hings that men desire correspond, in some rough
fashion, to the things they need. Natural rights are nothing more than
the armour evolved to protect their vital interests. Upon the narrow
basis of legal history it is, of course, impossible to protect them.
History is rather the record of the thwarting of human desire than of
its achievement. But upon the value of certain things there is a
sufficient and constant opinion to give us assurance that repression
will ultimately involve disorder. Nor is there any difference between
the classes of men in this regard. Forms, indeed, will vary; and the
power we have of answering demand will always wait upon the discoveries
of science. Our natural rights, that is to say, will have a changing
content simply because this is not a static world. But that does not
mean, as Burke insisted, that they are empty of experience. They come,
of course, mainly from men who have been excluded from intimate contact
with the fruits of power. Nonconformists in religion, workers without
land or capital save the power of their own hands, it is from the
disinherited that they draw, as demands, their strength. Yet it is
difficult to see, as Burke would undoubtedly have insisted, that they
are the worse from the source whence they derive. Rather do they point
to grave inadequacy in the substance of the state, inadequacy neglect of
which has led to the cataclysms of historic experience. The
unwillingness of Burke to examine into their foundation reveals his lack
of moral insight into the problem he confronted.

That lack of insight must, of course, be given some explanation; and its
cause seems rooted in Burke's metaphysic outlook. He was profoundly
religious; and he did not doubt that the order of the universe was the
command of God. It was, as a consequence, beneficent; and to deny its
validity was, for him, to doubt the wisdom of God. "Having disposed," he
wrote, "and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will,
but to His, He had, in and by that disposition, vitally subjected us to
act the part which belongs to the place assigned us." The State, in
fact, it is to be built upon the sacrifice of men; and this they must
accept as of the will of God. We are to do our duty in our allotted
station without repining, in anticipation, doubtless, of a later reward.
What we are is thus the expression of his goodness; and there is a real
sense in which Burke may be said to have maintained the inhe