ABSTRACT
To appreciate fully Burke's appeals to the Natural Law in Irish, American, domestic, and Indian affairs, it is necessary to understand the historical conditions and immediate circumstances which called forth his pleas, and to examine the manner in which Burke sought to establish the principles of Natural Law through practical political action. The long-standing great political pretexts for exercising arbitrary power were that the Irish people were by nature turbulent, and that the authority of the English state had to be maintained. Burke knew that the ultimate grounds for persecuting Ireland were religious, and in appealing to the Natural Law against the arbitrary will of rulers he defended the religious rights of Ireland's Catholics on the same grounds that he defended the Protestant Dissenters' claims of conscience in the Relief Bill of 1773. Burke applied the same Natural Law principles in attacking the economic restrictions and civil disabilities imposed upon Ireland.
