Edmund Burke: life, ideas and books

Life

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin in 1729 and made his career in London as a writer, editor and politician. He sat in the House of Commons from 1765 to 1794 as a Rockingham Whig, representing Wendover, Bristol and Malton in turn. He served briefly as Paymaster of the Forces, where he pushed through reforms that abolished a number of lucrative offices, and he led the long impeachment of Warren Hastings, the former Governor-General of Bengal, who was eventually acquitted by the House of Lords.

Burke was an unusual politician in that his principles did not sort neatly into a single party line. He urged conciliation with the American colonies, supported Catholic emancipation and freer trade with Ireland, and defended the role of organised political parties as vehicles for principle. He died at Beaconsfield in 1797.

Ideas

Burke is best known for what he opposed: the attempt to remake a society from abstract first principles. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) he argued that the French revolutionaries were treating inherited institutions as obstacles to be swept away, when those institutions embodied the accumulated experience of many generations. He held that prudence, custom and what he called prejudice carry a store of practical wisdom that no single generation's reasoning can replace.

He described society as a partnership between the living, the dead and those yet to be born, not a contract among people alive today. He favoured reform that grew from existing institutions, and he distrusted abstract "rights of man" in favour of liberties inherited and defended as a people's own. He also argued that elected representatives owe their constituents their judgment rather than blind obedience.

Major works

• A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), a satire of rationalist attacks on government.
• A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), on aesthetics.
• On American Taxation (1774), a speech urging a conciliatory policy toward the colonies.
• Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), his best-known book.
• An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), defending his own consistency.

Why conservatives read him

Burke supplies the vocabulary for much of the later conservative tradition: tradition as a source of knowledge, gradual reform over revolution, the limits of abstract theory in politics and the duties that tie generations together. Russell Kirk treated him as the starting point of modern conservative thought, and his skepticism about sweeping plans for social engineering still shapes arguments about government, law and culture. Readers across the spectrum also value him for his speeches on empire and the rule of law.