Walter Bagehot: “Now that free government is in Europe so rare and in America so distant, the opinion, even the incomplete, erroneous…”

I do not think I put this too high when I say that a most important if not the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement of LUCKY rites.

Savages waste away before modern civilisation; they seem to have held their ground before the ancient.

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess.

And again, in political matters, how quickly a leading statesman can change the tone of the community!