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XIV

WALTER BAGEHOT

1826-1877

NE of England's great men who haven't yet

come into the full measure of their wellearned fame, is the banker, author and

political economist, Walter Bagehot.

Bagehot was a cynic, and cynics are slow to win appreciation. Leslie Stephen says "he always scorned a fool," and then, with a quiet humor, adds: "In early days his scorn was not yet tempered by the compassion which is the growth of years-when we have come to know how many and what excellent people belong to the class."

Bagehot was in Paris in the revolution of 1848. He superintended the construction of the barricades, but only to amuse himself. He wrote that he was revolted by the "sallow, sincere, sour fanatics behind them."

Bagehot's book on "The British Constitution," says Leslie Stephen, "came like a revolution; simply because he had opened his eyes and looked at facts"-a habit of bankers.

This versatile author and man of affairs, at the age of twenty-six began to take an active part in his father's banking business. The practical

experience and trained habits of observation and exhaustive analysis obtained in banking gave to his studies of economic questions rare practical value. His articles on "International Coinage," the "Depreciation of Silver," etc., collected after his death, have permanent value.

The banker's habit of taking nothing for granted-of looking into a situation as though the investigator were the original discoverer, is the distinguishing literary quality of Bagehot. Other writers on the British Constitution had theorized at a distance. Bagehot actually saw the wheels of government go round and scientifically studied their movement. He was the first practical man of affairs who had studied the Constitution as a banker studies a proposition for a loan.

Bagehot's "Lombard Street" is a vivid picture of the London banker in the concrete, "full of hopes and fires and passions"-as Stephen says. "The ordinary treatises had left us in the dull leaden cloud of a London fog, which, in Bagehot's treatment disperses, to let us see distinctly and vividly the human beings previously represented by vague, colourless phantoms."

Bagehot, in his shrewd way, thus sums up in a single sentence the true policy of banks in times of crises: "What is wanted is to diffuse the im

pression that though money may be dear, still money may be had."

"Lombard Street" is a matter-of-fact book, historically interesting at the outset, but, in the development of the author's purpose, dry. It is a valuable review of England's monetary system by a banker of large experience and rare breadth of view. The work evinces a rigid repression of the humor and play of fancy which illumine his "Character of Lord Brougham;" but is rich in clear statements of fact and unescapable conclusions. "Lombard Street" itself well illustrates the statement made by Mr. Bagehot in the introduction:

"A notion prevails that the money market is something so impalpable that it can only be spoken of in very abstract words, and that therefore books on it must always be exceedingly difficult. But I maintain that the money market is as concrete and real as anything else; that it can be described in as plain words; that it is the writer's fault if what he says is not clear."

We in America have seen well illustrated in the book and magazine writings of Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip of New York, Mr. George E. Roberts of Chicago, and others, the fact that the most complicated conditions and problems of trade

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