Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke (born 1723 January 12 in Dublin) was a philosopher and a statesman, a member of parliament for 29 years, opposing most of the policies of the ministers of King George III and supporting Catholic emancipation and American Independence. His Reflections on the French Revolution rejected the chaos and atheism of the new order and praised the stability of the old order.

In A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), Burke advocated the abolition of government, but later claimed the Vindication was intended as a satirical work. William Godwin, in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, later referred to Burke's Vindication as a treatise "in which the evils of the existing political institutions are displayed with incomparable force of reasoning and lustre of eloquence, while the intention of the author was to shew that these evils were to be considered as trivial."