Edmund Burke

Who was Edmund Burke?

Burke came from Dublin, where he was born in 1730. He was schooled by Quakers, studied at Trinity College and then read law at the Middle Temple. A book on the sublime and the beautiful in 1757 launched his career as a writer. He went to Parliament in 1765 after becoming secretary to Lord Rockingham, and sat for nearly three decades on the Whig benches. He was a minister only briefly, in 1782 and 1783. In 1790 his book on events in France cost him the friendship of several Whigs. He wrote about France and Ireland until his death in 1797.

Political views

• Urged Parliament in 1775 to reach terms with the American colonies and not to crush them.Source: gutenberg.org
• Reminded his Bristol electors in 1774 that an MP owes them his honest judgment, which is more than doing what they say.Source: gutenberg.org
• Wrote against the French Revolution in 1790, preferring inherited institutions and slow reform to neat theories.Source: gutenberg.org
• Held that a state without ways to change cannot keep itself going.Source: gutenberg.org
• In a 1795 text, said the state should leave grain prices alone and respect the rules of commerce.Source: gutenberg.org
• Led Parliament's case against Warren Hastings over how Britain governed India.Source: gutenberg.org

Legacy

Burke is often named as the founder of modern conservatism. People admire his defence of tradition, caution and gradual reform. Many liberals also value him for backing American colonists, Irish Catholics and the subjects of the East India Company. Early critics such as Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft said he stood up for privilege and inequality. Later writers have doubted that his ideas add up to one consistent system. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, no party or ideology can fully claim him as its own.

In their own words