Walter Bagehot: “The support of the Lords is an aid and a luxury; that of the Commons is a strict and indispensable necessary.”

They are solely concerned with his attractiveness as a candidate; they need not regard his efficiency as a ruler.

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.

No doubt this momentary gain is bought at a ruinous after-cost.

I do not think I put this too high when I say that a most important if not the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement of LUCKY rites.