Edmund Burke Extended Biography
Edmund BurkeExtended BiographyYou may wish to share this biography with students, or just to read it for your own information.Edmund Burke (1727-1797) is often called the father of modern conservatism, although that is not how he was described during the years in which he lived. In fact, many scholars see Burke as being an important liberal philosopher. Some suggest he had two lives, split between his work before and after the French Revolution, which he observed from nearby Britain. We get our terms “left” and “right”, to describe liberals and conservatives, from the places people stood and sat in the conventions of the French Revolution. But in the United States, at least, our idea of liberal and conservative mostly comes from eighteenth century British politics, where liberals were mainly people who wanted a lot of political change, fast, and conservatives mainly were people who wanted to maintain law and order. These two ideas were not necessarily opposed to each other, but they were quite different philosophies. In Britain, being conservative in this period generally meant supporting the power of the King, and being liberal generally meant wanting a stronger parliament. Similarly, in Britain conservatives were more likely to be Catholics, while liberals were more likely to be reformist Protestants, although this wasn’t always the case.Edmund Burke, fittingly for a person who would later straddle liberalism and conservativism, was born to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father in Ireland, which was then part of Britain. He studied law and history at Trinity College, Dublin. In the 1750s. he wrote several important philosophical books, including one that was a defense of religious thought. In many ways, his work was the epitome of Enlightenment philosophical experimentation, and many famous liberals of the time embraced him. In 1765, Burke became a member of parliament. The positions he took at this time were also very liberal. He generally sympathized with the American revolutionaries, whom he felt were dedicated to very British ideas of liberty against an unjust government. He viewed Indian Hindu religion as a positive and equal religion to those of Europe. He believed that a strong parliament was necessary to reign in the power of the King. He also argued for a free market in grain, even when it was politically difficult to do so. Burke also called for equal political rights for Catholics. It was this issue that first really led him to suggest that freedoms needed to sometimes be limited for the public good. In 1778, a series of laws were passed that were intended to give Catholics back some rights they had lost in the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century. Then in 1780, a series of riots broke out in London against these laws. A group of Protestants formed a mob that attacked leading Catholics and also immigrant Irish workers. Although they were put down, these mobs led Burke to believe that a strong government was necessary to keep law and order. He even called them a “swining multitude.”Then came the French Revolution. In many ways, Burke initially admired what he saw as a fight for freedom, writing “gazing at the French struggle for liberty...the spirit is impossible not to admire”. But then it became clear that law and order was collapsing in the country, and Burke wrote that “You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recovered freedom.” Burke believed the revolution had gone too far. He wrote a paper that became his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France. In this paper, Burke argued that there needed to be some loyalty and obedience to order. When “we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility... it is natural to be so affected”. For Burke, society needed the cohesiveness given by tradition, the moral leadership of religion, and the direction of the forces of order. Taken in total, Burke’s ideas—the importance of both freedom and order—are in many ways foundational ideas in both liberalism and conservatism. In the nineteenth century, however, British conservatives began to claim him as their forefather in particular, and that is the reputation he generally has today.