English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
Probably we pursue an insoluble problem in seeking a suitable education for a morbidly melancholy mind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
But then the mist of battles passes away, and the sound of the daily conflict no longer hurtles in the air, and a generation arises skilled with the skill of peace, and refined with the refinement of civilization, yet still remembering the old world, still appreciating the old life, still wondering at the old men, and ready to receive, at the hand of the poet, a new telling of the old tale.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A statesman ought to show his own nature, and talk in a palpable way what is to him important truth. And so he will both guide and benefit the nation. But if, especially at a time when great ignorance has an unusual power in public affairs, he chooses to accept and reiterate the decisions of that ignorance, he is only the hireling of the nation, and does little save hurt it.
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
The natural impulse of the English people is to resist authority. The introduction of effectual policemen was not liked; I know people, old people, I admit, who to this day consider them an infringement of freedom, and an imitation of the gendarmes of France. If the original policemen had been started with the present helmets, the result might have been dubious; there might have been a cry of military tyranny, and the inbred insubordination of the English people might have prevailed over the very modern love of PERFECT peace and order. The old notion that the Government is an extrinsic agency still rules our imaginations, though it is no longer true, and though in calm and intellectual moments we well know it is not. Nor is it merely our history which produces this effect; we might get over that; but the results of that history co-operate. Our double Government so acts: when we want to point the antipathy to the executive, we refer to the jealousy of the Crown, so deeply embedded in the very substance of constitutional authority; so many people are loth to admit the Queen, in spite of law and fact, to be the people's appointee and agent, that it is a good rhetorical emphasis to speak of her prerogative as something NON-popular, and therefore to be distrusted. By the very nature of our government our executive cannot be liked and trusted as the Swiss or the American is liked and trusted.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The best mode of testing what we owe to the Queen is to make a vigorous effort of the imagination, and see how we should get on without her.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Shakespeare was too wise not to know that for most of the purposes of human life stupidity is a most valuable element. He had nothing of the impatience which sharp logical narrow minds habitually feel when they come across those who do not apprehend their quick and precise deductions. No doubt he talked to the stupid players, to the stupid doorkeeper, to the property man, who considers paste jewels "very preferable, besides the expense "—talked with the stupid apprentices of stupid Fleet Street, and had much pleasure in ascertaining what was their notion of " King Lear".
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
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
But how far are the strongest nations really the best nations? how far is excellence in war a criterion of other excellence? I cannot answer this now fully, but three or four considerations are very plain. War, as I have said, nourishes the 'preliminary' virtues, and this is almost as much as to say that there are virtues which it does not nourish. All which may be called 'grace' as well as virtue it does not nourish; humanity, charity, a nice sense of the rights of others, it certainly does not foster. The insensibility to human suffering, which is so striking a fact in the world as it stood when history first reveals it, is doubtless due to the warlike origin of the old civilization. Bred in war, and nursed in war, it could not revolt from the things of war, and one of the principal of these is human pain. Since war has ceased to be the moving force in the world, men have become more tender one to another, and shrink from what they used to inflict without caring; and this not so much because men are improved (which may or may not be in various cases), but because they have no longer the daily habit of war—have no longer formed their notions upon war, and therefore are guided by thoughts and feelings which soldiers as such—soldiers educated simply by their trade—are too hard to understand.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
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
Those kinds of morals and that kind of religion which tend to make the firmest and most effectual character are sure to prevail, all else being the same; and creeds or systems that conduce to a soft limp mind tend to perish, except some hard extrinsic force keep them alive.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy—a bureaucracy trained from early life to its special avocation—is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business. That art has not yet been condensed into precepts, but a great many experiments have been made, and a vast floating vapor of knowledge floats through society. One of the most sure principles is, that success depends on a due mixture of special and non-special minds—of minds which attend to the means, and of minds which attend to the end.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The experiment of a strictly Parliamentary Republic—of a Republic where the Parliament appoints the executive—is being tried in France at an extreme disadvantage, because in France a Parliament is unusually likely to be bad, and unusually likely also to be free enough to show its badness.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The dignified parts of Government are those which bring it force—which attract its motive power. The efficient parts only employ that power. The comely parts of a Government HAVE need, for they are those upon which its vital strength depends. They may not do anything definite that a simpler polity would not do better; but they are the preliminaries, the needful prerequisites of ALL work. They raise the army, though they do not win the battle.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind. And the greatest of these results is this wonderful spectacle of society, which is ever new, and yet ever the same; in which accidents pass and essence remains; in which one generation dies and another succeeds, as if they were birds in a cage, or animals in a menagerie; of which it seems almost more than a metaphor to treat the parts as limbs of a perpetual living thing, so silently do they seem to change, so wonderfully and so perfectly does the conspicuous life of the new year take the place of the conspicuous life of last year.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
To exert itself, the will, like the arm, requires to have an obvious and a definite resistance, to know where it is, why it is, whence it comes, and whither it goes.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The newspapers only repeat the side their purchasers like: the favourable arguments are set out, elaborated, illustrated; the adverse arguments maimed, misstated, confused.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The essence of a civilised age is, that administration requires the continued aid of legislation.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution