And it has been at the time of great epochs of thought--at the Peloponnesian war, at the fall of the Roman Republic, at the Reformation, at the French Revolution--that such liberty of speaking and thinking have produced their full effect.
Bagehot identifies key historical moments where freedom of thought significantly impacted societal change.
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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.
That a House of Commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a Ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation's will well, bring matters to the nation's attention well.
It is absurd to choose by contested party election an impartial chooser of Ministers.
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