Conservatism is a political ideology that favours tradition and preservation of the status quo over radical change. That said, classical conservatism does not object to change per se, but considers that any reform should occur organically. Modern conservatism tends to be closely associated with free-market economic principles, the protection of private wealth and support for traditional social attitudes.
The beginnings of conservatism – the word stems from the Latin for ‘to preserve’ – are usually traced to the publication in 1790 of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. The Irish-born Burke, a lawyer by training, entered parliament in London in 1765 as a member of the Whig Party – the forerunner of the Liberal Party.
As a good liberal, he believed in the right of the people to overthrow an unjust government. But as he set about writing Reflections on the Revolution, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were in prison in Paris and within three years each would have been sent to their death at the guillotine. His revulsion at these events saw him fundamentally reposition himself in the political array, signalling the birth of a new ideology. Burke believed that the revolution had been anchored in abstract philosophical conceits such as liberty and rights, with little relevance to the experiences of ordinary people. The French Revolution, he said, had left France ‘a country undone’.
While he recognized the failings in the prior French system, he argued that it was far better to address social inequalities and constitutional failings through gradual reform than to invite the destructive chaos France was then experiencing. ‘I cannot conceive,’ he wrote, ‘how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.’ From such chaos, he warned (presciently, as it turned out), violence, tyranny and corruption would likely follow.
In calling for the stability inherent in keeping that which is already known (or at least changing it only slowly), Burke laid the roots of a conservative ethos that established itself as a major political force throughout much of the world over the next two centuries. Nonetheless, significant voices have been unconvinced by conservatism’s tendency to preserve the status quo, warts and all. As the economist J. K. Galbraith once wryly noted: ‘The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.’