14 Facts About Walter Bagehot

Walter Bagehot was an English journalist, businessman, and essayist, who wrote extensively about government, economics, literature and race.

Walter Bagehot is known for co-founding the National Review in 1855, and for his works The English Constitution and Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market.

Walter Bagehot attended University College London, where he studied mathematics and, in 1848, earned a master's degree in moral philosophy.

Walter Bagehot was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn, but preferred to join his father in 1852 in his family's shipping and banking business.

In 1858, Walter Bagehot married Elizabeth Wilson, whose father, James Wilson, was the founder and owner of The Economist.

In 1855, Walter Bagehot founded the National Review with his friend Richard Holt Hutton.

Walter Bagehot was widely accepted by the British establishment and was elected to the Athenaeum in 1875.

In 1867, Walter Bagehot wrote The English Constitution, a book that explores the nature of the constitution of the United Kingdom, specifically its Parliament and monarchy.

Walter Bagehot wrote Physics and Politics, 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.

Walter Bagehot 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.

Walter Bagehot attempted to provide empirical support for his views by citing John Lubbock and Edward Tylor although, in their writings on human evolution, neither of them accepted arguments for innate hereditary differences, as opposed to cultural inheritance.

In Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market Walter Bagehot seeks to explain the world of finance and banking.

Walter Bagehot's collected works were issued in a set of 15 volumes, published by The Economist between 1965 and 1986, and edited by Norman St John-Stevas.

Minor planet 2901 Walter Bagehot, discovered by Lubos Kohoutek, is named in his honour.