Topic: George Washington’s Farewell Address

ClassBrain Visitor:

Please let our children see the total and correct farewell address of our first President.

Yale Law School has the complete farewell posted.

I am sure you want our children to know the entire speech even though you may have some personal or vested interests in not doing so.

The following missing paragraphs are critically important for our people to remember:

"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. "


ClassBrain Response:

We had not realized that this was an abridged copy of the speech. It was
retrieved directly from the US State Department site and there was no
notation of it being abridged. Unfortunately, the address is long enough
that it is too long for our page system. We have therefore included a
notation of the abridgement at the bottom of the document with a link to the
complete unabridged version.

http://www.classbrain.com/artteenst/publish/article_41.shtml

There were no personal or vested interests in showing the alternate version
of the document, and there is more missing from the speech than just the
parts notated by you. We do appreciate you pointing out that there was a
more complete version of the document.

Thank you
Cynthia Kirkeby

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