BURKE, EoNlyNo (1729-97). An English statesman and orator. Ile was born in Dublin, where his father had an extensive practice as an attorney. As a schoolboy he displayed those traits of character and the germs of those pow ers which ultimately gave him greatness. His preparatory training was gained at a school in Ballitore, County Kildare. kept by Abraham Shackleton, a member of the Society of Friends. To this man, whom he always held in affectionate esteem, he believed he owed the best part of his education. In 1743 Burke entered TrinityCollege, Dublin, where he seems mainly to have devoted himself to his favorite studies of poetry, oratory, history. and metaphysics. He made himself ac quainted with Latin writers, particularly with Cicero, whom he accepted as a model 'in elo quence, in policy, in ethics, and philosophy.' In February. 1748, he graduated B.A., and in 1751 took his degree as master of arts. In the inter val (1750), being destined for the English bar, he proceeded to London, to keep his terms at the _Middle Temple, where he had been entered in 1748. To legal studies, however, he never took kindly, and ultimately he abandoned the idea of becoming a barrister. During the years 1750-56 he would appear to have occupied himself mainly in traveling through England and on the Conti nent, enjoying the society of literary men.
When yet at the university Burke had achieved a local reputation for literary talent and elo quence. Among the compositions of his under graduate life the most noticeable perhaps is his translation of the conclusion of the Second Georgic of Vergil, which shows poetic talent of no mean order. His first important publication. however. was the celebrated Vindication of Nat ural Society, written in imitation and ridicule of the style and reasoning of Lord Bolingbroke, in which, with well-concealed irony, he endea vored to confute his lordship's views of society by a reductio ad absurdum. This work, pub lished anonymously in 1756, attracted consider able attention. Soon after, in the same year. ap peared his well-known essay, The Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas on the sub lime and Beautiful—a work which gained the praise of Johnson and Lessing.
The essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, al though of little real value, attained a rapid pop and its author soon found himself court ed by all the eminent men of his time. was already one of his friends; among them he soon could count Reynolds, Soame Jenyns, Lord Lyttelton, Goldsmith. Hume. and Dr. Johnson. Notwithstanding this popularity, his progress continued slow; for three years he had to occupy himself with periodical writing, devoting his lei sure principally to political subjects. What is considered a joint work of Burke and his cousin, William Burke, appeared in 1757—An Account the settlements in Ain erica—and shows how carefully at this date he had studied the condition of the Colonies. During the next year he began his writing for the ;Innual Regis ter, the first volume of which appeared in 1759. In 1761 Nr. W. C. Hamilton ('Single-speech' Hamilton), then Secretary for Ireland, having appointed him his private secretary. lie returned
to Dublin. where. during two years' service, he demonstrated his aptitude for political business, receiving in 1763, in reward for his services, a pension on the Irish establishment of £300, which. however, he did not long enjoy.
Returning to London in 1764, he became a member of the literary club which met at the Turk's Ilead in Gerard Street. and whose history is assoeiated with almost every considerable name in the literature of the period. But literary so ciety did not call off his attention from the chances of a political career. Ile became private secretary to the i\larquis of Rockingham, on his becoming Premier (1765), and entered Parlia ment as a member for Wendover (1766). Here his eloquence at once gave him the reputation of heing'the first man in the Commons.' The Rock ingham Administration, however, lived oulya few months. and with it terminated this, his second political employment. He was successively mem ber for Wendover, Bristol, and 'Mahon; his Par liamentary life extended without intermission to 1794. Twice he held the post of paymaster of the forces, once Rockingham. and again under Lord North. with the standing of a privy councilor. After a career in Parliament remark able for the laboriousness. earnestness, and brill iancy with which every duty was discharged, and extending over nearly thirty years, he retired at last, receiving the thanks of the Commons for his numerous public services, and rewarded by the Government, on the express request of his sov ereign, with pensions amounting in all to several thousand pounds. He administered the office of paymaster of the forces with scrupulous regard to public economy, and sacrificed all the perqui sites of his office, exhibiting a severe integrity then unusual among public men. In his relations with the constituency of Bristol, which was alien ated from him by his advocacy of the claims of the Roman Catholics and of the opening up of the trade of Ireland, he was the first to maintain the doctrine of the independence of Parliamen tary representatives—that they are not machines to vote for measures approved by their constitu encies simply for that reason, but men and think ers chosen by them calmly to eonsider and legis late for the good of the Commonwealth. During his career lie rendered more important service to the cause of humanity than any other man of his time in Europe: he prepared the way for the abolition of the slave-trade, a measure which was destined to ripen to success in the hands of Wil berforce: he advocated the cause of humanity in India against the voracious greed of stockholders, who regarded its millions simply as materials for plunder, and largely contributed to improve the government of that country. Toward America he advocated a policy of justice and conciliation, which had it been adopted would have averted the horrors of the War of Independence, and re tained the Colonies in amity with the mother country. To the advocacy of every cause which he espoused he brought a capacity for patient research that was unlimited, and an eloquence that has seldom been equalled.