Similar
stipulations appear in the treaty of 1867 with Nicaragua, and of July,
1864, with Honduras. Those treaties (like the treaty of alliance made
with France in 1778 by Dr. Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee)
constitute _pro tanto_ a true protective alliance between the United
States and each of those Republics. Provisions of like effect appear
in the treaty of April 19, 1850, between Great Britain and the United
States.
Brazil, with her imperial semblance and constitutional reality, has
always held relations of amity with us, which have been fortified by
the opening of her great rivers to commerce. It needs only that, in
emulation of Russia and the United States, she should emancipate her
slaves to place her in more complete sympathy with the rest of America.
It will not be presumptuous, after the foregoing sketch, to say, with
entire consideration for the sovereignty and national pride of the
Spanish American Republics, that the United States, by the priority
of their independence, by the stability of their institutions, by the
regard of their people for the forms of law, by their resources as a
government, by their naval power, by their commercial enterprise, by the
attractions which they offer to European immigration, by the prodigious
internal development of their resources and wealth, and by the
intellectual life of their population, occupy of necessity a prominent
position on this continent, which they neither can nor should abdicate,
which entitles them to a leading voice, and which imposes upon them
duties of right and of honor regarding American questions, whether those
questions affect emancipated colonies or colonies still subject to
European dominion.
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