So far from wondering that the English Parliament has been inefficient in foreign policy, I think it is wonderful, and another sign of the rude, vague imagination that is at the bottom of our people, that we have done so well as we have.
Bagehot expresses surprise at the English Parliament's effectiveness in foreign policy, attributing it to the people's vague imagination.
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If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.
The whole history of civilisation, is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of its breath.
The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.
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