Sir,

But whatever the state of parties was at the Revolution, and for some time afterwards, the settlement made at that time having continued, that state of parties hath changed gradually, though slowly, and hath received at length, according to the necessary course of things, a total alteration. This alteration would have been sooner wrought, if the attempt I have mentioned, to defend principles no longer defensible, had not furnished the occasion and pretence to keep up the appearances of a Tory and a Whig party. Some of those who had been called Tories furnished this pretence. They who had been called Whigs seized and improved it. The advantages to one side, the disadvantages to the other, the mischiefs to the whole, which have ensued, I need not deduce. It shall suffice to observe, that these appearances were the more easy to be kept up, because several men, who had stood conspicuous in opposition to one another before the Revolution, continued an opposition, though not the same, afterwards. Fresh provocations were daily given, and fresh pretences for division daily taken. These contests were present; they recalled those that had passed in the time of King Charles the Second, and both sides forgot that union which their common danger and their common interest had formed at the Revolution. Old reproaches were renewed, new ones invented, against the party called Whigs, when they were as complaisant to a court as ever the Tories had been; against the party called Tories, when they were as jealous of public liberty and as frugal of public money as ever the Whigs had been.