Jasper Banner, Volume 3, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1856 — Extracts from Washington’s Farewell Address. [ARTICLE]

Extracts from Washington’s Farewell Address.

“Here, perhaps, I ongbt to stop; but a solicitude for yonr wellfare, 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, and which appear to me all important to the penqanency of yonr felicity ns 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 saiety; 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, m 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 insiduously 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 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 upotl the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of the 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 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 ofjoint councils, and joint efforts, 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 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 tbe agency of the North, see* its agriculture grow, and its commerce expand. Turning, partly into its own channels, the seamen of the North, it finds itsfparticular navigation invigorated: and while it contributes, in different ways, to norish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maratime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted.

While then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in-Union, all the parties combined cannot fail to find, in the united mass of meanaand efforts, greater strength, greater resource, proportionally greater secu-

ritj from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace Jby foreign nations: and what is of inestimable valne, they must derive from nninn an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not’tied together by the same government; which their own rivalships 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 eonsidered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one onght to endear to you the preservation of the other. These considerations speak a perausive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance cf 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 snch 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 subdivision, will afford a nappy 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 cf 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 endeafor 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 bonnd together by fraternal affection. * * * ♦

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plansiblo character, with the real design to direct, control, coonteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constiututed authorities, are destructive of this fundamental tendency. They2*erte to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force, to put in place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration {the mirror of the ill-con-certed and incongruous projocts of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plus, digested common councils, and modified by mutual interest; However combinations and associations of the above description ®*y now and then answer popnlar ends, they are likely, in the coarse of timeana things, to become potent engines by which canning, ambitions and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the powerof the people, and to usurp for themselves me reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lined them to hnjuat dominion. Towards the preaervatioit of your government, and*the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that yonjipeedfly mscounten&nce irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but abo that you resist with cars toe spirit of innovation upon its principles, howspecious the pretext** O® B method of assanlt may be to effect, in the forint of toe Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and tons to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown.” ’ j , r? .