ABSTRACT
Burke, Edmund (1729-97). Irish statesman and man of letters. Born in Dublin. Entered Parliament at the end of 1765, where he acted as a spokesman for the Whigs. In 1770, he published Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents, which was an attack on the unreformed Commons, royal patronage and corruption. He criticized the Government’s policy during the American War of Independence. He denounced the misuse of power in India by the East India Company, and took a leading role in the impeachment trial of the Governor General of British India, Warren Hastings. By the end of the 1780s, he increasingly disagreed with his old friend Fox and the reformist faction of the Whigs. His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) was the most influential of the criticisms on the French Revolution. It sold an estimated 19 000 copies and sparked at least 100 pamphlet replies.
