title: Edmund Burke

text: On 3 November 1774, Burke was elected Member for Bristol, at the time "England's second city" and a large constituency with a genuine electoral contest. At the conclusion of the poll, he made his "Speech to the Electors of Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll", a remarkable disclaimer of the constituent-imperative form of democracy, for which he substituted his statement of the "representative mandate" form. He failed to win re-election for that seat in the subsequent 1780 general election.


title: Edmund Burke

text: In May 1778, Burke supported a Parliamentary motion revising restrictions on Irish trade. His constituents, citizens of the great trading city of Bristol, urged Burke to oppose free trade with Ireland. Burke resisted their protestations and said: "If, from this conduct, I shall forfeit their suffrages at an ensuing election, it will stand on record an example to future representatives of the Commons of England, that one man at least had dared to resist the desires of his constituents when his judgment assured him they were wrong".


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke published "Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol on the Bills relative to the Trade of Ireland" in which he espoused "some of the chief principles of commerce; such as the advantage of free intercourse between all parts of the same kingdom...the evils attending restriction and monopoly...and that the gain of others is not necessarily our loss, but on the contrary an advantage by causing a greater demand for such wares as we have for sale".


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke also supported the attempts of Sir George Savile to repeal some of the penal laws against Catholics. Burke also called capital punishment "the Butchery which we call justice" in 1776 and in 1780 condemned the use of the pillory for two men convicted for attempting to practice sodomy.


title: Edmund Burke

text: This support for unpopular causes, notably free trade with Ireland and Catholic emancipation, led to Burke losing his seat in 1780. For the remainder of his Parliamentary career, Burke represented Malton, another pocket borough under the Marquess of Rockingham's patronage.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke expressed his support for the grievances of the American Thirteen Colonies under the government of King George III and his appointed representatives. On 19 April 1774, Burke made a speech, "On American Taxation" (published in January 1775), on a motion to repeal the tea duty:


title: Edmund Burke

text: Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it...Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it...Do not burthen them with taxes...But if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question...If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body of men will be argued into slavery.


title: Edmund Burke

text: On 22 March 1775, Burke delivered in the House of Commons a speech (published during May 1775) on reconciliation with America. Burke appealed for peace as preferable to civil war and reminded the House of Commons of America's growing population, its industry and its wealth. He warned against the notion that the Americans would back down in the face of force since most Americans were of British descent:


title: Edmund Burke

text: [T]he people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen...They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. The people are Protestants...a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it...My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation—the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke prized peace with America above all else, pleading with the House of Commons to remember that the interest by way of money received from the American colonies was far more attractive than any sense of putting the colonists in their place:


title: Edmund Burke

text: The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war, not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations, not peace to arise out of universal discord...[I]t is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke was not merely presenting a peace agreement to Parliament, but rather he stepped forward with four reasons against using force, carefully reasoned. He laid out his objections in an orderly manner, focusing on one before moving to the next. His first concern was that the use of force would have to be temporary and that the uprisings and objections to British governance in Colonial America would not be. Second, Burke worried about the uncertainty surrounding whether Britain would win a conflict in America. "An armament", Burke said, "is not a victory". Third, Burke brought up the issue of impairment, stating that it would do the British government no good to engage in a scorched earth war and have the object they desired (America) become damaged or even useless. The American colonists could always retreat into the mountains, but the land they left behind would most likely be unusable, whether by accident or design. The fourth and final reason to avoid the use of force was experience as the British had never attempted to rein in an unruly colony by force and they did not know if it could be done, let alone accomplished thousands of miles away from home. Not only were all of these concerns reasonable, but some turned out to be prophetic—the American colonists did not surrender, even when things looked extremely bleak and the British were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempts to win a war fought on American soil.


title: Edmund Burke

text: It was not temporary force, uncertainty, impairment, or even experience that Burke cited as the number one reason for avoiding war with the American colonies. Rather, it was the character of the American people themselves: "In this character of Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole...[T]his fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth...[The] men [are] acute, inquisitive, dextrous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources". Burke concludes with another plea for peace and a prayer that Britain might avoid actions which in Burke's words "may bring on the destruction of this Empire".


title: Edmund Burke

text: Had they been passed, the effect of these resolutions can never be known. Unfortunately, Burke delivered this speech just less than a month before the explosive conflict at Concord and Lexington. As these resolutions were not enacted, little was done that would help to dissuade conflict.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Among the reasons this speech was so greatly admired was its passage on Lord Bathurst (1684–1775) in which Burke describes an angel in 1704 prophesying to Bathurst the future greatness of England and also of America: "Young man, There is America—which at this day serves little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, shew itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world". Samuel Johnson was so irritated at hearing it continually praised that he made a parody of it, where the devil appears to a young Whig and predicts that in short time Whiggism will poison even the paradise of America.


title: Edmund Burke

text: The administration of Lord North (1770–1782) tried to defeat the colonist rebellion by military force. British and American forces clashed in 1775 and in 1776 came the American Declaration of Independence. Burke was appalled by celebrations in Britain of the defeat of the Americans at New York and Pennsylvania. He claimed the English national character was being changed by this authoritarianism. Burke wrote: "As to the good people of England, they seem to partake every day more and more of the Character of that administration which they have been induced to tolerate. I am satisfied, that within a few years there has been a great Change in the National Character. We seem no longer that eager, inquisitive, jealous, fiery people, which we have been formerly".


title: Edmund Burke

text: In Burke's view, the British government was fighting "the American English" ("our English Brethren in the Colonies"), with a Germanic king employing "the hireling sword of German boors and vassals" to destroy the English liberties of the colonists. On American independence, Burke wrote: "I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity".


title: Edmund Burke

text: During the Gordon Riots in 1780, Burke became a target of hostility and his home was placed under armed guard by the military.


title: Edmund Burke

text: The fall of North led to Rockingham being recalled to power in March 1782. Burke was appointed Paymaster of the Forces and a Privy Counsellor, but without a seat in Cabinet. Rockingham's unexpected death in July 1782 and replacement with Shelburne as Prime Minister put an end to his administration after only a few months, but Burke did manage to introduce two Acts.


title: Edmund Burke

text: The Paymaster General Act 1782 ended the post as a lucrative sinecure. Previously, Paymasters had been able to draw on money from HM Treasury at their discretion. Instead, now they were required to put the money they had requested to withdraw from the Treasury into the Bank of England, from where it was to be withdrawn for specific purposes. The Treasury would receive monthly statements of the Paymaster's balance at the Bank. This Act was repealed by Shelburne's administration, but the Act that replaced it repeated verbatim almost the whole text of the Burke Act.


title: Edmund Burke

text: The Civil List and Secret Service Money Act 1782 was a watered-down version of Burke's original intentions as outlined in his famous "Speech on Economical Reform" of 11 February 1780. However, he managed to abolish 134 offices in the royal household and civil administration. The third Secretary of State and the Board of Trade were abolished and pensions were limited and regulated. The Act was anticipated to save £72,368 a year.


title: Edmund Burke

text: In February 1783, Burke resumed the post of Paymaster of the Forces when Shelburne's government fell and was replaced by a coalition headed by North that included Charles James Fox. That coalition fell in 1783 and was succeeded by the long Tory administration of William Pitt the Younger which lasted until 1801. Accordingly, having supported Fox and North, Burke was in opposition for the remainder of his political life.


title: Edmund Burke

text: In 1774, Burke's "Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll" was noted for its defence of the principles of representative government against the notion that those elected to assemblies like Parliament are, or should be, merely delegates:


title: Edmund Burke

text: Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any sett of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.My worthy Colleague says, his Will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If Government were a matter of Will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But Government and Legislation are matters of reason and judgement, and not of inclination; and, what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one sett of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But "authoritative" instructions; "mandates" issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenour of our constitution.Parliament is not a "congress" of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a "deliberative" assembly of "one" nation, with "one" interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of "Parliament".


title: Edmund Burke

text: It is often forgotten in this connection that Burke, as detailed below, was an opponent of slavery, and therefore his conscience was refusing to support a trade in which many of his Bristol electors were lucratively involved.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Political scientist Hanna Pitkin points out that Burke linked the interest of the district with the proper behaviour of its elected official, explaining: "Burke conceives of broad, relatively fixed interest, few in number and clearly defined, of which any group or locality has just one. These interests are largely economic or associated with particular localities whose livelihood they characterize, in his over-all prosperity they involve".


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke was a leading sceptic with respect to democracy. While admitting that theoretically in some cases it might be desirable, he insisted a democratic government in Britain in his day would not only be inept, but also oppressive. He opposed democracy for three basic reasons. First, government required a degree of intelligence and breadth of knowledge of the sort that occurred rarely among the common people. Second, he thought that if they had the vote, common people had dangerous and angry passions that could be aroused easily by demagogues, fearing that the authoritarian impulses that could be empowered by these passions would undermine cherished traditions and established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property. Third, Burke warned that democracy would create a tyranny over unpopular minorities, who needed the protection of the upper classes.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke proposed a bill to ban slaveholders from being able to sit in the House of Commons, claiming they were a danger incompatible with traditional notions of British liberty. While Burke did believe that Africans were "barbaric" and needed to be "civilised" by Christianity, Gregory Collins argues that this was not an unusual attitude amongst abolitionists at the time. Furthermore, Burke seemed to believe that Christianity would provide a civilising benefit to any group of people, as he believed Christianity had "tamed" European civilisation and regarded Southern European peoples as equally savage and barbarous. Collins also suggests that Burke viewed the "uncivilised" behaviour of African slaves as being partially caused by slavery itself, as he believed that making someone a slave stripped them of any virtues and rendered them mentally deficient, regardless of race. Burke proposed a gradual program of emancipation called Sketch of a Negro Code., which Collins argues was quite detailed for the time. Collins concludes that Burke's "gradualist" position on the emancipation of slaves, while perhaps seeming ridiculous to some modern-day readers, was nonetheless sincere.


title: Edmund Burke

text: For years, Burke pursued impeachment efforts against Warren Hastings, formerly Governor-General of Bengal, that resulted in the trial during 1786. His interaction with the British dominion of India began well before Hastings' impeachment trial. For two decades prior to the impeachment, Parliament had dealt with the Indian issue. This trial was the pinnacle of years of unrest and deliberation. In 1781, Burke was first able to delve into the issues surrounding the East India Company when he was appointed Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on East Indian Affairs—from that point until the end of the trial, India was Burke's primary concern. This committee was charged "to investigate alleged injustices in Bengal, the war with Hyder Ali, and other Indian difficulties". While Burke and the committee focused their attention on these matters, a second secret committee was formed to assess the same issues. Both committee reports were written by Burke. Among other purposes, the reports conveyed to the Indian princes that Britain would not wage war on them, along with demanding that the East India Company should recall Hastings. This was Burke's first call for substantive change regarding imperial practices. When addressing the whole House of Commons regarding the committee report, Burke described the Indian issue as one that "began 'in commerce' but 'ended in empire'".


title: Edmund Burke

text: On 28 February 1785, Burke delivered a now-famous speech, "The Nabob of Arcot's Debts", wherein he condemned the damage to India by the East India Company. In the province of the Carnatic, the Indians had constructed a system of reservoirs to make the soil fertile in a naturally dry region, and centred their society on the husbandry of water:


title: Edmund Burke

text: These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people; testators to a posterity which they embraced as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built by ambition; but by the ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, not contented with reigning in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted term of human life, had strained, with all the reachings and graspings of a vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of their bounty beyond the limits of nature, and to perpetuate themselves through generations of generations, the guardians, the protectors, the nourishers of mankind.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke claimed that the advent of East India Company domination in India had eroded much that was good in these traditions and that as a consequence of this and the lack of new customs to replace them the Indian populace under Company rule was needlessly suffering. He set about establishing a set of imperial expectations, whose moral foundation would in his opinion warrant an overseas empire.


title: Edmund Burke

text: On 4 April 1786, Burke presented the House of Commons with the "Article of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors" against Hastings. The impeachment in Westminster Hall which did not begin until 14 February 1788 would be the "first major public discursive event of its kind in England", bringing the morality of imperialism to the forefront of public perception. Burke was already known for his eloquent rhetorical skills and his involvement in the trial only enhanced its popularity and significance. Burke's indictment, fuelled by emotional indignation, branded Hastings a "captain-general of iniquity" who never dined without "creating a famine", whose heart was "gangrened to the core" and who resembled both a "spider of Hell" and a "ravenous vulture devouring the carcasses of the dead". The House of Commons eventually impeached Hastings, but subsequently the House of Lords acquitted him of all charges.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Initially, Burke did not condemn the French Revolution. In a letter of 9 August 1789, he wrote: "England gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for Liberty and not knowing whether to blame or to applaud! The thing indeed, though I thought I saw something like it in progress for several years, has still something in it paradoxical and Mysterious. The spirit it is impossible not to admire; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner". The events of 5–6 October 1789, when a crowd of Parisian women marched on Versailles to compel King Louis XVI to return to Paris, turned Burke against it. In a letter to his son Richard Burke dated 10 October, he said: "This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous state of France—where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world of Monsters to be produced in the place of it—where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable". On 4 November, Charles-Jean-François Depont wrote to Burke, requesting that he endorse the Revolution. Burke replied that any critical language of it by him should be taken "as no more than the expression of doubt", but he added: "You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recover'd freedom". In the same month, he described France as "a country undone". Burke's first public condemnation of the Revolution occurred on the debate in Parliament on the army estimates on 9 February 1790 provoked by praise of the Revolution by Pitt and Fox:


title: Edmund Burke

text: Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures...[There was a danger of] an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy...[In religion] the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed.


title: Edmund Burke

text: In January 1790, Burke read Richard Price's sermon of 4 November 1789 entitled "A Discourse on the Love of Our Country" to the Revolution Society. That society had been founded to commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In this sermon, Price espoused the philosophy of universal "Rights of Men". Price argued that love of our country "does not imply any conviction of the superior value of it to other countries, or any particular preference of its laws and constitution of government". Instead, Price asserted that Englishmen should see themselves "more as citizens of the world than as members of any particular community".


title: Edmund Burke

text: A debate between Price and Burke ensued that was "the classic moment at which two fundamentally different conceptions of national identity were presented to the English public". Price claimed that the principles of the Glorious Revolution included "the right to choose our own governors, to cashier them for misconduct, and to frame a government for ourselves".


title: Edmund Burke

text: Immediately after reading Price's sermon, Burke wrote a draft of what eventually became "Reflections on the Revolution in France". On 13 February 1790, a notice in the press said that shortly Burke would publish a pamphlet on the Revolution and its British supporters, but he spent the year revising and expanding it. On 1 November, he finally published the "Reflections" and it was an immediate best-seller. Priced at five shillings, it was more expensive than most political pamphlets, but by the end of 1790 it had gone through ten printings and sold approximately 17,500 copies. A French translation appeared on 29 November and on 30 November the translator Pierre-Gaëton Dupont wrote to Burke saying 2,500 copies had already been sold. The French translation ran to ten printings by June 1791.


title: Edmund Burke

text: What the Glorious Revolution had meant was as important to Burke and his contemporaries as it had been for the last one hundred years in British politics. In the "Reflections", Burke argued against Price's interpretation of the Glorious Revolution and instead, gave a classic Whig defence of it. Burke argued against the idea of abstract, metaphysical rights of humans and instead advocated national tradition:


title: Edmund Burke

text: The Revolution was made to preserve our "antient" indisputable laws and liberties, and that "antient" constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty...The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as "an inheritance from our forefathers". Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon [scion] alien to the nature of the original plant...Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone, are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove that the ancient charter...were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the still more ancient standing law of the kingdom...In the famous law...called the "Petition of Right", the parliament says to the king, "Your subjects have "inherited" this freedom", claiming their franchises not on abstract principles "as the rights of men", but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke said: "We fear God, we look up with awe to kings; with affection to Parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is "natural" to be so affected". Burke defended this prejudice on the grounds that it is "the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages" and superior to individual reason, which is small in comparison. "Prejudice", Burke claimed, "is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit". Burke criticised social contract theory by claiming that society is indeed a contract, although it is "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born".


title: Edmund Burke

text: The most famous passage in Burke's "Reflections" was his description of the events of 5–6 October 1789 and the part of Marie-Antoinette in them. Burke's account differs little from modern historians who have used primary sources. His use of flowery language to describe it provoked both praise and criticism. Philip Francis wrote to Burke saying that what he wrote of Marie-Antoinette was "pure foppery". Edward Gibbon reacted differently: "I adore his chivalry". Burke was informed by an Englishman who had talked with the Duchesse de Biron that when Marie-Antoinette was reading the passage she burst into tears and took considerable time to finish reading it. Price had rejoiced that the French king had been "led in triumph" during the October Days, but to Burke this symbolised the opposing revolutionary sentiment of the Jacobins and the natural sentiments of those who shared his own view with horror—that the ungallant assault on Marie-Antoinette was a cowardly attack on a defenceless woman.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Louis XVI translated the "Reflections" "from end to end" into French. Fellow Whig MPs Richard Sheridan and Charles James Fox disagreed with Burke and split with him. Fox thought the "Reflections" to be "in very bad taste" and "favouring Tory principles". Other Whigs such as the Duke of Portland and Earl Fitzwilliam privately agreed with Burke, but they did not wish for a public breach with their Whig colleagues. Burke wrote on 29 November 1790: "I have received from the Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord John Cavendish, Montagu (Frederick Montagu MP), and a long et cetera of the old Stamina of the Whiggs a most full approbation of the principles of that work and a kind indulgence to the execution". The Duke of Portland said in 1791 that when anyone criticised the "Reflections" to him, he informed them that he had recommended the book to his sons as containing the true Whig creed.


title: Edmund Burke

text: In the opinion of Paul Langford, Burke crossed something of a Rubicon when he attended a levee on 3 February 1791 to meet the King, later described by Jane Burke as follows:


title: Edmund Burke

text: On his coming to Town for the Winter, as he generally does, he went to the Levee with the Duke of "Portland", who went with Lord William to kiss hands on his going into the Guards—while Lord William was kissing hands, The King was talking to The Duke, but his Eyes were fixed on [Burke] who was standing in the Crowd, and when He said His say to The Duke, without waiting for [Burke]'s coming up in his turn, The King went up to him, and, after the usual questions of how long have you been in Town and the weather, He said you have been very much employed of late, and very much confined. [Burke] said, no, Sir, not more than usual—You have and very well employed too, but there are none so deaf as those that w'ont hear, and none so blind as those that w'ont see—[Burke] made a low bow, Sir, I certainly now understand you, but was afraid my vanity or presumption might have led me to imagine what Your Majesty has said referred to what I have done—You cannot be vain—You have been of "use to us all", it is a general opinion, is it not so Lord Stair? who was standing near. It is said Lord Stair;—Your Majesty's adopting it, Sir, will make the opinion general, said [Burke]—I know it is the general opinion, and I know that there is no Man who calls himself a Gentleman that must not think himself obliged to you, for you have supported the cause of the Gentlemen—You know the tone at Court is a whisper, but The King said all this loud, so as to be heard by every one at Court.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke's "Reflections" sparked a pamphlet war. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the first into print, publishing "A Vindication of the Rights of Men" a few weeks after Burke. Thomas Paine followed with the "Rights of Man" in 1791. James Mackintosh, who wrote "Vindiciae Gallicae", was the first to see the "Reflections" as "the manifesto of a Counter Revolution". Mackintosh later agreed with Burke's views, remarking in December 1796 after meeting him that Burke was "minutely and accurately informed, to a wonderful exactness, with respect to every fact relating to the French Revolution". Mackintosh later said: "Burke was one of the first thinkers as well as one of the greatest orators of his time. He is without parallel in any age, excepting perhaps Lord Bacon and Cicero; and his works contain an ampler store of political and moral wisdom than can be found in any other writer whatever".


title: Edmund Burke

text: In November 1790, François-Louis-Thibault de Menonville, a member of the National Assembly of France, wrote to Burke, praising "Reflections" and requesting more "very refreshing mental food" that he could publish. This Burke did in April 1791 when he published "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly". Burke called for external forces to reverse the Revolution and included an attack on the late French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau as being the subject of a personality cult that had developed in revolutionary France. Although Burke conceded that Rousseau sometimes showed "a considerable insight into human nature", he mostly was critical. Although he did not meet Rousseau on his visit to Britain in 1766–1767, Burke was a friend of David Hume, with whom Rousseau had stayed. Burke said Rousseau "entertained no principle either to influence of his heart, or to guide his understanding—but "vanity""—which he "was possessed to a degree little short of madness". He also cited Rousseau's "Confessions" as evidence that Rousseau had a life of "obscure and vulgar vices" that was not "chequered, or spotted here and there, with virtues, or even distinguished by a single good action". Burke contrasted Rousseau's theory of universal benevolence and his having sent his children to a foundling hospital, stating that he was "a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred".


title: Edmund Burke

text: These events and the disagreements that arose from them within the Whig Party led to its break-up and to the rupture of Burke's friendship with Fox. In debate in Parliament on Britain's relations with Russia, Fox praised the principles of the Revolution, although Burke was not able to reply at this time as he was "overpowered by continued cries of question from his own side of the House". When Parliament was debating the Quebec Bill for a constitution for Canada, Fox praised the Revolution and criticised some of Burke's arguments such as hereditary power. On 6 May 1791, Burke used the opportunity to answer Fox during another debate in Parliament on the Quebec Bill and condemn the new French Constitution and "the horrible consequences flowing from the French idea of the Rights of Man". Burke asserted that those ideas were the antithesis of both the British and the American constitutions. Burke was interrupted and Fox intervened, saying that Burke should be allowed to carry on with his speech. However, a vote of censure was moved against Burke for noticing the affairs of France which was moved by Lord Sheffield and seconded by Fox. Pitt made a speech praising Burke and Fox made a speech—both rebuking and complimenting Burke. He questioned the sincerity of Burke, who seemed to have forgotten the lessons he had learned from him, quoting from Burke's own speeches of fourteen and fifteen years before. Burke's response was as follows:


title: Edmund Burke

text: It certainly was indiscreet at any period, but especially at his time of life, to parade enemies, or give his friends occasion to desert him; yet if his firm and steady adherence to the British constitution placed him in such a dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public duty and public experience taught him, with his last words exclaim, "Fly from the French Constitution".


title: Edmund Burke

text: At this point, Fox whispered that there was "no loss of friendship". "I regret to say there is", Burke replied, "I have indeed made a great sacrifice; I have done my duty though I have lost my friend. There is something in the detested French constitution that envenoms every thing it touches". This provoked a reply from Fox, yet he was unable to give his speech for some time since he was overcome with tears and emotion. Fox appealed to Burke to remember their inalienable friendship, but he also repeated his criticisms of Burke and uttered "unusually bitter sarcasms". This only aggravated the rupture between the two men. Burke demonstrated his separation from the party on 5 June 1791 by writing to Fitzwilliam, declining money from him.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke was dismayed that some Whigs, instead of reaffirming the principles of the Whig Party he laid out in the "Reflections", had rejected them in favour of "French principles" and that they criticised Burke for abandoning Whig principles. Burke wanted to demonstrate his fidelity to Whig principles and feared that acquiescence to Fox and his followers would allow the Whig Party to become a vehicle for Jacobinism.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke knew that many members of the Whig Party did not share Fox's views and he wanted to provoke them into condemning the French Revolution. Burke wrote that he wanted to represent the whole Whig Party "as tolerating, and by a toleration, countenancing those proceedings" so that he could "stimulate them to a public declaration of what every one of their acquaintance privately knows to be...their sentiments". On 3 August 1791, Burke published his "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs" in which he renewed his criticism of the radical revolutionary programmes inspired by the French Revolution and attacked the Whigs who supported them as holding principles contrary to those traditionally held by the Whig Party.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke owned two copies of what has been called "that practical compendium of Whig political theory", namely "The Tryal of Dr. Henry Sacheverell" (1710). Burke wrote of the trial: "It rarely happens to a party to have the opportunity of a clear, authentic, recorded, declaration of their political tenets upon the subject of a great constitutional event like that of the [Glorious] Revolution". Writing in the third person, Burke asserted in his "Appeal":


title: Edmund Burke

text: [The] foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,—a breach of the "original contract", implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords and Commons.—That the fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution. That it was justified "only" upon the "necessity" of the case; as the "only" means left for the recovery of that "antient" constitution, formed by the "original contract" of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the "same" government. These are the points to be proved.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke then provided quotations from Paine's "Rights of Man" to demonstrate what the New Whigs believed. Burke's belief that Foxite principles corresponded to Paine's was genuine. Finally, Burke denied that a majority of "the people" had, or ought to have, the final say in politics and alter society at their pleasure. People had rights, but also duties and these duties were not voluntary. According to Burke, the people could not overthrow morality derived from God.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Although Whig grandees such as Portland and Fitzwilliam privately agreed with Burke's "Appeal", they wished he had used more moderate language. Fitzwilliam saw the "Appeal" as containing "the doctrines I have sworn by, long and long since". Francis Basset, a backbench Whig MP, wrote to Burke that "though for reasons which I will not now detail I did not then deliver my sentiments, I most perfectly differ from Mr. Fox & from the great Body of opposition on the French Revolution". Burke sent a copy of the "Appeal" to the King and the King requested a friend to communicate to Burke that he had read it "with great Satisfaction". Burke wrote of its reception: "Not one word from one of our party. They are secretly galled. They agree with me to a title; but they dare not speak out for fear of hurting Fox...They leave me to myself; they see that I can do myself justice". Charles Burney viewed it as "a most admirable book—the best & most useful on political subjects that I have ever seen", but he believed the differences in the Whig Party between Burke and Fox should not be aired publicly.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Eventually, most of the Whigs sided with Burke and gave their support to William Pitt the Younger's Tory government which in response to France's declaration of war against Britain declared war on France's Revolutionary Government in 1793.


title: Edmund Burke

text: In December 1791, Burke sent government ministers his "Thoughts on French Affairs" where he put forward three main points, namely that no counter-revolution in France would come about by purely domestic causes; that the longer the Revolutionary Government exists, the stronger it becomes; and that the Revolutionary Government's interest and aim is to disturb all of the other governments of Europe.


title: Edmund Burke

text: As a Whig, Burke did not wish to see an absolute monarchy again in France after the extirpation of Jacobinism. Writing to an "émigré" in 1791, Burke expressed his views against a restoration of the "Ancien Régime":


title: Edmund Burke

text: When such a complete convulsion has shaken the State, and hardly left any thing whatsoever, either in civil arrangements, or in the Characters and disposition of men's minds, exactly where it was, whatever shall be settled although in the former persons and upon old forms, will be in some measure a new thing and will labour under something of the weakness as well as other inconveniences of a Change. My poor opinion is that you mean to establish what you call 'L'ancien Régime,' If any one means that system of Court Intrigue miscalled a Government as it stood, at Versailles before the present confusions as the thing to be established, that I believe will be found absolutely impossible; and if you consider the Nature, as well of persons, as of affairs, I flatter myself you must be of my opinion. That was tho' not so violent a State of Anarchy as well as the present. If it were even possible to lay things down exactly as they stood, before the series of experimental politicks began, I am quite sure that they could not long continue in that situation. In one Sense of L'Ancien Régime I am clear that nothing else can reasonably be done.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke delivered a speech on the debate of the Aliens Bill on 28 December 1792. He supported the Bill as it would exclude "murderous atheists, who would pull down Church and state; religion and God; morality and happiness". The peroration included a reference to a French order for 3,000 daggers. Burke revealed a dagger he had concealed in his coat and threw it to the floor: "This is what you are to gain by an alliance with France". Burke picked up the dagger and continued:


title: Edmund Burke

text: When they smile, I see blood trickling down their faces; I see their insidious purposes; I see that the object of all their cajoling is—blood! I now warn my countrymen to beware of these execrable philosophers, whose only object it is to destroy every thing that is good here, and to establish immorality and murder by precept and example—'Hic niger est hunc tu Romane caveto' ['Such a man is evil; beware of him, Roman'. Horace, "Satires" I. 4. 85.].


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke supported the war against Revolutionary France, seeing Britain as fighting on the side of the royalists and "émigres" in a civil war, rather than fighting against the whole nation of France. Burke also supported the royalist uprising in La Vendée, describing it on 4 November 1793 in a letter to William Windham as "the sole affair I have much heart in". Burke wrote to Henry Dundas on 7 October urging him to send reinforcements there as he viewed it as the only theatre in the war that might lead to a march on Paris, but Dundas did not follow Burke's advice.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke believed the British government was not taking the uprising seriously enough, a view reinforced by a letter he had received from the Prince Charles of France ("S.A.R. le comte d'Artois"), dated 23 October, requesting that he intercede on behalf of the royalists to the government. Burke was forced to reply on 6 November: "I am not in His Majesty's Service; or at all consulted in his Affairs". Burke published his "Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with Respect to France", begun in October, where he said: "I am sure every thing has shewn us that in this war with France, one Frenchman is worth twenty foreigners. La Vendée is a proof of this".


title: Edmund Burke

text: On 20 June 1794, Burke received a vote of thanks from the House of Commons for his services in the Hastings Trial and he immediately resigned his seat, being replaced by his son Richard. A tragic blow fell upon Burke with the loss of Richard in August 1794, to whom he was tenderly attached and in whom he saw signs of promise which were not patent to others and which in fact appear to have been non-existent, although this view may have rather reflected the fact that his son Richard had worked successfully in the early battle for Catholic emancipation. King George III, whose favour he had gained by his attitude on the French Revolution, wished to create him Earl of Beaconsfield, but the death of his son deprived the opportunity of such an honour and all its attractions, so the only award he would accept was a pension of £2,500. Even this modest reward was attacked by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to whom Burke replied in his "Letter to a Noble Lord" (1796): "It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, "To innovate is not to reform"". He argued that he was rewarded on merit, but the Duke of Bedford received his rewards from inheritance alone, his ancestor being the original pensioner: "Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his from Henry the Eighth". Burke also hinted at what would happen to such people if their revolutionary ideas were implemented and included a description of the British Constitution:


title: Edmund Burke

text: But as to "our" country and "our" race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land—so long as the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke's last publications were the "Letters on a Regicide Peace" (October 1796), called forth by negotiations for peace with France by the Pitt government. Burke regarded this as appeasement, injurious to national dignity and honour. In his "Second Letter", Burke wrote of the French Revolutionary government: "Individuality is left out of their scheme of government. The State is all in all. Everything is referred to the production of force; afterwards, everything is trusted to the use of it. It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The State has dominion and conquest for its sole objects—dominion over minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms".


title: Edmund Burke

text: This is held to be the first explanation of the modern concept of totalitarian state. Burke regarded the war with France as ideological, against an "armed doctrine". He wished that France would not be partitioned due to the effect this would have on the balance of power in Europe and that the war was not against France, but against the revolutionaries governing her. Burke said: "It is not France extending a foreign empire over other nations: it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning with the conquest of France".


title: Edmund Burke

text: In November 1795, there was a debate in Parliament on the high price of corn and Burke wrote a memorandum to Pitt on the subject. In December, Samuel Whitbread MP introduced a bill giving magistrates the power to fix minimum wages and Fox said he would vote for it. This debate probably led Burke to editing his memorandum as there appeared a notice that Burke would soon publish a letter on the subject to the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture Arthur Young, but he failed to complete it. These fragments were inserted into the memorandum after his death and published posthumously in 1800 as "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity". In it, Burke expounded "some of the doctrines of political economists bearing upon agriculture as a trade". Burke criticised policies such as maximum prices and state regulation of wages and set out what the limits of government should be:


title: Edmund Burke

text: That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is "truly and properly" public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.


title: Edmund Burke

text: The economist Adam Smith remarked that Burke was "the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us".


title: Edmund Burke

text: Writing to a friend in May 1795, Burke surveyed the causes of discontent: "I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland; or of Indianism [i.e. corporate tyranny, as practiced by the British East Indies Company], as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil". By March 1796, Burke had changed his mind: "Our Government and our Laws are beset by two different Enemies, which are sapping its foundations, Indianism, and Jacobinism. In some Cases they act separately, in some they act in conjunction: But of this I am sure; that the first is the worst by far, and the hardest to deal with; and for this amongst other reasons, that it weakens discredits, and ruins that force, which ought to be employed with the greatest Credit and Energy against the other; and that it furnishes Jacobinism with its strongest arms against all "formal" Government".


title: Edmund Burke

text: For more than a year prior to his death, Burke knew that his stomach was "irrecoverably ruind". After hearing that Burke was nearing death, Fox wrote to Mrs. Burke enquiring after him. Fox received the reply the next day:


title: Edmund Burke

text: Mrs. Burke presents her compliments to Mr. Fox, and thanks him for his obliging inquiries. Mrs. Burke communicated his letter to Mr. Burke, and by his desire has to inform Mr. Fox that it has cost Mr. Burke the most heart-felt pain to obey the stern voice of his duty in rending asunder a long friendship, but that he deemed this sacrifice necessary; that his principles continue the same; and that in whatever of life may yet remain to him, he conceives that he must live for others and not for himself. Mr. Burke is convinced that the principles which he has endeavoured to maintain are necessary to the welfare and dignity of his country, and that these principles can be enforced only by the general persuasion of his sincerity.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on 9 July 1797 and was buried there alongside his son and brother.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke is regarded by most political historians in the English-speaking world as a liberal conservative and the father of modern British conservatism. Burke was utilitarian and empirical in his arguments while Joseph de Maistre, a fellow conservative from the Continent, was more providentialist and sociological and deployed a more confrontational tone in his arguments.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke believed that property was essential to human life. Because of his conviction that people desire to be ruled and controlled, the division of property formed the basis for social structure, helping develop control within a property-based hierarchy. He viewed the social changes brought on by property as the natural order of events which should be taking place as the human race progressed. With the division of property and the class system, he also believed that it kept the monarch in check to the needs of the classes beneath the monarch. Since property largely aligned or defined divisions of social class, class too was seen as natural—part of a social agreement that the setting of persons into different classes, is the mutual benefit of all subjects. Concern for property is not Burke's only influence. Christopher Hitchens summarises as follows: "If modern conservatism can be held to derive from Burke, it is not just because he appealed to property owners in behalf of stability but also because he appealed to an everyday interest in the preservation of the ancestral and the immemorial".


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke's support for the causes of the "oppressed majorities", such as Irish Catholics and Indians, led him to be at the receiving end of hostile criticism from Tories; while his opposition to the spread of the French Republic (and its radical ideals) across Europe led to similar charges from Whigs. As a consequence, Burke often became isolated in Parliament.


title: Edmund Burke

text: In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both liberals and conservatives. Burke's friend Philip Francis wrote that Burke "was a man who truly & prophetically foresaw all the consequences which would rise from the adoption of the French principles", but because Burke wrote with so much passion, people were doubtful of his arguments. William Windham spoke from the same bench in the House of Commons as Burke had when he had separated from Fox and an observer said Windham spoke "like the ghost of Burke" when he made a speech against peace with France in 1801. William Hazlitt, a political opponent of Burke, regarded him as amongst his three favourite writers (the others being Junius and Rousseau) and made it "a test of the sense and candour of any one belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to be a great man". William Wordsworth was originally a supporter of the French Revolution and attacked Burke in "A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff" (1793), but by the early 19th century he had changed his mind and came to admire Burke. In his "Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmorland", Wordsworth called Burke "the most sagacious Politician of his age", whose predictions "time has verified". He later revised his poem "The Prelude" to include praise of Burke ("Genius of Burke! forgive the pen seduced/By specious wonders") and portrayed him as an old oak. Samuel Taylor Coleridge came to have a similar conversion as he had criticised Burke in "The Watchman", but in his "Friend" (1809–1810) had defended Burke from charges of inconsistency. Later in his "Biographia Literaria" (1817), Coleridge hails Burke as a prophet and praises Burke for referring "habitually to "principles". He was a "scientific" statesman; and therefore a "seer"". Henry Brougham wrote of Burke that "all his predictions, save one momentary expression, had been more than fulfilled: anarchy and bloodshed had borne sway in France; conquest and convulsion had desolated Europe...[T]he providence of mortals is not often able to penetrate so far as this into futurity". George Canning believed that Burke's "Reflections" "has been justified by the course of subsequent events; and almost every prophecy has been strictly fulfilled". In 1823, Canning wrote that he took Burke's "last works and words [as] the manual of my politics". The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli "was deeply penetrated with the spirit and sentiment of Burke's later writings".


title: Edmund Burke

text: The 19th-century Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone considered Burke "a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America" and in his diary recorded: "Made many extracts from Burke—"sometimes almost divine"". The Radical MP and anti-Corn Law activist Richard Cobden often praised Burke's "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity". The Liberal historian Lord Acton considered Burke one of the three greatest Liberals, along with Gladstone and Thomas Babington Macaulay. Lord Macaulay recorded in his diary: "I have now finished reading again most of Burke's works. Admirable! The greatest man since Milton". The Gladstonian Liberal MP John Morley published two books on Burke (including a biography) and was influenced by Burke, including his views on prejudice. The Cobdenite Radical Francis Hirst thought Burke deserved "a place among English libertarians, even though of all lovers of liberty and of all reformers he was the most conservative, the least abstract, always anxious to preserve and renovate rather than to innovate. In politics he resembled the modern architect who would restore an old house instead of pulling it down to construct a new one on the site". Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" was controversial at the time of its publication, but after his death it was to become his best known and most influential work and a manifesto for Conservative thinking.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Two contrasting assessments of Burke also were offered long after his death by Karl Marx and Winston Churchill. In a footnote to Volume One of "Das Kapital", Marx wrote:


title: Edmund Burke

text: The sycophant—who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic "laudator temporis acti" against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois. "The laws of commerce are the laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God." (E. Burke, l.c., pp. 31, 32) No wonder that, true to the laws of God and Nature, he always sold himself in the best market.


title: Edmund Burke

text: On the one hand [Burke] is revealed as a foremost apostle of Liberty, on the other as the redoubtable champion of Authority. But a charge of political inconsistency applied to this life appears a mean and petty thing. History easily discerns the reasons and forces which actuated him, and the immense changes in the problems he was facing which evoked from the same profound mind and sincere spirit these entirely contrary manifestations. His soul revolted against tyranny, whether it appeared in the aspect of a domineering Monarch and a corrupt Court and Parliamentary system, or whether, mouthing the watch-words of a non-existent liberty, it towered up against him in the dictation of a brutal mob and wicked sect. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other.


title: Edmund Burke

text: The historian Piers Brendon asserts that Burke laid the moral foundations for the British Empire, epitomised in the trial of Warren Hastings, that was ultimately to be its undoing. When Burke stated that "[t]he British Empire must be governed on a plan of freedom, for it will be governed by no other", this was "an ideological bacillus that would prove fatal. This was Edmund Burke's paternalistic doctrine that colonial government was a trust. It was to be so exercised for the benefit of subject people that they would eventually attain their birthright—freedom". As a consequence of these opinions, Burke objected to the opium trade which he called a "smuggling adventure" and condemned "the great Disgrace of the British character in India". According to political scientist Jennifer Pitts, Burke "was arguably the first political thinker to undertake a comprehensive critique of British imperial practice in the name of justice for those who suffered from its moral and political exclusions."


title: Edmund Burke

text: A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Burke at 37 Gerrard Street now in London's Chinatown.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Statues of Burke are in Bristol, England, Trinity College Dublin and Washington, D.C. Burke is also the namesake of a private college preparatory school in Washington, Edmund Burke School.


title: Edmund Burke

text: One of Burke's largest and most developed critics was the American political theorist Leo Strauss. In his book "Natural Right and History", Strauss makes a series of points in which he somewhat harshly evaluates Burke's writings.


title: Edmund Burke

text: One of the topics that he first addresses is the fact that Burke creates a definitive separation between happiness and virtue and explains that "Burke, therefore, seeks the foundation of government 'in a conformity to our duties' and not in 'imaginary rights of man". Strauss views Burke as believing that government should focus solely on the duties that a man should have in society as opposed to trying to address any additional needs or desires. Government is simply a practicality to Burke and not necessarily meant to function as a tool to help individuals live their best lives. Strauss also argues that in a sense Burke's theory could be seen as opposing the very idea of forming such philosophies. Burke expresses the view that theory cannot adequately predict future occurrences and therefore men need to have instincts that cannot be practised or derived from ideology.


title: Edmund Burke

text: This leads to an overarching criticism that Strauss holds regarding Burke which is his rejection of the use of logic. Burke dismisses a widely held view amongst theorists that reason should be the primary tool in the forming of a constitution or contract. Burke instead believes that constitutions should be made based on natural processes as opposed to rational planning for the future. However, Strauss points out that criticising rationality actually works against Burke's original stance of returning to traditional ways because some amount of human reason is inherent and therefore is in part grounded in tradition. In regards to this formation of legitimate social order, Strauss does not necessarily support Burke's opinion—that order cannot be established by individual wise people, but exclusively by a culmination of individuals with historical knowledge of past functions to use as a foundation. Strauss notes that Burke would oppose more newly formed republics due to this thought, although Lenzner adds the fact that he did seem to believe that America's constitution could be justified given the specific circumstances. On the other hand, France's constitution was much too radical as it relied too heavily on enlightened reasoning as opposed to traditional methods and values.


title: Edmund Burke

text: Burke's religious writing comprises published works and commentary on the subject of religion. Burke's religious thought was grounded in the belief that religion is the foundation of civil society. He sharply criticised deism and atheism and emphasised Christianity as a vehicle of social progress. Born in Ireland to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, Burke vigorously defended the Anglican Church, but he also demonstrated sensitivity to Catholic concerns. He linked the conservation of a state-established religion with the preservation of citizens' constitutional liberties and highlighted Christianity's benefit not only to the believer's soul, but also to political arrangements.


title: Edmund Burke

text: The statement that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" is often attributed to Burke despite the debated origin of this quote. In 1770, it is known that Burke wrote in "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents":


title: Edmund Burke

text: In 1867, John Stuart Mill made a similar statement in an inaugural address delivered before the University of St. Andrews:


title: Campania

text: Campania (, , , , ) is an administrative region of Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the island of Capri. The capital of the Campania region is Naples. As of 2018, the region had a population of around 5,820,000 people, making it Italy's third most populous region, and, with an area of , its most densely populated region. Based on its GDP, Campania is also the most economically productive region in southern Italy and the 7th most productive in the whole country. Naples' urban area, which is in Campania, is the eighth most populous in the European Union. The region is home to 10 of the 58 UNESCO sites in Italy, including Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Royal Palace of Caserta, the Amalfi Coast and the Historic Centre of Naples. In addition, Campania's Mount Vesuvius is part of the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves.


title: Campania

text: The Campania's hinterland was inhabited from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC by the Osci, Samnites and Etruscans while its coastal areas were colonised by the ancient Greeks between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, making those areas part of the so-called "Magna Graecia". At that time, Capua was Campania's leading city, while Naples was an anomaly, being predominantly Greek-speaking.


title: Campania

text: Campania is rich in culture, especially with regard to food, music, architecture, and archaeological and ancient sites—such as Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Paestum, Aeclanum, Stabiae, and Velia. The name "Campania" is derived from Latin; the Romans knew the region as "Campania felix" ("fertile countryside" or "happy countryside"). The rich natural beauty of Campania makes it important to the tourism industry: the city of Naples, the Amalfi Coast, Mount Vesuvius, and the islands of Capri and Ischia have long been major attractions.


title: Campania

text: The region known today as "Campania" was inhabited from at least the beginning of the 1st millennium BC by several Oscan-speaking Italic tribes: the Osci, the Opici, the Aurunci, the Ausones, the Sidicini, the Hirpini, the Caudini, the Oenotrians, the Campanians (after whom the region is named) and the Lucanians (who inhabited the southernmost part of Campania, known in ancient times as Lucania, roughly where modern-day Salerno is). Many of these tribes lived in simple agro-towns. Not much is known about the pre-Indo-European tribes that had lived in the region earlier; they were probably not as technologically or culturally advanced as the Oscans, and any who still flourished had become fully Oscanised by the middle of the first millennium BC.


title: Campania

text: Between the 9th and 6th centuries BC, the Etruscans from Central Italy established colonies in the Campanian Plains (the inland territories that today are the provinces of Caserta and Naples), as well as in the regions of Agro Nocerino Sarnese and Agro Picentino (which today are in the province of Salerno). There, they essentially replicated their "Dodecapolis" (twelve cities) political model, founding the cities of "Hyria" (modern-day Nola), "Irnthi" or "Marcina" (modern-day Salerno), "Amina" (modern-day Pontecagnano Faiano), "Velcha", "Velsu" and "Uri". In addition to assimilating into their urban-political domains, the Etruscans also incorporated the pre-existing tribal Oscan agro-towns of "Capua" (modern-day Santa Maria Capua Vetere), "Nuceria" (modern-day "comuni" of Nocera Superiore and Nocera Inferiore), Suessula, Acerra, Ercolano, Pompeii, Stabiae and Sorrento.


title: Campania

text: Meanwhile, during the 8th century BC, Greek-speaking people from Euboea (in Central Greece), known as Cumaeans, began to establish colonies themselves roughly around the coastal areas of the modern-day province of Naples and in the nearby islands founding, among others, the cities of Cumae, "Pithekoūsai" (modern-day Ischia), Paestum, Herculaneum and "Dicaearchia", later 'Puteoli', in Latin (modern-day Pozzuoli). The city of Naples began as a small commercial port called Parthenope (Παρθενόπη, meaning "Pure Eyes", a Siren in Greek mythology), which was established by Greek colonial sailors from Rhodes.


title: Campania

text: At one point in history, a distinct group of Oscan-speaking tribes from Samnium (in south-central Italy), the Samnites, moved down into Campania.


title: Campania

text: Since the Samnites were more warlike than the other Oscan populations, they easily took over the cities of Capua and Cumae, in an area which was one of the most prosperous and fertile in the Italian Peninsula at the time. During the 340s BC, the Samnites were engaged in a war with the Roman Republic in a dispute known as the Samnite Wars, with Rome claiming the rich pastures of northern Campania during the First Samnite War. The First Samnite War was initiated when the Etruscan-influenced Oscan city of Capua (in Etruscan "Capeva") was being attacked by the Samnites, and thus appealed to Rome for defensive help.


title: Campania

text: As the majority of Southern Italy was under Roman control at the time, the sole major remaining independent settlement in the region was the Greek colony of Neapolis, and when the city was eventually captured by the Samnites, the Neapolitan Greeks were left with no option but to call on the Romans, with whom they established an alliance, setting off the Second Samnite War. The Roman consul Quintus Publilius Filo recaptured Neapolis by 326 BC and allowed it to remain a Greek city with some autonomy as a "civitas foederata" while strongly aligned with Rome. The Second Samnite War ended with the Romans controlling all of southern Campania and additional regions further to the south, such as parts of Lucania.


title: Campania

text: Campania was a full-fledged part of the Roman Republic by the end of the 4th century BC, valued for its pastures and rich countryside. Naples, with its Greek language and customs, made it a centre of Hellenistic culture for the Romans, creating the first traces of Greco-Roman culture. During the Pyrrhic War in 275 BC, the Battle of Beneventum took place in Campania in the Samnite city of Maleventum, in which the Romans, led by the consul Curius Dentatus, were victorious. They renamed it Beneventum (modern day Benevento), which grew in stature until it was second only to Capua in southern Italy. During the Second Punic War in 216 BC, Capua, in a bid for equality with Rome, allied with Carthage. The rebellious Capuans were isolated from the rest of Campania, which remained allies of Rome. Naples resisted Hannibal due to the imposing walls. Capua was eventually starved into submission in the Roman retaking of 211 BC, and the Romans were victorious.


title: Campania

text: With the initial exception of Naples, the region adopted Latin as official language, in that sense gradually replacing the native Oscan and the Greek and the Etruscan still talked respectively in their colonies of the region, subsequently becoming fully Romanised. As part of the Roman Empire, Campania, with Latium, formed the most important region of the Augustan divisions of Italia, the "Regio I Latium et Campania"; Campania was one of the main areas for granary. In ancient times Misenum (modern 'Miseno'), at the extreme northern end of the bay of Naples, was the largest base of the Roman navy, since its port (Portus Julius) was the base of the Classis Misenensis, the most important Roman fleet. It was first established as a naval base in 27 BC by Marcus Agrippa, the right-hand man of the emperor Augustus. Roman Emperors chose Campania as a holiday destination, among them Claudius and Tiberius, the latter of whom is infamously linked to the island of Capri. It was also during this period that Christianity came to Campania. Two of the apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, are said to have preached in the city of Naples, and there were also several martyrs during this time. Unfortunately, the period of relative calm was violently interrupted by the epic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 which buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. With the Decline of the Roman Empire, its last emperor, Romulus Augustus, was put in a manor house prison near Castel dell'Ovo, Naples, in 476, ushering in the beginning of the Middle Ages and a period of uncertainty in regard to the future of the area.


title: Campania

text: The area had many duchies and principalities during the Middle Ages, in the hands of the Byzantine Empire (also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire) and the Lombards. Under the Normans, the smaller independent states were brought together as part of the Kingdom of Sicily, before the mainland broke away to form the Kingdom of Naples. It was during this period that elements of Spanish, French and Aragonese culture were introduced to Campania. Allegiances with the Muslim Saracens were made in 836, and the Arabs were requested to repel the siege of Lombard troops coming from the neighbouring Duchy of Benevento.


title: Campania

text: After a period as a Norman kingdom, the Kingdom of Sicily passed to the Hohenstaufens, who were a powerful Germanic royal house of Swabian origins. The University of Naples Federico II was founded by Frederick II in the city, the oldest state university in the world, making Naples the intellectual centre of the kingdom. Conflict between the Hohenstaufen house and the Papacy, led in 1266 to Pope Innocent IV crowning Angevin Dynasty duke Charles I as the king. Charles officially moved the capital from Palermo to Naples where he resided at the "Castel Nuovo". During this period, much Gothic architecture sprang up around Naples, including the Naples Cathedral, the main church of the city.


title: Campania

text: In 1281, with the advent of the Sicilian Vespers, the kingdom split in half. The Angevin Kingdom of Naples included the southern part of the Italian peninsula, while the island of Sicily became the Aragonese Kingdom of Sicily. The wars continued until the peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which saw Frederick III recognised as king of the Isle of Sicily, while Charles II was recognised as the king of Naples by Pope Boniface VIII. Despite the split, Naples grew in importance, attracting Pisan and Genoese merchants, Tuscan bankers, and with them some of the most championed Renaissance artists of the time, such as Boccaccio, Petrarch and Giotto. Alfonso I conquered Naples after his victory against the last Angevin king, René, and Naples was unified for a brief period with Sicily again.


title: Campania

text: Sicily and Naples were separated in 1458 but remained as dependencies of Aragon under Ferrante. The new dynasty enhanced Naples' commerce by establishing relations with the Iberian peninsula. Naples also became a centre of the Renaissance, with artists such as Laurana, da Messina, Sannazzaro and Poliziano arriving in the city. During 1501 Naples came under direct rule from France at the time of Louis XII, as Neapolitan king Frederick was taken as a prisoner to France; this lasted four years. Spain won Naples at the Battle of Garigliano and, as a result, Naples then became part of the Spanish Empire throughout the entire Habsburg Spain period. The Spanish sent viceroys to Naples to directly deal with local issues: the most important of which was Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, who was responsible for considerable social, economic and urban progress in the city; he also supported the Inquisition.


title: Campania

text: During this period Naples became Europe's second largest city after Paris. During the Baroque era it was home to artists including Caravaggio, Rosa and Bernini; philosophers such as Telesio, Bruno, Campanella and Vico; and writers such as Battista Marino. A revolution led by local fisherman Masaniello saw the creation of a brief independent Neapolitan Republic, though this lasted only a few months before Spanish rule was regained. Finally, by 1714, the Spanish ceased to rule Naples as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession; it was the Austrian Charles VI who ruled from Vienna, similarly, with viceroys. However, the


title: Campania

text: War of the Polish Succession saw the Spanish regain Sicily and Naples as part of a personal union, which in the Treaty of Vienna were recognised as independent under a cadet branch of the Spanish Bourbons in 1738 under Charles VII.


title: Campania

text: During the time of Ferdinand IV, the French Revolution made its way to Naples: Horatio Nelson, an ally of the Bourbons, even arrived in the city in 1798 to warn against it. However, Ferdinand was forced to retreat and fled to Palermo, where he was protected by a British fleet. Naples' lower classes (the "lazzaroni") were pious and Royalist, favouring the Bourbons; in the mêlée that followed, they fought the Neapolitan pro-Republican aristocracy, causing a civil war. The Republicans conquered Castel Sant'Elmo and proclaimed a Parthenopaean Republic, secured by the French Army. A counter-revolutionary religious army of "lazzaroni" under Fabrizio Ruffo was raised; they had great success and the French surrendered the Neapolitan castles and were allowed to sail back to Toulon.


title: Campania

text: Ferdinand IV was restored as king; however, after only seven years Napoleon conquered the kingdom and instated Bonapartist kings including his brother Joseph Bonaparte. With the help of the Austrian Empire and allies, the Bonapartists were defeated in the Neapolitan War and Bourbon Ferdinand IV once again regained the throne and the kingdom. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 saw the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily combined to form the Two Sicilies, with Naples as the capital city. Naples became the first city on the Italian peninsula to have a railway in 1839, there were many factories throughout the kingdom making it a highly important trade centre.


title: Campania

text: In September 1943, Salerno was the scene of Operation Avalanche and suffered a great deal of damage. From 12 February to 17 July 1944, it hosted the Government of Marshal Pietro Badoglio. In those months Salerno was the temporary "Capital of the Kingdom of Italy", and the King Victor Emmanuel III lived in a mansion in its outskirts. Salerno received the first "Tricolore" in an official ceremony on 7 January 2012 from the premier Mario Monti, to celebrate the glorious story of Italy and its old capitals.


title: Campania

text: Campania has an area of and a coastline of on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Campania is famous for its gulfs (Naples, Salerno and Policastro) as well as for three islands (Capri, Ischia and Procida).


title: Campania

text: Four other regions border Campania; Lazio to the northwest, Molise to the north, Apulia (Puglia) to the northeast and Basilicata to the east.


title: Campania

text: The mountainous interior is fragmented into several massifs, rarely reaching 2,000 metres (Miletto of 2,050 m), whereas close to the coast there are volcanic massifs: Vesuvio (1,277 m) and Campi Flegrei.


title: Campania

text: The climate is typically Mediterranean along the coast with warm, sunny and sultry summers and mild, rainy winters, whereas in the inner zones it is more continental, with lower temperatures in winter and warm summers. Snow is possible at higher elevations but rare at sea level. 51% of the total area is hilly, 34% mountainous and the remaining 15% is made up of plains. There is a high seismic risk across the region.


title: Campania

text: The GDP per capita in Campania is rank 18 from 20 Italian regions, surpassed only Sicily and Calabria. It is only 66.7% of the Italian average. It has been speculated that a factor could be the failure to connect the region's economy with the rest of Italy, while another factor could be its peripheral position with respect to the developed central areas of Europe.


title: Campania

text: Some factors may contribute in keeping the economy less competitive or less flexible compared to northern Italian and European regions, among them:


title: Campania

text: Heavy industry used to be concentrated in the Naples metropolitan area, where the largest industrial area was Bagnoli, a suburb located west of the city. Bagnoli enjoyed a favourable logistic position due to its proximity to the sea and to an industrial harbour and included steel factories that were among the largest in Europe. The steel factories operated since 1905 for about 80 years, but by the end of the sixties, all industries of the Bagnoli area gradually started to lose competitiveness, and the steel factories were definitively closed in 1991, but until 2021 the area has not been redeveloped completely. At the beginning of the 70s, plans for the de-industrialization of the area were presented, as it was perceived that the causes of competitiveness loss were impossible to remove. In 1970 the City Council decided that 30% of the space of the industrial area should be dismantled and turned into public parks. In 1976, a report concluded that the lack of competitiveness was due to the "impossibility to expand the facilities because of lack of space". The metropolitan area of Naples is limited by two dangerous areas, the Mount Vesuvius to the east, and the Campi Flegrei to the west, leaving little space in proximity of the sea.


title: Campania

text: Other large plants were also closed, e.g. Eternit, Q8 oil refinery, ICMI, Sofer, Whirlpool, Olivetti.


title: Campania

text: Campania mainly produces fruit and vegetables, but has also expanded its production of flowers grown in greenhouses, becoming one of the leading regions of the sector in Italy. The value added of this sector represents around 6.5% of the total value added of the region, equalling €213.7 million. Campania produces over 50% of Italy's nuts and is also the leader in the production of tomatoes, which reaches 1.5 million tonnes a year. A weak point for the region's agriculture is the very reduced size of farms, equal to 3.53 hectares.


title: Campania

text: A distinctive point of regional agriculture in the breeding of buffalos. The milk is used to produce mozzarella di bufala.


title: Campania

text: Olive trees, mainly of the varieties Carpellese (PDO designated), Cornia (Val di Cornia DOC), Frantoio, Leccino, Ogliarola Barese, Olivella, Ortice, Pisciottana (Also Ogliastrina or Olivo dell'Ascea), Ravece (also known as Rotondello), and Salella, covers over .


title: Campania

text: Vineyards cover 41,129 ha, but only ca. 5,100 ha using to produce quality wine of DOC and DOCG types. There are 4 DOCG wines: Aglianico del Taburno (red and rose), Fiano di Avellino (white), Greco di Tufo (white and sparkling) and Taurasi (red). Wine production has increased as well as the quality of the wine.


title: Campania

text: There is a problem with illegal toxic waste dump in the Triangle of death north of Naples between Acerra, Nola and Marigliano. In the region, over 12,000 cattle, river buffaloes and sheep had been culled before 2006. High levels of mortality and abnormal foetuses were also recorded in farms in Acerra linked to elevated levels of dioxin. Local studies have shown higher than permissible levels of lead in vegetables grown in the area. The government blames the Mafia's illegal garbage disposal racket. In samples of milk, which is using to produce mozzarella di bufala, found cancerogenic dioxine. In Naples-Bagnoli is an asbestos contamination from former Eternit cement plant. Millions of tons of toxic industrial waste has been dumped in Campania, not only in the Triangle of death, a region once celebrated for the fertility of its soil, but now the local population have been exposed to land contaminated with waste. This includes highly dangerous materials such as asbestos, zinc, lead, germanium, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, chromium, dioxin and uranium. Blood tests of people living in Campania show alarming levels of dioxins.


title: Campania

text: Campania had a massive automotive industrial production till 2011, focused on Alfa Romeo. Production of Alfa Romeo was reduced and relocated to plant in Cassino near Rome. Currently only one low-level Fiat Panda model is produced in facilities located in Pomigliano d'Arco in the Naples metropolitan area (140,478 units in 2020). A FIAT plant manufacturing engines is in Pratola Serra, Avellino. There are also plants for automotive parts suppliers like Magneti Marelli (exhaust systems) and Denso (engine cooling and air-conditioners). Buses are produced by Industria Italiana Autobus in Flumeri (ex-Irisbus).


title: Campania

text: Hitachi Rail Italy has headquarters, manufacturing plant and service facilities in Naples. Here it produces the metro trains Meneghino and Driverless Metro.


title: Campania

text: Luxury brands like Kiton, Cesare Attolini, Isaia, Rubinacci, Harmont & Blaine, E. Marinella are also located in Campania. All of them are relative small-sized with annual sales of less than 100 million euros each.


title: Campania

text: The region has a dense network of roads and motorways, a system of maritime connections and an international airport (Naples Airport). The port of Naples connects the region with the Mediterranean basin, and brings tourists to the archaeological sites, the cities of art (Naples and Caserta), to the coastal areas and to the islands.


title: Campania

text: Sea-based activity accounts for about 3.9% of the economy, which includes port movements of goods and passengers and sea transportation, as well as a sizable seaside tourism economy. In Castellammare di Stabia there is a big Fincantieri shipyard. Shipping companies Grimaldi and Tirrenia both headquarter in Naples.


title: Campania

text: The most well-known person in the Italian maritime industry is Neapolitan captain Francesco Schettino who crashed super-modern, full-equipped with all navigational and safety systems, cruise ship Costa Concordia on the underwater rocks of Giglio island in serene weather without any technical problem on board. Unlike captains Edward Smith (Titanic),


title: Campania

text: Alexandr Ostrovskiy (Bulgaria), Mahendra Nath Mulla (Khukri) who tried to save people and ships and go down with his ship, captain Schettino escaped from the ship with one of the first lifeboats and left onboard crew and passengers, inclusive women and children. Extremely indignant by this Coast Guard captain Gregorio de Falco commanded to him "Vada a bordo, cazzo!" ("Get back on board, asshole!"). After killing of 32 persons, Schettino was sentenced to only 16 years in prison.


title: Campania

text: The region, with a population of over 5.8 million inhabitants, is divided into five provinces: Naples, Benevento, Avellino, Caserta and Salerno. Over half of the population is resident in the province of Naples, where there is a population density of 2,626 inhabitants per km2. Within the province, the highest density can be found along the coast, where it reaches 13,000 inhabitants per km2 in the city of Portici. The region, which was characterised until recently by an acute economic contrast between internal and coastal areas, has shown an improvement in the last decade thanks to the development of the provinces of Benevento and Avellino. At the same time, the provinces of Naples, Caserta and in part Salerno, have developed a variety of activities connected to advanced types of services.


title: Campania

text: Unlike central and northern Italy, in the last decade the region of Campania has not attracted large numbers of immigrants. The Italian national institute of statistics ISTAT estimated in January 2007 that 98,052 foreign-born immigrants live in Campania, equal to 1.7% of the total regional population. Part of the reason for this is in recent times, there have been more employment opportunities in northern regions than in the Southern Italian regions.


title: Campania

text: The Politics of Campania, takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democracy, whereby the President of Regional Government is the head of government, and of a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the Regional Government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Regional Council.


title: Campania

text: The Regional Council of Campania ("Consiglio Regionale della Campania") is composed of 60 members, of which 47 are elected in provincial constituencies with proportional representation, 12 from the so-called "regional list" of the elected president and the last one is for the candidate for president who comes second, who usually becomes the leader of the opposition in the council. If a coalition wins more than 55% of the vote, only 6 candidates from the "regional list" will be elected and the number of those elected in provincial constituencies will be 53.


title: Campania

text: Campanian cuisine varies within the region. While Neapolitan dishes centre on seafood, Casertan and Aversan ones rely more on fresh vegetables and cheeses. The cuisine from Sorrento combines the culinary traditions from both Naples and Salerno.


title: Campania

text: Campania produces wines including Lacryma Christi, Fiano, Aglianico, Greco di Tufo, Falerno del Massico, Taburno, Solopaca, and Taurasi. The cheeses of Campania consist of Mozzarella di Bufala (buffalo mozzarella) (mozzarella made from buffalo milk), fiordilatte ("flower of milk") a mozzarella made from cow's milk, ricotta from sheep or buffalo milk, provolone from cow milk, and caciotta made from goat milk. Buffalo are bred in the provinces of Salerno and Caserta.


title: Campania

text: Several different cakes and pies are made in Campania. Pastiera pie is made during Easter. Casatiello and tortano are Easter breads made by adding lard or oil and various types of cheese to bread dough and garnishing it with slices of salami. Babà cake is a well known Neapolitan delicacy, best served with rum or limoncello (a liqueur invented in the Sorrento peninsula). It is an old Austrian cake, which arrived in Campania during the Austrian domination of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and was modified there to become a "walking cake" for citizens always in a hurry for work and other pursuits. Sfogliatella is another pastry from the Amalfi Coast, as is Zeppole, traditionally eaten on Saint Joseph's day. Struffoli, little balls fried dough dipped in honey, are enjoyed during the Christmas holidays.


title: Campania

text: Another Campanian dish is the so-called Russian salad, also known as Olivier salad, which is based on similar dishes from France. It is made of potatoes in mayonnaise garnished with shrimp and vegetables in vinegar. Another French-derived dish is "gattò" or "gâteau di patate" (an oven-baked pie made of boiled potatoes). As with the Russian salad, Campania is home to popular seafood-based dishes, such as "insalata di mare" (seafood salad), "zuppa di polpo" (octopus soup), and "zuppa di cozze" (mussel soup). Other regional seafood dishes include "frittelle di mare" (fritters with seaweed), made with edible poseidonia algae, "triglie al cartoccio" (red mullet in the bag), and "alici marinate" (fresh anchovies in olive oil). The island of Ischia is known for its fish dishes, as well as for cooked rabbit. Campania is also home to the lemons of Sorrento. Rapini (or Broccoli rabe), known locally as "friarielli", are often used in regional cooking. Campania also produces many nuts, especially in the area of Avellino, Salerno and Benevento. Hazelnut production is especially relevant in the province of Avellino – in Spanish, in Portuguese and in Occitan the hazelnut is respectively called "avellana", "avelã" and "avelano", after the city of Avella. That is also the case of ancient Italian "avellana", which is however not in use anymore.


title: Campania

text: The region of Campania is rich with a vast array of culture and history. Since the Greek colony of Elea, now Velia, Campania was home to philosophers of the Pre-Socratic philosophy school, such as Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, who came to prominence around 490–480 BC. The Latin poet Vergil (70 BC–19 BC) settled in Naples in his late-life: parts of his epic poem Aeneid are located in Campania. The ancient scientist Pliny the Elder studied Mount Vesuvius and died after being poisoned and killed by gas emitted from the volcano during the 79 AD eruption.


title: Campania

text: Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, died as a prisoner of the German general Odoacer at Naples around 500. In the Middle Ages, the artist Giotto made some frescoes in Castel Nuovo. These works of art were subsequently destroyed by an earthquake.


title: Campania

text: By the end of the Middle Ages, the medical school of Salerno, which combined ancient Roman and Greek medicine with Arab medicine, was known throughout Europe and its methods were adopted across the continent. Some have suggested that this may have been one of the first universities in Europe. Boccaccio, the Tuscan poet, visited Naples on various occasions, and in the Decameron described it as a dissolute city. He also wrote a love story involving a noblewoman close to the King of Naples.


title: Campania

text: In 1570, the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote the romance novel "Don Quixote", served as a Spanish soldier for a period in Naples. Poet Torquato Tasso was born in Sorrento in 1575. Years earlier in 1558, the first modern description and studies of the "camera obscura" ("dark chamber"), were established in Italy by Giovanni Battista della Porta in his " Magiae Naturalis".


title: Campania

text: Philosopher Giordano Bruno was born in Nola. He was the first to theorize infinite suns and infinite worlds in the universe. He was burnt in Rome by the Spanish Inquisition in 1600. Later, in c. 1606, the Baroque painter Caravaggio established his studio in Naples. Italian Baroque architect Cosimo Fanzago from Bergamo also decided to move to Naples.


title: Campania

text: In the 18th century, Naples was the last city to be visited by philosophers who created the "Grand Tour" which was the big touring voyage to visit all the important cultural sites of the European continent. Italian architect Luigi Vanvitelli son of Dutch architect Caspar van Wittel built the Royal Palace in Caserta in c. 1750. He contributed to the construction of many neoclassic-style palaces in which the nobles of Naples spent their holidays. These palaces are now known worldwide as "Ville Vesuviane".


title: Campania

text: Raimondo di Sangro, prince of Sansevero, was a scientist and one of the last alchemists. Around this time, in 1786, German writer Goethe visited Campania and Naples. German archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann also visited Naples, Paestum, Herculaneum and Pompeii in 1748 and later, studying how archaeological surveys were conducted in the kingdom of Naples. He was one of the first to study drawings, statues, stones, and ancient burned scrolls made of papyrus found in the excavations of the city of Herculaneum. Archaeological excavations in Pompeii were initiated by King Charles III of Naples in 1748. He issued the first modern laws in Europe to protect, defend and preserve archaeological sites. Neapolitan musicians of that period include Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli and Giovanni Paisiello.


title: Campania

text: Musician Gioachino Rossini lived for several years in Naples, where he wrote numerous compositions. Italian poet and writer Giacomo Leopardi established his home in Naples and Torre del Greco, remaining there at the end of his brief young life. He died at Naples in 1837. The first volcano observatory, the Vesuvius Observatory, was founded in Naples in 1841. Geologist Giuseppe Mercalli, born in Milan in 1850, was a director of the Vesuvius Observatory.


title: Campania

text: In February 1851, British statesman William Ewart Gladstone was allowed to visit the prison where Giacomo Lacaita, legal adviser to the British embassy, was imprisoned by the Neapolitan government, along with other political dissidents. He deplored their condition, and in April and July, he published two "Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen" against the Neapolitan government, followed by "An Examination of the Official Reply of the Neapolitan Government" in 1852. His pamphlets may have contributed to the cause of the unification of Italy in 1861.


title: Campania

text: French writer Alexandre Dumas, père was directly involved in the process of the Unification of Italy and sojourned two or three years in Naples, where he wrote several historical novels regarding that city. He was also a known newspaper correspondent. Francesco de Sanctis, writer, politician and twice Minister of Instruction after the reunification of Italy in 1861, was born in Morra De Sanctis near Avellino.