‘Occasionally,’ Woodrow Wilson wrote, “a man is born whose mission . . . is to clarify the thought of his generation . . . give it speed where it is slow, vision where it is blind, balance when it is out of poise, saving humor where it is dry,—and such a man was Walter Bagehot.”
Bagehot (1826-77) is mostly remembered today for having edited the Economist, which still features a column named after him. But he was also a literary critic, political theorist, banker and would-be member of Parliament, who, despite the tenuous health that ended his life at 51, produced 15 volumes of writings. To G.M. Young, the eminent historian, Bagehot (pronounced “bajut”) was simply “The Greatest Victorian,” and before settling on “The Age of Equipoise,” W.L. Burn considered calling his acclaimed 1964 study of the mid-Victorian era “The Age of Bagehot.”
The “balance” that made Bagehot the supreme representative of his times stemmed from his belief in a more noble, invisible world—a “stratum of the passions, of the intense, simple impulses which constitute the heart of man”—lurking beneath the surface of the savage one. Thanks to such mysticism, Bagehot’s otherwise sober temperament was tinged with benevolence. He was incapable of aloof indifference, yet free of excessive sentiment.
Born to a banking family and educated at University College, London, Bagehot was an upbeat Whig (that is, a champion of reform within the framework of a constitutional monarchy dominated by Parliament). He believed in mankind’s perfectibility yet feared Tory mulishness less than liberal schemes for the “instant reform” of land, church or Parliament. “Go home . . . and take a dose of salts” was a typical response to some overly enthusiastic liberals.