ever were.

This may be the result of living in a small community where everyone knows everyone else and where gossip and myth making remain a primary pursuit.

Thus Opposition Leader Pamela Gordon stated in yesterday's Royal Gazette that about 50 people wanted their names taken off a petition calling for a conference on the changes proposed by the Government to the Constitution.

Left unsaid was the possibility that many more than the 8,500 people who did sign the petition would have done so had it not been for this pervasive fear.

It is possible that more would have signed; the fact is that people who do not have the courage of their convictions to stand on their principles cannot be counted. Britain and Bermuda cannot be reduced to the Florida-like lunacy of trying to guess what voters intentions might have been.

The fact remains that the petition organised by the United Bermuda Party attracted 8,500 names; approximately a quarter of the Island's registered voters.

It should also be recalled that the opinion polling conducted since Premier Jennifer Smith unrolled her proposed changes demonstrates that a majority of those polled also want a conference, and that there is a recognition that the Constitution needs to be changed.

Whether this will make any difference in Whitehall and Westminster is unclear.

On the one hand, Britain will have to take into account the fact that the current Government stated in its manifesto that it would make these changes and can claim that it has a mandate of 54 percent of votes cast to back it up.

Against that, Britain must balance the petition, which demonstrates considerable opposition and the evidence of the opinion polls.

Britain must also take stock of its own principles. Premier Smith has noted that the British Government's Paper on the Overseas Territories, "Partnership for Progress'' urged the territories to update their Constitutions and Premier Smith has used this in part as a justification for her subsequent moves.

But when Britain modernised its albeit unwritten Constitution by devolving power to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh assembly, id did so via referenda; surely what's good for the United Kingdom should be good for Bermuda too.

This argument has an ideological disagreement at its heart.

The Westminster system was historically a representative democracy which presumed that many people, both voters and non-voters, were incapable of speaking for themselves and needed others who were richer and/or more intelligent to speak for them.

That notion in Bermuda and Britain has thankfully been consigned to the dustbin of history. But that idea -- that voters vote in a government and then are silent until the next General Election, clearly has some currency in Bermuda and elsewhere.

But representative democracy can also mean that the voters delegate certain powers to their representatives to carry out their desires because it would be impossible for every voter to vote on every measure which comes up.

But it also presumes that voters are intelligent enough to make up their own minds on major issues and deserve to be consulted. The constitutional changes proposed by the Government are the most important since 1968; as such the people deserve a say and Britain should ensure that they get it.