Edmund Burke

"Burkean" redirects here. For usage in literary theory, see Kenneth Burke.

For other people named Edmund Burke, see Edmund Burke (disambiguation).

Edmund Burke
Painting of Edmund Burke MP c. 1767, studio of Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)
Born	12 January 1729 Dublin, Kingdom of Ireland
Died	9 July 1797(1797-07-09) (aged 68) Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, Kingdom of 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 Plato Aristotle Socrates David Hume Adam Smith Cicero John Locke Saint Augustine Saint Thomas Aquinas Saint Thomas More Richard Hooker Edward Coke Thomas Hobbes Rene Descartes Montesquieu Joshua Reynolds William Blackstone Niccolo Machiavelli Dante Alighieri Samuel Johnson
Influenced Robert Peel John Stuart Mill Immanuel Kant J.R.R. Tolkien William Godwin Lord Acton G.K. Chesterton William Ewart Gladstone Lord Salisbury Russell Kirk Karl Popper C.S. Lewis John Henry Newman John Maynard Keynes Friedrich Hayek Roger Scruton Alexis de Tocqueville George Orwell William Wordsworth Joseph de Maistre Hannah Arendt Winston Churchill Ray Bradbury Ronald Reagan William F. Buckley Matthew Arnold Margaret Thatcher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Thomas Sowell Peter Hitchens Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald Aldous Huxley Søren Kierkegaard William Butler Yeats

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(1797-07-09) (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 the House 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 opposition to 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]

Early life

Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland. His mother Mary née Nagle (c. 1702 – 1770) was a Roman Catholic who hailed from a déclassé County 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 following Henry 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 Jesuit College 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]

After being elected to the House of Commons, Burke was required to take the oath of allegiance and abjuration, the oath of supremacy, and declare against transubstantiation: no Catholic 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 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 a Quaker 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

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 a reductio 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 and Bishop 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 at Bath. 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 a Freemason.^[31]^[32]

Member of Parliament

'A literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds's'.^[1] Use a cursor to see who is who.

^ 'A literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, D. George Thompson, published by Owen Bailey, after James William Edmund Doyle, published 1 October 1851

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.^[33]

The first great subject Burke addressed was the controversy with the American colonies, which soon developed into war and ultimate separation; 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".^[34]

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'.^[35] Although Johnson admired Burke's brilliance, he found him a dishonest politician.^[36]^[37]

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.^[38] 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".^[39] 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".^[40]

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.^[41] Burke also was prominent in securing the right to publish debates held in Parliament.^[42]

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."^[43] 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.^[44]

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.^[45]

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".^[46]

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".^[47]

Burke also supported the attempts of Sir George Savile to repeal some of the penal laws against Catholics.^[48] 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

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.^[49]

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.^[50]

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.^[51]

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".^[52] 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.^[52] 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...."^[52] 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".^[52]

Burke proposed six resolutions to settle the American conflict peacefully:

Allow the American colonists to elect their own representatives, thus settling the dispute about taxation without representation;
Acknowledge this wrongdoing and apologise for grievances caused;
Procure an efficient manner of choosing and sending these delegates;
Set up a General Assembly in America itself, with powers to regulate taxes;
Stop gathering taxes by imposition (or law), and start gathering them only when they are needed; and
Grant needed aid to the colonies.^[52]

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,^[53] 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".^[54] 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!^[54]

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".^[55]

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".^[56]

During the Gordon Riots in 1780, Burke became a target of hostility and his home was placed under armed guard by the military.^[57]

Paymaster of the Forces

In Cincinnatus in Retirement (1782), James Gillray caricatured 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 Forces and 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.^[58]

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.^[59] 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.^[60]

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

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.^[61]

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."^[62]

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.^[63]

India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings

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.^[64] 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".^[65] 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.'"^[66]

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.^[67]

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.^[68]

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",^[69] 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.^[70] 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'.^[71] The House of Commons eventually impeached Hastings, but subsequently, the House of Lords acquitted him of all charges.

French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789

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".^[72] 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".^[73] 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".^[74] 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.^[75]

In January 1790, Burke read Dr. Richard Price's sermon of 4 November 1789 entitled, A Discourse on the Love of our Country, to the Revolution Society.^[76] 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".^[77] 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".^[78] 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.^[79] 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.^[80]^[81] 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.^[82]

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.^[83] In the Reflections, Burke argued against Price's interpretation of the Glorious Revolution and instead, gave a classic Whig defence of it.^[84] 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.^[85]

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".^[86] 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".^[87] 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".^[88]

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.^[89] 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".^[90] Edward Gibbon, however, reacted differently: "I adore his chivalry".^[91] 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.^[92] 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.^[93]

Louis XVI translated the Reflections "from end to end" into French.^[94] 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".^[95] 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.^[96] 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".^[97] 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.^[98]

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.^[99]

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".^[100] 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".^[101]

Charles James Fox

In November 1790, François-Louis-Thibault de Menonville, a member of the National Assembly of France, wrote to Burke, praising Reflections and requesting more "very refreshing mental food" that he could publish.^[102] 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".^[103]

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".^[104] 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".^[105] Burke asserted that those ideas were the antithesis of both the British and the American constitutions.^[106] 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.^[107] 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".^[105]

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".^[108] 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".^[108] 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.^[109]

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".^[110] 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).^[111] 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".^[111] 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.^[111]

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.^[112] 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.^[113]

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".^[114] 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".^[114] 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".^[114] 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".^[109] 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.^[115]

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.^[116]

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.^[117]

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".^[118] 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.].^[118]

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.^[119] 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".^[119] 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".^[120] 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".^[121]

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 son Richard. 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 the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to whom Burke replied in his Letter to a Noble Lord (1796):^[122] "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".^[123] 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".^[124] 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.^[125]

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 as appeasement, injurious to national dignity and honour.^[126] 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".^[127]

This is held to be the first explanation of the modern concept of totalitarian state.^[128] 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.^[129] 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

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.^[130] In it, Burke expounded "some of the doctrines of political economists bearing upon agriculture as a trade".^[131] 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.^[132]

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".^[133]

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".^[134] 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".^[135]

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.^[136]

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

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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.^[137]^[138]^[139] 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.^[140]

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."^[141]

Burke's support for Irish Catholics and Indians often led him to be criticised by Tories.^[142] 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.^[143]

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.^[144] 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.^[145] 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".^[146] 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".^[147] 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.^[147] 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.^[148] 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 a seer".^[149] 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".^[150] George Canning believed that Burke's Reflections "has been justified by the course of subsequent events; and almost every prophecy has been strictly fulfilled".^[150] In 1823 Canning wrote that he took Burke's "last works and words [as] the manual of my politics".^[151] The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli "was deeply penetrated with the spirit and sentiment of Burke's later writings".^[152]

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".^[153] The Radical MP and anti-Corn Law activist Richard Cobden often praised Burke's Thoughts and Details on Scarcity.^[154] The Liberal historian Lord Acton considered Burke one of the three greatest Liberals, along with William Gladstone and Thomas Babington Macaulay.^[155] Lord Macaulay recorded in his diary: "I have now finished reading again most of Burke's works. Admirable! The greatest man since Milton".^[156] The Gladstonian Liberal MP John Morley published two books on Burke (including a biography) and was influenced by Burke, including his views on prejudice.^[157] 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".^[158] 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",^[159] 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".^[160] 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".^[161]

A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Burke at 37 Gerrard Street now in London's Chinatown.^[162]

Religious thought of Edmund Burke

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.^[163] He sharply criticised deism and atheism, and emphasised Christianity as a vehicle of social progress.^[164] Born in Ireland to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, Burke vigorously defended the Anglican Church, but also demonstrated sensitivity to Catholic concerns.^[165] 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.^[165]

False quotations

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.^[166]^[167] 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.^[168]^[169]

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.^[170]

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.^[171]

Timeline

Bibliography

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)

Notes

↑ 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).
↑ 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.
↑ 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.
↑ 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.
↑ Dennis O'Keeffe; John Meadowcroft (2009). Edmund Burke. Continuum. p. 93.
↑ Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction. Third Edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 74.
↑ F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke. Volume II: 1784–1797 (Clarendon Press, 2006), p. 585.
↑ 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.
↑ James Prior, Life of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Fifth Edition (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), p. 1.
↑ O'Brien, Connor Cruise (1993). The Great Melody. p. 10.
↑ "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.
↑ Clark, p. 26.
↑ Clark, p. 25.
↑ "DistanceFrom.com Dublin, Ireland to Ballitore, Co. Kildare, Ireland". DistanceFrom.com. softusvista. 2014. Retrieved 18 December 2014.
↑ "CATHOLICS AND TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. (Hansard, 8 May 1834)". hansard.millbanksystems.com. Retrieved 23 January 2014.
1 2 Prior, p. 45.
↑ Jim McCue, Edmund Burke and Our Present Discontents (The Claridge Press, 1997), p. 14.
↑ McCue, p. 145.
1 2 Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 85.
↑ Rothbard, Murray. "Edmund Burke, Anarchist". Retrieved 14 October 2007.
↑ 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. "
↑ Prior, p. 47.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 143.
↑ G. M. Young, 'Burke', Proceedings of the British Academy, XXIX (London, 1943), p. 6.
↑ Herbert Butterfield, Man on His Past (Cambridge, 1955), p. 69.
↑ Prior, pp. 52–3.
↑ 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.
1 2 Copeland, p. 446.
↑ www.ucl.ac.uk
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Nagle, Sir Edmund, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, J. K. Laughton, (subscription required), Retrieved 22 April 2012
↑ Denslow, William R., 10,000 Famous Freemasons, 4 vol., Missouri Lodge of Research, Trenton, Missouri, 1957–61. volume 1, page 155
↑ "Edmund Burke". Freemasonry.bcy.ca. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
↑ McCue, p. 16.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 262.
↑ 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
↑ Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, edited by Hill-Powell; v. II, p. 349; 7 April 1775
↑ Boswell, Journals, Boswell: The Ominous Years, p. 134, edited by Ryskamp & Pottle; McGraw Hill, 1963
↑ "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 September 2008.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 277.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 283.
↑ Prior, p. 127 + pp. 340–2.
↑ Prior, p. 127.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, pp. 321–22.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 322.
↑ Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat. The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–1783 (Allen Lane, 2007), pp. 569–71.
↑ Prior, p. 175.
↑ Prior, pp. 175–6.
↑ Prior, p. 176.
↑ Prior, pp. 142–3.
↑ "Speech on Moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America, 22 March 1775". Gutenberg.org. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
↑ "Speech on Moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America, 22 March 1775". Gutenberg.org. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
1 2 3 4 5 Burke, Edmund. "Speech to Parliament on Reconciliation with the American Colonies" (PDF). America in Class. National Humanities Center. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
↑ "Lexington and Concord". USHistory.org. Independence Hall Association in Philadelphia. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
1 2 Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 384.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 394.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 399.
↑ Hibbert pp. 48–73
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, p. 511 + n. 65.
↑ McCue, p. 21.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. I, pp. 511–2.
↑ The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume I (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), pp. 446–8.
↑ Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The concept of representation (1972) p. 174
↑ Joseph Hamburger, "Burke, Edmund" in Seymour Martin Lipset, ed., The Encyclopedia of Democracy (Congressional Quarterly, 1995) 1:147–149
↑ Siraj Ahmed, "The Theater of the Civilized Self: Edmund Burke and the East India Trials". Representations 78 (2002): 30.
↑ Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (1988), 2.
↑ Elizabeth D. Samet, "A Prosecutor and a Gentleman: Edmund Burke's Idiom of Impeachment", ELH 68, no. 2 (2001): 402.
↑ McCue, p. 155.
↑ McCue, p. 156.
↑ 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.
↑ Mukherjee, Justice, War, and the Imperium, 590.
↑ Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire: 1781–1998 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), p. 35. ISBN 978-0-224-06222-0
↑ Clark, p. 61.
↑ Clark, pp. 61–2.
↑ Clark, p. 62.
↑ Clark, pp. 66–7.
↑ "A Discourse on the Love of our Country". Constitution.org. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
↑ Clark, p. 63.
↑ Clark, English Society, p. 233.
↑ Dreyer, Frederick (1978). "The Genesis of Burke's Reflections". The Journal of Modern History. 50 (3): 462. doi:10.1086/241734.
↑ Clark, p. 68.
↑ Prior, p. 311.
↑ F. P. Lock, Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 132.
↑ Clark, p. 39.
↑ Clark, pp. 24–5, p. 34, p. 43.
↑ Clark, pp. 181–3.
↑ Clark, pp. 250–1.
↑ Clark, pp. 251–2.
↑ Clark, p. 261.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, pp. 289–90.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 297.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 300.
↑ Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 204.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 296.
↑ Prior, pp. 313–4.
↑ L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Penguin, 1997), p. 113.
↑ Lock, Burke's Reflections, p. 134.
↑ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, p. 178.
↑ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, p. 161, n. 2.
↑ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, p. 239.
↑ Clark, p. 49.
↑ Prior, p. 491.
↑ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, pp. 162–69.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, pp. 356–67.
↑ Prior, p. 327.
1 2 McCue, p. 23.
↑ Frank O'Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (Macmillan, 1967), p. 65.
↑ Prior, p. 328.
1 2 Prior, p. 329.
1 2 O'Gorman, p. 75.
↑ O'Gorman, p. 74.
1 2 3 Clark, p. 40.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 383.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 384.
1 2 3 Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 386.
↑ Lock, Burke. Vol. II, pp. 385–6.
↑ Prior, pp. 357–8.
↑ Cobban and Smith (eds.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VI, pp. 479–80.
1 2 Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 439.
1 2 Lock, Burke. Vol. II, p. 453.
↑ O'Gorman, pp. 168–69.
↑ Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume VII (F. C. and J. Rivington, 1815), p. 141.
↑ Prior, pp. 425–6.
↑ 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.
↑ Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord, p. 41.
↑ Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord, pp. 52–53.
↑ Prior, pp. 439–40.
↑ 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.
↑ Blakemore, p. 158.
↑ Prior, pp. 443–4.
↑ Robert Eccleshall, English Conservatism since the Restoration (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), p. 75.
↑ Prior, p. 419.
↑ Eccleshall, p. 77.
↑ E. G. West, Adam Smith (New York: Arlington House, 1969), p. 201.
↑ R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VIII (Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 254.
↑ McDowell (ed.), Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VIII, p. 432.
↑ Prior, p. 456
↑ 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.
↑ Robert Eccleshall (1990). English Conservatism Since the Restoration: An Introduction & Anthology. Routledge. pp. 39–. ISBN 978-0-04-445773-2. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
↑ 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.
↑ 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.
↑ Hitchens, Christopher. "Reactionary Prophet". www.theatlantic.com. The Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
↑ J. J. Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative. Reaction and orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760 – 1832 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 90.
↑ Sack, p. 95.
↑ 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.
↑ A. D. Harvey, Britain in the early nineteenth century (B T Batsford Ltd, 1978), p. 125.
↑ Lock, Burke's Reflections, p. 175.
1 2 Lock, Burke's Reflections, p. 173.
↑ Lock, Burke's Reflections, pp. 173–4.
↑ Lock, Burke's Reflections, p. 174.
1 2 Claeys, p. 50.
↑ E. J. Stapleton (ed.), Some Official Correspondence of George Canning. Volume I (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1887), p. 74.
↑ 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.
↑ John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone. Volume III (1880–1898) (London: Macmillan, 1903), p. 280.
↑ John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 167.
↑ Herbert Paul (ed.), Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (Macmillan, 1914), p. 44.
↑ Sir George Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume II (London: Longmans, 1876), p. 377.
↑ D. A. Hamer, John Morley. Liberal Intellectual in Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 65.
↑ F. W. Hirst, Liberty and Tyranny (London: Duckworth, 1935), pp. 105–6.
↑ K. Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy (Delhi, 1997), p. 27.
↑ Brendon, p. xviii.
↑ F. G. Whelan, Edmund Burke and India (Pittsburgh, 1996), p. 96.
↑ "BURKE, EDMUND (1729–1797)". English Heritage. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
↑ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1964), 87.
↑ Ian Harris, "Burke and Religion," in David Dwan and Christopher J Insole eds., The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 103.
1 2 Harris, 98.
↑ David Bromwich (2014). The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke. Harvard University Press. pp. 175–76.
↑ O'Toole, Garson. "The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing". Quote Investigator. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
↑ Daniel Ritchie (1990). Edmund Burke: appraisals and applications. ISBN 978-0-88738-328-1.
↑ Edmund Burke (1770). Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents.
↑ Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, Feb. 1st 1867 (1867), p. 36
↑ 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

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) 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

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, 1786–1788 online; vol 8 online; vol 9 online;

External links

Political offices
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
Parliament of Great Britain
Preceded by Richard Chandler-Cavendish Verney Lovett	Member of Parliament for Wendover 1765–1774	Succeeded by Joseph Bullock John Adams
Preceded by Savile Finch The Viscount Downe	Member of Parliament for Malton 1774	Succeeded by Savile Finch William Weddell
Preceded by Matthew Brickdale The Viscount Clare PC	Member of Parliament for Bristol 1774–1780	Succeeded by Matthew Brickdale Sir Henry Lippincott
Preceded by Savile Finch William Weddell	Member of Parliament for Malton 1780–1794	Succeeded by The Viscount Milton Richard Burke
Academic offices
Preceded by Henry Dundas	Rector of the University of Glasgow 1783–1785	Succeeded by Robert Cunninghame-Grahame of Gartmore

Edmund Burke

Career	Impeachment of Warren Hastings

Works	A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents" (1770) "On American Taxation" (1774) Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795) Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796)

The Age of Enlightenment

Topics

Thinkers

France	Jean le Rond d'Alembert Étienne Bonnot de Condillac Marquis de Condorcet Denis Diderot Claude Adrien Helvétius Baron d'Holbach Georges-Louis Leclerc Montesquieu François Quesnay Jean-Jacques Rousseau Marquis de Sade Voltaire

Germany	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Gottfried von Herder Immanuel Kant Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Moses Mendelssohn Friedrich Schiller

Greece	Neophytos Doukas Theoklitos Farmakidis Rigas Feraios Theophilos Kairis Adamantios Korais

Ireland	Robert Boyle Edmund Burke

Italy	Cesare Beccaria Gaetano Filangieri Antonio Genovesi Pietro Verri

Poland	Tadeusz Czacki Hugo Kołłątaj Stanisław Konarski Ignacy Krasicki Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz Stanisław August Poniatowski Jędrzej Śniadecki Stanisław Staszic Józef Wybicki Andrzej Stanisław Załuski Józef Andrzej Załuski

Portugal	Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo

Russia	Catherine II

Spain	Charles III Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro

United Kingdom (Scotland)	Francis Bacon Joseph Black James Boswell Adam Ferguson Edward Gibbon Robert Hooke David Hume Francis Hutcheson Samuel Johnson John Locke Isaac Newton Thomas Reid Adam Smith Mary Wollstonecraft

United States	Benjamin Franklin Thomas Jefferson James Madison George Mason Thomas Paine

Economists of the English historical school

Edmund Burke Richard Jones Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie Walter Bagehot Thorold Rogers William J. Ashley

French Revolution

Significant civil and political events by year

1788	Day of the Tiles (7 Jun 1788) Assembly of Vizille (21 Jul 1788)

1789	What Is the Third Estate? (Jan 1789) Réveillon riots (28 Apr 1789) Convocation of the Estates-General (5 May 1789) National Assembly (17 Jun – 9 Jul 1790) Tennis Court Oath (20 Jun 1789) National Constituent Assembly (9 Jul – 30 Sep 1791) Storming of the Bastille (14 Jul 1789) Great Fear (20 Jul – 5 Aug 1789) Abolition of Feudalism (4-11 Aug 1789) Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (27 Aug 1789) Women's March on Versailles (5 Oct 1789)

1790	Abolition of the Parlements (Feb–Jul 1790) Abolition of the Nobility (19 Jun 1790) Civil Constitution of the Clergy (12 Jul 1790)

1791	Flight to Varennes (20–21 Jun 1791) Champ de Mars Massacre (17 Jul 1791) Declaration of Pillnitz (27 Aug 1791) The Constitution of 1791 (3 Sep 1791) Legislative Assembly (1 Oct 1791 – Sep 1792)

1792	France declares war (20 Apr 1792) Brunswick Manifesto (25 Jul 1792) Paris Commune becomes insurrectionary (Jun 1792) 10th of August (10 Aug 1792) September Massacres (Sep 1792) National Convention (20 Sep 1792 – 26 Oct 1795) First republic declared (22 Sep 1792)

1793	Execution of Louis XVI (21 Jan 1793) Revolutionary Tribunal (9 Mar 1793 – 31 May 1795) Reign of Terror (27 Jun 1793 – 27 Jul 1794) Committee of Public Safety Committee of General Security Fall of the Girondists (2 Jun 1793) Assassination of Marat (13 Jul 1793) Levée en masse (23 Aug 1793) Law of Suspects (17 Sep 1793) Marie Antoinette is guillotined (16 Oct 1793) Anti-clerical laws (throughout the year)

1794	Danton and Desmoulins guillotined (5 Apr 1794) Law of 22 Prairial (10 Jun 1794) Thermidorian Reaction (27 Jul 1794) Robespierre guillotined (28 Jul 1794) White Terror (Fall 1794) Closing of the Jacobin Club (11 Nov 1794)

1795	Constitution of the Year III (22 Aug 1795) Conspiracy of the Equals (Nov 1795) Directoire (1795–99) Council of Five Hundred Council of Ancients

1797	Coup of 18 Fructidor (4 Sep 1797) Second Congress of Rastatt (Dec 1797)

1799	Coup of 30 Prairial VII (18 Jun 1799) Coup of 18 Brumaire (9 Nov 1799) Constitution of the Year VIII (24 Dec 1799) Consulate

Revolutionary campaigns

1792	Verdun Thionville Valmy Royalist Revolts Chouannerie Vendée Dauphiné Lille Siege of Mainz Jemappes Namur

1793	First Coalition Siege of Toulon (18 Sep – 18 Dec 1793) War in the Vendée Battle of Neerwinden) Battle of Famars (23 May 1793) Capture of San Pietro and Sant'Antioco (25 May 1793) Battle of Kaiserslautern Siege of Mainz Battle of Wattignies Battle of Hondschoote Siege of Bellegarde Battle of Peyrestortes (Pyrenees) First Battle of Wissembourg (13 Oct 1793) Battle of Truillas (Pyrenees) Second Battle of Wissembourg (26–27 Dec 1793)

1794	Battle of Villers-en-Cauchies (24 Apr 1794) Battle of Boulou (Pyrenees) (30 Apr – 1 May 1794) Battle of Tournay (22 May 1794) Battle of Fleurus (26 Jun 1794) Chouannerie Battle of Tourcoing (18 May 1794) Battle of Aldenhoven (2 Oct 1794)

1795	Peace of Basel

1796	Battle of Lonato (3–4 Aug 1796) Battle of Castiglione (5 Aug 1796) Battle of Theiningen Battle of Neresheim (11 Aug 1796) Battle of Amberg (24 Aug 1796) Battle of Würzburg (3 Sep 1796) Battle of Rovereto (4 Sep 1796) First Battle of Bassano (8 Sep 1796) Battle of Emmendingen (19 Oct 1796) Battle of Schliengen (26 Oct 1796) Second Battle of Bassano (6 Nov 1796) Battle of Calliano (6–7 Nov 1796) Battle of the Bridge of Arcole (15–17 Nov 1796) The Ireland Expedition (Dec 1796)

1797	Naval Engagement off Brittany (13 Jan 1797) Battle of Rivoli (14–15 Jan 1797) Battle of the Bay of Cádiz (25 Jan 1797) Treaty of Leoben (17 Apr 1797) Battle of Neuwied (18 Apr 1797) Treaty of Campo Formio (17 Oct 1797)

1798	French invasion of Switzerland (28 January – 17 May 1798) French Invasion of Egypt (1798–1801) Irish Rebellion of 1798 (23 May – 23 Sep 1798) Quasi-War (1798–1800) Peasants' War (12 Oct – 5 Dec 1798)

1799	Second Coalition (1798–1802) Siege of Acre (20 Mar – 21 May 1799) Battle of Ostrach (20–21 Mar 1799) Battle of Stockach (25 Mar 1799) Battle of Magnano (5 Apr 1799) Battle of Cassano (27 Apr 1799) First Battle of Zurich (4–7 Jun 1799) Battle of Trebbia (19 Jun 1799) Battle of Novi (15 Aug 1799) Second Battle of Zurich (25–26 Sep 1799)

1800	Battle of Marengo (14 Jun 1800) Battle of Hohenlinden (3 Dec 1800) League of Armed Neutrality (1800–02)

1801	Treaty of Lunéville (9 Feb 1801) Treaty of Florence (18 Mar 1801) Algeciras Campaign (8 Jul 1801)

1802	Treaty of Amiens (25 Mar 1802)

Military leaders

French Army

French Navy

Charles-Alexandre Linois

Opposition

Austria	József Alvinczi Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen Count of Clerfayt (Walloon) Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg Friedrich Freiherr von Hotze (Swiss) Friedrich Adolf, Count von Kalckreuth Pál Kray (Hungarian) Charles Eugene, Prince of Lambesc (French) Maximilian Baillet de Latour (Walloon) Karl Mack von Leiberich Rudolf Ritter von Otto (Saxon) Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld Peter Vitus von Quosdanovich Prince Heinrich XV of Reuss-Plauen Johann Mészáros von Szoboszló (Hungarian) Karl Philipp Sebottendorf Dagobert von Wurmser

Britain	Sir Ralph Abercromby Admiral Sir James Saumarez Admiral Sir Edward Pellew Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany

Dutch Republic	William V, Prince of Orange

Prussia	Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel Frederick Louis, Prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen

Russia	Alexander Korsakov Alexander Suvorov

Spain	Luis Firmin de Carvajal Antonio Ricardos

Other significant figures and factions

Society of 1789	Jean Sylvain Bailly Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt Isaac René Guy le Chapelier Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord Nicolas de Condorcet

Feuillants and monarchiens	Madame de Lamballe Madame du Barry Louis de Breteuil Loménie de Brienne Charles Alexandre de Calonne de Chateaubriand Jean Chouan Grace Elliott Arnaud de La Porte Jean-Sifrein Maury Jacques Necker François-Marie, marquis de Barthélemy Guillaume-Mathieu Dumas Antoine Barnave Lafayette Alexandre-Théodore-Victor, comte de Lameth Charles Malo François Lameth André Chénier Jean-François Rewbell Camille Jordan Madame de Staël Boissy d'Anglas Jean-Charles Pichegru Pierre Paul Royer-Collard

Girondists	Jacques Pierre Brissot Roland de La Platière Madame Roland Father Henri Grégoire Étienne Clavière Marquis de Condorcet Charlotte Corday Marie Jean Hérault Jean Baptiste Treilhard Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve Jean Debry Jean-Jacques Duval d'Eprémesnil Olympe de Gouges Jean-Baptiste Robert Lindet Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux

The Plain	Abbé Sieyès de Cambacérès Charles François Lebrun Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot Philippe Egalite Louis Philippe I Mirabeau Antoine Christophe Merlin de Thionville Jean Joseph Mounier Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours François de Neufchâteau

Montagnards	Maximilien Robespierre Georges Danton Jean-Paul Marat Camille Desmoulins Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Paul Nicolas, vicomte de Barras Louis Philippe I Louis Michel le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau Jacques-Louis David Marquis de Sade Jacques-Louis David Georges Couthon Roger Ducos Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois Jean-Henri Voulland Philippe-Antoine Merlin de Douai Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville Philippe-François-Joseph Le Bas Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier Jean-Pierre-André Amar Prieur de la Côte-d'Or Prieur de la Marne Gilbert Romme Jean Bon Saint-André Jean-Lambert Tallien Pierre Louis Prieur Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac Antoine Christophe Saliceti

Hébertists and Enragés	Jacques Hébert Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne Pierre Gaspard Chaumette Charles-Philippe Ronsin Antoine-François Momoro François-Nicolas Vincent François Chabot Jean Baptiste Noël Bouchotte Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel François Hanriot Jacques Roux Stanislas-Marie Maillard Charles-Philippe Ronsin Jean-François Varlet Theophile Leclerc Claire Lacombe Pauline Léon François-Noël Babeuf Sylvain Maréchal

Others	Charles X Louis XVI Louis XVII Louis XVIII Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien Louis Henri, Prince of Condé Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé Marie Antoinette Napoléon Bonaparte Lucien Bonaparte Joseph Bonaparte Joseph Fesch Joséphine de Beauharnais Joachim Murat Jean Sylvain Bailly Jacques-Donatien Le Ray Guillaume-Chrétien de Malesherbes Talleyrand Thérésa Tallien Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target Catherine Théot List of people associated with the French Revolution

Influential thinkers

Les Lumières Beaumarchais Edmund Burke Anacharsis Cloots Charles-Augustin de Coulomb Pierre Claude François Daunou Diderot Benjamin Franklin Thomas Jefferson Antoine Lavoisier Montesquieu Thomas Paine Jean-Jacques Rousseau Abbé Sieyès Voltaire Mary Wollstonecraft

Cultural impact

La Marseillaise French Tricolour Liberté, égalité, fraternité Marianne Bastille Day Panthéon French Republican Calendar Cult of the Supreme Being Cult of Reason Sans-culottes Metric system Phrygian cap Women in the French Revolution Symbolism in the French Revolution Historiography of the French Revolution Influence of the French Revolution

Conservatism

Timeline

Schools

International	Corporatism Cultural Fiscal Green High Tory Liberal National Progressive Small-c Social Socialism Traditionalist

American	Alt-right Bourbon Democrats Compassionate Democrat Fusionism Libertarian Neoconservatism Nixonianism Old Right Paleoconservatism Reaganism Rockefeller Republicans Social Tea Party Movement

British	Andism Dries Hughliganism One-nationism Powellism Thatcherism Tory socialism Toryism Wets

Canadian	Blue Tory Nationalist Pink Tory Red Tory

French	Bonapartism Gaullism Legitimism Neo-Bonapartism Ultra-royalism Orléanism

German	Revolutionary

Greek	Metaxism

Spanish	Carlism

Turkish	Democracy Erdoğanism

Pakistan	Nationalist conservatism

Concepts

National variants

People

Organizations

Identity politics

Religious variants: Christian; Hindu; Jewish; Islamic
Racial and ethnic variants: Black; Jewish
Sexual orientation and gender identity variants: LGBT