In his "Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents," Burke says, "I see no other way for the preservation of a decent attention to public interest in the representatives but the interposition of the body of the people itself." Mr. Morley fairly summarizes Burke's view on this point. "Against the system of the omnipotence of the administration," he says, "Burke called on the nation to set a stern face. 'Root it up,' he kept crying; 'settle the general course in which you desire members to go; insist that they shall not suffer themselves to be diverted from this by the authority of the Government of the day; let lists of votes be published, so that you may ascertain for yourselves whether your trustees have been faithful or fraudulent;—do all this, and then there will be no need to resort to those organic changes, those empirical innovations, which may possibly cure, but are much more likely to destroy.'"[1] It is true that he at the same time objected to authoritative mandates given by a constituency to its members, but all the same he constantly urged the efficiency of popular pressure as a substitute for organic change.
The Radicals, then, were striving for some legal and settled reform; the Whigs, resisting constitutional modifications, advocated a plan of irregular outside agitation, which was in their own minds indefinite, and which, if it ever became definite, must have become revolutionary. It was not therefore characteristic either of the old Whigs or of the new Radicals, that either of them appealed to public opinion as a power in the State. The distinction was, that one set of men would have used it in order to strengthen the traditional forms into which Parliamentary Liberalism had been moulded, whilst the others wanted to give it permanent and recognized force in the official government of the country.
Whilst it is impossible to point with certainty to any particular year as marking the origin of a party whose existence was the result not of an act of creation, but of growth and development, it is quite possible to refer to a time when movements took place amongst the Whigs, which led to the
- ↑ "Men of Letters—Burke," p. 58.
