Burke, Edmund

(1729-1797), the English orator and statesman, was born in Ireland, educated in Trinity College, Dublin, and gained attention in literature, especially as the author of a treatise on ‘The Sublime and Beautiful.’? After some years spent as private secretary he was returned to the House of Commons in 1766. In the exciting debates attendant on the American Revolution he took a leading part. He favored constitutional order, freedom, championed the colonies, and held the first rank as an orator and political thinker, In 1774 he de- Myered a great speech on American taxation, and the next year favored strongly a policy of conciliation. In 1782, and again in 1783, he held the office of paymaster of the forces, and draughted Fox's East India Bill. Burke led the attack on Warren Hastings in the House of Commons in 1786-87, and in 1788 was one of the managers in that statesman’s impeachment and made a celebrated speech. Soon after the outbreak of the French Revolution Burke, as a lover of order and conservatism, broke with his friend Fox, denounced the Revolution, and published his ‘Reflections’? on that event. The best biographies are by Prior and Morley.