The Casuistry of Edmund Burke’s Moderate Conservatism

And how natural societies have no divine approval

Benjamin Cain
12 min readJan 15, 2021

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Image by Burak AYDIN, from Pexels

Edmund Burke, an eighteenth-century member of the British House of Commons is widely regarded as the founder of modern conservatism. He supported liberal principles of social reform with great rhetorical skill until the chaos of the French Revolution inclined him to be more skeptical about our rational capacity for revolutionary progress.

Burke foresaw the havoc that resulted from the overthrow of the French monarchy and he predicted that the French would lurch into a new dictatorship to escape the chaos they created for themselves.

Some of his contemporary critics like Karl Marx and Thomas Paine accused Burke of being opportunistic and transactional and of having no consistent adherence to philosophical principles. But I think Burke’s principles can be discerned from the positions he took on the three main issues faced by Britain at that time: the American Revolution, the British East India Company’s abuses in India, and the French Revolution.

The deeper problem, for me, is whether those principles are compatible with an interest in social progress.

The Consistency of Burke’s Principles

As to the question of Burke’s opportunism or mercenariness, Adam Gopnik offers a plausible account of Burke’s consistent reasoning on those three issues.

Thus, Burke’s support for the independence of the American colonies wasn’t based on any abstract conception of human rights or progress. Rather, says Gopnik, Burke “came to doubt the wisdom of trying to rule a big country from a great distance, and of taxing people who didn’t get to vote for the people who taxed them. He thought the idea that you could run an empire on a balance sheet was crazy.”

Likewise, Burke’s defense of the natives of India against the depredations of the East India Company [EIC] wasn’t based on any revolutionary idea of progress. Rather, Burke preferred old-school, aristocratic imperialism to the modern, private-enterprising variety:

Burke wanted a more humane imperialism, a kinder colonialism, and behind his words is the continuing prejudice of a landed interest…

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Benjamin Cain
Dialogue & Discourse

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom