Walter Bagehot: “Soon the gravest sage shares the folly of the party with which he acts, and the sect with which he worships.”

And again, in political matters, how quickly a leading statesman can change the tone of the community!

In early society, originality in life was forbidden and repressed by the fixed rule of life.

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.

But all men heed great results, and a change of Government is a great result.