Walter Bagehot

It is not that you will not be able to do any good, but you will not be able to do anything at all.

If everybody does what he thinks right, there will be 657 amendments to every motion, and none of them will be carried or the motion either.

The moment, indeed, that we distinctly conceive that the House of Commons is mainly and above all things an elective assembly, we at once perceive that party is of its essence.

What is true at such minor and momentary elections must be much more true in a great and constant election of rulers.

The House of Commons lives in a state of perpetual potential choice; at any moment it can choose a ruler and dismiss a ruler.

Secondly, though the leaders of party no longer have the vast patronage of the last century with which to bribe, they can coerce by a threat far more potent than any allurement--they can dissolve.

This is the secret which keeps parties together.

Thirdly, it may seem odd to say so, just after inculcating that party organisation is the vital principle of representative government, but that organisation is permanently efficient, because it is not composed of warm partisans.

If it were otherwise, Parliamentary government would become the worst of governments--a sectarian government.

They are not eager to press the tenets of their party to impossible conclusions.

On the contrary, the way to lead them--the best and acknowledged way--is to affect a studied and illogical moderation.

They have lived all their lives in an atmosphere of probabilities and of doubt, where nothing is very clear, where there are some chances for many events, where there is much to be said for several courses, where nevertheless one course…

They like to hear arguments suited to this intellectual haze.

They got rich themselves by transactions of which they could not have stated the argumentative ground--and all they ask for is a distinct though moderate conclusion, that they can repeat when asked; something which they feel NOT to be…

An Opposition, on coming into power, is often like a speculative merchant whose bills become due.

And the end always is that a middle course is devised which LOOKS as much as possible like what was suggested in opposition, but which IS as much as possible what patent facts--facts which seem to live in the office, so teasing and…

Our English system contains both contrivances; it makes party government permanent and possible in the sole way in which it can be so, by making it mild.

The feeling of a constituency is the feeling of a dominant party, and that feeling is elicited, stimulated, sometimes even manufactured by the local political agent.

Such an opinion could not be moderate; could not be subject to effectual discussion; could not be in close contact with pressing facts; could not be framed under a chastening sense of near responsibility; could not be formed as those form…

Most persons would admit these conditions of Parliamentary government when they read them, but two at least of the most prominent ideas in the public mind are inconsistent with them.

They would not only make Parliamentary government work ill, but they would prevent its working at all; they would not render it bad, for they would make it impossible.

This theory demands that every man of twenty-one years of age (if not every woman too) should have an equal vote in electing Parliament.

Upon this theory each man is to have one twelve-millionth share in electing a Parliament; the rich and wise are not to have, by explicit law, more votes than the poor and stupid; nor are any latent contrivances to give them an influence…

Such a Parliament could not be composed of moderate men.

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