The word “represent” comes from Lat. re-praesentare, to
“make present again,” or “bring back into presence,” and its
history in English may be traced fairly well by the
citations given in the New English Dictionary of its
earliest uses in literature in senses which are still common. ThusThe word.
we find the verb meaning (1380) simply to “bring into presence,”
and Barbour uses it (1375) in the sense of bringing clearly
before the mind, whence the common sense of “explain,”
“exhibit,” “portray.” In 1513 it is used as synonymous
with “describe,” or “allege to be.” In 1460 we find it employed
for the performance of a play or a part in a play, whence
comes the sense of symbolizing, standing in the place of
some one, or corresponding to something; and in 1655 for
acting as authorized agent or deputy of some one. This is a
notable point in the development of the word. In Cromwell’s
speech to the parliament, January 22, 1655, he says: “I have
been careful of your safety, and the safety of those you represented.”
This strictly political use of the verb developed, it
will be seen, comparatively late.
The noun “representation” passed through similar stages. In 1425 we find it equivalent to “image,” “likeness,” “reproduction,” “picture,” from which is derived a meaning hardly distinguishable from “pretence.” In 1553 it means a “statement” or “account,” a sense which leads later (1679) to that of a formal and serious plea or remonstrance. In 1589 it occurs for a performance of a play. In 1647 it is used in psychology for the action of mental reproduction, a technical sense which applies especially to the “immediate object of imagination” (Sir W. Hamilton), and in Kantian language becomes the generic term for percepts, concepts and ideas. In 1624 it comes to mean “substitution of one thing or person for another,” “substituted presence” as opposed to “actual presence,” or “the fact of standing for, or in place of, some other thing or person,” especially with a right or authority to act on their account. Its application to a political assembly then becomes natural, but for some time it is not so found in literature, the sense remaining rather formal. Good instances of this use are: Gataker, Transubst. 4: “The Rocke was Christ onely symbolically and sacramentally, by representation or resemblance”; and R. Coke, Power and Subj. iii.: “So cannot these members be formed into one body but by the king, either by his Royal Presence or representation.” Thus “presence” and “representation” are used in distinctive meanings. In Scots law (1693) it obtains the technical meaning of the assumption by an heir of his predecessor’s rights and obligations.
The term “representative,” now specially applied to an elected member of a national or other assembly, deriving his authority from the constituency which returns him, appears to have been first used to denote not the member but the assembly itself. In the act abolishing the office of king, after Charles I.’s execution, 1649, section iv. runs: “And whereas by the abolition of the kingly office provided for in this Act, a most happy way is made for this nation (if God see it good) to return to its just and ancient right of being governed by its own Representatives or national meetings in council, from time to time chosen and entrusted for that purpose by the people, it is therefore resolved and declared by the Commons assembled in Parliament,” &c., “and that they will carefully provide for the certain choosing, meeting and sitting of the next and future Representatives,” &c. But the application of the term to the persons who sat in parliament was at all events very soon made, for in 1651 Isaac Penington the younger published pamphlet entitled “ The fundamental right, safety and liberty of the People; which is radically in themselves, derivatively in the Parliament, their substitutes or representatives.”
It is worth while to dwell on the historical evolution of the various meanings of “represent,” “representation” and “representative,” because it is at least curious that it was not till the 17th century that the modern political or parliamentary sense became attached to thern; and it is well to remember that though the idea of political representation is older and thus afterwards is expressed by the later meaning of the word, >the actual use of “representation” in such a sense is as modern as that. In Burke’s speeches of 1769[1] and 1774–1775, relating to taxation, we find the word in this sense already in common use, but the familiar modern doctrine of “no taxation without representation,” however far back the idea may be traced, is not to be found in Burke in those very words. The “originator of that immortal dogma of our (i.e. American) national greatness ” was, according to the American writer M. C. Tyler (Amer. Lit. i. 154), the politician and philanthropist Daniel Gookin (1612–1687), an Irish settler in Virginia, who, moving to Boston and becoming speaker of the Massachusetts legislature, became prominent in standing up for popular rights in the agitation which resulted in the withdrawal of the colonial charter (1686). But it was the vogue of the “dogma” in America, not its phrase, that he seems to have originated; and while the precise form of the phrase does not appear to be attributable to any single author, the principle itself was asserted in England long before the word “representation,” in a political sense, was current. In English constitutional history the principle was substantially established in 1297 by the declaration De Tallagio non concedendo,[2] confirmed by the Petition of Right in 1628.
The growth of the parliamentary system in England is traced in the article Parliament, but the account there given may be supplemented here by a more precise reference to the evolution of the idea of political “representation” as such, and of its embodiment in the word now The Idea of political representation.employed to express it. The simple idea of the substitution of one person for another, in some connexion, e.g. hostage, pledge, victim, is so old as to be only describable as primitive; it is found in the proxy system, e.g. in marriage, and in diplomacy, the legate or ambassador being the alter ego of his sovereign; but, so far as general political legislative action, by one man in an assembly on behalf of others, is concerned, no systematic employment of a “deputy (the word still used both in a general sense and in politics as a synonym for “representative”) is known among the ancients. So long as political power rests in a small privileged class, such an idea must be slow to develop; and the primitive notion of a law-making body is that of all the members present in person, as in ancient Greece. But, as Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 586) points out, the early English jury system (see Jury) shows the germ of the true idea of representation in England; it was the established practice of electing or selecting juries to present criminal matters before the king’s judges, and assessors to levy taxes on the county, that suggested the introduction of popular representation in the English political system, and thus brought “the commons” into play in addition to the Crown and the nobles. Under Henry III., in 1254, we have the writ (see Parliament) requiring the sheriff of each county to “cause to come[3] before the King’s Council two good and discreet Knights of the Shire, whom the men of the county shall have chosen for this purpose in the stead of all and of each of them, to consider along with knights of other shires what aid they will grant the king.” But the definite establishment of the principle of political representation, in a shape from which the later English system of representation lineally descended, may be traced rather to the year 1295, in Edward I.’s famous writ of summons to parliament, of which the following is the important part. In the volume of Select Documents of English Constitutional History (1901), selected by G. B. Adams and H. M. Stephens, whose version from the Latin we quote, the section is headed (ante-dating the use of the vital word), “Summons of representatives of the counties and boroughs”:—
“The king to the sheriff of Northamptonshire. Since we intend to haye a consultation and meeting with the earls, barons and other Emcipal men of our kingdom with regard to providing remedies
- ↑ The New English Dictionary, for its first citation of “representation” in an assembly, quotes Burke, Late St Nat., Works, ii. 138, i.e. in 1769.
- ↑ “No tallage or aid shall be laid or levied by us or our heirs in our realm, without the goodwill and assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses and other freemen of our realm.”
- ↑ “Venire facias,” not “elegi facias.”
