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“Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party.…
“It exists under different shapes in all Governments…but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.—
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.— But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.— The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.—”
(
George Washington
,
Farewell Address
,
The Independent Chronicle
, September 17, 1796.)
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