Lorenzetti’s The Effects of Bad Government fresco has not been written on as extensively as The Effects of Good Government, partly due to the worse condition of this fresco. The wall on which the fresco of The Effects of Bad Government is depicted used to be an exterior wall, so has suffered much moisture damage in the past. When the viewer turns to examine this mural, they are confronted with a devious looking figure adorned with horns and fangs, and appearing to be cross-eyed. This figure is identified as TYRAMMIDES (Tyranny). He sits enthroned, resting his feet upon a goat (symbolic of luxury), and in his hand he sinisterly holds a dagger.

Below the tyrant the captive figure of Justice lies bound, while the figures of Cruelty, Deceit, Fraud, Fury, Division, and War flank him, and above him float the figures of Avarice, Pride, and Vainglory. These figures, according to an advice book for city magistrates of the time, were considered to be the “leading enemies of human life”.^[15]The planets of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars preside over this scene, as they were the less favorable planets; also included are tyrannical figures such as the Roman Emperor Nero. When we look at the scene of the city itself, it appears to be very jarring; nothing fits as it should be. This is in part to the fact that Lorenzetti presented the scene in such a manner that the viewer must read it right to left, automatically creating a sense of discomfort. When we look at the scene, we see that the city is in ruin, windows are wide open, houses are being demolished, and businesses are nonexistent, except that of the armourer. The streets are deserted, and the country side shows two armies advancing towards each other. The whole scene shows the mirror opposite of that of The Effects of Good Government, creating a powerful reminder to the council.

On what grounds do we go to restore our Constitution to what it has been at some given period, or to reform and reconstruct it upon principles more conformable to a sound theory of government? A prescriptive government, such as ours, never was the work of any legislator, never was made upon any foregone theory. It seems to me a preposterous way of reasoning, and a perfect confusion of ideas, to take the theories which learned and speculative men have made from that government, and then, supposing it made on those theories which were made from it, to accuse the government as not corresponding with them. I do not vilify theory and speculation: no, because that would be to vilify reason itself, Neque decipitur ratio, neque decipit unquam. No,—whenever I speak against theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect theory; and one of the ways of discovering that it is a false theory is by comparing it with practice. This is the true touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of men,—Does it suit his nature in general?—does it suit his nature as modified by his habits?

The more frequently this affair is discussed, the stronger the case appears to the sense and the feelings of mankind. I have no more doubt than I entertain of my existence, that this very thing, which is stated as an horrible thing, is the means of the preservation of our Constitution whilst it lasts,—of curing it of many of the disorders which, attending every species of institution, would attend the principle of an exact local representation, or a representation on the principle of numbers. If you reject personal representation, you are pushed upon expedience; and, then what they wish us to do is, to prefer their speculations on that subject to the happy experience of this country, of a growing liberty and a growing prosperity for five hundred years. Whatever respect I have for their talents, this, for one, I will not do. Then what is the standard of expedience? Expedience is that which is good for the community, and good for every individual in it. Now this expedience is the desideratum, to be sought either without the experience of means or with that experience. If without, as in case of the fabrication of a new commonwealth, I will hear the learned arguing what promises to be expedient; but if we are to judge of a commonwealth actually existing, the first thing I inquire is, What has been found expedient or inexpedient? And I will not take their promise rather than the performance of the Constitution.

…. But no, this was not the cause of the discontents. I went through most of the northern parts,—the Yorkshire election was then raging; the year before, through most of the western counties,—Bath, Bristol, Gloucester: not one word, either in the towns or country, on the subject of representation; much on the receipt tax, something on Mr. Fox’s ambition; much greater apprehension of danger from thence than from want of representation. One would think that the ballast of the ship was shifted with us, and that our Constitution had the gunwale under water. But can you fairly and distinctly point out what one evil or grievance has happened which you can refer to the representative not following the opinion of his constituents? What one symptom do we find of this inequality? But it is not an arithmetical inequality with which we ought to trouble ourselves. If there be a moral, a political equality, this is the desideratum in our Constitution, and in every constitution in the world. Moral inequality is as between places and between classes. Now, I ask, what advantage do you find that the places which abound in representation possess over others in which it is more scanty, in security for freedom, in security for justice, or in any one of those means of procuring temporal prosperity and eternal happiness the ends for which society was formed? Are the local interests of Cornwall and Wiltshire, for instance, their roads, canals, their prisons, their police, better than Yorkshire, Warwickshire, or Staffordshire? Warwick has members: is Warwick or Stafford more opulent, happy, or free than Newcastle, or than Birmingham? Is Wiltshire the pampered favorite, whilst Yorkshire, like the child of the bondwoman, is turned out to the desert? This is like the unhappy persons who live, if they can be said to live, in the statical chair,—who are ever feeling their pulse, and who do not judge of health by the aptitude of the body to perform its functions, but by their ideas of what ought to be the true balance between the several secretions. Is a committee of Cornwall, &c., thronged, and the others deserted? No. You have an equal representation, because you have men equally interested in the prosperity of the whole, who are involved in the general interest and the general sympathy; and, perhaps, these places furnishing a superfluity of public agents and administrators, (whether in strictness they are representatives or not I do not mean to inquire, but they are agents and administrators,) they will stand clearer of local interests, passions, prejudices, and cabals than the others, and therefore preserve the balance of the parts, and with a more general view and a more steady hand than the rest….

In every political proposal we must not leave out of the question the political views and object of the proposer; and these we discover, not by what he says, but by the principles he lays down. “I mean,” says he, “a moderate and temperate reform: that is, I mean to do as little good as possible.” If the Constitution be what you represent it, and there be no danger in the change, you do wrong not to make the reform commensurate to the abuse. Fine reformer, indeed! generous donor! What is the cause of this parsimony of the liberty which you dole out to the people? Why all this limitation in giving blessings and benefits to mankind? You admit that there is an extreme in liberty, which may be infinitely noxious to those who are to receive it, and which in the end will leave them no liberty at all. I think so, too. They know it, and they feel it. The question is, then, What is the standard of that extreme? What that gentleman, and the associations, or some parts of their phalanxes, think proper? Then our liberties are in their pleasure; it depends on their arbitrary will how far I shall be free. I will have none of that freedom. If, therefore, the standard of moderation be sought for, I will seek for it. Where? Not in their fancies, nor in my own: I will seek for it where I know it is to be found,—in the Constitution I actually enjoy. Here it says to an encroaching prerogative,—”Your sceptre has its length; you cannot add an hair to your head, or a gem to your crown, but what an eternal law has given to it.” Here it says to an overweening peerage,—”Your pride finds banks that it cannot overflow”: here to a tumultuous and giddy people,—”There is a bound to the raging of the sea.” Our Constitution is like our island, which uses and restrains its subject sea; in vain the waves roar. In that Constitution, I know, and exultingly I feel, both that I am free, and that I am not free dangerously to myself or to others. I know that no power on earth, acting as I ought to do, can touch my life, my liberty, or my property. I have that inward and dignified consciousness of my own security and independence, which constitutes, and is the only thing which, does constitute, the proud and comfortable sentiment of freedom in the human breast. I know, too, and I bless God for, my safe mediocrity: I know, that, if I possessed all the talents of the gentlemen on the side of the House I sit, and on the other, I cannot, by royal favor, or by popular delusion, or by oligarchical cabal, elevate myself above a certain very limited point, so as to endanger my own fall, or the ruin of my country. I know there is an order that keeps things fast in their place: it is made to us, and we are made to it. Why not ask another wife, other children, another body, another mind?

The great object of most of these reformers is, to prepare the destruction of the Constitution, by disgracing and discrediting the House of Commons. For they think, (prudently, in my opinion,) that, if they can persuade the nation that the House of Commons is so constituted as not to secure the public liberty, not to have a proper connection with the public interests, so constituted as not either actually or virtually to be the representative of the people, it will be easy to prove that a government composed of a monarchy, an oligarchy chosen by the crown, and such a House of Commons, whatever good can be in such a system, can by no means be a system of free government.

I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong.  They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this.  But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.  Experience may perhaps justify me in going further.  When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and supported that there has been generally something found amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of Government.  The people have no interest in disorder.  When they do wrong, it is their error, and not their crime.  But with the governing part of the State it is far otherwise.  They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake.  “Les révolutions qui arrivent dans les grands états ne sont point un effect du hasard, ni du caprice des peuples.  Rien ne révolte les grands d’un royaume comme un Gouvernoment foible et dérangé.  Pour la populace, ce n’est jamais par envie d’attaquer qu’elle se soulève, mais par impatience de souffrir.”  These are the words of a great man, of a Minister of State, and a zealous assertor of Monarchy.  They are applied to the system of favouritism which was adopted by Henry the Third of France, and to the dreadful consequences it produced.  What he says of revolutions is equally true of all great disturbances.  If this presumption in favour of the subjects against the trustees of power be not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation, because it is more easy to change an Administration than to reform a people.

* * * * *

In Great Britain, conservative ideas (though not yet called that) emerged in the Tory movement during the Restoration period (1660–1688). Toryism supported a hierarchical society with a monarch who ruled by divine right. Tories opposed the idea that sovereignty derived from the people, and rejected the authority of parliament and freedom of religion. Robert Filmer‘s Patriarcha: or the Natural Power of Kings, published posthumously in 1680 but written before the English Civil War of 1642–1651, became accepted as the statement of their doctrine. However, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 destroyed this principle to some degree by establishing a constitutional government in England, leading to the hegemony of the Tory-opposed Whig ideology. Faced with defeat, the Tories reformed their movement, now holding that sovereignty was vested in the three estates of Crown, Lords, and Commons^[8] rather than solely in the Crown. Toryism became marginalized during the long period of Whig ascendancy in the 18th century.

Conservatives typically see Richard Hooker (1554–1600) as the founding father of conservatism, along with the Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695), David Hume (1711–1776) and Edmund Burke (1729–1797). Halifax promoted pragmatism in government, whilst Hume argued against political rationalism and utopianism.^[9][10] Burke served as the private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham and as official pamphleteer to the Rockingham branch of the Whig party.^[11] Together with the Tories, they were the conservatives in the late 18th century United Kingdom.^[12] Burke’s views were a mixture of liberal and conservative. He supported the American Revolution of 1765–1783 but abhorred the violence of the French Revolution (1789–1799). He accepted the liberal ideals of private property and the economics of Adam Smith (1723–1790), but thought that economics should remain subordinate to the conservative social ethic, that capitalism should be subordinate to the medieval social tradition and that the business class should be subordinate to aristocracy. He insisted on standards of honor derived from the medieval aristocratic tradition, and saw the aristocracy as the nation’s natural leaders.^[13] That meant limits on the powers of the Crown, since he found the institutions of Parliament to be better informed than commissions appointed by the executive. He favored an established church, but allowed for a degree of religious toleration.^[14] Burke justified the social order on the basis of tradition: tradition represented the wisdom of the species and he valued community and social harmony over social reforms.^[15] Burke was a leading theorist in his day, finding extreme idealism (either Tory or Whig) an endangerment to broader liberties, and (like Hume) rejecting abstract reason as an unsound guide for political theory. Despite their influence on future conservative thought, none of these early contributors were explicitly involved in Tory politics. Hooker lived in the 16th century, long before the advent of toryism, whilst Hume was an apolitical philosopher and Halifax similarly politically independent. Burke described himself as a Whig.

Shortly after Burke’s death in 1797, conservatism revived as a mainstream political force as the Whigs suffered a series of internal divisions. This new generation of conservatives derived their politics not from Burke but from his predecessor, the Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751), who was a Jacobite and traditional Tory, lacking Burke’s sympathies for Whiggish policies such as Catholic Emancipation and American independence (famously attacked by Samuel Johnson in “Taxation No Tyranny”). In the first half of the 19th century many newspapers, magazines, and journals promoted loyalist or right-wing attitudes in religion, politics, and international affairs. Burke was seldom mentioned but William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) became a conspicuous hero. The most prominent journals included The Quarterly Review, founded in 1809 as a counterweight to the Whigs’ Edinburgh Review, and the even more conservative Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Sack finds that the Quarterly Review promoted a balanced Canningite toryism; was neutral on Catholic emancipation and only mildly critical of Nonconformist Dissent; it opposed slavery and supported the current poor laws. It was “aggressively imperialist”. The high-church clergy of the Church of England read the Orthodox Churchman’s Magazine which was equally hostile to Jewish, Catholic, Jacobin, Methodist, and Unitarian spokesmen. Anchoring the ultra Tories, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine stood firmly against Catholic emancipation, and favoured slavery, cheap money, mercantilism, the Navigation acts, and the Holy Alliance.^[16]

Conservatism evolved after 1820, embracing free trade in 1846, and a commitment to democracy, especially under Disraeli. The effect was to significantly strengthen Conservatism as a grassroots political force. Conservatism no longer was the philosophical defense of the landed aristocracy but had been refreshed into redefining its commitment to the ideals of order, both secular and religious, expanding imperialism, strengthened monarchy, and a more generous vision of the welfare state as opposed to the punitive vision of the Whigs and Liberals.^[17] As early as 1835, Disraeli attacked the Whigs and utilitarians as slavishly devoted to an industrial oligarchy, while he described his fellow Tories as the only “really democratic party of England” and devoted to the interests of the whole people.^[18] Nevertheless, inside the party there was a tension between the growing numbers of wealthy businessmen on the one side, and the aristocracy and rural gentry on the other.^[19] The aristocracy gained strength as businessmen discovered they could use their wealth to buy a peerage and a country estate.

Although conservatives opposed attempts to allow greater representation of the middle class in parliament, in 1834 they conceded that electoral reform could not be reversed and promised to support further reforms so long as they did not erode the institutions of church and state. These new principles were presented in the Tamworth Manifesto of 1834, which historians regard as the basic statement of the beliefs of the new Conservative Party.^[20]

Some conservatives lamented the passing of a pastoral world where the ethos of noblesse oblige had promoted respect from the lower classes. They saw the Anglican Church and the aristocracy as balances against commercial wealth.^[21] They worked toward legislation for improved working conditions and urban housing.^[22] This viewpoint would later be called Tory Democracy.^[23] However, since Burke there has always been tension between traditional aristocratic conservatism and the wealthy business class.^[24]

In 1834, Tory Prime Minister Robert Peel issued the Tamworth Manifesto in which he pledged to endorse moderate political reform. This marked the beginning of the transformation of British conservatism from High Tory reactionism towards a more modern form based on “conservation”. The party became known as the Conservative Party as a result, a name it has retained to this day. Peel, however, would also be the root of a split in the party between the traditional Tories (led by the Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli) and the ‘Peelites’ (led first by Peel himself, then by the Earl of Aberdeen). The split occurred in 1846 over the issue of free trade, which Peel supported, versus protectionism, supported by Derby. The majority of the party sided with Derby, whilst about a third split away, eventually merging with the Whigs and the radicals to form the Liberal Party. Despite the split, the mainstream Conservative Party accepted the doctrine of free trade in 1852.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Liberal Party faced political schisms, especially over Irish Home Rule. Leader William Gladstone (himself a former Peelite) sought to give Ireland a degree of autonomy, a move that elements in both the left and right wings of his party opposed. These split off to become the Liberal Unionists (led by Joseph Chamberlain), forming a coalition with the Conservatives before merging with them in 1912. The Liberal Unionist influence dragged the Conservative Party towards the left; Conservative governments passing a number of progressive reforms at the turn of the 20th century. By the late 19th century the traditional business supporters of the UK Liberal Party had joined the Conservatives, making them the party of business and commerce.^[25]

After a period of Liberal dominance before the First World War, the Conservatives gradually became more influential in government, regaining full control of the cabinet in 1922. In the interwar period conservatism was the major ideology in Britain^{[citation needed]}, as the Liberal Party vied with the Labour Party for control of the left. After the Second World War, the first Labour government (1945–1951) under Clement Attlee embarked on a program of nationalization of industry and the promotion of social welfare. The Conservatives generally accepted those policies until the 1980s. In the 1980s the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, guided by neoliberal economics, reversed many of Labour’s programmes.^[26]

Other conservative political parties, such as the United Kingdom Independence Party (founded in 1993) and the Democratic Unionist Party (founded in 1971), began to appear, although they have yet to make any significant impact at Westminster (as of 2014 the DUP comprises the largest political party in the ruling coalition in the Northern Ireland Assembly).

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