Burke, Edmund

Burke, Edmund (1729–97). Whig politician and conservative political philosopher. Burke was born in Ireland to a catholic mother and protestant father. Brought up as a protestant, he was sent to a quaker school and then to Trinity College, Dublin. He studied law in London, but quickly turned his attention to writing. However, Burke's first love was politics and he became a member of Parliament in 1766. He remained an MP for virtually the rest of his life, and became a towering figure in the House of Commons, captivating his audience with spellbinding oratory. Burke had an unrivalled gift for portraying the wider significance of the issues of the day in terms of general principles, and as a result many of his speeches contain disquisitions on political philosophy. Indeed this was the way in which Burke understood the activity of political philosophy—as reflection on the principles which lay behind current political practice. He rejected the radical and utopian thinking of 18th-cent. writers such as Rousseau, who allowed their imaginations to run away with them, regarding them as little less than sacrilegious; for him the political traditions of a mature society were embodiments of the divine will. Moreover, for Burke, politics is the art of the possible; all social arrangements fall short of the ideal, but we should not reject them for that reason, since they may well be the best that are practicable in the circumstances.

Burke has often been accused of inconsistency. His stance on the plight of catholics in Ireland—he deplored their savage treatment by the protestant ascendancy—and of Indians in Bengal—he denounced the barbarisms perpetrated by the East India Company—is contrasted with his rejection of the idea of natural rights advanced by the French revolutionaries, and his defence of customary patterns of government. Similarly, Burke's sympathy for the American colonists chafing at the imposition of taxes by the British government appears to contradict his insistence on the sovereign authority of Parliament. However, if we bear in mind the above organizing ideas of his political philosophy, we can see that there is an underlying coherence in his writing. In his defence of the Irish catholics, the Bengali Indians, and the American colonists, Burke was not arguing that they had natural rights to determine their own destiny, or that the system of imperial authority exercised over them was fundamentally illegitimate. Far from it; what Burke was asserting was that there had been abuse of legitimate (i.e. traditional) authority, and that such abuse must be corrected to prevent a backlash which could lead to the overthrow of that authority. Similarly, we can see consistency in Burke's apparently contradictory endorsement of the 1688/9 Whig revolution in England, yet denunciation of the 1789 revolution in France. In both cases he sought to defend traditional modes of political authority. The Whig revolution in England was a revolution averted, in that it preserved the established Anglican state from an unconstitutional conversion by James II into a Roman catholic polity. By contrast the French Revolution was a real revolution, perpetrated illegitimately against the wholesome foundations of a ‘noble and venerable castle’, the traditional and settled French state.

Burke's enduring reputation as a political thinker rests on the claim that he is the founder of conservative ideology. His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is generally regarded as the epitome of conservatism, defending traditional political cultures. However, he recognized that some change was inevitable—indeed he held that a state without the means of change was without the means of its own conservation. He also strongly affirmed the modern principle of popular government. Although he was no democrat, Burke held that the primary organ of the British constitution was the House of Commons, and that Parliament owed its authority to the approval of the people.

As a practising politician and statesman, Burke also left his mark. His impassioned defence of the formation of political parties as a means of resisting the unconstitutional influence of the crown—he argued that when bad men combine, good men must unite—was an important step in the process of legitimizing party politics in Britain. This is not to say that Burke's endorsement of party loyalty was unconditional. On the contrary, he was himself responsible for splitting the Whig party over the issue of the French Revolution, by refusing to follow Fox's approval of the revolution, and he has been accused by historians of thereby depriving the Whigs of office for the next 40 years. Moreover, although he only held minor office (that of paymaster-general) for two short spells under Lord Rockingham, Burke exerted considerable influence on the government. His vehement condemnation of the revolution in France helped to stiffen anti-French policy in Britain. Similarly the sympathetic tone he adopted toward the American colonists contributed towards the rapprochement which was eventually reached by the British government. Finally Burke's obsessive pursuit of the impeachment of Warren Hastings in the House of Lords for his iniquitous rule as governor-general of Bengal, though it failed to secure Hastings's conviction, succeeded in creating an irresistible momentum for the subsequent reform of the East India Company.

Perhaps Burke's epitaph should be that he was an extremist in pursuit of moderation.

Tim S. Gray

Bibliography

Lock, F. , Edmund Burke (Oxford, 1998).