Walter Bagehot

The great leaders of Parliament have varied much, but they have all had a certain firmness.

A great assembly is as soon spoiled by over-indulgence as a little child.

The whole life of English politics is the action and reaction between the Ministry and the Parliament.

At the end of half the sessions of Parliament, you will read in the newspapers, and you will hear even from those who have looked close at the matter and should know better, "Parliament has done nothing this session.

It is its office to express the mind of the English people on all matters which come before it.

A great and open council of considerable men cannot be placed in the middle of a society without altering that society.

It ought to teach the nation what it does not know.

In old times one office of the House of Commons was to inform the sovereign what was wrong.

The nation needs it quite as much as the king ever needed it.

A free people is indeed mostly fair, liberty practises men in a give-and-take, which is the rough essence of justice.

The English people, possibly even above other free nations, is fair.

But a free nation rarely can be--and the English nation is not--quick of apprehension.

It only comprehends what is familiar to it--what comes into its own experience, what squares with its own thoughts.

Any notion, any creed, any feeling, any grievance which can get a decent number of English members to stand up for it, is felt by almost all Englishmen to be perhaps a false and pernicious opinion, but at any rate possible--an opinion…

Practical diplomatists say that a free Government is harder to deal with than a despotic Government; you may be able to get the despot to hear the other side; his Ministers, men of trained intelligence, will be sure to know what makes…

But a free nation never hears any side save its own.

The newspapers only repeat the side their purchasers like: the favourable arguments are set out, elaborated, illustrated; the adverse arguments maimed, misstated, confused.

The worst judge, they say, is a deaf judge; the most dull Government is a free Government on matters its ruling classes will not hear.

I am disposed to reckon it as the second function of Parliament in point of importance, that to some extent it makes us hear what otherwise we should not.

The nation may be misfitted with its laws, and need to change them: some particular corn law may hurt all industry, and it may be worth a thousand administrative blunders to get rid of it.

But generally the laws of a nation suit its life; special adaptations of them are but subordinate; the administration and conduct of that life is the matter which presses most.

Nevertheless, the statute-book of every great nation yearly contains many important new laws, and the English statute-book does so above any.

A law is a general command applicable to many cases.

But I do not consider that, upon broad principle, and omitting legal technicalities, the House of Commons has any special function with regard to financial different from its functions with respect to other legislation.

The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.