Walter Bagehot was one of the most quotable people in British history. Why is that? He was a journalist, editor and essayist rather than an academic, so he was writing for the ‘masses’ (or at least for that elite, literate slice of it). In the rather wordy style of the mid-Victorian age, his writings were unusually accessible and relative pithy, so much of it was potentially quotable. Whether he intended to create memorable quotes – as a ‘grabber’ for his readers, or perhaps as contributions to his legacy and posterity – we do not know. The former is the more probable, as he wrote to teach and explain, so he wanted to catch and maintain the attention of the reader, for which quotable phrases were a useful tool.
Another reason for his quotability is that so many of them can be lifted out of their immediate context and applied to situations and circumstances well beyond his immediate intention. Obvious examples of this in modern times relate to some of his main specialisms, such as constitution and government, or banking and finance, where his continuing relevance in age of bank panics, royal crises and political upheavals provide as much scope for brief quotes from his works as for impenetrable academic treatises based on them. More broadly, many of his best and most memorable quotes may originate in surprising places, such as his many pieces of literary criticism or social anthropology. In this context we must accept that Bagehot’s writings reproduced below reflect the views and terminology of his era, and would not always be regarded as acceptable nowadays.
Not only is Bagehot oft-quoted, he is even more often misquoted. Many of his supposed quotations either do not exist or were said by other people. One common reason for the latter is that the phrase or sentence is actually quoted by Bagehot himself in his own works and wrongly attributed to Bagehot. Many others are simply inaccurate transcriptions of what Bagehot actually wrote, or of what a compiler or secondary source misunderstood. In this online age, it is so much easier for misquotes to go viral and become ‘fact’ than it is to correct such errors.
The classic case is Bagehot’s most famous quote, which is commonly given as “The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do”. This is really a misquote. What he actually wrote was: “The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do”. It is taken from his 1853 essay on Shakespeare, and accurately cited below. The former seems so embedded now as to be unshiftable, but perhaps some day …
What follows is a selection of some of Bagehot’s best quotes, many of them not at all common, derived as far as possible from what are described nowadays as ‘trusted sources’. These include the 1914-15 compilations by his sister-in-law, Emilie Barrington (available online at the Online Library of Liberty: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/barrington-the-works-and-life-of-walter-bagehot-10-vols) and by Norman St John-Stevas in his 15 volume work for The Economist. Most are taken from his published articles and essays, but some are from his letters or cited by reliable sources such as his main biographers. His own writings are listed here, and books about Bagehot are listed here. The classic collection of Bagehotian quotations and extracts is Ruth Dudley Edwards’ invaluable The Best of Bagehot, Hamish Hamilton, 1993).
Many of these quotes appeared in a regular column in The Leveller (Somerset’s monthly newspaper), accompanied by relevant editorial interpretation and commentary.
This selection will be updated ‘as and when’, again usually based on criteria such as topicality or general interest. The Fund always welcomes further suggestions for inclusion (if so, please provide a source citation), or comments, corrections etc on any of the published selection.
All Americans, it has been said, know business; it is in the air of their country.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
The American nation has very much the sort of faults which ‘only children’ are said to have. It has no correct measure of its own strength. Having never entered into close competition with any other nation, it indulges in that infinite braggadocio which a public school so soon rubs out of a conceited boy.
[‘The “Monroe Doctrine” in 1823 and 1863’, The Economist, 14 Nov 1863]
Every great man creates his own opposition; and no great man, therefore, will ever be President of the United States, except in the rarest and most exceptional cases. The object of “President makers” is to find a candidate who will conciliate the greatest number, not the person for whom there is most to be said, but the person against whom there is least to be said. … It is not too much to say that, under the American Constitution, there was no opportunity for a great statesman. As we have seen, he had no chance of being chosen President, the artificial clauses of the Constitution, and the natural principles of human nature, have combined to prevent that.
[‘The American constitution at the present crisis’, National Review, Oct 1861]
The President is elected by processes which forbid the election of known men, except at peculiar conjunctures, and in moments when public opinion is excited and despotic; and consequently if a crisis comes upon us soon after he is elected, inevitably we have government by an unknown quantity—the superintendence of that crisis by what our great satirist would have called “Statesman X”.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
A presidential election … places the entire policy of the Union upon a single hazard. A particular moment is selected when the ruler for a term of years is to be chosen… The mode in which the President of the United States is chosen is the most complicated which could well be imagined.
[‘The American constitution at the present crisis’, National Review, Oct 1861]
Each State is a subordinate Republic, and yet the entire Union is but a single Republic. Each State is in some sense a centre of disunion. Each State attracts to itself a share of political attachment, has separate interests, real or supposed, has a separate set of public men anxious to increase its importance—upon which their own depends—anxious to weaken the power of the United Government, by which theirs is overshadowed.
[‘The American constitution at the present crisis’, National Review, Oct 1861]
Ancient Monuments are not less important, and in some respects are more important to the country, than ancient chronicles or records. Indeed, they are ancient chronicles and records with all the vividness of real life about them.
[‘Sir John Lubbock’s Ancient Monuments Bill’, The Economist, 17 Apr 1875]
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. …Out of the same history and the same results proceed our tolerance of those “local authorities” which so puzzle many foreigners.
[English Constitution, 1867]
The Sonnets of Shakespeare belong exactly to the same school of poetry. They are not the sort of verses to take any particular hold upon the mind permanently and for ever, but at a certain period they take too much. For a young man to read in the spring of the year among green fields and in gentle air, they are the ideal. As First of April poetry they are perfect.
[‘Shakespeare’ Prospective Review, Aug 1853]
There is often a turn in the tide, the ovation of the spring may be the prelude to unpopularity in the autumn.
[‘Mr Gladstone’ National Review, July 1860]
The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and every one always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling.
[The English Constitution, Introduction to the second edition, 1872]
So long as the security of the Money Market is not entirely to be relied on, the Goverment of a country had much better leave it to itself and keep its own money. If the banks are bad, they will certainly continue bad and will probably become worse if the Government sustains and encourages them. The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.
[Lombard Street, 1873]
A panic, in a word, is a species of neuralgia, and according to the rules of science you must not starve it. The holders of the cash reserve must be ready not only to keep it for their own liabilities, but to advance it most freely for the liabilities of others. … The ultimate banking reserve of a country (by whomsoever kept) is not kept out of show, but for certain essential purposes, and one of those purposes is the meeting a demand for cash caused by an alarm within the country. It is not unreasonable that our ultimate treasure in particular cases should be lent; on the contrary, we keep that treasure for the very reason that in particular cases it should be lent.
[Lombard Street, 1873]
The cause of panic is the expectation of insolvency.
[‘The monetary crisis of 1857’, National Review, Jan 1858]
The best palliative to a panic is a confidence in the adequate amount of the Bank reserve, and in the efficient use of that reserve.
[Lombard Street, 1873]
The history of a panic is the history of a confused conflict of many causes; and unless you know what sort of effect each cause is likely to produce, you cannot explain any part of what happens. It is trying to explain the bursting of a boiler without knowing the theory of steam.
[‘The Postulates of English Political Economy’, Fortnightly Review, 1876]
What nonsense it is about love being blind. It sees so distinctly..
[letter to Eliza Wilson, fiancée, 9 Dec 1857]
I do not quite believe in my happiness yet. One requires detail to make one believe anything so strange.
[letter to Eliza Wilson, future fiancée, 10 Nov 1857]
It has been often said that a man who has once really loved a woman, never can be without feeling towards that woman again. He may go on loving her, or he may change and hate her.
[‘On the emotion of conviction’ Contemporary Review, 1871]
Sauciness is my particular line. I am always rude to everybody I respect. I could write to you of the deep and serious feelings which I hope you believe really are in my heart, but my pen jests of itself and always will…
[letter to Eliza Wilson, fiancée, 19 Nov 1857]
The English people must miss a thousand minutiæ 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.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
The head of France is a better head than ours, but it does not move her limbs. The head of England is in comparison a coarse and crude thing, but rules her various frame and regulates her whole life.
[‘Cæsarism as it existed in 1865’, The Economist, 4 March 1865]
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.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results; or, as Burke put it, “that they will think the substance of business not to be much more important than the forms of it”. Their whole education and all the habit of their lives make them do so. They are brought young into the particular part of the public service to which they are attached; they are occupied for years in learning its forms—afterwards, for years too, in applying these forms to trifling matters. They are, to use the phrase of an old writer, “but the tailors of business; they cut the clothes, but they do not find the body”. Men so trained must come to think the routine of business not a means, but an end—to imagine the elaborate machinery of which they form a part, and from which they derive their dignity, to be a grand and achieved result, not a working and changeable instrument.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
Business is more amusing than pleasure.
[recalled by Eliza Bagehot, widow, in Memoir by his friend, RH Hutton, 1879]
I am, too, disposed to deny entirely that there can be any treaty for which adequate reasons cannot be given to the English people, which the English people ought to make. A great deal of the reticence of diplomacy had, I think history shows, much better be spoken out. … The parties concerned would almost always be better for hearing the substantial reasons which induced the negotiators to make the treaty, and the negotiators would do their work much better, for half the ambiguities in treaties are caused by the negotiators not liking the fact or not taking the pains to put their own meaning distinctly before their own minds. And they would be obliged to make it plain if they had to defend it and argue on it before a great assembly.
[The English Constitution, Introduction to the second edition, 1872]
Of course, however, something new is necessary for every man and for every nation. We may wish, if we please, that tomorrow shall be like to-day, but it will not be like it. New forces will impinge upon us; new wind, new rain, and the light of another sun; and we must alter to meet them.
[Physics and politics, 1872]
All our administrators go out together. The whole executive Government changes—at least, all the heads of it change in a body, and at every such change some speculators are sure to exclaim that such a habit is foolish… A little examination will show that this change of Ministers is essential to a Parliamentary government; that something like it will happen in all elective Governments, and that worse happens under Presidential government; that it is not necessarily prejudicial to a good administration, but that, on the contrary, something like it is a prerequisite of good administration
[The English Constitution, 1867]
Thus commerce, which, being wholly of human creation, one might have fancied to be very mutable, is really a thing most conservative.
[‘Cost of Production’, Economic Studies, 1880]
There are two principal powers in politics. One is the great wish of all ordinary decent people, poor and rich, to lead the life to which they have been used, and to think the thoughts to which they have been accustomed. In real life this elementary feeling does not, indeed, display itself simply; on the contrary, it hides itself in a prettier shape, it calls itself loyalty; it cries that it wants to preserve the Queen, or the Czar, or the Union. Nothing, indeed, is more absurd than this Conservative sentiment when it does not know what to cry out. … But however we may smile at the feeling, its strength makes it of cardinal importance; in times of revolution it has volcanic power. The shopkeeper, ordinarily so quiet, will fight for his till, the merchant for his counting-house, the peasant proprietor for his patch of soil, with an almost rabid fury, such as no mere soldier will show for anything. In quiet times it is the most enormous of “potential energies”; a statesman who is supported by it may reasonably feel that he has a force in reserve, which, if he elicit it, will certainly produce a mighty effect, and perhaps annihilate his enemies and maintain his rule.
[‘The chances for a long Conservative Regime in England’, Prospective Review Dec 1878]
Great attention and wonderful inventive power has of late been invested in the arts of destruction. No sooner is one invention perfected than a second takes its place. What was a superior way of killing people in 1859, is a most inferior way, a quite passée and useless way in 1862. With all our outlay, we are barely keeping pace, it is alleged, with science: … But from this statement it would appear that science is very adequate to expend money, but very inadequate to defend a country. Every year you must have, on this theory, a new set of destructive machines; every year you must give up last year’s patent, for actual trial (as at Shoeburyness) will prove that this year’s patent will break it up and smash it, and that if you depend on it you will be leaning on a broken reed. … And then with all our expenditure we shall be worsted. We shall have spent a large fortune, but we shall have obtained no security.
Unless we have some other guide besides a blind following of science (which, though it sound well in showy generals and reads nicely in print, only means in life, at the best an uncertain selection among discordant sects of scientific persons), we shall never obtain real security, and we must anticipate not a diminishing, but a still increasing expenditure. With the progress of the time science grows faster and faster, and inventions, also, multiply with accelerating rapidity. … But, as a rule, and particular cases excepted, every new destructive invention is a great evil; it causes new expense, and renders useless old and valued implements…
Moreover, suppose it should turn out that we are preparing in vacuo,—that no other nation has any such accumulation of queer machines as we have. In that case how absurd would be our position! We should have diverted our capital from productive pursuits, and constructed implements with which to kill (for, though it is wrapped up in words, that is the real meaning) those who we believed were about to kill us, but who did not intend to do so at all. There is no use in a defensive engine, unless there is somewhere else in the world a related aggressive engine; and a toy trophy of unnecessary martial machines and weapons is the most foolish of all toy trophies.
[Count your enemies and economise your expenditure, May 1862]
A clear knowledge of the disease must precede the remedy.
[‘Parliamentary reform’, National Review, Jan 1859]
A uniform remedy for many diseases often ends by killing the patient.
[Lombard Street, 1873]
In all cases an accurate diagnosis of a disease must come before a discussion of remedies, and in a very complex case like this such a preliminary is especially needful, or else we may find that we have been trying to cure disease A with medicine fit only for disease B, and so have made things no better, or worse.
[‘The Depreciation of Silver’, The Economist, July 1876]
Every person must see that the demand for uniformity in currency is only one case of the growing demand for uniformity in matters between nations really similar.
[A Universal Money, 1869]
Of all pursuits ever invented by man for separating the faculty of argument from the capacity of belief, the art of debating is probably the most effectual.
[‘The character of Sir Robert Peel’, National Review, July 1856]
…what place is there just now for the dictatorial disposition under the English Constitution? Surely it would be difficult to find. The English idea is a committee—we are born with a belief in a green cloth, clean pens, and twelve men with grey hair. In topics of belief the ultimate standard is a jury. “A jury,” as a living judge once said, “would decide this, but how they would decide it, I cannot think.” As a jury will discover everything, a board will determine anything. “We speak,” observed Lord Brougham, “of the wisdom of Parliament.” The whole fabric of English society is based upon discussion—all our affairs are decided, after the giving of reasons, by the compromise of opinions. What has the over-weening dictator to do here? He is too clever to give reasons, too proud to compromise his judgment. He is himself alone. A dictator will not save us — we require discussion, explanation, controversy. Of course, at particular crises, all this must be abandoned. At perilous epochs, we need practically uncontrolled power; and even an irritable distrust is best allayed by a fresh confidence in a firm and lofty mind.
[‘Average government’, Saturday Review 29 March 1856]
It is impossible to believe that all members of that cabinet agree in all those measures. No two people agree in fifteen things; fifteen clever men never yet agreed in anything; yet they all defend them, argue for them, are responsible for them.
[‘The character of Sir Robert Peel’, National Review, July 1856]
Of course all Cabinets are divided. Fifteen clever men never agree about anything; but how they are divided it is rarely possible to know, and then only under a pledge of secrecy. The few who know such things are slow to divulge them…. This division within the Cabinet will be another cause of stumbles. It will not diminish the effect of the other cause, but heighten it; for the scandal of twenty blunders is much greater than twenty times the scandal of one.
[‘The chances for a long Conservative Regime in England’, Prospective Review, Dec 1878]
Sensible men have a well-founded suspicion of those who repeat the same unvarying dogma under many varying circumstances.
[Count your enemies and economise your expenditure, May 1862]
And when the use to which we are putting an old thing is a new use, in common sense we should think whether the old thing is quite fit for the use to which we are setting it. ‘Putting new wine into old bottles’ is safe only when you watch the condition of the bottle, and adapt its structure most carefully.
[Lombard Street, 1873]
What is life worth relieved only by a piano?
[letter to Eliza Wilson, fiancée, 25 Nov 1857]
Steady labour and dull material—wrinkles on the forehead and figures on the tongue—these are the English admiration. We may prize more splendid qualities on uncommon occasions, but these are for daily wear… Dullness is our line, as cleverness is that of the French. Woe to the English people if they ever forget that.
[‘Dull government’, Saturday Review, Feb 1856]
The nature of modern trade is to give to those who have much and take from those who have little. Manufacture goes where manufacture is, because there and there alone it finds attendant and auxiliary manufacture. Every railway takes trade from the little town to the big town because it enables the customer to buy in the big town. Year by year the North (as we may roughly call the new industrial world) gets more important, and the South (as we may call the pleasant remnant of old times) gets less important.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
… no real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist: he is much more likely to be sorry for his life.
[‘The first Edinburgh reviewers’, National Review, Oct 1855]
Education cannot ensure infallibility, but it most certainly ensures deliberation and patience. It forms the opinions of people that can form the opinions of others.
[‘Oxford’, Prospective Review, Aug 1852]
Instead of the real attention of a laborious and anxious statesman, we have now the shifting caprices of a popular assembly—elected for one object, deciding on another; changing with the turn of debate; shifting in its very composition; one set of men coming down to vote to-day, to-morrow another and often unlike set, most of them eager for the dinner-hour, actuated by unseen influences, by a respect for their constituents, by the dread of an attorney in a far-off borough. What people are these to control a nation’s destinies, and wield the power of an empire, and regulate the happiness of millions!
[‘Charles Dickens’, National Review, 1858]
Free government involves privilege, because it requires that more power should be given to the instructed than to the uninstructed: there is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
[‘France or England’, The Economist, 5 Sept 1863]
Truth may be, as they say, stranger than fiction, abstractedly; but in actual books, novels are certainly odder and more astounding than correct history.
[‘Edward Gibbon’, National Review, Jan 1856]
So strong are the combative propensities of man that he would rather fight a losing battle than not fight at all. It is most difficult to persuade people that by fighting they may strengthen the enemy … The courage which strengthens an enemy and which so loses, not only the present battle, but many after battles, is a heavy curse to men and nations.
[The English Constitution, Introduction to the second edition, 1872]
If you will only write a description of it, any form of government will seem ridiculous.
[‘Charles Dickens’, National Review, October 1858]
A free state—a state with liberty—means a state, call it republic or call it monarchy, in which the sovereign power is divided between many persons, and in which there is a discussion among those persons.
[Physics and Politics, 1872]
On political economy the English-speaking race is undoubtedly the best instructed part of mankind; and, nevertheless, in the United States and in every English-speaking colony, Protection is the firm creed of the ruling classes, and Free Trade is but a heresy.
[‘Adam Smith as a person’, Fortnightly Review, July 1876]
There are, no doubt, obvious reasons why English Political Economy should be thus unpopular out of England. It is known everywhere as the theory “of Free Trade,” and out of England Free Trade is almost everywhere unpopular. Experience shows that no belief is so difficult to create, and no one so easy to disturb. The Protectionist creed rises like a weed in every soil.
[‘The Postulates of English Political Economy’, Fortnightly Review, 1876]
You may put down newspapers, dissolve Parliaments, imprison agitators, almost stop conversation, but you can’t stop thought. You can’t prevent the silent, slow, creeping, stealthy progress of hatred, and scorn, and shame. You can’t attenuate easily the stern justice of a retarded retaliation.
[7th Letter from Paris, 19 Feb 1852]
No English majority dare vote for an exceedingly bad treaty; it would rather desert its own leader than ensure its own ruin. And an English minority, inheriting a long experience of Parliamentary affairs, would not be exceedingly ready to reject a treaty made with a foreign Government. The leaders of an English Opposition are very conversant with the school-boy maxim, “Two can play at that fun”. They know that the next time they are in office the same sort of sharp practice may be used against them, and therefore they will not use it.
[The English Constitution. Introduction to the Second Edition, 1872]
The more a man knows himself, the more habituated he is to action in general, the more sure he is to take and to value responsible counsel emanating from ability and suggested by experience. That this principle brings good fruit is certain.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
Amateur statesmen are always dangerous advisers …
[‘Quiet reasons for quiet peers’, The Economist, 12 June 1869]
The reason why so few good books are written, is that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.
[‘Shakespeare’ Prospective Review, Aug 1853]
All Governments like to interfere; it elevates their position to make out that they can cure the evils of mankind. And all zealots wish they should interfere, for such zealots think they can and may convert the rulers and manipulate the State control: it is a distinct object to convert a definite man, and if he will not be convinced there is always a hope of his successor. But most zealots dislike to appeal to the mass of mankind; they know instinctively that it will be too opaque and impenetrable for them.
[‘The Postulates of English Political Economy’, Fortnightly Review, 1876]
The difficulty of making up a Government is very much like the difficulty of putting together a Chinese puzzle: the spaces do not suit what you have to put into them. And the difficulty of matching a Ministry is more than that of fitting a puzzle, because the Ministers to be put in can object, though the bits of a puzzle cannot.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
The first duty of society is the preservation of society. By the sound work of old-fashioned generations—by the singular painstaking of the slumberers in churchyards—by dull care—by stupid industry, a certain social fabric somehow exists; people contrive to go out to their work, and to find work to employ them actually until the evening, body and soul are kept together, and this is what mankind have to show for their six thousand years of toil and trouble.
[2nd Letter from Paris, 15 Jan 1852]
Equality is not artificially established in a new colony; it establishes itself. … If manufactures on a considerable scale are established—and most young communities strive even by protection to establish them—the tendency to inequality is intensified. The capitalist becomes a unit with much, and his labourers a crowd with little.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
Now of course it is true that there are some things, though not many things, more important than money, and a nation may well be called on to abandon the maxims which would produce the most money, for others which would promote some of these better ends. The case is much like that of health in the body. There are unquestionable circumstances in which a man may be called on to endanger and to sacrifice his health at some call of duty. But for all that bodily health is a most valuable thing, and the advice of the physician as to the best way of keeping it is very much to be heeded, and in the same way, though the wealth is occasionally to be foregone, and the ordinary rules of industry abandoned, yet still national wealth is in itself and in its connections a great end, and economists who teach us how to arrive at it are most useful. … They are like pleasant doctors who teach people to eat and drink too much, only they have higher pretensions, and say you must not think of health only; there are things which are higher than health, and so they appeal at once to the higher aspirations of humanity and to its lower weaknesses.
[‘The Centenary of The Wealth of Nations’, The Economist, June 1876]
History, which is the record of human existence…
[‘Mr Macaulay’ National Review, Apr 1856]
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
[Physics & Politics, 1872]
… only a very sanguine mind can imagine Germany or Austria, or any great State of the continent, enforcing contracts by which England will gain and they will not. Such disinterested virtue is no part of international morality, as they understand it…
[“What should not be the policy of England in the East?” The Economist, 21 Oct 1876]
As to holidays, it is one of the lessons of life to learn to be independent of them. They are scarcely to be obtained by people in regular employment except in very fortunate circumstances … I assure you, if you seriously mean to work hard in England, and you require a good deal of work to keep your mind healthy, you must not hope for any such long gaps. At any rate, I feel very strongly that you ought not to make the having one an essential condition of obtaining so good a position.
[Letter to friend RH Hutton, Dec 1856]
In fact the House of Lords, as a House, is not a bulwark that will keep out revolution, but an index that revolution is unlikely. Resting as it does upon old deference, and inveterate homage, it shows that the spasm of new forces, the outbreak of new agencies, which we call revolution, is for the time simply impossible. So long as many old leaves linger on the November trees, you know that there has been little frost and no wind; just so while the House of Lords retains much power, you may know that there is no desperate discontent in the country, no wild agency likely to cause a great demolition.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind. A highly developed moral nature, joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive.
[‘Wordsworth, Tennyson & Browning…’, National Review, Nov 1864]
It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
[The English constitution, 1867]
It is in the nature of a mass of clever and intellectual people living together to want something to talk about…The influence of the Press, if you believe writers and printers, is the one sufficient condition of social well-being.
… newspaper people are the only traders that thrive upon convulsion. In quiet times, who cares for the paper? In times of tumult, who does not? … A really sensible press, arguing temperately after a clear and satisfactory exposition of the facts, is a great blessing in any country.
[6th Letter from Paris, Feb 1852]
The newspapers describe daily and incessantly a certain conspicuous existence; they comment on its characters, recount its details, investigate its motives, anticipate its course.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
With our newspapers and our speeches .. we beat the ideas of the few into the minds of the many.
[‘Cæsarism as it existed in 1865’ The Economist, 4 Mar 1865]
But how to improve the world, to repair the defects, is a difficulty. Immobility is a part of man. A sluggish conservatism is the basis of our English nature. … The men who have in general exerted themselves in labours for others, have generally been rather of a brooding nature; certain ideas, views and feelings have impressed themselves on them in solitude; they come forth with them among the crowd, but they have no part in its diversified life. They are almost irritated by it. They have no conception except of their cause; they are abstracted in one thought, pained with the dizziness of a heated idea…. But an open-minded man, who is aroused by what he sees, quick at discerning abuses, ready to reform anything which he thinks goes wrong—will never have done acting. The details of life are endless, and each of them may go wrong in a hundred ways.
[‘Lord Brougham’, National Review, July 1857]
On the other hand, there is in States a mighty innovating—it would almost be clearer to say, revolutionary—impulse. …. Unhappily, laws and institutions are not changed so easily as furniture and manners. The things of the individual can be changed by the individual, but the things of the community—at least in free States—can only be changed by the community; and communities are heavy to move. The necessary agents are many, and slow to gain. In consequence, all these States are liable to acute spasms of innovating energy. The force which ought to have acted daily and hourly has long been effectually resisted every day and every hour; at last it breaks forth with pent-up power; it frightens every one, and for the minute seems as if it might destroy anything.
[‘The chances for a long Conservative Regime in England’, Prospective Review Dec 1878]
We have entirely lost the idea that any undertaking likely to pay, and seen to be likely, can perish for want of money; yet no idea was more familiar to our ancestors, or is more common now in most countries. A citizen of London in Queen Elizabeth’s time could not have imagined our state of mind. He would have thought that it was of no use inventing railways (if he could have understood what a railway meant), for you would not have been able to collect the capital with which to make them.
[Lombard Street, 1873]
The foreign policy of England has for many years been, according to the judgment now in vogue, inconsequent, fruitless, casual; aiming at no distinct pre-imagined end, based on no steadily pre-conceived principle. I have not room to discuss with how much or how little abatement this decisive censure should be accepted. However, I entirely concede that our recent foreign policy has been open to very grave and serious blame. But would it not have been a miracle if the English people, directing their own policy, and being what they are, had directed a good policy? Are they not above all nations divided from the rest of the world, insular both in situation and in mind, both for good and for evil? Are they not out of the current of common European causes and affairs? Are they not a race contemptuous of others? Are they not a race with no special education or culture as to the modern world, and too often despising such culture? Who could expect such a people to comprehend the new and strange events of foreign places? So far from wondering that the English Parliament has been inefficient in foreign policy, I think it is wonderful, and another sign of the rude, vague imagination that is at the bottom of our people, that we have done so well as we have.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
It is the misfortune of Ireland that it is not true of politics there that ‘nothing succeeds like success’, but rather, if we may be permitted the bull, that ‘nothing succeeds like failure’…. It is the chief blot on all political life in Ireland that there is so little seriousness in the choice of the political aims which are put forward … They prefer the demand to the satisfaction of the demand…. The Irish politicians have no disposition to compromise, because, as we believe, they have not their eyes on the thing demanded, but on the sound of the demand itself.”
[‘The Limerick Demonstration’, The Economist 22.4.1876]
I am very glad to hear that you enjoyed your Norwegian tour. It moves my bitter envy to hear of a man’s daring to go to a country where the post is such as you describe. My best idea of a holiday is half a dozen letters daily.
[Letter to CH Pearson, academic historian, 1 Sept 1862]
A great part of our law is really judge-made law. The courts always profess to be deciding on some ground of past precedent. But very often, and of necessity in novel circumstances, this is nothing but profession. The judges are really making the law when they are said to be declaring it; and if they declared it on solid grounds of principle, and for reasons which could with any sort of confidence be assigned and predicted beforehand, this judicial legislation would be tolerable. In fact, a great part of the best law in the world was so made by great judges who considered principle and followed out principle. … Accordingly, in so many cases it is but a “solemn toss-up” how the judges decide. They are really making new law, but they are not making it on principle; they fear principle. They are guided by fancied analogies and past precedents—one judge relying on one analogy and another on another, but none having anything substantial.
[‘Bad lawyers or good?’, Fortnightly Review, June 1870]
Posterity cannot take up little people, there are so many of them – reputation must be acquired at the moment and the circumstances of the moment are matters of accident.
[letter to Eliza Wilson, fiancée, 4 Jan 1858]
… our victory had been great, but it had no fruits.
[‘Lord Brougham’ National Review, July 1857]
Legal fictions have a place in courts of law; it is sometimes better or more possible to strain venerable maxims beyond their natural meaning than to limit them by special enactment: but legal fictions are very dangerous in the midst of popular institutions and a genuine moral excitement.
[‘Parliamentary Reform’, National Review, Jan 1859]
So that the great requisite for success in law is roominess of mind, to take in and hold at once a large number of considerations.
[Letter to father, TW Bagehot, Dec 1848]
But though there was no legal limit, there was a practical limit to subjection in (what may be called) the pagan part of human nature—the inseparable obstinacy of freemen. They never would do exactly what they were told.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
The head of the Executive may, by an infinitesimal chance, be a man so exactly representative of the people, that his acts always represent their thoughts, so shrewd that he can steer his way amidst the legal difficulties piled deliberately in his path, and so good that he desires power only for the national ends. The chance of obtaining such a man was, as we say, infinitesimal; but the United States, by a good fortune, of which they will one day be cruelly sensible, had obtained him. Mr. Lincoln, by a rare combination of qualities—patience, sagacity, and honesty—by a still more rare sympathy, not with the best of his nation but the best average of his nation, and by a moderation rarest of all, had attained such vast moral authority that he could make all the hundred wheels of the Constitution move in one direction without exerting any physical force.
[‘The assassination of Mr. Lincoln’, The Economist, 29 Apr 1865]
It is difficult enough to divide the sphere of properly municipal or country from properly central and Parliamentary powers, and almost impossible to do so beneficially without giving Parliament an absolute overriding power in case of conflict.
[‘Mr. Gladstone on Home Rule for Ireland’, The Economist, 30 Sept 1871]
I should maintain that elderly gentlemen with bald heads and local influence ought to feel that they, in the final resort, settle and determine all truly local matters. Human nature likes its own road, its own bridge, its own lapidary obstacles, its own deceptive luminosity.
[7th Letter from Paris, 19 Feb 1852]
In the course of a long reign a sagacious king would acquire an experience with which few Ministers could contend.
[English Constitution, 1867]
It is not possible that every year should be a constitutional era; and even if it were possible, it would not be desirable. Large changes in our fundamental institutions are grave tasks: they can only be proposed when the public mind has been thoroughly familiarised with their necessity; when the evil to be remedied is keenly experienced; when the preliminary discussion has been sufficient and effectual. These conditions can rarely be satisfied.
[‘The Unseen Work of Parliament’, The Economist, Feb 1861]
It is decidedly advantageous that every active or intelligent minority should have adequate spokesmen in the legislature; but it is often not desirable that it should be represented there in exact proportion to its national importance. … The judgment of the Parliament ought always to be coincident with the opinion of the nation; it is extremely important that it should not be less decided. Very frequently it is of less importance which of two courses be selected than that the one which is selected should be consistently adhered to and energetically carried through. If every minority had exactly as much weight in Parliament as it has in the nation, there might be a risk of indecision. Members of Parliament are apt enough to deviate from the plain decisive path, from vanity, from a wish to be original, from a nervous conscientiousness. They are subject to special temptations, which make their decisions less simple and consistent than the nation’s. We need a counteracting influence; and it will be no subject for regret if that influence be tolerably strong. It is, therefore, no disadvantage, but the contrary, that a diffused minority in the country is in general rather inadequately represented. A strong conviction in the ruling power will give it strength of volition. The House of Commons should think as the nation thinks; but it should think so rather more strongly, and with somewhat less of wavering.
[‘Parliamentary reform’, National Review, Jan 1859]
We live among the marvels of science, but we know how little they change us. The essentials of life are what they were. We go by the train, but we are not improved at our journey’s end. We have railways, and canals, and manufactures—excellent things, no doubt, but they do not touch the soul. Somehow, they seem to make life more superficial.
[‘Lord Brougham’, National Review, July 1857]
In fact, the habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people’s minds.
[‘Hartley Coleridge’, Prospective Review, Oct 1852]
The next parish even is suspected. Its inhabitants have different usages, almost imperceptibly different, but yet different; they speak a varying accent; they use a few peculiar words; tradition says that their faith is dubious. And if the next parish is a little suspected, the next county is much more suspected. Here is a definite beginning of new maxims, new thoughts, new ways: the immemorial boundary mark begins in feeling a strange world. And if the next county is dubious, a remote county is untrustworthy. … In ages when distant territories are blanks in the mind, when neighbourhood is a sentiment, when locality is a passion, concerted co-operation between remote regions is impossible even on trivial matters. Neither would rely enough upon the good faith, good sense, and good judgment of the other.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
So wonderfully and so perfectly does the conspicuous life of the new year take the place of the conspicuous life of last year.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
In its essence, the system is this: A man in the north is trustworthy, and wants money; a man in the south has money, but does not know who is trustworthy; a middleman in London knows who is trustworthy, and lends the money of the south to the man in the north.
[‘The monetary crisis of 1857’, National Review, Jan 1858]
We overlook and half forget the constant while we see and watch the variable.
[Physics and Politics, 1872]
One of the most helpless exhibitions of helpless ingenuity and wasted mind is a committee of the whole House on a bill of many clauses which eager enemies are trying to spoil, and various friends are trying to mend. An Act of Parliament is at least as complex as a marriage settlement; and it is made much as a settlement would be if it were left to the vote and settled by the major part of persons concerned, including the unborn children. There is an advocate for every interest, and every interest clamours for every advantage. The executive Government by means of its disciplined forces, and the few invaluable members who sit and think, preserves some sort of unity. But the result is very imperfect.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
The old questions have mostly been settled; the new questions are as yet too undetermined and too vague to be dealt with in an authoritative exposition. Politics must ‘grow’; they cannot suddenly be made.
[‘The Leadership of the Opposition’, The Economist 14 March 1874]
Deep study, especially deep study which haunts and rules the imagination, necessarily removes men from life, absorbs them in themselves; purifies their conduct, with some risk of isolating their sympathies; develops that loftiness of mood which is gifted with deep inspirations and indulged with great ideas, but which tends in its excess to engender a contempt for others, and a self-appreciation which is even more displeasing to them.
[‘John Milton’, National Review, July 1859]
Philosophers may be divided into seers on the one hand, and into gropers on the other.
[‘Bishop Butler’, Prospective Review, Nov 1854]
The supine placidity of civilisation is not favourable to animosity. A placid Conservative is perhaps a little pleased that the world is going a little ill.
[‘Lord Brougham’, National Review, July 1857]
The mere notion, the bare idea, that poetry is a deep thing, a teaching thing, the most surely and wisely elevating of human things, is even now to the coarse public mind nearly unknown.
[‘Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning Or Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art In English Poetry’, National Review, Nov 1864]
The most influential of constitutional statesmen is the one who most felicitously expresses the creed of the moment, who administers it, who embodies it in laws and institutions, who gives it the highest life it is capable of, who induces the average man to think, “I could not have done it any better if I had had time myself”.
Constitutional statesmen are obliged, not only to employ arguments which they do not think conclusive, but likewise to defend opinions which they do not believe to be true.
The consequence is, that those who conduct it have to defend measures they disapprove, to object to measures they approve, to appear to have an accurate opinion on points on which they really have no opinion. The calling of a constitutional statesman is very much that of a political advocate; he receives a new brief with the changing circumstances of each successive day.
[‘The character of Sir Robert Peel’, National Review, July 1856]
In well-framed polities, innovation—great innovation that is—can only be occasional. If you are always altering your house, it is a sign either that you have a bad house, or that you have an excessively restless disposition—there is something wrong somewhere. … Happiness, as far as it is affected by politics, needs a good, or at any rate a suitable, inherited polity, and a tenacious resolution not to change that polity without reason shown. … Nations eminent in practical politics have always possessed a singular constancy to old institutions, and have inherited institutions more or less deserving that constancy.
[‘The chances for a long Conservative Regime in England’, Prospective Review, Dec 1878]
Politicians, as has been said, live in the repute of the commonalty. They may appeal to posterity; but of what use is posterity? Years before that tribunal comes into life, your life will be extinct.
[‘The character of Sir Robert Peel’, National Review, July 1856]
Nothing can in general be more fleeting than the fame of an orator.
[‘Mr Bright’s Retirement’, The Economist, 24 Dec 1870]
Popular Government means, and as we suppose ought to mean, a Government which, for good and for evil, savours of all the good qualities and all the bad qualities of the people. It would not be well, but the reverse, if on subjects on which we are ignorant and careless, we were to be saved from the natural results of that ignorance and carelessness.
[‘The Quarterly Review on the lessons of the war’ The Economist, 28 Jan 1871]
Of a like nature is the value of constitutional royalty in times of transition… The Prime Minister—the chief on whom everything depends, who must take responsibility if any one is to take it, who must use force if any one is to use it—is not fixed in power. He holds his place, by the essence of the Government, with some uncertainty. Among a people well-accustomed to such a Government, such a functionary may be bold: he may rely, if not on the Parliament, on the nation which understands and values him. But when that Government has only recently been introduced, it is difficult for such a Minister to be as bold as he ought to be. His power rests too much on human reason, and too little on human instinct. The traditional strength of the hereditary monarch is at these times of incalculable use.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
… it marks the coming of the time when it will be one of the most important qualifications of a Prime Minister to exert a direct control over the masses—when the ability to reach them, not as his views may be filtered through an intermediate class of political teachers and writers, but directly by the vitality of his own mind, will give a vast advantage in the political race to any statesman. …It would be at once felt by all his discontented allies as well by his party foes that Mr. Gladstone’s direct command over the people is still immense,—that the result of an appeal to the people by him against a divided and hostile Parliament would very probably end in his full reinstatement in power, with as large a majority as ever. Mr. Gladstone has illustrated most remarkably his reserve power outside Parliament. … Parliament may not like it,—may think it even a dangerous power,—may echo the grumblings of three years ago over Mr. Gladstone’s stumping tour in Lancashire; but Parliament will recognise and respect it as a new store of political force, as a guarantee that the Premier has more direct relations to the people than any other Premier of our times, and that if he becomes unpopular with the representatives of the people, he may still be more popular with the people themselves than even those representatives. Undoubtedly Mr. Gladstone’s Greenwich speech will serve as a conspicuous mark for the date when it first became advisable for a Minister to cultivate the gifts of a great popular orator,—an orator who can deal with political topics in the broad, easy and animated style which touches the people, and without any of that subtle flavour of Parliamentary skill which only suits the statesman….
[‘Mr. Gladstone and the people’, The Economist, 4 Nov 1871]
The distinguishing quality of Parliamentary government is, that in each stage of a public transaction there is a discussion; that the public assist at this discussion; that it can, through Parliament, turn out an administration which is not doing as it likes, and can put in an administration which will do as it likes.
[The English Constitution Introduction to the second edition, 1872]
Some people have known a time in life when there was no book they could not read. The fact of its being a book went immensely in its favour. In early life there is an opinion that the obvious thing to do with a horse is to ride it; with a cake, to eat it; with sixpence, to spend it. A few boys carry this further, and think the natural thing to do with a book is to read it. There is an argument from design in the subject: if the book was not meant for that purpose, for what purpose was it meant?
[‘Edward Gibbon’, National Review, Jan 1856]
A constitutional sovereign must in the common course of government be a man of but common ability. I am afraid, looking to the early acquired feebleness of hereditary dynasties, that we must expect him to be a man of inferior ability. Theory and experience both teach that the education of a prince can be but a poor education, and that a royal family will generally have less ability than other families. What right have we then to expect the perpetual entail on any family of an exquisite discretion, which if it be not a sort of genius, is at least as rare as genius?
[The English Constitution, 1867]
[T]he Prime Minister is at the head of our business, and, like every head of a business, he ought to have mind in reserve. He must be able to take a fresh view of new contingencies, and keep an animated curiosity as to coming events. If he suffer himself to be involved in minutiæ, some great change in the world, some Franco-German war, may break out, like a thief in the night, and if he has no elastic thought and no spare energy, he may make the worst errors. A great Premier must add the vivacity of an idle man to the assiduity of a very laborious one.
[‘The Premiership’ The Economist, Jan 1875]
A Prime Minister under a Parliamentary constitution must have a very great number of other great qualities. He must be a man of business long trained in great affairs; he must be, if not a great orator, a great explainer; he must be able to expound with perspicuity to a mixed assembly complicated measures and involved transactions; he must be a great party leader, and have the knowledge of men, the easy use of men, and the miscellaneous sagacity, which such eminence necessarily implies; he must be a ready man, a managing man, and an intelligible man: and under no other system of government with which we are acquainted is there any security that all these, or an equal number of other, important qualities will constantly be found in the ruler of a nation.
[‘The history of the unreformed Parliament, and its lessons’ National Review, Jan 1860]
… the air of Downing Street brings certain ideas to those who live there, and that the hard, compact prejudices of opposition are soon melted and mitigated in the great gulf stream of affairs.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
The events for which one generation cares most, are often those of which the next knows least. They are too old to be matters of personal recollection, and they are too new to be subjects of study: they have passed out of memory, and they have not got into the books.
[‘Lord Althorp and the Reform Act of 1832’ Fortnightly Review, Nov 1876]
In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
[‘The Waverley novels’ National Review, Apr 1858]
On the whole, therefore, the position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in our Money Market is that of one who deposits largely in it, who created it, and who demoralised it. He cannot, therefore, banish it from his thoughts, or decline responsibility for it. He must arrange his finances so as not to intensify panics, but to mitigate them. He must aid the Bank of England in the discharge of its duties; he must not impede or prevent it.
His aid may be most efficient. He is, on finance, the natural exponent of the public opinion of England. And it is by that opinion that we wish the Bank of England to be guided. Under a natural system of banking we should have relied on self-interest, but the State prevented that; we now rely on opinion instead; the public approval is a reward, its disapproval a severe penalty, on the Bank directors; and of these it is most important that the finance minister should be a sound and felicitous exponent.
[Lombard Street, 1873]
To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others. He would find that his having no others would enable him to use these with singular effect. He would say to his Minister: “The responsibility of these measures is upon you. Whatever you think best must be done. Whatever you think best shall have my full and effectual support. But you will observe that for this reason and that reason what you propose to do is bad; for this reason and that reason what you do not propose is better. I do not oppose, it is my duty not to oppose; but observe that I warn.” Supposing the king to be right, and to have what kings often have, the gift of effectual expression, he could not help moving his Minister. He might not always turn his course, but he would always trouble his mind.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
Children’s holidays are parents’ schooltime.
[recalled by Eliza Bagehot, widow, in Memoir by his friend, RH Hutton, 1879]
We must speak to the many so that they will listen—that they will like to listen—that they will understand. It is of no use addressing them with the forms of science, or the rigour of accuracy, or the tedium of exhaustive discussion. The multitude are impatient of system, desirous of brevity, puzzled by formality.
[‘The first Edinburgh reviewers’, National Review, October 1855]
And “science” I regret to say only means scientific men, and they all differ on every difficult practical question. Whenever there is an important trial involving any complex point of engineering, twelve engineers will give evidence upon oath, and doubtless with perfect sincerity, in the affirmative,—and twelve others, with equal sincerity and upon oath also, in the negative. Now, suppose our authorities believe the wrong engineer, and our enemies’ authorities believe the right “engineer”. This is no impossible supposition. On the contrary, it is next to impossible that it should not frequently happen: infallibility in the choice of scientific employés is as rare as any other sort of administrative infallibility. And then with all our expenditure we shall be worsted. We shall have spent a large fortune, but we shall have obtained no security. Unless we have some other guide besides a blind following of science (which, though it sound well in showy generals and reads nicely in print, only means in life, at the best an uncertain selection among discordant sects of scientific persons), we shall never obtain real security, and we must anticipate not a diminishing, but a still increasing expenditure.
[Count your enemies and economise your expenditure, May 1862]
Some people are unfortunately born scientific. They take much interest in the objects of nature.
[W]e see that, even in the greatest cases, scientific men have been calm men. Their actions are unexceptionable; scarcely a spot stains their excellence: if a doubt is to be thrown on their character, it would be rather that they were insensible to the temptations than that they were involved in the offences of ordinary men. An aloofness and abstractedness cleave to their greatness. There is a coldness in their fame.
[‘Mr Macaulay’, National Review, Apr 1856]
In his time, people no more thought of the origin of the monarchy than they did of the origin of the Mendip Hills. The one had always been there, and so had the other. God (such was the common notion) had made both, and one as much as the other. Everywhere, in that age, the common modes of political speech assumed the existence of certain utterly national institutions, and would have been worthless and nonsensical except on that assumption. This national habit appears as it ought to appear in our national dramatist.
[‘Shakespeare’, Prospective Review, Aug 1853]
The most pressing need of the poor is a provision for failing health and for old age.
[‘Parliamentary reform’, National Review, Jan 1859]
Tranquillity can never be the lot of those who rule nations… No sooner has one war ended than another is begun. No sooner is one quarrel, which taxed the resources and menaced the existence of great nations, quenched in utter exhaustion or settled after infinite intrigue, than some little insignificant question – a cloud at first sight no bigger than a man’s hand – arises in some other quarter, swells into unexpected magnitude, and threatens the direst results…. [T]here is no rest for the politician on this side of the grave. Just now the appearance of the world is one of singular disturbance. It is a seething cauldron.
[‘The state of Europe’, National Review, Jan 1864]
There is one kind of business in which our aristocracy have still, and are likely to retain long, a certain advantage. This is the business of diplomacy. … Nations touch at their summits. It is always the highest class which travels most, knows most of foreign nations, has the least of the territorial sectarianism which calls itself patriotism, and is often thought to be so. Even here, indeed, in England the new trade-class is in real merit equal to the aristocracy. Their knowledge of foreign things is as great, and their contact with them often more. But, notwithstanding, the new race is not as serviceable for diplomacy as the old race. An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle. He is sent abroad for show as well as for substance; he is to represent the Queen among foreign courts and foreign sovereigns. An aristocracy is in its nature better suited to such work; it is trained to the theatrical part of life; it is fit for that if it is fit for anything.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
Every parent wisely teaches his child his own creed, and till the child has attained a certain age, it is better that he should not hear too much of any other. His mind will in the end be better able to weigh arguments, because it does not begin to weigh them so early. He will hardly comprehend any creed unless he has been taught some creed. But the restrictions of childhood must be relaxed in youth, and abandoned in manhood. One object of education is to train us for discussion, and as that training gradually approaches to completeness, we should gradually begin to enter into and to take part in discussion. The restrictions that are useful at nine years old are pernicious at nineteen.
[‘The metaphysical basis of toleration’ Contemporary Review, Apr 1874]
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
[‘Hartley Coleridge’, Prospective Review, Oct 1852]
The best test of a machine is the work it turns out.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
It is inconceivable to me to like to see many people and even to speak to them. Every new person you know is an intellectual burden because you may see them again, and must be able to recognise and willing to converse with them.
[Letter to an unnamed sister-in-law, c1861]
But those who have watched the habits of men of business in politics and out of it will have seen many cases in which a still and quiet man who does not seem to be doing much, and probably is talking of something quite different, has in matter of fact and at the week’s end accomplished much more than the “rushing mighty wind,”—the very energetic man who is never idle or at rest and who has no thought but his office business. A still man like Lord Clarendon has time to think what he will do, and most incessant men are apt to act before they have thought, and therefore land where they should not, or else lose half their time in sailing back again.
[‘The late Lord Clarendon’ The Economist, July 1870]
But, as men of business, we shrink from “understandings” with our competitors. Unless they are very full, very accurate, and very comprehensive, they are sure to lead to misunderstandings. Definite treaties are good, and general confidence is excellent, but vague, shadowy, and impalpable conventions will only exacerbate the ill-feeling which they are designed to allay. A regular discussion in Parliament would obtain the expected advantage, and would not involve the possible danger.
[‘The limit of defensive outlay: Mr. Cobden’s three panics’, The Economist, 26 Apr 1862]
Accordingly, a Government which negotiated a treaty would feel that its treaty would be subject certainly to a scrutiny, but still to a candid and lenient scrutiny; .. At present the Government which negotiates a treaty can hardly be said to be accountable to any one. It is sure to be subjected to vague censure. … it is quite possible that there may be no real criticism on a treaty at all; or the treaty has been made by the Government, and as it cannot be unmade by any one, the Opposition may not think it worth while to say much about it. The Government, therefore, is never certain of any criticism; on the contrary, it has a good chance of escaping criticism; but if there be any criticism the Government must expect it to be bitter, sharp, and captious … If we require that in some form the assent of Parliament shall be given to such treaties, we should have a real discussion prior to the making of such treaties. We should have the reasons for the treaty plainly stated, and also the reasons against it. … We should have a manlier and plainer way of dealing with foreign policy, if Ministers were obliged to explain clearly their foreign contracts before they were valid, just as they have to explain their domestic proposals before they can become laws.
[The English Constitution, Introduction to the second edition, 1872]
There is much of mankind that a man can only learn from himself. 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. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself. And if we would study the internal lives of others, it seems essential that we should begin with our own.
[‘Shakespeare’, Prospective Review, Aug 1853]
Without a hard ascent you can rarely see a great view.
[‘Béranger’, National Review, Oct 1857]
I fear you will laugh when I tell you what I conceive to be about the most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent, and on a large scale; it is much stupidity. … In fact, what we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is Nature’s favourite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion. It enforces concentration; people who learn slowly, learn only what they must. The best security for people’s doing their duty is, that they should not know anything else to do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is, that people should be incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side….. I extend this, and advisedly maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be too clever to be practical, and not dull enough to be free.
[3rd Letter from Paris, 20 Jan 1852]
A majority which is obtained by the employment of patronage is very different; it is combined mainly by an expectation. Sir Robert Walpole, the great master in the art of dispensing patronage, defined gratitude as an anticipation of future favour; he meant that the majority which maintained his administration was collected, not by recollection, but by hope; they thought not so much of favours which were past as of favours which were to come. At a critical moment this bond of union was ordinarily weak. … In a time of doubt and difficulty every member of such a majority inevitably distrusted his neighbour.
[‘The history of the unreformed Parliament, and its lessons’, National Review, Jan 1860]
The Government is a removable Government, its tenure depends upon its conduct. If a party in power were so foolish as to choose a weak man for its head, it would cease to be in power. Its judgment is its life. … in the hands of a person who was thought to be weak—who had been promoted because of his mediocrity—whom his own friends did not respect. … But a Prime Minister must show what he is. He must meet the House of Commons in debate; he must be able to guide that assembly in the management of its business, to gain its ear in every emergency, to rule it in its hours of excitement. He is conspicuously submitted to a searching test, and if he fails he must resign.
Nor would any party like to trust to a weak man the great power which a Cabinet government commits to its Premier. The Premier, though elected by Parliament can dissolve Parliament. Members would be naturally anxious that the power which might destroy their coveted dignity should be lodged in fit hands. They dare not place in unfit hands a power which, besides hurting the nation, might altogether ruin them.
[The English Constitution, 1867]
Now I know what a nut feels like when it is going to be cracked.
[recalled by Eliza Bagehot, widow, in Memoir by his friend, RH Hutton, 1879]
What does Great Britain not gain by the hearty co-operation of Scotch and English, and the totally different genius even of the Northern and the Southern English, in one and the same national unity?
[Are Alsace and Lorraine worth most to Germany or France?’, The Economist, September 1870]
If you have a mind to play with, there’s no better game than to play with it.
[Emilie Barrington, A retrospect and other articles, 1896]
Alternative version: “If you have a mind to play with, it’s so much the best game, you need have no other.”
[Emilie Barrington, Reminiscences of G. F. Watts, 1905]
Youth has a principle of consolidation. We begin with the whole. Small sciences are the labours of our manhood; but the round universe is the plaything of the boy. His fresh mind shoots out vaguely and crudely into the infinite and eternal. Nothing is hid from the depth of it; there are no boundaries to its vague and wandering vision. Early science, it has been said, begins in utter nonsense; it would be truer to say that it starts with boyish fancies.
[‘Edward Gibbon’, National Review, Jan 1856]
…women have now marvellous means of winning their way in the world; and mind without muscle has far greater force than muscle without mind.
[Physics & Politics, 1872]
But women can scarcely ever compose leaders, and no woman sits in our representative chamber. The whole tide of abstract discussion, which fills our mouths and deafens our ears, the whole complex accumulation of facts and figures to which we refer everything, and which we apply to everything, is quite unfemale. A lady has an insight into what she sees; … Women are clever, but cleverness of itself is nothing at present. … We are ruled by a machinery of oratory and discussion, in which women have no share, and which they hardly comprehend: we are engaged on subjects which need an arduous learning, to which they have no pretensions.
[‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’, National Review, Jan 1862]
But the ultimate issue of business is not the part of it which most impresses the officials of a department. They understand how business is conducted better than what comes of it. The statesman who gives them no trouble—who coincides with that which they recommend—who thinks of the things which they think of, is more satisfactory to his mere subordinates than a real ruler, who has plans which others do not share, and whose mind is occupied by large considerations, which only a few can appreciate, and only experience can test.
[‘Bolingbroke as a Statesman’, National Review, Apr 1863]