should be one in union.  Beware of attacks, open or covert, upon the Constitution.  Beware of the baneful effects of party spirit and of the ruin to which its extremes must lead.  Do not encourage party spirit, but use every effort to mitigate and assuage it.  Keep the departments of government separate, promote education, cherish the public credit, avoid debt.  Observe justice and good faith toward all nations; have neither passionate hatreds nor passionate attachments to any; and be independent politically of all.  In one word, be a nation, be Americans, and be true to yourselves.”

His admonitions were received by the people at large with profound respect, and sank deep into the public mind.  As the generations have come and gone, the farewell address has grown dearer to the hearts of the people, and the children and the children’s children of those to whom it was addressed have turned to it in all times and known that there was no room for error in following its counsel.

Yet at the moment, notwithstanding the general sadness at Washington’s retirement and the deep regard for his last words of advice, the opposition was so thoroughly hostile that they seized on the address itself as a theme for renewed attack upon its author.  “His character,” said one Democrat, “can only be respectable while it is not known; he is arbitrary, avaricious, ostentatious; without skill as a soldier, he has crept into fame by the places he has held.  His financial measures burdened the many to enrich the few.  History will tear the pages devoted to his praise.  France and his country gave him fame, and they will take that fame away.”  “His glory has dissolved in mist,” said another writer, “and he has sunk from the high level of Solon or Lycurgus to the mean rank of a Dutch Stadtholder or a Venetian Doge.  Posterity will look in vain for any marks of wisdom in his administration.”

To thoughtful persons these observations are not without a curious interest, as showing that even the wisest of men may be in error.  The distinguished Democrat who uttered these remarks has been forgotten, and the page of history on which Washington’s name was inscribed is still untorn.  The passage of the address, however, which gave the most offense, as Mr. McMaster points out, was, as might have been expected from the colonial condition of our politics, that which declared it to be our true policy “to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”  This, it was held, simply meant that, having made a treaty with England, we were to be stopped from making one with France.  Another distinguished editor declared that the farewell address came from the meanest of motives; that the President knew he could not be reelected because the Republicans would have united to supersede him with Adams, who had the simplicity of a Republican, while Washington had the ostentation of an Eastern Pasha, and it was in order to save himself from this humiliation that he had cunningly resigned.