Walter Bagehot: “In many existing constituencies the disfranchisement of minorities is hopeless and chronic.”

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.

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.

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.