Walter Bagehot  

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Walter Bagehot (3 February, 182624 March, 1877) was a nineteenth century British businessman, essayist and journalist, who wrote extensively about literature, government, economic affairs and other topics. He is the author of Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning; or Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art in English Poetry.

Works

In 1867, Bagehot wrote The English Constitution, a book that explores the nature of the constitution of the United Kingdom, specifically its Parliament and monarchy. It appeared at the same time that Parliament enacted the Reform Act of 1867, requiring Bagehot to write an extended introduction to the second edition which appeared in 1872.

Bagehot also wrote Physics and Politics (1872), in which he examines how civilisations sustain themselves, arguing that in their earliest phase civilisations are very much in opposition to the values of modern liberalism, insofar as they are sustained by conformism and military success, but once they are secured it is possible for them to mature into systems which allow for greater diversity and freedom. His viewpoint was based on a distinction between the qualities of an “accomplished man” and those of a “rude man”, which he considered the result of iterative inheritances by which the “nervous organisation” of the individual became increasingly refined through the generations. He regarded this distinction as a moral achievement whereby through the actions of the will, this “accomplished“ elite was able to morally differentiate themselves from “rude men“ by a “hereditary drill“. He equally applied such reasoning to develop a form of pseudoscientific racism, whereby those of mixed race lacked any “inherited creed” or “fixed traditional sentiments” upon which, he considered, human nature depended. He attempted to provide empirical support for his views by citing John Lubbock and Edward Tylor, although neither of them accepted such arguments for hereditary difference in their writings on human evolution. Tylor in particular rejected Bagehot's view of the centrality of physical heredity and that the modern “savage“ mind was “tattooed over with monstrous images” by which base instincts had been preserved in crevices, as opposed to the accomplished European man, for whom such instincts had been smoothed away through inherited will to exercise reason.

In Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (1873) Bagehot seeks to explain the world of finance and banking. His observations on finance are often cited by central bankers, most recently in the wake of the global financial crisis which began in 2007. Of particular importance is "Bagehot's Dictum" that in times of financial crisis central banks should lend freely to solvent depository institutions, yet only against sound collateral and at interest rates high enough to dissuade those borrowers that are not genuinely in need.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Walter Bagehot" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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