“The gentlemanliness of our statesmen is no secondary excellence. It was said by Burke of a great nobleman of the last century that ‘His virtues were his means’; that he accomplished by a gentle and high-minded honour what it would have been impossible to effect by coarse ability or impetuous disputation. If this great quality should die out from our political life, if it should be greatly diminished and permitted to sink gradually into decay, our political life will have lost a principal redeeming feature—our freedom will have lost one of its best securities—our statement will have lost the surest and best means of managing men.”
Walter Bagehot, “The Manners of Statesmen” (originally published in 1862 in The Economist)