I don’t mean to say the English politics always turn on romantic places or on small questions. They don’t. They often include questions of the largest order. But when the English introduce a really large question as the basis of their politics they like to select one that is insoluble. This guarantees that it will last. Take for example the rights of the Crown as against the people. That lasted for one hundred years,—all the seventeenth century. In Oklahoma or in Alberta they would have called a convention on the question, settled it in two weeks and spoiled it for further use.
- Stephen Leacock, My Discovery of England (1922) [full text]
