Walter Bagehot: “And what was more effectual still, they used their influence in the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords.”

The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.

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.

Subject to this saving remark, however, I not only admit, but maintain, that our Constitution is full of curious oddities, which are impeding and mischievous, and ought to be struck out.