The Premier then, as now, must resign upon a vote of want of confidence, but the volition of Parliament would then be the overt and single force in the selection of a successor, whereas it is now the predominant though latent force.
Bagehot discusses the implications of parliamentary confidence on the appointment of a Premier.
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If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.
All savage religions are full of superstitions founded on luck.
If the above reasoning be sound, compulsory constituencies are necessary, voluntary constituencies destructive; the optional transferability of votes is not a salutary aid, but a ruinous innovation.
He gave an excellent moral example to his contemporaries, but he is an instance of those whose good dies with them, while their evil lives after them.
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