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analyze why this should be the case. I can, however , point
to
some
observations we all might make .
The concept of equality as a high ideal flourishes as a revolu–
tionary aspiration when it is confronted with two types of conser–
vatism-as Mill 's was in Victorian England. One type of conservatism
is a direct reflection of the economic conditions of a society once the
society had settled down after its revolutionary open-endedness. When
class distinctions have rigidified , then the conservative ideology of
capitalism can bear a striking resemblance
to
the old order the
revolutionary boutgeoisie once overthrew. In its naked crudity this
conservatism is found in Arthur Young 's statement: " ... everyone
but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor , or they will
never be industrious," or in a verse of a hymn popular in England in
the years before the First World War :
The rich in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high or lowly
And ordered their estate.
The best liberal traditions of liberty , equality, and individualism such
as those represented by Mill rarely engaged directly with conservatism
of this sort , but their presence as an alternative
within
the same society
hopefully acts
to
circumscribe the possible power of such reactionary
stances .
There is another conservative tradition that is more testing for the
liberal conception of individualism and equality and that is Tory
radicalism. Where conservative conservatism argues that there are
generic differences which must be the basis of differences between
groups of people , Tory radicalism , like liberalism and, for that matter,
socialism and communism, argues that there are differences between
individuals . The litmus test here for establishing a distinction between
the political philosophies is
to
see what happens
to
these individual
differences. Tory radicalism always offers a place in the past, a romantic
golden age when society was small enough for all these differences
to
flourish-merely as differences, be they handicaps or advantages . The
liberal concept that I have presented here argues that we are all
different but these differences can only be realized in their infinite
variety ifwe are given equal opportunities
to
make what we individual-
,
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