George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[163] change in the great Whig party of England. The

chap. VII.} 1754.

fires had gone out; the ashes on its altars were grown cold. It must be renovated or given over to dissolution. It had accomplished its original purposes, and was relapsing into a state of chaos. Now that the principle of its former cohesion and activity had exhausted its power, and that it rested only on its traditions, intestine divisions and new combinations would necessarily follow. The Whigs had, by the Revolution of 1688, adjusted a compromise between the liberty of the industrial classes and the old feudal aristocracy, giving internal rest after a long conflict. With cold and unimpassioned judgment they had seated the House of Hanover on the English throne, in the person of a lewd, vulgar and ill-bred prince, who was neither born nor educated among them, nor spoke their language, nor understood their constitution; and who yet passively gave the nameof his House as a watchword for toleration in the church, freedom of thinking and of speech, the security of property under the sanction of law, the safe enjoyment of English liberty. They had defended this wise and deliberate act against the wounded hereditary affections and the monarchical propensities of the rural districts of the nation; till at last their fundamental measures had ceased to clash with the sentiment of the people, and the whole aristocracy had accepted their doctrines. Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, called himself a Whig, was one of the brightest ornaments of the party, and after Hardwicke, their oracle on questions of law. Cumberland, Newcastle, Devonshire, Bedford, Halifax, and the Marquis of Rockingham, were all reputed Whigs. So were George and Charles Townshend, the young Lord North, Grenville,