A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 1, part 1: George Washington
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 1, part 1: George Washington
Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government; Washington, George, 1732-1799
In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that
permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and
passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place
of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. The
nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual
fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to
its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its
duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes
each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight
causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental
or trifling occasions of dispute occur.
Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests.
The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to
war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy. The
government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts
through passion what reason would reject. At other times it makes the
animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility, instigated
by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace
often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.
So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces
a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the
illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common
interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other,
betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of
the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also
to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others,
which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions by
unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by
exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the
parties from whom equal privileges are withheld; and it gives to
ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the
favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their
own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding
with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable
deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good the
base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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