EDMUND BURKE

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

EDMUND BURKE was born in 1729. He was the son of an attorney of Dublin. His mother was a Roman Catholic, but he was brought up in the Protestant faith of his father. He was sent to a Quaker school, and at the age of fourteen entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied a variety of subjects with diligence and enthusiasm, though in a somewhat desultory fashion. Of the Latin authors with whom he made himself familiar, he gave especial attention to Cicero. He graduated in 1748, and in 1750 was sent by his father to London to study law. Little is known of his early life in England. After a few years, he abandoned his legal studies, which had never interested him, and devoted himself to literature and politics.

When he was twenty-eight, he married the daughter of his physician, Dr. Nugent. His wife had been a Catholic, but at her marriage accepted her husband's religion. At this time Burke's health was poor and his income was very small. For his services as editor of the Annual Register, he received only £100 a year. He became the private secretary of William Gerard Hamilton, through whose influence he received a pension, but when he quarreled with Hamilton, soon after, he refused to accept it.

When Rockingham became Prime Minister in 1765, he made Burke his private secretary. From this time Burke exercised great influence in the councils of the Whig Party. He was provided with a seat in the House of Commons, as a representative of the Borough of Wendover, and on January 27, 1766, made his first speech in that body, on the question of receiving a petition from the colonies against the Stamp Act. He at once took his place as a speaker of the first rank. Physically he was large and powerful, with

a commanding voice. Although he spoke with an Irish accent, and his gestures were awkward, he was soon recognized as one of the greatest orators who ever addressed the House.

During the Grafton Ministry, he was the life of the opposition to the action of the Government against Wilkes. In his Thoughts on the Present Discontents, he attributed the popular unrest to the policy of the Administration. He objected to the secret sessions of Parliament, and urged the necessity of party loyalty as a check upon the influence of the court. His spirit of loyalty to his party caused him, in 1772, to refuse an offer of the directors of the East India Company to send him to India at the head of a commission to reform the administration of the company.

In 1773, he visited Paris, where he met several of the leaders of French thought who were already busily engaged in arousing that discontent with the old régime which developed into the French Revolution. On this visit, he saw Marie Antoinette, whose sad fate in later years called forth his profoundest sympathy.

In 1774, Burke became representative for Bristol. In that year his party secured a strong recruit in the person of Charles James Fox, who definitely joined the opposition to Lord North. Fox at once became a firm friend and ally of Burke, and joined with him in opposing the Penal Acts of 1774. During the consideration by Parliament of American affairs in the spring of that year, Burke delivered his great Speech on American Taxation.

The interests of the colonies now engrossed his attention. Since 1771, he had been the agent of the Colony of New York, and no man in England better understood the attitude of the Americans. He devoted himself with untiring zeal to the task of convincing Parliament that its colonial policy would end in disaster. In this effort, he delivered his Speech on Conciliation, on March 22, 1775. In 1777, he defended his attitude on American questions in his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.

Burke had no sympathy with those who sought to lessen the influence of the Crown by changing the system of repre