On the record
If we set aside all the element derived from law and polity which runs through our current moral notions, I hardly know what we shall have left.
Said by
Walter Bagehot
Source
gutenberg.orgWalter Bagehot: “If we set aside all the element derived from law and polity which runs through our current moral notions, I hardly know…”
Editor's note · Context
Here, Bagehot argues that our current moral understanding is deeply intertwined with law and governance, making it hard to separate them.
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More from Walter Bagehot
Subject to this saving remark, however, I not only admit, but maintain, that our Constitution is full of curious oddities, which are impeding and mischievous, and ought to be struck out.
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.
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
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