ABSTRACT
In considering the traditional doctrines of representation in Britain it must be remembered that they emerged in the course of debates about relatively specific issues, and as the practice of representation changed, so did the issues and the focus of discussion. During much of the period with which we are concerned there was a fairly continuous trend towards the liberalization of the representative system. Proposals that were radical in one generation often seemed moderate in the next, and the positions taken up by the opponents of change became successively untenable as the tide of reform flowed on. In this shifting debate there were few fixed points of reference, and it is not easy to group the antagonists into clearly defined schools of thought. Thus Disraeli was a disciple of Burke, and was separated from John Stuart Mill by a fundamental difference of political attitude; yet Disraeli’s arguments in the 1860’s were closer to Mill’s than they were to Burke’s, simply because the climate of opinion in the mid-Victorian era differed so much from that of the late eighteenth century.
