The common ordinary mind is quite unfit to fix for itself what political question it shall attend to; it is as much as it can do to judge decently of the questions which drift down to it, and are brought before it; it almost never settles its topics; it can only decide upon the issues of those topics.
This quote reflects Bagehot's view on the limitations of the average person's ability to engage with political issues.
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I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
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.
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.
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