The philosophic import of political parties was established in 18th-century England, when Burke’s realism bested Bolingbroke’s ‘patriotism’, downgrading statesmanship to a conservative prudence.
In the classic era, philosophers solved the fundamental problem of rich versus poor by mixed government, not party government. The Glorious Revolution settled the contemporary problems of religion and divine right by reconciling warring elements of the ruling class, vindicating not Shaftesbury’s raison d’etre but something between Macaulay’s Whiggism (as represented by William of Orange) and Trevelyan’s prudence (seen in the trimmer Halifax). Burke’s

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

then gave the first justification for party as the best use of talents, harnessing statesmanship to honest conduct by compromising the individual’s discretion and requiring the party’s action to be both defensible and practical. As against Bolingbroke’s disinterested statesmanship, which reached its apex in the 1760s, he sought to remedy the possibility of tyranny: he didn’t actually believe George’s court to be a cabal, but needed to illustrate the defect for which party is the remedy.
Bolingbroke saw James I’s divine right as formerly preempting the country party’s split into Tories and Whigs. Men can know the works of God but not his nature; they can reason a posteriori as to God’s will, but not a priori; they can have knowledge of knowledge which they can’t fully possess. Nature is beneficent because it’s intelligible; but its essence is not understandable, so there must be a God who means well. Bolingbroke straddled ancient and medieval thinkers who supposed beneficence, and modern ones who saw a hostile nature to be conquered. Natural law is obvious in God’s work because men appreciate the benefits of society irrespective of without its contrasts with the state of nature. Averring man’s natural sociability marked his great break with Hobbes and Locke. Hobbes is to Bolingbroke in religion as Bolingbroke to Burke in party: Hobbes had not foreseen the resolution of religious conflict, but Bolingbroke, seeing religion had been solved, thought parties were consequently superfluous. He presumed a society based on truth (i.e., first principles) which expresses intolerance of not truth, and results in lack of partisanship. But politics are not (cannot) be nonpartisan, and parties can be helpful. Bolingbroke saw that parties are groups associated for purposes which are not those of the entire community, and become factions when personal or private interests predominate communal good; whereas Burke followed Plato and Aristotle in praising prejudice (‘noble truth’). Commerce is the foremost example of nonpartisan association; government is nonpartisan when its ends are not happiness but the means of happiness. For example, military policy might serve commerce.
The king and a court of the most able patriots were to be the most virtuous; corruption was the risk. The patriot king required not aristocrats but men of ability, resistance to corruption, the preferment of peace over military glory, and the fostering of commerce. Such a program reduces reliance on statesmanship-cum-virtue: it is the ambition of party beyond tyranny. Bolingbroke and Jefferson firstly sought to replace absolutist / aristocratic statesmanship with party; Burke sought for multiple parties, thinking a group of super-able men of ability, supernaturally virtuous – however unlikely – conferred undue advantage.
Burke thought parties possible in Britain because the great parties of religious conflict and divine right were bygone; only the quotidien remained. Open, established opposition was not a requisite for party government but instead evidence of attenuated great parties, that politics no longer culminated in civil war. (In founding political parties in America, Jefferson capitalized on the success of republican principles, yielding productive, legitimate partisanship.) Yet simultaneously he opposed fomenting general discontent with present good (e.g., pamphlets criticising the constitution) while suggestively promising improvement that might in fact fail. This was nearly Aristotle’s opposition to innovation: since virtue is a product of habitation and innovation disrupts habit, innovation disrupts virtue, even if the outcome is otherwise good.
Burke understood the constitution after 1688 to be mature, no longer needing improvement, and the monarch now being head of state but sharing leadership of government. The king, whose powers rested more on the normative than the statutory, retained the discretion necessarily vested in the executive, provided these were prudentially used – Aristotle’s phronesis. The ‘political school’ (i.e., Bolingbroke’s supporters) were implicitly required to support the king’s ministers because they were appointed by these rulers, whereas Burke saw the Commons as a check on the monarch and his ministers, and so the chief worry was abuse of prerogative. All uncontrolled power will inevitably be abused. Burke’s theory of popular government straddles Bolingbroke, American federalism (the Federalist saw legislators as subject to the Constitution, and so Congress), and modern British constitutionalism as described by Bagehot (responsible to the people).
Burke thought prescription embodies heritage (or tradition), and ‘establishments’ are the artefacts of heritage. Then, British government was to be ruled by gentlemen who defended the establishments and their prejudice: ‘Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive that anyone believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice. It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect. Therefore, every honourable connection will avow it as their first purpose to pursue every just method to put the men who hold their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the State.’
Burke considered that the patriot king increased the likelihood of tyranny, and sought to redefine party in British politics. His Thoughts disguised counterrevolution against Bolingbroke’s party: ‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle’. Bad describes those corrupted by executive (monarchical) prerogative. Party for the sake of liberty doesn’t manifest the true practice of politics. The program of a party is in its history, its rationale for past judgment of public measures, not its plans for the future. Deference goes to the party’s self-understanding, rather than the individual executive. The people are not to be included in government, but to be restrained by government, restraints aiming to preserve equal rights in civil society (as opposed to majority rule, which is arbitrary and likely to forget historic rights amid contemporary events). He opposed ‘responsible’ or opposition criticism as bound to flatter the people, and ‘independent’ criticism as lacking ambition to rule. Party did not require far-seeing statesmanship: there is a tension between prudence and consistency. It is a matter of leaders and led, not Aristotle’s rulers and ruled; though the leaders are of the people and mingle, the better to represent (but not to be delegated). The leaders’ property is a result not of public duty, but duty as a consequent of property. Their role is the cause of what they do, not what they do the cause of their role. Honor is the negation of the false pride of one who tends toward tyranny. It facilitates the association of good men, whereas Aristotle tended to isolate them.
Theories of natural law, being accessible to common sense, tend to elide the Aristotelian distinction between moral (or political) virtue and intellectual (or philosophic) virtue. Burke thought the laws we live by should be obvious at least to gentlemen, because there are natural penalties for their failure, and this makes the Aristotelian legislator unnecessary. He opposed viewing politics as a matter of first principles, but instead prioritized began Roma law treatment of prescription (whereby land was effectively titled when longstanding use could be shown). People remain in society to benefit from civilized liberties. The good for Aristotle is the discovery of reason: in politics, it is the product of the legislator. For Burke, civil liberty is based on natural feeling protected by prescriptive right. Prejudice can be effective only if not subject to first principles. His prudence avoids the legislator’s appeal to first principles. (Bolingbroke sided with Plato and Aristotle in that prejudice does admit of first principles.) The 19th century demonstrated economic progress sparked hunger for political innovation at the expense of establishments.
Mansfield suggests Burke was a deist but did not accept Christian revelation, professing its virtue for political benefit. This deity commanded the laws of nature; human nature trumped determinism and established the bases of moral action, of equality before the law. Natural feeling is love of one’s own. Natural law follows Hobbes, is disciplined by honesty, and is not a final, inevitable point as in Aquinas. Consequently when elites forget their obligations they risk not only their own place but the entire social order. Principled behavior in a statesman is not following first principles but defending establishments and prescription. Great men should recognize that honest men of great families (i.e., aristocrats) ordinarily have first call on ruling, because first principles normally fail in politics. It is natural law that is intended to perfect human nature, the standard from which men draw progress.
The conflict between Bolingbroke and Burke is tantamount to rationalism versus empiricism. Rationalism holds liberty (or the basis of natural law) can be discovered in first principles, in freedom from prejudice. It teaches the necessity of seeking security in society, and seeking truth as the path to peace. Empiricism proceeds directly to prejudice and preservation, until the truth can be known; prescriptive right is an inalienable right. Bolingbroke’s patriot party established a new means of statesmanship; Burke instead substituted prudence, or non-principled conservatism, which admits of multiple parties. He did not succeed in substituting prudence for Bolingbroke’s patriotism: he engendered respectable parties but not the party system, for the modern system tolerates fanatics such as Jacobins and Nazis. Nonetheless, modern statesmanship discards the legislator and thus political thought, and accepts popular guidance (as refracted by popular sovereignty). In demoting statesmanship to guarding against theoretical claims which might destroy the establishments, he made party inherently conservative.
Coda: Contemporary political scientists must focus on action and therefore its limits, whereas historians may be tempted by hindsight. Burke, had he known of class and racial parties, would not have advanced party (p. 23).
Machiavelli: ‘To preserve liberty by new laws and new schemes of government, whilst the corruption of a people continues and grows, is absolutely impossible: but to restore and preserve it under old laws, and an old constitution, by reinfusing into the minds of men the spirit of this constitution, is not only possible, but is, in a particular manner, easy to a king’ (p. 73 footnote: Discourses I)