Russell Kirk

Burke and Natural Rights

Edmund Burke was at once a chief exponent of the Ciceronian doctrine of natural law and a chief opponent of the “rights of man.” In our time, which is experiencing simultaneously a revival of interest in natural-law theory and an enthusiasm for defining “human rights” that is exemplified by the United Nations lengthy declaration, Burkes view of the natural juridic order deserves close attention. Unlike Bolingbroke and Hume, whose outward politics in some respects resembled the great Whig statesmans, Burke was a pious man. “The most important questions about the human race Burke answered … from the Church of Englands catechism.” He takes for granted a Christian cosmos, in which a just God has established moral principles for mans salvation. God has given man law, and with that law, rights; such, succinctly, is Burkes premise in all moral and juridical questions.

Social Justice and Mass Culture

A friend of mine has the misfortune of owning a number of stone cottages. I say “misfortune” because the cottages are in Scotland, and their rents are fixed at the level of 1914. The cottages were built long before 1914—some of them are eighteenth-century work, with their pantiled roofs and trick rubble walls and irregular little windows; but they are good to look upon still, with their white door-sills and their little gardens along the path to the road. The law compels my friend to keep them in tolerable repair, if they are tenanted, and to pay most of what rent he receives either to local authorities or to the Exchequer, in the form of rates and income-taxes. But the rent of each cottage amounts to a mere five shillings a week—seventy cents, at the present rate of exchange. This is not particularly depressing to my friend, for the rents of his farms are fixed at levels no higher than they were during the Napoleonic wars, let alone the First World War. The cottages are a cause of expense to him, of course, rather than a source of income; but persons of his station are now resigned to being ruined, and for some of his cottages he asks no rent at all, letting them to old people who can afford to pay next to nothing. Some of his tenants, however, are better off, according to their lights, than my friend himself: they have risen in the economic scale while he has descended. His income is still much greater than theirs, but his expenses are much greater, and his responsibilities. These tenants now have better wages and shorter hours than ever they did before; they can afford their little luxuries, extending sometimes to television-sets. Some of them have come to look upon rent as a luxury—for, after all, many of their neighbors are the recipients of my friends charity, paying nothing for their cottages. Accordingly, my friends agent occasionally has his difficulties when he goes from door to door, on Mondays, collecting five shillings here and five shillings there. One morning the agent knocked at the door of a tenant who was in good health and employed at good wages. The tenant came to the door and announced that he had decided to pay no more rent; he could not afford it; prices were high, and he could use that five shillings himself.

The Thought of Sir Henry Maine

Progress, Maine said, is rare in the procession of history; but it is real. Therefore—though never active in affairs of party — he commenced as a moderate Liberal under the influence of Burkes mind, endeavoring to promote cautious reform, reconciling old interests with new energies, preparing society for necessary change, preserving what is best in the ancient order. His Indian career displayed this influence of Burke, this respect for native custom and culture, this calm devotion to a society that is a spirit or a living thing, not a mere mechanical contrivance. Writers on politics who imply that Burke and his school opposed change per se err gravely. Beneficial change is the Providential instrument of social preservation, said Burke, a conservative force; but we must not fall into the vulgar error of thinking that all change is useful reform. The world experiences both improvement and decay; the latter tendency is the easier path, although ruinous at last; and statesmen must train themselves and the people to distinguish healthy change from processes of dissolution. When Henry Maine became convinced that the drift of change in Western society was retrogressive, then, like the astute representative of Burkes school that he was, he became a conservative. Lord Acton, in 1882, was startled and grieved to find Maine using “Toryism” as a term of commendation