 Central to conservatism is the notion of tradition, whose self-conscious, contrastive use arises only in modernity. In the later 18th century, the mobilisation of “the past” as an explicit political resource became especially important, and a contrast between “traditional” and “modern”—as opposed to “ancient” and “modern”—was stressed. Burke’s political philosophy was an early instance of this process. This mobilisation has been associated with “the invention of tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), in which mass-produced “traditional” artefacts established a fictional organic relation between past and present, as in Sir Walter Scott’s re-invention of the kilt and other “traditional” artefacts for King George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822.