Representation

“ Shall the Commons have a 'double representation,' that is to say, have as many members as the Noblesse and Clergy united? Shall the States-General, when once assembled, vote and deliberate, in one body, or in three separate bodies; 'vote by head, or vote by class,'—ordre as they call it? These are the moot-points now filling all France with jargon, logic and eleutheromania. ”

“ Connected with this division of property, and the consequent participation of the great mass of people in its possession and enjoyments, is the system of representation, which is admirably accommodated to our condition, better understood among us, and more familiarly and extensively practised, in the higher and in the lower departments of government, than it has been by any other people. ”

“ In the grand discovery of modern times, the system of representation, the solution of all the difficulties, both speculative and practical, will perhaps be found. If it cannot, we seem to be forced upon the extraordinary conclusion, that good government is impossible. ”

“ In the false democracy which, instead of giving representation to all, gives it only to the local majorities, the voice of the instructed minority may have no organs at all in the representative body. ”

“ This is now your condition, under that delusive ambiguity of language and of principle, which begins by declaring the representation in the popular branch of the legislature a representation of persons, and then provides that one class of persons shall have neither part not lot in the choice of their representatives; but their elective franchise shall be transferred to their masters, and the oppressors shall represent the oppressed. ”

“ Representation is the principle upon which the democratic government of our country is founded. On the battlefields of France this nation poured out its blood freely in order that democracy might be maintained at home and that its beneficient institutions might become available in other lands as well. ”

“ Right Reason and the spirit of a free constitution require that the representation of the whole people should be as equal as possible. A perfect equality of representation has been thought impracticable ”

“ It is a scheme of representation, which would make a specious appearance in a political romance, but cannot be brought into practice among us, who see every day the towering head of speculation bow down unwillingly to groveling experience. ”

“ The only answer which can possibly be made to this reasoning is that as different opinions predominate in different localities, the opinion which is in a minority in some places has a majority in others, and, on the whole, every opinion which exists in the constituencies obtains its fair share of voices in the representation. ”

“ Government within the State has widened down from autocratic authority to authority broad-based upon a people's will. The expansion of the principle of representation is responsible for that development. ”

“ To Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, he would say, the principles of representation naturally and necessarily led,—any less extensive proposition was a base compromise and a dereliction of right ”

“ The tremendous tendency toward class differentiation and the growing popularity of independent movements in politics, it is said, make a reform of the present system of representation highly desirable so as to harmonize conflicting interests, to enable each class to show the people what its interests are, and to defend them against attack. ”

“ A popular government of this extent, it was evident, could be framed only by carrying into full effect the principle of representation or of delegated power; and the world was to see whether society could, by the strength of this principle, maintain its own peace and good government, carry forward its own great interests, and conduct itself to political renown and glory. ”

“ The requisites in actual representation are, that the representatives should sympathize with their constituents; should think as they think, and feel as they feel; and that for these purposes they should be residents among them. ”

“ If representation does wrong, the possibility of which is contemplated by every free government, some mode of correction is necessary. We have provided two; election, and a division of representation between the Federal and State governments, assigned to each distinct and independent powers, and divided the moral rights of representation, that one species may check the wrongs of the other. ”

“ The almost sacramental idea of representation, by which the few may incarnate the many, arose in the Middle Ages, and has done great things for justice and liberty. It has had its real hours of triumph, as when the States General met to renew France's youth like the eagle's ”

“ But, to resume the subject of universal representation, I ought to have mentioned before, that in the choice of its representatives a people will not immorally hold out wealth as a criterion of integrity, nor lay down as a fundamental rule, that to be qualified for the trying duties of legislation a citizen should be possessed of a certain fixed property. Virtues, talents, and acquirements are all that it will look for. ”

“ Another objection against this wide-encroaching inference from the doctrine of personal representation, is, that it is suitable only to Monarchies. The Minister of a King may be feigned to represent in all respects the person of his master, but what person can be represented by the Ambassador of a Republic? If I am answered, the moral person of the nation, then I reply, that can be represented by no individual, being itself a fiction in law, incapable of committing any act, and having no corporeal existence susceptible of representation. ”

“ The principal one is, that the consent of every State is necessary ; the other, that the members are obliged to consult their constituents upon all occasions. We lose an equal representation ; we represent the people. ”

“ Of all the governments which have ever been established, it may perhaps be affirmed, that ours, if the most complicate in structure, is certainly the most beautiful in theory, correcting by the principle of representation, and a proper system of responsibility, the wild extravagances and the capricious levities of the unbalanced democracies of antiquity. ”

“ Is representation of parties all we have a right to demand from our representative system? If that were so, we might as well put up three flags inscribed with the words, Tory, Whig, and Radical, and let the electors make their choice among the flags, and when they have voted, let the leaders of the winning party select the particular persons who are to represent it. ”

“ In other words, there is a greater proportion of women and children in the old States. These should be and are represented. They are represented, in the true sense of that word, by their fathers and brothers. The man who represents them does so really and practically, and not by legal fiction, like the man who represents 'three-fifths of all other persons.'
"3. It takes from the basis of representation all unnaturalized foreigners. ”

“ It is by no means true, that a large representation is necessary to understand the interests of the people. It is not either theoretically, or practically true, that a knowledge of those interests is augmented in proportion to the increase of representatives. ”

“ The scheme of representation, as a substitute for a meeting of the citizens in person, being at most but very imperfectly known to ancient polity, it is in more modern times only, that we are to expect instructive examples. ”

“ Now, the basis of this representation is suffrage. The right to choose representatives is every man's part in the exercise of sovereign power; to have a voice in it, if he has the proper qualifications, is the portion of political power belonging to every elector. That is the beginning. That is the mode in which power emanates from its source, and gets into the hands of conventions, legislatures, courts of law, and the chair of the executive. It begins in suffrage. Suffrage is the delegation of the power of an individual to some agent. ”

“ The true doctrine of representation is more philosophical and more sincere. Starting from the principle that truth, reason, and justice,—in one word, the divine law,—alone possess rightful power, its reasoning is somewhat as follows:—Every society, according to its interior organization, its antecedents, and the aggregate of influences which have or do still modify it, is placed to a certain extent in a position to apprehend truth and justice as the divine law, and is in a measure disposed to conform itself to this law. ”

“ In a great nation, these two powers cannot be exercised by the people: whence comes the necessity of representatives, to exercise the faculty of willing, or the legislative power; and also of another species of representation, to exercise the faculty of acting ”

“ The view we have taken is that representation is the most important sociological invention which has been made in the whole history of the human race; that the successive steps taken in the evolution of the British Constitution mark a series of inventions scarcely less important, and that the resulting institution of party and responsible government is the indispensable agent of democratic progress. ”

“ In the dissertation, the sovereignty of the people is unequivocally asserted, as the basis of society and civil power. Representation is made its substitute, from the impossibility of holding national assemblies. ”

“ The instrumentality has been representation, of which the ancient world knew nothing, and lacking which it always lacked national integration.133 Because of representation and the railroads to carry representatives to distant capitals, we have been able to rear colossal structures like the government of the United States as easily as the ancients gave political organization to a city ”

“ And I put it as a question to those, who make a study of mankind, whether representation and election is not too great a power for one and the same body of men to possess? When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember, that virtue is not hereditary. ”

“ But real equality of representation is not obtained unless any set of electors amounting to the average number of a constituency, wherever in the country they happen to reside, have the power of combining with one another to return a representative. This degree of perfection in representation appeared impracticable until a man of great capacity, fitted alike for large general views and for the contrivance of practical details—Mr. ”

“ The state and especially the democratic state must be organized.86 This means practically that the basis of representation shall be the vocational group, that vocational representation shall replace representation by geographical districts.87 The law-making body on this basis311 will consist of representatives or delegates of the agricultural, the commercial, the industrial, the scientific group, etc. Women belonging to these groups will exercise the franchise within them. There will also be a distinct group of home-makers; motherhood will be recognized as a vocation. ”

“ There are three simple species of government—monarchy, where the supreme power is in a single person; aristocracy, where the supreme power is in a select assembly, the members of which either fill up, by election, the vacancies in their own body, or succeed to their places in it by inheritance, property, or in respect of some personal right or qualification; a republic or democracy, where the people at large retain the supreme power, and act either collectively or by representation. ”

“ A right reckoning makes long friends.——In a former page I likewise mentioned the necessity of a large and equal representation; and there is no political matter which more deserves our attention. A small number of Electors, or a small number of Representatives, are equally dangerous. ”

“ And add, also, that one half of our brethren who fight and pay taxes, are excluded, like Helots, from the rights of representation, as if society were instituted for the soil, and not for the men inhabiting it; or one half of these could dispose of the rights and the will of the other half, without their consent. ”

“ Again, in the same letter, he says, that the representation of the Union will present the advantage of a body "whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices, and to schemes of injustice." ”

“ The representations [Pg 208] which express them within each of us have an intensity which no purely private states of consciousness could ever attain; for they have the strength of the innumerable individual representations which have served to form each of them. It is society who speaks through the mouths of those who affirm them in our presence; it is society whom we hear in hearing them; and the voice of all has an accent which that of one alone could never have. ”

“ In a representative democracy such as this, these branches of government act on behalf of the people and, to a very large extent, the whole concept of representation depends upon the ability of the people to make their wishes known to their representatives. ”

“ The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity. ”

“ The administrators of the executive power may be either elective or not; and in the former case all or only some of them may be elective. They are elective in a proper democracy, that is to say, in a democracy which recognizes representation. If all the public officials are directly elected by the whole people, the democracy is a pure democracy; if only some, it is a mixed democracy. The public officials may also fill vacancies themselves; this is the case in a pure aristocracy. ”