Walter Bagehot: “Indeed if he mistakes he is soon weeded out; the editor rejects, the age will not read his compositions.”

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.

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.

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.

The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.