But he thought haste in the realm of reform led to even greater injustice than deliberate inaction. It's not that Burke was blind to injustice. In fact his record on spotting problems is better than just about everybody's. No, Burke simply didn't trust the problem-solvers. No single individual is smart enough to impose changes on society willy-nilly.
Tradition is the distillation of thousands of years of trial, error, and modest correction.
Tradition contains volumes of unexpressed knowledge that has been passed from one generation to another. We do not know why we do everything we do, because we are not omniscient historians. We are not conscious of all the painful trial and error that went into our habit of cooking food, but that doesn't mean it's a totally arbitrary practice. Think about how much accumulated wisdom is represented in our use of currency, and yet that practice predates the written arguments for currency by thousands of years. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.