Bagehot

Bagehot, WALTER, English economist and journalist, was born at Langport in Somersetshire, in 1826. He attended school at Bristol, and in 1842 went to University College, London, where he graduated in 1848; afterwards studied law, and was called to the bar in 1852, but joined his father in his business of banker and shipowner at Langport. In 1858 he married a daughter of the Right Hon. James Wilson, founder of the Economist newspaper; and from 1860 till 24th March 1877, when he died in his native town, he was the editor of that important journal. Bagehot's literary activity began in 1851, when he was in Paris at the time of the eoup d'état, and wrote seven letters to a London paper, justifying the policy of Napoleon. These letters were published after his death in the first volume of his Literary Studies. Besides some other works of minor importance, there appeared during his lifetime: The English Constitution, a book of great value, translated into several modern languages; Physics and Politics, a treatise published in the International Scientific Series, which applied to politics the theory of evolution (new ed. 1896); and Lombard Street, an invaluable work on the money-market (10th ed. 1892). In 1895 there were new editions of his Literary Studies (with Memoir by R. H. Hutton) and Economic Studies. Bagehot was a vigorous and brilliant writer, and a thinker of great acuteness and suggestiveness. While adhering to the current English type of thought, both in politics and economics, he was thoroughly independent in the formation and expression of his views, and was readier than most of his contemporaries to give weight to the historical and evolutionary side of things. In particular he recognised the limitations of the Ricardian economics, and considered political economy as a science not of rigorous laws, but of tendencies.