WHIG. Different accounts are given of the origin of this word. Burnet, in his History of his Own Time' (i. 43), under the year 1648, says, " The south west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year ; and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west came in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that came from the north; and from a word whiggam, used in driving their horses, all that drove were called whigjamors and shorter the whiggs. Now, in that year, after the news came down of Duke Hamilton's defeat, tile ministers animated their people to rise and march to Edinburgh ; and they came up march ing on the head of their parishes, with an unheard of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and bearded them, they being about 6000. This was called the whiggamors' inroad; and ever after that all that opposed the court came in contempt to be called whiggs ; and from Scotland the word was brought into England, where it is now one of our un happy terms of distinction?' Whig has long been the name of the one of the two great political parties in the state ; the other is Tory. [Tour.] The Whigs of the last century and a half are generally viewed as the represents tives of the friends of reform or change in the antient constitution of the country, ever since the popular element became active in the legislature, whether they were called puritans, non-conformists, round-heads, covenanters, or by any other name. Down to the Revolution of 1688 the object of this reform party was to make such change ; since that event, at least till recently, it has principally been to maintain the change then made. Of course, however, this party, like all other parties, has both shifted or modified its professions, principles, and modes of action within certain limits from time to time, in conformity with the variation of circumstances, and has seldom been with out several shades of opinion among the persons belonging to it in the same age.
These differences have been sometimes less, sometimes more distinctive; at one time re ferring to matters of apparently mere tem porary policy, as was thought to be the case when the Whigs of the last age, soon after the breaking out of the French revo lution, split into two sections, which came to be known as the Old and the New Whigs ; at another, seeming to involve so fundamental a discordance of ultimate views and objects, if not of first princi ples, as perhaps to make it expedient for one extreme of the party to drop the name of Whig altogether, and to call it self something else, as we have seen the Radicals do in our own day. All parties in politics indeed are liable to be thus drawn or forced to shift their ground from time to time ; even that party whose general object is to resist change and to preserve what exists, although it has no doubt a more definite course marked out for it than the opposite party, must still often, as Burke expresses it, vary its means to secure the unity of its end ; be sides, upon no principles will precisely the same objects seem the most desirable or important at all times. But the inno vating party, or party of the movement, is more especially subject to this change of views, aims, and character : it can, pro perly speaking, have no fixed principles; as soon as it begins to assume or profess such, it loses its true character and really passes into its opposite. Accordingly, in point of fact, much of what was once Whiggism has now become Toryisin or Conservatism, the changes in the consti tution which were formerly sought for being now attained; and, on the other hand, as new objects have presented them selves to it, Whiggism has, in so far as it retains its proper character, put on new aspects, and even taken to itself new names.