Conservator

An etymology of “conservative” from the online Dictionary of the History of Ideas (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/DicHist/dict.html):

In Latin conservare means to protect, preserve, save; the noun of agency, conservator, appears as a synonym for the substantives custos, servator. Just as the Greek S?ter (“Savior”) was adopted from the religious realm by the Hellenistic cult of the ruler, so too conservator is found among the Romans beginning in the Augustan era (as an epithet of both Jupiter and Caesar). Augustus appears
as Novus Romulus, as protector of the mos maiorum and pater patriae to whom the Senate dedicated the coinage inscription Parenti Cons (ervatori) Suo.

In Christianity conservator appears along with the proper name for the Savior (salvator) on some occasions. Beginning in the thirteenth century, upon the acceptance of Roman law, conservator appears north
of the Alps as a juridical and administrative term for an imperial, royal, or church functionary charged with the preservation or restoration of rights; in England they were predecessors of the “Justices of the Peace.”

In French conservateur is used roughly from 1400 to the end of the eighteenth century in the sense of an “official charged with the guardianship and protection of certain rights, of certain public property.” The political usage of “conservative” is derived from
the French conservateur, and begins to appear only after the French Revolution, and then very hesitantly. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Burke used the verb “to conserve,” while his German translator, Friedrich Gentz, later spoke of the “tend-
ency to conserve.” In France conservateur in the sense of moderation and conservation may also refer primarily to idéés libérales. In this sense it was used, among others, by Mme de Staël (1798) and by Nepoleon on the 19th of Brumaire 1799: “Conservative, tutelary,
and liberal ideas have come into their own by the dispersion of the factions which have been oppressing the Councils.”

The modern political meaning: “one who is a partisan of the maintenance of the established social and political order,” derives from Chateaubriand’s weekly newspaper Le Conservateur (started in
1818). (“Le Conservateur will support religion, the King, liberty, the Charter, and loyal, respectable people . . . .”) “Conservateur” has never appeared as the official name of a party in France.

The characteristic political connotation of the English term “conservative” took final form in the 1820’s in line with French usage. In 1827 Wellington expected from the “parti conservateur” of England the unity of all forces dedicated to the preservation of
monarchical and aristocratic privileges in opposition to radical demands; in the struggles over the final version of the Reform Bill after 1830, “conservative” was often understood in the sense of “local, constitutional,” and as the antithesis of “anarchic, radical.”

As the name of a party and as the expression of a changed conception of its own policies, “conservative party” appeared along with “Tory party” for the first time in 1830, though its meaning remained contro-
versial. It was the personality of Peel that imposed an interpretation on the word “conservative” that may still count as valid to this day: defense of law and order, along with a willingness to reform any institution really in need of amelioration, but by gradual and deliberate steps.