George Washington, in his Farewell Address, reminded Americans of the need to preserve the Founders’ system. He spoke of the “love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart” and warned of the “necessity of reciprocal checks of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian … against invasions by the others.” Of such checks and balances through the separation of powers be concluded, “To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them.”
Courtesy of the National Center for Constitutional Studies (www.nccs.net)