The theme of Gregory Conti’s book is captured by its title, Parliament the Mirror of the Nation. The idea is that the composition of the representative body should mimic the composition of the nation, not in terms of individuals’ wills or preferences but in terms of social groups; that is, “descriptive representation” (p. 1). As such, a Parliament that contained neither women nor members of the working classes, and for which none of the former and few of the latter could vote, was nevertheless considered to be an accurate mirror of society. It mirrored the social elements that mattered and was carefully balanced to include different kinds of property and education—agricultural, industrial, rural, urban, commercial, and so on. Readers may struggle with the dense and detailed presentation of this work. The text abounds in some overly long quotations (one of 291 words on p. 332, followed by one of 144 words on p. 334, 96 on p. 335, and 202 on p. 336). Nevertheless, this is a very valuable book, even if its value would have been more easily visible had its exposition been considerably more concise.

Conti does not attempt to describe the full scope of the debate about how representation should mirror the nation. Much of this has been covered before, in the literature about the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884, which he treats mostly in passing. He devotes his attention to attempts to correct what were perceived as flaws in the mirror produced in 1832. Two long chapters are devoted to theories “of the variety of suffrages,” mostly from before 1867: ideas about how to add (never subtract) voters and to add or subtract representatives. There follows a short chapter on democratic rebuttals that argue either that an accurate mirror can only be achieved by universal male suffrage or else whose proponents want to ditch the mirror metaphor altogether. Then come two more long chapters on arguments for proportional representation (PR), including the single transferable vote, mostly from after 1859 and running to 1914. For the PR advocates, the mirror should provide an “exact translation of the aggregate preferences of individuals” (p. 361), rather than a reflection of social groups and communities.

The conclusion emphasizes a strength of the book throughout, bringing Victorian debates into contact with current literature about voting and representation. In Conti’s view, the Victorian debates are relevant, now that representing groups is once again on the agenda. Interestingly, neither now nor in the Victorian period does the issue have a distinctly left–right valence, although it certainly takes on different political hues depending on whether the quotas concern women or small-state representation in the Electoral College.

Conti defines “variety-of-suffrages” reformers as those who “put forward plans for electoral reform that deliberately varied the suffrage across constituencies in order to ensure seats in the House of Commons for different classes, interest groups, and ideological movements” (pp. 1–2). In this they actually agreed in principle, pace Conti, with the dominant version of Parliament as the mirror of the nation, embodied in the formally uniform suffrage of the Reform Act of 1832. That act established uniform or, rather, dual qualifications for the suffrage based on borough or county property ownership. But this suffrage was uniform only formally. As its proponents were well aware and was frequently stated in the 1832 debates, a house worth £10 in London was of a very different social class than one of the same monetary value in a small provincial borough. This was considered a feature, not a flaw: the inhabitant of London was thought to be more politically sophisticated at a lower point in the social scale. Uniform national rules thus created a suitably varied and accurate mirror of society in the view of their proponents.

Nevertheless, Conti’s examination of would-be reformers who brandish the mirror metaphor and accept the idea of group representation creates a welcome change from the usual exclusive focus on reformers who use democratic, individually oriented language in which to discuss representation. Walter Bagehot, W. R. Greg, and William Rathbone, among others, attempt to give members of the working classes the vote and bring some men of working-class background into Parliament on this basis. Variety-of-suffrage ideas tend to fade out toward the end of the century, although W. E. H. Lecky provides a notable restatement in 1896 (pp. 74–75). Lecky himself is largely forgotten today, but his concerns linger on. Conti observes that “as a timeless truth, the mirror theory, thought Lecky, would outlive electoral democracy…. Were he to observe our ongoing ‘crisis of democratic representation,’ he would feel at home in the thought that it remains unclear what institutions await liberal societies in the coming decades” (p. 75). This last point is a good example of the suggestive nature of Conti’s historical discussion.

The second group that Conti treats, the democrats, think that universal male suffrage or something close to it will provide the best mirror. The most interesting of these democrats is Dicey, who remained a faithful Benthamite in his rejection of “class representation” (p. 180). Even were the goal of mirroring classes and their interests to be accepted, no agreement on what weight to give them would be possible. Furthermore, if ever such agreement were reached, it would be temporary, as society continued to evolve (pp. 182–83). Conti points out that demonstrations of the inadequacy of class representation do not necessarily lead to democracy as the alternative, but that democracy was the only alternative proposed.

Conti’s last two chapters take up the final strand in the mirroring debate, proportional representation, unduly neglected because it was never actually adopted (p. 194). Victorian PR endorsed many of the same values as traditional mirror theories but “radically diverged from the conceptual landscape of the variety-of-suffrages, overturning its cardinal tenet that electoral rules ought to be direct reflections of a group-based sociological imaginary” (p. 195). Whereas today PR is perceived by its supporters as the most democratic of systems, at the time it was often prescribed as a means of maintaining representation for an elite likely to be “swamped” by democracy. But the most important thing about it, only partly taken into account by Conti, is that PR stressed “opinions and parties… and importantly entailed a measure of individualization and voluntarism in thinking about representation.” It did not depend on the “attributes of group-belonging” central to traditional understandings of representation as the mirror of society (p. 206). We can add that it was also typically accompanied by an abandonment of the discourse of capacity—the attempt to make sure that only those individuals or groups with the necessary attributes should vote. It was because capacity was no longer the determining criterion for suffrage that it was considered important to preserve some influence for it through the mechanism of PR. Although this was not always the case for Thomas Hare, who wanted to maintain a limited suffrage (p. 214), it was the case for Mill and later advocates of PR, who also saw it as a weapon against the domination of a party apparatus (p. 255) and a means of encouraging participation (p. 295).

What all these approaches had in common, suggests Conti, was faith that a correct system of suffrage/representation could simultaneously improve morals and results (pp. 363–64). I would add that this combination of utilitarianism and moral perfectionism is characteristic of Victorian liberalism and, partly for that reason, of Victorian culture more generally. Suffrage debates provide a window into the larger political framework. Likewise, Conti’s book provides its readers with many valuable insights into nineteenth-century British political culture that extend far beyond the details of proposals for PR and shed a light from the past on issues that have once again become salient.