Whig (British politics)

“ The durability of the British constitution, its fitness for wear and tear, has been exemplified in the wonderful manner in which it has survived the rubs that from the hands of party it has experienced. This reflection naturally brings into our mind the terms Whig and Tory, into which politicians were divided, until modern statesmanship introduced us to a new class of principles, that may be called, concisely and comprehensively, the Conservative-Whig-Radical. ”

“ He was eminently true to the character of his countrymen. He discerned with a rare sagacity the lines of policy most suited to their genius and to their needs, and he had a sufficient ascendency in English politics to form its traditions, to give a character and a bias to its institutions. The Whig party, under his guidance, retained, though with diminished energy, its old love of civil and of religious liberty, but it lost its foreign sympathies, its tendency to extravagance, its military restlessness. The landed gentry, and in a great degree the Church, were reconciled to the new dynasty. ”

“ ELECTORS “awake, arise, or be for ever fallen.” Men of all shades of Politics, Whig and Tory, buckle on your armour, go hand in hand, beat back the foe that would rob you of your franchise. Shew your independence, let cowardice be distant. It is not a question between Whig and Tory that we have to decide, (Sandars is neither Whig or Tory,) but between Independence and Mental Slavery. ”

“ There is no firmness in a Whig ruler—there cannot be, if he would reconcile and command the confidence of all the various sects of his followers. Who was it that held with a firm and steady hand the helm of England, when all other Continental nations were submerged in ruin? A Conservative statesman. No Whig Minister could have succeeded then. The utmost firmness and steadiness in conducting the public business of this country were then required. No Whig Cabinet could have guided the fortunes of England then. ”

“ The Whig theory was the government of the people, for the people by existing privileged classes, that was practically, by the aristocracy. We now have evidence of the more definite formation, within the bounds of what we call Liberalism, of a party the individual members of which would have called themselves Whigs, and are some of them still regarded as characteristic leaders of that body, but who aimed at objects and would have adopted means which were distinctly beyond the Whig programme. ”

“ The leading principle of the Whigs is the dread of royal encroachment. It may thence, perhaps, be deduced that good and wise men would attach themselves either to the Whig or to the Tory party, according as there seemed to be the greater danger at that particular period from despotism or from democracy. The same person who would have been a Whig in 1712 would have been a Tory in 1830. For, on examination, it will be found that, in nearly all particulars, a modern Tory resembles a Whig of Queen Anne’s reign, and a Tory of Queen Anne’s reign a modern Whig. ”

“ I ought to say, by way of apology for him, that in his day it signified little or nothing whether Tory or Whig was in power. Politics had not become what they will one day become, a matter of life or death, dividing men with really private love and hate. ”

“ It has been a frequent subject of complaint against the Tory government, both before the Revolution of 1832, and on their return to power in 1841, that they were too liberal to their opponents, and forgetful of their friends, in the dispensing of the public patronage; and we have only to take up the Red Book, to see that this praise or imputation justly belongs to them. But no man alive ever heard of a Whig, during the ten years they were in power, being accused of giving any thing to a Tory. ”

“ To call a man a Whig was to compare him with the Presbyterian rebels of the west of Scotland. To call a man a Tory was to compare him with the Papist outlaws of Ireland. In fact, at this time the Whigs were maintainers of parliamentary power over the crown and of toleration for Dissenters, the Tories maintainers of the hereditary indefeasible rights of the wearer of the crown and of the refusal of toleration to Dissenters. ”

“ It united the Tories; it divided the Whigs. All England was deeply stirred. Nearly every important town offered to raise volunteer forces at its own expense. The Government soon had fifteen thousand men recruited at private cost. Help was offered so freely that the Whig, John Wilkes, actually introduced into Parliament a bill to prohibit gifts of money to the Crown since this voluntary 192 taxation gave the Crown money without the consent of Parliament. The British patriot, gentle as he might be towards America, fumed against France. ”

“ The Whigs of the eighteenth century would have rendered the House of Lords unchangeable; the Whigs of the nineteenth remodel the House of Commons.
I conclude here the first chapter of the ‘Spirit of Whiggism’-a little book which I hope may be easily read and easily remembered. The Whig party have always adopted popular cries. In one age it is Liberty, in another reform; at one period they sound the tocsin against popery, in another they ally themselves with papists. They have many cries, and various modes of conduct ”

“ The American Civil War had aroused their interest in politics, and the fortitude with which some of them had borne the sufferings of the time had done much to disarm opposition. Bright's agitation at last found a response, and in 1866 the Whig Government introduced a Reform Bill. The Ministry, deprived of Palmerston, collapsed before the Bill could be carried, and by a cynical sacrifice of the very Tory principles which had defeated the Whig Bill, the Tory Ministry of Lord Derby and Disraeli passed the Bill of 1867 into law. ”

“ The French Revolution made an end of that old distinction in which the Tory was known as the upholder of Crown-prerogative and the Whig as the supporter of a constitutional oligarchy of great families. It created that new political antagonism in which, whether under the names of Whig and Tory, or of Liberal and Conservative, two great parties have contended, one for a series of beneficial changes, the other for the preservation of the existing order. The convulsions of France and the dread of revolutionary agitation in England transformed both Pitt and the Whigs by whom he was opposed. ”

“ I have endeavoured in the last chapter to point out that the modern Whig view of the Revolution as a great conflict between two opposing schools of constitutional doctors, resulting in the victory of the more liberal one, is largely legendary; that the struggle between Whigs and Tories resolved itself almost entirely into a dispute of preferences as between two alternative candidates for the throne ”

“ Nobody can deny that it has given the Whig Government a great advantage over the Tories. Hitherto the Government have been working against the stream, inasmuch as they had the influence of the Crown running dead against them; the tide has now turned in their favour, and to a certain degree they will be able to convert the Tory principle to their own advantage. The object of the Whigs is to remain in office, to put down the Radicals and Radicalism, and go on gradually and safely reforming ”

“ The original principle of a Whig was, to be no farther for the interest of the crown, than the crown was for the interest of the people. A principle founded upon everlasting reason, and which the Tories have come into as often as temptations were taken out of their way; and a principle which the Whigs, whenever they have had temptations, have as vilely renounced in practice. No men upon earth have been more servile, crouching, and abandoned creatures of power than the Whigs sometimes have been ”

“ What is called in American politics a new departure has taken place in England since that time; the Radical party has come into existence with political principles and watchwords quite different even from those of the early Whigs. Some of the Whig houses, not many, have gone with the forward movement; some have remained behind, and so lapsed almost insensibly into the Tory quarter. But at the close of Queen Anne's reign all the great leading Whigs stood well together. They understood better than the Tories did the necessity of obtaining superior influence in the House of Commons. ”

“ In those days the House of Commons was chosen by a very small body of electors; now it is chosen by almost all the grown-up men in Great Britain. But the principle was the same then as now; a king who, perhaps, wanted to make a ‘Whig’ war or carry a ‘Whig’ law might suddenly find himself, after the election of a new Parliament, face to face with a ‘Tory’ House of Commons, and so he would have to dismiss his Whig ministers, take Tory ministers, and drop his ‘Whig’ war or his ‘Whig’ law. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have in that time pulled down thrones and churches, changed dynasties, abrogated and remodelled parliaments; they have disfranchised Scotland and confiscated Ireland. One may admire the vigour and consistency of the Whig party, and recognise in their career that unity of purpose that can only spring from a great principle; but the Whigs introduced sectarian religion, sectarian religion led to political exclusion, and political exclusion was soon accompanied by commercial restraint. ”

“ Although anxious to avoid anything like illiberality in estimating our opponents, we cannot conscientiously state it as our opinion that the bulk of the Radical party are actuated by pure patriotism. Even if it were otherwise, it is evident that they had ground for complaint; and we all know how soon action follows upon a sense of injury or neglect. Therefore, in the House of Commons, there was little enthusiasm displayed in favour of the Whig Cabinet by the ultra-liberal faction. ”

“ Whether they are called Independents, or Whigs, or men of the Left Centre, or Anti-revolutionaries, does not greatly matter. I prefer the Whig variety when the Whigs were at their best, that is, in the days of the Revolution of 1688, the days of Halifax and Somers. No doubt the Whigs, like every other party, became corrupted by too easy and too prolonged possession of power, for power, when it is too easily attained and too securely held, is a great corrupter. ”

“ The King had a keen dislike of party, and his ideal of government was a cabinet comprising of the best men of every faction to advise a ruler free to decide the final issue of every question. He had tried this scheme in England, equally honouring Whig and Tory, and taking his ministers from the rival ranks.
The plan had been an utter failure; each faction wanted the supreme control. The Whigs wanted the King to become their champion, and avenge them indiscriminately on every Tory; the Tories, who had always been opposed to William, refused to work with the Whigs ”

“ But for the resolute stand which they made against the Whig oligarchy—but for their wisdom in throwing themselves on the property of the nation to withstand its debasement, a domineering party would have become omnipotent, the people would have been irrecoverably plunged in the slough of corruption, and the liberties of England lost for ever, according to all former experience, in the firmly established despotism consequent on a successful revolution. ”

“ The electoral franchise was still limited to a small minority of the population. Britain was still ruled by her "wise men" of wealth and position. Meanwhile, however, just at the moment when dominant Whig influence in England carried through that step forward toward democratic institutions which Whigs had long lauded in America, the latter country had progressed to manhood suffrage, or as nearly all leading Englishmen, whether Whig or Tory, regarded it, had plunged into the rule of the mob. ”

“ The fact is—and the Whigs know it—that there is no such a thing as a united Liberal party, and that the soldering up of their differences is impossible. When a Whig appeals to a constituency as a Liberal, he is taking the worst and weakest, because the most untenable, ground. ”

“ Which, says Sir William, might well be answered thus:—
“The King to Oxford sent his troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force;
With equal care to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument.”
Mr. Johnson did him the justice to say it was one of the happiest extemporaneous productions he ever met with, though he once comically confessed that he hated to repeat the wit of a Whig urged in support of Whiggism. Says Garrick to him one day, “Why did not you make me a Tory, when we lived so much together? You love to make people Tories.” ”

“ There is no man in England to-day—no man who has made any position for himself as a writer—who is better acquainted than Mr. Russell with the history of the Whig party from the Reform Act of 1832 to the eclipse of Whiggism that resulted from the extension of the parliamentary franchise in 1884-1885, and the epoch-making division in the Liberal party over Gladstone's bill for Home Rule for Ireland of 1886. Mr. Russell was born into the Whig cult. ”