John Morley: “Instead of adapting law to custom, habit, practice, and equity, parliament proceeded to break all this down.”

All alike concerned themselves with its truth or falsehood, with what they counted to be its abstract fitness or unfitness.

Fitness is henceforth to be the criterion of eligibility.

No: not at all; because there is so much, I will not say of random variety, but there is so much independent use of mind upon the facts that we have to deal with, that I listen with endless edification and instruction.

But they were barren of any institutions by which the country could be governed and kept in prosperity for the future.”(166) This is a statement of the case that biographer and historian alike should ponder.