chy, in spite of their
machinations, were soon merged in the common ruin.

The ignoble tyranny to which this great nation was consequently subject
produced that reaction which is in the nature of human affairs. The
ancient constitution was in time restored, and the Church and the Crown
were invested with greater powers than they had enjoyed previously to
their overthrow. So hateful had been the consequences of Whig rule, that
the people were inclined rather to trust the talons of arbitrary power
than to take refuge under the wing of these pretended advocates of
popular rights. A worthless monarch and a corrupted court availed
themselves of the offered opportunity; and when James the Second
ascended the throne, the nation was again prepared to second the
aristocracy in a struggle for their liberties. But the Whigs had
profited by their previous experiment: they resolved upon a revolution,
but they determined that that revolution should be brought about by
as slight an appeal to popular sympathies as possible. They studiously
confined that appeal to the religious feelings of the nation. They hired
a foreign prince and enlisted a foreign army in their service. They
dethroned James, they established themselves in power without the aid of
the mass; and had William the Third been a man of ordinary capacity, the
constitution of Venice would have been established in England in 1688.
William the Third told the Whigs that he would never consent to be
a Doge. Resembling Louis Philippe in his character as well as in his
position, that extraordinary prince baffled the Whigs by his skilful
balance of parties; and had Providence accorded him an heir, it is
probable that the oligarchical faction would never have revived in
England. The Whigs have ever been opposed to the national institutions
because they are adverse to the establishment of an oligarchy. Local
institutions, supported by a landed gentry, check them; hence their love
of centralisation and their hatred of unpaid magistrates.

An independent hierarchy checks them; hence their affected advocacy of
toleration and their patronage of the Dissenters. The power of the Crown
checks them; therefore they always labour to reduce the sovereign to a
nonentity, and by the establishment of the Cabinet they have virtually
banished the King from his own councils. But, above all, the Parliament
of England checks them, and therefore it may be observed that the Whigs
at all times are quarre