Edmund Burke & the Politics of Reform

Jon Langford outlines conservative insights gained from revolutionary failures.

- Jon Langford

Edmund Burke (1729-97) seems to be a contradictory beast. On the one hand, he is considered by some to be ‘the father of conservatism’; on the other hand, he was an ardent reformer. But the two impulses – conservatism and reform – are not contradictory if there are things to conserve in society as well as things to change. For instance, if a society has a functioning democracy, concerned citizens should be as active in its preservation as in reform. And reform should be a cautious process that improves rather than undermines democracy. Even while identifying faults, we should acknowledge positive attributes. Edmund Burke exemplified this attempt to balance the reforming and the conservative instincts.

Burke was born in Dublin to a Catholic mother and a Church of Ireland solicitor father. He followed the Anglicanism (Episcopalianism) of his father, while his sister followed the Catholicism of their mother. Religion, along with the gentry, were, in Burke’s view, fundamental to civilisation, but he was non-sectarian, and he supported the Catholic Relief bills of 1778 and 1791.

Burke was a member of the British House of Commons from 1766 to 1794, and made his mark there as an orator and political theorist. Nowadays, he is most remembered for his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a conservative tract written in reaction to the radicalism of the French Revolution begun the year before. Yet as a reformer he successfully spearheaded change, limiting royal control of government in Britain, and supported foreign causes such as the American Revolution, greater independence for Ireland, and better practise in the East India Company rule of India.

This article will lay out Burke’s arguments for conservative caution, then extrapolate from these to suggest some general principles for reformers today.