Empty Senate Again Hears Washington’s Final Speech

George Washington’s parting words, in which he urged careful use of government power, resounded through nearly empty Senate chambers Monday.

Freshman Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), elected to Congress 190 years after Washington’s speech was first published, returned early from a recess to deliver the speech that Washington wrote but never delivered.

However, his audience for the day’s only item of business was typically sparse, including only two of his Senate colleagues, William Proxmire (D-Wis.) and John C. Stennis (D-Miss.), who presided, plus a smattering of reporters and tourists.

Washington used his speech to tell the American people his reasons for resigning after two terms and to give the young nation some advice on unity, peace and prosperity. He warned against excessive partisanship, “overgrown military establishments,” excessive debt and against “habitual hatred or an habitual fondness” for any nation.

Washington talked also about the importance of morality and virtue in government, and McCain said after reading the speech that those passages are particularly relevant today.

“I don’t think he (Washington) would have been too pleased with the conduct of our elected as well as non-elected officials,” he said in reference to the Iran- contra affair.

McCain took 43 minutes to read the laboriously phrased 7,641-word address. The record since the annual reading began in 1896 was the lightning 39-minute delivery by then-Sen. Paula Hawkins (R-Fla.) in 1985 and Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah) in 1975.

Washington himself never delivered the speech. It was first published in the Philadelphia Daily American Advertiser on Sept. 19, 1796.