TORY

A well-known party name in English history. {See Whig.) The Irish male contents, half robbers and half insurgents, who hara ed the English in Ireland at the period of the ma acre in 1640 and during the troubles which followed, were the first to whom this name was applied. It is said to have been transplanted into England about the time of the Popish Plot, when the public mind was agitated by chimerical fears respecting the apprehended employment of Irish Catholics to further that imaginary design; whence it was commonly applied by way of reproach to the court party, against which the popular hostility was then directed, as favouring and countenancing the supposed abettors of the plot. From the period of its introduction into England down to the present times the term Tory has been constantly employed to designate a large political party in this country. Down to the period when Hume wrote his E ay on the Parties of Great Britain, the conduct of the two great parties in the state (the Whigs and Tories) had been so vague and undetermined as to have led him to declare his utter inability to tell their nature, pretensions, and principles. Since that period, however, the conduct of the Tories has been more uniform; and it might now be easier to define the principles by which they have been guided during the last half century: but we shall not undertake the task. W'ithin the last two or three years, the word Tory has been gradually displaced by Conservative, -which seems likely to become the permanent designation of the Tory party. This term was originally a umed in contradistinction to Destructives, a name by which the more violent reformers came to be designated by their enemies; and it is now understood as referring to the whole Tory party, but more especially to what may be called the more liberal portion of that party. TO TIP ALMA TES, Tot i palm at i. (Lat. tot us,mi»Ve, and palm a, a palm. ) The name of a tribe of Palmipedes, or swimming birds, including those in which the hinder toe is enveloped in the same web with the three anterior toes. [s. 1259]