Walter Bagehot: “Taking the House of Commons, not after possible but most unlikely improvements, but in matter of fact and as it stands…”

No doubt this momentary gain is bought at a ruinous after-cost.

But as soon as the House met, Lord Thurlow became the greatest.

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.

But, above all things, they were frightened of 'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread.