"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance," and often enough we sleep at our vigils. But when all the dangers and difficulties that beset democracy are enumerated, and all its weak spots are laid bare, we can still hold democracy to be the only suitable form of government for persons possessing free will, and the representation of the people the most satisfactory expression of democracy. Government by autocrat, by despotism, benevolent or otherwise, by expert officials, or by an oligarchy of superior intelligences is irksome to the average man or woman of reasonable education, and in each case has been intolerable to the British people. They have all been tried and found wanting--royal absolutism, aristocracy, military dictatorship, and only of late have we been threatened by an expert bureaucracy. Parliamentary representation adapted, by the removal of disabilities of creed and rank and income, to meet the demands of the nation, has been proved by experience a clumsy but useful weapon for checking oppression. Nowadays, we are using it less for defence against oppression, or as an instrument for removing political grievances, and are testing its worth for the provision of positive social reform. More and more it is required of Parliament that means be found for getting rid of the ills around us, for preventing disease and destitution, for promoting health and decency. And just because legislation is, at the prompting of a social conscience, invading our homes and workshops, penetrating into prisons, workhouses, and hospitals, touching the lives of all of us from the cradle to the grave, the more imperative is it that our legislators should be chosen freely by the widest electorate of men and women. We fall back on the old maxim: "That which touches all shall be approved by all," and can perceive no other way of obtaining that general approbation for the laws than by the popular election of our representatives. Demagogues may exploit the popular will, the cunning and unscrupulous in power may have us at their mercy, in our folly and indifference the nation may be brought to grave losses; but still there is always the means of recovery for the well-disposed while the vote remains in their hands.