But at first they were simply defenders of royal authority against
aggression, without any original ideas.

The Country Party was the party of reform. They were the people
excluded from the public service by the oath in favour of
non-resistance. They believed in the rightfulness of the war which the
Long Parliament waged against the king, and were prepared, eventually,
to make war against Charles II. That was the essential distinction
between them and the Tories. They dreaded revolution, but, in an
extreme case, they thought it justifiable. "Acts of tyranny," said
Burnet, "will not justify the resistance of subjects, yet a total
subversion of their constitution will." When Burnet and Tillotson
urged this doctrine on Lord Russell, he replied that he did not see a
difference between a legal and a Turkish Constitution, upon this
hypothesis.

Whig history exhibits a gradual renunciation of Burnet's mitigated
doctrine, that resistance is only justified by extreme provocation,
and a gradual approach to the doctrine of Russell, on which the
American Revolution proceeded. The final purpose of the Whigs was not
distinct from that of their fathers in the Long Parliament. They
desired security against injustice and oppression. The victors in the
Civil War sought this security in a Republic, and in this they
conspicuously failed. It was obvious that they made a mistake in
abolishing the monarchy, the Established Church, and the House of
Lords. For all these things came back, and were restored as it were by
the force of Nature, not by the force of man.

The Whigs took this lesson of recent experience to heart. They
thought it unscientific to destroy a real political force. Monarchy,