In A Dissertation upon Parties (1733), the politician and political philosopher Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, argues that ‘If liberty is a delicious and wholesome fruit, the British constitution is the tree that bears this fruit’:

Bolingbroke's remarks indicate the centrality of liberty in eighteenth-century English political discourse, its connection with both the ‘nation’ and the people. In this discourse, liberty is historically inflected, having its basis in the ancient constitution. For Bolingbroke, at least, (there were other varieties of ancient constitutionalism) liberty originated with the Saxons and had been maintained (albeit with struggle) ever since. Typically in relation to this trope, the tone of the narrative expresses at once bullish certainty and underlying anxiety. In the struggle for liberty, one key moment, Bolingbroke suggests, was the Glorious Revolution: the ‘progression from a free to a slavish constitution of government’ (a government in which royal prerogative was too dominant) was ‘stopped at the revolution’. But the need to continue the struggle remains.

Bolingbroke's use of the ancient constitution and his praise for the Glorious Revolution is strategic. He had supported the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion against King George I, only receiving a pardon in 1723. Ten years later the statesman was prepared to evoke a consistent tradition of liberty and to imply his support for the Hanoverian dynasty which had prevented James Francis Edward Stuart's return. But as he praises the ‘drawing back’ of the Glorious Revolution, he undermines the king's first minister, Sir Robert Walpole. The minister's use of political placemanship and closeness to the monarchy is, Bolingbroke suggests, threatening liberty once again. The former Stuart supporter also uses the discourse of ancient constitutionalism to register alarm over the growth of ‘banking, credit and capital facilities’ and their influence on politics.