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A darling of the Left... My hero: Edmund Burke By David Marquand Edmund Burke was one of the most gifted, original and complex people ever to sit in the House of Commons. He still defies classification. Today, he is widely seen as the "father of conservatism". I think that is blinkered nonsense and I passionately dissent from it. John Morley, the Liberal politician and man of letters, wrote an admiring biography of Burke. The great liberal historian Lord Acton thought he belonged with Macaulay and Gladstone as one of the three greatest British liberals. Gladstone himself saw Burke's writings as a "magazine of wisdom". Read more : http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/11/edmund-burke-hero-david-marquand

A darling of the American old right as well. i.e. the old fashioned conservatives (equal to Brit tories).

Re: Edmund Burke ~ " a darling of the Left "... Hmmm ~ that's a novel argument, and a difficult sell, RBSI... Burke was a Rockingham Whig and certainly not a Tory, that is true ~ his political values might loosely correspond to those that we define as being 'Liberal' today... but... he was a staunch defender of traditional order and certainly not a 'progressive' in that respect. His reputation as a 'conservative' largely rests upon his hostility to the Revolution in France, which he bitterly rejected as a method for social transformation. Above all else, Burke valued the maintenance of institutional hierarchy within society, and this he firmly believed should be the responsibilty and duty of the 'elite' and certainly not a concern or a 'right' of the 'common man'. In 1772 Burke wrote a letter to one of his patrons ~ the Duke of Richmond. In it he expressed his sentiments regarding the proper and perennial function of the British aristocracy, I think that you will agree that it is hard to square thinking such as this with rather delusional sentiments of 'the Left' today : “You people of great families and hereditary trusts and fortunes are not like such as I am, who whatever may be the rapidity of our growth ... we creep along the ground... You, if you are what you ought to be, are in my eye the great oaks that shade a country, and perpetuate your benefits from generation to generation.”

how does one get out of rare book society? My fb page is flooded with these notifications -- how do I stop this incessant bombardment of info?

Vibha Joshi : : There might be an FB setting to stop these notifications from being sent to you. But if the daily posts itself are annoying you...the best alternative is to click on 'Leave page/group' which might be on the left-hand side of the RBSI page.

Yes, indeed. His Reflections on the Revolution in France is essential reading. As is his campaign against Warren Hastings's corruption.

Mr Simha ~ Re: ' [Burke's ] campaign againt Warren Hasting's [ alleged ] corruption. ' Yes, Burke's writings and much of his surviving correspondence is required reading not just for those interested in political theory/ philosophy but for those interested in the nature of Georgian society in England.... However, I for one, do not worship the man as a hero (as so many do) ~ largely becuase of his unwarrented pursuit of Warren Hastings. The body of the charges upon which Hastings was obliged to stand trial were compiled,coordinated ,researched, 'trumped up' and recommended by the same man that read them out before the assembled peers, jurors and curious members of the public in Westminster Hall ~ while Hastings knelt before them all ~ that man was, of course, Mr Edmund Burke MP (aided by, amongst others, Philip Francis, a man who held a pathological hatred for Hastings). As I'm sure you know, the trial dragged on for years, became something of political circus, and eventually petered out to a tame conclusion after a fiery start ~ but throughout the period Burke’s rhetoric became ever more personal and savage and he was frequently censured for his ' conduct unbecoming '. Burke called Hastings, at various times ‘a captain-general of iniquity’, ‘a bad scribbler of absurd papers, who could not place two coherent sentences together,’ and ‘a common place dog trot [turd]’; he claimed, absurdly, that Hastings ‘heart was gangrened to the core’ and that he resembled both a ‘great spider of hell’ and a ‘ravenous vulture devouring the carcases of the dead’ ... and much, much more besides. Hastings himself bore the abuse that was hurled at him with much dignity and his stoicism under attack won for him, over time, increasing support. However, perhaps his real feelings towards his adversary were revealed by the curt lines of a poem that he is alleged to have written while withstanding yet another withering assault upon his character from his accuser: ' Oft have I wondered that on Irish ground No poisonous reptiles yet were found; Revealed the secret strands of nature’s work, She saved her venom to create a Burke. ' In the final analysis, after all the bluster and fireworks, the question of whether or not Warren Hastings had presided over an administration in India that was enmeshed and personified by ‘institutional corruption’ came down to a simple vote of ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ . On the 23rd April, 1795, by an overwhelming margin, the House of Lords voted to acquit Hastings on all charges. Burke and his cohorts had failed and he never recovered from this blow to his credibility ~ he was to die only two years later. Modern observers, like ourselves, are left to ponder over this ambiguous historical outcome ~ was there ‘corruption’ in India under Hastings, certainly, was it ‘institutional’, probably not... what cannot be disputed is that Hastings, in many ways a noble, far-sighted and cultivated man, was destroyed by the trial... and he remained bitter until the end of his long life : “I gave you all; and you have rewarded me with confiscation, disgrace and a life of impeachment.”