Edmund Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) is the most notable among his early political pamphlets, and perhaps his most famous overall alongside the Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). While the Reflections has become a classic of conservatism, it was the Present Discontents that let Burke keep his hero status among Whigs and liberals in the nineteenth century. Liberal Prime Minister John Lord Russell called it “one of the few standard works on the science of government which the world possesses.” In the Present Discontents, Burke laid out his constitutional theory, including his famous defense of political parties.
Read Full Article »
