In the aftermath of the French Revolution, intellectuals in neighboring Britain were sharply divided. Supporters of the 1789 Revolution included radical thinkers Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), who viewed the revolt as a major advance in the cause of political equality.
But Edmund Burke (1729–1797), a politician, journalist, and political philosopher from Ireland, was appalled by the violence of the Revolution, which culminated in the mass killings of the Great Terror and the guillotining of King Louis XVI (1754–1793). Beginning in 1790, Burke published a series of eloquent denunciations of the revolt, emerging as one of the most influential critics of revolutionary France.
The articles and speeches Burke delivered as a member of Parliament helped precipitate a political clash in Britain, which eventually declared war on France in 1793. In the larger history of ideas, however, Burke’s antirevolutionary philosophy stands out as one of the foundations of modern political conservatism.
Burke was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College. His family had recently converted from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism, a status that allowed Burke to avoid the restrictive anti-Catholic laws still in place in eighteenth-century Britain. He was first elected to Parliament in 1765.
During the American Revolution, Burke sided with the rebels, arguing that it was pointless for Britain to try to hold on to the thirteen colonies. A member of the Whig party, which favored limiting the power of the Crown, Burke was also critical of British imperial policies in India and Ireland.
Indeed, Burke’s opposition to the French Revolution surprised many of his admirers. Burke was no friend of the French monarchy, but he also opposed the doctrine of radical, violent social change that the rebels had embraced. “When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer,” he wrote.
The death in 1794 of Burke’s only son, Richard, devastated the writer and caused him to lose some of his interest in politics. He resigned from Parliament in the same year and died three years later, at age sixty-eight.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- The names of the two main political parties in eighteenth-century Britain, the Whigs and the Tories, were both derived from Gaelic slurs. A whiggamore was a Scottish rebel, while toraidhe is an Old Irish word for “robber.” The nickname Tory is still used for the British Conservative Party.
- After resigning from Parliament, Burke was offered the aristocratic title of Lord Beaconsfield by King George III (1738–1820), but he refused the honor.
- Burke was an opponent of the mistreatment of Indians in the British colony of India, and he led an ultimately unsuccessful seven-year effort to convict the first British governor-general of India, Warren Hastings (1732–1818), on charges of corruption.
