Whig Party (British politics)

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Whig party thus became again a powerful element in English politics, while in face of the reunited Whigs stood the Tories, relieved like themselves from the burthen of an alliance which grew hourly more distasteful. The bulk of the old Ministry returned in a few days to office with Mr. Addington at their head, and his administration received the support of the whole Tory party in Parliament.
Without the walls of Parliament however the nation looked on such a change with dismay. Addington was regarded as a weak and narrow-minded man ”

“ 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. ”

“ What was most strange, however, was that the Conservative party, so strong in politics, had no literary organ of their own—and this at a time when the line of demarcation between the rival sides in politics was so fixed that no virtue could be recognised in an opponent or in an opponent's views, even though they were held regarding matters quite remote from politics. The Whig party, though in a minority politically and socially, represented a minority of tremendous power, and possessed latent capabilities which soon broke forth into action. ”

“ There are not really two parties in the State. There is but one great party, that of privilege, divided into two factions, labelled Whig and Tory, or Liberal and Conservative. Both do much the same things in office. The mimic warfare which they wage with each other, no shrewd observer takes seriously. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In these times it is becoming increasingly doubtful whether those who call themselves by what was once the honourable title of “Whig” have any claim to be considered members of the Liberal party; and there are many who consider that they are now more truly conservative than the Conservatives themselves. The Whigs tell us that they are only acting as the drag on the wheel; but this implies that we are always going down hill. That we do not believe. We hold that we are progressing; and a drag which would act upon the coach as it climbs the hill is a product neither of prudence nor common sense. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1698 prosperity and security had made men querulous, fastidious and unmanageable. The government was assailed with equal violence from widely different quarters. The opposition, made up of Tories many of whom carried Toryism to the length of Jacobitism, and of discontented Whigs some of whom carried Whiggism to the length of republicanism, called itself the Country party, a name which had been popular before the words Whig and Tory were known in England. The majority of the late House of Commons, a majority which had saved the State, was nicknamed the Court party. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why is it that certain parties are now, more than heretofore, engaged in getting up a cry for reform and extension of suffrage? Why is it that some men, ostensibly belonging to the Whig party, who, a year or two ago, held such views in utter detestation, have declared themselves favourable to the movement? Has anything been done to curtail the popular privileges—to take away from the people any portion of the power which they previously possessed—to curtail the liberty of the press—or in any way to trench upon the rights which are common to every subject? ”

“ But those Unions had been massed behind the official Whig Opposition. The League had very few Members of Parliament at its head, and not one of those was within the circle of Whig favour. The Unions had forced their policy upon the Tory party. The League forced its policy upon Parliament. So far as active assistance was concerned the Opposition was no more to the Free Traders than the Government. ”

“ 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 Whig Alliance has melted, like ice before the sun, and the strong souls of our people will never again serve the purposes of a faction.
The Conservative party, without union and without principle, is breaking up. Its English section is dividing into the tools of expediency and the pioneers of a New Generation—its Irish section into Castle Hacks and National Conservatives. ”

“ This section of the aristocracy were the origin of the English Whigs, though that title was not invented until the next reign. The primitive Whigs-’Parliament-men,’ as they liked to call themselves, ‘Roundheads,’ as they were in time dubbed—aspired to an oligarchy. For a moment they obtained one; but unable to maintain themselves in power against the returning sense and rising spirit of a generous and indignant people, they called to their aid that domestic revolutionary party which exists in all countries, and an anti-national enemy in addition. ”

“ From the earliest period of his entrance into political life he had always had the strongest sense of the duty incumbent on every public man of supporting, even in opposition, the authority of Government. The bitterest reproach which he cast upon the Whigs, in his first Tory 'Letter to the Electors of Great Britain' in 1835, was that when they found they could not carry on the government themselves, they tried to make it impossible for any other party to do so. ”

“ A change in the practice of creating new peerages; limiting the new creations to life peerages, and these only to be given as rewards for great national services; peers habitually absent from Parliament to be deprived of all legislative privileges, and the right of voting by proxy in any case to be abolished.
"10. The abolition as a governing class of the old Whig party, which has long since ceased to play any useful part in our public policy. Toryism represents obstructiveness to Radical progress, but it represents open hostility. Whiggism is hypocritical ”

“ Never, perhaps, was the inability of the Whig party to govern exhibited in such a marked manner as at the period immediately succeeding the passing of the Reform Bill. With a majority of three hundred, they yet disagreed amongst themselves concerning the desirability of introducing innovations into the Irish Church, and they fell. Some have declared that an excess of power—a majority too large to manage—was fatal to the endurance of their power. We rather think that it was but a conclusive proof that a Whig Minister must be a Minister on sufferance—in other words, is unable to govern. ”

“ For in truth the real contrast between Whigs and Tories, in respect of which there is a perfect continuity of principle, depended upon the fact that the Whigs reflected the sentiments of the middle classes, the “monied men” and the dissenters; whilst the Tories reflected the sentiments of the land and the church. Each party might occasionally adopt the commonplaces or accept the measures generally associated with its antagonists; but at bottom, the distinction was between squire [Pg 65] and parson on one side, tradesmen and banker on the other. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Even those who were honourable, disinterested, and, for such a period, unselfish, were for the most part the disciples of tradition and the slaves of that life-sapping curse of British politics: the party spirit, which led otherwise honourable men to oppose with all their strength the measures of their party opponents, even in the face of their country's dire need.
Then there was the anti-British faction, a party which spread fast-growing shoots from out the then Government's very heart and root. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”