Many Radical members who had been asking for years for household suffrage were much more surprised than pleased at the near chance of obtaining it; they had asked for it as bargainers ask for the highest possible price, but they never expected to get it.
Bagehot describes the unexpected reaction of Radical members to the potential for household suffrage.
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That a House of Commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a Ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation's will well, bring matters to the nation's attention well.
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.
In early society, originality in life was forbidden and repressed by the fixed rule of life.
There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid, specified, dated.
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