Walter Bagehot: “A campaign, as Macaulay well says, cannot be directed by a 'debating society;' and many other kinds of action also…”

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess.

They are solely concerned with his attractiveness as a candidate; they need not regard his efficiency as a ruler.

But, above all things, they were frightened of 'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread.

If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.