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Locke on representation in politics
HisroT of European Ideas. Vol. 3. No Prmted m Great Britain.
OIY I -h599CWfM0403-12 $03 WO 0 1982 Pergamon Press Ltd.
4. pp 4(13--114. 19X2
LOCKE ON REPRESENTATION
IN POLITICS*
GERAINT PARRY ‘the Image, Phantom, or Representative of the Commonwealth . . .’ (1;: ;51).’ This is how Locke in the Two Treatises describes a supreme executive who, as in the English system of government, has a share also in the legislative power. It is very unusual for Locke in his political writings to employ vocabulary which might be drawn from his epistemological writings and it is intriguing that he should do so when describing the qualities of political representation. Locke is sometimes considered a founding father, even an ideologist, of liberal political thought, in which the ideas of representative government play such a major part. Yet in the Two Treatises there is no explicit and sustained analysis of the notion of representation such as had already been found in Hobbes’s Leviathan. At another level, however, one could argue that a notion of representation is essential to the underlying structure of the argument of the Two Trentises. If one returns to the description of the executive as the ‘image, phantom, or representative of the Commonwealth’ one may discover that it is susceptible to several interpretations. Locke says that such a representative is ‘acted by the will of the Society’ and that ‘thus he has no Will, no Power, but that of the Law’. This usage is akin to what Hanna Pitkin has called ‘symbolic representation’.’ Bound by the framework of taw, the representative executive has no will of his own. He is a symbol of the community and its law. When he acts, what one perceives is an image of the community acting. It is not he whom one sees but a phantom. On another interpretation this passage might suggest a somewhat more positive notion of representation as ‘acting for’ the represented. The executive has no will of his own because he is the agent of the community or the law. As long as the executive acts in the manner directed by the legislative power he is the image and the representative of the community. When he acts in a manner contrary to the will of the legislative or beyond the bounds of his office he ceases to be a representative. He is no longer the image of the community. In both these interpretations of the passage the executive is the representative of the commonwealth because he acts on and reproduces the will of the legislative which is itself a representation of the will of the community and, indirectly, of the will of the individuals composing it. In what ways. however, does the legislative represent the community? How can it too be the image or phantom of the commonwealth’? In attempting to answer this question it might be intriguing to follow up the vocabulary Locke employs in this passage and *I
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pursue analogies which one may find with the work in which Locke does discuss a kind of representation at some length. Locke is, of course, celebrated, or perhaps notorious, for having adhered in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding to a version of the representative theory of perception. Locke states (II, viii, 8) that: Whatsoever the Mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of Perception, Thought, or Understanding, that I call Idea; and the Power to produce any Idea in our mind, I call Quality of the Subject wherein that power is. The problem with this account of perception been to every other student of philosophy. How shall the Mind, when it perceives nothing agree with Things themselves? (IV, iv, 3.)
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Locke believed that he could provide an answer to this question. An analysis of the concepts of qualities and of ideas would explain which ideas adequately represented the qualities of things and which ideas were inadequate representations. What Locke provides is an analysis of the conditions for adequate representation. Simple ideas are what the mind receives directly from sensation and reflection. Such simple ideas are adequate representations in that they ‘correspond’ to the powers that produce them and they ‘agree to the reality of things’. They ‘represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us’. However Locke also appears, as in the Second Treatise, to use the term ‘representation’ in a different sense. He insists that not all simple ideas are ‘Images or Representations of what does exist’ (II, xxx, 2). They represent in the sense that they correspond to qualities in objects, but they do not necessarily represent in the sense of resembling such qualities. Only in the case of ideas of primary qualities - intrinsic features such as shape, size. position, solidity, motion - are they representations, in the sense of resemblances, of those qualities. Ideas of secondary qualities - in colour, taste, sound - have no resemblance to anything in the bodies themselves. Secondary qualities are the effects of powers in things which are so constituted by God the maker that they must produce these sensations in us (II, xxx, 2; IV, iv, 4). The secondary qualities are produced by the arrangement and motion of the minute unseen parts of the bodies. They are hence dependent on the intrinsic primary qualities. The second category of ideas which are adequate representations of their originals are the complex ideas of what Locke calls ‘modes’. These are collections of simple ideas which the mind puts together without any reference to reality. Such ideas are not copies of anything else. They are themselves
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archetypes. They do not represent anything other than themselves and hence cannot be wrongly represented (II, xxi, 3; IV, iv, 5). Included in such modes are the terms of mathematics, such as ‘triangle’, or the terms of moral discourse, such as ‘justice’ or ‘property’. Errors concerning modes and relations arise from faulty reasoning and not from the representative quality of the ideas. Complex ideas of substance are, however, inadequate ideas. They are an incomplete representation of the archetypes to which they refer (II, xxi, 1; IV, 4, 11). The ideas of substances are indeed built up from simple ideas. They cannot be mere fictions. Nevertheless we have only a limited and uncertain understanding of the internal relation of the parts of any physical object. In the sense that we may form pictures of a substance such as iron built up from simple ideas of it, we have a representation of it (II, xxxi, 6), but it cannot be a representation in the sense of being an exact correspondence to all the varied and necessary relations of the powers and qualities of iron (II, xxxi, S-10). Locke’s discussion of the adequacy or inadequacy of ideas can be considered as part of an analysis of the conditions for effective representation. The correspondence of ideas to reality presupposes a causal relationship between them.4 In the case of simple ideas, God has so made the world, including ourselves, that the impulse of insensible particles of matter causes a motion in the brain which produces these ideas. In the case of complex ideas of substance, however, these are merely inferred and we have only a relative knowledge of them. Moreover he appears to suggest that the ‘infinite wise Contriver of us, and all things about us’ has so fashioned our faculties that we can only obtain this limited knowledge. He has equipped us for this life, for knowing our duties to others and to God - ‘these are our business in this world’. If a man’s ears could hear the internal motions of nature he would be deafened. If a man’s eyes were like microscopes he could see further into the composition of bodies but it ‘would not serve to conduct him to the Market and Exchange’ (II, xxiii, 12). In the case of complex ideas of modes and relations the maker of the archetypes of the ideas (which are indeed the ideas themselves) is man himself. If man causes the archetypes to come into being, the ideas mut be adequate representations, since they have ‘nothing to represent but themselves’ (II, xxxi, 3). It is because of this that Locke believes that we could have ‘certain and demonstrative knowledge’ in moral discourse as in mathematics (IV, iv, 9). Knowledge arises by tracing the relations of precise ideas to one another. The relations between the component parts of the idea of what is termed ‘theft’ could be analysed whether or not the name ‘theft’ is used or any act of thieving had actually occurred. If we return to Locke’s discussions of representation in the realm of politics we cannot of course find any explicit extension of the arguments of the Essay. It might however be possible to detect analogies in the mode of argument. The basic problem of political representation is to ensure that it represents what it is supposed to represent. As in the Essay it is a matter of establishing the conditions for adequate representation. One should be able to identify the causal process whereby representatives are produced and therefore what it is that is represented. One should be able to discover what persons are qualified
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to be representatives and the conditions which are necessary for the process of representation to be adequate. Finally one should be able to explain what would be required to maintain that representative process or restore it if the conditions for adequate representation are not provided. In Lockean terms ‘political representation’ would be a mixed mode. As such it is susceptible to philosophical analysis of the relations between the ideas which go to make up the concept. Such analysis could lead to certain knowledge even in the absence of any instance in the political world which actually corresponded to the idea. Nevertheless it is clear that the discussion of representation in the Two Treatises is directed at the English system of government and at a particular period in which the representative process was, in the view of Locke’s Whig Party friends, undergoing threat from the policies of Charles II and James II. In the Essay, too, Locke constantly illustrates conceptual analysis by empirical instances often drawn from the scientific investigations of his academic, scientific circle. One might be tempted to say that the political examples are more strongly motivated by Locke’s radical political aims and that this militates against the neutrality of the conceptual analysis. However, a reading of the Essay can scarcely leave one in any doubt of Locke’s deep-seated determination to put epistemology on the right tracks and save that too from corruption.” Like other great works of political thought the Treatises are committed, but what makes such works stand out is that they also display conceptual analysis of a high order. The first question to be answered in the analysis of r,epresentation is ‘What is represented?’ Man, according to Locke, is the creature of God his Maker. Each and every human being has a duty to preserve himself and, so far as possible, the rest of mankind in order that he may honour God and develop his distinctively human attribute of reason. These are duties under the law of nature and they in turn imply that men, as equal creatures of God, have an equal right to be able to perform their duties.“Such a system of duties and rights requires mutual respect and a sense that all belong to a single moral community (II, 6) governed by the law of nature. The law of nature is discovered by reason, which presupposes that men use their liberty to cultivate their rational faculties as fully as they can. Men are however beings of passion as well as reason. There is a propensity, more developed in some than others, to deviate from the law of reason and nature. They invade the rights of others. In these circumstances every person, in the absence of an established authority, has the right to enforce the law of nature and punish offenders. Each person wields the ‘Executive Power of the Law of Nature’ (II, 13). One could conceive each man as representing in his own person, the law of nature, although Locke does not employ the word in this context. Each has the right, and indeed the duty, to maintain the moral community. As is implicit in most notions of representation there is an outer limit beyond which the representative may not proceed without losing his representative status. Those executing the law of nature may not go beyond what is required by that law. The law entitles them to punish the transgressor: the punishment should be proportionate to the offence. Yet the law also permits the enforcer to apply sufficient force to deter the offender and others
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from similar trespasses in future (II, 8). This could even extend as far as punishing by death a thief who in the course of the theft would put one’s life and liberty at risk. Locke argues that in punishing an offender each person is acting in the name of mankind to safeguard mankind from ‘one of those wild Savage beasts with whom Men can have no Society nor Security’. In the same way Cain cried that all men might slay him as a punishment for his murder (II, 11). As well as restraint, the law of nature accorded the person who had been offended the right to demand reparation. In this case the enforcer is not so much acting as representative of the law of nature as claiming his rights. Another person may, however, come to his aid in attempting to secure his claim. As with restraint the extent to which reparation can be enforced is limited by the law of nature. These limitations are, however, not laid down with any precision. The exercise of justice can readily step beyond bounds which are ill-defined. If this occurs the action is not lawful but is the use of force beyond right and is itself an act of war which might lead to retaliation. It is equally easy for the person seeking reparation for a loss to act more out of vengeance than a respect for justice. He is judge in his own cause. Private policing is therefore unreliable and its inconveniences grow as the invention of money increases inequalities of property. There is no impartial person to clarify the law of nature, determine whether it has been broken, discover who is guilty and what the appropriate penalty is and ensure that it is imposed. This is the function that government is to perform. Civil government is established at the end of a sequence of transfers of the executive power of the law of nature. Government never acquires any more power than was originally wielded by men in the state of nature, representing the law of nature. It is ultimately the law of nature that government represents. The municipal laws of countries are only right in so far as they are ‘founded on the Law of Nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted’ (II, 12). Each individual participating in the original contract or joining the civil society surrenders the executive power of the law of nature to the community or the people. This body politic now wields the total power previously wielded by individuals who may not now take back this power so long as the society lasts. Private policing is at an end. The community now represents the law of nature in its dealings with its subjects. The whole community cannot exercise this function continuously. It therefore ‘entrusts’ the executive power of the law of nature to a government and, in particular, to the legislative. This act of trust is taken by the majority acting in the name of the community-the acceptance of majority rule is an implicit part of the original contract. The institution of the legislative is the ‘first and fundamental Act of Society’. The legislative has the ‘keeping’ of the will of the society (II, 212). It wields the executive power of the law of nature previously wielded by the community as a whole. In doing so it is representing the community and through it the individuals who composed it. The judgements of the legislative are to be considered the judgements of the individual subjects, ‘they being made by himself, or his Representative’ (II, 88). The legislative is limited by the law of nature as was the individual in the state of nature. If it exceeds the bounds set it ceases to represent the law-it is using force beyond right and is entering upon a state of war with those it is supposed to protect.
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It is because government ultimately represents the law of nature that Locke is able to evade a difficulty which his argument raises. Does government represent the majority which entrusted the executive or the individuals who compose the society? The majority-based government gains no powers that were not possessed by individuals in the state of nature. Because the government represents the will of the community it cannot therefore lay claim to rights that were never ceded it. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the law of nature allows a certain latitude and the individual is bound to accept such interpretations even if they differ from his own. They remain his own judgements provided that they do not step clearly beyond that still not entirely defined boundary of what is permitted by natural law.’ To minimise any such differences of interpretation, theories of representation have to establish the representativeness of the representation. What persons are qualified to act as representatives? How can one person effectively represent another? Locke offers no specific and extended discussion of these questions. One can only attempt to piece together a consistent account. When the questions are posed in this way representation is interpreted as a matter of identity between representative and represented. Locke does not analyse the notion of identity with another person but does, of course, undertake in the Essay a celebrated treatment of the question of personal identity. The question of how we can be sure that a person at time t and time t, is the identical person can seem the sort of puzzle only philosophers concern themselves with. In fact it is basic to the ascription of moral responsibility and it is for this reason that Locke tackles it. Locke begins by establishing what a person is and why we wish to know. He defines a person in terms of reason, intelligence and responsibility. It is a Forensick Term, appropriating Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only Agents, capable of a Law and Happiness and Misery. (II, xxvii, 26.)
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The identity of such a person through time is established by the continuity of consciousness (II, xxvii, 9). The importance of such continuity of consciousness consists in the fact that without it one could not impute to oneself past actions and bear responsibility for them nor could one expect to bear responsibility in the future for the actions one undertakes now. Rights and duties would make little sense. The analogy between such personal identity and the identity of representative and represented cannot be an exact one. Nevertheless the reason for being concerned with the issue has a significant resemblance. One wishes to establish that the person represented will bear reponsibility for the past and future actions of the representative. The person must regard the representative’s acts as his own and be accountable for them. This is essential if taxation or any other government measure is to be legitimate. What are the necessary conditions for this to be possible? Can there be an analogous continuity of consciousness between the two sides? Clearly there cannot be (without far-fetched possibilities) a transfer of consciousness. There can however be a public statement of one’s ideas, attitudes and aspirations of which the representative must take
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note and, so far as possible, undertake to reproduce in his utterances and actions. In this sense the representative would replicate the views of the represented. His speeches and decisions would be comparable to those of the original actor. Representation is akin to delegation. This would be a very different view of representation from that put forward by Hobbes. In Leviathan, representation is equivalent to authorisation. The representative stands in place of the person represented. The sovereign representative’s will replaces that of the individual whose liberty of unlimited willing has been surrendered. Every individual who has consented to be represented is then the author of everything said or done in his name.* Hobbes is here developing philosophically the position of the representatives in the English Parliament. It had been a fundamental principle that such representatives were granted plena potestas by those electing them.’ Armed with plenipotentiary powers the acts of the representatives could be taken to bind those whom they represented - not as a principle of democracy but as a means of ensuring consent and legitimacy for royal government. Hobbes identified the representative of the state with the sovereign. In a monarchy, such as England, the representative of the nation was not, therefore, Parliament but the King.” As such he possessed the plenipotentiary powers to act for the peace and safety of the realm. Lesser representatives merely existed by his leave. Certain passages in the Second Treatise might suggest that Locke too saw representation as authorisation. He argues (II, 88) that the individual has granted a right to the Commonwealth to employ his power to ensure peace, and that he must accept the Commonwealth’s judgements as his own since they were made by his representative. Locke could not however grant such a representative the plenitude of power of Hobbes’s sovereign. The representative is limited by the law of nature to a more real extent than is Hobbes’s sovereign. As Locke insists, the legislative has only a fiduciary power. It is entrusted to defend the civil interests - the property-of the subjects within a framework of law. The subjects are moral agents presumed to be the ultimate judges of how to control their property in lives. liberty and estates. It would be an absurdity for them to surrender this moral agency blindly to a government (II, 93). Locke does not go to the opposite Rousseauean position of arguing that any surrender or qualification of such moral agency is impermissible and that representation of the will is impossible. Instead he sees representation as a means of ensuring some correspondence between government, the community and the individual and through them to the law of nature. Locke’s argument does not necessarily imply radical democracy. Initially, indeed, Locke accepts that the first governments were likely to have been patriarchal monarchies. These were however instituted by some act of trust and would on Lockean terms have represented the people and be political societies. Peoples in relatively simple societies, little experienced in government, would understandably have chosen those whom they knew and trusted. Further experience, however, usually revealed that later monarchs could not be trusted not to abuse power. The history of civil governments thus displays successive attempts by the people to reconstitute political authority in order to make it
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correspond to the popular will as representing the law of nature (II, 110-l 1). Locke explicitly argues that the culmination of this process occurs with the institution of representative forms of government. People concluded that their properties were not secure. They were not genuinely in civil society till the Legislature was placed in collective Parliament, or what you please (II, 94).
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Civility of government therefore seems to imply that the government is made to represent more adequately (to use the language of the Essay) the people who create it. Mixed forms of government, on the English model, are clearly also capable of representing the people adequately. providing the people is vigilant. The legislative function represents the will of the community. The executive, we have seen, also represents the commonwealth since it is acted on by, and reproduces, the will of the legislative. But the English executive also had a part in the legislative. The monarch’s assent was required for legislation. The executive had the power to call and to dissolve the legislature and even in extreme circumstances to employ prerogative against the law. The ‘double trust’ placed in such a person might be taken as a double representation. The legislative in such a system is not the sole and independent representative of the community. It cannot act alone in determining the dissolution of government, which is a right possessed only by the people. The legislative function is, however, the prime representative body. Who is included in the representative process? This is a highly controversial matter. C. B. Macpherson’s celebrated argument is that only those with a property in estates are full citizens with the right to vote.” More recently, James Tully has attributed to Locke the extremely radical position of a full. adult male of the Two franchise. ” The issue has in fact raged since the first appearance Treatises. It was seized upon by one of Locke’s first critics, Charles Leslie: When did all the people of England (for example) choose the free-holders to be worth so much per annum? If they did not. then not only every individual had no vote. but much the major part of them had none. And they all had lives and liberties to dispose of. as well as the rest. ”
Leslie was pointing to the ambivalence in Locke’s argument for good political reasons. How far, he was asking, was Locke going in supporting the representative principle? Locke’s argument laid him open to this potentially embarrassing question. The form of government is established by a constitutive act of trust by the people or, strictly, by a majority of the people. It may decide to place the legislative power where it thinks fit. If this power abuses the trust placed in it the people retains the constituent right to re-order the constitution.” The people may therefore establish such a representative system and such a franchise as it believes appropriate (II. 149-58). Does it follow that there is a form of representation uniquely appropriate to a modern civil government’? A radical
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democratic interpretation of Locke would argue that the principle of natural equality must imply that every adult male must have the vote. Locke does indeed state that the best guarantee that the will of the legislative is the will of the society occurs where the people is able to choose ‘Representatives upon just and undeniably equal measures suitable to the original Frame of the Government . . .‘(II, 158). Manhood suffrage would seem to go beyond the broad franchise which one would expect Locke to support as a member of Shaftesbury’s party. The basis of the franchise in boroughs was subject to both variation and interpretation. The Whigs constantly sought to interpret the franchise as widely as possible and where the Commons had to rule on the issue it consistently favoured a wide electorate. I5 In some cases the franchise was extended to all free men. This would not extend to dependent persons, such as servants, as would appear to be required by a determinedly egalitarian view of Locke. In fact Tory opponents used this very inconsistency to show that the Whigs’ supposed equality of representation was itself fraudulent and that the Whig principles were mere themParty expediency. ” Not that the Tories were advocating egalitarianism selves. Like Charles Leslie they hoped to demonstrate the inappropriateness of this entire mode of reasoning about consent and representation. The Tory and Court objective had been to remodel the franchise wherever possible on a narrow and controllable basis. Although Locke did clearly argue for the broader electorate it is not necessarily the case that his references to equal representation implied a radical position more associated with the extreme levellers and beyond. As David Miller has shown, the inferences from natural equality to political equality have not been so obvious to generations of ‘liberal’ political thinkers. ” Locke argues for just and equal measures ‘according to the original Frame of the Government’ rather than in an absolute sense. He argues very powerfully against the distribution of the franchise in England but not for its extension. A franchise which would originally have corresponded to the distribution of wealth and population in the country has with economic and social change ceased to do so. Instead ‘Representucion becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was first establish’d upon’ (II, 1.57). It is clearly anomalous that a deserted tract of land with a few sheep should send representatives to the assembly simply because it is the site of a once great town, whilst an area which has recently grown in people, riches, trade and power should have no representatives. This requires a remedy. If the original system of representation was based on criteria of wealth and power, as well as persons, then ‘a fair and equal Representative’ (II, 158) would be one which reinstated this correspondence not a system based on ‘one man one vote’. The people, however much they may be incorporated as members of the body politic, have only a right to be represented ‘in proportion to the assistance it affords to the publick’. The representation of wealth as well as persons would indicate that Locke could be satisfied with a form of what was later to be termed ‘virtual representation’. The views and actions of the legislators would correspond to those of the electors who are themselves representative of the wider body of subjects. For Rousseau this would mean that the popular will was being represented at
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two removes. For Locke, however, consent to be a member of a society under this form of government would be sufficient recognition of its legitimacy so long as such a system was capable of representing the law of nature and of maintaining itself uncorrupted. It would remain compatible with Locke’s position for voters and representatives to be restricted to those with some property in estates. If a property in life and liberty is not essentially different from a property in estates the defence of property would be a defence of it in all its forms. It might then be reasonable for those with the greatest experience in controlling property to act as representatives on behalf of all property owners. Such a restriction on the franchise might be defended on principle or on pragmatic grounds. In the Second Treatise Locke does not state in full the grounds on which a people might establish its system of representation. An egalitarian suffrage might appear the obvious conclusion for rational individuals to select but Locke was often able to draw more conservative conclusions from radical premises. What primarily concerns Locke in his discussion of fair representation is how this reform may be brought about without endangering the constitution. The people’s constituent power has established the form of representation. To permit the legislative to reform the basis of its own representation would open the way to abuse. The legislative, or a faction within it, might attempt to gerrymander so as to ensure its re-election. One can think of contemporary arguments over the implementation of constituency changes in Britain. On the other hand, to permit the executive to reform the legislative is also open to abuse. It might be employed to obtain dominance over what is supposed to be the will of the commonwealth. Despite the strong opposition of Locke’s Whig associates to this very solution, Locke does ultimately risk placing this power of revision in the hands of the executive as part of the prerogative power. If the executive fails to employ it as should an ‘image, phantom or representative’ of the commonwealth there is only the judgement of the people itself available as a check. Locke is here examining the necessary conditions for adequate representation. What is at one level a conceptual issue is bound up with issues at the practical political level. Locke the philosopher and Locke the political adviser are at one. The essential conditions for adequate political representation are the liberty of electors to choose those who are to represent them, and the liberty of those representatives to speak and act in accordance with the wishes of the electors. Without these liberties there is only the name and not the reality of a legislative. As in the Essay, Locke says that we must not deal with mere names but with powers (II, 215). Locke offers the actions of Charles II and James II as a prime illustration of how the representative character of a government can be corrupted and undermined. Firstly, the legislative must be called at the right time and not be dissolved arbitrarily. As in his deliberations over the franchise. Locke does not resolve how this might best be guaranteed. He fears abuse if the legislative itself could decide these matters. It might refuse to dissolve itself to face new elections. An alternative might be (as in the U.S. Constitution) to lay down in the fundamental law the term of office. Or the matter might be left with the prerogative power with the risk of the abuses of the Stuarts which resulted in
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either long periods of government without Parliament or dissolutions in order to obtain the return of a more amenable Parliament (II, 154-6). A second requirement for genuine representation is the freedom of the election itself. One of the means employed by both Charles II and James II to control Parliament was the ‘remodelling’ of the borough charters in such a way as to restrict the electorate to a very narrow group believed to be reliable. Locke describes this as an alteration in the legislative and a breach of trust (II, 216). Such an executive: . . . pre-ingages the Electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he has by Sollicitations, Threats, Promises, or otherwise won to his designs; and imploys them to bring in such, who have promised before-hand, what to Vote, and what to Enact (II, 222). An assembly produced in this way could not be genuinely representative since representation implies freedom of choice. Thirdly, representation impheb freedom of debate. In one of his few references to one of the great themes of Harringtonian, republican politics, Locke attacks attempts through rewards and threats to bribe or corrupt elected members of the assembly by the offer of money or of well-paid posts and government contracts to family and associates. Such place-men ‘give their Votes before they hear the Debate’ (II, 222). This is inconsistent with the notion of representation. It is as great a breach of trust as is possible in government. A true political representative must have the liberty to deliberate and make choices for which he will be responsible. The responsibility, furthermore, is not limited to himself. The importance of representation in Locke’s political thought is that it is a means of legitimising the activities of government. Through a fair representative process the subject could come to bear responsibility for decisions in which he had not directly participated (II, 89). Locke could not, however, be satisfied by Hobbes’s solution to the problem. The almost unlimited authorisation granted by the Hobbesian subject to his representative sovereign required a surrender of self-determination which was foolish and was scarcely compatible with Locke’s conception of moral agency. The other extreme would be found in Rousseau’s denunciation of representation. For Rousseau, to renounce liberty - self-determination was to renounce being a moral agent. Locke did not find himself impelled this far despite having a not dissimilar view of moral agency. It was compatible with self-determination to entrust government to others who would represent one in executing the law of nature and the civil law with impartiality. Representation implies some duty on the part of the representative - the part of the notion which, as Hanna Pitkin argues, Hobbes’s account inadequately captures. Ix The duty of the Lockean representative is the duty of the Lockean individual. It is to ensure that in social and political transactions men observe the duties laid down by God and in the law of nature. Representation reinforces this obligation by promoting the identity of understanding, the continuity of consciousness of the duty, between representative and represented. It does not deny moral agency to either representative or represented.
Geraint
414
Parry
Both have the combination of liberty and understanding necessary to making right judgements. Without representation the subject is in fact a slave under the will of a lord. With representation the subject has a political status as a partner, and ultimately, the senior partner, in a common endeavour to ensure that the law of nature prevails, which is ‘the end and use of our liberty’. Geraint University
Parry
of Manchester
NOTES Two Treatises of’ Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), first or second Treatise and the paragraph, or to J. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1975). by book, chapter and paragraph. H. Pitkin. The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1967). chap. 5. J. Locke, An Examination of’ P. Malebranche’s Opinion of’Seeing All Things in God, Works, Vol. 9 (1812). p. 250. See J. L. Mackie, Problemsfrom Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). chap. 2. See J. W. Yolton, Locke and the Compass of‘Humun Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). See further G. Parry,/ohn Locke (London: Allen and Unwin. lY78). chap. III. See W. Kendall, John Locke and the Doctrine of‘ Majority Rule (Illinois, lY41). Studies in the Social Sciences. Vol. 26, No. 2. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshott (Oxford: Blackwell, lYSS), chap. 16. H. Cam, ‘The theory and practice of representation in medieval England’, in Law-Finders and Law-Makers (London: Merlin Press, l962), pp. 1X-75. Hobbes. Behemoth, ed. F. Tiinnies. 2nd edn (London: Cass. 1069). p. 120. C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962). J. Tully, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his Adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, lY80), p. 173. C. Leslie, The New Association of‘ those called Moderate Church-Men etc., Part II (London, 1703). p. 5. For a full discussion see J. 11. Franklin, John Locke and the Theory of.Soverei,gnty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. lY78). See J. H. Plumb. The Growth of Poliricul Stabilit~~ in England, 167%1725 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, lY73). chap. 2. See R. Ashcraft, ‘The Two Treatises and the exclusion crisis: the problem of Lockean political theory as bourgeois ideology’, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Papers (Los Angeles, lY8(1), pp. G-72. D. Miller. ‘Democracy and social justice’, in Democracy. Consensus und So&l Contract, P. Birnbaum, J. Lively and G. Parry, eds. (London: Sage, lY78), pp. 75-100. H. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation. pp. 30-7.
1. References in brackets in the text are to J. Locke,
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
17.
18.
OIY I -h599CWfM0403-12 $03 WO 0 1982 Pergamon Press Ltd.
4. pp 4(13--114. 19X2
LOCKE ON REPRESENTATION
IN POLITICS*
GERAINT PARRY ‘the Image, Phantom, or Representative of the Commonwealth . . .’ (1;: ;51).’ This is how Locke in the Two Treatises describes a supreme executive who, as in the English system of government, has a share also in the legislative power. It is very unusual for Locke in his political writings to employ vocabulary which might be drawn from his epistemological writings and it is intriguing that he should do so when describing the qualities of political representation. Locke is sometimes considered a founding father, even an ideologist, of liberal political thought, in which the ideas of representative government play such a major part. Yet in the Two Treatises there is no explicit and sustained analysis of the notion of representation such as had already been found in Hobbes’s Leviathan. At another level, however, one could argue that a notion of representation is essential to the underlying structure of the argument of the Two Trentises. If one returns to the description of the executive as the ‘image, phantom, or representative of the Commonwealth’ one may discover that it is susceptible to several interpretations. Locke says that such a representative is ‘acted by the will of the Society’ and that ‘thus he has no Will, no Power, but that of the Law’. This usage is akin to what Hanna Pitkin has called ‘symbolic representation’.’ Bound by the framework of taw, the representative executive has no will of his own. He is a symbol of the community and its law. When he acts, what one perceives is an image of the community acting. It is not he whom one sees but a phantom. On another interpretation this passage might suggest a somewhat more positive notion of representation as ‘acting for’ the represented. The executive has no will of his own because he is the agent of the community or the law. As long as the executive acts in the manner directed by the legislative power he is the image and the representative of the community. When he acts in a manner contrary to the will of the legislative or beyond the bounds of his office he ceases to be a representative. He is no longer the image of the community. In both these interpretations of the passage the executive is the representative of the commonwealth because he acts on and reproduces the will of the legislative which is itself a representation of the will of the community and, indirectly, of the will of the individuals composing it. In what ways. however, does the legislative represent the community? How can it too be the image or phantom of the commonwealth’? In attempting to answer this question it might be intriguing to follow up the vocabulary Locke employs in this passage and *I
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pursue analogies which one may find with the work in which Locke does discuss a kind of representation at some length. Locke is, of course, celebrated, or perhaps notorious, for having adhered in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding to a version of the representative theory of perception. Locke states (II, viii, 8) that: Whatsoever the Mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of Perception, Thought, or Understanding, that I call Idea; and the Power to produce any Idea in our mind, I call Quality of the Subject wherein that power is. The problem with this account of perception been to every other student of philosophy. How shall the Mind, when it perceives nothing agree with Things themselves? (IV, iv, 3.)
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Locke believed that he could provide an answer to this question. An analysis of the concepts of qualities and of ideas would explain which ideas adequately represented the qualities of things and which ideas were inadequate representations. What Locke provides is an analysis of the conditions for adequate representation. Simple ideas are what the mind receives directly from sensation and reflection. Such simple ideas are adequate representations in that they ‘correspond’ to the powers that produce them and they ‘agree to the reality of things’. They ‘represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us’. However Locke also appears, as in the Second Treatise, to use the term ‘representation’ in a different sense. He insists that not all simple ideas are ‘Images or Representations of what does exist’ (II, xxx, 2). They represent in the sense that they correspond to qualities in objects, but they do not necessarily represent in the sense of resembling such qualities. Only in the case of ideas of primary qualities - intrinsic features such as shape, size. position, solidity, motion - are they representations, in the sense of resemblances, of those qualities. Ideas of secondary qualities - in colour, taste, sound - have no resemblance to anything in the bodies themselves. Secondary qualities are the effects of powers in things which are so constituted by God the maker that they must produce these sensations in us (II, xxx, 2; IV, iv, 4). The secondary qualities are produced by the arrangement and motion of the minute unseen parts of the bodies. They are hence dependent on the intrinsic primary qualities. The second category of ideas which are adequate representations of their originals are the complex ideas of what Locke calls ‘modes’. These are collections of simple ideas which the mind puts together without any reference to reality. Such ideas are not copies of anything else. They are themselves
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archetypes. They do not represent anything other than themselves and hence cannot be wrongly represented (II, xxi, 3; IV, iv, 5). Included in such modes are the terms of mathematics, such as ‘triangle’, or the terms of moral discourse, such as ‘justice’ or ‘property’. Errors concerning modes and relations arise from faulty reasoning and not from the representative quality of the ideas. Complex ideas of substance are, however, inadequate ideas. They are an incomplete representation of the archetypes to which they refer (II, xxi, 1; IV, 4, 11). The ideas of substances are indeed built up from simple ideas. They cannot be mere fictions. Nevertheless we have only a limited and uncertain understanding of the internal relation of the parts of any physical object. In the sense that we may form pictures of a substance such as iron built up from simple ideas of it, we have a representation of it (II, xxxi, 6), but it cannot be a representation in the sense of being an exact correspondence to all the varied and necessary relations of the powers and qualities of iron (II, xxxi, S-10). Locke’s discussion of the adequacy or inadequacy of ideas can be considered as part of an analysis of the conditions for effective representation. The correspondence of ideas to reality presupposes a causal relationship between them.4 In the case of simple ideas, God has so made the world, including ourselves, that the impulse of insensible particles of matter causes a motion in the brain which produces these ideas. In the case of complex ideas of substance, however, these are merely inferred and we have only a relative knowledge of them. Moreover he appears to suggest that the ‘infinite wise Contriver of us, and all things about us’ has so fashioned our faculties that we can only obtain this limited knowledge. He has equipped us for this life, for knowing our duties to others and to God - ‘these are our business in this world’. If a man’s ears could hear the internal motions of nature he would be deafened. If a man’s eyes were like microscopes he could see further into the composition of bodies but it ‘would not serve to conduct him to the Market and Exchange’ (II, xxiii, 12). In the case of complex ideas of modes and relations the maker of the archetypes of the ideas (which are indeed the ideas themselves) is man himself. If man causes the archetypes to come into being, the ideas mut be adequate representations, since they have ‘nothing to represent but themselves’ (II, xxxi, 3). It is because of this that Locke believes that we could have ‘certain and demonstrative knowledge’ in moral discourse as in mathematics (IV, iv, 9). Knowledge arises by tracing the relations of precise ideas to one another. The relations between the component parts of the idea of what is termed ‘theft’ could be analysed whether or not the name ‘theft’ is used or any act of thieving had actually occurred. If we return to Locke’s discussions of representation in the realm of politics we cannot of course find any explicit extension of the arguments of the Essay. It might however be possible to detect analogies in the mode of argument. The basic problem of political representation is to ensure that it represents what it is supposed to represent. As in the Essay it is a matter of establishing the conditions for adequate representation. One should be able to identify the causal process whereby representatives are produced and therefore what it is that is represented. One should be able to discover what persons are qualified
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to be representatives and the conditions which are necessary for the process of representation to be adequate. Finally one should be able to explain what would be required to maintain that representative process or restore it if the conditions for adequate representation are not provided. In Lockean terms ‘political representation’ would be a mixed mode. As such it is susceptible to philosophical analysis of the relations between the ideas which go to make up the concept. Such analysis could lead to certain knowledge even in the absence of any instance in the political world which actually corresponded to the idea. Nevertheless it is clear that the discussion of representation in the Two Treatises is directed at the English system of government and at a particular period in which the representative process was, in the view of Locke’s Whig Party friends, undergoing threat from the policies of Charles II and James II. In the Essay, too, Locke constantly illustrates conceptual analysis by empirical instances often drawn from the scientific investigations of his academic, scientific circle. One might be tempted to say that the political examples are more strongly motivated by Locke’s radical political aims and that this militates against the neutrality of the conceptual analysis. However, a reading of the Essay can scarcely leave one in any doubt of Locke’s deep-seated determination to put epistemology on the right tracks and save that too from corruption.” Like other great works of political thought the Treatises are committed, but what makes such works stand out is that they also display conceptual analysis of a high order. The first question to be answered in the analysis of r,epresentation is ‘What is represented?’ Man, according to Locke, is the creature of God his Maker. Each and every human being has a duty to preserve himself and, so far as possible, the rest of mankind in order that he may honour God and develop his distinctively human attribute of reason. These are duties under the law of nature and they in turn imply that men, as equal creatures of God, have an equal right to be able to perform their duties.“Such a system of duties and rights requires mutual respect and a sense that all belong to a single moral community (II, 6) governed by the law of nature. The law of nature is discovered by reason, which presupposes that men use their liberty to cultivate their rational faculties as fully as they can. Men are however beings of passion as well as reason. There is a propensity, more developed in some than others, to deviate from the law of reason and nature. They invade the rights of others. In these circumstances every person, in the absence of an established authority, has the right to enforce the law of nature and punish offenders. Each person wields the ‘Executive Power of the Law of Nature’ (II, 13). One could conceive each man as representing in his own person, the law of nature, although Locke does not employ the word in this context. Each has the right, and indeed the duty, to maintain the moral community. As is implicit in most notions of representation there is an outer limit beyond which the representative may not proceed without losing his representative status. Those executing the law of nature may not go beyond what is required by that law. The law entitles them to punish the transgressor: the punishment should be proportionate to the offence. Yet the law also permits the enforcer to apply sufficient force to deter the offender and others
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from similar trespasses in future (II, 8). This could even extend as far as punishing by death a thief who in the course of the theft would put one’s life and liberty at risk. Locke argues that in punishing an offender each person is acting in the name of mankind to safeguard mankind from ‘one of those wild Savage beasts with whom Men can have no Society nor Security’. In the same way Cain cried that all men might slay him as a punishment for his murder (II, 11). As well as restraint, the law of nature accorded the person who had been offended the right to demand reparation. In this case the enforcer is not so much acting as representative of the law of nature as claiming his rights. Another person may, however, come to his aid in attempting to secure his claim. As with restraint the extent to which reparation can be enforced is limited by the law of nature. These limitations are, however, not laid down with any precision. The exercise of justice can readily step beyond bounds which are ill-defined. If this occurs the action is not lawful but is the use of force beyond right and is itself an act of war which might lead to retaliation. It is equally easy for the person seeking reparation for a loss to act more out of vengeance than a respect for justice. He is judge in his own cause. Private policing is therefore unreliable and its inconveniences grow as the invention of money increases inequalities of property. There is no impartial person to clarify the law of nature, determine whether it has been broken, discover who is guilty and what the appropriate penalty is and ensure that it is imposed. This is the function that government is to perform. Civil government is established at the end of a sequence of transfers of the executive power of the law of nature. Government never acquires any more power than was originally wielded by men in the state of nature, representing the law of nature. It is ultimately the law of nature that government represents. The municipal laws of countries are only right in so far as they are ‘founded on the Law of Nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted’ (II, 12). Each individual participating in the original contract or joining the civil society surrenders the executive power of the law of nature to the community or the people. This body politic now wields the total power previously wielded by individuals who may not now take back this power so long as the society lasts. Private policing is at an end. The community now represents the law of nature in its dealings with its subjects. The whole community cannot exercise this function continuously. It therefore ‘entrusts’ the executive power of the law of nature to a government and, in particular, to the legislative. This act of trust is taken by the majority acting in the name of the community-the acceptance of majority rule is an implicit part of the original contract. The institution of the legislative is the ‘first and fundamental Act of Society’. The legislative has the ‘keeping’ of the will of the society (II, 212). It wields the executive power of the law of nature previously wielded by the community as a whole. In doing so it is representing the community and through it the individuals who composed it. The judgements of the legislative are to be considered the judgements of the individual subjects, ‘they being made by himself, or his Representative’ (II, 88). The legislative is limited by the law of nature as was the individual in the state of nature. If it exceeds the bounds set it ceases to represent the law-it is using force beyond right and is entering upon a state of war with those it is supposed to protect.
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It is because government ultimately represents the law of nature that Locke is able to evade a difficulty which his argument raises. Does government represent the majority which entrusted the executive or the individuals who compose the society? The majority-based government gains no powers that were not possessed by individuals in the state of nature. Because the government represents the will of the community it cannot therefore lay claim to rights that were never ceded it. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the law of nature allows a certain latitude and the individual is bound to accept such interpretations even if they differ from his own. They remain his own judgements provided that they do not step clearly beyond that still not entirely defined boundary of what is permitted by natural law.’ To minimise any such differences of interpretation, theories of representation have to establish the representativeness of the representation. What persons are qualified to act as representatives? How can one person effectively represent another? Locke offers no specific and extended discussion of these questions. One can only attempt to piece together a consistent account. When the questions are posed in this way representation is interpreted as a matter of identity between representative and represented. Locke does not analyse the notion of identity with another person but does, of course, undertake in the Essay a celebrated treatment of the question of personal identity. The question of how we can be sure that a person at time t and time t, is the identical person can seem the sort of puzzle only philosophers concern themselves with. In fact it is basic to the ascription of moral responsibility and it is for this reason that Locke tackles it. Locke begins by establishing what a person is and why we wish to know. He defines a person in terms of reason, intelligence and responsibility. It is a Forensick Term, appropriating Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only Agents, capable of a Law and Happiness and Misery. (II, xxvii, 26.)
to intelligent
The identity of such a person through time is established by the continuity of consciousness (II, xxvii, 9). The importance of such continuity of consciousness consists in the fact that without it one could not impute to oneself past actions and bear responsibility for them nor could one expect to bear responsibility in the future for the actions one undertakes now. Rights and duties would make little sense. The analogy between such personal identity and the identity of representative and represented cannot be an exact one. Nevertheless the reason for being concerned with the issue has a significant resemblance. One wishes to establish that the person represented will bear reponsibility for the past and future actions of the representative. The person must regard the representative’s acts as his own and be accountable for them. This is essential if taxation or any other government measure is to be legitimate. What are the necessary conditions for this to be possible? Can there be an analogous continuity of consciousness between the two sides? Clearly there cannot be (without far-fetched possibilities) a transfer of consciousness. There can however be a public statement of one’s ideas, attitudes and aspirations of which the representative must take
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note and, so far as possible, undertake to reproduce in his utterances and actions. In this sense the representative would replicate the views of the represented. His speeches and decisions would be comparable to those of the original actor. Representation is akin to delegation. This would be a very different view of representation from that put forward by Hobbes. In Leviathan, representation is equivalent to authorisation. The representative stands in place of the person represented. The sovereign representative’s will replaces that of the individual whose liberty of unlimited willing has been surrendered. Every individual who has consented to be represented is then the author of everything said or done in his name.* Hobbes is here developing philosophically the position of the representatives in the English Parliament. It had been a fundamental principle that such representatives were granted plena potestas by those electing them.’ Armed with plenipotentiary powers the acts of the representatives could be taken to bind those whom they represented - not as a principle of democracy but as a means of ensuring consent and legitimacy for royal government. Hobbes identified the representative of the state with the sovereign. In a monarchy, such as England, the representative of the nation was not, therefore, Parliament but the King.” As such he possessed the plenipotentiary powers to act for the peace and safety of the realm. Lesser representatives merely existed by his leave. Certain passages in the Second Treatise might suggest that Locke too saw representation as authorisation. He argues (II, 88) that the individual has granted a right to the Commonwealth to employ his power to ensure peace, and that he must accept the Commonwealth’s judgements as his own since they were made by his representative. Locke could not however grant such a representative the plenitude of power of Hobbes’s sovereign. The representative is limited by the law of nature to a more real extent than is Hobbes’s sovereign. As Locke insists, the legislative has only a fiduciary power. It is entrusted to defend the civil interests - the property-of the subjects within a framework of law. The subjects are moral agents presumed to be the ultimate judges of how to control their property in lives. liberty and estates. It would be an absurdity for them to surrender this moral agency blindly to a government (II, 93). Locke does not go to the opposite Rousseauean position of arguing that any surrender or qualification of such moral agency is impermissible and that representation of the will is impossible. Instead he sees representation as a means of ensuring some correspondence between government, the community and the individual and through them to the law of nature. Locke’s argument does not necessarily imply radical democracy. Initially, indeed, Locke accepts that the first governments were likely to have been patriarchal monarchies. These were however instituted by some act of trust and would on Lockean terms have represented the people and be political societies. Peoples in relatively simple societies, little experienced in government, would understandably have chosen those whom they knew and trusted. Further experience, however, usually revealed that later monarchs could not be trusted not to abuse power. The history of civil governments thus displays successive attempts by the people to reconstitute political authority in order to make it
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correspond to the popular will as representing the law of nature (II, 110-l 1). Locke explicitly argues that the culmination of this process occurs with the institution of representative forms of government. People concluded that their properties were not secure. They were not genuinely in civil society till the Legislature was placed in collective Parliament, or what you please (II, 94).
Bodies
of Men,
call them
Senate.
Civility of government therefore seems to imply that the government is made to represent more adequately (to use the language of the Essay) the people who create it. Mixed forms of government, on the English model, are clearly also capable of representing the people adequately. providing the people is vigilant. The legislative function represents the will of the community. The executive, we have seen, also represents the commonwealth since it is acted on by, and reproduces, the will of the legislative. But the English executive also had a part in the legislative. The monarch’s assent was required for legislation. The executive had the power to call and to dissolve the legislature and even in extreme circumstances to employ prerogative against the law. The ‘double trust’ placed in such a person might be taken as a double representation. The legislative in such a system is not the sole and independent representative of the community. It cannot act alone in determining the dissolution of government, which is a right possessed only by the people. The legislative function is, however, the prime representative body. Who is included in the representative process? This is a highly controversial matter. C. B. Macpherson’s celebrated argument is that only those with a property in estates are full citizens with the right to vote.” More recently, James Tully has attributed to Locke the extremely radical position of a full. adult male of the Two franchise. ” The issue has in fact raged since the first appearance Treatises. It was seized upon by one of Locke’s first critics, Charles Leslie: When did all the people of England (for example) choose the free-holders to be worth so much per annum? If they did not. then not only every individual had no vote. but much the major part of them had none. And they all had lives and liberties to dispose of. as well as the rest. ”
Leslie was pointing to the ambivalence in Locke’s argument for good political reasons. How far, he was asking, was Locke going in supporting the representative principle? Locke’s argument laid him open to this potentially embarrassing question. The form of government is established by a constitutive act of trust by the people or, strictly, by a majority of the people. It may decide to place the legislative power where it thinks fit. If this power abuses the trust placed in it the people retains the constituent right to re-order the constitution.” The people may therefore establish such a representative system and such a franchise as it believes appropriate (II. 149-58). Does it follow that there is a form of representation uniquely appropriate to a modern civil government’? A radical
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democratic interpretation of Locke would argue that the principle of natural equality must imply that every adult male must have the vote. Locke does indeed state that the best guarantee that the will of the legislative is the will of the society occurs where the people is able to choose ‘Representatives upon just and undeniably equal measures suitable to the original Frame of the Government . . .‘(II, 158). Manhood suffrage would seem to go beyond the broad franchise which one would expect Locke to support as a member of Shaftesbury’s party. The basis of the franchise in boroughs was subject to both variation and interpretation. The Whigs constantly sought to interpret the franchise as widely as possible and where the Commons had to rule on the issue it consistently favoured a wide electorate. I5 In some cases the franchise was extended to all free men. This would not extend to dependent persons, such as servants, as would appear to be required by a determinedly egalitarian view of Locke. In fact Tory opponents used this very inconsistency to show that the Whigs’ supposed equality of representation was itself fraudulent and that the Whig principles were mere themParty expediency. ” Not that the Tories were advocating egalitarianism selves. Like Charles Leslie they hoped to demonstrate the inappropriateness of this entire mode of reasoning about consent and representation. The Tory and Court objective had been to remodel the franchise wherever possible on a narrow and controllable basis. Although Locke did clearly argue for the broader electorate it is not necessarily the case that his references to equal representation implied a radical position more associated with the extreme levellers and beyond. As David Miller has shown, the inferences from natural equality to political equality have not been so obvious to generations of ‘liberal’ political thinkers. ” Locke argues for just and equal measures ‘according to the original Frame of the Government’ rather than in an absolute sense. He argues very powerfully against the distribution of the franchise in England but not for its extension. A franchise which would originally have corresponded to the distribution of wealth and population in the country has with economic and social change ceased to do so. Instead ‘Representucion becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was first establish’d upon’ (II, 1.57). It is clearly anomalous that a deserted tract of land with a few sheep should send representatives to the assembly simply because it is the site of a once great town, whilst an area which has recently grown in people, riches, trade and power should have no representatives. This requires a remedy. If the original system of representation was based on criteria of wealth and power, as well as persons, then ‘a fair and equal Representative’ (II, 158) would be one which reinstated this correspondence not a system based on ‘one man one vote’. The people, however much they may be incorporated as members of the body politic, have only a right to be represented ‘in proportion to the assistance it affords to the publick’. The representation of wealth as well as persons would indicate that Locke could be satisfied with a form of what was later to be termed ‘virtual representation’. The views and actions of the legislators would correspond to those of the electors who are themselves representative of the wider body of subjects. For Rousseau this would mean that the popular will was being represented at
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two removes. For Locke, however, consent to be a member of a society under this form of government would be sufficient recognition of its legitimacy so long as such a system was capable of representing the law of nature and of maintaining itself uncorrupted. It would remain compatible with Locke’s position for voters and representatives to be restricted to those with some property in estates. If a property in life and liberty is not essentially different from a property in estates the defence of property would be a defence of it in all its forms. It might then be reasonable for those with the greatest experience in controlling property to act as representatives on behalf of all property owners. Such a restriction on the franchise might be defended on principle or on pragmatic grounds. In the Second Treatise Locke does not state in full the grounds on which a people might establish its system of representation. An egalitarian suffrage might appear the obvious conclusion for rational individuals to select but Locke was often able to draw more conservative conclusions from radical premises. What primarily concerns Locke in his discussion of fair representation is how this reform may be brought about without endangering the constitution. The people’s constituent power has established the form of representation. To permit the legislative to reform the basis of its own representation would open the way to abuse. The legislative, or a faction within it, might attempt to gerrymander so as to ensure its re-election. One can think of contemporary arguments over the implementation of constituency changes in Britain. On the other hand, to permit the executive to reform the legislative is also open to abuse. It might be employed to obtain dominance over what is supposed to be the will of the commonwealth. Despite the strong opposition of Locke’s Whig associates to this very solution, Locke does ultimately risk placing this power of revision in the hands of the executive as part of the prerogative power. If the executive fails to employ it as should an ‘image, phantom or representative’ of the commonwealth there is only the judgement of the people itself available as a check. Locke is here examining the necessary conditions for adequate representation. What is at one level a conceptual issue is bound up with issues at the practical political level. Locke the philosopher and Locke the political adviser are at one. The essential conditions for adequate political representation are the liberty of electors to choose those who are to represent them, and the liberty of those representatives to speak and act in accordance with the wishes of the electors. Without these liberties there is only the name and not the reality of a legislative. As in the Essay, Locke says that we must not deal with mere names but with powers (II, 215). Locke offers the actions of Charles II and James II as a prime illustration of how the representative character of a government can be corrupted and undermined. Firstly, the legislative must be called at the right time and not be dissolved arbitrarily. As in his deliberations over the franchise. Locke does not resolve how this might best be guaranteed. He fears abuse if the legislative itself could decide these matters. It might refuse to dissolve itself to face new elections. An alternative might be (as in the U.S. Constitution) to lay down in the fundamental law the term of office. Or the matter might be left with the prerogative power with the risk of the abuses of the Stuarts which resulted in
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either long periods of government without Parliament or dissolutions in order to obtain the return of a more amenable Parliament (II, 154-6). A second requirement for genuine representation is the freedom of the election itself. One of the means employed by both Charles II and James II to control Parliament was the ‘remodelling’ of the borough charters in such a way as to restrict the electorate to a very narrow group believed to be reliable. Locke describes this as an alteration in the legislative and a breach of trust (II, 216). Such an executive: . . . pre-ingages the Electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he has by Sollicitations, Threats, Promises, or otherwise won to his designs; and imploys them to bring in such, who have promised before-hand, what to Vote, and what to Enact (II, 222). An assembly produced in this way could not be genuinely representative since representation implies freedom of choice. Thirdly, representation impheb freedom of debate. In one of his few references to one of the great themes of Harringtonian, republican politics, Locke attacks attempts through rewards and threats to bribe or corrupt elected members of the assembly by the offer of money or of well-paid posts and government contracts to family and associates. Such place-men ‘give their Votes before they hear the Debate’ (II, 222). This is inconsistent with the notion of representation. It is as great a breach of trust as is possible in government. A true political representative must have the liberty to deliberate and make choices for which he will be responsible. The responsibility, furthermore, is not limited to himself. The importance of representation in Locke’s political thought is that it is a means of legitimising the activities of government. Through a fair representative process the subject could come to bear responsibility for decisions in which he had not directly participated (II, 89). Locke could not, however, be satisfied by Hobbes’s solution to the problem. The almost unlimited authorisation granted by the Hobbesian subject to his representative sovereign required a surrender of self-determination which was foolish and was scarcely compatible with Locke’s conception of moral agency. The other extreme would be found in Rousseau’s denunciation of representation. For Rousseau, to renounce liberty - self-determination was to renounce being a moral agent. Locke did not find himself impelled this far despite having a not dissimilar view of moral agency. It was compatible with self-determination to entrust government to others who would represent one in executing the law of nature and the civil law with impartiality. Representation implies some duty on the part of the representative - the part of the notion which, as Hanna Pitkin argues, Hobbes’s account inadequately captures. Ix The duty of the Lockean representative is the duty of the Lockean individual. It is to ensure that in social and political transactions men observe the duties laid down by God and in the law of nature. Representation reinforces this obligation by promoting the identity of understanding, the continuity of consciousness of the duty, between representative and represented. It does not deny moral agency to either representative or represented.
Geraint
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Parry
Both have the combination of liberty and understanding necessary to making right judgements. Without representation the subject is in fact a slave under the will of a lord. With representation the subject has a political status as a partner, and ultimately, the senior partner, in a common endeavour to ensure that the law of nature prevails, which is ‘the end and use of our liberty’. Geraint University
Parry
of Manchester
NOTES Two Treatises of’ Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), first or second Treatise and the paragraph, or to J. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1975). by book, chapter and paragraph. H. Pitkin. The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1967). chap. 5. J. Locke, An Examination of’ P. Malebranche’s Opinion of’Seeing All Things in God, Works, Vol. 9 (1812). p. 250. See J. L. Mackie, Problemsfrom Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). chap. 2. See J. W. Yolton, Locke and the Compass of‘Humun Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). See further G. Parry,/ohn Locke (London: Allen and Unwin. lY78). chap. III. See W. Kendall, John Locke and the Doctrine of‘ Majority Rule (Illinois, lY41). Studies in the Social Sciences. Vol. 26, No. 2. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshott (Oxford: Blackwell, lYSS), chap. 16. H. Cam, ‘The theory and practice of representation in medieval England’, in Law-Finders and Law-Makers (London: Merlin Press, l962), pp. 1X-75. Hobbes. Behemoth, ed. F. Tiinnies. 2nd edn (London: Cass. 1069). p. 120. C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962). J. Tully, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his Adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, lY80), p. 173. C. Leslie, The New Association of‘ those called Moderate Church-Men etc., Part II (London, 1703). p. 5. For a full discussion see J. 11. Franklin, John Locke and the Theory of.Soverei,gnty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. lY78). See J. H. Plumb. The Growth of Poliricul Stabilit~~ in England, 167%1725 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, lY73). chap. 2. See R. Ashcraft, ‘The Two Treatises and the exclusion crisis: the problem of Lockean political theory as bourgeois ideology’, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Papers (Los Angeles, lY8(1), pp. G-72. D. Miller. ‘Democracy and social justice’, in Democracy. Consensus und So&l Contract, P. Birnbaum, J. Lively and G. Parry, eds. (London: Sage, lY78), pp. 75-100. H. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation. pp. 30-7.
1. References in brackets in the text are to J. Locke,
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
17.
18.