Walter Bagehot

The perpetual atmosphere of intellectual inquiry acts powerfully, as everyone may see by looking about him in London, upon the constitution both of men and women.

There is only a certain QUANTUM of power in each of our race; if it goes in one way it is spent, and cannot go in another.

Lastly, a polity of discussion not only tends to diminish our inherited defects, but also, in one case at least, to augment a heritable excellence.

Homer was perfect in it, as far as we can judge; Shakespeare is often perfect in it for long together, though then, from the defects of a bad education and a vicious age, all at once he loses himself in excesses.

Still, Homer, and Shakespeare at his best, and Scott, though in other respects so unequal to them, have this remarkable quality in common--this union of life with measure, of spirit with reasonableness.

In action it is equally this quality in which the English--at least so I claim it for them--excel all other nations.

But, after all, in a certain sense, England is a success in the world; her career has had many faults, but still it has been, a fine and winning career upon the whole.

There is no better example of this quality in English statesmen than Lord Palmerston.

It is plain that this is a quality which as much as, if not more than, any other multiplies good results in practical life.

It enables men to see what is good; it gives them intellect enough for sufficient perception; but it does not make men all intellect; it does not' sickly them o'er with the pale cast of thought;' it enables them to do the good things they…

And it is plain that a government by popular discussion tends to produce this quality.

A strongly idiosyncratic mind, violently disposed to extremes of opinion, is soon weeded out of political life, and a bodiless thinker, an ineffectual scholar, cannot even live there for a day.

A vigorous moderateness in mind and body is the rule of a polity which works by discussion; and, upon the whole, it is the kind of temper most suited to the active life of such a being as man in such a world as the present one.

The first great benefit was the deliverance of mankind from the superannuated yoke of customary law, by the gradual development of an inquisitive originality.

Mundella, a most experienced and capable judge, tells us that the English artisan, though so much less sober, less instructed, and less refined than the artisans of some other countries, is yet more inventive than any other artisan.

And so rare is great originality among mankind, and so great are its fruits, that this one benefit of free government probably outweighs what are in many cases its accessory evils.

In a generation or two, the look of the nation, becomes quite different; the characteristic men who stand out are different, the men imitated are different; the result of the imitation is different.

A lazy nation may be changed into an industrious, a rich into a poor, a religious into a profane, as if by magic, if any single cause, though slight, or any combination of causes, however subtle, is strong enough to change the favourite…

This principle will, I think, help us in trying to solve the question why so few nations have progressed, though to us progress seems so natural-what is the cause or set of causes which have prevented that progress in the vast majority of…

Still more then in the more complex combinations and politics of human beings it is likely to be hard to find an agreed criterion for saying which nation is before another, or what age of a nation was marching forward and which was falling…

Archbishop Manning would have one rule of progress and decline; Professor Huxley, in most important points, quite an opposite rule; what one would set down as an advance, the other would set down as a retreat.

Each has a distinct end which he wishes and a distinct calamity which he fears, but the desire of the one is pretty near the fear of the other; books would not hold the controversy between them.

Hamilton used to say, 'truncate a problem which I cannot solve.' I must decline to sit in judgment on disputed points of art, morals, or religion.

Indisputably in the English village there are more means of happiness, a greater accumulation of the instruments of enjoyment, than in the Australian tribe.

The English have all manner of books, utensils, and machines which the others do not use, value, or understand.