Whip (politics)

“ The Junior Whips are another matter. Rebellious members of the party who would, however, feel some compunction about speaking their minds to the Chief Whip, lay bare their grievances, with embarrassing plain-spokenness, to the juniors. ”

“ Of the various forms ambition takes in political life the most inscrutable is that which leads a man to the Whip's room. In Parliamentary affairs the Whip fills a place analogous to that of a sub-editor on a newspaper. ”

“ The Whips have been called the autocrats of the House of Commons, but though they rule individual members with an iron hand, it must ever be their desire to keep their party contented and happy and harmonious. When a private member is very anxious to escape from the House for a holiday it is to the Whip he applies for permission. ”

“ Where the majority of the party in power is not large it is very necessary that there should always be at hand a sufficient number of its supporters to make up a majority, and without the assistance of the whips it would be impossible to secure this. The chief whip of the government holds the office of patronage secretary to the treasury, so called because when offices were freely distributed to secure the support of members, it was his chief duty to dispose of the patronage to the best advantage of his party. ”

“ And then came the division and a restoration of calm.
Charwomen and ratcatchers.
The Whip is a cunning dog, especially if he be the Whip of the party in power; and you have to be a long time in Parliament before you know all his wiles, and fully appreciate their meaning. For instance, few innocent outsiders would understand why it is that the Whip always puts down Estimates for a day immediately after the end of a vacation. The reasons are two. First, because Estimates give more time and opportunity for the mere bore and obstructive than any other part of Parliamentary business. ”

“ It is bad for a people to be familiarised with such punishments. When the whip went out of Bridewell, and ceased to be flourished at the carts tail and at the whipping-post, it began to fade out of madhouses, and workhouses, and schools and families, and to give place to a better system everywhere, than cruel driving. It would be hasty, because a few brutes may be inadequately punished, to revive, in any aspect, what, in so many aspects, society is hardly yet happily rid of. The whip is a very contagious kind of thing, and difficult to confine within one set of bounds. ”

“ Sir, the crack of the party whip has lost its power in these days of ours. Mere party cant lies stale and nauseating upon the stomach of the people. If you think that the movement which is now growing all over this land is a mere plot of politicians, you will soon discover your mistake. It is a new awakening of the public conscience. It is the reaction against the easy political morals and the spirit of jobbery which have grown and been developed in times of war and of great political excitement. It is an earnest uprising for an honest and pure government. ”

“ I don't blame the rich or the political tyrants—the mob has to be educated, the unhappy proletarians, who have so long submitted to the crack of the whip that they wouldn't know what to do with their freedom if they had it. ”

“ It's you who hold the whip—not them. If the down-trodden people of the country was only to rise up and assert their rights, the landlords and landowners and grabbers and sweaters couldn't hold out for one hour. Come out of it, boys! Come out of it, all of you who are men and not monkeys. Monkeys!' he says. 'Yes, you are monkeys. You are like monkeys chained to a piano-organ, and the piano-organ that's what they call Parliament. The poor man he has to do the dancing and get the whip, same as the monkey does, and the rich man gets the money and chooses the tune. ”

“ I had made up my mind to help whip the Whigs, for by so doing I should vote against a slaveholder as well as for one7 which I flatter myself would balance that account. I have noticed that in attacking this little party, finding nothing in their principles to which they can safely object, both the Whigs and Democrats charge them with radicalism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All the contempt which now leads us to raise, not the sword, but the whip, against that abortion compounded of low greed and shameless hypocrisy, he then screamed out to the world in words which we could not even to-day make bitterer or more scathing.—Prof. ”

“ The efforts to belittle his merits and defile his good name became systematic, and degenerated into the most unpardonable personal abuse and political defamation. This was exactly what the Whigs needed to supplement their lack of principles. It worked like a charm. It rallied the Whig masses like a grand battle-cry. Mass-meetings of the people, such as had never been dreamed of before, became the order of the day. The people took the work of politics into their own keeping, and the leaders became followers. ”

“ The Whigs had no resources from their own limited ranks to feed the muster of the popular levies. They were obliged to look about for allies wherewith to form their new popular estate. Any estate of the Commons modelled on any equitable principle, either of property or population, must have been fatal to the Whigs; they, therefore, very dexterously adopted a small minority of the nation, consisting of the sectarians, and inaugurating them as the people with a vast and bewildering train of hocus-pocus ceremonies, invested the Dissenters with political power. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Whigs and Tories united with all their accumulated force against me. I had, therefore, to contend, single-handed, against all the power, wealth and influence of all parties and factions in the city. All the corporation, all the merchants, all the tradesmen, all the clergy and priests, whether of the church of England or of the numberless sects of dissenters, all these, and all whom they could array under their banners, were volunteers to uphold the most corrupt and profligate system of election that ever disgraced the rottenest of rotten boroughs. ”

“ The honorable scruples of the Whigs, the sensitive consciences of the "Liberty" men, could never have prevailed permanently against a tendency so natural and so irresistible. Everything that year seemed to work against the Whigs. At a most unfortunate time for them, there was an outbreak of that "native" fanaticism which reappears from time to time in our politics with the periodicity of malarial fevers, and always to the profit of the party against which its efforts are aimed. ”

“ The whigs of 1840 stand where the republicans of 1798 stood, and where the whigs of the revolution were, battling for liberty, for the people, for free institutions, against power, against corruption, against executive encroachments, against monarchy.
We are reproached with struggling for offices and their emoluments. If we acted on the avowed and acknowledged principle of our opponents, ‘that the spoils belong to the victors,’ we should indeed be unworthy of the support of the people. No! fellow-citizens; higher, nobler, more patriotic motives actuate the whig party. ”

“ Paul, who had been sauntering between flowerless beds with his companion, stood stock still. The Chief Whip of a political party is a devil of a fellow. To the aspiring young politician he is much more a devil of a fellow than the Prime Minister or any Secretary of State. If a Chief Whip breathes the suggestion that a man might possibly stand for election as a Member of Parliament, it means that at any suitable vacancy, or at a general election, he will, with utter certainty, have his chance as a candidate with the whole force of his party behind him. ”

“ The chief whip, however, is often given afterwards a position in the ministry, or otherwise rewarded.
The Opposition also has its whips, usually three in number, whose position is important; though not so important as that of the government whips, because while a failure to have the full strength of the party present may be unfortunate, it cannot, as in the case of the government, be disastrous. Naturally the Opposition whips have no salaries, but they are sustained by the hope that their turn will come. ”

“ In the train of all this unprincipled corruption followed riots and tumults amongst the people, who were at once starving from the scarcity and dearness of bread, and infuriated with the drink with which they had been plied to serve the views of these base candidates. From the centre of this unholy chaos again rose the figure of John Wilkes, as the reputed champion of liberty. ”

“ You have disfranchised the gentry, and the real patriotism of the nation: you have agitated and exasperated the mob, and thrown the balance of political power into the hands of that class (the shopkeepers) which, in all countries and in all ages, has been, is now, and ever will be, the least patriotic and the least conservative of any. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it happens that "the people" here indicated are the very individuals who were before pointed out as alone responsible for the Rebellion. In the exercise of their right "to form a government for themselves," they rebelled; and now, it seems, by the exercise of the same right, they can unconditionally return. There is no wrong anywhere: it is all "right." The people are first made criminals, in order to exculpate the States, and then the innocence of the States is used to exculpate the people. ”

“ This made it a court-word; and in a little while all the friends and followers of the Duke began to be called Whigs.'" R. Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, volume 2, page 172. ALSO IN: J. H. Burton, History of Scotland, chapter 74 (volume 7) . See ENGLAND: A. D. 1680. {3652} WHIPS, Party. The "party whips," in English politics, are "an extremely useful and hard-working body of officials. ”

“ Will the partialities of a government between different classes promote the harmony and happiness of society? Is not their discord the universal consequence of the fraudulent power assumed by governments, of allotting to classes and individuals indigence or wealth, according to their own pleasure? Has not the English parliament been fatigued for centuries with eternal petitions, remonstrances, and lamentations from the artificial combinations it has created, or the natural classes it has favoured or oppressed, soliciting partialities, and deploring their pernicious effects? ”

“ It is a great delusion to believe that revolutions are ever effected by a nation. It is a faction, and generally a small one, that overthrows a dynasty or remodels a constitution. A small party, stung by a long exile from power, and desperate of success except by desperate means, invariably has recourse to a coup-d‘état. An oligarchical party is necessarily not numerous. Its members in general attempt, by noble lineage or vast possessions, to compensate for their poverty of numbers. The Whigs, in 1830, found themselves by accident in place, but under very peculiar circumstances. ”

“ The subject of the preceding memoir appears to have retained all her life a feeling recollection of the effects of the whip in the hands of her youthful mistress. Considering the vigor and frequency of the application, this is not strange. Infinite cuffs and thwacks, more or less, pass into oblivion; but a flogging with a raw-hide is not easily forgotten. A slave's experience of the whip, however, was not confined to his or to her early days. A slave race must be controlled by fear and pain: and the discipline, it was naturally thought, could not begin too early. ”

“ Whiggery, therefore, in its various forms, is the representative of Constitutionalism—is the outward expression of monopoly and consequent artificial restraints on labour and life; and there is only one expression of the force which will destroy Whiggery, and that is Socialism; and on the right hand and on the left Toryism and Radicalism will melt into Whiggery—are doing so now—and Socialism has got to absorb all that is not Whig in Radicalism. ”

“ Who is he, that, generous and confiding towards power where it is most dangerous, and jealous only of those who can restrain it,—who is he, that, reversing the order of the state, and upheaving the base, would poise the pyramid of the political system upon its apex? ”