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 REMARKS OF THE BRAZILIAN AMBASSADOR. 
 MR. JOAQUIM NABUCO, AT THE FOURTEENTH 
 ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE LINCOLN REPUBLICAN 
 CLUB AND OF THE YOUNG MEN'S REPUBLICAN 
 CLUB OF GRAND RAPIDS. ON FEBRUARY 12TH. 1906 
 
 LINCOLN'S WORLD INFLUENCE 
 

 Gift 
 
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LINCOLN'S WORLD INFLUENCE. 
 
 Sir, GentIvEmen: 
 
 Your distinguished Representative, Mr. William Alden 
 Smith, did not deceive us with his description of your an- 
 nual Lincoln's feast. It is an intimate satisfaction for us all 
 to join in its celebration and I thank him for having 
 brought me here. The widest mark, however, of your kind- 
 ness would be not to notice in my speech the dropping of 
 any aitches. The Rom.an people used long ago to aspirate 
 that letter, but the Latin races found they could utter the 
 vowels with an economy of breath, and naturally gave way 
 to what is known in the Science of Language as the law of the 
 lesser exertion. This is a law, I am afraid, that does not 
 sound well in this center of ever-increasing activity and com- 
 petition, least of all on the present occasion, as Lincoln illus- 
 trates in History just the contrary law: that of the great- 
 est effort. 
 
 Lincoln's name represents many things, one of which is 
 the coming of the West to the front in American politics. 
 But that subject Mr. Smith must have reserved for him- 
 self or for someone very much near him. The toast he called 
 upon me to answer is Lincoln's World Influence. 
 
 I regret I can only give you features of that influence that 
 present themselves at a glance to the common spectator. 
 
 I will deal first with his dh-ect influence abroad. 
 
Before anything else I^incoln represents to the World the 
 spiritof national union against the spirit of local separatism, 
 the right and duty of nations to fight disintegration in their 
 midst. In that line of thought he embodies, secondly, the 
 spirit of national greatness, which he seems to have made 
 every^svhere the spirit of his Century, and which is as yet 
 a growing spirit. From it has sprung already after him 
 more than one great nation and it seems to be brooding more 
 than one great Empire from west to east. Thirdly, lyincoln's 
 name brings at once to every mind, as he stood for Monroe's 
 doctrine at its critical moment, the thought that but for 
 him, with the breaking of the American Union, our conti- 
 nental system would now be divided between itself and rent 
 perhaps in two different political poles. The fourth far- 
 reaching effect of Lincoln's own personality is the magic 
 of his name for all who have had, or who still have, to fight 
 anywhere against Slavery. 
 
 I can give testimony of that inspiration for the Brazilian 
 Abolitionists, and my friend, Senor Quesada although 
 he only knows it by tradition, can give the same testimony 
 for the Spanish and Hispano-American Abolitionists. Brazil 
 and Cu1)a owe, especially, to Lincoln that a new great Power 
 was not created in North America forty years ago, having 
 African Slavery for its fighting spirit and as the principle of 
 its national expansion. On the other hand, we, like the other 
 American countries, owe to him that he made the leading 
 country of our Continent a wholly free nation, settling in that 
 way definitely the true character of American civilization. 
 
These are the points I would at a glance indicate as Lin- 
 coln's direct, so to say, personal, influence beyond the bor- 
 ders of the United States. It is a deep one. As to his /;/- 
 ^/r^<:^ influence, present and prospective, in History, it seems 
 to me incalculable. 
 
 Thanks to him, you, the Americans, have no longer two 
 national allegiances, the State and the Union, two father- 
 lands, but only one, and that the larger of the two. You 
 do no longer contemplate the possibility of the greatest of 
 national bodies dissolving by the right of secession into 
 dozens or hundreds of corpuscles. Those who were imagin- 
 ing that, as in the Greek legend, the irreconcilable brothers 
 would fight until killing each other, saw instead the tragedy 
 end by the embrace of the twins of the Blue and the Gray. 
 
 The South, soon after the war was. over, was seen count- 
 ing anew the stars of the old flag to make sure that they 
 were all there. Such a union could never have been forced 
 upon Americans by conquest, and so the gigantic civil war 
 only showed to the World, as nothing else could have shown, 
 the indestructibility of your national cohesion. The uni- 
 versal certainty of that indestructibility which prevails since 
 Lincoln is Lincoln's work and Lincoln's greatest achieve- 
 ment. He settled, so to say forever, your national destiny, 
 he symbolizes your national good fortune, Lincoln's World 
 Influence and the United States' World Influence are one 
 and the same. 
 
 I will not attempt to measure such a mass of energy, 
 of wealth, of labor, in a word, of human power. Could 
 

 you estimate President Roosevelt's World power? Even if 
 you could, that would not be sufficient, you would have to 
 estimate a larger sphere yet: that of American civilization 
 in the present and in the future. "Add star upon star," 
 Lincoln once said, "until their light shall shine upon five 
 hundred millions of a free and happy people." That is the 
 limit he traced in his own imagination to the greatness of 
 your country, and those shall not be at all exaggerated pro- 
 portions for what you call his World Influence. 
 
 I return, therefore, untouched to my friend, Mr. William 
 Alden Smith, the great subject he gave me to treat before 
 you to-night. It is too large, too wide, for me. I am sorry 
 to disappoint you, yet I feel sure you will not complain of 
 myself, but of your distinguished Representative who 
 brought me here from so far, as for all failures in your 
 expectations he is your natural, your elected scapegoat. 
 
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