This is an excellent work. A series of 4 short articles written by Noel Skelton in 1923/1924.
This shows a living conservatism that evolved with the times, making improvements upon standard traditional conservatism while retaining its traditional values. First and foremost, Skelton embraced universal suffrage and democracy, making him a partisan of modern liberal democracy. Traditional conservatives did not tend to be too fond of democracy, remaining either neutral or skeptical of democracy. Skelton fully embraced republicanism as a conservative.
He goes on to argue that modern liberal democracy needs widespread distribution of private ownership in order to be stable. He does not use the term "distributism," for he was writing before that term came into usage, but his views on economics and distributive justice align closely with those of Hilaire Belloc. Skelton argues that a "property-owning democracy," where most people have some wealth or capital or share of ownership in some enterprise is logically the only conservative alternative to socialism (public-ownership of industry). Skelton's "property-owning democracy" is liberal democracy plus distributism.
He refers to his new conservatism as "constructive conservatism," "progressive conservatism," and 'democratic conservatism.' He defends what he calls a "democratic constructive progressive conservatism."
Skelton coined the term "property-owning democracy." This concept was already present in civic republican theory (e.g. Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson) but it had no formal label. Later, John Rawls would take up the subject and espouse "property-owning democracy" as a key aspect of his political liberalism.
