【经济学人】白芝浩专栏——白芝浩VS脱欧！ [英国媒体]

Bagehot

Walter Bagehot would have loathed government by referendum

沃尔特·白芝浩先生也不会希望政府发起脱欧公投

The author of “The English Constitution” was no Europhile, but nor would he have backed Brexit

《英国宪制》的作者白芝浩先生既不是亲欧份子，也不会支持脱欧



Oct 21st 2017

EARLY day motions are parliamentary devices which give backbench MPs a chance to ask for a debate on a subject they choose. Two such motions doing the rounds note that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Walter Bagehot’s “The English Constitution”. The first, tabled by two Conservatives, notes that Bagehot’s “great facility” for explaining the “practical workings” of the political system ensures that his classic text remains “both relevant and highly influential today”. The second, tabled by five Labour MPs, invokes Bagehot as it urges Europe’s nations to ensure that “parliaments do not become mere constitutional decoration in the face of the continuing encroachment of the EU on parliamentary democracy.”

先期议案是英国议会的制度之一，授予后排议员就其选择的主题在议会展开辩论的机会，近期正在审阅中的两个此类议案不免使人想起今年正是沃尔特·白芝浩先生的着作《英国宪制》出版发行150周年。第一个议案由两位保守党议员提交，在议案中指出，白芝浩先生以极其通俗的语言说明了政治体系的实质，他的经典文献在150年后的今天依然“意义重大且影响深远”。第二个议案由五位工党议员呈上，在其中提及了白芝浩先生，议案的内容是敦促欧洲国家能够明白”议会不仅仅是宪法意义上的摆设品，尤其是在欧盟对议会民主制持续侵犯的情况下“

Bagehot’s great work is still worth debating. G.M. Young, the foremost historian of Victorian England, argued that Walter Bagehot (pronounced to rhyme roughly with gadget) was nothing less than “the greatest Victorian”. He was certainly the greatest Victorian journalist-cum-intellectual. He edited The Economist for 16 years, until his death from pneumonia in 1877, aged just 51. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, from politics to literature to finance. “Lombard Street”, his analysis of a Victorian banking panic, still provides central bankers with their template for what to do in a crisis, as Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve during the crisis of 2008, fulsomely acknowledges.

白芝浩先生的伟大贡献一直被后人铭记，维多利亚女王时期英国首屈一指的历史学家乔治·马尔科姆·杨曾说道，”沃尔特·白芝浩先生（他的发音押韵起来有点像”加吉特“）毫无疑问是维多利亚女王时期最伟大的人“。白芝浩先生是维多利亚时期最杰出的拟稿人兼公知，他担任《经济学人》主编达16年之久，直到1877年因肺炎去世，享年51岁。白芝浩先生发表的一系列着作涵盖了政治、文学、财经等广泛主题，有些夸张的是，其中他对维多利亚时代的银行业恐慌现象的分析着作《伦巴第街：货币市场记述》，时至今日仍被一些银行家视为如何应对危机的模型，譬如2008年经济危机中时任美联储主席本·伯南克就曾提及

“The English Constitution” revolutionised political debate because it succeeded in exposing the reality of power behind the façade of abstract formulae. Montesquieu’s idea that government can be divided into three branches—the executive, legislative and judicial—had proved so influential that the Founding Fathers built it into America’s constitution. Bagehot argued that the real division of powers is that between the “dignified” and the “efficient” branches of government. The dignified branch consists of the monarchy, and Parliament when it is engaged in ceremony. The efficient branch consists of the prime minister, the cabinet and the government ministries. The job of the dignified branch is to win the people’s loyalty by putting on a show. The job of the efficient branch is to use that loyalty to run the country. Bagehot argued that Britain is a “disguised republic” and a hidden meritocracy. The real rulers are secreted in the second-class carriages but are obeyed because of the splendour of the waxwork rulers in the first-class carriages.

《英国宪制》使政治辩论发生了翻天覆地的变化，其揭示了权力在其抽象形式背后的实质。法国思想家孟德斯鸠所提出的三权分立的政府—行政、立法、司法—该思想对美国的开国元勋们影响深远，是美国宪法体制的基石；而白芝浩先生则强调，政治权力的根本分歧在于政府如何同时兼顾“尊严”及“效率”：尊严的那一面在君主、议会宣誓继位/就职时生效，效率的那一面由首相、内阁、政府部长们构成。“尊严”是为了通过对外展示来赢得人民的忠诚，“效率”是为了靠着那份忠诚来治理国家。白芝浩先生强调，英国的国家制度其实是“伪共和”名义下的精英治国，人们名义上遵从具备显赫威名的君王签署发布的命令，但真正的权利却掌握在那些君王之下次一级的执行者手中

Bagehot expressed himself in sparkling prose. The monarchy puts “a family on the throne” and “brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life”. A “princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact”. The cabinet is a “hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens” the executive to the legislature. Bagehot famously warned, in discussing the monarchy, against letting in daylight upon magic. But his every sentence is a shaft of brilliant light.

白芝浩先生平淡无奇的描述中可谓是妙语连珠，例如：君主制政体奉行“家族统治”；“舍弃了统治阶级的骄傲，融入了平民般的生活”；“王室成员的婚礼也只是普通人婚礼的升级版本”；内阁就是行政与立法间“串联的字符，搭紧的皮扣”。在讨论君主制政体时，白芝浩先生曾有一句警世名言：“保持神秘的神秘才能神秘”，但他的每一句话都无疑是对神秘的揭示。

The five Labour MPs are certainly right that Bagehot would have worried about the transfer of power from Britain to the EU. As a creature of his time, he regarded continental Europe as a political backwater, governed by either unaccountable bureaucracies or wilful despots. And as a liberal pragmatist, he thought that power should be exercised as close to home as possible. It is possible to imagine Bagehot admiring the single market as an instrument of easier commerce. It is impossible to imagine him endorsing Utopian fantasies about forging an ever-closer union out of a hotch-potch of political systems and cultures.

那五位工党议员的提案当然是言之灼灼的，哪怕是白芝浩先生再生，也会对英国能否从欧盟手中收回权利而存怀疑态度，在他那个时代，他觉得欧洲大陆是一趟政治浑水，权力把持在不负责任的官僚和随心所欲的独断者手中。身为一名自由实用主义者，白芝浩先生认为权力的行使应当尽可能地靠近于英国本土，可以想象白芝浩先生会对单一市场这类使得贸易更便捷的工具赞不绝口，但他绝不可能为“从大杂烩式的政治文化体制联盟中脱身，并与之重新开展亲密合作“这一乌托邦式幻想而背书

That said, it is equally impossible to imagine Bagehot as a Brexiteer. He had doubts about extending the franchise to the uneducated masses, let alone giving power to the people in the form of a referendum. He thought that the popular will had to be filtered through institutions that tamed raw emotions and countered brute self-interest. Parliament was only the first of these institutions. Bagehot thought that MPs were wiser than the electorate in general but nevertheless too apt to act like a crowd. The heart of Parliament lay in the prime minister’s government, which had the responsibility to pursue the long-term good of the country, even if it meant ignoring the voice of the masses. For a prime minister to entrust the future of the country to a referendum would have struck him as an abomination.

这也就是说，白芝浩先生不可能赞同脱欧。他曾经就将权力授予未受良好教育的民众这一点提出质疑，更不用提公投这一方式了。在他看来，普通民众与不带原始情感、反对无脑自私的制度应当被区别对待，议会才是制度下的第一选择。白芝浩先生认为，议员尽管比普通选民更睿智，但却太容易受其影响，以首相为首的政府才是议会的核心，政府有责任维护国家的长远利益，尽管可能会忽视普通群众的呼声。身为首相，若将国家的命运诉诸于公投，只会使他名誉扫地。

Governed by weakness of imagination

聪明反被聪明误

Bagehot thought that the genius of the British political system lay in its moderation. Moderation is the hallmark of cabinet rule, and of British culture. The British dislike grand ideologies, regarding them as the afflictions of foreigners—and particularly of those worst of all foreigners, the French. The Brexit referendum has replaced moderation with polarisation and realism with ideology. The Brexiteers have more in common with the sans-culottes of France than they have with sensible Victorian Englishmen. They are in the grip of an idea that knows no compromise—sovereignty pure and unsullied—and they are willing to support that idea even if it crumbles on contact with reality. This week a minister suggested that Britain could grow its own food if it reached no deal with the EU.

白芝浩先生认为，不偏不倚的中正性是英国政治体制的特质。中正性是统领内阁的原则，也是英国文化的标志，英国人不喜欢广义的意识形态，认为这是外国人的通病—尤其是他们最瞧不起的法国人。而脱欧公投却用极端化取代了中正性，用意识形态取代了现实主义。与理智的维多利亚时代的英国人相比，脱欧支持者和法国大革命时期的共和党人有更多的共同语言，他们脑袋中有一股“决不妥协”的思想—纯粹无暇的主导权—所以他们宁愿支持那些不切实际的主张，譬如说，本周就有一位内阁部长称，英国就算和欧盟达不成任何协定，实在不行就自己种菜！

It may be too late to put the demon of populism, unleashed by the referendum, back into the constitutional bottle. The wild men of Brexit continue to drive the debate. Anyone who wants to compromise is labelled, disgracefully, a saboteur. Europe’s bureaucrats are playing into the wild men’s hands by focusing on legal niceties rather than strategic interests. But Bagehot’s “English Constitution” suggests that it is not too late to salvage the situation. Britain is a land of pragmatism, compromise and common sense. The ideological zealots who have brought the country to this sorry pass are impostors who are waiting for their bluff to be called. Parliament should debate the 150th anniversary of Bagehot’s “English Constitution”—and use that debate to consider the state of British democracy in an age of Brexit and bile.

脱欧公投释放了民粹主义这个恶魔，而现在要把它再关回宪制的瓶子中已经太迟了啊。支持脱欧的极端分子一直占据着舆论的制高点，任何想要追寻折衷方案的人都会被打上"耻辱“、”破坏分子“的标签。欧盟那些官僚们故意投其所好地让极端分子们纠结于律法手续而不是战略利益，而我们可以从白芝浩先生的《英国宪制》中看到，现在力挽狂澜还不算太晚，英国是一个务实、折衷、具备常识理性的国家，将国家带入如此悲惨境地的意识形态狂热分子就像江湖骗子，始终是要被拆穿的，在白芝浩先生的《英国宪制》出版150周年之际，议会应当就其主旨展开辩论，并通过这次辩论来反思在脱欧这个浮躁的时代，英式民主当前的境遇。

Economist.com/blogs/bagehot