Washington's Farewell Address: Roles of Citizenship Paragraph 16

16 To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a Government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions, which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This Government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true Liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.

Here George Washington lays out the roles of citizenship.  He plainly states that the People of the United States have improved upon the former government (Articles of Confederation) with this new Constitutional Government.  The people themselves had thoughtfully developed and debated this Constitution.  They had put in provisions for its amendment, if so needed.  True liberty now, would be to follow its dictates.  Often people think freedom is complete freedom from rules.  However, this is not the case.  That is slavery to passion.  True liberty is designing a system that produces the end result you have in mind and then playing by the rules.  If the rules need to be amended, there must be an explicit set of rules to be followed to do so.  Any subjection of this rules is an act of tyranny.  Rules are to be followed and if need be, changed by proper means.  Thus these rules are "sacredly obligatory upon all."  It is the duty of citizens until that time to "obey the established Government."  How much more should a free people follow the rules they themselves have set up?  Some of you must be asking, "This from the leader of a rebellion against his own government?"  True, but a look at Washington's actions leading up to the rebellion is a man who worked tirelessly in the British Parliamentary system to effect change.  In the Declaration of Independence they in fact state what they had tried to reason with their British Brethen.  Washington was no ruffian, he worked within the Parliamentary system to effect change, but realized the system he was acting under no longer existed under the dictorial powers of the King.