In Defense of the English Constitution
Walter Bagehot
[From The English Constitution, 1867]
... No one can approach to an understanding of the English
institutions, or of others which, being the growth of many centuries,
exercise a wide sway over mixed populations, unless he divide them
into two classes. In such constitutions there are two parts (not
indeed separable with microscopic accuracy, for the genius of great
affairs abhors nicety of division: first, those which excite and
preserve the reverence of the population -- the dignified
parts, if I may so call them; and next, the efficient parts --
those by which it, in fact, works and rules. There are two great
objects which every constitution must attain to be successful, which
every old and celebrated one must have wonderfully achieved: every
constitution must first gain authority, and then use
authority; it must first win the loyalty and confidence of mankind,
and then employ that homage in the work of government. There are
indeed practical men who reject the dignified parts of government.
They say, we want only to attain results, to do business: a
constitution is a collection of political means for political ends,
and if you admit that any part of a constitution does no business, or
that a simpler machine would do equally well what it does, you admit
that this part of the constitution, however dignified or awful it may
be, is nevertheless in truth useless. And other reasoners, who
distrust this bare philosophy, have propounded subtle arguments to
prove that these dignified parts of old governments are cardinal
components of the essential apparatus, great pivots of substantial
utility; and so they manufactured fallacies which the plainer school
have well exposed. But both schools are in error. The dignified parts
of government are those which bring it force -- which attract its
motive power. The efficient parts only employ that power. The comely
parts of a government have need, for they are those upon which
its vital strength depends. They may not do anything definite that a
simpler polity would not do better; but they are the preliminaries,
the needful prerequisites of all work. They raise the army,
though they do not win the battle.
Doubtless, if all subjects of the same government only thought of
what was useful to them, and if they ail thought the same thing
useful, and all thought that same thing could be attained in the same
way, the efficient members of a constitution would suffice, and no
impressive adjuncts would be needed. But the world in which we live is
organized far otherwise.
The most strange fact, though the most certain in nature, is the
unequal development of the human race. If we look back to the early
ages of mankind, such as we seem in the faint distance to see them --
if we call up the image of those dismal tribes in lake villages, or on
wretched beaches -- scarcely equal to the commonest material needs,
cutting down trees slowly and painfully with stone tools, hardly
resisting the attacks of huge, fierce animals -- without culture,
without leisure, without poetry, almost without thought -- destitute
of morality, with only a sort of magic for religion; and if we compare
that imagined life with the actual life of Europe now, we are
overwhelmed at the wide contrast -- we can scarcely conceive ourselves
to be of the same race as those in the far distance. There used to be
a notion -- not so much widely asserted as deeply implanted, rather
pervadingly latent than commonly apparent in political philosophy --
that in a little while, perhaps ten years or so, all human beings
might, without extraordinary appliances, be brought to the same level.
But now, when we see by the painful history of mankind at what point
we began, by what slow toil, what favourable circumstances, what
accumulated achievements, civilized man has become at all worthy in
any degree so to call himself -- when we realize the tedium of history
and the painfulness of results -- our perceptions are sharpened as to
the relative steps of our long and gradual progress. We have in a
great community like England crowds of people scarcely more civilized
than the majority of two thousand years ago; we have others, even more
numerous, such as the best people were a thousand years since. The
lower orders, the middle orders, are still, when tried by what is the
standard of the educated "ten thousand," narrow-minded,
unintelligent, incurious. It is useless to pile up abstract words.
Those who doubt should go out into their kitchens. Let an accomplished
man try what seems to him most obvious, most certain, most palpable in
intellectual matters, upon the housemaid and the footman, and he will
find that what he says seems unintelligible, confused, and erroneous
-- that his audience think him mad and wild when he is speaking what
is in his own sphere of thought the dullest platitude of cautious
soberness. Great communities are like-great mountains -- they have in
them the primary, secondary, and tertiary strata of human progress;
the characteristics of the lower regions resemble the life of old
times rather than the present life of the higher regions. And a
philosophy which does not ceaselessly remember, which does not
continually obtrude, the palpable differences of the various parts,
will be a theory radically false, because it has omitted a capital
reality -- will be a theory essentially misleading, because it will
lead men to expect what docs not exist, and not to anticipate that
which they will find.
Every one knows these plain facts, but by no means every one has
traced their political importance. When a state is constituted thus,
it is not true that the lower classes will be wholly absorbed in the
useful; on the contrary, they do not like anything so poor. 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. 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, them
selves, for what is called an idea -- for some attraction which seems
to transcend reality, which aspires to elevate men by an interest
higher, deeper, wider than that of ordinary life. But this order of
men are uninterested in the plain, palpable ends of government; they
do not prize them; they do not in the least comprehend how they should
be attained. 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.
That which is mystic in its claims; that which is occult in its mode
of action; that which is brilliant to the eye; that which is seen
vividly for a moment, and then is seen no more; that which is hidden
and unhidden; that which is specious, and yet interesting, palpable in
its seeming, and yet professing to be more than palpable in its
results; this, howsoever its form may change, or however we may define
it or describe it, is the sort of thing -- the only sort -- which yet
comes home to the mass of men. 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 and judge worst about what is useful.
There is another reason which, in an old constitution like that of
England, is hardly less important. 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. We could not do every day out of our own heads all we have to
do. 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. And all this traditional part of human nature is, ex vi
termini, most easily impressed and acted on by that which is handed
down. Other things being equal, yesterday's institutions are by far
the best for today; 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 every other must win. 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 outward strength, are its best instruments, that we
must not expect the oldest institutions to be now the most efficient.
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 life.
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 critical action, is decidedly simple
and rather modern. We have made, or rather stumbled on, a constitution
which-though full of every species of incidental defect, though of the
worst workmanship in all out-of-the-way matters of any
constitution in the world -- yet has two capital merits: it contains a
simple efficient part which, on occasion, and when wanted, can work
more simply and easily, and better, than any instrument of government
that has yet been tried; and it contains likewise historical, complex,
august, theatrical parts, which it has inherited from a long past --
which take the multitude -- which guide by an insensible but an
omnipotent influence the associations of its subjects. 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 approximation. The
connecting link is the cabinet By that new word we mean a committee of
the legislative body selected to be the executive body. The
legislature has many committees, but this is the greatest. It chooses
for this, its main committee, the men in whom it has most confidence.
It does not, it is true, choose them directly; but it is nearly
omnipotent in choosing them indirectly. ...But as a rule, the nominal
prime minister is chosen by the legislature, and the real prime
minister for most purposes -- the leader of the House of Commons --
almost without exception is so. 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. We have in England an elective first
magistrate as truly as the Americans have an elective first
magistrate. The Queen is only at the head of the dignified part of the
constitution. The prime minister is at the head of the efficient
part. The Crown is, according to the saying, the "fountain of
honour;" but the Treasury is the spring of business. Nevertheless
our first magistrate differs from the American. He is not elected
directly by the people; he is elected by the representatives of the
people. He is an example of "double election." The
legislature chosen, in name, to make laws, in fact finds its principal
business in making and in keeping an executive....
|