The English economist, social theorist, and literary critic Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) was virtually the founder in England of political psychology and political sociology.

Walter Bagehot, born on Feb. 23, 1826, at Langport, Somerset, came of well-to-do, middle-class banking stock with literary leanings. At Bristol College (1839-1842) he was deeply influenced by studying anthropology with J. C. Prichard. He then spent 4 years at University College, London, where he and some friends formed a debating society. They also wandered about London in search of the great free-trade and Chartist orators. Even more crucial was his year of reading for a master's degree, especially in moral philosophy and political economy and in the early-19th-century English poets. Out of this reading came his first published essays, literary and economic, in a Unitarian journal, the Prospective Review. Yet he fumbled in finding his vocation, spending several wretched years reading for the bar at Lincoln's...