their wishes to bear and play their part, together with the people at the centre, in the government of a country many times the size of a city-state of ancient Greece. There had been assemblies before in all ages of history: but this was something different. It was a Parliament. Representation seems to us such an obvious device that we often forget how comparatively modern it is and what a degree of responsibility and self-control it demands both in the representative and in those whom he represents. It is very unpleasant to hear of things done or acquiesced in by our representatives of which we disapprove, and to have to remember that it is our own fault for not sending a wiser or braver man to Westminster in his place. It is still more unpleasant for a representative to feel, as he often must, that his own honest opinion and conscience draw him one way on a matter of business and the opinions of most of his constituents another. But these are difficulties inherent in the system, and for which there is no remedy but sincerity and patience. It is part of the bargain that a constituency should not be able to disavow a representative: and that a representative should feel bound to use his own best judgement on the issues put before him. To turn the representative, as there is a tendency to do in some quarters, into a mere mouthpiece with a mandate, is to ignore the very problem which made representation necessary, and to presume that a local mass-meeting can be as well informed or take as wide a view as those who have all the facts before them at the centre. The ancient Greeks, who had a strong sense of individuality, were loth to believe that any one human being could make a decision on behalf of another. In the deepest sense of course they were right. But government, as has been said, is at best a rough business. Representation is no more than a practical compromise: but it is a compromise which has been found to work. It has made possible the extension of free government to areas undreamed of. It has enabled the general sense of the inhabitants of the United States, an area nearly as large as Europe, to be concentrated at Washington, and it may yet make it possible to collect the sense of self-governing Dominions in four continents in a Parliament at London. All this lay implicit in the practical instructions sent by the English king to his sheriffs; but its development would only have been possible in a community where the general level of character was a high one and where men were, therefore, in the habit of placing implicit trust in one another. The relationship of confidence between a member of Parliament and his constituents, or a Trade Union leader and his rank and file, is a thing of which public men are rightly proud: for it reflects honour on both parties and testifies to an underlying community of purpose which no passing disagreement on details can break down.