Walter Bagehot: “No English majority dare vote for an exceedingly bad treaty; it would rather desert its own leader than ensure its own…”

These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.

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

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.