Walter Bagehot: “Since 1789 France has always been trying political experiments, from which others may profit much, though as yet she…”

It is absurd to choose by contested party election an impartial chooser of Ministers.

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.

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.

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess.