Burke, Edmund

The statesman and writer Edmund Burke (1729–1797) was born in Dublin on 12 January 1729 and died at Beaconsfield in England on 9 July 1797. In his writings and career Burke sought to understand and exemplify the virtues of the emerging British empire. He sought to explain how the distinctive virtues of English constitutional and social traditions were capacious enough to absorb new populations, such as that of Ireland, and to expand to new territories, especially North America. While never a systematic philosopher, he laid the basis for a distinctive brand of conservative liberalism that exists to this day.

Burke's father, Richard, was a Protestant attorney at the Court of Exchequer, while his mother, Mary Nagle, was a Catholic with connections in Munster. Burke's vision of an inclusive model of empire was therefore generated from his family background. His early education was in the Quaker school at Ballitore in Kildare, and he attended Trinity College from 1743 to 1748 (B.A. 1748). There he was a founding member of the Historical Society. He left Ireland in 1750 but maintained Irish interests particularly as private secretary to Charles Watson-Wentworth, second marquis of Rockingham, leader of the parliamentary Whigs. Burke argued for Catholic Emancipation and was paymaster of the forces in the Rockingham administration that repealed Poynings' Law and granted legislative independence to Ireland in 1782. Burke spoke on Irish affairs as a British MP for Wendover from 1766 to 1794. He was a correspondent of the Catholic Committee, and his son was its agent in London until 1790. His Irish interests often hindered his English career, notably by costing him his Bristol seat.

Catholic Emancipation of Ireland was only one of his five great causes, which also included parliamentary reform, conciliation with America, reform of the Indian administration, and opposition to the French Revolution. None of these was achieved in his lifetime. His writings, notably A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777), and Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) were of more long-term importance than his political career.

SEE ALSO Eighteenth-Century Politics: 1714 to 1778—Interest Politics; Eighteenth-Century Politics: 1778 to 1795—Parliamentary and Popular Politics; Eighteenth-Century Politics: 1795 to 1800—Repression, Rebellion, and Union

Bibliography

Langford, Paul, et al., eds. Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke. 7 vols. 1981–.

O'Brien, Conor Cruise. The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke. 1992.

James Livesey