The True Sense of the People: Reconsidering Burke on Representation and Identity
Much of the current literature on representation concerns how legislatures might come to mirror more closely (or “descriptively represent”) the populace in terms of gender, race, or class. While these worries can sometimes be dismissed as mere engagement in “identity politics,” they may be worth a closer look. Looking at the classical liberal tradition, it can appear that representatives were intended to serve more as superior trustees than responsive descriptive representatives, and to compass national concerns rather than serve the narrow concerns of particular constituencies. The Federalists, for instance, saw it necessary to insulate the government from the whims of the masses. Given this legacy, can descriptively mirroring the people in the legislature be a worthy goal for those wedded to the classical liberal tradition?
In this essay I want to propose that contemporary theorists of representation, as well as scholars of racial and ethnic politics, might find a surprising ally in Edmund Burke. While Burke is typically associated with the concept of virtual representation—the idea that the interests of a constituency may be advanced by representatives they have not elected themselves—in the case of both the American colonists and Irish Catholics, Burke argued that virtual representation was inadequate. His statements on the Irish Catholic plight indicate a sensitivity towards their history of oppression and religious discrimination; he claimed that the Irish could not benefit from virtual representation when those in power were of an “adverse description.” Burke continually argued that Irish Catholics be granted the franchise and representation in Parliament, in addition to other constitutional civil rights. We might fruitfully apply this concept to racial and ethnic minorities in America, and thus bolster the case for greater descriptive representation, whether through candidate selection, redistricting or the protection of minority voting rights. Strictly from the standpoint of classical liberalism, it may seem that groups that have experienced a history of systematic exclusion or under-representation have no recourse. In fact, however, contemporary representation theorists might find that one of the most prominent proponents of trustee-style representation, Edmund Burke, also found it important that, particularly in cases where there is a history of oppression, those trustees reflect the descriptions of the people they represent.
A Note on Reading Burke
In reading support for descriptive representation in Burke’s thought, I am not claiming that his oeuvre is a monolithic, coherent, internally consistent body of work. One can find in his speeches and letters support for a variety of positions on representation; the interpreter encounters the challenge of deciding which of these elements to emphasize. As Melissa Williams observes, “…[T]here is not one Burke, but a multiplicity of Burkes; Burke has inspired nineteenth-century utilitarians and Cold War conservatives alike.”[1] My aim, then, is not to reconcile the many Burkes, but rather to describe an alternative emphasis one can give to his thought on representation. Many of the inconsistencies in Burke’s thought can be better understood if we recall his role as a politician. L.M. Cullen notes that Burke “was primarily a politician and his voluminous writings and speeches were dictated by the exigencies of public life;” moreover, most of Burke’s tenure as a politician was spent in the opposition, a position which, because of the pressures of party and time, fostered his giving more attention to a prudential path of solving problems than to a theoretical examination of them. [2] Indeed, in Empire and Revolution, Richard Bourke cautions readers that reconstructing Burke’s political thought requires “a full examination of current affairs as well as careful attention to intellectual context.”[3] Further, in approaching Burke, we must be aware of the ways that various political movements have made use (and abuse) of his voluminous body of work. Conor Cruise O’Brien explains that, in the 19th century, Burke was widely admired for his political wisdom by both liberals and conservatives. The left prized his writings on America and India, with their emphasis on the importance of consent of the governed, while the right valued his polemic against the revolution in France. Burke was a towering figure in European political thought up until the First World War, and O’Brien surmises that the dismissal of Burke’s thought after the war may have been a reaction against the so-called political wisdom that had brought them to such a disastrous state.[4]
With these caveats in mind, I start by asserting the relevance of Burke to the current debates on representation, and then outline the standard interpretation of Burke as understood by several influential theorists on representation. In tracing this strand of interpretation, I begin with the Burke revival of the post-World War II era. Next, I discuss an alternative reading of Burke that has found in his thought a justification for descriptive representation. Finally, I point to an avenue that could bolster the case for this alternative interpretation: namely, a study of Burke’s own identity and the historical oppression of Irish Catholics at the hands of the British Empire.
Burke’s Relevance to the Contemporary Debate on Representation
Given the controversy surrounding “identity politics,” I am keenly aware that further theoretical work needs to be done regarding the merits of descriptive representation. Clearly, in the U.S., women and minorities are not present in legislatures in proportion to their presence in the population. Some may assert that this is not a problem: anyone can adequately represent the interests of these groups and legislators are tasked with serving in the national interest, not in the interest of any group (or faction, as the Federalists would have it). Anne Phillips effectively captures the challenge contemporary theorists of representation face: “Establishing an empirical under-representation of certain groups does not in itself add up to a normative case for their equal or proportionate presence. It may alert us to overt forms of discrimination that are keeping people out, but it does not yet prove the case for a more radical change.”[5] She argues for a “politics of presence,” or the inclusion of those previously excluded, in order to reverse previous histories which deemed certain types of people to be “less suited to govern.”[6] Given the history of disenfranchisement and marginalization of certain groups, having representatives to “stand for” such groups can be essential. Suzanne Dovi suggests that such representatives should have a “mutual relationship with dispossessed subgroups.”[7] She establishes the criteria by which we can prefer some representatives to others, asserting that “historically disadvantaged groups should be represented by members of their group.”[8]
Apart from the historical inertia to be overcome in advancing descriptive representation for historically marginalized groups, there is the lack of a robust theoretical tradition to support it. In the American context, one sees a deliberate distance placed between legislators and those they represent, as in Madison’s claim in Federalist 10 that the role of the Congress is to “refine and enlarge” public opinion. As evidenced by debates during the Constitutional Convention, the Framers were concerned to filter the views of the masses through the indirect election of the president and senators. Even John Adams, who called for a legislature that would be “a portrait of the people at large in miniature,” required that these be “a few of the most wise and good.”[9] Madison was particularly concerned that too close a connection between the represented and their representatives would exacerbate the ‘mischiefs of faction’ (what we might call special interests today); he saw fit to encourage factions insofar as they would cancel each other out.[10]
Given this skepticism of descriptive representation in the American context, the re-evaluation of Burke’s views on representation is crucial. Though he has long been known as a principal advocate for trustee representation (where constituents put their faith in a representative to act in the national interest), Burke advocated for descriptive representation in the case of historically marginalized groups, like Irish Catholics. He might thus be an ally in the task of redeeming descriptive representation while providing mechanisms for accountability.
The Standard Interpretation of Burke on Representation
Two aspects of conventional interpretations of Burke have prevented his theories on representation from appearing hospitable to those who favor descriptive representation. First, his opposition to the French Revolution and emphasis on justice, order, custom, and tradition have fostered the view of Burke as solely a man of the right. Additionally, much of the representation scholarship, from Pitkin to Mansbridge, has identified Burke with his arguments in favor of virtual representation and the legislator’s role as a trustee, occupied largely with the national interest.
In the 1950s, Burke scholarship experienced a revival amongst conservatives who emphasized his respect for tradition (in his Reflections of the Revolution in France), his sharp criticisms of the French philosophes, as well as his invocation of the natural law. Burke is widely recognized, and with some justification, by modern conservatives as “the founding father of conservative political philosophy.”[11] Peter Stanlis, for instance, invoked Burke’s criticism of the role of ideology in driving revolutions. Specifically, he applied these arguments to modern Marxist revolutionaries writing, “…the ideological revolutionary’s vision of perfection is his reality, and anything which falls short of his vision must be destroyed;” Burke called such thinking “metaphysical insanity.”[12] In the post-war period, Burke served the conservative movement well as a classical liberal voice against leftist revolution and Marxist totalitarianism. Burke’s post-war interpreters also emphasized his references to natural law and its power to guide elected representatives in working for (or against) their constituents’ wishes. Ross Hoffman and Paul Levack, editors of a 1949 compilation of Burke’s political thought, wrote that Burke believed the House of Commons should indeed mirror the “feelings of the people,” and be bound by their demands, except when these militate against the “stable and eternal rules of justice and reason.”[13] They provide a conventional account of Burke’s ideas on the role of the representative as trustee and delegate. In the representative-constituent relationship, Burke wrote that members of Parliament were “the skillful workmen,” who “shape [the people’s] desires into perfect form.”[14] Given this association of Burke with typically conservative principles, those who seek to build the case for descriptive representation might be tempted to dismiss his thought on representation out of hand.
Additionally, Burke may seem inhospitable to advocates for greater descriptive representation due to the common view of him as an advocate for an elitist or, at least, distant approach to representation. In 1959, Eulau et al., conducted an empirical inquiry into Burke’s theory, and contended that Burke conflated the focal dimension of representation (concentrating on national over local interest) and the stylistic dimension of representation (exercising mature judgment over being bound by the people’s instructions) for polemical reasons.[15] They quote the oft-cited passage from Burke’s “Speech to the Electors of Bristol” (1774), where he argues for a focus on the national interest: “…[P]arliament 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.”[16] Classifying Burke’s overall view of the legislature as “a deliberative body whose representational focus is the whole rather than its constituent parts,” they posit this approach as only one of several viable relationship styles that legislators may adopt.[17] Burke’s thought was thus packaged as the premier example of the “trustee” model of representation.
Perhaps the scholar most responsible for our standard view of Burke’s thought on representation is Hannah Pitkin. In her seminal 1967 work, The Concept of Representation, she identifies Burke’s two concepts of representation. The first idea—that a wise and rational aristocracy governs in the interest of the entire nation—enabled him to justify maintaining the status quo on England’s rotten boroughs and other imbalances in representation. Rather than being actually represented, those in a growing city like Birmingham, were virtually represented. This virtual relationship is characterized by “a communion of interest and sympathy in feelings and desires between those who act in the name of any description of people and the people in whose name they act, though the trustees are not actually chosen by them.”[18] Burke, however, contended that this form of representation was inadequate in the cases of the disenfranchised Catholics in Ireland and the American colonists. These exceptions prompt Pitkin to identify Burke’s second concept of representation: that there is a representation of interests of specific constituencies by particular legislators. Thus, Irish Catholics could not be virtually represented because there were no members of Parliament who shared their interests. He wrote, “As things stand, the Catholic, as a Catholic, and belonging to a description, has no virtual relation to the representative—but the contrary.”[19] Pitkin gives an interest-based interpretation of why Burke claims that Irish Catholics lack virtual representation, rather than an identity-based explanation. Indeed, she sums up Burke’s concept of representation saying that it is “the representation of interest, and interest has an objective, impersonal, unattached reality.”[20] This understanding of interest is akin to what we now refer to as the “politics of ideas.” It is not surprising to find such a detached, abstract notion of interest in Pitkin’s work, given that she is generally presenting a case against descriptive representation (she argues it lacks accountability, and what representatives do is of much greater importance than who they are).[21] More recent Burke scholarship, however, has sought to correct Pitkin’s stress on this impersonal notion of interest. Burke’s concern that marginalized groups (Irish Catholics, in his case) be descriptively represented is not solely about their interests being neglected, but also about their identities, as they faced bigotry and oppression for who they were.
This standard Pitkin interpretation of Burke on representation is also evident in Jane Mansbridge’s account of Burke’s “trustee” representation. She seeks to distinguish his concept of trustee representation, where the legislator represents the interests (rather than the preferences) of the entire nation, from her own, more capacious, vision of “gyroscopic representation.”[22] In thus defining Burke, she cites what she herself calls the “standard interpretation” offered by Miller and Stokes in 1963. They argue that “constituency control,” or the idea that “the representative should be compelled by electoral sanctions to follow the ‘mandate’ of his constituents,” was antithetical to the Burkean concept of representation.[23] In keeping with this standard reading, then, Mansbridge defines her own vision of gyroscopic representation as a broader concept than Burke’s trustee model. A key feature of gyroscopic representation she says is that “the voter may select a representative with many of the voter’s own background characteristics, on the grounds that such a representative will act much the way the voter would if placed in the legislature.”[24] I contend that, depending on where one looks in the speeches and letters of Burke, one can find evidence to support just this type of “gyroscopic” representative—a person who descriptively aligns with the people they represent and acts in the way they would. Many scholars define Burke by his “Speech to the Electors of Bristol” and thus determine that his ideal representative is elitist and distant from his constituents. By examining other sources, especially what Burke said about the representation of Irish Catholics, we can find support for more inclusive ideas about representation of historically marginalized groups.
Towards an Alternative Vision of Burkean Representation
In the past 20 years several scholars have attempted a reappraisal of Burke’s thought on representation and these insights provide us with both a fuller picture of his views and a potential ally in the effort to bolster descriptive representation with theoretical arguments from the classical liberal tradition. Melissa Williams presents a compelling case for reading an identity-based notion of descriptive representation in Burke. She explores what Burke refers to as “descriptions” of citizens, or categories he believes merit parliamentary representation. In his “Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting” on parliamentary reform, he expressed a concern that all descriptions of the people be included, writing: “[T]he matter should be prepared in open committees, from a choice into which no class or description of men is to be excluded—and the subsequent county meetings should be as full and as well attended, as possible. Without these precautions the true sense of the people will ever be uncertain.”[25]
Williams contends that Burke defends these descriptions’ (especially Irish Catholics and American colonists) claim for political representation out of concern for equity and justice, and not simply as a pragmatic move.[26] To the extent that Burke does defend representing the various “descriptions” of the people on prudential grounds, he does so because he views it as the representative’s role “to exercise practical wisdom and identify the common good,” thus reconciling the various conflicts of interest among the “descriptions” and steering a course that is most beneficial to the nation and empire.[27] Apart from these practical considerations, Burke evinces a concern for the injustice of “representing” the Irish with people they have not selected and who work to undermine their interests. He writes, “No people ought to be permitted to live in a Country, who are not permitted to have an Interest in its Welfare, by quiet in their goods, their freedom, and their conscience.”[28] In the “Letter to Langrishe” (that Pitkin relied upon), we see Burke apply the concept of “adverse description” —or one that is actively hostile to the disenfranchised group—to the representation of Irish Catholics. For them, he writes, “[I]t is not an actual, and, if possible, still less a virtual representation. It is, indeed, the direct contrary. It is power unlimited placed in the hands of an adverse description because it is an adverse description.”[29] In contrast to such a hostile approach, Burke holds contends a “description” needs greater representation if it has grievances, and its members are not thriving.[30] This is particularly the case for Irish Catholics who faced the burden of governmental oppression and bigotry.
Williams then turns to applying these Burkean insights to contemporary inequities in representation. She writes, “Burke’s emphasis on virtual representation directs our gaze away from electoral processes to electoral results: are all of the relevant social groups virtually represented? Can they all identify representatives with whom they share a “sympathy of feelings and communion of interest”?”[31] She cites women and African-Americans as among those groups who have, historically, had to answer this question in the negative.
Camil Alexandru Parvu echoes this concern for contemporary realities and seeks to link Burke’s thought to a “politics of presence.” Parvu argues that simply having the right to vote does not mean one is adequately represented. Rather, he says, “One is concerned with representing neglected stakeholders. The identities, preferences, interests of various minorities that are not adequately represented in current voting procedures in liberal democracies…are to be represented on such an account of virtual political representation.”[32] This may involve having interests represented by those who were elected by others—an idea close to Burke’s understanding of virtual representation. Hélène Landemore also applies Burkean concepts to this problem of neglected stakeholders. While she is willing to accept the standard interpretation of Burke on trustee representation and the role of elites in representing the interests of the whole as they perceive them, she argues that these representatives will have the best cognitive judgments collectively if they mirror the composition of the people. She sees her project as uniting the politics of ideas with the politics of presence.[33]
The Role of History and Identity in Shaping Burke’s Views on Representation
The theoretical case for a politics of presence supported by Burkean views on representation would be strengthened by a fuller picture of the parallels between Burke’s situation and our own. This necessarily involves exploring the historical circumstances underpinning Burke’s concern for the Irish plight as well as the role of his own identity (or “presence”) in the debate over Irish Catholic enfranchisement.
Richard Bourke adroitly weaves Burke’s historical realities into the presentation of his thought. For instance, Bourke notes that, following his first-hand experience of the Whiteboy disturbances of the 1760s, Burke the politician saw the practical import of granting Catholics the franchise.[34] The “Whiteboys” were a group of rural agrarian protesters who engaged in covert property damage to defend the land rights of tenant farmers. Their tactics included “the maiming of cattle, the levelling of ditches, breaching perimeter walls and launching arson attacks on barns.”[35] Burke wrote that such disorder was to be expected of “an oppressed or a licentious people.”[36] We again see the pragmatic Burke, who argued that easing the oppression of Catholics would benefit the nation as a whole. In his “Letter to Richard Burke” (1792), written shortly after the aforementioned “Letter to Langrishe,” he wrote that there was little to be sacrificed and much to be gained by extending representation to Catholics.[37] He also evinced a concern for the unjust cycle that disenfranchised Catholics were stuck in, noting that they “have no hold on the gentlemen who aspire to be popular representatives,” and consequently, “…in addition to religious persecution under the popery laws, they continued to be subject to civil persecution by their exclusion from the privileges of citizenship.”[38] As long as Catholics were represented by men of an “adverse description,” they would continue to be subject to statues like The Penal Laws, which barred Catholics from public office, from serving as military officers, and from participating in the professions, prevented them from bearing arms and deprived them of the franchise as long as they refused to become members of the state Church of Ireland.[39]
Grounding Burke’s argument for the descriptive representation of Irish Catholics in its historical context highlights the importance of addressing this issue not as an abstract theoretical exercise on representation, but in light of the deeply personal impact Irish disenfranchisement must have had on Burke. The question of Burke’s own identity looms large over any discussion of his argument for Irish Catholic enfranchisement. Later writers, like W.B. Yeats, would see Burke as a generous and compassionate liberal Protestant moved by pity to aid the cause of the downtrodden Irish.[40] Burke too, occasionally referred to himself as an Englishman in his writings on Ireland. However, the fact remains that Burke was Irish. He was born there to a Catholic mother and a conformist father, who had forsworn his Catholic faith in favor of the Church of Ireland in order to be permitted to practice law. Though he was baptized a Protestant, Burke’s earliest education took place in a Catholic and Gaelic-speaking school, and he would remain close to his mother’s family his whole life. Indeed, among his contemporaries, his Irish background would make him a target of ethnic bigotry: one fellow politician said that Burke’s oratory “stank of whiskey and potatoes.” Mary Wollstonecraft took exception to Burke’s use of the pronoun ‘we’ when referring to the English; rumors that he was a crypto-Catholic followed him throughout his early career and political cartoons frequently portrayed him in Jesuit clerical garb.[41] Indeed, Luke Gibbons notes that Burke did invoke his Irish identity at times, especially in his assessment that the condition of Ireland under the Penal Laws was akin to slavery. Burke wrote: “I never can forget that I am an Irishman. I flatter myself perhaps; but I think, I would shed my blood rather than see the Limb I belong to oppressed and defrauded of its due nourishment.”[42] In such moments of candor we see a Burke who is conscious of his own identity and uses that to inform his public stances, thus serving as a sort of prototype for a “politics of presence.”
O’Brien compares Burke’s family situation to that of Karl Marx, whose father was the son of a rabbi, but who conformed to the established Lutheran church in Germany; each had to confront the question of his own heritage. Rather than view him as a defector, O’Brien argues that Burke remained loyal to Ireland, as evidenced by (what O’Brien calls) his most impassioned speech about Ireland, on the living death that existence under the Penal Laws had become for the Irish. Burke vowed, “…I would sooner bring myself to put a man to death for opinions I disliked, and so get rid of the man and his opinions at once, than to fret him with a feverish being, tainted with the jail-distemper of a contagious servitude, to keep him above ground an animated mass of putrefaction, corrupted himself, and corrupting all about him.”[43] One senses that Burke has an intimate knowledge of the emotional repercussions of living under such oppression.
Conclusion
In surveying the literature on Burkean representation, I have sought to highlight the role that Burke can play in supporting a descriptive representation marked by a politics of presence. Further, incorporating knowledge of Burke’s historical circumstances and biography enables us to draw parallels with the plight of repressed groups in our own time.
We have seen that Burke has traditionally been interpreted as a staunch supporter of virtual representation, according to which theory it doesn’t really matter who you are or where you are from. Identity takes a back seat; if you are wise, you can represent the interests of the entire nation. We might even regard this concept of representation as aiding Burke himself in his political rise, as it makes it unnecessary for his constituents to concern themselves with his own identity and origins. Nevertheless, we find that Burke remains concerned that certain historically marginalized groups be descriptively represented. When does it matter to Burke that representatives reflect the interests of their constituents? In the case of Ireland, where his personal attachments lay, perhaps he alternately experienced the sting of oppression and guilt at having largely escaped the stigma attached to his heritage. Given his prudential nature, he might have perceived that a militant Irish approach to English imperialism was a nonstarter. Instead, he became a successful part of the establishment and attempted to usher in gradual changes, beginning with advocacy for the enfranchisement and descriptive representation of the Irish.
NOTES:
[1] Melissa S. Williams, “Burkean ‘Descriptions’ and Political Representation: A Reappraisal,” Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 29, no. 1 (1996): 24.
[2] L.M. Cullen, “Burke’s Irish Views and Writings,” in The Enduring Edmund Burke: Bicentennial Essays, ed. Ian Crowe (Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1997), 62.
[3] Richard Bourke, Empire & Revolution : The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton University Press, 2015), 1.
[4] Conor Cruise O’Brien, “‘Setting People on Thinking’: Burke’s Legacy in the Debate on Irish Affairs,” in The Enduring Edmund Burke: Bicentennial Essays, ed. Ian Crowe (Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1997), 94.
[5] Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 39.
[6] Phillips, 40.
[7] Suzanne Dovi, “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?,” The American Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (2002): 728.
[8] Dovi, 741.
[9] John Adams, “Thoughts on Government,” accessed May 27, 2021, https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch4s5.html.
[10] As cited in Phillips, The Politics of Presence, 148.
[11] Pappin, “Edmund Burke’s Progeny: Recent Scholarship on Burke’s Political Philosophy,” Political Science Reviewer 35, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 10–65. 11.
[12] Peter J Stanlis, “Edmund Burke and Revolution,” The Intercollegiate Review, Summer 1971, 225.
[13] Edmund Burke, Burke’s Politics : Selected Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke on Reform, Revolution, and War / (Knopf, 1949), xxiii. Hoffman and Levack cite Burke’s Speech on Economical Reform (1780), Works, II, 357.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Heinz Eulau et al., “The Role of the Representative: Some Empirical Observations on the Theory of Edmund Burke,” The American Political Science Review 53, no. 3 (1959): 744, https://doi.org/10.2307/1951941.
[16] Eulau et al., 744. They cite the “Speech to the Electors of Bristol” (1774) in Works, Vol. II, 12.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation. (University of California Press, 1967), 173. Pitkin is citing Burke’s “Letter to Langrishe” (1792), Burke’s Politics, 495.
[19] Pitkin, 177. Pitkin again cites Burke’s “Letter to Langrishe,” Burke’s Politics, 482.
[20] Pitkin, 168.
[21] Pitkin, 3.
[22] Jane Mansbridge, “Rethinking Representation,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 4 (November 2003): 522.
[23] Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, “Constituency Influence in Congress,” The American Political Science Review 57, no. 1 (1963): 45, https://doi.org/10.2307/1952717.
[24] Mansbridge, “Rethinking Representation,” 522.
[25] Williams, “Burkean ‘Descriptions’ and Political Representation,” 24.
[26] Williams, 24.
[27] Williams, 31.
[28] Williams, 36.
[29] Williams, 32.
[30] Williams, 41.
[31] Williams, 44.
[32] Camil Alexandru Parvu, “The Avatars of Virtual Representation. An Assessment of the Burkean Notion’s Contemporary Relevance,” Studia Politica Romanian Political Science Review, no. 1 (2010): 21.
[33] Hélène Landemore, “Deliberation, Representation, and the Epistemic Function of Parliamentary Assemblies: A Burkean Argument in Favor of Descriptive Representation” (International Conference on “Democracy as Idea and Practice,” University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, 2010), 16.
[34] Bourke, Empire & Revolution, 796.
[35] Bourke, 239.
[36] Bourke, 239.
[37] Bourke, 796.
[38] Bourke, 796.
[39] “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Penal Laws,” accessed March 17, 2016, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11611c.htm#III.
[40] O’Brien, “‘Setting People on Thinking’: Burke’s Legacy in the Debate on Irish Affairs,” 101.
[41] O’Brien, 99–101.
[42] Luke Gibbons, Edmund Burke and Ireland : Aesthetics, Politics and the Colonial Sublime (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 69.
[43] O’Brien, “‘Setting People on Thinking’: Burke’s Legacy in the Debate on Irish Affairs,” 103.
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