But there is one area in which neoconservatives plead for more government action—crime control—and this is because of their very sense of man’s inherent baseness. It is evident in the writings of James Q. Wilson, for example, and his insistence on a stronger governmental role in curbing crime. Such a view revives the classic conservative model of the state as represser of evil passions. The liberal is naive in his belief that good men are rendered criminal solely by environment and society. The modern conservative appreciates that some men are by nature evil or sinful and that the law-and-order state must actively punish them, less as a deterrent than as external just deserts for their internal failure to curb themselves.
60
But even today Burke’s most enduring legacy is his skepticism. His conservative disciples envision government as primarily an act of management and administration. Burke’s theory of “prudential management” as the true art of government has been stated most succinctly in the contemporary age by Michael Oakeshott, the late English political philosopher. Oakeshott calls upon political leaders to take the ship of state to no particular port of call, no abstract or ideological ideal. Their task is to manage wisely the crises that arise out of day-to-day developments—to keep the ship afloat: “in political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbor for shelter, nor floor for anchorage, neither starting place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel.”
61
Such skills, of course, require men of a high quality and character not found among the democratic citizenry.
Skepticism also involves a specific orientation to change. Change and development are inevitable in any body, and the body politic is no exception. What the Burkean skeptic fears today, however, is planned change, change that is informed by some ideal, some abstract a priori blueprint. Self-consciously tampering and tinkering with the given structure out of a concern for efficiency, justice, or economy is fraught with danger. Better to suffer apparent inequity and imperfection than tempt the possible disorder and unpredictability of planned change. Any attempt to rationalize social or political life raises this specter of chaos for the conservative skeptic. The social order is complex and fragile; who knows what hell will break loose should people set about to structure it according to their abstract notions. This seemed tragically borne out for Burke when he reflected on the French having unleashed a monstrous nightmare on all Europe in their misguided zeal to change the apparently few defects and corruptions of their constitution. The skeptic Burke, then, cautions against zealous efforts to remedy evil, lest these very efforts create even greater unintended evil. The position is echoed once again by the American conservative skeptic Edward Banfield. In an essay criticizing plans to rationalize and reorganize the American party system, he argues with pure Burkean skepticism:
A political system is an accident. It is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstance. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society. ... To meddle with the structure and operation of a successful political system is therefore the greatest foolishness that men are capable of. Because the system is intricate beyond comprehension, the chance of improving it in the ways intended is slight, whereas the danger of disturbing its working and of setting off a succession of unwanted effects that will extend throughout the whole society is great.
62
It is the same plea heard from some American liberal skeptics. There is, for example, the law school professor Alex Bickel, who suggested in the 1970s in the widely read New Republic that
Our problem, as much as Burke’s, is that we cannot govern, and should not, in submission to the dictates of abstract theories, and that we cannot live, much less govern, without some “uniform rule and scheme of life,” without principles, however provisionally and skeptically held. Burke’s conservatism, if that is what it was, which at any rate belongs to the liberal tradition properly understood and translated to our time, is the way.
63
It was his skepticism, so praised in our day, that drove the Whig Burke from his alliance with liberals like Charles James Fox and that defined his unique vision of conservatism. So is it this same skepticism that appeals to neoconservatives and chastened liberals today and drives them in conservative flight from the reformer’s zeal. The legitimacy and ethical justification of such skeptical naysaying is not our concern here. All that needs be insisted upon here is the remarkable legacy of Burke’s ideas.
64
1
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. See below, pp. 417, 443, 451.
2
H. W. F. Somerset, ed., A
Notebook
of Edmund Burke (Cambridge, England, 1957), pp. 90-91.
3
Edmund Burke, Speech on the State of Representation of the Commons in Parlia
ment.
See below, p. 178.
4
Ibid. See below, p. 182.
5
Edmund Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs.
See below, p. 495.
6
Edmund Burke, Letter to the duke of Richmond. See below, p. 533.
7
Quoted in M. H. Abrams, Natural
Supernaturalism
(New York, 1971), p. 328.
8
Edward Dowdeen, ed., The
Correspondence
of Robert
Southey with
Caroline
Bowles
(Dublin, 1881), p. 52.
9
William Blake, “The French Revolution,” in The Poetry and Prose
of William
Blake, David Erdman, ed. (New York, 1970), pp. 11-12.
10
Quoted in Abrams, Natural
Supernaturalism,
p. 331.
11
Richard Price, Evidence for a Future Period of Improvement in the State of Mankind
with
the Means and Duty of Promoting It: An Address to Supporters of New Academical Institutions Among Protestant Dissenters (London, 1787), pp. 5, 22, 25.
13
Joseph Priestley, Letters to the Right Honourable
Edmund
Burke (Birmingham, 1791), letter 14, p. 25.
14
Burke,
Reflections.
See below, p. 437.
15
Ibid. See below, p. 431, and Burke’s Works (London, 1882), p. 310.
16
Ibid. See below, p. 442.
17
Ibid. See below, p. 443.
18
Ibid. See below, p. 446.
19
Ibid. See below, p. 446.
20
Ibid. See below, p. 447.
21
Ibid. See below, pp. 451-52.
22
Ibid. See below, p. 448.
23
Ibid. See below, p. 448, 450.
24
Ibid. See below, pp. 457-58.
25
Parliamentary History 30 (1792-94), p. 646.
26
Burke, An Appeal. See below, p. 491.
27
Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature and Other Essays (Boston, 1896), p. 160.
28
Robert Bage, Man As He Is (London, 1792), vol. 4, pp. 72-73.
29
Priestley,
Letters
to the
Right
Honourable
Edmund
Burke, p. 112.
30
Cited in Mary Mack,
Jeremy Bentham
(London, 1962), p. 347.
31
Tom Paine, The Rights of Man, H. Collins, ed. (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1969), p. 71.
32
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Reply to Mr. Burke’s Invective (London, 1792), pp. 98-99.
33
Mrs. Henry Baring, ed., The Diary of the Right Honourable William
Windham 1784-1810
(London: 1866), pp. 212-13.
34
Quoted in Sir Philip Magnus,
Edmund
Burke (London, 1939), p. 195.
35
Quoted in Boulton, The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke (London, 1963), p. 80.
36
The
Times (London) November 30, 1790.
37
R. E. Prothero, ed., The Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (London, 1897), vol. 2, pp. 237, 251.
38
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Religious Musings (1794), Table Talk (London, 1835), vol. 5, p. 18; vol. 2, p. 147.
39
William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book 7, lines 512-30.
40
James Prior, Memoirs of
the
Life and Character of the Right Honourable
Edmund
Burke (London, 1824), vol. 1, pp. 364, 564.
41
George Croly, A Memoir of the Political Life of the Right Honourable
Edmund
Burke: With
Extracts
From His Writings (London, 1840), vol. 1, pp. 145-46, viii, 24, 3.
42
John Morley, A Historical Study (London, 1867), p. 123; Burke (London, 1888), p. 210.
43
William Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1891), vol. 5, p. 476; vol. 3, p. 197.
44
Cited in T. W. Copeland, “The Reputation of Edmund Burke,” Journal of British Studies (no. 2, 1962), p. 83.
45
Woodrow Wilson, Mere Literature, pp. 107, 128, 141, 158, 155.
46
Arthur Baumann, Burke the Founder of Conservatism (London, 1929), pp. 37, 46; Robert Murray,
Edmund
Burke:A Biography (London, 1931), p. 407.
47
Alfred Cobban,
Edmund
Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century (New York: 1929), p. 12.
48
Sir Lewis Namier, “King George III: A Study of Personality” in Crossroads of
Power
(New York, 1962), p. 140. The major works of Namier were The Struc
ture
of Politics at the Accession of George
III
(London, 1929) and England in the Age of
the American
Revolution (London, 1930).
49
Namier, “Monarchy and the Party System” in Personalities and Powers (London, 1955), p. 143.
50
Namier, “The Character of Burke,” The Spectator, December 19, 1958.
51
Namier, “King George III,” p. 140.
52
Jeffrey Hart, “Burke and Radical Freedom,” The Review of Politics 29 (April 1967), p. 221.
53
R. J. S. Hoffman and P. Levack, eds.,
Burke’s
Politics (New York, 1959), pp. xiii, xii.
54
Russell Kirk, “Edmund Burke and National Rights,” The Review of Politics 13, no. 4 (October 1951), pp. 16, 21, 209, 211; The Conservative Mind (New York, 1953), p. 123.
55
P J. Stanlis, “Edmund Burke in the Twentieth Century,” in The Relevance of
Edmund
Burke, ed. P. J. Stanlis (New York, 1964), p. 53.
56
Stanlis,
Edmund
Burke and the Natural Law (Ann Arbor, 1958), pp. 247-49.
57
Nathan Glazer, “On Being Deradicalized,” Commentary 50, no. 4 (October 1970), p. 75.
58
Irving Kristol, On the Democratic Idea in America (New York, 1972), pp. ix, 69, 149, 144.
59
See E. C. Banfield,
The Unheavenly
City (Boston, 1970).
60
See, for example, James Q. Wilson, Thinking About Crime (New York, 1975), as well as his numerous articles in The New York Times Magazine and Com
mentary.
61
M. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London, 1962), p. 127.
62
Edward Banfield, “In Defense of the American Party System,” in Political Par
ties
U.S.A., ed. E. Goldwin (Chicago, 1964), pp. 37-38.
63
Alex Bickel, “Reconsideration: Edmund Burke,” in New Republic, March 17, 1973.
64
The editor thanks Michael Busch, yet again, for his invaluable assistance on this project.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Ayling, S.
Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions
(1988)
Blakemore, S.
Burke and the Fall of Language
(1988)
Bryant, D. C.
Edmund
Burke and His Literary Friends
(1939)
Canavan, F.
Edmund
Burke:
Prescription
and Providence
(1987)
Chapman, G.
Edmund Burke: The
Practical Imagination
(1967)
Cobban, A.
Edmund
Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century
(1929)
Conniff, J. The Useful Cobbler:
Edmund
Burke and The
Politics of
Progress
(1994)
Crowe, I., ed.
Edmund
Burke: His
Life
and Legacy
(1997)
Freeman, M.
Edmund
Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism
(1980)
Kirk, R.
Edmund Burke: A
Genius Reconsidered
(1967)
Kramnick, I.
The Rage of Edmund Burke
(1977)
Macpherson, C. B.
Burke
(1980)
O’Brien, C. C.
The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke
(1992)
Ritchie, D.
Edmund
Burke:
Appraisals and Appreciations
(1990)
Stanlis, P.
Edmund
Burke and the Natural
Law
(1958)
Whelan, E
Edmund
Burke and India
(1997)
White, S. K.
Edmund
Burke: Modernity, Politics, and Aesthetics
(1994)
Wilkins, B. T. The Problem of
Burke’s
Political Philosophy
(1969)
A NOTE ON THE SELECTIONS
WITH THE EXCEPTION of the pieces from
The Reformer, A Notebook of
Edmund
Burke
, and
The Annual Register,
all the selections in this collection, including the letters, can be found in any standard edition of Burke’s collected works. I have used the 1851 London edition in eight volumes of
The Works and Correspondence
of
the Right Honourable
Edmund Burke.