"Lewis Namier's classic model of mid-Hanoverian Westminster retains, for all its shortcomings, a good deal of saliency. Well-developed structures of popular politics existed, but they rarely exerted pressure on the elite, for whom what mainly mattered was procuring jobs for family, friends, and self, and whose behaviour was governed by considerations of pragmatism, habit, custom, and routine rather than by concern for society or commitments to principle."