The ideal Tory and the ideal Whig (and some such there have really been)
agreed in the necessity and benefit of an exact balance of the three
estates: but the Tory was more jealous of the balance being deranged by the
people; the Whig, of its being deranged by the Crown. But this was a habit,
a jealousy only; they both agreed in the ultimate preservation of the
balance; and accordingly they might each, under certain circumstances,
without the slightest inconsistency, pass from one side to the other, as
the ultimate object required it. This the Tories did at the Revolution, but
remained Tories as before.
I have half a mind to write a critical and philosophical essay on Whiggism,
from Dryden's Achitophel (Shaftesbury), the first Whig, (for, with Dr.
Johnson's leave, the devil is no such cattle,) down to ----, who, I trust,
in God's mercy to the interests of peace, union, and liberty in this
nation, will be the last. In it I would take the last years of Queen Anne's
reign as the zenith, or palmy state, of Whiggism in its divinest _avatar_
of common sense, or of the understanding, vigorously exerted in the right
direction on the right and proper objects of the understanding; and would
then trace the rise, the occasion, the progress, and the necessary
degeneration of the Whig spirit of compromise, even down to the profound
ineptitudes of their party in these days. A clever fellow might make
something of this hint. How Asgill would have done it!
_February_ 22. 1832.