What was the philosophy congenial to Conservatism?There is,of course,the simple answer,None.Toryism was a 'reaction'due to the great struggle of the war and the excesses of the revolution.A 'reaction'is a very convenient phrase.We are like our fathers;then the resemblance is only natural.We differ;then the phrase 'reaction'makes the alteration explain itself.No doubt,however,there was in some sense a reaction.Many people changed their minds as the revolutionary movement failed to fulfil their hopes.I need not argue now that such men were not necessarily corrupt renegades.I can only try to indicate the process by which they were led towards certain philosophical doctrines.Scott,Wordsworth,and Coleridge represent it enough for my purpose.When Mill was reproaching Englishmen for their want of interest in history,he pointed out that Thierry,'the earliest of the three great French historians'(Guizot and Michelet are the two others),ascribed his interest in his subject to Ivanhoe.22Englishmen read Ivanhoe simply for amusement.Frenchmen could see that it threw a light upon history,or at least suggested a great historical problem.Scott,it is often said,was the first person to teach us that our ancestors were once as much alive as ourselves.Scott,indeed,the one English writer whose fame upon the Continent could be compared to Byron's,had clearly no interest in,or capacity for,abstract speculations,An imaginative power,just falling short of the higher poetical gift,and a masculine common-sense were his most conspicuous faculties.The two qualities were occasionally at issue:his judgment struggled with his prejudices,and he sympathised too keenly with the active leaders and concrete causes to care much for any abstract theory.Yet his influence upon thought,though indirect,was remarkable,the vividness of his historical painting --inaccurate,no doubt,and delightfully reckless of dates and facts --stimulated the growing interest in historical inquiries even in England,His influence in one direction is recognised by Newman,who was perhaps thinking chiefly of his mediaevalism.23But the historical novels are only one side of Scott.Patriotic to the core,he lived at a time when patriotic feeling was stimulated to the utmost,and when Scotland in particular was still a province,and yet in many ways the most vigorous and progressive part of a great empire.He represents patriotism stimulated by contact with cosmopolitan movements.Loving every local peculiarity,painting every class from the noble to the peasant,loving the old traditions,and yet sharing the great impulses of the day,Scott was able to interest the world at large.While the most faithful portrayer of the special national type,he has too much sense not to be well aware that picturesque cattle-stealers and Jacobite chiefs were things of the past;but he loves with his whole heart the institutions rooted in the past and rich in historical associations.He transferred to poetry and fiction the political doctrine of Burke,to him,the revolutionary movement was simply a solvent,corroding all the old ties because it sapped the old traditions,and tended to substitute a mob for a nation.The continuity of national life seemed to him the essential condition;and a nation was not a mere aggregate of separate individuals,but an ancient organism,developing on an orderly system --where every man had his rightful place,and the beggar,as he observes in the Antiquary,was as ready as the noble to rise against foreign invasion.To him,the kings or priests who,to the revolutionist,represented simple despotism,represented part of a rough but manly order,in which many virtues were conspicuous and the governing classes were discharging great functions.Though he did not use the phrase,the revolutionary or radical view was hateful to him on account of its 'individualism.'It meant the summary destruction of all that he cherished most warmly in order to carry out theories altogether revolting to his common-sense.The very roots of a sound social order depend upon the traditions and accepted beliefs which bind together clans or families,and assign to every man a satisfactory function in life.The vivid realisation of history goes naturally with a love --excessive or reasonable --of the old order;and Scott,though writing carelessly to amuse idle readers,was stimulating the historical conceptions,which,for whatever reason,were most uncongenial to the Utilitarian as to all the revolutionists.
The more conscious philosophical application is illustrated by Wordsworth and Coleridge,Both of them had shared the truly revolutionary enthusiasm,and both came in time to be classed with the Tories,Both,as will be seen.had a marked influence upon J.S.Mill.Wordsworth has written in the Prelude one of the most remarkable of intellectual autobiographies.He was to be,though he never quite succeeded in being,a great philosophical poet,He never succeeded,because,in truth,he was not a great philosopher.But no one has more clearly indicated the history of his mental evolution.His sympathy with the revolution was perfectly genuine,but involved a vast misconception.
A sturdy,independent youth,thoroughly imbued with the instincts of his northern dalesmen,he had early leaned to a republican sentiment.His dislike of the effete conventionalism of the literary creed blended with his aversion to the political rule of the time.He caught the contagion of revolutionary enthusiasm in France,and was converted by the sight of the 'hunger-bitten'peasant girl --the victim of aristocratic oppression.'It is against that,'said his friend,'that we are fighting,'and so far Wordsworth was a convert.