Walter Bagehot

In the early ages of an agricultural colony, whether you have political democracy or not, social democracy you must have, for nature makes it, and not you.

Equality is not artificially established in a new colony; it establishes itself.

There are in such communities no large properties, no great capitals, no refined classes--every one is comfortable and homely, and no one is at all more.

By its theory all people are entitled to the same political power, and they can only be so entitled on the ground that in politics they are equally wise.

The structure of these communities is indeed based on the principle of equality, and it is impossible that ANY such community can wholly satisfy the severe requirements of a political theorist.

If the New England States possessed a Cabinet government as a separate nation, they would be as renowned in the world for political sagacity as they now are for diffused happiness.

In a State of this sort, where all the community is fit to choose a sufficient legislature, it is possible, it is almost easy, to create that legislature.

No one can doubt that the New England States, if they were a separate community, would have an education, a political capacity, and an intelligence such as the numerical majority of no people, equally numerous, has ever possessed.

Education is diffused much, and is fast spreading, Ignorant emigrants from the Old World often prize the intellectual advantages of which they are themselves destitute, and are annoyed at their inferiority in a place where rudimentary…

Where there is no honest poverty, where education is diffused, and political intelligence is common, it is easy for the mass of the people to elect a fair legislature.

The first is a nation in which the mass of the people are intelligent, and in which they are comfortable.

But the difficulty of keeping a good legislature, is evidently secondary to the difficulty of first getting it.

An indifferent Parliament may be much improved by the steadying effect of grave affairs; but a Parliament which has no such affairs must be intrinsically excellent, or it will fail utterly.

All we can say is, that a Parliament with little business, which is to be as efficient as a Parliament with much business, must be in all other respects much better.

If you employ the best set of men to do nearly nothing, they will quarrel with each other about that nothing.

To keep a legislature efficient, it must have a sufficient supply of substantial business.

First, you must get a good legislature; and next, you must keep it good.

We are not now concerned with perfection or excellence; we seek only for simple fitness and bare competency.

It must be possible to have not only a legislature, but to have a competent legislature--a legislature willing to elect and willing to maintain an efficient executive.

Civilisation is robust enough to bear the incision of legal improvements.

It has ceased to be necessary to maintain bad laws because it is necessary to have some laws.

There is a diffused desire in civilised communities for an ADJUSTING legislation; for a legislation which should adapt the inherited laws to the new wants of a world which now changes every day.

The perception of political expediency has then hardly begun; the sense of abstract justice is weak and vague; and a rigid adherence to the fixed mould of transmitted usage is essential to an unmarred, unspoiled, unbroken life.

Custom is the first check on tyranny; that fixed routine of social life at which modern innovations chafe, and by which modern improvement is impeded, is the primitive check on base power.

The conditions of life are so simple and so unvarying that any decent sort of rules suffice so long as men know what they are.