Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke

Painting of Edmund Burke MP c. 1767,

studio of Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)

Born 12 January 1729

Dublin, Ireland

Died 9 July 1797 (aged 68)

Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire,Great Britain

Alma mater Trinity College, Dublin

Religion Church of Ireland

Era Eighteenth century philosophy

Region Western philosophy

School Conservative liberalism, Conservatism

Main interests Social and political philosophy

Influences[show]

Influenced[show]

The Right Honourable

Edmund Burke

Paymaster of the Forces

In office

1782–1782

Preceded by Richard Rigby

Succeeded by Isaac Barré

In office

1783–1783

Preceded by Isaac Barré

Succeeded by William Grenville

Personal details

Born 12 January 1729

Dublin, Ireland

Died 9 July 1797 (aged 68)

Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, Great Britain

 Edmund Burke (/bɜːrk/; 12 January [NS] 1729[1] – 9 July 1797) was an Irish[2][3] statesman born
in Dublin, as well as an author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after moving to
London, served as a member of parliament (MP) for many years in theHouse of Commons with
the Whig Party.
Burke is remembered mainly for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, Catholic
emancipation, the impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and for his later
objections about the French Revolution, the latter leading to his becoming the leading figure within
the conservative faction of the Whig Party, which he dubbed the "Old Whigs", as opposed to the
pro–French Revolution "New Whigs", led by Charles James Fox.[4]
In the nineteenth century Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals.[5] Subsequently, in
the twentieth century, he became widely regarded as the philosophical founder of modern
conservatism.[6][7]

Contents
[hide]

 1Early life
 2Early writing
 3Member of Parliament
 4American War of Independence
 5Paymaster of the Forces
 6Democracy
 7India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings
 8French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789
 9Later life
 10Legacy
 11Religious thought of Edmund Burke
 12False quotations
 13Timeline
 14Bibliography
 15See also
 16Notes
 17References
 18Primary sources
 19Further reading
 20External links

Early life[edit]
Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland. His mother Mary née Nagle (c. 1702 – 1770) was a Roman
Catholic who hailed from a déclasséCounty Cork family (and a cousin of Nano Nagle), whereas his
father, a successful solicitor, Richard (died 1761), was a member of the Church of Ireland; it remains
unclear whether this is the same Richard Burke who converted from Catholicism.[8] The Burke
dynasty descends from an Anglo-Norman knight surnamed de Burgh (latinised as de Burgo) who
arrived in Ireland in 1185 followingHenry II of England's 1171 invasion of Ireland.[9]
Burke adhered to his father's faith and remained a practising Anglican throughout his life, unlike his
sister Juliana who was brought up as and remained a Roman Catholic.[10] Later, his political enemies
repeatedly accused him of having been educated at the JesuitCollege of St. Omer, near Calais,
France, and of harbouring secret Catholic sympathies at a time when membership of the Catholic
Church would disqualify him from public office (see Penal Laws in Ireland). As Burke told Frances
Crewe:
Mr. Burke's Enemies often endeavoured to convince the World that he had been bred up in the
Catholic Faith, & that his Family were of it, & that he himself had been educated at St. Omer—but
this was false, as his father was a regular practitioner of the Law at Dublin, which he could not be
unless of the Established Church: & it so happened that though Mr. B—was twice at Paris, he never
happened to go through the Town of St. Omer.[11]

Once an MP, Burke was required to take the oath of allegiance and abjuration, the oath of
supremacy, and declare against transubstantiation: no Catholic MP in Ireland is known to have done
so in the eighteenth century.[12] Although never denying his Irishness, Burke often described himself
as "an Englishman". According to the revisionist historian J. C. D. Clark, this was in an age "before
'Celtic nationalism' sought to make Irishness and Englishness incompatible".[13]
As a child he sometimes spent time away from the unhealthy air of Dublin with his mother's family in
the Blackwater Valley in County Cork. He received his early education at aQuaker school
in Ballitore, County Kildare, some 67 kilometres (42 mi) from Dublin.[14] He remained in
correspondence with his schoolmate from there, Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of the school's
owner, throughout his life.
In 1744, Burke started at Trinity College Dublin, a Protestant establishment, which up until 1793, did
not permit Catholics to take degrees.[15] In 1747, he set up a debating society, "Edmund Burke's
Club", which, in 1770, merged with TCD's Historical Club to form the College Historical Society; it is
the oldest undergraduate society in the world. The minutes of the meetings of Burke's Club remain in
the collection of the Historical Society. Burke graduated from Trinity in 1748. Burke's father wanted
him to read Law, and with this in mind he went to London in 1750, where he entered the Middle
Temple, before soon giving up legal study to travel in Continental Europe. After eschewing the Law,
he pursued a livelihood through writing.

Early writing[edit]
The late Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use of History was published in 1752 and his
collected works appeared in 1754. This provoked Burke into writing his first published work, A
Vindication of Natural Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind, appearing in
Spring 1756. Burke imitated Bolingbroke's style and ideas in areductio ad absurdum of his
arguments for atheistic rationalism, demonstrating their absurdity.[16][17]

"The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own." A
Vindication of Natural Society
Burke claimed that Bolingbroke's arguments against revealed religion could apply to all social and
civil institutions as well. Lord Chesterfield andBishop Warburton (and others) initially thought that the
work was genuinely by Bolingbroke rather than a satire.[16][18] All the reviews of the work were positive,
with critics especially appreciative of Burke's quality of writing. Some reviewers failed to notice the
ironic nature of the book, which led to Burke stating in the preface to the second edition (1757) that it
was a satire.[19]
Richard Hurd believed that Burke's imitation was near-perfect and that this defeated his purpose: an
ironist "should take care by a constant exaggeration to make the ridicule shine through the Imitation.
Whereas this Vindication is everywhere enforc'd, not only in the language, and on the principles of L.
Bol., but with so apparent, or rather so real an earnestness, that half his purpose is sacrificed to the
other".[19] A minority of scholars have taken the position that, in fact, Burke did write the Vindication in
earnest, later disowning it only for political reasons.[20][21]
In 1757, Burke published a treatise on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers
such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant. It was his only purely philosophical work, and when
asked by Sir Joshua Reynolds and French Laurence to expand it thirty years later, Burke replied that
he was no longer fit for abstract speculation (Burke had written it before he was nineteen years of
age).[22]
On 25 February 1757, Burke signed a contract with Robert Dodsley to write a "history of England
from the time of Julius Caesar to the end of the reign of Queen Anne", its length being eighty quarto
sheets (640 pages), nearly 400,000 words. It was to be submitted for publication by Christmas
1758.[23] Burke completed the work to the year 1216 and stopped; it was not published until after
Burke's death, being included in an 1812 collection of his works, entitled An Essay Towards an
Abridgement of the English History. G. M. Young did not value Burke's history and claimed that it
was "demonstrably a translation from the French".[24] Lord Acton, on commenting on the story that
Burke stopped his history because David Hume published his, said "it is ever to be regretted that the
reverse did not occur".[25]
During the year following that contract, with Dodsley, Burke founded the influential Annual Register,
a publication in which various authors evaluated the international political events of the previous
year.[26] The extent to which Burke contributed to the Annual Register is unclear:[27] in his biography of
Burke, Robert Murray quotes the Register as evidence of Burke's opinions, yet Philip Magnus in his
biography does not cite it directly as a reference.[28] Burke remained the chief editor of the publication
until at least 1789 and there is no evidence that any other writer contributed to it before 1766.[28]
On 12 March 1757, Burke married Jane Mary Nugent (1734–1812), daughter of Dr Christopher
Nugent,[29] a Catholic physician who had provided him with medical treatment atBath. Their
son Richard was born on 9 February 1758; an elder son, Christopher, died in infancy. Burke also
helped raise a ward, Edmund Nagle (later Admiral Sir Edmund Nagle), the son of a maternal cousin
orphaned in 1763.[30]
At about this same time, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton (known as "Single-
speech Hamilton"). When Hamilton was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, Burke accompanied
him to Dublin as his private secretary, a position he held for three years. In 1765 Burke
became private secretary to the liberal Whig statesman, Charles, Marquess of Rockingham,
then Prime Minister of Great Britain, who remained Burke's close friend and associate until his
untimely death in 1782. Rockingham also introduced Burke as aFreemason.[31][32]

Member of Parliament[edit]
'A literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds's'. [33] Use a cursor to see who is who.

In December 1765, Burke entered the House of Commons of the British Parliament as Member
for Wendover, a pocket borough in the gift of Lord Fermanagh, later 2nd Earl Verney and a close
political ally of Rockingham. Having delivered his maiden speech,William Pitt the Elder said Burke
had "spoken in such a manner as to stop the mouths of all Europe" and that the Commons should
congratulate itself on acquiring such a Member.[34]
The first great subject Burke addressed was the controversy with the American colonies, which soon
developed into war and ultimateseparation; in reply to the 1769 Grenvillite pamphlet, The Present
State of the Nation, he published his own pamphlet on,Observations on a Late State of the Nation.
Surveying the finances of France, Burke predicts "some extraordinary convulsion in that whole
system".[35]
During the same year, with mostly borrowed money, Burke purchased Gregories, a 600-acre
(2.4 km2) estate near Beaconsfield. Although the estate included saleable assets such as art
works by Titian, Gregories proved a heavy financial burden in the following decades and Burke was
never able to repay its purchase price in full. His speeches and writings, having made him famous,
led to the suggestion that he was the author of the Letters of Junius.
At about this time, Burke joined the circle of leading intellectuals and artists in London of
whom Samuel Johnson was the central luminary. This circle also included David Garrick,Oliver
Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds. Edward Gibbon described Burke as 'the most eloquent and
rational madman that I ever knew'.[36] Although Johnson admired Burke's brilliance, he found him a
dishonest politician.[37][38]
Burke took a leading role in the debate regarding the constitutional limits to the executive authority of
the king. He argued strongly against unrestrained royal power and for the role of political parties in
maintaining a principled opposition capable of preventing abuses, either by the monarch, or by
specific factions within the government. His most important publication in this regard was
his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents of 23 April 1770.[39] Burke identified the
"discontents" as stemming from the "secret influence" of a neo-Tory group he labelled as, the "king's
friends", whose system "comprehending the exterior and interior administrations, is commonly
called, in the technical language of the Court, Double Cabinet".[40] Britain needed a party with "an
unshaken adherence to principle, and attachment to connexion, against every allurement of
interest". Party divisions "whether operating for good or evil, are things inseparable from free
government".[41]
The Gregories estate, purchased by Burke for £20,000 in 1768

During 1771, Burke wrote a Bill that, if passed, would have given juries the right to determine what
was libel. Burke spoke in favour of the Bill but it was opposed by some, including Charles James
Fox thus not becoming law. Fox, when introducing his own Bill in 1791 in Opposition, repeated
almost verbatim the text of Burke's Bill without acknowledgement.[42] Burke also was prominent in
securing the right to publish debates held in Parliament.[43]
Speaking in a parliamentary debate on the prohibition on the export of grain on 16 November 1770,
Burke argued in favour of a free market in corn: "There are no such things as a high, & a low price
that is encouraging, & discouraging; there is nothing but a natural price, which grain brings at an
universal market."[44] In 1772 Burke was instrumental in the passing of the Repeal of Certain Laws
Act 1772, which repealed various old laws against dealers and forestallers in corn.[45]
In the Annual Register for 1772 (published in July 1773), Burke condemned the Partition of Poland.
He saw it as "the first very great breach in the modern political system of Europe" and as upsetting
the balance of power in Europe.[46]
In 1774, Burke was elected Member for Bristol, at the time "England's second city" and a large
constituency with a genuine electoral contest.
In May 1778, Burke supported a parliamentary motion revising restrictions on Irish trade. His
constituents, citizens of the great trading city of Bristol, however urged Burke to oppose free
trade with Ireland. Burke resisted their protestations and said: "If, from this conduct, I shall forfeit
their suffrages at an ensuing election, it will stand on record an example to future representatives of
the Commons of England, that one man at least had dared to resist the desires of his constituents
when his judgment assured him they were wrong".[47]
Burke published, Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol on the Bills relative to the Trade of Ireland, in
which he espoused "some of the chief principles of commerce; such as the advantage of free
intercourse between all parts of the same kingdom...the evils attending restriction and
monopoly...and that the gain of others is not necessarily our loss, but on the contrary an advantage
by causing a greater demand for such wares as we have for sale".[48]
Burke also supported the attempts of Sir George Savile to repeal some of the penal laws against
Catholics.[49] Burke also called capital punishment "the Butchery which we call justice" in 1776 and in
1780 he condemned the use of the pillory for two men convicted for attempting to practice sodomy.[30]
This support for unpopular causes, notably free trade with Ireland and Catholic Emancipation, led to
Burke losing his seat in 1780. For the remainder of his parliamentary career, Burke
represented Malton, another pocket borough under the Marquess of Rockingham's patronage.

American War of Independence[edit]

Burke expressed his support for the grievances of the American Colonies under the government
of King George III and his appointed representatives. On 19 April 1774 Burke made a speech, "On
American Taxation" (published in January 1775), on a motion to repeal the tea duty:
Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has
taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting
to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of
them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy
contest, will die along with it.... Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done
it.... Do not burthen them with taxes.... But if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and
poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to
those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach
them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question.... If that sovereignty and their
freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No
body of men will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other side... tell me, what one
character of liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of slavery they are free from, if they are
bound in their property and industry by all the restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at the
same time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose to impose, without the least share in
granting them. When they bear the burthens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to bear the
burthens of unlimited revenue too? The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery; that it
is legal slavery, will be no compensation either to his feelings or to his understandings.[50]

On 22 March 1775, in the House of Commons, Burke delivered a speech (published during May
1775) on reconciliation with America. Burke appealed for peace as preferable to civil war and
reminded the House of America's growing population, its industry, and its wealth. He warned against
the notion that the Americans would back down in the face of force, since most Americans were of
British descent:
... the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen.... They are therefore not only devoted
to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. The people are
Protestants... a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it.... My hold of the colonies
is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar
privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of
iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government—
they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their
allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges
another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation—the cement is gone, the
cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the
wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple
consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom,
they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the
more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have
anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from
Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity,
freedom they can have from none but you.[51]

Burke prized peace with America above all else, pleading with the House of Commons to remember
that the interest by way of money received from the American colonies was far more attractive than
any sense of putting the colonists in their place:
The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war, not peace to be hunted through the
labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations, not peace to arise out of universal discord... it is
simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of
peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.[52]

Burke was not merely presenting a peace agreement to Parliament; rather, he stepped forward with
four reasons against using force, carefully reasoned. He laid out his objections in an orderly manner,
focusing on one before moving to the next. His first concern was that the use of force would have to
be temporary, and that the uprisings and objections to British governance in America would not be.
Second, Burke worried about the uncertainty surrounding whether Britain would win a conflict in
America. "An armament", Burke said, "is not a victory".[53] Third, Burke brought up the issue of
impairment; it would do the British Government no good to engage in a scorched earth war and have
the object they desired (America) become damaged or even useless. The American colonists could
always retreat into the mountains, but the land they left behind would most likely be unusable,
whether by accident or design. The fourth and final reason to avoid the use of force was experience;
the British had never attempted to rein in an unruly colony by force, and they did not know if it could
be done, let alone accomplished thousands of miles away from home.[53] Not only were all of these
concerns reasonable, but some turned out to be prophetic – the American colonists did not
surrender, even when things looked extremely bleak, and the British were ultimately unsuccessful in
their attempts to win a war fought on American soil.
It was not temporary force, uncertainty, impairment, or even experience that Burke cited as the
number one reason for avoiding war with the American colonies, however; it was the character of the
American people themselves:
In this character of Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and
distinguishes the whole... this fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than
in any other people of the earth... [the] men [are] acute, inquisitive, dextrous, prompt in attack, ready
in defense, full of resources...."[53] Burke concludes with another plea for peace, and a prayer that
Britain might avoid actions which, in Burke's words, "may bring on the destruction of this Empire".[53]

Burke proposed six resolutions to settle the American conflict peacefully:

1. Allow the American colonists to elect their own representatives, thus settling the dispute
about taxation without representation;
2. Acknowledge this wrongdoing and apologise for grievances caused;
3. Procure an efficient manner of choosing and sending these delegates;
4. Set up a General Assembly in America itself, with powers to regulate taxes;
5. Stop gathering taxes by imposition (or law), and start gathering them only when they are
needed; and
6. Grant needed aid to the colonies.[53]
The effect of these resolutions, had they been passed, can never be known. Unfortunately, Burke
delivered this speech just less than a month before the explosive conflict at Concord and
Lexington,[54] and as these resolutions were not enacted, little was done that would help to dissuade
conflict.
Among the reasons this speech was so greatly admired was its passage on Lord Bathurst (1684–
1775); Burke describes an angel in 1704 prophesying to Bathurst the future greatness of England
and also of America: "Young man, There is America – which at this day serves little more than to
amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death,
shew itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world".[55] Samuel
Johnson was so irritated at hearing it continually praised, that he made a parody of it, where the
devil appears to a young Whig and predicts that in short time, Whiggism will poison even the
paradise of America! [55]
The administration of Lord North (1770–1782) tried to defeat the colonist rebellion by military force.
British and American forces clashed in 1775 and, in 1776, came the American Declaration of
Independence. Burke was appalled by celebrations in Britain of the defeat of the Americans at New
York and Pennsylvania. He claimed the English national character was being changed by this
authoritarianism.[30] Burke wrote: "As to the good people of England, they seem to partake every day
more and more of the Character of that administration which they have been induced to tolerate. I
am satisfied, that within a few years there has been a great Change in the National Character. We
seem no longer that eager, inquisitive, jealous, fiery people, which we have been formerly".[56]
In Burke's view, the British Government was fighting "the American English" ("our English Brethren
in the Colonies"), with a Germanic king employing "the hireling sword of German boors and vassals"
to destroy the English liberties of the colonists.[30] On American independence, Burke wrote: "I do not
know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of
our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity".[57]
During the Gordon Riots in 1780, Burke became a target of hostility and his home was placed under
armed guard by the military.[58]

Paymaster of the Forces[edit]

In Cincinnatus in Retirement (1782), James Gillraycaricatured Burke's support of rights for Catholics

The fall of North led to Rockingham being recalled to power in March 1782. Burke was
appointed Paymaster of the Forcesand a Privy Counsellor, but without a seat in Cabinet.
Rockingham's unexpected death in July 1782 and replacement with Shelburne as Prime Minister,
put an end to his administration after only a few months, however, Burke did manage to introduce
two Acts.
The Paymaster General Act 1782 ended the post as a lucrative sinecure. Previously, Paymasters
had been able to draw on money from HM Treasury at their discretion. Now they were required to
put the money they had requested to withdraw from the Treasury into the Bank of England, from
where it was to be withdrawn for specific purposes. The Treasury would receive monthly statements
of the Paymaster's balance at the Bank. This act was repealed by Shelburne's administration, but
the act that replaced it repeated verbatim almost the whole text of the Burke Act.[59]
The Civil List and Secret Service Money Act 1782 was a watered down version of Burke's original
intentions as outlined in his famous Speech on Economical Reform of 11 February 1780. He
managed, however, to abolish 134 offices in the royal household and civil administration.[60] The
third Secretary of State and the Board of Trade were abolished and pensions were limited and
regulated. The Act was anticipated to save £72,368 a year.[61]
In February 1783, Burke resumed the post of Paymaster of the Forces when Shelburne's
government fell and was replaced by a coalition headed by North that included Charles James Fox.
That coalition fell in 1783, and was succeeded by the long Tory administration of William Pitt the
Younger, which lasted until 1801. Accordingly, having supported Fox and North, Burke was in
opposition for the remainder of his political life.

Democracy[edit]
In 1774, Burke's Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll was noted for its
defence of the principles of representative government against the notion that elected officials
should merely be delegates:
... it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest
correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought
to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is
his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in
all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his
enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living.
These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a
trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes
you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it
to your opinion.[62]

Political scientist Hanna Pitkin points out that Burke linked the interest of the district with the proper
behaviour of its elected official, explaining, "Burke conceives of broad, relatively fixed interest, few in
number and clearly defined, of which any group or locality has just one. These interests are largely
economic or associated with particular localities whose livelihood they characterize, in his over-all
prosperity they involve."[63]
Burke was a leading sceptic with respect to democracy. While admitting that theoretically, in some
cases it might be desirable, he insisted a democratic government in Britain in his day would not only
be inept, but also oppressive. He opposed democracy for three basic reasons. First, government
required a degree of intelligence and breadth of knowledge of the sort that occurred rarely among
the common people. Second, he thought that if they had the vote, common people had dangerous
and angry passions that could be aroused easily by demagogues; he feared that the authoritarian
impulses that could be empowered by these passions would undermine cherished traditions and
established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property. Third, Burke warned that
democracy would create a tyranny over unpopular minorities, who needed the protection of the
upper classes.[64]

India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings[edit]

Main article: Impeachment of Warren Hastings
For years Burke pursued impeachment efforts against Warren Hastings, formerly Governor-General
of Bengal, that resulted in the trial during 1786. His interaction with the British dominion of India
began well before Hastings' impeachment trial. For two decades prior to the impeachment,
Parliament had dealt with the Indian issue. This trial was the pinnacle of years of unrest and
deliberation.[65] In 1781 Burke was first able to delve into the issues surrounding the East India
Company when he was appointed Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on East Indian
Affairs—from that point until the end of the trial; India was Burke's primary concern. This committee
was charged "to investigate alleged injustices in Bengal, the war with Hyder Ali, and other Indian
difficulties".[66] While Burke and the committee focused their attention on these matters, a second
'secret' committee was formed to assess the same issues. Both committee reports were written by
Burke. Among other purposes, the reports conveyed to the Indian princes that Britain would not
wage war on them, along with demanding that the HEIC recall Hastings. This was Burke's first call
for substantive change regarding imperial practices. When addressing the whole House of
Commons regarding the committee report, Burke described the Indian issue as one that "began 'in
commerce' but 'ended in empire.'"[67]
On 28 February 1785, Burke delivered a now-famous speech, The Nabob of Arcot's Debts, wherein
he condemned the damage to India by the East India Company. In the province of the Carnatic the
Indians had constructed a system of reservoirs to make the soil fertile in a naturally dry region, and
centred their society on the husbandry of water:
These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people; testators to a posterity
which they embraced as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built by ambition; but by the
ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, not contented with reigning in the dispensation of
happiness during the contracted term of human life, had strained, with all the reachings and
graspings of a vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of their bounty beyond the limits of nature,
and to perpetuate themselves through generations of generations, the guardians, the protectors, the
nourishers of mankind.[68]

Burke held that the advent of British dominion, and in particular the conduct of the East India
Company, had destroyed much that was good in these traditions and that, as a consequence of this,
and the lack of new customs to replace them, the Indians were suffering. He set about establishing a
set of British expectations, whose moral foundation would, in his opinion, warrant the empire.[69]
On 4 April 1786, Burke presented the Commons with the Article of Charge of High Crimes and
Misdemeanors against Hastings. The impeachment in Westminster Hall, which did not begin until 14
February 1788, would be the "first major public discursive event of its kind in England",[70] bringing the
morality and duty of imperialism to the forefront of public perception. Burke already was known for
his eloquent rhetorical skills and his involvement in the trial only enhanced its popularity and
significance.[71] Burke's indictment, fuelled by emotional indignation, branded Hastings a 'captain-
general of iniquity'; who never dined without 'creating a famine'; whose heart was 'gangrened to the
core', and who resembled both a 'spider of Hell' and a 'ravenous vulture devouring the carcasses of
the dead'.[72] The House of Commons eventually impeached Hastings, but subsequently, the House
of Lords acquitted him of all charges.

French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789[edit]

Smelling out a Rat;—or—The Atheistical-Revolutionist disturbed in his Midnight "Calculations" (1790) by Gillray, depicting a
caricature of Burke with a long nose and spectacles, holding a crown and a cross; the seated man, Dr. Richard Price, is
writing "On the Benefits of Anarchy Regicide Atheism" beneath a picture of the execution of Charles I of England.
Reflections on the Revolution in France, And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a
Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris. By the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.

Initially, Burke did not condemn the French Revolution. In a letter of 9 August 1789, he wrote:
"England gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for Liberty and not knowing whether to
blame or to applaud! The thing indeed, though I thought I saw something like it in progress for
several years, has still something in it paradoxical and Mysterious. The spirit it is impossible not to
admire; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner".[73] The events of 5–6
October 1789, when a crowd of Parisian women marched on Versailles to compel King Louis XVI to
return to Paris, turned Burke against it. In a letter to his son, Richard Burke, dated 10 October he
said: "This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous state of
France—where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world
of Monsters to be produced in the place of it—where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and
the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable".[74] On 4 November Charles-Jean-
François Depont wrote to Burke, requesting that he endorse the Revolution. Burke replied that any
critical language of it by him should be taken "as no more than the expression of doubt" but he
added: "You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recover'd freedom".[75] In the same month he
described France as "a country undone". Burke's first public condemnation of the Revolution
occurred on the debate in Parliament on the army estimates on 9 February 1790, provoked by praise
of the Revolution by Pitt and Fox:
Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French
had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very
short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church;
their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their
manufactures...[there was a danger of] an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled,
proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy...[in religion] the
danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to
all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been
embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed.[76]

In January 1790, Burke read Dr. Richard Price's sermon of 4 November 1789 entitled, A Discourse
on the Love of our Country, to theRevolution Society.[77] That society had been founded to
commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In this sermon Price espoused the philosophy of
universal "Rights of Men". Price argued that love of our country "does not imply any conviction of the
superior value of it to other countries, or any particular preference of its laws and constitution of
government".[78] Instead, Price asserted that Englishmen should see themselves "more as citizens of
the world than as members of any particular community".
A debate between Price and Burke ensued that was "the classic moment at which two fundamentally
different conceptions of national identity were presented to the English public".[79] Price claimed that
the principles of the Glorious Revolution included "the right to choose our own governors, to cashier
them for misconduct, and to frame a government for ourselves".
Immediately after reading Price's sermon, Burke wrote a draft of what eventually
became, Reflections on the Revolution in France.[80] On 13 February 1790, a notice in the press said
that shortly, Burke would publish a pamphlet on the Revolution and its British supporters, however
he spent the year revising and expanding it. On 1 November he finally published the Reflections and
it was an immediate best-seller.[81][82] Priced at five shillings, it was more expensive than most political
pamphlets, but by the end of 1790, it had gone through ten printings and sold approximately 17,500
copies. A French translation appeared on 29 November and on 30 November the translator, Pierre-
Gaëton Dupont, wrote to Burke saying 2,500 copies had already been sold. The French translation
ran to ten printings by June 1791.[83]
What the Glorious Revolution had meant was as important to Burke and his contemporaries as it
had been for the last one hundred years in British politics.[84] In the Reflections, Burke argued against
Price's interpretation of the Glorious Revolution and instead, gave a classic Whig defence of
it.[85] Burke argued against the idea of abstract, metaphysical rights of humans and instead advocated
national tradition:
The Revolution was made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and
that antient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty.... The very idea
of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the
period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our
forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon
[scion] alien to the nature of the original plant.... Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You
will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow
him, to Blackstone, are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove
that the ancient charter... were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the still more ancient standing
law of the kingdom.... In the famous law... called the Petition of Right, the parliament says to the
king, "Your subjects have inherited this freedom", claiming their franchises not on abstract principles
"as the rights of men", but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their
forefathers.[86]

Burke put forward that "We fear God, we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments;
with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when
such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected".[87] Burke defended this
prejudice on the grounds that it is "the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages" and superior
to individual reason, which is small in comparison. "Prejudice", Burke claimed, "is of ready
application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and
virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled, and
unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit".[88] Burke criticised social contract theory by
claiming that society is indeed, a contract, but "a partnership not only between those who are living,
but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born".[89]
The most famous passage in Burke's Reflections was his description of the events of 5–6 October
1789 and the part of Marie-Antoinette in them. Burke's account differs little from modern historians
who have used primary sources.[90] His use of flowery language to describe it, however, provoked
both praise and criticism. Philip Francis wrote to Burke saying that what he wrote of Marie-Antoinette
was "pure foppery".[91] Edward Gibbon, however, reacted differently: "I adore his chivalry".[92] Burke
was informed by an Englishman who had talked with the Duchesse de Biron, that when Marie-
Antoinette was reading the passage, she burst into tears and took considerable time to finish reading
it.[93] Price had rejoiced that the French king had been "led in triumph" during the October Days, but
to Burke this symbolised the opposing revolutionary sentiment of the Jacobins and the natural
sentiments of those who shared his own view with horror—that the ungallant assault on Marie-
Antoinette—was a cowardly attack on a defenceless woman.[94]
Louis XVI translated the Reflections "from end to end" into French.[95] Fellow Whig MPs Richard
Sheridan and Charles James Fox, disagreed with Burke and split with him. Fox thought
the Reflections to be "in very bad taste" and "favouring Tory principles".[96] Other Whigs such as
the Duke of Portland and Earl Fitzwilliam privately agreed with Burke, but did not wish for a public
breach with their Whig colleagues.[97] Burke wrote on 29 November 1790: "I have received from the
Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord John Cavendish, Montagu
(Frederick Montagu MP), and a long et cetera of the old Stamina of the Whiggs a most full
approbation of the principles of that work and a kind indulgence to the execution".[98] The Duke of
Portland said in 1791 that when anyone criticised the Reflections to him, he informed them that he
had recommended the book to his sons as containing the true Whig creed.[99]
In the opinion of Paul Langford,[30] Burke crossed something of a Rubicon when he attended a levee
on 3 February 1791 to meet the king, later described by Jane Burke:
On his coming to Town for the Winter, as he generally does, he went to the Levee with the Duke
of Portland, who went with Lord William to kiss hands on his going into the Guards—while Lord
William was kissing hands, The King was talking to The Duke, but his Eyes were fixed on [Burke]
who was standing in the Crowd, and when He said His say to The Duke, without waiting for [Burke]'s
coming up in his turn, The King went up to him, and, after the usual questions of how long have you
been in Town and the weather, He said you have been very much employed of late, and very much
confined. [Burke] said, no, Sir, not more than usual—You have and very well employed too, but
there are none so deaf as those that w'ont hear, and none so blind as those that w'ont see—[Burke]
made a low bow, Sir, I certainly now understand you, but was afraid my vanity or presumption might
have led me to imagine what Your Majesty has said referred to what I have done—You cannot be
vain—You have been of use to us all, it is a general opinion, is it not so Lord Stair? who was
standing near. It is said Lord Stair;—Your Majesty's adopting it, Sir, will make the opinion general,
said [Burke]—I know it is the general opinion, and I know that there is no Man who calls himself a
Gentleman that must not think himself obliged to you, for you have supported the cause of the
Gentlemen—You know the tone at Court is a whisper, but The King said all this loud, so as to be
heard by every one at Court.[100]

Burke's Reflections sparked a pamphlet war. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the first into print,
publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Men a few weeks after Burke. Thomas Paine followed with
the Rights of Man in 1791. James Mackintosh, who wrote Vindiciae Gallicae, was the first to see
the Reflections as "the manifesto of a Counter Revolution". Mackintosh later agreed with Burke's
views, remarking in December 1796 after meeting him, that Burke was "minutely and accurately
informed, to a wonderful exactness, with respect to every fact relating to the French
Revolution".[101] Mackintosh later said: "Burke was one of the first thinkers as well as one of the
greatest orators of his time. He is without parallel in any age, excepting perhaps Lord Bacon and
Cicero; and his works contain an ampler store of political and moral wisdom than can be found in
any other writer whatever".[102]
Charles James Fox

In November 1790, François-Louis-Thibault de Menonville, a member of the National Assembly of

France, wrote to Burke, praisingReflections and requesting more "very refreshing mental food" that
he could publish.[103] This Burke did in April 1791 when he published A Letter to a Member of the
National Assembly. Burke called for external forces to reverse the revolution and included an attack
on the late French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as being the subject of a personality cult
that had developed in revolutionary France. Although Burke conceded that Rousseau sometimes
showed "a considerable insight into human nature" he mostly was critical. Although he did not meet
Rousseau on his visit to Britain in 1766–7 Burke was a friend of David Hume, with whom Rousseau
had stayed. Burke said Rousseau "entertained no principle either to influence of his heart, or to
guide his understanding—but vanity"—which he "was possessed to a degree little short of
madness". He also cited Rousseau's Confessions as evidence that Rousseau had a life of "obscure
and vulgar vices" that was not "chequered, or spotted here and there, with virtues, or even
distinguished by a single good action". Burke contrasted Rousseau's theory of universal
benevolence and his having sent his children to a foundling hospital: "a lover of his kind, but a hater
of his kindred".[104]
These events and the disagreements that arose from them within the Whig Party, led to its break-up
and to the rupture of Burke's friendship with Fox. In debate in Parliament on Britain's relations with
Russia, Fox praised the principles of the revolution, although Burke was not able to reply at this time
as he was "overpowered by continued cries of question from his own side of the House".[105] When
Parliament was debating the Quebec Bill for a constitution for Canada, Fox praised the revolution
and criticised some of Burke's arguments, such as hereditary power. On 6 May 1791, during another
debate in Parliament on the Quebec Bill, Burke used the opportunity to answer Fox, and to condemn
the new French Constitution and "the horrible consequences flowing from the French idea of the
Rights of Man".[106] Burke asserted that those ideas were the antithesis of both the British and the
American constitutions.[107]Burke was interrupted, and Fox intervened, saying that Burke should be
allowed to carry on with his speech. A vote of censure was moved against Burke, however, for
noticing the affairs of France, which was moved by Lord Sheffield and seconded by Fox.[108] Pitt made
a speech praising Burke, and Fox made a speech—both rebuking and complimenting Burke. He
questioned the sincerity of Burke, who seemed to have forgotten the lessons he had learned from
him, quoting from Burke's own speeches of fourteen and fifteen years before.
Burke's response was:
It certainly was indiscreet at any period, but especially at his time of life, to parade enemies, or give
his friends occasion to desert him; yet if his firm and steady adherence to the British constitution
placed him in such a dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public duty and public experience taught
him, with his last words exclaim, "Fly from the French Constitution".[106]

At this point, Fox whispered that there was "no loss of friendship". "I regret to say there is", Burke
replied, "I have indeed made a great sacrifice; I have done my duty though I have lost my friend.
There is something in the detested French constitution that envenoms every thing it touches".[109] This
provoked a reply from Fox, yet he was unable to give his speech for some time since he was
overcome with tears and emotion, he appealed to Burke to remember their inalienable friendship,
but also repeated his criticisms of Burke and uttered "unusually bitter sarcasms".[109] This only
aggravated the rupture between the two men. Burke demonstrated his separation from the party on
5 June 1791 by writing to Fitzwilliam, declining money from him.[110]
Burke was dismayed that some Whigs, instead of reaffirming the principles of the Whig Party he laid
out in the Reflections, had rejected them in favour of "French principles" and that they criticised
Burke for abandoning Whig principles. Burke wanted to demonstrate his fidelity to Whig principles
and feared that acquiescence to Fox and his followers would allow the Whig Party to become a
vehicle for Jacobinism.
Burke knew that many members of the Whig Party did not share Fox's views and he wanted to
provoke them into condemning the French Revolution. Burke wrote that he wanted to represent the
whole Whig party "as tolerating, and by a toleration, countenancing those proceedings" so that he
could "stimulate them to a public declaration of what every one of their acquaintance privately knows
to be...their sentiments".[111] Therefore, on 3 August 1791 Burke published his Appeal from the New to
the Old Whigs, in which he renewed his criticism of the radical revolutionary programmes inspired by
the French Revolution and attacked the Whigs who supported them, as holding principles contrary to
those traditionally held by the Whig party.
Burke owned two copies of what has been called "that practical compendium of Whig political
theory", The Tryal of Dr. Henry Sacheverell (1710).[112] Burke wrote of the trial: "It rarely happens to a
party to have the opportunity of a clear, authentic, recorded, declaration of their political tenets upon
the subject of a great constitutional event like that of the [Glorious] Revolution".[112] Writing in the third
person, Burke asserted in his Appeal:
... that the foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying
the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,—a
breach of the original contract, implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme
of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords and Commons.—That the
fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and
in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution. That it was justified only upon the necessity of the
case; as the only means left for the recovery of that antient constitution, formed by the original
contract of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the same government. These
are the points to be proved.[112]

Burke then provided quotations from Paine's Rights of Man to demonstrate what the New Whigs
believed. Burke's belief that Foxite principles corresponded to Paine's was genuine.[113] Finally, Burke
denied that a majority of "the people" had, or ought to have, the final say in politics and alter society
at their pleasure. People had rights, but also duties, and these duties were not voluntary. Also, the
people could not overthrow morality derived from God.[114]
Although Whig grandees such as Portland and Fitzwilliam privately agreed with Burke's Appeal, they
wished he had used more moderate language. Fitzwilliam saw the Appeal as containing "the
doctrines I have sworn by, long and long since".[115] Francis Basset, a backbench Whig MP, wrote to
Burke: "...though for reasons which I will not now detail I did not then deliver my sentiments, I most
perfectly differ from Mr. Fox & from the great Body of opposition on the French Revolution".[115] Burke
sent a copy of the Appeal to the king and the king requested a friend to communicate to Burke that
he had read it "with great Satisfaction".[115] Burke wrote of its reception: "Not one word from one of our
party. They are secretly galled. They agree with me to a title; but they dare not speak out for fear of
hurting Fox. ... They leave me to myself; they see that I can do myself justice".[110]Charles
Burney viewed it as "a most admirable book—the best & most useful on political subjects that I have
ever seen" but believed the differences in the Whig Party between Burke and Fox should not be
aired publicly.[116]
Eventually, most of the Whigs sided with Burke and gave their support to Pitt's "conservative"
government, which, in response to France's declaration of war against Britain, declared war on
France's Revolutionary Government in 1793.
In December 1791, Burke sent Government ministers his Thoughts on French Affairs where he put
forward three main points: no counter-revolution in France would come about by purely domestic
causes; the longer the Revolutionary Government exists the stronger it becomes; and the
Revolutionary Government's interest and aim is to disturb all of the other governments of Europe.[117]
Burke, as a Whig, did not wish to see an absolute monarchy again in France after the extirpation of
Jacobinism. Writing to an émigré in 1791, Burke expressed his views against a restoration of
the ancien régime:
When such a complete convulsion has shaken the State, and hardly left any thing whatsoever, either
in civil arrangements, or in the Characters and disposition of men's minds, exactly where it was,
whatever shall be settled although in the former persons and upon old forms, will be in some
measure a new thing and will labour under something of the weakness as well as other
inconveniences of a Change. My poor opinion is that you mean to establish what you call 'L'ancien
Régime,' If any one means that system of Court Intrigue miscalled a Government as it stood, at
Versailles before the present confusions as the thing to be established, that I believe will be found
absolutely impossible; and if you consider the Nature, as well of persons, as of affairs, I flatter myself
you must be of my opinion. That was tho' not so violent a State of Anarchy as well as the present. If
it were even possible to lay things down exactly as they stood, before the series of experimental
politicks began, I am quite sure that they could not long continue in that situation. In one Sense of
L'Ancien Régime I am clear that nothing else can reasonably be done.[118]

Burke delivered a speech on the debate of the Aliens Bill on 28 December 1792. He supported the
Bill as it would exclude "murderous atheists, who would pull down Church and state; religion and
God; morality and happiness".[119] The peroration included a reference to a French order for 3,000
daggers. Burke revealed a dagger he had concealed in his coat and threw it to the floor: "This is
what you are to gain by an alliance with France". Burke picked up the dagger and continued:
When they smile, I see blood trickling down their faces; I see their insidious purposes; I see that the
object of all their cajoling is—blood! I now warn my countrymen to beware of these execrable
philosophers, whose only object it is to destroy every thing that is good here, and to establish
immorality and murder by precept and example—'Hic niger est hunc tu Romane caveto' ['Such a
man is evil; beware of him, Roman'. Horace, Satires I. 4. 85.].[119]

Burke supported the war against revolutionary France, seeing Britain as fighting on the side of
the royalists and émigres in a civil war, rather than fighting against the whole nation of
France.[120] Burke also supported the royalist uprising in La Vendée, describing it on 4 November
1793 in a letter to William Windham, as "the sole affair I have much heart in".[120] Burke wrote
to Henry Dundas on 7 October urging him to send reinforcements there, as he viewed it as the only
theatre in the war that might lead to a march on Paris. Dundas did not follow Burke's advice,
however.
Burke believed the Government was not taking the uprising seriously enough, a view reinforced by a
letter he had received from the Prince Charles of France (S.A.R. le comte d'Artois), dated 23
October, requesting that he intercede on behalf of the royalists to the Government. Burke was forced
to reply on 6 November: "I am not in His Majesty's Service; or at all consulted in his Affairs".[121] Burke
published his Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with Respect to France, begun in October, where
he said: "I am sure every thing has shewn us that in this war with France, one Frenchman is worth
twenty foreigners. La Vendée is a proof of this".[122]
On 20 June 1794, Burke received a vote of thanks from the Commons for his services in the
Hastings Trial and he immediately resigned his seat, being replaced by his sonRichard. A tragic blow
fell upon Burke with the loss of Richard in August 1794, to whom he was tenderly attached, and in
whom he saw signs of promise,[30] which were not patent to others and which, in fact, appear to have
been non-existent (though this view may have rather reflected the fact that Richard Burke had
worked successfully in the early battle for Catholic emancipation). King George III, whose favour he
had gained by his attitude on the French Revolution, wished to create him Earl of Beaconsfield, but
the death of his son deprived the opportunity of such an honour and all its attractions, so the only
award he would accept was a pension of £2,500. Even this modest reward was attacked by theDuke
of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to whom Burke replied in his Letter to a Noble
Lord (1796):[123] "It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept;
until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform".[124] He argued that he was
rewarded on merit, but the Duke of Bedford received his rewards from inheritance alone, his
ancestor being the original pensioner: "Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his from
Henry the Eighth".[125] Burke also hinted at what would happen to such people if their revolutionary
ideas were implemented, and included a description of the British constitution:
But as to our country and our race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state,
the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a
fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the
British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep
of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval
towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land—so long as the
mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all
the levellers of France.[126]

Burke's last publications were the Letters on a Regicide Peace (October 1796), called forth by
negotiations for peace with France by the Pitt government. Burke regarded this asappeasement,
injurious to national dignity and honour.[127] In his Second Letter, Burke wrote of the French
Revolutionary Government: "Individuality is left out of their scheme of government. The State is all in
all. Everything is referred to the production of force; afterwards, everything is trusted to the use of it.
It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The State has
dominion and conquest for its sole objects—dominion over minds by proselytism, over bodies by
arms".[128]
This is held to be the first explanation of the modern concept of totalitarian state.[129] Burke regarded
the war with France as ideological, against an "armed doctrine". He wished that France would not be
partitioned due to the effect this would have on the balance of power in Europe, and that the war
was not against France, but against the revolutionaries governing her.[130] Burke said: "It is not France
extending a foreign empire over other nations: it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning
with the conquest of France".[30]

Later life[edit]
In November 1795, there was a debate in Parliament on the high price of corn and Burke wrote a
memorandum to Pitt on the subject. In December Samuel Whitbread MP introduced a bill giving
magistrates the power to fix minimum wages and Fox said he would vote for it. This debate probably
led Burke to editing his memorandum, as there appeared a notice that Burke would soon publish a
letter on the subject to the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, Arthur Young; but he failed to
complete it. These fragments were inserted into the memorandum after his death and published
posthumously in 1800 as, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity.[131] In it, Burke expounded "some of the
doctrines of political economists bearing upon agriculture as a trade".[132] Burke criticised policies
such as maximum prices and state regulation of wages, and set out what the limits of government
should be:
That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely,
the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and
land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is truly and
properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public
prosperity.[133]

The economist Adam Smith remarked that Burke was "the only man I ever knew who thinks on
economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between
us".[134]
Writing to a friend in May 1795, Burke surveyed the causes of discontent: "I think I can hardly
overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland; or of
Indianism [i.e. corporate tyranny, as practiced by the British East Indies Company], as they affect
these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of
human society itself. The last is the greatest evil".[135] By March 1796, however Burke had changed
his mind: "Our Government and our Laws are beset by two different Enemies, which are sapping its
foundations, Indianism, and Jacobinism. In some Cases they act separately, in some they act in
conjunction: But of this I am sure; that the first is the worst by far, and the hardest to deal with; and
for this amongst other reasons, that it weakens discredits, and ruins that force, which ought to be
employed with the greatest Credit and Energy against the other; and that it furnishes Jacobinism
with its strongest arms against all formal Government".[136]
For more than a year prior to his death, Burke knew that his 'stomach' was "irrecoverably
ruind".[30] After hearing that Burke was nearing death, Fox wrote to Mrs. Burke enquiring after him.
Fox received the reply the next day:
Mrs. Burke presents her compliments to Mr. Fox, and thanks him for his obliging inquiries. Mrs.
Burke communicated his letter to Mr. Burke, and by his desire has to inform Mr. Fox that it has cost
Mr. Burke the most heart-felt pain to obey the stern voice of his duty in rending asunder a long
friendship, but that he deemed this sacrifice necessary; that his principles continue the same; and
that in whatever of life may yet remain to him, he conceives that he must live for others and not for
himself. Mr. Burke is convinced that the principles which he has endeavoured to maintain are
necessary to the welfare and dignity of his country, and that these principles can be enforced only by
the general persuasion of his sincerity.[137]

Burke died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on 9 July 1797 and was buried there alongside his
son and brother. His wife survived him by nearly fifteen years.

Legacy[edit]
Part of a series on

Conservatism
 Variants[show]

Concepts[show]

People[hide]

 Edmund Burke
 Giambattista Vico
 Justus Möser
 Joseph de Maistre
 Louis de Bonald
 Adam Müller
 Friedrich von Gentz
 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
 Novalis
 Karl Ludwig von Haller
 Pope Pius X
 Pope Pius IX
 Lucas Alamán
 François de Chateaubriand
 Antoine de Rivarol
 Klemens von Metternich
 Leopold von Ranke
 Nikolay Karamzin
 John A. Macdonald
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 Juan Donoso Cortés
 Jaime Balmes
 Friedrich Julius Stahl
 Aleksey Khomyakov
 Ivan Kireyevsky
 John C. Calhoun
 Pyotr Stolypin
 Miguel Miramón
 Benjamin Disraeli
 Otto von Bismarck
 Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach
 Friedrich Carl von Savigny
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 Statue of Edmund Burke at Washington D.C.

Burke is regarded by most political historians in the English-speaking world as the father of modern
British conservatism.[138][139][140] Burke was utilitarian and empirical in his arguments, while Joseph de
Maistre, a fellow conservative from the Continent, was more a providentialist and sociological, and
deployed a more confrontational tone in his arguments.[141]
Burke believed that property was essential to human life. Because of his conviction that people
desire to be ruled and controlled, the division of property formed the basis for social structure,
helping develop control within a property-based hierarchy. He viewed the social changes brought on
by property as the natural order of events, which should be taking place as the human race
progressed. With the division of property and the class system, he also believed that it kept the
monarch in check to the needs of the classes beneath the monarch. Since property largely aligned
or defined divisions of social class, class too, was seen as natural—part of a social agreement that
the setting of persons into different classes, is the mutual benefit of all subjects. Concern for property
is not Burke's only influence. As Christopher Hitchens summarises, "If modern conservatism can be
held to derive from Burke, it is not just because he appealed to property owners in behalf of stability
but also because he appealed to an everyday interest in the preservation of the ancestral and the
immemorial."[142]
Burke's support for Irish Catholics and Indians often led him to be criticised by Tories.[143] His
opposition to British imperialism in Ireland and India and his opposition to French imperialism and
radicalism in Europe, made it difficult for Whig or Tory to accept Burke wholly as their own.[144]
In the nineteenth century Burke was praised by both liberals and conservatives. Burke's friend Philip
Francis wrote that Burke "was a man who truly & prophetically foresaw all the consequences which
would rise from the adoption of the French principles" but because Burke wrote with so much
passion, people were doubtful of his arguments.[145] William Windham spoke from the same bench in
the House of Commons as Burke had, when he had separated from Fox, and an observer said
Windham spoke "like the ghost of Burke" when he made a speech against peace with France in
1801.[146] William Hazlitt, a political opponent of Burke, regarded him as amongst his three favourite
writers (the others being Junius and Rousseau), and made it "a test of the sense and candour of any
one belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to be a great man".[147] William
Wordsworth was originally a supporter of the French Revolution and attacked Burke in 'A Letter to
the Bishop of Llandaff' (1793), but by the early nineteenth century he had changed his mind and
came to admire Burke. In his Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmorland Wordsworth called
Burke "the most sagacious Politician of his age" whose predictions "time has verified".[148] He later
revised his poem The Prelude to include praise of Burke ("Genius of Burke! forgive the pen
seduced/By specious wonders") and portrayed him as an old oak.[148] Samuel Taylor Coleridge came
to have a similar conversion: he had criticised Burke in The Watchman, but in his Friend (1809–10)
Coleridge defended Burke from charges of inconsistency.[149] Later, in his Biographia Literaria (1817)
Coleridge hails Burke as a prophet and praises Burke for referring "habitually to principles. He was
a scientific statesman; and therefore aseer".[150] Henry Brougham wrote of Burke: "... all his
predictions, save one momentary expression, had been more than fulfilled: anarchy and bloodshed
had borne sway in France; conquest and convulsion had desolated Europe...the providence of
mortals is not often able to penetrate so far as this into futurity".[151] George Canning believed that
Burke'sReflections "has been justified by the course of subsequent events; and almost every
prophecy has been strictly fulfilled".[151] In 1823 Canning wrote that he took Burke's "last works and
words [as] the manual of my politics".[152] The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli "was
deeply penetrated with the spirit and sentiment of Burke's later writings".[153]
The 19th-century Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone considered Burke "a magazine of
wisdom on Ireland and America" and in his diary recorded: "Made many extracts from Burke—
sometimes almost divine".[154] The Radical MP and anti-Corn Law activist Richard Cobden often
praised Burke's Thoughts and Details on Scarcity.[155] The Liberal historianLord Acton considered
Burke one of the three greatest Liberals, along with William Gladstone and Thomas Babington
Macaulay.[156] Lord Macaulay recorded in his diary: "I have now finished reading again most of
Burke's works. Admirable! The greatest man since Milton".[157] The Gladstonian Liberal MP John
Morley published two books on Burke (including a biography) and was influenced by Burke,
including his views on prejudice.[158] The Cobdenite Radical Francis Hirst thought Burke deserved "a
place among English libertarians, even though of all lovers of liberty and of all reformers he was the
most conservative, the least abstract, always anxious to preserve and renovate rather than to
innovate. In politics he resembled the modern architect who would restore an old house instead of
pulling it down to construct a new one on the site".[159] Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in
France was controversial at the time of its publication, but after his death, it was to become his best
known and most influential work, and a manifesto for Conservative thinking.
Two contrasting assessments of Burke also were offered long after his death by Karl
Marx and Winston Churchill. In Das Kapital, Marx wrote:
The sycophant—who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic laudator temporis
acti against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning
of the American troubles, he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-
out vulgar bourgeois. "The laws of commerce are the laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God."
(E. Burke, l.c., pp. 31, 32) No wonder that, true to the laws of God and Nature, he always sold
himself in the best market.

Winston Churchill, in "Consistency in Politics", wrote:

On the one hand [Burke] is revealed as a foremost apostle of Liberty, on the other as the
redoubtable champion of Authority. But a charge of political inconsistency applied to this life appears
a mean and petty thing. History easily discerns the reasons and forces which actuated him, and the
immense changes in the problems he was facing which evoked from the same profound mind and
sincere spirit these entirely contrary manifestations. His soul revolted against tyranny, whether it
appeared in the aspect of a domineering Monarch and a corrupt Court and Parliamentary system, or
whether, mouthing the watch-words of a non-existent liberty, it towered up against him in the
dictation of a brutal mob and wicked sect. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of
Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same
ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now
from the other.

The historian Piers Brendon asserts that Burke laid the moral foundations for the British Empire,
epitomised in the trial of Warren Hastings, that was ultimately to be its undoing: when Burke stated
that "The British Empire must be governed on a plan of freedom, for it will be governed by no
other",[160] this was "...an ideological bacillus that would prove fatal. This was Edmund Burke's
paternalistic doctrine that colonial government was a trust. It was to be so exercised for the benefit of
subject people that they would eventually attain their birthright—freedom".[161] As a consequence of
this opinion, Burke objected to the opium trade, which he called a "smuggling adventure" and
condemned "the great Disgrace of the British character in India".[162]
A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Burke at 37 Gerrard Street now in London's
Chinatown.[163]

Religious thought of Edmund Burke[edit]

Main article: Religious thought of Edmund Burke
Burke's religious writing comprises published works and commentary on the subject of religion.
Burke's religious thought was grounded in the belief that religion is the foundation of civil
society.[164] He sharply criticised deism and atheism, and emphasised Christianity as a vehicle of
social progress.[165] Born in Ireland to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, Burke vigorously
defended the Anglican Church, but also demonstrated sensitivity to Catholic concerns.[166] He linked
the conservation of a state (established) religion with the preservation of citizens' constitutional
liberties and highlighted Christianity's benefit not only to the believer's soul, but also to political
arrangements.[166]

False quotations[edit]
The statement that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" is
often attributed to Burke despite the debated origin of this quote.[167][168] In 1770, however, it is known
that in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, Burke wrote that:
…when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied
sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.[169][170]

John Stuart Mill later made a similar statement in an inaugural address delivered before the
University of St. Andrews during 1867:
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do
nothing.[171]

Burke is also sometimes credited with George Santayana's quote: "Those who don't know history
are doomed to repeat it". His attribution for this statement similarly cannot be corroborated by
reliable sources.[172]

Timeline[edit]
Bibliography[edit]
 A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756)
 An Account of the European Settlement in America (1757)
 The Abridgement of the History of England (1757)
 Annual Register editor for some 30 years (1758)
 Tracts on the Popery Laws (Early 1760s)
 On the Present State of the Nation (1769)
 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)
 On American Taxation (1774)
 Conciliation with the Colonies (1775)
 A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)
 Reform of the Representation in the House of Commons (1782)
 Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
 Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)
 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791)
 Thoughts on French Affairs (1791)
 Remarks on the Policy of the Allies (1793)
 Letters on a Regicide Peace (1795–97)
 Letter to a Noble Lord (1796)

See also[edit]
 Sublime (literary)
 Sublime (philosophy)
 Burke family
 Conservative Party
 List of abolitionist forerunners

Notes[edit]
1. Jump up^ The exact year of his birth is the subject of a great deal of controversy; 1728, 1729, and 1730 have
been proposed. The month and day of his birth also are subject to question, a problem compounded by the Julian-
Gregorian changeover in 1752, during his lifetime. For a fuller treatment of the question, see F. P. Lock, Edmund
Burke. Volume I: 1730–1784(Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 16–17. Conor Cruise O'Brien (2008; p. 14) questions
Burke's birthplace as having been in Dublin, arguing in favour of Shanballymore, Co. Cork (in the house of his
uncle, James Nagle).
2. Jump up^ Clark, J. C. D. (2001). Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France: a Critical Edition.
Stanford. p. 25. ISBN 0-8047-3923-4. Edmund Burke was an Irishman, born in Dublin but in an age before 'Celtic
nationalism' had been constructed to make Irishness and Englishness incompatible: he was therefore free also to
describe himself, without misrepresentation, as 'a loyalist being loyal to England' to denote his membership of the
wider polity. He never attempted to disguise his Irishness (as some ambitious Scots in eighteenth-century England
tried to anglicise their accents), did what he could in the Commons to promote the interests of his native country
and was bitterly opposed to the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics.
3. Jump up^ Hitchens, Christopher (April 2004). "Reactionary Prophet". The Atlantic. Washington.Edmund Burke
was neither an Englishman nor a Tory. He was an Irishman, probably a Catholic Irishman at that (even if perhaps
a secret sympathiser), and for the greater part of his life he upheld the more liberal principles of the Whig faction.
4. Jump up^ Burke lived before the terms "conservative" and "liberal" were used to describe political ideologies, cf.
J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660–1832 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 5, p. 301.
5. Jump up^ Dennis O'Keeffe; John Meadowcroft (2009). Edmund Burke. Continuum. p. 93.
6. Jump up^ Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction. Third Edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p.
74.
7. Jump up^ F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke. Volume II: 1784–1797 (Clarendon Press, 2006), p. 585.
8. Jump up^ J. C. D. Clark (ed.), Reflections on the Revolution in France. A Critical Edition (Stanford University
Press, 2001), p. 26, n. 13. Hereafter cited as "Clark". Paul Langford, Burke, Edmund (1729/30–1797), Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, January 2008, accessed
18 October 2008.
9. Jump up^ James Prior, Life of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Fifth Edition (London: Henry G. Bohn,
1854), p. 1.
10. Jump up^ O'Brien, Connor Cruise (1993). The Great Melody. p. 10.
11. Jump up^ "Extracts from Mr. Burke's Table-talk, at Crewe Hall. Written down by Mrs. Crewe, pp.
62.", Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society. Volume VII (London: Whittingham and Wilkins, 1862–3), pp. 52–3.
12. Jump up^ Clark, p. 26.
13. Jump up^ Clark, p. 25.
14. Jump up^ "DistanceFrom.com Dublin, Ireland to Ballitore, Co. Kildare, Ireland".DistanceFrom.com. softusvista.
2014. Retrieved 18 December 2014.
15. Jump up^ "CATHOLICS AND TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. (Hansard, 8 May 1834)".
hansard.millbanksystems.com. Retrieved 23 January 2014.
16. ^ Jump up to:a b Prior, p. 45.
17. Jump up^ Jim McCue, Edmund Burke and Our Present Discontents (The Claridge Press, 1997), p. 14.
18. Jump up^ McCue, p. 145.
19. ^ Jump up to:a b Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 85.
20. Jump up^ Rothbard, Murray. "Edmund Burke, Anarchist". Retrieved 14 October 2007.
21. Jump up^ Sobran, Joseph, Anarchism, Reason, and History: "Oddly enough, the great conservative Edmund
Burke began his career with an anarchist tract, arguing that the state was naturally and historically destructive of
human society, life, and liberty. Later he explained that he'd intended his argument ironically, but many have
 doubted this. His argument for anarchy was too powerful, passionate, and cogent to be a joke. Later, as a
professional politician, Burke seems to have come to terms with the state, believing that no matter how bloody its
origins, it could be tamed and civilized, as in Europe, by "the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion". But
even as he wrote, the old order he loved was already breaking down. "
22. Jump up^ Prior, p. 47.
23. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 143.
24. Jump up^ G. M. Young, 'Burke', Proceedings of the British Academy, XXIX (London, 1943), p. 6.
25. Jump up^ Herbert Butterfield, Man on His Past (Cambridge, 1955), p. 69.
26. Jump up^ Prior, pp. 52–3.
27. Jump up^ Thomas Wellsted Copeland, 'Edmund Burke and the Book Reviews in Dodsley's Annual
Register', Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 57, No. 2. (Jun. 1942), pp. 446–468.
28. ^ Jump up to:a b Copeland, p. 446.
29. Jump up^ www.ucl.ac.uk
30. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Nagle, Sir Edmund, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, J. K. Laughton, (subscription
required), Retrieved 22 April 2012
31. Jump up^ Denslow, William R., 10,000 Famous Freemasons, 4 vol., Missouri Lodge of Research, Trenton,
Missouri, 1957–61. volume 1, page 155
32. Jump up^ "Edmund Burke". Freemasonry.bcy.ca. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
33. Jump up^ 'A literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, D. George Thompson, published by Owen Bailey, after
James William Edmund Doyle, published 1 October 1851
34. Jump up^ McCue, p. 16.
35. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 262.
36. Jump up^ Private Letters of Edward Gibbon, II (1896) Prothero, P. (ed.). p. 251 cited in The Decline and Fall of
the British Empire: 1781–1998 (2007) Brendon, Piers. Jonathan Cape, London. p. 10 ISBN 978-0-224-06222-0
37. Jump up^ Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, edited by Hill-Powell; v. II, p. 349; 7 April 1775
38. Jump up^ Boswell, Journals, Boswell: The Ominous Years, p. 134, edited by Ryskamp & Pottle; McGraw Hill,
1963
39. Jump up^ "Burke: Select Works of Edmund Burke, Vol. 1, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents:
Library of Economics and Liberty". Econlib.org. Retrieved 4 September2008.
40. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 277.
41. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 283.
42. Jump up^ Prior, p. 127 + pp. 340–2.
43. Jump up^ Prior, p. 127.
44. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, pp. 321–22.
45. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 322.
46. Jump up^ Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat. The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–
1783 (Allen Lane, 2007), pp. 569–71.
47. Jump up^ Prior, p. 175.
48. Jump up^ Prior, pp. 175–6.
49. Jump up^ Prior, p. 176.
50. Jump up^ Prior, pp. 142–3.
51. Jump up^ "Speech on Moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America, 22 March 1775". Gutenberg.org.
Retrieved 28 December 2011.
52. Jump up^ "Speech on Moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America, 22 March 1775". Gutenberg.org.
Retrieved 9 December 2014.
53. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Burke, Edmund. "Speech to Parliament on Reconciliation with the American
Colonies" (PDF). America in Class. National Humanities Center. Retrieved 10 December2014.
54. Jump up^ "Lexington and Concord". USHistory.org. Independence Hall Association in Philadelphia. Retrieved 10
December 2014.
55. ^ Jump up to:a b Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 384.
56. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 394.
57. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 399.
58. Jump up^ Hibbert pp. 48–73
59. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 511 + n. 65.
60. Jump up^ McCue, p. 21.
61. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, pp. 511–2.
62. Jump up^ The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume I (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), pp.
446–8.
63. Jump up^ Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The concept of representation (1972) p. 174
64. Jump up^ Joseph Hamburger, "Burke, Edmund" in Seymour Martin Lipset, ed., The Encyclopedia of
Democracy (Congressional Quarterly, 1995) 1:147–149
65. Jump up^ Siraj Ahmed, "The Theater of the Civilized Self: Edmund Burke and the East India
Trials". Representations 78 (2002): 30.
66. Jump up^ Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (1988), 2.
67. Jump up^ Elizabeth D. Samet, "A Prosecutor and a Gentleman: Edmund Burke's Idiom of
Impeachment", ELH 68, no. 2 (2001): 402.
68. Jump up^ McCue, p. 155.
69. Jump up^ McCue, p. 156.
70. Jump up^ Mithi Mukherjee, "Justice, War, and the Imperium: India and Britain in Edmund Burke's Prosecutorial
Speeches", Law and History Review 23, no. 3 (2005): 589.
71. Jump up^ Mukherjee, Justice, War, and the Imperium, 590.
72. Jump up^ Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire: 1781–1998 (London: Jonathan Cape,
2007), p. 35. ISBN 978-0-224-06222-0
73. Jump up^ Clark, p. 61.
74. Jump up^ Clark, pp. 61–2.
75. Jump up^ Clark, p. 62.
76. Jump up^ Clark, pp. 66–7.
77. Jump up^ "A Discourse on the Love of our Country". Constitution.org. Retrieved 28 December2011.
78. Jump up^ Clark, p. 63.
79. Jump up^ Clark, English Society, p. 233.
80. Jump up^ Dreyer, Frederick (1978). "The Genesis of Burke's Reflections". The Journal of Modern History. 50 (3):
462. doi:10.1086/241734.
81. Jump up^ Clark, p. 68.
82. Jump up^ Prior, p. 311.
83. Jump up^ F. P. Lock, Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 132.
84. Jump up^ Clark, p. 39.
85. Jump up^ Clark, pp. 24–5, p. 34, p. 43.
86. Jump up^ Clark, pp. 181–3.
87. Jump up^ Clark, pp. 250–1.
88. Jump up^ Clark, pp. 251–2.
89. Jump up^ Clark, p. 261.
90. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, pp. 289–90.
91. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 297.
92. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 300.
93. Jump up^ Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume
VI (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 204.
94. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 296.
95. Jump up^ Prior, pp. 313–4.
96. Jump up^ L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Penguin, 1997), p. 113.
97. Jump up^ Lock, Burke's Reflections, p. 134.
98. Jump up^ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, p. 178.
99. Jump up^ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, p. 161, n. 2.
100. Jump up^ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, p. 239.
101. Jump up^ Clark, p. 49.
102. Jump up^ Prior, p. 491.
103. Jump up^ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, pp. 162–69.
104. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, pp. 356–67.
105. Jump up^ Prior, p. 327.
106. ^ Jump up to:a b McCue, p. 23.
107. Jump up^ Frank O'Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (Macmillan, 1967), p. 65.
108. Jump up^ Prior, p. 328.
109. ^ Jump up to:a b Prior, p. 329.
110. ^ Jump up to:a b O'Gorman, p. 75.
111. Jump up^ O'Gorman, p. 74.
112. ^ Jump up to:a b c Clark, p. 40.
113. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 383.
114. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 384.
115. ^ Jump up to:a b c Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 386.
116. Jump up^ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, pp. 385–6.
117. Jump up^ Prior, pp. 357–8.
118. Jump up^ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, pp. 479–80.
119. ^ Jump up to:a b Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 439.
120. ^ Jump up to:a b Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 453.
121. Jump up^ O'Gorman, pp. 168–69.
122. Jump up^ Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume VII (F. C. and J.
Rivington, 1815), p. 141.
123. Jump up^ Prior, pp. 425–6.
124. Jump up^ Edmund Burke, A Letter from The Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks
made upon him and his pension, in the House of Lords, by The Duke of Bedford and The Earl of Lauderdale,
Early in the present Sessions of Parliament. (F. and C. Rivington, 1796), p. 20.
125. Jump up^ Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord, p. 41.
126. Jump up^ Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord, pp. 52–53.
127. Jump up^ Prior, pp. 439–40.
128. Jump up^ Steven Blakemore, 'Burke and the Revolution: Bicentennial Reflections', in Blakemore (ed.), Burke and
the French Revolution. Bicentennial Essays (The University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. 158.
129. Jump up^ Blakemore, p. 158.
130. Jump up^ Prior, pp. 443–4.
131. Jump up^ Robert Eccleshall, English Conservatism since the Restoration (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), p. 75.
132. Jump up^ Prior, p. 419.
133. Jump up^ Eccleshall, p. 77.
134. Jump up^ E. G. West, Adam Smith (New York: Arlington House, 1969), p. 201.
135. Jump up^ R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VIII (Cambridge University
Press, 1969), p. 254.
136. Jump up^ McDowell (ed.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VIII, p. 432.
137. Jump up^ Prior, p. 456
138. Jump up^ Christian D. Von Dehsen (21 October 1999). Philosophers and Religious Leaders. Greenwood
Publishing Group. pp. 36–. ISBN 978-1-57356-152-5. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
139. Jump up^ Robert Eccleshall (1990). English Conservatism Since the Restoration: An Introduction & Anthology.
Routledge. pp. 39–. ISBN 978-0-04-445773-2. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
140. Jump up^ Andrew Dobson (19 November 2009). An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of José Ortega Y
Gasset. Cambridge University Press. pp. 73–. ISBN 978-0-521-12331-0. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
141. Jump up^ Richard Lebrun (8 October 2001). Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence: Selected Studies.
McGill-Queen's Press – MQUP. pp. 164–. ISBN 978-0-7735-2288-6. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
142. Jump up^ Hitchens, Christopher. "Reactionary Prophet". www.theatlantic.com. The Atlantic Magazine.
Retrieved 24 December 2014.
143. Jump up^ J. J. Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative. Reaction and orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760 –
1832 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 90.
144. Jump up^ Sack, p. 95.
145. Jump up^ Gregory Claeys, 'The Reflections refracted: the critical reception of Burke's Reflections on the
Revolution in France during the early 1790s', in John Whale (ed.), Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution
in France. New interdisciplinary essays (Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 55, n. 23.
146. Jump up^ A. D. Harvey, Britain in the early nineteenth century (B T Batsford Ltd, 1978), p. 125.
147. Jump up^ Lock, Burke's Reflections, p. 175.
148. ^ Jump up to:a b Lock, Burke's Reflections, p. 173.
149. Jump up^ Lock, Burke's Reflections, pp. 173–4.
150. Jump up^ Lock, Burke's Reflections, p. 174.
151. ^ Jump up to:a b Claeys, p. 50.
152. Jump up^ E. J. Stapleton (ed.), Some Official Correspondence of George Canning. Volume I(London: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1887), p. 74.
153. Jump up^ William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli. Earl of
Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 310.
154. Jump up^ John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone. Volume III (1880–1898) (London: Macmillan, 1903),
p. 280.
155. Jump up^ John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 167.
156. Jump up^ Herbert Paul (ed.), Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (Macmillan, 1914), p. 44.
157. Jump up^ Sir George Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume II (London: Longmans, 1876), p.
377.
158. Jump up^ D. A. Hamer, John Morley. Liberal Intellectual in Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 65.
159. Jump up^ F. W. Hirst, Liberty and Tyranny (London: Duckworth, 1935), pp. 105–6.
160. Jump up^ K. Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy (Delhi, 1997), p. 27.
161. Jump up^ Brendon, p. xviii.
 162. Jump up^ F. G. Whelan, Edmund Burke and India (Pittsburgh, 1996), p. 96.
163. Jump up^ "BURKE, EDMUND (1729–1797)". English Heritage. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
164. Jump up^ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1964), 87.
165. Jump up^ Ian Harris, "Burke and Religion," in David Dwan and Christopher J Insole eds., The Cambridge
Companion to Edmund Burke (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 103.
166. ^ Jump up to:a b Harris, 98.
167. Jump up^ David Bromwich (2014). The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke. Harvard University Press. pp. 175–76.
168. Jump up^ O'Toole, Garson. "The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do
Nothing". Quote Investigator. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
169. Jump up^ Daniel Ritchie (1990). Edmund Burke: appraisals and applications. ISBN 978-0-88738-328-1.
170. Jump up^ Edmund Burke (1770). Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents.
171. Jump up^ Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, Feb. 1st 1867 (1867), p. 36
172. Jump up^ It is not among the 67 authentic Burke quotes in John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: A
Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature but
none the less, the quote is valid by means of tradition and verified through history. (16th ed. 1992), pp 330–32

References[edit]
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short
Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Wikisource
 Blakemore, Steven (ed.), Burke and the French Revolution. Bicentennial Essays (The University of Georgia Press,
1992).
 Bromwich, David, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American
Independence (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014). A review: Freedom fighter, The Economist, 5 July 2014
 Cone, Carl B. Burke and the Nature of Politics (2 vols, 1957, 1964), a detailed modern biography of Burke; somewhat
uncritical and sometimes superficial regarding politics
 Thomas Wellsted Copeland, 'Edmund Burke and the Book Reviews in Dodsley's Annual Register', Publications of the
Modern Language Association, Vol. 57, No. 2. (Jun. 1942), pp. 446–468.
 Courtenay, C.P. Montesquieu and Burke (1963), good introduction
 Crowe, Ian, ed. The Enduring Edmund Burke: Bicentennial Essays (1997) essays by American conservatives online
edition
 Crowe, Ian, ed. An Imaginative Whig: Reassessing the Life and Thought of Edmund Burke.(2005). 247 pp. essays by
scholars
 Ian Crowe, 'The career and political thought of Edmund Burke', Journal of Liberal History, Issue 40, Autumn 2003.
 Frederick Dreyer, 'The Genesis of Burke's Reflections', The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 50, No. 3. (Sep. 1978),
pp. 462–479.
 Robert Eccleshall, English Conservatism since the Restoration (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990).
 Gibbons, Luke. Edmund Burke and Ireland: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Colonial Sublime.(2003). 304 pp.
 Hibbert, Christopher (May 1990). King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780. Dorset
Press. ISBN 0-88029-399-3.
 Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (7th ed. 1992).
 Kirk, Russell. Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (1997) by a leader of American conservatism online edition
 Kramnick, Isaac. The Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an Ambivalent Conservative (1977)online edition
 Lock, F. P. Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985).
 Lock, F. P. Edmund Burke. Volume I: 1730–1784 (Clarendon Press, 1999).
 Lock, F. P. Edmund Burke. Volume II: 1784–1797 (Clarendon Press, 2006).
 Levin, Yuval. The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (Basic Books; 2013)
275 pages; their debate regarding the French Revolution.
 Lucas, Paul. "On Edmund Burke's Doctrine of Prescription; Or, An Appeal from the New to the Old Lawyers", Historical
Journal, 11 (1968) opens the way towards an effective synthesis of Burke's ideas of History, Change and Prescription.
 Jim McCue, Edmund Burke and Our Present Discontents (The Claridge Press, 1997).
 Magnus, Philip. Edmund Burke: A Life (1939), older biography
 Marshall, P. J. The Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1965), the standard history of the trial and Burke's role
 Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Great Melody. A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke (1992).ISBN 0-226-61651-7.
  O'Gorman, Frank. Edmund Burke: Edmund Burke: His Political Philosophy (2004) 153pp online edition
 Parkin, Charles. The Moral Basis of Burke's Political Thought (1956)
 Pocock, J.G.A. "Burke and the Ancient Constitution", Historical Journal, 3 (1960), 125–43; shows Burke's debt to the
Common Law tradition of the seventeenth century in JSTOR
 Raeder, Linda C. "Edmund Burke: Old Whig". Political Science Reviewer 2006 35: 115–131.ISSN 0091-
3715 Fulltext: Ebsco, argues Burke's ideas closely resemble those of conservative philosopher Friedrich August von
Hayek (1899–1992).
 J. J. Sack, 'The Memory of Burke and the Memory of Pitt: English Conservatism Confronts Its Past, 1806–1829', The
Historical Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3. (Sep. 1987), pp. 623–640.
 J. J. Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative. Reaction and orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760 – 1832(Cambridge University
Press, 2004).
 Spinner, Jeff. "Constructing Communities: Edmund Burke on Revolution", Polity, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Spring, 1991),
pp. 395–421 in JSTOR
 Stanlis, Peter. Edmund Burke and the Natural Law (1958)
 Vermeir, Koen and Funk Deckard, Michael (ed.) The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke's Philosophical
Enquiry (International Archives of the History of Ideas, Vol. 206) (Springer, 2012)
 John Whale (ed.), Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. New interdisciplinary essays (Manchester
University Press, 2000).
 Whelan, Frederick G. Edmund Burke and India: Political Morality and Empire (1996)
 O'Connor Power, J. 'Edmund Burke and His Abiding Influence', The North American Review, vol. 165 issue 493,
December 1897, 666–81.

Primary sources[edit]
 J. C. D. Clark (ed.), Reflections on the Revolution in France. A Critical Edition (Stanford
University Press, 2001).
 Burke's Politics (1949), edited by R. Hoffman and P. Levack
 Burke, Edmund, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (9 vol 1981– ) vol 1 online; vol 2
online; vol 6 India: The Launching of the Hastings Impeachment, 1786–1788online; vol 8 online;
vol 9 online;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke

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Edmund Burke ©Burke was a hugely influential Anglo-Irish politician, orator and
political thinker, notable for his strong support for the American Revolution and his fierce opposition to
the French Revolution.
Edmund Burke was born in Dublin on 12 January 1729, the son of a solicitor. He was educated at
Trinity College, Dublin and then went to London to study law. He quickly gave this up and after a visit
to Europe settled in London, concentrating on a literary and political career. He became a member of
parliament in 1765. He was closely involved in debates over limits to the power of the king, pressing
for parliamentary control of royal patronage and expenditure.

Britain's imposition on America of measures including the Stamp Act in 1765 provoked violent colonial
opposition. Burke argued that British policy had been inflexible and called for more pragmatism. He
believed that government should be a cooperative relationship between rulers and subjects and that,
while the past was important, a willingness to adapt to the inevitability of change could, hopefully,
reaffirm traditional values under new circumstances.
 He also maintained a keen interest in India. He concluded that Indian governmental corruption had to
be resolved by removing patronage from interested parties. He proposed that India be governed by
independent commissioners in London, but a bill to this end was defeated, prompting impeachment
proceedings against Warren Hastings, the governor-general of Bengal.

The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 gave Burke his greatest target. He expressed his
hostility in 'Reflections on the Revolution in France' (1790). The book provoked a huge response,
including Thomas Paine's 'The Rights of Man'. Burke emphasised the dangers of mob rule, fearing that
the Revolution's fervour was destroying French society. He appealed to the British virtues of
continuity, tradition, rank and property and opposed the Revolution to the end of his life.

Burke retired from parliament in 1794. His last years were clouded by the death of his only son, but
he continued to write and defend himself from his critics. His arguments for long-lived constitutional
conventions, political parties, and the independence of an MP once elected still carry weight. He is
justly regarded as one of the founders of the British Conservative tradition. He died on 9 July 1797.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/burke_edmund.shtml

Introduction
Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher, statesman and political theorist of the Age of Enlightenment.

He served for many years in the British House of Commons, and was one of the leading figures within
the Conservative faction of the Whig party. He was a strongsupporter of the American colonies, and a
staunch opponent of the French Revolution. He is often regarded as the philosophical founder of Anglo-
AmericanConservatism.

Life
Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland on January 12, 1729. His father, Richard Burke, was a prosperous, professional solicitor,
who had converted to the Church of Ireland from the Roman Catholicism of his Munster lineage. His mother, Mary (née
Nagle), came from a genteel Roman Catholic family of County Cork. He wasraised in the Church of Ireland (although his
sister, Juliana, was brought up as and remained a Roman Catholic) and would remain throughout his life a
practisingAnglican, although his political enemies would later repeatedly accuse him of harbouring secret Catholic
sympathies at a time when membership in the Catholic church would have disqualified him from public office.

His early education was at a Quaker school in Ballitore just south of Dublin, and he remained in correspondence with his
schoolmate Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of the school's owner, throughout his life. In 1744, he continued his education
at Trinity College, Dublin, where he set up a debating club, known as Edmund Burke's Club, and graduated in 1748. In
1750, he went to London to study law at the Middle Temple, but he soon gave up his legal studies in order to travel in
Europe, and attempted to earn his livelihood through writing.

During his time in London, Burke published his first work, "A Vindication of Natural Society" (a defence of Anarchism) and a
treatise on Aesthetics, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful". He founded
the influential political publication, the "Annual Register", in 1858, and became closely connected with many of the
leadingintellectuals and artists of the time, including Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), David Garrick (1717 - 1779), Oliver
Goldsmith(1730 -1774) and Joshua Reynolds (1723 - 1792).
In 1757, Burke married Jane Mary Nugent, and they had a son, Richard, in 1758 (another son, Christopher, died in infancy).
From 1758 to 1761, they moved to Dublin, where Burke was private secretary to William Gerard Hamilton (1729 - 1796),
who had been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland. In 1765, he became private secretary to the Prime Minister of Great
Britain, the liberal Whig Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquess of Rockingham (1730 - 1782) and, in the same year, began
his political career proper as Member of Parliament for Wendover.

He took a leading role in the debate over the constitutional limits to the executive authority of the King, and directly
opposedKing George III's policy of severe sovereignty in relation to the American colonists. He campaigned against
the persecution of Catholics in Ireland and denounced the abuses and corruption of the East India Company. His speeches
and writings soon made him famous, and in 1774 he was elected MP for Bristol, then England's "second city", although his
support for free trade with Ireland and his advocacy of Catholic emancipation were unpopular and he lost his seat in 1780.
For the remainder of his parliamentary career, Burke sat as the member for Malton, a pocket borough of his benefactor, the
Marquess of Rockingham. After Rockingham's return to power, Burke became Paymaster of the Forces and Privy
Councillor, although these ceased when Rockingham died unexpectedly in 1782.

With the beginning of the long Tory administration of William Pitt the Younger (1759 - 1806) in 1783, the remainder of
Burke's political life was in opposition, but he distinguished himself in the impeachment of the Indian governor Warren
Hastings (1732 - 1818), and he vociferously condemned the French Revolution, which he predicted would end in disaster.

His strong views on the French Revolution received conflicting responses. Former admirers, such as Thomas
Jefferson(1743 - 1826), Thomas Paine (1739 - 1809), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 - 1816) and Charles James
Fox (1749 - 1806), denounced Burke as a reactionary and an enemy of the French and their ground-breaking aspirations;
other former supporters of the American Revolution, such as John Adams (1735 - 1826), George Washington (1732 -
1799) and Alexander Hamilton(1755 - 1804), however, agreed with Burke's assessment of the French situation.

In 1794, his son Richard died and the Hastings trial came to an end, and Burke, feeling that his work was done and that he
was worn out, retired from Parliament. Although he had regained the favour of King George III by his attitude on the French
Revolution, he declined the title of Lord Beaconsfield, accepting only a generous pension instead. After a prolonged
illness, Burke died on 9 July 1797 at Beaconsfield.

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Work
Burke's first published work, "A Vindication of Natural Society" (subtitled "A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to
Mankind"), appeared in 1756. It was perhaps the first serious defence of Anarchism (although Burke later, with a
government appointnent at stake, characterized it as a satire), and was taken quite seriously by later anarchists such
as William Godwin(1756 - 1836).

In 1757, he published a treatise on Aesthetics, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful", which attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784)
and Immanuel Kant.

In his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" of 1790, Burke described the French Revolution as a violent rebellion
against tradition and proper authority, and as an experiment disconnected from the complex realities of human society.
Hevehemently disagreed with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of the "Popular Will", believing instead that most men in a
nation are not qualified to govern it. He believed the country should look to men of finer upbringing and higher Christian
education, or risk a move away from personal merit and distinction and towards an unprincipled, enervating mediocrity.
The intemperate language and factual inaccuracies of the "Reflections" convinced many readers that Burke had lost his
judgment but, after his death, when his predictions were proven largely correct, it grew to become his best-known and most
influential work.

In economics, he was a strong supporter of the free market system (believing that trade should be fair and benefit both
parties, but that governments should not interfere any more than necessary), but was wary of industrialization. The
pioneering economist, Adam Smith, was a strong supporter of his ground-breaking views; the socialist Karl Marx was a
radical opponentof them. Over time, Burke has come to be regarded as one of the fathers of modern Conservatism in the
English-speaking world, and his thinking has exerted considerable influence over the political philosophy of modern
classical Liberals.

A very common quotation mistakenly attributed to Burke is: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do
nothing" (or several similar variations). There is no definite source for the quotation, but it may be a paraphrasing of Burke's
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible
struggle".

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© 2008 Luke Mastin

http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_burke.html

Edmund Burke Biography

(c. 1729–1797)

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NAME
Edmund Burke

BIRTH DATE
c. January 12, 1729

DEATH DATE
July 9, 1797

EDUCATION
Trinity College, Dublin

PLACE OF BIRTH
Dublin, Ireland

PLACE OF DEATH
Beaconsfield, United Kingdom
 SYNOPSIS
 CITE THIS PAGE
Edmund Burke served in the British Parliament 1774-1794, where he dealt
with revolutions in America and France, as well as troubles in India and
Ireland.
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 FAMOUS GOVERNMENT
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Synopsis

In 1765, Edmund Burke was a member of the liberal Whig party throughout his term in
Parliament, from 1774 to 1794. During his career, Burke wrote and spoke on the major issues of
the day, including constitutional limitations on the power of the crown, taxation and revolution in
the American colonies, the problems of Ireland and India, and the French Revolution (which he
heartily opposed).

http://www.biography.com/people/edmund-burke-9231699

Edmund Burke
First published Mon Feb 23, 2004; substantive revision Thu Jan 14, 2010

Edmund Burke, author of Reflections on the Revolution in France, is known to a wide

public as a classic political thinker: it is less well understood that his intellectual
achievement depended upon his understanding of philosophy and use of it in the practical
writings and speeches by which he is chiefly known. The present essay explores the
character and significance of the use of philosophy in his thought.

 1. Introduction
 2. Life
 3. Intellectual Orientation
 4. Philosophical and Historical Writings
 5. Political Style: Some Parliamentary Applications
 6. Burke's Practical Reasoning
 7. Burke and the American Revolution
  8. Philosophical Character of Political Disposition
 9. The Revolution in France
 10. Problems of Interpretation
 11. Conclusion
 Bibliography
 Academic Tools
 Related Entries
 Other Internet Resources

1. Introduction
The name of Edmund Burke (1730–97) [1] is not one that often figures in the history of
philosophy .[2] This is a curious fate for a writer of genius who was also the author of a
book entitled A Philosophical Enquiry. Besides the Enquiry, Burke's writings and some
of his speeches contain strongly philosophical elements—philosophical both in our
contemporary sense and in the eighteenth century sense, especially ‘philosophical’
history. These elements play a fundamental role within his work, and help us to
understand why Burke is a political classic. His writings and speeches therefore merit
attention as examples of attention to both ideas and to history, and of the role of this
attention in practical thought. His work is also, as we see shall see at the end of this entry,
an achievement that challenges assumptions held by many of our contemporaries.

2. Life
Burke was born at Dublin in Ireland, then part of the British Empire, the son of a
prosperous attorney, and, after an early education at home, became a boarder at the
school run by Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker from Yorkshire, at Ballitore in County
Kildare. Burke received his university education at Trinity College, Dublin, a bastion of
the Anglican Church of Ireland. Thence he proceeded to the Middle Temple at London,
in order to qualify for the Bar, but legal practice was less attractive to him than the
broader perspective which had captured his attention at university (or earlier). It was first
as a writer, and then as a public figure that he made his career. Burke's intellectual
formation did not suggest that his career would be purely philosophical. Indeed, for those
without an independent income or a clerical vocation such a way of life was not very
feasible in Britain or Ireland. Only the Scottish universities offered posts that did not
require holy orders, but they were not very receptive to non-presbyterians. Burke married
in 1756, and had a son by 1758, so that a career of Humean celibacy, in which philosophy
was cultivated on a little oatmeal, was not for him.
Indeed, like Hume, Burke found that there was more money in narrative works and in
practical affairs than in philosophy. Burke's earliest writings include A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), and A
Vindication of Natural Society (1756). Thereafter he was co-author of An Account of the
European Settlements (1757) and began An Abridgement of English History (c.1757–62).
From 1758, at least until 1765, he was the principal ‘conductor’ of the new Annual
Register. In 1765, Burke became private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham (who
had just become First Lord of the Treasury) and was elected to the British House of
Commons in the same year. He remained there, with a brief intermission in the Autumn
of 1780, for nearly twenty-nine years, retiring in the Summer of 1794. Burke, who was
always a prominent figure there and sometimes an effective persuader, gave a great many
parliamentary speeches. He published versions of some of these, notably on American
Taxation (1774), Conciliation with America (1775), and Fox's East India Bill (1783).
These printed speeches, though anchored to specific occasions, and certainly intended to
have a practical effect in British politics, were also meant to embody Burke's thought in a
durable form. In that respect, they parallel his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present
Discontents (1770), and Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), amongst other
non-oratorical writings.
Burke's activity as a parliamentarian and political writer embraced a great many
concerns. Prominent amongst these were the problems of British rule overseas, in North
America, India and Ireland. His name, however, has been linked most strongly by
posterity to a critique of the French Revolution. Burke was certainly more notable as a
pundit than an executive politician, holding office only twice, for a few months in 1782
and 1783. His political life was punctuated in May 1791 by a break from some of his
party colleagues over the significance of the Revolution. Thereafter, assisted not least by
the turn it took in 1792–3, he became a largely independent commentator on domestic
politics and international affairs in An Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs (1791),Letters on a Regicide Peace (1795–7), and A Letter to a Noble
Lord (1796). Burke in his last years, especially from 1792, turned his attention to his
native Ireland. He failed to found a political dynasty, and he left no lasting school in
parliamentary politics: the last politician who can be regarded plausibly as a disciple, the
addressee of A Letter to William Elliot (1795), died in 1818. As Sidgwick observed,
‘though Burke lives, we meet with no Burkites’ (Sidgwick 2000, 195). Nor did Burke
bequeath a straightforward legacy to any political party or to any ideological brand of
thought, though plenty have tried to appropriate him wholly or partly. The difficulties
that they might find in colonising his thought are apparent from an account of it that
emphasizes its philosophical aspects.

3. Intellectual orientation
Burke's mind, by the time he left Trinity, had two facets: one was an orientation towards
religion, improvement and politics, the other a philosophical method. The latter derived
from his university education, the former from reflection on the Irish situation. Burke was
born into an Ireland where reflective intellect had its social setting in a small educational
elite, much of it connected with the Church of Ireland. This elite contemplated a political
class which owned much of the land, and consisted primarily of a gentry and peerage,
headed by the King's representative, the Lord-Lieutenant; but it saw too a tiny
professional class, and a huge, illiterate, impoverished peasantry. The aim of the
educational elite, which it shared with some of the political class, was improvement in the
broadest sense, that is to say it connected self-improvement through the influence of the
arts & sciences, and through the development of intellectual skills, with moral culture and
with economic development. The ability of the educated, the politicians and the rich to
take constructive initiatives contrasted starkly with the inability of the peasantry to help
itself: peasants relieved their misery principally through spasms of savagery against their
landlords' representatives, but such violence was repressed sternly and helped nobody.
The Irish situation suggested a general rationale of practice to those who wished to
improve themselves and others: improvement, if it was to spread outside the educational
elite, must spring from the guidance and good will of the possessing classes: from the
landlord who developed his property, from the priest who instructed and consoled the
poor, and from the lord lieutenant who used his power benevolently. The only obvious
alternative was violence—and that was both destructive and fruitless. Burke retained all
his life a sense of the responsibility of the educated, rich and powerful to improve the lot
of those whom they directed; a sense that existing arrangements were valuable insofar as
they were the necessary preconditions for improvement; and a strong sense of the
importance of educated people as agents for constructive change, change which he often
contrasted with the use of force, whether as method or as result.
This experiental orientation of Burke's mind was turned from attitude into articulate
thought through the educational medium of the Irish Enlightenment. For example, some
points that may seem distinctively Burkean, belonged first to Berkeley. Berkeley saw no
advantages in improper abstraction or in a mythical golden age. Thus Burke's
unwillingness to judge institutions and practices without first connecting them with other
things, his disinclination ‘to give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human
actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object in all the nakedness and
solitude of metaphysical abstraction’ (RRF, W & S 1981-, viii.58) is a practical
judgement that implies a conceptual counterpart like Berkeley's view that ‘when we
attempt to abstract extension and motion from all other qualities, and consider them by
themselves, we presently lose sight of them, and run into great extravagancies’
(Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 1948–57, vol. ii, 84.) In both cases,
philosophical wariness matched a distaste for considering aspects of objects in permanent
isolation from the other aspects with which they were essentially connected. This
suspicion of abstract ideas accompanied a suspicion of schemes for considering people in
abstraction from their present situation, and accompanied too doubts about a golden past:
Berkeley rejected ‘the rude original of society’ (Berkeley, The Querist, 1948–57, vol. vi,
141) and had no time for ‘declaimers against prejudice’ who ‘have wrought themselves
into a sort of esteem for savages, as a virtuous and unprejudiced
people’(Berkeley, Discourse addressed to Magistrates, 1948–57, vol. vi, 206), and it
need not be emphasized that Burke shared this view. Both belonged to an elite which
considered improvement to be necessary, and sought to make it through the agencies in
church, state and education that were really available at the time. Above all, they shared
an intellectual temper: they sought to see things how they are, with an eye to improving
the condition of society. But Burke was not Berkeley, and though their similarities
indicate a shared philosophical orientation, Burke had his own way of developing it. To
individuate him, we must turn to what he acquired from the Trinity syllabus, and how he
used his acquisitions.
This syllabus, by the time Burke became an undergraduate student at the age of fifteen
(1744), not only gave attention to Aristotelian manuals but also to ‘the way of ideas’
enshrined in Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding. Such a syllabus, in its
Aristotelian aspect, indicated the unity of all departments of literature—or learning as we
now call it — which was congenial to one with Burke's passion for knowledge — he
wrote of his furor mathematicus, furor logicus, furor historicus, and furor poeticus .[3] It
also indicated the range of achievements, and the range of needs, that people had
generated. The extent and variety of human activity impressed itself upon Burke. If his
practical situation in Ireland suggested that not reason alone but also Christianity and
persuasion were necessary to improvement, Burke could now understand these needs in
terms of a scheme of learning, and indeed had the opportunity to develop the
corresponding skills. At Trinity he founded a debating society, where he developed his
oratorical technique on theological, moral and political topics, as well as commenting on
the economic and literary life of Ireland in a periodical run by himself and his friends.
This acquisition of skills was complemented by an opportunity for philosophical
development. This applied in particular to Burke's antecedent bent towards the
imaginative branches of literature, especially romances of chivalry, such as the Faerie
Queen by Edmund Spenser (the collateral ancestor from whom he derived his Christian
name). Creations of alternative worlds by the mind now received a philosophical warrant
from another part of the Trinity syllabus. Locke had recognized that the mind devised
complex ideas. The mind had a power to receive simple ideas from the senses and from
its own reflection on them, and to make out of this material further ideas that had no
referent in the world of sensation. Burke's interest did not extend to the centaurs that
Locke had mentioned, but the ability to make complex ideas and to assemble them in new
ways was central to Burke's way of proceeding. His philosophical method involved
thinking in terms of complex ideas about a connected range of matters, matters connected
by their place in a programme of human improvement. Reason was fundamental to this
method—but not reason alone, as we see in Burke's sole work devoted wholly to
philosophy, which made use of Locke on the way to an original destination.

4. Philosophical and Historical Writings

Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding of 1690 was the first attempt to give a
survey of the mind's workings that was both comprehensive and post-aristotelian. It soon
fostered intense interest in epistemology, psychology and ethics. Burke seems to have
worked on the imagination—the faculty of devising and combining ideas — as an
undergraduate, and continued to do so into the 1750s. The result, A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) emphasized,
unsurprisingly, the activity of mind in making ideas and the influence of these upon
conduct. It was in the first place an exercise in clarifying ideas, with an eye to refining
the ways in which the arts affect the passions: in other words, a refinement of complex
ideas was taken to be the precondition of a refinement of practice.
The roots of human activity, Burke thought, were the passions of curiosity, pleasure and
pain. Curiosity stimulated the activity of mind on all matters. Ideas of pain and of
pleasure corresponded respectively to self-preservation and society, and society involved
the passions of sympathy, imitation and ambition. Imitation tended to establish habit, and
ambition to produce change. Sympathy did neither, but it did establish an interest in other
people's welfare that extended to mental identification with them. The scope of sympathy
could embrace anyone, unlike compassion, which applied only to those in a worse
situation than oneself. Such width of concern had an obvious reference to the social order
(and may express also Burke's thinking about the theatre). The passions, understood in
Burke's way, suggested at once that society as such answered to natural instincts, and that
it comprised elements of continuity and improvement alike. Burke then proceeded to
show that self-preservation and its cognates suggested the complex idea of the sublime,
and not least the idea of a God who was both active and terrible. Beauty, on the other
hand, comprised a very different set of simple ideas, which originated in pleasure.
Sublime and beautiful therefore sprang from very different origins.
The diverse views rejected by A Philosophical Enquiry were united by the pervasive
assumption that human nature in an unschooled condition, as it came from the hand of
nature, and understood without direct reference to God, was in some sense adequate to
the human condition. Rousseau'sDiscourse on Inequality was at odds with Burke's view
of the naturalness of society, and with his view that solitude, because unnatural, was a
source of pain, as well as with Burke's position that sympathy, rather than merely
compassion, was a key emotion. Burke's view that the mind formed ideas of beauty from
the ideas of pleasure it received contradicted the view of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson that
beauty (like goodness) was a perception presented by a sixth or moral sense. Burke's
further view that our simple ideas of pain went towards a complex idea of a God who
inspired terror, was very distant from the deists' view that He could be understood by our
natural faculty of reason alone and that as such He was known to be benevolent and not
much besides. These three positions alike presumed that human faculties, unimproved by
human effort and considered with little relation to God, were sufficient to inspire
conduct. It is not surprising that Burke rejected them.
Burke not only thought that nature needed improvement, but also recognized its
ambiguity. Ambition, for instance, was the source of enterprise and of improvement: but
Burke did not suppose that enterprise was in all its manifestations a benefit to its
exponent, and indeed once called it ‘the cause of the greatest disappointments, miseries
and misfortunes, and sometimes of dangerous immoralities’ [4]. If Burke had a forward-
looking mind, and believed that human nature both required and led to development, he
did not think that progress was necessarily an unqualified gain: for instance, in discussing
the civilizing of American savages, he saw a diminution of their courage as well as an
increase in their moral goodness.
A Philosophical Enquiry suggests that Burke was developing the loyalties of his youth
through the medium of philosophical psychology. A God who presents Himself through
nature in a way that is often found in the Bible, and who devises and sustains nature in a
way that leads man to society and facilitates the improvement of that society, has set
Himself to support Christianity, power and improvement, and probably education too. At
the same time, however, other aspects of the book suggest that this support was delivered
to them, not on their own terms, but on the terms of a philosophy which recognizes the
ability of the imagination to transform people's understandings of themselves and society.
Anyone who thinks in terms of complex ideas can see that these can be framed easily in
different ways, none of which need correspond to anything found in the external world:
combine the ideas of a man and a horse, and you have the idea of a centaur. No one who
reads romances would find difficulty in imagining a society differing beyond recognition
from its current arrangements. A classic instance of political imagination, indeed, is
Burke's own Vindication of Natural Society,which presents as an alternative model of
society an organization—if that is the word—devoid of civil government, church and
significant private property.
Burke, in other words, could think through not only his own grouping of propositions but
also their inverse. This reflects, no doubt, other features of his mind apart from his
understanding of complex ideas, such as the skill in seeing the strong side and the
obverse of any argument, which Burke had acquired in his undergraduate study of
rhetoric; and it reflects, too, a habit of versatility begun in his debating society, for there
speakers were called upon to play roles; and no doubt it is reminiscent, again, of Burke's
undergraduate interest in the theatre. Yet beyond all of these, it suggests that in the large
topics that experience had put before Burke—religion, morals, arts and sciences—
argument had not produced an overwhelmingly decisive case. For A Vindication also
seems to make a case against everything he had espoused.
If argument did not deliver incontestable conclusions, where was one to go? Burke's
answer, in his notebooks, was that where this was so, that people should prefer the
conclusions that accorded with their natural feelings. The complement to this emphasis
upon feeling was to look to the results of affective preference—that is to say, a criterion
for conduct in such a case was what tended to make people better and happier.
This was a judgement in the first place about personal conduct, and the manner of
applying it to matters on the larger scale of civil society was less obvious. Here the
judgement of benefit, whether ethical or pleasurable, might be harder to discern. In order
to make it plain in A Vindication, Burke applied a reductio ad absurdum to principles in
theology that he had rejected by showing their consequences for politics.
For that is what A Vindication provided. This short work was written in the persona of the
recently deceased Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751). Bolingbroke had
been a Tory pillar of the state, and therefore of the church too; but the posthumous
publication of his philosophical works revealed that far from being an Anglican, he had
not been a Christian—but rather a deist. A Vindication suggested the ills that Bolingbroke
had attributed to the artifice of revealed religion could be paralleled by those generated
by civil society. One logic, indeed, was attributable on these terms to both Christianity
and civil society: that just as the latter distributed the means of power unequally, so too
did Christianity distribute those of salvation unequally (for not everyone had heard, and
fewer believed, the Gospel). The deism of Bolingbroke implied the principle that God
treated everyone impartially, and that the means to salvation were therefore to be found
in a medium available to all, and thus available from the earliest point of human history,
namely reason. It was easy to add, as Burke did, that if the principle that such an original
nature was the mature expression of God's ordinances were to be applied to civil society,
the normative result would be a regression from complex and therefore civilised forms to
a simple society, even to animal-like primitiveness—some of the matter of A
Vindication paraphrases Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (Sewell 1938, 97–114). So
Bolingbroke the deist and Bolingbroke the politician could be made to look very much at
odds with each other. This gap offered Burke an opening. A Vindication satirized
Bolingbroke's schizophrenic position, employing a good deal of transparent exaggeration
to make ‘his’ criticisms of civil (‘artificial’) society seem very absurd: and Burke added a
preface to the second edition which made the disjunctive alternatives clear so that even he
who ran might read.
Yet it is hard not to recognize that Burke himself was telling the reader, in a way that
entered the consciousness all the more forcibly because it accompanied entertainment,
that civil society really did imply some evils, just as he identified losses as well as gains
from progress in other connexions. Burke's Vindication, speaking in the voice of pseudo-
Bolingbroke, lamented the situation of miners: and ‘the innumerable servile, degrading,
unseemly, unmanly, and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations’ of ‘so
many wretches’ was lamented by Burke without any persona, thirty-four years later
in Reflections on the Revolution in France. Such criticism, taken in itself, is undoubtedly
telling. Burke never dissembled the existence of the real misery that he observed in civil
society. Instead, he pointed out that wretched practices could not be detached from the
larger pattern of habits and institution in which they were implicated, and that this pattern
had a beneficial effect. Burke recognized misery, did not deny it, and therefore had a
lively sense of the imperfection of arrangements, however civilized they might be. His
sense of duality in nature and society resembles Adam Smith's.
Burke's position, therefore, was poised. But it was not merely a matter of pointing out
what made for good and what for ill in civil society: it was a matter of responsibility—of
choosing morally appropriate words. This was so for a philosophical reason, because of
the very nature of the words involved. Burke's Philosophical Enquiry divided words into
three categories. First, there were aggregate words, which signified groups of simple
ideas united by nature, e.g. man, horse, or tree. Second, there were simple abstract words,
each of which stood for one simple idea involved in such unities, as red, blue, round or
square. Thirdly, and most importantly for our purpose, came abstract compound words.
These united aggregate words and simple abstract words. As such, they did not have a
referent that existed in nature. A Philosophical Enquiry argued that no compound abstract
nouns suggested ideas to the mind at all readily, and that in many cases they did not
correspond to any idea at all, but instead produced in the mind only images of past
experience connected with these words. This category included virtue, vice, justice,
honour, and liberty, besides magistrate, docility and persuasion (Wecter 1940, 167–81).
The centrality of such terms to a discussion of civil society requires no emphasis. The
obvious inference from Burke's philosophy of language was that to use abstract
compound words was less to discuss ideas than to raise images which touched the
affections of the listener or reader. To do this could scarcely to be thought part of a
speculative activity: the effect would not be cognitive, but practical: not to develop ideas,
but to influence conduct. The question was, with what arrangements were these words,
and therefore pleasurable images, to be connected.
This understanding of the mind gave speakers and writers an unusually powerful role. It
was in their hands to connect words which suggested pro-attitudes with arrangements
of their choosing: for these words had did not imply only one set of conceptual contents,
because they implied none. If one recollects the propensity to imitation that Burke found
in mankind, this choosing was likely also to be leading. So Burke was exceptionally
sensitive to the role of men of letters and public speakers in moulding opinion. By the
same measure, he had an unusually lively sense of their responsibilities. It was they who
had the power to guide people to the proper ends, or elsewhere. Guidance need not be
directly didactic—indeed, it could not be, because there could be no definitions to
expound — but would be a matter of providing a linguistic context which guided listeners
and readers to goals that were ethically and politically beneficial.
One crucial approach that Burke himself developed was historiographical. In works of
history or in oratory, discussion involving a compound abstract noun—such as
‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’— could take place in connexion with aggregate words like
‘Indians’ or ‘the English’, and, therefore, being discussed in relation to these, connected
that noun with definite ideas rather than with further ideas that had no easily identifiable
content—or no content at all. Almost all of Burke's writings and his more important
speeches have a strong historical element. That element is cast as a narrative in a way that
connects compound abstract words with specific persons and specific transactions. Burke
also wrote avowedly historical works in the years immediately after publishing A
Philosophical Enquiry The content of these histories developed the preferences of his
youth for improvement by embodying these in a way that made them integral to the
origins and continuing character of modern arrangements in the Americas and in
England.
Burke, like Smith again, wrote ‘philosophical’ history, that is to say gave a view of the
key agencies that had shaped human destiny over the long run of human society. Indeed,
he casually implied a four-stage theory of socio-economic history at a time when Scottish
stadial history, except that in Dalrymple's Feudal Property (1757), was either unwritten
or unpublished. But his attention, primarily, lay elsewhere, as appears in An Account of
the European Settlements. This work arose from the initiative of ‘booksellers’ alive to the
reading public's interest in North America, where Britain was then at war with France,
and the work was co-written with Burke's ‘cousin’ and friend William Burke. Edmund's
pen is evident in the passages which contrast savagery with civilization. The book
emphasized that the coming of Europeans to the New World brought with it a civilizing
of savages, who were far from noble, through the agency of institutionalised Christianity.
This implicit distance from the cult of the noble savage, and from primitivism in general,
provided an identifiable complement to the implied rejections of A Philosophical
Enquiry and the satire about 'natural society' in A Vindication.
A stage of human history rather later than that of savages was delineated within An
Abridgement of English History, which Burke wrote after 1757, but did not finish. So far
as it goes, this provided a continuous account that ran from the Roman landings to Magna
Carta. Christianity figured again in this narrative as a source of civilization, but the
significance of the tale was more complex. This time the story was primarily political,
and showed how one of the values most prized by Burke's contemporaries, civil liberty,
came to belong to England. The Norman Conquest of England established a powerful
executive government and brought with it a uniform system of law; if these two were
necessary conditions for the matching grace of civil liberty for all, however, they were
not sufficient: the required addition came from an aristocracy, which had been taught the
value of liberty by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and which had come to understand that
its own power was insufficient to extract the requisite concessions from the crown unless
popular support could be won. Burke's sense of the double-edged character of civilization
thus developed into a sense that the political regime required by an advanced society—
the combination of strong institutions with civil liberty—came from sources that were
contrary to each other, and not always beneficial in isolation (aristocracy as a form of
government was an ‘austere and insolent domination’ (TCD, W & S, 1981-, ii. 268)): and
as both a strong executive and civil liberty were needed, by the same token the forces
making for each needed to be counterbalanced from the other side on a continuing basis.
This balance of forces provided a context in which ‘liberty’ had an identifiable meaning,
namely the specific civil liberties secured through political struggle and written into
Magna Carta.
Burke's narratives suggested that agencies antipathetic to each other, if properly
connected to one another, might produce results that were both intelligible and valuable.
One effect amongst several of this conception of cooperative conflict was a rehabilitation
of the Catholicism that was the historic heritage of Burke's family. An Account and An
Abridgement alike suggested that in its historical time and place Roman Catholicism, and,
indeed, clericalism, whether embodied in Jesuit missionaries or in an English archbishop,
had been a constituent needed to produce social and political benefits of a fundamental
kind. As an historiographical exemplar, An Abridgementtherefore showed an exceptional
appreciation of the Middle Ages, which was to cause raptures to Lord Acton. It
anticipated both Richard Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762), and, still more,
a great work that set the bearings for Anglo-American medievalists for many years,
William Stubbs' Constitutional History of England (1875–8). Burke, however, could not
think in terms of an academic historiography, still less one that would be the exclusive
intellectual preoccupation of its exponents: neither of these existed in his time. He could
think, however, of subtly defusing anti-Roman prejudice in Georgian Britain.
Burke himself was not a Roman Catholic, and viewed enquiry into his personal
background with alarm and suspicion. This was sensible enough in a Britain which still
subliminally linked civil liberty with Protestantism, and therefore regarded Irishness as a
likely pointer to popish subversion of its political values. Burke's argumentative stance
always benefited Roman Catholics, but he never found a kind word for the Pope: his was
a position which emphasized the priority of civil interests over denominational claims in
civil society. Indeed Burke considered that ‘the truth of our common Christianity, is not
so clear as this proposition: that all men, at least the majority of men in the society, ought
to enjoy the common advantages of it.’ (TPL, W & S 1981-, ix.464). This was a political
development of the centrality he gave to the claims of improvement, and of the obvious
necessity of its free development for the bettering of the human condition. It also silently
defused any papal claim to civil dominance on theological grounds and, more audibly,
suggested that the penalisation of Catholic beliefs was wrong if these did not cause
Catholics to interfere with others' civil interests. Burke's presumptions about the priority
of civil interests and a sense of the possible irrelevance of denominational opinion to civil
society suggest a reading of Locke's Letter concerning Toleration and Two Treatises of
Government, the latter of which was common, though not prescribed reading at Trinity. It
also implies that the proper terms in which to conceive civil interests are those of natural
jurisprudence, because there people are considered without reference to any specific
allegiances, religious or otherwise. Burke referred to natural law and natural rights
directly when such reference advanced his own arguments, though he made no theoretical
contribution to natural jurisprudence until quite late in life. His creative energies were
mostly applied elsewhere.
Burke developed his thoughts about civil interests in a work that his executors
entitled Tracts on the Popery Laws, which he drafted when he was employed as private
secretary to the Chief Secretary for Ireland in the early seventeen-sixties. After this,
Burke became involved more immediately in political practice, and, by one means or
another, contributed to it until his death and (through the activities of his executors in
publishing or reprinting his writings) from beyond the grave. This was one obvious route
for practical development, even besides the amenities of status that it brought to Burke.
For his view of the compound abstract words involved in civil discussion did not suggest
that purely speculative study had unlimited potential either for the mind or for personal
satisfaction, because a strictly speculative discussion was likely to be inconclusive at
best: such words became more readily intelligible in connexion with the concrete, and
therefore the practical. Hence, perhaps, Burke concluded that ‘man is made for
Speculation and action; and when he pursues his nature he succeeds best in both.’
(Somerset 1957, 87). There was, on this understanding, intellectual benefit in political
participation, and, equally, political practice might benefit from the speculative mind.
This is likely to seem an implausible position nowadays, when political activity is
frenetic, and learning is a matter of speciality; but in the eighteenth century, when an
agile mind could manage at least the basics of several branches of learning, and the
British legislature was often in session for less than six months in a year, it was more
plausible. Political participation, on Burke's understanding, had besides its intellectual
possibilities, an ethical potential. To the extent that thinking about politics was
necessarily uncertain, the proper conduct of affairs depended upon an honest as well as a
capacious mind, and on a well-disposed management of words.
It remains to show what Burke learnt from political activity, and what he conferred upon
it. The picture is one in which the claims of practice enriched Burke's mind and brought
intellectual benefits to practice itself.

5. Political style: some parliamentary

applications
Burke's life was spent in parliamentary affairs from the mid-1760s, and this made a
difference to his style of intellectual activity. This did not lie primarily in developing the
cast of his mind, and if in 1771 Burke stated that ‘I have endeavoured all my life to train
my understanding and my temper in the studies and habits of Philosophy’, at the same
time he concluded that ‘my Principles are all settled and arranged’ .[5] This did not
preclude intellectual innovation. The difference made by participation lay not least in his
reasons for applying his mind, and consequently in how he did so. The reasons were to
influence opinion, both in Parliament and from his position as a member of the
legislative, and determine votes in the House of Commons itself. The matter common to
both of these was Burke's view of the words central to political understanding.
An obvious inference from Burke's account of compound abstract words is that to use
these is to touch the experience of reader or listener, and that persuasion was unavoidably
central to discussing politics: this befitted a practical rather than a speculative subject.
Indeed, these terms implied that the point of discussing politics must be to influence
action, and nothing much else. Burke developed great skill in managing words, begun in
debating at Trinity and carried forward through other venues, including the House of
Commons. As such language was persuasive, its objective was to establish pro-attitudes
and con-attitudes in mind of listener or reader.
This was not the only philosophical aspect in Burke's political practice. A major
conceptual tool in discussing politics was relation. Relation is one of those terms which
was common to both the scholastics and to Locke. It denotes both comparison and
connexion. Comparison was an invaluable procedure because it enabled events,
institutions and persons to be placed in any number of lights which would raise or lower
their significance and standing. Connexion was scarcely less valuable, because the place
that someone or something occupied could be used to sustain or criticise their role, as
well as to demonstrate the value of co-operative contraries. Best of all, relation in either
sense lent itself to a myriad of uses, for as LeClerc had remarked in his Logic (which
Burke had read at Trinity) relations were beyond counting—sunt autem innumerae
relationes (Le Clerc 1692, pt. 1, ch. 4, s. 1, p. 19).
Burke's conception of philosophical history was also fundamental to his political practice.
‘Every age has its own manners and its politicks dependent upon them’ (TCD, W & S,
1981-, ii 258.) The manners Burke saw around him in England were continuous with
those he had seen in the middle ages, or projected backwards thither, in which a powerful
executive government was balanced by other agencies with the effect of securing civil
liberty. Those agencies most obvious in Burke's time had established the sovereignty of
Parliament at the Glorious Revolution (1688–9), reaffirmed it in the Bill of Rights (1689)
and the Act of Settlement (1701), and confirmed it by suppressing the attempts made
from 1708 to 1746 to reassert the sovereignty of kings alone. Burke understood law in
this arrangement as the guarantor of interests of the governed because it was law passed
and secured by Parliament. It was secured in Parliament by the mutual dependence of
Commons, Lords and King. That sovereignty had this public character made the British
state a beneficiary of a very high degree of financial credit, and this increased the power
of Parliament. The long, slow movement of British history from a conception of the
realm understood as royal property to the state conceived as the expression of public will
had in Burke's time reached a stage at which this will was expressed through the
decisions of Parliament in a manner heavily influenced by the monarch. Burke's political
activities therefore assumed parliamentary sovereignty.
If Burke's view of words and relations gave him practical tools, and if parliamentary
sovereignty provided him with a practical postulate, what did he assume was the proper
end of sovereignty? We have seen that the relation between sovereign and the governed
had for a primary purpose the protection of the latter's civil interests. This much suggests
continuity between Burke the philosopher/historian and Burke the political participant.
But the former might also see that there were complications for the latter. One who sees
the multiplicity of civil interests, and the variety of relations in which they can be
considered, and the variety of contraries at work, will see that to put society at ease with
itself may well imply conflict and see that such conflict is hard to avoid; he or she will
see, too, that Parliament forms an arena for conducting it in a stylised and moderated way
through the representation of interests, appropriate to a civilized state of society; and,
even while participating in such a conflict, s/he might recognizes the necessity of both
sides to the result. Here, opponents may be not only enemies but also co-workers, sharing
at least some common assumptions about the system within which their lot was cast,
although separated from others by the role required of them. In that situation, the question
becomes, where do you take your place? The answer may depend on your own
connexions, and on how you conceive them.

6. Burke's practical reasoning

Burke's method for written composition often combined (i) identification of relations,
with (ii) relevant history, and (iii) treatment in language that would attach pro-attitudes to
one side or the other in a difference of opinion. This method is seen, for instance, in
his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770). Its central statement for our
purpose is about (i) relation in the form of connexion: that the British constitution had
been constructed in a manner that required the connexion (in this case the
interdependence) of the parts of the sovereign in order to achieve mutual control. This
statement contrasted with (ii) the historical statement that there was a new system of
court politics which involved disconnecting those parts in order to make the monarch
independent of the other parts of the political sovereign. Burke's history showed the
emergence of this new system, and illustrated its pernicious results in both domestic and
foreign affairs. The contrast (iii) between the older system — which was represented as
having benign results—was clear, and the disposition of pro-language obvious enough.
Burke's appeal lay to the standards which his contemporaries would take for granted,
namely those implied in their beliefs about parliamentary sovereignty. As if it were not
enough, the picture of the older order was reinforced by a sense of connexion in the
Aristotelian mode that Burke's society recognized and approved—that man was sociable,
rather than being a solitary beast, and above all by the annexation of the key term
ofconnexion to the side of the dispute that Burke favoured. All of these considerations
suggested the appropriateness of ‘the good’ combining to counterbalance the efforts of
court politicians, and so to sustain parliamentary sovereignty and its benefits.
This illustrates Burke's remarkable ability to combine philosophical method and
philosophical history, as well as the practical purpose to which he put them—forming an
understanding of politics which was practical in the very particular sense of calling for
activity in one direction to counterbalance forces coming from another. It was also
practical in relation to advancing very specific interests. These considerations were used
to situate quite another sense of connexion, namely political party, and especially the
party of Rockingham to which and to whom Burke had attached himself. Indeed Present
Discontents was read in draft by its leading lights before publication. On publication, the
pamphlet was widely understood as a manifesto for this party. After publication Present
Discontents became a manual from which fledging politicians learnt the rationale of their
party, and, indeed, a source book for cat calls from the party colleagues from whom
Burke separated himself in 1791. The philosophical and historical element in Burke's
positions is evident only to those who retrace all of his steps; an activity which his
contemporaries lacked the will, and (as not all of his major works had been published)
some of the means to do.
The educative effect of Burke's writing is not to be underestimated in a civil society,
some of whose members were highly literate but had no formal education in political
science (except, sometimes, at Scottish universities). Indeed, it is likely that Burke wrote
in order to educate. Yet at the same time that the strength of his conceptual and historical
arguments, and the skill with which he developed these, excites the reader's admiration,
they create unease. This is not merely because in Present Discontents the philosophical
sense of connexion is used to adumbrate the claims of a party connexion: it is a more
generalized disquiet. A politician inspires confidence, in part, because s/he is honest: and
a good way to be thought honest is to convey the impression that you are not clever
enough to deceive. As a philosopher commands interest when s/he is intellectually
powerful, this impression is one that is naturally hard to achieve: but it can be done. C.D.
Broad suggested that ‘Locke, we feel, is not so much cleverer than ourselves as to be
capable of playing tricks with us even if he wanted to do so. He is the Mr Baldwin [6] of
philosophy, and he derives from his literary style some of the advantages which that
statesman owed to his pipe and his pigs.’ (Broad 1952, 39). This judgement does not
apply to Burke, even though he did keep pigs. The reader carries away from Burke a
sense of great creative power, dialectical skill, and verbal ingenuity: in short, a sense of
being overborne by intellectual force. The listener probably received other and
unwelcome sensations when this was seconded by personal raucousness. Such feelings
generate unease, and unease is increased by Burke's prose.
His literary style is to argue clearly, but in doing so to include a manifest carefulness of
qualification that will permit subsequent shifts of position—for instance his self-
description as a ‘true but severe friend to monarchy’ is consistent with his occupying any
point within the generous spectrum of parliamentary sovereignty—and, indeed, the sense
of historical change which pervades Present Discontents suggests that movement is a
common experience. Unease, perhaps, is increased even further: for against one equipped
with this intellectual repertoire, the accusation of inconsistency is irresistibly tempting
and utterly useless. Again, Burke's is a very sensible way for a statesman to think, but it
is not how the public wishes politicians to appear on most occasions. Still less is it
reassuring about Burke's intellectual bona fides: for this is not how people innocent of
political experience, who are the majority, conceive the role of political principles.
Coleridge put his finger on an important point when he suggested that from
‘principles exactly the same’ Burke could draw ‘practical inferences almost opposite’ in
different situations (Coleridge 1983, vol. i, 191). Burke's philosophical and historical
positions are clear, but they do not translate, and were not meant to translate, into a set of
specific practical conclusions of permanent validity.
There was the contrast, too, between the breadth of view and of learning in the matured
statements that Burke published, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ways of the
parliamentary pugilist who was audible to fellow M.P.s and legible to others in the
speeches reported by the daily newspapers. Burke's manner was anything but
‘philosophical’ as the public understands the word. Partly this was, doubtless, because
Burke was like that as a person, and not least because he had a weak voice that had to be
raised if it was to be heard in the bear garden that was the House of Commons, but partly,
too, because his Philosophical Enquiry had suggested that the best way to impart a mood
to an audience was to display it oneself. So, for instance, if Burke needed to plead for
moderation, he did so immoderately. Above all, perhaps, it was because this philosopher-
turned-participant was not exempt from the need to win to his side enough minds to
ensure that his side was not beaten (or, at any rate, demonstrated enough strength to
remain in contention), and had at hand an exceptionally powerful range of persuasive
tools. It is an evident fact, too, that the resources of Western civilization were sometimes
invoked by Burke in order to produce votes in the House of Commons—votes, which,
whatever else they were, were in the interests of his party. But, manifestly, these
resources do not supply a rationale for only one policy, still less for only one party. The
roles of thinker and party spokesman consort ill: and there were bound to be doubts about
one
Who born for the Universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up, what was meant for mankind.
Tho' fraught with all learning, kept straining his throat,
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote.
(Goldsmith, lines 31–34).

A disparity of this sort was always likely to suggest that Burke had profoundly personal
motives for narrowing his mind, and when he was not being caricatured as an Irish Jesuit
he was being satirized as a corrupt hack [7]. Yet some sort of procedure of the type pursued
by Burke was implied in his sense of practical reasoning. The ‘philosopher in action’ had
the function of finding ‘proper means’ to ‘the proper ends of Government’ marked out by
‘the speculative philosopher’ (TCD, W & S, 1981-, ii. 45–51). Parliamentary votes, in the
situation that Burke found himself, were amongst the proper means.

7. Burke and the American Revolution

Political participation generated scepticism about Burke as a person, some of which was
unjust, though all of it was to be expected. What was perhaps less predictable, and is
certainly more interesting philosophically, is that this participation was a precondition of
the practical thought which made Burke famous in his own time and has given him a
leading place in the canon of Western political thought.
Burke's practical thinking about the dispute between the British parliament and its North
American colonies began with a situation not of his making, that is to say the rejection of
the Stamp Act by the colonists, and its withdrawal by the ministry headed by Lord
Rockingham in 1765–6. The Rockingham ministry followed up this concession of letting
the colonists alone with the assertion of Parliament's right to legislate for the colonies in
the Declaratory Act of 1766. Burke's task was to demonstrate to the House of Commons
the plausibility of this package. He did so by combining two complex ideas—or at least
two abstract compound nouns—in a new way. One idea was empire, which involved
command. The other was liberty. These, Burke thought, were ideas difficult to
combine—a sound reflection as they are diametrically opposed—but that they were
combinable in the further idea of a British empire—one which combined legislative
command with civil liberty. This idea implied letting alone certain matters of concern to
the colonists, and so allowing them in some respects civil liberty on a de facto basis
(SDR, W & S 1981-, ii.317-18). This idea is considerably more ingenious than the
average British position that ‘all the dominions of Great Britain are bound by Acts of
Parliament’ .[8] Burke's view was explanatory, because it conceptualised the situation
before Parliament in a way that made intelligible the points involved and established a
connexion amongst them. It was also accommodating, because it made the British
executive's policy intellectually and therefore practically respectable at the same time that
it made room for colonial preferences. In short, it was a small masterpiece of thinking
about policy.
The repeal of the Stamp Act was followed by the passing of the Declaratory Act. Burke
was practically successful in 1766 with the House of Commons because he was speaking
for the executive, and a majority amongst Members of Parliament, ceteris paribus, tended
to vote for the king's ministers. In 1774 and 1775 he was practically unsuccessful,
because he was now in opposition, but his conceptual achievement in dealing with the
American question became much greater. By 1774, the issues dividing some American
colonists from the British parliament had changed. The former now resented the attempts
of the latter to levy taxation on them directly, rather than by the authority of their own
colonial legislatures, and they resented still more the project of backing the attempt, if
need be, with coercion. Burke's speech of 1774 on American Taxation did not delete the
idea of imperial command, but rather elaborated his complex idea of the British empire in
a new way in order to deal with the new situation.
Burke elaborated the complex idea in a way to which complex ideas lend themselves, that
is to say, by adding a qualification. The sovereignty of the British parliament was an idea
that certainly included a right to tax: but a right to tax could be understood to be
consistent on principle with inaction as well as action. The right, in plainer language,
need not be applied. Burke could accommodate, therefore, both the claims of
Westminster and those of the colonists. To this point, of course, one might reply that
Burke was merely making concessions. But observe: this situation provided a cue for
conceptual innovation—Burke inserted a distinction into the idea of sovereignty. He
distinguished ‘my idea of the constitution of the British Empire’ from ‘the constitution of
Britain’ unconnected with overseas rule. It could be inferred that
The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive empire in two
capacities: one of the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at
home…The other…is what I call her imperial character, in which…she superintends all
the several inferior legislatures, and guides, and controls them all without annihilating
any. As all these provincial legislatures are only co-ordinate to each other, they ought all
to be subordinate to her….It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent,
and to aid the weak and deficient, by the over-ruling plenitude of her power. She is
never to intrude into the place of the others, whilst they are equal to the common ends
of their institution. But in order to enable parliament to answer all these ends of
provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers must be boundless

so that Burke's elaboration of the complex idea of the British empire suggests
complementary roles for the British parliament and the colonial legislatures, an
elaboration which would make the question of taxation irrelevant at a stroke, whilst
simultaneously emphasizing the authority of Westminster.
Conceptual refinement provided a practical avenue that other, less gifted politicians had
not devised. Burke's position was altogether subtler than the implied tautology of a
minister's claim that ‘to say we have a right to tax America and are never to exercise that
right is ridiculous’ (Sir Edward Thurlow, quoted in Gore-Brown 1953, 85), and of
another politician's despairing sense that ‘we must either insist upon their submission to
the authority of the Legislature or give them up entirely to their own discretion.’ .[9] These
pundits, by failing to conceive a sufficiently complex idea of sovereignty and the
sovereign's right to tax, failed also to see that sovereignty did not imply an unpleasant
choice between abrogating this right by disuse or applying it by force.
Events soon required a further elaboration of Burke's idea of the British empire. The
continued use of coercion made the colonists more, not less recalcitrant. The practical
need seemed to be for terms on which they would stay, at least nominally, under British
rule. Their crucial claim was now that their right to tax themselves by their own
legislatures rested on charters from the Crown, and that they were subordinate to the
Crown alone, and not to Parliament. Burke gave still closer attention to the idea of
sovereignty. It would be tactless to emphasize the sovereignty of Parliament, but it would
be self-defeating to withdraw it explicitly and concede a sovereign right over taxation to
the colonial legislatures. So now, in Burke's speech on Conciliation with America (1775),
he focussed upon only one aspect of the complex idea of a parliamentary sovereign. The
latter comprised in the British instance not only Lords and Commons, but also the king.
Hence, by judicious emphasis, the item acquiesced in by the colonists could do some
conceptual work: ‘my idea of an Empire…is…that an Empire is the aggregate of many
States, under one common head; whether this head be a monarch or a presiding
republick’; and it was emphasized that the rights of the colonists depended on this
superior, for ‘the claim of a privilege seems rather, ex vi termini, to imply a superior
power.’ As to a right to tax, Burke added on a later occasion, that though it ‘was inherent
in the supreme power of society, taken as an aggregate, it did not follow that it must
reside in any particular power in that society’, and therefore Parliament could delegate it
to local legislatures. In short, ‘sovereignty was not in its nature an idea of abstract unity;
but was capable of great complexity and infinite modifications.’ (SSC, W & S 1981-, iii.
193).
Whether Burke's ‘infinite modifications’ would have assisted in keeping the thirteen
colonies within the fold of the British empire is unknowable, for nothing like his
proposals were tried until 1778, which was too late. It is clear, however, that Burke's
ability to make conceptual changes depended on his philosophical thinking. To think in
terms of complex ideas is to recognize that they can be elaborated by adding further
ideas; to distinguish between the roles of Parliament is to make that addition; and to
analyse the powers of a sovereign parliament as a preface to relocating one of them is to
use philosophy as a tool in practical reasoning. It is noteworthy, also, that these
philosophical exercises were the means of coping, as Burke hoped, with practical
changes. Neither was his work here primarily ideological, for though Burke had a
practical goal in view, and at that one consistent with the Rockingham achievements of
1766, he worked philosophically to modify the conceptions in terms of which his
contemporaries viewed their situation, rather than using his conceptual tools as ways of
defending those conceptions without modifying them. Thus he added ideas to the stock of
his day. It is fitting, though Burke's proposals were not implemented in time, and though
his goal was not attained, that his American speeches figured prominently in the schools
and universities of both the U.K. and the U.S.A. well into the twentieth century. Burke,
after all, was suspicious of poor ideas: he concluded that ‘one of the main causes of our
present troubles’ was ‘general discourses, and vague sentiments’, and urged instead study
of ‘an exact detail of particulars’ (SSC, W & S 1981-, iii. 185).

8. Philosophical Character of Political

Disposition
Burke's thinking about America also suggests a political disposition that owed something
to his philosophical conceptions. Burke's complaint in American Taxation against
ministers was that ‘they have taken things…without any regard to their relations or
dependencies’, and had ‘no one connected view.’ This was in part a straightforwardly
cognitive position being emphasized with prudential point: the world with which
politicians dealt was complex, and to use ideas which were insufficiently complex to
capture its contents and their relations was a short way to meet the rough side of reality.
It was also, implicitly an ethical position: governments ought not to apply force to
existing relations, at least those that were legitimate. This is, in one way, an obvious point
from natural jurisprudence, and one that Burke had made transparently with respect to
inroads by the government of Ireland against Catholic property. In another, and more
interesting way, it reflected his view that abstract compound nouns and complex ideas
evoke specific past experiences. To interfere forcibly with someone's experientially-based
expectations would be to break their mental association between experience and idea or
word: and so the idea or the word would become meaningless and cease to influence
action. If, therefore, ‘my hold of the Colonies, is in the close affection which grows from
common names’, amongst other sources that were ‘though light as air…as strong as links
of iron’, then ‘let the Colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with
your Government;—they will cling and grapple to you…But let it be once understood,
that your Government may be one thing, and their Privileges another; that these two
things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone; the cohesion is
loosened; and every thing hastens to decay and dissolution.’ (CWA, W & S 1981-, iii.
164). To break such mental associations was to break communities.
This point suggested that a genuinely prudent conduct of affairs would proceed without
assaulting the mental associations of the governed, and, as change was omnipresent,
would conduct its share under accepted names—in other words, by gradual and by
moderate reform of institutions and practices rather than by immediate and total
replacement, which Burke stigmatised as ‘innovation’. This, indeed, was what Burke
claimed to be doing in his contributions of 1780–82 to the recasting of the royal
household. The intellectual counterpart of this prudent conduct, namely the refinement of
our existing ideas, rather than replacing them, is what he had done in his revisions of the
idea of sovereignty.
This style of thinking gave Burke a very lively sense of the corrosive power of new ideas.
Even newquestions could have unpleasant results. When the innovations of the British
government unsettled the colonists, ‘then…they questioned all the parts of your
legislative power; and by the battery of such questions have shaken the solid structure of
this Empire to its deepest foundations.’ The proper way to avoid such shakes to civil
society was to ‘consult and follow your experience’ (ATX, W & S 1981-, ii.411, 457), for
‘experience’ according to Burke's philosophy of language was a condition of continuity
of mind, and, on the basis of mind, of a sustainable practice. His was therefore a
philosophically conditioned attitude to practice, and one that was very sensitive to the
hiatus that speculation could cause in the latter. Burke's sensitivity can produce apodictic
language in order to persuade people to make use of the ideas they have inherited, by
urging ‘a total renunciation of every speculation of my own; and… [by recommending] a
profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors’ (CWA, W & S 1981-, iii.139).
Indeed, Burke can be found, sometimes, on rational grounds, deprecating all explicit
appeal to speculation of whatever hue, if it had a disturbing effect: ‘reason not at all—
oppose the ancient policy and practice of the empire, as a rampart against the
speculations of innovators on both sides of the question’ (italics added) (ATX, W & S
1981-, ii.166). His deprecation of speculation was logically anterior to taking sides in
politics.
It was also, in effect, an appeal for ideas adequate to governing. This is evident in Burke's
criticism of ‘vulgar and mechanical politicians’,
a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and who
therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are
not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly
taught,…ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I have
mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth every thing, and all in all,
so that ‘little minds’ could not govern ‘a great empire’ (CWA, W & S 1981-, iii.139), or,
evidently, any empire at all, whereas better results might be expected from ‘men truly
initiated and rightly taught.’
Burke himself, however much he might try to hide the logic of his thought under the rich
foliage of words generated by his skill with words—he is perhaps the only classic of
political thought in the English language who is also a literary classic—was a
philosophical thinker. As such, his practical conclusions could change, and did, as we
have seen. Practical conclusions changed because they were meant to be serviceable in a
world that itself was changing. Burke's philosophical equipment, however, served him in
the face of all external changes.

9. The Revolution in France

Burke's name is indissolubly connected to his Reflections on the Revolution in France,
though a more perceptive account of the causes of the Revolution of 1789 can be found
in A Letter to William Elliot (1795), and the Letters on a Regicide Peace (1795–7)
investigate the character and consequences of the Revolution from 1791 in a more
thoroughgoing way. In an important sense, however, the judgement of posterity is right
for our purposes, because Reflections illustrates very clearly the central importance of
philosophy and ‘philosophical’ history for Burke's writing about one of the greatest
changes of his day.
This is true, in the first place, in terms of insight. Reflections was published on 1
November 1790, less than eighteen months after the storming of the Bastille. The
intervening period had been characterised by a mixture of popular violence and
peaceable, if feverish political activity in France, as its absolute monarchy gave way to a
constitutional monarchy. A detached observer would be unsure of the future—whether
destruction and violence would predominate or whether an enduring constitutional order
would emerge was a question which events had not answered. In the event, of course, the
Revolution would be characterised by both violence and constitutional development, at
different times, but this was as unknowable in 1790 as it is obvious in 2009.
Burke's Reflections may be divided (for the author did not provide any formal divisions)
into two portions of unequal length. Both of these are concerned with relations. The first
portion, about two-thirds of the text, suggests that the French, in their enthusiasm for the
idea of liberty, had failed to understand that liberty was only one amongst a range of
benefits, all of which were required in mutual connexion for a life under civil
government that was civilized in the proper sense. The results which flowed from this
deficiency of understanding included constitutional arrangements which, because they
did not reflect an understanding of liberty that was subtle enough to grasp that the liberty
of the many was power, did not qualify popular sovereignty in a way that would restrain
the demos effectively. As if an unrestrained populace was not bad enough, an
understanding of life only in terms of liberty swept away preceding elaborations of our
ideas. This mattered, because the refinement of ideas had been a precondition of
refinement of conduct and therefore of the progress of society in many respects. One key
instance of these was the respectful treatment of women encouraged since the middle
ages by Christian learning and by chivalry. But there was a newer philosophy: ‘on this
scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal;
and an animal not of the highest order’. The retrogression of humanity itself to animality
was not far in the future with ‘a swinish multitude’. The result, as people would no longer
be moved by opinion, which had embodied refined ideas, would be that they would need
to be governed by force. Force, too, was the ultimate destination of the second portion
of Reflections. This suggested that the idea of equality had been connected only too
pervasively with the institutional arrangements of the judiciary, the legislative and the
executive power—and therefore had produced not the authority of command in
government but institutionalised feebleness. At the same time, the perverse results of
equality in fiscal arrangements had caused popular discontent and financial instability.
The result was a situation which could be controlled only by the force of the military—if,
indeed, military order was sustainable when soldiers had absorbed the idea of equality.
France, it seemed, tended towards either the rule of force or the disintegration of order.
Burke's philosophical repertoire and historical understanding thus provided the structure
ofReflections, and, perhaps more importantly, suggested insights into the character of the
Revolution. The inattention of the revolutionaries to the relations that needed to be
comprised in a modern government, especially in connexion with liberty, was matched by
the inappropriateness to a sovereign regime of structuring its institutions around equality
rather than around effective command. These insights suggested that a mis-structuring of
the new constitution proceeded from an inadequate philosophical grasp. Such
misunderstanding was matched by a failure to understand the history which had produced
the elaboration of ideas about conduct that had underwritten government by opinion, and
this failure suggested that the Revolution would cause retrogression from this civilized
condition towards a less gentle way of proceeding, as well as a less effective one. In other
words, Burke's understanding of philosophy, and of the history of Europe, conceived
‘philosophically’, provided grounds for making fundamental claims about the
Revolution.
Whether Burke was right in these claims about the Revolution, of course, is another
question, and one that can never be answered: French readers of Reflections could take its
lessons to heart, and, anyhow, events have a way of modifying tendencies independently
of intention and interpretation. Indeed, none of this is to say that Reflections was intended
as an academic work, or even an accurate factual statement, about the Revolution. It was
calculated to produce a practical result, which was to dissuade the British from admiring
the Revolution and so to dampen any propensity they might feel to imitate it: and thus to
protect civilization in Britain. In the course of pursuing this goal, Burke was willing to
satirize the Revolution and its English sympathizers unmercifully in order to make them
as unattractive as possible to any sane reader, and he matched the satire with a panegyric
on British social and political arrangements. There is, indeed, much in Reflections besides
the elements that have been emphasized here (and indeed much in Burke's later views on
the Revolution which is not in Reflections): but without those elements, the book, and
Burke's understanding of the Revolution would have been impossible.

10. Problems of Interpretation

Whilst Burke's thought has never lacked interpreters, on the whole they have lacked the
persistence of historical insight and the strength of conceptual grasp required to do justice
to him. Hence he has suffered an ironic fate for one who urged breadth and precision of
thought. That is to say, he has figured as the spokesman for a very limited number of
points. This type of treatment began in the nineteenth century, when Burke was invoked
as an antidote to the confidence of the French Revolution by liberal thinkers who prized
its principles, saw their narrowness, and required a sense of historical development to
situate them properly in a viable civil society. It was continued when Matthew Arnold
tried to treat Burke as a (pre-Home Rule) Gladstonian spokesman about Ireland. It went
further still in the twentieth century, when Burke was pressed into service as a counter-
revolutionary agent in the anti-Communist cause, and when the twenty-first dawned some
treated Burke as proponent of postmodernism. He himself could hardly have complained
that his work has been put to practical use, but it remains true that academic justice has
yet to be done to him. Chapters and essays on individual themes in his writings have been
more plausible than attempts at general interpretation, which usually concentrate on a
theme of choice, or subordinate Burke's thought to it, and give the impression
(deliberately or otherwise) that this is the whole of Burke, or at any rate that this is what
matters about him.
In attacking the Revolution, Burke constructed a rogues' gallery for French politicians,
and stocked it also with quite a number of French thinkers. The figures who appeared to
be rogues, however, were most of them really straw men, stuffed according to the
prejudices of a British audience. More significantly for our purposes, Burke's censure of
the philosophes attributed to them complicity with the style of thought that had set up a
limited range of simple principles as the norm for politics, and which was wholly
inadequate to satisfy the connected and various needs of human nature under modern
conditions. Burke preferred to emphasize that numerous principles, and practical thinking
to combine them, were necessary to meet these needs, and so to sustain improvement,
and emphasize, too, that such accommodation involved much more practical activity than
speculative design. Correspondingly his own writings develop less a political philosophy
than a political style that had at its core philosophical elements—a style which, indeed,
implicitly suggested that politicalphilosophy was not a feasible activity, and, if it was,
certainly not one sufficient to the task of 'the philosopher in action'.
These views emphasize the importance of combining a wide range of principles, and of
remembering that principles, however numerous, are only one element in a satisfactory
conduct of practice. There can be no doubt that analysis was involved in Burke's
proceedings: ‘let this position be analysed,’ he instructed the House of Commons
critically in 1794, ‘for analysis is the deadly enemy of all declamation.’ [10] Though Burke
could certainly conduct effective analyses of ideas and words even after more than
twenty years at Westminster, as his Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe(1792) demonstrates,
his accent lay upon the necessity of synthesising ideas, and including non-conceptual
elements in any adequate treatment of politics. There is nothing in a style of doing
philosophy that centres upon analysis that is logically inconsistent with these procedures.
One temper of mind, however, which sometimes accompanies this manner of
philosophising is antipathetic to Burke, and there is much in contemporary opinions
about politics, including those held by some analytical philosophers, that he would have
found dangerously naive. Amongst these a belief in a continuing popular sovereignty (the
modern term of art for this is ‘democracy’)—rather than parliamentary sovereignty is
only the most obvious example. If Burke is unlikely at present to be the darling of some
philosophers and of some pundits; still less will he be of those who suppose that in
discussing a small number of principles they provide a prescriptive and sufficient
guidance for the conduct of policy; and even less of anyone who supposes it logically
adequate to claim that ‘one very simple principle’ is ‘entitled to govern absolutely the
dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control’ or any other
matter(Mill 1859, ‘Introductory’). The complex character of ideas, their connexions with
each other, the need to understand practice in terms of such relations, and to conduct it
with attention to habitual linkages amongst people's ideas and activities, suggest a
different sort of thinking. So it is not surprising that Burke has been quietly ignored by
many recent thinkers, or dismissed from consideration by being labelled as a
‘conservative’—but it is of great interest that he has found many admirers amongst those
who succeed in the conduct of practical politics. Whilst Burke would have been the first
to point out that his specific conclusions belong to a time and a place, his intellectual
style, is one with which any serious thinking about politics, whether reflective or
practical, needs to engage.

11. Conclusion
Burke's thought is philosophical in at least two senses. One is that it is constituted in part
by thinking in terms of philosophical conceptions, especially complex ideas, particularly
those of relation, as well as involving significant positions in philosophical psychology
and the philosophy of language. The other sense is that it develops an account of the
American, British and European past which is philosophical history, as the eighteenth-
century understood the term. These senses, once put together, inform a style of practical
thinking about politics which emphasizes the importance of synthetic as well as analytical
thinking for practice, and suggests that a progressive practice requires not only the yields
of past effort but also the intelligent application of mind to their further development if
progress, rather than regress, is to result. Burke is perhaps the least studied of political
classics, but he is certainly amongst the small number with whom anyone who aspires to
have an adequate political education must engage.

Bibliography
 Primary Literature
Burke's Writings
There is no complete edition of Burke's works: their quantity, the character of some of his
manuscript materials and the manner in which many of his parliamentary speeches are
preserved all make it very likely that this situation will continue. The fullest collection by
far, as well as the best edited, in nine, large substantive volumes, is: Writings and
Speeches of Edmund Burke, P. Langford (general editor), Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1981– (approaching completion). This is cited above asW & S, and individual works are
cited as follows:
[ATX] American Taxation.

[CWA] Conciliation with America.

[RRF] Reflections on the Revolution in France.

[SSC] Second Speech on Conciliation.

[SDR] Speech on Declaratory Resolutions.

[TCD] Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.

[TPL] Tracts relating to Popery Laws.

 [Burke, Edmund, and William Burke], 1757, An Account of the European Settlements,
London (and later editions).
 Somerset, H.V.F, ed., 1957, A Notebook of Edmund Burke, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Burke's Correspondence

 Copeland, T.W., 1958–78, (general ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke,

Cambridge and Chicago, Cambridge University Press and University of Chicago Press,
(ten volumes). Cited as Corr.
 Lock, F.P., 1997, 1999, 2003 ‘Unpublished Burke Letters’, English Historical Review, 112:
119–141; 114: 636–657; 118: 940–982
There is further unprinted correspondence in various repositories. The primary
collections of Burke manuscripts are at Sheffield Archives and Northamptonshire Record
Office, but there is further material by Burke in a wider range of places; the material in
manuscript bearing on him is extremely bulky, diverse and scattered.
 Secondary Literature
There is relatively little recent literature primarily on Burke's philosophical writings,
however ‘philosophical’ is defined, though there is much that makes reference to or use
of them: thus a bibliography of writings about his views on beauty, gender, and political
organization, as well as his literary temper and practical activities would be
disproportionately long. The reader is therefore invited to range freely. The secondary
literature as a whole is listed up to about 1980 in Clara I. Gandy and Peter J. Stanlis,
1983, Edmund Burke: A Bibliography of Secondary Studies to 1982, New York, Garland.
There are annual listings in the Modern Humanities Research Association's volumes.
For matters discussed here, the reader is referred to:

 Burke, Edmund, 1958, Philosophical Enquiry, ed. J.T. Boulton, London, Routledge (later
edition, Oxford, Blackwell, 1987)
 Canavan, F., 1957, ‘Edmund Burke's College Study of Philosophy’, Notes and Queries,
n.s.4: 538–543.
 Sewell Jr, R.B., 1938, ‘Rousseau's Second Discourse in England from 1755 to
1762’, Philological Quarterly, 17: 97–114.
 Wecter, D., 1940, ‘Burke's Theory of Words, Images and Emotions’, Publications of the
Modern Language Association, 55: 167–181.

Other works cited

 Berkeley, G, 1948–57, The Works of George Berkeley, eds. A.A.Luce and T.E.Jessop, 9
volumes, London, Nelson.
 Broad, C.D., 1952, Ethics and the History of Philosophy, London, Routledge.
 Coleridge, S.T., 1983, Biographica Literaria, eds. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate,
Princeton, Princeton University Press.
 Freeman, M., 1992, ‘Edmund Burke’, in Laurence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker,
eds.,Encyclopaedia of Ethics, 2 vols., Garland, New York, vol.i, pp.109–11.
 Gore-Brown, R, 1953, Chancellor Thurlow, London, Routledge.
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 1774, Retaliation: a poem, London, G. Kearsly. [Goldsmith 1774
available online].
 Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1905, Report on the Manuscripts of the Marquess of
Lothian, London, Stationery Office.
 Hull, C.H., and H.W.V. Temperley, eds., 1911–12, ‘Debates on the Declaratory Act and
the Repeal of the Stamp Act’, American Historical Review, 17, pp.563–586.
 Le Clerc, J, 1692, Logica: sive ars ratiocinandi, London, Awnsham & John Churchill.
 Mill, J.S., 1859, On Liberty, London, Longman.
 Robinson, Nicholas K., 1996, Edmund Burke: a life in caricature, New Haven, Yale
University Press.
 Sidgwick, H., 2000, Essays on Ethics and Method, ed. Marcus G. Singer, Clarendon Press,
Oxford.
 Williamson, P., 1999, Stanley Baldwin, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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Copyright © 2010 by
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Edmund Burke
BRITISH PHILOSOPHER AND STATESMAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WRITTEN BY:

Charles William Parkin

 Edmund Burke
BRITISH PHILOSOPHER AND STATESMAN

BORN

January 12, 1729?

Dublin, Ireland

DIED

July 9, 1797

Beaconsfield, England

SIMILAR PEOPLE

 Socrates
 Aristotle
 Plato
 Thomas Hobbes
 Bertrand Russell
 John Stuart Mill
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
 John Locke
 David Hume

Edmund Burke, (born January 12? [January 1, Old Style], 1729, Dublin, Ire.—
died July 9, 1797, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, Eng.) British statesman,
parliamentary orator, and political thinker prominent in public life from 1765 to about
1795 and important in the history of political theory. He championed conservatism in
opposition to Jacobinism inReflections on the Revolution in France (1790).


Edmund Burke.

Stock Montage/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

EARLY LIFE

Burke, the son of a solicitor, entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1744 and moved
to London in 1750 to begin his studies at the Middle Temple. There follows an
obscure period in which Burke lost interest in his legal studies, was estranged from
his father, and spent some time wandering aboutEngland and France. In 1756 he
published anonymously A Vindication of Natural Society…, a satirical imitation of the
style of Viscount Bolingbroke that was aimed at both the destructive criticism of
revealed religion and the contemporary vogue for a “return to Nature.” A contribution
to aesthetic theory, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful, which appeared in 1757, gave him some reputation in
England and was noticed abroad, among others by Denis Diderot, Immanuel Kant,
and G.E. Lessing. In agreement with the publisher Robert Dodsley, Burke
initiated The Annual Register as a yearly survey of world affairs; the first volume
 appeared in 1758 under his (unacknowledged) editorship, and he retained this
connection for about 30 years.

In 1757 Burke married Jane Nugent. From this period also date his numerous
literary and artistic friendships, including those with Dr. Samuel Johnson,Oliver
Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and David Garrick.

POLITICAL LIFE

After an unsuccessful first venture into politics, Burke was appointed secretary in
1765 to the Marquess of Rockingham, leader of one of the Whiggroups, the largely
liberal faction in Parliament, and he entered the House of Commons that year. Burke
remained Rockingham’s secretary until the latter’s death in 1782. Burke worked to
unify the group of Whigs that had formed around Rockingham; this faction was to be
the vehicle of Burke’s parliamentary career.

Burke soon took an active part in the domestic constitutional controversy ofGeorge
III’s reign. The main problem during the 18th century was whether king or Parliament
controlled the executive. The king was seeking to reassert a more active role for the
crown—which had lost some influence in the reigns of the first two Georges—
without infringing on the limitations of the royal prerogative set by the revolution
settlement of 1689. Burke’s chief comment on this issue is his pamphlet “Thoughts
on the Cause of the Present Discontents” (1770). He argued that George’s actions
were against not the letter but the spirit of the constitution. The choice of ministers
purely on personal grounds was favouritism; public approbation by the people
through Parliament should determine their selection. This pamphlet includes Burke’s
famous, and new, justification of party, defined as a body of men united on public
principle, which could act as a constitutional link between king and Parliament,
providing consistency and strength in administration, or principled criticism in
opposition.

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In 1774 Burke was elected a member of Parliament for Bristol, then the second city
of the kingdom and an open constituency requiring a genuine election contest. He
held this seat for six years but failed to retain the confidence of his constituents. For
the rest of his parliamentary career he was member for Malton, a pocket borough of
Lord Rockingham’s. It was at Bristol that Burke made the well-known statement on
the role of the member of Parliament. The elected member should be a
representative, not a mere delegate pledged to obey undeviatingly the wishes of his
constituents. The electors are capable of judging his integrity, and he should attend
to their local interests; but, more importantly, he must address himself to the general
good of the entire nation, acting according to his own judgment and conscience,
unfettered by mandates or prior instructions from those he represents.

T YOUR KNOWLEDGE

t’s In a Name? Philosopher Edition

Burke gave only qualified support to movements for parliamentary reform; though he
accepted the possibility of widening political participation, he rejected any doctrine of
mere rule of numbers. Burke’s main concern, rather, was the curtailment of the
crown’s powers. He made a practical attempt to reduce this influence as one of the
leaders of the movement that pressed for parliamentary control of royal patronage
and expenditure. When the Rockingham Whigs took office in 1782, bills were
passed reducing pensions and emoluments of offices. Burke was specifically
connected with an act regulating the civil list, the amount voted by Parliament for the
personal and household expenses of the sovereign.

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A second great issue that confronted Burke in 1765 was the quarrel with
theAmerican colonies. Britain’s imposition of the Stamp Act there in 1765, along with
other measures, provoked unrest and opposition, which soon swelled into
disobedience, conflict, and secession. British policy was vacillating; determination to
maintain imperial control ended in coercion, repression, and unsuccessful war.
Opposed to the tactics of coercion, the Rockingham group in their short
administration of 1765–66 repealed the Stamp Act but asserted the imperial right to
impose taxation by the Declaratory Act.

Burke’s best-known statements on this issue are two parliamentary speeches, “On
American Taxation” (1774) and “On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the
Colonies” (1775), and “A Letter to…the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of America”
(1777). British policy, he argued, had been both imprudent and inconsistent, but
above all legalistic and intransigent, in the assertion of imperial rights. Authority must
be exercised with respect for the temper of those subject to it, if there was not to be
collision of power and opinion. This truth was being ignored in the imperial quarrel; it
was absurd to treat universal disobedience as criminal: the revolt of a whole people
argued serious misgovernment. Burke made a wide historical survey of the growth
of the colonies and of their present economic problems. In the place of narrow
legalism he called for a more pragmatic policy on Britain’s part that would admit the
claims of circumstance, utility, and moral principle in addition to those of precedent.
Burke suggested that a conciliatory attitude be shown by Britain’s Parliament, along
with a readiness to meet American complaints and to undertake measures that
would restore the colonies’ confidence in imperial authority.

In view of the magnitude of the problem, the adequacy of Burke’s specific remedies
is questionable, but the principles on which he was basing his argument were the
same as those underlying his “Present Discontents”: government should ideally be a
cooperative, mutually restraining relation of rulers and subjects; there must be
attachment to tradition and the ways of the past, wherever possible, but, equally,
recognition of the fact of change and the need to respond to it, reaffirming the values
embodied in tradition under new circumstances.

CONNECT WITH BRITANNICA

Ireland was a special problem in imperial regulation. It was in strict political

dependency on England and internally subject to the ascendancy of an Anglo-Irish
Protestant minority that owned the bulk of the agricultural land. Roman Catholics
were excluded by a penal code from political participation and public office. To these
oppressions were added widespread rural poverty and a backward economic life
aggravated by commercial restrictions resulting from English commercial jealousy.
Burke was always concerned to ease the burdens of his native country. He
consistently advocated relaxation of the economic and penal regulations, and steps
toward legislative independence, at the cost of alienating his Bristol constituents and
of incurring suspicions of Roman Catholicism and charges of partiality.

The remaining imperial issue, to which he devoted many years, and which he
ranked as the most worthy of his labours, was that of India. The commercial
activities of a chartered trading concern, the British East India Company, had
created an extensive empire there. Burke in the 1760s and ’70s opposed
interference by the English government in the company’s affairs as a violation of
chartered rights. However, he learned a great deal about the state of the company’s
government as the most active member of a select committee that was appointed in
1781 to investigate the administration of justice in India but which soon widened its
field to that of a general inquiry. Burke concluded that the corrupt state of Indian
government could be remedied only if the vast patronage it was bound to dispose of
was in the hands neither of a company nor of the crown. He drafted the East India
Billof 1783 (of which the Whig statesman Charles James Fox was the nominal
author), which proposed that India be governed by a board of independent
commissioners in London. After the defeat of the bill, Burke’s indignation came to
centre on Warren Hastings, governor-general of Bengal from 1772 to 1785. It was at
Burke’s instigation that Hastings was impeached in 1787, and he challenged
Hastings’ claim that it was impossible to apply Western standards of authority and
legality to government in the East. He appealed to the concept of the Law of Nature,
the moral principles rooted in the universal order of things, to which all conditions
and races of men were subject.

TRENDING TOPICS

 Umayyad dynasty
 Iroquois Confederacy
 Black Panther Party
 Code of Justinian
 Millennium Dome
 Hillary Clinton
 American civil rights movement
 Intolerable Acts
 Matthias Jacob Schleiden
 Massachusetts Bay Colony

The impeachment, which is now generally regarded as an injustice to Hastings (who

was ultimately acquitted), is the most conspicuous illustration of the failings to which
Burke was liable throughout his public life, including his brief periods in office as
paymaster general of the forces in 1782 and 1783. His political positions were
sometimes marred by gross distortions and errors of judgment. His Indian speeches
fell at times into violent emotion and abuse, lacking restraint and proportion, and his
parliamentary activities were at times irresponsible or factious.

The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 was initially greeted in England with
much enthusiasm. Burke, after a brief suspension of judgment, was both hostile to it
and alarmed by this favourable English reaction. He was provoked into writing
his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) by a sermon of the Protestant
dissenter Richard Price welcoming the Revolution. Burke’s deeply felt antagonism to
the new movement propelled him to the plane of general political thought; it
provoked a host of English replies, of which the best known is Thomas Paine’s The
Rights of Man (1791–92).

In the first instance Burke discussed the actual course of the Revolution, examining
the personalities, motives, and policies of its leaders. More profoundly, he attempted
to analyze the fundamental ideas animating the movement and, fastening on the
Revolutionary concepts of “the rights of man” and popular sovereignty, emphasized
the dangers of democracy in the abstract and the mere rule of numbers when
unrestrained and unguided by the responsible leadership of a hereditary aristocracy.
Further, he challenged the whole rationalist and idealist temper of the movement. It
was not merely that the old social order was being pulled down. He argued, further,
that the moral fervour of the Revolution, and its vast speculative schemes of political
reconstruction, were causing a devaluation of tradition and inherited values and a
thoughtless destruction of the painfully acquired material and spiritual resources of
society. Against all this, he appealed to the example and the virtues of the English
constitution: its concern for continuity and unorganized growth; its respect for
traditional wisdom and usage rather than speculative innovation, for prescriptive,
rather than abstract, rights; its acceptance of a hierarchy of rank and property; its
religious consecration of secular authority and recognition of the radical imperfection
of all human contrivances.

As an analysis and prediction of the course of the Revolution, Burke’s French

writings, though frequently intemperate and uncontrolled, were in some ways
strikingly acute; but his lack of sympathy with its positive ideals concealed from him
its more fruitful and permanent potentialities. It is for the criticism and affirmation of
fundamental political attitudes that theReflections and An Appeal from the New to
the Old Whigs (1791) retain their freshness, relevance, and force.

Burke opposed the French Revolution to the end of his life, demanding war against
the new state and gaining a European reputation and influence. But his hostility to
the Revolution went beyond that of most of his party and in particular was
challenged by Fox. Burke’s long friendship with Fox came to a dramatic end in a
parliamentary debate (May 1791). Ultimately the majority of the party passed with
Burke into support of William Pitt’s government. In 1794, at the conclusion of
Hastings’ impeachment, Burke retired from Parliament. His last years were clouded
by the death of his only son, on whom his political ambitions had come to centre. He
continued to write, defending himself from his critics, deploring the condition of
Ireland, and opposing any recognition of the French government (notably in “Three
Letters Addressed to a Member of the Present Parliament on the Proposals for
Peace, with the Regicide Directory of France” [1796–97]).

BURKE’S THOUGHT AND INFLUENCE

Burke’s writings on France, though the most profound of his works, cannot be read
as a complete statement of his views on politics. Burke, in fact, never gave a
systematic exposition of his fundamental beliefs but appealed to them always in
relation to specific issues. But it is possible to regard his writings as an integrated
whole in terms of the constant principles underlying his practical positions.

These principles are, in essence, an exploration of the concept of “nature,” or

“natural law.” Burke conceives the emotional and spiritual life of man as a harmony
within the larger order of the universe. Natural impulse, that is, contains within itself
self-restraint and self-criticism; the moral and spiritual life is continuous with it,
generated from it and essentially sympathetic to it. It follows that society and state
make possible the full realization of human potentiality, embody a common good,
and represent a tacit or explicit agreement on norms and ends. The political
community acts ideally as a unity.

This interpretation of nature and the natural order implies deep respect for the
historical process and the usages and social achievements built up over time.
Therefore, social change is not merely possible but also inevitable and desirable.
But the scope and the role of thought operating as a reforming instrument on society
as a whole is limited. It should act under the promptings of specific tensions or
specific possibilities, in close union with the detailed process of change, rather than
in large speculative schemes involving extensive interference with the stable,
habitual life of society. Also, it ought not to place excessive emphasis on some ends
at the expense of others; in particular, it should not give rein to a moral idealism (as
in the French Revolution) that sets itself in radical opposition to the existing order.
Such attempts cut across the natural processes of social development, initiating
uncontrollable forces or provoking a dialectical reaction of excluded factors. Burke’s
hope, in effect, is not a realization of particular ends, such as the “liberty” and
“equality” of the French Revolution, but an intensification and reconciliation of the
multifarious elements of the good life that community exists to forward.

In his own day, Burke’s writings on France were an important inspiration to German
and French counterrevolutionary thought. His influence in England has been more
diffuse, more balanced, and more durable. He stands as the original exponent of
long-lived constitutional conventions, the idea of party, and the role of the member of
Parliament as free representative, not delegate. More generally, his remains the
most persuasive statement of certain inarticulate political and social principles long
and widely held in England: the validity of status and hierarchy and the limited role of
politics in the life of society.

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ADDITIONAL MEDIA
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ALL
MEDIA
MORE ABOUT Edmund Burke
34 REFERENCES FOUND IN BRITANNICA ARTICLES
 Assorted Reference

 influence on Gentz (in Friedrich Gentz: Early life and career.)

association with

 Barry (in James Barry)

 Beaconsfield (in Beaconsfield (England, United Kingdom))
 Crabbe (in George Crabbe)
 Woffington (in Peg Woffington)
conflict with

 Hastings (in Warren Hastings: Retirement and impeachment)

 Paine (in Thomas Paine: In Europe: Rights of Man)
 Pitt the Elder (in William Pitt, the Elder: Last years)
 Priestley (in Joseph Priestley: Turmoil and exile)
 Sheridan (in Richard Brinsley Sheridan: Political career)
VIEW MORE

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
QUOTES
Compromise

“ All government—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent

act—is founded on compromise and barter. ”

Edmund Burke, speech (1775)

Custom and Tradition

“ Custom reconciles us to everything. ”

Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful

Danger

“ Dangers by being despised grow great. ”

Edmund Burke, speech (1792)
Disaster

“ Public calamity is a mighty leveller. ”

Edmund Burke, speech (1775)

Evil

“ The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ”
Edmund Burke, attributed

[This has not been found in Burke’s writings.]

Example

“ Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. ”

Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace

Fear

“ Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.”

Edmund Burke, speech (1792)

Government

“ Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right

that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. ”

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

The Mind

“ The march of the human mind is slow. ”

Edmund Burke, speech (1775)

Order and Efficiency

“ Good order is the foundation of all good things. ”

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

Plans

“ You can never plan the future by the past. ”

Edmund Burke, letter (1791)

[Compare Patrick Henry’s comment, under Experience.]

Power

“ The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. ”

Edmund Burke, speech (1771)

Shame

“ Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart. ”
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
Success and Failure

“ All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. ”
Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace

Taxes

“ To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. ”
Edmund Burke, speech (1774)

Tolerance

“ ”
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

Edmund Burke, speech (1773)

Unity

“ When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied

sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. ”

Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Violence and Force

“ The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the

”
necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
 Edmund Burke, speech (1775)

ADDITIONAL READING
Biographies include Stanley Ayling, Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions (1988); and Alice P.
Miller, Edmund Burke and His World (1979). Discussions of Burke’s thought in relation to the political
issues of his career include John Morley, Edmund Burke: A Historical Study (1867, reprinted 1979); Carl
B. Cone, Burke and the Nature of Politics, 2 vol. (1957–64); Gerald W. Chapman, Edmund Burke: The
Practical Imagination (1967); F.P. Lock, Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1985); and C.B.
Macpherson, Burke (1980). Attempts to restate Burke’s ideas as a systematic political philosophy include
Charles W. Parkin, The Moral Basis of Burke’s Political Thought (1956, reprinted 1968); Peter J.
Stanlis, Edmund Burke and the Natural Law (1958), and Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and
Revolution (1991); Francis Canavan, The Political Reason of Edmund Burke (1960), and Edmund Burke:
Prescription and Providence (1987); and Michael Freeman, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political
Radicalism (1980). George Fasel, Edmund Burke (1983), studies his political activism. Christopher
Reid, Edmund Burke and the Practice of Political Writing (1985), analyzes Burkean rhetoric and literary
form.
EXTERNAL LINKS
 Age of the Sage - Transmitting the Wisdoms of the Ages - Biography of Edmund Burke
 British Broadcasting Corporation - Biography of Edmund Burke
 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Biography of Edmund Burke
 The Famous People - Biography of Edmund Burke
 The History of Parliament - Biography of Edmund Burke
 The University of Adelaide - Biography of Edmund Burke
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edmund-Burke-British-philosopher-and-statesman