Walter Bagehot

Of this we may at least be certain, that all ancient societies regarded themselves as having proceeded from one original stock, and even laboured under an incapacity for comprehending any reason except this for their holding together in…

I do not myself believe that the suggestion of Sir Henry Maine--for he does not, it will be seen, offer it as a confident theory--is an adequate account of the true origin of politics.

It describes, and truly describes, a kind of life antecedent to our present politics, and the conclusion I have drawn from it will be strengthened, not weakened, when we come to examine and deal with an age yet older, and a social bond far…

Whatever may be said against the principle of 'natural selection' in other departments, there is no doubt of its predominance in early human history.

The strongest killed out the weakest, as they could.

But, though the origin of polity is dubious, we are upon the terra firma of actual records when we speak of the preservation of polities.

Perhaps every young Englishman who comes now-a-days to Aristotle or Plato is struck with their conservatism: fresh from the liberal doctrines of the present age, he wonders at finding in those recognised teachers so much contrary teaching.

We reckon, as the basis of our culture, upon an amount of order, of tacit obedience, of prescriptive governability, which these philosophers hoped to get as a principal result of their culture.

In early times the quantity of government is much more important than its quality.

What you want is a comprehensive rule binding men together, making them do much the same things, telling them what to expect of each other--fashioning them alike, and keeping them so.

A good rule is better than a bad one, but any rule is better than none; while, for reasons which a jurist will appreciate, none can be very good.

But to gain that rule, what may be called the impressive elements of a polity are incomparably more important than its useful elements.

How to get the obedience of men is the hard problem; what you do with that obedience is less critical.

To gain that obedience, the primary condition is the identity--not the union, but the sameness--of what we now call Church and State.

What is there requisite is a single government--call it Church or State, as you like--regulating the whole of human life.

No division of power is then endurable without danger--probably without destruction; the priest must not teach one thing and the king another; king must be priest, and prophet king: the two must say the same, because they are the same.

All the actions of life are to be submitted to a single rule for a single object; that gradually created the 'hereditary drill' which science teaches to be essential, and which the early instinct of men saw to be essential too.

That this regime forbids free thought is not an evil; or rather, though an evil, it is the necessary basis for the greatest good; it is necessary for making the mould of civilisation, and hardening the soft fibre of early man.

Hence, in the time of Homer, in the first times of Rome, in the first times of ancient Germany, the king is the most visible part of the polity, because for momentary welfare he is the most useful.

Rome and Sparta were drilling aristocracies, and succeeded because they were such.

Athens was indeed of another and higher order; at least to us instructed moderns who know her and have been taught by her.

She was the great 'free failure' of the ancient world.

The Jews were in the beginning the most unstable of nations; they were submitted to their law, and they came out the most stable of nations.

Jeroboam has been called the 'first Liberal;' and, religion apart, there is a meaning in the phrase.

He began to break up the binding polity which was what men wanted in that age, though eager and inventive minds always dislike it.