Ideal Tory and Whig by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The ideal Tory and the ideal Whig (and some such there have really been) / agreed in the necessity and benefit of an exact balance of the three / estates: but the Tory was more jealous of the balance being deranged by the / people; the Whig, of its being deranged by the Crown. But this was a habit, / a jealousy only; they both agreed in the ultimate preservation of the / balance; and accordingly they might each, under certain circumstances, / without the slightest inconsistency, pass from one side to the other, as / the ultimate object required it. This the Tories did at the Revolution, but / remained Tories as before.

I have half a mind to write a critical and philosophical essay on Whiggism, / from Dryden's Achitophel (Shaftesbury), the first Whig, (for, with Dr. / Johnson's leave, the devil is no such cattle,) down to -- -- , who, I trust, / in God's mercy to the interests of peace, union, and liberty in this / nation, will be the last. In it I would take the last years of Queen Anne's / reign as the zenith, or palmy state, of Whiggism in its divinest _avatar_ / of common sense, or of the understanding, vigorously exerted in the right / direction on the right and proper objects of the understanding; and would / then trace the rise, the occasion, the progress, and the necessary / degeneration of the Whig spirit of compromise, even down to the profound / ineptitudes of their party in these days. A clever fellow might make / something of this hint. How Asgill would have done it!