ABSTRACT
The Rockingham Whigs, Edmund Burke among them, here were employing that word "revolution" in its older sense. If we employ the word "revolution" in its common signification near the end of the twentieth century, what occurred in 1688–89 was no true revolution. In the Whig interpretation of history, at least, the overturn of James II was a revolution not made, but prevented. In Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France, as earlier, Burke strongly approves the Revolution of 1688. "The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty", Burke declares. The American Revolution, or War of Independence, was a preventive movement, intended to preserve an old constitutional structure for the most part. The French Revolution was a very different phenomenon, as was its successor the Russian Revolution.
