It suffered also from its desire to lay down universal formulae.

It needed to state the rights demanded in terms of the social interests they involved rather than in the abstract ethic they implied.

But the demands which underlay the thought of men like Price and Priestley was as much the offspring of experience as Burke's own doctrine.

They made, indeed, the tactical mistake of seeking to give an unripe philosophic form to a political strategy wherein, clearly enough, Burke was their master.

But no one can read the answers of Paine and Mackintosh, who both were careful to avoid the panoply of metaphysics, to the _Reflections_, without feeling that Burke failed to move them from their main position.