A History of the Four Georges, Volume I | Page 8

and
they had determined to present to the English people as the destined
heir of the throne. In such an event as that, and most assuredly if men
like Bolingbroke had been in power, it may be taken for granted that
the Queen would have preferred her own brother, a Stuart, to the
Electoral Prince of Hanover. "What the consequence might have been,
if the Queen had survived," says Somerville, "is merely a matter of
conjecture; but we may {15} pronounce, with some degree of
assurance, that the Protestant interest would have been exposed to more
certain and to more imminent dangers than ever had threatened it
before at any period since the revolution." This seems a reasonable and
just assertion. If Anne had lived much longer, it is possible that
England might have seen a James the Third.

{16}
CHAPTER II.
PARTIES AND LEADERS.
[Sidenote: 1714--Whig and Tory]
All the closing months of Queen Anne's reign were occupied by Whigs

and Tories, and indeed by Anne herself as well, in the invention and
conduct of intrigues about the succession. The Queen herself, with the
grave opening before her, kept her fading eyes turned, not to the world
she was about to enter, but to the world she was about to leave. She
was thinking much more about the future of her throne than about her
own soul and future state. The Whigs were quite ready to maintain the
Hanoverian succession by force. They did not expect to be able to carry
matters easily, and they were ready to encounter a civil war. Their
belief seems to have been that they and not their opponents would have
to strike the blow, and they had already summoned the Duke of
Marlborough from his retirement in Flanders to take the lead in their
movement. Having Marlborough, they knew that they would have the
army. On the other hand, if Bolingbroke and the Tories really had any
actual hope of a restoration of the Stuarts, it is certain that up to the last
moment they had made no substantial preparations to accomplish their
object.
The Whigs and Tories divided between them whatever political force
there was in English society at this time. Outside both parties lay a
considerable section of people who did not distinctly belong to the one
faction or the other, but were ready to incline now to this and now to
that, according as the conditions of the hour might inspire them.
Outside these again, and far outnumbering these and all others
combined, was the great mass of the English {17}
people--hard-working, much-suffering, poor, patient, and almost
absolutely indifferent to changes in governments and the humors and
struggles of parties. "These wrangling jars of Whig and Tory," says
Dean Swift, "are stale and old as Troy-town story." But if the principles
were old, the titles of the parties were new. Steele, in 1710, published
in the Tatler a letter from Pasquin of Rome to Isaac Bickerstaff, asking
for "an account of those two religious orders which have lately sprung
up amongst you, the Whigs and the Tories." Steele declared that you
could not come even among women "but you find them divided into
Whig and Tory." It was like the famous lawsuit in Abdera, alluded to
by Lucian and amplified by Wieland, concerning the ownership of the
ass's shadow, on which all the Abderites took sides, and every one was
either a "Shadow" or an "Ass."

Various explanations have been given of these titles Whig and Tory.
Titus Oates applied the term "Tory," which then signified an Irish
robber, to those who would not believe in his Popish plot, and the name
gradually became extended to all who were supposed to have sympathy
with the Catholic Duke of York. The word "Whig" first arose during
the Cameronian rising, when it was applied to the Scotch Presbyterians,
and is derived by some from the whey which they habitually drank, and
by others from a word, "whiggam," used by the western Scottish
drovers.
The Whigs and the Tories represent in the main not only two political
doctrines, but two different feelings in the human mind. The natural
tendency of some men is to regard political liberty as of more
importance than political authority, and of other men to think that the
maintenance of authority is the first object to be secured, and that only
so much of individual liberty is to be conceded as will not interfere
with authority's strictest exercise. Roughly speaking, therefore, the
Tories were for authority, and the Whigs for liberty. The Tories
naturally held to the principle of the monarchy and of the State church;
the Whigs {18} were inclined for the supremacy of Parliament, and for
something like an approach to religious equality. [Sidenote:
1714--Political change] Up to