The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer.
Walter Bagehot: “The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them…”
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Walter Bagehot
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gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Bagehot compares the apparent rulers to figures in a procession, illustrating their influence over the masses.
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But, above all things, they were frightened of 'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread.
If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.
Thirdly, we see why so few nations have made rapid advance, and how many have become stationary.
He gave an excellent moral example to his contemporaries, but he is an instance of those whose good dies with them, while their evil lives after them.





