Walter Bagehot: “In the bare superficial theory of free institutions this is undoubtedly a defect.”

These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.

Political philosophy is still more imperfect; it has been framed from observations taken upon regular specimens of politics and States; as to these its teaching is most valuable.

The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.

I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.