Thursday, February 19, 2026

The Whigs are Alright - "America and the Irish Revolutionary Movement in the Eighteenth Century" by Michael Kraus (1939)





George Taylor was one of the three Ulster-born signers of the Declaration of Independence. A later biographer wrote that "“He is of course almost forgotten, even in the country where he used to reside; but the old men of the neighbourhood who recollect him, when asked about his character, reply, that ‘he was a fine man and a furious whig’.”

Limited monarchy.
Sovereignty of the people.
Parliament first.
Liberty before loyalty.
Covenant.

They were neither unionists nor nationalists. They were Whigs.

• Benjamin Franklin's essay, Some Good Whig Principles, is online here

• In his 1944 book The Scotch-Irish in Colonial Pennsylvania, Wayland Dunaway wrote:
In time, the radical Whigs became known as the Constitutionalists and the moderate Whigs as the Anti-Constitutionalists. The Scotch-Irish, almost to a man, espoused the cause of the radical Whig party, furnishing its principal following and leadership throughout the Revolutionary struggle.

The actual means by which Pennsylvania was transformed from a proprietary province into an American commonwealth was the new political organization developed by the Scotch-Irish in alliance with the eastern radical leaders of the continental Revolutionary movement.


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Although as you'll see below, TW Moody wasn't quite as impressed.








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