Walter Bagehot: “Accordingly, the Senate is respected; whatever may be the merits or demerits of its action, it can act; it is real…”

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.

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

Just so the lines of our Constitution were framed in old eras of sparse population, few wants, and simple habits; and we adhere in seeming to their shape, though civilisation has come with its dangers, complications, and enjoyments.

I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.