Physics and Politics. Genealogia della Costituzione inglese in Walter Bagehot

This paper analyses the connections between Bagehot’s Conservative liberalism and his evolutionary conception of the English Constitution. According to Bagehot, the solidity of the British constitutional system rests on the coexistence of two factors, the «government by discussion» (for the few) and the «deference» (by the people for the elite) in the social and political life of the Country. In his essay Physics and Politics, Bagehot asserts that the poise between the principle of political freedom and that of «legality» is the result of a lucky and rare evolutionary itinerary, which has enabled England to be a solid and dominant nation. The advance of democracy in the mid Victorian period threatens to blow up the balance achieved between change and continuity. For Bagehot, the danger is that democracy risks killing a «legality» based on «deference», and that death of deference risks killing a freedom based on «government by discussion».