EDMUND BURKE AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CIRCUMSTANCE
We are now in position to affirm that the rhetorical study of an argument
begins with a study of the sources. But since almost any extended
argument will draw upon more than one source we must look, to answer the
inquiry we are now starting, at the prevailing source, or the source
which is most frequently called upon in the total persuasive effort.
We shall say that this predominating source gives to the argument an
aspect, and our present question is, what can be inferred from the
aspect of any argument or body of arguments about the philosophy of its
maker? All men argue alike when they argue validly because the modes
of inference are formulas, from which deviation is error. Therefore
we characterize inference only as valid or invalid. But the reasoner
reveals his philosophical position by the source of argument which
appears most often in his major premise because the major premise tells
us how he is thinking about the world. In other words, the rhetorical
content of the major premise which the speaker habitually uses is the
key to his primary view of existence. We are of course excluding artful
choices which have in view only _ad hoc_ persuasions. Putting the matter
now figuratively, we may say that no man escapes being branded by the
premise that he regards as most efficacious in an argument. The general
importance of this is that major premises, in addition to their logical
function as part of a deductive argument, are expressive of values, and
a characteristic major premise characterizes the user.
To see this principle in application, let us take three of the chief
sources of argument recognized by the classical rhetoricians. We may
look first at the source which is _genus_. All arguments made through
genus are arguments based on the nature of the thing which is said
to constitute the genus. What the argument from genus then says is
that “generic” classes have a nature which can be predicated of their
species. Thus _man_ has a nature including _mortality_, which quality
can therefore be predicated of the man Socrates and the man John Smith.
The underlying postulate here, that things have a nature, is of course a
disputable view of the world, for it involves the acceptance of a realm
of essence. Yet anyone who uses such source of argument is committed to
this wider assumption. Now it follows that those who habitually argue
from genus are in their personal philosophy idealists. To them the idea
of genus is a reflection of existence. We are saying, accordingly, that
arguments which make predominant use of genus have an aspect through
this source, and that the aspect may be employed to distinguish the
philosophy of the author. It will be found, to cite a concrete example,
that John Henry Newman regularly argues from genus; he begins with the
nature of the thing and then makes the application. The question of what
a university is like is answered by applying the idea of a university.
The question of what man ought to study is answered by working out a
conception of the nature of man. And we shall find in a succeeding essay
that Abraham Lincoln, although he has become a patron for liberals and
pragmatists, was a consistent user of the argument from genus. His
refusal to hedge on the principle of slavery is referable to a fixed
concept of the nature of man. This, then, will serve to characterize the
argument from genus.
Another important source of argument is _similitude_. Whereas those
who argue from genus argue from a fixed class, those who argue from
similitude invoke essential (though not exhaustive) correspondences.
If one were to say, for example, that whatever has the divine attribute
of reason is likely to have also the divine attribute of immortality,
one would be using similitude to establish a probability. Thinkers
of the analogical sort use this argument chiefly. If required to
characterize the outlook it implies, we should say that it expresses
belief in a oneness of the world, which causes all correspondence to have
probative value. Proponents of this view tend to look toward some final,
transcendental unity, and as we might expect, this type of argument
is used widely by poets and religionists.[26] John Bunyan used it
constantly; so did Emerson.
A third type we shall mention, the type which provides our access
to Burke, is the argument from _circumstance_. The argument from
circumstance is, as the name suggests, the nearest of all arguments to
purest expediency. This argument merely reads the circumstances—the
“facts standing around”—and accepts them as coercive, or allows them to
dictate the decision. If one should say, “The city must be surrendered
because the besiegers are so numerous,” one would be arguing not from
genus, or similitude, but from a present circumstance. The expression
“In view of the situation, what else are you going to do?” constitutes a
sort of proposition-form for this type of argument. Such argument savors
of urgency rather than of perspicacity; and it seems to be preferred
by those who are easily impressed by existing tangibles. Whereas the
argument from consequence attempts a forecast of results, the argument
from circumstance attempts only an estimate of current conditions
or pressures. By thus making present circumstance the overbearing
consideration, it keeps from sight even the nexus of cause and effect.
It is the least philosophical of all the sources of argument, since
theoretically it stops at the level of perception of fact.
Burke is widely respected as a conservative who was intelligent enough
to provide solid philosophical foundations for his conservatism. It
is perfectly true that many of his observations upon society have a
conservative basis; but if one studies the kind of argument which Burke
regularly employed when at grips with concrete policies, one discovers a
strong addiction to the argument from circumstance. Now for reasons which
will be set forth in detail later, the argument from circumstance is the
argument philosophically appropriate to the liberal. Indeed, one can
go much further and say that it is the argument fatal to conservatism.
However much Burke eulogized tradition and fulminated against the
French Revolution, he was, when judged by what we are calling aspect of
argument, very far from being a conservative; and we suggest here that
a man’s method of argument is a truer index in his beliefs than his
explicit profession of principles. Here is a means whereby he is revealed
in his work. Burke’s voluminous controversies give us ample opportunity
to test him by this rule.
There is some point in beginning with Burke’s treatment of the existing
Catholic question, an issue which drew forth one of his earliest
political compositions and continued to engage his attention throughout
his life. As early as 1765 he had become concerned with the extraordinary
legal disabilities imposed upon Catholics in Ireland, and about this time
he undertook a treatise entitled _Tract on the Popery Laws_. Despite the
fact that in this treatise Burke professes belief in natural law, going
so far as to assert that all human laws are but declaratory, the type
of argument he uses chiefly is the secular argument from circumstance.
After a review of the laws and penalties, he introduces his “capital
consideration.”
The first and most capital consideration with regard to this,
as to every object, is the extent of it. And here it is
necessary to premise: this system of penalty and incapacity
has for its object no small sect or obscure party, but a very
numerous body of men—a body which comprehends at least two
thirds of the whole nation: it amounts to 2,800,000 souls,
a number sufficient for the materials constituent of a great
people.[27]
He then gave his reason for placing the circumstance first.
This consideration of the magnitude of the object ought to
attend us through the whole inquiry: if it does not always
affect the reason, it is always decisive on the importance of
the question. It not only makes itself a more leading point,
but complicates itself with every other part of the matter,
giving every error, minute in itself, a character and a
significance from its application. It is therefore not to be
wondered at, if we perpetually recur to it in the course of
this essay.[28]
The _Tract_ was planned in such a way as to continue this thought, while
accompanying it with discussion of the impediment to national prosperity,
and of “the impolicy of those laws, as they affect the national
security.” This early effort established the tenor of his thinking on the
subject.
While representing Bristol in Parliament, Burke alienated a part of
his constituency by supporting Sir George Savile’s measure to ease
the restraints upon Catholics. In the famous _Speech to the Electors
of Bristol_ he devoted a large portion of his time to a justification
of that course, and here, it is true, he made principal use of the
argument from genus (“justice”) and from consequence. The argument from
circumstance is not forgotten, but is tucked away at the end to persuade
the “bigoted enemies to liberty.” There, using again his criterion of the
“magnitude of the object,” he said:
Gentlemen, it is possible you may not know that the people
of that persuasion in Ireland amount to at least sixteen or
seventeen hundred thousand souls. I do not at all exaggerate
the number. A nation to be _persecuted_! Whilst we were masters
of the sea, embodied with America and in alliance with half
the powers of the continent, we might, perhaps, in that remote
corner of Europe, afford to tyrannize with impunity. But there
is a revolution in our affairs which makes it prudent for us to
be just.[29]
During the last decade of his life, Burke wrote a series of letters
upon the Catholic question and upon Irish affairs, in which, of
course, this question figured largely. In 1792 came _A Letter to Sir
Hercules Langrishe, M.P._, upon the propriety of admitting Catholics
to the elective franchise. Here we find him taking a pragmatic view
of liberality toward Catholics. He reasoned as follows regarding the
restoration of the franchise:
If such means can with any probability be shown, from
circumstances, rather to add strength to our mixed
ecclesiastical and secular constitution, than to weaken it;
surely they are means infinitely to be preferred to penalties,
incapacities, and proscriptions continued from generation to
generation.[30]
In this instance the consideration of magnitude took a more extended form:
How much more, certainly, ought they [the disqualifying laws]
to give way, when, as in our case, they affect, not here and
there, in some particular point or in their consequence,
but universally, collectively and directly, the fundamental
franchises of a people, equal to the whole inhabitants of
several respectable kingdoms and states, equal to the subjects
of the kings of Sardinia or of Denmark; equal to those of the
United Netherlands, and more than are to be found in all the
states of Switzerland. This way of proscribing men by whole
nations, as it were, from all the benefits of the constitution
to which they were born, I never can believe to be politic or
expedient, much less necessary for the existence of any state
or church in the world.[31]
Greatly exercised over events in France, Burke came to think of
Christianity as the one force with enough cohesion to check the spread
of the Revolution. Then in 1795 he wrote the _Letter to William Smith,
Esq._ Here he described Christianity as “the grand prejudice ... which
holds all the other prejudices together”;[32] and such prejudices, as
he visualized them, were essential to the fabric of society. He told
his correspondent candidly: “My whole politics, at present, center in
one point; and to this the merit or demerit of every measure (with me)
is referable; that is, what will most promote or depress the cause of
Jacobinism.”[33] In a second letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, written in
the same year, he could say: “In the Catholic Question I considered only
one point. Was it at the time, and in the circumstances, a measure which
tended to promote the concord of the citizens.”[34]
Only once did Burke approach the question of religion through what may be
properly termed an argument from definition. In the last year of his life
he composed _A Letter on the Affairs of Ireland_, one passage of which
considers religion not in its bearing upon some practical measure, but
with reference to its essential nature.
Let every man be as pious as he pleases, and in the way that he
pleases; but it is agreeable neither to piety nor to policy to
give exclusively all manner of civil privileges and advantages
to a _negative_ religion—such is the Protestant without a
certain creed; and at the same time to deny those privileges to
men whom we know to agree to an iota in every one _positive_
doctrine, which all of us, who profess religion authoritatively
taught in England, hold ourselves, according to our faculties,
bound to believe.[35]
It is not purely an argument from definition, but it contains such an
argument, and so contrasts with his dominant position on a subject which
engaged much of his thought and seems to have filled him with sincere
feeling.
We shall examine him now on another major subject to engage his
statesmanship, the rebellion of the North American Colonies against Great
Britain. By common admission today, Burke’s masterpiece of forensic
eloquence is the speech moving his resolutions for conciliation with that
disaffected part of the Empire, delivered in the House of Commons on
March 22, 1775. In admiring the felicities with which this great oration
undoubtedly abounds, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is from
beginning to end an argument from circumstance. It is not an argument
about rights or definitions, as Burke explicitly says at two or three
points; it is an argument about policy as dictated by circumstances.
Its burden is a plea to conciliate the colonies because they are waxing
great. No subtlety of interpretation is required to establish this truth,
because we can substantially establish it in the express language of
Burke himself.
To see the aspect of this argument, it is useful to begin by looking
at the large alternatives which the orator enumerates for Parliament
in the exigency. The first of these is to change the spirit of the
Colonies by rendering it more submissive. Circumventing the theory of
the relationship of ruler and ruled, Burke sets aside this alternative
as impractical. He admits that an effort to bring about submission would
be “radical in its principle” (_i.e._, would have a root in principle);
but he sees too many obstacles in geography, ethnology, and other
circumstances to warrant the trial.
The second alternative is to prosecute the Colonists as criminal. At this
point, the “magnitude of the object” again enters his equation, and he
would distinguish between the indictment of a single individual and the
indictment of a whole people as things different in kind. The number and
vigor of the Americans constitute an embarrassing circumstance. Therefore
his thought issues in the oft-quoted statement “I do not know the method
of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.”[36] This was said,
it should be recalled, despite the fact that history is replete with
proceedings against rebellious subjects.[37] But Burke had been an agent
for the colony of New York; he had studied the geography and history of
the Colonies with his usual industry; and we may suppose him to have had
a much clearer idea than his colleagues in Parliament of their power to
support a conflict.
It is understandable, by this view, that his third alternative should
be “to comply with the American spirit as necessary.” He told his
fellow Commoners plainly that his proposal had nothing to do with the
legal right of taxation. “My consideration is narrow, confined, and
wholly limited to the policy of the question.”[38] This policy he
later characterizes as “systematic indulgence.” The outcome of this
disjunctive argument is then a measure to accommodate a circumstance.
The circumstance is that America is a growing country, of awesome
potentiality, whose strength, both actual and imminent, makes it
advisable for the Mother Country to overlook abstract rights. In a
peroration, the topic of abstract rights is assigned to those “vulgar and
mechanical politicians,” who are “not fit to turn a wheel in the machine”
of Empire.[39]
With this conclusion in mind, it will be instructive to see how the
orator prepared the way for his proposal. The entire first part of his
discourse may be described as a depiction of the circumstance which
is to be his source of argument. After a circumspect beginning, in
which he calls attention to the signs of rebellion and derides the
notion of “paper government,” he devotes a long and brilliant passage
to simple characterization of the Colonies and their inhabitants. The
unavoidable effect of this passage is to impress upon his hearers the
size and resources of this portion of the Empire. First he takes up the
rapidly growing population, then the extensive trade, then the spirit
of enterprise, and finally the personal character of the Colonists
themselves. Outstanding even in this colorful passage is his account of
the New England whaling industry.
Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice,
and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses
of Hudson’s Bay and Davis’s Straits, whilst we are looking
for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have
pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they
are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent
of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and
romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but
a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious
industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to
them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know
that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon
on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue
their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what
is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness
to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the
activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of
English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hard
industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this
recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the
gristle; and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.[40]
It is the spectacle of this enterprise which induces Burke to “pardon
something to the spirit of liberty.”
The long recital is closed with an appeal which may be fitly regarded
as the _locus classicus_ of the argument from circumstance. For with
this impressive review of the fierce spirit of the colonists before
his audience, Burke declares: “The question is, not whether the spirit
deserves praise or blame, but—what, in the name of God, shall we do with
it?”[41] The question then is not what is right or wrong, or what accords
with our idea of justice or our scheme of duty; it is, how can we meet
this circumstance? “I am not determining a point of law; I am restoring
tranquillity.”[42] The circumstance becomes the cue of the policy. We
must remind ourselves that our concern here is not to pass upon the
merits of a particular controversy, but to note the term which Burke
evidently considered most efficacious in moving his hearers. “Political
reason,” he says, elsewhere, “is a computing principle.”[43] Where does
political reason in this instance leave him? It leaves him inevitably in
the middle, keeping the Colonies, but not as taxable parts of the Empire,
allowing them to pay their own charge by voluntary grants. In Burke’s
characteristic view, the theoretic relationship has been altered by the
medium until the thirteen (by his count fourteen) colonies of British
North America are left halfway between colonial and national status. The
position of the Tories meant that either the Colonies would be colonies
or they would terminate their relationship with the Empire. Burke’s case
was that by concession to circumstance they could be retained in some
form, and this would be a victory for policy. Philosophers of starker
principle, like Tom Paine, held that a compromise of the Burkean type
would have been unacceptable in the long run even to the Americans, and
the subsequent crystallization of American nationality seems to support
this view. But Burke thought he saw a way to preserve an institution by
making way for a large corporeal fact.
It must be confessed that Burke’s interest in the affairs of India,
and more specifically in the conduct of the East India Company, is not
reconcilable in quite the same way with the thesis of this chapter.
Certainly there is nothing in mean motives or contracted views to explain
why he should have labored over a period of fourteen years to benefit
a people with whom he had no contact and from whom he could expect no
direct token of appreciation. But it must be emphasized that the subject
of this essay is methods, and even in this famous case Burke found some
opportunity to utilize his favorite source.
In 1783, years before the impeachment of Warren Hastings, he made a long
speech in Parliament attacking Fox’s East India Bill. He was by then
deeply impressed by the wrongs done the Indians by British adventurers,
yet it will be observed that his _habitus_ reveals itself in the
following passages. He said of the East India Company:
I do not presume to condemn those who argue _a priori_ against
the propriety of leaving such extensive political power in the
hands of a company of merchants. I know much is, and much more
may be, said against such a system. But, with my particular
ideas and sentiments, I cannot go that way to work. I feel
an insuperable reluctance in giving my hand to destroy any
established institution of government, upon a theory, however
plausible it may be.[44]
Then shortly he continued:
To justify us in taking the administration of their affairs
out of the hands of the East India Company, as my principles,
I must see several conditions. 1st, the object affected by the
abuse must be great and important. 2nd, the abuse affecting
the great object ought to be a great abuse. 3rd, it ought to
be habitual and not accidental. 4th, it ought to be utterly
incurable in the body as it now stands constituted.[45]
It is pertinent to observe that Burke’s first condition here is exactly
the first condition raised with reference to the Irish Catholics and
with reference to the American Colonies. It is further characteristic of
his method that the passages cited above are followed immediately by a
description of the extent and wealth and civilization of India, just as
the plea for approaching the Colonies with reconciliation was followed
by a vivid advertisement of their extent and wealth and enterprise. The
argument is for justice, but it is conditioned upon a circumstance.
When Burke undertook the prosecution of Hastings in 1788, these
considerations seemed far from his mind. The splendid opening charge
contains arguments strictly from genus, despite the renunciation of
such arguments which we see above. He attacked the charter of the East
India Company by showing that it violated the idea of a charter.[46]
He affirmed the natural rights of man, and held that they had been
criminally denied in India.[47] He scorned the notion of geographical
morality. These sound like the utterances of a man committed to abstract
right. Lord Morley has some observations on Burke which may contain
the explanation. His study of Burke’s career led him to feel that
“direct moral or philanthropic apostleship was not his function.”[48]
Of his interest in India, he remarked: “It was reverence rather
than sensibility, a noble and philosophic conservatism rather than
philanthropy, which raised the storm in Burke’s breast against the
rapacity of English adventurers in India, and the imperial crimes of
Hastings.”[49] If it is true that Burke acted out of reverence rather
than out of sensibility or philanthropy, what was the reverence of? It
was, likely, for storied India, for an ancient and opulent civilization
which had brought religion and the arts to a high point of development
while his ancestors were yet “in the woods.” There is just enough of
deference for the established and going concern, for panoply, for that
which has prestige, to make us feel that Burke was again impressed—with
an intended consequence which was noble, of course; but it is only fair
to record this component of the situation.
The noble and philosophic conservatism next translated itself into a
violent opposition to the French Revolution, which was threatening to
bring down a still greater structure of rights and dignities, though in
this instance in the name of reform and emancipation.
The French Revolution was the touchstone of Burke. Those who have
regarded his position on this event as a reversal, or a sign of fatigue
and senescence, have not sufficiently analyzed his methods and his
sources. Burke would have had to become a new man to take any other stand
than he did on the French Revolution. It was an event perfectly suited to
mark off those who argue from circumstance, for it was one of the most
radical revolutions on record, and it was the work of a people fond of
logical rigor and clear demonstration.
Why Burke, who had championed the Irish Catholics, the American
colonists, and the Indians should have championed on this occasion the
nobility and the propertied classes of Europe is easy to explain. For him
Europe, with all its settlements and usages, was the circumstance; and
the Revolution was the challenge to it. From first to last Burke saw the
grand upheaval as a contest between inherited condition and speculative
insight. The circumstance said that Europe should go on; the Revolution
said that it should cease and begin anew.[50] Burke’s position was not
selfish; it was prudential within the philosophy we have seen him to hold.
Actually his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ divides itself
into two parts. The first is an attempt, made with a zeal which seems
almost excessive, to prove that the British government was the product
of slow accretion of precedent, that it is for that reason a beneficent
and stable government, and that the British have renounced, through their
choice of methods in the past, any theoretical right to change their
government by revolution. The second part is a miscellany of remarks on
the proceedings in France, in which many shrewd observations of human
nature are mingled with eloquent appeals on behalf of the _ancien régime_.
Burke appears terrified by the thought that the ultimate sources and
sanctions of government should be brought out into broad daylight for the
inspection of everyone, and the first effort was to clothe the British
government with a kind of concealment against this sort of inspection,
which could, of course, result in the testing of that government by
what might have been or might yet be. The second effort was to show
that France, instead of embarking on a career of progress through her
daring revolution, “had abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute
her virtue.” It will be observed that in both of these, a presumed
well-being is the source of his argument. Therefore we have the familiar
recourse to concrete situation.
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen, pass for nothing)
give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing
color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what
render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious
to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as
liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago,
have felicitated France upon her enjoyment of a government (for
she then had a government) without inquiring what the nature
of the government was, or how it was administered? Can I now
congratulate the same nation on its freedom?[51]
In his _Letter to a Member of the National Assembly_ (1791) he said:
What a number of faults have led to this multitude of
misfortunes, and almost all from this one source—that of
considering certain general maxims, without attending to
circumstances, to times, to places, to conjectures, and to
actors! If we do not attend scrupulously to all of these, the
medicine of today becomes the poison of tomorrow.[52]
This was the gist of such advice as Burke had for the French. That they
should build on what they had instead of attempting to found _de novo_,
that they should adapt necessary changes to existing conditions, and
above all that they should not sacrifice the sources of dignity and
continuity in the state—these made up a sort of gospel of precedent and
gradualism which he preached to the deaf ears across the Channel. We
behold him here in his characteristic political position, but forced to
dig a little deeper, to give his theorems a more general application,
and, it is hardly unjust to say, to make what really constitutes a
denial of philosophy take on some semblance of philosophy. Yet Burke was
certainly never at a greater height rhetorically in defending a reigning
circumstance. Let us listen to him for a moment on the virtues of old
Europe.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters,
economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of
Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we
behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud
submission, that dignified obedience, the subordination of
the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the
spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the
cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment, is
gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity
of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired
courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever
it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by
losing all its grossness.
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in
the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its
appearance by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted and
influenced through a long succession of generations, even to
the time we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished,
the loss I fear will be great. It is this which has given its
character to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished
it under all its forms of government, and distinguished it
to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and possibly from
those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods
of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding
ranks, has produced a noble equality and handed it down through
all the gradations of social life. It was this opinion which
mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be
fellows with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the
fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit
to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority
to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws
to be subdued by manners.
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which
made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the
different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation,
incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify
and soften private society, are to be dissolved by the new
conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery
of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas,
furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the
heart owns and the imagination ratifies, as necessary to cover
the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to
dignity in our own estimation, are to be exposed as ridiculous,
absurd, and antiquated fashions.[53]
With the writings on French affairs, Burke’s argument from circumstance
came full flower.
These citations are enough to show a partiality toward argument of
this aspect. But a rehearsal of his general observations on politics
and administration will show it in even clearer light. Burke had an
obsessive dislike of metaphysics and the methods of the metaphysician.
There is scarcely a peroration or passage of appeal in his works which
does not contain a gibe, direct or indirect, at this subject. In the
_Speech On American Taxation_ he said, “I do not enter into these
metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them.”[54] This
science he regarded as wholly incompatible with politics, yet capable of
deluding a certain type of politician with its niceties and exactitudes.
Whenever Burke introduced the subject of metaphysics, he was in effect
arguing from contraries; that is to say, he was asserting that what
is metaphysically true is politically false or unfeasible. For him,
metaphysical clarity was at the opposite pole from political prudence. As
he observed in the _Reflections_, “The pretended rights of these theories
are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true,
they are morally and politically false.”[55] In the first letter to Sir
Hercules Langrishe, he ridiculed “the metaphysicians of our times, who
are the most foolish of men, and who, dealing in universals and essences,
see no difference between more and less.”[56] It will be noted that
this last is a philosophical justification for his regular practice of
weighing a principle by the scale of magnitude of situation. The “more
and less” thus becomes determinative of the good. “Metaphysics cannot
live without definition, but prudence is cautious how she defines,”[57]
he said in the _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_. And again in the
_Reflections_, “These metaphysic rights, entering into common life, like
rays of light which pierce into a dense medium are by the laws of nature
refracted from a straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated
mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of man undergo
such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to
talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original
direction.”[58] Finally, there is his clear confession, “Whenever I speak
against a theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded
theory, and one of the ways of discovering that it is a false theory is
by comparing it with practice.” This is the philosophical explanation of
the source in circumstance of Burke’s characteristic argument.
In a brilliant passage on the American character, he had observed that
the Americans were in the habit of judging the pressure of a grievance
by the badness of the principle rather than _vice versa_. Burke’s own
habit, we now see, was fairly consistently the reverse: he judged the
badness of the principle by the pressure of the grievance; and hence we
are compelled to suppose that he believed politics ought to be decided
empirically and not dialectically. Yet a consequence of this position is
that whoever says he is going to give equal consideration to circumstance
and to ideals (or principles) almost inevitably finds himself following
circumstances while preserving a mere decorous respect for ideals.
Burke’s doctrine of precedent, which constitutes a central part of his
political thought, is directly related with the above position. If one
is unwilling to define political aims with reference to philosophic
absolutes, one tries to find guidance in precedent. We have now seen that
a principal topic of the _Reflections_ is a defense of custom against
insight. Burke tried with all his eloquence to show that the “manly”
freedom of the English was something inherited from ancestors, like a
valuable piece of property, increased or otherwise modified slightly to
meet the needs of the present generation, and then reverently passed on.
He did not want to know the precise origin of the title to it, nor did
he want philosophical definition of it. In fact, the statement of Burke
which so angered Thomas Paine—that Englishmen were ready to take up arms
to prove that they had no right to change their government—however brash
or paradoxical seeming, was quite in keeping with such conviction. Since
he scorned that freedom which did not have the stamp of generations of
approval upon it, he attempted to show that freedom too was a matter of
precedent.
Yet this is an evasion rather than an answer to the real question which
is lying in wait for Burke’s political philosophy. It is essential to see
that government either moves with something in view or it does not, and
to say that people may be governed merely by following precedent begs the
question. What line do the precedents mark out for us? How may we know
that this particular act is in conformity with the body of precedents
unless we can abstract the essence of the precedents? And if one extracts
the essence of a body of precedents, does not one have a “speculative
idea”? However one turns, one cannot evade the truth that there is no
practice without theory, and no government without some science of
government. Burke’s statement that a man’s situation is the preceptor of
his duty cannot be taken seriously unless one can isolate the precept.
This dilemma grows out of Burke’s own reluctance to speculate about
the origin and ultimate end of government. “There is a sacred veil to
be drawn over the beginnings of all governments,” he declared in his
second day’s speech at the trial of Warren Hastings.[59] To the abstract
doctrines of the French Revolution, he responded with a “philosophic
analogy,” by which governments are made to come into being with
something like the indistinct remoteness of the animal organism. This
political organism is a “mysterious incorporation,” never wholly young
or middle-aged or old, but partly each at every period, and capable,
like the animal organism, of regenerating itself through renewal of
tissue. It is therefore modified only through the slow forces that
produce evolution. But to the question of what brings on the changes
in society, Burke was never able to give an answer. He had faced the
problem briefly in the _Tract on the Popery Laws_, where he wrote: “Is,
then, no improvement to be brought into society? Undoubtedly, but not by
compulsion—but by encouragement, but by countenance, favor, privileges,
which are powerful and are lawful instruments.”[60] These, however, are
the passive forces which admit change, not the active ones which initiate
it. The prime mover is still to seek. If such social changes are brought
about by immanent evolutionary forces, they are hardly voluntary; if on
the other hand they are voluntary, they must be identifiable with some
point in time and with some agency of initiation. It quickly becomes
obvious that if one is to talk about the beginnings of things, about the
nisus of growth or of accumulation of precedents, and about final ends,
one must shift from empirical to speculative ground. Burke’s attachment
to what was _de facto_ prevented him from doing this in political theory
and made him a pleader from circumstance at many crucial points in his
speeches. One can scarcely do better than quote the judgment of Sir James
Prior in his summation of Burke’s career: “His aim therefore in our
domestic policy, was to preserve all our institutions in the main as they
stood for the simple reason that under them the nation had become great,
and prosperous, and happy.”[61] This is but a generalized translation of
the position “If it exists, there is something to be said in its favor,”
which we have determined as the aspect of the great orator’s case.
That position is, moreover, the essential position of Whiggism as a
political philosophy. It turns out to be, on examination, a position
which is defined by other positions because it will not conceive ultimate
goals, and it will not display on occasion a sovereign contempt for
circumstances as radical parties of both right and left are capable of
doing. The other parties take their bearing from some philosophy of
man and society; the Whigs take their bearings from the other parties.
Whatever a party of left or right proposes, they propose (or oppose) in
tempered measure. Its politics is then cautionary, instinctive, trusting
more to safety and to present success than to imagination and dramatic
boldness of principle. It is, to make the estimate candid, a politics
without vision and consequently without the capacity to survive.
“The political parties which I call great,” Tocqueville wrote in
_Democracy in America_, “are those which cling to principles rather
than to their consequences, to general and not to special cases, to
ideas and not to men.”[62] Manifestly the Whig Party is contrary to this
on each point. The Whigs do not argue from principles (_i.e._, genera
and definitions); they are awed not merely by consequences but also by
circumstances; and as for the general and the special, we have now heard
Burke testify on a dozen occasions to his disregard of the former and
his veneration of the latter. There is indeed ground for saying that
Burke was more Whig than the British Whigs of his own day themselves,
because at the one time when the British Whig Party took a turn in the
direction of radical principle, Burke found himself out of sympathy with
it and, before long, was excluded from it. This occurred in 1791, when
the electrifying influence of the French Revolution produced among the
liberals of the age a strong trend toward the philosophic left. It was
this trend which drew from Burke the _Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs_, with its final scornful paragraph in which he refused to take his
principles “from a French die.” This writing was largely taken up with
a defense of his recently published _Reflections on the Revolution in
France_, and it is here relevant to note how Burke defines his doctrine
as a middle course. “The opinions maintained in that book,” he said,
“never can lead to an extreme, because their foundation is laid in an
opposition to extremes.”[63] “These doctrines do of themselves gravitate
to a middle point, or to some point near a middle.”[64] “The author of
that book is supposed to have passed from extreme to extreme; but he has
always actually kept himself in a medium.”[65]
Actually the course of events which caused this separation was the same
as that which led to the ultimate extinction of the Whig point of view
in British political life. In the early twentieth century, when a world
conflict involving the Empire demanded of parties a profound basis in
principle, the heirs of the Whig party passed from the scene, leaving
two coherent parties, one of the right and one of the left. That is
part of our evidence for saying that a party which bases itself upon
circumstance cannot outlast that circumstance very long; that its claim
to make smaller mistakes (and to have smaller triumphs) than the extreme
parties will not win it enduring allegiance; and that when the necessity
arises, as it always does at some time, to look at the foundations of the
commonwealth, Burke’s wish will be disregarded, and only deeply founded
theories will be held worthy. A party does not become great by feasting
on the leavings of other parties, and Whiggism’s bid for even temporary
success is often rejected. A party must have its own principle of
movement and must not be content to serve as a brake on the movements of
others. Thus there is indication that Whiggism is a recipe for political
failure, but before affirming this as a conclusion, let us extend our
examination further to see how other parties have fared with circumstance
as the decisive argument.
The American Whig Party showed all the defects of this position in an
arena where such defects were bound to be more promptly fatal. It is just
to say that this party never had a set of principles. Lineal descendants
of the old Federalists, the American Whigs were simply the party of
opposition to that militant democracy which received its most aggressive
leadership from Andrew Jackson. It was, generally speaking, the party of
the “best people”; that is to say, the people who showed the greatest
respect for industry and integrity, the people in whose eyes Jackson was
“that wicked man and vulgar hero.” Yet because it had no philosophical
position, it was bound to take its position from that of the other party,
as we have seen that Whiggism is doomed to do. During most of its short
life it was conspicuously a party of “outs” arrayed against “ins.”
It revealed the characteristic impotence in two obvious ways. First, it
pinned its hopes for victory on brilliant personalities rather than on
dialectically secured positions. Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, who between
them represented the best statesmanship of the generation, were among its
leaders, but none of them ever reached the White House. The beau ideal of
the party was Clay, whose title “the Great Compromiser” seems to mark him
as the archetypal Whig. Finally it discovered a politically “practical”
candidate in William Henry Harrison, soldier and Indian fighter, and
through a campaign of noise and irrelevancies, put him in the Presidency.
But this success was short, and before long the Whigs were back battling
under their native handicaps.
Second, frustrated by its series of reverses, it decided that what the
patient needed was more of the disease. Whereas at the beginning it had
been only relatively pragmatic in program and had preserved dignity in
method, it now resolved to become completely pragmatic in program and as
pragmatic as its rivals the Democrats in method. Of the latter step, the
“coonskin and hard-cider” campaign on behalf of Harrison was the proof.
We may cite as special evidence the advice given to Harrison’s campaign
manager by Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia. “Let him [the candidate] say
not a single word about his principles or his creed—let him say nothing,
promise nothing. Let the use of pen and ink be wholly forbidden.”[66] E.
Malcolm Carroll in his _Origins of the Whig Party_ has thus summed up
the policy of the Whig leaders after their round with Jackson: “The most
active of the Whig politicians and editors after 1836, men like Weed,
Greeley, Ewing of Ohio, Thaddeus Stevens, and Richard Houghton of Boston,
preferred success to a consistent position and, therefore, influenced
the party to make its campaign in the form of appeal to popular emotion
and, for this purpose, to copy the methods of the Democratic Party.”[67]
This verdict is supported by Paul Murray in his study of Whig operations
in Georgia: “The compelling aim of the party was to get control of the
existing machinery of government, to maintain that control, and, in some
cases, to change the form of government the better to serve the dominant
interest of the group.”[68] Murray found that the Whigs of Georgia
“naturally had a respect for the past that approached at times the
unreasonable reverence of Edmund Burke for eighteenth century political
institutions.”[69]
But a party whose only program is an endorsement of the _status quo_ is
destined to go to pieces whenever the course of events brings a principle
strongly to the fore. The American Union was moving toward a civil
conflict in which ideological differences, as deep as any that have
appeared in modern revolutions, were to divide men. As always occurs in
such crises, the compromisers are regarded as unreliable by both sides
and are soon ejected from the scene. It now seems impossible that the
Whig Party, with its political history, could have survived the fifties.
But the interesting fact from the standpoint of theoretical discussion
is that the Democratic Party, because it was a radically based party,
was able to take over and defend certain of the defensible earlier Whig
positions. Murray points out the paradoxical fact that the Democratic
Party “purloined the leadership of conservative property interests in
Georgia and the South.”[70] It is no less paradoxical that it should have
purloined the defense of the states’ rights doctrine thirty years after
Jackson had threatened to hang disunionists.
The paradox can be resolved only by seeing that the Whig position was one
of self-stultification; and this is why a rising young political leader
in Illinois of Whig affiliation left the party to lead a re-conceived
Republican Party. The evidence of Lincoln’s life greatly favors the
supposition that he was a conservative. But he saw that conservatism to
be politically effective cannot be Whiggism, that it cannot perpetually
argue from circumstance. He saw that to be politically effective
conservatism must have something more than a temperamental love of
quietude or a relish for success. It must have some ideal objective. He
found objectives in the moral idea of freedom and the political idea of
union.
The political party which Abraham Lincoln carried to victory in 1860 was
a party with these moral objectives. The Whigs had disintegrated from
their own lack of principle, and the Republicans emerged with a program
capable of rallying men to effort and sacrifice—which are in the long
run psychologically more compelling than the stasis of security. But
after the war and the death of the party’s unique leader, all moral
idealism speedily fell away.[71] Of the passion of revenge there was
more than enough, so that some of the victor’s measures look like the
measures of a radical party. But the elevation of Grant to the presidency
and the party’s conduct during and after the Gilded Age show clearly
the declining interest in reform. Before the end of the century the
Republican Party had been reduced in its source of appeal to the Whig
argument from circumstance (or in the case of the tariff to a wholly
dishonest argument from consequences). For thirty or forty years its case
came to little more than this: we are the richest nation on earth with
the most widely distributed prosperity; therefore this party advocates
the _status quo_. The argument, whether embodied in the phrase “the full
dinner pail” or “two cars in every garage” has the same source. Murray’s
judgment of the Whig party in Georgia a hundred years ago: “Many facts in
the history of the party might impel one to say that its members regarded
the promotion of prosperity as the supreme aim of government,”[72] can
be applied without the slightest change to the Republican Party of the
1920’s. But when the circumstance of this _status quo_ disappeared about
1930, the party’s source of argument disappeared too, and no other has
been found since. It became the party of frustration and hatred, and like
the Whig Party earlier, it clung to personalities in the hope that they
would be sufficient to carry it to victory. First there was the grass
roots Middle Westerner Alf Landon; then the glamorous new convert to
internationalism Wendell Willkie; then the gang-buster and Empire State
governor Thomas Dewey. Finally, to make the parallel complete, there came
the military hero General Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower can be called the
William Henry Harrison of the Republican Party. He is “against” what the
Democrats are doing, and he is admired by the “best” people. All this
is well suited to take minds off real issues through an outpouring of
national vanity and the enjoyment of sensation.
The Republican charge against the incumbent administration has been
consistently the charge of “bungling,” while those Republicans who have
based their dissent on something more profound and clear-sighted have
generally drawn the suspicion and disapproval of the party’s supposedly
practical leaders. Of this the outstanding proof is the defeat of the
leadership of Taft. To look at the whole matter in an historical frame
of reference, there has been so violent a swing toward the left that the
Democrats today occupy the position once occupied by the Socialists; and
the Republicans, having to take their bearings from this, now occupy
the center position, which is historically reserved for liberals.
Their series of defeats comes from a failure to see that there is an
intellectually defensible position on the right. They persist with the
argument from circumstance, which never wins any major issues, and
sometimes, as we have noted, they are left without the circumstance.
I shall suggest that this story has more than an academic interest for
an age which has seen parliamentary government exposed to insults, some
open and vicious, some concealed and insidious. There are in existence
many technological factors which themselves constitute an argument from
circumstance for one-party political rule. Indeed, if the trend of
circumstances were our master term, we should almost certainly have to
favor the one-party efficiency system lately flourishing in Europe. The
centralization of power, the technification of means of communication,
the extreme peril of political divisiveness in the face of modern weapons
of war, all combine to put the question, “What is the function of a party
of opposition in this streamlined world anyhow?” Its proper function is
to talk, but talking, unless it concerns some opposition of principles,
is but the wearisome contention of “ins” and “outs.” Democracy is a
dialectical process, and unless society can produce a group sufficiently
indifferent to success to oppose the ruling group on principle rather
than according to opportunity for success, the idea of opposition becomes
discredited. A party which can argue only from success has no rhetorical
topic against the party presently enjoying success.
The proper aim of a political party is to persuade, and to persuade
it must have a rhetoric. As far as mere methods go, there is nothing
to object to in the argument from circumstance, for undeniably it has
a power to move. Yet it has this power through a widely shared human
weakness, which turns out on examination to be shortsightedness. This
shortsightedness leads a party to positions where it has no policy, or
only the policy of opposing an incumbent. When all the criteria are
brought to bear, then, this is an inferior source of argument, which
reflects adversely upon any habitual user and generally punishes with
failure. Since, as we have seen, it is grounded in the nature of a
situation rather than in the nature of things, its opposition will
not be a dialectically opposed opposition, any more than was Burke’s
opposition to the French Revolution. And here, in substance, I would
say, is the great reason why Burke should not be taken as prophet by the
political conservatives. True, he has left many wonderful materials which
they should assimilate. His insights into human nature are quite solid
propositions to build with, and his eloquence is a lesson for all time in
the effective power of energy and imagery. Yet these are the auxiliary
rhetorical appeals. For the rhetorical appeal on which it will stake its
life, a cause must have some primary source of argument which will not
be embarrassed by abstractions or even by absolutes—the general ideas
mentioned by Tocqueville. Burke was magnificent at embellishment, but of
clear rational principle he had a mortal distrust. It could almost be
said that he raised “muddling through” to the height of a science, though
in actuality it can never be a science. In the most critical undertaking
of all, the choice of one’s source of argument, it would be blindness
to take him as mentor. To find what Burke lacked, we now turn to the
American Abraham Lincoln, who despite an imperfect education, discovered
that political arguments must ultimately be based on genus or definition.