The Theory of Oligarchy: Edmund Burke

THE THEORY OF OLIGARCHY: EDMUND BURKE By RoBERT M. HuTCHINS I IN Scholasticism and Politics 1 M. Maritain sets forth the reasons for his faith in universal suffrage: "Because it offers the people a recourse against political enslavement; perhaps particularly because of its value as a symbol; and because it attests, according to the specific law of democracy, the right of human persons to political life, and of the multitude to the constitution of the authoritative organism of the city,it is because of all this that modern people are so strongly and so justly attached to it." The great name in opposition to this faith is Burke. The interrogation of democracy, resulting from the temporary triumph of states dominated by a conviction of the political incompetence of the masses, makes it useful to consider Burke's position and the arguments he advanced to establish it. The task of discovering what that position was is not altogether free from difficulty. No doubt Burke began his political career by urging that the weight and independence of British voters would be increased if their numbers were lessened.2 But the next year he said that the House of Commons was in a distinct sense the representative of the people, not because its power was derived from them, but because the virtue and essence of it consisted in being the express image of the feeling of the nation.3 Morley 4 and MacCunn 5 say that these words are not to be 'P. 113. • Obsf!!T"vations on a Late State of the Nation, 1769, Works II, (London, 1803) 135-36. • Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, Works II, !l17, 287-88, 34243 . See also Plan of Economical Reform, Speeches II, (London, 1816) 43. • Burke, English Men of Letters Series, 165. • The Political Philosophy of Burke, 26. 61 62 ROBERT M. HUTCHINS taken in any democratic sense. It may be so, though they are strong words. But neither of these writers mentions the fact that in his speeches on America Burke explicitly attacked the unreformed condition of Parliament. The lack of representation accorded Manchester and other considerable places then proved to him that the British government was only an approximation to the right; the inequalities of representation were one of the shameful parts of the British constitution, a weakness, an opprobrium, and "the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off." 6 He commended the highly popular character of the American governments 7 and scoffed at the notion that the colonists should be persuaded that their liberty would be more secure if held in trust for them by the British as their guardians during a perpetual minority.8 At this time he ridiculed virtual representation, the doctrine according to which those elected by a few were assumed to represent all. Could an American seriously be expected to think his country a part of the manor of Greenwich? 9 Wales, Chester, and Durham had been granted real representation. "What! does the electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlantic, than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighbourhood: or than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance of representation that is actual and palpable? But, Sir, your ancestors thought this sort of virtual representation, however ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom of the inhabitants of territories that are so near, and comparatively so inconsiderable. How then can I think it sufficient for those which are infinitely greater, and infinitely more remote?" 10 Nor was virtual representation good enough for the Catholics in Ireland, not even late in Burke's life, when for many years • On American Taxation, 1774, Speeches I, 178, 286. 7 On CCYfi.Ciliation with the Colonies, 1775, Speeches I, 289. "Ibid. 298. • On the Address on the Disturbances in North America, 1775, Speeches I, 262. Cf. "It is material to us to be represented really and bona fide, and not in forms, in. types, and shadows, and fictions of law." On Middlesex elections in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, supa, note 8, 804-05. 10 On CCYfi.Ciliation with the Colonies, supra, note 7, 814. THE THEORY OF OLIGARCHY: EDMUND...