Whig Journalism

"I saw a parcel of people caballing together to ruin property, corrupt the laws, invade the government, debauch the people and in short, enslave and embroil the nation;  and I cried, 'Fire'!"  Daniel Defoe

I love Defoe, as any regular reader of Q.E.D. has probably surmised by this point.  Defoe is in the literary world what Burke was in the political.  Defoe was the Whig writer of the greatest eminence for the eighteenth century, and is ignored by many conservatives who prefer the Tory Johnson.  (N.B. Johnson had a low opinion of Burke.)  Of course liberals idolize out of all proportion Jonathan Swift, who was a friend of a friend (Pope) of the scandalous Jacobite Tory Henry St. John.

Of course, even Tories of the eighteenth century look like members of the Rotary Club compared to the Jacobins who now constitute the Democratic Party.