The English Constitution: Walter Bagehot

The English Constitution: Walter Bagehot MILES TAYLOR Editor OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS ’ THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION W B was born in Langport, Somerset, in , the son of a banker. After taking BA and MA degrees from University College London he studied for the bar, and was called in . However, he decided to return home and join his father’s bank, devoting his leisure to contributing literary, historical and political reviews to the leading periodicals of the s. In he returned to London, succeeding his father-in-law as editor and director of the Economist. Three books ensured Bagehot’s reputation as one of the most distinguished and influential Victorian men-of-letters: The English Constitution (), published at the height of the debate over parliamentary reform; Physics and Politics (), his application of Darwinian ideas to political science; and Lombard Street (), a study of the City of London. Walter Bagehot died in . M T is a Lecturer in Modern History at King’s College, London. He is the author of The Decline of British Radicalism, – (Clarendon Press, ) and is currently completing a biography of the last Chartist leader, Ernest Jones. ’ For almost years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over titles–– from the ,-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels–– the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS WALTER BAGEHOT The English Constitution Edited with an Introduction and Notes by MILES TAYLOR 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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Reading, Berkshire CONTENTS Introduction vii Note on the Text xxx Select Bibliography xxxi A Chronology of Walter Bagehot xxxiii THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION Advertisement . The Cabinet . The Pre-requisites of Cabinet Government, and the Peculiar Form which they have Assumed in England . The Monarchy . The Monarchy (continued) . The House of Lords . The House of Commons . On Changes of Ministry . Its Supposed Checks and Balances . Its History, and the Effects of that History–– Conclusion Appendix on Reform Explanatory Notes INTRODUCTION W B’ The English Constitution () was not the first word on the subject written in the s. Nor has it proved the last, or even the most enduring. But it remains the best. First published as a series of articles in the Fortnightly Review between May and January , The English Constitution is a stylish analysis of the workings of the cabinet system, the monarchy, and the Houses of Parliament, especially at times of political crisis and difficulty. It is not a conventional text-book. Neither constitutional case-law nor historical narrative are allowed to get in the way of a good read. Bagehot’s wit and irreverence, his endless supply of anecdotes and stories, and his pragmatic approach to the problems of government make The English Constitution a lively and unpredictable book. In many ways it belongs to the tradition of the political essay as polemic–– the style and tone is of Edward Bulwer Lytton, or Thomas Carlyle or Hilaire Belloc–– rather than to that classic canon of constitutional authorities represented by Henry Hallam, A. V. Dicey, and A. L. Lowell. But Bagehot’s work is authoritative in a way that other polemics are not. It is informed by a lightly-worn evolutionary sociology and psychology, which, though somewhat arcane, remain persuasive. It is not doctrinaire: Bagehot describes a fluid and not a static system, some of which he admires, of some of which he disap- proves. Above all, The English Constitution, for all its levity, is a deft and penetrating account of an age-old set of institutions beset by modernity. It has influenced countless later constitutional commen- tators, including Dicey and James Bryce, acted as a primer for future monarchs such as Edward VII, and furnished sketch-writers and essayists alike with memorable one-liners. The English Constitution remains such a classic because, as one reviewer noted at the time, it is ‘wise chat’. Bagehot’s Reputation ‘Wise chat’ sums up the achievement but also the problem of Bagehot’s great work. The English Constitution is enjoyable, but also Spectator, March . viii Introduction vulnerable in the face of posterity. Few have doubted its read- ability. Many have questioned its accuracy and utility with the passage of time. Even in his own generation Bagehot was better known for his later Darwinian work, Physics and Politics, than for The English Constitution. Physics and Politics went through eight editions in fifteen years; The English Constitution took twenty-four years to reach a sixth edition, an by then Bagehot’s constitutional writing was perhaps better known overseas than at home. A Ger- man translation of The English Constitution had been produced in , an American edition (which included amongst its admirers the future President Woodrow Wilson) in . It was in America too that the first edition of Bagehot’s collected writings was released in , a quarter of a century before the first definitive English edition. Only after the First World War did Bagehot’s domestic audience really swell, as nostalgia for the Victorian age increased and concerns for the constitution flared up with the extension of the suffrage. In The English Constitution appeared for the first time in the World’s Classics series, with an appreciative introduction by a former Prime Minister, Earl Bal- four. Since then, however, wider readership has not ensured vener- ability. Bagehot nowadays is more noted for what he got wrong than what he got right. ‘There can be very few studies of our party system that were so rapidly overtaken by events as Walter Bagehot’s English Constitution’, declared Richard Crossman in , and, although more brazen than most, this verdict has been widely shared. Twentieth-century supporters of the Commons, such as Leo Amery, have suggested that Bagehot misunderstood the separation of powers; supporters of the monarchy and the Lords, such as Norman St John Stevas, have argued that Bagehot underestimated the continuing importance of those institutions; apologists for the cabinet, such as Richard Crossman, have pointed out that Bagehot overlooked the importance of party and the Prime Minister. Some historians simply think Bagehot got it all wrong, whilst others have implied that it does not really matter anyway, since few Victorians were interested in the thoughts on an Leo Amery, Thoughts upon the Constitution (London, ); Norman St John Stevas, Walter Bagehot: A Study of his Life and Thought together with a Selection from his Political Writings (London, ), –; Richard Crossman, ‘Introduction’ to Bagehot, The English Constitution (London, ), . Introduction ix esoteric subject of a financial journalist with an unpronounceable name. Bagehot, who often seemed not to be treating his own subject very seriously, has thus not been taken seriously–– either by modern historians who have aspired to be politicians, or by politicians who think of themselves as historians. This is partly a matter of tone. ‘Wise chat’ endears but does not endure. But it is also the result of how Bagehot’s English Constitution is read. If the book continues to be read simply as an accurate portrayal of the fundamental operations of the British political system, then not surprisingly its veracity will diminish over the course of time. Bagehot himself suggested as much in his introduction to the second edition of The English Consti- tution published in , five years into the working of the new electoral system ushered in by the second Reform Act. He drew back from many of the conclusions he had reached in the s, rearranged the sequence of chapters so that his discussion of monarchy was more prominent, and dropped entirely his gloomy conclusions about the extension of the suffrage. By revising his own work so quickly, Bagehot implied that it was a descriptive work requiring updating as the circumstances it described changed.

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