Walter Bagehot: “The teaching there given must be popular, and to be popular it must be concrete, embodied, short.”

The power of free interchange of ideas being wanting, the ideas themselves were barren.

If the above reasoning be sound, compulsory constituencies are necessary, voluntary constituencies destructive; the optional transferability of votes is not a salutary aid, but a ruinous innovation.

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.

It is absurd to choose by contested party election an impartial chooser of Ministers.