Edmund Burke was an Irish writer and statesman. He was born in 1729 at Dublin and died in 1797. After studying at Trinity College in Dublin, he moved to London and studied law at the Temple. He applied himself more to literature than to law, and in 1756 published his Essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful, which attracted considerable attention, and procured him the friendship of some of the most notable men of the time.
In 1761 he was appointed private secretary to W.G. Hamilton, secretary for Ireland. On his return he was rewarded with a pension of 300 pounds per annum, and obtained the appointment of private secretary to the Marquis of Buckingham, then First Lord of the Treasury, and in 1765 entered Parliament as member for Wendover. as a member of Parliament he advised badly on the question of taxing the American colonies. He was absent from Parliament from 1770, returning in 1774 as member for Bristol, advocating a policy of justice and conciliation towards the colonies. In 1782 he was appointed Paymaster-General of the Forces, shortly afterwards passing his bill for economic reform.
The chief feature in the latter part of Burke's life was his resolute struggle against the ideas and doctrines of the French revolution. His attitude on this question separated him from his old friend Fox, and the Liberals who followed Fox. His famous Reflections on the Revolution in France, a pamphlet which appeared in 1790, had an unprecedented sale, and gave enormous impetus to the reaction which had commenced in England. From this time most of his writings are powerful pleadings on the same side. We may mention An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs; Letter to a Noble Lord; Letters on a Regicide Peace; etc. In 1794 he withdrew from parliament. Three years after, on July the 8th, 1797, he died, his end being hastened by grief for the loss of his only son. Research Edmund Burke
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