I'm basically wanting to know what is Edmund Burke's views pertaining to inheritance whether its from the family or the state. What is it in general. How does he view equality or inequality and what makes him the father of classical conservatism?
For Edmund Burke, rights were not universal but particular to each society and handed down by our forefathers. Burke claimed that his view of rights was the traditional British view. In Magna Carta and in the 1689 Declaration of Right - the cornerstone of our constitution - there is no mention of "the rights of man". In these documents, rights were regarded as a patrimony or inheritance. Burke defined rights as: "an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity; an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any more general or prior right". (2). We receive and transmit our privileges"in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives" (i.e. by legal and genetic inheritance).
