English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
The danger of the House of Commons is, perhaps, that it will be reformed too rashly; the danger of the House of Lords certainly is, that it may never be reformed.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The purse strings tie us to our kind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The manner of writing history is as characteristic of the narrator as the actions are of the persons who are related to have performed them; often much more so. It may be generally defined as a view of one age taken by another; a picture of a series of men and women painted by one of another series.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Sound men are sound from the first.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Though a few gifted people may advance much, the mass of each generation can improve but very little on the generation which preceded it; and even the slight improvement so gained is liable to be destroyed by some mysterious atavism—some strange recurrence to a primitive past. Long ages of dreary monotony are the first facts in the history of human communities, but those ages were not lost to mankind, for it was then that was formed the comparatively gentle and guidable thing which we now call human nature.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The characteristic advantage of a constitutional king is the permanence of his place. This gives him the opportunity of acquiring a consecutive knowledge of complex transactions, but it gives only an opportunity. The king must use it. There is no royal road to political affairs: their detail is vast, disagreeable, complicated, and miscellaneous. A king, to be the equal of his Ministers in discussion, must work as they work; he must be a man of business as they are men of business. Yet a constitutional prince is the man who is most tempted to pleasure, and the least forced to business.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The change is what every one feels, though no one can define it. Each predominant mind calls out a corresponding sentiment in the country: most feel it a little. Those who feel it much express it much; those who feel it excessively express it excessively; those who dissent are silent, or unheard.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
I have known a man who did not know what color his sister's eyes were, though he had seen her every day for twenty years; or rather, he did not know because he had so seen her: so true is the philosophical maxim that we neglect the constant element in our thoughts, though it is probably the most important, and attend almost only to the varying elements—the differentiating elements (as men now speak)—though they are apt to be less potent.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Review writing is one of the features of modern literature. Many able men really give themselves up to it. Comments on ancient writings are scarcely so common as formerly; no great part of our literary talent is devoted to the illustration of the ancient masters; but what seems at first sight less dignified, annotation on modern writings was never so frequent.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbour, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
One of the most curious peculiarities of the English people is its dislike of the executive government. We are not in this respect "un vrai peuple moderne," like the Americans. The Americans conceive of the executive as one of their appointed agents; when it intervenes in common life, it does so, they consider, in virtue of the mandate of the sovereign people, and there is no invasion or dereliction of freedom in that people interfering with itself. The French, the Swiss, and all nations who breathe the full atmosphere of the nineteenth century, think so too. The material necessities of this age require a strong executive; a nation destitute of it cannot be clean, or healthy, or vigorous, like a nation possessing it. By definition, a nation calling itself free should have no jealousy of the executive, for freedom means that the nation, the political part of the nation, wields the executive. But our history has reversed the English feeling: our freedom is the result of centuries of resistance, more or less legal, or more or less illegal, more or less audacious, or more or less timid, to the executive government. We have, accordingly, inherited the traditions of conflict, and preserve them in the fullness of victory. We look on State action, not as our own action, but as alien action; as an imposed tyranny from without, not as the consummated result of our own organized wishes. I remember at the census of 1851 hearing a very sensible old lady say that the "liberties of England were at an end"; if Government might be thus inquisitorial, if they might ask who slept in your house, or what your age was, what, she argued, might they not ask and what might they not do?
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
There used to be a notion—not so much widely asserted as deeply implanted, rather pervadingly latent than commonly apparent in political philosophy—that in a little while, perhaps ten years or so, all human beings might, without extraordinary appliances, be brought to the same level. But now, when we see by the painful history of mankind at what point we began, by what slow toil, what favourable circumstances, what accumulated achievements, civilised man has become at all worthy in any degree so to call himself—when we realise the tedium of history and the painfulness of results—our perceptions are sharpened as to the relative steps of our long and gradual progress.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
At any rate, the pre-historic times were spent in making men capable of writing a history, and having something to put in it when it is written, and we can see how it was done.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Treaties are quite as important as most laws, and to require the elaborate assent of representative assemblies to every word of the law, and not to consult them even as to the essence of the treaty, is prima facie ludicrous.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
You have not a perception of the first elements in this matter till you know that government by a CLUB is a standing wonder.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
There are some that are bold and strong and incessant and energetic and hard, and to these is the world's glory; and some are timid and meek and impotent and cowardly and rejected and obscure.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
But a government by discussion, if it can be borne, at once breaks down the yoke of fixed custom.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The House of Commons has inquired into most things, but has never had a committee on "the Queen". There is no authentic blue-book to say what she does. Such an investigation cannot take place; but if it could, it would probably save her much vexatious routine, and many toilsome and unnecessary hours.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The world seems growing young when grave old lawyers and mature philosophers propose a scheme promising so much. It is from these classes that young men suffer commonly the chilling demonstration that their fine plans are opposed to rooted obstacles, that they are repetitions of other plans which failed long ago, and that we must be content with the very moderate results of tried machinery.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
But a dark cloud was at hand. If there be any truly painful fact about the world now tolerably well established by ample experience and ample records, it is that an intellectual and indolent happiness is wholly denied to the children of men.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies