The messenger in an office is not more intelligent than the clerks, not better educated, but worse; and yet the messenger is probably a very superior specimen of the newly enfranchised classes.
Bagehot compares the intelligence and education levels of messengers and clerks, suggesting a hierarchy among the newly enfranchised classes.
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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.
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
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.
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