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Note 3—On the origin of the words, Yankies, Indians, Whigs and Tories.—When the Portuguese under Vasco de Gama made their first discoveries in the East, they found the country at which they arrived, was called by the natives Hindostan or the land of the Hindoos. These names the Europeans softened to the appellations, India and the Indies. The original design of Columbus was only to find a passage to India by sailing to the West; and when he reached the American Islands, he supposed that he had attained his object. The new-discovered lands were called the West-Indies, and the name of Indians was given to all the native inhabitants, not only of those Islands, but of the whole continent of America.

Yankies.—The first settlers of New-England were mostly

emigrants from London and its vicinity, and exclusively styled themselves, The English. The Indians, in attempting to utter the word, English, with their broad guttural accent, gave it a sound, which would be nearly represented in this way, Yaunghees; the letter g being pronounced hard and approaching to the sound of k joined with a strong aspirate, like the Hebrew Cheth, or the Greek Chi, and the l suppressed, as almost impossible to be distinctly heard in that combination. The Dutch settlers on the river Hudson and the adjacent country, during their long contest concerning the right of territory, adopted the name, and applied it in contempt to the inhabitants of New-England. The British of the lower class have since extended it to all the people of the United States.

This seems the most probable origin of the term. The pretended Indian tribe of Yankoos does not appear to have ever had an existence: as little can we believe in an etymological derivation of the word from ancient Scythia or Siberia, or that it was ever the name of a horde of savages in any part of the world.

Tories and Whigs.—The appellation of Tories was first given to the native Irish, who dwelt, or were driven, beyond the English pale, as it was called, and like the moss-troopers and outlaws on the borders of Scotland, for some centuries carried on a desultory and predatory war, against the British settlements in Dublin and the eastern and southern parts of Ireland. In the civil wars in the time of Charles the first, these clans adhered to the royal party and were finally attacked and subdued by Cromwell.

In England this name seems to have been first applied to that part of the army of Charles, who were distinguished by the appellation of Cavaliers. A number of young noblemen and gentlemen of the first families, who adhered to the king, formed themselves into volunteer troops of cavalry. They were not more famous for courage in the field, than notorious for their dissolute manners and intemperate riots. Singing catches and ballads was then the fashionable music of society. To every stanza in the old ballads was annexed a chorus, called the burden or wheel of the song, which usually consisted of a roll of unmeaning sounds, in which the whole company joined with the utmost vociferation. They had a favorite ballad suited to the times, and as much in vogue, as the Ca ira was afterwards in the French revolution. Its chorus was

The word, Tories, soon came into use to denote a set of bacchanalian companions. Cotton, in his Virgil Travesty, often calls the Trojans at the court of Dido, Tories, and once, Tory-rories, according to this signification of the terms.

The word Whig originally meant a sour, astringent kind of crab-apple. The ancient proverbial comparison, “as sour as a Whig,” is still in use among the vulgar. In ridicule of the short, clipped hair and penitential scowl of the puritans, who served in the army of Cromwell, the royalists called them Whigs, prick-ears and round-heads.

Whether these facts afford a full explanation of the origin of the terms must be left to the decision of the antiquarians, among whom it has long been a subject of dispute. Certain

it is that they were never employed to designate political parties in England, until the period of the civil wars. The royalists who believed in the divine right, unlimited prerogatives and arbitrary power of kings, were then stigmatized by the name of Tories. Those who adhered to the Parliament, asserted the rights of the Commons, and carrying their zeal for liberty to the extreme of licentiousness and anarchy, finally brought their monarch to the scaffold, were in return contemptuously denominated Whigs. But as early as the commencement of the last century the terms had lost their original opprobrious meaning: and although the word, Tory, never became reputable, the name of Whig was assumed, as an honorable title, by the party opposed to arbitrary prerogative in the king, and to high-church principles in the hierarchy. The phrases now serve chiefly to distinguish the two great political parties, into which England has ever since been divided. In this sense they are used by Swift, Bolingbroke and their adversaries, in the time of Walpole, and more recently in the writings of Burke and some of the later English historians.

During the revolutionary war in America, the friends of liberty and Independence assumed the title of Whigs, and stigmatized, as Tories, all those who adhered to the king of England and advised submission to the demands of the British parliament. In this sense the terms are used in M'Fingal and by all cotemporary writers on American politics. But since the acknowledgement of our Independence and the adoption of a constitutional form of government in the United States, these names have gradually fallen into disuse, are considered

as expressions approaching towards vulgarity and almost banished from polite conversation. Parties have arisen upon new grounds and principles of policy, and are distinguished by new appellations.