Edmund Burke

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Political essay on causes of public discontent in eighteenth-century Britain

About the author

Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke

Irish-British statesman and philosopher who founded modern conservatism with his Reflections on the Revolution in France. He argued that inherited institutions embody accumulated wisdom that abstract reason cannot replace. His attack on the French Revolution provoked Paine's Rights of Man and launched the modern left-right political debate.

More by Edmund Burke