Walter Bagehot: “Nothing could be so conclusive against the American Constitution, as a Constitution, as that incident.”

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.

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

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

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.