BURKE, Edmund, political philosopher and orator: b. Dublin, 12 Jan. (probably) 1729; d. Beaconsfield, England, 9 July 1797. He was the son of a solicitor in good practice. His mother was a Roman Catholic, but he and his two brothers adopted the religion of their Protestant father. Always, however, he was tolerant of Catholicism. At the age of .14 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1748. In this period, as his letters show, he had fits of enthu siasm over various studies —a furor mathe maticus, succeeded by a furor logicus, a furor historicus and a furor poetics. The 17 years between 1748 and 1765, when his career was finally determined by his election to Parlia ment, he spent in different employments. Going to London with the intention of taking up law, he succumbed to the attractions of literature and philosophy. He traveled in England and on the Continent frequented debating clubs and theatres and did more or less hack work for publishers. He printed nothing, however, with which his name is connected till the two books of 1756: (A Vindication of Natural and Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful.) In the first he attempted to refute Bolingbroke's arguments against revealed religion by showing that they might be urged with equal force against the organization of society. In the second he took up a subject much discussed at the time; and though his speculations have been superseded, he has the credit of stimulat ing Lessing to the production of (Laokoon.) Burke also wrote or helped to write an count of the European Settlements in America) (1757), and an (Abridgment of the Histoty of England' (1758). In 1759 he began to edit the Annual Register, with which he was con nected for 30 years. In 1761 he went to Ireland, attached in some indefinite way to William Gerard Hamilton —aSingle-speech' Hamilton who was secretary to the lord-lieutenant After two years in Dublin he returned to Eng land; there he joined the famous Literary Club, with which are associated the names of John son, Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gar rick.
In recognition of his abilities and of the knowledge of politics which he had shown in the Annual Register, he was offered the post of private secretary to Lord Rockingham when the latter became Prime Minister in 1765. In the same year he was elected member of Parliament from Wendover. Within a week or two he made a strong impression with two speeches for the repeal of the Stamp Act. Upon the fall of the Rockingham ministry, Burke, who might have had a place with the new administration, remained with his friends. Turning to their account his literary powers, he began his series of great political tracts. In 1769 he put forth on the Present State of the Nation,' a reply to a pamphlet by George Grenville. In this controversy Burke showed himself a master of the details of revenue and finance. At this time he took part in some transactions which afforded his enemies a handle against him. Though he had been living almost from hand to mouth till he entered Parliament, he bought in 1768 an estate worth upwards of $100,000. The underlying facts have never been determined with complete satisfac tion. This much, however, is dear: Burke lived on terms of intimacy with his brother Richard and a distant kinsman, William Burke. Richard and William, together with Lord Verney, a political patron of Edmund, speculated in stock of the East India Company, and later Richard was engaged in questionable dealings in West Indian lands. That these ventures were shared by Burke has been charged but never proved. On the other hand it can be shown that most of the money for the purchase of his estate he borrowed from Lord Rockingham. After get ting the place, he had to borrow right and left to maintain it. Probably his faults were neither dishonesty in speculation nor venality in Parlia ment, but undue ambition to live as he thought became his position, carelessness and improvi dence, and adherence to 18th century standards of propriety, which in such matters were lower than ours.