Conservatives reject the liberal’s concept of abstract, ahistorical and universal rights, derived from the nature of human agency and autonomy, and possessed even when unrecognised, for instance by slaves in Ancient Greece (on abstract rights, see for instance Gewirth 1983). For conservatives, a priori claims such as L.T. Hobhouse’s “The proper end of government is the uncovering of civil liberties”, are doubly mistaken (Hobhouse 1964 [1911]: 19); government does not have such ends, and “uncover