It was, indeed, a notable utterance of pregnant and impressive thought which Mr. Root addressed to this important congress of the American Republics, and it well deserved the distinction that was accorded to it by the President of the United States, when he appended it to his Message to Congress the following December. A considerable part of the brief but richly filled address may fitly be quoted here: "I bring from my country," said the Secretary, "a special greeting to her elder sisters in the civilization of America. Unlike as we are in many respects, we are alike in this, that we are all engaged under new conditions, and free from the traditional forms and limitations of the Old World in working out the same problem of popular self-government. "It is a difficult and laborious task for each of us. Not in one generation nor in one century can the effective control of a superior sovereign, so long deemed necessary to government, be rejected and effective self-control by the governed be perfected in its place. The first fruits of democracy are many of them crude and unlovely; its mistakes are many, its partial failures many, its sins not few. Capacity for self-government does not come to man by nature. It is an art to be learned, and it is also an expression of character to be developed among all the thousands of men who exercise popular sovereignty. "To reach the goal toward which we are pressing forward, the governing multitude must first acquire knowledge that comes from universal education, wisdom that follows practical experience, personal independence and self-respect befitting men who acknowledge no superior, self-control to replace that external control which a democracy rejects, respect for law, obedience to the lawful expressions of the public will, consideration for the opinions and interests of others equally entitled to a voice in the state, loyalty to that abstract conception—one’s country—as inspiring as that loyalty to personal sovereigns which has so illumined the pages of history, subordination of personal interests to the public good, love of justice and mercy, of liberty and order. All these we must seek by slow and patient effort; and of how many shortcomings in his own land and among his own people each one of us is conscious! "Yet no student of our times can fail to see that not America alone but the whole civilized world is swinging away from its old governmental moorings and intrusting the fate of its civilization to the capacity of the popular mass to govern. By this pathway mankind is to travel, whithersoever it leads. Upon the success of this our great undertaking the hope of humanity depends. Nor can we fail to see that the world makes substantial progress towards more perfect popular self-government. …