Walter Bagehot: “But what makes one tribe--one incipient tribe, one bit of a tribe--to differ from another is their relative faculty of…”

I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.

It is natural that those who by special and admirable culture have come to look at all things upon the artistic side, should start back from these queer peculiarities.

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.