Washington’s Farewell Address
539
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 fashion, rather than the organ of consistent and
wholesome plans digested by common councils, and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above descriptions 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.—
Toward 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,