ABSTRACT
Studies of eighteenth-century politics, and consequently of Augustan literature, can be distorted if one approaches them as though they were all of a piece throughout. The main contribution to transition from an age of party strife to a more tranquil era was the cooling off of the political issues which had divided Tory from Whig since the Exclusion crisis and which had kept passions at boiling point. By 1722, pattern of politics had been almost completely transformed. In addition to the collapse of the Tories, this was due to divisions in Whig ranks which were partly a throwback to earlier disputes between court and country Whigs, and partly to a schism in body of the court Whigs themselves. As important for politics was the fact that charges of corruption replaced accusations that the church was being endangered as the most effective rallying cries. The philosophical case against Robert Walpole involved a mythology which has been called ‘the politics of nostalgia’.
