Simon of Montfort, when the opportunity came to him for striking out a reform in the English Parliament, adopted the plan which he had studied and seen at work amongst the Preaching Friars. “The idea of representative government had ripened in his hand,” and his genius interpreted the mind of the nation. In spite of all the scorn that has been poured on popular elections and the Houses of Parliament, in spite of all the imperfections that necessarily are attached to any constitutional system devised by the wit of man, the idea of representative government has become the inspiration of the nations of the world. The failings of democracy are obvious, the weak spots in popular electoral systems glaring; but mankind, once grasping the idea of freedom in politics, clamours eagerly for responsibility in law-making and the administration of justice, and refuses to rest satisfied under any despotism or bureaucracy, benevolent or malevolent. Suppressed by dictators, perverted by demagogues, abused by the unscrupulous in power, there still seems nothing better in politics for mankind than self-government. “Better is he who rules his own temper than he who storms a city,” wrote Friar Adam of Marsh to Simon of Montfort. “Better self-government for a people than world-wide conquest,” the average man declares, and the opinion slowly moulds the destinies of nations, till “patriotism” becomes the word for good service in politics. The verse of the thirteenth century chronicler:-- The king that tries without advice to seek his people’s will, Must often fail, he cannot know the woes and wants they feel, gets re-expression in the nineteenth century in Abraham Lincoln’s: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Always threatened by the personal ambition of man, often overthrown when ambition held the sword of power, contemptible to the wise and prudent because of the simplicity and innocence of “the people,” denounced as dangerous by the professional expert in bureaucracy because of the ignorance of “the people,” its inadequacy the common theme of the disappointed--representative government survives its enemies, defies its critics, and with its blemishes unconcealed, finds the company of its lovers ever increasing and recruiting in its behalf. For since that first Full Parliament of Earl Simon’s in 1265 it has never been possible to get rid of the notion that representative government was a key to the portals of freedom; and though the wider the freedom the greater the responsibility, to the credit of the race at all times men and women have pressed forward, not rejecting responsibility.