English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was obliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The heart and passions of men are moved by things more within their attainment; the essential nature is stirred by the essential life; by the real actual existence of love, and hope, and character, and by the real literature which takes in its spirit, and which is in some sort its undefecated essence.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Biographical Studies
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
This may sound like nonsense, and yet it is true. There is around some men a kind of circle or halo of influences, and traits, and associations, by which they infallibly leave a distinct and uniform impression on all their contemporaries. It is very difficult, even for those who have the best opportunities, to analyze exactly what this impression consists in, or why it was made—but it is made.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
It is a great gain to society to have two idols: in the competition of idolatries the true worship gets a chance.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
As a theoretical writer I can venture to say, what no elected member of Parliament, Conservative or Liberal, can venture to say, that I am exceedingly afraid of the ignorant multitude of the new constituencies. I wish to have as great and as compact a power as possible to resist it. But a dissension between the Lords and Commons divides that resisting power; as I have explained, the House of Commons still mainly represents the plutocracy, the Lords represent the aristocracy. The main interest of both these classes is now identical, which is to prevent or to mitigate the rule of uneducated numbers. But to prevent it effectually, they must not quarrel among themselves; they must not bid one against the other for the aid of their common opponent. And this is precisely the effect of a division between Lords and Commons. The two great bodies of the educated rich go to the constituencies to decide between them, and the majority of the constituencies now consist of the uneducated poor. This cannot be for the advantage of any one.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Sydney Smith was an after-dinner writer. His words have a flow, a vigor, an expression, which is not given to hungry mortals. You seem to read of good wine, of good cheer, of beaming and buoyant enjoyment. There is little trace of labor in his composition ; it is poured forth like an unceasing torrent, rejoicing daily to run its course.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Indeed, the dangers arising from a party spirit in Parliament exceeding that of the nation, and of a selfishness in Parliament contradicting the true interest of the nation, are not great dangers in a country where the mind of the nation is steadily political, and where its control over its representatives is constant. A steady opposition to a formed public opinion is hardly possible in our House of Commons, so incessant is the national attention to politics, and so keen the fear in the mind of each member that he may lose his valued seat. These dangers belong to early and scattered communities, where there are no interesting political questions, where the distances are great, where no vigilant opinion passes judgment on Parliamentary excesses, where few care to have seats in the chamber, and where many of those few are from their characters and their antecedents better not there than there. The one great vice of Parliamentary government in an adult political nation, is the caprice of Parliament in the choice of a Ministry. A nation can hardly control it here; and it is not good that, except within wide limits, it should control it. The Parliamentary judgment of the merits or demerits of an administration very generally depends on matters which the Parliament, being close at hand, distinctly sees, and which the distant nation does not see. But where personality enters, capriciousness begins. It is easy to imagine a House of Commons which is discontented with all statesmen, which is contented with none, which is made up of little parties, which votes in small knots, which will adhere steadily to no leader, which gives every leader a chance and a hope. Such Parliaments require the imminent check of possible dissolution; but that check is (as has been shown) better in the Premier than in the sovereign; and by the late practice of our constitution, its use is yearly ebbing from the sovereign, and yearly centering in the Premier. The Queen can hardly now refuse a defeated Minister the chance of a dissolution, any more than she can dissolve in the time of an undefeated one, and without his consent.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people. In proportion as you give it power it will inquire into everything, settle everything, meddle in everything.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The working classes contribute almost nothing to our corporate public opinion, and therefore, the fact of their want of influence in Parliament does not impair the coincidence of Parliament with public opinion. They are left out in the representation, and also in the thing represented.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The English people must miss a thousand minutiae that continental bureaucracies know even too well; but if they see a cardinal truth which those bureaucracies miss, that cardinal truth may greatly help the world.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
There are indeed practical men who reject the dignified parts of Government. They say, we want only to attain results, to do business: a constitution is a collection of political means for political ends, and if you admit that any part of a constitution does no business, or that a simpler machine would do equally well what it does, you admit that this part of the constitution, however dignified or awful it may be, is nevertheless in truth useless.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The power of a government by discussion as an instrument of elevation plainly depends—other things being equal—on the greatness or littleness of the things to be discussed.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The ages of isolation had their use, for they trained men for ages when they were not to be isolated.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Everybody who has studied mathematics knows how many shadowy difficulties he seemed to have before he understood the problem, and how impossible it was when once the demonstration had flashed upon him, ever to comprehend those indistinct difficulties again, or to call up the mental confusion, that admitted them. So in these days, when we cannot by any effort drive out of our minds the notion of law, we cannot imagine the mind of one who had never known it, and who could not by any effort have conceived it.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
A legislature continuously sitting, always making laws, always repealing laws, would have been both an anomaly and a nuisance.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The Americans will probably to some extent modify their past system of total administrative cataclysms, but their very existence in the only competing form of free government should prepare us for and make us patient with the mild transitions of Parliamentary government.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
There was a great deal of excellent hammering hammered in the parish, and it was sinful that a man with nothing to do should sit tranquil.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
In early youth it is, perhaps, not true that the passions, taken generally, are particularly violent, or that the imagination is in any remarkable degree powerful; but it is certain that the fancy (which though it be, in the last resort, but a weak stroke of that same faculty, which, when it strikes hard, we call imagination, may yet for this purpose be looked on as distinct) is particularly wakeful, and that the gentler species of passions are more absurd than they are afterwards.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies