reaction of that policy on France subjected it. For twenty years we
struggled in vain to accomplish this, and at last drifted into war.

The avoidance of entangling alliances, the characteristic feature of the
foreign policy of Washington, sprang from this condition of things. But
the entangling alliances which then existed were engagements made with
France as a part of the general contract under which aid was furnished
to us for the achievement of our independence. France was willing to
waive the letter of the obligation as to her West India possessions, but
demanded in its stead privileges in our ports which the Administration
was unwilling to concede. To make its refusal acceptable to a public
which sympathized with France, the Cabinet of General Washington
exaggerated the principle into a theory tending to national isolation.

The public measures designed to maintain unimpaired the domestic
sovereignty and the international neutrality of the United States
were independent of this policy, though apparently incidental to it.
The municipal laws enacted by Congress then and since have been but
declarations of the law of nations. They are essential to the
preservation of our national dignity and honor; they have for their
object to repress and punish all enterprises of private war, one of the
last relics of mediaeval barbarism; and they have descended to us from
the fathers of the Republic, supported and enforced by every succeeding
President of the United States.

The foreign policy of these early days was not a narrow one. During
this period we secured the evacuation by Great Britain of the country
wrongfully occupied by her on the Lakes; we acquired Louisiana; we
measured forces on the sea with France, and on the land and sea with
England; we set the example of resisting and chastising the piracies of