Walter Bagehot: “There is only a certain QUANTUM of power in each of our race; if it goes in one way it is spent, and cannot go in…”

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.

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.