Whigs | |
|---|---|
| Leaders | |
| Founder | Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury |
| Founded | 1678; 347 years ago (1678) |
| Dissolved | 1859; 166 years ago (1859) |
| Preceded by | Roundheads Kirk Party |
| Merged into | Liberal Party |
| Ideology | Whiggism[1] Factions: |
| Political position | Centre[9] tocentre-left[10][11] |
| Religion | Protestantism[a][12] |
| Colours | Orange |
TheWhigs were apolitical party in theParliaments of England,Scotland,Ireland,Great Britain and theUnited Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, theTories. The Whigs became theLiberal Party when the faction merged with thePeelites andRadicals in the 1850s. Many Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 over the issue ofIrish Home Rule to form theLiberal Unionist Party, which merged into theConservative Party in 1912.
The Whigs began as a political faction that opposedabsolute monarchy andCatholic emancipation, supportingconstitutional monarchism andparliamentary government, but also Protestant supremacy. They played a central role in theGlorious Revolution of 1688 and were the standing enemies of theRoman CatholicStuart kings and pretenders. The period known as the Whig Supremacy (1714–1760) was enabled by theHanoverian succession ofGeorge I in 1714 and the failure of theJacobite rising of 1715 by Tory rebels. The Whigs took full control of the government in 1715 and thoroughly purged the Tories from all major positions in government, the army, theChurch of England, the legal profession, and local political offices. The first great leader of the Whigs wasRobert Walpole, who maintained control of the government from 1721 to 1742, and whose protégé,Henry Pelham, led the government from 1743 to 1754. Great Britain approximated aone-party state under the Whigs until KingGeorge III came to the throne in 1760 and allowed Tories back in. But the Whig Party's hold on power remained strong for many years thereafter. Thus historians have called the period from roughly 1714 to 1783 the "long period of Whig oligarchy".[13] During theAmerican Revolution, the Whigs were the party more sympathetic to American independence and the creation of a democracy in the United States.
By 1784, both the Whigs and Tories had become formal political parties, withCharles James Fox becoming the leader of a reorganized Whig Party arrayed againstWilliam Pitt the Younger's new Tories. The foundation of both parties depended more on the support of wealthy politicians than on popular votes. Although there were elections to theHouse of Commons, only a few mencontrolled most of the voters.
Both parties slowly evolved during the 18th century. In the beginning, the Whig Party generally tended to support thearistocratic families, the continued disenfranchisement of Catholics and toleration ofnonconformist Protestants (dissenters such as the Presbyterians), while the Tories generally favoured the minorgentry and people who were (relatively speaking) smallholders; they also supported the legitimacy of a stronglyestablishedChurch of England. (The so-calledHigh Tories preferredhigh church Anglicanism, orAnglo-Catholicism. Some, particularly adherents of thenon-juring schism, openly or covertly supported the exiledHouse of Stuart's claim to the throne—a position known asJacobitism.) Later, the Whigs came to draw support from the emerging industrial reformists and the mercantile class while the Tories came to draw support from farmers, landowners,royalists and (relatedly) those who favoured imperial military spending.
By the first half of the 19th century, the Whig manifesto had come to encompass thesupremacy of parliament, theabolition of slavery, the expansion of the franchise (suffrage) and an acceleration of the move towardcomplete equal rights for Catholics (a reversal of the party's late-17th-century position, which had been militantlyanti-Catholic).[14]
The termWhig began as a short form ofwhiggamore, a term originally used by people in the north of England to refer to (cattle)drovers from western Scotland who came toLeith to buy corn. TheGaelic-speaking Scottish cattle drivers would call out "Chuig" or "Chuig an bothar"—meaning "away" or "to the road"; this sounded to the English like "Whig", and they came to use the word "Whig" or "Whiggamore" derisively to refer to these people.[15] During theEnglish Civil Wars, when Charles I reigned, the term "Whig" was picked up and used by the English to refer derisively to a radical faction of the ScottishCovenanters who called themselves theKirk Party (see theWhiggamore Raid). It was later applied to Scottish Presbyterian rebels who were against the king'sEpiscopalian order in Scotland.[16][17]
The wordWhig entered English political discourse during theExclusion Bill crisis of 1679–1681: there was controversy about whether King Charles II's brother,James, Duke of York, should be allowed to succeed to the throne on Charles's death, andWhig became a term of abuse for members of theCountry Party, which sought to remove James from the line of succession on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic (Samuel Johnson, a fervent Tory, often joked that "the first Whig was the Devil".).[18]
Eventually, Country Party politicians themselves would start describing their own faction as the "Whigs".
InThe History of England,c. 1760,David Hume wrote:
The court party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the name of Whigs: The country party found a resemblance between the courtiers and the popish banditti in Ireland, to whom the appellation of Tory was affixed. And after this manner, these foolish terms of reproach came into public and general use; and even at present seem not nearer their end than when they were first invented.[19]
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The precursor to the Whigs wasDenzil Holles' parliamentarian faction, which was characterised by its opposition toabsolute monarchism.
Under Lord Shaftesbury's leadership, the Whigs (also known as the Country Party) sought to exclude the Duke of York (who later became King James II) from the throne due to his Roman Catholicism, his favouring of monarchical absolutism, and his connections to France. They believed the heir presumptive, if allowed to inherit the throne, would endanger the Protestant religion, liberty and property.[20]: 4
The first Exclusion Bill was supported by a substantial majority on its second reading in May 1679. In response,King Charlesprorogued Parliament and then dissolved it, but the subsequent elections in August and September saw the Whigs' strength increase. This new parliament did not meet for thirteen months, because Charles wanted to give passions a chance to die down. When it met in October 1680, an Exclusion Bill was introduced and passed in the Commons without major resistance, but was rejected in the Lords. Charles dissolved Parliament in January 1681, but the Whigs did not suffer serious losses in the ensuing election. The next Parliament first met in March at Oxford, but Charles dissolved it after only a few days, when he made an appeal to the country against the Whigs and determined to rule without Parliament. In February, Charles had made a deal with the French KingLouis XIV, who promised to support him against the Whigs. Without Parliament, the Whigs gradually crumbled, mainly due to government repression following the discovery of theRye House Plot. The Whig peers, theEarl of Melville, theEarl of Leven, andLord Shaftesbury, and Charles II's illegitimate son theDuke of Monmouth, being implicated, fled to and regrouped in theUnited Provinces.Algernon Sidney,Sir Thomas Armstrong andWilliam Russell, Lord Russell, were executed for treason. TheEarl of Essex committed suicide in the Tower of London over his arrest for treason, whilstLord Grey of Werke escaped from the Tower.[20]: 7–8
After theGlorious Revolution of 1688, QueenMary II and KingWilliam III governed with both Whigs and Tories, despite the fact that many of the Tories still supported the deposed Roman CatholicJames II.[21] William saw that the Tories were generally friendlier to royal authority than the Whigs and he employed both groups in his government. His early ministry was largely Tory, but gradually the government came to be dominated by the so-calledJunto Whigs, a group of younger Whig politicians who led a tightly organised political grouping. The increasing dominance of the Junto led to a split among the Whigs, with the so-called Country Whigs seeing the Junto as betraying their principles for office. The Country Whigs, led byRobert Harley, gradually merged with the Tory opposition in the later 1690s.[22]
Although William's successorAnne had considerable Tory sympathies and excluded the Junto Whigs from power, after a brief and unsuccessful experiment with an exclusively Tory government she generally continued William's policy of balancing the parties, supported by her moderate Tory ministers, theDuke of Marlborough andLord Godolphin. However, as theWar of the Spanish Succession went on and became less and less popular with the Tories, Marlborough and Godolphin were forced to rely more and more on the Junto Whigs, so that by 1708 they headed an administration of theParliament of Great Britain dominated by the Junto. Anne herself grew increasingly uncomfortable with this dependence on the Whigs, especially as her personal relationship with theDuchess of Marlborough deteriorated. This situation also became increasingly uncomfortable to many of the non-Junto Whigs, led by theDuke of Somerset and theDuke of Shrewsbury, who began to intrigue withRobert Harley's Tories. In the spring of 1710, Anne dismissed Godolphin and the Junto ministers, replacing them with Tories.[22]
The Whigs now moved into opposition and particularly decried the 1713Treaty of Utrecht, which they attempted to block through their majority in theHouse of Lords. The Tory administration led by Harley and theViscount Bolingbroke persuaded the Queen to create twelve new Tory peers to force the treaty through.[23]
The Whigs primarily advocated the supremacy of Parliament, while calling for toleration for Protestant dissenters. They adamantly opposed a Catholic as king.[24] They opposed the Catholic Church because they saw it as a threat to liberty, or asPitt the Elder stated: "The errors of Rome are rank idolatry, a subversion of all civil as well as religious liberty, and the utter disgrace of reason and of human nature".[25]
Ashcraft and Goldsmith (1983) have traced in detail, in the period 1689 to 1710, the major influence of the liberal political ideas ofJohn Locke on Whig political values, as expressed in widely cited manifestos such as "Political Aphorisms: or, the True Maxims of Government Displayed", an anonymous pamphlet that appeared in 1690 and was widely cited by Whigs.[26] The 18th-century Whigs borrowed the concepts and language of universal rights employed by political theorists Locke andAlgernon Sidney (1622–1682).[27] By the 1770s the ideas ofAdam Smith, a founder ofclassical liberalism became important. As Wilson and Reill (2004) note: "Adam Smith's theory melded nicely with the liberal political stance of the Whig Party and its middle-class constituents".[28]
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), a leading London intellectual, repeatedly denigrated the "vile"[29] Whigs and praised the Tories, even during times of Whig political supremacy. In his greatDictionary (1755), Johnson defined a Tory as "one who adheres to the ancient Constitution of the state and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England, opposed to a Whig". He linked 18th-centuryWhiggism with 17th-century revolutionary Puritanism, arguing that the Whigs of his day were similarly inimical to the established order of church and state. Johnson recommended that strict uniformity in religious externals was the best antidote to the objectionable religious traits that he linked to Whiggism.[30]
At their inception, the Whigs wereprotectionist in economic policy, withfree trade policies being advocated by Tories.[31]: 270–71 The Whigs were opposed to the pro-French policies of the Stuart kings Charles II and James II as they believed that such an alliance with the Catholicabsolute monarchy of France endangered liberty and Protestantism. The Whigs claimed that trade with France was bad for England and developed an economic theory of overbalance, that is a deficit of trade with France was bad because it would enrich France at England's expense.[31]: 270–74
In 1678, the Whigs passed theProhibition of 1678 that banned certain French goods from being imported into England. The economic historianWilliam Ashley claimed that this Act witnessed the "real starting-point in the history of Whig policy in the matter of trade".[31]: 271 It was repealed upon the accession of James II by a Tory-dominated House of Commons but upon the accession of William III in 1688 a newAct was passed that prohibited the importation of French goods.[31]: 283 In 1704, the Whigs passed theTrade with France Act that renewed protectionism against France. In 1710, Queen Anne appointed the predominantly ToryHarley Ministry, which favoured free trade. When the Tory minister Lord Bolingbroke proposed a commercial treaty with France in 1713 that would have led to freer trade, the Whigs were vehemently against it and it had to be abandoned.[31]: 271, 299
In 1786, Pitt's government negotiated theEden Agreement, a commercial treaty with France which led to freer trade between the two countries. All of the Whig leaders attacked this on traditional Whig anti-French and protectionist grounds. Fox claimed that France was England's natural enemy and that it was only at Britain's expense that she could grow.Edmund Burke,Richard Sheridan,William Windham andCharles Grey all spoke out against the trade agreement on the same grounds.[32]
Ashley claimed that "[t]he traditional policy of the Whig party from before the Revolution [of 1688] down to the time of Fox was an extreme form of Protectionism".[33] The Whigs' protectionism of this period is today increasingly cited with approval by heterodox economists such asHa-Joon Chang, who wish to challenge contemporary prevailing free trade orthodoxies via precedents from the past.[34]
Later on, several members from the Whig party came to oppose the protectionism of theCorn Laws, but trade restrictions were not repealed even after the Whigs returned to power in the 1830s.[35]
With the succession ofElectorGeorge Louis ofHanover as king in 1714, the Whigs returned to government with the support of someHanoverian Tories. TheJacobite rising of 1715 discredited much of theTory party as treasonousJacobites, and theSeptennial Act ensured that the Whigs became the dominant party, establishing the Whig oligarchy. Between 1717 and 1720 theWhig Split led to a division in the party. Government Whigs led by the former soldierJames Stanhope were opposed byRobert Walpole and his allies. While Stanhope was backed by George I, Walpole and his supporters were closer to thePrince of Wales. Following his success in defeating the government over thePeerage Bill in 1719, Walpole was invited back into government the following year. He was able to defend the government in the Commons when theSouth Sea Bubble collapsed. When Stanhope died unexpectedly in 1721, Walpole replaced him as leader of the government and became known as the firstPrime Minister. In the1722 general election the Whigs swept to a decisive victory.
Between 1714 and 1760, the Tories struggled as an active political force, but always retained a considerable presence in theHouse of Commons. The governments of Walpole,Henry Pelham and his older brother theDuke of Newcastle dominated between 1721 and 1757 (with a brief break during the also-WhigCarteret ministry). The leading entities in these governments consistently referred to themselves as "Whigs".[36]
This arrangement changed during the reign ofGeorge III, who hoped to restore his own power by freeing himself from the great Whig magnates. Thus George promoted his old tutorLord Bute to power and broke with the old Whig leadership surrounding the Duke of Newcastle. After a decade of factional chaos, with distinctBedfordite,Chathamite,Grenvillite andRockinghamite factions successively in power and all referring to themselves as "Whigs", a new system emerged with two separate opposition groups. TheRockingham Whigs claimed the mantle of Old Whigs as the purported successors of the party of the Pelhams and the great Whig families. With such noted intellectuals asEdmund Burke behind them, the Rockingham Whigs laid out a philosophy which for the first time extolled the virtues of faction, or at least their faction. The other group were the followers ofLord Chatham, who as the great political hero of theSeven Years' War generally took a stance of opposition to party and faction.[37]
The Whigs were opposed by the government ofLord North which they accused of being a Tory administration. While it largely consisted of individuals previously associated with the Whigs, many old Pelhamites as well as the Bedfordite Whig faction formerly led by theDuke of Bedford and elements of that which had been led byGeorge Grenville, it also contained elements of the Kings' Men, the group formerly associated with Lord Bute and which was generally seen as Tory-leaning.[38]
The association of Toryism with Lord North's government was also influential in the American colonies and writings of British political commentators known as theRadical Whigs did much to stimulate colonialrepublican sentiment. Early activists in thecolonies called themselves Whigs,[example needed] seeing themselves as in alliance with the political opposition in Britain, until they turned to independence and started emphasising the labelPatriots.[citation needed] In contrast, the AmericanLoyalists, who supported the monarchy, were consistently also referred to as Tories.
Later, theUnited States Whig Party was founded in 1833 on the basis of opposition to a strongpresidency, initially the presidency ofAndrew Jackson, analogous to the British Whig opposition to a strong monarchy.[39] TheTrue Whig Party, which for a century dominatedLiberia, was named for the American party rather than directly for the British one.
Dickinson reports the following:
All historians are agreed that the Tory party declined sharply in the late 1740s and 1750s and that it ceased to be an organized party by 1760. The research of Sir Lewis Namier and his disciples [...] has convinced all historians that there were no organized political parties in Parliament between the late 1750s and the early 1780s. Even the Whigs ceased to be an identifiable party, and Parliament was dominated by competing political connections, which all proclaimed Whiggish political views, or by independent backbenchers unattached to any particular group.[40]
The North administration left power in March 1782 following theAmerican Revolution and a coalition of the Rockingham Whigs and the former Chathamites, now led by theEarl of Shelburne, took its place. After Rockingham's unexpected death in July 1782, this uneasy coalition fell apart, withCharles James Fox, Rockingham's successor as faction leader, quarrelling with Shelburne and withdrawing his supporters from the government. The following Shelburne administration was short-lived and Fox returned to power in April 1783, this time in an unexpected coalition with his old enemy Lord North. Although this pairing seemed unnatural to many at the time, it was to last beyond the demise of the coalition in December 1783. The coalition's untimely fall was brought about by George III in league with the House of Lords and the King now brought in Chatham's sonWilliam Pitt the Younger as his prime minister.
It was only now that a genuine two-party system can be seen to emerge, with Pitt and the government on the one side, and the ousted Fox-North coalition on the other. On 17 December 1783, Fox stated in the House of Commons that "[i]f [...] a change must take place, and a new ministry is to be formed and supported, not by the confidence of this House or the public, but the sole authority of the Crown, I, for one, shall not envy that hon. gentleman his situation. From that moment I put in my claim for a monopoly of Whig principles".[41] Although Pitt is often referred to as a Tory and Fox as a Whig, Pitt always considered himself to be an independent Whig and generally opposed the development of a strict partisan political system. Fox's supporters saw themselves as legitimate heirs of the Whig tradition and they strongly opposed Pitt in his early years in office, notably during the regency crisis revolving around the King's temporary insanity in 1788–1789, when Fox and his allies supported full powers as regent for their ally, thePrince of Wales.
The opposition Whigs were split by the onset of theFrench Revolution. While Fox and some younger members of the party such asCharles Grey andRichard Brinsley Sheridan were sympathetic to the French revolutionaries, others led byEdmund Burke were strongly opposed. Although Burke himself was largely alone in defecting to Pitt in 1791, much of the rest of the party, including the influential House of Lords leader theDuke of Portland, Rockingham's nephewLord Fitzwilliam andWilliam Windham, were increasingly uncomfortable with the flirtations of Fox and his allies with radicalism and the French Revolution. They split in early 1793 with Fox over the question of support for the war with France and by the end of the year they had openly broken with Fox. By the summer of the next year, large portions of the opposition had defected and joined Pitt's government.
Many of the Whigs who had joined with Pitt would eventually return to the fold, joining again with Fox in theMinistry of All the Talents following Pitt's death in 1806. The followers of Pitt—led until 1809 by Fox's old colleague the Duke of Portland—rejected the label of Tories and preferred to call themselvesThe Friends of Mr. Pitt. After the fall of the Talents ministry in 1807, the Foxite Whigs remained out of power for the better part of 25 years. The accession of Fox's old ally, the Prince of Wales, to the regency in 1811 did not change the situation, as the Prince had broken entirely with his old Foxite Whig companions. The members of the government ofLord Liverpool from 1812 to 1827 called themselves Whigs.[42]
By 1815, the Whigs were still far from being a "party" in the modern sense. They had no definite programme or policy and were by no means even united. Generally, they stood for reducing crown patronage, sympathy towardsnonconformists, support for the interests of merchants and bankers and a leaning towards the idea of a limited reform of the voting system.[43] Most Whig leaders, such asLord Grey,Lord Grenville,Lord Althorp, William Lamb (laterLord Melbourne) andLord John Russell, were still rich landowners. The most prominent exception wasHenry Brougham, the talented lawyer, who had a relatively modest background.[44]
Hay argues that Whig leaders welcomed the increasing political participation of the English middle classes in the two decades after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The fresh support strengthened their position in Parliament. Whigs rejected the Tory appeals to governmental authority and social discipline and extended political discussion beyond Parliament. Whigs used a national network of newspapers and magazines as well as local clubs to deliver their message. The press organised petitions and debates and reported to the public on government policy, while leaders such asHenry Brougham (1778–1868) built alliances with men who lacked direct representation. This new approach to the grass roots helped to define Whiggism and opened the way for later success. Whigs thereby forced the government to recognise the role of public opinion in parliamentary debate and influenced views of representation and reform throughout the 19th century.[45]
Whigs restored their unity by supporting moral reforms, especially the abolition of slavery. They triumphed in 1830 as champions of Parliamentary reform. They made Lord Grey prime minister 1830–1834 and theReform Act 1832 championed by Grey became their signature measure. It broadened the franchise and ended the system of "rotten and pocket boroughs" (where elections were controlled by powerful families) and instead redistributed power on the basis of population. It added 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000 in England and Wales. Only the upper and middle classes voted, so this shifted power away from the landed aristocracy to the urban middle classes. In 1832, the party abolished enslavement in the British Empire with theSlavery Abolition Act 1833. It purchased and freed the slaves, especially those in the Caribbean sugar islands. After parliamentary investigations demonstrated the horrors of child labour, limited reforms were passed in 1833. The Whigs also passed thePoor Law Amendment Act 1834 that reformed the administration of relief to the poor[46] and theMarriage Act 1836 that allowed civil marriages.
It was around this time that the great Whig historianThomas Babington Macaulay began to promulgate what would later be coined theWhig view of history, in which all of English history was seen as leading up to the culminating moment of the passage of Lord Grey's reform bill. This view led to serious distortions in later portrayals of 17th-century and 18th-century history, as Macaulay and his followers attempted to fit the complex and changing factional politics of theRestoration into the neat categories of 19th-century political divisions.
In 1836, a private gentleman's Club was constructed inPall Mall,Piccadilly as a consequence of the successfulReform Act 1832. TheReform Club was founded byEdward Ellice Sr.,MP for Coventry and WhigWhip, whose riches came from theHudson's Bay Company but whose zeal was chiefly devoted to securing the passage of theReform Act 1832. This new club, for members of both Houses ofParliament, was intended to be a forum for theradical ideas which the First Reform Bill represented: a bastion of liberal and progressive thought that became closely associated with theLiberal Party, who largely succeeded theWhigs in the second half of the 19th century.
Until the decline of the Liberal Party in the early 20th century, it wasde rigueur for Liberal MPs and peers to be members of the Reform Club, being regarded as an unofficial party headquarters. However, in 1882 theNational Liberal Club was established underWilliam Ewart Gladstone's chairmanship, designed to be more "inclusive" towards Liberalgrandees and activists throughout the United Kingdom.
TheLiberal Party (the term was first used officially in 1868, but had been used colloquially for decades beforehand) arose from a coalition of Whigs,free trade Tory followers ofRobert Peel and free tradeRadicals, first created, tenuously under thePeeliteEarl of Aberdeen in 1852 and put together more permanently under the formerCanningite ToryLord Palmerston in 1859. Although the Whigs at first formed the most important part of the coalition, the Whiggish elements of the new party progressively lost influence during the long leadership of former Peelite William Ewart Gladstone. Subsequently, the majority of the old Whig aristocracy broke from the party over the issue ofIrish home rule in 1886 to help form theLiberal Unionist Party, which in turn would merge with theConservative Party by 1912.[47] However, the Unionist support for trade protection in the early twentieth century underJoseph Chamberlain (probably the least Whiggish character in the Liberal Unionist party) further alienated the more orthodox Whigs. By the early twentieth century "Whiggery" was largely irrelevant and without a natural political home. One of the last active politicians to celebrate his Whiggish roots was the Liberal Unionist statesmanHenry James.[48]
The colours of the Whig Party (blue andbuff, a yellow-brown colour named afterbuff leather) were particularly associated withCharles James Fox.[49]
PoetRobert Burns in "Here's a health to them that's awa" wrote:
It's guid to support Caledonia's cause
And bide by the Buff and the Blue.
"The British Whig March" for piano was written byOscar Telgmann inKingston, Ontario,c. 1900.[50]
Punk bandThe Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing have a song named "Doing It for the Whigs".
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1661 | Denzil Holles | N/A | 139 / 518 |  139 | 2nd | Minority | |
| March 1679 | Anthony Ashley Cooper | 218 / 522 | 79 | 1st | Plurality | ||
| October 1679 | 310 / 530 | 92 |  1st | Majority | |||
| 1681 | 309 / 502 |  1 | 1st | Majority | |||
| 1685 | John Somers | 57 / 525 | 252 | 2nd | Minority | ||
| 1689 | 319 / 551 | 262 | 1st | Majority | |||
| 1690 | 241 / 512 | 78 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| 1695 | 257 / 513 | 16 | 1st | Majority | |||
| 1698 | 246 / 513 | 11 | 1st | Plurality | |||
| January 1701 | 219 / 513 | 27 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| November 1701 | 248 / 513 | 29 | 1st | Plurality | |||
| 1705 | 184 / 513 | 49 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1708 | John Somers | N/A | 291 / 558 | 45 | 1st | Minority | |
| 1710 | 196 / 558 | 95 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| 1713 | 161 / 558 | 25 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| 1715 | Charles Townshend | 341 / 558 | 180 | 1st | Majority | ||
| 1722 | 389 / 558 | 48 | 1st | Majority | |||
| 1727 | 415 / 558 | 26 | 1st | Majority | |||
| 1734 | Robert Walpole | 330 / 558 | 85 | 1st | Majority | ||
| 1741 | 286 / 558 | 44 | 1st | Majority | |||
| 1747 | Henry Pelham | 338 / 558 | 52 | 1st | Majority | ||
| 1754 | Thomas Pelham-Holles | 368 / 558 | 30 | 1st | Majority | ||
| 1761 | 446 / 558 | 78 | 1st | Majority | |||
| 1768 | Augustus FitzRoy | N/A | 1st | Majority | |||
| 1774 | Charles Watson-Wentworth | 215 / 558 | unknown | 2nd | Minority | ||
| 1780 | 254 / 558 | 39 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| 1784 | Charles James Fox | 155 / 558 | 99 | 2nd | Minority | ||
| 1790 | 183 / 558 | 28 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| 1796 | 95 / 558 | 88 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1802 | Charles James Fox | N/A | 269 / 658 | 184 | 2nd | Minority | |
| 1806 | William Grenville | 431 / 658 | 162 | 1st | Majority | ||
| 1807 | 213 / 658 | 218 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| 1812 | 196 / 658 | 17 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| 1818 | Charles Grey | 175 / 658 | 21 | 2nd | Minority | ||
| 1820 | 215 / 658 | 40 | 2nd | Minority | |||
| 1826 | Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice | 198 / 658 | 17 | 2nd | Minority | ||
| 1830 | 196 / 658 | 2 | 2nd | Majority | |||
| 1831 | Charles Grey | 370 / 658 | 174 | 1st | Majority | ||
| 1832 | 554,719 | 67.0% | 441 / 658 | 71 | 1st | Majority | |
| 1835 | William Lamb | 349,868 | 57.3% | 385 / 658 | 56 | 1st | Majority |
| 1837 | 418,331 | 51.7% | 344 / 658 | 41 | 1st | Majority | |
| 1841 | 273,902 | 46.9% | 271 / 658 | 73 | 2nd | Minority | |
| 1847 | John Russell | 259,311 | 53.8% | 292 / 656 | 21 | 2nd | Majority |
| 1852 | 430,882 | 57.9% | 324 / 654 | 32 | 2nd | Minority | |
| 1857 | Henry John Temple | 464,127 | 65.9% | 377 / 654 | 53 | 1st | Majority |
| 1859 | 372,117 | 65.7% | 356 / 654 | 21 | 1st | Majority | |
... preference for the (conservative-liberal) Whigs. But until the second half of the nineteenth century, ...
... For Whig liberalism is also known as 'conservative liberalism' ...
British politics of the first half of the nineteenth century was an ideological spectrum, with the Tories, or Conservative Party, on the right, the Whigs as liberal-centrists, and the radicals on the left.
Some [Tories] remained loyal to James II
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