Walter Bagehot: “The unanimous voice of the people may be so strong, and may be conveyed through so many organs, that it may be assumed…”

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.

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.

But, above all things, they were frightened of 'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread.

Thirdly, we see why so few nations have made rapid advance, and how many have become stationary.