Edmund Burke

191 Pages·1974·88.655 MB·English

by  Isaac Kramnick

N
GREAT LIVES OBSERVED
Gerald Emanuel Stearn, General Editor
EACH VOLUME IN THE SERIES VIEWS THE CHARACTER AND
ACHIEVEMENT OF A GREAT WORLD FIGURE IN THREE PERSPEC-
TIVES-THROUGH HIS OWN WORDS, THROUGH THE OPINIONS ·
OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES, AND THROUGH RETROSPECTIVE
JUDGMENTS-THUS COMBINING THE INTIMACY OF AUTOBI-
OGRAPHY, THE IMMEDIACY OF EYEWITNESS OBSERVATION,
AND THE OBJECTIVITY OF MODERN SCHOLARSHIP.
lsAAc KRAMNICK, editor of this volume in the Great Lives
Observed series, is Professor of Government at Cornell
University. Author of Bolingbroke and His Circle: The
Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole, Professor
Kramnick is now at work on a study of English social
thought in the second half of the eighteenth century.

GREAT LIVES OBSERVED
Edmund Burke
Edited by ISAAC KRAMNICK
I am not going to make an idle panegyric on Burke (he has
no need of it); but I cannot help looking upon him as the chief
boast and ornament of the English House of Commons.
What has been said of him is, I think, strictly true, that "he
was the most eloquent man of his time: his wisdom
was greater than his eloquence."
-WILLIAM HAzr.IIT, 180.,
fibrary
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AS PECTRUM BOOK
PRENTICE-HALL, INC., ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
:KRAMNICK, ISAAC, comp.
Edmund Burke.
(Great lives observed) (A Spectrum Book)
Bibliography: p.
I. Burke, Edmund, 1729?-1797.
DA506.B9K65 1974 942.07'3'0924 [B] 74-12324
ISBN 0-13-090597-6
ISBN 0--13-090589-5 (pbk.)
Unless otherwise indicated,
all quotations from Burke's writings
are from the twelve-volume "Boston" edition,
which was published in 1865-67.
@ 1974 by PRENTICE-HALL, INC.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
A SPECTRUM BOOK
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
PRENTICE-HALL INTERNATIONAL, INC. (London)
PRENTICE-HALL OF AUSTRALIA, PTY. Lru. (Sydney)
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PRENTICE-HALL oF INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED (New Delhi)
PRENTICE-HALL OF JAPAN, INC. (Tokyo)
Contents
Introduction 1
Chronology of the Life of Edmund Burke 11
PART ONE
BURKE LOOKS AT THE WORLD
1
Parliamentary Government 15'
"The Virtue, Spirit, and Essence of a House of Commons,"
15 "Party Is a Body of Men," 17 "The Happiness and
Glory of a Representative," 20
2
The American Revolution 22
"Leave the Americans As They Anciently Stood," 22
3
Radicalism and the Threat to the British
Constitution 31
"I Will Nurse Its Venerable Age," 31 "Rather George III
or IV than Dr. Priestley," 37
4
The French Revolution 40
"You Might Have Repaired Those Walls," 40 "They Have
the Rights of Man," 44 "The Age of Chivalry Is Gone,"
48 "In England, We Give No Credit to Them," 53 "Re-
ligion Is the Basis of Civil Society," 56 "A Perfect Democ-
V
vi CONTENTS
racy Is, Therefore, the Most Shameless Thing in the World,"
59 "The French Spirit of Proselytism," 62 "Rousseau Is
Their Canon of Holy Writ," 67
5
Principles of Society and Social Change 73
"Those Principles of Original Justice," 73 "Having Dis-
posed and Marshalled Us by a Divine Tactic," 76 "To
Provide for Us in Our Necessities Is Not the Power of Gov-
ernment/' 84 "A Blind and Furious Spirit of Innovation,"
88
PART TWO
BURKE VIEWED BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES
6
Character and Achievements 93
"Young Mr. Burk [sic]," 93 "His Irish Accent," 94 "Great-
est and Most Brilliant Parts of Any Person," 96 "A Damned
Wrongheaded Fellow," 98
7
In Parliament 100
"Our Friend Mr. Burke Spoke Divinely," 100 "He Spoke
Too Often," 102
8
The Response to English Radicalism 104
"Had Reason to Doubt His Judgement," 104
9
The "Reflections on the Revolution in France" 109
"Never Was There a Work So Valuable in Its Kind," 109
"It Is in General Thought to Be Madness," 112
CONTENTS / vii
10
The View from America 125
"The Rottenness of His Mind," 125
11
The Literary View 129
••This Is an Extraordinary Man," 129
PART THREE
BURKE IN HISTORY
12
Russell Kirk: Burke and the Philosophy of
Prescription 136
13
C. B. Macpherson: Edmund Burke 154
14
Alexander Bickel: Reconsideration:
Edmund Burke 164
Bibliographical Note 177
Index 179

Preface
My interest in Burke is not derived from any particular
conviction about his relevance for our time or all times, as is claimed
by some. Burke is of his own right a towering figure to be reckoned
with by the student of eighteenth-century English life and thought.
He represents, on the one hand, the continuation of a nostalgic repu-
diation of modernity found earlier in the century, which I have investi-
gated in some of my previous work. And he is also the archenemy of
the radical bourgeois circle of dissenters around Price and Priestley,
whose ideological relationship to the Industrial Revolution of the sec-
ond half of the century I am presently investigating. I have tried in
this Great Lives Observed volume to rescue the English aspect of
Burke from what I take to be the traditional overemphasis on him as
simply the commentator on the foibles of the French.
For help in the preparation of this volume I would like to thank
Mrs. Deborah Astell of London, England, who was of invaluable assist-
ance as she quickly mastered the British Museum, its intricacies of
cataloguing and idiosyncrasies of staff; Mrs. Virginia Brehm for worthy
clerical assistance; and finally, the publisher's anonymous reader for
points well made.