one other factor that tended to soften the rule of Thai kings was the ancient ideal of paternalistic rule.This ideal was overlaid and almost extinguished in the This state by the Cambodian ideas of divine kingship adopted in the fifteenth century. But the ideal was not completely forgotten. In 1850 at least one old institution of the father-king period remained the right of the people to petition the king directly. This institution had lost much of its former importance, hower, and the idea of the king as father of his people was not to return as an active force in government until the reigns of king after the middle of the nineteenth century