1 Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, Statesmanship and Party Government: A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Leo Strauss, , Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar. For a discussion of Strauss's own plurality of Burkes, see Lenzner, Steven J., “Strauss's Three Burkes: The Problem of Edmund Burke in Natural Right and History,” Political Theory 19 (1991), 364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 O'brien, Conor Cruise, The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).Google Scholar

4 Mosher, Michael A., “The Skeptic's Burke,” Political Theory 19 (1991), 391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Macpherson, C. B., Burke (New York: Hill & Wang, 1980)Google Scholar; and Pocock, J. G. A., “The Devil Has Two Horns: Review of Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke,” London Review of Books, February 24, 1994, 9–11.Google Scholar

6 White, Stephen K., “Burke on Politics, Aesthetics, and the Dangers of Modernity,” Political Theory 21 (1993), 507–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Kramnick, Isaac, The Rage of Edmund Burke (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar

8 O'Brien, The Great Melody.

9 It is important to note that Burke uses the term “description” very loosely to refer to any plurality of persons who may be grouped together on the basis of a shared attribute, interest or opinion. To that extent, he uses the term in much the way we do still—to indicate almost any characteristic or attribute by which we might describe a person or group of persons. But whereas we generally use the term in reference to individuals (“Sorry, officer, I haven't seen anyone of that description”), Burke, like his contemporaries, almost always uses it to refer to ways of categorizing groups. Consequently, it crops up most frequently in his discussions of social groups or groupings for which the term “class” is inappropriate; it is especially prevalent in his discussions of representation. See especially Burke's letter to his son, Richard, in 1793 (“Would not common reason and common honesty dictate to us the policy of regulating the people in the several descriptions of which they are composed, according to the natural ranks and classes of an orderly civil society, under a common protecting sovereign, and under a form of constitution favourable at once to authority and to freedom—such as the British constitution boasts to be, and such as it is, to those who enjoy it?” The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, Vol. 6 [12 vols.; Boston: Little, Brown, 1871], 403). Unless otherwise noted, all references to Burke's writings and speeches are to this edition of his collected works. See also, for example, Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting (on parliamentary reform), April 13, 1780, in Works, Vol. 6, 296 (“the matter should be prepared in open committees, from a choice into which no class or description of men is to be excluded—and the subsequent county meetings should be as full and as well attended, as possible. Without these precautions the true sense of the people will ever be uncertain” [emphasis added]); and Letter to Job Watts, August 10, 1780, in Woods, John A., ed., The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Vol. 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 261Google Scholar (“they are the unanimous Sentiments of all who are distinguished in this Kingdom, for learning, integrity, and abilities, and of all parties and descriptions of men”).

10 I have discussed this point in detail in Melissa S. Williams, Voice, Trust and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation (forthcoming), chap. 1.

11 Burke, Edmund, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents” (1770), in Works, Vol. 1, 520.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 503.

13 Ibid., 508.

14 Burke, Edmund, “Speech to the Electors of Bristol” (1774), in Works, Vol. 2, 95.Google Scholar

15 Burke, Edmund, Letter to the Duke of Portland, September 3, 1780, in Correspondence, 274.Google Scholar

16 Burke, Edmund, “Speech on a Bill for Shortening the Duration of Parliaments” (1780), in Works, Vol. 7, 74.Google Scholar

17 Burke, Edmund, “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs” (1791), in Works, Vol. 4, 176.Google Scholar

18 As Burke put it in his Appeal, “To enable men to act with the weight and character of a people, and to answer for the ends for which they are incorporated into that capacity, we must suppose them… to be in that state of habitual social discipline in which the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent conduct, and by their conducting enlighten and protect, the weaker” (ibid., 174).

19 Burke, “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” 96. Emphasis in original.

20 The following relies quite heavily on Pitkin, Hanna F., The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967)Google Scholar, chap. 8.

21 It is important to note that the distinction between actual and virtual representation is not a Burkean coinage, but was generally prevalent in his contemporaries’ discussions of political representation. “Virtual” representation was generally associated with Tories, who used the doctrine to defend malapportionment against democratic parliamentary reformers. The latter, in turn, decried the fact that the distribution of seats in the Commons was so distorted that there were both rotten boroughs and large cities without any representation whatsoever. In fact, Burke's use of the concept of virtual representation is, on the whole, more critical of this established usage than approving. Himself a beneficiary of pocket boroughs, he certainly does not reject the concept of virtual representation, but (as we shall see) tends to emphasize the cases in which even its standards of equity were not met by the current electoral system.

22 Burke, Edmund, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe” (1792), in Works, Vol. 4, 293.Google Scholar

23 John, of Salisbury, , Policraticus, ed. by Markland, Murray F. (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1979), 60–61.Google Scholar

24 Beer, Samuel, Modern British Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 10.Google Scholar

25 Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, 323; see also Beer, Samuel, “The Representation of Interests in British Government: Historical Background,” American Political Science Review 51 (1957), 613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” 433.

27 Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, 174.

28 Ibid.

29 Burke, “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” 97.

30 As Beer mentions in passing, but does not develop, this view of political representation is heavily influenced by mercantilism, itself, I believe, an amendment of medieval corporatism. This is not the place to launch a lengthy explanation of mercantilism—but basically it was as described above, an understanding of the nation as comprising relatively fixed economic sectors or “interests” each of which played a vital role in the economic flourishing of the nation. It also entailed a more or less hostile attitude toward other states, and assumed that the competition between them was a zero-sum game. Burke and his ilk, according to Beer, held on to this general corporatist understanding of the state, but expanded it to include the empire. They met with opposition from Tories, who regarded the colonies as external to the nation and therefore as having adverse interests—and therefore as something to be exploited rather than as something whose well-being ought to be of much concern.

I think that this mercantilist understanding of state and empire makes a good deal of sense of Burke's views on virtual representation. It makes sense of Burke's endless preoccupation with Britain as a commercial nation and empire. It even makes some sense of Burke's particular concern to defend the American colonists and the Irish Catholics, something which seems a bit of a puzzle to Pitkin. Of course, if this is who Burke is, his interest to us is as a representative figure of the intellectual trends of his day rather than as a source of new understanding on the place of groups within a system of national representation.

31 Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 293.

32 Ibid., 253. Emphasis in original.

33 Letter to Viscount Kenmare, February 21, 1782, in Woods, ed., Correspondence, Vol. 4, 418.

34 Burke, Edmund, “Speech on Conciliation with America” (1775), in Works, Vol. 2, 153.Google Scholar

35 Burke, Edmund, “Speech on American Taxation” (1774), in Works, Vol. 2, 44–45.Google Scholar

36 Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with America,” 141.

37 Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 245.

38 Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with America,” 153.

39 Burke, “Speech on American Taxation,” 72–73.

40 Ibid., 75.

41 Burke, Edmund, “Observations on a Late Publication Intituled ‘The Present State of the Nation’” (1769), in Works, Vol. 1, 369.Google Scholar

42 Ibid.

43 Letter to Samuel Span, in Hoffman, Ross J. S. and Levack, Paul, eds., Burke's Politics (New York: Knopf, 1959), 125Google Scholar. In these arguments, of course, there is a convergence of the contractarian with the functionalist Burke.

44 The exception is the class of the working poor, which Burke usually refers to as a “class” rather than as a “description.” See below, note 56 and accompanying text.

45 Burke, Letter to Job Watts, 261.

46 Burke, Edmund, “Speech at Bristol, Prior to the Election” (1780), in Works, Vol. 2, 416.Google Scholar

47 Burke, Edmund, “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol” (1777), in Works, Vol. 2, 198.Google Scholar

48 This is not to deny that Burke sometimes invokes natural law, but he does so only rarely in his discussions of justice and injustice toward subordinate “descriptions” of people.

49 Burke, Edmund, “Two Letters to Gentlemen in Bristol” (1778), in Works, Vol. 2, 251.Google Scholar

50 Ibid.

51 Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with America,” 150.

52 Burke, “An Appeal fom the New to the Old Whigs,” 169–70.

53 Burke, Edmund, “Speech on a Motion Made in the House of Commons… for a Committee to Inquire into the State of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament” (1782), in Works, Vol. 7, 95.Google Scholar

54 Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with America,” 140.

55 Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” 492.

56 See especially Burke, Edmund, “Thoughts and Details on Scarcity” (1795), in Works, Vol. 5, 131–69.Google Scholar

57 As Pitkin puts it, the discovery of the national interest “presupposes the participation of representatives of every interest so that all considerations will be brought to bear” (Concept of Representation, 187).

58 Burke, “Speech on… the State of the Representation of the Commons,” 96.

59 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. by Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), section 225, 415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 On the former, see “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe”; on the latter, see “Speech on… the State of the Representation of the Commons,” 99 (“Now, I ask, what advantage do you find that the places which abound in representation possess over others, in which it is more scanty, in security for freedom, in security for justice, or in any one of those means of procuring temporal prosperity and eternal happiness, the ends for which society was formed?”).

61 Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” 437.

62 Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 281–82.

63 Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with America,” 181.

64 Burke, Edmund, “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790), in Works, Vol. 3, 275.Google Scholar

65 Burke, Edmund, “Letter on the Affairs of Ireland” (1797), in Works, Vol. 6, 422.Google Scholar

66 See especially Phillips, Anne, Engendering Democracy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Williams, Voice, Trust and Memory.

67 Browning, Rufus P., Marshall, Dale Rogers and Tabb, David H., Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in Urban Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 141Google Scholar. See also, for example, Thernstrom, Abigail, Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 239Google Scholar (“governing bodies function differently when they are racially mixed, particularly where blacks are new to politics and where racially insensitive language and discrimination in the provision of services are long-established political habits”).