January 12, 2011 <Back to Index>
PAGE SPONSOR |
Edmund Burke PC (12 January [NS] 1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition to the French Revolution. The latter led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig party, which he dubbed the "Old Whigs", in opposition to the pro-French-Revolution "New Whigs," led by Charles James Fox. Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals in the nineteenth-century and since the twentieth-century he has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism, as well as a representative of classical liberalism. Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a prosperous solicitor father (Richard; d. 1761) of the Church of Ireland. It is unclear if this is the same Richard Burke who converted from Catholicism. His mother Mary (c. 1702 – 1770), whose maiden name was Nagle, belonged to the Roman Catholic Church and came from an impoverished but genteel County Cork family. (The name de Búrca, anglicised as Burke, is the Irish language version of the Norman name Burgh or de Burgh, the name of a family that settled in Ireland following the Norman invasion of Ireland by Henry II of England in 1172.) Burke was raised in his father's faith and remained throughout his life a practising Anglican, unlike his sister Juliana who was brought up as and remained a Roman Catholic. Although never denying his Irishness, Burke often described himself as "an Englishman". This was in an age "before 'Celtic nationalism' sought to make Irishness and Englishness incompatible". As a child he sometimes spent time away from the unhealthy air of Dublin with his mother's family in the Blackwater Valley. He received his early education at a Quaker school in Ballitore, some 30 miles (48 km) from Dublin, and remained in correspondence with his schoolmate Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of the school's owner, throughout his life. In 1744 he proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin. In 1747, he set up a Debating Club, known as Edmund Burke's Club, which in 1770 merged with the Historical Club to form the College Historical Society,
now the oldest undergraduate society in the world. The minutes of the
meetings of Burke's club remain in the collection of the Historical
Society. He graduated in 1748. Burke's father wished him to study for
the law, and with this object he went to London in 1750 and entered the Middle Temple, but soon thereafter he gave up his legal studies in order to travel in Continental Europe. After giving up law, he attempted to earn his livelihood through 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 Lord Bolingbroke's style and ideas in a reductio ad absurdum of his arguments for atheistic rationalism, demonstrating their absurdity. Burke claimed that Bolingbroke's arguments against revealed religion could apply to all social and civil institutions. Lord Chesterfield and Bishop Warburton (and others) initially thought that the work was genuinely by Bolingbroke rather than a satire. 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 writing in the
preface to the second edition (1757) that it was a satire. Richard Hurd believed
that Burke's imitation was near-perfect and that this defeated his
purpose. 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 Dr. 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 19). 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), under 400,000 words. It was to be submitted for publication by
Christmas 1758. Burke
actually completed to the year 1216, and never published the work. It
was not published until 1812 in Burke's collected works under the title
of An Essay Towards an Abridgement of the English History, after Burke's death. G.M. Young did not value Burke's history and claimed that it was "demonstrably a translation from the French". 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". The following year, with Dodsley, he created the influential Annual Register, a publication in which various authors evaluated the international political events of the previous year. The extent to which Burke personally contributed to the Annual Register is contested. Robert Murray in his biography of Burke quotes the Register as evidence of Burke's opinions, yet Philip Magnus in his biography does not directly cite it as a reference. Burke
remained its chief editor until at least 1789 and there is no evidence
that any other writer contributed to it before 1766. In London, Burke knew many of the leading intellectuals and artists, including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds. Edward Gibbon described him as, 'the most eloquent and rational madman that I ever knew.' On 12 March 1757 he married Jane Mary Nugent (1734 – 1812), daughter of a Catholic physician who had treated him at Bath. His son Richard was born on 9 February 1758. Another son, Christopher, died in infancy. At about this same time, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton (known as "Single-speech Hamilton"). When Hamilton was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland,
Burke accompanied him to Dublin as his private secretary, a position he
maintained for three years. In 1765 Burke became private secretary to
liberal Whig statesman Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham,
at the time Prime Minister of Great Britain, who remained Burke's close
friend and associate until his premature death in 1782. In December 1765 Burke entered the British Parliament as a member of the House of Commons for Wendover, a pocket borough in the control of Lord Fermanagh, later 2nd Earl Verney, a close political ally of Rockingham. After Burke's 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. In 1769 Burke published, in reply to Grenvillite pamphlet The Present State of the Nation, his pamphlet on Observations on a Late State of the Nation. Surveying the finances of France, Burke predicts "some extraordinary convulsion in that whole system". In the same year he purchased the small estate of Gregories near Beaconsfield. The 600-acre (2.4 km2) estate was purchased with mostly borrowed money, and though it contained an art collection that included works by Titian,
Gregories nevertheless would prove to be a heavy financial burden on
the MP in the following decades. Burke was never able to fully pay for
the estate. His speeches and writings had now made him famous, and
among other effects had brought about the suggestion that he was the
author of the Letters of Junius. Burke
took a leading role in the debate over the constitutional limits to the
executive authority of the King. He argued strongly against
unrestrained royal power and for the role of political parties in
maintaining a principled opposition capable of preventing abuses by the
monarch or by specific factions within the government. His most
important publication in this regard was his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents of 23 April 1770. Burke
identified the "discontents" as stemming from the "secret influence" of
a neo-Tory group he calls the "king's friends", whose system
"comprehending the exterior and interior Administrations, is commonly
called, in the technical language of the Court, Double Cabinet". Britain
needed a party which had "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". During
1771 Burke wrote a Bill which would, if passed, 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, and was not
passed. Fox, when introducing his own Bill in 1791, repeated almost verbatim the text of Burke's Bill without acknowledgement. Burke was also prominent in securing the right to publish debates held in Parliament. 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." In 1772 Burke was instrumental in passing the Repeal of Certain Laws Act 1772, which repealed various old laws against dealers and forestallers in corn. 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 upsetting the balance of power in Europe. In 1774 he was elected member for Bristol, at the time "England's second city" and a large constituency with a genuine electoral contest. His Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll was noted for its defence of the principles of representative democracy against the notion that elected officials should be delegates. In
May 1778 Burke supported a motion in Parliament to revise the
restrictions on Irish trade. However his constituents in Bristol, a
great trading city, urged Burke to oppose free trade with Ireland.
Burke resisted these demands 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". 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". Burke also supported Sir George Savile's attempts to repeal some of the penal laws against Catholics. This support for unpopular causes, notably free trade with Ireland and Catholic emancipation, led to Burke losing his seat in 1780. He also called capital punishment "the Butchery which we call justice" in 1776 and in 1780 Burke condemned the use of the pillory for two men convicted for attempting to practice sodomy. For the remainder of his parliamentary career, Burke sat for Malton, another pocket borough controlled by the Marquess of Rockingham. 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 (published
in January 1775) on a motion to repeal the tea duty. On 22 March 1775
Burke gave a speech (published in May 1775) on reconciliation with
America. The administration of Lord North (1770 – 1782)
tried to defeat the colonists' 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. In
Burke's view the British government was fighting "the American English"
("our English Brethren in the Colonies"), with a German-descended King
employing "the hireling sword of German boors and vassals" to destroy
British colonists' English liberties. 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". In 1780 during the Gordon Riots, Burke was a particular target for the rioters, and his home had to be placed under armed guard by the military.
The fall of North led to Rockingham being recalled to power in March 1782. Burke became Paymaster of the Forces and a Privy Councillor, but without a seat in the Cabinet. Rockingham's unexpected death in
July of 1782 and his replacement as Prime Minister by Shelburne put an
end to his administration after only a few months. However Burke did
manage to pass two Acts. The Paymaster General Act 1782 ended
the post as a lucrative sinecure. Previously, Paymasters had been able
to draw on money from the Treasury at their discretion. Now they were
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 which replaced it repeated verbatim almost
the whole text of Burke's Act. 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. However he managed to abolish 134 offices in the royal household and civil administration. The third Secretary of State and the Board of Trade were abolished and pensions were limited and regulated. The Act was projected to save £72,368 a year. 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 and including Charles James Fox. The coalition fell in 1783, and
was succeeded by the long Tory administration of William Pitt the Younger, which lasted until 1801. Burke was accordingly in opposition for the remainder of his political life. Burke’s
interaction with the British dominion of India began well before the
Hastings Trial. Previous to the impeachment, Parliament dealt with the
Indian issue for two decades, this trial was the pinnacle of years of
unrest and deliberation. 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 Affair – 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.” 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 and lead to the reassurance to
the Indian princes that Britain would not wage war on them and the
demand for the EIC to recall Hastings. This is Burke’s first call for
real, significant change of the imperial practices. When addressing the
whole House of Commons in regards to the committee’s report, Burke
would describe the Indian issue as one that “began ‘in commerce’ but
‘ended in empire.’” On February 28, 1785 he made his great speech on The Nabob of Arcot's Debts, where he condemned the damage he believed the East India Company had done to India. 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. 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. On April 4, 1786 Burke presented the Commons with the Article of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, the former Governor General of Bengal. The trial, which did not begin
until February 14, 1788, would be the “first major public discursive event of its kind in England,” bringing
the morality and duty of imperialism to the forefront of the public’s
perception. Burke was already known for his eloquent rhetorical skills
and his involvement in the trial only enhanced its popularity and
significance. For
the members of London’s fashionable society, the trial was a spectacle
, and was not centered around Hastings’ alleged misconduct and crimes
as had been Burke’s intent. Burke's
indictment, fuelled by emotional indignation, called Hastings the
'captain-general of iniquity'; who never dined without 'creating a
famine'; his heart was 'gangrened to the core' and he resembled both a
'spider of Hell' and a 'ravenous vulture devouring the carcases of the
dead'. The indictment was such a philippic that,
whereas it had previously seemed that Hastings would be found guilty,
it actually provoked public sympathy; however, although Hastings was
acquitted, the trial served to establish the principle that the Empire
was a moral undertaking rather than a wholesale looting by either the East India Company or its servants.
Burke did not initially condemn the French Revolution.
In a letter of 9 August 1789, Burke 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". The events of 5–6 October 1789, in which a mob 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 on 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". 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 added: "You may have subverted Monarchy, but
not recover'd freedom". 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. In January 1790 Burke read Dr. Richard Price's sermon of 4 November 1789 to the Revolution Society, called A Discourse On the Love of our Country. The Revolution Society was 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". Instead,
Englishmen should see themselves "more as citizens of the world than as
members of any particular community". The debate between Price and
Burke was "the classic moment at which two fundamentally different
conceptions of national identity were presented to the English public". 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 would eventually become the Reflections on the Revolution in France. On
13 February 1790 there appeared a notice in the press that Burke would
shortly 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. 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. What
the Glorious Revolution had meant was important to Burke and his
contemporaries, as it had been for the last one hundred years in
British politics. In the Reflections, Burke argued against Price's interpretation of the Glorious Revolution and instead gave a classic Whig defence of it. Burke argued against the idea of abstract, metaphysical rights of men and instead advocated national tradition. 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". Burke
defended 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". 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". The most famous passage of the Reflections was his description of the events of 5–6 October 1789 and Marie Antoinette's part in them. Burke's account differs little from modern historians who have used primary sources. 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". Edward Gibbon however reacted differently: "I adore his chivalry". 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. 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 like
himself who regarded the ungallant assault on Marie Antoinette with
horror, as a cowardly attack on a defenceless woman. Louis XVI translated the Reflections "from end to end" into French. 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". 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. Burke wrote on 29 November 1790: "I have received from the Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord John Cavendish Montagu 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". 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. King
George III at a levee on 3 February 1791 said to Burke: "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". Burke's Reflections sparked a pamphlet war. Thomas Paine penned The Rights of Man in 1791 as a response to Burke; Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Men and James Mackintosh wrote Vindiciae Gallicae. Mackintosh was the first to see the Reflections as
"the manifesto of a Counter Revolution". Mackintosh would later come to
agree 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". 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". In
November 1790 a member of the National Assembly of France,
François-Louis-Thibault de Menonville, wrote to Burke, praising
the Reflections and requesting more "very refreshing mental food" which he could publish. 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 a personality cult had developed in revolutionary France. Although
Burke conceded that Rousseau sometimes shows "a considerable insight
into human nature" he was mostly critical. Although he did not meet
Rousseau on his visit to Britain in 1766-7 he 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 sending his children to a
foundling hospital: "a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred". These
events, and the disagreements which arose regarding them within the
Whig party, led to its breakup and to the rupture of Burke's friendship
with Fox. In debate in Parliament on Britain's relations with Russia,
Fox praised the principles of the Revolution, though 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". 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 condemn the new French Constitution and "the horrible consequences
flowing from the French idea of the rights of man". Burke asserted that those ideas were the antithesis of both the British and the American constitutions. Burke
was interrupted, and Fox intervened to say that Burke should be allowed
to carry on with his speech. However a vote of censure was moved
against Burke for noticing the affairs of France, which was moved by Lord Sheffield and seconded by Fox. 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 taught him, quoting from Burke's
speeches of fourteen and fifteen years before. Burke replied: 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". At
this point Fox whispered that there was "no loss of friendship". "I
regret to say there is", Burke said, "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". 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". 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. 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 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 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". 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). 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". Burke 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. 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 which is derived from God. Although Whig grandees like 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". 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". 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". 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". 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 publicly aired. Eventually
most of the Whigs sided with Burke and voted their support for the
conservative government of Pitt, which, in response to France's
declaration of war against Britain, declared war on the revolutionary
government of France 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 the other governments
of Europe. 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. 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". 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.]. 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. 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". 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 which might lead to a march on Paris.
However Dundas did not follow Burke's advice. Burke believed the
government was not taking the uprising seriously enough, a view
reinforced by a letter he had received from the 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". 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 Vendee is a proof of this". On
20 June 1794 Burke received a vote of thanks from the Commons for his
services in the Hastings trial and immediately resigned his seat, being
replaced by his son Richard. However a terrible blow fell upon Burke in
the loss of Richard in August 1794, to whom he was tenderly attached,
and in whom he saw signs of promise. The King, whose favour he had gained by his attitude on the French Revolution, wished to make him Lord Beaconsfield,
but the death of his son had deprived such an honour of all its
attractions, and the only reward he would accept was a pension of
£2,500. This pension was attacked by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to whom Burke replied in the Letter to a Noble Lord (1796). Burke
wrote: "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". 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". Burke
also hinted at what would happen to such people if their revolutionary
ideas were implemented, and included a description of the British
constitution. Burke's last publications were the Letters on a Regicide Peace (October
1796), called forth by the Pitt government's negotiations for peace
with France. Burke regarded this as appeasement, injurious to national
dignity and honour. In
the Second Letter, Burke wrote of the revolutionary French 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". This has been seen as the first time someone explained the modern totalitarian state. Burke
regarded the war with France as ideological, gainst 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. 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". 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. In it, Burke expounded "some of the doctrines of political economists bearing upon agriculture as a trade". Burke
criticised policies such as maximum prices and state regulation of
wages, and set out what the limits of government should be. 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". 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, 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". However
by March 1796 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". For more than a year before his death Burke knew that his stomach was "irrecoverably ruind". 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. Burke died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire on 9 July 1797. He was buried in Beaconsfield alongside his son and brother. His wife survived him by nearly fifteen years. |