Empire and Imperialism: Europe. Few subjects have generated as much controversy as that of European imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because of the term's pejorative connotations, even attempting to define it causes difficulties.
Edmund Burke. From Conservapedia. Edmund Burke (born January 12, 1729 in Dublin, died July 9, 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman, an orator, and a leading conservative political theorist who is still widely read and continue to shape conservative attitudes.
There is a quasi-mythical attribution of the term to Edmund Burke, which Jeffrey Archer summed up in his novel, The Fourth Estate : In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the Estate General. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'.