Walter Bagehot: “The world seems growing young when grave old lawyers and mature philosophers propose a scheme promising so much.”

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.

At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

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.