Following the radical reforms of the French Revolution, and the perceived anarchy and generation of war that was associated with it, many upper class Europeans promoted the preservation of European monarchies and opposed the spread of democracy. Metternich argued that Europeans were not ready for democracy. Like all conservatives, he opposed to too much change too fast. Likewise, British Edmund Burke also advocated for slow organic change where an individual element could be changed, tried out and, if failed, abandoned. Conservatives thus favored tradition and stability of the society of the individual; and while not opposed to change was opposed to too much change too quickly. Burke and French thinker Joseph-Marie de Maistre argued that traditional cultures, religious views, and political developments established a successful nation, legitimate government, and designed programs that worked within already existing traditions rather than the developed new traditions. Once in power, the restored regimes resorted to absolutist approaches during their reigns i and ensured the domination of conservative rule. For example, Prussia’s Frederick William III (1797-1840) and Russia Czar Alexander I (1801-1825) and Nicholas I (1825-1855) used their developing police forces to crack down on any voices of liberalism, demands for reform and any attempts to constitutionally limit their powers. Conservationism received a surprising amount of support from the working class. Many liked the strong nationalist element, the stability it promised, and its association with both the past and the church.
Excerpt from Clemens Prince von Metternich Political Creed (1820): There is another class of men who can conceive only of the external form of an evil, who confuse its incidental manifestations with the fundamental object and who, instead of directing their efforts towards the source of the evil, are content to fight against a few transitory symptoms.
From ‘Reflections On The Revolution In France’ (1790): But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint….Revolution was made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and that antientconstitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty… The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers…Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta…. In the famous law… called the Petition of Right, the parliament says to the king, “Your subjects have inherited this freedom”, claiming their franchises not on abstract principles “as the rights of men”, but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers.
Figure 3: Edmund Burke by James Northcote
Liberalism stressed many of the opposite ideals of conservatism. It over the first half of the 19th century, because it viewed people as intrinsically good and would do the best for themselves and for society. The liberals advocated for the right to vote for all, for a meritocracy, while they opposed any form of censorship. Noting the actions of the absolute monarchs, they also pushed for an overall freedom from government involvement in their lives. Using ideas developed by Adam Smith, liberals argued for laissez-faire economics, a representative government, and a constitutionally protected rule of law.
Smith: There may be good policy in retaliations of this kind, when there is a probability that they will procure the repeal of the high duties or prohibitions complained of. The recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconveniency of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods. To judge whether such retaliations are likely to produce such an effect, does not, perhaps, belong so much to the science of a legislator, whose deliberations ought to be governed by general principles which are always the same, as to the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs. When there is no probability that any such repeal can be procured, it seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain classes of our people, to do another injury ourselves, not only to those classes, but to almost all the other classes of them.
