Dante tells us that he saw, in Malebolge, a strange encounter between a human form and a serpent.  The enemies, after cruel wounds inflicted, stood for a time glaring on each other.  A great cloud surrounded them, and then a wonderful metamorphosis began.  Each creature was transfigured into the likeness of its antagonist.  The serpent’s tail divided itself into two legs; the man’s legs intertwined themselves into a tail.  The body of the serpent put forth arms; the arms of the man shrank into his body.  At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake; the man sank down a serpent, and glided hissing away.  Something like this was the transformation which, during the reign of George the First, befell the two English parties.  Each gradually took the shape and colour of its foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect the zealot of freedom, and the Whig crawled and licked the dust at the feet of power.

It is true that, when these degenerate politicians discussed questions merely speculative, and, above all, when they discussed questions relating to the conduct of their own grandfathers, they still seemed to differ as their grandfathers had differed.  The Whig, who, during three Parliaments, had never given one vote against the Court, and who was ready to sell his soul for the Comptroller’s staff or for the Great Wardrobe, still professed to draw his political doctrines from Locke and Milton, still worshipped the memory of Pym and Hampden, and would still, on the thirtieth of January, take his glass, first to the man in the mask, and then to the man who would do it without a mask.  The Tory, on the other hand, while he reviled the mild and temperate Walpole as a deadly enemy of liberty, could see nothing to reprobate in the iron tyranny of Strafford and Laud.  But, whatever judgment the Whig or the Tory of that age might pronounce on transactions long past, there can be no doubt that, as respected the practical questions then pending, the Tory was a reformer, and indeed an intemperate and indiscreet reformer, while the Whig was conservative even to bigotry.  We have ourselves seen similar effects produced in a neighbouring country by similar causes.  Who would have believed, fifteen years ago, that M. Guizot and M. Villemain would have to defend property and social order against the attacks of such enemies as M. Genoude and M. de La Roche Jaquelin?

Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues; the successors of the old Roundheads had turned courtiers.  Yet was it long before their mutual animosity began to abate; for it is the nature of parties to retain their original enmities far more firmly than their original principles.  During many years, a generation of Whigs, whom Sidney would have spurned as slaves, continued to wage deadly war with a generation of Tories whom Jeffreys would have hanged for republicans.