The Common Sense of Bagehot

There are few truly literate people today who haven’t heard of Walter Bagehot; on the other hand, there are few who have actually read him. He bulked large in his own mid-Victorian England (as editor of the Economist, as expositor of the English Constitution, and as commentator on both life and literature). But students do not go to him today as they go to Carlyle or Arnold or Ruskin, or (to pick figures from an earlier time) to Coleridge or Burke.

There is some mystery about this, a mystery which is only partially dispelled by Norman St. John-Stevas’ useful Walter Bagehot: A Study of His Life and Thought Together With a Selection from His Political Writings (Indiana University Press, $7.50). It is not enough to say that Bagehot, since he was neither conservative nor liberal, inevitably lacked cutting edge. Burke himself could be described as just such a liberal-conservative or conservative-liberal. It is not enough to argue that Bagehot was unsystematic as a thinker; few English literary worthies have been systematic, but that has not kept them from being read.

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

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There are few truly literate people today who haven’t heard of Walter Bagehot; on the other hand, there are few who have actually read him. He bulked large in his own mid-Victorian England (as editor of the Economist, as expositor of the English Constitution, and as commentator on both life and literature). But students do not go to him today as they go to Carlyle or Arnold or Ruskin, or (to pick figures from an earlier time) to Coleridge or Burke.

There is some mystery about this, a mystery which is only partially dispelled by Norman St. John-Stevas’ useful Walter Bagehot: A Study of His Life and Thought Together With a Selection from His Political Writings (Indiana University Press, $7.50). It is not enough to say that Bagehot, since he was neither conservative nor liberal, inevitably lacked cutting edge. Burke himself could be described as just such a liberal-conservative or conservative-liberal. It is not enough to argue that Bagehot was unsystematic as a thinker; few English literary worthies have been systematic, but that has not kept them from being read.