Select the correct text in the passage. Which sentence from George Washington's Farewell Address warns Americans against the negative impact political parties could have on our
country?
The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established
government.
However, combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time
and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people
and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion
Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily
discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles,
however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the
energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember
that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the
surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere
hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for
the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the
perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest
guardian. This spirit
, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under
different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest
rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
- George Washington
from "George Washington's Farewell Address"