Unlike its main rivals socialism and liberalism, and notwithstanding the efforts of Aristotle and Hegel to provide one,¹ conservatism is notably reluctant to equip itself with any fully worked-out intellectual justification. Indeed, a sceptical aversion to doctrine and ideology generally is the most distinctive feature of modern conservatism, which began with Burke as a reaction to the French Revolution,² and later became a significant strand in Romantic anti-rationalist thought. Of all political outlooks conservatism is the least self-consciously "political", and is rooted (according to Oakeshott)³ in a widely shared, extra-political disposition to prefer an established, well-tried manner of doing things to its ideal or theoretical alternatives. Hence conservatism is to a large extent independent of party. Its opponents, however, usually regard it as a disingenuous, self-interested defence of social imperfections on the part of those who stand to lose most by their abolition.⁴