WHIGS, a word of British origin, used for many years to designate members of an Ameri can political party. It had previously been used in America in colonial and Revolu tionary times to indicate those who were op posed to the attempts of the British Crown to •leprise the Americans of their political and commercial rights. It disappeared with the dose of the Revolution, and did not appear agaia until the National Republicans, successors to the Federalists (q.v.), adopted the name of Whigs. Those Whigs who considered the slay cry question settled by the compromise of 1850 were called in Massachusetts °Cotton Whigs,• and in New York *Silver Grays.* The Whigs continued to exist as one of the two great par ties until the election of 1852, which was fol lowed by a division on the slavery issue, the anti-slavery Whigs joining the Republican party, and the others making common cause with the Democracy.
The term was prominent in British political history for nearly two centuries to designate the political party which advocates such changes in the Constitution as tend in the direction of democracy. Defoe thus accounts for the origin of the name: •The use of it began then when the western men (the peasantry of the West Lowlands of Scotland), called Cameronians, took arms frequently for their religion. Whig is a word used in those parts for a liquor (whig, Scotch for witty), which the men used to drink . . . and so became common to the people who drank it. It afterward became a denom ination of the poor harassed people of that part of the country, who, being unmercifully persecuted by the government, against all law and justice, thought they had a civil right to their religious liberties, and therefore resisted the power of the prince (Charles II).* Mon mouth was sent to quell the insurrection, and 'at his return he found himself ill-treated for having used the rebels too mercifully; and Lau derdale told Charles, with an oath, that the duke had been so civil to the Whigs because he was a Whig himself in his heart. This made it a
court word, and in a little time the friends and followers of the duke began to be called Whigs.* A different origin is, however, assigned to the term. Sir James Balfour, in writing of an outbreak which occurred in 1648, in his own day, calls the enthusiasts *whigamores,* and Burnet, who was then five years old, offers the following explanation: 'The southwest coun ties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them throughout the year, and the north ern parts producing more than they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that come from the north; and from a word, whiggarn, used in driving their horses, all that drove were called the whigamores, and shorter, the whiggs. After the news came of Duke Hamilton's defeat (in 1648), the minis ters animated their people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up, marching at the head of their parishes, with an unheard-of fury, preaching and praying as they came, . . . This was called the whigamores inroad, and ever after that, all that opposed the court came in derision to be called whigs; and from Scotland the word passed to England.• The Whigs brought about the Revolution of l688-89, and established the Protestant succession; • they were chiefly instrumental in obtaining the aboli tion of the slave-trade and slavery, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary and municipal re form, the repeal of the corn-laws and similar measures. The term Liberals is now generally applied to the representatives of this party; the extreme section of the party, who agitate for sweeping innovations, usually have a more or less close connection with the Whigs. and have adopted the name of Radicals. See PoLMcAL PARTIES.