English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
A great deal of the reticence of diplomacy had, I think history shows, much better be spoken out.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
But in all cases it must be remembered that a political combination of the lower classes, as such and for their own objects, is an evil of the first magnitude; that a permanent combination of them would make them (now that so many of them have the suffrage) supreme in the country; and that their supremacy, in the state they now are, means the supremacy of ignorance over instruction and of numbers over knowledge.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
In spiritedness, the style of Shakespeare is very like to that of Scott. The description of a charge of cavalry in Scott reads, as was said before, as if it was written on horseback. A play by Shakespeare reads as if it were written in a playhouse. The great critics assure you that a theatrical audience must be kept awake, but Shakespeare knew this of his own knowledge. When you read him, you feel a sensation of motion, a conviction that there is something "up," a notion that not only is something being talked about, but also that something is being done.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The most obvious evils cannot be quickly remedied.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Theodora never married. Love did not, however, kill her—at least, if it did, it was a long time at the task, as she survived these events more than sixty years. She never, seemingly, forgot the past.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A modern savage is anything but the simple being which philosophers of the eighteenth century imagined him to be; on the contrary, his life is twisted into a thousand curious habits; his reason is darkened by a thousand strange prejudices; his feelings are frightened by a thousand cruel superstitions. The whole mind of a modern savage is, so to say, tattooed over with monstrous images; there is not a smooth place anywhere about it. But there is no reason to suppose the minds of pre-historic men to be so cut and marked; on the contrary, the creation of these habits, these superstitions, these prejudices, must have taken ages.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
It should be observed, too, in fairness to the unroyal species of Cabinet government, that it is exempt from one of the greatest and most characteristic defects of the royal species. Where there is no Court there can be no evil influence from a Court.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
It will not answer to explain what all the things which you describe are not. You must begin by saying what they are.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
We have voluntary show enough already in London; we do not wish to have it encouraged and intensified, but quieted and mitigated.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
I have endeavoured to explain how difficult it is for inexperienced mankind to take to such a government; how much more natural, that is, how much more easy to uneducated men is loyalty to a monarch.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
If A kills B before B kills A, then A survives, and the human race is a race of A's.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Probably we pursue an insoluble problem in seeking a suitable education for a morbidly melancholy mind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Respect is traditional; it is given not to what is proved to be good, but to what is known to be old.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The condition of the primitive man, if we conceive of him rightly, is, in several respects, different from any we know. We unconsciously assume around us the existence of a great miscellaneous social machine working to our hands, and not only supplying our wants, but even telling and deciding when those wants shall come. No one can now without difficulty conceive how people got on before there were clocks and watches; as Sir G. Lewis said, 'it takes a vigorous effort of the imagination' to realize a period when it was a serious difficulty to know the hour of day. And much more is it difficult to fancy the unstable minds of such men as neither knew nature, which is the clock-work of material civilization, nor possessed a polity, which is a kind of clock-work to moral civilization. They never could have known what to expect; the whole habit of steady but varied anticipation, which makes our minds what they are, must have been wholly foreign to theirs.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Doubtless, if all subjects of the same Government only thought of what was useful to them, and if they all thought the same thing useful, and all thought that same thing could be attained in the same way, the efficient members of a constitution would suffice, and no impressive adjuncts would be needed. But the world in which we live is organised far otherwise.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
English history has been in substance the same, though its form is different, and its growth far slower and longer. The scale was larger, and the elements more various. A Greek city soon got rid of its kings, for the political sacredness of the monarch would not bear the daily inspection and constant criticism of an eager and talking multitude. Everywhere in Greece the slave population—the most ignorant, and therefore the most unsusceptible of intellectual influences—was struck out of the account. But England began as a kingdom of considerable size, inhabited by distinct races, none of them fit for prosaic criticism, and all subject to the superstition of royalty. In early England, too, royalty was much more than a superstition. A very strong executive was needed to keep down a divided, an armed, and an impatient country; and therefore the problem of political development was delicate. A formed free government in a homogeneous nation may have a strong executive; but during the transition state, while the republic is in course of development and the monarchy in course of decay, the executive is of necessity weak. The polity is divided, and its action feeble and failing. The different orders of English people have progressed, too, at different rates. The change in the state of the higher classes since the Middle Ages is enormous, and it is all improvement; but the lower have varied little, and many argue that in some important respects they have got worse, even if in others they have got better. The development of the English Constitution was of necessity slow, because a quick one would have destroyed the executive and killed the State, and because the most numerous classes, who changed very little, were not prepared for any catastrophic change in our institutions.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Failure is ever impending.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen
The defect of this religion is, that it is too abstract for the practical, and too bare for the musing.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies