But give this fiery element a body of decent-looking earth; give it an excuse for breaking out on an occasion, when the decent, the cultivated, and aristocratic classes could join with it, and they would conquer by means of it, and it could be disguised in their covering.
Bagehot illustrates how a passionate element could gain power when allied with respectable social classes.
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These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.
I cannot, therefore, join in the full cry against anomalies; in my judgment it may quickly overrun the scent, and so miss what we should be glad to find.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
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