[This is Chapter Two of Murphey’s book Modern Social and Political Philosophies: Burkean Conservatism and Classical Liberalism.]
Chapter 2
BRITISH CONSERVATIVES:
EIGHTEENTH
Edmund Burke expressed his conservatism in a form that was sufficiently mild that it in no sense made him an apologist for Hobbes' Leviathan. He opposed absolute monarchy and looked on himself as occupying something of a moderate middle. He was able, for example, to say that "these old fanatics of single arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary royalty was the only lawful government in the world, just as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power, maintain that a popular election is the sole lawful source of authority."1
Burke emphasized stability, but he also said that "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation." The type of change he preferred is clear from his statement that "all the reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of antiquity; and I hope, nay I am persuaded, that all those which possibly may be made hereafter, will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example."
“I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman.” He spoke favorably of "a free constitution . . . a potent monarchy . . . a disciplined army . . . a reformed and venerated clergy . . . a mitigated but spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it . . . a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people . . . a system of manners which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish . . . .”
Burke wanted an organic society. "Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection." He summarized his views when he said that "We fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility." He hoped for "a monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary dignity of a nation." A restraining force would be "the laws, opinions, and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages." And Burke said that "the doctrine of prescription, which . . . is a part of the law of nature," was essential to the security of property.
Individual human reason was subordinated by him to the “ancient system” of society. "We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small." He didn't want things "disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality."
Religion was one of the most important values. Burke said our civilization depended on two principles: the spirit of the gentleman and the spirit of religion. "Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort." "The consecration of the state, by a state religious establishment, is necessary also to operate with an wholesome awe upon free citizens.”
He insisted that he did not have a metaphysical system, that he was really a relativist: "I reprobate no form of government merely upon abstract principles. There may be situations in which the purely democratic form will become necessary." He spoke of "the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction" and said that “circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour." And yet, he cherished certain values. He thought certain truths basic, and he considered them actually to be truths. To the degree that he was a relativist, it was to emphasize his willingness to see change, if the change were properly in keeping with the underlying spirit of antiquity. And we can say that, whether he was a relativist or not, he was strongly rooted in a specific culture.
Probably the best summary of the moderate, liberal traditionalism he favored is to be found in the passage where he asked: "Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the world of theory and practice, of any thing between the despotism of the monarch and the despotism of the multitude? Have they never heard of a monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth and hereditary dignity of a nation; and both again controlled by a judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people at large acting by a suitable and permanent organ? Is it is then impossible that a man may be found who, without criminal ill intention, or pitiable absurdity, shall prefer such a mixed and tempered government to either of the extremes?"
Samuel Johnson was a contemporary of Burke, who was a member, in fact, of Johnson's conversational circle. If we read Johnson's conversations as reported by the dutiful Boswell, we find many graphic expressions of the perspective that was involved in this English traditionalism that rationalized so well the value-system of the Middle Ages. "I consider myself as acting a part in the great system of Society," Johnson said. "I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed."2
Johnson was frequently locked in conversational combat with the new republicans of his day. The following exchange occurs in one of the more revealing passages in Boswell’s reported conversations: "Mr. Dempster having.endeavored to maintain that intrinsick merit ought to make the only distinction amongst mankind. Johnson. 'Why, Sir, mankind have found that this cannot be. How shall we determine.the portion of intrinsick merit? Were that to be the only distinction amongst mankind, we should soon quarrel about the degrees of it. Were all distinctions abolished, the strongest would not long acquiesce, but would endeavor to obtain a superiority by their bodily strength. But, Sir, as subordination is very necessary for society, and contentions for superiority very dangerous, mankind, that is to say, all civilized nations, have settled it upon a plain invariable principle. A man is born to hereditary rank; or his being appointed to certain offices, gives him a certain rank. Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.’”
Boswell tells of a delightful clash on another occasion when Johnson said: "Sir, there is one Mrs. Macaulay in this town, a great republican. One day when I was at her house, I put on a very grave countenance, and said to her, 'Madam, I am now become a convert to your way of thinking. I am convinced that all mankind are upon an equal footing; and to give you an unquestionable proof, Madam, that I am in earnest, here is a very sensible, civil, well-behaved fellow-citizen, your footman; I desire that he may be allowed to sit down and dine with us. I thus, Sir, shewed her the absurdity of the leveling doctrine. She has never liked me since."
Johnson preferred stability to change. He told Sir William Scott that "the age is running mad over innovation; all the business of the world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new way."
Unlike a classical liberal, Johnson expressed no fear of government. He said that "I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. Sir, the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a private man." His views contrasted sharply with Lord Acton's later warning that "power corrupts" when he said that "in no government can power be abused long."
Most readers today will be
surprised by Johnson's attitude toward freedom of speech. His view on it illustrates the wide gulf
between his philosophy and more individualistic, rationalistic views: "Johnson. 'Every society has a right to preserve public peace and order,
and therefore has a good right to prohibit the propagation of opinions which
have a dangerous tendency . . .’ Mayo.
'I am of the opinion, Sir, that every man is entitled to liberty of conscience
in religion; and that the magistrate cannot restrain that right.' Johnson.
'Sir, I agree with you. Every man has right to liberty of conscience, and with
that the magistrate cannot interfere. People confound liberty of thinking with
liberty of talking; nay, with liberty of preaching. Every man has a physical
right to think as he pleases; for it cannot be discovered how he thinks. He has
not a moral right; for he ought to inform himself, and think justly. But, Sir,
no member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what that
society holds to be true. The magistrate, I say, may be wrong in what he
thinks; but, while he thinks himself right, he may, and ought to enforce what
he thinks.' Mayo. 'Then, Sir, we are to remain
always in errour, and truth never can prevail; and
the magistrate was right in persecuting the first Christians.' Johnson.
'Sir, the only method by which religious truth can be established is by
martyrdom.’” This reminds me of the comment Burke made that "the road to
eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be
made too easy . . . it ought to pass through some sort of
probation." The worldview articulated by Burke and Johnson was carried
into the nineteenth century by a diverse and splendidly talented group of
authors. One of them was Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Alfred Cobban has written about him that
"at heart Coleridge is hostile to democracy for the same reason as Burke:
They both disbelieved in human nature and distrusted the political capacity of
the average man.” He mentions
Coleridge’s efforts to build an enlightened Toryism
on the foundations laid by Burke. Coleridge was preoccupied mainly with poetry,
religion and Kantian metaphysics, and has been called the leader of the
Romantic movement in English poetry. He attacked the
Utilitarian happiness principle and was a "religious critic of the
Enlightenment's secular anthropology." He viewed “man’s tragic alienation
from God to be the fundamental datum not only of religion but also of
philosophy.” He joined Walter Scott,
Thomas Carlyle, Robert Southey and others in looking
back nostalgically to the Middle Ages.3
Although Cobban says that "Coleridge and Southey
in fact attribute most of the distress of contemporary
Coleridge was mainly in revolt against the rationalist, secular impulses of his time. "An excess in our attachment to temporal and personal objects can be counteracted,” he wrote, “only by a pre-occupation of the intellect and the affections with permanent, universal, and eternal truths.” He wanted three main "counterpoises" to the commercial, acquisitive tone of the nineteenth century: "the feeling of ancient birth and the respect paid to it by the community at large; a genuine intellectual Philosophy with an accredited, learned, and philosophic Class; and lastly, Religion."
In John Stuart Mill's famous essay On Bentham and Coleridge, Mill said that the two main positions of the first half of the nineteenth century were presented by Bentham and Coleridge. He thought that each contained an important part of the truth, but neither the whole truth. (It is interesting that Mill observed that "almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.") In summary, Mill said that "the Germano-Coleridgean doctrine . . . expresses the revolt of the human mind against the philosophy of the eighteenth century. It is ontological, because that was experimental; conservative, because that was innovative; religious, because so much of that was infidel; concrete and historical, because that was abstract and metaphysical; poetical, because that was matter-of-fact and prosaic." Mill's attraction to Coleridge was due in part to Coleridge's advocacy of a "clerisy," an educated class that would be in keeping with Mill's own perception of the need for a learned elite to elevate society.5
Whereas Samuel Coleridge was philosophical and poetic, Thomas Carlyle was fiery and biting. Carlyle was a thorough-going supporter of the aristocratic principle, but not of the aristocracy of his own day; a thinker to whom religion was ultimately very important, but who held to no orthodox religious view; a man who idealized the Middle Ages and excoriated the commercial system of his own time. His alienation from the early Industrial Revolution combines with Ruskin's and Southey's (and with a great many others’) to form an important backdrop for the then-developing socialist alienation against the bourgeoisie.
The following passages from Past and Present, which was one of Carlyle's major works, give a good feel for Carlyle's thinking and also for his characteristically energetic prose:
. "When a nation is unhappy, the old Prophet was right and not wrong in saying to it: Ye have forgotten God, yet have quitted the ways of God, or ye would not have been unhappy. It is not according to the laws of Fact that ye have lived and guided yourselves, but according to the laws of Delusion . . .”6
. “’Enlightened Egoism,' never so luminous, is not the rule by which man's life can be led. That 'Laissez-faire,’ 'Supply-and-demand,’ ‘Cash-payment for the sole nexus,’ and so forth, were not, are not and will never be, a practicable Law of Union for a Society of Men."
. "All great Peoples are conservative; slow to believe in novelties; patient of much error in actualities; deeply and forever certain of the greatness that is in Law, in Custom once solemnly established, and now long recognized as just and final.
. "It is well said, 'Land is the right basis of an Aristocracy;' whoever possesses the Land, he, more emphatically than any other, is the Governor, Vice-king of the people on the Land . . .Again and again we have to say, there can be no true Aristocracy but must possess the Land."
. “I will venture to believe that in no time, since the beginnings of Society, was the lot of those same, dumb millions of toilers so entirely unbearable as it is even in the days now passing over us.”
. "
. "
A few passages, of course, can't do full justice to Carlyle or any thinker. Hopefully, these passages will have whetted the reader's appetite to read him more completely. A few additional observations will help round out our present view of him: He favored legislation to overcome what he saw as the social ills of his day, but he opposed “physical-force Chartism.” He stressed a doctrine of spiritual uplift through Work; and he underscored the need for hero-worship, saying that nations are to be judged by the men they revere. Long passages drew an idyllic picture of the twelfth century, to which he contrasted the nineteenth. He wasn't totally opposed to change, and in fact urged immediate change from anything he considered "unjust, not according to God's law." He abhorred a society in which the relationships among people were based on temporary contract -- and called for a return, in effect, to a regime of status, to a "permanent contract." Carlyle joined with Coleridge in hoping that someday the men of letters would "become a 'Chivalry,' an actual instead of a virtual Priesthood."
Yet another nineteenth century
social critic was John Ruskin, whose intellectual emphasis shifted slowly from
that of a sensitive critic of art and architecture to that of a commentator on
social issues. "Following the English romantic writers . . ., he saw
nineteenth century industrial civilization as the enemy of wholeness in its
rampant individualism." The Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on
Ruskin makes a comment that reflects the influence of Ruskin's architectural
awareness on his social philosophy: "Ruskin's opposition to individualism
as a social principle and to competition as a method of political economy was
based on his idea of function, the fulfillment of each man's part in the
general design of creation. This required a social order based on intrinsic
human values.”7
Ruskin considered himself a Tory, but like Carlyle he did not automatically support the existing monarchy and aristocracy. He shared with other conservatives a strong religious sense, which with them he made the basis of his social critique. "The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe, our want of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage or civilized) who, taken as a body, so woefully fulfilled the words 'having no hope, and without God in the world,' as the present civilized European race.”8
I will conclude my review of these
nineteenth century English conservatives by mentioning Matthew Arnold, who
opposed what he saw as the materialistic civilization of the English middle
class with an ideal of human perfection through culture. Culture, which he defined
as taking the best from the past, would form a "right reason" which
should, he argued, be enforced by the state.
He felt that an insistence on individuality would stand in the way of
ultimate human perfection. Although he
wasn't a socialist,
NOTES
1. Ray B. Browne, The Burke-Paine Controversy (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1963 , pp. 10, 7, 12, 2, 15, 29, 22, 31, 42, 46, 48, 35, 29, 34, 42, 2, 42. In the text, I have said that Burke was mild when compared with Hobbes and with the conservatives on the continent. I do think, though, that there is a lot of merit in Lord Robbins' comment about Burke and about Friedrich Hayek’s tendency to give Burke more credit than he deserves as a Whig: "Not all institutions and habits which survive are to be regarded as beneficial; some at least are unmitigated evils which to treat with respect were absurd. It is certainly not a ‘rationalist fallacy’ to subject them to critical scrutiny. In this connection, I find a very significant contrast between Hume and Burke, whom Professor Hayek tends to bracket together. Hume usually seems to me to be about right: he certainly recognizes the limitations of reason in respect to the origins of institutions and morals; yet he never hesitates to use it where it is appropriate in criticizing the extent to which they satisfy the test of public utility. Whereas Burke, for all his wisdom and insight, which no man of sense would wish ever to deny, not infrequently lets his sense of the majesty of the past degenerate into what I, at least, should regard as indefensible conservatism. It is all very well for Professor Hayek to claim him as a Whig; doubtless, even to the end, there were strong traces of that tradition. But it was not the Whig in Burke which became the bible of the European reaction." Lord Robbins, Politics and Economics (New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1963), pp. 97-98.
2. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (New York: Modern Library, 1952), pp. 122, 113, 121, 122, 467, 188, 217.
3. Alfred Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1960), pp. 169, 95, 218-219; see also the Coleridge entry in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
4. R.J. White (ed.), The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Lay Sermons (Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 33-34, 173, 194.
5. John Stuart Mill, On Bentham and Coleridge (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1950), pp. 65, 108.
6. Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1962), pp. 27, 32, 156, 168, 203, 204, 232, 256, 266, 281.
7. Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Company and the Free Press, 1967), entry on Ruskin.
8. Harold Bloom, The Literary Criticism of John Ruskin (New York: Anchor Books, 1965), p. 108.
9. Edward Alexander, Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 254.