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Washington continued:

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion...

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle...

Morality is a necessary spring of popular government...Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation?"



Washington warned further:

"And of fatal tendency...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...

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 the themselves the reins of Government;

destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion..."

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Washington added:

"This leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism...

Disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an Individual...

(who) turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty...

The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism..."



Washington concluded:

"Let there be no change by usurpation...It is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

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