Edmund Burke (1729–1797), British statesman, parliamentary orator and political thinker, played a prominent part in all major political issues for about 30 years after 1765, and remained an important figure in the history of political theory. Burke was Irish, born in Dublin in 1729. His father, a solicitor, was protestant, his mother Roman Catholic. He entered Trinity college, Dublin, in 1744, and came to London in 1750. Burke's A Vindication of Natural Society was published in 1756 and in 1757 A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful appeared....

Burke’s political career began in 1765 when he became private secretary to the marquess of Rockingham, then prime minister, and formed a lifelong friendship with that leader. He also entered Parliament in 1765 and there strove for a wiser treatment of the American colonies. In 1766 he spoke in favor of the repeal of the Stamp Act, although he also supported the Declaratory Act, asserting Britain’s constitutional right to tax the colonists. In his famous later speeches On American Taxation (1774) and On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation With America (1775), he did not abandon that position; rather he urged the imprudence of exercising such theoretical rights. At a time when political allegiances were based largely on family connections and patronage and political opposition was generally regarded as factionalism, Burke, in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), became the first political philosopher to argue the value of political parties. He called for a limitation of crown patronage (so-called economical reform) and as paymaster of the forces (1782–83) in the second Rockingham ministry was able to enact some of his proposals....

Although he championed many liberal and reform causes, Burke believed that political, social, and religious institutions represented the wisdom of the ages; he feared political reform beyond limitations on the power of the crown. Consequently, his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) made him the spokesman of European conservatives. His stand against the French Revolution—and, by implication, against parliamentary reform—caused him to break with [Charles James] Fox and his Whigs in 1791. Burke’s Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) shows how closely he approached the Tory position of the younger William Pitt. He withdrew from political life in 1795.

(Biographical information is from The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001 on Bartleby.com, and an ongoing hypertext student project, From Revolution to Reconstruction...and what happened afterwards, started in 1994 by the Department of Humanities Computing, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.)