Opposition Whigs
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Patriot Whigs
|
|
|---|---|
| Leader |
Earl of Bath (amongst others) |
| Founded | 1725 |
| Dissolved | 1803 |
| Merged into | Mainstream Whigs Pittites |
| Ideology |
Whiggism Anti-Walpole Executive Anti-nepotism Anti-corruption |
| National affiliation | Whigs |
The Patriot Whigs and, later Patriot Party, was a group within the Whig party in Great Britain from 1725 to 1803. The group was formed in opposition to the ministry of Robert Walpole in the House of Commons in 1725, when William Pulteney (later 1st Earl of Bath) and seventeen other Whigs joined with the Tory party in attacks against the ministry. By the middle of the 1730s, there were over one hundred opposition Whigs in the Commons, many of whom embraced the Patriot label. For many years they provided a more effective opposition to the Walpole administration than the Tories.
The Whig Patriots believed that under Walpole the executive had grown too powerful through abuse of patronage and government in Parliament. They also accused Walpole personally of being too partisan, too important, and too eager to keep competent potential rivals out of positions of influence. He was further suspected of enriching himself from the public purse. Discontent with Walpole among his fellow Whigs had first been brought to a crisis with the South Sea Bubble and his role as a "screen" to the South Sea directors (and the fact that he had made a profit despite the crash). Under Queen Anne, the Tories had sent Walpole to the Tower for misappropriations as Secretary at War, and even radical Whigs such as John Tutchin had publicly accused him of siphoning off money.
As self-declared "patriots," the Patriot Whigs were often critical of Britain's foreign policy, especially under the first two Hanoverian kings. In 1739 their attacks in Parliament against the Walpole ministry's policy toward Spain helped stir up widespread public anger, which led to the War of Jenkins' Ear and ultimately to Walpole's fall three years later during the War of the Austrian Succession.
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Wikipedia