Walter Bagehot

The notion of employing a man of unknown smallness at a crisis of unknown greatness is to our minds simply ludicrous.

Lincoln, it is true, happened to be a man, if not of eminent ability, yet of eminent justness.

But success in a lottery is no argument for lotteries.

What were the chances against a person of Lincoln's antecedents, elected as he was, proving to be what he was?

Even in quiet times, government by a President, is, for the several various reasons which have been stated, inferior to government by a Cabinet; but the difficulty of quiet times is nothing as compared with the difficulty of unquiet times.

The comparative deficiencies of the regular, common operation of a Presidential government are far less than the comparative deficiencies in time of sudden trouble--the want of elasticity, the impossibility of a dictatorship, the total…

This contrast explains why the characteristic quality of Cabinet Governments--the fusion of the executive power with the legislative power--is of such cardinal importance.

The use of the Queen, in a dignified capacity, is incalculable.

Without her in England, the present English Government would fail and pass away.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government.

The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

The nature of a constitution, the action of an assembly, the play of parties, the unseen formation of a guiding opinion, are complex facts, difficult to know and easy to mistake.

But the action of a single will, the fiat of a single mind, are easy ideas: anybody can make them out, and no one can ever forget them.

Historical oligarchy, as well as democracy, agreed in requiring a certain established system of government, comprising the three elements of specialised functions, temporary functionaries, and ultimate responsibility (under some forms or…

But in the mind of every man, some determining rule or system--something like what in modern times is called a CONSTITUTION--was indispensable to any Government entitled to be called legitimate, or capable of creating in the mind of a…

We discern a government in which there is little or no scheme or system, still less any idea of responsibility to the governed, but in which the mainspring of obedience on the part of the people consists in their personal feeling and…

The characteristic of the English Monarchy is that it retains the feelings by which the heroic kings governed their rude age, and has added the feelings by which the Constitutions of later Greece ruled in more refined ages.

We have no slaves to keep down by special terrors and independent legislation.

But we have whole classes unable to comprehend the idea of a constitution--unable to feel the least attachment to impersonal laws.

A republic has only difficult ideas in government; a Constitutional Monarchy has an easy idea too; it has a comprehensible element for the vacant many, as well as complex laws and notions for the inquiring few.

It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales.

They treated as a great political event, what, looked at as a matter of pure business, was very small indeed.

The women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.