As long as we keep up a double set of institutions--one dignified and intended to impress the many, the other efficient and intended to govern the many--we should take care that the two match nicely, and hide where the one begins and where the other ends.
Bagehot discusses the importance of balancing the ceremonial and functional aspects of government institutions.
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They say, We reject your Bill for this once or these twice, or even these thrice: but if you keep on sending it up, at last we won't reject it.
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.
He gave an excellent moral example to his contemporaries, but he is an instance of those whose good dies with them, while their evil lives after them.
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.
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