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America and Walter Bagehot*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Hugh Brogan
Hugh Brogan
Affiliation:
University of Essex
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Extract

Before he took over the management of the Economist in 1860, Walter Bagehot had not had much occasion to notice the United States, at any rate in his published writings. During the 1850s he had been too taken up with banking, and literary criticism, and expounding the value of stupidity in politics. To be sure, in 1859 he decided that the time had come to discredit the American example. The English were becoming disquietingly interested in democracy, a system as to which he had all the usual mid-Victorian doubts and a few extra. So he told the world, through the National Review (which struggling Unitarian quarterly he edited) that the vulgar American voters sent only vulgar men to Congress: “ men of refinement shrink from the House of Representatives as from a parish vestry ”; and that America was too unlike England to be a safe model. Then, just as he became editor of the Economist, the secession crisis and the Civil War erupted. It was incumbent on him to pronounce on these events, and it would have been most uncharacteristic of this sunny, self-confident man to shirk such a responsibility.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , December 1977 , pp. 335 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Collected Works, ed. John-Stevas, Norman St., 8 vols. to date (London: Economist Newspaper, 1965– ), 6, 198Google Scholar (henceforward referred to as CW); National Review, Jan. 1859. Previously Bagehot had criticised American foreign policy in the Saturday Review, 21 June 1856; CW 6, 104–7.

2 CW, 6, 263–64; National Review, Jan. 1860.

3 Buchan, Alastair, The Spare Chancellor (London: Chatto & Windus, 1972), p. 99Google Scholar.

4 See the anonymously compiled book, The Economist 1843–1943(London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1943), p. 32Google Scholar.

5 Henderson, W. O., The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861–5 (1934; rept. Manchester: Univ. Press, 1969, with corrections and two additional chapters)Google Scholar.

6 See CW, 4, 267; Economist, 10 08. 1861. The passage well exemplifies Bagehot's professional sagacity. He sees that hitherto there has been no shortage of cotton; his only mistake is in expecting that there will soon be such a shortage: “the pressure has as yet been little felt in our manufacturing districts. The spinners, as a rule, are unusually well stocked with the raw material – many people say as far forward as October. The expectation of an advance in price, which was certain to be considerable and might be enormous, has induced purchasers to supply themselves freely with goods and yarn; and as producers were determined not to allow their produce to accumulate, they have met the demand readily. And as they could, generally, at existing prices ‘cover themselves’ (as the phrase is)– that is, escape actual loss–they have gone on producing nearly at their ordinary rate. Now, however, there is the commencement of a lull in the demand; and as manufacturers are determined not to ‘stock,’ they will produce only as much as they can sell, and we shall soon see short time resorted to as a general measure.”

7 Economist, 2 Mar. 1861. This article is reprinted in CW; but since this is usually the case, I shall in future specify only those cases where an article is not reprinted. The same will apply to articles in the National Review.

8 Economist, 13 Apr. 1861.

9 Ibid., 20 Apr. 1861.

10 Ibid., 4 May 1861.

11 Ibid., 29 June 1861.

12 Ibid., 17 Aug. 1861.

13 Not in CW.

14 Not in CW.

15 Misdated in CW.

16 Not in CW.

17 Not in CW.

18 Not in CW; Economist, 26 Nov. 1864.

19 “One of our most celebrated contemporaries was asked his opinion on ten great subjects in succession,” and on its appearing that he had no opinion, he said, apologetically, “You see, ma'am, I have written for The Times.” CW, 6, 94; Saturday Review, 19 Apr. 1856.

20 MrsBarrington, Russell, Life of Walter Bagehot (London: 1914), p. 387Google Scholar.

21 Alastair Buchan quotes a letter from James Wilson to Lewis, 19 Oct. 1859: “My friend Bagehot has undertaken a sort of general supervision of the Economist…will you kindly allow Bagehot to call upon you occasionally?” Buchan, , Spare Chancellor, p. 127nGoogle Scholar.

22 By my count there were ten of them. “The American News and its Lessons” (Economist, 20 Apr. 1861); “The Evil and the Good in the American War” (Economist, 4 May 1861); “The Practical Operation of the American Constitution at the Present Extreme Crisis” (Economist, 1 June 1861); “The American Constitution at the Present Crisis” (National Review, Oct. 1861); “The Last Probabilities of War and Peace” (Economist, 21 Dec. 1861); “Mr. Lincoln's Two Proclamations” (Economist, 11 Oct. 1862); “The Defeat of America” (Economist, 6 Dec. 1862); “Presidential and Ministerial Government Compared” (Economist, 13 Dec. 1862); “The Federal Constitution Responsible for Federal Apathy” (Economist, 10 Jan. 1863); “The Invasion of the Federal States” (Economist, 11 July 1863). Wholly or in part, each of these articles consists of what I call “ constitutional ” discussion. It is worth pointing out that all but one were written and published in the first twenty months of the war.

23 It is noteworthy that Bagehot does not, so late as 13 April, when this article was published, think it necessary to wonder what is happening at Fort Sumter.

24 Economist, 13 Apr. 1861.

25 Ibid., 4 May 1861.

26 Ibid., 1 June 1861.

27 It is noteworthy that at this period Bagehot never distinguished sufficiently between the Constitution and the political system that had grown up to work it. This analytical lapse was the cause of many of his mistakes.

28 National Review, Oct. 1861; Cf. Mr. Gladstone's famous remark: “ As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

29 Economist, 22 Apr. 1865.

30 Ibid., 29 Apr. 1865. Presumably by an oversight, in CW the article on Lincoln's death precedes instead of following the article on the fall of Richmond.

31 Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition (New York: Vintage Books ed., no date), p. 9Google Scholar.

32 That Bagehot could still blunder is shown by the fact that in his very next sentence he misrepresents the amending process of the Constitution.

33 English Constitution, CW, 5, 367n. This passage occurs only in the Fortnightly Review version.

34 Ibid., p. 223.

35 James Bryce to Mrs. Barrington, n.d., but circa 1913. Barrington, , Life, pp. 34–35Google Scholar.

36 James Bryce to A. V. Dicey, 4 Apr. 1916 (Bodleian Library, MS Bryce 4.) I owe this reference to Dr. H. A. Tulloch.

37 Bagehot's introduction to the 1872 edition of The English Constitution contains a potentially misleading statement: “between the time when the essays were first written in the Fortnightly, and their subsequent junction into a book, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, and Mr. Johnson, the Vice-President, became President…” Bagehot seems to be confusing composition with publication. His wife's diary shows that he wrote The English Constitution during 1865, each instalment appearing in the Fortnightly Review as it was ready (Barrington, , Life, p. 387)Google Scholar. But no doubt he began to turn his ideas over in his mind from the moment that he began to plan the Fortnightly with Lewes and George Eliot – that is, from the 26 Feb., well before Lincoln's death on 14 Apr.

38 A conservative liberal, of course, “is a broad-minded man, who thinks that something ought to be done, only not anything that anyone now desires, but something which was not done in 1881–82.” Cornford, F. M., Microcosmographia Academica (1908; fifth edn., Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1953), p. 4Google Scholar. In Bagehot's case the date should be amended to 1832.

39 See, above all, Tocqueville's anonymous letter to The Times, 11 Dec. 1851.

40 Tocqueville, of course, frequently expressed a similar fear, though without drawing Bagehot's consequences from it. See, for example, L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, ed. Mayer, J. P. (Paris: Gallimard, 1952) 1, pp. 247–250Google Scholar.

41 For Bagehot on the coup d'état of 1851, see CW, 4, 29–84.

42 Bagehot, who did not live to read The American Commonwealth, did not have a secure grasp of American political jargon. By “ caucus ” he meant the national party convention, and the heart of his objection was that these conventions were dominated by what he did not know enough to call machines – little corrupt unrepresentative groups, exploiting the voters' greed and ignorance.

43 English Constitution, CW, 5, 208.

44 This is a point on which I have been anticipated by MrSisson, C. H. (The Case of Walter Bagehot (London: Faber & Faber, 1972), p. 54)Google Scholar. The fact that we arrived at it independently is perhaps evidence of its accuracy.

45 English Constitution, CW, 5, 404–5.

46 Ibid., p. 402. This and the preceding reference are to material which was omitted from the 1872 edition because, with the passage of the Second Reform Act, it had lost its utility, and perhaps also because Bagehot had become more optimistic.

47 Ibid., p. 371n. This passage appeared only in the Fortnightly Review version.

48 Ibid., p. 372n. This passage appeared only in the Fortnightly Review.

49 Friendliness to the nation, but not to all Americans. In 1865–67 the Economist was fiercely anti-Johnson and pro-Radical Republican.

50 English Constitution, CW, 5, 349–50.

51 Ibid., pp. 345–49. Perhaps this is the place in which to insist that Bagehot's best thought cannot accurately be detached from his Victorian preoccupations. Like all other great political thinkers, he could have made no discoveries about the universal if he had not been so completely and intelligently preoccupied with the particular.

52 Ibid. pp. 376–77.

53 Ibid. p. 165.

54 Ibid. p. 202.

55 Ibid. p. 195.

56 Economist, 23 Mar. 1867; not in CW.

57 “ The Anglicizing Tendencies in Congress,” Economist, 29 12. 1866. Not in CWGoogle Scholar.

58 It is at any rate a pity that Johnson did not read, or deserve, Bagehot's explanation of the magic of public opinion under the American Constitution: “ We cannot assign the limits to Mr. Johnson's authority, yet he well knows that there is a marked line – a people-made boundary – beyond which he could not go ” (Economist, 2 Sept. 1865). One or two later Presidents could have profited from it also.

59 “ Mr. Goldwin Smith on the American Example for England,” Economist, 23 03. 1867; not in CWGoogle Scholar.