Editing Whigs (British political party) (section)

==== Liberal ideals ====
{{main|Whiggism}}
The Whigs primarily advocated the supremacy of Parliament, while calling for toleration for Protestant dissenters. They adamantly opposed a Catholic as king.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Hamowy |first=Ronald |author-link=Ronald Hamowy|encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism|title=Whiggism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC  |year=2008 |publisher= [[SAGE Publishing|SAGE]]; [[Cato Institute]] |location= Thousand Oaks, California|isbn= 978-1-4129-6580-4|oclc=750831024|lccn=2008009151|pages=542–543}}</ref> They opposed the Catholic Church because they saw it as a threat to liberty, or as [[William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham|Pitt the Elder]] stated: "The errors of Rome are rank idolatry, a subversion of all civil as well as religious liberty, and the utter disgrace of reason and of human nature".<ref>{{cite book |first=Basil |last=Williams |title=The Whig Supremacy: 1714–1760 |year=1949 |publisher=Clarendon Press |page=75 |oclc=2963203 }}</ref>

Ashcraft and Goldsmith (1983) have traced in detail, in the period 1689 to 1710, the major influence of the liberal political ideas of [[John Locke]] on Whig political values, as expressed in widely cited manifestos such as "Political Aphorisms: or, the True Maxims of Government Displayed", an anonymous pamphlet that appeared in 1690 and was widely cited by Whigs.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=Richard |last1=Ashcraft |first2=M. M. |last2=Goldsmith |title=Locke, Revolution Principles, and the Formation of Whig Ideology |journal=Historical Journal |year=1983 |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=773–800 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00012693 }}</ref> The 18th-century Whigs borrowed the concepts and language of universal rights employed by political theorists Locke and [[Algernon Sidney]] (1622–1682).<ref>{{cite journal |first=Melinda S. |last=Zook |title=The Restoration Remembered: The First Whigs and the Making of their History |journal=Seventeenth Century |year=2002 |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=213–34 |doi=10.1080/0268117X.2002.10555509 }}</ref> By the 1770s the ideas of [[Adam Smith]], a founder of [[classical liberalism]] became important. As Wilson and Reill (2004) note: "Adam Smith's theory melded nicely with the liberal political stance of the Whig Party and its middle-class constituents".<ref>{{cite book |first1=Ellen |last1=Wilson |first2=Peter |last2=Reill |title=Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment |year=2004 |page=298 }}</ref>

[[Samuel Johnson]] (1709–1784), a leading London intellectual, repeatedly denigrated the "vile"<ref>Boswell's Life of Johnson, Vol 2, p502</ref> Whigs and praised the Tories, even during times of Whig political supremacy. In his great ''Dictionary'' (1755), Johnson defined a Tory as "one who adheres to the ancient Constitution of the state and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England, opposed to a Whig". He linked 18th-century [[Whiggism]] with 17th-century revolutionary Puritanism, arguing that the Whigs of his day were similarly inimical to the established order of church and state. Johnson recommended that strict uniformity in religious externals was the best antidote to the objectionable religious traits that he linked to Whiggism.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Chester |last=Chapin |title=Religion and the Nature of Samuel Johnson's Toryism |journal=Cithara |year=1990 |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=38–54 }}</ref>