Walter Bagehot: “Such is our earliest property-law, and our earliest life--law is that the lives of all members of the family group were…”

At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.

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.

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.