One might even wonder if the so-called “New Right”, the European Nouvelle Droite, is a reaction against the declining Liberal/reform element of Conservatism as well as the loss of Conservatives who defend the permanent things...

The Traditionalist as Liberal

by Michael Davis

Conservatives, or more specifically Traditionalists, find ourselves in the rather uncomfortable position of revering a group of men who espoused ideas that modern Traditionalists approach with immense reserve—namely, Liberalism and democracy. William Cobbett irritated the Tory government of William Pitt the Younger with his incessant calls for parliamentary and social reform, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were both avowed Liberals, and C.S. Lewis, in one of his few political comments, names himself as a certain democrat. So are we wrong to call ourselves Conservatives? Are we, in fact, the true heirs of Liberalism?

First we ought to look at why Chesterton and Belloc would claim to beLiberals so long before Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton would do the same.

Some commentators prefer to explain that Liberalism has literally meant two very different things—something to the effect of, “In the modern use, a Liberal thinker is what the OED would define as, ‘giving generously’—that is, a proponent of redistribution of wealth. But in the 18th through the 20th centuries, a Liberal would have been identified with, ‘willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas’, and ‘favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms’.”

But that’s a tad too literal for my taste. It’s not likely that anyone was perusing the dictionary looking for a word that exactly matched their political thinking. Old Liberalism did have something to do with “liberalizing”, with freeing something up, and with becoming more permissive. But not in the way the word is used today.

If the “Old Liberals” of the 19th century were one thing, they weren’t revolutionaries. That role was filled by Charles James Fox’s Radicals: the English crypto-Jacobins. Certainly they often both belonged to the Whig party, and elsewhere I’ve criticized Radical Whigs without differentiation. But an honest commentator can hardly say Jefferson the Whig, the plutocrat, republican and anti-theist, is uniformly the same as Burke the Whig, the aristocrat, monarchist and Anglican. Burke today is even regarded as a Tory thinker, which is better than calling him a Whiggish thinker. But nonetheless, that Burke identified with the Whigs means that, to some degree, he isn’t an orthodox Tory, a conservative full-stop.

So what did Burke’s Old Liberals, the not-entirely-Conservative conservatives, stand for? It might be just as well if we define Old Liberals by what they aren’t—that is, neither Reactionaries nor Radicals.

The Tories, who were mostly the heirs of the Cavalier, Absolutist camp, had a narrow definition of rights: namely, the right of the King and the right of the Aristocracy to rule as they saw fit. They opposed the expansion of landowning and the vote, which have historically gone hand-in-hand, and most strongly resented the Industrial Revolution. Fastidious defenders of the Established Church, the Tories of this period were generally opposed to both Dissenter toleration and legal Catholic emancipation.

The Radicals, or the “New Whigs”, on the other hand, were republicans and egalitarians, advocates of greater suffrage and against the privilege of the landed. They also came down heavily in favor of Parliamentary authority and generally sympathized with religious toleration both for Catholics and for Dissenters, though their attitude toward the Catholic faith itself was marred by their pro-Jacobin sympathies.

Burke and his “Old Whigs”, the original Liberals, defended the institutional monarchy and aristocracy while encouraging reforms that would give the common people greater access to mercantile and farming opportunities. The Old Whigs generally supported the emancipation of Catholics, and many (including Burke) were suspected of being Catholics themselves.

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