WHIG and TORY, the names used to denote two opposing political parties in England, were nicknames introduced in 1679 during the heated struggle over the bill to exclude James, duke of York, from the succession to the Crown. The term "Whig"— whatever be its origin in Scots Gaelic—was used of cattle and horse thieves and was thence transferred to Scottish Presbyterians. Its connotations in the 17th century were therefore Presby terianism and rebellion ; and it was applied to those who claimed the power of excluding the heir from the throne when they deemed it desirable. "Tory" was an Irish term suggesting a Papist outlaw and was applied to those who supported the hereditary right of James in spite of his Roman Catholic faith. The names were party badges until the 19th century. The Tories placed reli ance on the Crown ; the Whigs on the greater nobility. It may be fanciful to trace this cleavage as far back as Magna Carta ; but at least it must be remembered that the later ideals of popular or democratic government are entirely irrelevant to the creeds of Whig and Tory. The revolution of 1688-89 changed the position, forcing a majority of Tories to recognize allegiance to other than hereditary right to the Crown ; and for a time they were thrown back on their opposition to religious toleration and to foreign entanglements, the expression of two cardinal principles of the older Toryism. Again in 1714 the failure of the Tory ministers to act together and themselves to determine who should succeed Anne, and the subsequent flight of their leader, Boling broke, discredited the Tories as Jacobites, and gave 5o years of political power to the Whigs. During this period the Whig land owners, with no effective king to fear, secured their hold on parliament by controlling a large proportion of the borough representation ; and the Tories came to advocate, not only an effective balancing force in the Crown, but also the safeguard of a wider franchise and a purified electoral system.
When George III. came to the throne in 176o the name of Whig covered many personal factions, for their long prosperity had brought disunion ; and the new king, attempting to restore the monarchy to influence, could easily attach to himself some of these groups. The following 25 years were complicated by the formid able body of "king's friends," who cannot properly be called by either name. Even the American revolution cannot be considered in terms of the two parties. The nation emerged from the mixing bowl in 1784, with a new Toryism, led by the younger Pitt and a new Whiggism, leavened by the industrial interests and by the beginnings of a Radicalism which took up the demand for electoral and philanthropic reform. In contrast to Whig changes, the Tory party began to acquire the reputation of resistance to change ; but the Reform Bill of 1832 and the willingness of Canning and Peel to face change, even through party disunion, led to the transformation of Toryism into the Conservatism of Disraeli, which while retaining its devotion to the Crown and the Established Church, expanded its fervent nationalism into a wider imperial outlook, a legacy from those Chathamite Whigs who were rarely at ease within the ranks of their nominal allies. Meanwhile, the commercial and radical wing of the great Whig party, abandoned by its more conservative members, became the main body of the Liberal Party, and Whiggism ceased to have any important political meaning. (See also CONSERVATIVE PARTY; LIBERAL PARTY.) (G. H. G.)