The notion of law as we have it--of a rule imposed by human authority, capable of being altered by that authority, when it likes, and in fact, so altered habitually--could not be conveyed to early nations, who regarded law half as an invincible prescription, and half as a Divine revelation.
Bagehot discusses the historical perception of law as both a divine and invincible force, contrasting it with modern understandings of legal authority.
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Nothing promotes intellect like intellectual discussion, and nothing promotes intellectual discussion so much as government by discussion.
No doubt this momentary gain is bought at a ruinous after-cost.
I do not think I put this too high when I say that a most important if not the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement of LUCKY rites.
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.
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