Just so in the history of the great prevailing city: you begin with a town and you end with an empire, and this by unmarked stages?--So shrouded, so shielded, in the coarse fibre of other qualities--was the delicate principle of progress, that it never failed, and it was never broken.
Bagehot illustrates the unmarked stages of progress in the history of a great city, culminating in an empire.
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There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid, specified, dated.
The whole history of civilisation, is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
If the above reasoning be sound, compulsory constituencies are necessary, voluntary constituencies destructive; the optional transferability of votes is not a salutary aid, but a ruinous innovation.
The power of free interchange of ideas being wanting, the ideas themselves were barren.
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