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WHIG PARTY IN ENGLAND IN 18TH & 19TH CENT.
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Origins, ideology, influence & power, leadership, platform, religion, economics.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Origins, ideology, influence & power, leadership, platform, religion, economics.
Paper Introduction:
The 18th century in England saw the destruction of the political structures that had been built up in the century before, as the political parties once in power lost their footing (or found themselves entirely transformed) to be replaced by different ones and as the power in the government shifted along institutional lines to the cabinet. The result of these transformations was that the modern structures of the British government were in substantial ways established during the first and second quarters of the 18th century.1
By the middle of the 18th century, both Whigs and Tories found themselves changed from what they had been. This is hardly surprising, given how much history had changed around them since these parties had formed. It is in fact less surprising that they changed than that they survived at all. This is especially true of th
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As the Glorious Revolution became more and more distant, it becameharder and harder for Whigs to pretend that they were still defending crownand country against such a menace, and this is one of the reasons that theparty began to fail.8 But such was the English dislike of and even fear ofRoman Catholicism that for decades this remained a sufficiently strongthreat to provide a sense of identity and purpose to Whig politicians andto keep them in favor with British public.9 In fact the Whigs milked the topic not only of the protection of theProtestant faith in England but of the reform of the Church at great length- so much so that Benjamin Disraeli would remark upon this long-runningmotif in 1834 with the comment that "I hope the time approaches when we mayhear less of Church reform and more of Church improvement" - after which hegoes on to list some of the many things that the Whigs had never been ableeither to reform or to improve about the church, despite their long yearsin power and despite the centrality of the church to their position as aparty.1 It might even have been enough to keep them in power longer had someWhig politicians not shown an almost astonishingly poor sense of just whatthe public would put up with. This is hardly surprising,given how much history had changed around them since these parties hadformed. Thecarelessness with which the families in power under Whig rule held the factof that power is clear in such contemporary accounts of the ways thatpolitics and family fortunes intermingled as laid out in 18th and 19thcentury letters of Elizabeth, Viscountess Melbourne and Emily Lamb,Viscountess Palmerston.14 This collection of their letters also contains atelling comment by Sheridan in relationship to the Whig Party of the veryearly 19th century, that it was composed of "those persons who, thrown byaccident in the outset of life into situations for which they are notfitted, become Friends of the People for a time, and afterwards, findingtheir mistake, desert the cause.15 The key to continuing Whig popularity inthe 18th century is that either (or rather both) people did not determinethat the Whigs had deserted the cause or that the people did not realizethat they were a cause that merited continued support. At least until the chair andseveral directors sold out, the bubble burst, and the stock collapsed.Thousands of stockholders were ruined. Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921.Roberts, Michael. In fact, both the early (and later on the 19th century EnglishWhigs) and the American Whigs looked to the same elements of Whiggery,which was its basis in a sort of pre-Norman utopia (no doubt dramaticallyidealized way from the actual conditions of life in 1 th century England)in which the monarchy had been elective, society had been governed by law,and people had been free in their consciences to follow the religiouscallings of their individual faiths. TheWhigs were very much a party of their time, an aristocratic group who ruledthrough influence and family connections. 2 Edmund Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (Indianapolis:Library of Liberal Arts, 1962 [1791]), vii. 8 Ibid., 54. The fact that the Whig Party did manage to survive into the 18thcentury indicates that its platform did still have something of importanceto contribute to the dialogue of public life in England as well as the factthat Whig leaders were themselves sufficiently charismatic (and one shouldperhaps add that in some cases devious and certainly well-connected here)to keep themselves if not precisely in favor than at least in office. Backed by the growing British mercantile and industrialinterests, the landed but untitled gentry, and the Protestant dissenters,or nonconformists, the Whig party achieved control of the government in1714 on the accession of King George I. During the next 7 years out of power it began to betransformed into something very different from what it once had been andwhen it returned to power in 183 , it had become something very much likethe a modern liberal return. Companies of all kinds were floated to take advantage of thepublic interest in obtaining South Sea Company stock and speculation sooncarried stock to ten times its nominal value. 3 Ibid., vii. It was the party that would keep England Protestant and save itfrom Popish leaders, and this remained a central part of its appeal throughits time in power in the 18th century. A Whig in Power. The Whigs of the 19th century put forth areform platform that won popular support - this is in fact what returnedthem to office - and during their first years in power they passedimportant reform legislation, known collectively as the Reform Bills. Their traditionswere, after all, those of monarchy rather than of democracy, and this factgoes some large way to explaining why they were if not precisely contentwith the government of the Whigs at least willing to tolerate it. New York: Macmillan Company, 1914.Mabell, Countess of Airlie. This last was perhaps the moreserious of the two for a party that had modeled itself as (at least in somemeasure) the voice of the people. Atthe same time, the Whig party became known as the Liberal party and theTory party as the Conservative party. In the spring of 172 the company offered to assumepractically the whole national debt, at that time equal to more than $15 million. It is ironic and sad that the party as a whole should in time sothoroughly have forgotten that power wielded by an unfair monarch is nomore pernicious than that wielded by a political party out of touch withits constituents.4 On the other hand, these elements of Whiggery that had become rathereasily subsumed by the English branch of the party were intellectually andhistorically available to the American branch, which helped the Americanrevolutionaries find a firmer political and historical grounding for theirown actions. Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts, 1962.Colbourn, H. Perhaps the most extravagant example ofcorruption and malfeasance that the Whigs were associated with was theadventure that became known (and has remained an example since of how notto practice politics) as the South Sea Bubble, a plan originated by theEnglish statesman Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, in 1711, for theretirement of the floating national debt of Great Britain.11 Under the plan, the debt was assumed by merchants to whom thegovernment guaranteed for a certain period annual payments equal to $3million. 4 H. This change in nomenclature was notsimply a question of pouring old wine into new bottles but marked asignificant political change in the identity and nature of the two parties,and this change of name marked a real and impermeable discontinuity withthe parties of the same names but of different politics and belonging to adifferent era.2 It is important in any analysis of the Whigs (in assessing eithertheir strengths or their weaknesses) not to assume that they were merelythe Liberal Party of the 19th century called by a funny name; in otherwords it would be a great mistake to believe that they were somehow really19th century Liberals with the prescience to live before their times. Parliamentary investigation revealedcomplicity by some company officials. BibliographyBurke, Edmund. The Whigs at least in some measure believed in the right ofpopular resistance and of civil liberties that had been developed throughtheir nascent resistance to the imposition of a Catholic monarch on aProtestant country (and the therefore the feared imposition of Catholicismon individual Protestants). Despite the power-mad natureof some of the most important Whigs (perhaps most notably Robert Walpole),the Whigs were able to present themselves as the right people to do thejob. 6 Wilkes, xi. Endnotes 1John Wilkes, A Whig in Power (Chicago: Northwestern University Press,1964), p. The Whigs had been in their infancy a partythat grew out of the need to protest the imposition from above of heavy-handed power, and to some extent they kept this core of beliefs withinthem. An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. Trevor. The result ofthese transformations was that the modern structures of the Britishgovernment were in substantial ways established during the first and secondquarters of the 18th century.1 By the middle of the 18th century, both Whigs and Tories foundthemselves changed from what they had been. It is in fact less surprising that they changed than that theysurvived at all. The Whigs had come to power as the partydesigned to save Protestantism and as the champion of Protestantdissenters. The Englishpeople (like most peoples throughout the world in the 18th century) wereused to having a rich, well-connected and at least sometimes corrupt andsometimes incompetent elite rule them, and so the Whigs were not in anyparticular danger of losing their jobs until broad assumptions about theappropriate relationship between the governed and the rulers began tochange with revolutionary fervor in America and in England. 12 Ibid. xi. The Whig Party emerged in the 17th century in opposition to KingCharles II and to the accession to the English throne of the Roman CatholicDuke of York as James II. 5 Ibid., 183. During this period, thoseAmerican colonists who supported the American Revolution were also known asWhigs, a point that is somewhat confusing since the two groups were in factvery dissimilar in fundamental ways. Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earlof Orford - at that time serving as the chancellor of the Exchequer - didmanage to overt national collapse, but he and the party were forever aftertarred by the affair. The party was largely responsible for theGlorious Revolution of 1688, which established the supremacy of Parliamentover the king. 7 Burke, vii. This is especially true of the Whig Party, which had tosustain charges of corruption and elitism. 9 Michael Roberts, The Whig Party, 18 7-1812 (London: Frank Cass,1965), 22. This sum, amounting to 6 percent interest, was to be obtained fromduties on imports. In Whig Society. 1 Benjamin Disraeli, Whigs and Whiggism: Political Writings (NewYork: Macmillan Company, 1914), 25. Rather the Whigs made their mark bywarning about the great Catholic menace. Eventually, this claim to both powerand virtue would wear thin, because it was in many ways a negative claim.Whigs did not come to power because they were arguing for the strengths ofAnglicanism as a faith (it already had its defenders among the ranks ofclergy and philosophers to do this). To the extent that both the Americanand early English branches of the Whig parties were able to convince thepeople that they were working toward an ideal like this, they were able tohold power and guide the destinies of their countries.5 But before the world changed and the Whigs with it - and before theirlong period of being out of favor and out of power - what kept the Whigs solong at the heart of the British government? Such a national get-rich-quick scheme seems notunlike such modern ventures as the S&L crisis, for its too centers on themanipulation of debt and allows "for the appeal to the fate of innocentsufferers, the widows and orphans [and] speculators eating at the Englishbody politic".12 The Whigs found themselves repeatedly connected to such venality, acondition that may well have come about (or at least been aided) by thefact that "the political machine built by Walpole was constructed oninfrequent general elections and few voters".13 But it was also true thatthe British public were used to a situation like this. Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and theIntellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1965), 193. A brief history of the Whig Party's rise to power is useful at thispoint. 14 Mabell, Countess of Airlie, In Whig Society (Toronto: Hodder andStoughton, 1921), 117-134. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965.Disraeli, Benjamin. For nearly 5 years the Whigsremained in power, until in 176 the opposition Tory party (bolstered byfears stemming from the early whispers of revolution in America) rode awave of conservative sentiment into office. The 18th century in England saw the destruction of the politicalstructures that had been built up in the century before, as the politicalparties once in power lost their footing (or found themselves entirelytransformed) to be replaced by different ones and as the power in thegovernment shifted along institutional lines to the cabinet. 11 Colbourn, 51. The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution. To be absolutely fair to the entire Whig party, it is important tonote that there were strains within the party (held by at least some of itsadherents) of aspects of political belief that were both Liberal andprogressive. The monopoly British trade in the South Seas and SouthAmerica was given to these merchants, who incorporated themselves as theSouth Sea Company, and extravagant ideas of the riches of South Americawere fostered. This was not the end of the Whig party, although it spent decades asthe opposition party. Or perhaps it is more accurate to saythat this became the more serious of the two charges as time passed andpopulist movements become more powerful and more insistent upon agovernment accountable to the needs of the people. 13 Ibid. Whigs and Whiggism: Political Writings. London: Frank Cass, 1965.Wilkes, John. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964. While some of them advocated anexpansion of the franchise, as a whole they were neither particularlyegalitarian nor liberal.3 By the time of the French Revolution, this factwould doom the ways of what might be called the Old Whig party, for thesocial order would fall away from underneath the feet of the Whigs alongwith everyone else and they would have to reconstitute themselves asLiberals. The continuing support felt by the Whigs was based in no very smallpart on the power of religion. It is notappropriate to look at the Whigs as really just 18th century Liberals; itis no more appropriate to look at the English populace of the 18th centuryas really 19th century early socialists with a lot of patience. 15 Ibid., 25. This was partly due to the fact that at least for substantial periodsof time the leaders of the opposition were to fragmented to form agovernment and so the Whigs ruled by default,6 partly because the familialand social connections of prominent Whigs gave them a power beyond thatcreated by themselves as individuals or their politicies.7 But there werealso elements of the Whig platform that did give it political strength andpopular support, and without these it could not have continued in power foras long as it did. The Whig Party, 18 7-1812. Two members in the royal court ofGeorge I were also implicated in the scandal.
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