British influences Edmund Burke, an Anglo-Irish
Whig statesman and philosopher whose political principles were rooted in moral natural law and the Western heritage, is one of the first expositors of traditionalist conservatism, although
Toryism represented an even earlier, more primitive form of traditionalist conservatism. Burke believed in prescriptive rights, which he considered to be "God-given". He argued for what he called "
ordered liberty" (best reflected in the unwritten law of the British constitutional monarchy). He also fought for universal ideals that were supported by institutions such as the church, the family, and the state. He was a fierce critic of the principles behind the
French Revolution, and in 1790, his observations on its excesses and radicalism were collected in
Reflections on the Revolution in France. In
Reflections, Burke called for the constitutional enactment of specific, concrete rights and warned that abstract rights could be easily abused to justify tyranny. American social critic and historian
Russell Kirk wrote: "The
Reflections burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes." Burke's influence was felt by later intellectuals and authors in both Britain and continental Europe. The English Romantic poets
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
William Wordsworth and
Robert Southey, as well as Scottish Romantic author
Sir Walter Scott, and the counter-revolutionary writers
François-René de Chateaubriand,
Louis de Bonald and
Joseph de Maistre were all affected by his ideas. Burke's legacy was best represented in the United States by the
Federalist Party and its leaders, such as President
John Adams and Secretary of the Treasury
Alexander Hamilton.
French influences (1753–1821)
Joseph de Maistre, a French lawyer, was another founder of conservatism. He was an
ultramontane Catholic, and thoroughly rejected progressivism and rationalism. In 1796, he published a political pamphlet entitled,
Considerations on France, that mirrored Burke's
Reflections. Maistre viewed the French revolution as "evil schism", and a movement premised on the "sentiment of hatred". After the demise of Napoleon, Maistre returned to France to meet with pro-royalist circles. In 1819, Maistre published a piece called
Du Pape which outlined the Pope as the key sovereign, unto which authority derives from.
Critics of material progress Three
cultural conservatives and
skeptics of material development,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Thomas Carlyle, and
John Henry Newman, were staunch supporters of Burke's classical conservatism. According to conservative scholar Peter Viereck, Coleridge and his colleague and fellow poet
William Wordsworth began as followers of the
French Revolution and the radical utopianism it engendered. Their collection of poems,
Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, however, rejected the
Enlightenment notion of reason triumphing over faith and tradition. Later works by Coleridge, such as
Lay Sermons (1816),
Biographia Literaria (1817) and
Aids to Reflection (1825), defended traditional conservative positions on hierarchy and organic society, criticism of materialism and the merchant class, and the need for "inner growth" that is rooted in a traditional and religious culture. Coleridge was a strong supporter of social institutions and an outspoken opponent of
Jeremy Bentham and his
utilitarian theory.
Thomas Carlyle, a writer, historian, and essayist, was an early traditionalist thinker, defending medieval ideals such as aristocracy, hierarchy, organic society, and class unity against communism and
laissez-faire capitalism's "cash nexus." The "cash nexus," according to Carlyle, occurs when social interactions are reduced to economic gain. Carlyle, a lover of the poor, claimed that mobs, plutocrats, anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals, and others were threatening the fabric of British society by exploiting them and perpetuating class animosity. A devotee of Germanic culture and
Romanticism, Carlyle is best known for his works,
Sartor Resartus (1833–1834) and
Past and Present (1843). The
Oxford Movement, a religious movement aimed at restoring Anglicanism's Catholic nature, gave the
Church of England a "catholic rebirth" in the mid-19th century. The
Tractarians (so named for the publication of their
Tracts for the Times) criticized
theological liberalism while preserving "dogma, ritual, poetry, [and] tradition," led by
John Keble,
Edward Pusey, and
John Henry Newman. Newman (who converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845 and was later made a Cardinal and a canonized saint) and the Tractarians, like Coleridge and Carlyle, were critical of material progress, or the idea that money, prosperity, and economic gain constituted the totality of human existence.
Cultural and artistic criticism Culture and the arts were also important to British traditionalist conservatives, and two of the most prominent defenders of tradition in culture and the arts were
Matthew Arnold and
John Ruskin. A poet and cultural commentator,
Matthew Arnold is most recognized for his poems and literary, social, and religious criticism. His book
Culture and Anarchy (1869) criticized Victorian middle-class norms (Arnold referred to middle class tastes in literature as "
philistinism") and advocated a return to ancient literature. Arnold was likewise skeptical of the plutocratic grasping at socioeconomic issues that had been denounced by Coleridge, Carlyle, and the Oxford Movement. Arnold was a vehement critic of the Liberal Party and its Nonconformist base. He mocked Liberal efforts to disestablish the Anglican Church in Ireland, establish a Catholic university there, allow dissenters to be buried in Church of England cemeteries, demand temperance, and ignore the need to improve middle class members rather than impose their unreasonable beliefs on society. Education was essential, and by that, Arnold meant a close reading and attachment to the cultural classics, coupled with critical reflection. He feared anarchy—the fragmentation of life into isolated facts that is caused by dangerous educational panaceas that emerge from materialistic and utilitarian philosophies. He was appalled at the shamelessness of the sensationalistic new journalism of the sort he witnessed on his tour of the United States in 1888. He prophesied, "If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers." One of the issues that traditionalist conservatives have often emphasized is that capitalism is just as suspect as the
classical liberalism that gave birth to it. Cultural and artistic critic
John Ruskin, a medievalist who considered himself a "Christian communist" and cared much about standards in culture, the arts, and society, continued this tradition. The
Industrial Revolution, according to Ruskin (and all 19th-century cultural conservatives), had caused dislocation, rootlessness, and vast urbanization of the poor. He wrote
The Stones of Venice (1851–1853), a work of art criticism that attacked the Classical heritage while upholding Gothic art and architecture.
The Seven Lamps of Architecture and
Unto This Last (1860) were two of his other masterpieces.
One-nation conservatism Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, and other traditionalist conservatives' beliefs were distilled into former British Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli's politics and ideology. When he was younger, Disraeli was an outspoken opponent of middle-class capitalism and the Manchester liberals' industrial policies (the Reform Bill and the Corn Laws). In order to ameliorate the suffering of the urban poor in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, Disraeli proposed "
one-nation conservatism," in which a coalition of aristocrats and commoners would band together to counter the liberal middle class's influence. This new coalition would be a way to interact with disenfranchised people while also rooting them in old conservative principles. Disraeli's ideas (especially his critique of
utilitarianism) were popularized in the "Young England" movement and in books like
Vindication of the English Constitution (1835),
The Radical Tory (1837), and his "social novels,"
Coningsby (1844) and
Sybil (1845). His one-nation conservatism was revived a few years later in
Lord Randolph Churchill's Tory democracy and in the early 21st century in British philosopher
Phillip Blond's
Red Tory thesis.
Distributism in 1915 In the early 20th century, traditionalist conservatism found its defenders through the efforts of
Hilaire Belloc,
G. K. Chesterton and other proponents of the socioeconomic system they advocated:
distributism. Originating in the papal encyclical
Rerum novarum, distributism employed the concept of
subsidiarity as a "third way" solution to the twin evils of communism and capitalism. It favors local economies, small business, the agrarian way of life and craftsmen and artists. Otto von Bismarck implemented one of the first modern welfare systems in Germany during the 1880s. Traditional communities akin to those found in the Middle Ages were advocated in books like Belloc's
The Servile State (1912),
Economics for Helen (1924), and
An Essay on the Restoration of Property (1936), and Chesterton's
The Outline of Sanity (1926), while big business and big government were condemned. Distributist views were accepted in the United States by the journalist
Herbert Agar and Catholic activist
Dorothy Day as well as through the influence of the German-born British economist
E. F. Schumacher, and were comparable to
Wilhelm Roepke's work.
T. S. Eliot was a staunch supporter of Western culture and traditional Christianity. Eliot was a political reactionary who used literary modernism to achieve traditionalist goals. Following in the footsteps of
Edmund Burke,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Thomas Carlyle,
John Ruskin,
G. K. Chesterton, and
Hilaire Belloc, he wrote
After Strange Gods (1934), and
Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948). At Harvard University, where he was educated by
Irving Babbitt and
George Santayana, Eliot was acquainted with
Allen Tate and
Russell Kirk. T. S. Eliot praised
Christopher Dawson as the most potent intellectual influence in Britain, and he was a prominent player in 20th-century traditionalism. The belief that religion was at the center of all civilization, especially Western culture, was central to his work, and his books reflected this view, notably
The Age of Gods (1928),
Religion and Culture (1948), and
Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950). Dawson, a contributor to Eliot's
Criterion, believed that religion and culture were crucial to rebuilding the West after World War II in the aftermath of
fascism and the advent of
communism. ==In the United Kingdom==