For more than twenty years the words Whig and Tory had well-nigh gone out; and the younger town’s-men were for some time rather doubtful about their meaning. At length, however, they learned that the Whigs meant the people, and the Tories those who wished to live by them, and yet call them names. The town’s-people, therefore, became Whigs to a man, execrated the Holy Alliance and the massacre at Manchester, drank healths to Queen Caroline and Henry Brougham; and though they petitioned against Catholic emancipation—for, like most Scotch folks, they had too thorough a respect for their grandfathers to be wholly consistent—they were yet shrewd enough to inquire whether any one had ever boasted of his country because the great statesmen opposed to that measure were his countrymen. The Reform Bill, however, set them all right again, by turning them full in the wake of their old leaders; and yet, no sooner was Whiggism intrusted with the keys of office, than they began to make discoveries which had the effect of considerably modifying the tone of their politics. They began to discover—will it be believed?—that all men are not born equal, and that there exists an aristocracy in the very economy of nature. It was not merely the choice of his countrymen that made Washington a great general, or Franklin a profound statesman. They have also begun to discover, that a good Whig may be a bad man; nay, that one may be at once Whig and Tory—a Tory to his servants and dependants, a Whig to his superiors and his country. For my own part, I am a Whig—a born Whig; but no similarity of political principle will ever lead me to put any confidence in the man to whom I could not intrust my private concerns; and as for the Whiggism that horsewhipped the poor woman who was picking a few withered sticks out of its hedge, it may wear the laurel leaf and the blue ribbon in any way it pleases, but I assure it—it won’t be of my party.
Sanson & Co., Printers, Edinburgh.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Chiefly between the years 1829 and 1832, inclusive. A few of the paragraphs were, however, introduced at a later time.
[2] Cromba, i.e., crooked bay.
[3] Two ancient farms in the neighbourhood bear the names of Meikle and Little Farness, and a third that of Eathie.
[4] Since, however, blown down during a storm, and broken into three pieces.
[5] See Burns’s Halloween.
[6] The resemblance between the inventions of Sir Thomas as described in the Jewel, and of the Marquis as intimated in the Century, is singularly close. The following passages, selected chiefly for their brevity as specimens, may serve to show how very much the minds that produced them must have been of a piece.