Whiggism

Whiggism or Whiggery is a political philosophy that grew out of the Parliamentarian faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1653) and was concretely formulated by Lord Shaftesbury during the Stuart Restoration.

[3] Even after 1760, the Whigs still included about half of the newest noble families in England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, as well as most merchants, dissenters, and the middle classes.

Whigs especially opposed regime change efforts by adherents of Jacobitism, a movement of legitimist monarchists which promised freedom of religion and civil rights to all outside the Established Churches, devolution in the United Kingdom, linguistic rights for minority languages, and many other political reforms, and which shared a substantial overlap with and heavily influenced both early Toryism and what is now termed traditionalist conservatism.

In the process, American Whiggism ultimately transitioned from monarchism into republicanism and Federalism, while also co-opting many traditionally Jacobite, Counter-Enlightenment, and early Tory positions.

Whig history, which was largely developed by Thomas Babington Macaulay to justify the party's political ideology and past practices, remained the official history of the British Empire until serious challenges were raised to its claims by John Lingard, William Cobbett, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Roger Scruton, Saunders Lewis, and John Lorne Campbell.

[5] In 1702, writing satirically in the guise of a Tory, Daniel Defoe asserted: "We can never enjoy a settled uninterrupted Union and Tranquility in this Nation, till the Spirit of Whiggisme, Faction, and Schism is melted down like the Old-Money".

[10]Although they were unsuccessful in preventing the accession of the Duke of York to the throne, the Whigs in alliance with William of Orange brought him down in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Tyrrell propounded a moderate Whiggism which interpreted England's balanced and mixed constitution "as the product of a contextualized social compact blending elements of custom, history, and prescription with inherent natural law obligations".

[15] Sidney, on the other hand, emphasised the main themes of republicanism and based Whig ideology in the sovereignty of the people by proposing a constitutional reordering that would both elevate the authority of Parliament and democratise its forms.

[21] In India, Prashad (1966) argues that the profound influence of the ideas of Edmund Burke introduced Whiggism into the mainstream of Indian political thought.