Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) was an Irish-born statesman and political thinker who sat in the British House of Commons for nearly thirty years. Born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, he made his name in London with A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) before entering Parliament as a Whig in 1765. He defended the American colonists, attacked the East India Company and led the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) wrote the founding text of modern conservatism, warning that abstract rights would end in terror. His speeches and letters fill many volumes.