[All page references are to the second edition, as reproduced on the History of Economic Thought site.]
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. [p 45]
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. [P 46]
The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other. It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations. The nature of a constitution, the action of an assembly, the play of parties, the unseen formation of a guiding opinion, are complex facts, difficult to know, and easy to mistake. But the action of a single will, the fiat of a single mind, are easy ideas: anybody can make them out, and no one can ever forget them. [P 61]
But we have whole classes unable to comprehend the idea of a constitution - unable to feel the least attachment to impersonal laws. Most do indeed vaguely know that there are some other institutions besides the Queen, and some rules by which she governs. But a vast number like their minds to dwell more upon her than upon any thing else, and therefore she is inestimable. A Republic has only difficult ideas in government; a Constitutional Monarchy has an easy idea too; it has a comprehensible element for the vacant many, as well as complex laws and notions for the inquiring few. [P 63]
A family on the throne is an interesting idea also. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. 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. (Pp 63-4)
To state the matter shortly, 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 the understanding. (P 64)
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The following long quote comes from Chapter 7, titled "The Prerequisites of Cabinet Government". Just before the quoted part, Bagehot has said that there are only two kinds of nations that can elect a good Parliament. One of them is a place like the United States, where the mass of the people are intelligent and well-educated. Then he says, in the following passage, that the other kind is a place, like England, where the masses of the people are deferential to their leaders. If that was all he said, you might think he was simply an observant, though somewhat cynical, sociologist rather than as a snob. But just wait for the end of the passage for the proof that he is a dyed-in-the-wool snob!
The English constitution in its palpable form is this - the mass of the people yield obedience to a select few; and when you see this select few, you perceive that though not of the lowest class, nor of an unrespectable class, they are yet of a heavy sensible class - the last people in the world to whom, if they were drawn up in a row, an immense nation would ever give an exclusive preference. In fact, the mass of the English people yield a deference rather to something else than to their rulers. They defer to what we may call the theatrical show of society. A certain state passes before them; a certain pomp of great men; a certain spectacle of beautiful women; a wonderful scene of wealth and enjoyment is displayed, and they are coerced by it. Their imagination is bowed down; they feel they are not equal to the life which is revealed to them. Courts and aristocracies have the great quality which rules the multitude, though philosophers can see nothing in invisibility. Courtiers can do what others cannot. A common man may as well try to rival the actors on the stage in their acting, as the aristocracy in their acting. The higher world, as it looks from without, is a stage on which the actors walk their parts much better than the spectators can. This play is played in every district. Every rustic feels that his house is not like my lord’s house; his life like my lord’s life; his wife like my lady. The climax of the play is the Queen: nobody supposes that their house is like the court; their life like her life; her orders like their orders. There is in England a certain charmed spectacle which imposes on the many, and guides their fancies as it will. As a rustic on coming to London finds himself in presence of a great show and vast exhibition of inconceivable mechanical things, so by the structure of our society he finds himself face to face with a great exhibition of political things which he could not have imagined, which he could not make - to which he feels in himself scarcely any thing analogous.
Philosophers may deride this superstition, but its results are inestimable. By the spectacle of this august society, countless ignorant men and women are induced to obey the few nominal electors - the £10 borough renters, and the £50 county renters - who have nothing imposing about them, nothing which would attract the eye or fascinate the fancy. What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind. And the greatest of these results is this wonderful spectacle of society, which is ever new, and yet ever the same; in which accidents pass and essence remains; in which one generation dies and another succeeds, as if they were birds in a cage, or animals in a menagerie; of which it seems almost more than a metaphor to treat the parts as limbs of a perpetual living thing, so silently do they seem to change, so wonderfully and so perfectly does the conspicuous life of the new year take the place of the conspicuous life of last year. The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.
It is quite true that this imaginative sentiment is supported by a sensation of political satisfaction. 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 prerequisites 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 any thing; 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.
A deferential community, even though its lowest classes are not intelligent, is far more suited to a cabinet government than any kind of democratic country, because it is more suited to political excellence. The highest classes can rule in it; and the highest classes must, as such, have more political ability than the lower classes. A life of labour, and incomplete education, a monotonous occupation, a career in which the hands are used much and the judgment is used little, cannot create as much flexible thought, as much applicable intelligence, as a life of leisure, a long culture, a varied experience, an existence by which the judgment is incessantly exercised, and by which it may be incessantly improved. A country of respectful poor, though far less happy than where there are no poor to be respectful, is nevertheless far more fitted for the best government. You can use the best classes of the respectful country; you can only use the worst where every man thinks he is as good as every other. [Pp 198-200]
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[After 1688] many of the English people - the higher and more educated portion - had come to comprehend the nature of constitutional government, but the mass did not comprehend it. They looked to the sovereign as the government, and to the sovereign only. [P 209]
So well is our real Government concealed, that if you tell a cabman to drive to "Downing Street" he most likely will never have heard of it, and will not in the least know where to take you. It is only a "disguised republic" which is suited to such a being as the Englishman in such a century as the nineteenth. [Footnote 12, at the very end of the book, p 214]
Note the nineteenth-century-gentleman's presuppositions here. Everyone has domestic servants (except of course the domestic servants themselves, but they don't count as part of "everyone"). Women have no interest in politics or the composition of the government, and a "cabman" is not likely even to have heard of Downing Street. In an era when even rough colonials like us know who lives at 10 Downing Street, and many even know what the door looks like from constantly seeing it on TV, perhaps Bagehot's arguments in favour of a bit of mystery in the constitution are as outdated as his presuppositions?