Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician, born in Dublin on 12 January 1729 and active in the public life of Great Britain through much of the 18th century. He served in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a Whig member of Parliament from 1766 to 1794, and in 1774 he was elected MP for Bristol. In later political memory he became widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism, and one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of his age.

Burke’s reputation rests on both his public career and his writing. His early satirical work, A Vindication of Natural Society, appeared in 1756 and expressed his belief in the social value of manners, virtue, and religious institutions. He criticized British policy toward the American colonies, including taxation, and supported the right of the colonists to resist metropolitan authority, while opposing the attempt to achieve independence. He is also remembered for long support of Catholic emancipation, for his opposition to the French Revolution, and for leading the attempt to impeach Warren Hastings of the East India Company.

His most famous response to the age of revolution was Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790. In it, Burke argued that the revolution was destroying good society and the traditional institutions of state and society, and he condemned the persecution of the Catholic Church that followed. The book made him a leading voice among the conservative faction of the Whig Party, which he called the Old Whigs, in contrast to the pro-French Revolution New Whigs associated with Charles James Fox.

The habits behind Burke’s thought were formed early. His mother, Mary Nagle, came from a Roman Catholic family in County Cork, while his father, Richard Burke, was a successful solicitor and a member of the Church of Ireland. Burke remained a practising Anglican throughout his life. He was educated at a Quaker school in Ballitore, County Kildare, and later studied at Trinity College Dublin, where he started a debating society in 1747. After graduating in 1748, he went to London in 1750 to read law at the Middle Temple, but soon gave up legal study, travelled in Continental Europe, and made his living through writing.

Burke moved among some of the leading public intellectuals of his time, including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds. In debate, he often argued against unrestricted ruling power and for political parties able to maintain a principled opposition, so that abuse of power could be checked. That concern helps explain why his writing continued to speak to both conservatives and liberals in the 19th century, and why in the 20th century he was widely regarded in the United States and the United Kingdom as a philosophical founder of conservatism.

His words still carry force because they join moral caution with political experience. Burke wrote about wealth, power, religion, institutions, and public duty as matters that shape ordinary life as well as governments. His line, “If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are indeed poor,” fits the larger pattern of his mind: freedom, for Burke, required discipline, restraint, and a clear sense of what should govern what.