The Weekly Sage hopes to regularly bring brief profiles of key contributors to thought and faith before a Christian audience for historical education and awareness of valuable resources.

Edmund Burke

–          “a Power which refuses to be limited by its own moderation, must either be lost or find more distinct and satisfactory Limitations.”[1]

–          “Untried forms of Government may, to unstable minds, recommend themselves even by their novelty. But you will do well to remember, that England has been great and happy under the present limited Monarchy (subsisting in more or less vigour and purity) for several hundred years.”[2]

–          “Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions; any bungler can add to the old. But is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions, than the patience of those who are to bear them?”[3]

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is a well-known British thinker, writer, and politician from the 18^th century, with lasting influence on Western thought and ideologies. Many people will likely be familiar with Burke’s name, and perhaps his famous quote, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

However, Burke never said the quote above, nor anything particularly close to it. Unfortunately, while there has been a great deal of scholarship on Edmund Burke, there is a great distance between meaningful knowledge of the real Edmund Burke and the current awareness of Burke’s life and work.

For example, many will likely think of Burke as an Englishman, and he certainly did serve in the English Parliament. Nevertheless, Burke was actually born in Dublin, and his mother was a Catholic, both of which set Burke apart from many of his Parliamentary colleagues. Given that the national religion was tied to the Church of England, many of his colleagues had developed a strong sense of the traditional, central power flowing from the Crown and the state Church, and organized themselves into a party, the Tories, designed to defend these interests. On the other hand, industrialization and population growth were creating new centers of popular and electoral strength whose supporters, the Whigs, generally pressed for significant reform and resistance to the majority policies of the Tories.

Burke was himself a Whig, but a uniquely well-educated and thoughtful one. He had already traveled Europe and written A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. This work, an examination of how and why we deal with beauty, appearances, and emotions, had a significant impact on European circles of thought, including such preeminent Enlightenment thinkers as Immanuel Kant. Further, Burke was deeply involved with leading intellectuals of England in his own day, such as Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, James Boswell, and Joshua Reynolds.

Due to this intellectual depth and variety, Burke was never quite at home as a simple party advocate. He followed the Whig leadership when they sought to combat the corruption of the Tory party, which was rampant due to its connections to the unscrupulous King George III. There were few Parliamentarians who supported the rights of the American colonists and argued for a peaceful and restrained policy toward them, but Burke led the charge with his famous Speech on Conciliation with America, which once figured prominently in school curriculum due to its rhetorical excellence.

However, Burke found himself increasingly isolated as the Whigs split into groups that embraced different levels of reform. While Burke sought slow and simple changes in the English Constitution, such as admitting Irish Catholics to the vote, other Whigs sought much more swift and sweeping changes, such as admitting all men to the vote immediately. These more radical Whigs supported the French Revolution in its early days, while Burke quickly recognized the violent potential and actuality of that movement.

Consequently, Burke’s best-known writings flow from late in his career; a seasoned politician and rhetorician, he was able to defend the English Constitution vigorously while revealing the dangers of radicalism in ways that still resonate today. Unfortunately, for Burke, some of the emotional power in these writings may come from personal tragedy. His son, Richard Burke, for whom Burke had actively smoothed the way to a legislative career, died of illness at 36, before entering onto the highest stage of political activity. Burke grieved deeply and was often depressed later in life.

Due to his political independence, Burke never held high office in the English Government, serving only a few years as Paymaster for the English army. Defeated in his advocacy of gentleness towards America, he never saw the reforms of corrupt and restrictive practices he sought in Britain’s administration of India or Ireland. At the time of his death, the French Revolution had been successfully defended against the military assault he supported, and was threatening to overturn the beautiful, growing, and free atmosphere of modern Christian Europe that Burke loved.

Nevertheless, Burke’s work has become increasingly important in political thought and practice, outstripping the influence of all his contemporaries. Burke’s incorporation of natural law and morals in his politics stood out from the corrupt practicality of the other legislators of his day. His brilliant mind allowed him to defend the lasting elements of the English Constitution while advocating valuable changes to make the nation’s government more humane and representative.

As a result, English politicians from the Liberal William Gladstone to the Conservative Winston Churchill have quoted, complimented, and relied on Burke to guide their statesmanship. Burke’s influence here in America has been nearly as great, both on knowledgeable politicians and insightful thinkers. Thus, anyone in the United States, England, or the world seeking to understand the modern era and the political events and thoughts that shaped its birth should become deeply familiar with Burke.

–          (To American Colonists during the Revolutionary War)

““We do not call you Rebels and Traitors. We do not call for the vengeance of the Crown against you. We do not know how to qualify millions of our Countrymen, contending with one hear, for an admission to privileges, which we have ever thought our own happiness and honour, by odious and unworthy names. On the contrary, we highly revere the principles, on which you act, though we lament some of their affects. Armed as you are, we embrace you as our friends, and as our brethren, by the best and dearest ties of relation.

We view the establishment of the English Colonies on principles of Liberty, as that which is to render this Kingdom venerable to future ages. …Those who have and who hold to that foundation of common Liberty, whether on this or on your side of the Ocean, we consider as the true and only Englishmen. Those who depart from it, whether there or here, are attainted, corrupted in blood, and wholly fallen from their original rank and value. They are the real rebels to the fair constitution and just supremacy of England.”[4]

–          “When officers are removed, and the offices remain, you may set the gratitude of some against the anger of others; you may oppose the friends you oblige against the enemies you provoke. But services of the present sort create no attachments. The individual good felt in a public benefit, is comparatively so small, and comes round through such an involved labyrinth of intricate and tedious revolutions; whilst a present personal detriment is so heavy where it fall, and so instant in its operation, that the cold commendation of a public advantage never was, and never will be, a match for the quick sensibility of a private loss”[5]

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[1] Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. Paul Lankford, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 275.

[2] Ibid, 283.

[3] Ibid, 486.

[4] Ibid, 282.

[5] Ibid, 485.