Page 27 - History 2020

based on abstract reasoning. The process of change is naturally gradual; a cartoon of

1790 by James Gillray shows the radical Thomas Paine trying to cram Britannia into a
tight, French corset; but Britannia clings for safety to an English oak, the symbol of
the organic growth of the British constitution.

For us, the significance of Burke is that he provided a philosophical underpinning for
the view that the British constitution was uniquely stable. He believed that this was
largely due to the 1688 Revolution which had established a uniquely stable
combination of liberty and order, in marked contrast to the wild antics of the French

Revolutionaries. Before the English Civil War, the word “revolution” used to mean “a
return to an original, pre-existing state”. The civil war altered this to its modern
meaning, “sudden, dramatic change”. But 1688 persuaded the British that
revolutions needn’t be like that. They returned to its older, conservative meaning.

Why does Burke matter?
Burke provided the British ruling oligarchy with a political philosophy which explained

and justified its conservative political culture of “stability”. As Richard Tombs says,
“England changed from being a byword for change and turbulence into the defender
and exponent of continuity and peaceful politics, with its respect for the law,
pragmatism, and suspicion of ‘ideology’ and ‘extremism’. Burke is a big part of this
reputation.

But this is only part of the story. Alongside Burke’s philosophy there arose a second
justification for Britain’s ruling oligarchy; a new version of British history, a narrative

that portrayed it as a stately journey towards constitutional perfection. Into this
narrative the idea of 1688 as a conservative revolution fitted perfectly.

This narrative became so influential that histories and text books took it as self-
evident. Its harshest critic, who virtually demolished it in a single, short book, gave it
a name: “the Whig interpretation of history”. We will look at this next session.