Whig into Tory

Abstract

On 31 March 1807 a satirical poem, criticising the new prime minister, the Duke of Portland, was published in the Morning Chronicle. It mocked the old and gout-ridden grandee: ‘He totters on a crutch; his brain by sickness long depressed, has lost the sense it once possessed, though that’s not losing much’. The main focus was on Portland’s betrayal of the Whig cause, an attack that was made more effective by putting words into his mouth:

But spite of all the world can say, My talents yet feel no decay They’re what they were before; And now, at sixty-nine, I still Can fold my paper, point my quill; And when did I do more?

Large parties, too, I still invite, Nor these as services too slight, Ye Tory friends, contemn; The Whigs, those Whigs who knew me well For thirty tedious years, can tell I did no more for them.