On the record
It can ensure that its decrees shall be executed, for it, and it alone, appoints the executive; it can inflict the most severe of all penalties on neglect, for it can remove the executive.
Said by
Walter Bagehot
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gutenberg.orgWalter Bagehot: “It can ensure that its decrees shall be executed, for it, and it alone, appoints the executive; it can inflict the most…”
Editor's note · Context
Bagehot explains the powers of the English Constitution to ensure the execution of its decrees through its control over the executive.
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More from Walter Bagehot
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.
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.
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.
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