President George Washington’s Farewell Address - 1796 (abridged)

Friends and Fellow Citizens:

The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United

States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in

designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper,

especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now

apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those

out of whom a choice is to be made…Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your

welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that

solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to

recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no

inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your

felicity as a people.

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for

it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home,

your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize.

But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will

be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is

the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will

be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite

moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your

collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable

attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your

political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing

whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly

frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the

rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those

entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional

spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The

spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to

create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power,

and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the

truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by

dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the

public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern;

some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to

institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional

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