Walter Bagehot: “Its function was to tell the executive--the king--what the nation wished he should do; to some extent, to guide him by…”

The nation then selected the English policy, but the Crown chose the English Ministers.

They are above corruption because they are the corruptors.

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.

Now it is not conceivable that a race of beings with valuable instincts supporting their existence and supplying their wants would need these simple tools.