Walter Bagehot: “The English system, therefore, is not an absorption of the executive power by the legislative power; it is a fusion of…”

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

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

But it is natural also that persons used to analyse political institutions should look at these anomalies with a little tenderness and a little interest.

Just so the lines of our Constitution were framed in old eras of sparse population, few wants, and simple habits; and we adhere in seeming to their shape, though civilisation has come with its dangers, complications, and enjoyments.