English Conservatism
BY LORD EUSTACE PERCY.
Tars• is not a well-proportioned book. Nearly four-fifths of it is devoted to an elementary, historical sketch of English politics, written obviously for adult students with Conser- vative prepossessions, but with no more than, at most, a School Certificate knowledge of modern history. As such, it is a competent performance. It is partisan, but with the partisanship of an attitude of mind rather than of a party. Moreover, its partisanship, being avowed, will offend many but mislead none, and therefore offers a much safer guide, even for non-Conservative beginners, than the half-suppressed complexes of some other teachers of modern youth. It will be despised only by those who believe that high-brows alone should be allowed to cut history to their own measure. Its chief fault is a rather narrow range of interests. For Dr. Hearnshaw, political history is the contest between the party of order and the party of progress, and the field of their contest is the abstract art of governing men, rather than the solution of the material problems of social life. He accepts the Disraelian maxim about improving the condition of the people, but he frankly regrets the economic pre- occupations of recent Conservative programmes, and his references to sociological questions are curiously amateurish. The Education Act of 1902 is dismissed as a " useful " measure ; housing is not even mentioned in the index ; his only reference to social insurance is the queer statement that the Old Age Pensions Act of 1921 " lowered the qualifi- cation for old age pensions from 70 to 65." This restriction of scope tends to make his treatment of political history from 1900 onwards increasingly perfunctory, until it lands him in positive misstatements, such as that the coal stoppage of 1926 was due to the withdrawal of Government subsidies.
But, in the plan of the book, this solid block of history is evidently intended to serve as the link between a brief " analytical " introduction and a briefer " political " con- clusion. Dr. Hearnshaw laments the lack of Conservative literature and announces that he is attempting a survey of Conservatism in its entirety." In this attempt he fails, and fails rather badly. His analysis does quite well as defining the scope of his history, but it is utterly inadequate as a foundation for a Conservative philosophy, and neither his analysis nor his history seems to have much to do with his conclusions. The fault does not lie with his rather narrow outlook. It is becoming a commonplace among teachers that scientific education a la H. G. Wells cannot be relied on to lead to any of Mr. Wells's Utopias. Every profession, and particularly politics, is overstocked to-day with Soults who can concentrate armies, but cannot fight battles with them. A little less attention to the collection of data and the formulation of programmes, and a little more consideration of basic principles, will certainly do politicians no harm. But Dr. Hearnshaw's basic principles do not appear to integrate his own mind, and are unlikely to integrate anyone else's. He can wax eloquent on the " safeguarding of English liberty " in the next breath after advocating eugenic reform " and " the segregation or sterilization of the unfit." He insists on the Conservative principle of continuity, yet his programme seems to consist largely of attempts to induce the nation to cast back on the lines of old mistakes, to undo the Parliament Act of 1911 and the Trades Disputes Act of 1926. As a historian he condemns the die-hards, as a politician he votes with them.
* Conservatism in England. By F. J. C. Idearnahaw. (Mac- millan_ Ss. 6d.) The truth is that, paradoxically enough, history is a more misleading approach to Conservatism than to any other political faith, for it tends to convert an elementary assump- tion into a creed. " Continuity with the past," said a great American judge, " is not a virtue, it is only a necessity." Its mere necessity is the strength of Conservative statesmanship, but the weakness of Conservative philosophy ; for to make a virtue of this necessity is to mistake the roadside hedges for the destination of man's journey. The essence of any political philosophy must be its conception of man's destiny, and the crippling defect of modern Conservatism is its tendency to resign itself to a more modest view of man's destiny than the Utopias of "human perfectibility." "The Conservative," says Dr. Hearnshaw, " views man and the state of nature rather with the eyes of Hobbes than those of Rousseau." But, as a matter of fact, Conservatism originally viewed these things with the eyes of a somewhat older authority, who de- clared that the prospect of universal dominion offered to man in a state of Rousseauian innocence was not abrogated by his descent into a state of Hobbesian brutishness, but has, on the contrary, been enhanced into the dazzling conception of sitting with Christ on His throne. Utopias indeed! What distinguishes Utopias from this vision is not their ambition but their grovelling inadequacy.
It is this traditional attachment to a transcendental view of man's destiny and of the way to its attainment which really accounts for the traditional Conservative conception of the dualism between Church and State, and for the traditional Conservative reluctance to exaggerate the possibilities of purely political progress. It follows that Conservatism, at any rate in Western Europe, is the one political faith which depends for its coherence on a complementary religious faith. Complementary, be it noted, not merely confirmatory ; Con- servative philosophy can take a relatively static view of politics in proportion as it takes a highly dynamic view of religion. English Conservatism has become increasingly in- coherent as it has lost hold on this distinction, and Dr. Hearnshaw is too typically an English Conservative to be able to criticize this incoherence ; he can only reproduce it. There is nothing peculiarly Conservative in an insistence on the divine source of human authority ; Cromwell and Mazzini held the same view. Burke :s aphorism about Church and State " being different parts of the same whole " represents almost exactly the traditional view of the English Labour Party. To treat the Established Church as a field for the cautious exercise of Conservative statesmanship comes very near saying to the patient : " You need few drugs, because you have the elixir of life in your pocket ; but pray use that elixir with the same cautious conservatism as determines my use of drugs."
Of course, this emphatically does not mean that political ConservatiSm should be identified with any particular view as to the nature of the elixir. Continental parties, such as the German Centrum, are the worst form of confusion between Church and State. The transcendental view may range the whole way from the De Contemplu Mundi to Dr. Hearnshaw's insistence on the importance of " character " ; but whatever form the view may take in different minds, Conservatism as a coherent philosophy stands or falls by the belief that salvation is not by the law. It is weakest when that belief proceeds from a mere negative sense of the weakness of the law ; strongest when it is based on a positive conception of the heights on which man's salvation may set him. Standing or falling thus, it awaits a wiser and a bolder prophet than Dr. Hearnshaw.
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