Walter Bagehot: “The teaching function brings true ideas before the nation, and is the function of its highest minds.”

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

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.

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.

Just so the lines of our Constitution were framed in old eras of sparse population, few wants, and simple habits; and we adhere in seeming to their shape, though civilisation has come with its dangers, complications, and enjoyments.