Just now, the triumph of the Prussians--the bureaucratic people, as is believed, par excellence--has excited a kind of admiration for bureaucracy, which a few years since we should have thought impossible.
Bagehot comments on the unexpected admiration for Prussian bureaucracy following their military successes.
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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.
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.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
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.
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