hteenth century had a real enthusiasm for liberty;
their voices lift like trumpets upon the very word. Whatever their
immediate forbears may have meant, these men meant what they said when
they talked of the high memory of Hampden or the majesty of Magna Carta.
Those Patriots whom Walpole called the Boys included many who really
were patriots--or better still, who really were boys. If we prefer to
put it so, among the Whig aristocrats were many who really were Whigs;
Whigs by all the ideal definitions which identified the party with a
defence of law against tyrants and courtiers. But if anybody deduces,
from the fact that the Whig aristocrats were Whigs, any doubt about
whether the Whig aristocrats were aristocrats, there is one practical
test and reply. It might be tested in many ways: by the game laws and
enclosure laws they passed, or by the strict code of the duel and the
definition of honour on which they all insisted. But if it be really
questioned whether I am right in calling their whole world an
aristocracy, and the very reverse of it a democracy, the true historical
test is this: that when republicanism really entered the world, they
instantly waged two great wars with it--or (if the view be preferred) it
instantly waged two great wars with them. America and France revealed
the real nature of the English Parliament. Ice may sparkle, but a real
spark will show it is only ice. So when the red fire of the Revolution
touched the frosty splendours of the Whigs, there was instantly a
hissing and a strife; a strife of the flame to melt the ice, of the
water to quench the flame.

It has been noted that one of the virtues of the aristocrats was
liberty, especially liberty among themselves. It might even be said that
one of the virtues of the aristocrats was cynicism. They were not
stuffed with our fashionable fiction, with its stiff and wooden figures
of a good man named Washington and a bad man named Boney. They at least
were aware that Washington's cause was not so obviously white nor
Napoleon's so obviously black as most books in general circulation would
indicate. They had a natural admiration for the military genius of
Washington and Napoleon; they had the most unmixed contempt for the
German Royal Family. But they were, as a class, not only against both
Washington and Napoleon, but against them both for the same reason. And
it was that they both stood for democracy.

Great injustice is done to the English aristo