Excerpt from President George Washington's Farewell Address (1796)

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To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of constitution of government better calculated than your former for intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, free in its principles, in the distribution of its , uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a for its own amendment, has a just claim to confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of political systems is the right of the people to and to alter their constitutions of government. But the which at any time exists, till changed by an and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly 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.