EDMUND BURKE. — Born in Dublin in 1729, died at Beaconsfield in 1797. He was one of the most notable figures of the Whig party; in 1765 he became secretary to Prime Minister Rockingham, thus beginning his political career. Both in government and in the House of Commons he maintained his anti-Tory stance: in 1778 he supported the repeal of the restrictions on English and Irish Catholics; between 1772 and 1795 he was a fierce opponent of the slave-trading policy pursued by England in India.
His fame rests chiefly on his writings, especially his battle-cry of 1790, *Reflections on the Revolution in France*. As a political writer he fought on two fronts, against both Enlightenment rationalism and pro-romantic individualism, in his unremitting defence of the concept of an organic-collective society. For Burke, the basis and germ of all sound political sentiment lie precisely in adherence to the social category and in affection for the small group of which the individual is a part within the broader whole. Against the abstract rationalism of the French Revolution he posited an equally abstract conservative method: his historicism, bent on extolling the perfect form of government (that of the English constitution), prevented him from seeing the political-social substratum of the French revolutionary movement.
Both admired and reviled, he became a spiritual nourishment for the writers of the Restoration, who took from him a respect for moral and political traditions that could not be destroyed by revolutionary fury. His opposition to Bolingbroke’s philosophy and his constant anti-atheistic polemic (atheism, in his view, is opposed not only to reason but also to human instinct) were a significant leaven for European religious romanticism.