ry essence of the new
Party was compromise. They saw that it is an error to ride a
principle to death, to push things to an extreme, to have an eye for
one thing only, to prefer abstraction to realities, to disregard
practical conditions. They were a little disappointing, a little too
fond of the half-way house. Their philosophy, or rather their
philosopher, John Locke, is always reasonable and sensible, but
diluted and pedestrian and poor. They became associated with great
interests in English society, with trade, and banking, and the city,
with elements that were progressive, but exclusive, and devoted to
private, not to national ends. So far as they went, they were in the
right, ethically as well as politically. But they proceeded slowly
beyond the bare need of the moment. They were a combination of men
rather than a doctrine, and the idea of fidelity to comrades was often
stronger among them than the idea of fidelity to truths. General
principles were so little apparent in the system that excellent
writers suppose that the Whigs were essentially English,
Nonconformists, associated with limited monarchy, unfit for
exportation over the world. They took long to outgrow the narrow
limits of the society in which they arose. A hundred years passed
before Whiggism assumed the universal and scientific character. In
the American speeches of Chatham and Camden, in Burke's writings from
1778 to 1783, in the Wealth of Nations, and the tracts of Sir William
Jones, there is an immense development. The national bounds are
overcome. The principles are sacred, irrespective of interests. The
charter of Rhode Island is worth more than the British Constitution,
and Whig statesmen toast General Washington, rejoice that America has
resisted, and insist on the acknowledgment of independence. The
progress is entirely consistent; and Burke's address to the colonists
is the logical outcome of the principles of liberty and the notion of
a higher law above municipal codes and constitutions, with which
Whiggism began.

It is the supreme achievement of Englishmen, and their bequest to the
nations; but the patriarchs of the doctrine were the most infamous of
men. They set up the monument to perpetuate the belief that the
Catholics set fire to London. They invented the Black Box and the
marriage of Lucy Waters. They prompted, encouraged, and rewarded the
murderer Oates. They proclaimed that the Prince of Wales came in the
warm