NOTES ON BURKE, VOL. 1 OF F.P. LOCK'S BIOGRAPHY

Edmund Burke was not blind to the terrible life the poor endured but like Adam Smith, he supposed that mere personal good will could solve the problem:

I fancy, many of our fine Gentlemen's Pageantry would be greatly tarnished, were their gilt Coaches to be preceded and followed by the miserable Wretches, whose Labour supports them. That some should live in a more sumptuous manner than others, is very allowable; but sure it is hard, that those who cultivate the Soil, should have so small a Part of its Fruits; and that among Creatures of the same Kind there should be such a Disproportion in their manner of living; it is a kind of Blasphemy on Providence . . . Our modern Systems hold, that the Riches and Power of Kings are by no means their Property, but a Depositum in their Hands, for the Use of the People: And if we consider the natural Equality of Mankind, we shall believe the same of the Estates of Gentlemen, bestowed on them at the first Distribution of Properties, for promoting the Public Good: And when, by the Use they make of their Fortunes, they thwart that End, they are liable to the same or a greater Reproach than a Prince who abuses his Power.  Lock, pp. 58-9

Like many conservatives, especially the Fundies, Burke had a distrust of rational thought:

The Enquiry illustrates Burke's respect for the 'natural', uncultivated responses of ordinary people. Feeling is more reliable than reason: 'It is, I own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory and right in practice; and we are happy that it is so. Men often act right from their feelings, who afterwards reason but ill on them from principle' (i. xix. 53). This is a characteristic Burkean theme. In his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), for example, he notes that 'it is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the cause of it' (WS ii. 256). The escape clause allows Burke to explain away the errors and delusions of 'the people', when their speculations did not coincide with his own. By the 1790s, he had developed his early insight into a philosophy of political conservatism that valued feeling and instinct above reason and calculation. He never lost his faith in custom or his distrust of theory. Lock, p.97

And just like the Fundies, he overvalued the role of religion in society:

`religion' in preserving culture, learning, and education. One subtext of his `History' is a defence of 'civilization' as he conceived it, and especially of the religion on which that civilization was based. This theme, religion as the basis of civilization, provides an element of continuity across Burke's entire writing life, the more remarkable as it runs counter to the general and increasing secularism of the century." In the Reflections, Burke defines man as 'by his constitution a religious animal' (142). Religion and religious institutions, he thought, did more for society than law or learning, and their contribution was often undervalued or neglected. Lock, p. 155

Burke did not carry this to the preposterous lengths the theocrat Fundies do:

As he had in his 'Tract on the Popery Laws', he condemns the penal laws for 'promoting the purity of religion by the corruption of Morality'. The 'Sole Business' of the 'Governing power' ought to be 'to make his people happy and prosperous, and not to convert them to any System of Theology' (iii. 457-8). Lock,p. 431

In Burke's vision of the ideal society, a hereditary aristocracy would rule:

Never sanguine about 'the people', Burke looked to the aristocracy for the country's political salvation. Writing to the Duke of Richmond, he developed a striking metaphor to express his vision of the political duties and responsibilities, and the advantages to a state, of a hereditary nobility:

You people of great families and hereditary Trusts and fortunes are not like such as I am, who whatever we may be by the Rapidity of our growth and of the fruit we bear, flatter ourselves that while we creep on the Ground we belly into melons that are exquisite for size and flavour, yet still we are but annual plants that perish with our Season and leave no sort of Traces behind us. You if you are what you ought to be are the great Oaks that shade a Country and perpetuate your benefits from Generation to Generation. (Nov. 1772: C ii. 377) Lock, p. 339

Finally, as I noted below, Burke had more than his share of paranoid thinking:

As fantastic as the 'double cabinet' conspiracy sketched in the Thoughts, the idea of George III distributing sacks of flour as a prelude to establishing a personal despotism is easily dismissed as the product of Burke's overheated imagination. Yet to understand Burke's mind, his fantasies have to be taken seriously. His belief in these plots and conspiracies was genuine. Such a faith was consoling, for it allowed him to attribute the unpopularity of the opposition to the debauching of the people by the court. By interpreting every event in terms of the court conspiracy, however, Burke increasingly cut himself off from reality. Indeed, it would take the French Revolution to cure him of the delusion that George III was a Gustavus III biding his time. Lock, p. 341-2