From polity to society

The switch from the notion of polity to that of society (and "manners") is an important one. With it comes the sense that political means of managing govenment and liberty (i.e. tinkering with the constitution) are less important that social means of achieving equality (i.e. forms of welfarism). In his Whigs and Liberals, John Burrow (27-28) argues that Hume is the key thinker of transition here. And that is why he is politically unclassifiable, though Burrow likes Duncan Forbes's term for him: 'sceptical Whig.' For Burrow, other important expressions of this shift are Mill's Autobiography and Morley's On Tolerance.

For Burrow, Burke does not have a strong distinction between polity and society, and his efforts to fuse them give his thought a 'mystical tinge.' (36)

It's a shift that spells the end for old-style civic humanism/republicanism. In Hume classical civic virtue is rough, exception, a case of ancient rather than modern liberty that is not open to imitation.

And because, in the 19thc, society is thought in terms of progress, it leads to the notion that change for the better will happen without conscious political conceptualization or action. Certainly thinking in terms of social progress rather than political intervention enables British Whigs and liberals to demonize the French Revolution.