h 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.'

The English constitution, which, from the tithing-man to the Peer of
Parliament, has thrown the whole government of the country into the
hands of those who are qualified by property to perform the duties of
their respective offices, has secured that diffused and general freedom,
without which the national industry would neither have its fair play nor
its just reward, by a variety of institutions, which, while they prevent
those who have no property from invading the social commonwealth, in
whose classes every industrious citizen has a right to register himself,
offer also an equally powerful check to the ambitious fancies of those
great families, over whose liberal principles and huge incomes the
Whig-Radical writers gloat with the self-complacency of lackeys at the
equipages of their masters. There is ever an union in a perverted sense
between those who are beneath power and those who wish to be above it;
and oligarchies and despotisms are usually established by the agency of
a deluded multitude. The Crown, with its constitutional influence over
the military services, a Parliament of two houses watching each other's
proceedings with constitutional jealousy, an independent hierarchy
and, not least, an independent magistracy, are serious obstacles in the
progressive establishment of that scheme of government which a small
knot of great families--these dukes and marquises, whose revenues
according to the Government organ, could buy up the income of the whole
peerage-naturally wish to introduce. We find, therefore, throughout the
whole period of our more modern history, a powerful section of the great
nobles ever at war with the national institutions, checking the Crown,
attacking the independence of that House of Parliament in which they
happen to be in a minority--no matter which, patronising sects to
reduce the influence of the Church, and playing town against country to
overcome the authority of the gentry.

It is evident that these aspiring oligarchs, as a party, can have little
essential strength; they can count upon nothing but their retainers.
To secure the triumph of their cause, therefore, they are forced to
manoeuvre with a pretext, and while they aim at oligarchical rule, they
appa