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Updated: June 6, 2025
Against his Life of MILTON, the hounds of Whiggism have opened in full cry . But of Milton's great excellence as a poet, where shall we find such a blazon as by the hand of Johnson?
I was very anxious that all should be well; and begged of my friend to avoid three topicks, as to which they differed very widely; Whiggism, Presbyterianism, and Sir John Pringle. He said courteously, 'I shall certainly not talk on subjects which I am told are disagreeable to a gentleman under whose roof I am; especially, I shall not do so to YOUR FATHER. Our first day went off very smoothly.
With this elevation alone, too, he was not content: he united the philosopher with the politician; and the ingenious rascal was pleased especially to pique himself upon being "a moderate Whig"! "Paul," he was wont to observe, "believe me, moderate Whiggism is a most excellent creed. It adapts itself to every possible change, to every conceivable variety of circumstance.
Indeed, miserable and insecure as his life was now, when we consider the public humiliations to which he would have been exposed, between his ancient pledge to Whiggism and his attachment and gratitude to Royalty, it is not wonderful that he should have preferred even the alternative of arrests and imprisonments to the risk of bringing upon his political name any further tarnish in such a struggle.
You can conceive my astonishment when I saw that toryism was as openly professed as whiggism itself: however, at that time I believed that all good Americans were united together; that the confidence of congress in you was unbounded. Then I entertained the certitude that America would be independent in case she should not lose you.
The repeal of the Act of Settlement would put another man in his place, and, again, an amendment of the Act of Settlement might secure the selection of some other member of the Royal Family, instead of the person previously designated to succeed by the Act of Settlement. But these, of course, are legal technicalities. The British Monarchy is an early example of Whiggism.
As men, they are genteel, sensible, and deserving. As politicians, they are worthy of your regard, for they possess the genuine spirit of whiggism. They have no acquaintance in York. They are desirous of seeing the fortifications, and other things in the military line.
Macaulay has ridiculed Johnson for what he takes to be the ludicrous inconsistency of his intense political prejudice, combined with his assertion of the indifference of all forms of government. "If," says Macaulay, "the difference between two forms of government be not worth half a guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be viler than Toryism, or the Crown can have too little power."
With this elevation alone, too, he was not content: he united the philosopher with the politician; and the ingenious rascal was pleased especially to pique himself upon being "a moderate Whig"! "Paul," he was wont to observe, "believe me, moderate Whiggism is a most excellent creed. It adapts itself to every possible change, to every conceivable variety of circumstance.
For myself, I see in it only a fresh illustration of the principles which I have demonstrated, from the whole current of our history, to form the basis of Whig policy. This union of oligarchical wealth and mob poverty is the very essence of the 'Spirit of Whiggism.
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