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A
New Name for an Old Whig
by Samuel Gregg
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here for PDF version
Hayek
once described himself as an unrepentant Old Whigwith the
stress on the old. What can we learn from this self-definition?
When Friedrich
Hayek was a young man, he was uncertain whether to become
an economist or a psychologist.1
Having chosen to be an economist, Hayekeventuallyreceived
due recognition of his eminence in the field. Yet Hayek could
have become a distinguished psychologist, as evidenced by
works such as The Sensory Order. Equally remarkable is that
for much of his life, Hayek did not write primarily in either
of these fields. Instead, he devoted his attention to political
philosophy. In many respects, The Constitution of Liberty
was the most significant fruit of this labour.
While there
are many insights in this text that may have eluded a philosopher
not trained in economics, Hayek is increasingly recognised
as a distinguished political theorist in his own right. Moreover,
his writings evince a deep knowledge of the history of ideas
and, as befits one profoundly influenced by evolutionary insights,
a sense for how particular traditions have developed over
time. Hayeks description of himself as an Old Whig is therefore
important as it indicates that he had very clear ideas about
where his political philosophy is appropriately situated.
The phrase
Old Whig can, however, be momentarily confusing. During a
1986 interview, for example, Hayek commented, Im becoming
a Burkean Whig. Apparently surprised, the interviewer replied,
Thats quite a combination. Hayeks response is revealing.
I think, he said, [that] Burke was fundamentally a Whig,
and I think that Adam Smith was.2
For good
reasons, Edmund Burke is widely regarded as one of modern
conservatisms philosophical fathers.3
Yet the Whig Party to which he belonged is viewed as one of
the primary precipitators of liberal thought.4 This suggests that in denoting himself as an Old
Whig, Hayek may have been indicating that the essences of
his political philosophy are hidden behind the often-contradictory
meanings attached to classifications such as conservative
or liberal in late 20th-century political discourse.
Close attention
to the Whig tradition brings to light an array of beliefs
which Hayek believed had withstood the test of time and met
the demands of reason. They may be summarised as liberty under
law and government limited by law. A continuing challenge
for students of Hayek, however, is to articulate Old Whig
principles in ways that increase their accessibility to audiences
outside the Academy. Those who consider Hayek to have important
messages to impart to the future therefore have a responsibility
to discover appropriate terminology.
Discovering
a tradition
Hayek was
always aware of the significance of history. On several occasions,
he stressed that much of our understanding of the present
is shaped by those whose interpretation of the past holds
sway.5 At the same time,
Hayek was aware that consciousness of the history of ideas
alerts us to particular phrases that point to the origins
of different philosophical traditions as well as the significant
events and figures that shaped them. This is evident in the
case of Hayeks attention to the term Old Whig.
The designation
Old Whig was first coined by Edmund Burke in his An Appeal
from the New to the Old Whigs. The canon to which Burke ascribedthe
doctrine of the ancient Whigs6was partly a product of the 17th century political
conflict between Crown and Commons that culminated in Englands
Glorious Revolution of 1688. United by a horror of arbitrary
power, the Whigs, according to John Locke, fought for
freedom
of men under government . . . to have a standing rule to live
by, common to every one of that society . . . and not to be
subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another
man [as well as the principle that] whoever has the legislative
or supreme power of any commonwealth is bound to govern by
established laws promulgated and made known to the people
and not by extemporary decrees.7
But in describing
himself as an Old Whig, Hayek was not simply announcing his
adherence to ideas honed during these particular political
debates. Both Burke and Hayek derived much of their thinking
from Scottish Enlightenment philosophers. As Hayek commented,
when I . . . discovered the Scots . . . [I] found that the
real root of my ideas lay with Ferguson and these people.8
One of the
principal members of this group, David Hume, produced a systematic
exposition of the Whig doctrine of government limited by general
rules of law. His History of England also underscored a theme
particularly important to Hayek, that being the significance
of Englands transformation from a government
of men to a government of law. Likewise, Smiths Wealth of
Nations profoundly influenced Hayeks economic views as well
as those of Whigs such as Burke.9
In Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, for example, Burke faithfully
echoes Smiths arguments concerning the futility of government
manipulation of the market process. Not only, in Burkes view,
did such interference violate the laws of commerce, that
is, the rules and principles of contending interests and
compromised advantages10 (a point cited verbatim by Hayek in The Constitution
of Liberty);11 he also
believed that such actions endangered freedom and infringed
justice.12
Beyond economics,
attention to the Whig tradition underscores the debt that
Hayeks theories about the nature of society owe to Adam Ferguson
and Hume. They maintained that society and its complex network
of institutionsby which they meant manners, morals and lawswere
the outcome of what Hayek called a centuries-old process
of cumulative growth.13
Burke agrees insofar as he held that the circumstances and
habits of every country, which it is always perilous and productive
of the greatest calamities to force, are to decide upon its
form of government.14
Here one
may posit that Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers
largely prefigured Hayeks theory of spontaneous order, aptly
summarised in Fergusons expression that nations stumble
upon establishments which are indeed the result of human action
but not the execution of human design.15
As one of their intellectual heirs, Francis Jeffrey, stated:
their
achievement was to resolve almost all that had [formerly]
been ascribed to positive institution into the spontaneous
and irresistible development of certain obvious principlesand
to show with how little contrivance or political wisdom
the most complicated and apparently artificial schemes of
policy might have been erected.16
One can
safely presume that Lord Acton had something similar in mind
when he wrote that Whigs did not invent Whiggism. They discovered
it.17
This is
not to suggest, of course, that certain differences in emphasis
do not exist between Hayeks thinking about this matter and
that of some Whigs.18 But
Hayek himself does not dwell upon these distinctions. He is
more concerned with demonstrating that Old Whig antecedents
precede not only Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, but also
the tumult of English politics. Far from being simply a product
of modernity, Hayek insisted that Old Whig beliefs stand on
intellectual foundations that are at once ancient and continually
evolving:
The basic
principles from which the Old Whigs fashioned their evolutionary
liberalism have a long pre-history. The eighteenth-century
thinkers who formulated them were . . . greatly assisted by
ideas drawn from classical antiquity and by certain medieval
traditions which in England had not been extinguished by absolutism.19
Disputing
[t]he denial by some nineteenth-century writers that the
ancients knew individual liberty in the modern sense, Hayek
contends that the ancient Greeks were the first to formulate
the ideal of individual liberty in the sense of freedom under
the law.20 In due course,
this led to the Stoics development of a philosophical outlook
that conceived of a law of nature which limited the powers
of all government, and of the equality of all men before that
law.21 Similar ideas,
Hayek suggests, found expression in the writings of Roman
scholars such as Titus, not to mention Roman laws individualist
conception of private property.22
Beyond the
world of Antiquity, Hayek also traces Whiggism to that tradition
of liberty under the law which was preserved and developed
during the Middle Ages.23 It was not for trivial reasons that Acton described St Thomas Aquinas as the
first Whig,24 a judgement
since affirmed by contemporary Thomist scholars. To cite John
Finnis:
the first
Whig was Thomas Aquinas because he. . . insisted that the
proper function of the states laws . . . do not include making
people morally all-round good . . . The role of state government
and law, according to Aquinas, is to uphold peace and justice:
the requirements imposed, supervised, and enforced by state
government and law concern only those sorts of choice and
action which are external and affect other people. 25
The ancient Greeks were the first to formulate the ideal of individual
liberty in the sense of freedom under the law.
The phrase
Old Whig does more, however, than underline the civilisational
roots of Hayeks political philosophy. It also highlights
the intellectual origins of those movements diametrically
opposed to Hayeks worldview. At the very moment when many
Whigs were maintaining that the American Revolutionaries were
defending one of the key protections secured by the Glorious
Revolution against arbitrary power,26
many of the ideas that would systematically challenge fundamental
Whig beliefs were acquiring potent political force.
Here Hayeks
stress upon the old in Old Whig assumes particular significance.
It indicates that there are substantive differences between
the position of Smith, Hume and Ferguson, and that of New Whigs such as
Charles Fox whom Burke considered navely enamoured of the
ideas of the philosophes. Besides regarding their thinking
as a grave threat to English constitutional rights and privileges,27
Burke believed that it reflected an erroneous understanding
of the nature of reason and civilisational development. Burkes
boast that we are not the disciples of Rousseau28
testifies to his consciousness of the intellectual pedigree
of what Hayek called constructivist rationalism. In this
sense, the phrase Old Whig allows us to distinguish those
who remained faithful to true Whiggism after 1789, from those
pursuing a quite different agenda.
Initially
convinced of the futility of planning by Ludwig von Misess
Socialism,29 Hayek later traced rationalisms contempt for
the values and habits that have grown out of the cultural
deposit of the past to Descartes as well Bacon and Hobbes.30 Though acknowledging that the geometric reason emphasised
by Descartes was useful in spheres such as mathematics, Hayek
considered it dangerous to employ this form of reason elsewhere.31 But Hayek also understood that at the heart of
the determination of Continental Enlightenment figures such
as the Abb Sieys to apply constructivist reason to every
dimension of human existence was an ongoing human problem:
hubristhe belief that people can be like God and create
a paradise on earth through the relentless application of
abstract reason.
With the
spread of this craving to make a tabula rasa of most existing
institutions and habits and somehow construct new ones, those
classifying themselves as lovers of liberty would thereafter
be grouped into one of two camps. The first were those loyal
to Old Whiggism; the second, the free-thinking rationalists
who, in Hayeks view, bore only superficial similarity to
the likes of Smith and Burke.32
While this
distinction parallels important intellectual differences between
the Anglo-Saxon and Continental European worlds, its significance
should not be exaggerated. Englishmen such as Gladstone and
Acton (the latter partly educated in Germany) certainly belonged
to the Burkean Whig tradition. The utilitarian school of Jeremy
Bentham, however, was profoundly influenced by Continental
rationalism, as evidenced by their tendency to regard all
inherited traditions as the epitome of ignorance. Likewise,
although most French liberals were essentially constructivist
rationalists, there were exceptions. Benjamin Constant and
Alexis de Tocqueville were not only concerned at the spread
of arbitrary state power, but understood how certain inherited
morals and organisations helped to preserve liberty. One may
speculate that Hayek sought to emphasise that Old Whiggism
had taken root in both the Anglo-Saxon and Continental European
worlds by proposing the name Acton-Tocqueville Society33
for what would become the Mont Plerin Society, an international
network of liberal intelligentsia founded in 1947.
Reason
versus rationalism
In his opening
address to the first Mont Plerin Society conference, Hayek
insisted that the revival of the ideals upheld by the participants
would involve rediscovering . . . the basic principles of
liberalism and purging traditional liberal theory of certain
accidental accretions.34
In identifying himself as an Old Whig, Hayek provides us with
guidance concerning how we distinguish the values held by
those who truly believe in freedom, from those that are incompatible
with true Whiggism. Most significance should perhaps be attached
to one value that some might think odd to associate with an
individual whose reflections on many subjects proved to be
propheticthe quality of humility.
One cornerstone
of Hayeks theoretical edifice is his recognition of the limits
to any one individuals knowledge. This may be contrasted
with what Smith called the man of system:35
those who believe that reason enables us to organise people
and institutions as if they were material objects, and with
the same efficacy that one builds a house. Attention to everyday
life, Hayek commented, suggests:
We make
constant use of formulas, symbols and rules whose meaning
we do not understand and through the use of which we avail
ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually
we do not possess. We have developed these practices by building
upon habits and institutions which have proved successful
in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation
of the civilization we have built up.36
There is,
then, much intelligence incorporated in the complex networks
of inherited and evolved customs and organisations that surround
us. Yet, to paraphrase Hume, while these institutions are
invariably advantageous to the public, they are not intended
for that purpose by the inventors.37
Even our capacity to understand how this order maintains itself
is limited. As Burke explained:
Rational
and experienced men tolerably well know . . . how to distinguish
between true and false liberty . . . But none . . . can comprehend
the elaborate contrivance of a fabric fitted to unite private
and public liberty with public force, with order, with peace,
with justice, and, above all, with the institutions formed
for bestowing permanence and stability, through ages, upon
this invaluable whole.38
Humility
is central to avoiding the error of thinking that one can
completely understand this order. Perhaps no other thought
is as uncongenial to the rationalist temperament (scientism39)
as the notion that civilisational growth depends upon humanitys
willingness to be governed by inherited rules whose origin
and function we may not fully understand. From Rousseau to
Rawls, the construction of new laws and moralities has preoccupied
those determined to remodel society. Such individuals are
victims of pridewhat Hayek called the fatal conceit
40 or, more specifically:
false rationalism
. . . [which] is an expression of an intellectual hubris which
is the opposite of that intellectual humility which is the
essence of the true liberalism that regards with reverence
those spontaneous social forces through which the individual
creates things greater than he knows.41
The same
hubristic pride feeds the utopianism of which Old Whigs are
especially wary. One of Burkes most telling criticisms of
Foxs praise of the French Constitution as the most . . .
glorious edifice of liberty . . . erected on the foundation
of human integrity in any time or country, was that the
English admirers of the forty-eight thousand republics which
form the French federation praise them not for what they are,
but for what they are to become. As Burke remarked, it will
be thought a little singular to praise any work, not for its
own merits, but for the merits of something else which may
succeed to it. 42
What then
does this suggest about that primary Whig value, liberty under
law? On one level, Hayeks strictures concerning hubris remind
us that some of the most significant threats to freedom have
emerged as a consequence of rationalist attempts to engineer
heaven-on-earth.
But when
Hayek speaks of liberty under law, as an Old Whig he has something
quite distinct in mind. Freedom, from the Whig standpoint,
is essentially freedom from arbitrary coercion, whether emanating
from government, legislature or the people. On the Whig view,
such freedom is gained by strict adherence to the rule of
law. This limits, as Hayek states, the freedom of each so
as to secure the same freedom of all. The Whig vision of
freedom is not therefore that of the anarchist: it recognises
that if all are to be as free as possible, coercion cannot
be entirely limited.43
But nor is Whiggisms conception of liberty linked to reactionary
politics, statism or collectivism, as it strives to allow
individuals as much scope as possible to act freely.
It is, however,
apparent that what constitutes law from an Old Whig perspective
differs from that of legal positivism.44
Neither Hume nor Burke, for example, believed that law, properly
understood, was the product of arbitrary legislative or judicial
will. Nothing, Burke held, is
more
truly subversive of all the order . . . and happiness, of
human society, than the position that any body of men have
a right to make what laws they pleaseor that laws can derive
any authority from their institution merely, and independent
of the quality of the subject-matter.45
The Whig
understanding of law is thus quite specific. Hume46
believed that law had an evolutionary character and embodied
the wisdom of experience. The rule concerning stability of
possession, Hume wrote, arises gradually, and acquires force
by slow progression, and our repeated experience of the inconvenience
of transgressing it.47
Hence, he concludes, such rules are antecedent to government.48 They are not deliberate inventions, but rather
grown formations.49 Taking
a similar view, Burke insisted that any proposed statute must
be reconciled to all established, recognised morals, and
to the general, ancient, known policy of the laws of England.50
Here, one may suggest, are some of the roots of Hayeks distinction
between law and legislation. The evolved rules that constitute
law, Hayek argued, necessarily possess certain attributes
which legislation will possess only if modelled on these rules.51
It is therefore
hardly surprising to discover that Whiggism regards not just
individuals as capable of violating law, but governments as
well. Burke, for example, always maintained that [the American
Revolutionaries] were purely on the defensive in that rebellion
. . . they had taken up arms from one motive only: that is,
our attempting to tax them without their consent.52
Burke was thus quite correct to describe the colonists as
not only devoted to English liberty, but to liberty according
to . . . English principles.53 Once this particular rule was violated, Burke
recognised that all other such rules were in danger, as under
the system of policy . . . then pursued, the Americans could
have no sort of security for their laws or liberties.54
From Burkes position, it is no exaggeration to state, as
Acton did, that By [Whig] principles America made itself
free.55
Rebellion
against the state should, as Aquinas reminds us,56
be a last resort to protect liberty from tyranny. Many other
Old Whig values are subsequently concerned with limiting state
power so that such an option need never be contemplated. One
is what might be called constitutionalism. Agreeing with the
quintessential American Whig, James Madison, that all power
in human hands is likely to be abused,57
Hayek insists upon limitation of the powers even of the representatives
of the majority by requiring a commitment to principles either
explicitly laid down in a constitution or accepted by general
opinion as to effectively confine legislation.58
To this
extent, Hayek opposes those who give priority to what Burke
called French liberty,59 that is, political freedom in the sense of enhancing
participation in the determination of policy.60 Though Hayek was not adverse to democracy,
he saw it primarily as a type of procedural device for determining
certain matters of common concern rather than an objective
in itself. I have made it clear, Hayek stated, that I do
not regard majority rule as an end but merely as a means,
or perhaps as the least evil of those forms of government
from which we have to choose.61
Consistent with his opposition to any type of unlimited government,
Hayek (like Tocqueville) condemned totalitarian or doctrinaire
democracy:62 the view that whatever the majority wantseven
if it is inconsistent with constitutional or common law guarantees
of libertyshould receive legislative fiat. Once again, Burke
provides Hayek with Old Whig precedents for this anti-majoritarianism.
One of Burkes criticisms of the New Whigs was their belief
that sovereignty . . . did not only originate from the people
. . . [but] that the people are essentially their own rule,
and their will the measure of their conduct . . . These doctrines
concerning the people . . . tend . . . to the utter subversion,
not only of all government, in all modes, and to the stable
securities to rational freedom, but to all the rules and principles
of morality itself.63
Faced with
majoritarian claims that any proposal was justifiable if it
reflected the majoritys will, Burkes response was that Neither
the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will,
in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.64
Hence, when addressing his Bristol constituents, Burke insisted
that his role as their MP was not to represent their views
blindly. To do so, he maintained, would be against the
whole order and tenor of our Constitution.65
This principle
of self-restraint on the part of both people and government
also features in Hayeks thought. Living in a free society,
he notes, sometimes means that people often have to tolerate
(as opposed to endorse) certain acts that they regard with
repulsion.66 The same principle,
however, was applicable to government. It must, Hayek believed,
be constitutionally restrained from enacting legislation inconsistent
with general rules. His reasoning resembles that of Burke.
The vice of the ancient democracies, Burke claimed, was
that they ruled . . . by occasional decrees . . . This practice
. . . broke in upon the tenor and consistency of the laws;
it abated the respect of the people towards them, and totally
destroyed them in the end.67
Herein lies
the key to understanding Whiggisms conceptions of justice
and equality. Its location of justice and the rule of law
in the application of general and inflexible rules to everyone
reflects Humes awareness of humanitys tendency to prefer
immediate gain to long term advantage. On this basis, Hume
contended that government must [admit] of a partition of
power among several members whose united authority is no less
. . . than that of a monarch, but who, in the usual course
of administration, must act by general and equal laws, that
are previously known to all members and to all their subjects.68 While acknowledging that all general laws are
attended with inconveniences, when applied to particular cases,
Hume maintained these inconveniences are fewer than what
results from full discretionary powers in every magistrate.69
In other
words, once those charged with administering law concern themselves
primarily with what Hume called the characters, situations,
and connections of the persons concerned, or any particular
consequences which may result from the determination of these
laws,70 the ill-effects
are likely to be greater than the difficulties ensuing from
applying general rules to hard cases. This Whig emphasis upon
procedural justice contrasts with those who regard law primarily
as a means for equalising social conditions or redistributing
wealth. Again, the primary Whig concern is that such actions
increase the states arbitrary power. Burke may have been
referring to this when voicing his opposition to the spirit
of levelling . . . [because it is] adverse to the true principles
of freedom.71
Moreover,
statist attempts to equalise social and economic life, Hayek
insisted, can lead to particular groups (such as industries
seeking protection from market disciplines) being granted
legislated exemptions from general rules. Apart from compromising
the rule of law, such interference seriously distorts the
process of spontaneous change that drives civilisational progress.
One example of this highlighted by Hayek were the wage rigidities
maintained, in part, by trade unions privileged legal position.72
By undermining industrys capacity to respond to changes in
demand, such privileges facilitated a cycle of misleading
economic signals, and consequently economic stagnation and,
in some instances, regression.
Renewing
the tradition
The irony
is that these examples of state intervention are usually described
as liberal initiatives. New expressions must therefore be
found to communicate Old Whig ideas to wider contemporary
audiences. For while Hayek thought that [Whiggism] has been
the name for the only set of ideals that has consistently
opposed all arbitrary power, he did not know whether to
revive that old name is practical politics. 73
The difficulties
involved in identifying an alternative definition are manifold.
To a large extent, the word liberalism has been appropriated
by constructivist rationalists. As Hayek noted, in many countries
it has become almost impossible to use liberal in the sense
in which I have used itwithout engaging in long explanations
[that cause] too much confusion.74 Then there is the problem of finding a form of words that
encapsulateunder one rubrichumility, belief in liberty under
law, government limited by law, limited reason, procedural
justice, constitutionalism, spontaneous development, and respect
for grown institutions, not to mention opposition to hubris,
constructivist rationalism, anarchism, collectivism, statism,
and doctrinaire democracy.
This is
not to say that alternatives to Whig or liberal have not
been tried. Libertarian is commonly used, but Hayek himself
believed that it carries too much the flavour of a manufactured
term and of a substitute.75
Neo-liberal and neo-conservative have also entered political
discourse. One wonders, however, whether either term escapes
the confusion generated by the different meanings often attached
to liberal and conservative.
A
case could be mounted for the phrase Burkean conservative.
Unfortunately, it presumes some knowledge of the history of
ideas that is hardly widespread among broader audiences. One
need only recall Isaiah Berlins description of Burke as a
reactionary76 to realise
how Burkes opposition to the French Revolution leads many
to forget that this was consistent with Whiggism.77
In any event, Hayek was wary of the term conservative. He
wanted people to recognise that belief in integral freedom
is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not
on any nostalgic longing for the past.78 Any new definition of Whiggism must therefore
express a sense of dynamism, not least because of its focus
upon spontaneous creativity, not least within Whiggism itself.79
What I . . . want, Hayek stated, is a term which describes
the party of life, the party that favours free growth and
spontaneous evolution.80
It
is perhaps improbable that a single phrase that captures all
the ideals and transcends all the difficulties outlined above
will ever be coined. After all, we are seeking an expression
which, in Hayeks words, [pieces] together the broken fragments
of a tradition81 that encapsulates Burkes political
reflections, Smiths economics, Tocquevilles constitutionalism,
Humes scepticism, Fergusons evolutionism, and Actons view
of history.
Inevitably,
a degree of simplification is necessary if this is be communicated
to broader audiences. A starting point may be a phrase rooted
in true Whiggism. Given that the central Whig value is liberty
under law, ordered liberty may be an alternative definition
of Hayeks political philosophy.
Significant
objections are immediately obvious. Does ordered liberty,
for example, imply telling people what to do with their
freedom? Ordered liberty is, however, surely a contemporary
approximation of what Burke had in mind when he insisted:
The distinguishing
part of our Constitution . . . is its liberty. To preserve
that liberty inviolate is the peculiar duty . . . of a member
of the . . . Commons. But the liberty, the only liberty,
worth preserving is a liberty connected with order; and
that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist
without them. It inheres in good and steady government,
as in its substance and vital principle.82
Order is
understood here as an essential safeguard of liberty. It reflects
Whiggisms emphasis upon the need for general rules (good
and steady government) that allow the freedom of each so
as to secure the freedom of all by limiting the states potential
for arbitrary action.
Burkes
reference to virtue in this context is also significant. It
expresses most Old Whigs recognition that liberty depends
upon the cultivation of particular moral habits. As Tocqueville
observes, free people require the moeurs suitable to free
nations. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville noted how virtues
such as prudence reduced the possibility of civil discord,
the fear of which tempts many to desire order at any cost.83
These habits, Tocqueville suggests, also facilitate the growth
of the voluntary associations that reduce the possibility
of democracy degenerating into majoritarianism.84
Lastly,
the phrase ordered liberty is one that may assist contemporary
Whigs in debating modern disciples of the Parisian philosophy.85
While it communicates an appreciation of freedoms reliance
upon particular institutional and moral frameworks, ordered
liberty also affirms that such ordering is directed to preserving
liberty and has little in common with modern liberal agendas
of arranging matters in pursuit of ends often antithetical
to freedom.
Ordered
liberty, in this sense, does not rule out change. A political
order which protects liberty is one that encourages risk,
innovation, and subsequently evolution. Such arrangements
are therefore both conservative and progressive in the best
sense of each word. They are conservative in their respect
for the hidden wisdom contained in habits and institutions.
Yet they are progressive insofar as they facilitate inventiveness.
Ordered liberty thus captures some of Whiggisms most attractive
qualities: optimism tempered by prudence; a faith in individuals
grounded in a realistic appreciation of human nature; and
a Tocquevillian consciousness of freedoms grandeur and fragility.
While this means that the civilisation towards which humanity
is journeying will always be unknown, it suggests that we
should be distracted by neither utopianism nor nostalgia.
In the end,
of course, the viability of ordered liberty as a modern
definition and expression of Old Whiggism will be determined
by the intellectual marketplace. But Hayek, one imagines,
would not have it any other way.
Endnotes
1 F.A. Hayek, Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical
Dialogue, eds. S. Kresge and L. Wenar, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994, 4.
2 Ibid., 141.
3 See Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke and National Rights,
The Review of Politics 13 (4), 1951: 16-21.
4 See Frank OGorman, The Whig Party and the French
Revolution, St Martins Press, London, 1967: 1-22.
5 See F.A. Hayek, Historians and the Future of Europe,
in The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, vol. 4, The Fortunes
of Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics and the Ideal
of Freedom, ed. P.G. Klein, The University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1992: 211-15; F.A. Hayek, Opening Address to a Conference
at Mont Plerin, in The Fortunes of Liberalism; 243-4; and
F.A. Hayek, History and Politics, in The Collected Works
of F.A. Hayek, vol. 3, The Trend of Economic Thinking: Essays
on Political Economists and Economic History, ed. W.W. Bartley
and S. Kresge, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990:
56-74.
6 Edmund Burke, An Appeal from the Old to the New
Whigs, in The Portable Edmund Burke, ed. I. Kramnick, Penguin
Books, London, 1999, 488.
7 John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government,
ed. J. Gough, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1962: sec. 22, 13; sec. 131, 64.
8 Hayek, Hayek on Hayek, 140.
9 See E.G. West, Adam Smith: The Man and His Works,
Liberty Press, Indianapolis, 1976: 236-7.
10 Edmund Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity,
in The Portable Burke, 210, 204.
11 F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, London, 1960, 60.
12 See Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, 211-2.
13 Hayek, Constitution, 57.
14 Burke, An Appeal, 485.
15 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil
Society, T. Clark and Sons, Edinburgh, 1767/1966, 187.
16 Francis Jeffrey, Craigs Life of Millar, Edinburgh
Review 9, 1807, 84.
17 John Dalberg-Acton, Whigs, in Selected Writings
of Lord Acton, vol. 3, Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality,
ed. J.R. Fears, Liberty Classics, Indianapolis, 1988, 535.
18 Burkes reverence, for example, for the inherited
institutions and rules that embody societys cumulative experience
and knowledge was partly derived from his deep religious convictions.
Particular societies, according to Burke, were spiritual phenomena,
clauses in the great primeval contract of eternal society
. . . connecting the visible and invisible world. Edmund
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. C.C. OBrien,
Penguin Classics, London, 1790/1986, 195. As a religious agnostic,
Hayek would have, presumably, been less sympathetic to this
viewpoint.
19 Hayek, Liberalism, in New Studies in Philosophy,
Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, The University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978: 121-2.
20 See Hayek, Constitution, 164-6.
21 Hayek, Liberalism, 122.
22 See Hayek, Constitution, 166-7.
23 See Hayek, Liberalism, 122-3.
24 See John Dalberg-Acton, The History of Freedom
in Christianity, in Selected Writings of Lord Acton, vol.
1, Essays in the History of Liberty, ed. J.R. Fears, Liberty
Classics, Indianapolis, 1986, 34.
25 John Finnis, The Catholic Church and Public Policy
Debates in Western liberal societies, in Issues for a Catholic
Bioethic, ed. L. Gormally, Linacre Centre, London, 1997, 261.
See also St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Blackfriars,
London, 1975: II-II, q.104, a.5. Hayek also suggests that
liberalism in this sense was developed by sixteenth-century
Spanish Jesuit philosophers into a cohesive intellectual framework
that anticipated many Scottish Enlightenment insights. See
Hayek, Liberalism, 123; and F.A. Hayek, Law, Legislation,
and Liberty, vol. 2, The Mirage of Social Justice, The University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1976, 179 n15. See also Alejandro
Chafuen, Christians for Freedom: Late-Scholastics Economics,
Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986.
26 See, for example, Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation
with the Colonies, in The Portable Burke, 259-73.
27 Burke, An Appeal, 482.
28 Burke, Reflections, 284.
29 See F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973),
in The Fortunes of Liberalism, 133.
30 See Hayek, Liberalism, 120; and F.A. Hayek, Francis
Bacon: Progenitor of Scientism (1561-1626), in The Trend
in Economic Thinking, 75-8.
31 See F.A. Hayek, Dr. Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733),
in The Trend of Economic Thinking, 86.
32 Hayek, The Legal and Political Philosophy of David
Hume (1711-1776), in The Trend of Economic Thinking, 101.
33 Hayek, Opening Address, 247; see also Hayek,
Historians and the Future of Europe, 215.
34 Hayek, Opening Address, 238.
35 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Liberty
Press, Indianapolis, 1976, pt. VI, sec. ii, chp.2, 380.
36 F.A. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society,
in The Essence of Hayek, eds. C. Nishiyama and K.R. Leube,
Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, 1986, 221.
37 David Hume A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. Selby-Bigge,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1738-40/1951, bk. 2, 296.
38 Burke, An Appeal, 498-9.
39 F.A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science:
Studies of the Abuse of Reason, 2nd ed., Liberty Press, Indianapolis,
1952/1979, 69.
40 F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism,
ed. W.W. Bartley, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1988.
41 Hayek, Opening Address, 244.
42 Burke An Appeal, 477.
43 Hayek, Liberalism, 133.
44 See also Hayek, The Mirage, 44-56.
45 Edmund Burke, Tract on the Popery Laws, in The
Portable Burke, 297
46 Burke and Hume had different views, however, on
the origins of human law. Burke maintained that they represented
a mundane manifestation of the divine and natural law, while
Hume (and Hayek) regarded them as evolutionary adaptations
to humanitys permanent epistemological predicamentthe inability
to foresee all the consequences of ones actions or to know
more than a fraction of the concrete circumstances that prevail
in ones environment. See Linda Raeder, The Liberalism/Conservatism
of Edmund Burke and F.A. Hayek: A Critical Comparison, Humanitas
10 (1) 1997: 7-8.
47 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, bk.2, 263.
48 Ibid., bk.2, 306.
49 Ibid., bk.2, 274.
50 Burke, An Appeal, 489.
51 See Hayek, Constitution, 207-15.
52 Burke, An Appeal, 481-2.
53 Burke, Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies,
in The Portable Burke, 261.
54 Burke An Appeal, 482.
55 Acton, Whigs, 537.
56 See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.42, a.2,
ad.3. Aquinass expression, pro liberatione multitudinis (liberate
the people), underlines the precise object that any such action
must be directed to realising.
57 The Complete Madison, ed. S.K. Padover, Free Press,
New York, 1953, 46.
58 Hayek, Liberalism, 143.
59 Burke, An Appeal, 480.
60 See Hayek, Constitution, 55. Whiggism, according
to Hayek, is the only name which correctly describes the
beliefs of the Gladstonian liberals, of the men of the generation
of Maitland, Acton, and Bryce, the last generation for whom
liberty rather than equality or democracy was the main goal.
Ibid., 531 n16.
61 Ibid., 403.
62 See Ibid., 106.
63 Burke, An Appeal, 488.
64 Ibid., 489.
65 Burke, Speech at Mr Burkes Arrival in Bristol,
in The Portable Burke, 156.
66 See Hayek, Constitution, 145.
67 Burke, Reflections, 182.
68 David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary,
Routledge, London, 1972, bk.1, 116.
69 Ibid., bk.1, 178.
70 Ibid., bk.2, 274.
71 Burke, An Appeal, 485.
72 See Hayek, Constitution, 267-84.
73 Ibid., 410.
74 Ibid., 408.
75 Ibid., 408.
76 See Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity:
Chapters in the History of Ideas, Fontana Press, London, 1991,
59.
77 See Frederick Dreyer, Burke's Politics: A Study
in Whig Orthodoxy, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo,
1979: 105-56.
78 Hayek, Constitution, 410.
79 In Hayeks words: To confess oneself an Old Whig
does not mean . . . that one wants to go back to where we
were at the end of the seventeenth century. It has been one
of the many purposes of this book to show that the doctrines
then first stated continued to grow and develop until about
seventy or eighty years ago . . . We have since learned much
that should enable us to restate them in a more satisfactory
and effective form. Ibid., 409.
80 Ibid., 408.
81 Ibid., 411.
82 Burke, An Appeal, 480.
83 See Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres compltes, ed.
J. Mayer, Fayard, Paris, 1951, I, 1, 241.
84 See, for example, Ibid., I, 1: 263; and I, 2, 324.
85 Burke, An Appeal, 491.
Dr Samuel Gregg
is Director of Research at the Acton Institute for the Study
of Religion and Liberty, and Adjunct Scholar with The Centre
for Independent Studies. This is based on a paper delivered
to the Mont Pelerin Society in 2000, where Gregg won the Friedrich
von Hayek Award for this essay.
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