chap. XXII.} 1766. Feb. |
Thus did Edmund Burke and the Rockingham ministry on that night lead Mansfield, Northington, and the gentlemen of the long robe, to found the new tory party of England, and recover legality for its position, stealing it away from the party that hitherto, under the revolution, had possessed it exclusively. It was decided as a question of law, that irresponsible taxation was not a tyranny, but a vested right; that parliament held power, not as a representative body, but in absolute trust. Under the decision, no option was left to the colonies but extreme resistance, or unconditional submission. It had grown to be a fact, that the House of Commons was no longer responsible to the people; and this night it was held to be the law, that it never had been, and was not responsible; that the doctrine of representation was not in the bill of rights. The tory party, with George the Third at its head, accepted from Burke and Rockingham the creed which Grenville claimed to be the whiggism of the revolution of 1688, and Mansfield the British constitution of his times.
In England, it was all over with the Middle Age. There was to be no more Jacobitism, no more zeal for legitimacy at home, no more union of the Catholic church and the sceptre. The new toryism was the child of modern civilization. It carried its pedigree no further back than the revolution of 1688, and was but a coalition of the king and the aristocracy upon the basis of the established law. By law the House of
