Philosopher, statesman and founder of conservatism, Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past three hundred years. He was one of the eighteenth century's golden generation, which included his friends Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon; a dazzling orator and a visionary theorist who spent his long political career fighting the abuse of power against the backdrop of the the revolt of the American colonies, the expansion of the British empire,...