238 Chapter X
Much has been said in these later times, at least in America, on the religion of
Edmund Burke. It is true that he disliked declared infidels, sympathized with all
hierarchical churches, and was much in favor of the Church of England, but his
religion, so far as I can see, consisted in a kind of attribution of the social order to
the will of God, and in a kind of humility which was by no means a personal hu-
mility, but a belief, or expressed belief, in the limitations of the human mind, and a
distrust of reason (though “the species is wise”) which really meant a distrust of the
reason of those persons who did not agree with him. As for the realism of his ap-
proach to practical issues, his idealization of the England of his day seems scarcely
closer to fact than the roseate optimism, with respect to the future, of a Dupont de
Nemours or a Condorcet. As for the wisdom of some of his great utterances, there
are many of them that I would not question for a moment in the abstract. I would
only question their relevancy to the circumstances that elicited them. This is to
question his common sense—as his contemporaries did.
The point to be emphasized in the present connection is that Burke’s conserva-
tism was well formed long before the French Revolution. It was not shaped, in
1784, by the spectacle of real revolution, nor by dislike of public disorder, nor by
resistance to illegal leadership or to law- breaking, nor by opposition to mobs, none
of which accompanied the reform bills brought up in the British Parliament be-
tween 1782 and 1785. It was directed against the Enlightenment only insofar as
the Enlightenment was a habit of mind, not only of French philosophes, but of vari-
ous Americans, British, and Europeans whose number included William Pitt.
Burke’s conservatism was really directed against the democratization of govern-
ment even by peaceful means—not even against universal suffrage or annual Par-
liaments, which Pitt was far from endorsing, but against the ideas of personal rep-
resentation, or of political change at the will of the living, or of the right to abolish
institutions for which there was little reason except history on the one hand or
narrow vested interest on the other.
In any case, Burke’s conservatism had as yet little influence, because no one
would pay attention long enough to find out what it was. Even men intending to
vote as he wished walked out when he rose to speak—they did not need such ele-
gant arguments. The reform of Parliament in the 1780’s failed in both England
and Ireland. The parliamentary oligarchies triumphed over the reformers.
The “Appellation of Citizen” vs. the Test Act
A word must be added on a related matter, the attempt of English Protestant Dis-
senters to obtain equality of civil rights. This reached its height between 1787 and
1790, and has been called, like the Association movement, “England’s unsuccessful
Revolution.”^36
The Dissenters were Protestants who would not take communion in the Church
of England, or subscribe to its Thirty- Nine Articles. They were divided in the
36 A. Lincoln, Some Political and Social Ideas of English Dissent, 1763–1800 (Cambridge, Eng.,
1938), 2 and 183. The following section is drawn largely from this book.