Walter Bagehot - The English Constitution (1867)

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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

Walter Bagehot
The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling.

Walter Bagehot
Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.

Walter Bagehot
Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best.

Walter Bagehot
As soon as we see that England is a disguised republic we must see too that the classes for whom the disguise is necessary must be tenderly dealt with.

Walter Bagehot
A cabinet is a combining committee,—a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.

Walter Bagehot
It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'; that it was the first government which made a criticism of administration as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government.

Walter Bagehot
But the mass of the old electors did not analyse very much: they liked to have one of their "betters" to represent them; if he was rich they respected him much; and if he was a lord, they liked him the better. The issue put before these electors was, which of two rich people will you choose? And each of those rich people was put forward by great parties whose notions were the notions of the rich—whose plans were their plans. The electors only selected one or two wealthy men to carry out the schemes of one or two wealthy associations.

Walter Bagehot
Of Queen Victoria and the future Edward VII:
It is nice to trace how the actions of a retired widow and an unemployed youth become of such importance.

Walter Bagehot
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 economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.

Walter Bagehot
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.

Walter Bagehot
The only fit material for a constitutional king is a prince who begins early to reign—who in his youth is superior to pleasure—who in his youth is willing to labour—who has by nature a genius for discretion. Such kings are among God's greatest gifts, but they are also among His rarest.

Walter Bagehot
The House of Commons lives in a state of perpetual potential choice: at any moment it can choose a ruler and dismiss a ruler. And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of its breath.

Walter Bagehot
Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

Walter Bagehot
The greatest enjoyment possible to man was that which this philosophy promises its votaries—the pleasure of being always right, and always reasoning—without ever being bound to look at anything.

Walter Bagehot
In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too.

Walter Bagehot
The Queen…must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her.

Walter Bagehot
Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

Walter Bagehot
The Crown is, according to the saying, the 'fountain of honour'; but the Treasury is the spring of business.

Walter Bagehot
There are arguments for not having a Court, and there are arguments for having a splendid Court; but there are no arguments for having a mean Court.

Walter Bagehot
In such constitutions [as England's] there are two parts…first, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the population—the dignified parts…and next, the efficient parts—those by which it, in fact, works and rules.

Walter Bagehot
Whatever expenditure is sanctioned—even when it is sanctioned against the ministry's wish—the ministry must find the money. Accordingly, they have the strongest motive to oppose extra outlay.... The ministry is (so to speak) the breadwinner of the political family, and has to meet the cost of philanthropy and glory; just as the head of a family has to pay for the charities of his wife and the toilette of his daughters.

Walter Bagehot
The whole life of English politics is the action and reaction between the ministry and the parliament.

Walter Bagehot
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

Walter Bagehot
Women—one half the human race at least—care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.

Walter Bagehot