What does it say? It is only a portion of the whole message. This was a lead into the most important part of Washington's advice which was warning against small, radical parties, taking control of a section of the country to divide the people. Washington's main theme was the danger that political demagogues would manipulate sectional passions and the importance of subordinating regional interests to the preservation of the Union.

"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."

What Washington warned against came true and the Constitution suffered under the effects of "the chief of some prevailing faction". We now have a Constitution that is ruled by legislational law instead of the "people".

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David Upton