Political Science Of The State

POLITICAL PARTIES. 555
his time, the cabinet are permanent officers of the president,
and the legislature changes at certain stated times and in cer-
tain ways.
Parties in a free country are exceedingly affected by the lead-
influence of hi*- ing events of the time. Thus, the sentiment of
torical events on par- « , , , , j ,1 • . A-
ties. England was drawn towards the ancient consti-
tution by the events of the civil war and the destruction of the
monarchy, so that at the restoration the monarchy was more
firmly secured in the heart of the people than it had been for
many years. The long parliament of Charles II., when it
opened its sessions in 1660, went beyond the court in its per-
secuting ordinances, and in bitterness towards those out of
whose hands the power had passed : when it was dissolved in
1678, change of opinion and change of members by death or
other causes, together with the disclosures of the vileness of the
court and the king, made it essentially a different body. The
lines between whigs and tories were now drawn, and the
former accepted rules of constitutional government which
had been the abhorrence of the high-church party seventeen
years before. By the change in the line of succession the
whigs acquired additional influence, while the tories were
ready, it was thought, to welcome, or at least accept the family
of James II. if they should succeed in getting possession of
the throne. It was not strange that the defenders of the
Protestant succession—those who had brought over and up-
held the house of Hanover—should carry on the government,
for many of the tories were believed to be Jacobites at heart.
The whigs continued in power during the reign of the two
first Georges, and gave place to a tory faction at the accession
of George III., after England by their ability in administration
had taken the first place in European affairs, and acquired an
immense empire in the east as well as in the west. The for-
tunes of the parties fluctuated after George III. came to the
throne ; but when the French revolution alarmed England,
the tories came to a secure possession of the government
during forty years ; when the demand for a reformed parlia-
ment called in the other party again, which has had control