This the Tories did at the Revolution, but
remained Tories as before.
I have half a mind to write a critical and philosophical essay on Whiggism,
from Dryden's Achitophel (Shaftesbury), the first Whig, (for, with Dr.
Johnson's leave, the devil is no such cattle,) down to ----, who, I trust,
in God's mercy to the interests of peace, union, and liberty in this
nation, will be the last. In it I would take the last years of Queen Anne's
reign as the zenith, or palmy state, of Whiggism in its divinest _avatar_
of common sense, or of the understanding, vigorously exerted in the right
direction on the right and proper objects of the understanding; and would
then trace the rise, the occasion, the progress, and the necessary
degeneration of the Whig spirit of compromise, even down to the profound
ineptitudes of their party in these days. A clever fellow might make
something of this hint. How Asgill would have done it!
_February_ 22. 1832.
THE CHURCH.
The church is the last relic of our nationality. Would to God that the
bishops and the clergy in general could once fully understand that the
Christian church and the national church are as little to be confounded as
divided! I think the fate of the Reform Bill, in itself, of comparatively
minor importance; the fate of the national church occupies my mind with
greater intensity.
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