Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin in 1730, educated at a Quaker school and at Trinity College Dublin, and trained at the Middle Temple in London. He first made his name as a writer, publishing A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful in 1757. In 1765 he became private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham and entered the House of Commons, where he sat for nearly 29 years as a Whig. He held office only briefly in 1782 and 1783. His 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France led to a break with some party colleagues, and in his last years he wrote widely on revolutionary France and on Ireland. He died in 1797.

Burke is widely cited as a founder of modern conservatism, admired for his defence of tradition, prudence and gradual reform, and many liberals also value his support for the American colonists, Irish Catholics and Indian subjects of the East India Company. Critics, beginning with Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, argued that he defended privilege and inequality, and later writers have questioned whether his views form a consistent system. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that no political party or ideology has been able to claim his legacy fully.