establishments, on a
respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary
alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Harmony, and a 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 opinions
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 independence, 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 intrigues, 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 the world. To myself,
the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least believed
myself to