  The educative effect of Burke's writing is not to be underestimated in a civil society, which boasted many highly literate members but had very few with any formal education in political science (except, sometimes, at Scottish universities). Indeed, it is likely that Burke wrote in order to educate. Yet at the same time that the strength of his conceptual and historical arguments, and the skill with which he developed these, excites the reader's admiration, they create unease. This is not merely because in Present Discontents the philosophical sense of connexion is used to adumbrate the claims of a party connexion: it is a more generalized disquiet. A politician inspires confidence, in part, because s/he is honest: and a good way to be thought honest is to convey the impression that you are not clever enough to deceive. As a philosopher commands interest when s/he is intellectually powerful, this impression is one that is naturally hard to achieve: but it can be done. C.D. Broad suggested that ‘Locke, we feel, is not so much cleverer than ourselves as to be capable of playing tricks with us even if he wanted to do so. He is the Mr Baldwin  [6]  of philosophy, and he derives from his literary style some of the advantages which that statesman owed to his pipe and his pigs.’ (Broad 1952, 39). This judgement does not apply to Burke, even though he did keep pigs. The reader carries away from Burke a sense of great creative power, dialectical skill, and verbal ingenuity: in short, a sense of being overborne by intellectual force. The listener probably received other and unwelcome sensations when these were seconded by personal raucousness. Such feelings generate unease, and unease is increased by Burke's prose.