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Washington's
Farewell Address
George
Washington
1796
Friends and
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.
I beg you, at the same
time, to do me the justice to be assured that this
resolution has not been taken without a strict
regard to all the considerations appertaining to the
relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his
country; and that in withdrawing the tender of
service, which silence in my situation might imply,
I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your
future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect
for your past kindness, but am supported by a full
conviction that the step is compatible with both.
The acceptance of, and
continuance hitherto in, the office to which your
suffrages have twice called me have been a uniform
sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and
to a deference for what appeared to be your desire.
I constantly hoped that it would have been much
earlier in my power, consistently with motives which
I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that
retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn.
The strength of my inclination to do this, previous
to the last election, had even led to the
preparation of an address to declare it to you; but
mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical
posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the
unanimous advice of persons entitled to my
confidence, impelled me to abandon the idea.
I rejoice that the state of
your concerns, external as well as internal, no
longer renders the pursuit of inclination
incompatible with the sentiment of duty or
propriety, and am persuaded, whatever partiality may
be retained for my services, that, in the present
circumstances of our country, you will not
disapprove my determination to retire.
The impressions with which
I first undertook the arduous trust were explained
on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this
trust, I will only say that I have, with good
intentions, contributed towards the organization and
administration of the government the best exertions
of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not
unconscious in the outset of the inferiority of my
qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps
still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened
the motives to diffidence of myself; and every day
the increasing weight of years admonishes me more
and more that the shade of retirement is as
necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied
that if any circumstances have given peculiar value
to my services, they were temporary, I have the
consolation to believe that, while choice and
prudence invite me to quit the political scene,
patriotism does not forbid it.
In looking forward to the
moment which is intended to terminate the career of
my public life, my feelings do not permit me to
suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of
gratitude which I owe to my beloved country for the
many honors it has conferred upon me; still more for
the steadfast confidence with which it has supported
me; and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed
of manifesting my inviolable attachment, by services
faithful and persevering, though in usefulness
unequal to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our
country from these services, let it always be
remembered to your praise, and as an instructive
example in our annals, that under circumstances in
which the passions, agitated in every direction,
were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes
dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging,
in situations in which not unfrequently want of
success has countenanced the spirit of criticism,
the constancy of your support was the essential prop
of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by
which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with
this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as
a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven
may continue to you the choicest tokens of its
beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection
may be perpetual; that the free Constitution, which
is the work of your hands, may be sacredly
maintained; that its administration in every
department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue;
that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these
States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made
complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent
a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the
glory of recommending it to the applause, the
affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet
a stranger to it.
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. 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 motive to bias his
counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to
it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a
former and not dissimilar occasion.
Interwoven as is the love
of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no
recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or
confirm the attachment.
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.
For this you have every
inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by
birth or choice, of a common country, that country
has a right to concentrate your affections. The name
of American, which belongs to you in your national
capacity, must always exalt the just pride of
patriotism more than any appellation derived from
local discriminations. With slight shades of
difference, you have the same religion, manners,
habits, and political principles. You have in a
common cause fought and triumphed together; the
independence and liberty you possess are the work of
joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers,
sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations,
however powerfully they address themselves to your
sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which
apply more immediately to your interest. Here every
portion of our country finds the most commanding
motives for carefully guarding and preserving the
union of the whole.
The North, in an
unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected
by the equal laws of a common government, finds in
the productions of the latter great additional
resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and
precious materials of manufacturing industry. The
South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the
agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and
its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own
channels the seamen of the North, it finds its
particular navigation invigorated; and, while it
contributes, in different ways, to nourish and
increase the general mass of the national
navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a
maritime strength, to which itself is unequally
adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the
West, already finds, and in the progressive
improvement of interior communications by land and
water, will more and more find a valuable vent for
the commodities which it brings from abroad, or
manufactures at home. The West derives from the East
supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and,
what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it
must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of
indispensable outlets for its own productions to the
weight, influence, and the future maritime strength
of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an
indissoluble community of interest as one nation.
Any other tenure by which the West can hold this
essential advantage, whether derived from its own
separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural
connection with any foreign power, must be
intrinsically precarious.
While, then, every part of
our country thus feels an immediate and particular
interest in union, all the parts combined cannot
fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts
greater strength, greater resource, proportionally
greater security from external danger, a less
frequent interruption of their peace by foreign
nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they
must derive from union an exemption from those
broils and wars between themselves, which so
frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied
together by the same governments, which their own
rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce,
but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments,
and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence,
likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those
overgrown military establishments which, under any
form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and
which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to
republican liberty. In this sense it is that your
union ought to be considered as a main prop of your
liberty, and that the love of the one ought to
endear to you the preservation of the other.
These considerations speak
a persuasive language to every reflecting and
virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the
Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is
there a doubt whether a common government can
embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it.
To listen to mere speculation in such a case were
criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper
organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency
of governments for the respective subdivisions, will
afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well
worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful
and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of
our country, while experience shall not have
demonstrated its impracticability, there will always
be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in
any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.
In contemplating the causes
which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of
serious concern that any ground should have been
furnished for characterizing parties by geographical
discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and
Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite
a belief that there is a real difference of local
interests and views. One of the expedients of party
to acquire influence within particular districts is
to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other
districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much
against the jealousies and heart burnings which
spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to
render alien to each other those who ought to be
bound together by fraternal affection. The
inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a
useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the
negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous
ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with
Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that
event, throughout the United States, a decisive
proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated
among them of a policy in the General Government and
in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests
in regard to the Mississippi; they have been
witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that
with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which
secure to them everything they could desire, in
respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming
their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to
rely for the preservation of these advantages on the
Union by which they were procured ? Will they not
henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there
are, who would sever them from their brethren and
connect them with aliens?
To the efficacy and
permanency of your Union, a government for the whole
is indispensable. No alliance, however strict,
between the parts can be an adequate substitute;
they must inevitably experience the infractions and
interruptions which all alliances in all times have
experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you
have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption
of a constitution of government better calculated
than your former for an intimate union, and for the
efficacious management of your common concerns. This
government, the offspring of our own choice,
uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full
investigation and mature deliberation, completely
free in its principles, in the distribution of its
powers, uniting security with energy, and containing
within itself a provision for its own amendment, has
a just claim to your confidence and your support.
Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws,
acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by
the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of
our political systems is the right of the people to
make and to alter their constitutions of government.
But the Constitution which at any time exists, till
changed by an explicit and authentic act of the
whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. 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.
All obstructions to the
execution of the laws, all combinations and
associations, under whatever plausible character,
with the real design to direct, control, counteract,
or awe the regular deliberation and action of the
constituted authorities, are destructive of this
fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They
serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial
and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the
delegated will of the nation the will of a party,
often a small but artful and enterprising minority
of the community; and, according to the alternate
triumphs of different parties, to make the public
administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and
incongruous projects of faction, rather than the
organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by
common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
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. It is, indeed, little
else than a name, where the government is too feeble
to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine
each member of the society within the limits
prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the
secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of
person and property.
I have already intimated to
you the danger of parties in the State, with
particular reference to the founding of them on
geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more
comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn
manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of
party generally.
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.
The alternate domination of
one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of
revenge, natural to party dissension, which in
different ages and countries has perpetrated the
most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful
despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal
and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries
which result gradually incline the minds of men to
seek security and repose in the absolute power of an
individual; and sooner or later the chief of some
prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than
his competitors, turns this disposition to the
purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of
public liberty.
Without looking forward to
an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought
not to be entirely out of sight), the common and
continual mischief's of the spirit of party are
sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a
wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to
distract the public councils and enfeeble the public
administration. It agitates the community with
ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the
animosity of one part against another, foments
occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the
door to foreign influence and corruption, which
finds a facilitated access to the government itself
through the channels of party passions. Thus the
policy and the will of one country are subjected to
the policy and will of another.
There is an opinion that
parties in free countries are useful checks upon the
administration of the government and serve to keep
alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain
limits is probably true; and in governments of a
monarchical cast, patriotism may look with
indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of
party. But in those of the popular character, in
governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to
be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is
certain there will always be enough of that spirit
for every salutary purpose. And there being constant
danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of
public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire
not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance
to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead
of warming, it should consume.
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 powers be in any particular wrong,
let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which
the Constitution designates. But let there be no
change by usurpation; for though this, in one
instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the
customary weapon by which free governments are
destroyed. The precedent must always greatly
overbalance in permanent evil any partial or
transient benefit, which the use can at any time
yield.
Of all the dispositions and
habits which lead to political prosperity, religion
and morality are indispensable supports. In vain
would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who
should labor to subvert these great pillars of human
happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men
and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the
pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A
volume could not trace all their connections with
private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked:
Where is the security for property, for reputation,
for life, if the sense of religious obligation
desert the oaths which are the instruments of
investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with
caution indulge the supposition that morality can be
maintained without religion. Whatever may be
conceded to the influence of refined education on
minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience
both forbid us to expect that national morality can
prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true
that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of
popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with
more or less force to every species of free
government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can
look with indifference upon attempts to shake the
foundation of the fabric?
Promote then, as an object
of primary importance, institutions for the general
diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the
structure of a government gives force to public
opinion, it is essential that public opinion should
be enlightened.
As a very important source
of strength and security, cherish public credit. One
method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as
possible, avoiding occasions of expense by
cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely
disbursements to prepare for danger frequently
prevent much greater disbursements to repel it,
avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only
by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous
exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts
which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not
ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden
which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of
these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it
is necessary that public opinion should co-operate.
To facilitate to them the performance of their duty,
it is essential that you should practically bear in
mind that towards the payment of debts there must be
revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes;
that no taxes can be devised which are not more or
less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic
embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the
proper objects (which is always a choice of
difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a
candid construction of the conduct of the government
in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in
the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public
exigencies may at any time dictate.
Observe good faith and
justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and
harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this
conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not
equally enjoin it 7 It will be worthy of a free,
enlightened, and at no distant period, a great
nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too
novel example of a people always guided by an
exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that,
in the course of time and things, the fruits of such
a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages
which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ?
Can it be that Providence has not connected the
permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The
experiment, at least, is recommended by every
sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it
rendered impossible by its vices?
In the execution of such a
plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent,
inveterate antipathies against particular nations,
and passionate attachments for others, should be
excluded; and that, in place of them, just and
amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.
The nation which indulges towards another a habitual
hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a
slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its
affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it
astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in
one nation against another disposes each more
readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of
slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and
intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions
of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions,
obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The
nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment,
sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to
the best calculations of policy. The government
sometimes participates in the national propensity,
and adopts through passion what reason would reject;
at other times it makes the animosity of the nation
subservient to projects of hostility instigated by
pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious
motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the
liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate
attachment of one nation for another produces a
variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation,
facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common
interest in cases where no real common interest
exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the
other, betrays the former into a participation in
the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate
inducement or justification. It leads also to
concessions to the favorite nation of privileges
denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the
nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily
parting with what ought to have been retained, and
by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to
retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges
are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted,
or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the
favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice
the interests of their own country, without odium,
sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the
appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a
commendable deference for public opinion, or a
laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish
compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign
influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are
particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and
independent patriot. How many opportunities do they
afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice
the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to
influence or awe the public councils 7 Such an
attachment of a small or weak towards a great and
powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite
of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles
of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me,
fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought
to be constantly awake, since history and experience
prove that foreign influence is one of the most
baneful foes of republican government. But that
jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it
becomes the instrument of the very influence to be
avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive
partiality for one foreign nation and excessive
dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to
see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and
even second the arts of influence on the other. Real
patriots who may resist the intrigues of the
favorite are liable to become suspected and odious,
while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and
confidence of the people, to surrender their
interests.
The great rule of conduct
for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending
our commercial relations, to have with them as
little political connection as possible. So far as
we have already formed engagements, let them be
fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.
Europe has a set of primary interests which to us
have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must
be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of
which are essentially foreign to our concerns.
Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to
implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the
ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the
ordinary combinations and collisions of her
friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant
situation invites and enables us to pursue a
different course. If we remain one people under an
efficient government. the period is not far off when
we may defy material injury from external annoyance;
when we may take such an attitude as will cause the
neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be
scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations,
under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon
us, will not lightly hazard the giving us
provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our
interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages
of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to
stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our
destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle
our peace and prosperity in the toils of European
ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to
steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion
of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now
at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as
capable of patronizing infidelity to existing
engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to
public than to private affairs, that honesty is
always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let
those engagements be observed in their genuine
sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and
would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep
ourselves by suitable establishments on a
respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust
to temporary alliances for extraordinary
emergencies.
Harmony, liberal
intercourse with all nations, are recommended by
policy, humanity, and interest. But even our
commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial
hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors
or preferences; consulting the natural course of
things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means
the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing;
establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to
give trade a stable course, to define the rights of
our merchants, and to enable the government to
support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the
best that present circumstances and mutual opinion
will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from
time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and
circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in
view that it is folly in one nation to look for
disinterested favors from another; that it must pay
with a portion of its independence for whatever it
may accept under that character; that, by such
acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of
having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet
of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving
more. There can be no greater error than to expect
or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.
It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which
a just pride ought to discard.
In offering to you, my
countrymen, these counsels of an old and
affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make
the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that
they will control the usual current of the passions,
or prevent our nation from running the course which
has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if
I may even flatter myself that they may be
productive of some partial benefit, some occasional
good; that they may now and then recur to moderate
the fury of party spirit, to warn against the
mischief's of foreign intrigue, to guard against the
impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will
be a full recompense for the solicitude for your
welfare, by which they have been dictated.
How far in the discharge of
my official duties I have been guided by the
principles which have been delineated, the public
records and other evidences of my conduct must
witness to you and to the world. To myself, the
assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at
least believed myself to be guided by them.
In relation to the still
subsisting war in Europe, my proclamation of the
twenty-second of April, I793, is the index of my
plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice, and by
that of your representatives in both houses of
Congress, the spirit of that measure has continually
governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter
or divert me from it.
After deliberate
examination, with the aid of the best lights I could
obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under
all the circumstances of the case, had a right to
take, and was bound in duty and interest to take, a
neutral position. Having taken it, I determined, as
far as should depend upon me, to maintain it, with
moderation, perseverance, and firmness.
The considerations which
respect the right to hold this con duct, it is not
necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only
observe that, according to my understanding of the
matter, that right, so far from being denied by any
of the belligerent powers, has been virtually
admitted by all.
The duty of holding a
neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything
more, from the obligation which justice and humanity
impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free
to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace
and amity towards other nations.
The inducements of interest
for observing that conduct will best be referred to
your own reflections and experience. With me a
predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time
to our country to settle and mature its yet recent
institutions, and to progress without interruption
to that degree of strength and consistency which is
necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command
of its own fortunes.
Though, in reviewing the
incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of
intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of
my defects not to think it probable that I may have
committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I
fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate
the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry
with me the hope that my country will never cease to
view them with indulgence; and that, after forty
five years of my life dedicated to its service with
an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities
will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon
be to the mansions of rest.
Relying on its kindness in
this as in other things, and actuated by that
fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a
man who views in it the native soil of himself and
his progenitors for several generations, I
anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in
which I promise myself to realize, without alloy,
the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my
fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws
under a free government, the ever-favorite object of
my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our
mutual cares, labors, and dangers.
Geo. Washington
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