On the record
If the highest social rank was to be scrambled for in the House of Commons, the number of social adventurers there would be incalculably more numerous, and indefinitely more eager.
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Walter Bagehot
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gutenberg.orgWalter Bagehot: “If the highest social rank was to be scrambled for in the House of Commons, the number of social adventurers there would…”
Editor's note · Context
Bagehot speculates that competition for social status in politics would lead to an influx of opportunists.
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More from Walter Bagehot
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
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.
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
I cannot, therefore, join in the full cry against anomalies; in my judgment it may quickly overrun the scent, and so miss what we should be glad to find.
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