Sadly this was one of Dr Rothbard’s worst articles.

The “Vindication” was indeed a satire of the argument that religion could just be found in the human heart and had no need of scripture and doctrines.

By making an argument that civil society could exist without any need for political institutions of any kind Burke hoped to show the absurdity of the “natural religion” case – he was not even pretending to support an anarchocapitalist line (the “Vindication” was not really about political philiosophy at all).

Far from only claiming that the Vindication was a satire many years later, Burke let the cat out of the bag (for those people who had not understood the satire) only a year after the Vindication was published.

Of course it helps when writing a satire to have an insight into the position that one is attacking. And Burke did indeed feel a great frustration with the endless arguments between different sects of Christians (particularly with the oppression of Roman Catholics in his native Ireland) and understood the strain of going through all the religious arguments (Burke claimed to have read all the works on religion published in English over the last couple of centuries).

However, Burke’s lifelong hostility to such things as allowing Ministers of the Church of England to dissent from the basic doctrines of the Church of England (and still be Ministers of the Church of England) showed that he did not accept that could be such a thing as a religion without doctrines – no matter how tedious the study of religious doctrine was.

Actually (to return to politics) one can make a case for some sympathy for “anarchocapitalism” (or rather pro pivate property anarchism) in Burke – but would base this case on a very late work, not an early one.

In “An appeal from the New to the Old Whigs” (1791) Burke makes it quite clear that he does not consider that private property is the creation of the state, and holds that if all political institutions collapse people’s moral claim to their property is not undermined in any way. He is standing against the notion that revolution produces a year zero situation which gives political authorities some sort of right to distribute property.

In short, if Burke could be convinced that government was not needed to protect the lives and goods (the property) of the public he would open to the argument that government should be abolished.