First Virtue of Old Whigs: Prudence in Burke and Lincoln

In the subtitle of his engaging new book, Greg Weiner joins two different groups of "Burke and" interpreters: by connecting Burke with Lincoln, he joins the authors who compare Burke and another central thinker. Some of the deepest of these comparative studies pair him with Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Disraeli and Churchill, and—to mention Weiner's 2015 book—Daniel Patrick Moynihan. By focusing on "prudence," he joins authors whose books treat Burke in light of a central theme such as property, empire, natural law, conservatism, party government, the sublime, Ireland, India, and so on.