Two centuries on,, the works of Edmund Burke (1729-97), politician and political writer, continue to provoke interest and lively debate. He has been celebrated as a moderate Whig, an arch-conservative, and a forerunner of nineteenth-century liberalism; as a revolutionar, and a counter-revolutionary. Which was he?

In this stimulating book, Professor Macpherson argues that Burke was all these things, and that there is no fundamental contradiction between such apparently opposite positions. The key to the underlying consistency he finds in Burke's political economy, which he shows to be a constant factor in Burke's political reasoning. This soltion is itself controversial, but there is no doubt that it is compellingly presented.