John Wilson Croker is another significant figure in the narrative of the Representative. Born in Galway of English descent in 1780, he was a Protestant and a Tory. At the time our story begins, he was an experienced, middle-aged man of the world while the two other major characters, Lockhart and Disraeli, were much younger. Croker had already made his mark in politics and literature and was, therefore, not as fretful or anxious about the future as his younger counterparts.

At first young Benjamin tried to gain Croker's favour, possibly in the hope of getting support for his political ambitions, but when he did not, the vengeful streak in Disraeli immortalised the older man as one of the most disgusting creatures in nineteenth-century English fiction: the hateful Rigby, in Coningsby.

Apart from being a politician, John Wilson Croker was also a dedicated scholar and a sharp literary critic; this side of his activities must have brought him close to John Murray II of whom he was a friend. Between the years 1809 and 1830 he was First Secretary to Admiralty and it was during this time that he was more active and influential in journalism. As a literary critic, Croker is as scathing as Lockhart, although he is subtle where Lockhart is vociferous. He published a critical review on Keats’ Endymion in the Quarterly Review three months before Lockhart published his in Blackwood's Magazine. In this piece he begins by confessing that he could not read the whole poem, but that the parts that he did not read remain as mysterious to him as those that he did: