Walter Bagehot: “The tradition ascribing Spartan legislation to Lycurgus was literally untrue, but its spirit was quite true.”

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.

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.

But it is natural also that persons used to analyse political institutions should look at these anomalies with a little tenderness and a little interest.

The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.