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…

Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies…

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot…

Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great & powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice & humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace & amity towards other nations.

19th September, 1796…

George Washington