Old Sports and Sportsmen; or, the Willey Country: with sketches of Squire Forester and his whipper-in Tom MoodyRandall, John
History
Old Sports and Sportsmen; or, the Willey Country: with sketches of Squire Forester and his whipper-in Tom Moody
Randall, John
Forester, George, -1811; Hunting -- England -- Shropshire; Shropshire (England) -- History
So that Whig and Tory had even then long been names representing those
principles by which the Constitution was balanced, names representing
those popular and monarchical ingredients which it was supposed assured
liberty and order, progress and stability. But about the commencement of
Mr. Forester’s parliamentary career parties had been in a great measure
broken up into sections, if not into factions—into Pelhamites,
Cobhamites, Foxites, Pittites, and Wilkites—the questions uppermost being
place, power, and distinction, ministry and opposition—the Ins and the
Outs. The Ins, when Whigs, pretty much as now, adopted Tory principles,
and Tories in opposition appealed to popular favour for support; indeed
from the fall of Walpole to the American war, as now, there were few
statesmen who were not by turns the colleagues and the adversaries, the
friends and the foes of their contemporaries. The general pulse, it is
true, beat more feverishly, and men went to Parliament or into battle as
readily as to the hunting-field—for the excitement of the thing. To
epitomise, mighty armies, such as Europe had not seen since the days of
Marlborough, were moving in every direction. Four hundred and fifty-two
thousand men were gathering to crush the Prince of a German state, with
one hundred and fifty thousand men in the field to encounter them. The
English and Hanoverian army, under the Duke of Cumberland, was relied
upon to prevent the French attacking Prussia, with whom we had formed an
alliance. England felt an intense interest in the struggle, and bets
were made as to the result. Mr. Forester was returned to the new
Parliament, which met in December, 1757, in time, we believe, to vote for
the subsidy of £670,000 asked for by the king for his “good brother and
ally,” the King of Prussia. A minister like Pitt, who was then inspiring
the people with his spirit, and raising the martial ardour of the nation
to a pitch it had never known before, who drew such pictures of England’s
power and pluck as to cause the French envoy to jump out of the window,
was a man after the Squire’s own heart, and he gave him his hearty “aye,”
to subsidy after subsidy. As a contemporary satirist wrote:—
“No more they make a fiddle-faddle
About a Hessian horse or saddle.
No more of continental measures;
No more of wasting British treasures.
Ten millions, and a vote of credit.
’Tis right. He can’t be wrong who did it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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