Walter Bagehot: “It is not that you will not be able to do any good, but you will not be able to do anything at all.”

There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid, specified, dated.

Nothing promotes intellect like intellectual discussion, and nothing promotes intellectual discussion so much as government by discussion.

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

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.