![]() Under Charles James Fox, the Whigs resisted Pitt’s authoritarian measures during the Napoleonic Wars and a prolonged period in opposition also encouraged them to embrace a more popular agenda, in the form of religious toleration and electoral reform. In the late eighteenth century the revolt of the American Colonies and the French Revolution opened up a renewed debate about the ideological basis of government. Broadly speaking, the Tories were defenders of the Crown and the established Anglican Church, while the Whigs drew their inspiration from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which established the supremacy of parliament over the monarchy. The following century saw the gradual establishment of two parliamentary groupings, the Whigs and the Tories. Whilst the history of the Liberal Democrats stretches back 150 years to the formation of the Liberal Party in 1859, Liberal political thought goes back a further 200 years to the ferment of the English Civil War and the struggles with the monarchy over the power of Parliament. ![]()
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