Friends Until the End

Edmund Burke and Charles Fox made common political cause in eighteenth-century Britain for twenty-five years: They supported the rebellious American colonies, attacked the British slave trade, defended religious liberty, and attempted to shield Britain's public credit from the crisis-prone East India Company. The two men were an improbable pair. But the hard-drinking, mistress-collecting Fox loved and admired Burke, feelings that the clean-living political philosopher and statesman warmly reciprocated. They moved together in the London intellectual world and jointly opposed what they regarded as the overreaching crown. Friends Until the End traces Burke and Fox's relationship through three great events: the American Revolution; the impeachment of the East India Company's governor-general; and the French Revolution, which ended their political union and shattered their friendship. With wit and panache, James Grant illuminates the politics and economics of their era and its lessons for our divided present.