Our conclusion is that though a king with high courage and fine discretion, a king with a genius for the place, is always useful, and at rare moments priceless, yet a common king is of no use at a crisis, while, in the common course of things, he will do, and need do, nothing. Our constitution is full of anomalies. Some of them are, no doubt, impeding and mischievous. Half the world believes that the Englishman is born illogical. The complexity we tolerate is that which has grown up.
Any new complexity is detestable to the English mind.
Let anyone try to advocate a plan of suffrage reform at all out of the way, and see how many adherents he can collect. This great political question of the day, the suffrage question, is made exceedingly difficult by this history of ours. We shall find on investigation that so far from an ultra-democratic suffrage giving us a more homogeneous and decided House of Commons it would give us a less homogeneous and more timid house. With us democracy would mean the rule of money and increasingly of new money working for its own ends.