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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
As he prepared to leave office and active politics, George Washington offered the American people some advice based on a lifetime of thought and conviction.
“It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government…. Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” He went on to write in the same address that religion and morality were essential to national prosperity and to stability and happiness. Washington spoke as a gentleman, a republican it is true, but nevertheless a man schooled in a long tradition of courtesy.
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