electorates of a federal republic as likely to throw up more educated and thoughtful
representatives. At its simplest, this was because there would be a greater pool of talented men
(and he did mean 'men') to choose from. It was also because large voting constituencies would
make it harder for 'unworthy' candidates who tried to buy their way through bribery and
corruption or for parochial candidates who could not see beyond 'local circumstances and lesser
interests'. (Madison et al, 1987: 127) In a representative democracy, the views of the electorate
would pass through the filter of elected representatives, and this filtering process would have the
effect of enlarging and refining their views. Instead of electing people Just like themselves' to
serve as their political representatives (in Madison's view, a travesty of representative
government), voters would be inclined to support those they perceived as wiser, more educated,
more knowledgeable than the rest. The people would have their say yet the talented would still
be elected. A perfect compromise.
Some critics from the time countered with what (following Hanna Pitkin) we have come
to tenn 'descriptive' or 'mirror' representation. Anti-federalists in America made much of the
dangers of remote government, and they took this to include not only the remoteness of federal
government from the concerns of constituent states but what they perceived as a growing gap
between representatives and the people. Their main objection, of course, was that a strong federal
government would overturn the laws and practices of individual states, but they also argued that
ordinary citizens would have no chance of election to a federal assembly. 'CT) he station will be
too elevated for them to aspire to'; 'there will be no part of the people represented, but the rich'
(Storing, 1985: 125-6): the resulting assembly would be thoroughly unrepresentative.
By the end of the eighteenth century, this counter-position had been pretty soundly
defeated and issues of pictorial accuracy had dropped off the agenda. The one exception to this
related to the nature of electoral systems, and whether it was desirable to secure a proportional
representation of the electorate's preferences in the composition of the legislative assembly.
Writing in 1861, John Stuart Mill expressed no interest in the idea that representatives should be
drawn from a variety of occupational or social strata - that they should be 'representative' in a
social sampling sense. He was, however, deeply concerned that the prevailing electoral system
did not promote a fair representation of minority opinions and views. Democracy should secure
'a representation, in proportion to numbers, of every division of the electoral body: not two great
parties alone, with perhaps a few sectional minorities in particular places, but every minority in
the whole nation, consisting of a sufficiently large number to be, on principles of justice, entitled
to a representative.' (Mill, 1975:256) Though the reference to minority representation points
forward to my own concerns about the representation of difference, Mill did not anticipate that
electors who came from a minority ethnic group, spoke a minority language, or followed a
minority religion, would have a proportionate share of representative positions: this was not the
kind of 'division' of the electoral body he had in mind.