Richard Oastler, advocate of the Ten Hours Bill to limit the work week, was a decided Tory, not because he wanted to preserve class privilege but because he believed that conservative policies benefitted the most vulnerable:
A Tory is one who, believing that the institutions of this country are calculated, as they were intended, to secure the prosperity and happiness of every class of society, wishes to maintain them in their original beauty, simplicity and integrity. He is tenacious of the rights of all, but most of all the poor and needy, because they require the shelter of the constitution and the laws more than the other classes. A Tory is a staunch friend of Order, for the sake of Liberty; and, knowing that all our institutions are founded upon Christianity, he is of course a Christian, believing with S. Paul that each order of society is mutually dependent upon the others for peace and prosperity (quoted, Herbert Schlossberg, The Silent Revolution & the Making of Victorian England, 273).
It’s a drum Rusty Reno has been beating for some time: By eroding settled moral expectations, progressivism harms the poor it claims to help. Cultural conservatism defends moral traditions that protect the vulnerable.
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