, might have given him pause. The "obscure provincial
advocates ... stewards of petty local jurisdictions ... the fomenters
and conductors of the petty war of village vexation" legislated, out of
their inexperience, for the world. Their resolution, their constancy,
their high sense of the national need, were precisely the qualities
Burke demanded in his governing class; and the States-General did not
move from the straight path he laid down until they met with intrigue
from those of whom Burke became the licensed champion.

Nor is it in the least clear that his emphasis upon expediency is, in
any real way, a release from metaphysical inquiry. Rather may it be
urged that what was needed in Burke's philosophy was the clear avowal
of the metaphysic it implied. Nothing is more greatly wanted in
political inquiry than discovery of that "intuition more subtle than any
articulate major premise" which, as Mr. Justice Holmes has said, is the
true foundation of so many of our political judgments. The theory of
natural rights upon which Burke heaped such contempt was wrong rather in
its form than in its substance. It clearly suffered from its mistaken
effort to trace to an imaginary state of nature what was due to a
complex experience. It suffered also from its desire to lay down
universal formulae. It needed to state the rights demanded in terms of
the social interests they involved rather than in the abstract ethic
they implied. But the demands which underlay the thought of men like
Price and Priestley was as much the offspring of experience as Burke's
own doctrine. They made, indeed, the tactical mistake of seeking to give
an unripe philosophic form to a political strategy wherein, clearly
enough, Burke was their master. But no one can read the answers of Paine
and Mackintosh, who both were careful to avoid the panoply of
metaphysics, to the _Reflections_, without feeling that Burke failed
to move them from their main position. Expediency may be admirable in
telling the statesmen what to do; but it does not explain the sources of
his ultimate act, nor justify the thing finally done. The unconscious
deeps which lie beneath the surface of the mind are rarely less urgent
than the motives that are avowed. Action is less their elimination than
their index; and we must penetrate within their recesses before we have
the full materials for judgment.

Considered in this fashion, the case for natural rights is surely
unanswerable. The t