The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence

513 Pages·2014·2.49 MB·English

by  David Bromwich

The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke

Th e Intellectual Life of
Edmund Burke
• • •
From the Sublime and Beautiful to
American In de pen dence
David Bromwich
Th e Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
cambridge, massachusetts
london, eng land
2014
Copyright © 2014 by David Bromwich
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Dean Bornstein
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Bromwich, David, 1951–
Th e intellectual life of Edmund Burke : from the sublime and beautiful to
American in de pend ence / David Bromwich.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0 -6 74- 72970- 4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Burke, Edmund, 1729– 1797. 2. Great Britain— Politics and government—
18th century. 3. Statesmen— Great Britain— Biography. 4. Po litic al
scientists—G reat Britain— Biography. I. Title.
DA506.B9B69 2014
941.073092—dc23
[B] 2013037807
To Georgann Witte
•

Preface
Th e title of this book conveys its purpose. I have tried to answer the ques-
tion, What did it mean to think like Edmund Burke? To a great extent,
Burke’s was a life of ideas, yet he chose a career in politics. Th is is therefore
in some mea sure the biography of a politician. But on matters such as
Burke’s relationships with his family, his series of residences, his fi nancial
arrangements, his lineage starting a generation or two before him, and the
experiences that he had or is likely to have had as a child, the pages that
follow cannot pretend to be a useful guide. Th e same can be said for most
(though not all) of his part icu lar dealings within his party and with other
politicians. Readers interested in those indispensable parts of the history
will profi t, as I have, from the full- length biographies by F. P. Lock, Conor
Cruise O ’Brien, and Carl B. Cone and the recent shorter biographies by
Stanley Ayling and Jesse Norman. I begin with a brief summary of Burke’s
career, in order to provide the largest of signposts, but the life that this
book traces is a life conducted mostly in writings, speeches, and letters.
Interpretation must impose a degree of unity on its subject. But apart
from the necessary conv e nience of a narrative—t hings happened in a
certain order—I seek to understand the originality and the continuities of
Burke’s thinking and not the rise and fall of his fortunes. Th e chapters
here are or gan ized by episode: Burke’s view of the emotions that govern
human nature and his non- rational conception of habit and power, in his
early books on natural society and the sublime and beautiful (Chapters 1
and 2); the credo he wrote for his party and his defense of an idea of party
at a time of civil disorder (Chapter 3); his vindication of constitutional
liberty and his protest against the violence of British policies during the
American war (Chapters 4 and 5); his arguments on representative gov-
ernment and religious toleration, and his accompanying attempt to limit
the power of the crown, during the domestic crisis of the late 1770s and
early 1780s (Chapters 6 and 7). Here and there, episodes overlap, and one
chapter ends later than the next one begins. Notice is given when that
happens, and overall the movement of the book is straightforward.
vii
Preface
Most of my primary sources are easily available in the eight published
volumes of the projected nine-v olume Oxford edition of Burke’s Writings
and Speeches, supervised by Paul Langford, and the ten volumes of Burke’s
Correspondence, supervised by Th omas Copeland. Th e second of these
sources has been especially valuable at every stage of my thinking. Th e pro-
cedure h ere is to quote as much of Burke as possible and to comment ad-
equately on what has been quoted. Th e paraphrases and shorter quotations
are too many to number, or for me to be entirely conscious of, but I supply
endnotes for the location of passages longer than two sentences. Readers
who know Burke only from Refl ections on the Revolution in France, and the
smaller number who know some of his major speeches, have not yet been
introduced to the scope and depth of his genius. Th is book attempts to
characterize his achievement with the fi rsthand evidence of his writings.
Burke’s speeches themselves are often writings, but they come to us in
several forms, including drafts, manuscript notes, newspaper accounts, re-
ports from the parliamentary history, and the pamphlets whose publication
he oversaw. I treat the speeches as writings and have italicized their titles
throughout, while allowing the condition of a given text to impose limits
on interpretation: a deciphered scrap cannot overturn the inference from a
full- length utterance published with the author’s approval. Eighteenth-
century spelling and punctuation were less regular than ours, and I have
not purged any idiosyncrasies except in cases where the anomaly would
force on the reader an inordinately long and distracting pause. I prefer not
to crowd the text with inserted references and names of consulted sources
but have taken care to register my strong reliance on a par ticu lar source
where it occurs, as, for example, with Arthur Cash on the career of Wilkes
and Herbert Butterfi eld on the insurrectionary threat of the years 1779–
1780. A second volume will take up the rest of the story: from Burke’s at-
tempt to reform the government of British India to his pamphlets against
the French Revolution. Burke’s tract on the popery laws, chronologically
appropriate h ere but digressive, has been deferred for consideration in the
relevant context in the sequel.
As for the claim of my subject on a reader today, I cannot do better
than the advertisement by French Laurence and Walker King in their
1803 edition of Burke’s Works (Vol. 1, pp. xx– xxi): “Th e period during which
viii
Preface
he fl ourished was one of the most memorable of our annals. It compre-
hended the acquisition of one empire in the east, the loss of another in the
west, and the total subversion of the ancient system of Eu rope by the French
Revolution; with all which events the history of his life is necessarily and
intimately connected; as indeed it also is, much more than is generally
known, with the state of literature and the elegant arts.” Laurence and
King added a warning, which I hope I have taken to heart: “Such a sub-
ject of biography cannot be dismissed with a slight and rapid touch; nor
can it be treated in a manner worthy of it, from the information, however
authentick and extensive, which the industry of any one man may have
accumulated.”
A seminar on Burke that I taught occasionally at Yale University has
infl uenced my approach, and I owe much to perceptions that could only
have sprung from that collaborative setting. I was fortunate to have the
opportunity to test some elements of the argument in 1995 at the Gauss
Seminars in Criticism at Prince ton University. Th e staff s of the Beinecke
Library at Yale, the Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, the
British Library, the Sheffi eld Archives, the Libraries of the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, and the Houghton Collection at Harvard
University w ere resourceful in locating materials that added to the interest
of the book. For support of various kinds, I thank Winifred Amaturo,
Akeel Bilgrami, Sir David Cannadine, Judith Hawley, Philip Horne,
David Quint, Carol Rovane, Alexander Welsh, and Ruth Yeazell. Conver-
sations with George Kateb over many years played a considerable part in
defi ning my emphasis. For informal comments that deepened my under-
standing of Burke, I am indebted to Ross Borden, Richard Bourke, Linda
Colley, Ian Crowe, John Dunn, Harvey Mansfi eld, Uday Mehta, Jennifer
Pitts, and Jeff rey Stout. Conor Cruise O’Brien off ered a warm response to a
lecture on Refl ections on the Revolution in France and King Lear, which
prompted further work on similar lines. I discussed the plan of the book
in its early stages with a teacher, colleague, and friend, Martin Price, and
now regret that I will not be able to put a copy in his hands.
Among scholars of the eigh teenth century, my largest debt is to John
Faulkner. He provided a constant fund of observations and recommended
readings, and in going over all the chapters he has detected inaccuracies,
ix