seemed to be a strong current of popular sentiment running against the administration. The anti-Jackson men won in several local elections. It was at this period that the opposition began to call itself the Whig party. “In New York and Connecticut,” wrote Niles in April, “the term Whigs is now used by the opponents of the administration when speaking of themselves, and they call the Jackson men by the offensive name of Tories.” Clay had used the term with great emphasis already in March, in one of his “distress” speeches, commenting upon an anti-administration success in a municipal election in New York city.
“It was a brilliant and signal triumph of the Whigs [he said]. And they have assumed for themselves, and bestowed on their opponents, a denomination which, according to all the analogy of history, is strictly correct. It deserves to be extended throughout the whole country. What was the origin among our British ancestors of these appellations? The Tories were the supporters of executive power, of royal prerogative, of the maxim that the king could do no wrong, of the detestable doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. The Whigs were the champions of liberty, the friends of the people, and the defenders of their representatives in the House of Commons. During the Revolutionary war the Tories took sides with the king against liberty, the Whigs against royal executive power and for freedom and independence. And what is the present but the same contest in another form? The partisans of the present executive sustain his power in the most boundless extent. The Whigs are opposing executive encroachment,
