Nonconformity. That the nation
at large remained Tory in sentiment was seen from the fact that in every
House of Commons elected after the Revolution the majority was commonly
Tory; it was only indeed when their opposition to the war and the
patriotic feeling which it aroused rendered a Tory majority impossible
that the House became Whig. And even in the height of Whig rule and
amidst the blaze of Whig victories, England rose in the Sacheverell
riots, forced Tories again into power, and ended the Whig war by what it
deemed a Tory peace. And yet every Englishman knew that from the moment
of the Revolution the whole system of government had not been Tory but
Whig. Passionate as it was for peace and for withdrawal from all
meddling in foreign affairs, England found itself involved abroad in
ever-widening warfare and drawn into a guardianship of the whole state
of Europe. At home it was drifting along a path that it hated even more.
Every year saw the Crown more helpless, and the Church becoming as
helpless as the Crown. The country hated a standing army, and the
standing army existed in spite of its hate; it revolted against debt and
taxation, and taxes and debt grew heavier and heavier in the teeth of
its revolt. Its prejudice against Nonconformists remained as fanatical
as ever, and yet Nonconformists worshipped in their chapels and served
as aldermen or mayors with perfect security. What made this the bitterer
was the fact that neither a change of ministers nor of sovereign brought
about any in the system of government. Under the Tory Anne the policy of
England remained practically as Whig as under the Whig William.
Nottingham and Harley did as little to restore the monarchy or the
Church as Somers or Godolphin.

[Sidenote: Helplessness of the Tories.]

In driving James to a foreign land, indeed, in making him dependent on a
foreign Court, the Revolution had effectually guarded itself from any
undoing of its work. So long as a Stuart Pretender existed, so long as
he remained a tool in the hands of France, every monarch that the
Revolution placed on the English throne, and every servant of such a
monarch, was forced to cling to the principles of the Revolution and to
the men who were most certain to fight for them. With a Parliament of
landed gentry and Churchmen behind him Harley could not be drawn into
measures which would effectively alienate the merchant or the Dissenter;
and if Bolingbroke's talk was more reckless