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WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS
[Editor's Note: This farewell address of Washington justly ranks as one
of the great American classics. It was delivered to the American people in 1797
upon the completion of his second term as President. His declination to accept
a third term has become one of the unwritten canons of American law which no
succeeding President has dared to attempt to violate. The [address contains
so much of the wisdom of warning and prophecy that it has ever stood as a guidebook for American statesmanship. Owing to the limitations of the present
volume only extracts can be presented here.]
A solicitude for your welfare, which can not 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. These will be offered
to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the
disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have
no personal motives to bias his counsel.
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 tranquillity
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