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12 January 2010
Edmund Burke's arguments against the Irish Penal Laws
Burke himself claimed that the greatest cause of his political career was the Hastings impeachment. This is one of the rare occasions where I am not really in tune with Burke's thinking. His reasons for leading the impeachment against Warren Hastings for the alleged delinquency of his rule in India were important, even extremely important, but for me they were a continuation of the arguments he had already marshalled against his opponents in the other great causes: The Irish Penal Laws; the conflict over taxation with the Americans, and the French Revolution. I am yet to understand why he thought it more important than the French Revolution.
The French revolutionaries and the barbarism they authored roused him to an intellectual fury that resulted in the most sustained exposition of his political philosophy together with its metaphysical and epistemological background. It is the Irish Penal Laws, however, that led him (carefully, for he was on dangerous ground) to expose the blackest chapter in Britain's history, a chapter with far more ranging effects than Hastings' supposed corrupt rule in India. Indeed, there are historians that regard Hastings' despotic rule as appropriate in the circumstances.
Below is a link to my analysis of the arguments Burke brought against the Penal Laws in Ireland. It is a short section in a book I am preparing on Edmund Burke's political philosophy, which is a revision, updating and expansion of my Masters thesis. I reproduce it here because of my references in other comments to Britain's penal laws against the Catholic population in Ireland and Great Britain.
A brief note to the reader: the section reproduced here follows from a discussion about whether a principle of utility or classical natural law was the basis of Burke's philosophy. I claim that it was the latter but with important epistemological modifications - which I am bringing to the fore here.
Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com
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