Walter Bagehot: “Custom is the first check on tyranny; that fixed routine of social life at which modern innovations chafe, and by which…”

Subject to this saving remark, however, I not only admit, but maintain, that our Constitution is full of curious oddities, which are impeding and mischievous, and ought to be struck out.

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.

I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.

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