Walter Bagehot: “But in politics we must not trouble ourselves with exceedingly exceptional accidents; it is quite difficult enough to…”

In early society, originality in life was forbidden and repressed by the fixed rule of life.

There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid, specified, dated.

The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it.

I do not think I put this too high when I say that a most important if not the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement of LUCKY rites.