It will be obvious that I have given to each of these political principles a moral character; and have considered them as they would subsist in upright and conscientious men, not as we may find them "in the dregs of Romulus," suffocated by selfishness or distorted by faction. The whigs appear to have taken a far more comprehensive view of the nature and ends of civil society; their principle is more virtuous, more flexible to the variations of time and circumstance, more congenial to large and masculine intellects. But it may probably be no small advantage that the two parties, or rather the sentiments which have been presumed to actuate them, should have been mingled, as we find them, in the complex mass of the English nation, whether the proportions may or not have been always such as we might desire. They bear some analogy to the two forces which retain the planetary bodies in their orbits; the annihilation of one would disperse them into chaos, that of the other would drag them to a centre. And, though I cannot reckon these old appellations by any means characteristic of our political factions in the nineteenth century, the names whig and tory are often well applied to individuals. Nor can it be otherwise; since they are founded not only on our laws and history, with which most have some acquaintance, but in the diversities of condition and of moral temperament generally subsisting among mankind. It is, however, one thing to prefer the whig principle, another to justify, as an advocate, the party which bore that name. So far as they were guided by that principle, I hold them far more friendly to the great interests of the commonwealth than their adversaries. But, in truth, the peculiar circumstances of these four reigns after the revolution, the spirit of faction, prejudice, and animosity, above all, the desire of obtaining or retaining power, which, if it be ever sought as a means, is soon converted into an end, threw both parties very often into a false position, and gave to each the language and sentiments of the other; so that the two principles are rather to be traced in writings, and those not wholly of a temporary nature, than in the debates of parliament. In the reigns of William and Anne, the whigs, speaking of them generally as a great party, had preserved their original character unimpaired far more than their opponents. All that had passed in the former reign served to humble the tories, and to enfeeble their principle. The revolution itself, and the votes upon which it was founded, the bill of recognition in 1690, the repeal of the non-resisting test, the act of settlement, the oath of abjuration, were solemn adjudications, as it were, against their creed. They took away the old argument, that the letter of the law was on their side. If this indeed were all usurpation, the answer was ready; but those who did not care to make it, or by their submission put it out of