July 9, 1797

Political theorist Edmund Burke died at the age of 68 on this day in 1797. Born in Dublin to a successful solicitor who had converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism, Burke was raised in the same faith with similar moral values. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin and started a debate club. Thinking he wanted to go into law, he attended Middle Temple in England, but decided otherwise and left school in favor of a career in writing. He wrote several treatises, his most famous being “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.” Eventually, Burke became a member of parliament.