Whig

,—a person who prefers the influence of the House of Hanover to the prerogative of the Stuarts. I am an enemy to both; but if we must languish under one or the other, I would, without hesitation, prefer the prerogative of the Stuarts, and for this reason—where prerogative is, the defence and justification of an arbitrary act, all the odium which such an act would incur, is attached to the king himself; whereas, when this same arbitrary act is unduced, through the medium of influence, the odium rests on no one in particular. If our Parliament, for instance, was to vote the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act (not that I think the People would suffer it), this wouild be effected by influence, but he odium could not be personally applied, as no one could tell who voted from influence, and who from erroneous conviction. And further, here the People have the show, the fiction, of a representation, it would therefore be, ostensibly, or seem to be, the People’s own act.