Public Virtues, Private Vices

Abstract

George I’s peaceful accession to the throne in accordance with the provisions of the Act of Settlement was quickly consolidated by a massive handover of power to the triumphant Whigs. The Tory party was discarded, destined to remain in permanent opposition for several generations. Some of its leading lights, Bolingbroke and Ormonde, fled to France and the Court of the Pretender, as proceedings within Parliament leading to their impeachment for high treason and high crimes and misdemeanours began in 1715. Others stayed behind, and tried to salvage something from the political wreckage. Their claim to be legitimate contenders for power under the Hanoverians was not helped by the Jacobite policy of direct intervention in British politics, which allowed the Whigs to blacken the entire Tory party with the smear of wishing to restore a Stuart to the throne.

Or (darker Prospect! scarce one Gleam behind Disclosing) should the broad corruptive Plague Breathe from the City to the farthest Hut, That sits serene within the Forest-Shade; The fever’d People fire, inflame their Wants, And their luxurious Thirst, so gathering Rage, That, were a Buyer found, they stand prepar’d To sell their Birthright for a cooling Draught. Should shameless Pens for plain Corruption plead; The hir’d Assassins of the Commonweal! Deem’d the declaiming Rant of greece and rome, Should Public Virtue grow the Public Scoff, ‘Till Private, failing, staggers thro’ the Land.

James Thomson, The Prospect: Being the Fifth Part of Liberty, A Poem (1736), p. 20