121. ADMINISTRATION, Foreign Policy.—
In the transaction of your foreign affairs,
we have endeavored to cultivate the
friendship of all nations, and especially of
those with which we have the most important
relations. We have done them justice on all
occasions, favored where favor was lawful,
and cherished mutual interests and intercourse
on fair and equal terms. We are
firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction,
that with nations, as with individuals,
our interests soundly calculated, will ever be
found inseparable from our moral duties;
and history bears witness to the fact, that a
just nation is taken on its word, when recourse
is had to armaments and wars to
bridle others.—
Second Inaugural Address. Washington ed. viii, 40.
Ford ed., viii, 343.
(1805)
