Washington’s Farewell Address
537
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,
proportionably 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. ’Tis 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 endeavour to weaken its bands.
In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs
as a matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, North-