When her family came to the Crown it was a sort of treason to maintain the inalienable right of lineal sovereignty, for it was equivalent to saying that the claim of another family was better than hers: but now, in the strange course of human events, that very sentiment has become her surest and best support.
Bagehot reflects on the evolving nature of monarchy and its legitimacy over time.
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Subject to this saving remark, however, I not only admit, but maintain, that our Constitution is full of curious oddities, which are impeding and mischievous, and ought to be struck out.
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
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.
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