This is the mode in which Lord Palmerston's administration has been lately maintained; a Ministry in many ways defective, but more beneficially vigorous abroad, and more beneficially active at home, than the vast majority of English Ministries.
Bagehot assesses Lord Palmerston's administration as effective despite its flaws, emphasizing its vigor.
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More from Walter Bagehot
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.
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.
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.
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