Walter Bagehot: “And it is plain that a government by popular discussion tends to produce this quality.”

The casual line was traced according to the strength of deceased combatants; succeeding generations fought elsewhere; and the hesitating line of a half-drawn battle was left to stand for a perpetual limit.

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.

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.