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The realisme impitoyable which good critics find in a most characteristic part of the literature of the nineteenth century, is to be found also in its politics.
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Walter Bagehot
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gutenberg.orgWalter Bagehot: “The realisme impitoyable which good critics find in a most characteristic part of the literature of the nineteenth…”
Editor's note · Context
He notes that the stark realism found in 19th-century literature is also reflected in its political landscape.
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More from Walter Bagehot
If the above reasoning be sound, compulsory constituencies are necessary, voluntary constituencies destructive; the optional transferability of votes is not a salutary aid, but a ruinous innovation.
No doubt this momentary gain is bought at a ruinous after-cost.
And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of its breath.
If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.
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