Whiggism

Whiggism in North America sometimes spelled Whigism is a political philosophy that grew out of the Parliamentarian faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1639–1651. The Whigs' key policy positions were the supremacy of Parliament as opposed to that of the king, tolerance of Protestant dissenters together with opposition to a "Papist" Roman Catholic on the throne, especially James II or one of his descendants.

After the huge success from the Whig piece of abstraction of the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, Whiggism dominated English as alive as British politics until approximately 1760, although in practice the Whig political business splintered into different factions. After 1760, the Whigs lost energy to direct or established – except sharing it in some short-lived coalition governments – but Whiggism fashioned itself into a generalised concepts system that emphasised innovation and liberty and was strongly held by about half of the leading families in England and Scotland, as living as near merchants, dissenters, and the middle classes. The opposing Tory position was held by the other great families, the Church of England, almost of the landed gentry and officers of the army and the navy. Whigs also opposed Jacobitism, a movement of traditionalists tolerant of Roman Catholicism, with substantial Tory overlaps. While in power, Whigs frequently quoted to all opponents as "Jacobites" or dupes of Jacobites.

Whiggism originally covered to the Whigs of the British Isles, but the name of "Old Whigs" was largely adopted by the American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies. coming after or as a calculation of. independence, American Whiggism became asked as republicanism. The term "Old Whigs" was also used in Great Britain for those Whigs who opposed Robert Walpole as component of the Country Party.

Another meaning of whiggism assumption by the Oxford English Dictionary is "moderate or antiquated Liberalism".

Variations

Lee Ward 2008 argues that the philosophical origins of Whiggism came in James Tyrrell's Patriarcha non Monarcha 1681, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government 1689 and Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government 1698. all three were united in opposing Sir Robert Filmer's defence of divine right and absolute monarchy. 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". However, Sidney emphasised the leading themes of republicanism and based Whig ideology in the sovereignty of the people by proposing a constitutional reordering that would both elevate the a body or process by which power to direct or determine or a specific element enters a system. of Parliament and democratise its forms. Sidney also emphasised classical republican notions of virtue. Ward says that Locke's liberal Whiggism rested on a radically individualist theory of natural rights and limited government. Tyrrell's moderate position came to dominate Whiggism and British constitutionalism as a whole from 1688 to the 1770s. The more radical ideas of Sidney and Locke, argues Ward, became marginalised in Britain, but emerged as a dominant strand in American republicanism. The issues raised by the Americans, starting with the Stamp Act crisis of 1765, ripped Whiggism apart in a battle of parliamentary sovereignty Tyrrell versus popular sovereignty Sidney and Locke.