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Conservative Party n. one of the major British political parties, which developed from the former Tory Party in the 1830s, and is generally disposed to maintain traditional institutions and promote individual enterprise (sometimes more fully Conservative and Unionist Party: see unionist n. 2a). Also: the name given to a similar political party elsewhere, esp. in Canada.The term Conservative party was first used in an article published in the Quarterly Review: see quot. 1830 (in N.E.D. (1891) attributed to J. Wilson Croker, but its authorship is now disputed: see Victorian Periodicals Rev. 24 (1991) 170). The adjective almost immediately took the place of Tory (see Tory n. 3a), which had been in use for nearly 150 years. Preference for Conservative sometimes implied rejection of the reactionary tendencies associated with earlier Toryism and espousal of the new phase introduced by Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850) in the 1830s and 1840s. The name Conservative Party was not at first accepted by all Tories, or believed to be descriptive of their principles by their political opponents; hence the disparaging context in which many early references occur. [Compare French parti conservateur political party generally disposed to maintaining the existing order (1845 in dictionaries of French, although compare quot. 1827 and compare also Le Conservateur, title of a political journal initiated in 1818 by François-René de Chateaubriand, French writer, diplomat, and politician).]