REPRESENTATION, a term used in various senses in dif ferent connections, but particularly in a political meaning, which has developed out of the others. The word "represent" comes from Lat. re-praesentare, to "make present again," or "bring back into presence," and its history in English may be traced fairly well by the citations given in the New English Dictionary of its earliest uses in literature in senses which are still common. Thus we find the verb meaning (1380) simply to "bring into presence," and Barbour uses it (1375) in the sense of bringing clearly be fore the mind, whence the common sense of "explain," "exhibit," "portray." In 1513 it is used as synonymous with "describe," or "allege to be." In 146o we find it employed for the performance of a play or a part in a play, whence comes the sense of symbol izing, standing in the place of some one, or corresponding to some thing; and in 1655 for acting as authorized agent or deputy of some one. This is a notable point in the development of the word. In Cromwell's speech to the parliament, Jan. 22, 1655, he says: "I have been careful of your safety, and the safety of those you represented." This strictly political use of the verb developed, it will be seen, comparatively late.
The noun "representation" passed through similar stages. In 1624 it comes to mean "substitution of one thing or person for another," "substituted presence" as opposed to "actual presence," or "the fact of standing for, or in place of, some other thing or person," especially with a right or authority to act on their ac count. Its application to a political assembly then becomes nat ural, but for some time it is not so found in literature, the sense remaining rather formal. In Scots law (1693) it obtains the tech nical meaning of the assumption by an heir of his predecessor's rights and obligations.
The term "representative," now specially applied to an elected member of a national or other assembly, deriving his authority from the constituency which returns him, appears to have been first used to denote not the member but the assembly itself. In the Act abolishing the office of king, after Charles I.'s execution, 1649, s. iv. runs: "And whereas by the abolition of the kingly office provided for in this Act, a most happy way is made for this nation (if God see it good) to return to its just and ancient right of being governed by its own Representatives or national meet ings in council, from time to time chosen and entrusted for that purpose by the people, it is therefore resolved and declared by the Commons assembled in Parliament," etc., "and that they will
carefully provide for the certain choosing, meeting and sitting of the next and future Representatives," etc. But the application of the term to the persons who sat in parliament was at all events very soon made, for in 1651 Isaac Penington the younger pub lished a pamphlet entitled "The fundamental right, safety and liberty of the People ; which is radically in themselves, deriva tively in the Parliament, their substitutes or representatives." It is worth while to dwell on the historical evolution of the various meanings of "represent," "representation" and "represent ative," because it is at least curious that it was not till the 17th century that the modern political or parliamentary sense became attached to them; and it is well to remember that though the idea of political representation is older and thus afterwards is expressed by the later meaning of the word, the actual use of "representation" in such a sense is as modern as that. In Burke's speeches of 1769 and relating to taxation, we find the word in this sense already in common use, but the familiar mod ern doctrine of "no taxation without representation," however far back the idea may be traced, is not to be found in Burke in those very words. The "originator of that immortal dogma of our (i.e., American) national greatness" was, according to the Amer ican writer M. C. Tyler (Amer. Lit. i. 154), the politician and philanthropist Daniel Gookin (1612-87), an Irish settler in Vir ginia, who, moving to Boston and becoming speaker of the Massa chusetts legislature, became prominent in standing up for popular rights in the agitation which resulted in the withdrawal of the colonial charter (1686). But it was the vogue of the "dogma" in America, not its phrase, that he seems to have originated ; and while the precise form of the phrase does not appear to be at tributable to any single author, the principle itself was asserted in England long before the word "representation," in a political sense, was current. In English constitutional history the prin ciple was substantially established in 1297 by the declaration De Tallagio non concedendo, confirmed by the Petition of Right in 1628.