When the first edition of this book was published I had great difficulty in persuading many people that it was possible in a non-monarchical State, for the real chief of the practical executive--the Premier as we should call him--to be nominated and to be removable by the vote of the National Assembly.
Bagehot recounts the challenges he faced in convincing others about the feasibility of a non-monarchical executive in a republic.
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He gave an excellent moral example to his contemporaries, but he is an instance of those whose good dies with them, while their evil lives after them.
Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess.
He could have found the truth as a statesman just as he found it when a judge; but he never did find it.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
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