It is easy to imagine a House of Commons which is discontented with all statesmen, which is contented with none, which is made up of little parties, which votes in small knots, which will adhere steadily to no leader, which gives every leader a chance and a hope.
Bagehot describes a hypothetical discontented House of Commons with fragmented loyalties.
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The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
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.
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