It is only in later times, when the world is wider, its experience larger, and its thought colder, that the plain rule of a palpably chosen ruler is even possible.
Walter Bagehot: “It is only in later times, when the world is wider, its experience larger, and its thought colder, that the plain rule…”
Editor's note · Context
Bagehot notes that a palpably chosen ruler is only possible in a more advanced society.
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That a House of Commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a Ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation's will well, bring matters to the nation's attention well.
They are above corruption because they are the corruptors.
We have thus a whole group of ancient republics of non-Aryan race, and one which, being more ancient than the classical republics, could not have borrowed from or imitated them.
The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it.





