Tories

“ Men began to have some practical conception that the Tories thought it their duty to govern the people (for their good) as a disposable property; that the Whigs thought it their duty to govern as trustees of the nation, according to their own discretion; and that there were persons living, and effectually moving in the world of politics, who thought that the people ought to govern themselves through the House of Commons. ”

“ The monarchy of the Tories is more democratic than the Republic of the Whigs. It appeals with a keener sympathy to the passions of the millions; it studies their interest with a more comprehensive solicitude. Admitting for a moment that I have mistaken the genius of the English constitution, what chance, if our institutions be overthrown, is there of substituting in their stead a more popular polity? This hazard, both for their own happiness and the honour of their country, the English Radicals are bound to calculate nicely. ”

“ The present struggle is not between the people and the Tories, it is one against both Whig and Tory—it is between you, the Parliament, and the people; for you do not represent the nation, you have made yourselves a class against the nation. Some of you may be the nominees of dukes, earls, marquises, and barons for boroughs in which the voters are political serfs, and to such of you I declare that you are a dishonour to our country, a disgrace to our House of Commons. ”

“ The Tories, who have exhibited nothing but obstinacy and unreasonableness, and who thwarted the Waverers by every means they could devise, have reaped all the benefit of their efforts, and that without admitting that they were right or thanking them for bringing matters to this pass. They are triumphant, in spite of all they did to prevent their own triumph, and have had all the spiteful pleasure of abuse and obloquy, all the glory of consistency, and the satisfaction of pertinacity, with all the advantages that an opposite line of conduct promised to give them. ”

“ Another favouring influence not understood outside England was to be found in the character of the party he led. In his day the Tories, being the party of the property-holders, and having not to advance but to stand still, not to propose changes but to resist them, having bonds of interest as well as of sentiment to draw them close together, possessed a cohesion, a loyalty to their chiefs, a tenacious corporate spirit, far exceeding what was to be found among their adversaries, who were usually divided into a moderate or Whig and an advanced or Radical section. ”

“ If we are to fight England, we fight the Tories,—and the Tories with the more bitterness because we feel that they ought to be with us. I've heard ugly talk already of tar and feathers for some of our important men here. ”

“ The Tory damns the Whig, for maintaining a resistance, which he himself never fails to practice; and the Whig reproaches the Tory with slavish principles, yet calls him rebel if he do not practice them. The truth is, all men dread the power of oppression out of their own hands, and almost all men wish it irresistible when it is there.
We change sides every day, yet keep the same names for ever. I have known a man a staunch Whig for a year together, yet thought and called a Tory by all the Whigs, and by the Tories themselves. ”

“ The Tories had, during twelve months, been complaining that their share in the government of the districts in which they lived bore no proportion to their number, to their wealth, and to the consideration which they enjoyed in society. They now regained with great delight their former position in their shires. The Whigs raised a cry that the King was foully betrayed, and that he had been induced by evil counsellors to put the sword into the hands of men who, as soon as a favourable opportunity offered, would turn the edge against himself. ”

“ The Tories are dangerous innovators. Our political progress has consisted in setting aside "the leading subtleties which grew up from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth," and reverting "to the plain common sense of the eleventh or tenth, and of times far earlier." ”

“ But the Tories, who are of the people, know and exclaim that these institutions, which are not so much the work of the genius of man, but rather the inspired offspring of Time, are the tried guarantees of individual liberty, popular government, and Christian morality; that they are the only institutions which possess the virtue of stability, of stability even through all ages; that the harmonious fusion of classes and interests which they represent corresponds with and satisfies the highest aspirations either of peoples or of men ”

“ But the Toryism of men who only know they had a grandfather by inference, not by positive testimony; who inherited nothing but their bare limbs; who began their career as tradesmen or mechanics,—mechanics in divinity or law as well as in trade,—and get their bread by any of the useful and honourable callings of life—that such men, getting rich, or lifting their heads out of the obscurity they were once in, should become Tories, in a land, too, where institutions are founded on the idea of freedom and equity and natural justice—that is another thing. ”

“ Even now we are far nearer, upon all important points, to the Tories than we are to these Radical fellows who at present vote with us, but who in time will want to control us. The Tories have come much nearer to us, and we to them. ”

“ August 4th.—It is nearly a month ago that I wrote the above, and in the meantime the elections progressed in favour of the Tories, and ended by giving them a majority of above eighty. Nothing was left for the Whigs but to comfort themselves with reflexions upon the united state of their minority, and hopes of the disunion that would prevail among the Tories; and upon these considerations, and upon the distresses and embarrassment of the country, which they trust and believe will make Peel's Government very difficult, they build their sanguine expectations of being speedily restored to office. ”

“ The gravity with which such remedial measures as this were proposed shows how utterly the Tories had failed to understand their business. It is always the habit of a Tory to suppose that popular discontent is a matter of preaching. It is always preached up, and it can always be preached down. The people ask for bread, and the Tories offer them a dogma. The Government of 1819 was no wiser than its predecessors, and it applied itself with great diligence to convert the people by words from a disposition which arose directly out of a combination of low wages and high prices. ”

“ If people are frightened at the Tories, we'll turn round and frighten them. You know what a Tory is—one who wants to drive the workingman as he'd drive cattle. That's what a Tory is; and a Whig is no better, if he's like Garstin. A Whig wants to knock the Tory down and get the whip, that's all. But Transome's neither Whig nor Tory; he's the workingman's friend, the collier's friend, the friend of the honest navvy. And if he gets into Parliament, let me tell you it will be better for you. ”

“ In politics, we were harmonious—we were Tories to a man, and defied the Radicals of all classes, ranks, and conditions. We deplored the ruin of our country, and breathed a sigh over the depression of the agricultural interest. ”

“ We now hear daily of elections; and, in a list I saw yesterday of about twenty, there are seven or eight more Tories than in the last Parliament; so that I believe they need not fear a majority, with the help of those who will vote as the Court pleases. But I have been told that Mr. Harley himself would not let the Tories be too numerous, for fear they should be insolent, and kick against him; and for that reason they have kept several Whigs in employments, who expected to be turned out every day; as Sir John Holland the Comptroller, and many others. ”

“ Is not England, with spinning-jenny PEEL at the head of its affairs, in this precise predicament? England may live; but inactive, torpid; unfitted for all healthful exertion,—deprived of its grandest functions—paralyzed in its noblest strength. We have a Tory Cabinet, but where is the brain of statesmanship?
Now, however, there are no Tories. Oh, no! Sir ROBERT PEEL is a Conservative—LYNDHURST is a Conservative—all are Conservative. Toryism has sloughed its old skin, and rejoices in a new coat of many colours ”

“ As there [are] every where awful Tories enough, to distract the Minds of the People, would it not be wise for the Congress by a Publication of their own to set this important Intelligence in a clear Light before them, and fix in their Minds the first Impressions in favor of Truth? For I do assure you, it begins to be whisperd by the Tories & as soon as they dare to do it they will speak aloud, that this is but a french Finesse and that Britain is the only real Friend of America. ”

“ A system originally sound and good could well become corrupt and bad under a changed condition of affairs, and if Tories were pledged to resist any sort of change, bad or good—well, they at once placed themselves in a false position, and made their own extinction only a matter of time. He maintained that the true Tory aimed always for the best and soundest policy, the policy that would make England respected abroad and prosperous at home. ”

“ We say this would be but fair, because the Tories, with as little reason, have a thousand times demanded, "What good has the Reform Bill done?"—knowing, full well, that no benefit could possibly result from that measure until a Parliament, chosen under the new system, had been elected, and that, even then, the results could only be slowly developed. But the effects of the dominance of Toryism, in our city, come more rapidly. ”

“ During that Revolution, human beings in America, in conformity with their respective beliefs in the Tory or the American concept of the relation of human being to government, had been divided into what history knows as the Tories and the Americans. Many of the human beings, assembled in those conventions of ten or twelve years later, had been sincere Tories in the days of the Revolution. ”

“ Each party strove to control the House of Commons by getting its own friends elected to it, and thus to get itself into office. The Tories, who were also the ‘High Church’ men, hated, or pretended to hate, the war and the Duke of Marlborough. ”

“ The system pursued by the Tories, though for the time it was successful in keeping up a general dread of popular violence, and thus temporarily hushed the agitation for reform, was gradually alienating from Government all classes but the one immediately connected with it, and forcing the nation at large to look upon Government itself as its natural enemy, and to fix its hopes more and more upon some constitutional change. ”

“ The Tories showed no inclination to trust men whom they considered as their betrayers, and they resisted them as statesmen who had abused their power, and coalesced with their political antagonists, to force upon the country a measure contrary to its opinions, interests, and institutions. They resisted them, also, as politicians who, to effect their purpose had abandoned their tenets, betrayed and surprised their own confiding adherents, and introduced as a principle into the conduct of government, that everything was to be granted which was demanded by clamorous agitation. ”

“ The great body of the Tories, on the other hand, are thirsting for office: they are, or pretend to be, greatly alarmed at the Radical tendencies of the Government, but they are well aware that in the actual state of the House of Commons they have the power of keeping the Government in check and of defeating every Radical scheme while in opposition, but that it would be dangerous to attempt to turn them out and take their places. ”

“ It is not difficult to show for example, that the two great political parties in America represent only one English party, the middle-class Liberal party, [Pg 74] the party of industrialism and freedom. There are no Tories to represent the feudal system, and no Labor party. It is history, it is no mere ingenious gloss upon history, that the Tories, the party of the crown, of the high gentry and control, of mitigated property and an organic state, vanished from America at the Revolution. ”

“ The Tories, being men of property and precluded from all degree of Court favour since Queen Anne's time, lived upon their estates, never went to London but to attend Parliament, and that for a short time, while the Whigs surrounded the Court, governed the two Kingdoms, knew confidentially all that passed at home and abroad, were in the secret of everything, and provided for younger brothers, cousins, nephews and dependants, whose wits were sharpened by their advancement. ”

“ The horsemen seemed to have forgotten their wrath in their astonishment.
"Are you all Tories, too?" they found voice to demand.
"We're as good patriots as ever you be!" rejoined mine host, crisply. "But if we've got any Tories among us they're our own, and we'll see about 'em ourselves, our own way. Now clear out!" And he hit the nigh horse a smart slap on the rump, making him bound forward.
By this time the leader and spokesman of the twain had recovered his full head of anger. He had no quixotic notion of undertaking to discipline Second Westings village. ”

“ There is a natural tendency to reaction in English popular opinion, and a tendency to murmur against whichever party may be in power. This tendency must soon have told in favour of the Tories, with little effort on their own part ”