDEZ

PRESIDENT OF THE ACADEMY

At the Installation of Mr. Root as an Honorary Member, October 4, 1907

Honored Sir: Because of the office I am temporarily holding, I am given
the unexpected honor of placing in your hands the diploma that entitles
you to honorary membership in the Mexican Academy of Legislation and
Jurisprudence.

You have come to the country of snowy mountains and flowering valleys
which perfume our tropical breezes, preceded by the meritorious fame of
having preserved always, unblemished during the course of your fruitful
life, the reputation and profession of a lawyer, of having penetrated
the secrets of the juridical science and of consecrating today all your
energies and abilities to the service of your country.

By a happy coincidence, you will find engraved in this parchment as our
motto: "Professional Honor, Science, and Country"--the same great ends
that have consecrated your life. Never was the diploma bearing this
motto conferred upon a more meritorious or greater man.

In science, you have not been the selfish investigator nor in the
service of your country have you confined yourself to directing from
your place in the Cabinet the important matters of the foreign relations
of a world-power.

Knowing that the time has passed for studies merely speculative, and
that at the present day every sc