No wonder that we find democratic government developing co-ordinately with these gilds. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Magna Charta was signed. About the middle of it the first English Parliament met, before the end of it the proper representation of the cities and {191} towns which were mainly controlled by the gilds was secured and during the last quarter of it the English Common Law came into effect so as to secure the rights of all. Bracton's great "Digest of the English Common Law" was written about 1280, and it is still the great sourcebook of the principles of law in English-speaking countries. In many of the States of our Union the Supreme Courts still make their decisions on the basis of the English Common Law, and until a decade or two ago all of them did. The people's rights were secured by the education of the people and the property laws and those for the guardianship of the person and for the prevention of autocratic interference with liberty were all of them put into effect as a consequence of this education in democracy. This, then, was surely an ideal teaching of the masses, a teaching of the arts and crafts, a teaching of mutual aid, a teaching of true fraternity, a teaching of book-learning whenever that was considered necessary or advisable, a teaching of the rights of man and a wonderful development of laws as a consequence, and all of this accomplished not by the upper classes, stooping to lift the lower classes, but out of the conscious development of the lower classes themselves, so that there came a true evolution and not merely a superficial influence from without. If we want to know how to teach the masses and to help them to contentment, happiness, occupation of mind, {192} uplifting entertainment, cheerful amusement and, above all, to conscious democratic government, here is the model of it as it can be found nowhere else. I commend it to those who are teaching and who, realizing the failure of our modern education in many ways, are looking about for the remedies that will help to make our popular education more efficient.