repeated. Presbyterian, Papist, Tool of Holland, Pensioner of
France, were the appellations interchanged between the contending
factions. The Whig cry was that the Tory members of the last two
Parliaments had, from a malignant desire to mortify the King,
left the kingdom exposed to danger and insult, had
unconstitutionally encroached both on the legislature and on the
judicial functions of the House of Lords, had turned the House of
Commons into a new Star Chamber, had used as instruments of
capricious tyranny those privileges which ought never to be
employed but in defence of freedom, had persecuted, without
regard to law, to natural justice, or to decorum, the great
Commander who had saved the state at La Hogue, the great
Financier who had restored the currency and reestablished public
credit, the great judge whom all persons not blinded by prejudice
acknowledged to be, in virtue, in prudence, in learning and
eloquence, the first of living English jurists and statesmen. The
Tories answered that they had been only too moderate, only too
merciful; that they had used the Speaker's warrant and the power
of tacking only too sparingly; and that, if they ever again had a
majority, the three Whig leaders who now imagined themselves
secure should be impeached, not for high misdemeanours, but for
high treason. It soon appeared that these threats were not likely
to be very speedily executed. Four Whig and four Tory candidates
contested the City of London. The show of hands was for the
Whigs. A poll was demanded; and the Whigs polled nearly two votes
to one. Sir John Levison Gower, who was supposed to have
ingratiated himself with the whole body of shopkeepers by some
parts of his parliamentary conduct, was put up for Westminster on
the Tory interest; and the electors were reminded by puffs in the
newspapers of the services which he had rendered to trade. But