Historica Wiki
Advertisement

The Whigs were a liberal political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom from the 1680s to the 1850s. On their foundation, the Whigs represented aristocratic, landowning families and the financial interests of the wealthy middle classes, and supported constitutional monarchy and protections for nonconformist Protestants. The Whigs factionalized following the collapse of Toryism in the 1750s and did not form a cohesive party organization until the end of the American Revolutionary War and the dawn of the French Revolution, when former Tories and conservative Whigs formed a "New Tory" faction of British politics and the remaining Whigs, led by Charles James Fox, came to represent the interests of religious dissenters, industrialists, and supporters of electoral, parliamentary, and philanthropic reforms. In 1852, Karl Marx wrote, "The Whigs are the aristocratic representatives of the bourgeoisie, of the industrial and commercial middle class...The interests and principles which they represent besides, from time to time, do not belong to the Whigs; they are forced upon them. by the development of the industrial and commercial class, the Bourgeoisie. After 1688 we find them united with the Bankocracy, just then rising into importance, as we find them in 1846, united with the Millocracy"; he described them as, "Feudalists, who are at the same time Malthusians, money-mongers with feudal prejudices, aristocrats without point of honor, Bourgeois without industrial activity, finality — men with progressive phrases, progressists with fanatical Conservatism, traffickers in homeopathical fractions of reforms, fosterers of family — nepotism, Grand Masters of corruption, hypocrites of religion, Tartuffes of politics." In 1859, the upper-middle-class Whigs and the working-class Radicals merged into the Liberal Party, the main liberal party of Victorian Britain.

History[]

The name "Whig" comes from the "whiggamores", radical Scottish Presbyterians who affiliated themselves with the Kirk Party and challenged King Charles I of England's establishment of the Scottish Episcopal Church during the Bishops' Wars. The term came into use during the 1678 Exclusion Crisis, during which a sizeable faction in English politics opposed a Catholic succession to the throne (due to their belief that Catholicism was a threat to all the religious and political changes that followed the Restoration), and were thus compared to radical Protestants. The Whigs were the spiritual successors of the Parliamentarians of the English Civil War, upholding their belief in the supremacy of Parliament over the King. The Whigs supported the continued disenfranchisement of Catholics and toleration of Protestant dissenters, and many of their leaders were wealthy elites who met regularly at town or country mansions and at fashionable resorts, exercising enormous influence through their connections and patronage. The Whigs were opposed to the Tories, who supported the continued establishment of the Church of England and "divine right" absolutism, and wielded the support of the rural gentry against religious toleration and foreign entanglements.

Whig MPs in 1705

Whig MPs in 1705

While the Whigs failed to block the accession of the Catholic James II of England to the throne in 1685, they backed the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, with most Whigs and many Protestant Tories inviting William of Orange to invade the British Isles and take the throne. The ensuing "Rage of Party" from 1690 to 1715 saw the Whigs, inspired by the values of liberal democracy brought about by the Enlightenment, and consisting of the noble houses, wealthy merchants, and non-Anglicans, engage in intense partisanship with the Tories, who came to accept a limited version of Whiggish constitutional monarchy. During the War of the Spanish Succession, the Whigs - who represented urban merchants - supported the war with France due to their increased profits, while the Tory country landlords paid for the war with their taxes and were eager to bring the war to a close.

Queen Anne favored the Tories during her reign from 1702 to 1714, but, on her death, the Tories plotted to invite James Edward Francis Stuart to take the throne; the Jacobite rising of 1715 discredited the Tories as a party of crypto-Jacobites, ushering in a period of "Whig supremacy" from 1714 to 1756. During this time, the Whigs supported Britain's expansionist ambitions overseas, while the Tories criticized the financial and human cost of these wars. By the 1750s, the Jacobite rising of 1745 had further discredited the Tories, and the rising opposition of the "Patriot Whigs" to Robert Walpole's Whig regime led to the disintegration of Whig party politics as factions such as the Rockinghamites, Bedfordites, Foxites, Portlandites, Pittites, and others emerged around leading Whigs. Rule was by aristocratic groups and connections, regarding themselves as Whigs by sentiment and tradition, while country gentlemen identifying themselves as "Tories" remained an important force at the local level. While the English peasantry tended to have a sentimental attachment to Toryism and supported the squirearchy and landed gentry, the urban working-class saw the Whigs as more responsive to the needs and aspirations of the lower classes, although there were pockets of Tory support among urban workers employed in traditional crafts or industries with close ties to the landowning elite.

The accession of King George III to the throne in 1762 changed the meanings of "Whig" and "Tory", as his attempts to reassert royal power led to a faction of "The King's Friends" being identified with Toryism. Tory sentiment, tradition, and temperament survived among certain families and social groups, and vaguely-defined Tory and Whig parties took shape as the Rockinghamites opposed the King's reassertion of power and, as in the case of Charles James Fox, many sympathized with the American Revolution. The parties reformed in the 1780s and 1790s during a revolutionary fervor as "the King's Friends" and conservative Whigs reformed the Tories (then known as "Pittites") and moderate and radical Whigs rallied around Fox, who had French sympathies. The Whigs also supported free trade and came to support broadening the franchise, the abolition of slavery, and emancipating the Catholics, switching their previous views on allowing the working-class and Catholics to vote. While Foxite opposition to the Papists Act 1779 (allowing Catholics to serve in the British Army) resulted in the Gordon Riots in London and William Pitt the Younger supported electoral reform in 1784 and Catholic emancipation in 1801, the French Revolution caused the Tories to change their views on electoral reform and adopt a decidedly conservative and anti-revolutionary nature, radicals supportive of electoral reform became Whigs. The French Revolution and the Irish Rebellion of 1798 helped shift the parties' views towards Catholicism; while radical Whigs had led the 1780 Gordon Riots in London in response to the inclusion of Catholics in the British Army, the Whigs' growing concern about the rise of Napoleon in France led to their belief that Catholic emancipation was a way to win the support of Irish Catholics and to unite Britain against Napoleon. They introduced a bill to the House of Commons in 1801, attempting to allow Catholics to hold certain government offices. The bill failed, but the Whigs passed the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829. Meanwhile, the Tories became increasingly anti-Catholic after the French Revolution due to their belief that the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was evidence that Irish Catholics were not content with British rule; the Tories passed the Acts of Union in 1800 to strip Ireland of legislative independence, causing many Catholics to feel that the Tories had betrayed them.

By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the Whigs continued to appeal to the emerging commercial and industrial classes, as well as some segments of the landed aristocracy who were more open to gradual reform. They advocated for greater parliamentary representation, the expansion of civil liberties, and the reform of outdated social and economic structures, and they were more open to accommodating the interests of the middle and working classes, though they still maintained a degree of deference to the aristocracy. Meanwhile, the Tories drew their support primarily from the landed gentry, the aristocracy, the Church of England, and those with a vested interest in the status quo. The Tories were the dominant political force during the Napoleonic Wars, largely due to the perceived need for a strong, centralized government to guide the country through the military and diplomatic challenges posed by Napoleon. The Tories' support for the war effort and their ability to present themselves as the party of stability and national unity helped them maintain their grip on power throughout the conflict. The Whigs, while offering an alternative vision of reform and gradual change, were often seen as less reliable in times of crisis and military threat. While the Tories supported a strong, interventionist foreign policy and a robust military response to the Napoleonic threat and saw war as necessary to preserve Britain's global power and the stability of the existing political order, the Whigs were more skeptical of the war, advocating for a more limited British involvement and a focus on naval blockades rather than continental commitments. The Whigs were worried about the financial and human costs of the prolonged conflict. Many British soldiers who fought in the wars were drawn from the working classes and may have been sympathetic to the Whigs' calls for greater representation and social reform, but the soldier's primary loyalty was to the Crown, the military, and the preservation of the British Empire, causes that were strongly championed by the Tory party.

In 1807, the Whig prime minister William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville and his cabinet lost the support of King George III by trying to legislate to permit Catholics to serve as Army and Navy officers, marking a shift in the Whigs' views towards Catholicism. While the Tory program of opposing Catholic emancipation and supporting the traditional powers of the King proved popular with the restricted electorate of the unreformed House of Commons by the 1807 general election, the Foxites continued to serve as the core of the Whig Party, while the Radicals (a largely middle-class group of reformers who had philosophical differences with the aristocratic Whigs) voted with the Whigs in parliament. By the 1818 election, the Whigs had long suffered from weak leadership in the House and were divided over their response to growing social unrest and the introduction of the Corn Laws. The weak leadership of the Whigs enabled Lord Liverpool to remain prime minister from 1812 to 1827, and the Tories blunted the momentum of the increasingly-popular Irish "Catholic Association" (which held mass protests to advocate for Catholic emancipation) by turning enough Tory votes to emancipate the Catholics in 1829. From 1826 to 1830, the Whig situation improved as Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey emerged as the Whig peers' leading figure, and, in 1831, supporters of electoral reform helped the Whigs win that year's election in a landslide. In 1832, in the first election after the Reform Act 1832, the newly-enfranchised middle classes helped the Whigs win 67% o the popular vote, while the Repeal Association won several seats in Ireland through presenting candidates independent of the two principal parties. In 1835, the Whigs formed an electoral pact with the Repeal Association and the Radicals, but the formation of a new "Conservative Party" - consisting of Tories supportive of incremental progress - rescued Toryism. While the Conservatives stood by an eleven-point Tamworth Manifesto (supporting the Reform Act as the final settlement of a great constitutional question, supporting a careful review of civil and ecclesiastical institutions, supporting the correction of proved abuses, supported church reform to preserve the true interests of Anglicanism, supported the idea of "reform to survive," and opposed "a perpetual vortex of agitation"), the Whigs advocated for a reform of the Corn Laws, resulting in their loss of protectionist support and heavy losses in constituencies where aristocratic Whigs were rejected by the electorate. The Repeal Association was also shattered in 1841, while the Chartists picked up a few votes. Divisions within the Conservative Party between protectionist Tories led by Edward Smith-Stanley and pro-free trade Peelites allowed the Whigs to form a minority government in 1847, and the 1852 election saw the Tories become more completely the party of the rural aristocracy as the Whigs became the party of the rising urban bourgeoisie, resulting in a close election. The Peelites formed a coalition with the Whigs and Radicals, and the coalition won re-election in 1857 in a show of support for the Irish former Tory-turned-conservative Whig Lord Palmerston's handling of the Second Opium War. The Liberal coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the House of Commons (who represented the manufacturing towns, social reformers, Nonconformists, pro-business isolationists, and free traders) merged with the Peelites to form the Liberal Party during the late 1850s and 1860s, when the departure of the Whig leaders Russell and Palmerston enabled William Ewart Gladstone to lead a middle-class Liberal movement dedicated to balanced budgets, low taxes, laissez-faire economics, and the development of a capitalist society.

The Whigs and Tories came to embody the liberal-conservative contention of 19th century Europe, and they were increasingly referred to by such labels. In 1859, the Whigs, Radicals, and Peelite Tories merged into the Liberal Party.

Electorate[]

The Whig Party consistently performed well in major urban centers, port towns, and manufacturing hubs, reflecting the party's support for modern capitalism, as well as trading centers' associations with nonconformist Protestantism. The Whig Party was initially an alliance of aristocrats - who sought to increase their own power and decrease that of the king through Parliament - with the urban middle classes and nonconformists. This alliance of large-scale landholders and capitalists allowed for the Whigs to remain a competitive force both in rural and urban areas, although rural areas, with their heavy concentration of rural gentry and traditional Anglicans, proved fertile ground for Toryism. Nonconformism and financial centers were initially concentrated in South East England, especially in London, which was a Whig stronghold. The revival of Toryism in the 1780s led to a political realignment as conservative Whigs joined forces with William Pitt the Younger's Tories, who attracted the country gentry, the merchant classes, and official administerial groups, while Whigs attracted religious dissenters, industrialists, and reformers. The Whigs' change of heart about Catholicism led to the Irish Patriot Party merging with the Whigs following the Acts of Union in 1801. However, the Whigs' distrust of involving the working-class in democracy resulted in the Radicals winning the support of this demographic, while the Whigs attracted the managerial class.

The Whigs had a complicated relationship with the working classes, the Irish, and the Scots. The lower-class English, while largely excluded from formal political participation, often expressed their views through riots, protests, and other forms of popular action. In the early 18th-century, many lower-class English people were sympathetic to the Whigs due to their identification with reform and progress, but the Whigs' support for the lower classes waned in the mid-18th century due to their increasing focus on the interests of the wealthy and powerful. The Whigs also became more supportive of the war effort against France, which led to increased taxes and hardship for the lower-class English. The Tories' support for low taxes and protectionist trade measures attracted working-class support in the late 18th century. At the same time, the Tories were seen as the party of Scottish nationalism and the restoration of the House of Stuart to the throne, attracting significant support. The Whigs were seen as the party of English imperialism due to their support for the union of England and Scotland and the suppression of Scottish nationalism, but their support for free trade and the development of Scottish industries led to the Whigs becoming the dominant party in the Lowlands and western Highlands. While Tories were concerned about the preservation of Scottish culture, Scottish Whigs supported involvement in a greater British economy to facilitate access to English export markets. The suppression of the Jacobite rising of 1745 led many Scots to abandon Toryism and turn to the Whigs.

Gallery[]

Advertisement