High Toryism is a term used in Britain, Canada and elsewhere to refer to a traditionalist conservatism which is in line with the Toryism originating in the 17th century. It tends to be at odds with the modern emphasis of the Conservative Party in these countries. High Toryism has been described as neo-feudalist[1] in its preference of a ruling class over democratisation. Historically, the late eighteenth-century conservatism derived from the Whigs Edmund Burke and William Pitt the Younger marks a watershed from the earlier and "higher" or legitimist Toryism that was allied to Jacobitism.
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The High Tory view in the 1700s preferred low taxation and deplored Whig support for a standing army, an expanding empire and commerce. This changed in the late 1700s and many of their privileges were reduced by the Reform Act 1832. By the reign of Queen Victoria High Tories supported the empire and were personified by the Prime Ministers Lord Derby and Lord Salisbury.
High Tories prefer the values of the historical landed gentry and aristocracy, with their noblesse oblige and their self-imposed sense of duty and responsibility, to those of the modern commercial business class. Their focus is on maintaining a traditional, rooted society and way of life, which is often as much threatened by modern capitalism as by socialism or the Welfare State. A High Tory also favours a strong community, in contrast to Whig, liberal and neoconservative individualism. One Nation Conservatism, as influenced by Disraeli and epitomised in leaders such as Baldwin, favoured social cohesion, and its adherents support social institutions that maintain harmony between different interest groups, classes, and—more recently—different races or religions.
Examples of English High Tory views in the twentieth century would be those of the novelists Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Burgess, poet T. S. Eliot, Members of Parliament such as John Biggs-Davison, Julian Amery, John Heydon Stokes, Alan Clark, and the philosopher Roger Scruton. The leading pressure-group of High Toryism was undoubtedly the Conservative Monday Club, described by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson as "The Conscience of the Tory Party".
The archetypal traditional High Tory would be a gentleman, a fervent monarchist (some were Jacobites—particularly prior to George III and the death of the agnatic Stuart line), most likely a High Church Anglican but in some cases traditionalist Catholic in religion, a classically-educated believer in high culture with a suspicion and dislike of contemporary popular culture, cool towards the idea of democracy and populism, a devoted Anglophile (if Canadian rather than British), and leaning rather more towards anti-Americanism than to pro-Americanism in foreign policy (America being seen as the ultimate proponent of democracy and popular culture, a country without rooted traditions, long history, monarchy or aristocracy).
The distinction between a "High Tory" and a conventional contemporary Tory bears some resemblance to that between traditionalist conservatives or paleoconservatives and mainstream or neoconservatives in the United States. In Canada the term Red Tory used to mean something like a High Tory.
A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? by Boyd Hilton on Google Books