XXI. Whigs and Tories
Motto. "This thirst of kindred blood, my sons, detest,
Nor turn your force against your country's breast."
—Virgil, Æneid, vi. 832. Dryden's tr.
[155]: 1. The malice of parties. Party feeling had perhaps never been more bitter in England than just at this time; and it was probably all the more bitter and personal because there were no very clear questions at issue between the two parties. Swift, writing in the Tory Examiner a few months before the date of this paper (November 16, 1710), says, "Let any one examine a reasonable honest man, of either side, upon those opinions in religion and government, which both parties daily buffet each other about, he shall hardly find one material point in difference between them." The principal questions upon which Whig and Tory had once actively differed, and still continued to differ in theory, were two. The first was the nature of the monarchy and its relation to the other parts of the government. The extreme Tories held that the king had a divine right to his throne, by hereditary succession; that this was indefeasible, and implied the duty of unconditional obedience from the subject. The extreme Whigs held that the king was the creation of the people, and held his office purely by act of Parliament. But it would have been difficult to find many such extreme Tories or extreme Whigs. The doctrine of the divine right of kings had been practically refuted by the Revolution of 1688; if there were any such right, then the crown belonged, not to Anne, but to the Pretender, son of James II. On the other hand, few Whigs would have denied that the monarchy was an essential part of the English system of government, and not the mere creature of parliament.
The other and more important subject of difference between the two parties was the relation of the Church to the State and to Dissent. The Tories were Churchmen, and held that the interests of the Church and of religion demanded more constant and detailed attention from the State, and more stringent measures to repress dissent. They always called themselves the Church party; Queen Anne never called them anything else. The Whigs, on the other hand, though many of them were good Churchmen, apprehended less danger from dissent and were more liberal toward it. The Dissenters themselves, of course, were all Whigs.
There was, however, another difference between the two parties quite as important as any speculative question, and daily growing more important. As was stated in the Introduction, the most significant social fact in the England of the first half of the eighteenth century is the growth of a great middle, commercial class, who were gaining wealth rapidly and filling up the towns. At the bottom of much political controversy between 1700 and 1715 was the undefined jealousy between this class and the landed class. It was trade against land, new wealth against old aristocracy, town against country. For this commercial class almost to a man were Whigs; the landed gentry and their dependants, country squires and country parsons, almost to a man, were Tories.
This jealousy became extremely bitter about 1710. During all the reign of Anne, England had been engaged in the great war of the Spanish succession, the real object of which was to prevent the virtual union of the crowns of France and Spain. The war was heartily supported from the first by the Whigs, but opposed, or only languidly supported, by the Tories. A successful war is always popular, and strengthens the party that favours it most; accordingly, through the earlier years of the reign, when the English general Marlborough was winning his famous victories, the Whigs had everything their own way, and by 1708 the government was entirely in their hands. But as the war, however successful, seemed no nearer ending, and its burdens began to press more heavily, Tory opposition strengthened, and party feeling grew more and more intense. The financial load fell mostly on the Tory or landed class; for, as the Tories said, so soon as ever a trading Whig could get a thousand pounds, he put it into government securities, which he had to pay no tax upon, while the land had to pay him a handsome rate of interest. This opposition to the Whigs, strengthened by a feeling that the cause of the church and of religion was endangered by Whig supremacy, grew to such volume that in the memorable elections of 1710 the Whigs were defeated, and a Tory majority brought into the Commons. The Whig ministers were dismissed; Marlborough, the great general, a little later was recalled from the army; and finally the queen took the unprecedented step of creating twelve new Tory peers, and so making a Tory majority in the House of Lords also.
It was in these stormy years that The Spectator appeared. In the tumult of partisan controversy Addison succeeded in keeping his paper out of the strife. He was a pronounced Whig himself, and his preferences are plainly enough to be seen even in these papers; but he sincerely deprecated the rancorous tone of party writing, and he wisely refused to allow The Spectator to become the organ of a party. Steele had more difficulty in restraining his pen, and finally retired from The Spectator rather than remain quiet on public questions.
155: 4. Roundheads and Cavaliers. The Puritans, during the term of the Civil War, were nicknamed Roundheads because they wore their hair short (as everybody does now), instead of allowing it to fall over their shoulders as was the fashion with the Royalists or Cavaliers.
155: 6. St. Anne's Lane. Probably the lane of that name in Westminster, near the Abbey.
155: 12. Prick-eared cur. A dog with pointed ears. The epithet was applied to the Puritans, because they wore their hair short, and their ears were not covered by long locks.
[156]: 4. Tend to the prejudice of the land-tax. Sir Roger naturally finds the mischiefs of parties to come mostly from the Whigs, who support the war, and so raise the land tax.
156: 25. Plutarch. The Greek historian and moralist, born about 46 A.D. His Lives are perhaps the most interesting work of biography in the world. The quotation in the text is from his other principal work, the Morals.
[157]: 5. That great rule. Luke vi. 27-29.
157: 8. Many good men ... alienated from one another. It is probable Addison had especially in mind his own old friendship with Swift, which had grown very chill of late on account of their political differences. As early as December 14, 1710, when he began to be intimate with the new Tory ministry, Swift writes in the Journal to Stella, "Mr. Addison and I are as different as black and white, and I believe our friendship will go off by this damned business of party." A month later, January 14, 1711, he says, "At the coffee-house talked coldly awhile with Mr. Addison; all our friendship and dearness are off; we are civil acquaintances, talk words, of course, of when we shall meet, and that is all."
[158]: 26. Guelphs and Ghibellines. The two great political parties in Italy, fiercely opposed to each other from the middle of the twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century. The Guelphs or popular party, supported the pope; the Ghibellines, or aristocratic party, the emperor.
158: 27. The League. The Holy Catholic League, formed in France, 1546, to resist the claims of Henry IV to the throne, and check the advance of Protestantism.
XXII. Whigs and Tories—Continued
Motto. "Trojan or Rutulian, it shall be the same to me."—Virgil, Æneid, x. 108.
[161]: 24. Diodorus Siculus. A Greek historian of the first century, born—as the name implies—in Sicily. He wrote a Historical Library, of which only a part is preserved.
[162]: 19. The spirit of party reigns more in the country. Here speaks the Whig prejudice of Addison; Sir Roger himself might have thought differently.
162: 29. Tory fox hunters. See Addison's account of a typical Tory fox hunter in The Freeholder, No. 22.
[164]: 23. Fanatic. The term was frequently applied to the Puritans, and later to Dissenters.