No orator ever made an impression by appealing to men as to their plainest physical wants, except when he could allege that those wants were caused by some one's tyranny.
Walter Bagehot
The Public Record
Walter Bagehot was an English journalist, businessman, and essayist, who wrote extensively about government, economics, literature and race. He is known for co-founding the National Review in 1855, and for his works The English Constitution and Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (1873).
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But thousands have made the greatest impression by appealing to some vague dream of glory, or empire, or nationality.
The ruder sort of men--that is, men at ONE stage of rudeness--will sacrifice all they hope for, all they have, THEMSELVES, for what is called an idea--for some attraction which seems to transcend reality, which aspires to elevate men by an…
It is very natural, therefore, that the most useful parts of the structure of government should by no means be those which excite the most reverence.
The elements which excite the most easy reverence will be the THEATRICAL elements--those which appeal to the senses, which claim to be embodiments of the greatest human ideas, which boast in some cases of far more than human origin.
So far from the dignified parts of a constitution being necessarily the most useful, they are likely, according to outside presumption, to be the least so; for they are likely to be adjusted to the lowest orders--those likely to care least…
The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will.
The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economised by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.
We should accomplish nothing, for all our energies would be frittered away in minor attempts at petty improvement.
One man, too, would go off from the known track in one direction, and one in another; so that when a crisis came requiring massed combination, no two men would be near enough to act together.
It is the dull traditional habit of mankind that guides most men's actions, and is the steady frame in which each new artist must set the picture that he paints.
Other things being equal, yesterday's institutions are by far the best for to-day; they are the most ready, the most influential, the most easy to get obeyed, the most likely to retain the reverence which they alone inherit, and which…
The most imposing institutions of mankind are the oldest; and yet so changing is the world, so fluctuating are its needs, so apt to lose inward force, though retaining out ward strength, are its best instruments, that we must not expect…
We must expect what is venerable to acquire influence because of its inherent dignity; but we must not expect it to use that influence so well as new creations apt for the modern world, instinct with its spirit, and fitting closely to its…
The brief description of the characteristic merit of the English Constitution is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable; while its efficient part, at least when in great and…
Its essence is strong with the strength of modern simplicity; its exterior is august with the Gothic grandeur of a more imposing age.
Its simple essence may, mutatis mutandis, be transplanted to many very various countries, but its august outside--what most men think it is--is narrowly confined to nations with an analogous history and similar political materials.
The efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as the close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and legislative powers.
No doubt by the traditional theory, as it exists in all the books, the goodness of our constitution consists in the entire separation of the legislative and executive authorities, but in truth its merit consists in their singular…
There is nearly always some one man plainly selected by the voice of the predominant party in the predominant house of the legislature to head that party, and consequently to rule the nation.
He is not elected directly by the people; he is elected by the representatives of the people.
The legislature chosen, in name, to make laws, in fact finds its principal business in making and in keeping an executive.
The position of most men in Parliament forbids their being invited to the Cabinet; the position of a few men ensures their being invited.
Between the compulsory list whom he must take, and the impossible list whom he cannot take, a Prime Minister's independent choice in the formation of a Cabinet is not very large; it extends rather to the division of the Cabinet offices…
Parliament and the nation have pretty well settled who shall have the first places; but they have not discriminated with the same accuracy which man shall have which place.
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