The dominant Liberal figure of the 19th century was William Gladstone, a towering intellectual moralist with a powerful oratorical style.
When Gladstone, as Liberal Prime Minister, introduced the second reading of the first Irish Home Rule Bill in Parliament on 8 April , he did so with the support of Edmund Burke: he stated that he had come to his conclusion through his readings of Burke, and he expressed a sincere wish that his supporters and detractors would do the same. What followed was a Burkean reading revolution, which had significant results for the legacy of Burke and the identity of the Liberal Unionists, who broke from Gladstone over the question of Irish devolution in Burke was once central to English Literature syllabi in schools and universities.
Here the judgement of benefit, whether ethical or pleasurable, might be harder to discern. In order to make it plain in A Vindication , Burke applied a reductio ad absurdum to principles in theology that he had rejected by showing their consequences for politics. For that is what A Vindication provided.
This short work was written in the persona of the recently deceased Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke — Bolingbroke had been a Tory pillar of the state, and therefore of the church too; but the posthumous publication of his philosophical works revealed that far from being an Anglican, he had not been a Christian—but rather a deist.
A Vindication suggested the ills that Bolingbroke had attributed to the artifice of revealed religion could be paralleled by those generated by civil society. One logic, indeed, was attributable on these terms to both Christianity and civil society: that just as the latter distributed the means of power unequally, so too did Christianity distribute those of salvation unequally for not everyone had heard, and fewer believed, the Gospel.
The deism of Bolingbroke implied the principle that God treated everyone impartially, and that the means to salvation were therefore to be found in a medium available to all, and thus available from the earliest point of human history, namely reason.
It was easy to add, as Burke did, that if the principle that such an original nature was the mature expression of God's ordinances were to be applied to civil society, the normative result would be a regression from complex and therefore civilised forms to a simple society, even to animal-like primitiveness—some of the matter of A Vindication paraphrases Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality Sewell , 97— So Bolingbroke the deist and Bolingbroke the politician could be made to look very much at odds with each other.
This gap offered Burke an opening. Yet it is hard not to recognize that Burke himself was telling the reader, in a way that entered the consciousness all the more forcibly because it accompanied entertainment, that civil society really did involve some evils, just as he identified losses as well as gains from progress in other connexions. Such criticism, taken in itself, is undoubtedly telling. Burke never dissembled the existence of the real misery that he observed in civil society.
Instead, he pointed out that wretched practices could not be detached from the larger pattern of habits and institution in which they were implicated, and that this pattern had a beneficial effect overall. Burke recognized misery, did not deny it, and therefore had a lively sense of the imperfection of arrangements, however civilized they might be.
His sense of duality in nature and society resembles Adam Smith's. Burke's position, therefore, was poised. But it was not merely a matter of pointing out what made for good and what for ill in civil society: it was a matter of responsibility—of choosing morally appropriate words.
This was so for a philosophical reason, because of the very nature of the words involved. Burke's Philosophical Enquiry divided words into three categories. First, there were aggregate words, which signified groups of simple ideas united by nature, e.
Second, there were simple abstract words, each of which stood for one simple idea involved in such unities, as red, blue, round or square. Thirdly, and most importantly for our purpose, came abstract compound words. These united aggregate words and simple abstract words. As such, they did not have a referent that existed in nature. A Philosophical Enquiry argued that no compound abstract nouns suggested ideas to the mind at all readily, and that in many cases they did not correspond to any idea at all, but instead produced in the mind only images of past experience connected with these words.
This category included virtue, vice, justice, honour, and liberty, besides magistrate, docility and persuasion Wecter , — The centrality of such terms to a discussion of civil society requires no emphasis. The obvious inference from Burke's philosophy of language was that to use abstract compound words was less to discuss ideas than to raise images which touched the affections of the listener or reader. To do this could scarcely to be thought part of a speculative activity: the effect would not be cognitive, but practical: not to develop ideas, but to influence conduct.
The question was, with what arrangements were these words, and therefore pleasurable images, to be connected. This understanding of the mind gave speakers and writers an unusually powerful role. It was in their hands to connect words which suggested pro-attitudes with arrangements of their choosing: for these words had did not imply only one set of conceptual contents, because they implied none. If one recollects the propensity to imitation that Burke found in mankind, this choosing was likely also to be leading.
So Burke was exceptionally sensitive to the role of men of letters and public speakers in moulding opinion. By the same measure, he had an unusually lively sense of their responsibilities.
It was they who had the power to guide people to the proper ends, or elsewhere. Guidance need not be directly didactic—indeed, it could not be, because there could be no definitions to expound — but would be a matter of providing a linguistic context which guided listeners and readers to goals that were ethically and politically beneficial.
One crucial approach that Burke himself developed was historiographical. Almost all of Burke's writings and his more important speeches have a strong historical element. That element is cast as a narrative in a way that connects compound abstract words with specific persons and specific transactions.
Burke also wrote avowedly historical works in the years immediately after publishing A Philosophical Enquiry The content of these histories developed the preferences of his youth for improvement by embodying these in a way that made them integral to the origins and continuing character of modern arrangements in the Americas and in England. Indeed, he casually implied a four-stage theory of socio-economic history at a time when Scottish stadial history, except that in Dalrymple's Feudal Property , was either unwritten or unpublished.
But his attention, primarily, lay elsewhere, as appears in An Account of the European Settlements. Edmund's pen is evident in the passages which contrast savagery with civilization. The book emphasized that the coming of Europeans to the New World brought with it a civilizing of savages, who were far from noble, through the agency of institutionalised Christianity.
This implicit distance from the cult of the noble savage, and from primitivism in general, provided an identifiable complement to the implied rejections of A Philosophical Enquiry and the satire about 'natural society' in A Vindication.
A stage of human history rather later than that of savages was delineated within An Abridgement of English History , which Burke wrote after , but did not finish. So far as it goes, this provided a continuous account that ran from the Roman landings to Magna Carta.
Christianity figured again in this narrative as a source of civilization, but the significance of the tale was more complex. This time the story was primarily political, and showed how one of the values most prized by Burke's contemporaries, civil liberty, came to belong to England. The Norman Conquest of England established a powerful executive government and brought with it a uniform system of law; if these two were necessary conditions for the matching grace of civil liberty for all, however, they were not sufficient: the required addition came from an aristocracy, which had been taught the value of liberty by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and which had come to understand that its own power was insufficient to extract the requisite concessions from the crown unless popular support could be won.
Burke's narratives suggested that agencies antipathetic to each other, if properly connected to one another, might produce results that were both intelligible and valuable. One effect amongst several of this conception of cooperative conflict was a rehabilitation of the Roman Catholicism that was the historic heritage of Burke's family. An Account and An Abridgement alike suggested that in its historical time and place Roman Catholicism, and, indeed, clericalism, whether embodied in Jesuit missionaries or in an English archbishop, had been a constituent needed to produce social and political benefits of a fundamental kind.
As an historiographical exemplar, An Abridgement therefore showed an exceptional appreciation of the Middle Ages, which was to cause raptures to Lord Acton. It anticipated both Richard Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance , and, still more, a great work that set the bearings for Anglo-American medievalists for many years, William Stubbs' Constitutional History of England —8.
Burke, however, could not think in terms of an academic historiography, still less one that would be the exclusive intellectual preoccupation of its exponents: neither of these existed in his time. He could think, however, of subtly defusing anti-Roman prejudice in Georgian Britain. Burke himself was not a Roman Catholic, and viewed enquiry into his personal background with alarm and suspicion.
This was sensible enough in a Britain which still subliminally linked civil liberty with Protestantism, and therefore regarded Irishness as a likely pointer to popish subversion of its political values. Burke's argumentative stance always benefited Roman Catholics, but he never found a kind word for the Pope: his was a position which emphasized the priority of civil interests over denominational claims in civil society.
This was a political development of the centrality he gave to the claims of improvement, and of the obvious necessity of its free development for the bettering of the human condition. It also silently defused any papal claim to civil dominance on theological grounds and, more audibly, suggested that the penalisation of Roman Catholic beliefs was wrong if these did not cause Catholics to interfere with others' civil interests. Burke's presumptions about the priority of civil interests and a sense of the possible irrelevance of denominational opinion to civil society suggest a reading of Locke's Letter concerning Toleration and Two Treatises of Government , the latter of which was common, though not prescribed reading at Trinity.
It also implies that the proper terms in which to conceive civil interests are those of natural jurisprudence, because there people are considered without reference to any specific allegiances, religious or otherwise. Burke referred to natural law and natural rights directly when such reference advanced his own arguments, though he made no theoretical contribution to natural jurisprudence until quite late in life.
His creative energies were mostly applied elsewhere. Burke developed his thoughts about civil interests in a work that his executors entitled Tracts on the Popery Laws , which he drafted when he was employed as private secretary to the Chief Secretary for Ireland in the early seventeen-sixties.
After this, Burke became involved more immediately in political practice, and, by one means or another, contributed to it until his death and through the activities of his executors in publishing or reprinting his writings from beyond the grave.
This was one obvious route for practical development, even besides the amenities of status that it brought to Burke. For his view of the compound abstract words involved in civil discussion did not suggest that purely speculative study had unlimited potential either for the mind or for personal satisfaction, because a strictly speculative discussion was likely to be inconclusive at best: such words became more readily intelligible in connexion with the concrete, and therefore the practical.
There was, on this understanding, intellectual benefit in political participation, and, equally, political practice might benefit from the speculative mind. This is likely to seem an implausible position nowadays, when political activity is frenetic, and learning is a matter of speciality; but in the eighteenth century, when an agile mind could manage at least the basics of several branches of learning, and the British legislature was often in session for less than six months each year, it was more plausible.
Political participation, on Burke's understanding, besides its intellectual possibilities, had an ethical potential. To the extent that thinking about politics was necessarily uncertain, the proper conduct of affairs depended upon an honest as well as a capacious mind, and on a well-disposed management of words. It remains to show what Burke learnt from political activity, and what he conferred upon it. The picture is one in which the claims of practice enriched Burke's mind and brought intellectual benefits to practice itself.
Burke's life was spent in parliamentary affairs from the mids, and this made a difference to his style of intellectual activity. The difference made by participation lay not least in his reasons for applying his mind, and consequently in how he did so. The reasons were to influence opinion, both in Parliament and from his position as a member of the legislative, and to determine votes in the House of Commons itself.
The matter common to both of these was Burke's view that words were central to political understanding. An obvious inference from Burke's account of compound abstract words is that to use these is to touch the experience of reader or listener, and that persuasion was unavoidably central to discussing politics: this befitted a practical rather than a speculative subject.
Indeed, these terms implied that the point of discussing politics must be to influence action, and nothing much else. Burke developed great skill in managing words, begun in debating at Trinity and carried forward at other venues, including the House of Commons. As such language was persuasive, its objective was to establish pro-attitudes and con-attitudes in mind of listener or reader. This was not the only philosophical aspect in Burke's political practice.
A major conceptual tool in discussing politics was relation. Relation is one of those terms which was common to both the scholastics and Locke. It denotes both comparison and connexion. Comparison was an invaluable procedure because it enabled events, institutions and persons to be placed in any number of lights which would raise or lower their significance and standing.
Connexion was scarcely less valuable, because the place that someone or something occupied could be used to sustain or criticise their role, as well as to demonstrate the value of co-operative contraries.
Best of all, relation in either sense lent itself to a myriad of uses, for as LeClerc had remarked in his Logic which Burke had read at Trinity relations were beyond counting— sunt autem innumerae relationes Le Clerc , pt. Burke's conception of philosophical history was also fundamental to his political practice.
The manners Burke saw around him in England were continuous with those he had seen in the middle ages, or projected backwards thither, in which a powerful executive government was balanced by other agencies with the effect of securing civil liberty.
Those agencies most obvious in Burke's time had established the sovereignty of Parliament at the Glorious Revolution —9 , implied it in the Bill of Rights , exercised it in the Act of Settlement , and confirmed it by suppressing the attempts made from to to reassert the sovereignty of kings alone. Burke understood law in this arrangement as the guarantor of interests of the governed because it was law passed and secured by Parliament.
It was secured in Parliament by the mutual dependence of Commons, Lords and King. That sovereignty had this public character made the British state a beneficiary of a very high degree of financial credit, and this increased the power of Parliament.
The long, slow movement of British history from a conception of the realm understood as royal property to the state conceived as the expression of public will had in Burke's time reached a stage at which this will was expressed through the decisions of Parliament in a manner heavily influenced by the monarch. Burke's political activities therefore assumed parliamentary sovereignty. If Burke's view of words and relations gave him practical tools, and if parliamentary sovereignty provided him with a practical postulate, what did he assume was the proper end of sovereignty?
We have seen that the relation between sovereign and the governed had for a primary purpose the protection of the latter's civil interests. But the former might also see that there were complications for the latter. Here, opponents may be not only enemies but also co-workers, sharing at least some common assumptions about the system within which their lot was cast, although separated from others by the role required of them.
In that situation, the question becomes, where do you take your place? The answer may depend on your own connexions, and on how you conceive them. Let us turn to how Burke's thinking was informed by his philosophical thinking, especially to his use of relation. Burke's method for written composition often combined i identification of relations, with ii relevant history, and iii treatment in language that would attach pro-attitudes to one side or the other in a difference of opinion.
He excelled in history and loved poetry, but in his father sent him to London to become a lawyer. In London, Burke studied law briefly, but abandoned it in favor of pursuing a career as a writer. He also worked as a secretary for several politicians, writing pamphlets and speeches for them.
In , Burke married the daughter of a Catholic doctor who had treated him. Through his political connections, Burke got a job as the private secretary of Charles Rockingham.
The two men became lifelong friends and political allies. Rockingham saw to it that Burke secured a seat in the House of Commons. Burke immediately plunged into the hot debate in Parliament over repeal of the Stamp Act. This was a tax on newspapers and legal documents in the American colonies. Its purpose was to help pay off the British debt from the French and Indian War in North America, which had ended in The Americans resisted the Stamp Act by boycotting English goods.
Since they lost business, English merchants and manufacturers demanded that Parliament repeal this tax. Rockingham Whigs sympathized with their economic troubles. Burke also favored repealing the tax, but for a different reason. As a matter of principle, he argued that Americans should not be taxed without their consent. He quickly impressed many with his excellent debating skills and speeches.
The Rockingham government repealed the Stamp Act. Soon, Burke became embroiled in a different political controversy. He and other Whigs charged the advisors of King George with funding the election of "placemen" to seats in the House of Commons. The king had appointed these individuals to government-paid jobs that had few or no real duties.
Although historians tend to doubt this "conspiracy" amounted to much, Burke wrote a pamphlet on what he believed was royal tampering with the traditional roles of king and Parliament. Most people in England considered a political party to be, at best, a group that followed a powerful leader, or, at worst, a faction of political schemers.
Burke, however, had a different view of political parties. He defined a party as "a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.
Both the Whigs and their main political rivals, the Tories, consisted mainly of wealthy property owners. The electorate also owned property, as ownership was a requirement for the right to vote. Burke tried to mold the Whigs into a party of principle to respect more rigorously the British Constitution. Unlike the U. Constitution, the British Constitution is not written in one document.
It consists of charters like the Magna Charta, laws, declarations by Parliament, court precedents, and customs. All these elements of the British Constitution, Burke believed, represented the inherited wisdom of past generations.
In , the voters of the seaport of Bristol elected Burke along with one other man as their representatives in the House of Commons. Burke, however, took a principled position on how he would cast his votes.
In a famous speech to the Bristol voters, Burke agreed that their wishes "ought to have great weight. Burke insisted that Parliament was a deliberating "assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole—where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good.
The American colonists continued their cry of "no taxation without representation" in opposing the Townshend duties. The duties were taxes on glass, paper, tea and other imports from Britain. In Ireland, Burke's sympathies were with the persecuted Roman Catholics, who were "reduced to beasts of burden" and asked only for that elementary justice all subjects had a right to expect from their government.
He preferred their cause to that of the Protestant Anglo-Irish, who were striving to throw off the authority of the British Parliament. With Irish nationalism and its constitutional grievances he had little sympathy. As on the American problem, Burke always counseled moderation in Ireland. On the formation of the short-lived Rockingham ministry in March , Burke was appointed paymaster general. But now, when he seemed on the threshold of political achievement, everything seemed to go wrong for Burke.
In particular, his conduct at this time showed signs of mental disturbance, a tendency aggravated by the death of Rockingham in July James Boswell told Samuel Johnson in that Burke had been represented as "actually mad"; to which Johnson replied, "If a man will appear extravagant as he does, and cry, can he wonder that he is represented as mad?
Ever since Rockingham had taken office, the punishment of those accused of corruption in India had been uppermost in Burke's mind. His strong aggressive instincts, sharpened by public and private disappointments, needed an enemy against which they could concentrate. Always inclined to favor the unfortunate, he became convinced that Hastings was the principal source of misrule in India and that one striking example of retribution would deter other potential offenders.
In Burke's disordered mind, Hastings appeared as a monster of iniquity; he listened uncritically to any complaint against him; and the vehemence with which he prosecuted the impeachment indicates the depth of his emotions. His violent language and intemperate charges alienated independent men and convinced his own party that he was a political liability.
Disappointment and nostalgia colored Burke's later years. He was the first to appreciate the significance of the French Revolution and to apply it to English conditions. In February he warned the Commons: "In France a cruel, blind, and ferocious democracy had carried all before them; their conduct, marked with the most savage and unfeeling barbarity, had manifested no other system than a determination to destroy all order, subvert all arrangement, and reduce every rank and description of men to one common level.
Burke had England and his own disappointments in mind when he published Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings of Certain Societies in London in In part the Reflections is also Burke's apologia for his devotion to Rockingham. For Rockingham's cause Burke had sacrificed his material interests through 16 long years of profitless opposition, and when his party at last came to power he failed to obtain any lasting advantage for himself or his family.
In the famous passage on Marie Antoinette in the Reflections, Burke, lamenting the passing of the "age of chivalry," perhaps unconsciously described his own relations with the Whig aristocrats: "Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. For the last 5 years of his life Burke occupied a unique position.
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