Edmund Burke

Born in Dublin, Edmund Burke was the son of a Protestant Lawyer and a Catholic mother. He was educated in Classics at a Quaker boarding school and at Trinity College Dublin, he remained a committed Anglican the rest of his life. He considered a national established church a requirement for sound government. In 1750 he went to London to study law but soon left his course. In 1756 he published his first book anonymously A Vindication of Natural Society, a satirical account of the rise of civilisation and how it produces unhappiness and distress. A year later he published the Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful, his most philosophical work (And also written anonymously). He became editor of The Annual Register, a record of contemporary political events. After serving as private secretary to several senior parliamentarians, Burke was given a seat in 1765 and remained in Parliament for over thirty years. His success as an orator, political writer and party member for the Whigs was extensive although he was never given a particularly high office by his party when it took government, possibly because of his independent streak.

During his political career he campaigned constantly, but unsuccessfully in the short term. He advocated administrative reform of the royal household and to increase the power of the crown so as to reward its supporters; He supported the elimination of anti-Catholic laws in Ireland and the controls on trade with that island.; He was in favour of generous treatment to the American Colonists, and supported reconciliation from the outbreak of hostilities with the American War of Independence; He favoured strong state support for the established Anglican Church and for the landed gentry; He fought for restrictions on the powers of the East India Company in its administration of India; He supported military intervention against the French Revolution and for tighter controls of civil Liberties in Britain, so as to prevent such an occurance happening there. All these causes were effectively lost, but Burkes ceaseless politics of principle made them burning issues and subsequently made him famous. He died disappointed three years after his retirement and the death of his son, which caused him much grief.