Just Sentiments and Washington’s “Farewell Address”

In nurturing “the just pride of patriotism,” Washington went on to call for “a jealousy of a free people.” “Jealous” is used six times. Three are negative in connotation and three are more positive. After calling for “a jealousy of a free people,” Washington writes: “that jealousy to be useful must be impartial.”

In “Three Modes of Patriotism,” Erik Matson endorses what he calls the patriotism of partnership. The spirit of this patriotism is captured in Adam Smith’s words about proper attitudes between England and France:

Alongside the virtuous patriotism of partnership are two less wholesome kinds of patriotism. One is what Matson calls “the patriotism of national jealousy.” “Jealousy” here has an invidious connotation. It signifies a patriotism apt to turn ugly.

Patriotism as national jealousy, Matson says, “stems from the belief that the good of the nation contends with the good of other nations.”² It is a patriotism of “place”. If another country rises in “place” or “wins,” our country must go down or lose. The patriotism of national jealousy tends toward zero-​sum: there is only one first place, so if the other country attains it, we do not. This patriotism, Matson says, inflames people “to support the extension of national power through military dominance.” Smith described this patriotism as a “ferocious” and “savage” patriotism.

Yet Washington used jealousy favorably with reference to “a free people.” Since Matson follows the lead of Smith, I wondered whether Smith and Washington are at odds on the sentiments of patriotism, jealousy, and pride. For modern readers, jealousy is understood as a vice, associated with positional insecurity and invidiousness.³

Is jealousy necessarily a vicious passion? Or is jealousy a passion that can assert itself both in vice and in virtue?

What Smith says about the word “pride” is helpful here. His chief discussion of pride treats it as the vice of overestimating one’s own merit or importance. But he notes that the words pride and proud “are sometimes taken in a good sense.”⁴ Smith himself sometimes uses pride in a good sense.⁵ Pride “is frequently attended with many respectable virtues; with truth, with integrity, with a high sense of honour, with cordial and steady friendship, with the most inflexible firmness and resolution.”⁶

But Smith’s analysis of pride, which is mixed with his analysis of vanity, is chiefly a call to reduce one’s pride. Focusing on pride as a vice, he writes:

Vanity differs from pride in that the proud man sincerely believes his overestimation of himself and wants others to estimate him as he does, whereas the vain man wants others to estimate him more highly than he estimates himself. Smith writes that “[t]he words vain and vanity are never taken in a good sense.”⁸ He points out, however, that there are redeeming facets of vanity, including how it may be part of a process of rising upward in virtue.⁹

Smith’s instruction about pride and vanity is oriented around the notion that perfect propriety and virtue would be to estimate oneself only as you deserve and to seek no more from others than what you deserve:

Smith says repeatedly that humans never arrive at perfection. But we can improve. Smith sees that passions such as pride—the continual solicitous impulse to estimate oneself highly—are necessarily part and parcel of upward improvement.

In examining Washington’s jealousy through a Smithian framework, it becomes evident that, like pride, jealousy too admits both vicious and virtuous expressions. Matson describes an unjust jealousy, which he deems incompatible with Smithian virtue. It implies the belief that the good of one’s nation must contend with the good of other nations. Holding this belief frequently impels such patriots to support military ascendancy over neighboring states, which motivates extensive systems of economic intervention, domestic and foreign. In this context, jealousy frequently busts through the proper bounds of justice.

Washington clearly denounces this mode of patriotism and endorses the contrary.

But Washington did not suppose that it would be easy to maintain good faith and justice toward all nations. He used “a jealousy of a free people” in his discussion of threats posed to American liberty by foreign influence.

While Matson highlights how the good of one’s own nation may invidiously contend with the good of others, Washington’s jealousy holds that the good of one nation shouldn’t contend with the good of other nations, but that it could. For this reason, Washington’s endorsement of jealousy is prudent, and to be employed defensively against a certain category of threat.

Smith, too, suggests the jealousy may be beneficial. In The Wealth of Nations, he writes of the common people of England being “so jealous of their liberty”¹³ and says: “Men of republican principles have been jealous of a standing army as dangerous to liberty”.¹⁴ Smith understood that virtue depends on passions.

Washingtonian jealousy appears as a reasonable, vigilant countermeasure to ward against the repercussions of favoritism, or the “passionate attachment of one nation for another,” which, Washington tells us “produces a variety of evils”¹⁵:

Because the relationship with a favored nation is deceptively forged on illusionary mutual interest, jealousy serves as the filter through which one is able to distinguish genuine American interests from agendas of the favored nation, sold as American interests. For Washington, a just American jealousy serves to protect the lives of citizens, along with their taxes. It prevents entanglement in foreign wars with enemies of the favored nation and preserves American wealth for the benefit of America’s own, rather than diverting it to the government of the favored nation. Because democracies naturally must contain the seeds of their own undoing, a “jealousy of a free people” also serves as a vetting mechanism for our elected officials and our fellow citizens.

Washington warns that favoritism incentivizes treason:

Thus, the patriotism of national jealousy is often “pretended patriotism”.¹⁸ Indeed, Washington writes: “Real patriots … are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests”.¹⁹

Washington understands that liberty is fragile and that the structures and status quos which protect liberty can be used to displace it. Washington says that public vigilance

Perhaps it could be said that a “jealousy of a free people” is the perpetual approach Americans must take to foreign “friendships” to ensure that nobody gets too cozy and sacrifices the nation’s independency. The nation must stand ready to say “no” to its alleged friend.

In a very Smithian manner, Washington deliberately calls for prudence and impartiality in his final use of “jealous”:

The object of Washington’s jealousy is not rival nations, but the operations of power within the polity. It is a restrained suspicion, within bounds, oriented toward the preservation of liberty. Properly understood, it is not invidiousness toward others but a protectiveness over one’s own constitutional order.

There is a word that is etymologically related to jealous and which, too, derives from the Latin term for an ardent will to defend one’s own. That word is zealous, and it also has both negative and positive connotations. When the purpose is good and means are just, zeal is praised. In the “Farewell Address,” Washington uses “zeal” four times, and they are all positive uses—three are declarations of his own zeal for the interests of Americans. But the words zealot and zealotry have a negative connotation, suggesting that the ardor busts through the proper bounds of justice. Zeal may be the vice of the fanatic, in whom a certain passion runs amok.

In the time of Smith and Washington, the Aristotelian notion of a virtue being situated between a vice of deficiency and a vice of excess was commonplace. Smith and Washington did not ask people to banish passion but rather to develop juster passions, properly operating on proper objects. Passions were to be cultivated to check other passions, troublesome passions, rather like James Madison’s hope that faction would check faction and Smith’s hope that church sect would check church sect.

Washington’s “Farewell Address” makes clear that he saw passions as part and parcel of our answering virtue’s call to upwardness. Smith too teaches that sentiment is central to virtue, if only because sentiment is integral to purpose. Smith writes of “the love of our country”:

Love is a sentiment that can motivate action. It can frequently be called a passion when it impels action. Sentiments that do not impel action are often called emotions. Thus, roughly, active sentiments are passions and passive sentiments are emotions.

Washington is arguably foremost among the Founding Fathers. He provided a guiding judgment throughout the entire Founding experience, from the end of the colonial period, through the violent struggle for independence, through the 1780s and the Constitutional moment, and through the 1790s and the first two presidential terms.

Washingtonian jealousy is not only compatible with but necessary for Smith’s approved mode of patriotism, which Matson calls the patriotism of partnership. Washington tells Americans: “Observe good faith and justice towards all nations.”²³ Washington’s patriotism of partnership commends us for loving our country and instructs us in how to keep the love true and just.