Transition To Liberal Party
The Liberal Party (the term was first used officially in 1868 but had been used colloquially for decades beforehand) arose from a coalition of Whigs, free trade Tory followers of Robert Peel, and free trade Radicals, first created, tenuously under the Peelite Lord Aberdeen in 1852, and put together more permanently under the former Canningite Tory Lord Palmerston in 1859. Although the Whigs at first formed the most important part of the coalition, the Whiggish elements of the new party progressively lost influence during the long leadership of the Peelite William Ewart Gladstone, and many of the old Whig aristocrats broke from the party over the issue of Irish home rule in 1886 to help form the Liberal Unionist Party—which itself would merge with the Conservative Party by 1912. The Unionist support for (trade) protection in the early twentieth century under Joseph Chamberlain (probably the least Whiggish character in the party) further alienated the more orthodox Whigs, however, and by the early twentieth century Whiggery was largely irrelevant and without a natural political home.
Read more about this topic: Whig (British Political Party)
Famous quotes containing the words transition, liberal and/or party:
“Some of the taverns on this road, which were particularly dirty, were plainly in a transition state from the camp to the house.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Since he hath got the jewel that I loved,
And that which you did swear to keep for me,
I will become as liberal as you,
I’ll not deny him anything I have,
No, not my body nor my husband’s bed.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“At the moment when a man openly makes known his difference of opinion from a well-known party leader, the whole world thinks that he must be angry with the latter. Sometimes, however, he is just on the point of ceasing to be angry with him. He ventures to put himself on the same plane as his opponent, and is free from the tortures of suppressed envy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)