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