Walter Bagehot: “The executive must be like a steel shirt of the Middle Ages--extremely hard and extremely flexible.”

There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid, specified, dated.

Now it is not conceivable that a race of beings with valuable instincts supporting their existence and supplying their wants would need these simple tools.

The power of free interchange of ideas being wanting, the ideas themselves were barren.

The whole history of civilisation, is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.