could have on our
Which sentence from George Washington's Farewell Address warns Americans against the negative impact political parties
country?
The very idea of he 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 mon will be enabled t subvert the power of the people and to
usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted hem 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 atjusted, its surest guardian. This spirit, unfortunately,
inseparable from our nature, having its root n 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 truly their worst enemy.