The Saga of Edmund Burke: From His Age to Ours (Routledge Studies in Modern History) [1 ed.] 1032536527, 9781032536521

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The Saga of Edmund Burke

This book offers an examination of responses to Edmund Burke from the last decades of the eighteenth century to the present day, ending with the question whether there is still a role for him to play in post-Thatcher England. It includes a chapter asking the same question about America. The sharp focus on Burke’s legacy permits the author to cover a great many years while remaining quite concise. Written in an accessible style, modest in length, covering major debates in England over the course of two centuries and more, this book aims to reach out to as many potential readers as possible. Mark Hulliung is Richard Koret Professor of History at Brandeis University. He has published widely on topics concerning cultural, intellectual, and political history, European and American. Over the course of his career, he has written books about England, Scotland, America, France, and Italy, in studies ranging timewise from the Renaissance to the present age. He is a historian and a political theorist, and his work is interdisciplinary in nature, cutting especially across history, political science, and literary studies.

Routledge Studies in Modern History

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The Saga of Edmund Burke From His Age to Ours

Mark Hulliung

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Mark Hulliung The right of Mark Hulliung to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-53652-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-53651-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-41297-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003412977 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

To Meg and Scott

Contents

Acknowledgmentsix 1

Prologue: Burke and Posterity

1

2

Initial Responses to Burke: Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century

8

1688, 1776, 1789  9 The Social Contract Debate  12 Paine vs. Burke  17 Foes of Burke  22 Friends of Burke  31 3

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century

42

Burke as an Outsider to the Conservative Tradition  43 Burke as a Nineteenth-Century Liberal  60 The Emergence of Conservative Liberalism  72 4

Mill to Morley: From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke

88

Morley’s Debt to Mill  89 Morley’s Defense of Mill  91 Morley’s Reinstatement of Burke  100 5

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England Prelude to Burke the Conservative  116 The Advent of Burke the Conservative  125 Burke’s Strange Career in the Later Twentieth Century  147

116

viii Contents 6

The Americanization of Burke?

162

The American Revolution and the Founding Years  163 Burke and the Adams Family  166 Burke in Antebellum America  168 Woodrow Wilson and Edmund Burke  173 Burke the Cold Warrior  177 An Inconclusive Conclusion  183 Index189

Acknowledgments

As is true of all historians, I have over the years accumulated debts to a countless number of scholars. Among the many to whom I am indebted and whose work is relevant to the present volume are the following: Samuel Beer, Hedva Ben-Israel, J. W. Burrow, Marilyn Butler, Gregory Claeys, Carl Cone, H. T. Dickinson, Amanda Goodrich, Albert Goodwin, F. O’Gorman, Emily Jones, J. P. Kenyon, Isaac Kramnick, F. P. Lock, ­Pauline Maier, John M ­ orley, Gregory D. Phillips, Jennifer Pitts, J. J. Sack, Lois G. Schwoerer, ­Hannah Z. Sidney, Julia Stapleton, E. D. Steele, Eileen Sullivan, Stanley A. Wolpert, and Michael Zuckert. I also wish to thank Amy Eastwood for her invaluable assistance.

1 Prologue Burke and Posterity

Edmund Burke could not speak with too much concern for posterity or with too much reverence for the past. “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors,” he proclaimed near the beginning of his Reflections on the Revolution in France.1 The ties between past, present, and future generations should never be broken. He prided himself on looking back to ancestors, and since his passing, from his day to ours, many public figures and intellectuals have looked back to him because they regard themselves as his posterity. Burke, whether for better or worse, is still with us; the past is not past. Very few public figures have received such enduring attention, and of those who have, such as Karl Marx, the reaction has been decidedly mixed, some approving, others strongly disapproving. Burke is singular in that, overwhelmingly, only in his day did he provoke strong reactions against his speeches. Pamphlets issued on his behalf had to compete with those written against him in the eighteenth century; ever after, those who have invoked his name almost always have done so to express deep appreciation and indebtedness. Nowadays, he is often revered by conservatives, who regard themselves as his descendants, but one need not be a conservative to recognize that he cannot be ignored. How enthusiastically he continues to be acclaimed across the ideological spectrum of recent times is evident in the commentaries on Burke by Harold Laski, an unlikely ally. A significant twentieth-century political activist and author, a thinker enamored of Marxism, a Labourite who eventually proved too radical for the Labour Party, one would not expect Laski to approach Burke with sympathy and understanding. And yet he did. In an address on Burke delivered in 1947, he began by saying, “In the whole range of political philosophy I doubt if there is any other thinker whom men of all schools of thought have so united to praise.” The reason why is that “No political philosophy of the British tradition had quite the same power of provoking men to thought.” Remarkably, Burke in his day had astonished not only the House of Commons and the more socially prominent sections of London, but even “the upper strata of Grub Street.” To him, “all Europe and America learned to listen.”2 By way of specifics, Laski sided with Burke most of all on his impeachment of Warren Hastings. In Laski’s DOI: 10.4324/9781003412977-1

2  Prologue: Burke and Posterity estimation, Burke in denouncing Hastings’ record in India “saw clearly the moral vice of predatory imperialism.”3 It was no accident that Laski chose this particular moment to praise Burke’s efforts to call Hastings to account; his essay appeared even as the Labour Party was in the process of granting independence to India.4 Laski also devoted a chapter to Burke in his book Political Thought in E ­ ngland from Locke to Bentham. One of his most memorable sentences reads, “it has been the singular good fortune of Burke not merely to obtain acceptance as the apostle of conservatism, but to give deep comfort to men of liberal temper.”5 The “liberalism of Burke,” he continues, “is most apparent in his handling of the immediate issues of the age. Upon Ireland, America and India, he was at every point upon the side of the future.”6 Only on France was he deficient, unfair to the persons representing the Third Estate,7 too often displaying “the zeal of a fanatic waging a holy war,”8 unwilling to understand why the French spoke the language of natural rights. “The rights men craved were not, as Burke insisted, the immediate offspring of metaphysic fancy, but the result of a determination to end the malignant wrong of centuries.”9 Our natural penchant is to assume that Burke the conservative of our time is the Burke of all times. Laski knew better but did not follow through with an historical account proving his point that Burke has been a man relevant to more than one ideology, as opposed to being the monopoly of conservatives. It shall be our goal in the present undertaking to demonstrate the historical truth of Laski’s pronouncement. Perhaps most insightful are Laski’s remarks on the “liberalism of Burke” because recent historical examinations, which we shall attempt to enhance, prove that Burke was indeed embraced by the English liberals in the nineteenth century; his full-scale identification as a conservative would await the twentieth century. There are many surprises, many twists and turns, in the rich and complex story of Burke’s legacy. If it is quite remarkable to encounter a left-wing intellectual of Laski’s prominence praising Burke to the skies, it is possibly even more remarkable to encounter a right-wing intellectual such as Lewis Namier demeaning Burke by every possible means. The one glaring exception to the generalization that Burke has been embraced across the ideological spectrum comes from Namier, who was willing to be called a radical Tory but whose animus against Burke could not have been more vehement. Namier’s exceptional position on Burke mattered a great deal because for quite some time he and his coterie, such as John Brooke, dominated the world of England’s professional historians. The Structure of ­Politics at the Accession of George III, Namier’s work of 1929, placed him in a position of leadership among historians. One side of Namier’s intellectual undertakings was his decision to enroll in the school of psycho-history, which gave him free rein under the protective cover of Freud to depict Burke as a pitiful creature. Publishing a brief essay on The Character of Burke in The Spectator, 1958, Namier began by saying

Prologue: Burke and Posterity  3 “Burke’s writings, admired beyond measure and most copiously quoted for nearly 200 years, stand as a magnificent façade between the man and his readers.” Immediately, he followed with an exercise in amateur psychoanalysis: Since emotions as a rule governed his thinking, his personality has to be probed in its depths … To understand Burke it is necessary to pass from his works, with their polished surface, to his letters reflecting changing moods, contradictory feelings, anxiety and aggressiveness. Namier had well-prepared his readers for his closing words. “There was a streak of persecution mania in Burke which heightened his aggressiveness and drove him into action.”10 Namier and his side-kick Brooke were always quick to draw attention to Burke’s troubled family life, his mother’s emotional instability, his father’s tyranny. ­Psycho-history gave them an excuse to launch vicious personal attacks on Burke. The essay of 1958 contained one passage revealing clearly ­Namier’s underlying motive for discrediting Burke. “Baseless allegations against George  III,” having “a baleful effect on British politics at the time, and on Whig historians for the next 150 years,” were Burke’s unforgivable offense. The King’s use of patronage to govern deserved no censure, explained Namier, not when it enabled the government to govern. Burke’s call for party unity for the purpose of frustrating the King in his 1770 essay Thoughts on Present Discontents met with a hostile reception from Namier, who regarded it as thoroughly misconceived. The reality of politics in the eighteenth century was that members of Parliament, whether Whigs or Tories, decided nothing on the basis of established ideologies. Issues were local, not national; alliances were short-term, ad hoc, issue-by-issue. Burke’s legacy to Whig historians could not have been more misleading and unfortunate, or so said Namier. Namier’s day came and eventually his day passed, long-lasting though it was. Psycho-history fell out of favor for several reasons, the lack of compelling evidence to back up claims, the amateurism of these intellectual adventures, and the suspicion that psycho-history was in vogue because it sanctioned what looked very much like personal smears. The narrow focus of Namier on political history, his histories confined to the comings and goings of members of Parliament, also called out for a post-Namier generation to seek a revised and enlarged exploration of historical studies. From our perspective what especially matters is that the role of ideas was deliberately omitted from Namier’s accounts of the past. Since his day, historians have shown quite convincingly that political ideology did exist and did m ­ atter in eighteenth-century Britain.11 We shall attempt to build upon the findings of recent historians who have restored ideas to their rightful place in the study of English history. Our special focus will be devoted to those ideas from Burke’s day to recent times which were expressed by citing his name and works – the

4  Prologue: Burke and Posterity manifold and often conflicting uses of Burke’s reputation during the ­nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Any book about the history of Burke’s influence must obviously be primarily concerned with his readership in Great Britain. It is nonetheless true that considerable interest has been expressed in recent times about Burke’s possible place in America. Now and again, we witness an American of some prominence who invokes Burke’s name. Edward C. Banfield, a well-known political scientist of fairly recent years, did not hesitate to say “I am a vintage Burkean.” In common with Burke, he made a career out of underscoring the downside of the best intended political reforms. Vividly, he contrasted the ability of Chicago’s old-fashioned and “corrupt” political “machine” to get things done with the sad record of urban reformers in other cities, who managed to make things worse as a result of their efforts to make them better. If he had bothered to quote Burke, we can readily imagine which passage he would have chosen: the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens: and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.12 Banfield shared Burke’s view that society is so complex, the results of reform so unpredictable that, to quote the cliché, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” The parallel between Banfield and Burke is undeniable; the evidence of a significant presence of Burke in Banfield’s publications is, however, difficult to find. Far closer to the world that Banfield inhabited than Burke’s foregoing quote from Reflections on the Revolution in France was sociologist Robert M. Merton’s oft-cited, Burke-free essay of 1936, “The Unanticipated Consequence of Purposive Social Action.”13 There is no problem finding a reference here and there in America to Burke, no problem finding an occasional parallel to something Burke said, but proving that Burke was a figure of significance across the Atlantic is quite another matter. Another possible opening for Burke in America came with the n­ eo-conservative movement, born of the 1960s as a reaction against the New Left, the student demonstrations opposing the war in Vietnam, and the ever-expanding counterculture. Some evidence does exist of neo-conservative wishes to enroll Burke in their camp. Richard John Neuhaus and Peter Berger wanted to reclaim the primacy of local institutions, to celebrate the mores and practices of American life as embodied in neighborhood, family, and church. Writing in the aftermath of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s failed bid for a “Great Society,” they reprimanded liberalism for being “blind to the political … functions of mediating structures.” Burke they took to be their ally. “Liberalism’s blindness to

Prologue: Burke and Posterity  5 mediating structures can be traced to its Enlightenment roots. Enlightenment thought is abstract, universalistic, addicted to what Burke called ‘geometry’ in social policy.” Their cause was that of “mediating structures,” and they found in Burke the perfect quotation: “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.” As with Banfield, there is ample reason to suspect that the references of ­Neuhaus and Berger to Burke prove less than meets the eye. The citation from Burke is matched by no larger exposition and adaptation of his thought. No sooner have they quoted Burke than they appeal to Tocqueville’s remarks on local democratic government in America, a much better fit than the aristocratic, antidemocratic views of Burke. And immediately after Tocqueville they surprisingly turn to Marx who, they tell us, “was concerned about the destruction of community, and the glimpse he gives us of post-revolutionary society is strongly reminiscent of Burke’s ‘little platoons’.”14 This is much like Banfield: Burke is cited, a Burkean thought is emitted, but Burke does not appear to be at the forefront of their political thinking. Only Reflections is ever cited, and only in passing; always a passage that everyone knows by heart. Prominent political scientist Samuel P. Huntington’s 1957 essay “Conservatism as an Ideology” begins with the sentence, “Does conservative political thought have a place in America today?” He hoped it did but doubted that it could be grounded in the framework provided by Edmund Burke. Insofar as Burke’s thought was an exemplar of what Huntington called “the aristocratic theory” of conservatism, it was of little or no relevance to democratic America. Huntington was also skeptical of those conservative intellectuals of the 1950s who identified Burke independently of the aristocratic definition by reading him as an advocate of a timeless, universal natural law philosophy akin to Thomism (below, Chapter 6). More important to Huntington than his doubts about such claims as to Burke’s meaning was his conviction that “any theory of natural law as a set of transcendent and universal moral principles is inherently nonconservative.”15 Never should we forget what the natural law theorists most certainly did forget, that “conservatism itself stresses the particular nature of truth and warns of the danger of overarching principles … The essence of conservatism is the rationalization of existing institutions.”16 Setting forth his own thoughts on America, Huntington argued that in the United States, “no necessary dichotomy exists between conservatism and liberalism” because American institutions and political culture are liberal. The task of a good conservative is therefore to understand that in America “conservatism may well be necessary for the defense of liberal institutions.”17 Borrowing from Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, Huntington accepted the claim that, lacking a feudal tradition, lacking an aristocracy, America had no conservative tradition comparable to England’s. Where all citizens are, or aspire to be, middle class, as in America, political debates have taken place solely within the

6  Prologue: Burke and Posterity liberal tradition, no matter that Americans have no such understanding. If the calling of conservatives is to protect established beliefs and institutions, their mission in America is, then, to defend a liberal status quo. Huntington quotes Hartz’s epigram that in America, Burke and Locke are one.18 Huntington ended his essay by addressing how Americans must deal with “the challenge of communism” and the Soviet Union. “In preserving the achievements of American liberalism, liberals have no recourse but to turn to conservatism.” Going even further, he ends by assuring his readers that conducting a successful defensive operation against Russia “requires American liberals to lay aside their ideology and to accept the values of conservatism for the duration of the threat.”19 Anything that Huntington wrote attracted considerable notice, but it is ­doubtful that liberals had any interest in hearing that the way to safeguard liberalism was to avoid pursuing liberal ideals. Nor could conservatives find consolation in his recommendations. His advocacy was for a conservatism deliberately devoid of ideals, Burkean or otherwise. What he cared about most of all when he discussed America and other countries across the globe, as his subsequent publications testify, was political order, the path to stability whatever the regime.20 Hobbes comes to mind when one reads Huntington; Burke does not. Political ideals of any and all varieties be damned. What Huntington inadvertently proves, what Banfield, Neuhaus, and Berger also unintentionally prove, is that anyone seeking to answer the question of Burke’s presence or absence in America, or to come to terms with the nature of conservatism on this side of the Atlantic, must demand what none of these intellectuals offered, an historical overview of the American past. In search of Burke over the course of American history will be the focus of the sixth chapter of the present study. Burke in America, we shall contend, is largely a marginal story. Front and center, and therefore occupying far more of our attention, is the rich and complex story of Burke in England, where his prominence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is undeniable. Inevitably, we are tempted to read the present into the past, and in Burke’s case, that means assuming he was always considered a Conservative. A study of history will show that Laski was correct to speak of Burke the Liberal; such he was in the nineteenth century. Burke crossed party lines during his life, from Whig to Tory, and again after his death when his followers had him cross from Tory or Conservative to nineteenth-century Liberal. Within the Liberal Party, he was claimed by both sides on the very divisive issue of Home Rule for Ireland. It was only during the twentieth century that he finally became Burke the Conservative, but not until Liberals had prepared the way at the turn of the century by setting forth their conservative Liberalism in the name of Burke (Chs. 3, 5). The point of our examination of the uses to which Burke’s name has been put through the ages is not to decide on the definitively correct interpretation of his

Prologue: Burke and Posterity  7 thought. What we hope to show is that an examination of the uses to which his thought has been put over the years, the decades, and the centuries can provide an efficient means to highlight British political thought and political culture from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. It is with Margaret Thatcher and her legacy that we shall close, but not before posing the question whether there is still a place for Burke in post-Thatcherite England. The politicians of the present who call themselves Conservatives in both England and America unknowingly raise the question whether Burke is finally dead, or does he have a new mission to fulfill as a Conservative crying out against the self-proclaimed Conservatives of our time. Notes 1 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 29. 2 Harold J. Laski, “Edmund Burke: An Address Delivered on the Occasion of the ­Bi-Centenary of the Foundation of Burke’s ‘Club’,” 14 March 1947 (Dublin: F ­ alconer Printer, 1947), pp. 1, 8. 3 Ibid., p. 7. 4 Isaac Kramnick’s essay “‘The Left and Edmund Burke” makes for rewarding reading. Political Theory, vol. 11, no. 2 (May 1983), pp. 189–214. 5 Harold J. Laski, Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham (New York: Henry Holt & Co., London: Williams & Norgate, 1920), p. 223. 6 Ibid., p. 226. 7 Ibid., p. 268. 8 Ibid., pp. 256–257. 9 Ibid., p. 260. 10 L. B. Namier, “The Character of Burke,” The Spectator, December 19, 1958. 11 E. g., Harry T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in EighteenthCentury Britain (London: Methuen, 1979). 12 Burke, Reflections, p. 53. 13 Robert K. Merton, “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action,” American Sociological Review, vol. 1, no. 6 (December 1936), pp. 894–904. 14 Mark Gerson, ed., The Essential Neo-Conservative Reader (Reading, MA: AddisonWesley, 1996), pp. 216–217. 15 Samuel P. Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” The American Political ­Science Review, vol. 51, no. 2 (June 1957), p. 459n. 16 Ibid., p. 457. 17 Ibid., p. 460. 18 Ibid., p. 461. 19 Ibid., pp. 472–473. 20 E. g., Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968).

2

Initial Responses to Burke Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century

Over the course of his long career, Edmund Burke delivered a considerable ­number of noteworthy speeches, one of which indisputably overshadowed all the others by way of the countless number of responses it elicited in his day, some supporting, others attacking him – the Reflections on the Revolution in France. But the very first polemical exchange concerning Burke’s Reflections was not one delivered by someone else following its publication. Quite the opposite, it was Burke himself in his Reflections who initiated the war of the pamphlets by challenging another pamphleteer. The never-ending controversies sparked by the Reflections began when he decided to introduce what would prove to be his most famous publication by lambasting Richard Price’s essay of 1789, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country. No matter how animated his speech, Burke’s denunciation of Price was not personal. Much was truly at stake in their conflict, most of all the striking contrast between two versions of Whiggery, one conservative, the other leaning radical. Price had his comrades and allies, perhaps most notably his friend Joseph Priestley, both religious Dissenters, both consequently debarred permanently from holding public office, both important political commentators but outsiders against their will to parliamentary politics. Eventually, it became clear that Burke’s position on the French Revolution would also cause a painful separation from one of the leading insiders of parliamentary life, Charles James Fox. For two decades and more, Burke and Fox had been the closest of Whig allies, but Burke’s steadfast adherence to the arguments of the Reflections ended their friendship and political alliance – Fox reduced to “tears” by Burke’s intransigence, Burke publicly stating that dear to him was friendship, but even dearer were his “love of his country” and “his principles.”1 In 1770, Burke had called for members of the Whig Party to close ranks and unite in opposing George III’s abuse of power;2 two decades later, he would overturn his earlier stand on party discipline, crossing the aisle to stand with the Tory Party of Pitt the Younger. No longer would Burke Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs as he had in 1791; he would appeal instead to the Tories. One overarching dispute had come to the fore which separated Burke from both DOI: 10.4324/9781003412977-2

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  9 outsider Whigs such as Price and insider Whigs such as Fox. Conflicting ­understandings of the revolutions of England in 1688, America in 1776, and France in 1789 rendered reconciliation impossible and set the stage for a great outpouring of pamphlet literature. 1688, 1776, 1789 The Glorious Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789 were all dear to Richard Price, each a progressive moment in the unfolding of a future of freedom such as the world had never previously known. Just as his friend Joseph Priestley in his Lectures on History had discerned the hand of Providence coming to the fore across the ages, so did Price. “After sharing in the benefits of one revolution, I have been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions, both glorious.”3 Each of the three revolutions was an inspiring and Providential leap forward, the French Revolution figuring as the latest fulfillment of the continuing quest for liberty. Edmund Burke could not have disagreed more. The French Revolution, to him, was “the most astonishing [event] that has hitherto happened in the world”4 – astonishing because it marked the lowest, not the highest point of human history. In his estimation, 1688 and 1789 were thesis/antithesis, the best and the worst of human experience, so when Price enthusiastically conflated 1688 with 1789 in his Discourse on the Love of Our Country, it was imperative that Burke publish a resounding rebuttal, his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Quite possibly Price was shocked by Burke’s assault. Were they not both Whigs; did they not, therefore, have much in common? Or perhaps Price was not completely taken by surprise; possibly he regarded Burke’s attack as an encore performance of a previous critic’s assault on his writings – a vigorous attack thirteen years earlier on his essays cheering the American Revolution. The hostile essay in question, which reads in retrospect as Burke before Burke, was titled Remarks on Dr. Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, and is often, but not definitively, attributed to Adam Ferguson, an ardent Whig and a major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. Unfairly perhaps but inevitably, anyone who reads Ferguson’s pamphlet cannot avoid the temptation to view it as an anticipation of Burke, a perfect prefiguring of the Reflections. Conservative Whigs Ferguson and Burke praised only one revolution, the English in 1688, whereas for Price, 1688 was only the first chapter in the ongoing history of the realization of freedom. Price’s Discourse on the Love of Our Country, delivered on November 4, 1789, is a brief statement, best read in conjunction with his more fully developed essay of 1776, Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty, and the War with America, along with a follow-up essay on America in 1777 and yet another in 1785. Price comes close to saying that if the British government had set out to give American colonists reason to rebel, it could not have done better.

10  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century Representative government that did not represent was the great failing of English public life, both at home and abroad. “No one community can have power over the property or legislation of another community which is not incorporated with it by a just and adequate representation.”5 The argument offered in defense of the government’s position was ludicrous: “We [in England] submit to a government that does not represent us, and therefore they ought. How strange an argument is this?”6 “Virtual representation” is a sham. Nothing is more essential than proper representation; “without it a government is nothing but a usurpation.”7 Gladly, the unrepresented Americans would defer to Parliament in matters of trade, asserted Price, but not so in regard to taxation. How, then, do we justify continuing to tax them without their consent? By telling them the foolish story, he answers, that they are the offspring of England and are therefore bound to obey; to which the proper response is, “The English came from Germany. Does that give the German states the right to tax us?”8 Eventually, the government to its credit withdrew the Stamp Act in the face of mounting opposition, but then proceeded to undermine the value of its concession by reaffirming its continuing right to tax the Americans in the future as it pleased, the infamous Declaratory Act.9 So irredeemably self-righteous and self-congratulatory was the government that it had forgotten how to be politic. Despite his belief in progress, Price had trouble keeping pessimism at bay. In 1759, during the Seven Years’ War, he took pride that the English were “humbling that cruel and faithless nation [Old Regime France], which has so long been the plague of Europe.”10 For a moment, but only a moment, he could indulge in optimism. Not many years later he came to fear that due to venality, dissipation, and corruption, “the fair inheritance of liberty left us by our ancestors, many of us are willing to resign.” Corruption and ministerial abuse were rampant in ­England, threatening to destroy the freedoms that should be preserved at all costs.11 Then came 1776 and renewed hope for the future: the revolution in favor of universal liberty which has taken place in ­America … begins a new era in the history of mankind, a revolution by which Britons themselves will be the greatest gainers, if wise enough … to catch the flame of virtuous liberty which has saved their American brethren.12 When he delivered his Discourse on the Love of Our Country, Price again seized the opportunity to shore up sagging confidence, this time by enjoying the sight of France in 1789, the country long the nemesis of freedom, vowing now to uphold the same ideals that had inspired the Americans in 1776. The pamphlet Remarks on Dr. Price’s Observations, presumably written by Adam Ferguson, dramatically displayed in 1776 conservative Whiggery’s uncompromising hostility to revolution, which would come to the fore again in 1789, when Burke wrote his Reflections. England’s revolution in 1688, wrote Ferguson, was

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  11 “glorious” because it was a not a revolution; America’s inglorious because it was. How could anyone admire the American Revolution, an event that in the author’s words was seditious, pernicious, miserable, destructive, factitious, and turbulent, nothing better than a series of episodes celebrating “the omnipotence of an illiterate multitude?”13 The author, call him Ferguson, wrote so that “no parallel instance of rebellion may ever [again] deface the annals of history.”14 As everyone knows, “since the creation of the world there never was a government so admirably administered as our own.”15 And yet the Americans rise up against it. Alarm must be sounded because “the subjection of the whole western world depends on the present contest.”16 Military might is needed to compel the Americans to honor their duty.17 “Rather let their towns be desolated, than the name of every Briton sullied.”18 Despite our misgivings, let us admit that “to such a people, the sword only could teach a sense of duty.”19 Drive them inland, away from the coastline, away from their cities, away from their centers of trade, and let them encounter at first hand, not the yeoman arcadia and golden age of Price’s dreams but a dreary backwoods and backward society.20 However calm and non-violent the spirit of conservative Whiggery in 1688, its manifestation in Ferguson’s pamphlet nearly a century later was precisely the opposite. Burke’s rhetoric on America had nothing in common with Ferguson’s, which is not surprising given that he dealt almost not at all with revolutionary ­America. Most of Burke’s important speeches on America were penned before the ­Revolution, and his few later comments indicate that, preoccupied with other matters such as India, he never came to terms one way or the other with 1776 except in passing. On one occasion only, and at the late date of 1791, did he have something noteworthy to say. By his brief and belated account, he always firmly believed that they [the Americans] were purely on the defensive in that rebellion. He considered the Americans as standing at that time, and in that controversy, in the same relation to England as England did to King James the Second in 1688. He believed that they had taken up arms from one motive only: that is, our attempting to tax them without their consent.21 In his view, voiced fifteen years after the event, 1776 was 1688 revisited; never did he indicate that he saw any link, as did Price, between 1776 and 1789. Ferguson’s understanding of the American Revolution as a turbulent and ­reprehensible upheaval, the opposite of England’s in 1688, was forgotten in later history. Burke’s very different understanding of America, however understated, became a permanent ideological fixture in the English-speaking world when the English translation of counter-revolutionary Friedrich Gentz’s The French and American Revolutions Compared appeared in 1800. From that moment on, ­nothing was more common than to repeat Gentz’s claim that the American ­Revolution, like its English predecessor, was to be applauded because it was not

12  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century a revolution, not to be likened to the destructive trans-European event that was the French Revolution. Burke had spoken of 1688 and 1789, contrasting the two, almost completely omitting 1776. Gentz believed that in adding America to the equation, playing off 1776 against 1789, he had completed Burke’s unfinished business (Chapter 6). The Revolutions of England and America were to be cheered; the French Revolution to be condemned. Many were the readers who would be moved by the beckoning call of his ideological siren. The Social Contract Debate Behind the conflicting commentaries on 1688, 1776, and 1789, lurking in the shadows but never lost from sight, was the question of the social contract. Was social contract theory best ignored when dealing with modern revolutions? If discussed, should it address the writings of Locke? Or should a safe harbor between suppressing and discussing contract theory be sought in the pre-­Lockean and far less radical social contract theories of Grotius and Pufendorf? Sooner or later Burke, his friends and his foes, found themselves compelled to take a stand. Fundamental questions of consent and obligation were raised by modern revolutions, which made it difficult to suppress forever discussions of the social contract. When eighteenth-century Whigs ignored the social contract, as was often the case, they did so not out of innocent neglect but as a self-conscious political strategy. To reap the benefits of 1688, it was necessary to offer consolable Tories the means to accept the demise of the Stuart Monarchy, which under James II had been outspokenly committed to monarchical absolutism, indefeasible hereditary succession, non-resistance, and passive obedience. The Convention Parliament had raised but did not dare follow through on the thought that an “original contract” had been violated by the Monarch, and neither did the Declaration of Rights of 1689 speak of an “original contract,” for fear of upsetting the delicate agreement of 1688. The claim that the king had abdicated was a convenient fiction, allowing Whigs and Tories to come to terms. During their years of predominance in the eighteenth century, Whigs made it their calling, whenever possible, to avoid debates concerning fundamental political principles.22 It was radical Whigs such as Price, Priestley, and Catharine Macaulay who insisted upon airing such discussions. When challenged by radicals, establishment Whigs were forced to answer, sometimes in anger as was true of Ferguson’s performance in response to Price in 1776. Against Price’s defense of the American rebels, Ferguson in his pamphlet launched a series of vituperative assaults. Unforgivable was Price’s applause that the Americans had dared raise the question of contractual obligation. “It is dangerous to enfeeble governments by speculations,” cautioned Ferguson; we should remember how much more laudable [it is] to conceal from an unthinking multitude the source of government – The obedience due to authority ought never to

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  13 be canvassed by the people … Deprive government of that reverence that it claims from people of all ranks, you withdraw its chief pillar.23 Ferguson was horrified by America’s “revolution principles,” derived from notions of a social contract. “Nothing but sedition, and the worst of principles, could prompt the Americans to so destructive a rebellion.” Americans were flaunting “miserable principles,” “destructive principles,” “seditious principles.”24 What their actions called to mind were the terrible days of the Puritan Revolution, a “period so full of horror” that we should “not call [it] to recollection.”25 Diametrically opposed was Price’s conviction that “next to the introduction of Christianity among mankind, the American revolution may prove the most important step in the progressive course of improvement.”26 What Ferguson discerned in Price and the Americans was the presence of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.27 To prove his suspicions, ­Ferguson did not need to read between the lines. Introducing one of his essays on America, Price had affirmed that “the principles on which I have argued form the foundation of every state as far as it is free, and are the same with those taught by Mr. Locke.”28 Both Ferguson and Price spoke of England as a “parent state” but with the difference that Price takes seriously Locke’s notion that when children reach maturity, “they become independent agents; … the authority of the parent ceases, and becomes nothing but the respect and influence due to benefactors.”29 A comparison of Ferguson and Price on charters also highlights the difference between a Lockean and a non-Lockean thinker. For Ferguson what mattered were the admirable charters governing the colonies for a period of “above 200 years.” The consequences of the American desire to be done with charters could only spell disaster. “If precedents, statutes, charters, are of no estimation, adieu, at once to all order.”30 The contrasting stand of Price on charters could not be greater, nor could it sound more Lockean: I have chosen to try this question by the general principles of civil liberty; and not by … the charters granted the colonies … The question with all liberal enquirers ought to be, not what jurisdiction over them precedents, statutes and charters give, but what reason and equity, and the rights of humanity give.31 Price invoked Locke’s name in 1776 and was repudiated by Ferguson; Price invoked Locke’s name in 1789 and was repudiated again, far more famously, by Burke. On the centenary of the Glorious Revolution, Price asked his audience to “take care not to forget the principles of the Revolution”; “we should always bear in mind the principles that justify it.”32 The most fundamental of those principles was that we the people have “the right to chuse our own governors, to cashier them for misconduct, and to frame a government for ourselves.”33 Popular sovereignty cannot be alienated or denied. The king “owes his crown to the choice of the people”; his majesty is in truth “the majesty of the people.”’34 Price cited

14  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century Locke without alerting his audience that he had set forth a radicalized version of the Second Treatise of Government. In Locke’s formulation, the people should not risk an uprising unless there has been “a long train of abuses”35; in Price’s the people may demand a new government whenever they wish. He finishes by expressing the hope that the “light” that removed “darkness” from England in 1688 and America in 1776 would now in 1789 be “reflected to France.”36 At the outset of his Reflections, Burke shouted his outrage that Price had so fundamentally misunderstood the Glorious Revolution; that he had conjured up so dangerous a social contract theory; and that he had embraced the unenlightened so-called Enlightenment. Perhaps Price’s version of the contract, constantly being unmade and remade, had its forerunner in English history, but if so it was as an unacknowledged reminiscence of the worst of times: the Puritan Revolution. Price’s position, charged Burke, “agrees perfectly with the spirit and rapture of 1648.”37 No doubt Price and his cohort regard themselves as proud members of the Enlightenment; not so Burke who despaired of “the solid darkness of this enlightened age.”38 What is the consequence of “this new conquering empire of light and reason?” Is it not that “all the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off?”39 Possibly there is no theme more common in the works not only of philosophes but of all devotees of the Enlightenment than the denunciation of prejudice, usually taken to mean the wretched misdeeds of oppressive religion. Burke harvested the polemical gains of arguing for prejudice. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it … does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision … Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit … Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.40 Our church establishment “is the first of our prejudices,”41 unappreciated by ­Dissenters and philosophes but dear to everyone else. As for the social contract, Burke was willing to permit it – on his terms, not Price’s. “Society is indeed a contract,” he wrote in the Reflections, “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”42 Burke’s metaphorical-sounding social contract was applied to the continuity of generations; Price’s only to the present generation. That Burke’s might be more than a metaphor becomes clear when he complains that the contract of his opponents was a bad version of social contract theory; it “binds the magistrate, but has nothing reciprocal in it.”43 He also insists that there was an “original compact of the state” between king and people, not subject to subsequent formulations, “settled forever.”44 This was the foundation of the “ancient constitution,” violated by James II but restored by the Convention Parliament. Contrary to Locke’s contract and Price’s, but far from unfamiliar in his day, was Burke’s contract. Rather than rejecting the social contract outright or reducing it to a metaphor, he had, in effect, signed on with the earlier, pre-­Lockean, versions of social contract theory promulgated by Grotius and Pufendorf.

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  15 Both Hugo Grotius in The Law of War and Peace (1625) and Samuel ­ ufendorf in The Law of Nature and Nations (1672) sought an end to wars of P religion by setting forth their theories of the social contract. Order, not freedom, was their primary objective. Once upon a time, they postulated, humans yearning for stability had agreed to alienate their rights to the existing governmental authority. Having done so, they are bound forever. “As a general rule rebellion is not permitted by the law of nature,”45 said Grotius. There is no basis, he held, for the view that a king, having violated his trust, may be removed.46 Pufendorf concurred: “Those persons are not to be endured who assert … that a King, when he degenerates into a tyrant, may be deprived of his crown, and brought to punishment by his people.”47 In the view of Grotius and Pufendorf, right is on the side of the constituted authority, not the constituent authority. Absolute monarchs, not surprisingly, could not have been more pleased by the social contract philosophy of Grotius and Pufendorf, both of whom were dedicated to assisting kings in their quest to end civil war and to rendering royal persons inviolable. But it was not only absolute monarchs who appropriated The Law of War and Peace. By exploiting a loophole in the formulations of Grotius, the triumphal Whigs of the Glorious Revolution – and eventually Edmund Burke – found they had much to gain by implicitly building upon his writings. There are rare cases, Grotius grudgingly conceded, when the people in signing the contract allowed for the constituent authority to hold the constituted authority accountable. Was not England, the land of the Glorious Revolution, the perfect exception to the rule of non-resistance to a tyrant, asked the Whigs? Against the more radically minded in their ranks, the Grotian Whigs of 1688 successfully contended that the way to avoid bloodshed and buy off the Tories was to uphold the pre-Lockean and conservative contract of Grotius. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was later to complain that Grotius simply rationalized any and every status quo, adding “ought” to “is.”48 To the Whigs that was the great merit of Grotius. ­English history, in their view, was a record of the virtually unbroken continuity of the constitutional government they cherished. From a Grotian standpoint, Whiggish constitutional government should obviously continue in England s­ imply because it had always been. To Burke, as to the Whigs in general, Grotius came second hand, which is to say they did not directly quote Grotius. Especially in Burke’s case, it was fortunate to be able to accept the Grotian inheritance without citing The Law of War and Peace. Consistently, from his earliest to his most mature years, Burke had expressed his disgust that “the negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more complete … than what any people in their condition suffer in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time.”49 How horrified then would Burke have been to encounter Grotius’s claim that “there is nothing a master is not permitted to do to his slave. There is no suffering which may not be inflicted.”50 Nevertheless, with the general outlook of Grotius there was every reason for Burke to agree. Much to his liking, all of Grotius’s reasoning was based not on abstract principles but upon history, the record of the past, which

16  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century accorded well with what Burke had always believed: “Our constitution,” he said in 1782, “is a prescriptive constitution; it is a constitution whose sole authority is, that it has existed time out of mind.”51 Burke’s arguments also paralleled Grotius’s insistence that once a constitutional structure of whatever kind arose, it was to last forever. Very similar to Grotius was Burke’s claim in the Reflections that the English in 1688 agreed to “submit themselves, their heirs and posterities forever.”52 Heir to Grotius, Burke was also indebted to Pufendorf, especially to the presentation in The Law of Nature and Nations of the concept of two contracts, one a contract of “association,” the other a contract of “submission,” a social contract followed by a political contract establishing government.53 While speaking the language of a “reciprocal promise,”54 Pufendorf’s efforts were consistently directed to securing and maintaining submission. Despite his talk about reciprocity, he was unreceptive to a right of resistance when the government resorted to oppression of its subjects.55 All he allowed to those who concluded the government had violated its trust was a right to emigrate.56 He would not admit that the “original contract,” determined by express or tacit consent, had been broken. What Burke and the Whigs did was to convert Pufendorf’s double contract into a vindication of Whiggery. Reciprocity the Whigs took very seriously. Both government and people were bound by a contractual relationship sanctioning long-standing constitutional rather than authoritarian rule. When James II violated the “original contract,” it was right and proper to end his reign. “The nation, after the Revolution, renewed by a fresh compact the spirit of the original compact of the state, binding itself, both in its existing members and all its posterity,”57 explained Burke in his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. Unfortunately, some New Whigs want to believe that only the government is bound by a contractual relationship, when it should be understood as applicable to both governors and governed. The exceptional and admirable English Constitution, which has long been singular in its provision of liberty for all subjects, may not be altered “without the breach of the covenant, or the consent of all the parties.”58 Radical Whiggery is disallowed, conservative Whiggery confirmed. Burke was the enemy of Locke’s contract but not of all social contract theory. He was the enemy of popular sovereignty, of the idea that the rulers owed all to the ruled, and the ruled owed nothing in return because rulers held office in “trust,” not by a contractual arrangement. Relentlessly, he denied the claim that the people could demand a new constitution whenever they wished. His contract was once and for all time, swallowed up into a web of tradition, custom, and non-theoretical agreement. Presumably Burke would have been delighted had he known that Pufendorf published a second book a year after his first, this one not on the rights but “on the duty of man and citizen.” Similar is Burke’s observation, speaking of the British subject, that “through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature,”59 and that our freedom should never be absolute because “duties are not voluntary.”60

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  17 Very revealing are Burke’s remarks on human “will.” Pufendorf had gone so far as to say, “The right use of his free will is the one thing that a man may call his own; it is the only thing on which he may value or despise himself.”61 In sharp contrast stands Burke’s worry that stress on will threatens to undermine our acknowledgment of duty. “Duty and will are even contradictory terms.” Marriage is voluntary but the attendant duties “are not a matter of choice.” Parents, “consenting or not … are bound to a long train of burdensome duties.” Our most important duties, affirmed Burke, arise “independently of our will.”62 By far, the most frightening abuse of will in Burke’s estimation is featured prominently in radical theories of the social contract, the notion that we can undo overnight the legacy of centuries, overturning the agreements dating from time out of mind. It is no wonder that from the radical Whigs in his day to our day, Burke has often mistakenly been taken to be the enemy pure and simple of the social contract. All too often his Whiggish ambiguities concerning the contract, taking with one hand, giving with the other, rather than simply saying no, have been lost. In his self-understanding, he was simply honoring his conviction that “in the British Constitution there is a perpetual treaty and compromise going on.”63 Paine vs. Burke “From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural that I should consider him a friend to mankind.” Such were the words of disappointed expectation with which Tom Paine in Rights of Man introduced his rebuttal of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Paine was surprised by the Burke of 1790, as no doubt Burke was by Paine. With the coming of 1776, Burke had turned away from America to address other problems of the British Empire, especially those concerning India. Never, to all appearances, did he familiarize himself with the pamphlet literature of the Americans who challenged and eventually broke with the English government. Had he been aware of Paine’s 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, he might well have anticipated the sharp barbs that would be aimed at him in Paine’s pamphlet of 1791, Rights of Man. From the outset of his Reflections, Burke made it his mission to prevent the triumph of radical Whiggery in Britain: Price, Priestley, and their comrades were to be stopped in their tracks. What he did not understand was that in America radical Whiggery had won decisively against conservative Whiggery in 1776. He never bothered to compare the language of the American Declaration of Independence with the English Declaration of Rights. Burke could not speak with too much satisfaction when addressing England’s Declaration. If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Declaration of Right. In that most wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts, not one word is said … of a general

18  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century right ‘to choose our own governors, to cashier them for misconduct, and to form a government for ourselves.’64 Very different, but never acknowledged as such by Burke, was the American Declaration of Independence. The English Declaration had affirmed parliamentary rather than popular sovereignty, “ancient rights and liberties” rather than natural rights, and omitted the language of consent and contract. The American Declaration resembles the English only in its second part, an enumeration of grievances against the king. The first part, the preamble, stands in stark contrast to the Declaration of 1689. It speaks of “self-evident” and “unalienable Rights,” of “the consent of the governed,” and boldly asserts that “whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government.” The right to revolution is enshrined: “it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government.”65 Burke’s nightmare of radical Whiggery was the language in which Jefferson set forth the preamble of the American Declaration. Paine’s Common Sense played a major role in persuading the Americans to sign on to radical Whiggery, and unknowingly set the stage for his later confrontation with Burke. From 1764 to 1776, the colonists in America tried to conduct their resistance to England without emitting the frightening noise of revolutionaries. They dared not risk what in the parlance of the day would be called a second Puritan Revolution; they would stop short of lodging a revolutionary Lockean outburst against the British government, confining themselves to the far less controversial legacy of Pufendorf. Useful for their purposes was his notion of two contracts, permitting them to charge the English authorities with violating the second, the political contract, in asserting their unjust demands. The original contract binding society remained intact even as they took to the streets to protest unjust taxation, collectively registering their discontents out-of-doors and urging the British authorities to reconsider. The final revolutionary step of declaring independence did not come easily, but one pamphlet in particular led the way, Paine’s Common Sense, originally appearing on January 10, 1776. Paine had only been in America for fourteen months, which perhaps explains why the author of the first edition was designated not as Tom Paine but as “written by an Englishman.” His plea, issued in the ardent accents of radical English Whiggery, was enormously successful, when conjoined with British blunders, in convincing the Continental Congress and Americans generally to take the final step of separation and war. In Rights of Man, Paine made a comment that effectively summarizes in retrospect the view of the American Revolution he had set forth earlier in Common Sense. “The independence of America, considered merely as a separation from England, would have been a matter but of little importance, had it not been accompanied by a revolution in the principles and practices of governments.”66 Never did Paine permit the readers of Common Sense forget how much was

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  19 already at stake in 1776, long before the more explosive events of the French Revolution. “Every spot of the old world is over-run with oppression,”67 he maintained in 1776. Speaking of the ongoing struggle of America with ­England, he wrote that “the sun never shined on a cause of greater worth,” and then put to use a word that would later feature prominently in Burke’s vocabulary: “posterity are virtually involved in the contest.”68 As he approached the final pages of Common Sense, he further embellished his encomium: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birth-day of a new world is at hand.”69 What Burke feared in 1789, the contagion of revolution across the world, was precisely what Paine was already calling for in 1776. “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”70 Whereas Burke did everything in his power to smother Locke’s social contract, Paine by contrast recognized in America the perfect opportunity to turn Locke into literal truth. “In the beginning all the world was America,” Locke had written.71 Where, other than in America inquired Paine, could one encounter, joyously so, an almost literal state of nature and social contract? “Natural liberty” is not an objective to be reclaimed but a given reality when dealing with “the first peopling of any country.” Necessity would, of course, “soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society,” whereupon they would agree upon “the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue…; in this first parliament every man, by natural right will have a seat.” Inevitably, a move to representative government will be necessary, but freedom will be assured by “having elections often.” America is as close as any country has come to being an embodiment of this idyll.72 Talk of England as the “parent” country is out of place by way of arguing for a refusal of self-rule in America, complained Paine. “The colonies come of age”73 and should now be permitted to govern themselves, much as Locke had attested in his remarks on how children coming of age should be permitted to assume control over their lives. “A government of our own is our natural right,”74 and must be secured by fighting bravely against a country which has soiled itself and destroyed its reputation in the course of “declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind.”75 To read Common Sense is to realize that, without knowing it, Paine had been advancing for many years toward a showdown with Edmund Burke. The day of reckoning came with the publication of Rights of Man. Burke had burdened the present generation with the weight of the past and of the generations to come; Paine may have remembered his Locke when he freed the present from the past: “at best,” remarked Locke, “an argument from what has been, to what should of right be, has no great force.”76 Locke also argued for the freedom of future generations: “whatever engagements or promises any one has made for himself, he is under the obligation of them, but cannot by any compact whatsoever, bind his children or Posterity.”77

20  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century Good, if radical, Lockean that he was, Paine deemed it completely ­unacceptable that “Mr. Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living.” Autonomy for the present generation, even if it venerates its predecessors, is one of the primary themes of Rights of Man. “Every generation is and must be competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated.” Paine cannot make this point too often: “Every age and generation must be free to act for itself … The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.” There is no link permanently binding present, past, and future: “Those who have quitted the world, and those who are not yet arrived at it, are as remote from each other, as the utmost stretch of moral imagination can conceive: What possible obligation can exist between them?” Each generation must accept the burden and opportunity of deciding for itself.78 Paine’s denial that the past should dictate the present leads him to deny the notion of an “ancient constitution” dating from time immemorial. “The obscurity in which the origin of all the present old governments is buried, implies the iniquity and disgrace with which they began. The origin of the present government of America and France will ever be remembered,” because it is a matter of public record.79 Burke was wrong to say that the initial meeting of the National Assembly in three orders was the French constitution; it was “not a constitution, but a convention, to make a constitution.”80 A constitution must be willed into existence, and then sustained or revoked by each subsequent generation. ­Antiquity is irrelevant. To speak of a constitution is to speak of a social contract, and not just any contract but the social contract portrayed by Locke rather than Pufendorf. “It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed: but this cannot be true.” No such contract of submission is acceptable, contended Paine; only a Lockean contract will do, a single contract of association. A proper contract is one in which the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.81 Quite properly, in both the constitution of Pennsylvania and the constitution of the United States “there is no such thing as the idea of a compact between the people on one side, and the government on the other.” As Locke said and Paine repeated, government is a “trust” delegated by the people; and, confirmed Paine, “is always resumable. It has of itself no rights; … [only] duties.”82 How then shall we go about discussing a proper constitution? A good place to begin is to recognize that while in classical political thought the form of

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  21 government comes first, in social contract theory legitimacy and consent come first, discussion of the regime second. “I am not contending for nor against any form of government … That which a whole nation chooses to do, it has a right to do.”83 Above all we need to understand that “a constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting a government.”84 And never should we forget that “government without a constitution is power without right.”85 The most dramatic outcome of Paine’s thoughts on constitutional government is the shocking but seemingly inevitable consequence he drew from all his thoughts leading up to his finale – his firm rebuke of the British Constitution revered by Burke, Blackstone, Montesquieu, and seemingly all the established authorities. Rather than hailing from time immemorial, it can be traced back no farther than 1066. The English government is one of those which arose out of a conquest, and not out of society, and, consequently it arose over the people; and though it has been much modified … since the time of William the Conqueror, the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution.86 On the basis of all his reasoning concerning a constitution as a social contract, Paine could go beyond the already upsetting conclusion that England had a bad constitution to the far more disturbing claim that it had no constitution at all. “The whole is merely a form of government without a Constitution,”87 and is therefore illegitimate. Can then Mr. Burke produce the English Constitution? If he cannot, we may fairly conclude, that though it has been so much talked about, no such thing as a constitution exists, or ever did exist, and consequently that the people have yet a constitution to form.88 In an ideal but highly unlikely world, the English would follow the examples of America and France, and conduct their own long overdue constitutional convention. Not even the oft-lauded English bill of rights is worth a boast because “the bill of rights is more properly a bill of wrongs.”89 Included on Paine’s list of what is indefensible is hereditary succession to the crown; “it operates to preclude the consent of the succeeding generation; and the preclusion of consent is despotism.”90 As for the nobility, its proud members are more properly called persons of “No-ability.”91 In the debate over 1688, 1776, and 1789, Paine anchored his hopes for the future in the American Revolution, which in his estimation was “a revolution in the principles” of governments, and he publicly expressed his aspiration that, with the coming of the French Revolution, President George Washington would

22  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century “enjoy the happiness of seeing the New World regenerate the Old.”92 Both the American and the French Revolutions eclipsed the English, because in 1688 “the rights of man were imperfectly understood.”93 In the seventeenth century, the English rose up against the persons of Charles I and James II; in the eighteenth century America and France, to their everlasting credit, rose up not against persons but on behalf of principles.94 The French Declaration of Rights “is of more value to the world, and will do more good, than all the laws and statutes that have yet been promulgated.” So transcendent is the happening in France “that the name of a Revolution is diminutive of its character, and it rises into a Regeneration of man.”95 In the thought of Tom Paine, radical Whiggery might be said to have reached its ultimate climax, which is not to say that other radical Whigs were comfortable with his writings. Too far for most of them, too extreme, were some of his stands. His attacks on monarchy, on aristocracy, on the hereditary principle; his denial that England had a constitution; his call for a unicameral legislature and for a greatly expanded voting franchise were too much for many of his fellow radical Whigs. He had, however, accomplished what he had set out to do. Edmund Burke had been challenged as never before, which was especially important because the Reflections on the Revolution in France sold quite well despite its relatively high price of five shillings. Paine’s Rights of Man, selling for a mere six-pence, outsold Burke by a considerable margin. He was either on or near the mark when he boasted that Rights of Man “had the greatest run of any work ever published in the English language.”96 Two hundred thousand copies sold almost immediately, followed eventually by as many as another three hundred thousand. Avoiding classical references and legal jargon, writing in a language accessible to everyone, he successfully reached out to workers and artisans. Passionate though he was, he succeeded in communicating to his readers the recognition that just as “common sense” was all the Americans needed in 1776, so it was all the English needed in 1790 to free themselves from the clutches of England’s political class and Edmund Burke. Foes of Burke Rights of Man was likely the most famous and most widely read response to Burke’s Reflections. Most certainly, however, it did not stand alone. Endless, it seems, was the number of pamphlets written for or against Burke.97 In his own age, the outpouring was enormous and would never cease in the ages to come. We shall begin by discussing some of Burke’s foes in the eighteenth century and end by discussing some of his friends. Burke’s Reflections was barely off the press when Mary Wollstonecraft rushed into print her condemnation of his performance in A Vindication of the Rights of Men in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, which sold out within three weeks. The constitution Burke revered had been “settled in the dark

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  23 days of ignorance,”98 not in the days of modern Enlightenment. Responding to Burke’s reverence for tradition, she asks “Can there be an opinion more subversive of morality, than that time sanctifies crimes?”99 Has he read Hume’s history of ­England100 which shows that the past was anything but a continuous forward march of freedom? Presumably, she encountered the passage in which Hume remarked on “the uncertain and undefined nature of the English constitution,” and was familiar also with his comment that “the English constitution, like all others, has been in a state of continual fluctuation.”101 She further embarrasses Burke by inquiring how, on his principles, he can justify the Protestant Reformation? Or how can he justify his sympathy for the American rebels?102 And what can be more depressing than Burke’s indifference to the plight of the poor and his demeaning exaltation of women? In the strongest possible terms she condemned “the demon of property [that] has ever been at hand to encroach on the sacred rights of men.” Challenging Burke directly, she added “I beseech you to ask your own heart when you call yourself a friend of liberty, whether it would not be more consistent to style yourself the champion of property.”103 As for women, she expressed her fear that “ladies may have read your Enquiry concerning the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, and, convinced by your arguments, may have labored to be pretty by counterfeiting weakness.”104 Already in 1790, she had set the stage for her performance two years later in Vindication of the Rights of Women. Directly opposed to the rights of women, she argued in 1790, were Burke’s comments in his early A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. There he had set forth the reprehensible contention that, in his words, the female sex almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection … for which reason they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness and even sickness. In all this they are guided by nature.105 What was this, she wished to know, other than to say that whatever is, is right, no matter that half the human race suffers in consequence? If anything, it is Burke who fulfills the stereotype of woman, Burke with his “pampered sensibility,” his “theatrical exclamations,” and the “turgid bombast” of his prose.106 How deeply she troubled Burke is evident in his remark, several years later, that Wollstonecraft was one of “that Clan of desperate, Wicked, and mischievously ingenious Women, who have brought, or are likely to bring Ruin and shame upon all those that listen to them.”107 Another woman more than willing to challenge Burke was Catharine Macaulay, who engaged him in combat as early as 1770 in response to his Thoughts on Present Discontents, and again in 1790, writing against his Reflections on the Revolution in France. The tone and argument of her earlier essay set the stage for the second. “The pamphlet is written with great eloquence,”

24  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century she said of Present Discontents, “but its fine turned and polished periods carry with them a poison sufficient to destroy all the little virtue and understanding of sound policy which is left in the nation.” His is a “pernicious work,” supposedly written to ward off an overly assertive Monarch, but truth be told, it “endeavors to mislead the people on the subject of the … no less dangerous maneuvers of the Aristocratic faction and party.” Burke called for a return in his day to the understandings of 1688; Macaulay, by contrast, could not have been more disappointed with the so-called Glorious Revolution. “A system of corruption began at the very period of the Revolution [and] … Parliament, the great barrier of our much-boasted constitution, while it preserved its forms, annihilated its spirit.” Speaking as a radical Whig against the established Whiggery of Burke, she complained that “in all the great struggles for liberty, true reformation was never by the ruling party either effected or even intended.” Everything most essential – frequent elections, rotation in office, “the full and impartial security of the rights of nature” – suffered denial by Burke and his party.108 Catharine Macaulay’s criticism of Burke’s Reflections, like Wollstonecraft’s, was published early, prior to those of Joseph Priestley, Tom Paine, and James Mackintosh. How daring she could be is evident in the passages of her earlier History of England when she praised the mid-seventeenth century republic, denounced by most everyone but presented by her as an admirable experiment undermined by “mischievous ambition of Cromwell.”109 How careful, on the other hand, she could be was on display in her Observations on the Reflections of Burke. Along with other radical Whigs such as Price and Priestley, she articulated her republican sentiments in her essay on Burke as a perfection of, rather than a threat to, the English monarchy.110 Not classical but modern commercial republicanism, with a king as symbolic head, was England’s path to the future and could be revolutionary France’s as well. Citizens rather than subjects, a public fairly represented in the legislature and free to debate openly, were her objectives, frequently pitting her against Burke. The reason why it is difficult to understand the French Revolution, she explained, is that “the present complexion of things in France has something of different aspect from what history or the state of other countries presents to our view.” So far, the outcome of the experiment forced upon France could not be more admirable: the abolition of feudalism, calls for a reform of the reprehensible legal system, a rejection of the notion that the people should be permitted only one third of the votes in meetings of the Estates General. Much that needs to be changed is being changed, and as this happens “we see a people firm and united in their efforts to support their rights, yet obedient.” Burke never has a good word for the French Enlightenment, always presenting the philosophes as hopelessly abstract thinkers, completely out of touch with reality, and narrowly self-serving. Macaulay sees precisely the opposite. “From what can this difference which subsists between the French nation and other societies arise,” she asks, “but in a more general diffusion of knowledge.”111 The heralds of the Old Regime were taken by surprise: “Neither the court, nor the Parlement of

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  25 Paris … were aware of the consequences which must arise from the general spread of knowledge among the people.”112 Even at this late date, Burke, to her consternation, displays no knowledge of the writings of the philosophes, and continues to be blind to the merits of the Enlightenment. It was especially on the question of rights that Macaulay took Burke to task. “Either … an individual or some privileged persons have an inherent and indefeasible right to make laws for the community, or … the authority rests in the unalienable and indefeasible rights of man.”113 She had no doubt that the l­atter was the correct assumption. Most fundamental of all rights is that of “the social body to choose its own government, which Mr. Burke condemns under the description of a metaphysical foolery.”114 Why has he … endeavored to rouse all the nations of men against them, and thus to crush in their ruin all the rights of man? … Would he recommend to the potentates of Europe a renewal of that wicked conspiracy against the rights of men?115 The time has come for Burke and all the English to move beyond their narrow-minded notion of the rights of Englishmen. “I have always considered the boasted birthright of an Englishman as an arrogant pretension, built on a beggarly foundation. It … intimates a kind of exclusion to the rest of mankind.”116 Few critiques of Burke’s Reflections have received more attention than James Mackintosh’s Vindiciae Gallicae, published in 1791. Later, he would compromise, but in this work, he set forth an uncompromising critique both of Burke’s overall outlook and of the specifics of his argument. Even more important than his concerns about particular items was the battle he fought against Burke’s stand on the French Enlightenment, on the philosophes, famous throughout Europe – Voltaire, Diderot, and company. In the strongest possible terms, Burke contrasted unfavorably the highly influential French intellectuals with their British brethren. Thankfully, no philosophical “cabal” in England is attempting to force its way into political prominence, he remarked. Admittedly, there had been in the early eighteenth century the “Freethinkers,” the deists, but “who, born within the last forty years, had read one word of Collins, and Toland, and ­Tindal?” Unconnected individuals, “they never acted in corps or were known as a faction in the state.” Altogether different is France where the intellectuals are organized in academies, in the collective project of producing an Encyclopedia, in popularizing their message in coffee houses, and in looking to form alliances with monarchs such as Frederick the Great. Enemies of religion, “these atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own, and they have learned to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk.” Burke passed on to his audience the reassuring message that he would not “shock the moral reader with any quotation of their vulgar, base, and profane language.”117 He was so careful to avoid directly citing their writings that his familiarity with their works remains in doubt.

26  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century Exactly opposite was Mackintosh’s evaluation. “The principles of freedom had long been understood, perhaps better than in any country of the world, by the philosophers of France.”118 All to the good, then, it is that “the convictions of philosophy insinuate themselves by a slow, but certain progress, into popular sentiment.”119 Mackintosh appreciated the “progressive energy of public opinion,”120 which linked his thought with that of the philosophes, who at ­mid-century had discovered what might be accomplished by shaping opinion. It was the press that provided the means of creating an enlightened public. “Philosophers have long remained a distinct nation in the midst of an unenlightened multitude. It is only now that the conquests of the press are enlarging the dominion of reason.”121 The press is “that engine, which has subjected the powerful to the wise, by governing the opinion of mankind.”122 So indebted did Macintosh feel to the Enlightenment that its imagery of light and darkness pervades his manuscript. An outpouring of pamphlets, he remarked, followed the announcement of the convocation of the Estates General, such that “the advancement of Paris to light and freedom was greater in three months than it had been in almost as many centuries.” Posterity will remember “this rapid diffusion of light.”123 In England, Locke had “contributed to the diffusion of political light,”124 and the French have successfully imported his contribution to enlightenment. One problem facing the French was that the legal body known as the Parlement of Paris was only “half-enlightened.”125 A sign of hope for the future is that “the minds of enlightened Europe” are coming to realize that colonial possessions are “commercially useless and politically ruinous.”126 Only “half-enlightened,” unfortunately, is the Parliament of Great Britain.127 Much remains to be accomplished because “our ancestors at the Revolution” were not “sufficiently enlightened and matured for the grand enterprises of legislation.”128 Consequently, it is to France that we must look for the light that may illuminate the world. The shock that destroyed the despotism of France has widely dispersed the clouds that intercepted reason from the political and moral world; and we cannot suppose, that England is the only spot that has not been reached by this ‘flood of light’ that has burst upon the human race.129 Throughout his manuscript, Mackintosh searched for “general causes,”130 contrasting his efforts with Burke’s language of “plots” and conspiracies.131 “A predilection for aristocracy, and a dread of innovation, have ever been among the most sacred articles of his public creed,” preventing Burke from controlling his “prolific imagination,” his “ardent and deluded sensibility.” Eloquent he is but “his eloquence is not at leisure to deplore the fate of beggared artisans and famished peasants.”132 The “general cause” missed by Burke is immediately identified by Mackintosh: “The downfall of the feudal aristocracy” occurred in France before the rise of a commercial middle class, with the result that “power

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  27 devolved on the Crown.” By the end of the fifteenth century, the Estates General had passed into insignificance.133 Nothing comparable to the English constitution had ever existed in France. In France, “two hundred years of uninterrupted exercise had legitimated absolute authority.”134 Burke’s refusals to acknowledge the consequences, his claims that the French had a constitution waiting to be recovered, were totally unacceptable. All the established institutions were “tainted by despotism,” “incapable of alliance with a free Constitution.” “The Nobility, the Priesthood, the Judicial Aristocracy, were unfit to be members of a free government.”135 Typical was the Parlement of Paris which called for a convening of the Estates General but was concerned only to expand its privileges.136 Burke’s apology for the Estates General, his condemnation of the Third Estate for seceding and forming a new assembly, was thoroughly mistaken. France desperately needed reforms, such as the abolition of feudalism, which was accomplished but only because the Third Estate rejected the Estates General for a unified assembly, the National Assembly, in which the privileged orders could not veto essential legislative initiatives. The great advantage of the members of the National Assembly was that “they were fortunate enough to live in a period when it was only necessary to affix the stamp of laws to what had been prepared by the research of philosophy.”137 A convention, informed by ever-growing knowledge of the “science of politics,” could follow the American example of creating a constitution by “art,” not historical accident, “the work of legislative intellect, reared on the immutable basis of natural right and general happiness.”138 England was not sufficiently enlightened in 1688, and even now, Parliament “is not the guardian of [the people’s] rights, nor the organ of their voice.”139 Americans were enlightened in 1776, and remarkably so are the French as they forge their startling revolution. Mackintosh sharply contrasted his own progressive view of the world with what he regarded as Burke’s hopelessly regressive vision. Nothing excited Mackintosh more than what struck deep fear in Burke: the thought that the French Revolution would prove contagious. Ever so slowly, but most assuredly, the passage of time has broken down the walls between European states, wrote Mackintosh approvingly. “When a society of nations are so closely united as to resemble the union of provinces of a State, the propagation of sentiment is indeed inevitable, and the European annals already afford sufficient evidence of its effect.”140 This striking reality “entitle[s] us to hope that freedom and reason will be rapidly propagated from their source in France.” With deep satisfaction, Mackintosh proclaimed that “the first marks of the probable progress of French principles are the alarms betrayed by despots.”141 Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Macaulay, Tom Paine, and James Macintosh rank very high on the list of Burkean nay-sayers. Other critics, plentiful in number, some fairly prominent, others less so, figured in abundance and sounded fundamental themes. Was Burke guilty in Reflections of upholding a position fundamentally inconsistent with his earlier speeches and essays, many asked?

28  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century Was it not essential to save the idea of a social contract from his polemics? Did his remarkable imagination and rhetoric do more to obscure than to illuminate the vital issues at stake? Was he not communicating an apology for the deepseated wrongs that characterized the Old Regime, rather than discussing necessary reforms? How, finally, could he fail to understand that the French had no ancient constitution waiting to be retrieved and that the creation of a constitution, at long last, was their inescapable burden and extraordinary opportunity? Joseph Priestley was among those who charged Burke with inconsistency. “That an avowed friend of the American revolution should be an enemy to that of the French, which arose from the same general principles, and in a great measure sprung from it, is to me unaccountable.”142 Benjamin Bousfield, a lesser known polemicist, agreed: “Does he not remember his own words on the occasion” of the American War?143 George Rous, a person of some significance as a member of Parliament and then Counsel to the East India Company, wrote an extensive pamphlet expressing his dismay that Burke had devolved from his “celebrated labors in the cause of freedom” to hostile commentator on the efforts of the French to secure their freedom.144 Some critics argued that Burke had betrayed principles he had set forth as early as 1770. “Formerly Mr. Burke was of opinion,” wrote William Belsham in 1792, “that in all disputes between the people and their rulers, the presumption was in favor of the people.”145 The passage Belsham paraphrased was from Burke’s speech of 1770, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents: in Burke’s words, “in all disputes between [the people] and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.”146 Brooke Boothby offered the same sentiment in A Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: “Twenty years ago you would not have thought of this revolution as you do now.”147 Troubled by the charge of inconsistency, Burke repeatedly defended himself in An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.148 How deeply this issue was felt by Burke’s critics is evident in the remarks of Charles Pigott, who introduced his pamphlet by calling Burke “a deserter from an honourable cause.”149 Many Whigs rejected what they regarded as Burke’s dismissal of the cherished social contract tradition of political thought. Charles Stanhope was of their number, he the brother-in-law of Pitt the Younger – Pitt’s early supporter, only to be disappointed by the Prime’s Minister’s retreat from reform. In his Letter to Edmund Burke, dated 1790, Stanhope affirmed in perfectly Lockean language, “All warrantable political power is derived, either mediately or immediately, from the People. All political authority is a TRUST … The natural RIGHTS of the PEOPLE are sacred and unalienable.”150 George Rous was among the many Whigs who expressed their dismay that Burke did not deny natural rights but wrongly insisted they “refer wholly to a period antecedent of all civil government.”151 Charles Pigott in his “strictures” on Burke agreed that “the people will never give back the rights they have recovered,” and he compliments Paine, who against Burke “has so ably exposed the absurdity of one age enacting laws which

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  29 are binding on all posterity.”152 Thomas Christie, a friend of Price, deemed Burke “the first writer who ever imagined that the Revolution [of 1688] established the principle of an unchangeable hereditary succession.”153 Priestley found incomprehensible Burke’s contention that one generation could decide for all to come; “could [one generation] seriously mean to bind their posterity [from] ever doing again what they themselves then did?”154 Has Burke bothered to read Locke, his critics seemed to ask. In the early French Revolution Boothby envisioned “the most magnificent spectacle that has ever presented itself to the human eye. A great and generous nation animated with one soul, rising up … to demand the restitution of their natural rights.” Boothby’s idea of contract in his Letter to Edmund Burke, like Stanhope’s, is Lockean in that “all political power consists of an aggregate sum of the natural rights and liberties of the persons over whom it is exercised.”155 Bousfield joined the chorus, writing “that all power proceeds from the people, is never alienated, and when abused, may be resumed.” Such are “the rights of men, which Mr. Burke attempts to ridicule.”156 Belsham was unusual in noting that Burke had sanctioned a contract, but is quick to point out that it is meaningless. Burke’s contract, “tacit or expressed,” might as well not exist because “there exist neither power nor right to alter it.” All parties, “oppressors as well the oppressed,” must agree to any change. It is Pufendorf at his worst. A contract “which divests the people of their natural rights is to be held in execration.” No one could have expected, “at the close of the eighteenth century, to have heard such principles of government advanced anywhere but at Constantinople.”157 George Rous agreed that Burke’s idea of contract “supports the despotism of Turkey.”158 Burke’s foes vied with one another to show how very vile was the Old Regime that he refused to criticize and for which he offered apologies. “A century and a half of despotism,” suggested Boothby, had “warped and moulded every institution to the support of the omnipotence of the crown.”159 Belsham greatly inflated such findings: “The French nation had long groaned under … the despotism of a thousand years.”160 Christie depicts the people of the Old Regime as “kept in the state of lowest servitude”; commerce was wanting because “it was reckoned dishonourable”; “the only road to power and success was to flatter the great.”161 Politically, said Bousfield, the people of France existed for the king, not the king for the people; socially, the debauched nobility was everything and the people nothing. “Mr. Burke I believe has been deceived by the French refugees in England.”162 Burke’s critics also agreed that his claims the French possessed a constitution waiting to be recovered were utterly mistaken. Bousfield remarked that “Mr. Burke thinks they ought to have built upon their ancient constitution – he ought to have informed us, when and where it was to be found.”163 Stanhope listed the standard practices of repression that defined public life in France: no trial by jury, no declaration of rights, no liberty of the press, despotic power. “Such were the blessed effects of that good Constitution of which, you say, the French were at that time in absolute possession.” The simple truth is that the

30  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century nation had not “even the semblance of a free constitution.”164 Christie’s ­judgment was that the French “wanted amongst them the very principles of a Constitution”; “nothing but a total revolution was equal to the cure.”165 Boothby, ever a spokesperson for “Whig principles,” believed the French “languish under the evils of a vicious constitution, presenting an odious contract between the higher and lower orders.”166 Addressing Burke he asks, “What was there here so well worth preserving; were these the corner stones upon which you would have laid the foundation of a free constitution?”167 Much the same was Belsham’s account: “The constitution of France, previous to the Revolution … was a slavish and tyrannical system.” Perhaps there was an original contract, but if so, it was “radically and incorrigibly vicious.”168 Widely recognized today and yesterday is the power of Burke’s rhetoric and imagination, usually cited in praise of his speeches. Critics in his day, however, constantly demeaned him for what a later age and some of his contemporaries admired. Charles Pigott was especially unforgiving, suggesting that Burke’s rhetoric was a substitute for substance. In his words, “Groundless assertion, dressed in all the splendid imagery of language, the most brilliant allusions, calculated to dazzle the senses, to confound and perplex the judgment, are the general resources on which Mr. Burke rests his attack.” It is “melancholy to observe,” he added, “that the same fascinating eloquence which was so successfully displayed in the cause of American independence, should be now engaged in … the attempt to re-establish the conquered despotism of France.”169 Thomas Christie warned that eloquence separated from truth “becomes a wandering prostitute … Had the principles of Mr. Burke’s book been as just as the language of it is splendid and sublime, it would have merited a place amongst the first productions of human genius.”170 Bousfield found that “in reading his pamphlet, we must admire the bursts of eloquence, the beautiful turns of language, and the elegant figures, which …embellish and animate his pages: but the reasoning … is fallacious.” The succeeding Romantic age, we realize today, might admire what Bousfield termed “the soaring flights of a boundless imagination,” but he deemed them little more than “the effusions of an irritable and irritated mind.”171 Speaking of Burke’s “eloquence,” Priestley wrote “I always admire you in this field, though not in that of sober reasoning.” He then invites Burke to change your style, and assume the character of a philosopher, and not that of a mere rhetorician … You are now of an age in which I should have imagined that the powers of the imagination would have been more checked by those of reason172 Mackintosh detected in Burke’s Reflections strong indications of a mind unstable and out of control.173 Critiques of Burke both in pamphlets and in leading journals abound in derogatory comments about his “fervid imagination,” his “florid declamation,” his habit of substituting passionate rhetoric and imagery

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  31 for reason and sound argument.174 Insofar as they could, Burke’s critics turned his exceptional prose against him. One other major point of conflict between Burke and his critics was that they hoped for what he feared, the spread of the French Revolution across Europe. Mackintosh was not alone when, writing against Burke, he expressed his “hope that freedom and reason will be rapidly propagated from their source in France.” Other New and Radical Whigs shared his view. Charles Stanhope, publicly d­ issenting from Burke’s view, wrote that “the change of government in France … is an unparalleled example of public spirit to the enslaved nations upon the C ­ ontinent.” He closed his response to Burke by expressing his optimism for the future. “That great and glorious Revolution will, in time, disseminate throughout Europe liberality of sentiment, and a just regard for political, civil, and religious liberty.”175 Bousfield carefully indicated his veneration of the British constitution but then went on to say of the ongoing French experiment, “I cherish the animating hope, that it will irradiate every part of the habitable globe.”176 Mark Wilks was a lesser known figure but perhaps that in itself renders his “sermon” of interest as a statement of popular sentiment. The French Revolution, he suspected, “will, in process of time, enlighten the darkest corners of the globe.”177 Burke’s foes in the eighteenth century could hardly have been more plentiful or more determined to overturn his arguments. Did he also have friends, pamphleteers writing on his behalf, or was it only after his death that he came fully into his own? Friends of Burke Two quotations inevitably come to mind, each uttered by a prominent figure of the late eighteenth century, when scholars search for those who spoke up in favor of the Burke of the Reflections. One was vocalized by the King, the other written by the noteworthy historian Edward Gibbon. Quite remarkable is George III’s comment that Burke was author of “a book which every gentleman ought to read.”178 Burke had earlier earned the King’s disgust when he stood up for Parliament against what he regarded as an effort of royalty to undermine its independence. Now, as the uncompromising nay-sayer to the ongoing French Revolution, he was a man to be commended. As for Gibbon, he could not be outdone in his witty expression of approval: “Burke’s book is a most admirable medicine against the French disease … I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can even forgive his superstition.”179 Unfortunately for Burke, the King and Gibbon were not typical of those who denounced the onset of the French Revolution. What is striking is how few pamphlets were written in Burke’s behalf in 1791 and 1792,180 the years when there was a flood of pamphlets attacking him. Outspoken defenses were rare, and Pitt the Younger’s silence, far from an oversight, was likely part of his

32  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century strategy of maintaining neutrality in ideological debates – and avoiding war. One ­pro-­government source that did break the silence was the paper World, but its editors delighted in ridiculing Burke. Major John Scott, who could not forgive Burke for impeaching Hastings, was very influential with this publication.181 A major factor in Burke’s neglect by anti-revolutionaries is that the pamphleteers of the age were far less concerned to write for than against; pro-French authors wrote against Burke, anti-French writers against Paine rather than for Burke. Frederick Hervey warned that “Mr. Paine’s book is perhaps one of the most dangerous publications that ever appeared on any subject.”182 A pamphleteer who remained anonymous charged that “Paine writes to the vulgar, to the mob.”183 The consequences were spelled out by another anonymous writer: the taking of the Bastille was an example of how “the capricious tyranny of the many is ravaging at large one of the fairest empires in the world.”184 A recurring charge registered against the early French revolutionaries was that they were the equivalent of the English Levellers of the mid-seventeenth century. “Mr. Paine is a Leveller,”185 wrote William Sewell, who also charged that the Revolution Society, established to celebrate the centenary of 1688, “come[s] cordially into the general views of levelling policy.”186 In another pamphlet, the alarm is raised that “the levellers are again appearing.”187 In November 1792, John Reeves founded the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers. These thematic references to the horrors of the Puritan Revolution separate many pamphleteers both from the New Whigs at one end of the spectrum and from Burke at the other. Both those who praised the events of 1789 and Burke who violently rejected them agreed that what was happening was unprecedented, they to salute, he to damn the French. In sharp contrast stands the pamphlet literature with its backward-looking references to the L ­ evellers of the mid-seventeenth century. The sparsity of references to Burke is a defining feature of the anti-French pamphlet literature. So is the failure to cite Burke even when duplicating his incantations. No passage in the Reflections is more famous or quoted more often than his eulogy of prejudice – his contention that we can almost always count on prejudice, rarely on reason, to keep us on the straight and narrow.188 Quite in keeping with such sentiments is the statement of a pamphleteer that “men in general, both the great and the vulgar, are creatures of opinion, and their opinion is oftener formed (and must necessarily be so) upon prejudice than upon reason.”189 Burke would have wholeheartedly agreed, but his name is not mentioned. When the theme of “generations” appears in the pamphlets, Paine’s exclusive concern for the living is mentioned, if only for purposes of condemnation; Burke’s concern for the living, the dead, and those yet to be born goes unmentioned.190 When it is argued that “distinct classes in society … have been in all ages and countries found essential,” and that “the sentiments of liberty, the generous desire of diffusing its influence through all orders of men, …seem to inspire the higher still more than the lower orders of the community,” Burke’s name again receives no mention.191

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  33 On those relatively few occasions when Burke is mentioned by anti-French pamphleteers, more often than not it is to disparage gently the Reflections. ­Frederick Hervey registered his disappointment that Burke’s “book is written with considerable asperity.”192 William Sewell approved of Burke’s “opposition to the Doctrine of levelling fanaticism,” but disapproved of his “intemperate zeal.”193 Many English spokespersons who denounced the outbreak of the French Revolution would have applauded Burke’s assaults on ideologues, had they not felt compelled to enroll his name, too, in the ranks of destructive ideologues. Their worries, voiced as early as 1791, would not dissipate in the following years when Burke urged a war with France that would be, if he had his way, a modern-day war of religion. Not only in the late eighteenth but into the early nineteenth century, conservatives would distance themselves from the Burke they regarded as an extremist (Chapter 3). By 1796, conservatives did not need Burke’s rhetoric, nor that of any other conservative to quiet the radicals. The government had taken matters in hand with a program of repression. Important as was the government’s campaign of coercion, especially remarkable was how, well before 1796, significant Burke detractors such as the Reverend Christopher Wyvill, Brooke Boothby, and ­William Belsham had led the way in protecting radical Whiggery by repudiating Paine, and how after that year the formidable Burke critic James Mackintosh reinvented himself as an arch-defender of his former nemesis while remaining a devoted Whig. New Whigs, Radical Whigs, were eager to prove they were not wild-eyed revolutionaries, and Mackintosh, forced to deal with the bloody excesses of the French Revolution, went so far as to seek a détente if not comradeship with Burke. His was a significant moment in the transition of Burke’s image from the eighteenth into the nineteenth century. Hostile to Burke, Wyvill called him “our modern Filmer.” The title of his pamphlet indicated unmistakably where he stood, A Defence of Dr. Price and the Reformers of England. To defend Price and cast Burke aside was not, however, to defend Paine’s Rights of Man, “a book ably and forcibly written, though neither with candour nor wisdom.” It is intolerable that Paine “supports the doctrine of Republicanism,” a view contradictory to Price’s beliefs, to Wyvill’s, to the reformers in general. Price was not hostile to the Constitution of England, nor was Wyvill, even though they called for substantial reforms; they did not hold, as Paine did, that England has no constitution. Wyvill’s pamphlet testified that one did not have to be a conservative or a Burkean to reject Tom Paine.194 Belsham was sympathetic toward Paine but careful to distance himself from him on the question of monarchy versus republic. As to the republican principles [Rights of Man] contains, everyone knows that Mr. Paine is the subject of a republican state. And it by no means follows, that those who admire and recommend his book as an excellent and decisive reply to Mr. Burke, must adopt his opinions relative to monarchy.195

34  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century The Reverend John Horne Tooke remarked that he was willing to ride seated beside Paine but not all the way to republicanism.196 Another reformer eager to free himself and his comrades from Paine was Boothby. After publishing his ­Letter to Edmund Burke in 1790, Boothby followed two years later with Observations on the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs and on Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man. His most crucial sentence, near the beginning, was “I am not a ­Burkite – I am not a Painite.”197 Most telling of all was James Mackintosh, who not only abandoned the brilliant radical Whig critique of Burke which he had elaborated in Vindiciae ­Gallicae, but with the passing years fled from Paine, from all the radicals, and, in the course of reinventing himself as an anti-radical Whig, publicly embraced Burke. The September Massacres of 1792, the execution of Louis XVI in ­January of 1793, and of Marie Antoinette in October of that year, and the outbreak of war between England and France, forced him to reconsider his views. Writing to his erstwhile enemy Edmund Burke in 1796, Mackintosh confessed: for a time, seduced by the love of what I thought liberty, I ventured to oppose, without ever ceasing to venerate, that writer [Burke] who had nourished my understanding with the most wholesome principles of political wisdom … Since that time a melancholy experience has undeceived me on many ­subjects in which I was then the dupe of my own enthusiasm.198 How far Mackintosh had evolved in a direction complementary to Burke is evident in A Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations. Foremost, or nearly so, among the themes of this work is his adamant rejection of social contract theory. We must search for the “foundation” of property, he assures the reader, “not in imaginary contracts or a pretended state of nature” but in the historical record.199 Likewise, the duties of subject and sovereign, citizen and magistrate, must be established on the “solid basis of convenience,” “not upon supposed contracts, which are altogether chimerical” and give rise to the “universal despotism of Hobbes” or the “universal anarchy of Rousseau.” Far better than the moderns in this regard were the ancients, especially Aristotle who understood that humans are by nature sociable, polis dwelling creatures.200 “History … is a vast museum,” Mackintosh remarks, and from it he derives universal, definitive, and final moral principles. One historical source is the works over the ages of the most famous political authors. His is what a later age would call a great books approach. “I agree with all the wise men who have ever deeply considered the principles of politics; with Aristotle and Polybius, with Cicero and Tacitus, with Bacon and Machiavel, with Montesquieu and Hume.”201 The great thinkers of the past articulated “the sacred master-principles,” and it is to their findings that the word “consent” is proper, the “consent of mankind,” not the consent of a social contract. Studies of the historical development of the law of nations is a second way of arriving at universal truths.

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  35 We are not confined, as the learned of the last age generally were, to the history of those renowned nations who are our masters of literature. We can bring before us man in a lower and more abject condition than any in which he was ever before seen. The records have been partly opened to us of those mighty empires of Asia.202 There are moments in his Discourse when Mackintosh sounds like an echo of Burke. He speaks out against a philosophy which “stigmatizes all our most natural feelings as prejudices.”203 On generations, also, he speaks in tones reminiscent of Burke: The great commerce between ages will be broken …; the human race will be reduced to the scanty stock of their own age, unless the latest generations are united to the earliest by an early and intimate knowledge of their language, and their literature.204 Burke would likely also agree with the comment that any government is better than none,205 and that, contrary to the likes of Paine, “simple governments are mere creations of the imagination of theorists,” rather than the product of proven experience.206 Beyond duplicating Burke, Mackintosh directly praises the author of the Reflections as “a writer who is admired by all mankind for his eloquence, but who is, if possible, still more admired … for his philosophy.”207 Fox and Burke had split bitterly over the revolution in France, and later over how aggressive the English response should be, with Mackintosh initially siding with Fox.208 Now, in retrospect, Mackintosh reunites Burke and Fox: he speaks of “these illustrious men whose names I here join, as they will be joined in fame by posterity.”209 The Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations dates from 1799, the close of the eighteenth century and the passage to the nineteenth. Most certainly, Mackintosh’s discourse marks a transitional moment. Burke, who had gone over to Pitt and the Tories, is returned in Mackintosh’s account to Fox and the Whigs. Symbolically, this move could not be more appropriate as a presentiment of the nineteenth century. The Burke of the nineteenth century would be a Whig, not a Tory; a Liberal, not a Conservative. The friends of Burke would be Liberals – conservative leaning, perhaps, but Liberals nonetheless. Burke the full-fledged Conservative would await the twentieth century. Notes 1 Edmund Burke, Parliamentary History of England, vol. 29, April 21, 1791, pp. 362, 363, 388. 2 Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, & Co., 1866), vol. I, pp. 435–537. 3 D. O. Thomas, ed., Richard Price: Political Writings (New York: Cambridge ­University Press, 1991), p. 195.

36  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century 4 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 9. 5 Thomas, ed., Price: Political Writings, p. 30. 6 Ibid., p. 41. 7 Ibid., p. 192. 8 Ibid., p. 39. 9 Ibid., p. 37 10 Ibid., p. 11. 11 Ibid., p. 30. 12 Ibid., p. 117. 13 Adam Ferguson, Remarks on Dr. Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil ­Liberty (London: Printed for G. Kearsley, 1776), p. 7. 14 Ibid., p. 18. 15 Ibid., p. 59. 16 Ibid., p. 62. 17 Ibid., p. 36. 18 Ibid., p. 42. 19 Ibid., p. 47. 20 Ibid., p. 64. 21 Edmund Burke, “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” in Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, & Co., 1866), vol. IV, p. 101. 22 Harry T. Dickinson, “The Eighteenth-Century Debates on the ‘Glorious Revolution’,” History, vol. 61, 1976, pp. 28–45. Harry T. Dickinson, “Whiggism in the Eighteenth Century,” in John Cannon, ed., The Whig Ascendancy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), ch. 2. Harry T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977). 23 Ferguson, Remarks on Dr. Price’s Observations, pp. 36–37. 24 Ibid., pp. 23, 30, 45, 64. 25 Ibid., p. 36. 26 Price, Political Writings, p. 119. 27 Ferguson, Remarks, p. 69. 28 Price, Political Writings p. 20. 29 Ibid., p. 39. 30 Ferguson, Remarks, p. 17. 31 Price, Political Writings, p. 36. 32 Ibid., pp. 189, 192. 33 Ibid., p. 190. 34 Ibid., p. 186. 35 Locke, Second Treatise of Government, no. 225. 36 Price, Political Writings, p. 196. 37 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, pp. 10, 58. 38 Ibid., p. 213. 39 Ibid., p. 67. 40 Ibid., pp. 76–77. 41 Ibid., p. 80. 42 Ibid., pp. 84–85. 43 Ibid., p. 77. 44 Ibid., pp. 17, 19, 24. 45 Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925), Bk. I, ch. 4, no. 2, p. 139. 46 Ibid., Bk. I, ch. 3, no. 8, p. 110.

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  37 47 Samuel Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2005), Bk. 7, ch. 8, no. 6, p. 720. 48 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, Bk. I, ch. 2. 49 Edmund Burke, “An Account of the European Settlements in America,” in Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Edmund Burke (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), p. 233. In the parliamentary session of 1789 Burke opposed the slave-trade, and again in a code drafted in 1792 for Secretary of State Henry Dundas. 50 Grotius, Law of War and Peace, Bk. III, ch.7, no. 3, p. 691. 51 Edmund Burke, “Speech on a Committee to Inquire into the State of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1901), vol. VII, p. 94. 52 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 18. 53 Samuel Pufendorf, The Law of Nature and Nations, Bk. VII, ch. 2, nos. 7–8, pp. 639–640. 54 Ibid., Bk. VII, ch. 2, nos. 9, 11, pp. 642, 644. 55 Ibid., Bk. VII, ch. 8, no. 6, pp. 720–721. 56 Ibid., Bk. VII, ch. 8, nos. 3, 5. 57 An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, p. 135. 58 Ibid., p. 162. 59 Burke, Reflections, pp. 76–7, pp. 717, 719. 60 Burke, Appeal, p. 165. 61 Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 63. 62 Burke, Appeal, pp. 165–167. 63 Ibid., p. 208. 64 Burke, Reflections, p. 15. 65 For an excellent comparison of the Declaration of Independence with the English Declaration of Rights, see Michael Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). For England, Lois G. S ­ chwoerer, The Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1981). 66 Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 159. 67 Thomas Paine, Common Sense (London: Penguin Classics, 1986), p. 100. 68 Ibid., p. 82. 69 Ibid., p. 120. 70 Ibid., p. 63. 71 Locke, Second Treatise, no. 49. 72 Paine, Common Sense, pp. 66–67. 73 Ibid., p. 94. 74 Ibid., p. 98. 75 Ibid., p. 63. 76 Locke, Second Treatise, no. 103. 77 Ibid., no. 116. 78 Paine, Rights of Man, pp. 41–43. 79 Ibid., p. 168. 80 Ibid., p. 72. 81 Ibid., p. 70. 82 Ibid., pp. 188–189. Locke, Second Treatise, no. 149. 83 Ibid., p. 42. 84 Ibid., p. 71. 85 Ibid., p. 185. 86 Ibid., p. 72.

38  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century 87 Ibid., p. 131. 88 Ibid., pp. 71–72. 89 Ibid., p. 193. 90 Ibid., p. 122. 91 Ibid., p. 106. 92 Ibid., first page. 93 Ibid., p. 43. 94 Ibid., p. 50. 95 Ibid., p. 114. 96 Philip Foner, The Complete Works of Thomas Paine (New York: Citadel Press, 1969), vol. II, p. 910. 97 Gregory Claeys, ed., The Political Writings of the 1790s: the French Revolution Debate in Britain (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1995), 8 vols. 98 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Literary Texts, 1997), p. 42. 99 Ibid., p. 85. 100 Ibid., p. 40. 101 Hume, The History of England (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1983), IV, p. 355n; vol. V, p. 128. 102 Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Men, pp. 43, 44. 103 Ibid., pp. 38, 42. 104 Ibid., pp. 79–80. 105 Edmund Burke, “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, & Co., 1866), vol. I, p. 188. 106 Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Men, pp. 34, 45, 61. 107 Thomas W. Copeland, The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958–78), vol. 8, p. 304. 108 Catharine Macaulay, Observations on a Pamphlet Entitled Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (London: Printed for Edward & Charles Dilly, 1770), pp. 6, 7, 10, 12, 13. 109 Catharine Macaulay, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Revolution [8 vols.] (London: Printed for A. Hamilton, 1763–1783), V, p. 249. 110 Catharine Macaulay, Observations on the Reflections of Burke on the Revolution in France (London: Printed for C. Dilly, 1790), pp. 81–82, on republic and monarchy united. 111 Ibid., p. 89. 112 Ibid., p. 35. 113 Ibid., p. 94. 114 Ibid., p. 45. 115 Ibid., p. 91. 116 Ibid., p. 31. 117 Burke, Reflections, pp. 78, 97, 98n. 118 James Mackintosh, Vindiciae Gallicae (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006), p. 20n. 119 Ibid., pp. 54–55. 120 Ibid., p. 16. 121 Ibid., pp. 161, 55. 122 Ibid., p. 55. 123 Ibid., p. 20. 124 Ibid., p. 136. 125 Ibid., p. 147.

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  39 126 Ibid., p. 122. 127 Ibid., p. 147. 128 Ibid., p. 134. 129 Ibid., p. 151. 130 Ibid., pp. 12, 29, 57, 160. 131 Ibid., p. 6. 132 Ibid., p. 7. 133 Ibid., p. 12. 134 Ibid., p. 34. 135 Ibid., p. 33. 136 Ibid., pp. 16, 47. 137 Ibid., pp. 52–53. 138 Ibid., p. 52. 139 Ibid., p. 147. 140 Ibid., p. 158. 141 Ibid., p. 161. 142 Joseph Priestley, Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France (Birmingham: Printed for Thomas Pearson, 1791), p. iv. 143 Benjamin Bousfield, Observations on the Right Honourable Edmund Burke’s Pamphlet on the Subject of the American Revolution (Dublin: Printed for P. Byrne, 1791), p. 24. 144 George Rous, A Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke in Reply to His Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (Dublin: Printed for P. Wogan, 1791), p. 5. 145 William Belsham, Examination of an Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (­London: Printed for C. Dilly, 1792), pp. 38–39. 146 Edmund Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” in Works (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1866), vol. I, p. 440. 147 Brooke Boothby, A Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 3rd edition (London: Printed for J. Debrett, 1792), p. 23. 148 Burke, An Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs, pp. 75, 92, 110. 149 Charles Pigott, Strictures on the New Political Tenets of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke on the American and French Revolutions (London: Printed for James Ridgway, 1791), p. v. 150 Charles Stanhope, A Letter from Earl Stanhope to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Containing a Short Answer to His Late Speech on the French Revolution, 3rd edition (Dublin: Printed for P. Byrne, 1790), pp. 12–13. 151 Rous, Letter to Burke, p. 14. 152 Pigott, Strictures, p. 23, 23n. 153 Thomas Christie, Letters on the Revolution of France and on the New Constitution Established by the Publications of the Right Honourable. Edmund Burke (Dublin: Published for P. Byrne, 1791), p. 20. 154 Priestley, Letters to Burke, p. 35. 155 Boothby, Letter to Burke, pp. 28, 38. 156 Bousfield, Observations on Burke’s Pamphlet, pp. 9, 21. 157 Belsham, Examination of an Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, pp. 94–96. 158 Rous, Letter to Burke, p. 43. 159 Boothby, Letter to Burke, pp. 18–19. 160 Belsham, Examination of an Appeal, p. 27. 161 Christie, Letters on the Revolution of France, p. 85. 162 Bousfield, Observations on Burke’s Pamphlet, pp. 25–28.

40  Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century 163 Ibid., p. 26. 164 Stanhope, Letter to Burke, pp. 3–4. 165 Christie, Letters on the Revolution, p. 58. 166 Brooke Boothby, Observation on the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs and on Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man (London: Printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly, 1792), p. 48. 167 Boothby, Letter to Burke, p. 34. 168 Belsham, Examination of an Appeal, pp. 52–53. 169 Pigott, Strictures, pp. 10, 25–26. 170 Christie, Letters on the Revolution, pp. 4–5. 171 Bousfield, Observation on Burke’s Pamphlet, p. 2. 172 Priestley, Letters to Burke, pp. 70, 139. 173 Mackintosh, Vindiciae Gallicae, p. 7. 174 Ibid., p. 81. Belsham, Examination of an Appeal, p. 17. F. P. Lock, Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: George Allen & Unwin, 2009), p. 140. 175 Stanhope, Letter to Burke, pp. 6, 16. 176 Bousfield, Observations on Burke’s Pamphlet, p. 38. 177 Mark Wilks, The Origin and Stability of the French Revolution: A Sermon July 14, 1791 (Printed for the Author). 178 The King’s Levée, 3 February 1791. 179 Edward Gibbon, Letters, J. E. Norton, ed. (London: Cassell, 1956), vol. 3, p. 216. 180 One example of a pro-Burke pamphlet published in 1791 is Edward Tatham’s ­Letters to Edmund Burke on Politics (University of London: Goldsmith’s Library, 1791). Quite tellingly, Tatham is much more attentive to repudiating Price and Priestley than to commenting on Burke. 181 Lock, Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, pp. 137–38. 182 Gregory Claeys, ed., Political Writings of the 1790s, vol. 5 (London: William ­Pickering, 1995), p. 72. 183 Ibid., p. 13. 184 Ibid., p. 110. 185 Ibid., p. 157. 186 Ibid., p. 133. 187 Ibid., p. 19. 188 Burke, Reflections, pp. 76–77. 189 Claeys, ed., Political Writings, p. 107. 190 Ibid., p. 200. 191 Ibid., pp. 101, 107. 192 Ibid., p. 66. 193 Ibid., pp. 153–154. 194 Christopher Wyvill, A Defence of Dr. Price and the Reformers of England (London: Printed for W. Blanchard, 1792), pp. 54, 59, 62, 79. 195 Belsham, Examination of an Appeal, p. 34. 196 Carl B. Cone, The English Jacobins: Reformers in Late 18th Century England (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), p. 100. 197 Brooke Boothby, Observations on the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs and on Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man (Printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly, 1792), p. 5. 198 Robert James Mackintosh, ed., Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh (London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1836), p. 87. 199 James Mackintosh, “A Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations,” in Vindiciae Gallicae and Other Writings on the French Revolution (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006), p. 230. 200 Ibid., p. 232.

Pamphlet Wars of the Eighteenth Century  41 201 Ibid., pp. 220, 235. 202 Ibid., pp. 219, 220. 203 Ibid., p. 251. 204 Ibid., p. 256. 205 Ibid., p. 253. 206 Ibid., p. 235. 207 Ibid., p. 243. 208 Mackintosh disagreed with the aggressive stance Burke took against the Directory in Letters on a Regicide Peace. 209 Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations, p. 235n.

3

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century

The more we familiarize ourselves with the Burke of the nineteenth century, the more likely it is that we shall eventually come face to face with two striking findings, one concerning his fate during the years immediately following the close of the eighteenth century, the other concerning ourselves in recent times. As to the first count, no sooner did the curtain come down on the French ­Revolution in the early 1800s – no sooner did it pass from active event into historical memory – than the “foes” of Burke disappear. Rather than “friend or foe?” the proper question when dealing with the nineteenth century becomes “when was Burke remembered, when forgotten, and why?” As for ourselves today, the second count, an immersion in nineteenth century political discourse teaches us that the notion constantly bandied about in recent times, that Burke was always regarded as Mr. Conservative, is mistaken. Early nineteenth century Tories, soon to be Conservatives, wanted to move on from Burke – to leave him behind. If they were to replace ideological with incremental politics, there could be no room in their world for the hyper-ideological Burke of the Letters on a Regicide Peace. Best it was, then, early in the century, to dismiss him quickly or simply ignore him. Several decades later, in the newly created Conservative universe of Disraeli and other members of Young England, Burke would appear only on the fringes of their political urgings. Front and center in their reflections was Bolingbroke, the figure Burke had dismissed with stinging sarcasm in Reflections on the Revolution in France. The many commentators of recent times who have characterized Burke as the hero of an unbroken conservative tradition are therefore mistaken. The nineteenth century is not Burke’s conservative moment. If anything, that period was one in which it was the liberals who repeatedly called out his name and claimed him as their illustrious predecessor. Among the liberals, nothing was more common than to express admiration for the Burke who had been the outstanding Whig spokesperson during the period preceding the French Revolution. And liberals felt forced to remember the Burke of the Reflections when they confronted events in nineteenth-century France, especially in 1830 and 1848. Often, they took pleasure in projecting images of the England of 1688 upon the promising DOI: 10.4324/9781003412977-3

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  43 France of 1830, only to express their shock and dismay not many years later when it appeared that the France of 1848 might be a repeat of that country’s 1790s. Burke, who could express both their hopes and their fears, was frequently called upon by liberals in search of a formidable spokesperson. Burke as an Outsider to the Conservative Tradition Burke’s writings in 1796, the year before his death, convinced the Tories of the early nineteenth century to keep their distance from the man who would eventually be known as the hero of conservatism. Mainly, it was the Letters on aR ­ egicide Peace that led Tories to shun and sometimes criticize Burke. A lesser but by no means insignificant problem was his Letter to a Noble Lord, which inadvertently raised questions as to whether he continued to uphold his lifetime commitment to the English aristocracy. Confronted with the Burke of 1796, Tories found it necessary to abandon Burke, consigning him to the ranks of forgotten figures. Pitt the Younger and his regime wanted nothing more to do with war against France if it could be avoided. The French government of the day was the Directory, which was far from radical, having self-consciously distanced itself from Jacobinism. The time had come, concluded Pitt, for a return to the old politics of balancing power on the international stage. Burke, however, refused to back down. Tirelessly and in the most extreme language, he militated in favor of a renewal of warfare, total warfare, against what to his mind was the most hideous enemy of all time. In the first of his Letters on a Regicide Peace, Burke set the pattern for all that would follow in his subsequent letters. “We are at war with a system,” he announced, “which, by its essence, is inimical to all other Governments, … It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war.”1 A greater threat is unimaginable, yet the English people, he lamented, choose not to understand. What the English were in the last century, they are no more. “To what purpose have I recalled your view to the end of the last century? It has been done to shew that the British Nation was then a great people.”2 Alas, the British show signs of no longer being equal to the task of their historical calling. “As the danger from Jacobinism is increased in my eyes and in yours, the fear of it is lessened in the eyes of many people who formerly regarded it with horror.”3 Not everyone English agreed with him in 1796 as to the magnitude of the danger, and some went so far as to express sympathy for the most recent republican regime of France. “We are a divided people,” wrote a disconsolate Burke; regretfully some in our country are “seditious” actors, Jacobin in all but name.4 The struggle between England and France was nothing less than a war of religion, “a war to prevent the murderers of Louis the Sixteenth from imposing their irreligion upon us.” In the most hyperbolic and misleading language imaginable, Burke spoke of “Atheism by Establishment” as the objective of France.5

44  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century Nothing outraged Burke more than the introduction in France of civil m ­ arriage and civil divorce in 1792. At considerable length, he denounced the French on this score in his first Letter on a Regicide Peace. Other Legislators, knowing that marriage is the origin of all relations, and consequently the first element of all duties, have endeavored to make it sacred … The direct contrary course has been taken in the Synagogue of Antichrist … They pronounced that marriage was no better than a common civil contract. Women especially were the focus of Burke’s concern: The reason [the French legislators] assigned was as infamous as the act; declaring that women had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of husbands. It is not necessary to observe upon the horrible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out of guardianship and protection of the other. Under the new regime, “marriage is reduced to the vilest concubinage.” In its treatment of women, Burke accused France’s revolutionary regime of violating both God’s law and the law of nature.6 Toward the end of his letter, Burke made an overture toward Pitt. “In wishing this nominal peace not to be precipitated, I am sure no man living is less disposed to blame the present Ministry than I am.” If anyone “can possibly save us from the disasters of a Regicide peace, he is the man to save us.” Yet, Burke no sooner politely praised Pitt than he expressed his worry whether Pitt was truly up to the task. “I am sure there was a period in which we agreed better in the danger of a Jacobin existence in France.”7 To Burke’s mind, one Letter on a Regicide Peace did not suffice. More were needed and were soon forthcoming. Little, however, was new in the subsequent Letters on a Regicide Peace. As in the past, he proclaimed that “fanatical ­atheism … [is] the principal feature in the French Revolution.” As he had in the Reflections, but more so and in stronger language, he depicted without the slightest show of evidence a pernicious alliance of philosophes with radical politicians. “The philosophers were the active internal agitators, and supplied the spirit and principles: the second gave the practical direction.” The politicians “found that they could not do without the philosophers; and the philosophers soon made them sensible that the destruction of religion was to supply them with means of conquest first at home, and then abroad.”8 He continued to speak of “the Jacobin faction in England” and attacked “Citizen Thomas Paine.”9 The ideological temperature of the Letters on a Regicide Peace was always approaching the boiling point and proved far too hot for the Tories of the early nineteenth century to touch without subjecting themselves to harm.

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  45 The Letters on a Regicide Peace was not the only Burkean offering of 1796 from which Tories needed to distance themselves. Another was the Letter to a Noble Lord, written as a repudiation of the Duke of Bedford, who had accused Burke of hypocrisy. Sixteen years earlier, Burke had delivered his Speech on Economical Reform, in which he accused George III of seeking illicit ­Constitution-defying power by means of issuing sinecures and pensions to those members of ­Parliament who would do his bidding. Now, Burke was among those willing to benefit from a pension. Bedford was much younger than Burke and was the offspring, unlike Burke, of a well-established aristocratic family. In the course of defending himself, Burke attacked Bedford and his noble family name so vigorously that Burke’s long-standing commitment to the English aristocracy seemed, at various moments in his speech, to be called into question. Even the radical John Thelwall deemed Burke’s anti-aristocratic comments “seditious and inflammatory.”10 From the outset, Burke reminds his audience that Bedford, rather than condemning “the revolution harpies of France, sprung from night and hell,”11 has expressed sympathy for the enemy. Within the realm of English public discourse, he has “acquitted towards me whatever arrear of debt was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the Paines.”12 He is unwilling to face up to what will happen to him if “the cannibal philosophers of France should proselytize any considerable part of this people.”13 Were it not for my efforts to “buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, wealth, and titles,” he might by now have lost them to “the meretricious French faction his grace at least coquets with.”14 In Letter to a Noble Lord, no less than in Letters on a Regicide Peace, Burke speaks as if the French Revolution is still as alive as it ever was, fails to acknowledge that the Directory marks a significant break from Jacobinism, and spies fellow travelers on English soil. There are passages in the Letter to a Noble Lord which, taken by themselves, would surely warm the heart of every aristocratic Tory. Unfortunately, these are often in danger of falling victim to the angry abuse he pours on Bedford, worded in such a manner as to sound like second thoughts about all those who claim they are born to rule. Presumably, Tories would praise Burke’s opposition to changes which “by a great misnomer [were] called parliamentary reforms… Had they taken place, not France, but England, would have had the honor of leading up to the death-dance of democratick revolution.”15 Also likely to meet with Tory approval was Burke’s contrast of innovation with reform. On occasion, a modest reform is indeed called for and acts as a preservative of the constitutional order; it conserves. Undesirable is change as innovation or novelty because it is the opposite of constructive reform. “The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all unchanged.”16 Could Tories ask for a better pronouncement of their outlook? The difficulty for a Tory came with the manner in which Burke set out not only to answer but to debase Bedford. Despite the duke’s title, Burke refused to take Bedford seriously. “The duke of Bedford … plays and frolics in the ocean

46  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century of the royal bounty … Everything of him and about him is from the throne. Is it for him to question the dispensation of the royal favor?”17 Place my record beside Bedford’s, demands Burke, and it immediately becomes clear who deserves respect: “My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal; his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit.”18 His ancestor worship notwithstanding, Burke, still not satisfied, proceeds to examine the historical record for the sake of besmirching the title Bedford enjoyed. The ancestor in question earned his title by serving “a levelling tyrant,” 19 Henry VIII. His founder’s merits were, by arts in which he served his master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness and depopulation on his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince in promoting the commerce, manufactures and agriculture of his kingdom.”20 Would not a Tory want to remind Burke that in 1780 he had written “It is always to be lamented when men are driven to search into the foundations of the commonwealth.”21 Did not his comment at that moment apply just as well sixteen years later to the foundations of a noble title? Why should it matter how a noble title was originally earned? In 1780, Burke had blocked a proposed shortening of parliamentary sessions from seven to three years by dismissing any argument based upon an appeal to “foundations.” Now, quite inconsistently, he was appealing to origins, foundations, in order to compromise the name of an aristocrat, a move no proper Tory could be expected to tolerate. Apparently, the commoner Burke could not be trusted. If his supposedly profound reverence for tradition did not prevent him from attacking the lineage of the duke of Bedford, why should any Tory place confidence in him? How very troubled good Tories might be by Burke’s arguments in 1796 is made explicit in an essay published in December of that year, appearing in British Critic: A New Review. Established in 1793, this journal, conservative and High Anglican, was dedicated to combating anything and everything having to do with the French Revolution. The offering of an anonymous author, the essay in question addressed Burke’s Letters on a Regicide Peace. Beginning with what seemingly everyone accepted, that Burke was a gifted orator, the author wastes no time before proclaiming “we do not find the arguments of the writer so cogent as his eloquence is seducing.” Anger or at least frustration, it seems, is just beneath the surface on the part of this writer who is as committed to a “regicide peace” – a peace with the Directory – as Burke was to continuing the armed struggle. “He paints … our supposed humiliation in proposing peace: and, professing the greatest veneration for the ministers, writes a most bitter satire upon all their late proceedings. To us all this appears pernicious.”

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  47 “On the main ground of his publication, we differ from him, because we do not see the actual state of things as he conceives it.” Repeatedly, the author criticizes Burke for failing to deal with reality, or, more exactly, failing to deal with the world as it was in the present moment, 1796, as opposed to the world as it was in 1793. Europe had moved on; Burke remained frozen in time. Explicitly, Burke appeals to 1793, “but ought he to be still here, [three years into the past]? If the realities of things have changed, our opinions ought to make a similar ­progress, otherwise they will be left aground.” No evidence is sufficient for Burke to concede “that the worst and most pernicious characters of Jacobinism had … disappeared in France.” Surprisingly, perhaps, but undeniably, the current government of France is “much more like our own than anything we could have expected.” Near the beginning of his essay, the author complains that Burke, “who combats what did, instead of what actually does exist, is fighting only the air.” Near the end, he underscores his original judgment: “we must speculate upon what is, not what is past. What eloquence then shall persuade us that we ought to persist in attempting what reason and experience tell us is beyond our strength. Not even that of Mr. Burke.”22 Although the reviewer continued to praise warmly the Reflections on the Revolution in France, he deeply regretted the publication of the Letters on a Regicide Peace. In the terms of our day, we might summarize the reviewer’s argument by suggesting that he condemned Burke, famous for denouncing ideologists, for degenerating into the most ultra-ideological of well-known public figures. The lesson for Tories was that it was time to leave Burke behind. Identifying with him, allowing him to be their recognized spokesperson, had become far too problematic. On those occasions when Tories continued to address Burke in the nineteenth century, quite often they did so to side with Bedford on the question of Burke’s pension. There was an early instance when Burke’s name was cited favorably and quite strikingly, but that moment quickly came and went. As noted earlier, it came when none other than George III, whom Burke and his comrade Charles James Fox had previously denounced for undermining the parliamentary government, was quoted as saying of the Reflections on the Revolution in France that it was “a good book, a very good book; every gentleman ought to read it.” The King’s endorsement notwithstanding, the words of William Windham testify that Burke faded as early as the opening years of the nineteenth century into the background of the Tory universe. Windham had been closely allied to Burke, following him from the Whiggery of Rockingham to the Toryism of Pitt the Younger. Willing to serve Pitt as Secretary of War from 1794 to 1801, Windham was ­nevertheless unwilling to attend Pitt’s funeral in Westminster Abbey, apparently because Pitt was buried with the elaborate honors which had been denied Burke. Had it been the Foxite Whigs who refused to honor Burke, famous for abandoning them to join Pitt, Windham would have understood. “But that was not the case; it was

48  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century not from them that the objection came, but from the gentlemen on the other side,” the Tories. “In every point of comparison that could be made, Mr. Burke stood upon the same level with Mr. Pitt, and I do not see the reason for the difference.”23 The contrast between the funerals of Burke and Pitt was only the beginning of what would prove to be an extensive pattern of neglect of Burke and glorification of Pitt. Historians who have examined the journals of the Tories have noted the paucity of references to Burke and the general downplaying of his significance. A contributor in 1825 to the very right-wing journal Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine observed that while the “nation annually heaps new honours on the tomb of Pitt, … that of Burke is forgotten.” Not with satisfaction but with candor the reviewer remarked that Burke’s speeches were rarely mentioned in Parliament: “The ashes of Burke slumber almost without notice.” A year later, John Wilson Croker, a prominent Tory intellectual, suggested in the Quarterly Review, the leading Tory journal, that Burke’s “mighty name may … by the neglect of friends, be for a time obscured.” By and large, Burke’s speeches were relatively neglected rather than serving as a sounding board for articles in the Quarterly Review, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and the British Critic.24 Two explanations may be offered to account for this relative absence of Burke in Tory journalism: one that Tories were in strong disagreement with some of Burke’s political stands, and a second that as time passed there was scant room for Burke in a Tory world that more and more elevated Pitt the Younger to something approaching political sainthood. Tories had good reasons to feel ill at ease with Burke’s record. Dear to them were the prerogatives of the Crown, which, far from a being a threat to the Constitution as Burke held, were to Tories the effort of George III to restore the revered constitutional balance, lost during decades of Whig rule. Slavery also divided Burke from many Tories, they often supporting, he opposing. In 1792, he drafted a code for Henry Dundas, secretary of state, remarking that “Rather than suffer it [the slave trade] to continue as it is, I heartily wish it at an end.” Gradual, slow-paced, but genuine abolition of slavery in the West Indies was his stated objective.25 On the questions of Ireland, India, Empire, and sometimes even on the French ­Revolution, the Tories realized it was not self-evident that Burke was always their man. Burke’s long struggle against Warren Hastings pleased no Tories and was utterly repugnant to the imperialist Quarterly Review. As for Catholics in Ireland, Burke’s sympathy was to Tories a burden to their outlook, and some among their number could not forego the cartoon of Burke as a closet Jesuit. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, it was not only Whigs and Liberals who often thought Burke misunderstood France, and that he was especially unreliable whenever the topic of the Revolution was raised. There were a number of Tories who said the same. Robert Southey in a 1829 edition of the Quarterly Review held it

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  49 impossible to join Mr. Burke in the eulogiums he has bestowed on the court and aristocracy of France … [I]t was the degeneracy, corruption, and thoughtlessness of the court and government which was the chief source of … the revolution. Three years earlier, Croker criticized Burke’s “extravagant passion for ­established systems,” and admitted that “the French Revolution has, in the ultimate issue of events, proved beneficial to France.” A number of other nations, he adds, “have in consequence of it advanced in freedom and the general improvement of their institutions.” In response to James Prior’s adulatory 1824 Life of Burke, the conservative British Critic published a highly critical review. Burke was taken to task for his “ungovernable temper,” his uncontrolled emotional tirades. His “praises of the Court of France,” moreover, were “an outrage on common sense and decency.” To neither “the first or even the second place” should he be assigned among the worthy statesmen of his age. Although more often than not it was a Whig or liberal who cast aside Burke’s anti-French diatribes, it was far from unknown for a Tory to do the same. Benefiting from the advantage of hindsight, some Tories in the nineteenth century saw the outcome of French Revolution very differently than Burke had in the eighteenth.26 His foresight and their hindsight were sometimes at considerable odds. Compromised by the stands he took on various political issues, Burke’s reputation suffered again when his name was smothered under a profusion of outpourings on behalf of William Pitt the Younger. The canonization of Pitt began immediately after his death and lasted for two decades and more, some twenty to twenty-five years, if not longer. It was not enough for the Tories to conduct elaborate ceremonies commemorating Pitt when he was buried. Each year thereafter, they followed with celebrations of his birthday. Everything imaginable was done to enshrine Pitt in public memory and public opinion. Statues of Pitt served the end of placing him on permanent public display. Youngsters were taught by means of scholarships to grammar school and university to revere Pitt. Accounts of the past were rewritten to purge all that was objectionable to Tories in Pitt’s career and to falsify the historical record of his actions to their satisfaction. Pro-slavery, anti-Catholic, anti-parliamentary reform, Tories conveniently forgot that Pitt had held views directly contrary to theirs. The reinvented Pitt was no longer the man who had resigned from his leadership position in 1801, when he found himself in conflict with the King over Catholic emancipation. Pitt’s willingness to forego his programs of reform when it became obvious they could not succeed was read as a change of heart, which it was not. Passive in religion, Pitt was transformed after his death into a passionate Christian. The British Critic announced with conviction that Pitt was “raised up by Providence.” Much the same sentiments were uttered in the Anti-Jacobin Review, which found Pitt’s example universal in significance. Not to be outdone, ­Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine concluded that Pitt the Younger’s prowess

50  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century as a parliamentary leader was superior to the adroitness of Pitt the Elder, Fox, Burke, and Canning. Pitt clubs were established across the nation, perhaps most notably in London where British Tory leader George Canning, until a falling out, was numbered among its membership. Enrollment in a Burke club was impossible because there were none.27

** Whether Burke was a significant presence in Benjamin Disraeli’s career; whether he was present as early as Disraeli’s formative days in the Young England coterie of the 1840s; whether he was a continuing presence, up to and including his late years as Prime Minister, 1874–1880, are questions of great importance in determining Burke’s fate in nineteenth-century Britain. We have seen that Burke fared poorly with early Toryism; if he did not do much better with Disraeli later in the century, the case for Burke as a formidable nineteenth-century conservative would appear to be untenable. For our purposes, three moments are especially worth examining in Disraeli’s career as perhaps the most noteworthy Conservative of his age. One is his early treatise Vindication of the English Constitution, arguably his most systematic work, which was published in December 1835. The second moment came in the 1840s, when he occupied a prominent position in the ranks of the Young England enthusiasts, having attracted considerable attention upon publishing his novels, particularly Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845). The third moment came with two speeches he delivered in 1872, two years before his eventful term as Prime Minister. “Conservative Principles” was an oration he delivered on April 13, 1872, and his famous Crystal Palace speech titled “Conservative and Liberal Principles” followed on June 24. What stands out in these works is what does not stand out, a serious encounter with Edmund Burke. Pitt in ­Disraeli’s speeches continues to receive attention as he had earlier in the century, and especially remarkable is that Bolingbroke fares much better than Burke – ­Bolingbroke whom Burke had dismissed with contempt in his Reflections. “Who now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?” asked Burke.28 One who did at a later date, in Vindication of the English Constitution and his novels, was ­Benjamin Disraeli. It is impossible to read the Vindication without remarking on the many statements, claims, and generalizations which bring Burke to mind; yet Disraeli rarely cites Burke as his political muse and has little use for him in his pamphlet. Reminiscent of the unmentioned Burke are Disraeli’s glowing comments on prescription, precedent, and posterity. “This respect for precedent, this clinging to prescription, this reverence for antiquity,” wrote Disraeli in a vocabulary that could not sound more Burkean, “appear to me to have their origin in a profound knowledge of human nature.” “Posterity” and the inheritance of “generation after generation” also figure prominently in Disraeli’s prose as they had in

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  51 Burke’s. Yet, another point of significant overlap is reverence for English law. Edward Coke and the common law tradition are as fulsomely praised by Disraeli as they had been by Burke. Nevertheless, Burke is nowhere to be seen, despite the obvious affinities of Disraeli’s vocabulary and sentiments with his.29 Throughout the whole of English history, affirms Disraeli in harmony with Burke, we have recognized that it is best to adhere to our legal tradition and “to eschew abstractions,” such as natural rights or a social contract; “this resolution is the distinguishing feature of English statesmanship.”30 Without mentioning Burke, Disraeli again parallels his predecessor in the pride he takes in “the sympathy which has ever subsisted between the great body of the English nation and their aristocracy,” “an order of men who, from their vast possessions, have not only a great, a palpable, and immediate interest in the welfare of a country, but the ease, and leisure, and freedom from anxiety” to pursue public well-being.31 Let such men represent us at they deem best, consulting us, perhaps, but making their own decisions. No more than Burke was Disraeli willing to permit members of the House of Commons pander to the electorate. As for the Lords, they are not elected and therefore cannot possibly be mistaken for “trustees, or deputies, or delegates.” “But this [Upper] House is nevertheless representative.”32 Compare Disraeli’s statement with Burke’s in 1774 to his Bristol constituency: “Your representative owes you … his judgment; and he betrays, instead of s­ erving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”33 Often indistinguishable from Burke in what he applauds, Disraeli also was in strong but unrecognized agreement with Burke in what he condemns. For Disraeli as for Burke everything about the French Revolution was reprehensible and precisely the opposite of the English settlement: “An English revolution is at least a solemn sacrifice; a French revolution is an indecent massacre.”34 Exactly like Burke, Disraeli held that “In France, previous to the great revolution, there existed all the elements of a free constitution.”35 Attempting to anchor firmly in place a constitution upon the abstractions of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in defiance of history was a fatal error. Infinitely better was our English Declaration, connected with the Petition of Right (1628), disconnected from the so-called “sovereignty of the people.”36 Any and all English sympathy for the French Revolution and its heritage was fatally mistaken and reprehensible. Completely in accord with Burke on the French Revolution, the same may be said of Disraeli’s view of the American Revolution. “The Anglo-Americans did not struggle for liberty: they struggled for independence,” 37 wrote Disraeli, which accords well with Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies. Both men ignored the significant role which the despised doctrine of natural rights played in the American no less than the French revolution – both ignored the success of Jefferson and Lafayette in reasserting in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 1789, the Lockean theory of natural rights that had been implanted in the Declaration of Independence, 1776. What England had

52  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century lost, the colonies, was the primary concern of Burke and Disraeli; neither man, it appears, had any understanding of the American pamphlet literature. Initially, the lack in Disraeli’s thought of a full-scale encounter with Burke is puzzling. On the American and French Revolutions; on fostering deep and abiding concern for posterity, prescription, precedent, and common law; on hostility to political abstractions such as doctrines of natural rights; on commitment to the calling of the aristocracy; and on representation, Disraeli’s positions were in effect a replication of Burke’s. Few puzzles, however, are more readily solved. All we need do to dissipate the mystery is list an assortment of the many matters on which Burke and Disraeli held contradictory views, sometimes sharply contradictory views, such that it would have been difficult for Disraeli fully to embrace Burke, even if he so desired. Never during his entire career did Disraeli express anything but disgust for the Whigs, which implicitly puts him at odds with Burke, a leading Whig spokesperson who as late as An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) attempted to plead his case against the French revolutionaries without crossing the aisle to side with the Tories. Both Burke’s Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770) and his Speech on Economical Reform (1780) were major Whig documents aimed against George III; Disraeli, by contrast, praised George III in glowing terms because during his reign the nation became “the most powerful and its people the most free, and second to no existing nation in arts or arms, in internal posterity, or external splendor.” George I had permitted Parliament to have its way; George III reaffirmed royal prerogative. “Let us hope that our gracious Sovereign [George IV] may take warning from the first of his house that ruled these realms, and follow the example of George the Third rather than George the First.”38 Disraeli and Burke also use the word “democracy” in strikingly different manners. Burke’s conceptual universe hailed as far back as the ancient Greek classics, in that for him, as for them, “democracy” and anarchy or mob rule were one and the same. Only when speaking of the government of England as mixed and balanced, consisting of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements, can we expect him to have anything favorable to say about democracy. Very different was Disraeli who issued strong rhetorical appeals to democracy to gain an advantage against the Whigs. “However irresistible may be the social power of the Tory party,” remarks Disraeli approvingly, “their political power, since 1831, has only been preserved and maintained by a series of democratic measures of the greatest importance.” Those Tories “who were loudest in upbraiding the Whig Reform Act [of 1832] as a democratic measure … have ever since been urging and prosecuting measures infinitely more democratic than that cunning oligarchical device.” It is the Tories who have sought inclusion since 1832, just as the Whigs have sought to preserve oligarchy by exclusion.39 Sympathy for a more democratic polity, far from new to the Tories, is as old as the regime of the “democratic Minister” Pitt the Younger, under whose “comprehensive and consistent, vigorous and strictly democratic system, this island has become the

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  53 metropolis of a mighty Empire.”40 Quite simply, not the Whigs but “the Tory party in this country is … the really democratic party of England.”41 The egalitarian nature of democracy in England is not a threat since it is an equality of civil rights. “The principle of English equality is that everyone should be privileged.” It is “the equality that elevates,” not “the equality that levels.” It is ­English rather than French.42 Disraeli’s position on democracy is incompatible with Burke’s remarks in his Reflections that “democratic and levelling principles” cannot be separated; that “a perfect democracy is the most shameless thing in the world”; and that chaotic France “affects to be a pure democracy.”43 If he had wished, Disraeli could nevertheless have saved the day for the claim of continuity with his eighteenthcentury predecessor by saying he was updating Burke on the question of democracy for the nineteenth century. He did not bother, and his silence in this matter is eloquent. Another matter on which Disraeli deemed it best to ignore Burke was the question of empire. It is quite arguable that Burke entertained a vision of a great empire, federal in nature, consisting among its English-speaking member-states of relatively autonomous units, all presided over by an attentive and thoughtful Parliament. Yet, Burke had grave misgivings about the actual imperialism of England. Warren Hastings was worth nine ultimately fruitless years of impeachment hearings, not only due to his dubious personal record but because he ­inadvertently called into question the very integrity of England’s imperial ambitions. Was it Hastings who was on trial or was it England? Imperialists denied the latter and – whether offended by Burke or simply exhausted – eventually forgave the former. As for Disraeli, he was an ardent supporter of imperialism as early as his Vindication of the English Constitution in 1835, and his record many years later as Prime Minister was one of unlimited imperial ambition in his dealings with the Eastern question, with Constantinople, the Balkans, Bulgaria, and Afghanistan. On his initiative, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. Liberals such as Gladstone had their misgivings about the quest for Empire, but Disraeli made it a dominant theme of the Tories, one which would win the approval of everyone English, the working class very self-consciously included. Imperialism should feature prominently on any list of Disraeli’s disconnections from Burke whose imperial designs were more restrained and arguably more humane.44 “Empire” along with “democracy” and “nation” were the three keywords in the vocabulary of the Vindication, and for the rest of his life, Disraeli would evoke the first of these words as often or perhaps more so than the latter two. Burke fits poorly into this scheme. In Coningsby and Sybil, published a decade after the Vindication, Disraeli reiterated his earlier themes. Once again, he denounced utilitarianism in Coningsby as a shallow and ignoble philosophy as he previously had at the outset of his 1835 treatise.45 By no means, however, were his novels a mere rehash of his earlier writings. Especially prominent was his attack on the Whigs and their

54  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century laissez-faire economics for dividing Great Britain into the very rich and the very poor, into “The Two Nations,” the subtitle of Sybil. One of the characters in Disraeli’s novel offers a chilling summary of its theme. There are “Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were … inhabitants of different planets … THE RICH AND THE POOR.”46 The account offered in Sybil of the plight of the working classes is so grim and moving that it might have satisfied Karl Marx. There is every reason to believe, however, that it would not have satisfied Edmund Burke, author of two commentaries in the mid-1790s running directly counter to Disraeli’s convictions. Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, a work of 1795, is an all-out assault on what we would call the possible advent of a welfare state. Warfare with France had resulted in a severe want of food and other vital goods, but when Pitt floated the idea of governmental relief, Burke would have none of it. “Labour is … a commodity,” explained Burke in terms presumably learned from his associate, Adam Smith; and “labour must be subject to all the laws and principles of trade, and not to regulations foreign to them.”47 A few pages later Burke adds, “The moment that the government appears at market, all the principles of market will be subverted.” In the most uncompromising terms, Burke then asserts that “the laws of commerce are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God,” implying that any form of governmental intervention would be sacrilege. The example of ancient Rome, he continues, “may serve as a great caution to all governments, not to attempt to feed the people out of the hands of the magistrate.”48 Old Regime France teaches the same lesson. Usually, the apologist for the p­ re-revolutionary period, Burke by contrast in his essay of 1795 suggests that the French regime “was in good intention ill-directed” and blameworthy for its “restless desire of governing too much.” It is imperative that we stand up “against those wicked writers of the newspapers, who would inflame the poor against their friends, guardians, patrons, and protectors.”49 No difficulty need arise, assured Burke, so long as we remember that “charity to the poor is a direct and obligatory duty upon all Christians.”50 “Nothing can be so base and so wicked as the political canting language, ‘the laboring poor,’” wrote Burke in Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. “Patience, labour, sobriety, frugality, and religion should be recommended to them; all the rest is downright fraud.”51 An identical denunciation of the expression “the laboring poor” may be found in the third Letter on a Regicide Peace. With great satisfaction, he underscores “our astonishing and almost incredible prosperity,” and condemns proposals to intervene on behalf of the poor. “This affected pity, only tends to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach them to seek resources where no resources are to be found, in something else than their own industry, and frugality, and sobriety.”52 Disraeli proved that he existed in a very different world from Burke’s as he blazed a trail toward what would later be called Tory democracy and social Conservatism. After attaining power, Disraeli legislated the Artisans’ and Labourers’

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  55 Dwelling Improvement Act, which opened the door to slum clearance. He also sponsored the Public Health Act of 1875, providing clean water, much needed drainage and sewage systems, and the appointment of local medical officers of health. The Factory Acts of 1874 and 1878 on behalf of labor were his doing, as were two trade union acts friendly to unions and protective of their legal position. On the electoral front, too, Disraeli reached out to the workers by the Reform Act of 1867. While the Reform Act of 1832 was the triumph of oligarchy, that of 1867 was the victory of Tory-style democracy. Having undertaken such projects, Disraeli would have found it far easier to portray Burke as his nemesis than as his predecessor. Disraeli and Burke agree that political understanding must be grounded in the study of history and appreciation of tradition. Ever insistent was Burke that we abjure ahistorical political abstractions; constantly he applauds the traditions of England and discovers in them the path to wisdom in the present. Likewise, Disraeli ended Sybil by affirming “it is the past alone that can explain the present,” and that he “would have impressed upon the rising race not to despair, but to seek in a right understanding of the history of their country and in the energies of heroic youth the elements of national welfare.”53 Yet here again, upon closer examination, a major disagreement between Disraeli and Burke comes to the surface. Burke posits a continuity of history, as in his insistence that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a reaffirmation of the past rather than a novel moment in English history. Very different is Disraeli’s account of the history of England, featuring as it does a record of disruption and discontinuity. The lesson of Disraeli’s novels is that England needs a new start, a new history founded on new leadership from the young, not deference to elders who are mired in an unworthy past and present. With the coming of the Glorious Revolution and the Prince of Orange, an unworthy new era began, marked by the stock market, financial speculation, and the unprecedented Bank of ­England. “The demoralizing consequences of the funding system” are unspeakable; “the moral condition of the people has been entirely lost sight of” by those who should lead the nation. A proper aristocracy is based on land; the current version is “a mortgaged aristocracy.”54 Even the monks of long ago were better than our current so-called aristocrats; they were not absentee and did not charge exorbitant rents; society under their rule had not been divided into two classes.55 Not a genuine aristocracy but a “rapacious oligarchy”56 dominates what pretends to be public life today; “There is no longer in fact an aristocracy in England.”57 As for the so-called Reform Act of 1832, it was anything but a reform. “To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder each other” was its consequence.58 Under the post-1832 regime, the many suffer in “wretched tenements, … water streaming down the walls”; they have “neither windows nor doors sufficient to keep out the weather,” victims all of “our thoughtless civilization.”59 Burke would have us build upon our historically established community, a plea that has no basis in reality. “There is no community in England; there is

56  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century aggregation,” dissociation, disunity.60 The current Tory party provides no answer. “It was because he had not found guides among his elders, that [Coningsby’s] thoughts had been turned to the generation that he himself represented.”61 Coningsby is offered a seat in Parliament but is exasperated to discover that the current Conservative place-holders have no firm sense of party and do not know what to conserve.62 What England needs, as Sybil establishes, is for its new generation of aristocrats to rise up to their calling. The people cannot act for themselves, but the youthful aristocrats can act for them. “The new generation of the aristocracy of England are not tyrants, not oppressors.”63 Burke would have us trust the elders but in truth, writes Disraeli in his closing line to Sybil, “the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.”64 Burke wholeheartedly embraced tradition; Disraeli felt betrayed by the past. On the relation of the past to the present, Disraeli yet again found himself in unacknowledged disagreement and implicit conflict with Burke. In sum, there are occasions when Disraeli might have, but did not, cite Burke as an illustrious forerunner, and there are other occasions when he could not cite Burke even if he wished, because often his thought is incompatible with Burke’s. Having dealt with the frequent absence of Burke from Disraeli’s speeches and writings, our next task is to investigate those occasions when Burke’s name or an alternative name does come to the fore. Two findings await us. One is that even when Burke is present in Disraeli’s thought, he matters relatively little; the other is that if there was an eighteenth-century figure to whom Disraeli truly was indebted, it was none other than the person Burke dismissed out of hand, Lord Bolingbroke. In Coningsby we read “the time had arrived when parliamentary pre-­eminence could no longer be achieved or maintained by gorgeous abstractions borrowed from Burke,” 65 a compliment, perhaps, but empty of content. More is said in Sybil where Disraeli credits Rockingham for availing himself of the talents of Burke who “was a great writer; as an orator he was transcendent.” And yet Burke, who praised the aristocracy but was not himself a noble, had reason to complain, remarks Disraeli. Not admitted to the Whig Cabinet, Burke accepted that he must “submit to the yoke, but the humiliation could never be forgotten.” Eventually, the day came when he “rended in twain the proud oligarchy that had dared to use and to insult him,” notably in the Letter to a Noble Lord. In Sybil, Disraeli comes close to questioning Burke’s emotional stability even as he sings his praises: “Burke poured forth the vials of his hoarded vengeance into the agitated heart of Christendom; he stimulated the panic of a world by the wild pictures of his inspired imagination.” Tellingly, when in Sybil Disraeli praised Burke, he did so in a manner that would not have been appreciated: he lauded him by linking him to Bolingbroke, despite Burke’s contempt. “Burke effected for the whigs what Bolingbroke in a preceding age had done for the tories: he restored the moral existence of the party.”66 Disraeli’s remarks on Burke in Sybil are in many respects a reprise of his comments a decade earlier in Vindication of the English Constitution. Chapter 31

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  57 of the Vindication commences with a eulogy of Burke: “Gifted with that fiery ­imagination, … the ablest writer and the most accomplished orator of his age” – such was “that rare union that has rendered Burke so memorable.” Barely, though, has he finished uttering those words than he proclaims that “no one was better qualified to be the Minister of a free and powerful nation than Henry St. John [Bolingbroke].” Forced to decide whether to be a Whig or Tory, ­Bolingbroke chose the latter because he was faced with “a choice between oligarchy and democracy.” Bolingbroke “in becoming a Tory, embraced the national cause,” as opposed to the class politics of the Whigs. Had not Bolingbroke, in A Dissertation Upon Parties, proclaimed that his party was “improperly called a party. It is the nation.” Appreciative of Bolingbroke’s foregoing words, an admiring Disraeli wrote that Bolingbroke’s writings are “unequalled in our literature for their spirited patriotism.” Bolingbroke, wrote an admiring Disraeli, “eradicated from Toryism” all its foolish doctrines, such as divine right, passive obedience, non-resistance.67 To his lasting fame, Bolingbroke “laid the foundation for the future accession of the Tory party to power.” Early in the nineteenth century, Burke’s reputation had lost out to Pitt; in Disraeli’s later account, Burke loses out to Pitt and Bolingbroke combined: the “energetic system of conduct … developed … by the genius of a Bolingbroke, led in due season to the administration of a Pitt.”68 Overall, it is Bolingbroke who enjoys a privileged status in Disraeli’s account; Burke, despite being rhetorically embraced, is a secondary figure. Why Disraeli was drawn to Bolingbroke is well worth considering. On the very last page of Sybil, an exasperated Disraeli had written, “two great existences have been blotted out of the history of England – the Monarch and the Multitude; as the power of the Crown has diminished, the privileges of the people have disappeared.” No one before him, Disraeli professed, had more lucidly comprehended this nightmare than Bolingbroke, nor had anyone done more than Bolingbroke to suggest a solution, especially in his pamphlet The Idea of a Patriot King. There are no limits to what a Patriot King can accomplish, Bolingbroke had promised: “A new people will seem to arise with a new king.” Under a Patriot King, England will be “united by one common interest, and animated by one common spirit.” A Patriot King will honor his or – remembering his beloved Elizabeth – her calling. “Instead of abetting the divisions of his people, he will endeavor to unite them, and to be himself the center of their union.”69 Disraeli enthusiastically agreed with Bolingbroke’s position on “the Monarch” – and on democracy. Eager to use democracy to outvote the middle class, and equally determined to establish “a democracy of the noblest character,” Disraeli could express sympathy for Bolingbroke’s willingness to sanction “short Parliaments.”70 Monarchy and democracy must be united, as Bolingbroke had demanded, or so Disraeli imagined. Presumably, Disraeli also found in Bolingbroke’s writings a welcome foreshadowing of his own outlook, contra Burke’s, of a disruptive rather than

58  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century a continuous history of English freedom. In Disraeli’s own day, freedom was threatened by the Whigs, but most certainly not for the first time. As he viewed the past, the prospects of freedom had been compromised as long ago as Tudor times, when the dissolution of the monasteries led to the rise of a Whig aristocracy that was anything but aristocratic. Bolingbroke preceded Disraeli with the claim that freedom in the present day required an active and selective reclaiming of what had been best in the past rather than a simple acceptance of what was historically transmitted to the present moment. “History is philosophy teaching by examples,”71 good examples and bad, said Bolingbroke, and we must have the insight and courage to choose properly between opposites, when need be, rather than uncritically accepting whatever has been passed down from past to present. Bolingbroke in On the Spirit of Patriotism and throughout his writings sought to “repair the breach that is made, and is increasing daily in the constitution.”72 Whig corruption still being as rife in the present as it had been in the past, simply to surrender to what the past has bequeathed to the present is unacceptable. Machiavelli’s call for a ritorno ai principii was revisited by Bolingbroke: “All that can be done to prolong the duration of a good government is to draw it back, on every favorable occasion, to the first good principles on which it was founded.”73 Disraeli was in fervent agreement with Bolingbroke. Corruption threatens now and again, and whenever corruption arises, it must be stifled by bold regeneration, no matter how difficult. Bolingbroke, it seems, on one vital matter after another, was ever available to Disraeli; Burke only occasionally. The positions staked out by Disraeli during his youthful years as a Young ­Englander were by no means unusual within his coterie of bright, budding writers and public figures. That Burke was not at the top of their agenda is evident not only in Disraeli’s youthful works but also in those of others among his cohort. When George Smythe, a prominent spokesperson for Young England, cited his heroes, he in agreement with Disraeli placed the names of Bolingbroke and Pitt prominently on his list but omitted Burke.74 By the time Disraeli delivered his speeches in 1872 on Liberalism and Conservatism, he had benefited from the passage of many years to rethink and reconsider his youthful claims. The year 1872 came shortly after his brief first term as Prime Minister and just before his lengthy second term. With the burden of office resting on his shoulders, where would Disraeli decide to stand in relation to Burke? In his speeches of 1872, Disraeli reminded his comrades of how low the Tory party of the past had fallen. “Instead of the principles professed by Mr. Pitt, … the Tory system had degenerated into a policy which found an adequate basis on the principles of exclusiveness and restriction.” Now all has changed. The Liberal enemy has stirred the Tory party to reinvent itself. For forty years, the Liberals have “endeavored to substitute cosmopolitan for national principles.” Frequently inspired by the French, the Liberals have set out “to make war on the manners and customs of the people of this country under the pretext of

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  59 Progress.” Monarchy, Lords, and the Anglican Church have endured constant abuse at the hands of the Liberals. Coming to the rescue is “the Tory party, or, as I will venture to call it, the National Party.” No mission is more essential than to defend and reinvigorate English institutions, and it is Disraeli’s Tories who are rising to the occasion.75 The Reform Act of 1832, sponsored by the Liberals, was a fraud, omitting the workers. In 1867, it was the turn of the Conservatives to pass a Reform Act, and under the direction of Disraeli, theirs was far more inclusive. Disraeli’s message was aimed at all classes, middle, aristocratic, and working. Because there is “a hierarchy of middle classes,” the Tories need not grant the Liberals a monopoly of support from the commercial interests.76 As for the aristocrats, they have been and continue to be the natural allies of the Tories, which gave Disraeli freedom to focus on winning the support of the working class. There is, he was convinced, every reason to believe the Tories can win the workers to their party. “Recently [the workers] have obtained – and wisely obtained – a great extension of political rights.”77 This is all to the good but the workers want Parliament to grant them much more: “the time had arrived when social, and not political improvement is the object they ought to pursue.” The Tories should side with the workers, assisting them in their quest by Factory Laws, sanitary legislation, and other measures.78 The dedication of Tories to Empire, possibly as much or more than social legislation, assures their party that the workers are now and will continue to be their allies. “The attempts of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire of England” are costing them dearly. So small-minded are the ­Liberals that they deem India “as a burden upon this country, viewing everything in a financial aspect, and totally passing by those moral and political considerations which make nations great.” Little do the Liberals understand “that the people of England, and especially the working classes of England, are proud of belonging to a great country, … proud of belonging to an imperial country.”79 Obviously, Disraeli’s speeches of 1872 were for the most part a natural updating of the sentiments he had voiced decades earlier as a primary figure in the ranks of Young England. As before, he insisted it was not acceptable for those Conservatives, who were more or less guaranteed office by their social standing, to avoid the hard work of thinking vigorously about public affairs. Constantly, he called out for his party to be dedicated to “principle,” such principle with a few additions and subtractions as he had voiced as a youngster. Undeniably, however, there is at least one noteworthy difference between the earlier and the later Disraeli. Both Bolingbroke and Burke are absent from his 1872 speeches. When seeking the highest office, that of Prime Minister, and again when serving as Prime Minister, Disraeli had no further use for Bolingbroke, the figure he had most admired, nor for Burke who no longer was present even as a secondary figure. Conservatism did not need Burke in either the earlier or for most of the later nineteenth century, not until the closing years.

60  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century Burke as a Nineteenth-Century Liberal Burke did not disappear entirely from the speeches of Tories over the course of the nineteenth century. On occasion, they found it convenient to cite the Burke who opposed the French Revolution; they deemed it useful, now and again, to champion the older and “mature” Burke at the expense of his younger Whiggish self. By and large, however, it was not until late in the century that the process commenced, ever so slowly, of transforming Burke into the full-fledged conservative he would become in the twentieth century – the supposedly worthy predecessor and champion of the Conservative Party. Predominantly in the nineteenth century it was Burke regarded as a Liberal who strode across the stage to the sound of applause. Historians who have studied Hansard, the record of parliamentary debates, have discovered that it was the Whigs, not the Tories, in the first years of the nineteenth century who drew upon Burke to shore up their stands. The first mention of Burke’s Reflections came from the Whigs in 1805 in the course of pressing their arguments on Irish Catholic relief. Three years later, Francis Horner, a founder of the Whig and liberal Edinburgh Review, denied the claim “that the latter part of Mr. Burke’s life went in any way to invalidate or contradict the sincerity of his earlier efforts.”80 Burke in Parliament was Burke the Whig. Arguably, the culminating moment for Burke the nineteenth-century liberal arrived in 1894 when Lord Rosebery, a Liberal and then Prime Minister, lauded Burke as “a Whig of the Whigs. He glorified Whigs. He inspired the Whigs. He was … the prose Poet Laureate of Whiggery.”81 If Rosebery was the culminating point, a brief review of James Mackintosh (Chapter 2) may provide an excellent starting point. Reacting to the Reign of Terror, Mackintosh repealed the anti-Burke arguments of Vindiciae Gallicae. By 1796, he sought Burke’s comradeship and in 1799 published his safely conservative Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations, using the occasion to congratulate Burke on his philosophy. By 1815, he was ready to speak about the “great man” Edmund Burke who “was often justly celebrated for that spirit of philosophical prophecy which enabled him to discern … all the misfortunes which the leaders of the French Revolution were to bring on the world by their erroneous principles of reformation.”82 In 1831, near the end of his days, Mackintosh cited Burke on conciliation with America to remind his colleagues that, as Burke had taught them, the people do not take to the streets unless they have good cause.83 Mackintosh had been an anti-Burke radical Whig in 1791; forty years later, he was still a Whig but a Burkean liberal Whig. Quite possibly, no one else displays so dramatically the transformation of Burke into a nineteenth-century liberal; nor does anyone else, perhaps, foreshadow so effectively the transition, not simply from Whiggery to liberalism, but to the conservative Liberalism which emerged later in the century. “Mackintosh and Macaulay are only Burke trimmed and stripped of all that touched the skies.” So wrote liberal Lord Acton in a letter of 1880 addressed to

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  61 “Mary, Daughter of the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone.” Thomas Babington Macaulay did indeed pick up in the middling years of the nineteenth century where Mackintosh had left off in the pursuit of a Liberal agenda, and, as Acton suggests, Macaulay’s work is well worth considering in any account of Burke’s baptism into the creed of nineteenth-century Liberalism. Lord Acton initially had no doubts about the Liberal succession: Burke, Macaulay, and Gladstone were, he declared, “the three greatest Liberals.”84 When on occasion Acton expressed misgivings about Macaulay, it was because he feared that Macaulay the ardent imperialist sometimes failed to live up to his Liberal calling, but never did he charge Macaulay with the offense of simply abandoning Liberalism. Formidable as a public figure and politician, Macaulay’s liberal crusades included parliamentary reform, an end to slavery, and to the civil disabilities of Jews. Formidable as an author, he is likely best known for his History of England. Whatever his failings, Macaulay’s credentials as a prominent Liberal cannot be questioned. His willingness to be a Burkean Liberal is our present concern. Macaulay acknowledged his fascination with Burke. “I have now finished reading again most of Burke’s works,” states his diary. “Admirable! The greatest man since Milton.”85 Yet no matter how willing Macaulay was to express deference, he like other Liberals picked and chose from Burke as he saw fit, diplomatically side-stepping areas of disagreement with the master. While appreciative, uncritical references to Burke enjoy no monopoly in Macaulay’s writings, they are quite conspicuous, far outweighing criticisms. When Macaulay wrote “reform that you may preserve” in response to the Reform Act of 1832, his words sounded like an echo of Burke’s admission in the Reflections that “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”86 Eager to stress Burke’s supposed Liberal credentials, Macaulay made it his concern to minimize Burke’s commitment to the label of Tory; it was, Macaulay insisted, “the violence of the democratic party in France,” not a lifelong commitment, that “made Burke a Tory.”87 And Macaulay most certainly shared Burke’s aversion to democracy. Against the People’s Charter and its call for universal manhood suffrage, he took an uncompromising stand in Parliament. My firm conviction is that, in our country, universal suffrage is incompatible, not with this or that form of government, but with all forms of government …; that it is incompatible with property, and that it is consequently incompatible with civilization.88 There were occasions, however, when Macaulay had to struggle to keep on good terms with the memory of Burke, nowhere more so than when he penned his lengthy essay on Warren Hastings. Macaulay’s examination in 1841 of the Hastings affair was a major statement addressing the ongoing question of whether Liberals should be advocates of the imperialist cause. No Liberal was more ardently imperialist than Macaulay who had served in India; no Liberal

62  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century more insistent that England’s Empire was the supreme fulfillment rather than the contradiction of Liberal ideals. Both before and after his day, there were Liberals who expressed doubts or thought otherwise. William Gladstone, the most prominent Liberal politician of the nineteenth century and an admirer of Burke, had by 1855 shown willingness to allow colonies to decide how long they would remain within the Empire, and in 1873, serving as Prime Minister, he had opposed a motion to seek contributions to the defense of the Empire from the colonies. Insofar as possible, he held back from “domineering excess” in imperialist schemes, while accepting the belief that Britain had a special mission in the world.89 Burke’s scheme of a federal Empire, consisting of autonomous members under parliamentary guidance, was perfectly natural for the Liberals of the succeeding age to take into consideration when they quarreled with one another. Late in the century, it was the Gladstone the Liberal public figure, possibly with his favorite Edmund Burke in mind, who both embraced and raised doubts about imperialism; before the nineteenth century began, it was the liberal intellectual Jeremy Bentham in 1793 who resoundingly denounced imperialism in “Emancipate Your Colonies!” After Bentham and before Gladstone’s reign, there was the arch-liberal John Stuart Mill’s rationalization of Empire in major works, including On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government. Macaulay’s essay on Hastings and his accompanying treatment of Burke was at the center of these Liberal controversies. “What conception,” demanded Bentham, “can you frame to yourselves of manners and modes of life so different from your own?” The imperial project totally contradicted Bentham’s central claim that no one is entitled to determine the interests of another person. Accordingly, he asked, “Is it then for their advantage to be governed by a people who never know, nor ever can know either their inclinations or their wants?”90 Although John Stuart Mill was unwilling to jettison the Utilitarian label, imperialism occupies a conspicuous place on the list of his reversals of Bentham. Without question, he believed, England understands the needs of China better than the Chinese, and is obliged to free them from themselves. “They have become stationary – have remained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to be further improved, it must be by foreigners.” In perhaps the single most astonishing utterance by Mill in On Liberty, he called for the promotion of liberal ends by remarkably illiberal means. “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement and the means justified by actually effecting that end.”91 Two years later in Considerations on Representative Government, he repeated the call for England to employ “despotic” measures of imperial governance when necessary.92 The arduous task that awaited Macaulay when he set out to write his 1841 essay was to find a way to defend Hastings, a leading practitioner of English imperialism in India, while at the same time avoiding a break with Burke. Simply ignoring Burke altogether in this matter was not an option, given that Burke

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  63 had devoted as much time and passion to impeaching Hastings as he had to denouncing the French Revolution. Macaulay is quite willing to praise Burke’s labors to inform himself about India. “He had studied the history, the laws, and the usages of the East with an industry, such as is seldom found united to so much genius and so much sensibility.”93 Never, however, does Macaulay ask himself whether Burke would have approved of his own dismissal of the culture and traditions of India. Six years earlier, in 1835, Macaulay had spoken to ­Parliament about education in India. In the strongest possible terms, he called for the suppression of the study of Arabic or Sanskrit literature, to be replaced by a purely Western education. His position in 1835 was that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”94 On one of the relatively few occasions when, in 1841, he criticized Hastings, he did so because he did little … towards introducing into India the learning of the West; little to make the young natives of Bengal familiar with Milton and Adam Smith, to substitute the geography, astronomy, and surgery of Europe for the dotages of Brahminical superstition. Why had Hastings committed this mistake? “Perhaps the fondness of Hastings for Persian literature may have tended to corrupt his taste.”95 A confrontation with Burke? Possibly so, but Macaulay simply sidesteps the matter. A keen desire to keep on good terms with Burke did not discourage Macaulay from finding reasons to applaud Hastings. What Macaulay desired most he stated explicitly: We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”96 Hastings, to his credit, had prepared the way for the fulfillment of this goal, or so thought Macaulay. At home “a minister in Europe finds himself, on the first day he commences his functions, surrounded by experienced public servants, the depositaries of official traditions. Hastings had no such help.”97 Left to his own devices, Hastings proved more than equal to the task. “It is indeed impossible to deny that, in the great art of inspiring large masses of human beings with confidence and attachment, no ruler ever surpassed Hastings.”98 Determined to succeed, Hastings admittedly overstepped the bounds on some occasions, but even when his acts were most objectionable, this was usually a matter of questionable means serving worthy ends.99 Macaulay admired “the skill and resolution of Hastings,” and endorsed “the just fame of Hastings.”100 Seemingly, Macaulay had burned his bridges to Burke when he undertook his stout defense of Warren Hastings. It says much about the grip of Burke on

64  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century Macaulay, and plausibly on nineteenth-century liberalism more generally, that Macaulay does all he can to embrace Burke at the same time that he registers his firm disagreement. A good example of his determination to have it both ways, accepting and criticizing, is his remark in his journals that “Burke, who was right in so many things, was wrong in thinking that the old French institutions could, without a change which would have destroyed their identity, have been formed into a tolerable polity.”101 One safe way to side with the memory of Burke while conceding nothing to his sometimes mistaken notions was to declare him “superior to every orator, ancient or modern.”102 More significant was Macaulay’s statement of disappointment that Hastings had placed his confidence in John Scott, Major in the Bengal army, who “designated the greatest man then living as ‘that reptile Mr. Burke’.”103 For Scott and for all Burke’s detractors, Macaulay has no use: “Men unable to understand the elevation of his mind have tried to find out some discreditable motive” behind his actions. “But they have altogether failed.”104 Why Burke went wrong can be explained by examining his flawed but admirable character. “His imagination and his passions, once excited, hurried him beyond the bounds of justice and good sense. His reason, powerful as it was, became the slave of feelings which it should have controlled.”105 Throughout the history of responses to Burke, a recurring theme is that of questioning his emotional stability, even his sanity, perhaps most famously when historian H. T. Buckle held that, in response to the French Revolution, Burke “fell into a state of complete hallucination.”106 The considerably kinder verdict of Macaulay was to deem Burke “a great and good man, led into extravagance by a sensibility which domineered over all his faculties.”107 Wrong about Hastings he may have been, but Burke’s greatness remains undiminished in Macaulay’s account. Arguably Macaulay’s most outstanding tribute to Burke came in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, this despite the absence of Burke’s name in the text. Direct proof that Macaulay was inspired by Burke cannot be adduced, but the affinities between Macaulay and Burke on the Glorious Revolution of 1688 cannot be denied. Always Burke was present, whether in the foreground or the background of Macaulay’s various intellectual labors, so it is highly unlikely that Burke was forgotten when Macaulay undertook this, his most “Burkean” project. Exactly like Burke, Macaulay lauded England’s bloodless revolution, finding it perfectly antithetical to the violence of the French Revolution. “These calamities our Revolution averted. It was a revolution strictly defensive, and had prescription [one of Burke’s favorite words] on its side.” On the Continent, the limited monarchies dating back to the Middle Ages had long been effaced, greatly complicating the establishment of modern constitutional governments. “Turning away with disgust from their own national precedents and traditions,” the revolutionaries foolishly “sought for principles of government in the writings of theorists” – another Burkean theme. The end result was that they “engendered despotism sterner than that from which it had sprung.” From despotism to freedom was the revolutionary aspiration, but the outcome

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  65 was change from mild despotism to a far worse despotism. Had Burke said it any differently? The story of English freedom was unique, without parallel in any other country. “Here, and here only, a limited monarchy of the thirteenth century had come down unimpaired to the seventeenth century.” The French were reduced to trusting to a written constitution, ahistorical, and therefore unviable, whereas the English constitution “had been engraven on the hearts of Englishmen during four hundred years.” Since Whigs and Tories were in agreement, all that was necessary in 1688 was a reaffirmation of established constitutional principles. “A realm of which these were the fundamental laws stood in no need of a new constitution.” When the Convention Parliament convened, the Declaration of Rights was issued but “not a single new right was given to the people” because none was needed. The throne was declared “vacant”; the king had abdicated. “There had been a slight deviation from the ordinary course of succession. This was all; and this was enough.”108 Nothing could be more Burkean than Macaulay’s account of 1688, nothing more dedicated to minimizing the significance of what in truth was a pivotal moment in the history of England rather than a story of pure continuity from past to present. The claim that James II had abdicated was false, of course; he had been driven off the throne, a major event. The Tories were not in genuine agreement with the Whigs; they reluctantly abandoned monarchical divine right for the divine right of the new regime because the King had showered upon Catholics all the advantages taken for granted by Anglican aristocrats. Rather than the religion of the King dictating that of the ruled, it was the ruled who dictated to the King. Instead of a restoration of the ancient constitution, there was a constitution substantially revised albeit with the revisions hidden by means of the time-honored device of describing new law as old. Never again after 1689 did a king dare unilaterally to tax his subjects. The Bill of Rights, the statutory form of the Declaration of Rights, settled the critical question of whether King or Parliament was sovereign in favor of Parliament. Macaulay’s account of these matters is quite inaccurate but blends very well with the utterances of Burke, both men wanting to portray the Revolution as anything but a revolution.109 Whatever his intentions, Macaulay’s History of England did not escape from the ideological wars of his age. Good liberal James Mackintosh had been working on his own History of the Revolution in England in 1688 during his final years,110 and upon his death, Macaulay inherited his collection of historical documents, which may have alerted Tories to be prepared to strike at what they presumed would be a high-blown Liberal presentation by Macaulay at their expense. It would not do to permit Liberals to have a monopoly on the now universally revered, ever so Glorious, Revolution. And so it was that the Tory historian John Wilson Croker, who had coined the term “Conservatism” in the 1830s, asserted that Macaulay’s History “is as full of political prejudice and partisan advocacy as any of his parliamentary speeches.”111 The Church of England

66  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century in particular fares poorly in Macaulay’s History, complained Croker. Bitterly, the Tory Croker denounced Macaulay’s History as a narrowly partisan Liberal document. At odds with the Conservatives, Macaulay’s account also marks a division within the ranks of the Liberals, Macaulay and Burkean liberalism on one side, John Stuart Mill, a non-Burkean Whig, the most famous name on the other side. There were some Liberals who accepted the outcome, albeit not the violence, of the French Revolution, while others joined hands with many Tories in simply condemning the revolutionary heritage root and branch. Liberals, for or against 1789, often welcomed the July Monarchy of 1830, but feared the Second Republic of 1848 would be a repeat of the First. Early in his career, Macaulay had written, “we entertain no doubt that the Revolution [of 1830] was, on the whole, a most salutary event for France.”112 But by the time 1848 arrived, he was numbered among the English liberals who responded with horror to events in France. John Stuart Mill, by contrast, having immersed himself in studies of French history and historians during his earlier years, took the opposite position. Addressing the July Monarchy he wrote, “The French government is not a constitutional government – it is a despotism limited by a parliament.”113 In 1835, he expressed his frustration that “the English Whigs and Tories … are as utterly ignorant of the French revolution as of the revolutions among the inhabitants of the moon.”114 With the rise of the Second Republic, when Macaulay was fear-stricken, Mill penned an essay bearing the title “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848.” Little was ever forthcoming from Mill about Burke except for his dismissive comment on one occasion that Burke’s publications amounted to nothing more than “weapons snatched up for the service of a particular quarrel,” rather than “the matured convictions of a scientific mind.”115 Remarkably different is Macaulay’s replication in his History of England, published in 1848, of Burke’s exuberant praise of England’s glorious non-revolution of 1688, complemented by Macaulay’s reassertion of the reassuring Burkean mythology that England’s history was a record of unbroken historical continuity. With deliberation and forethought, Macaulay used the occasion of his account of 1688 to issue a stern warning about the potentially revolutionary events of his own day, 1848, in France and elsewhere on the Continent. Writing in the present tense in his culminating chapter on 1688, Macaulay expressed his deep concern and worry that “All around us the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations.” The republicans of 1848, he warned, espouse “doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all arts, to all industry, … doctrines which, if carried into effect, would, in thirty years undo all that thirty centuries have done for mankind.” What these doctrines are he does not bother to inform his readers. All that matters is that “Meanwhile in our island the regular course of government has never been for a day interrupted… It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying revolution in the nineteenth.”116

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  67 Often, Burke is explicitly present in Macaulay’s writings; sometimes, as in this case, implicitly present. Nothing it seems could be more Burkean than Macaulay’s treatment of 1688, and no historian, in Lord Acton’s estimation in the 1880s, had ever been more devoted to the Liberal cause or more a worthy successor to Burke. In Acton’s Historical Essays, one reads that Macaulay “had done more than any writer in the literature of the world for the propagation of the Liberal faith”; and in his History of Freedom Acton asserted that “The greatest writers of the Whig party, Burke and Macaulay, constantly represented the statesmen of the [1688] Revolution as the legitimate ancestors of modern liberty.”117 Accustomed as we are to associating the Reflections on the Revolution in France with Conservatism, it is quite striking to encounter in Macaulay’s ­History of England a transformation of that famous work into a vindication of Liberalism. With ease and comfort, Macaulay translated Burke’s pro-English, anti-French sentiments into a liberal idiom. Less remarkable but also quite significant is recognition that Burke’s earlier Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents was claimed by nineteenth-century Liberals for their cause. This work of 1770, when Burke was a devoted Whig, had the effect in the nineteenth century of pitting Liberals against Conservatives, Liberals approving, Conservatives disapproving. The plea Burke had issued in 1770 was for Whigs to halt what he saw as the usurpation of George III, carried out in conjunction with his court lackeys. “Since the revolution, until the period we are speaking of,” pronounced Burke, the influence of the crown had been always employed in supporting the ministers of state, and in carrying out the public business according to their ­opinions. But the [King’s cabal] … proceeds on the idea of weakening the state in order to strengthen the court.118 In times past Walpole and the Whigs had successfully governed Parliament by distributing favors, but now “the power of the crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of influence.”119 Everything possible was being done by “the new court faction to get rid of the great Whig connections.”120 If George III succeeded, “party was to be totally done away.”121 Burke’s response was to defend parties vigorously and to call for Whigs to unite. “When bad men combine, the good must associate.” Whatever the misgivings of individual members of Parliament on any particular matter, the Whigs must collectively vote as one.122 “Party,” in Burke’s famous definition, “is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.”123 This was a Burke much to the liking of Liberals. Of the Tories in the nineteenth century who rejected Burke on party, George Croly and T. E. Kebbel are noteworthy because they were leading spokespersons

68  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century and authors. Croly published A Memoir of Burke in 1840, which contained a ­telling repudiation of party as little more than a body of men bound together by the single object of seizing on power; sacrificing all individual principle to the general purposes of ambition; and openly declaring all means, however false and dishonorable, to be justified by their use in carrying party into power.124 Similarly, to read Kebbel’s essay of the 1860s on Burke is to come face to face with a remarkable set of contrasts between his position and Burke’s. From Burke’s perspective, George II was an ideal monarch: “the most ardent lover of his country cannot wish for Great Britain a happier fate” than was hers during his reign.125 Kebbel thought quite the opposite: The spectacle of a government such as George II’s, in which the King resigned all his authority to the chief of a faction who ruled by the most questionable means, must have roused independent men to think seriously of the condition of the monarchy.126 In Kebbel’s account, the accession of George III to the throne saved England; in Burke’s account, George III was guilty of undermining Parliament. Kebbel had no doubt that Burke had misread the situation. “Burke’s celebrated picture of the king’s friends is monstrously exaggerated and distorted.”127 Thanks to George III and his “friends” of the “court party,” governance was viable. Burke could only offer his Reflections in 1790, suggested Kebbel, by forgetting his speech of 1770. The day had come when Burke, to his credit, would abandon his party, in defiance of Thoughts on Present Discontents, for the sake of saving his country from revolutionary excess. That Tories did not tire of writing against Burke’s speech of 1770 may be seen in the Tory historian J. S Brewer’s comments more than a century later, 1876. Nobody now … believes in Burke’s ‘Thoughts on the Present Discontents’ … No one now thinks that this clever but unscrupulous calumny was anything better than a party invention to conceal the incapacity of the Whigs and their mutual recriminations.128 That the Liberal response to Present Discontents stood in direct opposition to the Tory may be seen in the work of Liberal Lord John Russell, Prime Minister from 1846 to 1852 and 1865 to 1866. Very early in the nineteenth century, he found occasion in his writings on English history to laud Burke’s speech as “one of the few standard works on the science of government which the world possesses.” Burke had been right to stand up for political “connections,” that is, parties. “The general defence of political – connexion … may be left where

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  69 Mr. Burke has placed it. There can be nothing more striking, or more sound, than his writings on this subject.”129 What Russell said in the 1820s was reiterated a few years later by Arthur Hallam. Burke’s speech Present Discontents, Hallam asserted, “has been termed the Whig Manual, and certainly contains the ablest exposition ever given to the principles held by that party for a long series of years.” Hallam’s verdict is especially significant in that, upon graduating from Eton in 1827, he was the recipient of a six-volume edition of Burke’s works. The donor was none other than William Gladstone.130 In 1867, it was prominent Liberal historian and politician John Morley’s turn to congratulate Burke on defending the claims of Parliament against calls for an overly mighty monarch: “Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents … is the virtual refutation of [Bolingbroke’s] Patriot King.”131 Nineteenth-century Liberals, we may conclude, often welcomed into their intellectual repertoire Burke’s Reflections, the work we now automatically associate with Conservatism. And they made Burke their own a second time when they championed Thoughts on Present Discontents at the same time that Conservatives denounced it. Yet another matter in which Liberals claimed Burke as one of their own comes to light when we examine the strange career of nineteenth-century utilitarianism. Seemingly, no philosophy could be more at odds with Burke’s thought than that of Jeremy Bentham and his popularizer James Mill. But step by step, ­utilitarianism was subjected to a fundamental transformation until, late in the century, Burke seemingly was admitted to the utilitarian club by such longstanding Liberals as James Fitzjames Stephen, A. V. Dicey, and John Morley. For a first step in charting the evolution of utilitarian thought, there is much to be said for inspecting Macaulay’s essay of 1829, written in response to James Mill’s pamphlet of 1820, An Essay on Government. When it came to popularizing utilitarianism, Bentham had offered little or nothing. His texts were not written for the many. It was James Mill who attempted to reach out to the many, and Mill again who turned utilitarianism into a political movement. In a relatively few pages, Mill made his case, supposedly based on “principles of human nature,” on “laws of human nature,” for a highly individualistic philosophy based on the assumption that we always pursue self-interest, and rightly so, but need laws to prevent us from inflicting harm upon others as we seek pleasure for ourselves. Macaulay’s repudiation was uncompromising: “We believe that it is utterly impossible to deduce the science of government from the principles of human nature.” Macaulay felt obliged to attack Mill, a fellow liberal, because it was necessary “to expose the vices of a kind of reasoning utterly unfit for moral and political discussions.” Mill legislates not for England but for mankind, and thus for no one. How, then, asks Macaulay, “are we to arrive at just conclusions on a subject so important to the happiness of mankind?” His answer is “by the method of Induction; by observing the present state of the world, by assiduously studying the history of past ages.” Piece by piece, fragment by fragment, we can

70  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century learn to understand ourselves and others, avoiding facile generalizations from universal human nature. Only thus, by pursuing a historical approach, can we arrive at “that noble Science of Politics.”132 With Burke, Macaulay enjoyed at the very least a marriage of convenience; with James Mill a divorce because of irreconcilable differences. The most significant Liberal endeavor to transform Utilitarianism was that of John Stuart Mill, who kept the name of the philosophy while radically altering its reality. For his father’s hero, Jeremy Bentham, he had trouble concealing his disdain, except for his appreciation of Bentham’s service as a reformer of the laws: “He found the philosophy of law a chaos, he left it a science.” The great error of Bentham was to inflate his calculus of felicity from a system of legal deterrence into a general philosophy of life. “Bentham’s knowledge of human nature is bounded … He was a boy to the last.” Self-consciousness, the torment and the glory of the Romantic movement, “never awakened in him.” In common with Macaulay, Mill insisted upon bringing historical studies to bear upon our understanding of the present, but as for Bentham, “Other ages and other nations were a blank to him.”133 Mill’s Autobiography and essay “Utilitarianism” inadvertently reveal how he was driven to chart a new intellectual course but could not bring himself to admit he was no longer a Utilitarian. Declaring himself a Utilitarian at the age of sixteen to the delight of James Mill, he suffered an emotional breakdown at twentyone. Upon his recovery never did he break with his father even though John Stuart tells the sad tale of childhood denied by a demanding parent who understood nothing about children. Emotionally starved, Bentham’s philosophy made things worse because it was analytical and “the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.” As an antidote Mill immersed himself in Romantic poetry, and as he matured, “the cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed.” To recover from his illness, he pushed aside his father’s “contempt” for “passionate emotions of all sorts, and for everything which has been said or written in exaltation of them.” What, then, given his determination to redeem his life, could be worse for Mill’s purposes than Bentham’s infamous statement that pushpin is as good as poetry?134 Bentham’s was a “quantitative ethics,” a matter of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Mill’s contrary position in “Utilitarianism” is that “it would be absurd, that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasure should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.”135 Bentham had opposed imposing upon anyone the qualitative notion of a higher self to which the lower must be sacrificed; he had accordingly opposed both asceticism and aestheticism in morals. Mill reintroduced the latter and the idea of a higher self while seeking to remain in the Utilitarian camp, upper case “U.” Famously he declared, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied.”136 His language in On Liberty was not that of Bentham or his father when he wrote that

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  71 Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.137 In the opening pages of his treatise on liberty he had written, “I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”138 Was this utilitarianism revised and refined, one must ask, or was it another philosophy hiding under the name? If nothing else, Mill had shown the way for others in his day, and later in the century, to retain the Utilitarian label while turning it to purposes Bentham and James Mill would have condemned. One consequence was that eventually Liberals could ally with Burke by calling him a utilitarian. “Burke was from first to last a utilitarian of the strongest kind.” So wrote James Fitzjames Stephen in 1867, a statement he embellished by adding, “Expediency is the basis of all his speculation, and the first rule of expediency is to set out from existing facts, and to take all measures whatever with respect to them.”139 Burke fits the formula for a utilitarian perfectly concluded Stephen, whose pronouncements mattered because he was a noted figure in the Liberal ranks of the later nineteenth century. A. V. Dicey, another well-known Liberal of the late nineteenth century, saw no conflict in simultaneously embracing utilitarianism and Burke. As one scholar has remarked, he described himself as an “old, an unconverted, and an impenitent Benthamite,” but that did not prevent him from befriending and calling upon Burke from 1886 onward in his writings.140 Burke appears once again in a work of Leslie Stephen, brother of James Fitzjames Stephen, The English Utilitarians, where he is lauded as an advocate of “the very organic principles of society” which Leslie Stephen deemed more the welcome fulfillment than the rejection of liberal utilitarianism.141 What John Morley had to say on the topic of Burke the utilitarian was of exceptional significance inasmuch as he was both a prominent public figure and the author of two books on Burke. Each of these books came to a close with a eulogy of “Burke’s utilitarian liberalism.”142 One of his most striking arguments on behalf of Burke the supposed utilitarian came when he praised Burke’s plea for conciliation with the American colonies and damned the ­British government for fostering a trans-Atlantic war over independence. Foolishly, “the king and the minister … scorned to submit their policy to so mean a test as that prescribed by the creed of utility.” Year in and year out the British government’s concern was with its rights when it should have “awakened to the utilitarian truth, that the statesman is concerned, not at all with the rights of the government, but altogether with the interests and happiness of the governed.” Burke was correct then and, “if Burke were among us at this day,” he would issue an updated warning. “Are we sure that if a set of conditions

72  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century similar to those of 1776 were to recur in our own time,” the powers that be would refrain from proclaiming their rights and examine positively and simply what would be the course most likely to reconcile the best interests of all the people concerned? If anybody is sure of this, let him look at Ireland and the policy of the landowners’ party in that country.143 Converted into a utilitarian, Burke was admired by nineteenth-century Liberals not only as their precursor, but also as a figure whose writings were as relevant to their day as they had been to England a century earlier. Burke the utilitarian liberal was an authority to whom they could always turn in time of need. The Emergence of Conservative Liberalism “Time and security soon wear off the thin whitewash which distinguishes a patrician Whig from an avowed Tory,”144 wrote John Morley in reference to the eighteenth century, and his generalization might be extended to the ­Liberals and Conservatives of his own day, the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Now and again, the dividing line between Conservatives and many of the ­Liberals vanished, as when the issue was Home Rule for Ireland. Sometimes, it was a matter of conviction, always a matter of good politics, when Liberals took advantage of the confusion of Liberal and Conservative identities to justify themselves by renewing the memory of Edmund Burke. Not least among the features that made Burke attractive to Liberals was that by invoking his name they could, when need be, foster a politics of reaching across the aisle to consort amiably with Conservatives. In the preface to Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill addressed the relationship between Liberalism and Conservatism by saying that in his presentation, he would be looking for “something wider than either, which in virtue of its superior comprehensiveness might be adopted by either Liberal or Conservative.” Democracy was his immediate concern in 1861, the possibility on the horizon of widespread suffrage that was to become reality six years later with the passage of the Reform Bill of 1867. For both Liberals and Conservatives, for Gladstone and Disraeli, this was a dramatic moment – and one in which Burke’s name would be brought explicitly to bear. Other moments would figure, too, in the creation of a late nineteenth-century ambiance friendly to Burke, sometimes explicitly claiming him for conservative Liberalism: numbered among these Burke-friendly moments were the growth of historical consciousness in an impressive array of Liberal English historians; the accompanying suppression of almost all that remained of the Whig talk of old about natural rights and a social contract; the quest to elevate the moral level of public life; and the arguments for and against Home Rule for Ireland, with Burke cited both by Home Ruler Gladstone and by Liberal Unionists.

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  73 Fear of democracy was common to both Conservatives and Liberals for much of the century, and it was only when Disraeli sought the votes of workers by passing the Reform Act of 1867 that both parties accepted an electorate which included members of the working class. On the Liberal front, Macaulay twentyfive years earlier had wanted to bask forever in the victory of the Reform Act of 1832. Instead, he found it necessary in his parliamentary address of May 3, 1842, to proclaim that if the Chartists had their way with annual Parliaments and universal suffrage, civilization itself would fall. Earlier still, he had misleadingly charged James Mill with fostering a levelling doctrine, and in the course of doing so Macaulay offered comments about “generations” that sounded like paraphrases of Burke. “Mr. Mill proposes to give the poor majority power over the rich minority,” he falsely charged. “When we examine his reasonings, we find that he thinks only of the greatest number of a single generation,” creating a world wherein “every generation in turn can gratify itself at the expense of posterity.” How, inquires Macaulay, is it possible for any person who holds to the doctrines of Mr. Mill to doubt that the rich would be pillaged as unmercifully as under a Turkish Pacha? It is no doubt for the interest of the next generation … that property should be held sacred. Only with the greatest difficulty could Macaulay have repeatedly invoked the words “posterity” and “generations,” central to the Reflections, without thinking of Burke.145 No one had more to say about the difficulties posed by the coming of modern democracy than John Stuart Mill, and though he had nothing to say about Burke, his comrade Thomas Hare, pursuing an agenda in common with Mill, most certainly did. Before siding with Hare in Considerations on Representative ­Government in 1861, Mill had raised the issue of democracy decades earlier in his essay on Bentham and in his reviews of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Just as Macaulay had falsely accused James Mill in 1829 of promoting a levelling democracy, John Stuart Mill made the same dubious claim against Bentham in 1838. Bentham, charged Mill, “not content with enthroning the majority as sovereign by universal suffrage, … exhausted all the resources of ingenuity in devising means of riveting the yoke of public opinion closer and closer round the necks of public functionaries.”146 In 1835 and 1840, Mill reviewed Tocqueville’s most famous work. Drawing upon Tocqueville, Mill wrote that the English discussions of whether there should be popular government were beside the point. As Tocqueville had shown, wrote Mill, “we have it not in our power to choose between democracy and aristocracy; … the choice … is between a well and an ill-regulated democracy.”147 Against the efforts of English Tories such as Robert Peel to monopolize Tocqueville’s expression “the tyranny of the majority” for their purposes, Mill reminded his readers that Tocqueville’s message was of immediate significance

74  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century to Liberals as well. Democracy in America, far from an ideological polemic, marked “the beginning of a new era in the scientific study of politics.”148 One defect of the second volume, in Mill’s view, is that Tocqueville is too eager to generalize beyond the American experience; he thinks too abstractly,149 deducing conclusions from the notion of “democratic society” rather than investigating the circumstances of different countries.150 Yet, there can be no doubt that Tocqueville has put us all in his debt. When commenting on Democracy in America, Mill was especially eager to second “the complaint of M. de Tocqueville … that in no other country does there exist less independence of thought.” In America, everyone is middle class; in England, there are an ever-increasing number of novi homines of middling standing, and the likely consequences of a burgeoning middle class can be quite disturbing. “The tyranny which we fear, and which M. de Tocqueville principally dreads, is … a tyranny not over the body but over the mind.”151 Considerations on Representative Government was written by John Stuart Mill to deal with the dawning of a democratic age in England. Writing before passage of the Reform Act of 1832, his father had ended his Essay on Government with a rallying cry for the triumph of the middle class: “There can be no doubt,” wrote Mill senior, “that the middle rank … gives to science, to art, and to legislation itself their most distinguished ornaments, and is the chief source of all that has exalted and refined human nature.” The “wisdom of the middle rank” is clear; its calling to lead unmistakable. “The great majority of the people never cease to be guided by that rank.”152 John Stuart Mill, writing after the enfranchisement of the middle class and in contradiction of his father, wrote that “the natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilization, is toward collective mediocrity.”153 How problematic the rise of a middle-class society is, how threatening to liberty, was emphasized by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. Mill’s starting point in this, his most famous essay, is that the political problem of freedom has been solved; constitutional mechanisms have been enshrined in England. A troubling social problem remains, the tyranny of the majority in a middle-class society, manifest as social conformity, slavery of the soul. Jeremy Bentham and James Mill had set forth a doctrine of individualism in which individuals are alike, interchangeable, each capable only of calculating narrow self-interest. Individuality, not individualism, is John Stuart Mill’s objective, and to that end, he would do everything possible to encourage passion, eccentricity, and genius – anything to combat ­conformity. “The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are … cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody.” To experience genuine freedom, “there should be different experiments of living; free scope should be given to varieties of character.”154 The Romantic poets who had saved the young Mill from depression had shown the way. In Considerations on Representative Government, Mill attempted to suggest a political solution for the rise of the new social problem he had diagnosed two

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  75 years earlier in On Liberty. “It is an essential part of democracy that minorities should be adequately represented. No real democracy, nothing but a false show of democracy, is possible without it.”155 Majoritarian democracy fares poorly in his chapter on “True and False Democracy” because the many are not yet ready for public life and whether they ever will be is uncertain. The measures Mill recommends to promote true democracy include public voting rather than casting secret ballots, so as to hold voters accountable. No salaries will be paid to members of Parliament because persons of independent means are more likely to dedicate themselves to pursuing the public interest. The well-educated should have more than one vote. In common with On Liberty Mill says of voters that “it is their minds, far more than their personal circumstances, that now require to be emancipated.”156 Throughout his presentation, the person with whom he explicitly sides is Thomas Hare, known most of all, perhaps, for his schemes of proportional representation. For all their similarities, there is at least one noteworthy difference between Mill and Hare. Burke is absent from Mill’s volume on representation but figures prominently in Hare’s work. Quite striking is that in one of his footnotes, Hare places side by side Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government with Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. The reconciliation of Mill with Burke, of no interest to Mill, was apparently on Hare’s mind. It is Burke, however, not Mill, who dominates the pages of Hare’s treatise. On the very first page of The Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal, Hare cites Burke on “the power of acting by a majority.” Shortly thereafter he quotes from the Reflections: “Of this I am certain, that, in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.”157 Elsewhere he cites the Reflections again with the remark “Mr. Burke adverts to the error of the theorists who sophistically confound the right of the people with their power.”158 Seemingly everywhere throughout his text, Hare cites Burke, often quoting him at great length, usually from the Reflections, occasionally from other works. Fairly early in his treatise Hare writes “it is useful to listen again to the authority so often cited in these pages,” Edmund Burke. Much later, he seeks “counsel from the mouth of the philosophical statesman, so often cited in these pages,” Edmund Burke. Mill had written his Considerations on Representative Government to forge an alliance of Liberals and Conservatives for the sake of controlling the consequences of the considerable extension of suffrage that would be forthcoming in 1867. Hare insisted that the voice to be remembered in all such discussions of the need to offset the ill effects of the coming of democracy should be that of Edmund Burke. Up to the very end of the nineteenth century, there were Liberals fearful of democracy who continued issuing stern warnings against the consequences of universal manhood suffrage. Two such conservative Liberals were Walter ­Bagehot and William Lecky, both well-known, both alarmed by what they saw

76  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century as the probable consequences of the enfranchisement of the workers in 1867. Bagehot had been optimistic about the future in The English Constitution, a work issued just before passage of the Reform Act; five years after it became law, he voiced his fears in a new Introduction. William Lecky was still sounding the alarm in 1896, when he published Democracy and Liberty. One difference between the two men was that Bagehot, like Mill, did not bother with Burke, whereas Lecky, like Hare, sought consolation in the pages of Burke when he undertook the work for which he is best known, History of England During the Eighteenth Century. “If you once permit the ignorant class to begin to rule you may bid farewell to deference forever,” 159 wrote Bagehot in the original version of his work. In the introduction to the second edition, he repeated his firmly held conviction that “the leading statesmen in a free country … [should] settle the conversation of mankind.” Alas, what should be is no more; deference is a thing of the past. “What I fear is that both our political parties will bid for the support of the working man.” Nothing less than a “great calamity” now awaits an England dominated by the “ignorant multitude.”160 Bagehot in the first edition enjoyed pointing out what Mill had missed, the reality of Cabinet government that figured nowhere in traditional understandings of the English Constitution. Now the Cabinet had lost its independence, the victim of political parties revamped to appeal to the unwashed many. Burke goes unmentioned, but the comments on “generations” in the original version sound like a paraphrase of famous words in the Reflections. With reverence, and sounding very much like Burke, Bagehot had spoken of “this wonderful spectacle of society, which is ever new, and yet ever the same; in which accidents pass and essence remains; in which one generation dies and another succeeds.”161 Lecky had reasons to be fearful that were unknown to the likes of Mill and Bagehot. They knew nothing of a man named Karl Marx. Lecky did know, and Marx makes an unwelcome appearance in the pages of Democracy and Liberty. Quite remarkable in his History of England During the Eighteenth Century are his chapters devoted to the French Revolution or, perhaps better said, devoted to Edmund Burke. Democracy was one of the sins of the French, explains Lecky in agreement with Burke, and the French were especially guilty of fomenting turmoil when they exported democracy to other countries.162 Burke appears everywhere in Lecky’s discussion of France and, as the most admirable person of his day, always to be remembered and revered. Henry Sumner Maine’s most widely recognized book was Ancient Law, published in 1861. Immediately following passage of the Third Reform Act, 1884, he stepped forth with Popular Government. Much like many another ­conservative Liberal, he addressed the problem of democracy by citing the American example. The distinctive feature of Maine’s account was that whereas for others America often served as a warning, to Maine it merited admiration. His final sentence reads that America “may well fill the Englishmen who now

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  77 live …with wonder and envy.”163 Maine recalls Burke’s “magnificent panegyric on the ­British Constitution in 1790.” The great misfortune is that England’s constitution is no longer what it was, and it is now the American example that should be followed. “Of all the infirmities of our Constitution in its decay, there is none more serious than the absence of any special precautions to be observed in passing laws which touch the very foundations of our political system.”164 Checks and balances are central to the American system but absent in England. Throughout his book, Burke is cited time and again, always with admiration. Not by accident did John Morley, an expert on Burke’s writings, speak of Maine as “the most eminent English member of the Burkian school.”165 If the question of democracy placed Burke sometimes in the foreground and often in the background of Liberal ruminations, thereby opening the door for the entrance of a more conservative Liberalism, the same is true of the Liberals’ growing insistence on making arguments by means of the study of history. Here again John Stuart Mill led the way, without mentioning Burke, in his calls for an historical approach to politics, culture, and society. Other Liberals would follow who were more than willing to recognize Burke when they devoted themselves to historical studies. In Civilization, an early essay dating from 1836, Mill expressed disgust that “Nearly all professorships have degenerated into sinecures.” “As a means of educating the many, the Universities are null,” and not the least of the resulting deficiencies is the absence of historical learning, a malady he wished to cure. Reform of the educational curriculum was desperately needed to remedy this deficiency. “An important place in the system of education we contemplate would be occupied by history.”166 A year earlier, he had complained that “the crowd of English politicians … live in a truly insular ignorance of the great movement of European ideas”167 which across the Channel placed historical knowledge at the forefront. As late as 1844, he was still frustrated that “Whoever desires … the renovation of historical studies must look to the Continent, … Germany and France.”168 Perhaps, there was an increase at home in historical writings he conceded in 1845, but “the interest which historical studies in this country inspire, is not yet of a scientific character.”169 Over the course of the nineteenth century, Liberal historians came into their own in England, which had the effect, whether intended or unintended, of making their thought far more compatible with Burke’s. Equally or even more remarkable is that in their histories they frequently single out Burke for praise, the works of J. R. Green, William Smyth, Thomas Macknight, and Leslie ­Stephen being cases in point. How Liberal historians moved in a Burkean direction is evident in J. R. Green’s review of Edward A. Freeman’s book, 1872, The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times. With the exception of a few minor criticisms, Green praised Freeman in the strongest terms because “he looks for the true explanation of our present forms of government to the tradition and progress of the past, and for the mould of our political life [in the present] to the shape assumed by the

78  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century earliest society.” Such a book should be assigned reading: “No book could possibly be more useful to students of our constitutional history.” The intellectual lineage of Freeman’s efforts was clear to Green: “His conception of the Constitution is mainly that of Burke,” updated by modern scholarship.170 The historian much earlier in the century who was something of a pioneer in turning Whigs and later Liberals into admirers of Burke was William Smyth. From 1807 to 1847, he served as Regius Professor of Modern History at ­Cambridge, a position conferred as a political favor by Whig friends but which he took very seriously, dedicating himself to painstaking historical studies. Burke was always on his mind, initially as someone he rejected, later as a person he revered. “I have long since given up Burke and having now no suspicion that he can be right have no patience to wait till he is shown to be wrong,” he said in 1797171, but with the rise of the Benthamites early in the nineteenth century, he moved to a more conservative stance and changed his view of Burke. His account of Burke’s speeches on England’s actions leading up to the American declaration of independence could not be more admiring. What, then were the views and reasonings of Mr. Burke? … [His speeches] cannot be too much your study, if you mean either to understand, or to maintain against its various enemies, open and concealed, designing and mistaken, the singular constitution of this fortunate island.172 At great length, Smyth then quotes Burke to confirm his argument. Smyth was the first English historian to write about the French Revolution. Although he agreed with Burke on its miseries, he did not share the view that the Old Regime bore no responsibility for the outbreak in 1789. The Revolution, rather than a conspiracy, was the result of woeful government. Reform was needed but the parlements, the nobility in general, only concerned to maximize their privileges, were not up to the task. Far too harsh was Burke’s treatment of the Constituent Assembly and the Girondins.173 Nor were the people wrong to rise up against the Bastille. Thanks to Smyth’s ongoing communication with Madame de Staël, he never condemned the early phase of the Revolution but most certainly did join with Burke in condemning the rest. “I read [Burke’s Reflections] over and over, and as the events of the world come changing and crowding upon me, every year with more and more admiration at the profound philosophy which it contains.”174 His criticisms notwithstanding, Smyth deeply admired Burke. If a prize were awarded for the Liberal most effusive, embarrassingly so, in his admiration of Burke, Thomas Macknight, author of a three-volume, 1800page History of the Life and Times of Edmund Burke (1858–1860), would be the likely winner. In the politics of his own day, he was a pro-Gladstone, antiDisraeli Liberal. Besides his Life of Burke, many of his newspaper editorials addressed Burke’s speeches; at the time of his death, he was working on an

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  79 annotated version of Burke’s works; his first son was named Edmund. English by birth, Irish by preference, he found the public figure he desired in Burke, the defender of Ireland. At the outset of his major work, he announced that Burke was, by the dispensation of Providence, chosen to be the first, the greatest, and the wisest of the emancipators of Ireland, the most brilliant and far-sighted statesman, … and the most profound and comprehensive of political philosophers that had yet existed in the world. As if that encomium were not enough, some two hundred pages later he offered even more extravagant praise. Burke’s accomplishment was to unite politics, eloquence, and philosophy as they had never before been united in ancient or modern times, not even by Cicero, not even by Bacon, and who … was to display such an all-embracing sympathy, with a depth of philosophical reflection, a power of insight, and a richness of imagination as could be paralleled in another province of literature by Shakespeare alone.”175 When Leslie Stephen in 1876 turned to Burke in his History of English Political Thought in the Eighteenth Century, he, like Macknight before him, initially praised Burke in the strongest possible terms. “No English writer has received, or has deserved, more splendid panegyrics than Burke,” reads his first sentence, to which he soon adds that Burke was “incomparably the greatest in intellectual power of all English politicians.”176 Yet Stephen, unlike Macknight, was by no means uncritical. At times, he remarked, Burke’s doctrine of “prescription” approached too closely to the adage “Whatever is, is right.” Agnostic that he was, Stephen also was ill at ease with Burke’s resistance to any questioning of the doctrines preached by the Established Church.177 Dealing with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, “Burke ignores the fact that it really involved a transfer of power.”178 Like many another nineteenth-century Liberal, Stephen was enamored of Burke’s earlier speeches but stopped short of applauding the ­Reflections. “His assault on the French Revolution places him for once on the side of the oppressors,” and his Letters on a Regicide Peace sadly display a Burke “foaming at the mouth.”179 Nevertheless, his stands on Ireland and India over the course of his career could not have been better.180 Especially admirable was his sense of historical evolution, so much superior to Hume and all other thinkers in the eighteenth century. “Burke had fully grasped the conception of a nation as a living organism of complex structure and historical continuity.”181 Turning their thoughts to history, Liberals evolved to a position which aligned them with Burke. And the more their thought moved toward a historical understanding of the world, the more they rejected past Whig and Liberal notions of natural rights and social contract, another possible link with Burke. Early in the

80  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century century, Bentham had led the way: “there are no such things as natural rights – no such things as rights anterior to the establishment of government – no such things as natural rights opposed to, in contradistinction to, legal.” He then uttered what may be his most unforgettable words: talk of “natural and imprescriptible rights [is] rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.” In the next paragraph, he mentioned the horrors of natural rights as a “terrorist language.” Bentham was equally hostile to the notion of a social contract. “Contracts came from government, not government from contracts.” The idea of a social contract is “a pure fiction”; “the allegation of it does mischief.”182 John Stuart Mill, despite his fundamental revisions of Bentham, in effect repeated him when he scoffed at “the fiction of contract” in his essay on “Utilitarianism,”183 and again when he set forth his own rejection of natural rights in Considerations on R ­ epresentative Government. Contemporary democrats think themselves greatly concerned in maintaining that the franchise is what they term a right … Now this one idea, taking root in the general mind, does a moral mischief outweighing all the good that the ballot can do.”184 William Lecky in Democracy and Liberty informed his readers that the guiding principles on which the English parliamentary government of the eighteenth century was mainly based … found their best expression and defence in the writings of Burke. It was then almost universally held that the right of voting was not a natural right.185 It is impossible to read his History of England During the Eighteenth Century without surmising that, if Lecky had his way, there would never be such an acknowledgment. He was horrified by Rousseau, and somehow convinced himself that Rousseau’s ghost might be coming to England. Very upsetting, thought Lecky, was that Rousseau allowed for only one contract, that of association, and did not permit a second contract “between the sovereign nation and its rulers or magistrates.” Completely lost on him was that John Locke long before had said the same, insisting that government was only held in “trust.”186 “The star of Burke is manifestly fading, and a great part of the teaching of [­Rousseau’s] Contrat Social is passing even into English politics,”187 warned Lecky. Far more even-tempered was John Morley but even he in a book on Burke wrote, “Not advancing beyond rights, Filmer and a French Revolutionist were on a par … The one flung himself back on Abraham and the Bible, and the other invented a social contract.” Both failed to stake their claims on the safe ground of Burkean expediency.188 Leslie Stephen was pleased to see how “vigorously … Locke can put the utilitarian argument,”189 but deeply disappointed that he would stoop so low as to commend social contract theory. “It is strange to see a man of such vast intellectual vigor … allowing himself to be trammeled with this vexatious figment.”190 Sounding to our ears today like Marx, he likened the social contract

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  81 to the demeaning stature of a “joint-stock company.”191 What particularly troubled ­Stephen was that the theory of the social contract still lingered. “The social ­compact theory lived long after the brains were out; nay, it flourished and became identified with theories which exercised, and still exercise, a vast influence upon political thought.”192 For one moment, but one moment only, Stephen notes that during the American revolutionary debates, “the social contract theory seemed to be translating itself into history.” He might have examined the invention of the American Constitution as the signing of a social contract but did nothing of the sort. Instead, he took his stand on the safe ground of Burke’s speeches on America, which he regarded as tributes to expediency and utility.193 Leslie Stephen was not entirely wrong to say that the idea of a social contract was still alive at the time he published his book, 1876. Two years later, William Gladstone wrote “Regal right has, since the Revolution of 1688, been expressly founded upon contract; and the breach of that contract destroys the title of allegiance of the subject.”194 What is true, however, is that on those occasions when the never completely absent notion of a social contract made an appearance, as with Gladstone, it did so in a pre-Lockean and Burke-friendly form. Gladstone accepted the notion, hailing from Samuel Pufendorf, of two contracts, one social, the other political. The Americans from 1764 to 1776 had used Pufendorf to justify resistance but not revolution by arguing that the English government had violated the second, the political contract. The original social contract remained in effect. Demonstrating in the streets was justifiable, even if revolution was not. Come 1776 and the Declaration of Independence, they turned to Locke. Gladstone, whether he realized it or not, was using Pufendorf for his distinctively English purpose of sustaining the idea of the social contract while avoiding Locke’s potentially revolutionary philosophy. One could declare indebtedness to Burke, as Gladstone repeatedly did, and support the social contract at the same time, if it was of the pre-Lockean variety.

** Whether it was a matter of denouncing the rhetoric of rights; of commending utility and expediency while asking for something more elevated than an ethics of pure self-interest; of a reverence for the past and a historical understanding of present-day possibilities; of sustaining the admirable ways of deference; of finding a way to admit but control democracy – in any and all of these concerns the story of Liberalism across the nineteenth century was that it frequently bowed to Burke. Liberalism throughout most of the nineteenth century was conservative Liberalism, which prepared the way for the Conservative Burke of the twentieth century. Notes 1 R. B. McDowell, ed. “Letters on a Regicide Peace,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), vol. IX, p. 199. 2 Ibid., p. 236.

82  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century 3 Ibid., p. 222. 4 Ibid., pp. 223, 224, 228. 5 Ibid., pp. 238, 243. 6 Ibid., pp. 243–246. 7 Ibid., pp. 262–263. 8 Ibid., pp. 279–880. 9 Ibid., pp. 116, 82. 10 John Thelwall, Sober Reflections on the Seditious and Inflammatory Letter of Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord (London: Printed for H. D. Symonds, 1796). 11 Edmund Burke, “Letter to a Noble Lord,” in David Bromwich, ed., On Empire, Liberty, and Reform (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 480. 12 Ibid., p. 468. 13 Ibid., p. 500. 14 Ibid., p. 487. 15 Ibid., p. 475. 16 Ibid., pp. 479, 500. 17 Ibid., p. 489. 18 Ibid., p. 490 19 Ibid., p. 492 20 Ibid., p. 493. 21 Edmund Burke, “Speech on a Bill for Shortening the Duration of Parliaments,” in Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1866–1887), vol. 7, p. 71. 22 “Mr. Burke’s Two Letters to Parliament,” in British Critic (London: F. & C. ­Rivington), vol. 8 Dec., 1796, pp. 662–668. 23 In this section, I am following the lead of J. J. Sack, harvesting quotations from his excellent essay, “The Memory of Burke and the Memory of Pitt: English Conservatism Confronts Its Past, 1806–1829,” The Historical Journal, vol. 30, no. 3 (September, 1987), pp. 623–640. 24 Ibid., pp. 623, 626. 25 Edmund Burke, “Sketch of a Negro Code,” in Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Edmund Burke (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), pp. 183–184. 26 Sack, “The Memory of Burke and the Memory of Pitt,” pp. 627–628. 27 Ibid., pp. 631, 634, 636. 28 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 78. 29 Benjamin Disraeli, “Vindication of the English Constitution,” in William Hutcheson, ed., Whigs and Whiggism: Political Writings by Benjamin Disraeli (New York: Macmillan, 1914), pp. 124–125. 30 Ibid., p. 147. 31 Ibid., pp. 161, 198. 32 Ibid., p. 185. 33 “Mr. Burke’s Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” in David Bromwich, ed., On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters of Edmund Burke (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 55. 34 Vindication, p. 137. 35 Ibid., p. 127. 36 Ibid., p. 136. 37 Ibid., p. 144. 38 Ibid., pp. 211, 220. 39 Ibid., pp. 227–228. 40 Ibid., pp. 210–211.

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  83 41 Ibid., p. 216. 42 Ibid., pp. 216, 229. 43 Burke, Reflections, pp. 12, 82, 109. 44 Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: the Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), ch. 3. 45 Vindication, ch. 2. Coningsby: or the New Generation (London: Penguin Classics, 1989), p. 460. 46 Sybil or The Two Nations (London: Penguin Classics, 1985), p. 96. 47 “Thoughts and Details on Scarcity,” in R. B. McDowell, ed. The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), vol. IX, p. 126. 48 Ibid., pp. 135–137. 49 Ibid., pp. 143–144. 50 Ibid., p. 129. 51 Ibid., p. 121. 52 Letters on a Regicide Peace, pp. 355, 382. 53 Sybil, p. 496. 54 Ibid., p. 45. 55 Ibid., pp. 91, 93. 56 Coningsby, p. 53. 57 Sybil, p. 141. 58 Ibid., p. 56. 59 Ibid., p. 81. 60 Ibid., p. 94. 61 Coningsby, p. 150. 62 Ibid., pp. 283, 343, 415. 63 Sybil, p.334. 64 Ibid., p. 497. 65 Coningsby, p. 106. 66 Sybil, pp. 38–39. 67 Vindication, pp. 218–219. Bolingbroke, “A Dissertation Upon Parties,” in David Armitage, ed., Bolingbroke: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 5, 37. An excellent study is Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: the Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 68 Vindication, pp. 221–222. 69 Bolingbroke, The Idea of a Patriot King (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 39, 46, 47. 70 Vindication, pp. 223, 230. 71 Bolingbroke, Letters on the Study and Use of History (Basil: Printed by J. J. ­Tourneisen, 1791), Letter 2, p. 10. 72 Bolingbroke, “On the Spirit of Patriotism,” in Armitage, ed., Bolingbroke: Political Writings, p. 209. 73 Idea of a Patriot King, p. 40. 74 Disraeli thought highly of George Smythe. Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1966), pp. 169–170. Primary sources dealing with Smyth and other Young Englanders may be found in John Morrow, ed., Young England: The New Generation: A Selection of Primary Texts (London & New York: Leicester University Press, 1999). 75 Benjamin Disraeli, “Conservative and Liberal Principles,” Speech at Crystal ­Palace, June 24, 1872, in Selected Speeches of the Late Honourable Earl of Beaconsfield, T. E. Kebbel, ed. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1882), vol. 2, pp. 523–524, 529.

84  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century 76 Benjamin Disraeli, “Conservative Principles,” Speech at Manchester, in Selected Speeches, T. E. Kebbel, ed., vol. 2, p. 507. 77 Speech at Crystal Palace, p. 533. 78 Speech at Crystal Palace, p. 531. Speech at Manchester, p. 511. 79 Speech at Crystal Palace, pp. 527–528, 530, 531. 80 Hannah Z. Sidney, Inventing Burke: Edmund Burke and the Conservative Party, 1790–1918 (Master’s Thesis: CUNY, 2014), pp. 17, 24. Her study of Hansard is noteworthy. 81 Thomas F. G. Coates, ed., Lord Rosebery, His Life and Speeches (London: H ­ utchinson, 1900), vol. 2, p. 1013. 82 Quoted by Sidney, Inventing Burke, p. 25. 83 Emily Jones, Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1­ 830–1914: An Intellectual History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 33. 84 Lord Acton, Letters of Lord Acton to Mary, Daughter of the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone (London: George Allen, 1904). p. 57. 85 Journals of Thomas Babington Macaulay, William Thomas, ed. (London: ­Routledge, 2008), vol. IV, p. 17. 86 Thomas Babington Macaulay, Speech Delivered in the House of Commons on the 2nd of March 1831, in Speeches and Poems (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1867), p. 38. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 19. 87 Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Burleigh and His Times” [April 1832], Critical and Historical Essays, vol. I, p.130 (London: Electric Book Company, 2001). 88 Macaulay, Hansard, vol. 63, 3 May 1842. 89 William Gladstone, “The Paths of Honour and of Shame,” Nineteenth Century, vol. III (March 1878), pp. 591–604; “England’s Mission,” vol. IV (September 1878), pp. 560–584. 90 Jeremy Bentham, Emancipate Your Colonies! (London: For Robert Heward, ­Wellington Street, 1830), pp. 5, 6–7. 91 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), pp. 10, 69. Well worth consulting is Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: the Rise of Liberal Imperialism in Britain and France. 92 J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts, 1958), p. 30. 93 Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, First Governor-General of Bengal,” Critical and Historical Essays (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1907), p. 624. 94 Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute on Indian Education” (New York: AMS Press, 1979), p. 349. 95 Macaulay, “Life of Hastings,” p. 615. 96 Macaulay, “Indian Education,” p. 359. 97 Macaulay, “Life of Hastings,” pp. 613–614. 98 Ibid., p. 616. 99 Ibid., pp. 557, 572. 100 Ibid., p. 613. 101 Thomas Babington Macaulay, The Journals of Thomas Babington Macaulay (­London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008), vol. V, p. 201. 102 Macaulay, “Life of Hastings,” p. 636. Major John Scott attacked Burke at length in his pamphlet A Letter to the Right Hon. Edmund Burke in Reply to his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” by a Member of the Revolution Society (London: John Stockdale, 1791). 103 Ibid., p. 621.

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  85 104 Ibid., p. 623. 105 Ibid., 625. 106 H. T. Buckle, History of Civilization in England (London: John W. Parker & Son, 1857–1861), vol. I, p. 334. 107 Macaulay, “Life of Hastings,” p. 625. 108 Especially telling are the final pages of the second volume of Macaulay’s History of England, where he lauds the Revolution of 1688 and damns Continental revolution. The edition I have used was published in London by Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863, ch. 10. 109 Lois G. Schwoerer, The Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Baltimore, MD: Johns H ­ opkins Press, 1981). J. P. Kenyon, “The Revolution of 1688: Resistance and Contract,” in Neil McKendriek, ed., Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society (London: Europa Publications, 1974), ch. III. 110 James Mackintosh, History of the Revolution in England in 1688 (Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1834). 111 Croker, review of Macaulay’s History, Quarterly Review, vol. 84 (1849), p. 549. See also William Thomas, The Quarrel of Macaulay and Croker: Politics and ­History in the Age of Reform (Oxford University Press, 2000.). 112 Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Mill’s Essay on Government,” in The Life and Works of Lord Macaulay Complete (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1­896–1906), vol. V, p. 264. 113 J. S. Mill, “Armand Carrel (1837),” Essays on French History and Historians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), vol. XX, p. 191. 114 J. S. Mill, “The Monster Trial (1835),” Essays on French History and Historians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), vol. XX, p. 127. 115 J. S. Mill, “An Examination of William Hamilton’s Philosophy,” in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (University of Toronto Press, 1979), vol. IX, p. 160. 116 Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second (London: Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863), pp. 662–671. 117 Lord Acton, Historical Essays and Studies (London: Macmillan, 1907), p. 482. Lord Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1907), p. 53. 118 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1866), vol. IV, p. 460. 119 Ibid., p. 444. 120 Ibid., p. 452. 121 Ibid., p. 454. 122 Ibid., p. 526. 123 Ibid., p. 530. 124 George Croly, A Memoir of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1840), vol. II, p. 203. 125 Thoughts on Present Discontents, p. 456. 126 T. E. Kebbel, “Edmund Burke,” in T. E. Kebbel, ed., Essays upon History and ­Politics (London: Chapman and Hall, 1864), p.168. 127 Ibid., p. 177. 128 J. S. Brewer, English Studies, or Essays in English History and Literature (­London: J. Murray, 1881), pp. 100–101. Originally published in the Quarterly Review, April 1876. 129 Lord John Russell, An Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution: From the Reign of Henry VII to the Present Time (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1823), pp. 179, 229–230. 130 Jones, Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, p. 29.

86  Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century 131 John Morley, Edmund Burke: A Historical Study (London: Macmillan & Co., 1867), pp. 12–13. 132 “Macaulay on James Mill, 1829” The Life and Works of Lord Macaulay (London: Longmans, Green & co., 1896–1906), vol. V, pp. 259, 266, 270. 133 J. S. Mill, “Bentham (1838),” On Bentham and Coleridge (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962), pp. 62–63, 75. 134 J. S. Mill, Autobiography (Penguin Books, 1989), pp. 56, 114, 118. Bentham, Rationale of Reward (London: John & H. L. Hunt, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, 1825), Bk. III, ch. 1, p. 206. 135 J. S. Mill, “Utilitarianism,” in Marshall Cohen, ed., The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill (New York: Modern Library, 1961), pp. 331–312. 136 Ibid., p. 333. 137 On Liberty, pp. 56–57. 138 Ibid., p. 10. 139 James Fitzjames Stephen, “Burke on the English Constitution,” in Horae Sabbaticae (London: Macmillan, 1892), pp. 114–115, 116. 140 Emily Jones, Edmund Burke and Modern Conservatism, p. 162. 141 Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians (London: Durkworth & Co., 1900), vol. II, p. 100. J. W. Burrow, Whigs and Liberals: Continuity and Change in English Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 9–10. 142 John Morley, Burke Men of Letters (New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1900), p. 213. Originally published in 1879. 143 Morley, Edmund Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 150–152. 144 Ibid., p. 5. 145 Macaulay, “Mill’s Essay on Government,” pp. 261–262. 146 J. S. Mill, “Bentham,” pp. 87–88. 147 J. S. Mill, “Tocqueville on Democracy in America,” (1835) in Gertrude Himmelfarb, ed., Essays on Politics and Culture by John Stuart Mill (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1963), p. 182. 148 Ibid., (1840), p. 215. 149 Ibid., p. 238. 150 Ibid., p. 258. 151 Ibid., p. 240–241. 152 James Mill, An Essay on Government (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), pp. 89–91. 153 J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, p. 114. 154 On Liberty, p. 54. 155 Considerations on Representative Government, p. 107. 156 Ibid., p. 159. 157 Thomas Hare, The Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal (­London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1967). p. 6. Originally published in 1867. 158 Ibid., p. 223. 159 Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 251. 160 Ibid., pp. 274, 275, 277, 281. 161 Ibid., p. 249. 162 William Lecky, The French Revolution: Chapters from the Author’s History of England during the Eighteenth Century (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1904), p. 441. 163 Henry Maine, Popular Government (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1970), p. 247. 164 Ibid., p. 236. 165 John Morley, Notes on Politics and History (2nd ed., London: Macmillan, 1914), p. 27. 166 J. S. Mill, “Civilization,” in Himmelfarb, ed., Essays, pp. 70–71, 74.

Uses of Burke in the Nineteenth Century  87 167 J. S. Mill, “Tocqueville” in Himmelfarb, ed., Essays, p. 174. 168 J. S. Mill, “Michelet’s History of France,” in Essays on French History and Historians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), vol. XX, p. 219. 169 J. S. Mill, 1845. “Guizot’s Essays and Lectures on History,” Essays on French History and Historians, vol. XX, p. 260. 170 J. R. Green, “Freeman’s Growth of the English Constitution,” Saturday Review (4 May 1872), pp. 574–575. 171 Quoted by Hedva Ben-Israel, English Historians on the French Revolution (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 75. My account of Smyth is deeply indebted to Chapter 5 of her book. 172 Smyth & Jared Sparks, Lectures on Modern History (Boston: B. B. Mussey & Co., 1849), p. 580. 173 Respected historian Alfred Cobban wrote that “to condemn the Assembly, in the language of Burke, … is absurd… There has perhaps never been an assembly in French history which contained so much talent.” A History of Modern France (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), vol. I, p. 180. 174 Quoted by Ben-Israel, English Historians, p. 81. 175 Thomas Macknight, The Life and Times of Edmund Burke (London: Chapman & Hall, 1858), vol. I, pp. 9, 201. Emily Jones, Edmund Burke, p. 14. 176 Leslie Stephen, History of English Political Thought in the Eighteenth Century (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1902), pp. 219, 222. 177 Ibid., p. 229. 178 Ibid., p. 249. 179 Ibid., p. 243. 180 Ibid., p. 223. 181 Ibid., p. 230. 182 Jeremy Bentham, “A Critical Examination of the Declaration of the Rights,” in John Bowring, ed., The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Edinburgh: W. Tait, 1843), vol. 2, pp. 501–502. 183 Mill, “Utilitarianism,” p. 388. 184 Consideration of Representative Government, pp. 154–155. 185 William Lecky, Democracy and Liberty (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), vol. I, p. 3. 186 Lecky, Chapters from History of England, pp. 63–64. 187 Ibid., p. 88. 188 Morley, Edmund Burke: A Historical Study, p. 308. 189 Stephen, History of Political Thought, p.138. 190 Ibid., p. 140. 191 Ibid., p. 141. 192 Ibid., p. 180. 193 Ibid., pp. 237–240. 194 William Gladstone, “Kin Beyond Sea,” North American Review (September–­ October, 1878), p. 197.

4

Mill to Morley From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke

Burke, as we have seen (Chapter 3), figured far more as a Liberal than as a ­Conservative in the nineteenth century. Always his name and legacy were available to any and all takers, so when the Tories ignored him in the nineteenth century, Whigs and Liberals at their leisure could and did step in to fill the breach. And they had good reason to claim him. Who better than Burke to permit Liberals to form effective alliances when needed with Conservatives? Across the political spectrum in nineteenth century England stood a great many liberals who were conservative, such as William Gladstone, complemented by Tories who were liberal in outlook, such as George Canning. Then, there were such noteworthy figures as Lord Palmerston and Gladstone who softened the distinction between Tories and Liberals when they effortlessly switched from one party to the other, Tory to Liberal. Of considerable significance were the governments of hybrid political regimes, based on cooperation between Liberals and Conservatives. Burke, if not a man for all seasons was a man for all ideologies, recognized especially by the Liberals of the nineteenth century as a potentially useful ally. Quite feasibly, there is no better way to underscore the prominence of Burke the supposed liberal in the nineteenth century than to address the work of John Stuart Mill in conjunction with that of his self-proclaimed liberal acolyte of the next generation, John Morley. So little was Mill (1806–1873) concerned with Burke that his name is virtually absent in his work, even though many of Mill’s writings could easily be transformed into a systematic refutation of the author of Reflections on the Revolution in France. In remarkable contrast stands Morley (1838–1923), a liberal through and through who regarded Mill as his ideal mentor, yet wrote repeatedly and at great length, often in praise of Edmund Burke. To note the intimate personal and intellectual links between Mill and Morley is to observe how readily Burke might have disappeared had Morley followed Mill’s lead, as he did on many another occasion. Instead, despite his reservations, Morley in effect ensconced Burke more adamantly than ever as the ancestor of liberal aspirations in nineteenth-century England. To all appearances, Morley might have broken the pattern of liberals enrolling Burke under their DOI: 10.4324/9781003412977-4

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  89 banner; he might have followed Mill in ignoring Burke. He did just the opposite, choosing throughout his remarkable career, as productive author and prominent political figure, to display Burke’s name and reputation conspicuously in public discourse, often placing him in the Liberal pantheon. We shall begin by discussing Morley’s debt to Mill, then proceed to Morley’s spirited defense of Mill, who in the year of his death came under vigorous attack at the hands of James Fitzjames Stephen; and end our account with a discussion of how Morley, in sharp contrast with his idol Mill, reinstated Burke.

** Morley’s Debt to Mill The bond between John Morley and John Stuart Mill was intimate and long-­ lasting. Nearly three decades after Mill’s death, Morley could still remark with reverence that Mill was “the most virtuous and truth-loving man that I at least have ever known.”1 Estranged from his father, Morley sought and found a surrogate father in the willing person of John Stuart Mill. In the final paragraph of Mill’s Autobiography, he referred to Morley as “my friend”; for Morley, however, friendship was not enough; nothing less would do than to hail Mill as something of a father figure. What Mill offered was by Morley’s account the “gift of intellectual fatherhood.” Having fallen out irreparably with his natural father over religion, Morley thought of his mentor, John Stuart Mill, as “the best and wisest man that I can ever know,” and “one whose memory will always be as precious to me as to a son.”2 When a contemporary referred to Morley as “a disciple of Mill,”3 he was, if anything, understating their relationship. After reading one of Morley’s youthful journalistic essays, Mill in 1865 initiated what would prove to be a permanent friendship. In his estimation, Morley was an up-and-coming journalist who had shown “an unusual amount of qualities which go towards making the most valuable kind of writer for the general public,” and was pleased that Morley was soon to be editor of the influential Fortnightly Review. Come the year 1867, Mill praised Morley “as one of our best and most rising periodical writers on serious subjects – moral, social, and philosophical, still more than political.”4 It was obvious to Mill that he had encountered a youthful kindred spirit capable of spreading thought such as his to a fairly large audience. For his part, Morley sent Mill articles to peruse, and was delighted that the famous intellectual and leading advocate of liberal causes did not fail to respond. Soon, Morley was numbered among the select group who regularly dined with Mill on Sunday evenings. As editor, Morley time and again took advantage of his position to comment on Mill’s life, his work, and his enduring significance. Not long after they met, he began using the Fortnightly Review to assess and publicize Mill’s work. An early opportunity to comment came in 1867 when the third volume of Mill’s

90  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke Dissertations and Discourses was published. Though this collection may have consisted of “minor writings,” Morley nevertheless contended that Mill’s essays displayed his uncanny ability to rise from “special facts” to “general ideas.” It was here, no less than in his systematic treatises, that Mill’s readers encountered “those qualities of his mind which have impressed in so remarkable a manner some of the most active English intellects of the present day” – and through them, he has reached the larger public, or so Morley contended.5 Shortly after Mill’s death in 1873, Morley reviewed the recently published Autobiography, which permitted him to comment not only on that work but on the various other writings discussed by Mill in the course of recounting his life. Turning briefly to “the little book on the Subjection of Women,” Morley, although unknown as an outspoken advocate of feminism, deemed Mill’s pamphlet “probably the best illustration of all the best and richest qualities of the author’s mind.”6 He was willing to go so far as to rank On the Subjection of Women alongside On Liberty as “the notable result of this ripest, loftiest, and most inspiring part of his life.”7 Of equal or possibly of more importance to Morley in his account of the Autobiography were Mill’s words directed to the significance of Auguste Comte. Morley paid due diligence to Mill’s appreciation of Comte’s efforts to create a science of society – sociology – while quoting Mill’s stated reason for breaking with Comte. “Mr. Mill says of the Système de Politique Positive” that it is, in Mill’s words, “‘a monumental warning to thinkers on society and politics of what happens when once men lose sight in their speculations of the value of Liberty and Individuality’.”8 What Morley does not say is that he was greatly indebted to Mill for breaking the spell that Comte had cast on him in his earlier years. For some intellectuals in search of a comprehensive system expelling all skepticism, Comtean Positivism had become what T. H. Huxley ridiculed as “Catholicism minus Christianity,” as was true of Morley’s friend Frederic Harrison. Mill’s 1864 study of Auguste Comte and Positivism marked his break with the founder of sociology and freed Morley from Comte’s stifling embrace. There can be no doubt that Mill’s death in 1873 was one of the most significant moments in Morley’s lifetime. In May of that year, he penned a moving remembrance, beginning with “we mourn for one of the greater among the servants of humanity.” Once more he invoked filial imagery, speaking of “the ­affectionate veneration of sons” for their surrogate father. He also spoke a­ dmiringly of Mill because he was “the only [prominent] writer in the world whose treatises … have been printed during his lifetime in editions for the people, and sold at the price of railway novels.”9 The passage of time, and Morley’s busy life in Parliament beginning in 1883, in no way diminished his determination to honor the memory of Mill, as he did yet again when the year 1906 arrived, marking the one hundred year anniversary of Mill’s birth. No one had to remind Morley that the time was ripe for another public appreciation of Mill’s accomplishments and

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  91 legacy. “Nobody,” he wrote, “who claims to deal as a m ­ atter of history with the ­intellectual fermentation between 1840 and 1870 … can fail to assign a leading influence to Mill.” Morley deemed it likely in retrospect that Mill, briefly a member of Parliament, would “have had a better chance of real influence in our more democratic House today, than in that hour of unprincipled faction and bewildered strategy.” Much to Mill’s credit, “he undoubtedly knew more of India than all Secretaries of State ever installed there put together.” Praiseworthy also was that “on all the grand decisive issues – American Slavery, Free Trade, Reform – Mill and [John] Bright fought side by side.” Beyond what he thought about specific causes, Mill was remarkable for how he thought, as evidenced by his theoretical contributions to the study of economics and philosophy. “In political economy (1848) he is admitted … to have exercised without doubt a greater influence than any other writer since Ricardo.” As for philosophy, Mill recognized how seemingly abstract writings could have practical outcomes of considerable significance; in particular, he realized how important it was to discredit the emotionalist, intuitionist philosophies of his day. “Every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered,” wrote ­Morley paraphrasing Mill, “is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself,” with the predictable consequence of “consecrating all deep-seated prejudices.” Mill’s was “an elaborate attempt to perform the practical task of dislodging intuitive philosophy, as a step towards sounder thinking about society and institutions; as a step, in other words, towards Liberalism.”10 Morley finished his essay with a eulogy of Mill, who “will long deserve to be commemorated as the personification of some of the noblest and most fruitful qualities within the reach and compass of mankind.” When Morley’s essay was reproduced in 1923, it bore the title “A Great Teacher.”11 By no means, however, was the eulogy Morley’s most important commentary on Mill. More significant was Morley’s defense of Mill when he came under an all-out assault from another figure who claimed to be a true liberal and denied that Mill was. The year 1873 was not only the date of Mill’s death; it was also the publication date of James Fitzjames Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, a strident diatribe aimed at Mill; and the same year witnessed Morley’s response, “Mr. Mill’s Doctrine of Liberty.” Morley’s Defense of Mill Two essays that Fitzjames Stephen published in the 1860s provide a convenient introduction to his later full-scale, extremely hostile book on John Stuart Mill. The first essay was “Liberalism,” which appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, 1862; the second “Burke on Popular Representation,” in the Saturday Review, 1865. Stephen’s fear as expressed in “Liberalism” was that the Liberals of his day had lost their way and were in danger of failing to live up to their calling. Never should it be forgotten, he insisted, that everyone English benefits from

92  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke an admirable, unrivaled, unbroken legacy: “Nothing in the history of England is more striking than its continuity.” The calling of a Liberal should be to teach all classes to see in the institutions of their native land neither a prison to escape from nor a fortress to storm, but a stately and venerable mansion which for eight centuries had been the home of their ancestors, and in which they were now to take their place and play their part. What troubles liberalism is that currently it is “the party which wishes to alter existing institutions with the view of increasing popular power.” The words “democracy” and “liberalism” have become nearly interchangeable as Liberals cravenly appeal to the people at large. Popular power reigns without control in America and France at the expense of all that is noble and worthy, and the same may soon be true of England, warned Stephen, unless Liberals find a way to admit a measure of democracy without lowering “the general tone of public life.”12 Unfortunately, much harm has already befallen that which for countless ages was the magnificent British nation. “The great characteristic danger of our days is the growth of this quiet ignoble littleness of character and spirit.” Ours has become the politics of the lowest common denominator as Liberals seek the approval of artisans and mechanics, who are finished with education by the early age of twelve, feasting thereafter on the shallow content of newspapers, quickly forgetting whatever few morsels of worthwhile information they may have encountered. “For about twenty years past, the ‘working man’ has been the subject of a sort of apotheosis.” A case in point is the sycophantic treatment of the worker In the novels of the likes of Dickens and Disraeli.13 Best it would be if the many were to recognize “the moral and intellectual superiority of the few who, in virtue of a happy combination of personal gifts with accidental advantages, ought to be regarded as their natural leaders.” Among Great Britain’s many advantages is that despite the enfranchisement of the middle class, it can still boast “a powerful and splendid aristocracy,” not a few of whose members are devoted Liberals aware that their calling is to fulfill their country’s mission. There is no point which a true liberal would be more anxious to impress upon the bulk of the population … than the vital importance of forming a lofty notion not merely of the splendor and of the history of their country, but of the part which it has to play in the world. Liberals should be concerned, most of all, to pursue “a high and generous conception of national existence.” Workers must be invited to care about something more than their material circumstances. “If our labourers and mechanics are to legislate, … if they are called, as they are often told, to rule a world, let them

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  93 catch the imperial spirit.”14 Let them take pride in the greatness of England, its high standing on the stage of the world. It was to nationalism that Stephen was devoted – national pride which will elevate the English of all social classes to new heights, and be the fulfillment of his vision of liberalism, more so than any record of successful domestic liberal reforms. “We should do more to promote true liberalism by discharging … [our efforts] in a liberal imperial spirit than by any number of reform bills.” Nothing distinguishes the English more than that they “have become the absolute masters of the Indian empire… Here, if anywhere, is an opportunity for true liberalism.” None other than Tocqueville, “one of the most illustrious of all liberals,” has expressed the deepest appreciation of our accomplishments in India. “Hitherto,” Stephen concludes, liberals “have been critics. They are now to be authors,” free to write their story on the international script, if they put the nation and patriotism first.15 With the publication three years later of his essay on Burke, the question naturally arises as to whether Stephen fits better within the Conservative than the Liberal camp. Distinguished historian Sir Ernest Barker, in Political Thought in England: 1848 to 1914, wrote that “Stephen’s book is the finest exposition of conservative thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century.”16 And Benjamin Disraeli wrote in 1881, “it is a thousand pities that Stephen is a judge; he might have done anything and everything as a leader of the future Conservative party.”17 Certainly Stephen, after the publication of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, was sometimes regarded as a Conservative, and he had complained in 1862 about the English political vocabulary with its “strange compounds of Liberal-­ Conservative and Conservative-Liberal, which are so constantly in use amongst us at the present day.”18 There might be confusion as to his ideological identity, but if so it was not of his doing, he insisted. Ever and always he was a selfprofessed Liberal. The essay titled “Burke on Popular Representation” clearly is the work of a readily identifiable nineteenth-century Liberal, willing to nod approvingly on some occasions while expressing disappointment on others with Burke’s speeches. At the outset, Stephen praises Burke profusely, but only as a preface to the very different tone of all that follows, which is a stern critique. Burke, he begins, was “one of the most distinguished of English political philosophers.” Our age, he continues, is one of extreme preoccupation with “material improvement,” so much so that it is in danger of losing awareness of the wisdom of its ancestors. Numbered among our distinguished forebears “there is perhaps none whose ideas in English politics better repay the labour of studying them than those of Edmund Burke.” The great shortcoming of Burke’s political life is that his utterances often contradict his very own philosophy. Sometimes, far too often, his “vigor” degenerated into “wild violence.” The ironical upshot is that Burke often sounded like those French political figures he always denounced. As Stephen put it, “the uncompromising vehemence with which a French politician insists on adopting

94  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke the most extreme consequences” of his principles “may be found in nearly every prominent act of Burke’s career, although nothing could be more opposed to the teachings of his own political philosophy.” Ill-conceived was Burke’s “utter and unconditional annihilation of a powerful body like the East India Company.” Equally reprehensible was “his wild violence during the debates on the Regency in 1788.” No doubt Burke was right in objecting to “abstract” and “metaphysical” thinking in political matters, and he is to be congratulated for insisting on applying strictly the test of expediency when dealing with the rebellious American colonies. But even when properly denouncing geometrical and abstract political principles, his rigidity too often gives us reason to object. “His fear of new abstractions prevented him from encouraging the development of what was contained in the old and accepted principles.” Burke denied what “no reasonable politician of today would dream of denying”; his efforts in 1782 to excuse and even laud “the non-representation of so many important towns” in England are indefensible “and hard to explain unless we admit his reverence for the existing state of things to have been excessive.” In a pithy summary, Stephen writes, “He goes too far, or, we should perhaps say, he stays too far behind.”19 In the later 1860s, Stephen wrote several more essays about Burke, noteworthy for displaying his acquaintance with all Burke’s works and for embellishing his earlier essay but not for withdrawing the sentiments he had expressed in 1865.20 Stephen had put reform legislation in second place in “Liberalism,” first place taken by the quest for national greatness. In his essay “Burke on Popular Representation,” he affirmed that he was nevertheless committed to necessary Liberal reforms. Burke’s serious shortcoming, Stephen made clear, was his unwillingness to support necessary change. It was James Fitzjames Stephen, a Liberal not a Conservative, as the essays “Liberalism” and “Burke on Popular Representation” attest, who confronted Mill in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Further evidence that he regarded himself unequivocally as a Liberal in 1873, the year when his book was published, is that in this same year he stood as a Liberal candidate for Parliament. Admittedly, 1873 was a major turning point in his convictions, not however from Liberalism to Conservatism, but rather from a Liberalism of hope to a Liberalism of despair. The book written against Mill marked a moment of transition to the last two decades of his life, a depressing final period during which he would mourn “the Paradise Lost of Liberalism.” In the 1880s, he expressed exasperation that the old maxims of government, [and] the old Liberalism … have been and are being utterly given up, and in their place is being erected a tyrannical democracy which will change the whole face of society and destroy all that I love or respect in our institutions. He would have nothing to do with the Liberal-Radicalism of Gladstone.21

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  95 His prolonged earlier attack on Mill in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was a­ rguably the decisive turning point in his career. At the beginning of his book, Stephen points out that he had approved of some of Mill’s earlier work, such as Principles of Political Economy. But the day had come to object in the strongest possible terms to later works, such as the pamphlets On the Subjection of Women and Utilitarianism, which to his mind constituted a capitulation to the worst tendencies of the new democratic age.22 “In a certain sense I am myself a utilitarian,”23 he professed, but only after having written several hundred pages expressing contempt for Mill’s utilitarianism. What utility could there be in a body of work devoid of the moral uplift of patriotism, devoid in general of any worthy aspirations, or of the saving tonic of a sense of reality? What exemplifies, perhaps more than anything else, the unreality of Mill’s world is his thoroughgoing failure to appreciate the significance of coercion in human society, its vital role in suppressing our worst and bringing to the fore our best possibilities. “The condition of human life is such that we must of necessity be restrained and compelled by circumstances in nearly every action of our lives.”24 Supposedly, utilitarianism is founded on a clear-sighted understanding of human nature. How fatal it is then to Mill’s philosophy that his animus against coercion proves he understands nothing about our nature. Coercion is what is, what has been, what will ever be, and it is also what must continue to be to further human prospects. It is “ought” as well as “is,” plausibly more “ought” than “is.” Mill understands neither our evil nor our good, and misses how coercion is necessary to quell the former and enhance the latter. As to evil, “speak of original sin or not as you please, but the fact [is] that all men are in some respects both weak and wicked.” If Mill had his way, he would undermine criminal law, blaming society for evil deeds, as he always does, never the perpetrators.25 “The desire of vengeance” should be ranked among the most “important elements of human nature” and ought, in the form of public punishment, “to be satisfied in a regular public and legal manner.” Inexcusably, “the constitution of human nature” is unknown to Mill, and therefore he never comes to terms with the needs both to protect society and to satisfy fundamental social yearnings by the necessary means of unapologetic coercion.26 “It is only under the protection of a powerful, well-organized, and intelligent government,” defiant of Mill’s anarchy, unafraid to exercise coercion, “that any liberty can exist at all.”27 Coercion or force should not be called a necessary evil when in truth it confers an unlimited amount of social and political good. Not least among its accomplishments is that it builds character. “A young man who is … kept under close and continuous discipline … will generally have a more vigorous and more original character than one who is left to his own devices.”28 It follows that nothing could be worse than Mill’s scheme of negative freedom, freedom from constraint, liberty to do as we please so long as we do not harm others. Even if the worst of human nature does not always thereby come to the fore, the best will never see the light of day.

96  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke Mill displayed a fundamental ignorance of the world when he called for f­reedom of discussion to displace coercion. Stephen demanded of his fellow citizens that they Estimate the proportion of men and women who are … absolutely commonplace and wrapped up in the smallest of petty routines, and consider how far the freest of free discussion is likely to improve them. The only way by which it is practically possible to act upon them at all is by compulsion or restraint. To those who would make the fatal mistake of following Mill, Stephen asks the question: “Where in the very most advanced and civilized communities will you find any class of persons whose views … are regulated … by the results of free discussion?” To which he adds another challenging query: “mention any single great change which has been effected by mere discussion.” Force is omnipresent, inescapable; even “Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion.”29 The most one can do is enter a plea for persuasion, but even so, we must recognize that persuasion is a form of force, force a form of persuasion.30 And always we should remember how essential force has been and should in some measure continue to be in two of the most primary social and political realms, religion and morality, without which we are nothing. One of the longest sections in Stephen’s book is that which deals with Mill’s On the Subjection of Women, “a work from which I dissent from the first sentence to the last.” Not once but twice he found it necessary to say that he “dissent[ed] from nearly every word he says.”31 In short, Stephen’s response to Mill’s feminist sentiments is one of utter revulsion. “There is something … unpleasant in the direction of indecorum in prolonged and minute discussions about the relations between men and women, and the characteristics of women as such.” Such a book obviously should never have been written, never made available to the public, and did not merit comment; yet Stephen against his will had to speak up, and at considerable length, because the very integrity of society and civilization was at stake. I consider [Mill’s pamphlet] unsound in every respect. I think that it rests upon an unsound view of history, an unsound view of morals, and a grotesquely distorted view of facts, and I believe that its practical application would be as injurious as its theory is false.32 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was the emblem of the hideous French Revolution and should never find a home in England. But Mill’s notions of equality and their application to women portend a momentous crisis which presumably goes far by way of explaining Stephen’s title, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Let the fear of France prevent the English from engaging in foolish undertakings. The gender division sanctioned by endless centuries of human experience is in

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  97 danger of falling. “Are boys to learn to sew, to keep house, and to cook, and are girls to play at cricket, to row, and be drilled like boys?” And what will happen if marriage comes to be understood as a contract between equals? In such a world, it would be “impossible to avoid the inference that marriage, like other partnerships, may be dissolved at pleasure.” Therefore, “if marriage is to be permanent, the government of the family must be put by law and by morals in the hands of the husband.” What has been should continue to be true: “when a woman marries she practically renounces in all but the rarest cases the possibility of undertaking any profession but one,” that of wife and mother, spouse of the man who is the stronger physically and mentally. In the event of a disagreement about children or any important matter, “I say the wife ought to give way.”33 In 1862, Stephen had expressed his frustration with the “strange compounds” in the talk of his day about “Liberal-Conservative and Conservative-Liberal.” His many pages on women in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and indeed all the pages of that volume, should have warned him that he no longer had a right to complain. For although he still clung to the name of Liberal, his was surely a remarkably conservative variant.

** It would be John Morley’s explicit objectives in “Mr. Mill’s Doctrine of L ­ iberty” to save his beloved mentor from Stephen’s wrath, while at the same time reclaiming a less compromised vision of liberalism than that set forth in Liberty, ­Equality, Fraternity. Also of significance when considering Morley’s response to Mills’ On Liberty and his repudiation of Stephen are his comments a few months later in his review of Mill’s Autobiography. Implicitly, some of the arguments in his examination of the Autobiography are connected to his earlier offering that year in defense of Mill, as he indicates by citing “Mr. Mill’s D ­ octrine of Liberty” in a footnote to his review. In particular, Morley’s defense of Mill’s promotion of the feminist cause in his review of the Autobiography appears to be a clear-cut, all but explicit, defiance of Stephen. Addressing On Liberty in his review, Morley maintained that Mr. Mill’s plea for liberty in the abstract, invaluable as it is, still is less important than the memorable application of this plea and of all the arguments ­supporting it to that half of the human race whose individuality has hitherto been blindly and most wastefully repressed.34 On Liberty and On the Subjection of Women are intimately interconnected, ­Morley realized. The puzzle as to why Morley suddenly took up the question of women, previously missing from his thought – and why he later briefly reiterated his concern for women in various of his other works35 – is readily solved if we assume he felt forced to respond to Stephen’s militant anti-feminism.

98  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke Without Stephen’s polemic, it is not obvious that the fate of women would ever have entered into Morley’s discourse. Once he entered the fray, Morley suggested his wish that Mill had gone further, that he had discussed the matter of divorce. Perhaps he did not because, observed Morley, “society is now passing through a transitional period”; “a great change in the fundamental constitution of men’s modes of the thought must precede any marked improvement.” Quite possibly, Mill realized he needed to push but could not push too far or too fast.36 In any event, Morley’s determination to defend Mill against Stephen on the subject of women was unmistakable if implicit. Frustration frequently rises to the surface in “Mr. Mill’s Doctrine of Liberty” when Morley explicitly attempts to counter Stephen. How can one answer arguments which are frequently completely beside the point? “Neglect to master the real position taken by Mr. Mill” often characterizes Stephen’s would-be critique; his is “the fallacy of Irrelevancy.” “He proves the contradictory of assertions which his adversary never made.” Morley insists at the outset of his essay that Mill’s On Liberty is a very English fulfillment of the earlier work on freedom famously espoused by Milton and Locke. Nothing could be more misleading or disgusting, then, than Stephen’s smears of Mill as French in all but name. In reality, the doctrine of liberty is in Mr. Mill’s hands something quite different from the same doctrine as preached by the French revolutionary school … It reposes on no principle of abstract right, but like all the rest of the author’s opinions, on principles of utility and experience. Nothing could be more English.37 Does one bad turn deserve an equally bad turn in response? It would seem so because Morley at one point likens Stephen’s arguments for curtailing freedom to those of the Jacobins. Less aggressively but quite forcefully and more plausibly, Morley forces unwanted radical garb upon Stephen near the end of his essay: Stephen does not practice the historic method; we see no flexibility in his premises or his conclusions, nor any reference of them to specific historical stages. He is one of those absolute thinkers who bring to the problems of society the methods of geometry. Despite Stephen’s claims to the contrary, the liberalism of Mill does not condemn the entire past; it simply learns from experience. By contrast, it is Stephen whose praise of “rational man, and reasonable people” was abstract and unhistorical.38 Liberals, including Stephen despite his apologies for coercion, cherished ­freedom. Mill’s treatise on liberty was meant as an expansion of the realm of freedom, but Stephen finds the notion of negative freedom, freedom from

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  99 restraint, unworthy or even reprehensible – an escape from responsibility and from moral commitment. Morley acknowledges that Mill championed freedom to go one’s own way so long as no one else is harmed, but he also vigorously affirmed that Mill in On Liberty “held that liberty was much more than a negation.” Any similarity of Mill’s account and Stephen’s account of Mill is purely accidental. “Mr. Mill’s doctrine does not lend the least countenance to the cardinal principles of some writers in the last century, that the only need of human character and of social institutions is to be let alone.” Unlike Bentham and the advocates of laissez-faire, Mill heeded the call of a higher self. Anarchy has no place in his thought; authority does, but it must be “the noblest and deepest and most beneficent kind of authority”; it must arise from within, founded on reason, deliberation, and uncoerced choice.39 Stephen would have it that he affirmed, Mill denied, the need to place governance in the hands of an elite, “the wiser part of the community.” By what means he managed to miss the elitism of Mill’s essay On Liberty is difficult to imagine. Somehow he found a way to overlook sentences such as this: No government by a democracy … ever did or could rise above mediocrity except in so far as the sovereign Many have let themselves be guided … by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed one or few.40 Fully aware of Mill’s disdain for the current aristocracy, Morley did not on that account fail to recognize his fear of the many, the masses, and did not hesitate to affirm that “the essay on Liberty is in fact one of the most aristocratic books ever written.”41 Morley also had no trouble pointing out how misleading was Stephen’s insistence that his calls for coercion were essential to development of character; Mill’s calls for freedom detrimental to the same. In this case as in so many others, ­Stephen had reality turned upside down. Prohibition of alcoholic beverage provides a convenient example. From Mill’s perspective, Morley noted, sobriety might perhaps be procured by some form of coercive legislation, but the evil inherent in such legislation, its enervating effect on character, its replacement of self-control … by a protective paternal will from without, would do more than counterbalance the advantages of sobriety so gained. Freedom, not coercion, builds character: “It is its robust and bracing influence on character which makes men prize freedom, and strive for the enlargement of its province.” Freedom is “essential to the richest expression of human faculty.” If we educate our children properly, we can, consistently with freedom, “stimulate the best parts of character.”42 So wrote Morley in agreement with Mill. The question of the worth of social eccentricity was another dividing line between Mill and Stephen which Morley crossed to defend his mentor. To Mill, the

100  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke force of lamentable social conformity in the newly emerged m ­ iddle-class society was so formidable that he applauded the few who went their own way, those who chose to be eccentric. Stephen predictably would have none of it. “Eccentricity,” he announced, “is far more often a mark of weakness than a mark of strength.”43 Once again, Morley rallied to Mill’s defense: “He prized that eccentricity which Mr. Stephen so heartily dislikes, because he perceived that all new truth and new ways of living must … always appear eccentric to persons accustomed to old opinions and old ways of living.” Eccentricity is desirable as an answer to conformity, and it is desirable in a second sense in that it marks an openness to change and improvement, a willingness to move history forward, unlike Stephen’s use of history to chain us to the past. Stephen feared novelty; not so Mill nor Morley. To Stephen’s call for unity of religion Morley responded that historically such calls had been issued by stationary societies. “Not all novelties are improvements,” he conceded, “but all improvements are novel.”44 Morley was, so to speak, the student of Mill, and he was also Mill’s ardent champion; all the more remarkable therefore is the contrast between Mill’s persistent silence and Morley’s unrelenting outspokenness on the significance of Edmund Burke. Morley’s Reinstatement of Burke Mill’s indifference to Edmund Burke was virtually total and might have led Morley and other Liberals to ignore him. No matter how obviously or how frequently the occasion arose to confront Burke, Mill never bothered to challenge him. Quite typical of Mill is that when he reworked Thomas Hare’s insights on proportional representation in Considerations on Representative Government, he ignored Burke, whereas Hare could not cite him too often.45 One might argue that silence was the strongest possible testimony on Mill’s part as to the unworthiness of Burke. In Mill’s thought, Burke no longer exists; he is irrelevant and has consequently disappeared. A few examples from On Liberty will go far to demonstrate how Mill most certainly could have, but did not, bother to challenge Burke. One of the most famous passages in Reflections on the Revolution in France is Burke’s praise of prejudice as essential to solidarity. Without bothering to recall Burke, Mill insists that even if received opinion is true, it must nevertheless not be shielded from criticism. If left unchallenged, if not “vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.” In praise of the wisdom of custom is another of Burke’s themes. Mill in sharp contrast repeatedly calls c­ ustom into question, again without remembering Burke: “The human ­faculties … are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice.” Harmful to individuals, blind adherence to custom is also harmful to the species.

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  101 The progressive principle … is antagonistic to the sway of custom …; and the contest between the two constitutes the chief interest in the history of mankind. The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. Even on those occasions when he in effect agrees with Burke, as he does in the matter of rejecting natural rights, Mill does not mention him: “I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing independent of utility,” remarked Mill in On Liberty.46 Another noteworthy silence on Mill’s part took the form of ignoring Burke’s remarks on marriage and women. In Letters on a Regicide Peace, Burke had lashed out passionately against the monsters of the Constituent Assembly of 1789, who had “pronounced marriage no better than a common contract” (­Chapter 3). He was inconsolably upset at the thought of “the horrible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out of the guardianship and protection of the other.” Worst of all were the Jacobins by whom “marriage is reduced to the vilest concubinage.”47 Mill the fighter for the feminist cause might be expected to vigorously reject Burke’s reactionary stand, but again he apparently saw no need – another indication that Burke meant nothing to him. Quite possibly, no passage in the Reflections on the Revolution in France is more familiar than that in which Burke voiced his despair that “the age of chivalry is gone.” As early as 1826, when he was still a youngster, Mill set out to puncture the bloated claims that had been made on behalf of chivalry; his performance calls out for a citation of Burke, but the call is never answered. Burke would have us believe that chivalry “has given its character to modern Europe,” and accounts for what he takes to be the superiority of his age to antiquity and to Asia.48 The truth as Mill sees it is quite the opposite. “The compound of noble qualities called the spirit of chivalry was almost unknown in the age of chivalry,” a time “distinguished by moral depravity and by physical wretchedness.” The common soldiers were the ones who died in battle, not the supposedly heroic nobles. “The far-famed knights of the middle ages were nearly as destitute even of the military virtues … as they were of all other virtues.” Woman did not fare well, because the knight paid her no heed “when he had the power of gratifying his passion independently of her consent.” Praise of chivalry in fable and mythology has completely misled us. “It is the misfortune of modern writers that they have mistaken the romances of chivalry for the history of chivalry.” We pay dearly for our phantasies about chivalry: “the illusions of chivalry are to this hour the great stronghold of aristocratic prejudices.” Obviously, Mill had every reason to attack Burke on the subject of chivalry. That he did not do so attests forcefully to his conviction that Burke was not worth his time.49 Unlike Mill, Morley commented at great length on Burke, most notably in essays in the Fortnightly Review and two substantial books, the first Burke: A Historical Survey in 1867, followed by Burke in 1879, the latter appearing

102  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke in the English Men of Letters series which he edited. There is no indication in anything he wrote, no reason to infer, that in addressing Burke he found himself at odds with Mill. In writing biographies of Burke, he was simply doing what he chose to do throughout the course of his life, writing accounts of various historical figures. In spite of his busy political career – twenty-five years in Parliament as compared to Mill’s three years – he published works at an astonishing rate, and was as much an intellectual as a politician. Probably, he is best known today for his expansive three-volume work on the public figure he most admired, ­William Gladstone. Among his many other works were studies of Richard ­Cobden, ­Oliver Cromwell, Diderot and the philosophes, Voltaire, and Rousseau. His contributions on many topics to high-toned journals were ongoing and substantial. Writing about Burke matched naturally with his lifelong commitment to penning biographies of significant historical figures. It is also worth noting that in spite of Morley’s reverence for Mill, he was always his own person, thinking his own thoughts – sometimes, perhaps unknowingly, taking positions not in accord with Mill. Like Mill, he served B ­ ritish imperial interests in India but in his case reluctantly, never abandoning the Liberal anti-imperialist strain of thought, whereas Mill evolved from his father’s reluctant commitment to India to his own belief that by means of imperialism the liberal cause could be admirably exported across the world.50 One might say Morley backtracked to the position of James Mill, whose History of British India he knew and repeatedly cited approvingly.51 Against his wishes, Morley concluded that “We now actually possess supreme power in India, and if we were to abandon it, from however exalted motives, we should be leaving the country and its inhabitants to disaster.”52 James Mill could not have said it better. Exporting liberalism was not on Morley’s agenda any more than on James Mill’s, even if he, like James Mill, was convinced England could not risk withdrawing from India. On India, Morley was so close and yet so far from John Stuart Mill. Yet, another occasion when John Stuart Mill opened a door through which Morley stepped forward with one foot, only to step back a moment later, was social legislation. Mill had started with but moved well beyond laissez-faire, and Morley was sometimes tempted to follow, as when he considered the possibility of land reform. Yet so strong was Morley’s fear of an emerging Labour Party, so great his hatred of socialism, that he eventually found himself taking stands placing his person adamantly in conflict with the demands of workers for an eight-hour day and trade unions. It was impossible for him to forget that he had authored an admiring two-volume study of free trader Richard Cobden. “Even now our heartfelt admiration goes out” to Cobden53 he insisted, no matter that his legacy had been called into doubt by some liberals seeking what they called social justice. Morley might slightly revise but never would he abandon Cobden and the free traders. For better or for worse, on social issues he did not follow Mill. Morley was his own person, never a mere acolyte. He did not need Mill’s blessing to write on Burke and Burke’s legacy.

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  103 The contrast between Mill and Morley in citing, mentioning, and calling upon Burke to reinforce arguments could not be greater. Present virtually nowhere in Mill’s writings, Burke is everywhere in Morley’s. Not only in his two books dedicated to the memory of Burke but throughout Morley’s prolific publications, especially but not exclusively his biographies of various major public figures, Burke has a way of frequently rising from the grave. Untiringly throughout his works, Morley praised and eulogized Burke. In the second volume of his study of Rousseau, he bows to “the great Burke.”54 Cobden he noted in the first volume of his biographical and historical account is to be congratulated because he “had made himself acquainted with … the splendid majesty of Burke.”55 In the second volume of The Life of Richard Cobden, he remarked with great satisfaction that Cobden was able to quote the illustrious authority of Burke in favor of the principle which he was now advocating, that the Government should not be allowed to manufacture for itself any article which could be obtained from private producers in a competitive market.56 One parallel drawn by Morley between himself and Burke was that both were ­liberals of a conservative bent. Speaking of himself in On Compromise, his most theoretical work, Morley suggested that “We may seem to have been unconsciously arguing as strongly in favor of a vigorous social conservatism as of a self-asserting spirit of social improvement. All that we have been saying may appear to cut both ways.”57 Another parallel was Morley’s insistence that in Burke’s case, as in his own, certain overtures to conservatism did not compromise either author’s commitment to liberalism. On economic issues, Burke, like Morley later, displayed his ultimate choice in favor of liberalism. “Burke, the most magnificent genius that the Conservative spirit has ever attracted, was one of the earliest assailants of legislative interference in the corn trade”58 – which placed him in the liberal camp. Not even Burke’s reaction to 1789 provided ample evidence, in Morley’s judgment, to remove his name from the list of noteworthy liberals. On Burke’s behalf, Morley lodged a complaint that “the French Revolution is alleged, and most unreasonably alleged, to have alienated him from liberalism.”59 Toward the end of his career, Morley wrote his glowing, massive three-­ volume account of the career of William Gladstone, the prominent political leader who had evolved from a Conservative to perhaps the most famous of English Liberals, and who in Morley’s account was deeply indebted to Burke. Gladstone had written, Morley reminds the reader, that in his early years he was “with Canning, and under the shadow of the yet more venerable name of Burke.” When the Reform bill came on the scene at the beginning of the 1830s, Gladstone was “frightened,” he confessed, and later concluded that Burke had misled him into assuming that any and all moves toward greater

104  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke democracy were dangerous.60 Yet, the fascination with Burke did not end. “Above all, he nearly every day reads Burke,” remarks Morley of Gladstone. Not least of what Gladstone b­ orrowed from Burke, as Morley sees it, was his reverence for the monarchy. “His sense of chivalry and his sense of an august tradition continually symbolized by a historic throne, moved him as the sight of the French Queen at Versailles had moved the majestic political imagination of Burke a century before.” But by no means were bows to monarchy and chivalry the entirety of what Gladstone owed to Burke, a point Morley makes by quoting Gladstone’s Diary: “December 18. – Read Burke; what a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America. January 9. – Made many extracts from Burke – sometimes almost divine.” To those quotations, Morley adds his own comment: “We may easily imagine how the heat from that profound and glowing furnace still further inflamed strong purposes and exalted resolution in Mr. Gladstone.”61 Morley looks back with satisfaction at the evolution of Gladstone. Over what a space had democracy travelled [in his thought], and what a transition for its champion of the hour, since the days half a century back when the Christ Church undergraduate, the disciple of Burke and Canning, had ­ridden in anti-reform processions. Gladstone had come a long way, indeed, as he travelled from conservatism to liberalism. That he did so without leaving Burke behind Morley made clear in the late section of the third volume titled “Table Talk.” As reported by Morley, Gladstone told him “I consider Burke a tripartite man: America, France, and Ireland.” To which Morley responds, “Must you not add some home affairs and India? His Thoughts on the Discontents is a masterpiece of civil wisdom … Then he gave fourteen years of industry to Warren Hastings, and teaching England the rights of the natives.” Much to Morley’s satisfaction Gladstone agreed: “Yes, yes – quite true.”62 A measure of empathy came naturally to Morley when he published a book about Burke in 1867 and another in 1879. Burke, Mill, Morley: did not all three embed their outlooks in a liberalism that allied itself with a form of conservatism, or perhaps more tellingly, that aspired to transcend ideological dividing lines? Were not Burke’s speeches prior to the outbreak of the French Revolution translatable into liberalism? Likewise, have we not encountered remarks in ­Morley’s On Compromise that deliberately blurred the markers dividing one ideology from another? Finally, John Stuart Mill, the political theorist Morley most admired, prefaced his Considerations on Representative Government by stating that he sought something “which in virtue of its superior comprehensiveness might be adopted by either Liberal or Conservative.”63 Morley the good liberal had no difficulty mixing a significant measure of empathy with his criticisms when he approached Burke.

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  105 In the two books he wrote on Burke, and on occasion in some of his other works, Morley did not refrain from criticizing him, sometimes explicitly, on other occasions implicitly, but never does he concede Burke’s legacy to the Conservatives and frequently he claims it for the Liberals. Coming to terms with Burke was essential because he was omnipresent; “many of [his words and thoughts] have got embedded in the current phraseology, and men use Burke’s maxims without knowing who is their teacher.”64 Sometimes, we do Burke unintentional injustice by forgetting it is to him that we are indebted for political wisdom we take for granted. At other times, he suffers when we criticize him because he lived fully immersed in his century rather than foreseeing all the problems and possibilities of our own nineteenth century. “It is very unjust to Burke to overlook the great services which he rendered” to his age “because he failed to grasp the spirit of the greater movement which followed it.”65 We also do Burke an injustice when we accuse him of inconsistency. A theme ­Morley never abandons, and constantly affirms, is that “few men’s opinions hang together so closely and compactly as his did.”66 How very grateful a nineteenth-century Liberal should be to the Whig Edmund Burke is evident in many of Morley’s observations near the beginning of Edmund Burke: A Historical Study. For many decades after the Revolution of 1688 the Whigs had ruled, but often they remained in power by ignoring their principles. To their credit, says Morley, the Whigs had defeated the Divine Right of Kings in 1688; to their discredit, during the following decades they had substituted what amounted to “The Divine Right of Nobles.” Eventually, the Old Whigs, devoid of vision, drifting aimlessly, and caring only for themselves, lost out to George III’s concerted effort to invent or restore many of the powers of the monarch; and in the course of his aggrandizing pursuit, King George threatened to destroy constitutional balance in the name of restoring it. If he had his way, the Cabinet that had been successfully institutionalized decades earlier as the loyal servant of Parliament during Walpole’s ministry would henceforth answer to the king. There would be a “double cabinet,” as Burke had lamented, an inner and governing court Cabinet and an outer Cabinet, merely for show.67 Much needed to counter underhanded royal usurpation was the rise of those Whigs who were “the creation of Edmund Burke.” Thanks to Burke, “their inspirer,” Whigs were once again learning to stand up for the powers of Parliament against the Constitution-compromising claims of a king. Under Burke’s direction, Whigs from 1770 to 1790 took up the cause of resisting dangerously overblown royal authority. “To him they owed the whole vitality of their creed, the whole coherence of their principles.” Burke brought the dead Whig principles up from out of the grave … He made a ­vigorous effort to restore popular ideas to that high place in practical politics from which they had been excluded ever since the days of the Great Rebellion.68

106  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke Not only the king but the Parliament, too, needed to be reminded of its duties, as was especially evident in the case of John Wilkes. Although never a democrat, it was Burke who first seized the true significance of the situation, who first proclaimed the principles of the rising movement, and who thus led the Whigs to the forgotten truth, that a government exists for the sake of the whole people.69 Parliament at times could vie with King in wrong-doing, as when it refused to seat the agitator John Wilkes after he had won election to the Commons. Burke, in a stern rebuke of Parliament, sided with Wilkes despite his own opposition to the unsettling radical politics of the candidate cheated of office. Morley quotes Burke’s telling words: “in all disputes between [the people] and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.”70 Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents was, among other things, Burke’s response to the Wilkes affair, and in Morley’s estimation, it was also a speech noteworthy for proving that Burke was adept at criticizing previous political thinkers of considerable fame, Hume and Bolingbroke. “It is impossible to see the meaning of the troubles which sprang from the contest between Wilkes and the oligarchic Lower House more clearly and fully than Burke saw it,” asserted Morley. David Hume, by contrast, completely misread the situation. Unable to see what was at stake, simply venting his hostility to Wilkes, Hume wrote “as if to illustrate and justify Burke’s uniform contempt for speculative philosophers.” Sounding himself like Burke, Morley wrote “this is neither the first nor the last time that a learned man has so grievously misunderstood political reality.”71 It was Morley who contrasted Hume with Burke; it was Burke who contrasted himself with Bolingbroke. According to Morley, “Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents … is the virtual refutation of the Patriot King.”72 Bolingbroke, despite his contempt for the label of royalist, had called for a king, presumably Prince Frederick, to save the country from a failed nobility and Commons.73 George III found justification for his assertive reign by immersing himself in a pamphlet Bolingbroke had written several decades earlier, Idea of a Patriot King. Burke’s speech of 1770 on Present Discontents was a vigorous and brilliant denunciation of monarchical usurpation and a cry for Parliament to resume recognition of its responsibilities. If Parliament remembered that it was or should be aristocratic rather than oligarchical, all would be well. One measure that might make it more responsible would be the publication of parliamentary proceedings. The last thing England needed was patriotism which took the form of bowing down to an overly assertive king. Sympathetic to Burke’s response to the Wilkes affair, Morley was equally appreciative, perhaps more so, of Burke’s stand on the conflict with America. Great Britain may have been correct in maintaining it had a right to tax the Americans admitted Burke, but it should have saved America for its Empire and

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  107 saved itself by permitting them to tax themselves as they saw fit. Unknowingly, “the insurgents, while achieving their own freedom, were indirectly engaged in fighting the battle of the people of the mother country as well,” contended Morley. Perfectly correct was Burke’s contention that, in his words, “to keep a people in a state of abject subjection, would prove fatal in the end to the liberties of England itself.”74 From England’s refusal to accommodate the Americans in the 1760s and 1770s to her tyrannical behavior in her own country post-1794, the line of continuity was unmistakable in Morley’s estimation. “The ruin of the American cause,” however popular in England, “would have been also the ruin of the constitutional cause in England,” wrote Morley in agreement with Burke. Thanks to losing the war with America, the king had been brought under constitutional control and proper Cabinet government triumphantly restored.75 So eager is Morley to praise Burke’s vigorously articulated stand on the ­American conflict that he enthusiastically endorses rather than criticizes what was surely a fundamental misunderstanding on Burke’s part as to what was at stake. Of all Burke’s writings none are so fit to secure unqualified and unanimous admiration as the three pieces on this momentous struggle: the Speech on American Taxation (April 19, 1774); the Speech on Conciliation with ­America (March 22, 1775); and the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777).76 In each of these speeches, Morley correctly remarked, Burke criticized the parliamentary leadership for speaking the language of sovereignty instead of utility, specifically the sovereign right to tax the colonies. In each of these Burke failed to notice, and so did Morley, that the Americans justified themselves by a much stronger appeal to rights – natural rights, inalienable rights, universal rights. Morley is as blind as Burke to the rights talk of American colonists. Morley quotes the words Burke uttered in 1774: “I am not going into the distinction of rights … I hate the very sound of them.”77 Generalizing his findings, Morley went on to note that, although denunciation of rights talk is “especially [evident] in the Speech on Conciliation with America,” we should take notice that “in scarcely a single piece [of Burke’s works] do we miss at least one expression of aversion to abstractions.” In the speech of 1777, Burke continued to express his exasperation that “there are people who have split and anatomized the doctrine of free government, as if it were an abstract question concerning metaphysical liberty and necessity; and not a matter of moral prudence.”78 Agreeing with Burke, Morley concluded that “the Stamp Act and the Tea Duty … were the assertion of a [governmental] right … made without any thought as to the profit to be drawn from it.” England paid the ultimate price for choosing to respond to America through the idiom of right instead of utility concluded Morley in vindication of Burke. “If Burke’s [English] contemporaries had all understood as thoroughly as he did the fruitlessness alike of abstract

108  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke rights and abstract ideals, we should not have had to read the history of our war with the American colonies.” Burke could not have asked for a more favorable assessment of his outlook.79 “I think I know America … for I have spared no pains to understand it,” Burke announced to his fellow parliamentarians.80 No doubt he did, because as early as the late 1750s and early 1760s, he had been at work on a detailed history of the colonization of America, and never did his interest in America wane during the years leading up to the American Revolution. Yet in one vital respect, Burke completely misunderstood America, and Morley was no better. Apparently neither man had the slightest familiarity with the rich pamphlet literature produced by the Americans when they made their case for settling their own affairs on the question or taxation. Had they read the American spokespersons, they would have been compelled to realize that no people spoke more often about natural rights and social contract than the Americans. Burke’s claim was that the American colonists were “not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. Abstract liberty … is not to be found.”81 He knew nothing of how some of the colonists had from the very beginning of the conflict in the middle 1760s invoked doctrines of natural right, nor was he aware of how by 1776 they had advanced from Grotius and ­Pufendorf to Locke. Initially, the colonists settled for drawing upon the preLockean notion of two contracts, the first a social union, the second an agreement on the terms under which a government had been established. Under this understanding, the American people, without gambling upon a return to the state of nature, could follow the lesser course of resistance. The British authorities, they proclaimed, had violated the second, the political contract, which justified demonstrations in the streets, and by their non-revolutionary politics of resistance, they hoped Parliament could be brought to its senses. But as 1776 approached, they graduated to Locke and demanded that popular sovereignty be understood as sanctioning their natural right to a government of their choice, their creation, a social contract they could make, unmake, and remake whenever they chose (Chapter 2).82 Completely ignorant of American revolutionary thought, Morley assured his readers that “the colonists had been far out of the main current of European thought.” Much like Burke, Morley wrongly insisted that “no reflections on the nature and obligation of the social contract paved the way for the expulsion of the instruments and apparatus of monarchy” from the various colonies. The Americans were “not subtle or even elevated in ideas.” Philosophers “were little needed in the American colonies” where they could not aspire to instruct “the unsophisticated understandings of merchants and farmers.” On the one occasion when Morley did recognize rights talk in America, the Declaration of Independence, his reading is exactly wrong, the truth exactly the opposite of his account. He would have his readers believe “Jefferson … introduced into the famous document of their independence abstract doctrines borrowed from the

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  109 French jurists.” The truth, of course, is just the opposite. Lafayette borrowed from ­Jefferson, then in France, the Lockean formulation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The best Morley could do to bring Jefferson under control was to transform his natural right to the pursuit of happiness into a scheme of duty and obligation. “If happiness is the right of our neighbor, then not to hinder him, but to help him in its pursuit, must plainly be our duty. If all men have a claim, then each man is under an obligation.”83 Utility should ever be our standard, never right. Such Morley believed was Burke’s doctrine; such was his own. Almost certainly, the American Revolution would have been avoided if England’s leaders “had for a moment awakened to the utilitarian truth, that the statesman is concerned, not at all with the rights of the government, but altogether with the interests and happiness of the governed.” Only in the case of India was Morley willing to speak favorably for a moment about rights. By impeaching Hastings, Burke had taught “the great lesson that Asiatics have rights and that Europeans have obligations.”84 One of the benefits of stressing Burke’s silence on doctrines of natural right in his speeches on America was that it enabled Morley to reject the claim that the Reflections on the Revolution in France marked a significant break in his thought. That Burke spoke with one voice before the French Revolution, with another after, that he was “a revolutionist in 1770 and a reactionist in 1790,” was a frequently repeated message in Morley’s age that he was eager to repudiate. “Burke’s later history is no more than the development of the principles of his early history,” he assured his readers. During the French Revolution, Burke’s views “were no more than the fair corollaries of the views which he had maintained throughout a public life of five and twenty years.” His “passionate enthusiasm for Order … is not a jot more strong in the Reflections, in 1790, than it was in the Thoughts on the Present Discontents twenty years before.” Indefensible were historians such as Henry Thomas Buckle who suggested, in Morley’s words, that “he was in his sane mind when he opposed the supremacy of the Court, but that his reason was tottering before he opposed the supremacy of the rabble.” It should not be overlooked that already during the American Revolution he had denounced the abstractions of rights talk – uttered by the English government – for which he became famous during the revolution in France; “this [continuity] should be borne in mind by those who impugn the unity of Burke’s earlier and later views.”85 Many good nineteenth-century liberals spied a sharp dividing line between Burke’s writings before and after the French Revolution. Morley disagreed, perhaps most of all because of his eagerness to keep Burke’s name for all times within the liberal pantheon. Morley’s difficult self-appointed task in his two books on Burke was to have it both ways, to avoid a break with the public figure he admired while at the same time acknowledging all that was missing or simply wrong in Burke’s account. Speaking as a historian, Morley would frequently solve his dilemma by providing vital information about the events before, during, and after the French

110  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke Revolution that Burke misunderstood or omitted, without mentioning Burke’s name. Or Morley would excuse Burke by blaming the age in which he lived. Morley admitted what Burke would not, that the members of the Constituent Assembly were a remarkably talented group; that the Civil Code of 1793 was a memorable achievement; that “it was the enmity of the retrograde powers of Europe which first drove her into the excesses natural to panic”; that “the kingdom had been brought to the very brink of ruin long before 1789” by inept royals and covetous nobles; “that a total change in the spirit of government was imperatively demanded”; that the fate of the poor in France was no better than that of the many in India; and that when Burke said “the French before 1789 possessed all the elements of a constitution” his remark was “recklessly ill-considered and untrue.” On occasion, Morley was even willing to abandon for a moment his Burkean impulse to place the blame for much of what went wrong on the doctrine of natural rights: It was no idle abstraction, no metaphysical right of man, for which the French cried, but only the practical right of being permitted, by their own toil, to save themselves and the little ones about their knees from hunger and cruel death.86 Yet no matter how frequently he disagreed with Burke, often without mentioning his name, never did he break with him. “We can only be just to him by comparing his ideas with those which were dominant” in his age. And if we make just comparisons, the proper conclusion is for us to admire his struggles over Wilkes, the Americans, the Irish, the Indians, and even much of what he offered on France. The only warning Morley issues is to avoid those “who, because Burke was wise and great in his generation, … are guilty … of impeding present progress and future well-being” by following Burke blindly.87 The Revolution was not the only aspect of eighteenth-century France which captured Morley’s attention. There were also the philosophes, the leading figures of the French Enlightenment, who were Morley’s subject of research in lengthy studies of Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclopedists, and Rousseau. For the philosophes, Burke had expressed nothing but contempt and had cast blame on them for the outbreak of the French Revolution. It was therefore an expression of noteworthy independence on Morley’s part when he published books sympathetic to the work of the philosophes, going so far on one occasion as to write, “Turgot is even a more imposing figure than Burke himself.”88 Yet, there were limits to Morley’s efforts to distance himself from Burke; at times, his comments on French “men of letters” in Edmund Burke: A Historical Study sound for all the world exactly like those of Burke.89 Most of all, it was in his disappointing two-volume study of Rousseau, published in 1886, years after his two books on Burke, that Morley sounds most like Burke, and is arguably no better than Burke in his treatment of the most remarkable of all

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  111 the philosophes. In the second volume of Rousseau, he stopped discussing his subject for a moment in order to praise “the magnificent and immortal pieces of Burke.”90 While he did not set out to mimic Burke’s treatment of R ­ ousseau, and Burke is at most a shadow in the background, yet Morley duplicates Burke’s utter and complete failure to understand the writings of Rousseau. Not content with dismissing Rousseau as “the most petulant, suspicious, perverse, and irrestrainable of men,” he more significantly denied that Rousseau knew how to think. Assuredly, Rousseau left a mark on Europe, “but this mark would have been very different if he had ever grasped what systematic thinking is.” ­Rousseau had distinctions “but the distinction of knowing how to think … was hardly among them.” Morley offers insight into none of Rousseau’s writings, dismisses them with a sigh of disdain, and knows only how to blame R ­ ousseau for the worst excesses of the Jacobins.91 Burke would have approved; we cannot. All he accomplished was to offer yet another demonstration of how long it took for scholars in the English-speaking world to come to terms with ­Rousseau’s thought when it was so much easier to blame him for Jacobinism or, more recently, for totalitarianism.

** In the closing pages of Burke: A Historical Study, Morley returned to the theme of denouncing the politics of natural rights and social contract theory. His reason for doing so had been foreshadowed much earlier in the volume. “Unsound metaphysical abstraction” remained a threat, he warned halfway through his book. “The abstract conception which wrought such evil at this lamentable period is still full of noxious vitality.”92 Talk of natural rights had not yet ended in the ranks of British radicals. For Morley, his comments on rights talk at the end of his study of Burke were a fulfillment of what he presumably regarded as his most unifying argument throughout the volume. For us, they are a fulfillment of our efforts to consolidate our findings on Mill, Morley, and Burke. In repudiating natural rights and the social contract, adhering instead to the principle of utility, Morley found himself in perfect agreement both with Mill and, he believed, with Burke. Mill was a utilitarian and so too, in Morley’s reading, was Burke. Possibly Morley was familiar with Burke’s utilitarian-sounding remark in 1792, that “the happiness or misery of mankind, estimated by their feelings and sentiments, and not by any theories of their rights, is, and ought to be, the standard for the conduct of legislators towards the people.”93 However that may be, we know for certain that in 1867 Morley wrote, If the [French] Revolutionists, instead of reverting to an imaginary social contract which they had first to create, had adopted Burke’s own standard of the general utility, they could have made out a case for the sovereignty of the people.

112  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke The revolutionaries should have deleted talk about natural rights and a social contract in their speeches while continuing to adhere uncompromisingly to the doctrine of popular sovereignty. If, instead of treading on the narrow and barren metaphysical heights, they had shown that for a highly political people … any government in which they do not more or less directly participate is essentially unstable, they would have adduced an argument worth a hundred social contracts. That the rhetoric of the revolutionaries stressed inherent right over “general h­ appiness” was especially lamentable, “because the Revolution was unquestionably the most gigantic effort that has ever been made to establish this criterion firmly and permanently in political affairs.” The greatest happiness of the greatest number was the Revolutionary objective; “general happiness” and “general utility” were its overriding concerns. Burke was “the greatest statesman who has adhered to this doctrine” of utility, from which it follows that he was “much nearer to the best, most vital, and most durable part of the Revolution than he knew.”94 With the foregoing words, Morley accomplished all that he set out to do. He remained a good liberal, insistent that considerable good was a consequence of the French Revolution in spite of its horrors. He remained an admirer of John Stuart Mill’s brand of utilitarianism, which had evolved beyond Bentham to a more sociological view of collective social forces. And, by deciding that Burke was a utilitarian in Mill’s sense, he claimed Burke for the liberal cause. On only one matter was Morley at odds with Mill. Where Mill had apparently forgotten about Burke, Morley reinstated Burke in striking terms. No one testified more stoutly than Morley to the unwillingness of English liberals in the nineteenth century to leave Burke behind. Notes 1 D. A. Hamer, John Morley: Liberal Intellectual in Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 22. 2 Ibid., p. 26. 3 Ibid., p. 114. 4 Ibid., p. 21. 5 John Morley, Fortnightly Review, vol. III, July 7, 1867. 6 John Morley, “Mr. Mill’s Autobiography,” Fortnightly Review, no. LXXXV (January 1874), pp. 12–13. 7 Ibid., p. 15. 8 Ibid., p. 12. John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (London: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 164. 9 John Morley, “The Death of Mr. Mill,” Critical Miscellanies, vol. III (May 1783), pp. 37–39. 10 John Morley, Miscellanies (London: Macmillan, 1908), pp. 146, 155–156, 158, 166, 168. 11 John Morley, “A Great Teacher,” in Oracles on Man and Government (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1968), pp. 1–27. Originally published 1923.

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  113 12 James Fitzjames Stephen, “Liberalism,” Cornhill Magazine, vol. 5 (1862), pp. 71, 73, 75. 13 Ibid., pp. 77, 78, 79, 81. 14 Ibid., pp. 74, 76, 80. 15 Ibid., pp. 82–83. 16 Ernest Barker, Political Thought in England: 1848 to 1914 (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p.150. 17 Editor’s Introduction to Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 11. 18 Stephen, “Liberalism,” p. 70. 19 James Fitzjames Stephen, “Burke on Popular Representation,” Saturday Review (September 1865), pp. 394–396. 20 James Fitzjames Stephen, “‘The Works of Burke,’ ‘Burke on the English Constitution,’ ‘Burke on the French Revolution,’ ‘Burke and De Tocqueville on the French Revolution’,” in Horae Sabbaticae (London: Macmillan, 1892), pp. 93–171. 21 Quoted by the editor in the Introduction to James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 15–16. 22 Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 53–54. 23 Ibid., p. 227. 24 Ibid., p. 59. 25 Ibid., p.141. 26 Ibid., pp. 82, 152, 59. 27 Ibid., p. 166. 28 Ibid., p. 81. 29 Ibid., pp. 69, 70, 72. 30 Ibid., pp. 128–130. 31 Ibid., pp. 203, 206. 32 Ibid., pp. 188, 190, 191. 33 Ibid., pp. 194–197. 34 Morley, “Mr. Mill’s Autobiography,” p. 12. 35 John Morley, On Compromise (London: Macmillan, 1924), p. 177. Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (London: Macmillan, 1914), p. 76. Rousseau (London: Macmillan, 1905), ch. V. 36 “Mr. Mill’s Autobiography,” pp. 13, 15. 37 John Morley, “Mr. Mill’s Doctrine of Liberty,” Fortnightly Review (August 1873), pp. 239, 242, 243, 250. 38 Ibid., pp. 255, 254. 39 Ibid., pp. 240, 241, 245. 40 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), p. 63. 41 “Mr. Mill’s Doctrine of Liberty,” p. 246. 42 Ibid., pp. 240, 244, 245, 253. 43 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 84. 44 “Mr. Mill’s Doctrine of Liberty,” pp. 247–248. 45 Thomas Hare, The Election of Representatives (London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1967), pp. 1, 6, 42, 48, 49, 79, 126, 207, 223, 272, 293. 46 On Liberty, pp. 50, 56, 67, 10. 47 Letter on a Regicide Peace, I, R. B. McDowell, ed., Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), vol. IX, pp. 243–245. 48 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), pp. 66–67. 49 John Stuart Mill, “Modern French Historical Works,” in John C. Cairns and John Robson, eds., Essays on French History and Historians (University of Toronto Press, 1985), pp. 20, 33, 37, 38, 40,47.

114  From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke 50 Stanley A. Wolpert, Morley and India, 1906–1910 (Berkeley: University of ­California Press, 1967). Eileen P. Sullivan, “Liberalism and Imperialism: J. S. Mill’s Defense of the British Empire,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 11, no. 1 (October–­ December 1983), pp. 599–617. On the extremely illiberal practices committed in the name of liberal imperialism, see Caroline Elkins, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2022). 51 Morley, Edmund Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 206–207, 209, 218. 52 Ibid., p. 200. 53 John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: Macmillan, 1867), vol. II, p. 129. 54 John Morley, Rousseau (London: Macmillan, 1910), vol. II, pp. 140–141. 55 Morley, Cobden, vol. I, p. 26. 56 Morley, Ibid., vol. II, p. 449. 57 Morley, On Compromise, p. 240. 58 Morley, Cobden, vol. I, p. 167. 59 Morley, On Compromise, pp. 227–228. 60 John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (New York: Macmillan, 1903), vol. I, pp. 25, 70. 61 Ibid., II, 477; III, 280. 62 Ibid., II, 660–661; III, 469. 63 John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), p. 2. 64 Morley, Burke: A Historical Study, p. 31. 65 Ibid., pp. 17–18. 66 Ibid., p. 46. Cf. pp. 20, 22n., 47, 54, 259. 67 Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (Boston, MA: ­Little, Brown, 1866), vol. IV, p. 466. 68 Morley, Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 5, 9, 10. 69 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 70 Burke, Present Discontents, vol. IV, p. 440. Morley, Burke: A Historical Study, p. 87. 71 Morley, Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 84, 86–87. 72 Ibid., pp. 12–13. 73 Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 74 Burke: A Historical Study, p. 140. Morley is quoting Burke’s Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. 75 Ibid., p. 123–124. 76 Morley, Burke, English Men of Letters (New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1900), p. 78. Originally published in 1879, twelve years after his first book on Burke. 77 Edmund Burke, “Speech on American Taxation,” in Paul Langford, ed., The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 458. 78 Edmund Burke, “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” in David Bromwich, ed., On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000) p. 169. 79 Morley, Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 21–23, 152. 80 Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, in Bromwish, p. 154. 81 Edmund Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies,” in The Work of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1866), p. 120. 82 Mark Hulliung, The Social Contract in America: From the Revolution to the Present Age (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007). 83 Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 133, 134, 136, 161. 84 Ibid., pp. 150, 216.

From the Disappearance to the Triumphal Reinstatement of Burke  115 85 Ibid., pp. 22, 35, 47, 54, 259. Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in ­England (New York: D. Appleton, 1870), vol. I, p. 334. 86 Ibid., pp. 231, 252, 261, 285, 299. Burke, English Men of Letters, pp. 159, 160. 87 Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 19–20, 122. 88 Burke [1879], p. 173. 89 Burke: A Historical Study, p. 282. 90 John Morley, Rousseau (London: Macmillan, 1910), vol. II, pp. 191–192. 91 John Morley, Rousseau (London: Macmillan, 1910), vol. I, pp. 88–89, 268. 92 Burke: A Historical Study, p. 143. 93 John Burke, “Speech on the Petition of the Unitarian Society,” in Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Edmund Burke (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), p. 120. 94 Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 308–310.

5

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England

Prelude to Burke the Conservative For the title of the person who most perfectly embodied the “conservative ­Liberal” point of view, no one has a stronger claim than William Gladstone; nor, ironically, was anyone more responsible than he for the splintering of conservative Liberals into hostile camps, Gladstonian Liberals versus Liberal-­Unionists, a divide that led to an alliance of Liberal Unionists with Conservatives in 1895, and by 1912 to the advent of a Conservative and Unionist Party. It was ­Gladstone’s repeated efforts to bring Home Rule to Ireland that resulted in a fracturing of the Liberal Party and an enhancement of the powers of the Conservatives, which for Gladstone was a most unwelcome chapter in history’s storybook of unintended consequences. Mr. Liberal, William Gladstone, had inadvertently opened a door through which Liberals would pass to join Conservatives. Passing with them would be the memory of Edmund Burke, his conservatism rebranded from a lower case “c” to an upper case “C” at the time of his initiation into the Conservative Party. Edmund Burke’s passage to the camp of the Conservatives did not happen overnight. It would take time for Burke to be embraced by the Conservatives who, although they had long since stopped excoriating him for opposing the slave trade, were in no hurry to overcome their doubts about his stands on royal prerogative, Empire, and Irish Catholics. With the Liberals, the situation was very different, Gladstonian Liberals and Liberal Unionists competing to claim the authority of Burke. Sir Charles Grey was on to something when as early as 1815 he remarked in Parliament that Burke provided “a magazine of arguments for and against every side of almost every question.”1 In 1826, John Hobhouse similarly noted that Mr. Burke “may be quoted for any side of almost any question.”2 Bishop William Boyd Carpenter updated these observations in 1897 with the comment that “every politician of the nineteenth century was happy if he could only shelter himself under the authority of Burke.”3 Home Rule was a perfect example of how Burke’s speeches could be harvested by both sides of a conflict. DOI: 10.4324/9781003412977-5

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  117 The division of the Liberals into two warring camps was entirely contrary to the wishes of Gladstone. It was relatively late, around 1860 or even later, that party unity had finally become a reality in nineteenth-century England. Only with the coming of universal suffrage did parties look beyond Parliament; only then did party functionaries feel compelled as never before to offer a reasonably coherent program to the public. Before democratization of the suffrage, ­coalitions came and went, politicking consisted of ongoing temporary adjustments; all public affairs were internal to parliamentary circles. Gladstone welcomed a disciplined party for the sake of passing a principled program of legislation, and no doubt regarded his own well-established political outlook as perfect for a party committed, as his was in large but not exclusive measure, to conservative Liberal principles. Burke was his lifelong intellectual companion as he journeyed from his affiliation with Robert Peel in his early days, to his entry into the Liberal Party and eventual elevation to the position of its leader for four terms as Prime Minister. At the peak of his career, 1885, Gladstone never tired of expressing his dedication to “true conservatism,” that is, to conservatism spelled with a lower case “c.” Speaking to his working class constituents in 1871, Gladstone had not hesitated to laud the theme of deference he believed they shared with him: I have a shrewd suspicion … that a very large proportion of the people of England are not like the people of France, lovers of naked political equality. England is a lover of liberty but of equality she has never been much enamored. An important feature of Disraeli’s attempt to woo the working class vote had been his pursuit of modest measures of social reform, as with the Artisans’ Dwelling Act of 1875, permitting local authorities to clear slums. Gladstone, pro-laissez faire as well as pro-gentry, would not sanction such measures. It is not your friends, but … your enemies in fact, though not in intention, who teach you to look to the legislature for the radical removal of the evils that afflict human life … It is the individual mind and conscience, it is the individual character, on which mainly human happiness and misery depends. When he saw signs that Liberals as well as Conservatives were thinking of introducing social reforms, his response in 1885 was “I deeply deplore … the leaning of both parties to socialism, which I radically disapprove”; and when Joseph Chamberlain, President of the Board of Trade during Gladstone’s second term, 1880–1885, stepped forth with modest proposals of social reform, Gladstone’s reaction was “His socialism repels me.” One possible source of comfort for ­Gladstone was that he had no reason to fear that Burke would have

118  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England questioned his opposition to proposals for compromising free trade. Burke’s words in Thoughts and Details on Scarcity on the sanctity of markets mesh perfectly with those of Gladstone. Nevertheless, the depths of Gladstone’s commitment to Ireland can only be appreciated by recalling his land reform bills to assist exploited tenants. These measures Gladstone pursued even though they limited property rights, in contradiction of his overall philosophy.4 Not all Liberals were in agreement with Gladstone’s convictions on social matters, his unwillingness to sponsor labor legislation; some were open to modest experiments. At the most philosophical level, reaching well beyond Chamberlain’s pragmatic agenda, stood the thoughts of T. H. Green. “Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract,” a work bearing the early date of 1881, featured Green’s eloquent call for principled social legislation. Yet, there was no lack of Liberals who did agree with Gladstone on social policies, and who found good reasons to discern in his speeches a welcome confirmation of their own conservative Liberal views. What broke the Liberals into two camps was not social and economic issues but Gladstone’s repeated efforts to legislate Home Rule for Ireland. In 1886, Gladstone introduced his first Home Rule bill. Setting the stage for subsequent discussions and animated exchanges, he could think of no better way to begin than by asking members of Parliament to remember their Burke. “I should like to quote Mr. Burke – and I hope we shall hear much of Mr. Burke in the course of this discussion.” Most certainly, he did succeed in this request because citing Burke, claiming his authority, quoting his speeches, was commonplace during the debates in Parliament and in literary outlets. “The writings of Mr. Burke upon Ireland …,” Gladstone continued, “are a mine of gold for the political wisdom with which they are charged, applicable to the circumstances of today, and full of the deepest and most valuable lessons to guide the policy of a country.”5 When the Home Rule bill of 1886 came to a vote it was defeated 341 to 311, with a remarkable 93 of the nays cast by Liberals. Just as upsetting to Gladstone was that the Liberal Unionist Party was formed to prevent future passage of another such bill. On one matter only did Gladstone see his desires come true, but surely not in the form he wished. Burke was indeed as he desired at the center of these debates on Home Rule, but was put to use, to Gladstone’s dismay, as forcefully by the anti-Home Rule forces as by his own allies. When Gladstone delivered his initial speech, inviting members of Parliament to consult Burke, he suggested that they pay attention to Burke’s thoughts “still more upon America” than to Burke upon Ireland. It was Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies and his Speech on American Taxation that were in dire need of being consulted. One duty of Parliament, Burke had affirmed, was to act, in his words, as “the local legislature of this island”; “the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her imperial character; in which … she superintends all the several inferior legislatures, and guides and controls them all without annihilating any.”6 Such sentiments expressed by Burke could

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  119 be and were turned to the defense of Home Rule by Gladstone and his cohort. The American colonies would likely never have been lost, they asserted, if only Parliament had understood when to refrain from proclaiming elevated assertions of right – if only it had preferred, instead, to seek a workable compromise. ­Lessons such as these from the past, taught by Edmund Burke, should be applied to Ireland in the present. Home Rule, properly constructed, far from a threat to Empire, would actually justify itself as a device for strengthening Ireland’s attachment to the Union. So spoke Gladstone, and some but far from all Liberals followed him. Yet another historical marker Gladstone and the Gladstonians were eager to cite was Grattan’s Parliament of 1782. During the American war for independence Westminster was in trouble, with reform-minded Whigs at home struggling peacefully to arouse public opinion against Parliament, and at the same time challengers in Ireland were willing to resort to force, if need be, to gain a measure of independence. What the Irish wanted was to rid the country of the trade regulations Britain had imposed at the request of British merchants. Fortunately for the Irish, war with America and the threat presented by the French permitted them and their leader Henry Grattan to win a measure of freedom. By far the greatest beneficiaries of Grattan’s Irish Parliament were the small minority of Anglicans, but Presbyterians and for a while even some Catholics could applaud. Under Grattan, argued the Gladstonians, the Irish had demonstrated that their Parliament could handle local affairs without challenging the British Empire. In the eyes of the Gladstonians, the historical example of Ireland in 1782 proved the viability of what they demanded for Ireland in 1886. And throughout their presentations the name of Edmund Burke, Irish himself and ever concerned about Ireland, constantly came to the fore. Never to be forgotten, it was hoped, was what Burke said of Grattan: “surely Great Britain and Ireland ought to join in wreathing a never fading garland for the head of Grattan.”7 Near the close of the eighteenth century, with the coming of the French Revolution, there was a struggle between friends and foes of Burke (Chapter 2); near the close of the nineteenth, a struggle between friends of Burke, foes of one other – Liberal Unionists against Gladstonian Home Rulers, both sides claiming Burke. Matthew Arnold played a role of significance in the conflict over whether Burke should be aligned with the friends or the foes of Home Rule. It was he who in 1881 edited and published Letters, Speeches, and Tracts on Irish Affairs by Edmund Burke, a volume that had the effect of inviting both Home Rulers and their opponents to justify themselves by identifying with Burke. To neglect Burke is to impoverish our culture and ourselves, suggested Arnold in his preface to Burke’s private and public reflections on Ireland. “He is the greatest of our political thinkers and writers. But his political thinking and writing has more value on some subjects than on others; the value is at its highest when the subject [is] Ireland.” Typical of Burke, thought Arnold, was his willingness to sacrifice his seat representing commercial Bristol rather than obeying his constituents’

120  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England demand that he vote to restrict Irish trade. “In my opinion, the importance of Burke’s thoughts on the policy pursued in Ireland is as great now,” on the eve of the Home Rule showdown, “as when he uttered them.”8 In his noteworthy book of 1869, Culture and Anarchy, Arnold had expressed his disgust with the “vulgarity of middle-class liberalism,” yet maintained he was faithful to the liberal tradition, if not always as it was, then as it sometimes was, as it could be and should be. “I am a liberal,” he announced in that work, and repeatedly he appealed to “our liberal friends.”9 During the 1880s, he continued to address “we earnest English Liberals” and all “good Liberals (of whom I am considered one).”10 When the question of Home Rule reached center stage, Arnold sided against Gladstone and with the Liberal Unionists, arguing not in pragmatic fashion but by invoking the principles he had set forth much earlier in Culture and Anarchy. Unlike many other prominent political authors in his day, he was not an office holder, but as a writer he had won widespread recognition. Matthew Arnold, with his considerable audience, could not be ignored, especially not by fellow Liberals. Central to Arnold’s vision, as stated in Culture and Anarchy, was a call for his fellow English subjects to live up to their highest potential, a call he renewed in the 1880s when he addressed the problem of Ireland. For all manifestations of what he deemed narrow-minded individualism, Arnold expressed nothing but contempt in Culture and Anarchy. Bentham and Benthamites, the most obvious targets, he tirelessly denounced but did not stop with them in his tirades against individualism. What could possibly be more wanting, he asked, than satisfaction with negative liberty, “the exaggerated notion which we English … entertain of the right and blessedness of the mere doing as one likes, of affirming oneself, and oneself just as it is.”11 What a poor substitute this is for seeking “our best self”12 and how wrong it is to set aside the quest for perfection merely because it is “at variance with our strong individualism.”13 Even in matters of religion, the Liberal party is under the sway of individualism in that it has always sought the support, not of organized Anglicans but of non-conforming ­Dissenters. “The Nonconformists, the successors and representatives of the Puritans, … have developed one side of their humanity at the expense of all others, and have become incomplete and mutilated men in consequence.”14 No better were the Liberals when at their seemingly most idealistic politically, they still resorted on occasion to the language of rights. Like many another Victorian, Arnold dismissed talk about rights insofar as it was ungrounded and abstract; peculiar to him, however, was his statement that duties are what matter, not rights.15 To whom could one turn for a remedy? Far from admirable in his estimation were the ignoble English aristocrats, but the triumph of the middle class, the Philistines, the mainstays of the Liberal Party, was nothing to celebrate. The rise of the middle class, not objectionable in and of itself, had unfortunately been accompanied by the fall of culture – the loss of humanistic wisdom, of sweetness and light. When Arnold took up the question of Home Rule in the 1880s, he did so by renewing these themes enunciated much earlier in Culture and Anarchy.

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  121 “Supporters of national unity have made one mistake,” exasperated Liberal Unionist A. V. Dicey admitted in 1888. Intent on highlighting the ill effects of Home Rule, “they have not addressed themselves with anything like due vigor to the moral convictions of the people.”16 This shortcoming, he might have added, need not have plagued the presentations of the Liberal Unionists if they had followed in the footsteps of Matthew Arnold. The moral high ground was precisely what Arnold demanded Unionists occupy when setting forth their arguments. A year after he published Burke’s works on Ireland, Arnold proclaimed his own views, which he held were a matter of updating Burke’s admission of the wrong-doing of landowners in Ireland, of following the lead of Burke who had denounced the oppressive Popery Laws, and of fulfilling Burke’s message of “healing.” “I have recourse to Burke in the early part of these remarks, and I wish to keep him with me … to the end.”17 From the outset, Arnold conceded that “Irish misery and discontent have been due more to English misgovernment and injustice than to Irish faults.” His solution was a renewal of Burke. “He was for a Union” in the late eighteenth century, and it was high time, thought Arnold, for England a century later finally to institute and oversee a proper, just, uplifting, and humane Union.18 It was not time, and would never be time, for England to follow Gladstone’s Home Rule abandonment of the quest for a morally and politically satisfactory union. Long had spokespersons for England justified Empire by professing to help a “lower civilization” rise to a higher level. Arnold pointed out that this theory, as applied to Ireland, was one thing, the reality quite another. “It behooves us to make quite sure, before we talk of Ireland’s lower civilization, that our civilization is really high, – high enough to exercise attraction.” Unfortunately, what the Irish “come across, and what gives them the idea they have of our civilization and of its promise, is our middle class.” As an expression of the middle class, “our civilization has no courtesy and graciousness, it has no enjoyment of life, it has the curse of hardness upon it.” It is anything but attractive. The “British Philistine” can be and must be transformed for the sake both of England and of Ireland.19 Burke was correct, concludes Arnold, to say it is not enough to grant reluctant, forced concessions to the Irish.20 Opposition to Home Rule must be anchored in constructive change at home, change in England. “If we wish cordially to attach Ireland to the English connexion, not only must we offer healing political measures, we must also, and that as speedily as we can, transform our middle class and its social civilization.”21 With the coming of Gladstone’s first Home Rule bill in 1886, Arnold’s position was that this country “rejects Mr. Gladstone’s plan, but it would give the Irish control of their own local affairs,” a limited measure of self-rule. A path would thereby be made available, not to the demise of the Union, but to the political education of the Irish. Should Gladstone refuse, the action called for was obvious. “To establish such a plan the Unionists can [act] in perfect concert with Lord Salisbury,” no matter that he is a Conservative.22 Arnold was willing to have Liberal Unionists cross the aisle and seat themselves next to Conservative

122  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England members of Parliament. Burke’s spirit would accompany them, in preparation for the emergence of his twentieth-century persona as a Conservative. Arnold was only one of a number of highly accomplished Liberal Unionists who opened the door for their successors to walk through and join the Conservatives. A. V. Dicey, W. E. H. Lecky, Leslie Stephen, and James Fitzjames ­Stephen were numbered among many others who, along with Arnold, continued to identify as Liberals even as the pursuit of their Unionist beliefs led to the dawn of a merger with the Conservatives. In at least one important respect, however, Arnold’s position was different from that of his fellow Unionists. His was the language of hope; theirs the language of fear. Constantly, they harped on what they deemed would be the disastrous consequences of Home Rule. Every time Gladstone and his cohort suggested that Home Rule was the best way to assure unity, the Liberal Unionists countered with the claim that the inevitable result would be the destruction of the Empire. Sooner or later, Ireland would go its own way, and its withdrawal might well have repercussions for the Empire throughout the world. “The wit of man could devise no more efficient agent [than Home Rule] for organizing and preparing the disruption of the Empire,” wrote Lecky in a letter to The Times dated January 13, 1886. Even if well intended, Home Rule will have disastrous consequences, and often, suggested Lecky, the intentions themselves are dishonorable: “The party which demands Home Rule … is animated by two leading ideas – a desire to plunder the whole landed property of the country, and an inveterate hatred of the English connexion.” Lecky was also concerned about the eventual fate of Protestants in Ireland. Liberals champion liberty, but how under Home Rule will “the liberty of the individual” be protected in the case of the vulnerable minority of Irish Protestants? For Lecky, the threat was personal; he was Irish and Protestant. Liberal Unionists also dismissed Gladstonian efforts to claim Grattan’s Parliament for their cause. “It is perfectly idle to argue from the old Irish Parliament to any Parliament that could now be established,” contended Lecky. What existed then is “utterly unlike anything that could now be set up.”23 Seconding Lecky, Dicey held that “Home Rule as the revival of Grattan’s Constitution is an impossibility. The Constitution of 1782 belongs to a past age, and cannot by any miracle be at the present day restored to life.” It is “dead” and admits of no “resurrection.” Raising the stakes of his argument against Gladstone’s proposal, Dicey proceeded in England’s Case Against Home Rule to argue further and passionately that there was never anything admirable about Grattan’s Constitution. Insisting it was lost and gone forever did not suffice. Even more important was to recognize that it “rested on the absolute denial of British Parliamentary sovereignty,” as is true of Gladstone’s Home Rule proposal.24 Both measures, 1782 and 1886, were radically mistaken and destructive. Nothing could be more wrong-headed, then, than to sigh nostalgically over the demise of the Constitution of 1782, when its existence had constituted a threat to the beloved English Constitution.

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  123 “Gladstone’s Constitution rested on the absolute denial of British ­ arliamentary sovereignty,”25 and as such is totally unacceptable and downright P pernicious. Words such as the foregoing coming from someone with Dicey’s credentials were especially powerful. Immediately preceding the first Home Rule bill, he had published Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, which established his reputation as the leading expositor of the Constitution, the ­Blackstone, one might say, of his age. Constitutional law he defined as “all rules which directly or indirectly affect the distribution or the exercise of the sovereign power in the state.”26 For the sake of upholding the Constitution, everyone should accept that whatever Parliament says, when pronouncing on the most vital matters, must be upheld. “Parliament is, under the English constitution, an absolutely sovereign legislature,” and as such has “the right to make or unmake any law whatever.”27 Gladstone is repeating the dangerous mistake made by Burke’s fellow Whig, Charles James Fox, “who blended in his political creed doctrines of absolute Parliamentary sovereignty … [with] the essentially inconsistent dogma of the sovereignty of the people.” Burke, points out Dicey, never shared Fox’s confusion.28 Time and again, beginning on his first page, Dicey cited Burke in his famous treatise on constitutional law, claiming his authority. Very likely, Dicey strongly approved of Burke’s saying that “our ­ancestors … went on insensibly drawing this Constitution nearer and nearer to its perfection, by never departing from its fundamental principles.”29 Continuity was everything, Home Rule the disruption of continuity. The conflict between Fox and Burke was about more than parliamentary sovereignty. It was also about Fox’s support for and Burke’s opposition to the French Revolution during its earliest years, a conflict that would result in Burke’s abandonment of the Whig Party. When the Liberal Unionists broke with Gladstone’s Liberals, they pointed to the parallel of Burke crossing the aisle to join with Pitt and the Tories, just as they were tempted to cross over and join the Conservatives. History was, they were tempted to say, repeating itself. A favorite text the Liberal Unionists drew upon was Burke’s Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs; their update was to portray themselves as appealing from the new to the old Liberals. If Gladstone could not cite Burke’s speeches on the conflict with America too often, the Liberal Unionists countered with citations to Burke on the French Revolution, and in the course of doing so welcomed the possibility of an alliance with the Conservatives. Mathew Arnold was a transitional figure. Even as he joined the ranks of Liberal Unionists, he continued to speak the language of the Liberals he had left behind: “On the French Revolution,” he remarked, Burke’s “utterances are not entirely those of the Burke of the best time, of the Burke of the American War … But on Ireland, which he knew thoroughly, he was always the Burke of the best time.”30 Ireland permitted Arnold both to reaffirm the old Liberal position of sympathy for the American revolutionaries, and yet to move on, leaving his Liberal past behind him as he enrolled in the ranks of the

124  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England Liberal Unionists. Other Liberal Unionists marched straight forward, endorsing the ­anti-French Burke, forgetting the pro-American Burke. Eventually, Gladstone and the Liberal Unionists would confront one another in irreconcilable and at times inflammatory rhetorical exchanges. Earlier in his career, Gladstone held it was “not by compulsion but by the free will of the people, [that] this body of gentlemen called the house of lords exercise a vast social and political influence.”31 Later, when the House of Lords vetoed his second Home Rule bill in 1893, he was driven to voice the language of despair: I painfully reflect that in almost every one … of the great political ­controversies of the last fifty years, whether they affected the franchise, … ­commerce, … religion, … slavery, or whatever, … [in all such matters] these leisured, … educated, … wealthy … titled classes have been in the wrong.32 Precisely, the opposite stand was taken by W. E. H. Lecky who in his 1896 study, Democracy and Liberty, both denounced Gladstone’s Home Rule bills and ­congratulated the Lords on vetoing the second. “The last speech delivered in Parliament by Mr. Gladstone was truly described … as ‘a declaration of war against the House of Lords’,” wrote a disgusted Lecky. Despite his fear of democracy, Lecky defended the Lords by stealing the name of democracy in support of his cause. “The elections of 1886 and 1895 have shown beyond all possibility of doubt that, on the Home Rule question, the House of Lords represented the true sentiments of the democracy of the country.”33 Throughout his account, Burke predictably made frequent appearances. Remarkable though they were, Lecky’s remarks in 1896 against ­Gladstonians, issued after the defeat of the second Home Rule bill, were no match for the hostility of Dicey’s diatribe in 1888, when the question of Home Rule was still undecided. The crucial document is Dicey’s essay “New Jacobinism and Old Morality.” Home Rulers he designated as modern Jacobins and he wholeheartedly embraced for his time Burke’s “Letters on a Regicide Peace,” the very document early nineteenth-century Tories had distanced themselves from ­ because of its extremism (Chapter 3). After citing “Regicide Peace” enthusiastically, Dicey goes on to say Burke’s anti-revolutionary writings teem with sentences which might appear to be prophetically aimed at the favorite dogmas of Gladstonian Liberalism. The whole spirit of his teaching is as hostile to the new Jacobitism patronized by Mr. Gladstone as to the old Jacobinism patronized or tolerated by Fox.34 New Jacobinism is “the child of old Jacobinism and exhibits with but slight change the familiar traits of its parent. Once again, as a century ago, à priori dogmatism apes the appearance of political wisdom.”35 Sadly, the Conservative Salisbury is preferable to the Liberal Gladstone.36

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  125 The kindest thing Dicey could say of the Gladstonians was that they know not what they do. Neither do they know their Burke: “Burke is sometimes appealed to by Gladstonian controversialists as an authority in favor of Gladstonian policy. Any fair critic who is even moderately acquainted with Burke’s works, hears such an appeal with simple astonishment.”37 Burke had rightly switched allegiance to join the Tories, and Liberal Unionists were right to abandon Gladstone when they reached out to Conservatives. Dicey had stolen Burke from Gladstonian Liberals and enrolled him in a place of honor among Liberal Unionists. The only remaining question was how long would it take before Conservatives discovered that Burke, the late nineteenthcentury Liberal Unionist, was available to them as Burke, the twentieth-century Conservative? They had everything to gain, nothing to lose by embracing Burke. His pronouncements, carefully selected and updated, could be theirs and could fill a troublesome void, arming them with what was missing from their public image, a forcefully articulated political outlook. The Advent of Burke the Conservative There was much to cause Conservatives to worry during the early years of the twentieth century. In the 1906 election, they won only 157 seats, the lowest count ever. The world was changing and Conservatives were struggling to adjust. By 1905, only about one in seven of their seats in Parliament was held by a Conservative who could boast aristocratic credentials of title and land; ever more frequently members of Parliament hailed from cities rather than countryside, a dramatic reversal. With the rise of the Labour Party and its coherent ideology, the lack of a thoughtful Conservative answer was all too evident. Slow to exit was the nineteenth-century legacy of factional, ill-defined, muddling-through politics. Why bother with ideologies, why think of anyone outside Parliament, before the many belatedly gained the vote in 1867 and 1884? Why worry about the lack of consistency on fundamental policies – back-and-forth on free trade, no and yes on imperialism? No longer could the Tories afford to walk along the well-worn path of yesteryear. Desperately, they needed in the twentieth century to catch up with a changing world. The time had come wrote a distraught Arthur Boutwood in 1913 for ­Conservatives to prove they can think. He opened his book, National Revival: a ­Re-statement of Tory Principles, with an ominous warning: “The very foundations of the political, social, and industrial order which we have inherited are under adverse criticism.” Our disturbing situation is this: we are faced with the development of a new political mind which owes practically nothing to the great Conservative tradition, and it has been made possible … by the long abstention of the Conservative Party from anything and everything that deserves the name of thought.

126  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England We are unprepared to answer the challenge because “modern conservatism has never developed a distinctive philosophy of politics or defined a distinctive ideal. It has been a practical attitude rather than a reasoned creed.” How frustrated then Boutwood must have felt when he encountered the words of Lord Salisbury. Prime Minister three times, for a total of more than thirteen years, a person of deeply conservative instincts, Salisbury had written, “the course of events in our day is so startling and the forces which determine it are so new, that the history of the past gives us little aid in deciphering the mysteries of the future.”38 Salisbury had no political philosophy with which to meet the challenge, and although his sentiments have been described as Burkean, Burke is singularly absent from his articles in a primary outlet for the expression of Tory opinion, the Quarterly Review.39 Liberals such as John Stuart Mill and T. H. Green, not Conservatives, ­dominated political thought in the nineteenth century, contended Boutwood. “For a hundred years [Conservatism] has been unrepresented in the highest ranks of political thought. Not since Burke has it had a political thinker of the first rank.”40 A consistent, coherent philosophy of Conservatism is overdue and essential. “The time for ‘muddling through’ has passed.”41 The Parliament Act of 1911, which entailed a significant reduction of the powers of the House of Lords, awakened Conservatives to the task of thinking consistently, theoretically, about the beliefs they had long taken for granted. Hints of a recognition that Conservative ideology needed to be addressed, formulated, and publicized can be discerned even earlier, as when Lord Malmesbury called for a “more systematic political theory.” Someone of the stature of “Hobbes or Burke,” he sighed wistfully, was needed to arm Conservatives with a “political philosophy.”42 What seemed unlikely to Malmesbury in 1908 became far more plausible in 1911 when a number of remarkable figures stepped forth to assume the philosophical mantle, Boutwood numbered among them, but most aggressively outspoken in their ranks was Richard Grenville Verney, titled Lord ­Willoughby de Broke. Willoughby de Broke was a prominent spokesperson for Tories in the House of Lords, a leader of the “Die-Hards” or “Ditchers,” the radical Tories who fought against the Parliament Act of 1911. In a breach of parliamentary convention, the Lords had vetoed the budget of 1909, eliciting the response from the Commons in 1911 that the Lords’ right to veto was henceforth denied, negations from the Upper House limited thereafter to delaying bills for no more than two years. Try as one might, it is difficult to think of a member of the Lords who better embodied their values than de Broke, for whom nothing was more natural than rule by a landed aristocracy, its primacy gratefully accepted by all ranks of society. Hunting the Fox, the book he eventually published, was about sport but may also be taken as a symbol of all that was dearest to him, the aristocratic way of life. Backward looking though he was, no Tory was more determined than Lord Willoughby de Broke to turn the democratic age to the advantage of

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  127 Conservatives. A reactionary he was, but far from a hopeless reactionary. The modern democratic age, he firmly believed, could be exploited to serve the purposes of the Tories. Willoughby de Broke and Arthur Boutwood were allies; their alliance ­publicly confirmed when Boutwood agreed that de Broke would write an “Introduction” to National Revival: a Re-statement of Tory Principles. One of their many natural affinities was a shared belief that they lived in an age of revolutionary change in England, an ongoing threat to everything they cherished. “In England to-day alarmed and unhelpful voices are warning us of coming Revolution,” wrote Boutwood in his opening pages. “Their warning is belated, for the Revolution is already accomplished, and what is approaching is merely the final catastrophe.”43 Much the same view may be found in Willoughby de Broke’s essay of late 1911, “The Tory Tradition.” The Reform Bill of 1832, he wrote, although preceded by disruptive moments, “was not a Revolution. The Parliament Bill [of 1911] destroys the Constitution and is therefore a Revolution.” When a rightwing spokesperson speaks out against Revolution, we are not surprised if he or she cites Burke, as Boutwood did at the very beginning of his book. What is surprising is how little opportunity de Broke granted Burke to appear in his pages. He was in full agreement with Boutwood that the time had come for the articulation of a Conservative philosophy, a philosophy inspired insofar as possible by famous figures from the past. Why then his relative silence about Burke? Was there something so unprecedented about his Conservatism that it rendered Burke irrelevant, and delayed Burke’s emergence as the hero of twentieth-­century Conservatism? Lord Willoughby de Broke could not have been more alarmed because, in his view, what was at stake in his time was nothing less than the viability of the Constitution, the question whether it could survive the attack on the House of Lords and a renewed struggle over Home Rule for Ireland. The difficult assignment of providing the public with a Conservative political philosophy was one he accepted and which is a theme of his pronouncements. “First principles, First principles, and again First Principles are what we must preach … No more tactics,” he proclaimed in a letter of January 29, 1911, addressed to ­Leopold Maxse, editor of the Conservative journal National Review.44 Later that year, he gave public voice to his alarm: “The necessity for protecting the cardinal principles of Conservatism is here submitted.”45 His publications of 1913 abound in calls for a restoration of principles. “Never before in the whole history of England has it been more urgent to reaffirm national principles, and to direct men’s minds from the expedient and the transient to the vital and the eternal.”46 Especially in his essay “National Toryism,” he spoke of “the need for a great revival of thought”47 and repeatedly called out for a reaffirmation of principles: “We must have a faith, a philosophy, … a creed, a clarified statement of principles.”48 Our inescapable task is “to reconstruct national thought from the very foundations.”49 Leaders willing to place principle above party

128  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England “have a unique opportunity of saving the nation by leading a confused and discordant public back to first principles.”50 In spelling out his principles, what came immediately to Willoughby de Broke’s mind was “the idea of unity,” national unity, “the keynote of National Toryism,” and to secure it nothing was more important than to seek “unity between all classes.”51 Workers will vote for Conservatives, not for Labourites or socialists, if only we remind them of the historical record. The whole history and teaching of the Tory Party is packed with constructive Social Reform. The Tories were the only Party who took any notice of the working classes before they had the vote. In industrial matters we have only to return to first principles.52 Workers are entitled to “a living wage and a healthy home and the enjoyment of the elementary rights of citizenship. The position of the sweated workers is indefensible from every single point of view.”53 Once workers understand where their interests lie, they will no longer listen to talk about a future socialist society in which no one is privileged, but rather will respond to reassuring talk about everyone feeling privileged, here and now, in that all are eligible to enjoy the comfort and fulfillment of English civic life.54 National unity will be all the more readily assured because of a common belief in England’s imperial mission and a commonly shared religious faith. “We believe [the Empire] to be the greatest agency for good that the world has ever seen.”55 The British Empire must be “everywhere or nowhere,” hopefully everywhere for the benefit of all human kind.56 Closest to home, Home Rule must never be permitted. “On the day the Sovereign gives the Royal Assent to Home Rule for Ireland the honor of England will be gone forever.”57 We must be one nation, one people, and in that quest, religion should play a major role. The unity of Church and state is essential: “Not that politics are to be brought into religion. Rather let religion be brought into politics.”58 Our calling as Conservatives is to foster “a great awakening,”59 an uplifting awakening, recognizing that “neither Tariff Reform, nor the Union, is in itself enough to satisfy the soul of a people … Character is more important.”60 In charting his course of action, it is only to be expected that Willoughby de Broke would seek whatever consolation and inspiration he could unearth in conservative thinkers of an earlier age. Unexpected is how little attention he pays to Burke, possibly explained by Burke’s hostility to the rhetoric of “principle” in contrast to Willoughby de Broke’s preoccupation with the same. Disraeli is the figure he admires most, and when he reaches back to the eighteenth century, it is not Burke but Bolingbroke, treated with contempt by Burke, who receives considerable attention. Just as Disraeli had admired Bolingbroke and marginalized Burke, so does Willoughby de Broke. His essay “The Tory Tradition” begins with a long quotation from an eighteenth-century figure – Bolingbroke,

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  129 not Burke. Several pages later, Bolingbroke is again quoted at length and praised for his insight into the dangers threatening England in his age.61 In the same essay, readers are invited to “drink copiously at the fount of Bolingbroke, Pitt, and Beaconsfield [Disraeli].”62 Burke is absent from this list of forerunners, and forced to wait for admission to the list until publication of “National Toryism” and even then without elaboration of his significance.63 Overwhelmingly, it was with Disraeli that Willoughby de Broke identified, and it was Disraeli’s outlook and policies that he wished to adapt to the twentieth century. To review our previous findings about Disraeli (Chapter 3) is to recognize why Willoughby de Broke saw him as his forerunner. No word is more sacred in de Broke’s vocabulary than “national,” which encouraged him to begin “National Toryism” with a quote from Disraeli: “The Tory Party, unless it is a National Party, is nothing.” Disraeli had preceded de Broke in championing a society of privileges for all rather than privileges for none; in calling for England to be “One Nation” instead of “Two Nations,” the rich and the poor. The social programs Disraeli had initiated would be fulfilled by the Conservatives of the twentieth century, if de Broke had his way. Disraeli also preceded and inspired Willoughby de Broke in his imperial ambition. They agreed, yet again, that religion and politics should work hand in hand, never in separation; and for both men “principles,” “national principles,” never hollow cosmopolitanism, should unite the entire country. What are our principles? “Disraeli told us in his memorable and prophetic speech at the Crystal Palace in 1872.”64 Almost always Willoughby de Broke found anticipations of himself in ­Disraeli’s speeches, quite often in Bolingbroke’s but virtually never in Burke’s, presumably because radical Toryism is a square peg that will not fit into the round hole of traditional Conservatism. Willoughby de Broke’s Conservatism was not Burke’s. Unlike Burke’s presumption of a continuous, unbroken English history threatened in his own day by the sympathizers at home with the Revolution in France, Willoughby de Broke seconded Disraeli’s theme of long-standing historical discontinuity. Going beyond Disraeli, de Broke joined with Boutwood in holding that the revolution had already occurred in England. “The Constitution has perished,”65 such that the Conservatives must be prepared by any and all means to restore the British Constitution, torn down by their political opponents. On democracy, de Broke and Disraeli were in agreement, and in disagreement with Burke. Any concessions Burke made to democracy were to its limited place within a system of mixed and balanced government. In the sharpest possible contrast, both de Broke and Disraeli claimed democracy for the Conservative cause. Disraeli went so far as to cite Pitt the Younger as an early advocate of the democratic cause; and Bolingbroke, even earlier, as someone who sided with the Tories because they stood for democracy as opposed to the Whigs, the arch-defenders of oligarchy. Assuming the many in England’s deferential society would support the few, Disraeli saw nothing to lose, much to gain in his expansion of the franchise in 1867 (Chapter 3). Democracy as it existed in the

130  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England early twentieth century, noted Willoughby de Broke with disgust, was little more than “the exploitation of the nation by the money-grubbing classes, who are in their turn exploited by a minority of shallow ‘intellectuals’.” But the lesson to be learned was not to abandon democracy, thus conceding permanent defeat, but to use and abuse it as necessary for political gain. In an age of democracy, we must be prepared to deal with voters who “only understand methods of a more sledgehammer type.”66 Boutwood’s thoughts are much the same as de Broke’s, with the difference that National Revival: a Re-statement of Tory Principles is a more developed treatise than anything de Broke found time to offer the public. Among the many redundant themes is Boutwood’s pronouncement that “the State cannot do without religion, – least of all the modern democratic state.”67 There is the same quest for unity, the same fear of the “New Democracy,” and the same effort to exploit it for Conservative purposes by learning how to speak to “the man in the street in his own language.”68 Again in common with de Broke, there is the appeal to Empire as a source of pride and unity for everyone, regardless of class standing: “our Empire … is the embattled home of an ethical idea, of history’s greatest achievement, of the future’s greatest possibility.”69 Boutwood, in his quest for unity, was attentive to the plight of the working class. “The most conspicuous fact in English politics today is the new self-­assertion of the working classes.”70 Forever gone is the age when workers, accepting “subordination of class to class, reinforced by religious conceptions,” were willing to find fulfillment “even in menial and trivial work. That ­subordination … has disappeared.” In the age of the factory, “the soullessness of modern work” is undeniable.71 Labor is merely a commodity, its demoted standing celebrated by “Liberal political economy.” As a remedy, “partnership” between labor and capital should be the goal, and if such mutual understanding were diligently pursued, Boutwood was convinced that “labor would grow towards a loftier patriotism.”72 The moral uplift not only of the workers but of the privileged, of all citizens, should be the goal of the Conservative State, Boutwood affirmed.73 Everyone should be taught that we are group beings, not individuals,74 and that although rights will be respected, duties should be understood as more essential. “Man has rights because he has duties, and only because he has duties.”75 Negative freedom, “the absence of restraint,” the “right to do whatever [one] likes,” will not suffice. A measure of active “political education,” of modest participation of all in some public matters – positive freedom – is mandatory.76 Democracy untutored is a nightmare; democracy educated can forge a path to unprecedented human achievement. These changes admittedly will not be readily achieved. A politics “from above”77 is essential to save the new democratic age from itself. “The classes at one time called ‘the governing classes’ have lost confidence in themselves.”78 A new governing class must arise. Under the leadership of a recomposed elite

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  131 espousing the ideology of “Constructive Toryism” a National Revival was ­possible, Boutwood was convinced. Much like Lord Willoughby, Boutwood accepted that the new Conservatism should not delude itself into thinking it merely had to recapture the past, “for the unity which gave stability to the past is irrecoverable.”79 The past is lost and gone forever. Strangely enough, only a radical Toryism will suffice under modern conditions. Where did Burke fit in this bold new incarnation of Conservatism? By and large he did not. For a brief moment, it appears that Burke might fare far better in Boutwood’s treatise than in Willoughby de Broke’s essays. Unlike de Broke who began “The Tory Tradition” with a long quotation from Bolingbroke, the quotation at the outset of National Revival is from Burke, and as we have seen, ­Boutwood early in his presentation hailed Burke and lamented the lack of a ­worthy Conservative successor. It is also true that Bolingbroke makes no appearance in National Revival and that Boutwood does not build upon the legacy of Disraeli. But what is decisive is that Burke quickly disappears from the pages of National Revival. No more than de Broke does Boutwood attempt to reconcile Burke, the spokesperson for historical continuity, with the radical Tory claim of discontinuity and the professed need to start over, to construct a new Conservatism in recognition of a new world. Radicalism, even if rightwing radicalism, is incompatible with Burke. Liberal Unionism had opened the door for Burke to enter the twentieth century; Conservative Unionism inadvertently blocked his entrance for quite some time. Burke the Conservative had yet to arrive on the scene.

** When the published thoughts of Willoughby de Broke and Arthur Boutwood from 1911 to 1913 were succeeded in 1914 by historian and future member of Parliament Sir Geoffrey G. Butler’s, The Tory Tradition: Bolingbroke, Burke, Disraeli, Salisbury, one person who benefited was Edmund Burke. As the title indicates, he was not yet promoted to the stature of the one and only patron saint of Conservatives, but he was acknowledged as a figure who merited careful attention. Once again, as with de Broke and Boutwood, Burke had to share the stage with Bolingbroke and Disraeli, and Disraeli enjoyed the advantage that he had addressed the problems of an industrial age still pressing in Butler’s time, virtually non-existent in Burke’s age. Nevertheless, the very format of the book, with Burke treated to a chapter of his own, bore some responsibility for the emergence in Butler’s volume of Burke as Conservative. On this occasion, Burke would not have to struggle to be heard, and his thoughts would be presented by a knowledgeable historian harboring Conservative sympathies. “Back to Burke … He must be the Bible of … pure and reformed Conservatism.”80 So declared Butler at the end of the relevant chapter. His preceding comments on what Conservatives should learn from Burke are quite striking.

132  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England Most of all they should realize that “Burke saw into the eternal meaning of the Revolution.”81 Let John Morley and other commentators say what they will to make a case for the continuity of Burke’s pronouncements; it is nonetheless true that “the [French] Revolution marked as clear a turning point for him as did the vision on the road to Damascus for St. Paul.”82 Burke’s stress upon the common law, upon turning to the past for guidance rather than to conjured dreams of the future, his insistence upon the “organic state of society”83 – these when combined form a “statement of the fundamental doctrine of all Toryism.”84 “Burke I believe to be the thinker of all thinkers who have left to us commentaries upon Tory doctrine.”85 To the honor of our schools and thanks to Burke, students learn that “the French Revolution as a turning-point of history was only approached in importance by the creation of the world itself.”86 Burke the forerunner of Conservatism steps forth in Butler’s chapter, ready for recognition and admiration by twentieth-century Conservatives. Another champion of Burke was Lord Hugh Cecil, who did much to institutionalize Burke as the father of Conservatism. Born to a family prominent in public life, youngest son of Prime Minister Salisbury, first cousin of Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, Hugh Cecil was known for his remarkable speeches and for annoying almost everyone when acting in his mischievous role as eponymous leader of the Hughlians, young Tories critical of their own leaders. For a moment, it seemed as if an alliance might be negotiated between Cecil and the radical Tories, especially when Willoughby de Broke invited him to a reading by Arthur Boutwood of his paper on “Conservative Principles,” a warming-up exercise for writing his book National Revival. But although Cecil agreed with de Broke and Boutwood on many matters, and outdid them in his admiration of Burke, his treatises Liberty and Authority (1910) and Conservatism (1912) also reveal significant differences. Before examining Cecil’s divergence from the radical Tories, it is best to underscore the similarities which confirm that his claim to the title of Conservative was as well or better founded than theirs. Exactly like de Broke or ­Boutwood, Cecil placed a high value on the development of “a mind trained to value the intellectual coherence of a sound political theory.”87 Again like them, he affirmed that “only by having a class of men born to be politicians can you ensure … that notable skill in parliamentary methods so highly valued in both Houses for many generations.”88 Reaffirmation of England’s imperial calling was another shared assumption: “our vocation in the world has been to undertake the government of vast uncivilized populations and to raise them gradually to a higher level of life.”89 Agreement, too, on the primacy of religion: “the championship of religion is the most important of the functions of Conservatism. It is the arch upon which the whole fabric rests.”90 And it almost goes without saying that he shared with all Tories his horror at the demotion of the House of Lords in 1911. A final link with the radical Tories was Cecil’s insistence upon spying Jacobin tendencies in his opponents. “There is sometimes a taint of Jacobinism

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  133 in socialist language,”91 he warned, and the same is true of the language of Home Rulers.92 With the undoubted blessing of the radical Tories, Cecil confirmed that “conservatism arose to resist Jacobinism, and that is to this day its most essential and fundamental characteristic.”93 Despite the many agreements between Cecil and the radical Tories, their parting of the ways was striking in that the radical Tories aligned themselves with the “collectivism” of the new age, placing the group before the individual,94 whereas for Cecil the individual always came first. G. K. Chesterton’s opinion that Cecil was guilty of “extreme individualism”95 was similar to the charges lodged by many a Tory, radical or not. Very revealing is the contrast of Arthur Boutwood with Hugh Cecil in their respective responses to the Liberal philosophers John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, and T. H. Green. Although he grudgingly conceded the primacy of Liberal philosophers in the nineteenth century, Boutwood expressed a measure of esteem for only one, T. H. Green, author of Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. “The most fruitful conceptions in present-day politics – those dominant thoughts, of the social organism, of political right, of social service are his.”96 Impossible it was for Boutwood to avoid finding something to favor in Green who had written, “A law is not good because it enforces ‘natural rights,’ but because it contributes to the realization of a certain end.”97 T. H. Green, the Liberal, was not objectionable in exactly the measure that his writings comported favorably with the Conservative outlook. Quite the opposite was Cecil, who criticized both Mill and Arnold on the grounds that they were Liberals but not liberal enough. In Liberty and Authority Cecil in effect criticized Mill because he was not as liberal as he should have been when defending individual freedom in his famous essay On Liberty. Unacceptable was that Mill wrote we should be free but not so free as to do whatever reaches beyond ourselves to disturb others. “Everything we do concerns others than ourselves,”98 objected Cecil, the same objection that some Liberals would lodge against Mill. Arnold was worse than Mill since as early as Culture and Anarchy he was guilty of a brilliantly and attractively stated “authoritarian attack on liberty.” Throughout his works, Arnold never tired of urging the state to intervene, forcing citizens to be free, forbidding the freedom of “doing as one likes.”99 Cecil was a Conservative Unionist, but his Conservatism was willing to harvest the best of Liberalism for his own purposes. One other matter in which Cecil’s politics paralleled that of the Liberals, or at least of Liberals before they embraced the welfare state, was his opposition to Joseph Chamberlain’s attempt to protect workers by substituting Tariff Reform for free trade. Taking his stand in favor of free trade did not place Cecil in conflict with Edmund Burke, the hero of his 1912 study, Conservatism. In his presentation of 1795, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, Burke’s point of reference was his understanding of Adam Smith (Chapter 3). “To provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government,” Burke held. “Patience, labor, sobriety, frugality, and religion should be recommended to [workers]; all the

134  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England rest is downright fraud.”100 Burke would have nothing to do with “the zealots of the sect of regulation.”101 Labor is a commodity and should be treated as such; to interfere with it is to overturn “the laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God.”102 All we can do for the working class is remember that “charity to the poor is a direct and obligatory duty upon all Christians.”103 Much the same are Cecil’s pronouncements in Conservatism. Consider his statement: “The cruel State that leaves a man to starve does not actively injure him. The only question is, does it withhold from him something to which he is entitled? I find it hard to argue that it does.”104 Charity is the answer, the only acceptable answer for the right-thinking Tory. “The religious foundation of his Tory beliefs gives to the sorrows of the poor an urgent claim upon his care,”105 voluntary care, not mandatory and governmental. Both Conservatism and socialism have gone astray in enhancing the powers of the state in the name of social justice, better named unfreedom. Burke is front and center in all of Cecil’s reflections. “In Burke Conservatism found its first and perhaps its greatest teacher; … [he] gave to the Conservative movement the dignity of a philosophical creed and the fervor of a religious crusade.”106 Against those who would accuse Burke of inconsistency, Cecil responds with the well-worn claim that he had always been a conservative, even when he was a Whig.107 Admittedly, Burke had his faults; he was only human. His Regicide Peace is extravagant, and he failed to recognize that France suffered from a serious social problem.108 Nevertheless, “when it is remembered that he wrote in 1790, long before the Reign of Terror or the Napoleonic Empire, his political insight seems marvelous.”109 On all the main lines of his criticism, he was right and deserves credit for abandoning Fox, who was inexcusably sympathetic toward the French. At that moment, when Burke went over to the Tories, “Conservatism may be said to have been born.”110 Cecil’s individualism, far from signifying a return to nineteenth-century ­Liberalism, was in his estimation an updated version of Conservatism, carefully enfolded in long-standing Conservative themes. What Conservatives took for granted, and which Cecil shared with them, was their favorite analogy of society as an “organism.” Insofar as Cecil had affinities with the conservativeleaning Liberal Unionists of the late nineteenth century, he may have been familiar with Leslie Stephen’s strongly stated organicism,111 and definitely he took notice of the organic analogy in Burke, eagerly applying it to the Conservatism of the twentieth century. Burke “regarded society as an organism,” Cecil remarked approvingly; “This sense that the State is a mysterious organism may be almost called the keynote of Burke’s political philosophy.”112 No collectivist Conservative would outdo Cecil when it came to lauding the organic analogy of Burke’s day and restating it for modern times. Other themes that Cecil shared with Conservatives included the praise of social hierarchy; the repudiation of what they believed was the French sacrifice of freedom to equality; and the conviction that the great dividing line of all history into “before and after” was the

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  135 French Revolution. Even when Cecil sanctioned a politics of radical-sounding “­resistance” to the State, he did so for the Conservative reason of protecting the Protestants of Ulster against the threat of Home Rule. Just as Tories had refused the Catholicism of James II in 1688, so also the Conservatives of Cecil’s day, despite their deep respect for authority, had good reasons, he believed, to protect Irish Protestants from Catholics, by means of active resistance if necessary.113 His ardent individualism notwithstanding, we may conclude that Cecil was careful to tie his ideology to Conservatism in its past incarnations. That was essential but did not suffice. Peering into the future, he hoped that his brand of forward-looking Conservatism would eventually win the day against Tories who in his estimation were locked in the past. Had he been able to view the rest of the twentieth century, he might well have been satisfied. For if the pro-State and welfare-friendly Conservatism of Disraeli and the radical Tories had many triumphs over the course of future years, it is also true that free trade, anti-State Conservatism would eventually have its day. Both versions of Conservatism could and did claim Burke as their progenitor and mentor. The documents dealing with Conservatism and with Burke authored by ­Willoughby de Broke, Arthur Boutwood, Hugh Cecil, and Geoffrey Butler were published in the early years of the second decade of the twentieth century. Another document published later in that decade by A. V. Dicey also demands attention, his essay “Burke on Bolshevism” published in 1918. Only a few more years had passed, but to all observers, it felt as if Europe had been subjected overnight to a dramatic break, the Russian Revolution, a momentous threat demanding a response. Dicey answered by offering the English people “the ­Lessons of Burke for modern England.”114 To understand the meaning of B ­ olshevism all that was necessary, suggested Dicey, was to review Burke’s words in his Reflections, while making the minor adjustment of crossing out “France” in Burke’s text, substituting “Russia.”115 Although a good Liberal, Dicey remarked approvingly that Burke would not have accepted John Stuart Mill “with much patience.”116 The larger point is that it is imperative that Liberals as well as Conservatives embrace Burke. Everyone should learn the lesson encapsulated in the motto “Beware of Bolshevism at home.” At a time when Liberal supporters of welfare programs such as Sir William Harcourt have joined with socialists in saying “We are now all of us socialists,” the danger is grave indeed.117 That someone with Dicey’s political credentials should applaud Burke is astonishing. Throughout his long career, Dicey had espoused a version of Liberal individualism placing him seemingly at odds with Burke. With great force, Dicey had always insisted that the common law recognizes individuals only and that “personal liberty is the basis of national welfare,”118 views that are difficult to reconcile with Burke’s focus on the primacy of group identities. Another source of potential conflict was that Dicey supported the extension of the suffrage in 1867, whereas Burke, as Dicey noted, “at all periods of his career was opposed to democratic innovation.”119 Votes for the many were acceptable to

136  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England Dicey; unacceptable were the proposals of some Liberals, many Conservatives, and Burke before them that representation in Parliament should be of classes rather than persons.120 In spite of having so many reasons to abjure Burke, Dicey increasingly sided with him over the course of his career – agreeing from early on with Burke’s justification of parliamentary sovereignty, and in his later years with Burke’s denunciation of Jacobinism, updated by Dicey when he denounced socialism, supposedly the Jacobinism of the twentieth century. As a Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist, and, finally, a person of ever more conservative views, Dicey found himself constantly moving further into the camp of Burke. To distance himself from “so-called philosophic Liberals”121 – perhaps meaning the collectivist followers of T. H. Green – was vital to Dicey. As he called for a return to an earlier individualist version of Liberalism, he found unlikely aid and comfort in the works of anti-individualist but fiercely anti-Jacobin Edmund Burke. What for our purposes perhaps stands out most in Dicey’s performance is that it arguably represents an important new moment in the twentieth-century emergence of Burke the Conservative. The day would come when Burke’s stature as Mr. Conservative would often be acknowledged across the political spectrum, left to right. Burke the author of the Reflections, and only the Reflections, Burke the anti-Jacobin and anti-revolutionary, would eventually become a permanent fixture in twentieth-century politics, his earlier works often overlooked, and at a later date, this Burke would pass across the Atlantic to Cold War America (Chapter 6). By no means, however, was it overnight that Burke, who had once crossed the aisle from Whig to Tory, passed across all ideological aisles in the twentieth century, eventually attaining recognition from both left and right as Mr. ­Conservative. In the 1920s, his status was very much in the hands, one way or the other, of one party only, the Conservative. Prominent politically throughout the decade, the Conservatives bore responsibility for grappling with formidable challenges, and to Burke they sometimes, not always, turned for edification. Soldiers returning from service in World War I had difficulty finding jobs; impoverished workers and highly taxed members of the middle class ended the decade of the 1920s faced with world depression in 1929. Many landed estates, for ages the pride of aristocrats, were placed on the market because their titled owners could no longer afford to pay the hefty taxes. Competition from Japan called the primacy of English international trade into question. For the first time, however briefly and only with the help of Liberals, Labour was in charge of government. To meet the challenge, a number of Conservative thinkers and spokespersons stepped forth, some not bothering with Burke, others placing him front and center. One who chose to do almost entirely without Burke was Harold Begbie, a widely published journalist who sometimes availed himself of the pseudonym “Gentleman with a Duster,” as he did in his volume The Conservative Mind,

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  137 released in 1924. Although he began with a quotation from Disraeli, Begbie’s volume was about figures of his own age, so Burke’ absence – one passing ­citation – is not surprising. There is, nevertheless, something striking in encountering a Conservative writing about “the Conservative mind” who on his quest for a “return to first principles”122 pays virtually no attention to the historical lineage of Conservative reflection. He is much more interested in discussing the mind of contemporary Conservative politician Stanley Baldwin, among others, than in searching for intellectual predecessors. What he found in his search for Conservative principles was a desire “fearlessly and earnestly to tear the mask of moderation from the Bolshevik ­features of Labour.” Equally important were “the maintenance of our institutions, the preservation of our Empire, and the improvement of the conditions of our people.”123 Baldwin embodied his image of the ideal Conservative. “He saw that to do its work in the world Conservatism must draw its strength from the confidence and affection of the working-classes.”124 What would be called “the workingclass Tory vote” was what Baldwin coveted. “I do not know,” concluded Begbie, “any other man in public life more likely … to gain the faithful confidence of the steadier elements of the working class.”125 Why the absence of Burke? One answer is the great stress on the working class, which lies outside Burke’s focus on a pre-industrial world. Another was that Baldwin, in Begbie’s view, had moved beyond appeals to tradition, to a modern effort to “co-operate with the divine energy in the supreme work of evolution.”126 In his earlier writings, Begbie had spoken in favor of a theistic version of evolutionary science, hints of which are noticeable his The Conservative Mind. With modern science on his side, Begbie did not need to revert to the authority of Burke. Much like Begbie’s book was Walter Elliot’s Toryism and the Twentieth Century, published three years later. Elected to the House of Commons in 1918, Elliot remained in Parliament, except for a brief interval, until his death four decades later. Over the years, he held many governmental posts and became a public person of some renown. Along with other Tories, Elliot took up the theme of serving the working class, remarking in 1929, “I write this from the very capital both of the slum men and of the steel men, under the thunder of those engines.”127 Another echo of Tory voices was his contempt for “French Republicans, the Bolsheviks of their day.”128 But his voice was most similar to Begbie’s, especially when he spoke of evolution, for Elliot explicitly asserted what Begbie had only implied, that Toryism should ally with the science of evolution. “In the realm of thought a veritable revolution is taking place … [T]he key of all this thought is biology, and biology squares rather with the creed of the Right than with the creed of the Left.”129 Burke, barely mentioned, fares no better in Elliot than in Begbie. One of the Prime Ministers Elliot served was Stanley Baldwin. Perhaps that is why he did not have to settle for writing about Baldwin, as did Begbie; Elliot’s

138  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England encounter was more direct in that he enjoyed Baldwin’s willingness to write an introduction to his book. “Thoroughly exhilarating” was how Baldwin described Elliot’s Toryism and the Twentieth Century. “The future lies with that party which, while holding fast to the proved lessons of the past, is prepared to incorporate the increments of the new truth vouchsafed to us by modern science.”130 In endorsing Elliot, Baldwin in effect joined with both Begbie and Elliot in pushing Burke, in the name of modern science, to the sidelines of Conservative thought. Baldwin published his own book in 1926, On England. Many ­long-standing Conservative themes are reiterated: the need to keep religion and politics united, to continue twelve centuries of self-government, and to reaffirm ­England’s dedication abroad “to help people who belong to a backward civilization, wisely to raise themselves in the scale of civilization.”131 No theme was more important to Baldwin than the search for unity at home: “There is only one thing which I feel is worth giving one’s whole strength to, and that is the binding together of all classes of our people …That is the main end and object of my life in p­ olitics.”132 Predictably, he asks his audience to remember Disraeli’s warning of “Two Nations.” Many names of writers of past ages are mentioned in the pages of his book, but one name almost absent is that of Edmund Burke.133 “My party have no political bible,”134 a sentence that may explain Burke’s absence. Three times Baldwin served as Prime Minister, ending in 1937. For Burke, to be an outsider to Baldwin is a strong indication that Burke’s primacy in Conservative thought was an off-and-on again affair, not to be taken for granted. Although Burke’s reign in twentieth-century Conservatism was not universal, its power is evident in the works of authors such as Arthur Baumann and Arthur Bryant. Baumann’s work of 1929, Burke: the Founder of Conservatism, is filled with dire warnings about current events with Burke frequently called to the rescue. As early as 1912, Baumann had held that “from the publication of the Reflections … dates the birth of Conservatism.”135 By 1929, Burke had graduated in Baumann’s thought to the stature of “the greatest political thinker and speaker of the eighteenth century,” whose measure of success was that “he educated the inarticulate aristocrats of the eighteenth century as Disraeli educated the Tory squires of the nineteenth century.”136 A powerful figure Burke was in his time and he remains so for all time. His writings on the French Revolution “today are the political bible of all who are on the side of law, religion, property, and order. Burke is a classic, and therefore can never be out of date.”137 Precisely, as Dicey had said eleven years earlier, Baumann suggests that “much of Burke’s writing against the French Revolution … might with only a change of names be addressed to the Bolsheviks.”138 No less now than in the past is Burke desperately needed, because all he stood for, and which Conservatives should continue to stand for, is fighting for its very survival. The general strike of 1926 could not be more worrisome. Votes for women, recently granted, are a deplorable “leap

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  139 into gynocracy.”139 Making matters all the worse is that “deference is a word we never mention now, and as for our estates, they are being broken up under the auctioneer’s hammer.”140 The harm being done to aristocrats, Baumann feared, was less damaging than the harm they inflict upon themselves when their younger generation “dabble in revolutionary ideas.”141 Only a restoration of the diminished power of the House of Lords will do.142 And most certainly, those Conservatives who invoke the science of evolution to address questions of public life must be ignored. “­Mischievous has been the loan by biology to politics of the word ‘evolution,’ whose all-atoning name is used to cover with an air of science the changes which politicians are too lazy or too cowardly to resist.”143 Begbie and Elliot have no place in Baumann’s thought. Baumann ends his treatise by asking the leaders of the Tory party to listen to Burke, whose Letter to a Noble Lord he reissues. His own work Baumann treats as merely an introduction to the thoughts of the master and a repetition of his advice. Just as Burke, the enemy of eighteenth-century radicalism had demanded that aristocrats stop flirting with radical ideas which if implemented would be their own undoing, so does Baumann warn the young Tories of his time against toying with socialist rhetoric. Arthur Bryant’s The Spirit of Conservatism was in 1929 another major contribution to Conservative thought and to the enhancement of Burke’s reputation as the torch-bearer of Conservatism. In his Preface, Bryant explained that he was building upon the work of a number of formidable predecessors, including Hugh Cecil, Geoffrey Butler, and Walter Elliot. He also made clear that “in the speeches of Burke and Disraeli, the creed of Conservatism is preserved for all time.” Throughout the volume, it is evident that Burke was the trailbreaker, Disraeli the person who adapted the Conservative message to an industrial age. At the very beginning of his treatise, Bryant quotes Burke on prejudice and on page two sounds perfectly Burkean when he writes “each generation [is] a link in a chain which stretches from the beginning of time.” Chains, however, can be broken. Turn the page and one finds him worrying that “since the industrial revolution the majority of English people have been shut out from the traditions of their country and forefathers, as though by a dark tunnel.” Town dwellers, in particular, have been “cut off from their roots.”144 The culprit is the doctrine of free trade. Under the Liberals of the nineteenth century, “one law only was to govern the world – the economic law of supply and demand; in other words, the Law of Might is Right.” Laissez-faire was nothing less than “a return to the savage law of the jungle.”145 “We have seen the disastrous effects of this doctrine in the social condition of the workers.”146 The task of righting the wrongs fell to Conservatives, but unfortunately, they were not always truly conservative in the nineteenth century, often missing the opportunity to offset the evils of the Industrial Revolution.147 Too often, “the Conservative Party forgot its true aims, and bitterly opposed all

140  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England change,” lamented Bryant. Too often, “Conservatives were compelled to allow ­revolutionary changes to take place without being able to control them, because they had opposed necessary alteration too long.” Today, we are faced with the problems of modern industrial England, with its legacy of class separation and distrust, of warfare between its component parts, capital and labour, of the waste of a world war and the crushing burden of post-war taxation, of the shrinkage of markets that were once thought to be a British monopoly.148 Yet not all is lost, thanks to Disraeli who made it his mission “to guide the Conservative Party back to its true course.”149 Because of Disraeli, “a long stream of Conservative legislation has borne testimony to the fact that the Tory Party has learnt to regard, as among its first duties, the social amelioration of the lot of the people.”150 To renew Disraeli’s sense of mission is, or should be, the calling of twentieth-century Conservatives. There are reasons to be hopeful. On the economic front workers and corporate executives are learning that in a collectivist age of “Trusts, Combines, Mergers and Cartelism,” it is not necessary for laborers and capitalists to be in conflict. “In place of the extreme rivalry of the nineteenth century, industry is returning to the ancient medieval practice of cooperation and mutual agreement.”151 Thanks to the movement initiated by Disraeli, a managed economy has become thinkable, possible without the Socialist attempt “to see Whitehall not the servant but the master of the nation.”152 To be successful, Conservatives must accept the democracy of the new age while preventing it from causing harm. Much was gained when Disraeli in 1867 broke the stranglehold on government of the middle class by extending the vote to artisans, a democratic move. Harm from the expanded franchise may be avoided if we remember, along with Burke and Disraeli, that “the necessity of a national religion is greater in a democratic state than under any other form of government.”153 It is also important to realize that for a political regime to be recognized as legitimate, it must include everyone, which led Bryant to approve of votes for women,154 unlike Baumann. There is nothing to fear from the expansion of democracy if we remember Burke’s thoughts, especially in his speech at Bristol, on the duty of parliamentary representatives to stand up for whatever they believe instead of pandering to the many.155 Local self-government is also vital, as a way to educate and include the many.156 In agreement with other Conservatives, Bryant spoke enthusiastically about England’s imperial mission, its success in instilling pride in all social ranks, and the good the English do by accepting what he called the “white man’s burden.” Perhaps more than on any other topic, Bryant cannot speak of Burke too often when lauding the grandeur of English imperialism. Unappreciated at the time of

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  141 the American Revolution, “Burke’s teaching bore fruit in the next generation.” Much to be admired was that Burke “laid down forever the principles that must govern the relations between England and her colonies.” He was “the champion of oppressed native races,” especially the people of India.157 References to Burke, always favorable, abound in The Spirit of Conservatism. Only Disraeli is cited as frequently. All Conservatives, Bryant cajoled his colleagues, need to revisit Burke to understand what should be their principles. After that, they should consult Disraeli in search of strategies for translating those principles into practice when dealing with the citizens of an industrial age. Their Conservative representatives especially, more and more of whom hail from commercial rather than aristocratic families, should heed the advice of Disraeli. Bryant was a major player in a movement of Conservative thought, stimulated by the challenge of Labour, to seek a working-class Tory vote. As late as the 1920s, there were two competing Conservative traditions, one pro-free market as with Cecil, the other demanding political intervention in the economy. By the 1930s, the interventionists were faring exceptionally well at the expense of the free traders. In Conservatism in England, 1933, F. J. C. Hearnshaw struck a note that would be repeated for years to come by other Conservatives. “Too little use is made of the conservative working man, too little is given to his peculiar problems.”158 Looking for a kindred spirit, he immediately found one by quoting Begbie’s virtually ­identical comment in The Conservative Mind. One Conservative after another forcefully articulated the same demand during the next few decades – that an uncontrolled economy exploiting workers must be banished. Speaking in 1947 R. A. Butler, nephew of Geoffrey Butler, told the House of Commons, “We are not frightened at the use of the State. A good Tory has never been in history afraid of the use of the State.” Anthony Eden, at a party conference that same year, announced “We are the not the Party of unbridled, brutal capitalism … We are not the political children of the laissez-faire school.” A decade earlier, Harold Macmillan had declared that “Toryism has always been a form of paternal Socialism.”159 The Tory tradition of favoring state power eased twentieth-century Conservatives into backing policies of intervention in economic matters. So did the desire to hold their own in elections, taking them so far after defeat in 1945 as to accept Labour’s major welfare state expenses and the sharply graduated taxes used to finance them. Those Conservatives intent on reaching out to the workers were convinced that the reign of deference could yet be salvaged if they sanctioned some measure of governmental intervention in the economy. Overmighty political collectivism need not be instituted, they affirmed, because the modern economy was itself collectivistic. Already in 1929, Arthur Bryant recognized a newly emerging world in which “we see the growth of Trusts, Combines, Mergers and Cartels, which are slowly, but inevitably, embracing the whole of modern industry.” There is every reason to applaud this development. “A smaller business is

142  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England always liable to ship-wreck when things go badly; a great Combine can outride the storm in safety.”160 At first glance, one might expect Burke to fare poorly with Conservatives who chose to compete with Socialists in advocating a welfare state. Burke’s Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, perfect for free trade Conservatives, might have ­eliminated him from their consideration. But in this case, we see once again that there is a Burke for every occasion. Very convenient for the purposes of the Conservatives from the 1930s onward was Burke’s statement that “nothing universal can be rationally affirmed on any moral or any political subject.”161 Arthur Bryant and other Conservatives could harmonize with Burke by saying “questions of Free Trade and Protection are not matters of absolute religious faith, as the old Liberals held, but questions of expediency.”162 Helpful, again, was Burke’s view that “the circumstances … of every country” must always be kept in mind,163 opening the door for Bryant to comment, “It is circumstances, as Burke said, that render every civil and political scheme beneficial or obnoxious to mankind. Free trade, as a political practice, is neither absolutely right nor absolutely wrong.”164 Free trade was appropriate in the nineteenth century when England dominated world trade; the twentieth century is quite another matter. Collectivist in their outlook, Conservatives prided themselves on discovering in Burke their forerunner. In Colonel John Buchan’s Preface to Bryant’s The Spirit of Conservatism, he called upon Burke in confirmation of his belief that Conservatism “believes the State is an organic and not a mechanical being.” Nothing was more common than for Conservative spokespersons to speak up for the notion of an “organic” society and polity, as opposed to the individualistic and “mechanical” conceptions of utilitarianism and natural rights philosophy. What they espoused was a collectivist point of view, expressed in what we would call sociological and communitarian terms. Butler had preceded Buchan in arguing that in his Reflections Burke “propounded his theory of an organic state,” which was destined to become “the fundamental doctrine of all ­Toryism – the organic, as opposed to the mechanic, conception.” So much do we owe to our social inheritance that Burke was correct to counter the doctrine of “the rights of man” with “the doctrine of the duties of man.”165 This organic interpretation could not have been more widespread, present already in Leslie Stephen who, although a Liberal, had made the same argument in favor of an “organic” interpretation in the late nineteenth century, and so had Hugh Cecil, despite his commitment to free trade. Harold Macmillan in 1934 cited “that organic conception of society” which is useful to offset “individualism and laissez-faire.”166 David Clarke, speaking on behalf of the Conservative Party in 1947, wrote that “the conservative sense of the historical leads it to regard society as more like a living organism than a machine.” He then cited the famous passage in which Burke declared that society is indeed a contract, insisting along with Burke that this was not the self-consciously willed social contract of Locke,

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  143 but a partnership unfolding over time, an inherited and organic tie between the living, the dead, and those who are yet to be born. Properly conceived, argued Clarke in Burkean echoes, society is understood as “a living organic whole inherited from our forefathers and living in our children and their children.”167 When Conservatives revived the organic analogy in this forceful manner, when they spoke out in favor of a collectivist understanding of society and economy, Burke was always available to vindicate them. As they transferred their focus to a managed economy and social welfare measures, Conservatives came to realize they could rehabilitate their old Tory views to address a new world and cite Burke whenever they wished. “Conservatives do not deny that the existence of classes is necessary and natural,” wrote David Clarke in The Conservative Faith in a Modern Age, an official Party statement of 1947 backed by prominent politicians R. A. Butler, Oliver Stanley, and Harold Macmillan. Hierarchy is as essential and desirable in the new world as in the old. “In a group of men pursuing a common purpose, whether it be a nation or a family, a factory or a farm, there must be those who exercise authority and those who obey.”168 Not least among the advantages of social hierarchy is that it provides the leadership assuring stability and progress. Along the same lines, F. J. C. Hearnshaw maintained that Conservatism affirms “the solidarity of the nation and the unity of all classes in the whole”; it leaves “predominant political control in the possession of those who are by descent, by character, by education, and by experience, best fitted to exercise it.”169 Similarly, Conservative political philosopher A. K. White in The Character of British Democracy (1945) wrote that “the need for a governing class is in the nature of things”; a privileged few are needed who enjoy the “freedom from want and care” enabling them to devote their lives to public service. Only a few are able to rule “with that effortless grace which inspires loyalty without loss of self-respect in those who are ruled … Liberal democracy and responsible government imply a privileged class.”170 The mission of the legislator is to be “the representative and not the delegate of his constituents.”171 Whether he remembered Burke’s speech on representation to the electors of Bristol, in which he expressed exactly the same sentiments, is uncertain but a definite possibility. L. S. Amery began his 1947 study, Thoughts on the Constitution, by saying “I have, I trust, approached the subject of the Constitution in the spirit of Burke’s warning that we should ‘improve it with zeal, but with fear’.”172 A fixture of Conservative governments, Amery served in several Cabinets, devoting much of his efforts to the Empire, but was perhaps best known for his opposition to appeasement of Nazi Germany. His was a voice that could not be ignored. Perfectly Burkean was his claim that “our Constitution … throughout all the changes in its working has retained its essential and original character”; “there has never been a complete break in its continuity.”173 Adjustments to new conditions, such as the rise of a corporate economy, are essential to avoid a break with revered tradition. What is needed for the mid-twentieth century is

144  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England “corporative” or “functional” representation. “The time has come, I believe, for a new and ­far-reaching Reform Act which will recognize the ever-growing economic organization of the national life as a necessary basis of representation.”174 Throughout his manuscript, Amery cites Burke approvingly on myriad topics, such as party, constitution, and democracy.175 Not least of what he admired in Burke was what he took to be his position on empire. “It remained for Burke to preach for later generations the gospel of an Empire based on the loyalty begotten of freedom.”176 Burke fared well indeed in Amery’s published offering modernizing Conservatism. David Clarke sounded all the familiar themes in his pamphlet on the prospects of Conservatism in a modern age. Continuity “is part of the fundamental creed of Conservatism,” as is respect for “the accumulated wisdom of generations.”177 Laissez-faire and extreme individualism are no more, which is an advantage to Conservatives in their quest to safeguard continuity and to assert “the existence of duties as well as of rights.”178 Much to be admired is that Tories “from 1832 opposed the Liberal oligarchy of Whigs and manufacturers responsible for the disastrous social consequences of the Industrial Revolution.”179 In recent times, “the Conservative Party has … done more than any other in this country to associate State and industry in industrial partnership.”180 As for social welfare, “Conservatives believe that positive measures can be taken to strengthen family life.”181 And Burke? Clarke dutifully quotes him on the necessity of connecting liberty with order,182 but it is Disraeli who dominates his pages, Burke mainly appearing in conjunction with Bolingbroke as a predecessor of Disraeli. Always cited, always praised, Burke had yet to achieve the status of dominant spokesperson of Conservatism, its inimitable incarnation. He is primary in the pronouncements of some Conservatives such as Amery, overshadowed by ­Disraeli in others. The year 1947 was a moment very rich in Conservative reflection, perhaps in response to a shocking recent electoral loss. That year saw the publication not only of Amery and Clarke but also of Quinton Hogg’s, The Case for Conservatism. Much like the other Conservatives, Hogg spoke on behalf of “the organic theory of society”; “a human community” in his view “is much more like a living being than a machine.”183 All to the good is that “the whole world has moved far from Liberal economic orthodoxy and no one can seriously hope to restore it.”184 He is pleased to remind his readers that the Conservative Party was the first to recognize the right of trade unions to organize185 but sounds the alarm against the Labour Party’s socialist takeover of the unions. “Never since the days of Cromwell has a single force in this country constituted a more formidable menace to political liberty.”186 Very frequently, he shores up his argument with quotations from or references to Burke. Very often, he calls upon Disraeli to consolidate his argument and lend it credibility. There is little or no difference between Hogg’s treatment of Burke and that of Clarke, except that Hogg’s is a full-scale book, Clarke’s a pamphlet.

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  145 Given the larger scale, the pattern stands out all the more: Burke is to be admired but must share the stage with Disraeli who brought Conservatism up to date.

** Taking account of our foregoing discussions, it is clear that we today must be twice on our guard, the first time to avoid placing the Conservative label on Burke in the nineteenth century, the second time to avoid reading Burke as if he were the Conservative of all Conservatives throughout every decade of the twentieth century. Because Conservative writers think historically, they habitually place Burke in a line of temporal succession. He occupies a place of importance in their Conservative pantheon, but Disraeli has the advantage of coming later and of addressing the challenges of an industrial age. For an indication of Burke’s fate in England during the transition from the first to the second half of the twentieth century, a brief examination of selected writings of Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan may be in order. Churchill obviously requires no introduction; in Macmillan’s case, it is well to remember that he served Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden before assuming the position of leadership himself from 1957 to 1963. Macmillan had a long and illustrious career, beginning fairly early in the century, and he lived to see the rise of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Placing Churchill and Macmillan side by side on the subject of Burke is another way of showing both Burke’s considerable significance and insignificance in Conservative reckoning, his embrace by Churchill, and his apparently virtual non-existence for Macmillan. Churchill may have had a personal and an intellectual reason to appreciate Burke. He knew of course that Burke had crossed the aisle, moving from Whig to Tory, and may well have been thinking of his predecessor, Edmund Burke, when in one of his speeches he remarked on his own “act of crossing the Floor.” “I have accomplished that difficult process, not only once but twice,” switching from the Conservative to the Liberal Party in 1904, returning to the Conservatives twenty years later. In that same speech, he sounded much like Burke when he suggested that “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” and asked that plans for a physically rebuilt Home of Commons not be constructed to satisfy “political theorists” who would want an architectural scheme for symmetrical show, rather than for facilitating the conduct of public affairs.187 In Thoughts and Adventures, 1932, Churchill contrasted Burke’s writings on the American Revolution, when he had spoken “as a foremost apostle of Liberty,” with his speeches on the French Revolution, at which time he had served “as the redoubtable champion of Authority.” Was Burke inconsistent, as some have charged, asks Churchill? Perhaps he was, but if so, for the best of reasons. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same

146  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England ideals of society and government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other.188 Twenty-five years later, Burke continued to fare well in Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, but with the insertion of just enough criticism to make the praise sound well-considered rather than narrowly partisan. “An orator to be named with the ancients, an incomparable political reasoner, he lacked both judgment and self-control.”189 Although Burke “had no great gift for practical politics,”190 that did not prevent him from being “a great political thinker” and “perhaps the greatest man Ireland has produced.” Thanks to his Irish identity, “he was able to diagnose the situation [in England] with an imaginative insight beyond the range of those immersed in the business of the day and bound by traditional habits of mind.”191 Burke’s declarations on India in favor of “principles of equity and humanity”192 could not be more praiseworthy. Memorable also was that at the moment when the British ambassador in Paris, 1789, praised the Revolution, Burke “was more far-sighted.” He “discerned the shape of things to come,” and quite rightly contrasted the admirable English Revolution of 1688 with that of France a century later.193 Coming from Churchill, a dominant figure, such praise of Burke in the latter half of the twentieth century could not be forgotten except by those who wished to forget. Very possibly, Harold Macmillan was a major figure who did choose to forget. As early as 1929, in a brief article in The Saturday Review, “Where is Conservatism Going?”, he spelled out the view that would be his for the rest of his career. His preoccupations were with “the modernization of our economic methods, the humanization of our industrial relations, and the expansion of our foreign, and primarily our Imperial markets.” To achieve those goals, we must move beyond the “dialectical batteries,” the outworn polemics of “Individualists and Collectivists,” in recognition that they have no bearing on “the real facts in question.” Our efforts should be directed toward re-examining these matters “in a new spirit, without prejudices and without a priori theories.” Ideologies must be forgotten, replaced by science as we search for solutions to practical problems. “I  only plead for a new determination to undertake their scientific examination.”194 Five years later, in Reconstruction: A Plea for a National Policy, Macmillan conceded that a measure of “planning is forced upon us, … not for idealistic reasons, but because the old mechanism which served us when markets were expanding naturally and spontaneously is no longer adequate.”195 Necessary is “a reasonable compromise between the rival claims of individualist and collectivist conceptions of society.”196 Government and industry in his scheme would work in cooperation, and “the worker would no longer be treated as a commodity to be bought and sold in the labour market, but as an integral part of a united and coherent system.”197 In 1938, Macmillan published another book, the title of which might be taken as the heart and soul of his entire career, The

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  147 Middle Way, accompanied by the subtitle A Study of the Problem of Economic and Social P ­ rogress in a Free and Democratic Society. It is vital, he urged his fellow citizens, that we cease “reiterating those truths of the past that may have become the half-truths of the present.”198 Patience is essential because “we shall reach only at a later stage the theories which seem to emerge from this empirical approach.”199 Examine the economy with an open mind, and you will find that “competitive methods are being replaced by co-operative methods.”200 While political parties engage in heated debates pitting laissez-faire against State intervention, “the two systems have in practice been merged.”201 The time has come for us to acknowledge “the truth of the new conceptions of planned Capitalism.”202 Once we learn to cooperate, all will recognize that “freedom and poverty cannot live together,”203 and that “it is not necessary to reduce the incomes of one class in order to increase the incomes of another.”204 Democracy will be “revealed as much more than a political system; it is a way of life. Upon its preservation depends the future of civilization.”205 If what is present in Macmillan’s writings is noteworthy, no less so is what is absent – any mention of Burke, or, for that matter, mention of any illustrious predecessor. At times, Disraeli’s name seems just beneath the surface, as when Macmillan accuses Labour of being “a class party … They build upon division. We are a national party. We build upon unity.”206 The word “national” is as central to Macmillan’s vocabulary as it was to Disraeli’s, and yet Disraeli goes unmentioned. It would seem that Macmillan sought an end to ideological controversy, a facing up instead to practical problems, best dealt with by skillful public servants dedicated to the task of solving problems and getting jobs done. Burke is often regarded as someone who spoke out against ideologues. One wonders whether in Macmillan’s eyes the impassioned Burke was not himself an ideologue and therefore best forgotten. As we move into the second half of the twentieth century, it would seem as if Churchill placed on display the continuing relevance of Burke, while Macmillan chose not to support or refute Burke but quietly to leave him behind. Burke’s Strange Career in the Later Twentieth Century Strange as it may seem, there are good reasons to conclude both that Burke triumphed as never before in the late twentieth century and that he faded significantly from public life. With the coming of Margaret Thatcher, with her success in forging the Conservative Party in her image, it is arguable that Burke virtually disappeared from the discourse of those figures serving on the public stage. At the same time, Burke was not only remembered in the academy, but his works were embellished, far more than previously, as those of a great political thinker, a true and formidable political philosopher. In the academy, Burke emerged as never before as the symbol and spokesperson of Conservatism, unmatched by anyone else. Burke as taught in the

148  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England educational system stood by himself, no longer struggling to hold his own against the likes of Disraeli. This is the triumphant Burke whom we have inherited, the Burke we have misleadingly read back into much earlier history. In the realm of practice, the story is very different. Burke would have his uses as long as there were Tories who dared challenge Thatcherism, but her remarkable success in reconfiguring the Conservative party may well have consigned Burke to irrelevance in practical politics. Thatcherism, as it came to be called, was in the making well before Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Tories, and it provoked an increasingly desperate response from those who deemed it a radical break with the Tory tradition – and with Burke. Increasingly, as the years passed in the later twentieth century, the Conservatives were divided into two ever more irreconcilable groups. One segment, proud of its tradition of patrician rule, wished to continue upholding its by now rather long-standing Tory commitment to a managed economy and a welfare state. The other segment, less enthusiastic about patricians, more comfortable with leaders drawn from the business classes, devoted itself to a reign of free trade or what is known as economic liberalism. Margaret Thatcher represented the culmination, fulfillment, and victory of this second version of Conservatism. She had been preceded by such luminaries as Edward Heath and Enoch Powell, and accompanied by converts such as Keith Joseph. After dutifully serving Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath graduated to the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, holding that office during the years 1970 to 1974. From 1965 to 1975, he was recognized as leader of the Conservative Party. Because he was successfully challenged by Thatcher for leadership of the Party in 1975 and was not thereafter her ally, it is tempting to ignore the manner in which he was arguably her forerunner. To remember what he wished to accomplish is to recognize the affinity of his politics with hers; to remember what he was forced to do against his wishes is to understand why the link between his politics and hers is often forgotten. Offspring of a carpenter and a lady’s maid, Heath broke ranks with what he regarded as the upper-class paternalistic policies of Macmillan. All his initial efforts were aimed to roll back national planning, to cut back subsidies to nationalized industries and social services, to reduce taxes, and to check labor unions – which in retrospect might be called Thatcherism before Thatcher. Unfortunately for him, during his reign unemployment rose and so did prices. His original efforts were stymied by an onset of stagflation, leaving him with no choice but to reverse course. Against his initial commitments, he conducted a famous or infamous U-turn, pouring money into health, education, and welfare. Only those persons with long memories would later recall that he had originally attempted to take steps in the direction of what in hindsight might be called Thatcherism. If Edward Heath, in his initial pursuit of a neoliberal agenda, broke with ­Macmillan, soon thereafter Enoch Powell broke with Heath’s reversal from

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  149 neoliberalism to governmental intervention. Powell would reinstate Heath’s original agenda. A brilliant and flamboyant figure, Powell unabashedly claimed the Tory heritage at the same time that he marched off in a very different direction with his all-out advocacy of laissez-faire, free market capitalism. Exceptionally adept at drawing attention to himself, Powell was not about to allow the norms of Tory Party discipline prevent him from broadcasting his pleas to the public in strident terms. From the late 1960s to well into the 1970s, he was popular and populist. Loyal Tory Ian Gilmour conceded that “Mr. Powell’s intellectual gifts are beyond question,” but expressed deep dissatisfaction that “the nearest thing the Tory Party has … to an ideologue is Mr. Enoch Powell.”207 When adopted by the Thatcherites, Powell’s views, once considered extreme, would graduate to the mainstream of the Conservative Party. Keith Joseph personified the change in the Tory Party to Thatcherism in that he had served Macmillan and Heath but upon allying with Thatcher underwent what he called a conversion. “About twenty years ago I joined the Conservative Party” he wrote in his 1975 pamphlet Reversing the Trend. “But it was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. I had thought I was a Conservative but I now see that I was not really one at all.”208 Henceforth, he would march forth hand in hand with Margaret Thatcher, serving her as called upon. Patrician values be damned; it was embourgeoisement that should be sought by all citizens.209 “Britain never really internalized capitalist values,” he sighed. Sons of successful capitalists have been encouraged over the ages to pursue careers in the army, civil service, and the professions.210 It was high time for a certain amount of uprooting from the aristocratic past. It was also time to repudiate the socialism of recent years. “Paraphrasing Lincoln we have to ask ‘can a country prosper, half collectivist, half free?’”211 Burke had no home in the ever more Thatcherite world of Heath, Powell, and Joseph. Nor would Burke be called upon by Geoffrey Howe when he turned against Thatcher and brought her career to a close after having served as her loyal helpmate throughout her eleven years of service as Prime Minister. As early as 1961, he wrote in retrospect, “there was no doubting my proto-­Thatcherite credentials,” for mine was “a strikingly radical brand of Conservatism.”212 For all but her final three weeks in office Howe remained at her side, until he could bear no more. Her narrow-minded nationalism was unacceptable. And her authoritarian style of governance, her “all or nothing” attitude,213 “the recklessness with which she later sought to impose her own increasingly uncompromising views,” her insistence that “any criticism of her was an unpatriotic act” were intolerable.214 For all his frustration with Thatcher’s mode of governance, Howe still believed that hers was “a period of remarkable achievement.”215 Thatcherism remained admirable even if Thatcher did not. Nowhere in Conflict of Loyalty, a book of some 700 pages, does Howe bother to cite Burke. Burke would matter only in the reflections of those Tories who abhorred the transformation – or degeneration – of the venerable Tory Party into Thatcherism.

150  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England Sir Ian Gilmour’s work provides an especially illuminating case in point. Already in The Body Politic, published in 1969, he was worried not only about the socialists outside his party but also about the emerging neoliberals within. Although sympathetic to Macmillan’s “middle way” and his aversion to ideological controversy, Gilmour was unlike Macmillan in that he was quite willing to insert the thoughts of Burke and Disraeli into his discussions. “There has often in postwar Toryism been an excessive lack of enthusiasm,” he complained. “There is more to politics than good management and smooth-running business efficiency. A solely down-to-earth or materialistic appeal is not compelling. There must be idealism and inspiration as well.”216 In three books, Gilmour attempted to infuse idealism into Conservatism while refraining from ideological excess in his own person and suppressing it in his fellow Tories. The first, The Body Politic, was published six years before Thatcher took over the reins of the Conservative Party. The second, Inside Right: A Study of Conservatism, saw the light of publication in 1977, just as she was about to assume office as Prime Minister. The third, Dancing with Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism, was published after the termination of her reign. Burke is present in all three. Time and again, Gilmour looks to Burke and Disraeli for an idealism that is willing to negotiate and compromise, to get things done by finding common ground, a politics that is inspired but eminently practical. Above all the two parties, whatever their differences, must understand the need to compromise and coalesce in the daily procedures of governing. “If the parties want to go in opposite directions for any length of time, the two-party system cannot survive.”217 It is all to the good that “the Conservative party confronted by the Labour party moved towards it between the wars.” There is “nothing unusual in the British Labour party’s drift from the left, or in the Conservative party’s drift from the right, to the centre,”218 not when stalemate can thereby be avoided and the issues at hand met successfully. Let Conservatives remember that half the votes for them are cast by workers,219 which should prevent the Party from turning its back on its history of intervention whenever necessary in the economy. “The welfare state is a thoroughly Conservative institution, which is why Conservatives did so much to bring it into existence; and its roots go deep in English history.”220 To all appearances, in his books released in 1969 and 1977, it was less the Socialists than a segment of his own party who worried Gilmour, the ever-bolder neoliberals. Already in The Body Politic, he urged his fellow Conservatives to understand that free trade was the correct policy for some historical circumstances but not for others; it should not be regarded as an article of religious faith: When a country is stronger economically than other countries, free trade is the right policy for it; when it is not stronger, protection may be the right

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  151 policy. The battle lines between laissez-faire and state interference cannot be drawn for all time.221 Later, in Inside Right, he added that “the Conservative does not regard the market as something sacrosanct on which a profane government should not intrude.”222 Rather than permitting the neoliberals to claim Hugh Cecil for their cause, Gilmour launched a preemptive strike by quoting from Conservatism, Cecil’s widely recognized book of 1912: “As long as state action does not involve what is unjust or oppressive,” wrote Cecil, “it cannot be said that the principles of Conservatism are hostile to it.”223 Concerned to keep a measure of idealism in Tory politics, Gilmour was perhaps even more preoccupied with the need for Tories to refrain from ideological excess. “British Conservatism is not an ‘-ism.’ It is not an idea. Still less is it a system of ideas.”224 As the world changes, so does Toryism; it is ever in the making. Rigidity of doctrine must be avoided. “The nearest thing the Tory party has to a doctrine is an anti-doctrine: they believe all political theories are at best inadequate, at worst false … Skepticism and empiricism are the foundations of Conservatism.”225 Refusing to be ideologues, Conservatives are well qualified to make deals with the other party and to allow their own colleagues to voice differences of opinion. Uniformity of message should be expected from pressure groups but not from parties.226 Ian Gilmour’s response to Margaret Thatcher in the books of 1969, 1977, and 1992 underwent a remarkable evolution. She makes no appearance in the first book, The Body Politic, because he had no way of knowing that the future would be hers. In the second Thatcher is on his mind because she became party leader in 1975 and was about to assume the post of Prime Minister. “Conservatives, as Margaret Thatcher has emphasized, do not believe in the ‘one-generation ­society,’” he wrote, attributing a Burkean-sounding expression to her. One other comment on Thatcher may be found in the conclusion of Inside Right, a remark he would soon regret: “Margaret Thatcher and the Tory Party will fight the next election on a moderate non-dogmatic programme consisting of common-sense policies and not many promises.”227 Gilmour regarded Inside Right as “a defence of traditional Conservatism” in its debates with Labour.228 Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism was also intended as a defense of Conservatism, not against Labour but against Margaret Thatcher and those in the Conservative Party who bowed to her. ­Gilmour could not have been more disappointed with her reign. Some of his case against her in 1992 was similar to that of Geoffrey Howe in 1994, with the difference that Gilmour rejected both her means and her ends, whereas Howe spoke out only against her means, her arbitrary style of governance. As Howe would at a slightly later date, Gilmour expressed his disgust with her high-handed and under-handed mode of governing. Thatcher wished to be surrounded by converts, and “those who resisted conversion and clung instead to

152  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England traditional Tory principles were soon regarded as, at best, infidels or, at worst, the enemy within.” Her Cabinet she regarded as “an obstacle to be surmounted”; in her eyes, “dialogue was a waste of time” and hers was a deliberate “rejection of consensus politics.”229 Under her direction, late twentieth-century Toryism “largely consisted of nineteenth-century individualism dressed up in twentieth-century clothes.”230 Everything public crumbled as she abandoned traditional Toryism. Because of the government’s obsession with cutting income tax, its dislike of public expenditure and its devotion to laissez-faire, the gaping need to improve industrial training and education was not met … Similarly public expenditure was needed to stop the country’s infrastructure collapsing; yet that expenditure, too, was denied. A decayed dogma produced a decaying infrastructure.231 Thatcher, “wedded to a set of abstract ideas,” gained “the dubious accolade of having an ‘ism.’”232 The social consequence of her policies was the creation of “an underclass, whose existence is an affront to one nation Toryism.”233 The political consequence was a severely damaging abuse of power. The will to extend the power of the Prime Minister … lay at the heart of Thatcherism. For all her seemingly endless talk of ‘freedom’ and her claim to have ‘cut back the powers of government,’ Mrs. Thatcher’s administration did more to amass and centralize power than any peacetime British government in the century.234 Virtually absent from Thatcher’s world, Burke figured prominently in Gilmour’s universe, the revered name of Burke coming to the fore quite often in his three books. In retrospect, the efforts of Gilmour as representative of the old Toryism confronting the new Conservatism of Thatcherism might be seen as in some measure Burke’s last stand in the public discourse of parliamentarians and public intellectuals, the last moment before Burke and Gilmour yielded to Margaret Thatcher and exited the stage. Burke’s name and notions are sprinkled liberally throughout Gilmour’s writings when he states the case for traditional Toryism before the rise of Thatcher, and again when he pleads for the restoration of Toryism after her reign. References to Burke and comments on his speeches suffuse Gilmour’s writings. On the Empire, he finds Burke enlightened and well ahead of his time.235 On party, he argues that Burke’s view about agreement on principles should be transferred to pressure groups, with their uniform views as opposed to the differences of opinion that are inevitable in a comprehensive political party.236 The “little platoon” of social belonging that warmed Burke’s heart is also appreciated by Gilmour.237 Almost inevitably, Rousseau is demeaned whenever Gilmour

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  153 places him alongside Burke.238 And Gilmour never tires of upholding the Tory outlook by repeating Burke’s denunciations of the French Revolution: “In the Tory view, simplicity of doctrine and institutions, a dominant characteristic of the French Revolution, as Burke pointed out, is the path to tyranny.”239 Gilmour even went so far as to find in Burke excuses for the modern welfare state.240 In Dancing With Dogma Gilmour enlists Burke in his battle with Thatcher. Her “relentless campaign against local government,”241 he assures us, would have been rejected by Burke. “Conservative writers from Burke and de ­Tocqueville to Oakeshott have stressed the vital importance of barriers between state and citizens. Hence Thatcherism’s frank hostility to intermediate institutions was another deep break with the Conservative tradition.”242 Gilmour was horrified that in Thatcher’s world only individuals exist, and he called upon Burke to help him make the counter-argument that “the community and society do exist, and they are not the mere aggregation of individual wishes.”243 Another sin of Thatcher and the Thatcherites was that they “laid bare the fragility of the British constitution,” taking advantage of its unwritten nature and its dependence on restraint. “Moderation in the exercise of power, whose crucial importance was emphasized by Burke, Oakeshott, and many others was despised.”244 And, of course, nothing could be more Burkean than Gilmour’s assertion that “Thatcherism, right wing though it was, had some of the characteristics of Jacobinism.”245 For all his admiration of his eighteenth-century predecessor, Gilmour did not refrain from offering criticisms of Burke whose “abhorrence of the French Revolution led him to ignore the abuses of the ancien régime.” Burke was also wrong to apologize for “the many blemishes and deformities which tarnished the representative system” of England. Nor should Burke have spoken against Pitt’s concern to relieve the poor.246 Skepticism is the attitude proper to a Conservative, which made Gilmour uncomfortable with Burke when he sometimes “ossified his prejudices into dogma” and was guilty of “occasional dogmatism.” Among Conservative thinkers, Gilmour preferred skeptical empiricist David Hume and his twentieth-century reincarnation Michael Oakeshott, famous especially for his essay “Rationalism in Politics,” a plea against ideological politics. “Hume’s Toryism is the dominant strand in British Conservatism,” suggested Gilmour – Hume’s Toryism as updated and modernized by Oakeshott.247 Disraeli likely was also on Gilmour’s mind because, throughout the 1980s, there was talk about “two nations” and about Thatcher as a “two-nation Tory.” Burke’s standing in Gilmour’s writings is much the same as what we have frequently encountered, with Burke presented as a major figure, a commentator still relevant to the late twentieth century. He is portrayed as a leading, but not the only representative of the Conservative tradition. We have yet to discover the Burke whom we automatically think of as the embodiment of Conservatism, the personage standing alone who has driven Disraeli and all other Conservative competitors off the stage. How then do we explain our predisposition to see him as he was not previously seen, as the embodiment of Conservative

154  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England thought, standing above all others in a class by himself? Perhaps the explanation is that Burke, even as he exited the parlance of parliamentarians and public intellectuals, took up residence as never before in the academy, appearing in the guise not of a timely polemicist but in that of a timeless philosopher. Gilmour wrote that “Burke was not a professional political philosopher working in cloistered seclusion and seeking to erect a wholly coherent system of thought in three or four volumes.”248 Many another intellectual or politician before him recognized that Burke had not been “cloistered” but nevertheless drew the opposite conclusion, preparing the way for eventual efforts to portray Burke as a great political philosopher. F. J. C. Hearnshaw had proclaimed that Burke had a philosophic mind of such strength and clarity that … he could probably have produced works worthy to rank him with the master pieces of Plato and Aristotle, and far above the amateur lucubrations of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.249 Geoffrey Butler held that Burke “saw into the eternal meaning of the Revolution” and was “the most penetrating philosopher of the eighteenth century.”250 Hugh Cecil hailed “Burke the theoretic philosopher.”251 Arthur Baumann conferred upon Burke the title of “greatest political thinker of the eighteenth ­century.”252 Winston Churchill said “he was a great political thinker.”253 Already in the nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold had referred to Burke as “the greatest of our political thinkers and writers,” and historians William Smyth and Thomas Macknight outdid one another in proclaiming Burke a profound political philosopher.254 Now and then a professional philosopher stepped forth to write about The Political Philosophy of Burke, as did John McCunn in 1913. English Idealists especially had been receptive to Burke the philosopher, and found use for him in their classrooms.255 The invitation had been issued, in effect, earlier in the century for the Burke of grand philosophical stature who would come to the fore later in the century. Burke the philosopher is still with us today, as is evident in the writings of Anthony Quinton among others. “What I shall identify as conservatism,” he writes, “is a long-lasting body of political doctrine” available to all, not the monopoly of a single party. “It is, above all, the political doctrine of Burke” but can be traced back as far as to Aristotle. “Since Burke it has taken the form of a continuous tradition, culminating for the time being in Oakeshott.” Admittedly, Burke was sometimes guilty of “a measure of rhetorical excess,” but his central themes have been enlisted by thoughtful commentators throughout the ages, and can be found not only in England but also in other countries such as France, Germany, and America. Organicism, skepticism, and traditionalism are among Burke’s many timeless themes, remarked Quinton. No matter how attentive he was to “circumstance” or what we would term historical context, his arguments have universal and philosophical implications. Burke’s name, in Quinton’s

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  155 reading, belongs in any account of the history of political philosophy, and he is the primary political philosopher of the modern Conservative tradition.256

** The possible uses of Burke today are open to debate. From Margaret Thatcher to erratic Prime Minister Boris Johnson or to his successor Liz Truss, the shortlived Prime Minister known for mimicking Thatcher, it is no longer obvious that Burke matters to Conservatives outside the academy. One possibility for his continuing public relevance is that he might be enlisted in the ranks of those who, if they still exist, would return Conservatism to what it was, to the Conservatism of yesteryear, Conservatism as it was or aspired to be but is no more. Burke’s name could be called out by anyone wishing to protest against those who in our time call themselves Conservatives. Notes 1 Sir Charles Grey, Parl. Debs. (Series 1), vol. 31, col. 343 (23 May 1815). 2 John Hobhouse, Parl. Debs. (Series 2), vol. 15, col. 685 (27 April 1826). 3 William Boyd Carpenter, The Times (2 August 1897), p. 8. 4 I am borrowing these quotations from E. D. Steele’s excellent article “Gladstone and Ireland,” Irish Historical Studies, vol. 17, no. 65 (March 1970), pp. 65–67. 5 Quoted by Emily Jones, Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1830–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 124. Her chapter on Home Rule, ch. 5, is excellent. 6 Edmund Burke, “Speech on American Taxation,” in Paul Langford, ed., The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 459–460. 7 Matthew Arnold, ed., Letters, Speeches, and Tracts on Irish Affairs by Edmund Burke (London: Macmillan and Co., 1881), p. 333. 8 Ibid., pp. vi, ix. 9 Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 29, 43. 10 Matthew Arnold, Irish Essays and Others (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1891), pp. 43, 48. 11 Culture and Anarchy, p. 64. 12 Ibid., pp. 65, 74. 13 Ibid., p. 34. 14 Ibid., p. 8. 15 Ibid., p. 116. 16 A. V. Dicey, “New Jacobinism and Old Morality,” The Contemporary Review, April 1888. 17 Arnold, Irish Essays and Others, pp. 34–36. 18 Ibid., pp. 11, 14. 19 Ibid., pp. 43, 49. 20 Ibid., pp. 14–15. 21 Ibid., p. 57. 22 Arnold, Letter to The Times, August 6, 1886, p. 12. 23 W. E. H. Lecky, Letter to The Times, January 13, 1886. p. 12.



156  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England 24 A. V. Dicey, England’s Case against Home Rule (London: J. Murray, 1886), pp. 220, 221. 25 Ibid., p. 221. 26 A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (London: ­Macmillan, 1915), p. 22. Originally published 1885. 27 Ibid., pp. 37, 38. 28 Ibid., p. 431. 29 Edmund Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” in Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, & Co., 1866), vol. IV, p. 213. 30 Arnold, Irish Essays, pp. 10–11. 31 Steele, “Gladstone and Ireland,” p. 66. 32 Ibid., p. 69. 33 W. E. H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), vol. I, pp. 364–365. 34 A. V. Dicey, “New Jacobinism and Old Morality,” The Contemporary Review (April 1888), p. 486n. 35 Ibid., p. 486. 36 Ibid., p. 495. 37 Ibid., p. 486n. 38 Lord Salisbury, Quarterly Review, vol. 127, no. 254, p. 561. 39 Paul Smith, ed., Lord Salisbury on Politics: A Selection from His Articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860–1883 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 40 Arthur Boutwood, National Revival: A Re-statement of Tory Principles (London: H. Jenkins, 1913), pp. 2, 4, 5. 41 Ibid., p. 48. 42 Lord Malmesbury, “Unionist Philosophy: an Introductory Essay,” in The New Order: Essays in Unionist Policy (London: Francis Griffiths, 1908), p. 4. 43 Boutwood, National Revival, p. 4. 44 Quoted by Gregory D. Phillips, “Lord Willoughby de Broke and the Politics of Radical Toryism, 1909–1914,” Journal of British Studies, vol. 20, no. 1 (Autumn, 1980), p. 214. 45 Willoughby de Broke, “The Tory Tradition,” National Review, no. 344 (October 1911), p. 209. 46 Willoughby de Broke, “Introduction” to Boutwood, National Revival, p. vii. 47 Willoughby de Broke, “National Toryism,” National Review, no. 351 (May 1912), p. 426. 48 Ibid., p. 417. 49 Ibid., p. 415. 50 Ibid., pp. 418, 426. 51 Ibid., p. 422. 52 “The Tory Tradition,” p. 211. 53 “National Toryism,” p. 421. 54 Ibid., p. 426. 55 Willoughby de Broke, “Introduction” to Boutwood, p. ix. 56 “National Toryism,” p. 421. 57 Ibid., p. 417. 58 Ibid., p. 420. 59 “Introduction” to Boutwood, p. xi. 60 “National Toryism,” p. 417. 61 “The Tory Tradition,” p. 206. 62 Ibid., p. 208.

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  157 63 “National Toryism,” p. 416. 64 “The Tory Tradition.” p. 210. 65 “National Toryism,” p. 414. 66 Quoted by Phillips, “Lord Willoughby de Broke and the Politics of Radical ­Toryism,” p. 221. 67 Boutwood, National Revival, p. 143. 68 Ibid., p. 48. 69 Ibid., p. 125. 70 Ibid., p. 16. 71 Ibid., pp. 102–103. 72 Ibid., pp. 111–112. 73 Ibid., p. 90. 74 Ibid., p. 97. 75 Ibid., pp. xvii–viii. 76 Ibid., pp. 65, 68, 73. 77 Ibid., p. xv. 78 Ibid., pp. 13n, 76. 79 Ibid., p. 18. 80 Geoffrey Butler, The Tory Tradition: Bolingbroke, Burke, Disraeli, Salisbury (­London: J. Murray, 1914), p. 59. 81 Ibid., p. 35. 82 Ibid., p. 34 83 Ibid., p. 39. 84 Ibid., p. 40. 85 Ibid., p. 103. 86 Ibid., p. 52. 87 Hugh Cecil, Conservatism (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912), p. 69. 88 Ibid., p. 232. 89 Ibid., p. 214. 90 Ibid., p. 116. 91 Ibid., p. 248. 92 Ibid., p. 241. 93 Ibid., p. 249. 94 E.g., Boutwood, National Revival, p. 97. 95 The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1936), p. 272. 96 Boutwood, National Revival, pp. 5, 32n, 53. 97 T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (London: Longmans, Green, & Co.), p. 41. 98 Hugh Cecil, Liberty and Authority (London: Edward Arnold, 1910), p. 11. 99 Ibid., pp. 26–27, 35. 100 Edmund Burke, “Thoughts and Details on Scarcity,” in R. B. McDowell, ed., Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), vol. IX, p. 121. 101 Ibid., p. 126. 102 Ibid., p. 137. 103 Ibid., p. 129. 104 Hugh Cecil, Conservatism, p. 173. 105 Ibid., p. 198. 106 Ibid., p. 40. 107 Ibid., pp. 40–41. 108 Ibid., pp. 42, 45–46. 109 Ibid., p. 47.

158  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England 110 Ibid., p. 44. 111 Leslie Stephen, History of English Political Thought in the Eighteenth Century (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1876), vol. II, p. 230. The English Utilitarians (­London: Duckworth & Co., 1900), vol. II, p. 100. 112 Hugh Cecil, Conservatism, pp. 48, 54. 113 Ibid., pp. 77–80. 114 A. V. Dicey, “Burke on Bolshevism,” The Nineteenth Century and After, vol. LXXXIV (July–August 1918), p. 282. 115 Ibid., pp. 274, 277. 116 Ibid., p. 277n. 117 Ibid., p. 284. Harcourt’s words were “we are all socialists now.” 118 Quoted by Julia Stapleton, “Introduction,” in J. Stapleton, ed., Liberalism, Democracy, and the State in Britain: Five Essays, 1862–1891 (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), p. 21. 119 A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (London: ­Macmillan, 1915), p. 431. Originally published in 1885. 120 A. V. Dicey, “The Balance of Classes,” in Julia Stapleton, Liberalism, Democracy, and the State. Published in 1888. 121 Ibid., p. 97. 122 Harold Begbie, The Conservative Mind, By a Gentleman with a Duster (London: Mills & Boon, 1924), p. 8. 123 Ibid., pp. 9, 10. 124 Ibid., p. 23. 125 Ibid., pp. 31–32. 126 Ibid., p. 13. 127 Walter Elliot, “Toryism and the People.” Saturday Review, 25 May 1929, p. 712. 128 Walter Elliot, Toryism and the Twentieth Century (London: Philip Allan & Co., 1927), p. 55. 129 Ibid., pp. 135–136. 130 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 131 Stanley Baldwin, On England and Other Addresses (London: Philip Allan & Co., 1926), pp. 185–186. 132 Ibid., p. 16. 133 Ibid., pp. 214, 256 for brief mention of Burke. 134 Ibid., p. 205. 135 Arthur Baumann, “Lord Hugh Cecil on Conservatism,” Fortnightly, vol. 92 (1 July 1912), p. 42. 136 Arthur Baumann, Burke: the Founder of Conservatism (London: Eyre and Spotiswoode, 1929), pp. 5, 9. 137 Ibid., p. 46. 138 Ibid., p. 56. 139 Ibid., pp. 69, 76. 140 Ibid., p. 60. 141 Ibid., p. 37. 142 Ibid., pp. 80–81. 143 Ibid., p. 76. 144 Arthur Bryant, The Spirit of Conservatism (London: Methuen & Co., 1929), pp. x, 1–3. 145 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 146 Ibid., p. 124. 147 Ibid., p. 20. 148 Ibid., p. 93.

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  159 149 Ibid., pp. 38–39. 150 Ibid., p. 23. 151 Ibid., p. 103. 152 Ibid., p. 31. 153 Ibid., p. 64. 154 Ibid., p. 45. 155 Ibid., pp. 48–49. 156 Ibid., pp. 70–73, 75. 157 Ibid., p. 154. 158 F. J. C. Hearnshaw, Conservatism in England (New York: Howard Fertig, 1967), p. 293. Originally published in 1933. 159 Quoted by Samuel Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Vintage, 1969), pp. 270–271. 160 Bryant, The Spirit of Conservatism, pp. 103–104. 161 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, p. 80. 162 The Spirit of Conservatism, p. 136. 163 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, p. 109. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 7. 164 The Spirit of Conservatism, p. 136. 165 Butler, The Tory Tradition, pp. 39, 40, 43. 166 Harold Macmillan, Reconstruction: A Plea for a National Policy (London: ­Macmillan, 1934), pp. 127–128. 167 David Clarke, The Conservative Faith in a Modern Age (London: The Conservative Political Centre, 1947), pp. 13, 18, 38. 168 Ibid., p. 14. 169 F. J. C. Hearnshaw, Conservatism in England (London: Macmillan, 1933), pp. 293–294. 170 A. K. White, The Character of British Democracy (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1945), pp. 18–20. 171 Ibid., pp. 46, 55. 172 L. S. Amery, Thoughts on the Constitution (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. x. 173 Ibid., pp. 1–2. 174 Ibid., p. 65. 175 Ibid., pp. 42, 46. 176 Ibid., p. 107. 177 Clarke, The Conservative Faith in a Modern Age, p. 10. 178 Ibid., pp. 8, 9. 179 Ibid., pp. 12–13. 180 Ibid., p. 25. 181 Ibid., p. 17. 182 Ibid., p. 32. 183 Quinton Hogg, The Case for Conservatism (London: Penguin, 1947), p. 24. 184 Ibid., p. 60. 185 Ibid., p. 125. 186 Ibid., p. 305. 187 Winston Churchill, “Speech on Rebuilding the House of Commons,” in Jerry Z. Muller, Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 286–287. 188 Winston Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures (New York & London: W. W. ­Norton & Co., 1991), p. 24. Originally published in 1932.

160  Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England 189 Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1957), vol. III, p. 174. 190 Ibid., p. 238. 191 Ibid., pp. 173–174. 192 Ibid., p. 229. 193 Ibid., pp. 277–278. 194 Harold Macmillan, “Where is Conservatism Going?”, The Saturday Review, 9 Nov. 1929, pp. 534–535. 195 Harold Macmillan, Reconstruction: A Plea for a National Policy (London: ­Macmillan & Co., 1934), p. 18. 196 Ibid., p. 128. 197 Ibid., p. 122. 198 Harold Macmillan, The Middle Way: A Study of the Problem of Economic and Social Progress in a Free and Democratic Society (London: Macmillan & Co., 1938), p. 14. 199 Ibid., p. 18. 200 Ibid., p. 176. 201 Ibid., p. 173–174. 202 Ibid., p. 238. 203 Ibid., p. 372. 204 Ibid., p. 374. 205 Ibid., p. 376. 206 Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age, p. 102. 207 Ian Gilmour, Inside Right: A Study of Conservatism (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1977), p. 133. 208 Keith Joseph, Reversing the Trend: A Critical Re-appraisal of Conservative Economic and Social Policies (London: Chichester: Rose, 1975), p. 4. 209 Ibid., p. 55. 210 Ibid., pp. 60–61. 211 Ibid., p. 9. 212 Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp. 32, 38. 213 Ibid., pp. 347–348. 214 Ibid., p. 691. 215 Ibid., p. 686. 216 Gilmour, Inside Right, p. 170. 217 Ibid., p. 142. 218 Ian Gilmour, The Body Politic (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1969), pp. 44, 46. 219 Ibid., p. 92. 220 Inside Right, p. 152. 221 The Body Politic, p. 85. 222 Inside Right, p. 235. 223 Cecil, Conservatism, p. 192. Quoted in The Body Politic, p. 49. 224 Inside Right, p. 121. 225 The Body Politic, p. 86. 226 Ibid., p. 36. 227 Inside Right, pp. 150, 258. 228 Ian Gilmour, Dancing With Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism (London: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 42. 229 Ibid., pp. 2, 4. 230 Ibid., p. 9. 231 Ibid., p. 71. 232 Ibid., p. 269.

Burke’s Conservative Moment in Twentieth-Century England  161 233 Ibid., pp. 116, 140. 234 Ibid., p. 177–178. 235 Inside Right, p. 65. 236 The Body Politic, p. 366. 237 Inside Right, p. 157. 238 The Body Politic, p. 367. Inside Right, p. 61. 239 The Body Politic, p. 88. Inside Right, pp. 61, 147, 161. 240 Inside Right, p. 152. 241 Dancing With Dogma, p. 212. 242 Ibid., p. 199. 243 Ibid., p. 170. 244 Ibid., p. 224. 245 Ibid., p. 221. 246 Inside Right, p. 66. 247 Body Politic, pp. 86–87. 248 Inside Right, p. 67. 249 F. J. C. Hearnshaw, “Edmund Burke,” in The Social and Political Idea of Some ­Representative Thinkers of the Revolutionary Era (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1950), ch. IV, p. 73. Originally published in 1929–1930. 250 Geoffrey Butler, The Tory Tradition, pp. 35, 38. 251 Hugh Cecil, Conservatism, p. 68. 252 Arthur Baumann, Burke: the Founder of Conservatism, p. 5. 253 Previously cited, endnote 190. 254 Matthew Arnold, Letters, Speeches, and Tracts on Irish Affairs by Edmund Burke (London: Macmillan & Co., 1881), p. 6. See the quotes from Macknight and Smyth cited in chapter III, above. 255 Emily Jones, Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, ch. 7. 256 Anthony Quinton, “Conservatism,” in Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit, Thomas W. Pogge, eds., A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: John Wiley, 2007), ch. 11.

6

The Americanization of Burke?

Burke’s significance in English political discourse throughout the ­nineteenth and much of the twentieth century cannot be denied. The record of his presence is rich and manifold. A question that remains is how much has he ­mattered in America? How much attention did he receive during the ­colonial period when the Americans were the inheritors of British political culture; how much in later history when Americans were forging an identity and history all their own?1 The famous answer of Louis Hartz in his well-known The Liberal Tradition in America was that Burke mattered not at all. To Hartz’s credit, he ­studied Burke and conservatism in a comparative perspective; to his discredit, his account verges on an a priori assertion rather than an historically founded claim. ­Borrowing from Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, Hartz maintained that something akin to European conservatism, the ideology of the aristocracy, could not take root in middle-class America. Tocqueville, noted Hartz, had explained that all Americans were or aspired to be middle class; Mannheim that liberalism was the ideology of the middle class. Whence it followed that all struggles in America transpired within the unrecognized boundaries of liberal thought. There was no place for Burke or European-style conservatism. A generation later, scholars were determined to Americanize Burke, to refute Hartz, but their conclusions were less than definitive for two reasons. One was that they often cited a Burkean element in this speech or that of an American public figure, an isolated and particular item, rather than staking their claims on the overall significance and influence of Burke’s work. A second problem was that they often argued by analogy rather than by presenting compelling evidence. Something in the pronouncements of various American public figures and writers reminded them of Burke, which was enough to convince them they had made their point.2 An expedited review of American history in search of Burke is necessary if we are to come to terms with his presence or absence, his significance or ­insignificance, in America.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003412977-6

The Americanization of Burke?  163 The American Revolution and the Founding Years “I think I know America …, for I have spared no pains to understand it,”3 ­confirmed Burke. Know it he did, for he had labored in the late 1750s and early 1760s on a historical account of the colonization of America, and in 1771 accepted the position of agent of Great Britain for the colony of New York. He knew America and the American colonists knew him because of the stand he took, entirely to their liking, in the John Wilkes affair. Charged with subversion, Wilkes had been expelled from Parliament in 1769. His maltreatment endeared Wilkes to Americans who chose to see in the abuse he suffered the same wrongdoing they suffered at the hands of the British government. Boston’s Sons of Liberty called Wilkes to the attention of all British Americans by carrying on a well-advertised correspondence with him.4 Burke delighted the colonists in 1770 when he defended Wilkes’ right to his elected seat in Parliament. “Resistance to power has shut the door of the House of Commons to one man,” said Burke, “obsequiousness and servility, to none.” By no stretch of the imagination were Wilkes’ utterances dangerous, by no means were they a proper excuse for his exile. “I will not believe, what no other man believes, that Mr. Wilkes was punished for the indecency of his publications,” affirmed Burke. What could be more ridiculous “when I see that, for years together, full as impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, to virtue, and order have not been punished?” Anyone who desires can know the disturbing truth: “This gentleman, by setting himself strongly in opposition to the court cabal, had become an object of their persecution.”5 One need not admire Wilkes to know that it was essential to speak up in his behalf. Burke and the colonists were in agreement. Colonists still hopeful for a peaceful settlement with the mother country in 1775 had reason once more to be pleased with Burke when he delivered his famous speech on conciliation. Against those who lodged the charge that the colonists were anti-English, Burke argued they were English to the core. Understandably, Parliamentarians were annoyed that the colonists “augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.” But this was because the Americans were obsessed with the English thirst for liberty; the Americans were truly English, only more so. “In the character of the Americans a love of freedom is the predominating feature … This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth.” Their concern about taxation was typical of English history where “the great contests of freedom were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxation.” The deep immersion of the Americans in Blackstone, another tribute to their English identity, made them exceptionally adept at articulating their grievances; and their religion of Protestant dissent, “the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion,” 6 also had English roots.

164  The Americanization of Burke? What could be more English asked Burke? Any presentation of the ­Americans as being less English than persons living in England is based upon complete incomprehension of the colonists. Burke’s flattering portrait of the Americans would not suffice, he realized, to pacify them. Concessions were needed, not empty talk of “virtual representation” in Parliament as propounded by Lord Mansfield and others. To prevent a disruption of the Empire, the colonists should be permitted to return to their long-established habit of taxing themselves as they see fit. “My idea of an empire” is one in which “the subordinate parts have many local privileges and immunities.”7 Every time Burke spoke on behalf of the colonists his primary focus was on England, on sustaining the Empire. Every time Burke spoke of America his focus was on England a second time, in that he used the occasion to denounce the corruption of King and Parliament. Devoted Whig that he was, Burke was strongly opposed to the efforts of George III and his sycophants to undo the reigns of George I and George II, replacing their marginality in political affairs with the regime of a king powerful through the manipulation of patronage or “influence.” Burke and the Rockingham Whigs feared that the ruling coterie was provoking the colonists to the point of defection and therefore urged repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766. No sooner had they done so, however, than the Whigs agreed to the Declaratory Act which reaffirmed Parliamentary superiority over America “in all cases whatsoever.” Parliamentary sovereignty was taken for granted. America was to be accommodated, but Burke and his fellows failed to appreciate the evolution of political thought on the other side of the Atlantic, from parliamentary to popular sovereignty, from the rights of Englishmen to universal natural rights. As the year 1776 approached, the Americans were moving ever more beyond the politics of resistance to the politics of revolution, from Pufendorf to Locke. Burke was deaf to this development, deliberately so because he wished to circumvent discussions of the “principles” of political obligation. In his “Speech on American Taxation,” 1774, he had said “I am not going into distinctions of rights … I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them.”8 Burke had known America but knew it no more when the revolutionary year 1776 arrived. The metaphysical distinctions he abhorred were those promulgated by Parliament; those voiced by the Americans against Parliament went unnoticed in his speeches. He was deaf to the ever more ardent American talk of universal natural rights, a social contract based on popular sovereignty, and a constitution willed into existence rather than an historical inheritance. As of 1776, Burke did not know the Americans and they no longer had reason to know him. His unwillingness to acknowledge their revolutionary ideology saved him from a confrontation with them but curtailed the Americanization of Burke. The story of the Founding years in America after 1787 is decidedly not one of Burke triumphant. Both Federalists and Antifederalists seemingly had good reasons to cite Burke, the Federalists to embrace, the Antifederalists to repudiate

The Americanization of Burke?  165 him. Tellingly, both sides ignored him. “Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation … where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide but the general good,”9 Burke had announced. A statement more fit for Federalist purposes is difficult to imagine, but Burke’s name could not be mentioned, not when Antifederalists were accusing Federalists of imposing a British-style constitution on newly independent America. Madison’s statement in the Federalist Papers that representatives should “refine and enlarge the public views” sounded much like Burke’s speech of 1774 to the electors of Bristol and directly contradictory of the Antifederalist view that the will of constituents should be the only concern. But once again, Burke’s name is unmentioned by either party to the dispute. Nor in their call for frequent elections and rotation in office did Antifederalists bother to damn the Federalists by pointing out that in woeful England, a prominent spokesperson named Edmund Burke had taken the opposite view. Burke was the forgotten man, remembered in America only later, when he published his Reflections on the Revolution in France. In search of post-revolutionary legal continuity, James Wilson delivered his Lectures on Law in the early 1790s, and in the course of doing so penned some pages commenting on Burke’s Reflections. Earlier, Wilson had clashed with Tom Paine over the Pennsylvania constitution of 1790, Paine arguing for a unicameral legislature and weak executive, Wilson for bicameralism and a strong governor. One might expect Paine versus Wilson to be a rehash of Paine versus Burke (Chapter 2) but such was not the case. It was on forms, not on principles of government, that Wilson and Paine disagreed. As ardently as Paine, Wilson adhered to the principles of the American Revolution and took Burke to task for belittling the social contract. Whether he believed in self-government was the pressing question Wilson asked Burke. “To this question, Mr. Burke, in the spirit of his late creed, has answered in the negative.” Woe, then, to anyone who follows Burke’s lead; “this negative answer has been, from time immemorial, the stronghold of tyranny.” On the question of rights Burke again offered the wrong answer. Our rights are natural and universal, and Burke is quite wrong to suggest we sacrifice any of them upon signing the social contract. Precisely, the opposite is true; “man’s natural liberty, instead of being abridged, [is] increased and secured,” contended Wilson. Nor is it true that a past generation can bind forever succeeding generations. Did Burke forget that the English altered the line of succession in 1688?10 James Wilson was writing a moment before the rise of the Jeffersonians, a time of the Constitution ratified, of Federalism triumphant. Soon, a two-party system came into being with the Jeffersonian Republicans appearing to be the future, the Federalists the past. Confronted by Jeffersonians who rallied to the banner of Paine’s Rights of Man, the Federalists might have responded by churning out editions of Burke’s Reflections, hoping at the very least to hold their own in a revived Paine-Burke debate. Only minimally did they do so, with a mere two editions of Burke’s Reflections published between 1791 and 1793, as compared to

166  The Americanization of Burke? nineteen editions of Rights of Man. Associations called ­Democratic-Republican Societies, sympathetic to the French Revolution, arose as of 1793 from Maine to Georgia, never tiring of toasting Tom Paine and Rights of Man, never bothering to roast Burke. Old Federalists held their own meetings at which they denounced Paine, the “loathsome reptile,” but forgot to lift their glasses in honor of Edmund Burke. For or against Paine, not for or against Burke, characterized the frenzied debates of these years.11 There was apparently only one expression from Burke’s Reflections that repeatedly saw the light of day, “the swinish multitude.” Federalist Lewis Ogden greeted Jefferson’s election by remarking, “I think it will be truly laughable to see the swinish multitude (as Mr. Burke observes) … swilling whiskey to seditious toasts.” Another Federalist, John S. J. Gardiner, agreed that the voters were a “swinish multitude.” Nothing could have pleased Jeffersonians more than such insults which could readily be turned against the Federalists. Jeffersonian journalist Philip Freneau went so far as to designate himself “ONE OF THE SWINISH MULTITUDE.”12 Years earlier in England, James Parkinson had turned Burke against Burke with his Address to the Hon. Edmund Burke from the ­Swinish Multitude.13 Later, the Americans learned to employ the same device against Burke and the Federalists. Burke and the Adams Family Burke’s reception during the Founding years was meager and often negative. Did he fare any better with the famous Adams family, John and his son John Quincy? It is clear he was no stranger to them. When John Adams faced Jefferson in a bid for election, his son offered an English translation of Friedrich Gentz’s Burkeaninspired The French and American Revolutions Compared. John Adams entered less directly into the fray, but his letters do feature comments now and again on Burke. In some measure, Burke visited the Adams family, but was he a welcome guest and for how long was he invited to stay? Both Paine and Burke met with the disapproval of John Adams. Paine’s Common Sense was “a poor, ignorant, malicious, short sighted, crapulous mass.” As the proponent of a unicameral legislature, Paine was “a star of disaster,” “a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf.”14 Hostility to Paine did not convert, however, into attraction to Burke. The senior Adams told Benjamin Rush in 1809 that Burke had “uttered and published very absurd notions on the principles of government.”15 Coming upon the expression “swinish multitude,” Adams lashed out against Burke, calling him the “impudent libeler of your species!”16 Such occasional remarks as were forthcoming from Adams on Burke’s Reflections were uniformly critical. Beside the point or simply false was Burke’s claim that the Estates-General provided a proper foundation for a constitution. No better were Burke’s emotional comments about the unchivalrous treatment of the Queen. “In his description there is more of the

The Americanization of Burke?  167 orator than of the philosopher.”17 To the extent that Adams comments on Burke, it is always to distance himself. He expressed the strongest possible regret that anyone might confuse his warnings in A Defence of the Constitution of the United States about the regretful but inevitable rise of political elites, and the need to control them, with Burke’s enthusiastic championing of the aristocracy.18 John Quincy Adams published his 1791 “Publicola” letters on Burke and Paine in response to Jefferson’s misreading of his father’s message about aristocracy. Overwhelmingly, the remarks of the younger Adams focused on Paine; to avoid misunderstanding, he therefore alerted his readers “It is not my intention to defend the principles of Mr. Burke.” Neither Paine nor Burke was praiseworthy, not Burke for his “continued invective upon almost all the proceedings of the National Assembly,” not Paine for his “applause, as undistinguishing as is the censure of Mr. Burke.” Paine merited more attention because John Quincy agreed with him on principles, making it worthwhile to warn the public against repeating Paine’s mistake of “inferring questionable deductions from unquestionable principles.” Burke’s principled avoidance of principles, by contrast, deserved scant notice.19 John Quincy Adams sided firmly with Locke and the right to revolution but argued for reform whenever possible, for revolution only when absolutely necessary, because of the dangerous unpredictability of the outcome. “Mr. Pain[e] seems to think it as easy for a nation to change its government as for a man to change his coat.”20 Paine notwithstanding, England is not ready for revolution. The principal and most dangerous abuses in the English government arise less from the defects inherent in the Constitution than from the state of society – the universal venality and corruption which pervades all classes of men in that kingdom, and which a change of government could not reform. The fanatical anti-Catholic Gordon riots of 1780 show how unready England is for Paine’s suggestion of an enlightened uprising from below. Successful revolution is out of the question; effective reform a possibility. Paine the radical Whig is sometimes right for America, wrong for England.21 Like his father, John Quincy Adams was attacked for opinions he did not profess. He broke with the reactionary Federalists, moved on to the National Republicans, and eventually to the Whigs of the second party system. That did not prevent Theodore Lyman Jr. from denouncing him in 1828 as an Old F ­ ederalist. “The leading trait of Mr. Adams is a distrust of the people in matters of government. His opinions were formed in the school of Burke.”22 Nothing could have been further from the truth. In 1809, John Quincy had written a scathing critique of the Federalists under the title American Principles. To their everlasting shame, the New England Federalists, he charged, have “renounced the principles of their better days.” Their “anti-republican prejudices” are reprehensible, their words and actions place on public display “the last flutterings of a nervous ­system in ruins.”23

168  The Americanization of Burke? Persistently throughout his career Adams signed on with Locke, so u­ ncompromisingly that there was no room for Burke to enter the picture. Speaking on July 4, 1831, he underscored what made the American Revolution an event of universal significance: “In the history of the world, this was the first example of a self-constituted nation proclaiming to the rest of mankind the principles upon which it was associated, and deriving those principles from the laws of nature.” Accused of flaunting abstractions, Americans should remember that it was “those abstractions [upon which] hinged the justice of their cause. Without them, our revolution would have been but successful rebellion.”24 On the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington, Adams took advantage of the occasion to celebrate “this mighty revolution, not only in the affairs of our own country, but in the principles of government [of] civilized man.” Pursuing his self-appointed mission of paving the way for America to shape its image as it entered the world stage, he could think of no better credential than its commitment to natural rights, popular sovereignty, and the social contract. Especially admirable was that Americans had moved beyond the rights of Englishmen to “the imprescriptible rights of man and the transcendent sovereignty of the people.” “In the history of the human race this had never been done before.”25 Three years later, Adams delivered a speech titled The Social Compact, Exemplified in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in which he offered a mini-course on the history of social contract theory, endorsing Locke as the hero of his tale.26 Whether Adams gave any thought to Burke when making such remarks in uncertain, but it is certain that the political philosophy of Adams was fundamentally incompatible with that of Burke. Late in life, 1843, Adams reaffirmed his uncompromising support of America’s social contract by taking direct aim at countervailing thoughts emanating from England. “Government had by the people of England been declared to be founded on a compact between the sovereign and the people … It was asserted that by entering into the social compact man surrendered all his rights.” This was the contract of Grotius, Pufendorf, and the Burke of An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. After signing the social contract, the people, in the English view, forfeited their sovereignty and freedom by agreeing to a second, a political contract, binding them forever to their rulers, as opposed to the American notion that the rulers are bound to the people. Against England, against the unnamed Burke, Adams hailed America’s bold Lockean stand at the time of the Revolution and throughout its history.27 Burke in Antebellum America If ever there was a moment when Burke might have come to the fore in ­America, it was during the Antebellum age. The many Jacksonian toasts to Paine, especially in the North, might well have inspired a renewed Burke-Paine debate. In the South, Burke’s remarks in his speech on conciliation, especially on

The Americanization of Burke?  169 Southern slavery, seemed an open invitation to cite him favorably. And when ­conservatives, both North and South, were confronted with abolitionists and labor radicals, they responded in common with the epithet “Jacobin,” which presumably gave them ample reason to cherish Burke. Nevertheless, there were formidable obstacles to a triumph of Burke. When the Southerners seceded, they belatedly reclaimed the revolutionary ­heritage they had earlier foregone. Remarkably, they flaunted copies of the very ­un-Burkean Declaration of Independence in self-justification as they departed from the Union – this after many years of condemning its philosophy of universal rights.28 To the North, Daniel Webster’s Appeal to the Old Whigs of New Hampshire (1805) inadvertently displayed the limits of Burke’s use despite the title, borrowed from Burke’s Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. For were not the Old Whigs in the American setting supporters of the revolutionary ideology, and thus the very opposite of England’s Old Whigs? There is no better place to look than to Edward Everett’s speeches for a guide to Burke’s place in Whig sensibilities during the Antebellum years. Perhaps, the most elegant speaker of his age, likened to Cicero, Everett inserted plentiful references to Burke into his speeches. Within a single paragraph, Everett praised Burke as a “great man” but also depicted him far less favorably as a conjurer of “splendid paradoxes.”29 Everett’s topic, The Principle of the American Constitutions, made it difficult for him to ally closely with Burke, the enemy of all discussions of principles. In 1791, Burke had belatedly addressed the American Revolution but only to condemn ministerial conduct in England, not to acknowledge the American struggle for freedom. Between America and England, Burke never recognized a difference of political vision. Everett, by contrast, acknowledged “a mighty issue of political right between the two hemispheres.” Nowhere in Europe “was the truth admitted, that the only just foundation of all government is the will of the people.”30 “Without disparaging foreign governments, we may be allowed to prefer our own, … to seek to maintain them on their original foundations and on their true principles.”31 “I am not … the panegyrist of England,”32 Everett affirmed. Among its many virtues, America has welcomed newcomers not of English descent. It is confirmation of the principles of the Revolution that makes one a citizen, not an ­English inheritance. Potentially, America can be better than England and could be a model for Europe to emulate if Americans continue to live up to the promise of their principles.33 Such sentiments were distinctively un-Burkean. Everett cited Burke often, expressing sympathy but disagreeing with him on fundamental issues. Burke was mistaken in his efforts to prove that the people of England have not a right to appoint and remove their rulers; and that, if they ever had the right, they deliberately renounced it, at the glorious revolution of 1688, for themselves and their posterity forever.

170  The Americanization of Burke? In Everett’s eyes, the Whig contract of Burke and his fellows shared with Tory divine right the assumption that all government was based upon “the right of the strongest.”34 Decidedly, Everett was not a Burkean. Most Americans enrolled in the Whig party were optimistic about the future. History is progressive was their view, the economy steadily expanding, and eventually, overcoming their initial reluctance, they learned to mimic ­Jacksonian tricks to win elections – “no fellow shall out democrat me” said a Kentucky Whig.35 Another sign of Whig willingness to adjust to the world of democratic politics was Calvin Colton’s awkward compromise: he embraced the democratic symbol “Hard Cider,” useful for attracting an audience, while maintaining his Whiggish commitment to self-control by refusing to actually recommend drinking at open field political events.36 Not all Whigs, however, were convinced that a welcome future awaited the country, and at least a few, such as Joseph Tracy, Hubbard Winslow, and Rufus Choate, three New Englanders, flirted with despair. All three paid some attention to Burke, whether in passing or in depth. Tracy and Winslow were Congregational clergymen, heirs of the New E ­ ngland clergymen of 1795 who had led the way to repudiation of the French Revolution; and now in the 1830s, it was their turn to shout “Jacobin!” at ­home-grown ­American radicals. Both were traumatized by the abolitionist movement, and Tracy had even more to worry about: frightening signs of a feminist movement coming into being and a New York state constitutional convention at which a cry went up for equalization of property. Winslow’s Burke was “an illustrious scholar and statesman” whose “writings should be in the hands of all American citizens.” To counteract radicals eager to “sweep away, with one great burning blast, all the collected wisdom and experience of the ages,” he exhumed Burke’s most dire predictions as to the results of wanton innovation.37 Tracy’s Burke was the man who rebuked the French for pronouncing marriage “no better than a common, civil contract.” Much to Burke’s credit, he had expatiated upon “the horrible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out of the guardianship and protection of the other.”38 Rufus Choate made numerous allusions to Burke in his speeches, always favorable. He called himself a “conservative” and advocated “conservatism.”39 Yet what his work best illustrates is that in America the mores of the legal profession often preempted Burkean conservatism. It was in his 1845 speech on “the position and functions of the American bar” that he defined his conservative political outlook. Unwilling to discard the ideology of the Revolution, he urged lawyers to undermine its radical potential. Lawyers are “statesmen” charged with the duty of inscribing the “vast truth of conservatism on the public mind, so that no [abolitionist] demagogue denies it.”40 Natural rights, the right to a new constitution, the right to revolution – all these Choate granted in theory but asked lawyers and judges to nullify in practice. Forget Locke, the state is something

The Americanization of Burke?  171 more than a contract, more than “an encampment of tents on the great prairie.” Yes, once upon a time the political order may have been a matter of human will, but now it should be regarded as a set of fixed and quasi-religious institutions. The wise course is to leave “the Constitution and the Union exactly as they are” until at last they are worshipped at the same throne as the common law.41 The last chapter of Choate’s career is the sad tale of a self-inflicted wound from which he could not recover. A fervent unionist, he had always condemned the abolitionists, and toward the end of his life he expressed outrage at those of his fellow Whigs who joined the new sectional Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. To him the future looked bleak, and in his fury he poured out vituperation against the Declaration of Independence, the document Republicans had chosen to embrace as their defining emblem. The Civil War buried Choate, and dying with him was the last hint of Burke as Yankee. His many references to Burke over the course of his career came to nothing.

** Ever so slowly Burke’s works saw the light of day during the Antebellum years, with sixteen editions of his collected works published by the outbreak of the Civil War. A few embattled Whigs, as we have seen, took a measure of refuge in his works, and even more so did embattled Southerners, ever on the lookout for writings to defend their deeply embedded but ceaselessly challenged institution of slavery. It was Burke’s comments on the South in his speech on conciliation with the colonies to which they frequently repaired to shore up their defenses. Much to the liking of Southerners was Burke’s comment that in their colonies he spied a circumstance rendering the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those of the n­ orthward … In Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege … In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.42 Robert Hayne, Thomas Roderick Dew, William Harper, and George Fitzhugh were numbered among the Southern luminaries who turned Burke’s speech into what he would never have sanctioned: an apology for slavery. In the course of debating Daniel Webster in 1830, South Carolina Senator Robert Hayne found himself defending the “character” of Southerners. “Ardent love of country, exalted virtue, and a pure and holy devotion to liberty,” he assured his audience, were the most pronounced and unmistakable characteristics of Southerners.

172  The Americanization of Burke? Rendering such nobility possible was the institution of slavery, and anyone who thought otherwise should consult Burke’s famous speech on conciliation.43 Thomas Roderick Dew wrote in response to the impassioned legislative debate over emancipation following Nat Turner’s rebellion. One of his trump cards was a long quotation from Burke on the splendors of freedom in a slave society.44 Respected proslavery polemicist William Harper added his voice to those recommending Burke’s speech on conciliation.45 What Hayne, Dew, and Harper said in the early to mid-1830s, George Fitzhugh was still saying in the late 1850s. Never one to overlook an argument defending the South, Fitzhugh added his voice to the Southern chorus singing the praises of Burke.46 Burke arguably taught the Southerners not only how to speak but also how to remain strategically silent. Their awkward record was that of welcoming the social contract during the Revolution, then criticizing it in antebellum times, and, finally, embracing it again when they seceded. Burke offered them an escape from the need to choose for or against the social contract. His aversion of principles was perhaps as much to their liking as his praise of their devotion to freedom. Every time they cited his speech on conciliation with the colonies they could serve their ends without siding for or against the social contract. Burke’s speech did more than divert the Southerners from Locke. It also reminded them to read their Aristotle. While writing about the South, Burke noted that “ancient commonwealths,” like the modern South, had been founded on slave labor and were the wonder of classical times. Nothing more was necessary for Harper, Dew, Fitzhugh, and James Henry Hammond to recommend Aristotle’s Politics to Southerners. Their view was that slavery had been the “cornerstone” of the old, classical republican edifice, that it was likewise the cornerstone of the new, and therefore should be protected at all costs. “Our citizens, like those of Rome and Athens, are a privileged class,” obliged to serve the public, wrote Fitzhugh.47 Harper agreed and rallied his fellow Southerners to their civic duty: “Resembling the ancients in our institutions, we should resemble them in their public spirit.”48 The history-defying call for a return to the classics was not limited to states below the Mason-Dixon Line. Hubbard Winslow in the North had similarly saluted Burke, only to leave him behind when issuing a plea for citizens to return to the good old republican virtues of the fathers. “Only the same virtues which originated and established our republic can perpetuate and prosper it … Let our children then be early and faithfully taught the true republican doctrine.”49 Northerners and Southerners in search of a safe conservative doctrine did their best to forget the natural rights republic of the Revolution and Founding. The more complete their self-induced amnesia, the more they could fill the resulting void with misleading images of a classical America in the recent, eighteenthcentury past. Burke was consigned to the background as ultraconservatives North and South rode off on a quest to recapture an American past that had never existed. His day never truly came, either as Yankee or as Cavalier.

The Americanization of Burke?  173 Woodrow Wilson and Edmund Burke If Burke was more a marginal than a compelling presence in antebellum ­America, where his prospects were at their most promising, we should not be surprised by his relative insignificance during the Gilded Age and ensuing Progressive Era. Nevertheless, there was one noteworthy exception: Burke fared exceptionally well in the essays, histories, and pronouncements of prominent scholar and exceptionally important public figure Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a Southerner and an arch-racist; in his histories, every claim made by proslavery writers before the Civil War was repeated as matter-of-fact truth – the analogy of the Southern states with classical republics; the assertion that domestic slaves were treated with affection and indulgence; the reassurance that only absentee masters were ever guilty of misconduct; and the insistence that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a book to be scorned.50 Wilson was second to no Southerner in his admiration of Burke’s remarks on the South in his speech on ­conciliation. What made his praise exceptional was that, unlike most Southern authors, he did not stop with borrowing from the speech on conciliation to vindicate his racism. He drew upon the entirety of Burke’s life and writings and did not hesitate to conclude that Burke offered “the best political thought of the English race.”51 Wilson’s essay of 1896, The Interpreter of English Liberty, demands careful scrutiny. More than an expression of intense Anglophilia, more than a simple apology for Burke, Wilson took thoughtful notice of the ambivalence of Burke’s early pronouncements. There was, of course, much to Wilson’s liking in the Burke he discussed, much that matched conventional wisdom, as when he assured his readers that “from first to last Burke’s thought is conservative.” In the same vein of approval is the comment that “there is no page of abstract reasoning to be found in Burke.” The responses of Burke to the four crises of his career – the American war of independence, the question of parliamentary reform, the proper and improper treatment of India, and the French Revolution – were all made of one evolutionary cloth. “The history of England is a continuous thesis against revolution,” Wilson assured his audience, and Burke was perhaps the greatest exponent of this thesis.52 Wilson was quite certain that Burke’s responses to the four crises were consistently those of a dedicated conservative. Up to this point, there is nothing unexpected in Wilson’s essay. He did, however, break new ground by taking seriously the thought that Burke’s credentials as a hard-bitten conservative, if measured against his early career, were not always above reproach. During his youthful years, Burke had written A Vindication of Natural Society which sounded like and was taken to be an exercise in radical Whiggery. Shortly thereafter, he distanced himself from his performance with a new preface explaining that he was parodying Bolingbroke’s Vindication of Natural Religion. “The design,” said Burke, “was to show that … the same engines that were employed for the destruction of religion, might be

174  The Americanization of Burke? employed with equal success for the subversion of government.”53 Perhaps so, but ­Wilson was correct to remark that Burke’s radical treatise was so convincing that it fooled “some very grave critics.” After submitting Burke’s treatise to careful examination, Wilson concluded that “the book, indeed, is not a parody” but immediately rescued his beloved predecessor by suggesting that, although Burke agreed with all the particular criticisms of society, he had not meant for the overall thesis to be taken seriously.54 Wilson must have had trouble convincing himself that Burke in his early years was harmless. He knew quite well that Burke, rather than satisfying his father by pursuing a legal career, had sought fame and fortune in the dubious social netherworld of journalism. Burke, he admitted, was a “high-minded adventurer,” driven by a “roving mind,” who lived with “Bohemian” friends. Near the end of his essay, Wilson saved the day by concluding that “the radical features of Burke’s mind were literary,” not overtly political.55 Wilson could not quite bring himself to take the final step of admitting that the youthful Burke had come very close to being the kind of unattached intellectual that the later mature Burke would charge with fomenting the French Revolution. Wilson could be reasonably forthright about Burke’s possible youthful indiscretions because they were, thankfully, of no consequence. Unfortunately, the words of Burke’s maturity were also of little or no consequence, considering that members of Parliament taunted him and walked out on his speeches. “His great authority is over us rather than over the men of his own day,” Wilson pointed out, quite plausibly.56 Only after his death did the curtain go up for Burke. The Burke who mattered and with whom Wilson identified was the Burke of the Liberals William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, and Henry Maine, the leading deities of politics and political literature. Like Burke and many later English Liberals, Wilson applauded 1688, condemned 1789, and in works such as The State (1889) went so far as to suggest that “from the dim morning of history … the law of coherence and continuity in political development,” except for the French Revolution, “has suffered no serious breach.”57 Less dogmatically and far more effectively, he called upon Bagehot’s The English Constitution to learn how to study American political institutions. Behind the “literary theory” of separation of powers, Bagehot had detected the reality of cabinet government. Employing the same tactic, Wilson in Congressional Government (1885) spied – behind the misleading rhetoric of checks and balances – the reality of government by congressional committees. Not least among the items Wilson borrowed from the English Liberals was their animus against natural rights and the social contract. When Gladstone referred to the franchise as a “right,” his fellow Liberals gasped in disbelief. How could their leader speak in a language that echoed the old talk about natural rights, long discredited in England as French, revolutionary, and destructive?58 Henry Maine in Ancient Law (1861) had taken direct aim at the social contract and derided it as historical nonsense because the pattern of historical development, properly

The Americanization of Burke?  175 understood, had not been from contract to society but from early s­ ocieties based on “status” to modern societies awash in contracts – but not the social contract.59 Wilson dutifully followed suit. His book The State features a section called “Contract Versus Status,” arguing that the social contract “simply has no historical foundation. Status was the basis of primitive society: the individual counted for nothing.”60 Much like the conservative English Liberals, Wilson conveniently forgot Locke and parroted their condemnation of social contract theory on the grounds that it had been thoroughly discredited by the French Revolution. “No state can be conducted on its principles,” he wrote in his essay on Burke, “for it holds that government is a matter of contract and deliberate arrangement, whereas in fact it is an institute of habit.”61 There being no Jacobins in America, Wilson had to settle for regurgitating the old baseless Federalist depiction of Thomas Jefferson as a fellow traveler. Jefferson, he wrote in A History of the American People, was “touched at every point of touch by the speculations which were the principles of the revolution over sea.”62 He made the same misleading charge in Division and Reunion, 1829–1889, and in his essay “A Calendar of Great Americans.”63 Perhaps the most striking story to be told about Wilson’s intellectual life is that of how he began by referring to “the rights of man” in sarcastic terms and ended by embracing the same, and, in a parallel development, how he evolved from vilifying Jefferson to seizing his mantle.64 Political events, no doubt, had something to do with his reversal, especially his decision to join the Progressives, and, later, his response to world affairs during World War I. But to do him full justice, it is necessary to recognize his transformation as a step-by-step internal development rather than simply a convenient response to external pressure. It is also necessary to note how Burke more and more faded from the foreground to the background of Wilson’s thought. A good place to begin in taking account of his evolution is with a recognition that his conservatism was never a mere apology for the status quo. His praise of Bagehot is a case in point. Bagehot had lauded the government of England at great length, occasionally underscoring its excellence by making comparisons with what he saw as the deficient American system. Wilson’s Congressional Government made Bagehot’s criticism of America its focus, and in the margins contrasted it with England’s excellent cabinet government. What Wilson did was to develop systematically Bagehot’s belief that responsible government in England promoted educational debates in Parliament, unlike America, where whispers in congressional committees stifled public life.65 Long before he became a Progressive, Woodrow Wilson the Burkean sympathizer was a critic and reformer. Wilson regarded Congressional Government as nothing less than a critique of constitutional government in America. “We of the present generation are in the first season of free, outspoken, unrestrained constitutional criticism,” he announced in his opening pages.66 It is to his credit that, while drawing upon

176  The Americanization of Burke? British Liberal Walter Bagehot, he proved he was not the blind disciple of ­Bagehot or of any British Liberal, not even of perhaps the most cherished ­Liberal of all, William Gladstone. Only a few years earlier, Gladstone had published “Kin Beyond Sea” in the North American Review. In this essay, he remarked that as the British Constitution is the most subtile organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is … the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. For generations to come, Americans in want of English validation cited ­Gladstone’s words.67 But not Woodrow Wilson, who had concluded that all was not well with constitutional government in America. It is also to Wilson’s credit that he never granted anything to the antidemocratic fears of British Liberals (Chapter 3) such as Henry Maine and Walter Bagehot. Not at all. On the contrary, he chided Bagehot because “he has no sympathy with the voiceless body of the people … He would have the mass served, and served with devotion,” but would never permit them “to serve themselves.”68 Wilson wanted nothing to do with the repugnance felt by Bagehot and other “literary men” for democracy.69 Active politicians understand that the lesson of American history must be heeded. “The war for independence had been a democratic upheaval, and its processes had seriously discredited all government which was not entirely of the people.”70 Wilson was always a democrat (lower and upper case), and his faith in democracy made it that much easier for him to pursue a Democratic version of the Progressive movement. Wilson’s New Freedom speeches of 1912 contain what might be called a Burkean rationale for his shift of position. “I am forced to be a progressive,” he announced in a campaign speech, “if for no other reason, because we have not kept up with our changes of conditions, either in the economic field or in the political field.”71 Did not his position in 1912, he might have asked, follow directly from the words he had spoken in 1889: “The method of political development is conservative adaptation, shaping old habits into new ones, modifying old means to accomplish new ends.”72 The new Wilson came to the fore as the preserver of all that was worthwhile in the old America. “If I did not believe that to be progressive was to preserve the essentials of our institutions, I for one could not be a progressive.”73 Exceptionally well versed in Burke, he may have been thinking about a sentence in the Reflections: “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”74 Wilson had motive, then, to be a Progressive, and the rise of the modern presidency afforded him the means to succeed. The Spanish-American War had taught him that the leadership he thought essential but absent from Congressional ­Government could come from the executive office for which he was now campaigning.75 All that was wanting was a program and that, too, could be provided by the New Freedom agenda of saving America from the corporate plutocrats.

The Americanization of Burke?  177 Everything British and Burkean in Wilson’s makeup disappeared during the campaign of 1912, replaced in part at least by the time-honored American faith in popular sovereignty and rights. “Every society is renewed from the bottom,” he told the voters. “The people of the United States understand their own interests better than any [representatives]”; hence, Progressives were duty-bound to “bring the government back to the people.”76 As a Democratic Progressive, Woodrow Wilson learned to sing the praises of the very Jefferson he had previously chided. Were Jefferson alive in 1912, Wilson expressed confidence that he would have been an advocate of the New Freedom.77 Last but far from least, the new Wilson unflinchingly endorsed the doctrine of rights: “What I am interested in is having the government of the United States more concerned about human rights than about property rights.”78 Burke may have helped ease Woodrow Wilson into the Progressive movement, but the movement eased Burke out of Wilson’s speeches. World War I had much the same effect on Wilson. Beginning with Gladstone’s notion of the selfdetermination of nations, Wilson quickly moved on to declare that “we are the champions of the rights of mankind.”79 Forgotten was Burke’s uncompromising hostility to the French declaration of universal rights. Again and again, Wilson returned to his theme: “We are fighting for what we believe to be the rights of mankind.”80 The devoted Burkean had evolved to the point of speaking with a voice strikingly similar to that of Tom Paine. Woodrow Wilson could not have sounded more Burkean in his earlier career as an academic, nor less Burkean in his later career as a Presidential figure. Burke the Cold Warrior Throughout America history, it was only with great difficulty that Burke’s name could be invoked in a persuasive manner, yet during the Cold War of the 1950s, he enjoyed a moment of belated triumph. There had always been obvious reasons why he appeared to be ill-suited for America and which could be overcome only with difficulty. His advocacy of aristocracy had gone down well in ­England but not in America. It is difficult to forget Joel Barlow’s words of 1793: “Mr. Burke, in a frenzy of passions, has drawn away the veil; and aristocracy, like a decayed prostitute … throws off her covering, to get a livelihood by displaying her ugliness.”81 Even Russell Kirk, one of his foremost American advocates in the 1950s, admitted, “Burke would have dreaded the modern democratic state.”82 And yet triumph Burke did in that decade, the 1950s, recruited as an ally ready and willing to serve intellectuals fighting the Cold War. As the eighteenth century drew to a close, Friedrich Gentz penned The French and American Revolutions Compared. Twice in the 1950s, this Burkean-inspired pamphlet was reissued, the first time with an Introduction by Russell Kirk, the second time under the title Three Revolutions, because scholar Stefan T. ­Possony added his essay “Reflections on the Russian Revolution” to the original work – an irresistible complement to Gentz, given that this edition came out during the

178  The Americanization of Burke? height of the Cold War. In his early years, Gentz had attended the lectures of Immanuel Kant, adhered to the world of the Prussian Aufklärung, championed “enlightened” causes, and defended the French Revolution, only to change his outlook dramatically between April 1791 and Autumn 1792 when he divorced Kant for Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France he translated into German in 1793. When he entered public life, he became an active figure in the Counter-Revolution. By far, his most famous publication was The French and American Revolutions Compared, which explicitly aimed to be a fulfillment of Burke’s work. Burke himself never offered a fully developed comparison of the American and French Revolutions. No sooner had the colonies seceded than they were of little interest to him, his focus shifting in the years following 1776 to finding a better way to administer the Indian part of England’s Empire. And with the outbreak of the French Revolution, all his energies were directed to denying the radical Whig Richard Price’s likening of France in 1789 to England in 1688. Burke addressed the years leading up to the American Revolution but not that event itself except in passing, and not until Gentz was there a systematic “Burkean” comparison of 1776 with 1789. Burke’s scattered comments about revolutionary America contain only a few germs of Gentz’s later work. Insofar as Burke completely missed in 1777, and then denied in 1791, the existence of the radical ideology of the Americans, he invited Gentz’s sharp contrast of the American with the French Revolution. Burke’s Address to the British Colonists in North America was a final effort, in 1777, to persuade the Americans to reconsider their declaration of independence. He readily conceded that England’s employment of foreign mercenaries had been a mistake, but he warned the colonists that life outside the protections of the English Empire was likely to be challenging. To his mind, there was still hope because the Americans were concerned about the preservation of their “privileges and liberties” – their English liberty.83 Burke either had not read or did not understand the words of the Declaration of Independence. Speaking again in 1777, Burke took comfort in finding that “for a long time, even amidst the desolations of war, … the American leaders seem to have had the greatest difficulty in bringing up their people to a declaration of total independence.”84 In 1791, Burke turned, belatedly and briefly, to the American Revolution to defend himself against “new” Whigs who charged him, an “old” Whig, with inconsistency in saying no to the French Revolution after having said yes to the American. Burke explained that his conversations with Benjamin Franklin had led him to conclude that the Americans “were purely on the defensive in that rebellion.” He considered the Americans as standing at that time … in the same relation to England as England did to King James the Second in 1688. He believed that they had taken up arms from one motive only: … our attempting to tax them without their consent.85

The Americanization of Burke?  179 With these brief comments, spoken in the third person, Burke initiated the work that Gentz would complete in his pamphlet, translated into English and published in 1800. The point of The French and American Revolutions Compared was to persuade the reader that “every parallel between the two revolutions will serve much more likely to display the contrast rather than the resemblance between them.” Unlike the French, the Americans sought “only to preserve, not to erect a new building”; “it never occurred to them … to reform even their own country, much less the whole world.” To their credit, the Americans escaped from “the deadly passion for making political experiments with abstract theories.”86 The French did, the Americans did not, proselytize. Another major contrast was that the French fought a civil war, the Americans a war of independence. The most remarkable contrast was that “the American revolution was … merely a defensive revolution; the French … an offensive revolution.”87 All told, 1776 was the replay of English glory in 1688 rather than the precursor of the damnable French event dating from 1789. To transform 1776 and 1789 into thesis and antithesis, Gentz had to omit from his account of America the de facto banishment of the Loyalists to Canada, the confiscation of Loyalist property, the tar and feathers borne by officials who attempted to enforce the Stamp Act, the proud American assertions of a novus ordo seclorum, and the universalistic ideals that the American revolutionaries and their descendants repeatedly invited Europeans to adopt. Until 1795, a full year after the Terror, even the Federalists were enthralled by the thought that the French were vindicating in Europe the earlier revolution in America. Gentz recognized that the greatest obstacle to his objective of disconnecting the two revolutions was the undeniable kinship of the Declaration of Independence with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. True it is, that the declaration of independence, … is preceded by an introduction, in which the natural and unalienable rights of mankind are considered the foundation of all government … It is likewise true, that most of the [state] constitutions of the United States, are preceded by those idle declarations of rights, from which so much misery has at a later period been derived upon France. The best Gentz could do to save his argument was to assure his readers “that they allowed to these speculative ideas no visible influence upon their practical measures and resolves.” Scrambling to shore up his sagging argument, Gentz changed the topic and drew “a contrast between the wild, extravagant declamation of a Paine, and the mild, moderate, and considerate tone … of a Washington.”88 There is little to indicate that Gentz’s essay had significant influence in ­America when it was published in 1800, or that it received much attention in later American history. The reason for this neglect is not obscure. Many Americans

180  The Americanization of Burke? have been quite willing to make the mistake of denying that the principles of their revolution had anything in common with France’s; they have often been willing to forget that the notions of popular sovereignty, natural or human rights, and the right of the people to will a new constitution into being, belong to both revolutions.89 They have frequently had recourse to “Jacobin” as a curse word. But what Americans have only rarely accepted in the disconnection of America and France has been the outright denial of their own political principles. Only occasionally did they go that far, the 1950s being one of those occasions. The new edition of Gentz, introduced by the conservative pundit Russell Kirk, was a hit because of the Cold War. Gentz had feared “eine ­Total-Revolution,” as had Burke in his final work, the Letters on a Regicide Peace. American conservatives of the 1950s and Cold War liberals overlapped in their fear of “totalitarianism.” J. L. Talmon’s The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1951), applauded by Kirk, was a prime example of the determination of Cold War liberals to see the French Revolution as the precursor of the Russian Revolution, the Jacobins as the forerunners of the Bolsheviks. Walter Lippmann’s The Public Philosophy (1955) gave wide currency in America to Talmon’s attack on French republicans. Writing in response to the McCarthy period, Lippmann, like many another liberal intellectual of his time, feared “the ever-expanding masses who are losing contact with the traditions of Western society.”90 In the climate of opinion of the day, the French and Bolshevik revolutions became interchangeable, and the American revolution, as a saving grace, was deliberately denied its status as a revolution. Liberals and Conservatives alike adhered to a ­conservative outlook. In his Introduction to Gentz’s pamphlet, Kirk took delight in recommending a publication that appeared in 1953, Daniel Boorstin’s The Genius of ­American Politics. Here was a book authored by a well-known scholar who came “to a conclusion identical to Gentz’s.” There was much to be said for Kirk’s reading of Boorstin because the chapter on the American Revolution was, indeed, a systematic assault on the notion that it was in any way, shape, or form a revolution. One lengthy section of a chapter bore the title “The Conservatism of the Revolution,” another was named “Revolution Without Dogma: A Legacy of Institutions.” Typical was the assertion that “our national birth certificate is a Declaration of Independence and not a Declaration of the Rights of Man.”91 The “technical, legalistic, and conservative character” of the Declaration “will appear at once by contrast with the comparable document of the French Revolution.”92 The Declaration’s legalistic list of specific acts of British misconduct may be admitted, but the political philosophy of the opening paragraphs should be ignored or somehow taken to be “merely a succinct restatement of the Whig theory of the British revolution of 1688.”93 What more could Kirk ask, except an explicit nod to Burke, and here, too, Boorstin did not disappoint: “The ablest defender of the Revolution – in fact, the greatest political theorist of the ­American ­Revolution – was also the great theorist of British conservatism, Edmund Burke.”94

The Americanization of Burke?  181 The notoriety of Gentz’s essay on revolution was not the only major debate in which Burke was enlisted as a Cold Warrior in the 1950s. Another role for Burke was in the struggle over how political philosophy should be taught in the universities. Peter Laslett in Politics, Philosophy, and Society, a collection of essays published in 1956, uttered in the Foreword his oft-quoted sentence, “For the time being, anyway, political philosophy is dead.” And he knew exactly who had ended its life: “The Logical Positivists did it.”95 Such a conclusion was bound to disappoint some scholars, who were not content to attend the funeral of the great tradition of ethical and political thought initiated in ancient Greece and persistent over endless centuries. Well-known political theorist Leo Strauss was more than disappointed. The abandonment of the pursuit of the great ethical questions, in his judgment, “leads to nihilism – nay, it is identical with nihilism.” The time had come for a battle within the academy. “Looking around us, we see two hostile camps, heavily fortified and strictly guarded. One is occupied by the liberals of various descriptions, the other by the Catholic and non-Catholic disciples of Thomas Aquinas,”96 argued Strauss. The analytical philosophers were on one side; the proponents of traditional natural law philosophy on the other. Edmund Burke would be invited to join and become a prominent member of the latter group. A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic may be taken as a manifesto of logical positivism. Truthful statements are either formal or empirical, he explained. Empirical truths deal with facts, with observable reality, and sometimes can be generalized by induction; formal truths deal with pure thought, with logic, including mathematics, and have nothing to do with existence. Proper philosophy seeks “the elimination of metaphysics” because it falls into neither category of truth. Neither does ethics, which is merely a matter of expressing our emotions. “Ethical judgments have no validity.”97 “Is” and “ought,” fused in older philosophies, are permanently separated. The great questions are nonsense – literally so, because they go beyond sense experience. Anyone upset by such findings should remember that there is no better antidote to fanaticism than skepticism, or so thought intellectuals who carried Ayer’s message into the 1950s.98 Ayer’s treatise had profound implications for political philosophy, as was shown decisively in analytical philosopher T. D. Weldon’s The Vocabulary of Politics, a wake without tears in 1953 for the so-called “perennial wisdom” of the classics. When Plato and other great thinkers devoted themselves to questions such as “What is Justice?” they were wasting their time, Weldon asserted, because truth pertains solely to matters of fact or questions of logic. Possibly, Plato’s Laws merits serious study for its empirical claims, but as for the highfalutin Republic, it is worthless.99 In the background of Weldon’s book, there lurked, once again, the Cold War. No message was more prominent in The Vocabulary of Politics than the insistence that there is no rational basis for deciding that one regime is better than another. Hence, we should abjure dangerous ideological struggles, devoting ourselves

182  The Americanization of Burke? instead to piecemeal, modest, and safe political measures.100 “­Ideological wars have no tendency whatever to prove that one answer is right and another wrong.”101 The skepticism of Weldon and other analytical philosophers did not go down easily for many of the intellectuals caught up in the Cold War. A response to skepticism and relativism came to the fore and took the form of a quest for absolutes, such as had been provided once upon a time by the natural law philosophy which could be traced back to antiquity, then to Aquinas, and to the Catholic church in modern times. So fearful were mid-century intellectuals of democracy degenerating into totalitarianism that at least one major figure embraced natural law without, apparently, believing it intellectually viable. Walter Lippmann, educated at Harvard in the Pragmatic philosophy of William James and John Dewey, a Progressive intellectual writing for a large audience, voiced his fears of “the doctrine of popular sovereignty” in The Public Philosophy (1955) and searched for a means to minimize the influence of “the recently enfranchised voters.” His suggestion was that university students should be exposed to the message of self-restraint found in the classics, especially in the philosophers of natural law. Revealingly, he admitted that “what is necessary … is that [this philosophy] shall be believed to be right,” not that it is right, all of which smacked of the Pragmatism of his youth. Lippmann’s natural law philosophy sounds like Plato’s “noble lie.”102 There was no lack of Cold War intellectuals in the 1950s who believed ardently in natural law philosophy, some of whom bolstered their position by enlisting Edmund Burke in their ranks. A number of English commentators in the nineteenth century, as we have seen (Chapter 5), did not hesitate to designate Burke’s thought as political philosophy. Perhaps, we should not be surprised to encounter a number of American writers in the 1950s who registered the same claim. “Never was statesman more reluctant to turn political philosopher [than Burke],” wrote Russell Kirk in his 1953 study of The Conservative Mind; “but never, perhaps, was the metamorphosis more consequential … By the clutch of circumstance, Burke had been compelled to enter the realm of abstraction,” enunciating a classical doctrine of natural law. Had Kirk insisted that Burke drew upon the modern natural rights philosophy of Grotius and Pufendorf, he might have been on to something (Chapter 2). Instead, he suggested the much more dubious proposition that when Burke “enunciates the doctrine of the jus naturale, the law of the universe,” he was promulgating “the Ciceronian jus naturale.”103 Kirk in his own writings pursued the natural law credentials of Burke no further, but he gave his blessings to those who did, especially to Peter Stanlis. What could have been more welcome to Stanlis, an up and coming scholar, not yet arrived, than to have none other than Russell Kirk write a Foreword to his 1958 study of Edmund Burke and the Natural Law. There is no question that Stanlis has his moments of success. He has no trouble refuting John Morley and other scholars who interpreted Burke as a utilitarian.

The Americanization of Burke?  183 And he is quite right to find in Burke’s “Speech on Mr. Fox’s East India Bill” an appeal to universal moral norms, useful to condemn wrong-doing. But unresolved problems persist. Although it is clear that Burke is neither a utilitarian, nor, despite his attention to tradition, a historicist before historicism, he never spells out his moral philosophy. Even Kirk had to admit that “Burke is readier to say what the laws of nature are not than to tell what they are.”104 It is arguable that Stanlis served Burke better by founding the Burke Newsletter in 1959 than by publishing his book in 1958. Another problem facing natural law philosophers, Burkean or not, is one that still bedevils us today. Are the universal norms of natural law free from the charge that sometimes they are a matter of projecting our cultural norms upon the rest of the world? As long ago as 1918 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. had c­ ommented that those “who believe in natural law seem to me to be in that naïve state of mind that accepts what has been familiar and accepted by them and their neighbors as something that must be accepted by all men everywhere.”105 Japanese officials placed on trial after World War II found incomprehensible the charge of the victorious Western powers that they had violated the law of nature.106 Do efforts to interpret Burke as the spokesperson of classical Western wisdom from Aristotle onwards, even if that were true, render his message universal? There is something very peculiar about the effort to turn Burke into a philosopher of universal natural law. To him everything was a matter of circumstances, of context. Efforts to baptize him as a natural law philosopher pull him out of context; he becomes the spokesperson of what he hated most, abstract, universal truths. Perhaps eliminating context is the point for those who wish to champion his cause in America. All the reasons why Burke does not fit in the American context disappear when he is transformed into a philosopher of universal truths, a thinker outside of time and place. He fits in America because he fits everywhere. How convincingly is another matter. An Inconclusive Conclusion Is there a place for Burke’s conservatism in America today? The obstacles are considerable: the movement of the supposedly conservative Republican party to right-wing populism under Newt Gingrich in the early 1990s, the failure of the Republican Party to repudiate Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow the election of 2020, the efforts of legislatures in Republican states to suppress the votes of those who presumably would vote for the Democratic Party – what could be more non-Burkean than the schemes of those in America today who call themselves conservatives? The words of lifelong conservative David Brooks are worth considering. Brooks is a public intellectual of considerable notoriety, a New York Times journalist, and a regular commentator on public television. In the Atlantic, 2022, Brooks asked “What Happened to American Conservatism?” Revisiting his

184  The Americanization of Burke? youth, he bemoaned that “what passes for ‘conservatism’ now is nearly the opposite of Burkean conservatism … The rich philosophical perspective that dazzled me then has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression.” Voting now is difficult because “to be a conservative today, you have to oppose much of what the Republican Party has come to stand for.” What is a genuine conservative to do in the politics of today? His essay, he explained, “is a reclamation project. It is an attempt to remember how modern conservatism started, what core wisdom it contains, and why that wisdom is still needed today.” Brooks took his readers on a whirlwind but thoughtful tour, finding nothing to admire in the state of nature of Locke or ­Rousseau, much to admire in the Scottish Enlightenment, also in the works of Adam Smith and, more so, David Hume. The social norms of England have much to r­ecommend them. “Brits don’t have to think about what to do at a crowded bus stop. They form a queue, guided by the cultural practices they have inherited.” Most of all, it was Burke who inspired Brooks and continues to inspire him – Burke’s admission of the limits of reason as expressed in the Reflections, his “epistemological modesty or humility,” his appreciation of the “latent wisdom that is passed down by generations, cultures, families, and institutions.” Most of all, “Burkean conservatism inspired me because … its vision was about soulcraft, about how we build institutions that produce good citizens.”107 Earlier (Chapter 5), we suggested that if there was still a mission for Burke in Thatcherite and more recent England, it might well be that of protest against those who call themselves Conservatives. Now it seems fitting to make the same claim for America. Whether the voice of someone like David Brooks will be heard is far from obvious, but that he merits a hearing should not be denied by anyone who wishes to claim the heritage of Edmund Burke. Notes 1 In this chapter, I shall be drawing upon, but enhancing, my presentation in Chapter 4 of my The Social Contract in America: from the Revolution to the Present Age (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007). 2 Perhaps the best attempt to Americanize Burke is that of Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). 3 “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” in David Bromwich, ed., On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 154. 4 Pauline Maier, “John Wilkes and American Disillusionment with Britain,” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 3 (1963), pp. 373–395. 5 Edmund Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1866), vol. I, pp. 497, 499, 500. 6 Edmund Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies,” in David Bromwich, ed., On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters of Edmund Burke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 81, 83, 85. 7 Ibid., pp. 94, 107–108.

The Americanization of Burke?  185 8 Edmund Burke, “Speech on American Taxation,” in Paul Langford, ed., The ­Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 458. 9 Edmund Burke, “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” in Works (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1866), vol. II, p. 96. 10 Robert McCloskey, ed., The Works of James Wilson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard ­University Press, 1967), pp. 574, 586–592. 11 Philip S. Foner, ed., The Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800: A Documentary Sourcebook of Constitutions, Declarations, Addresses, and Toasts (­Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), pp. 55–56, 64, 83, 85, 95, 97, 104, 168–170, 174–175, 185, 201, 203, 217–218, 222, 229, 231–232, 235, 237, 245, 266–268, 352, 363, 380, 383, 393. W. B. Allen, ed., Works of Fisher Ames (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), p. 303. 12 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 69. Lewis M. Ogden to William Meredith, February 26, 1801, cited by David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), p. 97. Philip H. Marsh, ed., The Prose Works of Philip Freneau (New Brunswick, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1955), pp. 300, 395. 13 Old Hubert [James Parkinson], An Address to the Hon. Edmund Burke from the Swinish Multitude (London: Printed for J. Ridgway, York-Street; St. James Square, 1793). 14 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 22, 1819, in The Works of John Adams (­Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1856), vol. 10, p. 380; L. H. Butterfield, Leonard C. Faber, and Wendell D. Garnett, eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), vol. 3, pp. 330–333; David Freeman Hawke, Paine (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 7. 15 John Adams to Benjamin Rush, September 27, 1809, in John A. Schutz and ­Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1966), p. 169. 16 George W. Carey, ed., The Political Writings of John Adams (Washington, DC: ­Regnery, 2000), p. 418. 17 Zoltán Haraszti, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1952), pp. 213, 339. 18 Edward Handler, America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 157–158. Adams said he had taken nothing from Burke but Burke might have taken something from him. 19 John Quincy Adams’s “Publicola” papers were published anonymously (and wrongly attributed to his father) in the Columbian Centinel, beginning June 8, 1791. I am quoting from J. Q. Adams, An Answer to Pain’s Rights of Man (Dublin: Printed for P. Byrne, J. Moore, & W. Jones, 1793), pp. 6, 10, 11. 20 Ibid., pp. 24, 28, 31. 21 Ibid., pp. 28, 30–31. 22 Quoted in Shaw Livermore, Jr., The Twilight of Federalism: the Disintegration of the Federalist Party, 1815–1830 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 220. 23 John Quincy Adams, American Principles: A Review of the Works of Fisher Ames (Boston, MA: Everett & Munroe, 1809), pp. 32–33, 35, 47. Later he made the same point in Parties in the United States (New York: Greenberg, 1941), pp. 9, 54–56, 96–98. 24 John Quincy Adams, An Oration to the Citizens of the Town of Quincy on the Fourth of July, 1831 (Boston, MA: Richardson, Lord & Holbrook, 1831), p. 18. 25 John Quincy Adams, The Jubilee of the Constitution (New York: Bedford & Co., 1848), 12, 16, 40. 26 John Quincy Adams, The Social Contract Exemplified in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Providence, RI: Knowles & Bose, 1842), pp. 21, 23, 24, 29.

186  The Americanization of Burke? 27 John Quincy Adams, “An Oration Delivered Before the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, November 10, 1843,” in Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Selected Writings or John and John Quincy Adams (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981), pp. 398–399. 28 Mark Hulliung, The Social Contract in America: From the Revolution to the Present Age, chs. 2, 5. 29 Edward Everett, “Principle of the American Constitutions” (1826), in Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions (Boston: Little, Brown, 1878), vol. I, p. 120. 30 Ibid., pp. 107, 117. 31 Edward Everett, “First Settlement of New England,” in Orations, vol. I. p. 54. 32 Ibid., p. 65. ­ iberty,” 33 Everett, “Principle of the American Constitutions,” p. 111. “The History of L in Orations, vol. I, pp. 160, 171–172. “The Departure of Pilgrims,” in Orations, vol. II, 645. 34 Everett, “First Settlement of New England,” Orations, p. 59; “Principle of the American Constitutions,” pp. 120–122, 112–113. 35 Quoted by Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: the Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Hill & Wang, 1990), p. 212. 36 Daniel Walker Howe, ed., The American Whigs (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973), p. 103. 37 Hubbard Winslow, The Means of the Perpetuity and Prosperity of Our Republic (Boston, MA: John H. Eastburn, 1838), pp. 41n, 20, 17n, 17. 38 Joseph Tracy, A Sermon Before the Vermont Colonization Society (Windsor, VT: Chronicle Press, 1833), pp. 7–8. 39 Thomas E. Woods, Jr., ed., The Political Writings of Rufus Choate (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2001), pp. 193, 202, 349. 40 Ibid., p. 202. 41 Ibid., pp. 195, 197, 203–205. 42 Edmund Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies,” in David Bromwich, ed., On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters of Edmund Burke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 84. 43 Herman Belz, ed., The Webster-Hayne Debate (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), pp. 50, 80. 44 Thomas Roderick Dew, “Abolition of Negro Slavery,” in Drew Gilpin Faust, ed., The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), p. 66; Dew, “Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature, 1831–32,” in The Proslavery Argument as Maintained by the Most Distinguished Writers of the Southern States (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), p. 461. 45 William Harper, Anniversary Oration: The South Carolina Society for the Advancement of Learning, 9 December 1835 (Columbia, SC: Telescope Office, 1836), p. 20. 46 George Fitzhugh, “Southern Thought” [1857], in Faust, ed., Ideology of Slavery, p. 287. 47 George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South: Or the Failure of Free Society (1854) (New York: Burt Franklin, 1965), p. 93. 48 Harper, Anniversary Oration, p. 13. 49 Winslow, Means, p. 22. 50 Woodrow Wilson, Division and Reunion, 1829–1889 [1893] (New York: L ­ ongmans, Green & Co., 1902), pp. 125–126, 181; Woodrow Wilson, A History of the ­American People (New York: Harper, 1902), vol.4, pp. 160, 196–197. 51 Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature and Other Essays (Port Washington, NY: ­Kennikat Press, 1965), p. 105.

The Americanization of Burke?  187 52 Ibid., pp.128, 142, 156. 53 The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1866), vol. I, pp. 4–5. 54 Wilson, Mere Literature, pp. 118–119. 55 Ibid., pp. 109, 114–115, 159. 56 Ibid., p. 131. 57 Woodrow Wilson, The State, Elements of Historical and Practical Politics: A Sketch of Institutional History and Administration (Boston, MA: D. C. Heath, 1889), p. 575. 58 J. W. Burrow, Whigs and Liberals: Continuity and Change in English Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 46. 59 Henry Maine, Ancient Law (New York: Dutton, 1954), pp. 67–68, 100. 60 Wilson, The State, pp. 9–10, 13. 61 Wilson, Mere Literature, pp. 155–156. 62 Wilson, A History of the American People, vol. 3, p. 130. 63 Wilson, Division and Reunion, p. 15; Wilson, Mere Literature, pp. 196–197. 64 Wilson, Division and Reunion, p. 111: The State, p. 643; A History of the American People, vol. 5, p. 6; Constitutional Government in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), p. 16. 65 Wilson set the stage for Congressional Government with his earlier (August 1879) essay “Cabinet Government in the United States,” in Arthur Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), vol. I, pp. 493–510. 66 Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), p. 5. 67 William Gladstone, “Kin Beyond Sea,” North American Review 127 (September 1878), p. 185. On the influence of Gladstone’s remark in America, see Michael Kammen, A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American C ­ ulture (NY: Random House, 1986), p. 162. 68 Wilson, Mere Literature, pp. 99–100. 69 Woodrow Wilson, Leaders of Men (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 20. 70 Wilson, A History of the American People, vol. 3, p. 117. 71 Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961)), p. 35. 72 Wilson, The State, p. 668. 73 Wilson, New Freedom, p. 40. 74 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 19. 75 See the preface to the 1900 edition of Congressional Government and Wilson’s work of 1908, Constitutional Government in the United States. 76 Wilson, New Freedom, pp. 50, 57, 59, 114. 77 Ibid., p. 164. Woodrow Wilson, “What Would Jefferson Do?” April 14, 1912, in Link, ed., Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 24, pp. 331–332. Wilson revised his view of Jefferson in the years leading up to his run for the presidency; see, for instance, “An Address on Thomas Jefferson,” April 16, 1906, in Link, ed., Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 16, pp. 362–369. 78 Wilson, New Freedom, p. 159. 79 Woodrow Wilson, “A Memorial Day Address,” May 30, 1916, in Link, ed., Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 37 (1981), p. 125. 80 Woodrow Wilson, “An Appeal to the American People,” April 15, 1917, in Link, ed., Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 42 (1983), p. 72. 81 Joel Barlow, Advice to the Privileged Orders part 2, London 1793, in Gregory Claeys, ed., Political Writings of the 1790s: French Revolution Debate in Britain (London, Pickering & Chatto, 1995), vol. III, pp. 324–324.

188  The Americanization of Burke? 82 Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (Chicago: Gateway, 1953), p. 20. 83 Burke, “Address to the British Colonists,” pp. 188, 191–192, 194. 84 Edmund Burke, “A Letter to the Sheriffs of the City of Bristol,” in David B ­ romwich, ed., Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters of Edmund Burke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 155. 85 Edmund Burke, “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, & Co.,1866), vol. IV, pp. 100–101. 86 Friedrich Gentz, The French and American Revolutions Compared (New York: Gateway, 1955), p. 62. 87 Ibid., pp. 47, 62, 69, 77, 84. 88 Ibid., pp. 63, 66. 89 Hulliung, The Social Contract in America, ch. 5. 90 Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy (New York: Mentor, 1955), p. 61. 91 Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 70. 92 Ibid., p. 82. 93 Ibid., p. 83. 94 Ibid., pp. 72–73. 95 Peter Laslett, ed., Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956), ­Foreword, pp. vii, ix. 96 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 5, 7. 97 A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover, 1952), p. 110. 98 E. g., Hans Kelsen, “Absolutism and Relativism in Philosophy and Politics,” ­American Political Science Review, vol. 42 (1948), pp. 906–914. 99 T. D. Weldon, The Vocabulary of Politics (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1953), p. 15. 100 Ibid., pp. 15, 39, 57, 168, 178–179, 191, 192. 101 Ibid., p. 159. 102 Lippmann, The Public Philosophy, pp. 36–38, 137. 103 Kirk, The Conservative Mind, pp. 28, 39, 55. 104 Ibid., p. 59. 105 Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr., “Natural Law,” in David H. Hollinger and Charles ­Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), vol. 2, pp. 128–130. 106 Judith Shklar, Legalism: An Essay on Law, Morals, and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 179–190. 107 Another New York Times columnist who has invoked Burke against Trump is Bret Stephens, “Why Edmund Burke Still Matters,” New York Times, August 5, 2020.

Index

Acton, Lord 60–61, 67 Adams, John 166, 167 Adams, John Quincy 167–168 American Constitutions 169 American Revolution 9–13, 17, 18, 21, 28, 51, 109, 145, 163–165, 168, 169, 178–180 Amery, L. S. 143–144 ancient constitution 14, 20, 28, 29, 65 Anti-Federalists 164–165 Anti-Jacobin Review 49 Antoinette, Marie 34, 104, 166 Aquinas, Thomas 181, 182 Aristotle 34, 154, 172, 183 Arnold, Matthew 119–123, 133, 154 Artisan’s and Labourers Dwelling Improvement Act 54–55 Ayer, A. J. 181 Bacon, Francis 34, 79 Bagehot, Walter 75–76 Baldwin, Stanley 137–138 Balfour, Arthur 132 Banfield, Edward C. 4–6 Barker, Ernest 93 Barlow, Joel 177 Baumann, Arthur 138–139, 154 Begbie, Harold 136–139 Belsham, William 28–29, 33 Bentham, Jeremy 62, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 80 Berger, Peter 4–5 Bill of Rights 1689 21, 65 Blackstone, William 21, 163 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 48, 49 Bolingbroke, Lord Henry St. John 42, 50, 56, 57, 58, 59 Bolshevism 135

Boorstin, Daniel 180 Boothby, Brooke 28–30, 33, 34 Bousfield, Benjamin 28–31 Boutwood, Arthur 125, 126–133 Brewer, J. S. 68 Bright, John 91 British Critic: A New Review 46, 48, 49 Brooke, John 2, 3 Brooks, David 183–184 Bryant, Arthur 138–142 Buckle, Henry Thomas 64, 109 Butler, Geoffrey 131, 135, 139, 142, 154 Butler, R. A. 141, 143 Canning, George 50, 88, 103, 104 Carpenter, William Boyd, Bishop 116 Cecil, Hugh 132–135, 139, 141, 142, 151, 154 Chamberlain, Joseph 118, 133 Charles I 22 Chartists 73 Chesterton, G. K. 133 chivalry 31, 101, 104 Choate, Rufus 170–171 Christie, Thomas 29, 30 Churchill, Winston 145–146, 147 Cicero 34, 79, 169 Civil Code, 1793 110 Clarke, David 142–144 Cobden, Richard 102, 103 Coke, Edward 51 Cold War 136, 177–183 Collins, Anthony 25 Colton, Calvin 170 Comte, Auguste 90 consent 10, 11, 12, 16, 18, 21, 34, 178 Cornhill Magazine 91 Croker, John Wilson 48, 49, 65–66

190 Index Croly, George 67–68 Cromwell, Oliver 24, 102, 144 Declaration of Independence 17–18, 51, 81, 108, 169, 171, 179, 180 Declaration of Rights, 1689 12, 17–18 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen 22, 51, 65, 109, 179 Declaratory Act, 1766 10, 164 democracy 52–55, 57, 61, 73, 75, 76, 81, 92, 94, 99, 104, 124, 129, 130, 140, 143, 147, 182 Democratic-Republican Societies 166 Dew, Thomas Roderick 171–172 Dewey, John 182 Dicey, A. V. 69, 71, 121–125, 135–136 Dickens, Charles 92 Diderot, Denis 25, 110 Directory 43, 45, 46 Disraeli, Benjamin 50–59, 73, 92, 93, 129, 131, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 147, 150 Dissenters 8, 14, 120 divine right 57, 65, 105 Dundas, Henry 48 East India Company 28, 94, 183 Eden, Anthony 141, 145, 148 Elliot, Walter 137, 138, 139 empire, imperialism 2, 17, 48, 53, 59, 62, 102, 140 Enlightenment 5, 9, 14, 23, 24, 25, 26, 110, 184 Estates General 24, 26, 27, 166 Everett, Edward 169–170 Factory Acts of 1874, 1878 55 Federalists 164–166 Ferguson, Adam 9–13 feudalism 24, 27 Filmer, Robert 33, 80 Fitzhugh, George 171, 172 Fortnightly Review 89, 101 Fox, Charles James 8, 9, 35, 47, 123, 124, 134 Franklin, Benjamin 178 Frederick the Great 25 freedom, negative and positive 95, 98–99, 130 Freeman, Edward A. 77 French Revolution 9–12, 32 Freneau, Philip 166

Gardiner, John S. J. 166 generations 1, 14, 19, 32, 35, 73, 76, 144, 165, 184 Gentz, Friedrich 12, 177–180 George I 52, 164 George III 3, 45, 47, 48, 52, 67, 68, 106, 164 Gibbon, Edward 31 Gilded Age 173 Gilmour, Ian 149, 150–154 Gingrich, Newt 183 Gladstone, William 53, 61, 62, 72, 81, 88, 94, 103, 104, 116–119, 122–124, 174, 176 Glorious Revolution 9, 13, 14, 15, 24, 55, 64, 65, 79, 169 Gordon Riots 167 Grattan, Henry 119, 122 Green, T. H. 118, 126, 133, 136 Green, J. R. 77 Grey, Charles 116 Grotius, Hugo 12, 15–16, 108, 168, 182 Hallam, Arthur 69 Hammond, James Henry 172 Hare, Thomas 73–75 Harper, William 171–172 Harrison, Frederic 90 Hartz, Louis 162 Hastings, Warren 1, 104, 109 Hayne, Robert 171, 172 Hearnshaw, F. J. C. 141, 143, 154 Heath, Edward 148, 149 Henry VIII 46 Hervey, Frederick 32, 33 Hobbes, Thomas 6, 34, 126, 154 Hobhouse, John 116 Hogg, Quinton 144 Holmes, Jr., Oliver Wendall 183 Home Rule 6, 72, 73, 116, 118–124, 127–128, 135 Howe, Geoffrey 149, 151 Hume, David 23, 34, 79, 106, 153, 184 Huntington, Samuel 5–6 India 2, 11, 17, 48, 53, 59, 62–63, 79, 91, 93, 102, 104, 109, 110, 141, 146, 173 Ireland 2, 6, 48, 72, 79, 104, 116, 118–120, 122, 123, 127, 128 James II 12, 14, 16, 22, 65, 135 James, William 182

Index  191 Jefferson, Thomas 18, 51, 108–109, 166, 175, 177 Johnson, Boris 155 Johnson, Lyndon Baines 4 Joseph, Keith 148, 149 July Monarchy 66 Kebbel, T. E. 67–68 Kirk, Russell 177, 180, 182, 183 Labour Party 1, 2, 102, 125, 128, 136, 137, 141, 144, 147, 150, 151 Lafayette 51, 109 laissez-faire 54, 99, 102, 117, 139, 141, 142, 144, 147, 149, 151, 152 Laski, Harold 1–2, 6 Laslett, Peter 181 Lecky, William 75–76, 80, 122, 124 Levellers 32 Liberal Unionists 72, 116, 119, 120–125, 134 Lincoln, Abraham 149, 171 Lippmann, Walter 180, 182 Locke, John 2, 6, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 26, 29, 80, 81, 98, 108, 142, 154, 164, 167, 168, 170, 172, 175, 184 logical positivism 181 Louis XVI 34, 43 Lyman, Theodore Jr. 167 Macaulay, Catharine 12, 23–25 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 60, 61–73 Machiavelli, Niccolò 58 Mackintosh, James 26–27, 30, 31, 33–35, 60, 65 Macknight, Thomas 77, 78–79 Macmillan, Harold 141, 142, 143, 145–148, 150 Madison, James 165 Maine, Henry Sumner 76–77, 174, 176 Malmesbury, Lord 126 Mannheim, Karl 162 Mansfield, Lord 164 marriage 17, 44, 97, 101, 170 Marx, Karl 1, 5, 54, 76 Maxse, Leopold 127 Merton, Robert K. 4 McCunn, John 154 Mill, James 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 102 Mill, John Stuart 62, 66, 70, 71, 72, 73–75, 76, 77, 80, 88–104, 111, 112, 126, 133, 135

Milton, John 61, 63, 98 Montesquieu 21, 34 Morley, John 69, 71, 72, 77, 80, 88–112 Namier, Lewis 2–3 National Assembly 20, 27, 167 National Review 127 natural law, law of nature 5, 15, 16, 34–35, 44, 181–183 natural rights, inalienable rights 2, 18, 19, 28–30, 51, 72, 79–80, 101, 107, 108, 110, 111–112, 133, 142, 164, 168, 170, 172, 174, 182 neoconservative 4 Neuhaus, Richard John 4, 5, 6 New Freedom 176–177 Oakeshott, Michael 153, 154 Ogden, Lewis 166 Old Regime 10, 24, 28, 29, 54, 78 opinion, public opinion 26, 32, 49, 51, 73, 119 Paine, Thomas 17–22, 28, 32–34, 44, 165, 166, 167, 179 Palmerston, Lord 88 Parkinson, James 166 parlements 24, 26, 27 Parliament Act of 1911 126, 132 Parliamentary sovereignty 122, 123, 136, 164 Peel, Robert 73, 117 Petition of Right 51 philosophes 14, 24, 25, 26, 44, 102, 110 Pigott, Charles 28, 30 Pitt the Elder 50 Pitt the Younger 8, 28, 31, 35, 43, 44, 48, 49, 52, 54, 57, 58, 129 Plato 154, 181 Polybius 34 popular sovereignty, sovereignty of the people 13, 16, 18, 108, 112, 164, 168, 177, 180, 182 Possony, Stefan T. 177 posterity 1, 16, 19, 29, 35, 50, 52, 56, 73, 169 Powell, Enoch 148–149 prejudice 14, 16, 32, 65, 100, 139 prescription 50, 52, 64, 79 Price, Richard 8–14, 17, 33 Progressive Era 173 Providence 9, 49, 79

192 Index Priestley, Joseph 8, 9, 12, 17, 24, 28, 29, 30 Prior, James 49 Public Health Act, 1875 55 Pufendorf, Samuel 12, 15–18, 20, 29, 81, 108, 164, 168, 182 Puritan Revolution 13, 14, 18, 32 Quarterly Review 48, 126 Quinton, Anthony 154 Reeves, John 32 Reform Act 1832 52, 55, 59, 61, 73, 74, 127 Reform Act 1867 55, 59, 72, 73, 75, 76, 129, 140 Reform Act 1884 76, 125 Regency crisis, 1788 94 representation 10, 52, 75, 93, 94, 100, 136, 143, 144, 164 Ricardo, David 91 Rockingham Whigs 47, 56, 164 Rosebery, Earl of 60 Rous, George 28, 29 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 15, 34, 80, 102, 103, 111, 152, 154, 184 Rush, Benjamin 166 Salisbury, Marquis of 121, 124, 126 Saturday Review 91, 146 Scott, Major John 32, 64 Second Republic 1848 42, 43, 66 September Massacres 34 Sewell, William 32, 33 Shakespeare, William 79 slavery 15, 48, 49, 61, 91, 124, 169, 171, 172 Smith, Adam 54, 63, 184 Smythe, William 58 social contract 12–21, 28–30, 34, 51, 72, 79–81, 108, 111–112, 142, 164, 165, 168, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175 socialism 102, 117, 134, 136, 141, 149 Sons of Liberty 163 Southey, Robert 48–49 Spanish-American War 176 Staël, Madame de 78 Stamp Act, 1766 10, 107, 164, 179 Stanhope, Charles 28, 29, 31 Stanley, Oliver 143

Stanlis, Peter 182–183 Stephen, James Fitzjames 69, 71, 89, 91–100 Stephen, Leslie 71, 79, 80–81 Strauss, Leo 181 Tacitus 34 Talmon, J. L. 180 Thatcher, Margaret 145, 147–149, 151–153, 155 Thelwall, John 45 Third Estate 2, 27 Thomism 5 Tindal, Matthew 25 Tocqueville, Alexis de 5, 73–74, 93, 153, 162 Toland, John 25 Tooke, John Horne 34 totalitarianism 111, 180, 182 Tracy, Joseph 170 Trump, Donald 183 Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, baron de l’Aulne 110 utilitarianism 53, 69, 70, 71, 80, 95, 112 Victoria, Queen 53 virtual representation 10, 164 Voltaire, François-Marie de 25, 102, 110 Walpole, Robert PM 67, 105 Washington, George 21–22, 168, 179 Webster, Daniel 171 Weldon, T. D. 181, 182 White, A. K. 143 Wilkes, John 106, 110, 163 Wilks, Mark 31 William the Conqueror 21 Willoughby de Broke, Richard Grenville Verney 126–130, 132, 145 Wilson, James 165 Wilson, Woodrow 173–177 Windham, William 47 Winslow, Hubbard 170, 172 Wollstonecraft, Mary 22, 23 women 23, 44, 90, 95, 96, 97–98, 101, 138, 139 World 32 Wyvill, Christopher 33 Young England 42, 50, 58, 59