Walter Bagehot: “If the whole official class change when a new party goes out or comes in, a good official system is impossible.”

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.

It is natural that those who by special and admirable culture have come to look at all things upon the artistic side, should start back from these queer peculiarities.

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.

These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.