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The Politics of Human Frailty A Theological Defense of
Political Liberalism 1st Edition Christopher J. Insole
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Christopher J. Insole
ISBN(s): 9780268031756, 0268031754
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 11.07 MB
Year: 2004
Language: english
FAITH IN REASON
PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRIES
Series Editors:
Laurence Paul Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons
The Politics of Human

Frailty |
A Theological Defence of Political
Liberalism
Christopher J. Insole
University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana
Inspired by the challenge to consider anew the relation of faith and reason that
has been posed by the papal encyclical letter of 1998 Fides et ratio, this series
is dedicated to paying generous heed to the questions that lie within its scope.
The series comprises monographs by a wide range of international and ecumeni-
cal authors, edited collections, and translations of significant texts, with appeal
both to an academic community and broadly to all those on whom the apolo-
getic task impinges. The studies it encompasses are informed by desire for the
mutual engagement of the disciplines of theology and philosophy in the prob-
lematic areas of current debate at the highest and most serious level of scholar-
ship. These may serve to illuminate the foundations of faith in the contemporary
cultural context and will thus constitute an ecumenical renewal of the work of
philosophical theology. The series is promoted by the work of the Society of
St. Catherine of Siena, in the spirit of its commitment to the renewal of the intel-
lectual apostolate of the Catholic Church. http://www.caterinati.org.uk/
Copyright © 2004 Christopher J. Insole
First published in 2004 by SCM Press

9-17 St Albans Place, London nr onx
www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk
SCM Press is a division of
SCM-Canterbury Press Ltd
Published in the United States in 2005 by

the University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Insole, Christopher J.
The politics of human frailty : a theological defence of political liberalism /
Christopher J. Insole-— Notre Dame ed.
p. cm. — (Faith in reason)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-268-03175-4 (alk. paper)
1. Liberalism—Religion aspects—Christianity. I. Title. II. Series.
JC574.167 2004
361.7—dc22
2004063692
0 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents
Acknowledgements Vv
Preface Vii
t Obscured Order, Human Frailty and the Liberal

Tradition I
Limited theological appreciation of liberalism Ui
Edmund Burke and obscured order 15
2 Reciprocity and the Burdens of Judgement: Political

Liberalism and the Invisible Church AI
Rawlsian political liberalism 44

Richard Hooker and the invisible Church oe
Rome and Geneva on the invisible Church 63
Constructivism, law and purposive self-limitation es
A caveat: Anglicanism, invisibility and the national
Church 7
3 Overcoming Evil With Good — The American

Eschatology and Crusading Liberalism 87
An Augustinian eschatology 9I
Overcoming the ‘Antichrist and crusading liberalism 94
Political implications and qualifications 116
The Politics of Human Frailty
Against Radical Orthodoxy: The Dangers of
Overcoming Political Liberalism E25
The liberal subject and the will-to-power 130

Liberalism, participation and atomism I41
The Eucharist and political transformation c5e
Radical Orthodoxy and the Stuart Polity: A Lesson

from History on the Dangers of Analogy 158
The king, the common good and the violation of

ancient liberties I60
Royal power and the liberties of the subject: natural
law and common law 163
The Church in the World 170
Appendix Robert Bellah and Clifford Longley:

Religion in America 179
Bibliography 189
Index 197
Acknowledgements
This book was the result of a Research Fellowship in Theology and

Society at Heythrop College, University of London. Thanks should
go first of all to Peter Askonas, whose generosity funded the Fellow-
ship, and to Heythrop College for providing academic community
and friendship for three years.
Many colleagues and friends have contributed to the process of
preparing this book, through conversations, seminars and reading
parts or (some brave souls) all of the manuscript in various stages. I
would like to thank the following people: Oliver O’Donovan, David
Fergusson, Ian Linden and John Gray for providing encouragement
and judicious advice at an early stage of the project; anonymous
readers for SCM Press for insightful suggestions on the manuscript;
Giles Fraser for disagreeing with me so enjoyably throughout; Eddie
Howells, Pierre Manent and James Hanvey for bringing their distinct
expertise to bear on aspects of the book; Denys Turner and Douglas
Hedley for stimulating conversations on Marx and Plotinus, that
came too late to be part of the book, but have provided food for
future thought; Nigel Biggar for his personal encouragement and
sustained and detailed attention to the project, and David Dwan for
constant intellectual friendship and his profound interrogation of an
early draft of the manuscript. I should like to thank Barbara Laing
of SCM Press for interest in the project and Roger Ruston for copy-
editing the manuscript so intelligently and courteously. Susan
Parsons and Laurence Hemming have both been extraordinarily
supportive, affirming and energetic in nurturing the interests of the
project and its author, as series editors and fine friends.
Other people have been spared too much exposure to the hook,
but have been vital over the course of writing the book for making
my life larger than this project, and all the better for that. So thank
you to Thomas Dixon, Kath O’Neill, Jude Bryson, Ferdinand von
Knapp, Liz Gulliford, Anna Beer, Becca Williams and Phil Shiner.
Friends on the Isle of Iona, both in the Ilona Community, the
vi The Politics of Human Frailty
Columba and the village have provided vital renewal and inspiration,
when the author, if not the project, was a little frayed at the edges.
Aspects of this book are informed by my involvement and engage-
ment with Anglicanism. I have been fortunate to have so many kind
and wise people who have nurtured me in this tradition. So for teach-
ing me that gentleness, self-examination and tolerance can be the
fruits of a strong, compassionate and confident faith I thank Michael
Anderson, Robert Mitchell, Robert Fergusson, Giles Fraser, Trevor
Williams, Liz Gulliford and Rachel Lawrence. A very practical and
vital form of support was provided by the Church of England in the
last year of writing this book, with accommodation provided by
the Parish of Putney: thank you and sorry that I was such a poor
gardener.
‘Some of my best friends’, as the saying goes, ‘are Roman
Catholics’; but in this case it is really true. Heythrop College and the
Society of St Catherine of Siena have exhibited all the ancient
confidence and inclusive generosity of the Roman Catholic tradition,
by their preparedness to sponsor and promote a work concerned in
part with the nature of Anglicanism. I owe them thanks and respect.
Towards the end of preparing this book the universe began to
feel much more like home, when I began what I hope will be a long
journey with Lisa Feeley. I would like to thank her for all the
support and encouragement she has given in the final vital stages of
producing the book.
Finally I should like to thank my parents, for constant and vocifer-
ous — if at times, I have felt, undeserved — pride in me and what I do.
The pride is reciprocated and this book is dedicated to you.
Preface
This book provides a theological defence of a strand of political

liberalism; a strand informed by the theological conviction that the
human person is a creature incapable of its own perfection, although
nonetheless called to and made for this perfection. My intention is to
put a question-mark against easy caricatures of ‘liberalism’, which
tend to describe it as individualistic, hubristic and relativist. By
attending to figures such as Edmund Burke and Lord Acton in
Chapter 1, I show that a passion to protect the individual within lib-
eral institutions arises not from an illusory sense of self-sufficiency,
but from an insight into our fallen condition, characterized by frailty,
vulnerability, yet also a hope for, and intimation of, redemption and
an eternal divine order. In Chapter 2 I take up the emphasis John
Rawls places on the wars of religion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Europe as the historical impetus for an emerging political
liberalism. The Anglican divine Richard Hooker was immersed in
this context, addressing a Church riven by theological conflict; in so
doing, I will suggest, Hooker provides a powerful articulation of our
frailty, and shows how our need for generosity calls us to charity,
reciprocity and self-examination, rather than persecuting zeal. In
Richard Hooker’s thought, one finds in the theologico-political
seed-bed of liberalism a profound and moving theological sensitivity
and motivation; one that is not lost in subsequent centuries, but
reconfigured and interpreted.
In Chapter 3 I separate the political liberalism defended from
theologically over-zealous appropriations of the notion of ‘liberty’
that emanate, for instance, from American presidents. I investigate
how the notion of ‘liberty’ employed in America has a quite distinct
theological lineage, rooted in the Calvinist notion of covenantal
church government (liberty from Romish hierarchies) and Christian
liberty from sin, guaranteed through the saint’s pre-election, leading
to activist projects to eliminate evil. Hooker’s relevance is shown
again, in that it is precisely the Puritan forebears of this tradition of
Vili The Politics of Human Frailty
talking about ‘Christian liberty’ that Hooker has in sight when
writing the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.
On the basis of the defence of political liberalism I move on in
Chapters 4 and 5 to critique utopian attempts to leap beyond liberal-
ism to a more enchanted space. The critique of political liberalism
found in Radical Orthodoxy writers is shown to be historically and
conceptually impoverished, and their constructive solution — the
assertion of a peaceful, teleological and analogically interrelated
cosmos — is found to be politically naive and dangerous in ways well
understood by the tradition of political liberalism that I defend.
I conclude by facing the charge that my approach has an inade-
quate ecclesiology, leading to an inability to resist evil.
Obscured Order, Human Frailty and
the Liberal Tradition
There seems to be almost a consensus in theological circles concern-

ing the nature of the problem with ‘liberalism’.! Liberalism, accord-
ing to this conception, is based upon an illusory human subject who
constructs order and denies transcendence. The ‘liberal’ focuses on
the will at the cost of attending to reason or order. This focus on the
will engenders a fetish for freedom of choice and the removal of all
impediments to human liberty; consequently, the notion of ‘free-
dom/liberty’ is emptied of any substantial historical, traditional or
philosophical content. Flowing from this entirely stripped-down
notion of freedom, liberalism has a voluntaristic account of values
and meaning, with ‘ethics’ being a construction by the subject. This
voluntarist meta-ethic fosters a destructive individualism and social
atomism. In an attempt to distract from the poverty of the liberal
conception of freedom, liberals tend to support a pseudo-Messianic/
Pelagian progressivism about history, often finding expression in a
fixation with technology and economic growth. After relating this
narrative, theology is called upon to judge this liberalism as a false
and historically contingent religion masquerading as a secular, time-
less and neutral framework. Although sometimes able to say a tenta-
tive ‘yes’ to some aspects of liberalism, there is usually also a
trenchant call for the Church to stand as a counter-culture to the
corrupt pseudo-religion of man which liberalism has become;
‘modernity as Antichrist, a parodic and corrupt development of
Christian social order’,* as Oliver O’Donovan sternly phrases it.
The Radical Orthodoxy movement, which I treat extensively in
1 A version of this chapter was presented at a conference organized by

Heythrop College University of London, ‘The Hidden City: a Theological
Reflection on the Polis’, held at Trinity College, Oxford, in September 2003.
2 Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of
Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 275.
2 The Politics of Human Frailty
Chapter 4, clearly flags its contempt of political liberalism. So John
Milbank, in his recent Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon,
comments that ‘political liberalism itself engenders today an increas-
ingly joyless and puritanical world’ marked by a ‘totalitarian drift
... its [political liberalism’s] empty heart . . . besieged by an irrational
cult of race, science, style or belief’. We find a more measured but
not entirely dissimilar critique in Robert Song’s Christianity and
Liberal Society. Song’s fine study is superior to many theological
treatments of liberalism in that it does at least deny the possibility of
a ‘univocal definition of such an historically and conceptually com-
plex phenomenon” as liberalism. Nevertheless, Song identifies a
‘pattern of characteristic family resemblances’, of which the ‘most
central’ are ‘a voluntaristic conception of the human subject; a con-
structivist meta-ethics; an abstract, universalist, and individualistic
mode of thought; and a broadly progressivist philosophy of history’.°
Song speaks of the ‘political Messianism’ of the ‘doctrines of his-
torical progress and implicit Pelagian theologies’ behind liberalism,®
which doctrines are now manifested in ‘late twentieth-century
dependencies on economic growth and technological progress’.”
After identifying the centrality of the will, the loss of transcendence
and the neglect of human limitations as defining features of this
political Messianism,® Song states that ‘theology must finally inter-
pret politics, and not vice-versa’,’ with a special role for the Church
to make ‘declarations of moral truth in the public realm’ being
‘formed by a language which the world does not share’.!° Although
the Church can offer a tentative ‘Yes’ to some features of liberal
society, in ‘so far as it offers opportunities for contributing to social
order less unjust than the alternatives’,!! nevertheless the Church with
its “orientation to eternity’ is there to ‘signify the eschatological
* John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (London: Rout-

ledge, 2003), p. 25.
* Robert Song, Christianity and Liberal Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997), p- 9.
° Song, Christianity, p. 9.
Song, Christianity, p. 214.
co
Song, Christianity, pp. 216-20.
Obscured Order 3
Kingdom’,'’ and to register its ‘No’ to liberalism in so far as it is
‘subservient to technology and oriented to historical utopianism’.'4
O*’Donovan identifies the ‘series of self-interpreting doctrines’ of
liberalism ‘which define metaphysical parameters for thought and
action (even while innocently disavowing metaphysical inten-
tions)’.!> Liberalism emerges as a ‘false posture of transcendence, an
illusion that society may be organised on formal principles from the
perspective of a “view from nowhere” (Nagel)’.!* At the centre of the
liberal moment is ‘the notion of the abstract will, exercising choice
prior to all reason and order, from whose fiat Iux spring society,
morality and rationality itself’.'? Corresponding to this transcendent
will who constructs meaning is ‘an inert nature, lacking any given
order that could make it good prior to the imposition of human
purposes upon it’.!’ Drawing out the deep theological commitments
of this position O’Donovan writes that ‘the paradigm for the
human presence in the world is creation ex nihilo, the absolute
summoning of reason, order and beauty out of chaos and emptiness.
This does not, of course, honour God’s creative deed, but competes
with it.’!?
Such a critique of liberalism has venerable philosophical and theo-
logical roots. Heidegger’s essay ‘Die Frage nach der Technik’ (‘The
Question of Technology’)”° identifies technology not as technical
innovation but as an approach to practical reasoning that treats
reason as an instrument which manipulates — to its own pre-
conceived ends — the raw material around it. Such an ordering of
reason to techne is understood by Heidegger to be behind humanism
and liberalism,”! binding it in the same ontological genealogy to
Communism and Fascism. This binding is one which O’Donovan
and Song are both happy to re-enact, with Song finding a ‘similarity
13. Song, Christianity, p. 231.

4 Song, Christianity, p. 232.
1S O’Donovan, Desire, p. 274.
16 O’Donovan, Desire, p. 274.
18 ©’Donovan, Desire, p. 274.
20 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ in trans. W.
Lovitt, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (1952-62)
(New York: Harper and Row, 1977).
21 See Martin Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’ in Pathmarks, (ed.) W.
McNeil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
4 The Politics ofHuman Frailty
between liberal and national socialist rhetorics’,”* and O’Donovan
drawing the more generalized and cautious parallel between liberal-
ism and political structures that offer themselves as the ‘sufficient
and necessary condition of human welfare’, and which as such are
‘totalitarian’.23 Bolstering the anti-liberal theological consensus we
can perhaps also hear Karl Barth’s characterization of the Enlighten-
ment as the time of ‘absolute man’. Barth’s ‘absolute man’ is sub-
stantially the same as the ‘liberal man’ of theological consensus:
Man, who discovers his own power and ability, the potentiality
dormant in his humanity, that is, his human being as such, and
looks upon it as the final, the real and absolute, I mean as some-
thing ‘detached’, self-justifying, with its own authority and power,
which he can therefore set in motion in all directions and without
any restraint — this man is absolute man.**
These theologians are not wrong about liberalism. There are

certainly strands of liberalism which fit this characterization. Song,
for instance, does a careful and effective job of showing these
strands running through five liberal thinkers: Locke, Kant, Mill,
Hobhouse and Hayek. Although not wrong about liberalism, Song,
O’Donovan, Barth and their lesser imitators are not right about it
either. Consider Song’s ‘family resemblance’ description of liberal-
ism, which is an entirely characteristic conception in the anti-liberal
theological literature. Such liberalism is marked out, we remember,
by: ‘... a voluntaristic conception of the human subject; a construc-
tivist meta-ethics; an abstract, universalist, and individualistic mode
** Song, Christianity, p. 213. Based on Dr Goebbels’ saying: ‘You are at lib-

erty to seek your salvation as you understand it, provided you do nothing to
change the social order.’ It is well known that totalitarian regimes commandeer
the language of freedom; I would suggest that it should not be taken at face value
that this reflects a deep conceptual fault line in liberalism, rather than a kitsch
appropriation by totalitarians of antithetical principles.
*3 O’Donovan, Desire, p. 274.
** Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. B.
Cozens (London: SCM Press, 1972), p. 36. Die Protestantische Theologie im 19
Jahrhundert (Zollikon/Ziirich: Evangelisher Verlag AG, 1952): ‘Der Mensch,
der seine eigene Fraft, sein Kénnen, die in seiner Humanitat, d.h. in seinem
Menschein also solchem schlummerrule Potentialitat entdeckt, der sie als
Letzten, Eigentliches, Absolutes, will sagen: als ein Geldstes, in sich selbst
Berechtigtes und Bevollmachtigtes und Machtiges versteht, der sie darum
hemmungslos nach allen Seiten in Gang setzt, dieser Mensch ist der absolutische
Mensch’, p. 18.
Obscured Order 5
of thought; and a broadly progressivist philosophy of history’.25 The

problem with this characterization is that it could have been deliv-
ered — almost point by point and on the basis of his political liberal-
ism — by Edmund Burke as a summary of all that is wrong with
projects and enthusiasms such as the French Revolution. The claim
developed in this chapter is that proper attention to a figure such as
Burke can challenge the anti-liberal consensus, indicating deep
lines of theological compatibility between some aspects of political
liberalism and the Christian tradition. Although the focus in this
chapter will be on Burke — and to a lesser extent Lord Acton — the
ramifications are much wider. By documenting a ‘hidden’ strand
of political liberalism, theologians might be brought to think more
generously about the possibilities and aspirations of political liberal-
ism, as well as declaring its manifest failings, historical debasement
and concrete problems. Christian theologians legitimately complain
when ‘Christianity’ is judged by its worst historical and concrete
moments, and ask for its higher aspirations and deepest truths to be
reckoned with; we might do well to extend this courtesy to other
traditions, such as political liberalism.
The term ‘liberalism’ was not used as a term in political contexts
until the 1820s.*° Considerable caution is required in ‘back-
projecting’ the term to earlier periods. Nonetheless, a certain amount
of ‘back-projection’ is legitimate if the term ‘political liberalism’ is
used in a specified way to pick out themes that are unarguably part
of political liberalism as we understand it, which themes are dem-
onstrably developed in thinkers prior to 1820. So to be quite specific,
by ‘political liberalism’ I mean the conviction that politics is ordered
towards peaceful coexistence (the absence of conflict), and the
preservation of the liberties of the individual within a pluralistic and
tolerant framework, rather than by a search for truth (religious or
otherwise), perfection and unity. The crucial ambition of this sort of
‘political liberalism’ is a refusal to allow public power to enforce on
society a substantial and comprehensive conception of the good;
driven as it is by its central passion for the liberties of individuals over
and above the enthusiasms of other individuals or collectivities.
Political authority is wielded on behalf of the people it protects, and
is derived ultimately from their consent.
26 | am grateful to Matthew Grimley for drawing my attention to this.
Burke (1729-97), inasmuch as he endorses each of these features
of political liberalism, represents a ‘politically liberal’ position.
Striking for our purposes here, Burke defends these politically liberal
elements whilst critiquing everything to which anti-liberal theolo-
gians are allergic: the voluntaristic, abstract, formal, universalizing,
self-transcendent will who constructs all order, meaning and beauty.
This ‘liberal’ (from now on I will drop the scare marks, with the
understanding that I mean by ‘liberalism’ the specified elements
outlined above) tradition is driven by a sense of the frailty and
limitations of individuals and a sense of the difficulty and dangers
of discerning and imposing order given our fallen and complex
condition.
There is something ironic about the charge that liberalism has
‘become’ a pseudo-religion, that it has — in Song’s words — ‘take[n]
on Messianic form, in its philosophy of history and tendency to
progressivism’.”” As will become clear in my discussion of ‘crusading
liberalism’ (Chapter 3), this progressivist and eschatologically ambi-
tious liberalism is entirely the child of certain theological presup-
positions. There is no need for theology to intervene or come in
judgement, or for liberal society to be ‘sacralized’ (Song);”® there is
already too much theology of too specific a nature directly behind
some of the most objectionable features of crusading liberalism.
These features spring from an attempt to separate in history the
saints from the damned, and to purify the visible historical institu-
tion of the Church so that it becomes, through human activism, the
eschatological gathering in glory of all the saints. The visible Church
was to be transformed into the invisible (the impure into the pure) by
the regeneration of the saints. Once this regeneration was complete,
the saints could take their activist part in inaugurating the Kingdom
by the confident identification and elimination of evil.
There is perhaps a trace - no more than this, and subject to
qualification given below — of something depressingly familiar in the
way the Church is invoked by O’Donovan and Song. It has echoes
at least of the pure, transforming, politically activist Church of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century radical Protestants, who we will
see are behind some of the most depressing features of modern
triumphalist liberalism. There is an intimation of the same movement
of thought. The Church is pure, the world (liberalism) impure;

Obscured Order a
through salvation of its members the Church is then called to
prophetic action and judgement of the world and the elimination of
evil, leading to the inauguration of the Kingdom on earth. So Song
writes of the ‘Church as the unique eschatological sign of the coming
Kingdom . . . that which, by its existence, defines the world as world,
and by its life, shows to the world its worldly nature . . . a living
demonstration of the relativity and transient nature of politics’.?°
O’Donovan tells us that the church is the ‘only . . . society which is
incorporated into the Kingdom of God and which recapitulates the
narrative of the Christ event’.*°
Is this the visible or the invisible Church? If the visible, where is the
Church which is not — for all its glories — like every human institution
bogged down in conflict, complacency, corruption, mediocrity and
self-deception? Sometimes it seems that ‘the Church’ being spoken of
is not tainted, fallen and complex in the same way as all human insti-
tutions, but that the visible Church has already been transformed
into the invisible, and needs to maintain purity of witness and action
before a world cast in darkness. It is not confidence in human
activism and voluntarism per se that seems to be problematized, but
human activism and voluntarism outside of the Church. How else
can we make sense of the rather odd feature of Oliver O’Donovan’s
magnificent Desire of the Nations, that after a sustained scholarly
polemic against the notion of voluntarism and the will, we are
brought in the ultimate paragraph before a ‘moment of decision’,
between the ‘two loves which made the two cities’,*! as if — after all -
human decision-making is the key.
Limited theological appreciation of liberalism
With these reservations emphatically made, it is nevertheless impor-

tant to record that the theological treatments of liberalism presented
by O’Donovan and Song are more subtle and nuanced than some of
the passages quoted above would suggest. We have already seen how
Song’s ‘family resemblance’ account of liberalism avoids the fruitless
drawing-up of necessary and sufficient conditions for liberalism, and
so avoids a crude caricature. Song’s approach is valuable, for

instance, in being able to distinguish constitutional liberalism (Locke
and Kant), ‘rooted in opposition to arbitrary, personal, or unlimited
power’, laissez-faire liberalism (Hayek) emphasizing ‘freedom of
trade internationally and minimal government domestically’ and
welfare/revisionist liberalism (Hobhouse) stressing ‘the importance
of social justice and equitable material distribution’ within a frame-
work ‘which guarantees civil liberties and the rights of the indi-
vidual’.22 Such a differentiation of the liberal tradition is invaluable
in that it helps Song to see how one can criticize one form of liberal-
ism on the basis of another. So, for instance, in his discussion of
Reinhold Niebuhr, Song notes how Niebuhr’s critical attitude to
certain strands of liberalism was only possible because he was a
‘chastened welfare liberal with a strong commitment to liberal
constitutionalism’.*°
Song’s subtlety about liberalism comes out at another point in his
discussion of Niebuhr. Niebuhr draws a connection between what he
understands to be the optimistic, liberal view of man and pro-
gressivist notions of history and Pelagianism, writing for instance
that the ‘belief that man could solve his problem . . . by the historical
process itself is a mistake which is partly prompted by the most uni-
versal of all “ideological” taints: the pride, not of particular men and
cultures, but of man as man’.** Song’s entirely apposite comment
here is that Niebuhr ‘sometimes talked of liberalism when properly
he meant optimism. . . clearly regarding the former as a species of the
latter’.°° Song correctly points out that ‘not all liberals have been
naive progressivists’.*° Even where some notion of progress is in play,
it need not have the perfectibilist implausibility that Niebuhr claims.
So Kant hoped for perpetual peace and the unity of mankind, ‘but
was relatively pessimistic about human perfectibility’;3? Mill was
dispositionally a perfectibilist (‘the general tendency is... a tendency
towards a better and happier state’*), but as Song points out, Mill
*° Song, Christianity, pp. 38-9.

> Song, Christianity, p. 50.
* Song, Christianity, p. 64. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of
Man (London: Nisbet, 1943), ii, 331.
°° Song, Christianity, p. 71.
°° Ibid. The Mill reference is, ‘A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive’
in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson (London:
Routledge, 1974), Vol. vi, p. 3.
Obscured Order 9
also feared the coming of democracy, and ‘hardly owned to a massive

historical idealism’.*°
O’Donovan’s strictures against liberalism are counter-balanced
with his acknowledgement that ‘the liberal tradition . . . has right of
possession . . . we cannot simply go behind it; it has the status of a
church tradition, and demands to be treated with respect’.*°
O’Donovan, like Song, has a rich appreciation of the different
strands that make up modernity:
As it has gained in sophistication, modernity-criticism has shown

more clearly the multiplicity of threads from which the fabric is
woven, and so has allowed us to think of other liberalisms, differ-
ent possibilities of combination and development from those
which have woven our contemporary bondage. By way of this
closer view of the weaving of modernity, we are free to discern
both the triumph of Christ in liberal institutions and the coming of
the Antichrist.*!
It is precisely this ‘closer view of the weaving of modernity’ which

I am engaged upon in this book, and I attach myself emphatically to
O’Donovan’s observation that ‘the liberal tradition is not homoge-
nous or unchanging, and its central Christian witness does not
always lie on the surface’. O’Donovan’s most severe judgements,
the outline of which I gave above, are reserved more for ‘late-
modern’ liberalism, with its confidence in the human will, construc-
tivism and technology. O’Donovan provides a more mixed report
for the ‘early modern liberalism’ of Locke, Hobbes and Kant, ‘a
composite of rationalist, romantic and sceptical influences as well
as Christian, some of them tending to subvert, some to strengthen
the Christian contribution’.*? Early modern liberalism has the
watermark of Christendom running through it.
There are at least three areas in which O’Donovan perceives
the legacy of Christendom in early modern liberalism: the responsi-
bility of rulers; the rule of law and tolerance. On the first motif
O’Donovan comments that ‘the political doctrine that emerged from
3? Song, Christianity, p. 72.

IO The Politics of Human Frailty
Christendom is characterised by a notion that government is respon-
sible’.44 Because of the division between the two Kingdoms, the lack
of identification between the two Cities, ‘rulers, overcome by Christ’s
victory, exist provisionally and on sufferance for specific purposes. In
the church they have to confront a society which witnesses to the
Kingdom under which they stand and before which they must dis-
appear. It is to that conception we refer when we describe political
authority in terms of “the state”.’ This was a concept unknown to
the ancient world, describing something new, ‘a form of political
authority which has come to understand itself differently as a result
of Christ’s triumph’.** The notion that rulers are provisional and on
sufferance for specific purposes — vehicles of an authority which is
not intrinsic to them — is broadly what makes possible the liberal con-
ception of power invested in government: provisional, instrumental,
answerable. Furthermore, the influence of Christendom is to be
discerned in the liberal emphasis on law. Under Christendom the
‘state exists in order to give judgement; but under the authority of
Christ’s rule it gives judgement under law, never as its own law. One
might say that the only sense of political authority acknowledged
within Christendom was the law of the ascended Christ, and that all
political authority was the authority of that law.’46
A third ‘Christian’ feature of early modern liberalism discussed by
O’Donovan — tolerance — owes less to Christendom than a certain
Protestant understanding of the relationship between an individual’s
faith and reason. So for early liberals
the dialectical struggle of tational debate, in which each side
marshals arguments to bring the other to agreement, seemed... a
healthy thing, the proper alternative to violent struggle. In an
argument which had currency from Milton to Mill, they pleaded
for the toleration of erroneous beliefs precisely on the ground that
they stimulated rational discussion and so assisted the common
quest for truth without approving the hope that common persua-
sions may emerge from it. They thought there was nothing to
fear from shared convictions if they were rationally reached and
rationally held.*”
This theological resonance of early modern liberalism has been
** O'Donovan, Desire, p. 231.

*S O’Donovan, Desire, p. 231.
*© O’Donovan, Desire, p. 233.
*” O’Donovan, Desire, p. 221.
Obscured Order a
of interest to David Fergusson also, whose work is exemplary for a
subtle appreciation of the strengths of liberalism. So Fergusson out-
lines the theological case for tolerance in the early modern period as
being ‘based on a cluster of related arguments — the example of
Christ and the early church, the limits of state power, the irrational-
ity of coercion, the sanctity of each person’s faith commitment, the
need for peace and social cohesion, and the promotion of conversa-
tion and debate amongst those who differ for the sake of a greater
approximation to God’s truth’.** The truth of Fergusson’s claim
about the theological origins of ‘liberal’ toleration can be shown
strictly and biographically by looking at Locke’s Four Letters on
Toleration,” where we find Locke stating that ‘the toleration of
those that differ from others in matters of religion, is so agreeable to
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the genuine reason of mankind,
that it seems monstrous for men to be so blind, as not to perceive the
necessity and advantage of it, in so clear a light’.°° The theological
non-intervention of the state, and the tolerance of religious diversity,
are absolutely necessary given the nature of faith as autonomous,
reasoned and individual:
All the life and power of true religion consists in the outward and
full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing.
Whatever profession we make, to whatever outward worship we
conform, if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind that the one
is true, and the other well pleasing unto God, such profession and
such practice, far from being any furtherance, are indeed great
obstacles to our salvation. For in this manner, instead of expiating
other sins by the exercise of religion, I say, in offering thus unto
God Almighty such a worship as we esteem to be displeasing unto
him, we add unto the number of our other sins, those also of
hypocrisy, and contempt of his Divine Majesty.°!
Fergusson draws contemporary lessons from this theological lineage,
that ‘these arguments’ concerning the relationship between non-
coercion, tolerance and faith, ‘retain their validity even if more
48 David Fergusson, “The Reformed Tradition and the Virtue of Tolerance’,

in Public Theology for the 21st Century, ed. William Storrar and Andrew
Morton (London: T. & T. Clark International, forthcoming 2004). See also
Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1998).
49 John Locke, Four Letters on Toleration (London: Ward, Lock, 1899).
50 Locke, Toleration, p. 5.
51 Locke, Toleration, p. 6.
modern claims for autonomy are found increasingly suspect. At a
time when liberalism is under attack, we may need to be reminded of
the preceding theological case of toleration.”**
Attending to the best contemporary theological treatments of
political liberalism — as found in Oliver O’Donovan, Robert Song
and David Fergusson — we may be able to discern a new wind, more
favourable to liberalism than the likes of Heidegger and Karl Barth.
Any enthusiasm for liberalism is muted, reserved, partial and
specifically theological, tending to focus on earlier strands of the
liberal tradition which are seen to preserve something of their
Christian inheritance: the responsibility of rulers, the rule of law and
the importance of toleration and freedom of conscience as a neces-
sary but not sufficient pre-condition for faith and salvation. There is,
as we have seen, a sense that as time moves on the theological im-
pulses behind liberalism get watered down and corrupted with more
dubious preoccupations. The concern of critics such as Song and
O’Donovan is that the responsibility of rulers becomes reduced to
their instrumental and unprincipled slavery to the ballot box and the
stock market. The rule of law is no longer subservient to Christ, but
is conceived within a framework where the conventional and con-
structed nature of order and truth is taken for granted. Tolerance
becomes either an indifferent relativism, or itself a paradoxically
intolerant ideology which makes impossible more ‘coercive’ forms of
life and traditional communities. But nonetheless, there is an appre-
ciation of the impossibility of simply leaping over liberalism, and the
stirrings of an appreciation of its complex conceptual, historical and
theological motivations.
I conceive the thesis being argued for here as is in some ways
attached to, and in sympathy with, this more considered re-
appreciation of aspects of liberalism. Where I would depart signifi-
cantly from the contemporary literature is in a conviction that it has
not in several respects gone far enough. First of all, there is almost no
attempt to face with repentance and self-reflexiveness the fairly direct
theological responsibility which the Christian tradition has for some
of the worst features of crusading liberalism. This narrative, traced
especially in Chapter 3, shows that the most divisive, activist and
intolerant strands of liberalism arise historically from a too close
identification of the visible and invisible Church, and a subsequent
anthropology which verges on the perfectibilist and Manichean.
°° Fergusson, ‘Reformed Tradition’, p. x1.

Obscured Order 13
Theological accounts of liberalism can be very keen to take responsi-
bility for the prettier aspects of liberalism (the responsibility of rulers
and freedom of conscience), with the less attractive aspects being
ascribed to liberalism’s falling away from whatever Christian origins
it may have had. On the other hand, there is some reluctance to per-
ceive that the ‘pseudo-Messianism’ which can be found in liberal
progressivist views of history has not become superficially attached
through a kitsch secular appropriation of theological themes, but
was in fact a generating and theological principle of this ‘liberal’
movement, which can drop the explicit theological reference and
then appropriate more ‘secular’ themes (such as technology or
global free-markets).
The second respect in which I would claim that the contemporary
re-evaluation of liberalism does not go far enough, is that it fails to
see that there is a healthy strand of liberalism — running through the
early modern period and still alive in the present day — which is
informed by, or at the very least powerfully compatible with, a theo-
logical tradition of reckoning with our status as creatures. Even the
most appreciative approaches that we have considered are wedded to
a characterization of liberalism as voluntaristic, constructivist and
broadly progressivist. This critique remains in place, even where
some credit is given to liberalism for its emphasis on non-coercive
faith, or the de-sacralization of power. So liberalism is held to be
‘voluntaristic’, in that the individual is conceived as the fundamental
ontological unit. The individual, so conceived, is abstracted from
contingency, context and history, failing to acknowledge our
thrown-projection, our embodiment, or in a more theological key,
our createdness. It is ‘constructivist’ in that all order and value are
constructed by the subject, either individually or collectively. It is
‘progressivist’ in that — even if in a broad and complicated way -
history is moving towards a better organization of society and
fulfilment of human potential, with liberalism being instrumentally
necessary for this progress. This characterization of liberalism is
sometimes described as an aspect of the ‘modern turn’, given power-
ful philosophical expression by thinkers such as Heidegger and Leo
Strauss. In spite of more nuanced appreciations of the virtues of
‘early-modern’ liberalism, the sense that liberalism belongs on the
wrong side of this turn seems always to remain. Where there is diver-
gence, it concerns what we can hope to do about this ‘modern turn’,
of which political liberalism is a symptom, ranging from the ‘partici-
patory universe’ of Radical Orthodoxy, through to the evangelical-
prophetic, eschatological Church uttering its considered ‘yes’ and
‘no’ to liberalism.
This characterization of liberalism needs to be challenged. I will
present a strand of liberal political thought, focusing in this chapter
on Edmund Burke and to a lesser extent Lord Acton, which is in
crucial respects anti-voluntaristic, anti-constructivist and anti-
progressivist; in short, a strand of liberalism opposed to all those
features that are supposed — even on the most generous interpreta-
tion — to belong to liberalism, as liberalism in turn belongs to the
‘modern turn’. We will find that where the individual is conceived as
the basic ontological unit, this is entirely because of a sense of the
frailty and createdness of individuals. In these thinkers there is a
powerful sense of given and created order, along with a caution
which arises from an equally urgent sense of the importance and
difficulty of fallen humans reading this order. Will and construction
are always balanced by an integrated account of reason, tradition
and order. Burkean liberalism is rooted in an Augustinian sense of
the complexity and fallenness of history, with no whiff of progres-
sivism or Pelagianism. In showing this tradition of liberalism, I
will be challenging the pervasive ‘fits all’ hermeneutic value of the
‘modern turn’, and arguing for a much more theologically resounding
endorsement of specific liberal movements of thought.
It will also be necessary to show that this theologically subtle and
informed liberal tradition did not exhaust itself - as O’Donovan
suggests — in an ‘early modern period’ leading to a monopoly of a
much more pernicious voluntaristic liberalism. I argue against this
theological narrative by attending in the next chapter to John Rawls,
and the debate generated by Rawls. I will suggest that a proper
consideration of Rawls shows that there are places where the finest
ideals of political liberalism are as alive today as they ever have been.
The theological narrative that liberalism has ‘fallen’ from an early
modern state of grace is likely to be as historically unfounded as the
inverse Whig narrative of progress. To judge the demise of political
liberalism by its worst debasements — hawkish American administra-
tions, corrupt global corporations and popular TV shows - is to
invite a similarly ungenerous and unscholarly announcement of
the fall of ‘Christianity’ (in its entirety) on the basis of its worst
debasements, for instance, sectarian terrorism, white supremacist
groups who appropriate Christian vocabulary, and slick television
evangelists.
Obscured Order 15
Edmund Burke and obscured order
My discussion of Burke will move through four stages. First of all, I

will demonstrate the unequivocal sense in which Burke is a liberal in
the specified sense, accounting at the same time for his trenchant
anti-democratic stance, and his apparent inegalitarianism. Second,
I will demonstrate Burke’s committment to the notion of created
order and harmony; at this point I will suggest that the ‘modern turn’
posited in politics by Leo Strauss would seem not to pertain in crucial
respects to Burkean liberalism. This is no insignificant conclusion, as
it indicates that there can be non-voluntaristic and non-constructivist
insights within the liberal tradition, and so that the hermeneutic
value of speaking in blanket terms of the ‘modern turn’ is too crude
and alarmist. The third phase of the discussion shows how Burke has
a profound and compassionate sense of human imperfectibility,
frailty and complexity, which lends his political thought an allergy
to abstraction, metaphysical generalization, extremism and pro-
gressivism. We will see how this sense of human imperfectibility is a
generating motivation for Burke’s liberalism and individualism;
although there is unconstructed order and harmony, it is hard — but
not impossible — to read it, owing to the obscured quality of the
order. Finally, I show how this draws together to produce Burke’s
spirit of loving reformation: an active and principled commitment to
resist abuses of power, but within a framework of constant caution
about human nature and action. The City of God is hidden amid the
City of Man: attempts to render the heavenly city visible or construct
it on earth through human activity, Burke fears, are steeped in blood,
the product of a hubristic metaphysical frenzy leading to vast human
misery.
Burke’s liberalism and Lord Acton

For Burke the centrality of ‘liberty’ and its inherent relationship to
given order is made clear in his Appeal from the Old to the New
Whigs, where he writes that ‘the distinguishing part of our constitu-
tion ... is its liberty’:
To preserve that liberty inviolate, is the peculiar duty and proper

trust of a member of the House of Commons. But the liberty, the
only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order, and that not
only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without
them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance
and vital principle.°°
Burke’s attachment to ordered, rational liberty preserved within

historical constitutions makes him hostile to what he understands to
be the vacuous formulaic calls for liberty heard in the French
Revolution. At the same time, it makes him supportive of the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American move to independ-
ence: both were, as he understood them, in some sense attempts to
protect ancient liberties enjoyed by English subjects from innovation
and tyranny imposed by the Government. So Burke appeals to British
colonists in North America as fellow ‘men of liberal minds’,** who
enjoy the ‘large and liberal platform of common liberty’*> which
unites the Americans and the ‘largest and soundest’ part of ‘this
kingdom’ (England), where originated the ‘very liberty which you
(the Americans) so justly prize’.°° The Americans were increasingly
unhappy with insensitive colonial rule, featuring oppressive taxation
without consent or representation. Burke concedes that the behav-
iour of the English administration has been so bad that even a revo-
lution and subsequent ‘series of wars and contentions amongst
yourselves . . . might be worth the risk to men of honour, when
rational liberty is at stake’.°’ The revolutionaries, provoked by an
illiberal British administration, ‘have and... hold to that foundation
of common liberty’ and as such are ‘the only true Englishmen’,
with the English administration of Lord North and others being
‘corrupted in blood, and wholly fallen from their original rank
and value’ being the ‘real rebels to the fair constitution and just
supremacy of England’.**
Already we see that Burke’s position is subtle enough to support
reform of a significant kind — to the point of revolution — and is far
from being a eulogy to the powers that be, with it being possible to
castigate British prime ministers as ‘rebels’ when they threaten the
°° Edmund Burke, ‘Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs’, in The Works
and Correspondence of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, Vol. 1v (London: Francis
and John Rivington, 1852), p. 417.
* Edmund Burke, ‘An Address to the British Colonists in North America’. in
Works and Correspondence,Vol. v, p. 544.
°° Burke, ‘Address’, p. 540.
°° Burke, ‘Address’, p. 544.
7 Burke, ‘Address’, p. 544.
8 Burke, ‘Address’, pp. 543-4.
Obscured Order Tz
common liberties of the subject. The popular image of Burke — as a
Tory defender of an oppressive status quo — can be an impediment to
serious consideration of his stature and thought, and a little back-
ground here may be helpful. In fact Burke was a Whig and spent most
of his active political life opposing the Tories, and in his own words
in “constant attempts to reform abuses in government’.*? Burke may
have in mind his piloting of the Catholic Relief Act though the
Commons in 1778; his spirited attacks on the oppressive taxation
enforced by the American Stamp Act and the Massachusetts Bay
Regulation Bill; attempts up to and through the American War of
Independence to get the House to grant American independence, and
his attempt to impeach Warren Hastings, Director of the East India
Company, for British atrocities in India. So in speeches before
Parliament Burke accused Hastings and his agents of showing ‘the
avarice of English dominion’ with an ‘unbounded license to plunder’.
Burke complained that they built no schools, no hospitals, no
bridges, but were merely out for ‘profit’ and ‘the transmission of
great wealth to this country’.°° On Britain’s responsibilities in
America, India and Ireland, Burke is a more nuanced figure than in
his pontifications on France — for which he is best known — where his
genuinely interesting critique of the Revolution is at times alarming-
ly and gratuitously tied up with a romantic, chivalrously blinkered,
and almost nauseating defence of the ancien régime.
Another clear indication of Burke’s political liberalism is his atti-
tude to religion. The state must be silent about religious truth, not
because there is none, but because it is hard to discern, and the
attempt to impose upon others leads to conflict and oppression. So
we have the characteristic liberal call to religious tolerance, based
first of all upon a sense of a lack of certainty in religious matters, but
then justified in terms of the Christian virtue of charity: ‘Perhaps
[religious] truth may be far better [than social peace]. But as we have
scarcely ever the same certainty in the one that we have in the other,
I would, unless the truth were evident indeed, hold fast to peace,
which has in her company charity, the highest of virtues.’ Burke is
explicit that authority derives from consent, expressed over time
59° Burke, ‘Appeal’, p. 422.

60 Edmund Burke, ‘Speech on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings’ (3rd
Day, 18 February 1788), in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
(London: Bohn Standard Library, 1877-84), Vol. 7, pp. 43-5.
61 Edmund Burke, ‘A Letter on the Affairs of Ireland, written in the year
1797’, in Works and Correspondence, Vol. v1, pp. 75-6.
within a mixed constitution. A certain amount of relearning of the
‘conservative’ Burke might be required to see this point. Burke does
not believe in democratic elections as the effective mechanism for
representing the people and protecting their ancient liberties (the
purpose of government, in Burke’s view). He believes, as we may not,
in custom, tradition, history and the common law, and in the repre-
sentation of the people in a largely undemocratic mixed constitution.
But the crucial liberal point is that authority is derived by popular
consent, and is ordered towards the preservation of the subject’s life,
liberty and property. How that consent is registered is another
matter; elective democratic representation is not necessary to politi-
cal liberalism. Rather democratic representation through elections is
thought by some to be the only effective guarantor of liberalism, or
to be a legitimate expression of it; by others, such as Burke, demo-
cratic representation through polling is conceived to be a dangerous
threat to political liberalism.
The greatest danger to the liberties of individuals is arbitrary rule,
the overpowering of rational government. Burke considers that
democracy is a great danger to liberalism — indeed ‘the most false,
wicked, and mischievous doctrine that ever could be preached to [the
people]? — because it fosters and nourishes a desire for arbitrary
power:
... arbitrary power is so much to the depraved taste of the vulgar,

of the vulgar of every description, that almost all the dissensions,
which lacerate the commonwealth, are not concerning the manner
in which it is to be exercised, but concerning the hands in which it
is to be placed. Somewhere they are resolved to have it. Whether
they desire it to be vested in the many or the few, depends with
most men upon the chance which they imagine they themselves
may have or partaking in the exercise of that arbitrary sway, in the
one mode or in the other.
The broader lesson to be learnt from Burke’s anti-democratic stance

is that attitudes to representative mechanisms of democracy are no
litmus test for a thinker’s political liberalism, especially where there
is a concern about the frailty and fallenness of individuals, and the
potential tyranny of majorities over the liberties of individuals (the
great liberal passion).
°° Burke, ‘Appeal’, p. 459.

Obscured Order 19
This passion comes to the fore where Burke expresses his concern
about the ambitions of the post-revolutionary French state:
Individuality is left out of their scheme of Government. The state

is all in all. Everything is referred to the production of force; after-
wards everything is entrusted to the use of it. It is military in its
principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The
state has dominion and conquest for its sole object; dominion over
minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms.®
This violates the principle that the state ‘has been made to the people,
not the people conformed to the state’. Not only should the state seek
‘every sort of social advantage’, but it should also cultivate ‘the
welfare of every individual’. Countries that value liberty are such
that ‘the objects (the ends) which they embrace are of the greatest
possible variety, and have become in a manner infinite’. This means
necessarily that no one plan or end will be pursued, for the ends of
individuals are various and not to be lightly trampled upon. Burke
fears the way in which the French state is ‘considered as a great
machine’ which operates ‘for some one great end’. Burke is more
comfortable with the British state, because in his view it ‘pursues the
greatest variety of ends, and is the least disposed to sacrifice any one
of them to another, or to the whole’:
It aims at taking in the entire circle of human desires, and securing

for them their fair enjoyment. Our legislature has been ever closely
connected, in its most efficient part, with individual feeling, and
individual interest. Personal liberty, the most lively of these feel-
ings and the most important of these interests, which in other
European countries has rather arisen from the system of manners
and the habitudes of life, than from the laws of the state, (in which
it flourished more from neglect than attention) in England, has
been a direct object of government.”
Whatever we make of the comparative politics here, these comments

underline the importance to Burke of the personal liberty of subjects
to frame and pursue — without state interference — their own ends,
63 Edmund Burke, ‘Second Letter on a Regicide Peace’, in Works and Corre-

spondence, Vol. v, p. 340.
64 Burke, ‘Second Letter’, pp. 339-40.
various and incompatible as these may be. This must be one of the
enduring pedal notes of all variations of political liberalism, and
Burke’s political thought at points resonates deeply with it.
A feature of Burke’s thinking which might be thought to be in
tension with other aspects of the liberal tradition is his hostility to
calls for equality, compounded by his troublesome and at times
effusive affection for aristocracy. The liberal tradition is usually com-
mited to some notion of the equality of citizens. There can be no
doubt that aspects of Burke’s thought are in tension with a more
developed and egalitarian liberalism; Burke is a multi-valenced
thinker who became important for traditions other than the liberal
one that I am highlighting. Nonetheless, there is something which
can be said to mitigate the ‘offence’ (in politically liberal terms) of
Burke’s apparent inegalitarianism.
Taking an unambiguously political liberal thinker such as John
Rawls — whom I will discuss extensively in the next chapter — we find
that he is able to endorse a ‘complex egalitarianism’ when unpacking
what is involved in a society of ‘free and equal citizens’. A complex
egalitarianism does not call for a levelling of all resources, wealth and
symbolic power. Rather the maxim is that inequalities are justified
inasmuch as the least advantaged are better off with them than they
would be without them. Although Rawls comments that contempo-
rary American culture is a long way from being in such a position,
some inequality is in principle acceptable, if it is to the ‘greatest
benefit of the least-advantaged members of society’.®° Burke’s posi-
tion is in fact not so different, in that he certainly considers the least
advantaged to be better off with the inequalities than without them.
He makes a distinction between ‘levelling’ and ‘equalizing’, where
the former is a blanket reduction of all to the same estate, and the
latter is more like a just distribution of resources (material and
symbolic) according to — as Burke sees it — merit, need (widely under-
stood) and overall utility. Burke’s conviction is that ‘those who
attempt to level, never equalize’, for ‘in all societies, consisting
of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be
upper-most’.®6
Although we may not agree with Burke’s view here, that he
defends an unequal distribution of resources and power hardly dis-
®* John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 43.
°° Edmund Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, in Works and
Correspondence, Vol. tv, p. 190.
Obscured Order 21
qualifies him from being a ‘liberal’. Otherwise seminally liberal
thinkers such as Locke and Hayek would be disqualified, supporting
as they do unequal distribution of resources for a mixture of reasons
to do with merit, need and overall utility. Burke’s aversion to level-
ling programmes is made more comprehensible in the light of his
attachment to ‘order’, and his wariness about the ‘tricks and devices
of human skill’, both of which I will go on to discuss.
Even the impact of Burke’s interest in the aristocracy can be miti-
gated by reflecting on the intentions behind both Burke’s endorse-
ment and Rawlsian ‘complex egalitarianism’. The importance Burke
places in aristocrats does not arise from any sense that the aristocrat
is necessarily a more excellent human being (although he should have
certain virtues attendant upon his birth and education, as each of the
estates should), or deserves more protection under the law; Burke is
not inegalitarian in that sense. Rather, Burke considers that the
historical institution of aristocracy is a vital protection of certain
basic liberties of the subject. This argument was prevalent in an
English republican tradition, with Milton praising ‘those faithful and
courageous barons’ of the Middle Ages ‘who lost their lives in the
field, making glorious war against the tyrants for the common
liberty’.°’ A similar expectation of the nobility was espoused after the
Restoration by the republican writer Algernon Sidney who recalled
the ‘ancient’, ‘warlike’, ‘powerful, gallant nobility’ who had spirits
‘suitable to their births’ and who had been able to protect the liber-
ties of the subject, ‘to restrain the exorbitances that either the king,
or the commons might run into’.®* Burke is less convinced about the
personal merits of aristocrats, commenting that the House of Lords
were ‘in general, languid, scrupulous, and unsystematic’, although
‘on the whole’ Burke inclines to the view that ‘the faults in. . . [the
Lords]... are no more than the ordinary frailties of human nature’.
Nonetheless, that the nobles had something of a protective national
role for Burke is made clear, for instance, in a letter to the Duke of
Richmond where he instructs his grace that ‘you, if you are what you
67 John Milton, The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. D. M. Wolfe,
8 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952-82), Vol. 11, p. 343. My com-
ments on the English republican tradition are indebted to Blair Worden’s article
‘English Republicanism’ in J. H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Political
Thought 1450-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 443-
75. For the discussion of Milton and Sidney see p. 459.
68 Robert Molesworth, An Account of Denmark (London: 1694), p. 70.
6° Edmund Burke, Letter to the Duke of Richmond Nov 17 1772, in Works
and Correspondence, Vol. 1, p. 187.
a The Politics of Human Frailty
ought to be, are the great oaks that shade a country and perpetuate
your benefits from Generation to Generation’.”°
Nevertheless, the aristocrat is often not what he ought to be, and
Burke is frequently exhausted and exasperated by the behaviour of
actual nobility. So in 1795 Burke complained of how the Duke of
Bedford oppressed the industry of the ‘common man’, by which
Burke meant himself, being as he was of fairly humble origins: “The
Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the
crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in
the ocean of royal bounty. Huge as he is . . . he is still a creature.’”!
Burke goes on to describe his grace’s ‘ribs, his fins, his whale bone,
his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of
brine against his origin, and covers me all over with the spray’.”
So Burke’s affection for aristocracy is not straightforward. He
tends to demand from aristocrats the stability and protections we
would expect from more democratic institutions. The difference
between a thinker like Burke and John Rawls is less a substantial one
concerning the intrinsic excellence of persons, leading to a different
standing before the law; the concern is more how best to preserve (as
we would understand them) liberal protections. For Rawls, inequal-
ities are justified if under them the least advantaged are still better off
than they would be with greater equality; this, however erroneous,
would be the grounds of Burke’s defence of aristocracy.
Lord Acton, the nineteenth-century liberal, was so explicitly con-
cerned with the theological basis of his political liberalism, that he
proclaimed to have ‘renounced everything in Catholicism which was
not compatible with Liberty, and everything in Politics which was
not compatible with Catholicity’.”* Although Acton conceded that
‘liberty’ was ‘an idea of which there are two hundred definitions’,’4 it
was recognizable most of all by the absence of arbitrary rule and the
protection of the liberties of individuals: ‘you will know it by out-
ward signs: Representation, the extinction of slavery .. . and the like;
” Burke, ‘Richmond’, p. 190.

” Edmund Burke, ‘A Letter to a Noble Lord’, in Works and Correspondence,
Vol. v, pp. 215-50.
” Burke, ‘Letter’, pp. 215—5o.
as
Lord Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power (Boston, Mass.: The Beacon
Press, 1948), p. lvi.
™ From his Inaugural Lecture delivered at Cambridge, 11 June 1895, reprint-
ed in Lectures on Modern History (London and New York: Macmillan, 1906)
pp. 12-13.
ef
Obscured Order 23
better still by less apparent evidences: the security of the weaker

groups and the liberty of conscience, which, effectually secured,
secures the rest’.’> Acton was convinced that ‘politics is an affair of
principle, that it is an affair of morality, that it touches eternal inter-
ests as much as vices and virtues do in public life’.”* Concerning
Burke, Acton wrote to Gladstone ‘some day, I shall say to a pupil:
Read Burke night and day. He is our best political writer, and the
deepest of all Whigs.’”” No one could deny the ‘liberal’ credentials of
Acton and Gladstone (if they are not liberals, the category is an
empty one); Acton’s deep admiration of Burke, and his proclaiming
Burke as ‘the deepest of all Whigs’, with Whiggery to an extent
becoming nineteenth-century Gladstonian liberalism,” is perhaps a
testimony to the possibilities of a liberal reading of Burke.
Acton, like Burke, had a theological appreciation of the need to
protect individuals both because of the dignity of our freedom, and
the wretchedness of our fallen condition: ‘now as heretofore, the
Men of the Time are, in most cases, unprincipled, and act from
motives of interest, of passion, of prejudice cherished and unchecked,
of selfish hope or unworthy fear’.” This criticism is rooted explicitly
in Acton’s Christian beliefs:
The Christian is bound by his very creed to suspect evil, and

cannot release himself... religion has brought evil to light in a way
in which it never was before; it has shown its depth, subtlety,
ubiquity; and a revelation, full of mercy on the one hand, is
terrible in its exposure of the world’s real state on the other. The
Gospel fastens the sense of evil upon the mind; a Christian is
enlightened, hardened, sharpened, as to evil; he sees it where
others do not... He owns the doctrine of original sin; that doc-
trine puts him necessarily on his guard against all appearances,
75 Acton, Lectures, pp. 12-13.

76 Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone, ed. Herbert Paul (London and
New York: Macmillan, 1904), p. 105.
77 Scholarly integrity demands that I complete Acton’s sentence: *. . . and he
(the student) will answer: Dear Me! I thought he broke up the party, carried it
over to the Tories, admired the despotism of the Bourbons, and trained no end
of men towards Conservatism? I shall have to answer: So he did. Both sayings
are true. In Lord Acton and His Circle, ed. G. Abbot (London and New York:
Gasquet, 1906, p. 60).
78 Which is not to under-emphasize the importance of other traditions that
fed into Gladstonian liberalism, such as the Peelites and Radicals.
79 Letters to Mary Gladstone, p. 228.
sustains his apprehension under perplexity, and prepares him for
recognizing anywhere what he knows to be everywhere.”
Here we have a liberal denying the supposedly ‘liberal’ conviction

that evils can be eliminated by education, social programmes or
better government. In Acton’s famous dictums that ‘progress is the
religion of those who have none’*! and ‘power tends to corrupt and
absolute power corrupts absolutely’,*? we have a sense that there
is an irreducible wickedness in human nature, a general, basic and
radical evil. Himmelfarb comments that this sense ‘depended upon
the paradoxical insight that men are sinful creatures, not to be con-
fused with God, and that, created in the likeness of God, they have
spiritual needs that no amount of material well-being can satisfy’.®°
As with Burke there is a sense that human nature is both created and
fallen, and that liberal political institutions that protect the frail and
dependent individual must contain this wickedness.
At the same time, Acton disagrees with Burke’s prescription as to
how these protections are to be maintained. Although both fear the
tyranny of the majority, Acton’s suspicion of human nature is more
consistently applied across the board than Burke’s, and lacks the
latter’s high expectations of aristocrats and the ancien régime.
Consequently Acton supports the expansion of democracy in the
form of the Reform Acts of the 1830s, commenting that ‘the danger
is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to
govern.’** We would endorse Acton’s censure of Burke, and the
recognition of the vital role of democracy as one of the protections of
liberal democracy within a mixed constitution.
Leo Strauss: order and nature

Leo Strauss tells a story about the demise of the notion of natural
law in political philosophy. It is my conviction that Burke creates
problems for this story, and that once the narrative framework has
been pierced in one place, other fragments seem to fit the accepted
picture less comfortably. The story Strauss tells goes something like
this. In the eighteenth century modern natural science destroyed ‘the
Acton, ‘Study of History’, in Essays, p. 28.

Acton, Essays, p. xxxviii. Quoting from Add. MSS., 5648.
‘Acton—Creighton Correspondence’ in Acton, Essays, p. 3 64.
Acton, ‘Introduction’, Essays, p. |.
Acton, Letters to Mary Gladstone, p. 196.
Obscured Order Z5
teleological view of the universe, of which the teleological view of
man forms a part’.®* It was found to be unpalatable to follow up the
non-teleological conception of the universe with a similarly non-
teleological account of human life as ‘it seemed to be impossible to
give an adequate account of human ends by conceiving of them
merely as posited by desires or impulses’.*° The unstable solution
found was ‘to accept a fundamental, typically modern, dualism of a
nonteleological natural science and a teleological science of man’.°”
An attempt was made to locate the difference between man and non-
human nature in the dimension of history, ‘history was thought to
supply the only empirical, and hence the only solid, knowledge of
what is truly human, of man as man: of his greatness and misery’.*®
At the same time, empirical historical study revealed a great diversity
and plurality of forms of life, challenging the very notion that there is
anything at all which constitutes man’s nature, ‘man as man’.*’ This
presented a challenge to natural right doctrines, which ‘claim that the
fundamentals of justice are, in principle, accessible to man as man.
They presuppose, therefore, that a most important truth can, in
principle, be accessible to man as man.’”? What started as an attempt
to mark out the teleological nature of man within an historical
dimension becomes a ‘radical historicism’ which ‘asserts that the
basic insight into the essential limitation of all human thought is not
accessible to man as man, or that it is not the result of the progress of
the labor of human thought, but that it is an unforeseeable gift of
unfathomable fate’.®! ‘Fate’ stands for all the contingency of our
thrownness in the world, rendering us incapable of speaking about
any ‘essential’ nature, rather than our constructed social roles and
identities. Radical historicism, coupled with the supposed impossi-
bility of going from factual statements to value judgements, led to the
demise of natural right doctrines, and the death of any notion of
unconstructed, given order.
Ultimately responsible for this demise of the natural law tradition
is the modern turn away from attending to eternal order, towards
85 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1953), p- 8.
86 Strauss, Natural Right, p. 8.
°° Strauss, Natural Right, p. 28.
attending to human construction. The account of how this happens
given by Strauss is complex, and needs some unteasing. First of all,
the difference between the modern and the pre-modern is distinctly
not, for Strauss, that the moderns are sceptical about natural law,
whereas the pre-moderns thought it possible to read the natural
law, the purposes of creation from creation itself. Strauss insists that
being bewildered by the ‘variety of notions of right’ and so moving
towards the ‘nonexistence of natural right’ ‘is as old as political
philosophy itself’.°? Rather, the difference between classical and
modern approaches for Strauss seems to be the following.
The classical approach

Even where there is not a sense of natural law, there is nevertheless a
view that there is a natural and eternal order, not constructed by
human convention. Because of the epistemological difficulty of read-
ing this order, in human and political affairs it may be that we have
little to go on except convention, an ‘agreement which may produce
peace’ but ‘not truth’.”’ The crucial difficulty here is epistemological.
There is an eternal and natural order, which in principle could be
known, but in practice this is so difficult that we must rely on con-
vention, although ‘nature is of incomparably higher dignity than
convention of the fiat of society’.”* Although convention can be given
an important role, it is ‘originally an inadequate attempt to answer
the question of the all-comprehensive truth of the eternal order...
The fundamental premise of conventionalism is, then, nothing other
than the idea of philosophy as the attempt to grasp the eternal.’
The ‘modern turn’ and the modern denial of natural right takes the
following form:
The modern approach

The difficulty with natural right — and its associated notions of order,
law and harmony — for the modern approach is not epistemological
but ontological. There is no sense that it is ‘difficult’ to discern order,
in that there just is no natural and eternal order which it could be
92
Strauss, Natural Right, p. 10.
93
94
°° Strauss, Natural Right, p. 12.
Obscured Order 27
difficult to read. So ‘the adherents of the modern historical view . . .
reject as mythical the premise that nature is the norm; they reject the
premise that nature is of higher dignity than any works of man’.
This lends an importance to convention that was not there on the
classical view. On the classical view, convention is in principle
answerable to a non-constructed order; whereas on the modern view
there is no ontological lever with which one can be sceptical about
human conventions. Where grasping the eternal is in principle
impossible (because of its completely noumenal status, or because
everything is a human construction), the ‘eternal’ becomes in practice
irrelevant. Where the classical approach sees ‘philosophy as the
attempt to grasp the eternal’, ‘the modern opponents of natural right
reject precisely this idea. According to them, all human thought is
historical and hence unable ever to grasp anything eternal.’”” “The
contemporary rejection of natural right in the name of history is
based’, writes Strauss ‘not on historical evidence, but on a philo-
sophical critique of the possibility or knowability of natural right.’
This ‘critique of the possibility or knowability’ of natural right goes
beyond the epistemological difficulties of the classical approach.
Rather it asserts that it is in principle impossible to know, just
because there is nothing to know.
Some attention to crucial passages in Burke reveal that he fits
Strauss’s ‘classical’ model much more closely than the ‘modern’.
Burke it seems, and Burkean liberalism, is on the wrong side of the
modern turn. And if Burkean liberalism is, what else might be?
The ‘modern turn’ has something of the status of a Kuhnian para-
digm. A certain amount of marginal counter evidence can be accom-
modated, and the paradigm can remain because of its overall utility
and persuasiveness. But if the evidence against the paradigm is too
great, then it can be toppled. Then fragmented pieces, which previ-
ously might have been easily ignored, can begin to assume their own
pattern and centrality. There is, of course, no intention to replace one
monolithic impression of liberalism with another one, and there are
features of liberalism that the ‘modern turn’ explains well, just as
there were features of the universe explained well by the Ptolemaic
world-view.
The Straussian paradigm begins to be stretched, then, when we
% Strauss, Natural Right, p. 11.

% Strauss, Natural Right, p. 12.
hear Burke proclaim that ‘I love order . . . for the universe is order’.”
God is ‘the awful Author of our being’ and ‘the Author of our place
in the order of existence’. Burke finds that order is ‘made to us, and
we are made to it’. We are all bound by the law that God has pre-
scribed for us. This ‘great immutable, pre-existent law’ connects us
with the ‘eternal frame of the universe’.'°° This eternal law gives our
conventions ‘all the force and sanction they can have’.'°! It simply
cannot be said that Burke has no sense of the answerability of human
convention to the ‘eternal law’ when we hear him say such things as
‘each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great
primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the
higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according
to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all
physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place’.'° The
different contracts made by political societies are as ‘municipal
corporations’ of a ‘universal kingdom’. There is certainly none of the
‘liberal’ or ‘modern’ confidence in human ability to freely construct
order and meaning when Burke tells us that these ‘municipal corpo-
rations’ are ‘not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their
speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and
tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dis-
solve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary
principles’ .!°%
For Burke there is an eternal order — it is hard to read, but human
convention is answerable to it. This is essentially the ‘classical’ point
of view on Strauss’s scheme. There is in political and moral matters
‘a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount
to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evi-
dence’.'°** Burke considers political society to be ordered, by the
consent of the people, for the preservation of the liberty of indi-
viduals. At the same time he has a powerful sense of our thrownness,
the contingency and createdness of the human condition, ‘this neces-
sity ...is part... of that moral and physical disposition of things, to
»” Edmund Burke, The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (Chicago and

Cambridge University Presses, 1958-70), Vol. v1, p. 460.
' Burke, Correspondence, Vol. vt, p. 7s
'°! Burke, Correspondence, Vol. vt, Deane
'? Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, in Works and Corre-
spondence, Vol. tv, p. 230.
103 Burke, ‘Reflections’, p. 230.
'0* Burke, ‘Reflections’, p. 230.
Obscured Order 29
which man must be obedient by consent of force’.!°°> When human
hubris leads man to break away from his createdness — as Burke
understands it — and to treat the eternal law as an ‘object of choice’
then ‘the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are
outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and
order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antago-
nist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing
sorrow’.
Now it is true that Burke places a high importance on convention,
custom, prescription and artifice in political affairs. This in no way
contradicts his reverence for the natural order; rather it is an intense
expression of it. The human mind and human reason are part of the
natural order, and nature — richly understood as a continuity running
through all of creation — commands that we obey convention,
custom and prescription. So Burke tells us that ‘in all things what-
ever, the mind is the most valuable and the most important’.’°” We
then have a classically Aristotelian expression of reason as the
informing principle, just as ‘the beast is an informing principle to the
plough and cart, the labourer is as reason to the beast; and the farmer
is as a thinking and presiding principle to the labourer’. In a crucial
passage linking Burke’s understanding of artificiality and ‘natural
law’, we see that there is no tension between the two, just because art
is ‘man’s nature’:
The state of civil society . . . is a state of nature; and much more

truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of life. For man is by
nature reasonable; and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but
when he is placed where reason may be best cultivated, and most
predominates. Art is man’s nature. We are as much, at least, ina
state of nature in formed manhood, as in immature and helpless
infancy. Men, qualified in the manner I have just described, form
in nature, as she operates in the common modification of society,
the leading, guiding and governing part. It is the soul to the body,
without which the man does not exist. To give therefore no more

108 Burke, ‘Thoughts and Details on Scarcity’, in Works and Correspondence,
Vol. v, p. 193.
importance, in the social order, to such descriptions of men, than
that of so many units, is a horrible usurpation.’”
So there is a natural law basis to Burke’s doctrine of prescription,

convention and tradition. Remember that this natural law connects
us ultimately to the eternal created order, and so is answerable to
that. There is a high importance for convention in Burke, but again,
it resembles more the classical view, where the natural order is
something apart from and prior to the human, but in which the
human participates by virtue of our rational nature. Where there is a
difficulty in talking of the natural law - again as with Strauss’s
classical view — it is in terms of the epistemological difficulty of
knowing what it is, given our ‘fallible and feeble’ natures. Hence, for
Burke, the need for institutions and traditions rich in memory and
experience:
Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial

institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful
instincts, to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our
reason, we have derived several other, and those no small benefits,
from considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance.!!°
Burke combines an orientation to the eternal divine law with an

endorsement of the local particularity of different forms of govern-
ment and convention, depending upon the customs and history of
various societies. This way of conceiving the relationship between
local particularity and divine law is not evidence of a ‘modern’ con-
structivism or a creeping relativism, but goes back to a distinction
drawn by Augustine between the eternal and temporal law. In De
libero arbitrio Augustine gives an example of a law which deserves to
be called ‘eternal’:
. . consider the law that is called the highest reason, which must
always be obeyed, and by which the wicked deserve misery and the
good deserve a happy life and by which the law that we agreed to
call ‘temporal’ is rightly enacted and rightly changed. Can anyone
of sense deny that this law is unchangeable and eternal?""™!
109 Burke, ‘Appeal’, p. 467.

"0 Burke, ‘Reflections’, p. 178.
'" The translation used is by T. Williams, Augustine, On Free Choice of the
Will, (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993), Bk I.6,
Obscured Order a7
As human beings are ‘changeable and subject to time’,!'” there must
also be temporal law ‘promulgated in writing helpful to human
beings living in this present life’.!!> This law is ‘temporal’, for
‘although it is just, it can justly be changed in the course of time’.!4
These temporal laws, although changeable over time, and variable
from people to people, nonetheless gain whatever validity they do
from their service to the eternal law. The eternal law that ‘is stamped
upon our minds is the law according to which it is just that all
things be perfectly ordered’ and is that ‘by which all temporal laws
regarding human government can be changed’.''’ Burke is a perfect
Augustinian when writing, as quoted above, that ‘each contract of
each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of
eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting
the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanc-
tioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral
natures, each in their appointed place’.1!
The final nail in the coffin of any attempt to place Burke in the
modern ‘historical’ camp must be his strictures against the impor-
tance of the historical dimension. Burke is strong on time, and the
frailties and contingencies which belong to our temporal nature, but
there is not in Burke any sense that ‘history’ yields the key to man’s
unique nature, nor that in any sense it is a progressive or dynamic
concept. The crucial category for Burke is constantly temporal
nature, rather than a dynamic historical progress or awareness. So
p. 11. The original text is as follows: ‘. . . illa lex quae summa ratio nominatur,
cui semper obtemperandum est et per quam mali miseram, boni beatam uitam
merentur, per quam denique illa, quam temporalem uocandam diximus, recte
fertur recteque mutatur, potestne cuipiam intellegenti non incommutabilis aeter-
naque uideri?’, De Libero Arbitrio, Bk 1.6, p. 220, in Aurelii Augustini Opera,
Pars I:2: Contra Academicos in Corpus Christianorum, Series Lata 29
(Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1970).
12 Augustine, Free Choice, p. 10. ‘... Mutabiles temporibusque subjecti ...’,
De Libero Arbitrio, p. 219.
13 Augustine, Free Choice, p. 10. ‘.. . Utrum lex quae litteris promulgator
hominibus hanc uitam uiuentibus opituletor’, De Libero Arbitrio, p. 220.
114 Augustine, Free Choice, p. 11. ‘Appellemus ergo istam legem . . . tempo-
ralem quae quamquam iusta sit, commutari tamen per tempora iuste potest’, De
Libero Arbitrio, p. 220.
4S Augustine, Free Choice, p. 11. ‘Cum ergo sit una lex, ex qua illae omnes
temporales ad homines regendos uariantur, num ideo ipsa uariari ullo modo
potest?’, De Libero Arbitrio, p. 220.
ao The Politics of Human Frailty
after reaffirming again that ‘our political system is placed in a just

correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with
the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of
transitory parts wherein’, Burke informs us that:
. . the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the

whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in
a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the
varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.
Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the
state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new; in what we
retain, we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this manner
and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by
the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic
analogy.'!”
This passage also explodes the consensus that liberalism is neces-

sarily attached to at least a broad sense of progress; there could be no
more perfect expression of the classical Augustinian view of history
than Burke’s invocation of the ‘varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall,
renovation, and progression’.!!8
Where there is a difference between Burke and the classical tradi-
tion, it lies in the enormous emphasis Burke can put on the individual
and the liberties of the individual. Strauss correctly picks up on this,
but goes on to draw the wrong implication when he comments that
for Burke, ‘naturalness and free flowering of individuality are the
same’,'’” as if Burke is somehow taken in by the ‘modern turn’ and
announces that order and meaning arise from the free construction
and expression of individuals. Burke emphasizes the individual
not because of the individual’s potency and creative constructive
abilities, but precisely because of the individual’s created, fallen,
thrown, frail and complex condition. The protection of individuals
needs to be the lynch-pin of political liberalism, just because indi-
viduals, taken singly or collectively, are dangerous and fallen. There
is such a thing as human wisdom, but it is so obscured and delicate,
that it needs to be read off generations, rather than individuals or
committees.
117
Burke, ‘Reflections’, p. 178.
"8 Burke, ‘Reflections’, p. 178.
"? Burke, ‘Reflections’, p. 178.
Obscured Order a3
So the difference between Burke and the ‘classical view’ as outlined

by Strauss is not at all that Burke thinks that there is no eternal order,
or that we construct such order that there is, but rather that Burkean
liberalism elaborates on a classical theme — the epistemological
difficulty of reading this order — and adds a theological richness to
this in terms of his compassionate sense of human fallenness. There
is a greater emphasis on the individual in Burkean liberalism than in
Straussian classicism, but this is due to an even more pronounced
sense of our created, fallen and thrown condition, answerable to the
eternal order which it sees but through a glass darkly. It is certainly
not ascribable to the modern disease of believing that individual
expressivity, creativity and construction is salvific in itself.
Burke and the politics offallenness

The third phase of the discussion shows how Burke has a profound
and compassionate sense of human imperfectibility, frailty and com-
plexity, which gives his political thought an allergy to abstraction,
metaphysical generalization, extremism and progressivism. We will
see how this sense of human imperfectibility is a generating motiva-
tion for Burke’s liberalism and individualism; although there is order
and harmony, it is hard — but not impossible — to read it, owing to the
obscured quality of the order.
Burke’s view is that a tendency towards oversimplistic extremism,
generalization and metaphysical abstractions arises from failing to
reckon with our complexity, fallenness and fallibility — very similar,
as we will see, to the anxieties expressed by Hooker in relation to
Puritanism. Failing to account for ‘the concerns, the actions’ and ‘the
passions’ of men leads thinkers to attempt to treat social knowledge
as a species of technical or scientific knowledge, exactly the tendency
in ‘liberalism’ identified by theologians in the wake of Heidegger:
These philosophers consider men in their experiments, not more

than they do mice in an air pump, or in a recipient of mephitic gas
_.. It is remarkable, that, in a great arrangement of mankind, not
one reference whatsoever is to be found to anything moral or
anything politic; nothing that relates to the concerns, the actions,
the passions, the interests of men.'”°
120 Burke, ‘Letter to a Noble Lord’, p. 246.

The need for caution in politics is brought about because of our frail
and complex condition. Burke is subtle here, both celebrating our
createdness, and lamenting our fallen frailty. So, on the one hand, we
find Burke discouraging a lament at the created human condition,
stating that ‘he censures God who quarrels with the imperfections of
man’:'?! ‘There is no part of our condition, but we ought to submit to
with cheerfulness. Why should I desire to be more than man? I have
too much reverence for our nature to wish myself divested even of the
weak parts of it.”!?? On the other hand the invocation to ‘submit . . .
with cheerfulness’ has to be read against Burke’s cautionary stricture
that ‘the natural progress of the passions, from frailty to vice, ought
to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand’.'*3 In history ‘a
great volume is unrolled for our instruction’ consisting ‘for the
greater part’ of humanity’s slippage from frailty to vice, of the
‘miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice,
revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train
of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same’.!**
This is not so different from Richard Hooker’s observation that
faults that arise ‘from the root of human frailty and corruption...
not only are, but have been always more or less, yea .. . will be till the
world’s end complained of’.!2* Human nature is imperfect; therefore
we should be practical, realistic and compassionate, rather than full
of righteousness, pride, extreme idealism or indignation. But there is
something from which we have fallen, something we should have
been, a moral order exemplifying goodness, beauty and harmony,
and we should still orientate ourselves as much as possible to this
order.
So Burke sees the need for the irreducible wickedness of the human
condition to be contained within stable structures, rather than
attempting to eliminate it through radical measures, for
you would not cure the evil by resolving, that there should be
no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the Gospel; no
interpreters of law; no general officers; no public councils. You
*! HV. F. Somerset (ed.), A Notebook of Edmund Burke (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1957), p. 92.
' Burke, ‘Speech at Bristol, previous to the Election, 1780’, in Works and
Correspondence, Vol. m1, p. 411.
5 Richard Hooker, ‘Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity’, preface, ch. m1. 7, p. 147.
Obscured Order 35
might change the names. The things in some shape must remain. A
certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in
some hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply
their remedies to vices, not to occasional organs by which they act,
and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will
be wise historically, a fool in practice.!*°
If one reacts only to the ‘transitory organ’ by which ‘vice’ acts, one
will fall foul of the fact that
seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts and the
same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive.
Whilst you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very
same vice assumes a new body ... You are terrifying yourselves
with ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is a haunt of
robbers. It is thus with all those, who, attending only to the shell
and husk of history, think they are waging war with intolerance,
pride and cruelty, whilst, under colour of abhorring the ill prin-
ciples of antiquated parties, they are authorizing and feeding the
same odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse.'?’
The political implications of Burke’s understanding of human

weakness contained within a moral framework are well understood
by the commentator Michael Freeman:
Men who hate vice too much, says Burke, love men too little. Men
of excessive virtue may take excessive measures to bring ordinary
men into the path of virtue. In the womb of moral puritanism
lies the seed of political authoritarianism. Fanaticism, even if altru-
istic, perhaps especially when altruistic, poses a greater threat to
freedom and humanity than ordinary selfishness. Paradoxically,
extreme virtue turns into extreme vice.'?8
Anticipating the Manichaean tendencies of crusading liberalism,

which will be discussed in Chapter 3, it is interesting to find Freeman
using a similar vocabulary for Burke’s critique: “Burke . . . accused

127 Burke, ‘Reflections’, p. 267. oak.
128 Michael Freeman, Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1980), p. 41.
revolutionaries of Manichaeanism, the belief that the world is
divided between the forces of Good and Evil’.’””
The spirit of loving reformation

A sense of human frailty does not lead into a moral or political
nihilism, but rather lends itself naturally to a reforming nature, but
reform enacted out of a sense of caution about oneself, compassion
for others and a sense of the frailty and limitations of human agency.
Burke cautions against a ‘mode of arguing from your having done
any thing in a certain line, to the necessity of doing every thing’. Such
an approach ‘has political consequences of other moment than those
of a logical fallacy’.'°°
In his efforts for reform Burke aims to act towards the constitution
— ‘no simple, no superficial thing, nor to be estimated by superficial
understandings’?! — on the analogy of a ‘friend with frailties’ :'?
I think it a duty, in that case, not to inflame the public mind against
the obnoxious person, by any exaggeration of his faults. It is our
duty rather to palliate his errors and defects, or to cast them into
the shade, and industriously to bring forward any good qualities
that he may happen to possess.!*
So, contrary to what is sometimes thought, Burke did not think the
British constitution was perfect; it had, he acknowledged, obnoxious
elements and faults. Taking the friend analogy further, Burke gives
us an account of what the ‘spirit of reformation’ consists in:
...it then becomes the office of a friend to urge his faults and vices
with all the energy of enlightened affection, to paint them in their
most vivid colours, and to bring the moral patient to a better habit.
Thus I think with regard to individuals; thus I think with regard to
ancient and respected governments and orders of men. A spirit of
reformation is never more consistent with itself, than when it
refuses to be rendered the means of destruction.!*4
29 Freeman, Burke, p. 51.

i3? burke, Appeal’; p42,
152, Burke, ‘Appeal’, ps 42.6;
133, Burke, ‘Appeal’, p. 426.
Obscured Order 37
Destruction, Burke considers, is the likely result when we turn our
hand to the transforming — the ‘demolition and construction’ — of
human nature. Here we have a fine statement of the danger of con-
structionism and the view that the subject can construct itself and
society:
If circumspection and caution are a part of wisdom, when we work

only upon inanimate matter, surely they become a part of duty
too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not
brick and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of
whose state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered
miserable.'°>
The spirit of loving reformation, which refuses to be ‘the means of

destruction’ is the only approach which recognizes that ‘the nature of
man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible
complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of
power can be suitable either to man’s nature, or to the quality of his
affairs’.!°° So from considerations to do with human createdness
within a moral order, and fallenness from this order, we derive a
warning concerning political simplifications and metaphysical
generalization, for ‘circumstances are infinite, and infinitely com-
bined’, they are ‘ are variable and transient’ and ‘he, who does not
take them into consideration is not erroneous, but stark mad... A
statesman, never losing sight of principles, is to be guided by circum-
stances; and judging contrary to the exigencies of the moment he
may ruin his country for ever.’!’’ In this last sentence we have the
createdness and fallenness perfectly poised: the statesman must never
lose ‘sight of principles’, the eternal moral order, but must also be
‘suided by circumstances . . . the exigencies of the moment’.
Contrary to the spirit of loving reformation within a framework of
obscured order, is a simplistic and metaphysically abstract way of
proceeding, such as Burke considered to be at work in the French
Revolution. In a sentiment reminiscent of Hooker’s warning, which
we will come to in the next chapter, against the Puritans who
135 Burke, ‘A Letter from Mr. Burke to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of
America’, in Works and Correspondence, Vol. Il, p. 322.
137 Burke, ‘Letters on a Regicide Peace’, in Works and Correspondence, Vol.
V, P-307-
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
V.
Wederzijdsche Ophelderingen.
Vrij-Kogel en zijne twee kameraden hadden, dank zij de gunstige plaats
waar zij stonden, niet alleen alles wat er in het kamp der Apachen omging,
kunnen zien, maar tevens zonder een woord er van te missen alles gehoord
wat er tusschen Loer-Vogel en den Rooden-Wolf gesproken was.
Sedert vele jaren reeds waren de twee Canadesche jagers naauw aan
[27]elkander verbonden: menige stoutmoedige onderneming die de
woudloopers gewoon zijn tegen de Indianen te wagen, hadden zij zamen
beraamd of uitgevoerd; zij hadden voor elkander geene geheimen; alles was
onder hen gemeenschappelijk, hunne vijandschappen zoo wel als hunne
vriendschappen.
Vrij-Kogel was dus volmaakt goed op de hoogte van het onderwerp dat
door den Rooden-Wolf ter sprake werd gebragt, en zoo zekere redenen, die
wij later zullen vermelden, het hem niet hadden belet, zou hij waarschijnlijk
zijn vriend in het ontvoeren der Wilde-Roos uit de magt van den Apachen-
chef hebben bijgestaan. Maar hoe goed hij ook met deze zaak bekend was,
bleef er toch altijd een punt duister voor hem, namelijk, de vreedzame
tegenwoordigheid van Loer-Vogel in het kamp der Indianen, na den strijd
van welke hij de kreten en de geweerschoten had gehoord en die hier in
vriendschappelijk gesprek scheen te eindigen.
Door welken vreemden zamenloop van omstandigheden kwam het, dat

Loer-Vogel, de man die de listen der Indianen het best kende en wiens roem
van behendigheid en moed algemeen onder de jagers en strikkenzetters van
het Westen verspreid was, zich in zulk eene gevaarlijke positie bevond, te
midden van dertig à veertig Apachen, de geslependste, verraderlijkste en
wildste Indianen-stam van allen die in de woestijn rondzwierven? Dit was
een raadsel, dat de eerlijke jager niet kon oplossen en hem geheel in
verwarring bragt.
Op gevaar af van hetgeen er zou kunnen volgen, besloot hij om zijn vriend
van zijne tegenwoordigheid te verwittigen, door een signaal dat tusschen
hen sedert lang was afgesproken, om hem te waarschuwen, dat er in geval
van nood, een vriend voor hem waakte. Dit was het zuchtend gefluit
geweest, dat, gelijk wij straks gezien hebben, den benarden jager van
vreugde had doen sidderen. Maar het signaal had nog iets anders ten
gevolge, dat Vrij-Kogel wel verre was van te verwachten; de takken
namelijk, van den boom waartegen hij geleund stond, werden schier
onmerkbaar uiteengeschoven, en een man die er met beide armen aanhing,
viel op eens, geen twee passen van hem verwijderd op den grond, maar zoo
zacht en stil, dat de schok niet het minste gedruisch maakte.
Op het eerste oogenblik reeds had Vrij-Kogel den man, die als uit de lucht
scheen te vallen, herkend; en hij had het enkel aan zijne volkomene
zelfbeheersching te danken, dat hij de verwondering, welke deze
onverwachte verschijning hem baarde, niet met een schreeuw te kennen gaf.
De jager zette zijn buks met de kolf op den grond, en zei tegen den Indiaan,
terwijl hij hem met een glimlach groette:
—Nu! hoofdman, dat noem ik een zonderling idee, om zoo laat in den nacht
op de boomen te wandelen.
—De Vliegende-Arend bespiedt de Apachen, antwoordde de Indiaan

fluisterend; had mijn broeder niet gedacht mij te zien?
—In de prairie moet men op alles bedacht zijn, hoofdman; ik wil u wel
zeggen dat weinig ontmoetingen mij zoo aangenaam zijn als de uwe, vooral
in deze oogenblikken. [28]
—Is mijn broeder ook op het spoor der Antilope-Apachen?
—Ik zweer u op mijn woord, hoofdman, dat ik naauwelijks een uur geleden
niet wist dat ik zoo digt bij hen was; als ik u niet had hooren schieten, lag ik
waarschijnlijk op dit oogenblik gerust te slapen in mijn kampement.
—Ja, mijn broeder heeft zeker de buks van een vriend hooren fluiten en is
daarom hier gekomen.
—Juist geraden, hoofdman. Maar verklaar u intusschen nader, en zeg mij
wat er van is, want ik weet waarlijk van niets.
—Heeft mijn blanke broeder dan den Rooden-Wolf niet gehoord?
—Woord voor woord, hoofdman; is er anders niets?
—Niets; de Vliegende-Arend heeft zijne vrouw weggevoerd, de Apachen

hebben hem als lafhartige coyotes vervolgd, en dezen nacht hem
overrompeld bij zijn vuur.
—Voortreffelijk! is de Wilde-Roos in veiligheid?
—De Wilde-Roos is eene dochter der Comanchen; zij kent geene vrees.
—Dat weet ik, het is een goed schepsel; doch daarover zullen wij thans niet
spreken; wat denkt gij te doen?
—Het gunstig oogenblik afwachten, mijn aanvalskreet aanheffen en deze

honden overrompelen.
—Hm! Uw plan is een weinig voorbarig; met uw verlof zal ik er iets aan
veranderen.
—De wijsheid spreekt uit den mond van den blanken jager; de Vliegende-
Arend is nog jong; hij zal hem gehoorzamen.
—Goed, en des te meer, daar ik alleen in uw eigen belang zal te werk gaan;
maar vergun mij thans te luisteren, het gesprek daar ginds schijnt mij toe
eene voor ons zeer belangrijke wending te nemen.
De Indiaan maakte eene buiging, en Vrij-Kogel verplaatste zich een weinig,

om beter te kunnen hooren wat er gesproken werd.
Na verloop van een paar minuten hield de jager het waarschijnlijk voor
raadzaam om tusschenbeide te komen, daar hij zich weder tot den
Vliegenden-Arend wendde, en hem iets in het oor fluisterde, even als zij
gedurende hun vorige zamenspraak steeds gedaan hadden.
—Laat mijn broeder mij vergunnen deze zaak alleen af te doen, zeide hij;
zijne tegenwoordigheid zou thans meer schade dan voordeel aanbrengen;
wij kunnen niet zoo vermetel zijn om ons met zulk een groot aantal
vijanden te meten, de voorzigtigheid vordert dat wij liever list te baat
nemen.
—De Apachen zijn honden, mompelde de Comanch bitter.
—Dat ben ik met u eens; maar voor het tegenwoordige moeten wij doen als
of wij beter over hen denken. Geloof mij, wij zullen spoedig gelegenheid
hebben om ons te wreken; buitendien blijft het voordeel aan ons, daar wij
hen misleiden.
De Vliegende-Arend liet het hoofd hangen.
—Belooft het opperhoofd mij, dat hij zich niet zal verroeren, voor dat ik
hem een sein geef? hervatte de jager met nadruk. [29]
—De Vliegende-Arend is een Sachem, hij heeft reeds gezegd dat hij het
Grijze-Hoofd zal gehoorzamen.
—Goed, let nu maar wèl op, gij zult niet lang behoeven te wachten.
Nadat hij hem deze woorden, op den gemengden toon van half bittere, half
zoetsappige scherts, die hem eigen was, had ingefluisterd, baande de oude
jager zich stoutmoedig een weg door de struiken en stapte met vasten tred
het kampement binnen, gevolgd door zijne twee kameraden.
Wij hebben reeds gezegd welk eene opschudding hunne onverwachte komst
onder de Apachen te weeg bragt.
De Vliegende-Arend nam zijne schuilplaats boven in den boom weder in,

dien hij slechts verlaten had om eenige woorden met den jager te wisselen
en hem de hoogst noodige raad en teregtwijzing te geven. Vrij-Kogel stond
nu reeds bij Loer-Vogel.
—Vriend, zeide hij in ’t Spaansch, welke taal de meeste Indianen verstaan,
uw bevel is ten uitvoer gebragt, de Vliegende-Arend en zijne vrouw zijn
thans in het kamp der Gambucinos.
—Goed, antwoordde Loer-Vogel, die met een half woord voldoende

begreep wat er van was; wie zijn die twee mannen die gij daar bij u hebt?
—Twee jagers, die het opperhoofd der Gachupines mij heeft medegegeven,
ondanks mijne verzekering dat gij u te midden uwer vrienden bevondt; hij
zelf komt terstond hier met een dertigtal ruiters.
—Keer tot hem terug en zeg hem dat hij zich om mij niet verder behoeft te
bekommeren, en de moeite kan sparen … of neen, ik zal liever zelf bij hem
gaan, om alle misverstand te voorkomen.
Deze woorden, op ongedwongen toon en zonder drift uitgesproken, door

een man dien de aanwezige Indianen menigmaal op den waren prijs hadden
leeren schatten, maakten op al de aanwezigen een onbeschrijfelijken indruk.
Wij hebben in onze vroegere verhalen reeds meer dan eens gezegd, dat de
Roodhuiden aan de dolzinnigste vermetelheid steeds de grootste
voorzigtigheid paren en nooit eene onderneming zullen wagen, zonder
vooraf al de kansen op welslagen die zij aanbiedt te hebben berekend; en
zoodra deze kansen verdwijnen om voor een vermoedelijk nadeelige
uitkomst plaats te maken, zullen zij zich niet schamen er van af te zien, om
de eenvoudige reden, dat bij hen de eer, zoo als wij die in Europa begrijpen,
slechts eene ondergeschikte plaats inneemt, en eerst in aanmerking komt,
als de goede uitslag verzekerd is.
De Roode-Wolf was ongetwijfeld een dapper man; in menig gevecht had hij
hiervan afdoende proeven gegeven; intusschen aarzelde hij niet om voor het
algemeen belang te wijken en zijne innigste wenschen op te offeren, en
hierin gaf hij, naar ons gevoelen, een sprekend bewijs van dien aangeboren
maatschappelijken zin en vaderlandsliefde, die de grootste kracht der
Indianen uitmaakt. Hoe geslepen hij ook wezen mogt, liet hij zich thans
geheel om den tuin leiden door Vrij-Kogel, [30]wiens onverwachte
tusschenkomst en onweerstaanbaar overwigt voldoende zouden zijn
geweest om zelfs de inzigten van een schranderder man van ’t spoor te
helpen, dan den onbeschaafden Indiaan, met wien hij hier te doen had. De
Roode-Wolf koos dadelijk en onvoorwaardelijk partij.
—Mijn broeder, het Grijze-Hoofd, is welkom aan mijn haard, mijn hart
verheugt zich hem als vriend te mogen ontvangen; zijne medgezellen
kunnen nevens hem plaats nemen rondom het vuur van den raad, waar de
rietpijp van het opperhoofd hun onverwijld zal worden aangeboden.
—De Roode-Wolf is een groot opperhoofd, antwoordde Vrij-Kogel; ik

reken mij gelukkig door de gevoelens van welwillendheid die hij mij
betoont, en ik zou zijn aanbod met het meeste genoegen aannemen, zoo
dringende redenen mij niet verpligtten om zoo spoedig mogelijk naar mijne
blanke broeders terug te keeren, die mij reeds wachten op korten afstand
van het kamp der Antilope-Apachen.
—Ik hoop niet dat er eene wolk is opgekomen tusschen het Grijze-Hoofd en
zijn broeder den Rooden-Wolf, hervatte de arglistige Indiaan; twee
krijgslieden moeten elkander wederkeerig hoogachten.
—Zoo denk ik er ook over, hoofdman, en daarom ben ik vrij en vrank in uw

kamp verschenen, terwijl ik mij gemakkelijk door een talrijk geleide van
krijgslieden had kunnen doen vergezellen.
Vrij-Kogel wist zeer goed dat de Apachen de Spaansche taal verstonden, en

dat dus niets van hetgeen door hem aan Loer-Vogel gezegd was hun
ontgaan kon; maar het was zijn belang en dat van zijn vriend, om te veinzen
dat zij er niets van begrepen, en om de arglistige uitnoodigingen van hun
opperhoofd voor goede munt te laten gelden.
—Zijn die blanke vrienden van u zoo digt in onze nabijheid gelegerd?
hervatte de Roode-Wolf.
—Ja, antwoordde Vrij-Kogel, niet verder dan vier of vijf boogschoten op

zijn best genomen, in westelijke rigting.
—Ooah! dat spijt mij, zeide de Indiaan, ik zou mijne broeders anders
gaarne tot aan hun kamp hebben verzeld.
—En wat zou u beletten om toch met ons mede te gaan? vroeg de oude
jager even rond als politiek; vreest gij misschien slecht ontvangen te zullen
worden?
—Ooah! wie zou den Rooden-Wolf durven ontvangen zonder hem de

verschuldigde achting te bewijzen? hernam de Apach hoogmoedig.
—Niemand, voorzeker.
De Roode-Wolf wendde zich ongemerkt naar een opperhoofd van minderen

rang en fluisterde hem eenige woorden in ’t oor; deze stond op en verliet het
kamp. De jagers zagen deze manoeuvre niet zonder ongerustheid en
wisselden een blik die zooveel te kennen gaf als: Laten wij op onze hoede
zijn! Ongedwongen deden zij thans eenige stappen achterwaarts en sloten
zich digter aan elkander, om bij het minste teeken van onraad gereed te zijn;
zij kenden de trouweloosheid der lieden met welke zij te doen hadden, en
waren van hun kant op alles verdacht. De Indiaan dien het opperhoofd had
weggezonden, [31]kwam spoedig terug; hij was naauwelijks tien minuten
weg geweest.
—Wel? vroeg hem de Roode-Wolf.
—Nilijti—het is waar—antwoordde de Indiaan laconisch.
Het gelaat van den Sachem betrok merkbaar. Hij hield zich thans vast
overtuigd dat Vrij-Kogel hem niet bedrogen had; want de man, door hem
buiten het kamp gezonden, was belast geweest om zich te vergewissen of er
werkelijk op korten afstand wachtvuren der blanken in ’t gezigt waren; het
antwoord van zijn veldontdekker bewees, dat het hoogst ongeraden zou zijn
den schelm te spelen, en dat hij moest volhouden met de beste gezindheden
te veinzen, om op een geschikten voet van zijne lastige gasten af te komen,
die hij anders op eene gansch andere manier zou hebben behandeld.
Op zijn bevel werden nu de paarden ontkoppeld en stegen zijne ruiters in
den zadel.
—De dag is nabij, zeide hij; de maan is in den grooten berg weggezonken;
ik ga met mijne jongelieden op marsch; moge de Wakondah mijne blanke
broeders beschermen!
—Ik dank u, hoofdman, antwoordde Loer-Vogel; maar gaat gij dan niet met
ons mede?
—Wij moeten den anderen kant uit, antwoordde de Sachem droogjes,

terwijl hij zijn paard den teugel vierde en wegreed.
—Dat laat zich begrijpen, verwenschte hond, bromde Vrij-Kogel tusschen

de tanden.
De gansche bende vertrok met den meesten spoed en verdween in de

duisternis; weldra werd het gedruisch van hun draf minder hoorbaar, en
smolt in de verte zamen met die duizend geheimzinnige geluiden zonder
blijkbare oorzaak, die de statige stilte der woestijn onophoudelijk verstoren.
De jagers waren alleen gebleven. Even als de wigchelaars van het oude
Rome, die elkander niet zonder lagchen konden aanzien, weerhielden zij
zich naauwelijks om in een bespottelijk geschater los te barsten over het
haastig vertrek der Apachen, die zij zoo fijn hadden beet genomen. Op een
sein van Loer-Vogel, voegden de Vliegende-Arend en de Wilde-Roos zich
bij hunne vrienden, die reeds weder onbekommerd bij het vuur zaten, daar
zij hunne vijanden zoo behendig van hadden weten te verdrijven.
—Hm! meesmuilde Vrij-Kogel terwijl hij zijn pijp stopte, over die grap zal
ik lang moeten lagchen, zij is bijna zoo fijn als die ik de Pawnies speelde, in
1827, in Opper-Arkansas; ik was toen nog jong, en had naauwelijks eenige
jaren in de prairiën rondgezworven, en ik was nog niet zoo goed als thans,
met al de streken en grollen der Indianen bekend; maar ik herinner mij
wel …
—Maar zeg mij toch door welk toeval ik u hier ontmoet heb, Vrij-Kogel?
vroeg zijn vriend, hem met drift in de rede vallende.
Loer-Vogel wist maar al te goed, wanneer Vrij-Kogel iets begon te

vertellen, dat er niet veel kans bestond om hem in zijn verhaal te stuiten; de
eerzame jager had in den loop van zijn lang en avontuurlijk [32]leven, zoo
vele buitengewone zaken gezien en gedaan, dat hem bijna niets overkomen
kon, of hij herinnerde zich terstond een of ander geval uit zijn vroegere
loopbaan, dat hem aanleiding gaf tot eindelooze verhalen; zijne vrienden,
bekend met dit zwak, ontzagen zich nooit om hem stout in de rede te vallen
en zoodoende aan zijne wijdloopige vertelzucht te ontsnappen; evenwel
moeten wij tot eer van Vrij-Kogel zeggen, dat hij deze stoornis niet kwalijk
nam; met dien verstande echter, dat hij geen tien minuten daarna den draad
van zijn verhaal weder opvatte of een ander begon, zoodat zijne vrienden
hem op nieuw moesten storen, maar zonder hem ooit boos te kunnen
maken.
Op de plotselinge vraag van Loer-Vogel antwoordde hij:
—Wij zullen gaan zien; en ik zal het u vertellen. Daarop zich tot Domingo
wendende, zeide hij: Ik zeg u dank voor de hulp die gij ons bewezen hebt;
ga naar uw kamp terug en denk om uwe belofte, maar verzuim vooral niet
om van hetgeen gij gezien hebt verslag te geven aan, gij weet wel wie.
—Dat is afgesproken, oude klemmenzetter. Wees maar gerust. Vaarwel!
—Goed fortuin!
Domingo wierp zijn buks over den schouder, stak zijn pijp aan, en keerde
met haastigen tred naar het kamp terug, dat trouwens niet veraf lag en waar
hij een uur later binnen kwam.
—Zie zoo, zei Loer-Vogel, nu geloof ik dat u niets meer belet op mijne
vraag te antwoorden.
—Ja toch, vriend, een ding nog.

—En dat is?
—Zoo als gij ziet, is de nacht voorbij: hij is voor ons allen ruw genoeg
geweest, zoodat ik meen dat twee of drie uurtjes slaap wel niet onmisbaar,
maar toch hoog noodig zullen zijn; daarbij, wij hebben volstrekt geen haast.
—Zeg mij maar een woord, en ik laat u slapen zoolang gij wilt.
—En wat zal dat woord zijn?
—Hoe kwaamt gij hier toch zoo prompt op het terrein om ons te helpen?
—Te duivel! dat is juist wat ik gevreesd had; uwe vraag verpligt mij om in
bijzonderheden te treden die veel te omslagtig zijn om u op dit oogenblik te
kunnen voldoen.
—Ik moet u zeggen, vriend, hoe hartelijk ik ook verlangen zou om eenige
dagen bij u te vertoeven, ben ik genoodzaakt om u reeds met zonsopgang te
verlaten.
—Komaan, dat is immers onmogelijk?
—Met uw verlof, ja; ik moet!
—Maar wat dringt u dan zoo?
—Ik heb mij verbonden als gids bij een karavaan, die ik morgen om twee
uren in den namiddag zal ontmoeten aan het veer del Rubio; die ontmoeting
is reeds voor meer dan twee maanden afgesproken. En [33]gij weet, voor ons
jagers, is iedere afspraak heilig, gij zult mij dus niet willen verleiden om
mijn woord te breken.
—Bij al de bisonshuiden die ieder jaar in de prairie gedood worden niet!

Naar welke streek van het Verre-Westen moet gij die menschen den weg
wijzen?
—Dat zal ik morgen hooren.

—En met welk soort van lieden hebt gij te doen? Zijn het Spanjaarden of
Gringos?
—Weet ik het?.. Mexicanen denk ik; hun kapitein noemde zich, als ik het
wel onthouden heb, don Miguel Ortega, of zoo iets; enfin, dat zal zich wel
vinden.
—He! riep Vrij-Kogel uit, terwijl hij opsprong van verrassing; hoe zegt gij
ook weer?
—Don Miguel Ortega, herhaalde de spoorzoeker; ik durf er intusschen niet

op zweren, het kan zijn dat ik mij vergis, maar ik denk het niet.
—Dat’s vreemd! mompelde de oude jager half in zich zelven.
—Ik zie er niets vreemds in! die naam komt mij zelfs zeer gewoon voor.
—Voor u, dat kan zijn; en hebt gij met hem accoord gemaakt?
—Op den besten voet.
—Als spoorzoeker.
—Ja, duizendmaal ja! antwoordde Loer-Vogel met drift.
—Nu, stel u gerust, vriend, en blijf bedaard, wij denken nog langer zamen
te leven.
—Zoudt gij onder zijne bende willen gaan?
—God bewaar mij!
—Dan begrijp ik er niets meer van.
Vrij-Kogel scheen eenige oogenblikken ernstig na te denken; zich toen

weder tot zijn vriend wendende, zeide hij:
—Hoor eens, Loer-Vogel, zoo waar als gij een oud vriend van mij zijt, zou
ik u niet gaarne uit luchthartigheid van het regte spoor zien dwalen; ik heb u
zekere onmisbare teregtwijzingen mede te deelen, om u in staat te stellen de
door u aangenomen taak behoorlijk te volbrengen; ik zie wel dat wij dezen
nacht niet slapen zullen, luister derhalve met aandacht toe; wat gij hooren
zult is meer dan de moeite waard.
Loer-Vogel was ten hoogste verbaasd over den plegtigen toon dien de oude
jager aannam, en zag hem ongerust aan:
—Spreek, zeide hij.
Vrij-Kogel dacht een oogenblik na en scheen zijne herinneringen in orde te

schikken; daarop nam hij het woord en begon eene lange geschiedenis die
door de aanwezigen met klimmende aandacht en belangstelling werd
aangehoord; nog nooit in hun leven hadden zij zulke buitengewone en
vreemdsoortige gebeurtenissen gehoord of gezien.
De zon was reeds ver boven de kimmen gerezen, toen de oude jager nog
sprak. [34]
[Inhoud]
VI.
Eene duistere geschiedenis.
Wij geven hier, ontdaan van alle min of meer juiste aanmerkingen,
waarmede de wijdloopige spreker haar geliefde op te sieren, de
buitengewone geschiedenis die de Canadees aan zijne toehoorders vertelde,
en die zoo innig met ons verhaal zamenhangt, dat wij ons genoodzaakt zien
haar tot in de kleinste bijzonderheden mede te deelen.
Slechts weinige steden hebben zulk een bekoorlijk aanzien als Mexico;
deze aloude hoofdstad van het rijk der Azteken strekt zich, als eene mollige
Creoolsche matrone op haar divan, weelderig en traag uit op een zacht
golvenden bodem, half omsluijerd door een digt gordijn van statige
cipressen, die de kanalen en wegen in haren omtrek omzoomen. Op
gelijkmatigen afstand tusschen twee oceanen gebouwd, 2280 meters boven
hun waterspiegel, d. i. ongeveer op dezelfde hoogte als het bekende
hospitaal der monniken op den St. Bernard, geniet deze stad eene gematigde
en verkwikkelijke temperatuur, onder een helderen hemel, tusschen twee
prachtige bergen, de Popocatepetl—een rookende vulkaan—en de
Iztaczehuatl, of de “Witte Vrouw,” welks grijze met eeuwige sneeuw
bedekte kruin zich in de wolken verliest. De vreemdeling, wanneer hij met
zonsondergang Mexico nadert, langs den oostelijken straatweg,—een der
vier groote wegen langs welke men den alouden zetel der Azteken bereikt,
die zich eenzaam en statig verheft te midden van het meer Tezcuco, aan
welks wateren zij gebouwd is—ondervindt bij den aanblik dezer stad een
wonderbaren indruk van welken hij zich geen rekenschap kan geven. De
Moorsche bouwtrant der paleizen, de schitterende met lichte kleuren
beschilderde muren, de dommen en koepels der tallooze kerken en
kloosters, die hoog boven de azotea’s (platte huisdaken) uitsteken, en de
gansche stad, om zoo te zeggen, met hunne groote geele, blaauwe of roode
parasols overdekken, besprenkeld met het goud der dalende westerzon en
gekust door de laauwe, met geuren bezwangerde avondkoelte, die van de
bergen aanwaait en met het digte loof der bosschen speelt: alles vereenigt
zich om aan Mexico het aanzien te geven eener geheel oostersche stad, die
onze starende blikken aantrekt en tegelijk verbaast. Het eerste Mexico, in
der tijd door Fernando Cortez verbrand, werd door dezen veroveraar op
hare oude grondslagen herbouwd: al hare straten snijden zich regthoekig, en
loopen uit op de Plaza Major, in vijf hoofdaderen, namelijk de calle de
Tacuba, de Monterilla, de Santo Domingo, de Moneda en de San-Francisco.
De Spaansche steden der Nieuwe Wereld zijn alle volgens eenerlei

grondplan gebouwd, en hebben dit met elkander gemeen, dat het hoofdplein
op dezelfde wijs is aangelegd. Zoo heeft de Plaza Major ook te Mexico aan
een van hare zijden de kathedraal, en de Sagrario (de heilige kapel); daar
tegenover ligt het paleis van den president der [35]republiek, dat de vier
ministeriën, de kazernen, de gevangenis enz. bevat; aan de derde zijde heeft
men de Ayuntamiento (stadhuis); eindelijk aan de vierde zijde bevinden
zich twee bazars of groote verkoophuizen—de Parian en de Portal de las
Flores.
Op den 10 Julij 1834, omstreeks tien ure des avonds, nadat eene brandende
zonnehitte de inwoners dien geheelen dag genoodzaakt had zich in hunne
huizen op te sluiten, verhief zich een frissche togt van de bergen, die de
lucht merkelijk afkoelde. Iedereen begaf zich op de met bloemen bedekte,
naar hangende tuinen gelijkende azotea’s, om er het verkwikkende luchtbad
van den amerikaanschen nacht te genieten, dat als door het heldere blaauw
des hemels heen, van de sterren op aarde schijnt af te dalen. Ook de straten
en pleinen waren met wandelaars opgevuld, allerwege heerschte een
gonzend gehommel, een ondoordringbaar gewemel van voetgangers en
ruiters, zoo vrouwen als mannen, Indianen zoowel als Spanjaarden, creolen,
mestiezen, zwarten en blanken; gescheurde kleeren en lompen, mengden
zich op de zonderlingste wijs met zijden, fluweelen en gouden stoffen,
onder het geklater van roepstemmen, kwinkslagen of schaterend gelach;
kortom, als een betooverde stad uit de duizend en een Arabische
Nachtvertellingen, scheen Mexico op het gebengel der klok van het oracion
eensklaps als uit een eeuwenlangen slaap gewekt, zoo vrolijk straalden er
de aangezigten van genot, en zoo gelukkig waren allen dat zij de reine
avondlucht met volle teugen konden inademen. Op dit oogenblik kwam er
uit de calle San-Francisco een onderofficier—gemakkelijk te herkennen aan
den druivenstok1 dien hij als kenteeken van zijn rang in de hand had—en
mengde zich onder de woelige schaar op de Plaza Major, met dien
balanceerenden trippelgang en dat air van onbezorgde schalkerij, dat den
militairen lanterfant in alle wereldstreken eigen schijnt. De hier door ons
bedoelde was een jong mensch van trotsch uitzigt, fieren blik en een paar
fijn gewaste, koket opgestreken knevels. Na twee of drie keeren het plein te
zijn rond geweest, knipoogend tegen de jonge meisjes, en met de ellebogen
stootend tegen de mannen, naderde hij, altoos in de zelfde onverschillige
houding, een winkeltje, dat tegen een der portalen was aangebouwd en
waarin een oud man, met een gezigt als een marmot en met loensche
blikken, bij het licht van een smerige lamp, bezig was een stapeltje papier,
pennen, enveloppen, ouwels, kortom alle noodige schrijfbehoeften weg te
bergen, in de lade van zijne met duizend inktvlakken bezoedelde tafel;
werkelijk was de oude schobbejak rekest- en briefschrijver van beroep,
zooals het bordje boven de deur van zijn pothuis aanduidde, waarop met
witte letters op een zwarten grond gelezen werd: “Juan Bautisto Leporella,
Evangelista.” De onderofficier loerde eerst eenige oogenblikken door het
glazen raampje, dat met allerlei soort van geschreven stukken pronkte; en
zonder twijfel voldaan over hetgeen hij gezien [36]had, gaf hij met zijn
druivenstok drie ferme slagen op de deur.
De soldaat hoorde daar binnen een stoel verschuiven, den sleutel in het slot
steken, eindelijk ging de deur met een scheur open, en kwam het hoofd van
den rekestschrijver vreesachtig te voorschijn.
—Ha! zijt gij het, don Annibal. Dios me ampare! ik had u nog niet zoo
spoedig verwacht, zei de oude, op dien zoetsappigen slependen toon, daar
zekere lieden zich van bedienen, wanneer zij iemand voor zich zien dien zij
niet aandurven.
—Cuerpo de Christo! houdt u maar zoo onnoozel niet, oude coyote,

antwoordde de sergeant barsch; wie anders als ik zou mijne voeten nog zoo
laat in uw vervloekt kot durven zetten?
De evangelista meesmuilde hoofdschuddend en schoof zijn in zilver

gevatten bril met ronde glazen, hoog op zijn voorhoofd.
—Ho! ho! riep hij met een geheimzinnig lachje, er komen brave lieden
genoeg in mijn ministerie, mooije “chérubin d’amour.”
—’t Is mogelijk, hervatte de soldaat, hem zonder pligtpleging terugduwend

en het winkeltje binnentredend, ik beklaag ze allen die onder de greep van
zulk een ouden roofvogel komen als gij; maar dat is eigenlijk de reden niet
waarom ik thans hier kom.
—Misschien zou het voor u en voor mij beter zijn, als uwe bezoeken een
ander doel hadden dan hetgeen u hier heen trekt? opperde de oude
beschroomd.
—Houd op met uwe predicatie, maak de deur digt, sluit uwe blinden,
zoodat niemand daarbuiten ons ziet, en laten wij zamen praten; wij hebben
geen tijd te verliezen.
De oude antwoordde niet; hij begon dadelijk, met meer vlugheid dan men
van hem zou verwacht hebben, de blinden te sluiten, die zijn pothuis des
nachts tegen de rateros (dieven) moesten beschermen; daarop nam hij
plaats bij zijn gast, na vooraf zorgvuldig de deur van binnen te hebben
gegrendeld.
Deze twee mannen, zoo in het licht van een walmende candil (keukenlamp)
gezien, maakten met elkander een zonderling contrast: de een jong, schoon,
sterk en stoutmoedig, de ander oud en gebrekkig, geveinsd en gluiperig,
wisselden zij ter sluik blikken van onverklaarbare beteekenis. Onder het
masker van vriendschap verschool zich waarschijnlijk een diep gewortelde
haat, en terwijl zij met zachte stemmen oor aan oor zaten te praten, geleken
zij twee duivels van verschillende soort die op den val van een engel
uitwaren.
De soldaat was de eerste die het woord weder opvatte; hij sprak zoo zacht,
als ware hij beducht dat de wanden van het gesloten pothuis hem zouden
beluisteren.
—Hoor eens, Tio Leporello, fluisterde hij, het wordt tijd dat wij ter zake
komen en elkander verstaan, de klok der Sagrario heeft reeds half elf
geslagen, spreek dus, wat hebt gij voor nieuws?
—Hm! hernam de andere, niet veel bijzonders.
De sergeant wierp hem een argwanenden blik toe, en scheen zich te

bezinnen. [37]
—’t Is waar ook, zeide hij een oogenblik later, ik dacht er niet meer om;
waar staat mijn hoofd toch?
Hij grabbelde in den borstzak van zijn uniformrok, en haalde een wel
voorziene beurs te voorschijn; door de groen zijden mazen zag men een
aantal goudstukken blinken van verscheidene oncen zwaarte; vervolgens
een lang knipmes, dat hij opende en naast zich op de tafel legde. De oude
ontroerde op het gezigt van het scherpe lemmer, welks blaauwe staal
dreigend glinsterde in de schemering; thans opende de soldaat zijne beurs
en stortte een vrolijk ruischende kaskade van goudstukken voor zich uit op
de tafel. De evangelista vergat oogenblikkelijk het mes, om zich met niets
anders bezig te houden dan met het goud, welks liefelijke klank hem
aantrok als een onweerstaanbare magneet.
De soldaat was onder dit alles te werk gegaan met de koelbloedigheid van
iemand, die zich bewust is, allesafdoende middelen in handen te hebben.
—Thans raad ik u om even in uw geheugen te grabbelen, oude duivel,

hervatte hij, of mijn navaja zal u leeren wat het zegt, als gij met mij te doen
hebt en uwe zaken vergeet.
De evangelista glimlachte vergenoegd, terwijl hij een begeerigen blik op de

verleidelijke goudstukken wierp.
—Ik weet te goed wat ik u schuldig ben, don Annibal, antwoordde hij, om u
niet te willen believen met al de middelen daar ik over te beschikken heb.
—Femel toch niet langer met uwe schijnheilige beleefdheid, oude aap, en
kom ter zake. Neem dit al vast, om u aan te moedigen opregt te zijn.
Hier stelde hij hem eenige oncen goud ter hand, die de evangelista zoo
gezwind deed verdwijnen, dat de soldaat onmogelijk had kunnen zeggen
waar ze gebleven waren.
—Gij zijt edelmoedig, don Annibal, dat zal u geluk geven.
—Ter zake, ter zake.
—Ik ben er reeds.
—Spreek op dan; ik luister.
De sergeant plaatste de ellebogen op de tafel, in de houding van iemand die

zich gereed maakt om een belangrijk verhaal aan te hooren, terwijl de
evangelista hoestte, spuwde, en met zekere hem eigen geworden
omzigtigheid, nog eerst een onrustigen blik in het rond sloeg.
Het woelig gedruisch op de Plaza Major was langzamerhand weggestorven,

de menigte had zich in alle rigtingen verstrooid en was in de huizen
teruggekeerd; zoowel buiten als binnen heerschte de diepste stilte. Op dit
oogenblik bomde het uurwerk der kathedraal-kerk langzaam en statig elf
slagen; de beide mannen sidderden onwillekeurig bij het sombere gegalm
der kerkklok; de serenos (nachtwachts) zongen het uur met hunne slepende
dronkemans-stemmen; dit was alles.
—Wilt gij spreken, ja of neen? riep de soldaat plotseling barsch en op

dreigenden toon. [38]
De evangelista viel bijna van zijn stoel, alsof hij uit een droom werd
gewekt, en streek zich eenige keeren met de hand over het voorhoofd.
—Ik begin al, zeide hij met eene bevende stem.
—Dat zou gelukkig wezen, bromde de andere.
—Gij moet dan weten, begon hij.… maar, vervolgde hij, op eens weder
afbrekende, moet ik u alles tot in de kleinste bijzonderheden vertellen?
—Duivelsch! riep de soldaat, kwaad wordende, maak toch dat wij er
doorkomen; ge weet wel dat ik de volledigste narigten hebben moet.
Canarios! speel met mij niet als de kat met de muis, oude vrek, wees
gewaarschuwd, het zou gevaarlijk spel zijn voor u.
De evangelista boog, als begreep hij waar het heen moest, en begon op
nieuw:
—Dezen morgen dan, zat ik naauwelijks in mijn kantoor, nadat ik mijne

papieren geschikt en mijne pennen vermaakt had, of er werd zacht aan de
deur geklopt; ik stond op om open te doen; het was eene jonge en schoone
vrouw, in zoo verre namelijk als ik er over kon oordeelen, want zij had zich
zoo digt in haar zwarten mantel gewikkeld, dat zij niet kenbaar was.
—Het was dus niet dezelfde vrouw die u reeds eene maand lang dagelijks
bezocht? viel de sergeant hem in de rede.
—Ja wel, maar zoo als gij reeds zult hebben opgemerkt, komt zij bij elk
bezoek in eene andere kleeding, zonder twijfel om zich daardoor onkenbaar
te maken; in weerwil echter van deze voorzorgen, heb ik haar telkens bij
den eersten blik uit hare donkere oogen dadelijk herkend, daar ik te zeer aan
de listen der vrouwen gewoon ben om er mij door te laten misleiden.
—Zeer goed; ga voort.
—Zij bleef een poosje zwijgend voor mij staan, en speelde verlegen met
haar waaijer; ik bood haar beleefdelijk een stoel aan en hield mij alsof ik
haar niet herkende, terwijl ik haar vroeg, waarmede ik haar van dienst kon
zijn.—“O!” antwoordde zij mij op vrijpostigen toon, “wat ik van u verlang
is zeer eenvoudig.”—“Spreek slechts, senorita,” zeide ik, “zoo het iets is dat
mijn ministerie aangaat, wees dan verzekerd dat ik het mij ten pligt zal
rekenen u te gehoorzamen.”—“Als het dat niet was zou ik niet bij u
gekomen zijn,” was haar antwoord; “maar zijt gij wel iemand daar men op
vertrouwen kan?” En terwijl zij dit zeide, keek zij mij met hare groote
zwarte oogen, doordringend en uitvorschend aan. Ik hield mij goed en
antwoordde haar met den meesten ernst en met de hand op het hart:
—“Senorita, een evangelista is zoo goed als een biechtvader, al uwe
geheimen blijven in mijn hart begraven.” Hierop haalde zij een geschrift uit
den zak van hare saya (overkleed), keerde het verscheidene malen tusschen
hare vingers om, maar eensklaps begon zij te lagchen, en riep:—“Wat ben
ik toch dwaas, dat ik een geheim zoek te maken van niets; voor het overige
zijt gij op dit oogenblik niets meer dan een machine, daar gij zelf niet
begrijpen zult wat gij schrijft.” Ik boog op goed geluk af, [39]en hield mij
weder gereed op een van die duivelsche kunstgrepen, die zij mij sedert eene
maand lang dagelijks heeft laten afschrijven.
—Houd toch op met uwe beschouwingen! viel de sergeant hem in de rede.
—Zij overhandigde mij het document, vervolgde de evangelista; en, zooals

tusschen u en mij is afgesproken, nam ik een vel copiëerpapier en legde er
het schoone blad op, dat ik beschrijven zou; zooals gij weet, is het
copiëerpapier van achteren zwart gemaakt, zoo dat de woorden die ik op
mijn gewone papier schreef, door middel van het zwart gemaakte, letterlijk
werden overgedrukt op een derde vel wit papier, dat er onder lag, zonder dat
de arme nina (kind) er iets van bemerkte en zij niet beter wist of alles ging
zuiver toe. Behalve dat was de brief niet lang, en bestond slechts uit een
paar regels; maar ik mag verdoemd zijn, vervolgde de oude gaauwdief,
terwijl hij een kruis sloeg, als ik een syllabe begreep van het duivelsche
tooverschrift dat zij mij copiëren liet; ik geloof zeker dat het Arabisch was.
—Wat verder?
—Verder heb ik het papier in den vorm van een brief toegemaakt, en er een
adres op geschreven.
—Ah! riep de soldaat met levendige belangstelling, dat is voor het eerst.
—Ja, maar met die wetenschap zult gij niet veel verder komen.
—Waarom niet? laat zien, hoe was dat adres?
—Z. p. V. 2 Calle S. P. Z.
—Hm! riep de soldaat peinzend, dat is zeker alles behalve duidelijk; maar
vervolgens?
—Vervolgens is zij vertrokken, nadat zij mij een ons goud had gegeven.
—Zij is wel genereus.
—Povre nina! (het arme kind) riep de evangelista, terwijl hij met zijne
kromme vingers zich de drooge oogen afwischte.
—Houd toch op met uwe kwezelarij, daar geloof ik toch niets van; is dat
alles wat zij u gezegd heeft?
—Nagenoeg, zei de oude aarzelend.
De sergeant keek den evangelista strak aan.
—Er is dus nog iets? vroeg hij, hem eenige goudstukken toewerpende, die
Tio Leporello dadelijk deed verdwijnen.
—Bijna niets.
—Spreek op, Leporello, hoe weinig het wezen mag; gij zult zelf wel weten
dat de hoofdzaak van een brief gewoonlijk in een post scriptum staat.
—Toen zij mijn bureau verliet, wenkte de Senorita een providencia2 die
juist voorbij reed; het rijtuig hield stil, en ofschoon het jonge meisje zeer
zacht sprak, hoorde ik haar tegen den koetsier zeggen: Naar het
Bernardijnen klooster! [40]
De sergeant huiverde onmerkbaar.
—Hm! riep hij op een toon van meesterlijk gespeelde onverschilligheid, dat
adres beteekent niet veel; maar geef mij intusschen het overgedrukte blad.
De evangelista grabbelde in zijne lade en haalde er een blad wit papier uit te
voorschijn, daar eenige woorden in bijna onleesbare krabbels op stonden.
Zoodra de sergeant het blad in handen had en met de oogen doorliep,
scheen de inhoud hem groot belang in te boezemen, want hij verbleekte
zigtbaar en eene zenuwachtige rilling liep hem door de leden; maar hij
herstelde zich bijna oogenblikkelijk.
—’t Is goed, zeide hij, het blad in kleine stukjes scheurende;—zie daar, dat
is voor u, vervolgde hij en wierp den ouden briefschrijver nog een hand vol
goudstukken toe.
—Dank je, caballero! riep Tio Leporello en wierp zich met drift op het
kostbare metaal, terwijl hij tevens naar het mes greep.
Een spotachtige glimlach plooide zich om de lippen van den soldaat; hij
rukte den oude het mes uit de hand en van het oogenblik gebruik makende
waarop Leporello bukte om het goud op te rapen, stak hij hem het mes bijna
tot aan het heft tusschen de beide schouders. De stoot was zoo behendig
gemikt en met zulk een vaste hand toegebragt, dat de oude woekeraar als
een logge klomp voorover viel, zonder een klagt of zucht te slaken. Don
Annibal zag hem een oogenblik koelbloedig en onverschillig aan; toen door
de bewegingloosheid van zijn slagtoffer gerustgesteld, meende hij dat hij
dood was.
—Komaan, bromde hij, dat is zoo veel te beter, nu zal hij ten minste niet
klappen.
Na deze philosofische lijkrede wischte de moordenaar bedaard het mes af,

raapte zijn goud bijeen, blies de lamp uit, opende de deur, sloot die weder
achter zich digt en verwijderde zich met rustigen, ofschoon min of meer
versnelden tred, als iemand die te lang is uitgebleven en zich haasten moet
om thuis te komen.
De Plaza Major was eenzaam en stil.
1 Een rotting of zoogenaamde sixpence. ↑

2 Naam der huurrijtuigen te Mexico. ↑
[Inhoud]
VII.
Eene duistere historie (vervolg).
Het oude Mexico was met grachten doorsneden, even als Venetië, of om
naauwkeuriger te spreken als vele steden in Holland, want er liep langs de
meeste grachten doorgaans een straat tusschen het water en de huizen.
Thans, nu alle grachten gedempt, en op een enkele wijk der stad na, in
geplaveide straten zijn veranderd, begrijpt men naauwelijks hoe Cervantes
in een zijner romans Mexico met Venetië heeft kunnen vergelijken;
evenwel, ofschoon de grachten voor het oog verdwenen [41]zijn, bestaan zij
nog altoos onder den grond; en in zekere lagere gedeelten der stad, waar
men hen in afvoerkanalen of liever in open riolen heeft herschapen,
ontwaart men ze dadelijk door den vuilen stank dien zij uitwasemen of
liever door de massa fecale stoffen, die zich in hare stilstaande en rottende
wateren verzamelt.
De sergeant, na zijne rekening met den ongelukkigen evangelista zoo

knaphandig te hebben vereffend, was het plein in de volle breedte
overgegaan en toen de calle de la Monterilla ingeslagen.
Hij stapte bedaard voort in denzelfden pas dien hij bij het verlaten van het
winkeltje had aangenomen. Eindelijk na een marsch van ongeveer twintig
minuten, door een aantal eenzame straten en donkere steegjes, wier ellendig
en armoedig aanzien al dreigend en dreigender werd, hield hij stand voor
een huis van meer dan verdacht voorkomen, boven welks deur, achter een
retablo des animas benditas (schilderij der gelukkige zielen) eene
walmende lamp brandde; de vensters van het huis waren verlicht, en op het
platte dak huilden en knorden eenige wachthonden naargeestig tegen de
maan. De sergeant sloeg tweemaal op de deur met den druivenstok, dien hij
in de hand had.
Het duurde tamelijk lang eer hij gehoor kreeg; het schreeuwen en zingen
daar binnen hield plotseling op; eindelijk hoorde hij iemand naderen met
zwaren stap. De deur werd half geopend, want als overal in Mexico, was zij
van binnen met een ketting gesloten en eene grove stem vroeg op
dronkenmans toon:
—Quien es?—Wie is daar?
—Gente de paz—Goed volk, antwoordde de sergeant.
—Hm! het is laat genoeg om te loopen lanterfanten en als een dief binnen te
komen! riep de andere, die zich scheen te bedenken.
—Ik verlang niet om binnen te komen.
—Wat duivel verlangt gij dan?
—Pan y sal! por los caballeros errantes (brood en zout voor de dolende
ridders) hernam de soldaat op een gebiedenden toon, terwijl hij zich
derwijze plaatste, dat de maan hem vlak in het aangezigt scheen.
De portier deinsde terug met een uitroep van verbazing:
—Valgame dios! Senor don Torribio, riep hij op een toon van diepen
eerbied, wie zou u onder die ellendige plunje hebben herkend! Kom binnen,
kom binnen, men wacht u met ongeduld.
Met deze woorden haastte de man zich, even onderdanig als hij eenige
oogenblikken te voren barsch was geweest, om de ketting af te ligten en de
deur geheel te openen.
—’t Is niet noodig, Pepito, hernam de soldaat, ik zeg u nog eens dat ik niet
binnen kom! Met hun hoevelen zijn ze?
—Met hun twintigen, Senor.
—Gewapend?
—Ten volle.
—Laat hen dan oogenblikkelijk afkomen; ik zal ze hier wachten, mijn zoon,
de tijd is kort.
—En gij dan, Senor? [42]
—Breng mij een hoed, een mantel, mijn degen en mijne pistolen maar
gaauw wat, haast u.
Pepito wachtte niet tot het hem voor de tweede maal gezegd werd; hij liet
de deur open en liep op een drafje naar binnen.
Eenige minuten later stormden een twintigtal bandieten tot aan de tanden
gewapend den trap af en de straat op, suizebollend en tegen elkander
tuimelend. Toen zij den sergeant in ’t oog kregen, groetten zij hem eerbiedig
en op zijn wenk bleven zij zwijgend en onbewegelijk staan.
Pepito bragt de voorwerpen, gevraagd door den man die zich bij den
evangelista don Annibal noemde, maar hier don Torribio heette en die nog
wie weet hoeveel andere namen had, doch dien wij vooreerst zijn laatsten
naam zullen laten behouden.
—Zijn de paarden gereed? vroeg don Torribio, terwijl hij zijn uniform met
den mantel bedekte, een langen degen aangespte, en een paar pistolen met
dubbelen loop in zijn gordel stak.
—Ja, Senor, antwoordde Pepito, met den hoed in de hand.
—Goed, mijn zoon; breng ze waar ik u gezegd heb; maar terwijl het thans
nacht en dus verboden is om te paard op straat te verschijnen, zult gij
weldoen van op de celadores (ijveraars) en serenos (nachtwakers) te letten.
De bandieten barstten los in een schaterend gelach, op deze zonderlinge

aanbeveling.
—Ziedaar, zei don Torribio terwijl hij den hoed met breeden rand opzette,
dien Pepito hem gebragt had, dat is klaar: thans kunnen wij vertrekken;
luistert nu aandachtig, caballeros.

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University of Notre Dame Press

Copyright © 2004 Christopher J. Insole

First published in 2004 by SCM Press

Published in the United States in 2005 by

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

0 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

t Obscured Order, Human Frailty and the Liberal

2 Reciprocity and the Burdens of Judgement: Political

Rawlsian political liberalism 44

3 Overcoming Evil With Good — The American

The liberal subject and the will-to-power 130

Radical Orthodoxy and the Stuart Polity: A Lesson

The king, the common good and the violation of

The Church in the World 170

Appendix Robert Bellah and Clifford Longley:

This book was the result of a Research Fellowship in Theology and

This book provides a theological defence of a strand of political

There seems to be almost a consensus in theological circles concern-

1 A version of this chapter was presented at a conference organized by

* John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (London: Rout-

13. Song, Christianity, p. 231.

These theologians are not wrong about liberalism. There are

** Song, Christianity, p. 213. Based on Dr Goebbels’ saying: ‘You are at lib-

of thought; and a broadly progressivist philosophy of history’.25 The

7 Song, Christianity, p. 229.

Limited theological appreciation of liberalism

With these reservations emphatically made, it is nevertheless impor-

2 Song, Christianity, p. 229.

*° Song, Christianity, pp. 38-9.

also feared the coming of democracy, and ‘hardly owned to a massive

As it has gained in sophistication, modernity-criticism has shown

It is precisely this ‘closer view of the weaving of modernity’ which

3? Song, Christianity, p. 72.

** O'Donovan, Desire, p. 231.

48 David Fergusson, “The Reformed Tradition and the Virtue of Tolerance’,

°° Fergusson, ‘Reformed Tradition’, p. x1.

Edmund Burke and obscured order

My discussion of Burke will move through four stages. First of all, I

Burke’s liberalism and Lord Acton

To preserve that liberty inviolate, is the peculiar duty and proper

Burke’s attachment to ordered, rational liberty preserved within

59° Burke, ‘Appeal’, p. 422.

... arbitrary power is so much to the depraved taste of the vulgar,

The broader lesson to be learnt from Burke’s anti-democratic stance

°° Burke, ‘Appeal’, p. 459.

Individuality is left out of their scheme of Government. The state

It aims at taking in the entire circle of human desires, and securing