Walter Bagehot: “The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will.”

But it is natural also that persons used to analyse political institutions should look at these anomalies with a little tenderness and a little interest.

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.

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

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