Edmund Burke in America

The Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism

Drew Maciag

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781501705717
• eBook ISBN: 9780801467868
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–1797) is a touchstone for modern conservatism in the United States, and his name and his writings have been invoked by figures ranging from the arch Federalist George Cabot to the twentieth-century political philosopher Leo Strauss. But Burke's legacy has neither been consistently associated with conservative thought nor has the richness and subtlety of his political vision been fully appreciated by either his American admirers or detractors. In Edmund Burke in America, Drew Maciag traces Burke's reception and reputation in the United States, from the contest of ideas between Burke and Thomas Paine in the Revolutionary period, to the Progressive Era (when Republicans and Democrats alike invoked Burke's wisdom), to his apotheosis within the modern conservative movement.Throughout, Maciag is sensitive to the relationship between American opinions about Burke and the changing circumstances of American life. The dynamic tension between conservative and liberal attitudes in American society surfaced in debates over the French Revolution, Jacksonian democracy, Gilded Age values, Progressive reform, Cold War anticommunism, and post-1960s liberalism. The post–World War II rediscovery of Burke by New Conservatives and their adoption of him as the "father of conservatism" provided an intellectual foundation for the conservative ascendancy of the late twentieth century. Highlighting the Burkean influence on such influential writers as George Bancroft, E. L. Godkin, and Russell Kirk, Maciag also explores the underappreciated impact of Burke's thought on four U.S. presidents: John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Through close and keen readings of political speeches, public lectures, and works of history and political theory and commentary, Maciag offers a sweeping account of the American political scene over two centuries.

CHAPTER 1

Burke in Brief

A “Philosophical” Primer

Edmund Burke (1729–97) is usually described as a British political philosopher. But he was, in the first instance, an active politician who spent most of his adult life as a member of Parliament. Whatever “philosophy” Burke expounded was extracted by others from his pamphlets, letters, and orations, which were produced in the heat of political battle. This, in part, explains why he has been susceptible to differing interpretations. Burke was a prolific speaker and writer who today is remembered chiefly as a critic of the French Revolution and as the “father of conservatism.” In historical context, however, he had little in common with many conservatives of his own day, and almost nothing in common with conservatism as it is practiced today. It would be less anachronistic and more accurate to call Burke a progressive-traditionalist instead, since certain kinds of conservatism are antitraditionalist, ahistorical, and certainly not progressive. Burke’s traditionalism employed an idealized conception of the past as a guide for managing change in the present. The goal was not to prevent change; it was to assure the right kind of change.

In fact, Burke called for a good deal of change during his lifetime. And far from being a conservative by the standards of his day, he was more the genuine reformer. In British terms, he was a Whig, not a Tory. On such issues as American liberty, the condition of Ireland, religious toleration, the abolition of slavery, and the governance of India, Burke opposed the archconservative power structure and—at considerable political risk—called for more humane policies (in present-day usage, he would have been “liberal” or “progressive” on such issues). Granted, this is not the whole story; on other matters— radical revolution in particular—Burke took the conservative side. But even his conservatism was—and still is—subject to qualification.

Burke’s Image

Few important historical figures have been more ill-served by concise summation than Edmund Burke. The richness of his Whig vision has been diluted by an oversimplification of his political views and by a fixation on the most reactionary elements of his thought. While the present conservative stereotype of Burke was constructed by a right-wing constituency during the early Cold War, it could not have taken hold without the acquiescence of the broader intellectual community. Postwar conservatives may have needed a patron saint to guide them out of the wilderness, but liberals and radicals also benefited by finding a convenient straw man to embody the alleged backwardness of conservative positions. Even ideologically neutral writers found, and still find, that it is expedient to classify Burke as a narrow defender of outdated beliefs. Textbooks, for instance, give brief mention to Burke for the sake of obstruction—that is, to demonstrate to late-modern students why the historical path to secular democracy, pluralism, and egalitarian values was not traveled as effortlessly as might be assumed in retrospect.

Yet had Burke actually been as crudely cemented to rigid ideas and practices as his current image implies, it is doubtful that his writings would have found a receptive audience for generations after his passing. Usually, brief treatments of Burke deal exclusively with the concluding chapter of his career. But if Burke had died at the age of sixty, his thought would not have been subject to such misinterpretation. Moreover, his legacy would likely have been incorporated into the tradition of progressive reform rather than conservative reaction. Be that as it may, had Burke died at sixty (which would have been in 1789, the year the French Revolution began), he would have died a much smaller man. No matter how prolific a writer, or how distinguished his political career, Burke was merely an interesting figure of secondary importance until he published his Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790. Only then did he become one of the major voices of political philosophy. His remaining years were most notable for his elaborations on that great work.1

To better understand Burke’s American image, it is helpful to look briefly at those elements of his career that formed the basis for later interpretations. For the sake of convenience (and following a tiny nutshell biography), this summary will be divided into three topics: America and reform, reason and revolution, and Burke’s Whig vision.

Nutshell Biography

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1729, the son of a Protestant (lawyer) father and a Catholic mother. After graduating from Trinity College, he relocated to London, ostensibly to study law, but intent on a career as a man of letters. Although he achieved recognition with A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), he chose to enter politics. In 1765 Burke became secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham (leader of the Whigs, and briefly prime minister) and was elected to Parliament from the pocket borough of Wendover. He remained in the House of Commons for over twenty-eight years, later representing Bristol (1774–80) and the pocket borough of Malton (1781–94); in 1782–83 he twice held the subcabinet post of paymaster of the forces. Burke was a genius at political rhetoric, and his early tracts and published speeches mostly served a reform agenda, especially regarding the American crisis, the Wilkes Affair, and Whig attempts at curbing the power of King George III. After Rockingham’s death in 1782, Burke’s influence dwindled among Whigs; from 1783 on, his major reform crusade was an attack on Britain’s exploitation of India. Following the fall of the Bastille in 1789, Burke began to break with the Whigs and oppose the revolution in France, ultimately calling for British military intervention to thwart France’s European expansion. He retired from Parliament in 1794 and died at his Beaconsfield estate near London in 1797.

Burke’s accomplishments may appear to have been modest. He failed to achieve high office or significant power and was rarely on the winning side of political debates. Nevertheless, he was an articulate proponent of political principles that were to have profound and long-lasting consequences. His writings and speeches were (and are) what made Burke important and exceptional. For instance, his Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770) outlined the Whig opposition to the court government and defended the rise of political parties. His two major speeches on America—Speech on American Taxation (1774) and Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)—brilliantly addressed the issues of political liberty and colonial governance; his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777) expanded on those themes, and also defined the proper relationship between elected representatives and their constituents. In his later antirevolutionary works, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and many others, Burke defended traditional practices against radicalism and rationalism, and laid a foundation for ideological conservatism. Thus it was Burke’s writings, rather than his political effectiveness, that made him “immortal” and relevant to future generations.

America and Reform

Contrary to popular belief, Burke did not exactly support the American Revolution, but he sympathized with it. He believed that colonial grievances were justified, and that a combination of arrogance, corruption, and stupidity on the part of the king’s government had prevented British Americans from enjoying their customary liberties. Burke strongly preferred granting America some version of autonomy short of independence. As he put it in his Speech on Conciliation with America: “My hold of the Colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These ties, which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.”2

Burke seems to have found America alluring, and he even considered emigrating. In his late twenties, he wrote that he wished “shortly please God, to be in America,” and at thirty-two he asked a friend: “When you look at the Atlantic do you not think of America?”3 Around this time An Account of the European Settlements in America appeared, bearing no author’s name but actually a collaboration of Edmund and his “cousin” Will Burke.4 Portentously, the book observed that Englishmen in America exhibited an unusually strong “natural temper” for liberty.5 Later, Burke stated that the colonists “must be governed according to the opinion of a free land.”6 Elsewhere he concluded that British Americans chafed against authority because they were both militant Protestants and assertive Whigs, inclined to “snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.”7 Accordingly, during the brief ministry of the Rockingham Whigs, Britain repealed the hated Stamp Act, which had been the chief cause of American discontent. On one hand, Burke saw in America living proof of British liberty unencumbered by the damaging rule of “wicked and designing men.” On the other hand, since America lacked so many of the stabilizing institutions of England, particularly a hereditary aristocracy, Burke doubted the colonies’ ability to function outside the protection of the British Empire and its unwritten constitution. Nevertheless, at this early stage of the game Burke leaned in favor of liberty and kept his reservations about its consequences in check.

For example, when the radical MP John Wilkes was charged with treason for publishing a criticism of royal prerogative, Burke aligned his party with English radicals in the name of liberty. Wilkes also supported the American colonial cause, and the Wilkes Affair was a major catalyst in shifting American opinion toward independence.8 This episode introduced a whole cluster of reform issues—parliamentary privilege, habeas corpus, freedom of the press, the constitutionality of general warrants, the reporting of parliamentary speeches, and the rights of citizens to choose their legislative representatives—all centered on the actions of Wilkes between 1763 and 1774. On each of these matters, Burke championed (what would now be called) civil liberties and government transparency and accountability.9 Far from the aristocratic flavor of his more famous conservative sentiments, Burke’s ideas during this early crisis sounded solidly bottom-up by the standards of his day: “The House of Commons can never be a control on other parts of Government unless they are controuled [sic] themselves by their constituents.”10 And: “The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a Statesman.”11 In his Conciliation speech, he declared: “I do not know a method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. I cannot insult and ridicule the feelings of Millions of my fellow-creatures.” And elsewhere he posed the question: “If any ask me what a free government is? I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so; and that they, not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.”12 True, Burke never became a democrat as the term is used today. In the 1770s, only radicals drifted toward that persuasion. But Burke’s own drift certainly pointed away from government by a “cabal” of “King’s friends” and away from authoritarian notions of imperial control.

Obviously, Burke failed to prevent American independence, though he quickly accommodated himself to it, even hinting, in a private note, at a favorable outcome: “A great revolution has happened…. It has made as great a change…as the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the solar world.”13 The related Wilkes Affair, which had forged a marriage of convenience between Whigs and radicals (and of Burke and radicals), ushered in a number of liberty-enhancing reforms in Britain concerning arrest warrants, the reporting of parliamentary speeches, and freedom of the press. Finally—and perhaps difficult for Americans to comprehend—once the United States achieved independence, it seemed to fade from Burke’s consciousness; since America no longer belonged to the British Empire, his concerns turned elsewhere.

It may surprise many to learn that Burke espoused a gentle rather than tough line on what today’s politicians call “law and order.” This included that ultimate litmus test of tough-on-crime rhetoric: the death penalty. Here Burke noted that “experience” showed “that capital punishments are not more certain to prevent crimes than inferior penalties.” It was a mistake, he said, to “suppose the Gallows the only force.”14 Later, when the issue was the punishment of rioters, he argued that the number of prisoners awaiting execution (sixty-two) was excessive, and that the “carnage” of mass executions “rather resembles a Massacre than a sober” justice.15 The next month, Burke defended two sailors condemned to hang for mutiny, and he was among those instrumental in obtaining pardons for both men.16 While not strictly opposed to capital punishment, Burke sought to limit its use. On punishments short of the death penalty Burke likewise favored humane reform, as when he offered to support legislation to outlaw the pillory.17 He also proposed the revision of the entire criminal code, and called especially for improvements to, or even the complete abolishment of, the system of transportation to penal colonies. In fact, on criminal law in general, the father of conservatism sometimes sounded remarkably softhearted, even calling criminals “the diseased and infirm part of our country…. They are under cure; and that is a state which calls for tenderness, and diligence, and great consideration.”18 Burke’s reform impulse extended to civil matters. For instance, he supported a bill to prevent the permanent imprisonment of insolvent debtors—and he went even further, by proposing a “white-washing” provision allowing for the total discharge of debt. He criticized the existing law for turning a civil matter into a criminal one, which delivered into “private hands” the right “to punish without mercy and without measure.”19

Perhaps most interesting of all reform issues was Burke’s opposition to slavery. As far back as 1765 Burke opposed a plan to seat American representatives in the House of Commons, because the colonial contingent would include southern slaveholders. Burke favored abolition but realized that it was not a practical goal. He therefore applied himself to reforming the conditions of slavery, and he drew up a “Negro Code,” intended to “lessen the inconveniences and evils” of slavery and the slave trade “until both shall be gradually done away.” This code proposed detailed regulations for conditions aboard slave ships and in slave ports along the African coast, including who could be enslaved and how they must be treated.20 This was a radical document for its day in the use of interventionist government, the granting of substantial legal rights to slaves, and in its basic premise that the human rights of captive Africans took preceden...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Burke in Brief
• Part I: Early America
• Part II: Transition to Modern America
• Part III: Postwar America
• Conclusion
• Notes