546
Interpreting and Preserving the Constitution
Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a
respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances
for extraordinary emergencies.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by
policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should
hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive
favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing
and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing
nothing; establishing, with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a
stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the
government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best
that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view, that it
is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it
must pay with a portion of its dependence for whatever it may accept
under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the
condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no
greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to
nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride
ought to discard.
In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course, which has hitherto
marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they
may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that
they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to
warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for
the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.
How far in the discharge of my official duties I have been guided by
the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other
evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To my-