Richard Bourke - Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke

Empire & Revolution

Empire & Revolution

THE POLITICAL LIFE OF EDMUND BURKE

Richard Bourke

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2015 by Richard Bourke

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Jacket image: Detail of Portrait of Edmund Burke, from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, circa 1769. Image National Portrait Gallery, London.

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-691-14511-2

Empire and revolution : the political life of Edmund Burke / Richard Bourke.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-691-14511-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Burke, Edmund, 17291797. 2. StatesmenGreat BritainBiography. 3. Great BritainPolitics and government18th century. 4. Political scientistsGreat BritainBiography. I. Title.

DA506.B9B66 2015

328.41092dc23

[B]

2014031021

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents

Illustrations

Maps

Figures

Acknowledgements

This book has taken a long time to complete. I have consequently acquired a great many debts in the process of writing and researching it. It is a pleasure finally to record these. I owe particular thanks to colleagues in the history of political thought and political theory, above all to David Armitage, the late John Burrow, Alan Cromartie, Hannah Dawson, John Dunn, Raymond Geuss, Angus Gowland, Knud Haakonssen, Ross Harrison, Jeremy Jennings, Gareth Stedman Jones, Avi Lifschitz, Karuna Mantena, Sankar Muthu, Niall OFlaherty, Philip Pettit, Nicholas Phillipson, Jennifer Pitts, J.G.A. Pocock, John Robertson, Fred Rosen, Silvia Sebastiani, Quentin Skinner, Michael Sonenscher, Tim Stanton, Sylvana Tomaselli, Richard Tuck, Georgios Varouxakis, Richard Whatmore, Donald Winch and David Wootton. The death of Istvan Hont during the final stages of my research has meant that I am unable to thank him in person for the benefit I received from his extraordinary knowledge of political ideas in the eighteenth century.

I have also benefited from conversations over the years with a number of Burke scholars, especially with David Bromwich, Seamus Deane, David Dwan, Iain Hampsher-Monk, Ian Harris, Paul Langford, F. P. Lock, Eamon OFlaherty and Chris Reid. P. J. Marshall, who brings over fifty years experience to the study of Burke, was particularly helpful in reading and commenting on large sections of a draft of the manuscript. I am also grateful to him for making available to me the materials for his edition of volume IV of the Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke.

I would like to thank a number of colleagues whose specialist knowledge guided me. For help with France, I would like to thank Alex Fairfax-Cholmeley, Malcolm Crook, Ultn Gillen, Colin Jones, Munro Price and Michael Sonenscher; with Ireland, John Bergin, Paul Bew, Marielouise Coolahan, Ultn Gillen and Ian McBride; with the common law, Michael Lobban and Wilfred Prest; with eighteenth-century theology, Anthony Milton, Niall OFlaherty and Isabel Rivers; with India, P. J. Marshall; with Britain, Joanna Innes and Steve Pincus; with America, Stephen Conway, who generously read my chapters on the colonies; with Locke, Hannah Dawson; with Hume, James Harris and Paul Sagar; with Tocqueville, Hugh Brogan; with the theory of language, Avi Lifschitz; with Montaigne, Felicity Green; and with Dutch painting, David Solkin and Joanna Woodall. I am grateful to the anonymous readers who reviewed the typescript for Princeton University Press for their scrutiny and advice. I have also greatly appreciated support from John Barrell, Cornelia Cook, Paul Hamilton, Eckhart Hellmuth, Christian Meier, Emer Nolan, Daniel Pick, David Simpson and Maurice Walsh.

The research for this book was made easier by the generous support of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University (2004), the Clark Memorial Library at UCLA (2009), the Beinecke Library at Yale (2010) and the Huntington Library in San Marino (2011). The archivists at the Sheffield Archives, at the National Library of Ireland, and above all at the Northamptonshire Record Office, were indispensable. I am indebted to the AHRC for a terms funded research leave in 2004, and to the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for a Fellowship that I held in the History Faculty at the University of Munich in 20067. I would also like to express my thanks to the School of History at Queen Mary University of London for its constructive collegiality and forward-looking policy on research leave.

Princeton University Press has been exceptionally supportive at all stages. I am grateful to Ian Malcolm, then at Princeton, for commissioning the work. Al Bertrand, the publishing director, has been a sustaining presence. My editor, Ben Tate, has been a model of patience and encouragement. James Pullen, at the Wylie Agency, and before him Theo Collier, delivered indispensable advice. My copy-editor, Frances Brown, indexer Tom Broughton-Willett, and production editor Debbie Tegarden, have been meticulous throughout. The final preparation of the manuscript was undertaken in the conducive environment of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. My thanks are due to the library staff for enabling me to make final checks.

Without Beatrice Collier, to whom my debts are incalculable, the book could not have been written.

Abbreviations

AAC Asian and African Collections (formerly Oriental and India Office Collections), British Library, London.

Add. MSS. Additional Manuscripts, British Library, London.

Archives parlementaires Archives parlementaires de 1787 1860, premire srie (17871799), ed. M. J. Mavidal (Paris: 1875).

Bodl. MSS. Bodleian Library Manuscripts, Oxford.

Cavendish Debates of the House of Commons Sir Henry Cavendishs Debates of the House of Commons during the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain, ed. John Wright (London: 18413), 2 vols.

Cavendish Diary Parliamentary Diary of Sir Henry Cavendish, 17681774, Egerton Manuscripts, British Library, London.

Cavendish Debates 1774 Debates of the House of Commons in the Year 1774 on the Bill for Making more Effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec, ed. John Wright (London: 1839).

Chatham Correspondence Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, ed. W. S. Taylor and J. H. Pringle (London: 183840), 4 vols.

CJJournals of the House of Commons.

Corr. The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. Thomas W. Copeland et al. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 195878), 10 vols.

Correspondence (1844) Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, between the Year 1744 and the Period of his Decease, in 1797, ed. Charles William, Earl Fitzwilliam, and Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Bourke (London: 1844, 4 vols.

EB Edmund Burke.

Eg. MSS. Egerton Manuscripts, British Library.

Grafton, AutobiographyAutobiography and Political Correspondence of Augustus Henry, Third Duke of Grafton, ed. William R. Anson (London: 1898).

Grenville Papers