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Edmund Burke

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                      Western Philosophy
   18th-century philosophy
   Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke
         Name:       Edmund Burke
        Birth:       1729 January 12 (Dublin, Ireland)
        Death:       1797 July 9 ( Beaconsfield, England)
   School/tradition: Classical liberalism, conservatism
    Main interests:  Social and political philosophy
      Influenced:    Lord Acton, Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper

   Edmund Burke ( January 12, 1729 – July 9, 1797) was an Anglo-Irish
   statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher, who
   served for many years in the British House of Commons as a member of
   the Whig party. He is chiefly remembered for his support of the
   American colonies in the struggle against King George III that led to
   the American Revolution and for his strong opposition to the French
   Revolution. The latter made Burke one of the leading figures within the
   conservative faction of the Whig party (which he dubbed the "Old
   Whigs"), in opposition to the pro-revolutionary "New Whigs," led by
   Charles James Fox. Burke also published philosophical work on
   aesthetics and founded the Annual Register, a political review. He is
   often regarded as the father of Anglo-American conservatism.

Life

   Burke, who was of Munster Roman Catholic stock, was born in Dublin to a
   solicitor father who conformed to the Church of Ireland. His mother,
   whose maiden name was Nagle, belonged to the Roman Catholic Church.
   Burke was raised in his father's faith and would remain throughout his
   life a practicing Anglican, but 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 (see Penal Laws in Ireland).

   He received his early education at a Quaker school in Ballitore and in
   1744 he proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin. In 1747, he set up a
   Debating Club, known as Edmund Burke's Club, which in 1770 merged with
   the Historical Club to form the College Historical Society. The minutes
   of the meetings of Burke's club remain in the collection of the
   Historical Society. He graduated in 1748. Burke's father wished him to
   study for the law, and with this object he went to London in 1750 and
   entered the Middle Temple, but soon thereafter he gave up his legal
   studies in order to travel in Continental Europe.

   Burke's first published work, A Vindication of Natural Society: A View
   of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind, appeared in 1756 and was
   fraudulently attributed to Lord Bolingbroke. It was originally taken as
   a serious treatise on anarchism. Years later, with a government
   appointment at stake, Burke claimed that it had been intended as a
   satire. Many modern scholars consider it to be satire, but others take
   Vindication as a serious defence of anarchism (an interpretation
   notably espoused by Murray Rothbard.) Whether satire or not, it was the
   first anarchist essay, and taken seriously by later anarchists such as
   William Godwin. 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. The following year,
   with Robert Dodsley, he created the influential Annual Register, a
   publication in which various authors evaluated the international
   political events of the previous year. In London, Burke became closely
   connected with many of the leading intellectuals and artists, including
   Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds.

   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 maintained for three years. In
   1765 Burke became private secretary to liberal Whig statesman Charles
   Watson-Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham, at the time Prime
   Minister of the United Kingdom, who remained Burke's close friend and
   associate until his premature death in 1782.

Political career

   Statue of Edmund Burke in Bristol. The inscription reads: Burke
   1774-1780. "I wish to be a member of parliament to have my share of
   doing good and resisting evil". Speech at Bristol 1780.
   Enlarge
   Statue of Edmund Burke in Bristol. The inscription reads: Burke
   1774-1780. "I wish to be a member of parliament to have my share of
   doing good and resisting evil". Speech at Bristol 1780.

   In 1765 Burke entered the British Parliament as a member of the House
   of Commons for Wendover, a pocket borough in the control of Lord
   Verney, later 2nd Earl Verney, a close political ally of Rockingham.
   Burke took a leading role in the debate over 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 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 1770. Burke expressed his support for the
   grievances of the American colonies under the government of King George
   III and his appointed representatives. He also campaigned against the
   persecution of Catholics in Ireland and denounced the abuses and
   corruption of the East India Company.

   In 1769 Burke published, in reply to George Grenville, his pamphlet on
   The Present State of the Nation. In the same year he purchased the
   small estate of Gregories near Beaconsfield. The 600-acre estate was
   purchased with mostly borrowed money, and though it contained an art
   collection that included works by Titian, Gregories nevertheless would
   prove to be a heavy financial burden on the MP in the following
   decades. His speeches and writings had now made him famous, and among
   other effects had brought about the suggestion that he was the author
   of the Letters of Junius. In 1774 he was elected member for Bristol, at
   the time "England's second city" and a large constituency with a
   genuine electoral contest. His address to the electors of Bristol was
   noted for its defence of the principles of representative democracy
   against the notion that elected officials should act narrowly as
   advocates for the interests of their constituents. Burke's arguments in
   this matter helped to formulate the delegate and trustee models of
   political representation. His support for free trade with Ireland and
   his advocacy of Catholic emancipation were unpopular with his
   constituents and caused him to lose his seat in 1780. For the remainder
   of his parliamentary career, Burke sat for Malton, another pocket
   borough controlled by Rockingham.

   Under the Tory administration of Lord North ( 1770- 1782) the American
   war went on from bad to worse, and it was in part owing to the splendid
   oratorical efforts of Burke that it was at last brought to an end. To
   this period belong two of his most famous performances, his speech on
   Conciliation with America ( 1775), and his Letter to the Sheriffs of
   Bristol ( 1777). The fall of North led to Rockingham being recalled to
   power. Burke became Paymaster of the Forces and Privy Councillor, but
   Rockingham's unexpected death in July of 1782 put an end to his
   administration after only a few months.

   Burke then supported fellow Whig Charles James Fox in his coalition
   with Lord North, a decision that many came to regard later as his
   greatest political error. Under that short-lived coalition he continued
   to hold the office of Paymaster and he distinguished himself in
   connection with Fox's India Bill. The coalition fell in 1783, and was
   succeeded by the long Tory administration of William Pitt the Younger,
   which lasted until 1801. Burke was accordingly in opposition for the
   remainder of his political life. In 1785 he made his great speech on
   The Nabob of Arcot's Debts, and in the next year ( 1786) he moved for
   papers in regard to the Indian government of Warren Hastings, the
   consequence of which was the impeachment trial of that politician. The
   trial, of which Burke was the leading promoter, lasted from 1787 until
   Hastings's eventual acquittal in 1794.

Response to the French Revolution

   Given his record as a strong supporter of American independence and as
   a campaigner against royal prerogative, many were surprised when Burke
   published his Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790. With it,
   Burke became one of the earliest and fiercest British critics of the
   French Revolution, which he saw not as movement towards a
   representative, constitutional democracy but rather as a violent
   rebellion against tradition and proper authority and as an experiment
   disconnected from the complex realities of human society, which would
   end in disaster. Former admirers of Burke, such as Thomas Jefferson and
   fellow Whig politician Charles James Fox, proceeded to denounce Burke
   as a reactionary and an enemy of democracy. Thomas Paine penned The
   Rights of Man in 1791 as a response to Burke. However, other
   pro-democratic politicians, such as the American John Adams, agreed
   with Burke's assessment of the French situation. Many of Burke's dire
   predictions for the outcome of the French Revolution were later borne
   out by the execution of King Louis XVI, the subsequent Reign of Terror,
   and the eventual rise of Napoleon's autocratic regime.

   These events, and the disagreements which arose regarding them within
   the Whig party, led to its breakup and to the rupture of Burke's
   friendship with Fox. In 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. Eventually most of the Whigs sided with
   Burke and voted their support for the conservative government of Prime
   Minister William Pitt the Younger, which declared war on the
   revolutionary government of France in 1793.

   In 1794 a terrible blow fell upon Burke in the loss of his son Richard,
   to whom he was tenderly attached, and in whom he saw signs of promise,
   which were not patent to others, and which in fact appear to have been
   non-existent. In the same year the Hastings trial came to an end. Burke
   felt that his work was done and indeed that he was worn out; and he
   took leave of Parliament. The King, whose favour he had gained by his
   attitude on the French Revolution, wished to make him Lord
   Beaconsfield, but the death of his son had deprived such an honour of
   all its attractions, and the only reward he would accept was a pension
   of £2,500. Even this modest reward was attacked by the Duke of Bedford
   and the Earl of Lauderdale, to whom Burke made a crushing reply in the
   Letter to a Noble Lord ( 1796). His last publications were the Letters
   on a Regicide Peace ( 1796), called forth by negotiations for peace
   with France.

   Burke died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire in 1797.

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   Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France was extremely
   controversial at the time of its publication. Its intemperate language
   and factual inaccuracies even convinced many readers that Burke had
   lost his judgment. But as the subsequent violence and chaos in France
   vindicated much of Burke's assessment, it grew to become his best-known
   and most influential work. In the English-speaking world, Burke is
   often regarded as one of the fathers of modern conservatism, and his
   thinking has exerted considerable influence over the political
   philosophy of such classical liberals as Friedrich Hayek and Karl
   Popper. Burke's 'liberal' conservatism, which opposes the
   implementation of grand theoretical plans of radical political change
   but recognizes the necessity of gradual reform, must not be confused
   with the autocratic conservatism of such anti-revolutionary Continental
   figures as Joseph de Maistre.

   Adam Smith remarked that "Burke is the only man I ever knew who thinks
   on economic subjects exactly as I do without any previous communication
   having passed between us". The Liberal historian Lord Acton considered
   Burke as one of the three greatest liberals, along with William Ewart
   Gladstone and Thomas Babington Macaulay.

   Two contrasting assessments of Burke were offered long after his death
   by Karl Marx and Winston Churchill. According to the former's Das
   Kapital:

     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.

   According to Winston Churchill's "Consistency in Politics":

     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.

   Though still controversial, Burke is today widely regarded as one of
   the major political thinkers of the English-speaking world. His
   writings, like his speeches, are characterised by the welding together
   of knowledge, thought, and feeling. Unlike most orators, he is more
   successful as a writer than he was as a speaker. He often rose too far
   above the heads of his audience, which the continued splendour of his
   declamation, his prolixity, and his excessive vehemence, often passing
   into fury, at length wearied, and even disgusted. Burke was known as
   the 'Dinner Bell' to his contemporaries because MPs would leave the
   chamber to look for dinner when he rose to speak . But in his writings
   are found some of the grandest examples of a fervid and richly
   elaborated eloquence. Though he was never admitted to the Cabinet, he
   guided and influenced largely the policy of his party. His efforts in
   the direction of economy and order in administration at home, and on
   behalf of a more just government in America, India, and Ireland, as
   well as his contributions to political philosophy, constitute his most
   significant legacy.

   Burke is the namesake of a variety of prominent associations and
   societies, including The Antient and Honourable Edmund Burke Society at
   the University of Chicago.

Speeches

   Burke made several famous speeches while serving in the British House
   of Commons.
     * On American Taxation ( 1774): "Whether you were right or wrong in
       establishing the Colonies on the principles of commercial monopoly,
       rather than on that of revenue, is at this day a problem of mere
       speculation. You cannot have both by the same authority. To join
       together the restraints of an universal internal and external
       monopoly, with an universal internal and external taxation, is an
       unnatural union; perfect uncompensated slavery."

     * On Conciliation with America ( 1775) : "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 fomented, from principle, in all
       parts of the Empire, not peace to depend on the juridical
       determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the
       shadowy boundaries of a complex government. 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…"

   Also famous is his speech to the Electors of Bristol during the 1774
   election, on the duties of a Member of Parliament.
     * Speech to the Electors of Bristol ( 1774) : "...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
       unbiassed 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.."

Writings

     * A Vindication of Natural Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils
       Arising to Mankind 1756 (Liberty Fund, 1982) ISBN 0-86597-009-2.
       This article, outlining radical political theory, was first
       published anonymously and, when Burke was revealed as its author,
       he explained that it was a satire. The consensus of historians is
       that this is correct. An alternate theory, proposed by Murray
       Rothbard, argues that Burke wrote the Vindication in earnest but
       later wished to disavow it for political reasons.
     * A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime
       and Beautiful 1757, begun when he was 19 and published when he was
       27. (Oxford University Press, 1998) ISBN 0-19-283580-7
     * Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Oxford University
       Press, 1999) ISBN 0-19-283978-0 Burke's criticisms of the French
       Revolution and its connection to Rousseau's philosophy, made before
       the revolution was radicalized, predicted that it would fall into
       terror, tyranny, and misrule. Burke, a supporter of the American
       Revolution, wrote the Reflections in response to a young
       correspondent who mistakenly assumed that he would support the
       French Revolution as well.

Trivia

     * Having lost his only heir, in 1794 Burke refused King George III's
       offer to raise him to the peerage as Lord Beaconsfield. That title
       would later be chosen by Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative
       politician and Prime Minister, when he was awarded a peerage.

     * Reflections on the Revolution in France was addressed to an
       anonymous French nobleman whose identity has been the subject of
       many rumours. Thomas Copeland, editor of Burke's Correspondence,
       put forth a compelling argument that the recipient was in fact
       Victor Marie du Pont. Victor's brother was Eleuthère Irénée du
       Pont, founder of the E.I. duPont de Nemours Company.

Summary

   [USEMAP:24813.png]
   Preceded by:
   Richard Rigby Paymaster of the Forces
                 1782                          Succeeded by:
                                         Isaac Barré
   Preceded by:
   Isaac Barré   Paymaster of the Forces
                 1783–1784                    Succeeded by:
                                         William Wyndham Grenville
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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