The English Constitution

Highlights

Page 89

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.2 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 esoteric subject of a financial journalist with an unpronounceable name.

Page 141

His father was not only a country banker, but also a Unitarian (a small but very influential branch of nonconformity), which meant that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were not an option for Bagehot, although he himself, like his mother, was Anglican.

Note: Dafaq

Page 228

‘[I]t is impossible for Englishmen’, wrote Bagehot in April 1861, ‘not to observe that the whole mischief has been, not caused but painfully exacerbated by the unfortunate mixture of flexibility and inflexibility in the United States Constitution.’ The southern, slave-holding states dominated the federal congress and the senate, but they had no control over the new President Lincoln. Indeed, once in office for a fixed term of years, the President was accountable to no one, and shared responsibility for his policies with no other branch of the constitution—unlike the English system, Bagehot pointedly remarked, where ‘[t]he mutual influence of the Cabinet on the House, and the House on the Cabinet, keeps the country in a vital connection with the ministry’.

Page 252

Political institutions worked in Britain, not because of the inherent logic of a paper constitution, but because they matched the civilization of which they were a part.

Page 259

In his pamphlet Bagehot came down somewhere in the middle, arguing that on the whole Parliament had done well enough since 1832, although its expressive function was no longer working properly, as artisans in the towns were not adequately represented. At the same time there was a danger that a uniform lowering of the franchise would swamp the voices of the higher orders, and also increase corruption in the small borough constituencies where the manners and progress of urban society had made less inroad. The ability or ‘fitness’ of an individual to elect a ‘ruling assembly’ was not, concluded Bagehot, an attribute shared by everyone: ‘[E]very person has a right to so much political power as he can exercise without impeding any other person who would more fitly exercise such power.’

Page 305

The second achievement usually claimed for Bagehot is his articulation of a new role for the monarchy, not as the working head of state, but as the bearer of ceremonial in politics, a ‘dignified’ symbol of authority which ordinary people are more likely to obey and revere than the professional politicians who actually run the ‘efficient’ institutions of government.

Page 399

The formal powers of a modern English monarch were few and in some cases rather eccentric, but the ‘theatrical’ activities of the court, especially the royal family, deflected ordinary people’s minds away from the workings of government. The fiction of monarchical power was a useful fiction, for it enabled poor people to associate the political system with a remote though intelligible figure to whom they could never have access, rather than a parliament to which they might. Similarly, the House of Lords acted as a focus for social ambition and status, although the formal powers and patronage that it exercised were few. Far better, suggested Bagehot, for people to idolize the peers and their wives who held levées and parties in St James’s Square and Piccadilly, than a French-style Senate or a bureaucracy who exercised real power.

Page 574

an ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.

Page 593

The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the constituent convention had decreed it—even if the component States had ratified it. The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.

Page 610

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 pre-requisites of all work. They raise the army, though they do not win the battle.

Page 626

We have in a great community like England crowds of people scarcely more civilised 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,

Note: Hmm

Page 644

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.

Page 658

Other things being equal, yesterday’s institutions are by far the best for to-day; 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.

Page 673

The efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as the close union, the nearly complete fusion of the executive and legislative powers.

Page 778

Human nature despises long arguments which come to nothing,—heavy speeches which precede no motion—abstract disquisitions which leave visible things where they were.

Page 800

People wonder that so literary a people as the Americans—a people who read more than any people who ever lived, who read so many newspapers—should have such bad newspapers. The papers are not as good as the English papers, because they have not the same motive to be good as the English papers. At a political ‘crisis,’ as we say—that is, when the fate of the administration is unfixed, when it depends on a few votes, yet unsettled, upon a wavering and veering opinion—effective articles in great journals become of essential moment. The Times has made many ministries. When, as of late, there has been a long continuance of divided parliaments, of governments which were without ‘brute voting power,’ and which depended on intellectual strength, the support of the most influential organ of English opinion has been of critical moment. If a Washington newspaper could have turned out Mr Lincoln, there would have been good writing and fine argument in the Washington newspapers. But the Washington newspapers can no more remove a president during his term of place than the Times can remove a lord mayor during his year of office. Nobody cares for a debate in Congress which ‘comes to nothing,’ and no one reads long articles which have no influence on events. The Americans glance at the heads of news, and through the paper. They do not enter upon a discussion. They do not think of entering on a discussion which would be useless.

Note: Disagree

Page 823

Generally speaking, in an electioneering country (I mean in a country full of political life, and used to the manipulation of popular institutions), the election of candidates to elect candidates is a farce. The Electoral College of America is so. It was intended that the deputies when assembled should exercise a real discretion, and by independent choice select the president. But the primary electors take too much interest. They only elect a deputy to vote for Mr Lincoln or Mr Breckenridge,* and the deputy only takes a ticket, and drops that ticket in an urn. He never chooses or thinks of choosing. He is but a messenger—a transmitter: the real decision is in those who chose him; who chose him because they knew what he would do.

Page 835

A good parliament, too, is a capital choosing body. If it is fit to make laws for a country, its majority ought to represent the general average intelligence of that country; its various members ought to represent the various special interests, special opinions, special prejudices, to be found in that community.

Page 861

Unless a member of the legislature be sure of something more than speech, unless he is incited by the hope of action, and chastened by the chance of responsibility, a first-rate man will not care to take the place, and will not do much if he does take it.

Page 911

But success in a lottery is no argument for lotteries. What were the chances against a person of Lincoln’s antecedents, elected as he was, proving to be what he was?

Page 928

The first pre-requisite of elective government is the mutual confidence of the electors. We are so accustomed to submit to be ruled by elected ministers, that we are apt to fancy all mankind would readily be so too. Knowledge and civilisation have at least made this progress, that we instinctively, without argument, almost without consciousness, allow a certain number of specified persons to choose our rulers for us. It seems to us the simplest thing in the world. But it is one of the gravest things.

Note: We accept so many things without question because it has always been this way

Page 932

The peculiar marks of semi-barbarous people are diffused distrust and indiscriminate suspicion.

Page 933

People, in all but the most favoured times and places, are rooted to the places where they were born, think the thoughts of those places, can endure no other thoughts. The next parish even is suspected. Its inhabitants have different usages, almost imperceptibly different, but yet different; they speak a varying accent; they use a few peculiar words; tradition says that their faith is dubious. And if the next parish is a little suspected, the next county is much more suspected. Here is a definite beginning of new maxims, new thoughts, new ways: the immemorial boundary mark begins in feeling a strange world. And if the next county is dubious, a remote county is untrustworthy. ‘Vagrants come from thence’ men know, and they know nothing else.

Page 950

The best political credit is analogous; we trust our countrymen without remembering that we trust them.

Page 955

The poorer and more ignorant classes—those who would most feel excitement, who would most be misled by excitement—really believe that the Queen governs. You could not explain to them the recondite difference between ‘reigning’ and ‘governing;’ the words necessary to express it do not exist in their dialect; the ideas necessary to comprehend it do not exist in their minds. The separation of principal power from principal station is a refinement which they could not even conceive. They fancy they are governed by an hereditary queen, a queen by the grace of God, when they are really governed by a cabinet and a parliament—men like themselves, chosen by themselves. The conspicuous dignity awakens the sentiment of reverence, and men, often very undignified, seize the occasion to govern by means of it.

Note: I wonder how true this was and is now

Page 979

The valued use of parliament was not half so much to alter the law, as to prevent the laws being altered. And such too was its real use. In early societies it matters much more that the law should be fixed than that it should be good. Any law which the people of ignorant times enact is sure to involve many misconceptions, and to cause many evils. Perfection in legislation is not to be looked for, and is not, indeed, much wanted in a rude, painful, confined life. But such an age covets fixity. That men should enjoy the fruits of their labour, that the law of property should be known, that the law of marriage should be known, that the whole course of life should be kept in a calculable track, is the summum bonum* of early ages, the first desire of semi-civilised mankind.

Page 002

To keep a legislature efficient, it must have a sufficient supply of substantial business. If you employ the best sort of men to do nearly nothing, they will quarrel with each other about that nothing.

Page 049

But suppose the mass of the people are not able to elect,—and this is the case with the numerical majority of all but the rarest nations,—how is a cabinet government to be then possible? It is only possible in what I may venture to call deferential nations. It has been thought strange, but there are nations in which the numerous unwiser part wishes to be ruled by the less numerous wiser part. The numerical majority—whether by custom or by choice, is immaterial—is ready, is eager to delegate its power of choosing its ruler to a certain select minority. It abdicates in favour of its élite, and consents to obey whoever that élite may confide in. It acknowledges as its secondary electors—as the choosers of its government—an educated minority, at once competent and unresisted; it has a kind of loyalty to some superior persons who are fit to choose a good government, and whom no other class opposes.

Note: Sceptical

Page 087

It cannot be said that the mass of the English people are well off. There are whole classes who have not a conception of what the higher orders call comfort; who have not the pre-requisites of moral existence; who cannot lead the life that becomes a man. But the most miserable of these classes do not impute their misery to politics. If a political agitator were to lecture to the peasants of Dorsetshire, and try to excite political dissatisfaction, it is much more likely that he would be pelted than that he would succeed. Of parliament these miserable creatures know scarcely anything; of the cabinet they never heard. But they would say that, ‘for all they have heard, the Queen is very good;’ and rebelling against the structure of society is to their minds rebelling against the Queen, who rules that society, in whom all its most impressive part—the part that they know—culminates. The mass of the English people are politically contented as well as politically deferential.

Note: Impossible to know how true this was

Page 115

A people very rarely hears two sides of a subject in which it is much interested; the popular organs take up the side which is acceptable, and none but the popular organs in fact reach the people. A people never hears censure of itself.

Note: Holy shit. True and elegantly put.

Page 177

No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales.* They treated as a great political event, what, looked at as a matter of pure business, was very small indeed. But no feeling could be more like common human nature, as it is, and as it is likely to be. The women—one half the human race at least—care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry. All but a few cynics like to see a pretty novel touching for a moment the dry scenes of the grave world. A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such, it rivets mankind.

Page 187

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to understanding.

Page 229

If you ask the immense majority of the Queen’s subjects by what right she rules, they would never tell you that she rules by Parliamentary right, by virtue of 6 Anne, c. 7.* They will say she rules by ‘God’s grace;’ they believe that they have a mystic obligation to obey her.

Page 262

In a country where people did not care for the outward show of life, where the genius of the people was untheatrical, and they exclusively regarded the substance of things, this matter would be trifling. Whether Lord and Lady Derby* received the foreign ministers, or Lord and Lady Palmerston, would be a matter of indifference; whether they gave the nicest parties would be important only to the persons at those parties. A nation of unimpressible philosophers would not care at all how the externals of life were managed. Who is the showman is not material unless you care about the show.

Page 305

The faculties which fit a man to be a great ruler are not those of society; some great rulers have been unintelligible like Cromwell, or brusque like Napoleon, or coarse and barbarous like Sir Robert Walpole. The light nothings of the drawing-room and the grave things of office are as different from one another as two human occupations can be. There is no naturalness in uniting the two; the end of it always is, that you put a man at the head of society who very likely is remarkable for social defects, and is not eminent for social merits.

Page 335

it may be that the Court of England is not quite as gorgeous as we might wish to see it. But no comparison must ever be made between it and the French Court. The Emperor represents a different idea from the Queen. He is not the head of the State; he is the State. The theory of his Government is that every one in France is equal, and that the Emperor embodies the principle of equality. The greater you make him, the less, and therefore the more equal, you make all others. He is magnified that others may be dwarfed.

Note: Wow

Page 387

But the Queen has no such veto. She must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her.

Page 499

If constitutional monarchs be ordinary men of restricted experience and common capacity (and we have no right to suppose that by miracle they will be more), the judgment of the sovereign will often be worse than the judgment of the party, and he will be very subject to the chronic danger of preferring a respectful common-place man, such as Addington,* to an independent first-rate man, such as Pitt.

Page 547

The responsibility of parliament should be felt by parliament. So long as parliament thinks it is the sovereign’s business to find a government, it will be sure not to find a government itself.

Page 567

the grand elector, the great chooser of ministries might be, at a sharp crisis, either a good friend or a bad enemy. The strongest party would select someone who would be on their side when he had to take a side, who should incline to them when he did incline, who should be a constant auxiliary to them, and a constant impediment to their adversaries. It is absurd to choose by contested party election an impartial chooser of ministers.

Page 588

To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others. He would find that his having no others would enable him to use these with singular effect.

Page 599

The king would have the advantage which a permanent under-secretary has over his superior the parliamentary secretary.

Page 604

No doubt a parliamentary secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says, ‘I do not think there is much in all that. Many errors were committed at the time you refer to which we need not now discuss.’ A pompous man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal with his subordinate he cannot so deal with his king.

Page 647

To wish to be a despot, ‘to hunger after tyranny,’ as the Greek phrase had it, marks in our day an uncultivated mind. A person who so wishes cannot have weighed what Butler calls the ‘doubtfulness things are involved in.’* To be sure you are right, to impose your will or to wish to impose it with violence upon others,—to see your own ideas vividly and fixedly, and to be tormented till you can apply them in life and practice, not to like to hear the opinions of others, to be unable to sit down and weigh the truth they have, are but crude states of intellect in our present civilisation.

Page 676

If we look at history we shall find that it is only during the period of the present reign that in England the duties of a constitutional sovereign have ever been well performed. The first two Georges were ignorant of English affairs, and wholly unable to guide them whether well or ill; for many years in their time the Prime Minister, had over and above the labour of managing parliament, to manage the woman—sometimes the queen, sometimes the mistress—who managed the sovereign; George III interfered unceasingly, but he did harm unceasingly; George IV and William IV gave no steady continuing guidance, and were unfit to give it.

Page 684

A monarch is useful when he gives an effectual and beneficial guidance to his ministers. But these ministers are sure to be among the ablest men of their time. They will have had to conduct the business of parliament so as to satisfy it: they will have to speak so as to satisfy it. The two together cannot be done save by a man of very great and varied ability. The exercise of the two gifts is sure to teach a man much of the world; and if it did not, a parliamentary leader has to pass through a magnificent training before he becomes a leader. He has to gain a seat in parliament; to gain the ear of parliament; to gain the confidence of parliament; to gain the confidence of his colleagues. No one can achieve these—no one, still more, can both achieve them and retain them—without a singular ability, nicely trained in the varied detail of life. What chance has an hereditary monarch, such as nature forces him to be, such as history shows he is, against men so educated and so born? He can but be an average man to begin with; sometimes he will be clever, but sometimes he will be stupid; in the long run he will be neither clever nor stupid: he will be the simple, common man who plods the plain routine of life from the cradle to the grave. His education will be that of one who has never had to struggle; who has always felt he has nothing to gain; who has had the first dignity given him; who has never seen common life as in truth it

Page 712

A pleasure-loving lounger in middle life will not begin to work as George III worked, or as Prince Albert worked. The only fit material for a constitutional king is a prince who begins early to reign,—

Page 745

A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence; but the ‘old squire’ will get reverence. Even after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him. The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man’s sense. An old lord will get infinite respect. His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind—the coarse dull, contracted multitude, who could neither appreciate or perceive any other.

Note: This was probably true, hard to say. But for sure Bagehot was confident that the aam aadmi would not read these articles :P

Page 766

In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but an appendix to a man; in reverencing inherited nobility, we reverence the probable possession of a great faculty—the faculty of bringing out what is in one.

Note: Fack off

Page 960

It is perfectly possible—it has happened, and will happen again—that the Cabinet, being very powerful in the Commons, may inflict minor measures on the nation which the nation did not like, but which it did not understand enough to forbid.

Page 001

But the Lords are those who give social bribes, and not those who take them. They are above corruption because they are the corruptors.

Page 013

of our institutions* said that ‘the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it’—

Page 028

As far as politics go there is profound truth in Lord Chesterfield’s axiom,* ‘that the world must judge of you by what you seem not by what you are.’

Page 052

The House of Lords, being an hereditary chamber, cannot be of more than common ability. It may contain—it almost always has contained, it almost always will contain—extraordinary men. But its average born lawmakers cannot be extraordinary. Being a set of eldest sons picked out by chance and history, it cannot be very wise. It would be a standing miracle if such a chamber possessed a knowledge of its age superior to the other men of the age; if it possessed a superior and supplemental knowledge; if it descried what they did not discern, and saw truly that which they saw, indeed, but saw untruly.

Page 086

There is one kind of business in which our aristocracy have still, and are likely to retain long, a certain advantage. This is the business of diplomacy. Napoleon, who knew men well, would never, if he could help, employ men of the Revolution in missions to the old courts; he said, ‘They spoke to no one, and no one spoke to them;’ and so they sent home no information.

Page 189

it is quite safe against rough destruction, but it is not safe against inward decay. It may lose its veto as the Crown has lost its veto. If most of its members neglect their duties, if all its members continue to be of one class, and that not quite the best; if its doors are shut against genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not five thousand a year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be gone, as so much kingly power is gone—no one knows how. Its danger is not assassination, but atrophy; not abolition, but decline.

Page 207

The House only goes where it thinks in the end the nation will follow; but it takes its chance of the nation following or not following; it assumes the initiative, and acts upon its discretion or its caprice.

Page 224

The second function of the House of Commons is what I may call an expressive function. It is its office to express the mind of the English people on all matters which come before it.

Note: Curious he says English and not British

Page 241

a free government is harder to deal with than a despotic government: you may be able to get the despot to hear the other side; his ministers, men of trained intelligence, will be sure to know what makes against them; and they may tell him. But a free nation never hears any side save its own. The newspapers only repeat the side their purchasers like: the favourable arguments are set out, elaborated, illustrated; the adverse arguments maimed, misstated, confused.

Page 339

the partisans of the English Parliament are not of such a temper. They are Whigs, or Radicals, or Tories, but they are much else too. They are common Englishmen, and, as Father Newman complains,* ‘hard to be worked up to the dogmatic level.’ They are not eager to press the tenets of their party to impossible conclusions.

Page 519

Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best. An imposed government, a government like that of the English in India, may very possibly be better; it may represent the views of a higher race than the governed race, but it is not therefore a free government. A free government is that which the people subject to it voluntarily choose.

Page 600

So long as there is an uneasy class, a class which has not its just power, it will rashly clutch and blindly believe the notion that all men should have the same power.

Page 766

Nor is chance inquiry all a public department has most to fear. Fifty members of Parliament may be zealous for a particular policy affecting the department, and fifty others for another policy, and between them they may divide its action, spoil its favourite aims, and prevent its consistently working out either of their own aims. The process is very simple. Every department at times looks as if it was in a scrape; some apparent blunder, perhaps some real blunder, catches the public eye. At once the antagonist Parliamentary sections, which want to act on the department, seize the opportunity. They make speeches, they move for documents, they amass statistics. They declare ‘that in no other country is such a policy possible as that which the department is pursuing; that it is medieval; that it costs money; that it wastes life; that America does the contrary; that Prussia does the contrary.’ The newspapers follow according to their nature. These bits of administrative scandal amuse the public. Articles on them are very easy to write, easy to read, easy to talk about. They please the vanity of mankind. We think as we read, ‘Thank God, I am not as that man; I did not send green coffee to the Crimea;* I did not send patent cartridge to the common guns, and common cartridge to the breech-loaders. I make money; that miserable public functionary only wastes money.’ As for the defence of the department, no one cares for it or reads it. Naturally at first hearing it does not sound true. The opposition have the unrestricted selection of the point of attack, and they seldom choose a case in which the department, upon the surface of the matter, seems to be right. The case of first impression will always be that something shameful has happened; that such and such men did die; that this and that gun would not go off; that this or that ship will not sail. All the pretty reading is unfavourable, and all the praise is very dull.

Page 895

The defects of bureaucracy are, indeed, well known. It is a form of government which has been tried often enough in the world and it is easy to show what, human nature being what it in the long run is, the defects of a bureaucracy must in the long run be. It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results; or, as Burke put it,* ‘that they will think the substance of business not to be much more important than the forms of it.’ Their whole education and all the habit of their lives make them do so. They are brought young into the particular part of the public service to which they are attached; they are occupied for years in learning its forms—afterwards, for years too, in applying these forms to trifling matters. They are, to use the phrase of an old writer, ‘but the tailors of business; they cut the clothes, but they do not find the body.’ Men so trained must come to think the routine of business not a means but an end—to imagine the elaborate machinery of which they form a part, and from which they derive their dignity, to be a grand and achieved result, not a working and changeable instrument.

Page 906

The Prussian military system is the theme of popular wonder now, yet it sixty years pointed the moral against the form. We have all heard the saying that ‘Frederic the Great lost the battle of Jena.’* It was the system he had established—a good system for his wants and his times, which, blindly adhered to, and continued into a different age,—put to strive with different competitors,—brought his country to ruin.

Page 912

Not only does a bureaucracy thus tend to under-government, in point of quality; it tends to over-government, in point of quantity. The trained official hates the rude, untrained public. He thinks that they are stupid, ignorant, reckless—that they cannot tell their own interest—that they should have the leave of the office before they do anything.

Page 031

The dictator dare not appoint a bad minister if he would. I admit that such a despot is a better selector of administrators than a parliament; that he will know how to mix fresh minds and used minds better; that he is under a stronger motive to combine them well; that here is to be seen the best of all choosers with the keenest motives to choose. But I need not prove in England that the revolutionary selection of rulers obtains administrative efficiency at a price altogether transcending its value; that it shocks credit by its catastrophes; that for intervals it does not protect property or life; that it maintains an undergrowth of fear through all prosperity; that it may take years to find the true capable despot; that the interregna of the incapable are full of all evil; that the fit despot may die as soon as found; that the good administration and all else hang by the thread of his life.

Page 207

Eric also had me get a heart-rate monitor so I could correct the second-most common mistake of the running class—pace. Most of us are just as clueless about speed as we are about form. “Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow,” Ken Mierke says. “So they’re just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You’ve got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last.” The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold—your hard-breathing point—during your endurance runs.

Page 202

This determining political fact was not in the jurisdiction of the highest government in the country, where you might expect its highest wisdom, nor in the central government, where you might look for impartiality; but in local governments, where petty interests were sure to be considered, and where only inferior abilities were likely to be employed.

Note: But if enough power lies in the states then people of ability would be happy to work there.

Page 351

But can such a head be found? In one case I think it has been found. Our colonial governors are precisely Dei ex machinâ.* They are always intelligent, for they have to live by a difficult trade; they are nearly sure to be impartial, for they come from the ends of the earth; they are sure not to participate in the selfish desires of any colonial class or body, for long before those desires can have attained fruition they will have passed to the other side of the world; be busy with other faces and other minds, be almost out of hearing what happens in a region they have half forgotten.

Note: Mountbatten

Page 357

But even in this case the advantage of this extrinsic authority is purchased at a heavy price—a price which must not be made light of, because it is often worth paying. A colonial governor is a ruler who has no permanent interest in the colony he governs; who perhaps had to look for it in the map when he was sent thither; who takes years before he really understands its parties and its controversies; who, though without prejudice himself, is apt to be a slave to the prejudices of local people near him; who inevitably, and almost laudably, governs not in the interest of the colony, which he may mistake, but in his own interest, which he sees and is sure of. The first desire of a colonial governor is not to get into a ‘scrape,’ not to do anything which may give trouble to his superiors—the Colonial Office—at home, which may cause an untimely and dubious recall, which may hurt his after career. He is sure to leave upon the colony the feeling that they have a ruler who only half knows them, and does not so much as half care for them. We hardly appreciate this common feeling in our colonies, because we appoint their sovereign; but we should understand it in an instant if, by a political metamorphosis, the choice were turned the opposite way—if they appointed our sovereign. We should then say at once, ‘How is it possible a man from New Zealand can understand England? how is it possible that a man longing to get back to the antipodes can care for England? how can we trust one who lives by the fluctuating favour of a distant authority? how can we heartily obey one who is but a foreigner with the accident of an identical language?’

Page 377

An hereditary king is but an ordinary person, upon an average, at best; he is nearly sure to be badly educated for business; he is very little likely to have a taste for business; he is solicited from youth by every temptation to pleasure; he probably passed the whole of his youth in the vicious situation of the heir-apparent, who can do nothing because he has no appointed work, and who will be considered almost to outstep his function if he undertake optional work. For the most part, a constitutional king is a damaged common man; not forced to business by necessity as a despot often is, but yet spoiled for business by most of the temptations which spoil a despot.

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But there is a still worse case, a case which the life of George III—which is a sort of museum of the defects of a constitutional king—suggests at once. The Parliament may be wiser than the people, and yet the king may be of the same mind with the people. During the last years of the American war, the Premier, Lord North, upon whom the first responsibility rested, was averse to continuing it, and knew it could not succeed. Parliament was much of the same mind; if Lord North had been able to come down to Parliament with a peace in his hand, Parliament would probably have rejoiced, and the nation under the guidance of Parliament, though saddened by its losses, probably would have been satisfied. The opinion of that day was more like the American opinion of the present day than like our present opinion. It was much slower in its formation than our opinion now, and obeyed much more easily sudden impulses from the central administration. If Lord North had been able to throw the undivided energy and the undistracted authority of the Executive Government into the excellent work of making a peace and carrying a peace, years of bloodshed might have been spared, and an entail of enmity cut off that has yet to run out. But there was a power behind the Prime Minister; George III was madly eager to continue the war, and the nation—not seeing how hopeless the strife was, not comprehending the last antipathy which their obstinacy was creating—ignorant, dull, and helpless, was ready to go on too. Even if Lord North had wished to make peace, and had persuaded Parliament accordingly, all his work would have been useless; a superior power could and would have appealed from a wise and pacific Parliament to a sullen and warlike nation. The check which finds for the special vices of our Parliament was misused to curb its wisdom.

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habitual mediocrity of an hereditary sovereign.

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A free government cannot be wiser than a free nation; it is but their fruit and outcome, and it must be as they are. The real source of the weakness in our policy is in ourselves—in our ignorance.

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In the beginning was the deed, Smiley liked to say to him, in his failed-priest mood, quoting from one of his German poets. For Jerry, that simple maxim had become a pillar of his uncomplicated philosophy. What a man thinks is his own business. What matters is what he does.

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