 Macpherson argued that by Burke’s time, the traditional order was a capitalist one, and so his conservatism was consistent with free-market liberalism; Burke advocated the Whig principles underlying the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1776, but not the French Revolution (Macpherson 1980; see Burke 1987 [1790]: 15, on how his opponents are “constantly confounding” the revolution of 1688, and those of 1649 and 1789). In contrast, O’Brien in The Great Melody—the title, a quotation from W.B. Yeats, is Burke’s consistent opposition to abuse of power in Ireland, America, India and France—argues that his understanding of the American Revolution was not a radical, liberal one. He was always a Christian and monarchist, and his great speech was entitled “On Conciliation with the Colonies”; until independence was inevitable, conciliation was his aim. Cobban, seeing Burke as “the greatest of the followers of Locke”, denies that he changed his opinion fundamentally at the time of the French Revolution; rather, “an inconsistency runs right through his thought” (Cobban 1960: 40). (Pocock 1994 outlines Burke’s conflicting commitments to English Whiggery and Irish Catholicism.)