Let me explain more concretely. The origin and development of the House of Commons is a highly important subject. It behooves me to impress its history as lucidly and forcibly as may be upon my class. But it is a subject beset with obscurities and difficult to make clear to an immature mind. I may ignore all the obscurities and the conflicting details, and may simply emphasize the principal landmarks--the first inclusion of the “commons” in Simon de Montfort’s parliament of 1265; the cementing of Simon’s innovation in the Model Parliament of 1295, and the separation of the upper and lower Houses early in Edward III’s reign. This is the method of some of the older text-books. It is clear cut, simple, definite. But is it true? Certainly not unqualifiedly no. My love of truth warns me that I must not make it so definite, so conveniently cut and dried, so absolute if I am to convey the historical facts. On the other hand, suppose I resolve to go into more strictly accurate detail. Shall I call forth the note-books and painstakingly explain that representatives of the shires were first summoned by King John in 1213; that two knights from each shire were called to parliament in 1254; that in 1261 three knights were summoned; in 1264, _four_; in 1265, two knights and two burgesses; in 1275, two knights; but that the practice of summoning knights of the shire and citizens of the towns did not become in any sense continuous till 1295? If I do this, I must go further and try to give some of the reasons for this desultory and varying practice, and before I am done, I have made a fine muddle in my pupils’ heads! I have shipwrecked both interest and comprehension, and I am not much nearer conveying truth than I would have been by the former method. So, too, I must beware of giving or allowing the impression that parliament was in any sense a legislative body at this period, and at the same time I must have a care lest in trying to explain its functions not always too clear to the more advanced scholar, I explain too much and mislead where I would enlighten. The same difficulty presents itself in the effort to give the gist of the great laws of Edward I and of Edward III. Some of these laws are very hard to express simply; some of them were enacted over and over again. Yet the principles for which they stood, and their subsequent effects can hardly be overlooked. Again, as in the case of the House of Commons, I must be definite and simple, and yet not too definite or too simple.