The conservative mind

1. The idea of conservatism

2. Burke and the politics of prescription: Burke's career

The radical systems

Providence and humility

Prejudice and prescription

The rights of civil social man

Equality and aristocracy

The principle of order

3. John Adams and liberty under law: Federalists and Republicans

Alexander Hamilton

Fisher Ames' vaticinations

John Adams as psychologist

The aristocracy of nature

American constitutions

Marshall and the metamorphosis of federalism

4. Romantics and utilitarians: Benthamism and Walter Scott

Canning and enlightened conservatism

Coleridge and conservative ideas

5. Southern conservatism: Randolph and Calhoun: Southern impulses

Randolph on the peril of positive legislation

The rights of minorities: Calhoun

The valor of the South

6. Liberal conservatives: Macaulay, Cooper, Tocqueville: Burke's influence upon liberalism

Macaulay on democracy

Fenimore Cooper and a gentleman's America

Tocqueville on democratic despotism

7. Transitional conservatism: New England sketches: Industrialism as a leveller

John Quincy Adams and progress: his aspirations and his failure

The illusions of transcendentalism

Brownson on the conservative power of Catholicism

Nathaniel Hawthorne: society and sin

8. Conservatism with imagination: Disraeli and Newman: Marx's materialism; and the fruits of liberalism

Disraeli and Tory loyalties

Newman: the sources of knowledge and the idea of education

The age of discussion: Bagehot

9. Legal and historical conservatism: a time of foreboding: Liberalism moves toward collectivism: John Stuart Mill, Comte, and positivism

Stephen on the ends of life and politics

Maine: status and contract

Lecky: illiberal democracy

10. Conservatism frustrated: America, 1865-1918: The gilded age

James Russell Lowell's perplexities

Godkin on democratic opinion

Henry Adams on the degradation of the democratic dogma

Brooks Adams and a world of terrible energies

11. English conservatism adrift: the twentieth century: The end of aristocratic politics: 1906

George Gissing and the Nether world

Arthur Balfour: his spiritual conservatism; and the tide of socialism

The books of W.H. Mallock: a conservative synthesis ; Positivism deflated; socialism vs. ability

A dreary conservatism between wars

12. Critical conservatism: Babbitt, More, Santayana: Pragmatism: the fumbling of America

Irving Babbitt's humanism: the higher will in a democracy

Paul Elmer More on justice and faith

George Santayana buries liberalism

America in search of ideas

13. The recrudescence of conservatism: Old radicalisms fade

The planners' state and the new elite

The conservatives' task; and their prospects in Britain

The fertility of conservative thought in the United States: critics and economists ; Possible forms of conservative society

The plan of action for American conservatives ; America as a destructive force; and as the conservator of civilization.