THE REPORTERS' GALLERY By MICHAEL MACDONAGH Author of ' The Book of Parliament ' and ' Parliament Its Romance, Comedy and Pathos ' HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO PREFACE MY history of the Reporters' Gallery does not embrace the cognate, but much larger, subject of the develop, ment of a Free Press, or the growth of that liberty which the Press has long enjoyed as a purveyor of news and an exponent of opinion. That is a matter which has often been dealt with. My book relates to a subsidiary phase of the same movement to establish freedom of public opinion and public discussion. It is an account of the long and dramatic struggle between Parliament and those who, as printers, publishers, editors and reporters, sought to satisfy the curiosity of the people as to the conduct of their representa- tives in Parliament, and, at the same time, of course, make a commercial profit for themselves, by reporting the Debates in the magazines and newspapers. The rise of the Reporters ' Gallery has curiously failed to attract the particular notice of our great historians. Though the battle of the Press against Parliament was fought and won in the eighteenth century, Lecky deals with it but incidentally and in a sum- mary way in his History of England in the Eighteenth Century. And yet it is one of the most eventful episodes not only in the progress of journalism, but, what is far more historically important, in the democratization of the whole constitution, machinery and working of government in this country. Of course, there are conflicting views entertained of the v vi PREFACE Reporters' Gallery. To some people it is the palladium of our liberties, no less ; to others it is but an aider and abettor in the imposture of Parliament. Two great writers have acted as the spokesmen to the country of these distinct and irreconcilable opinions. The exalted and glorified view is presented by Macaulay, that splendid adept at expressing an uplifting emotion in himself, and awakening it in others. 1 The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm,' he says, in his essay on Hallam's Constitutional History. l The publication of the debates, a practice which seemed to the most liberal statesmen of the old school full of danger to the great safeguards of public liberty, is now regarded by many persons as a safeguard tantamount, and more than tantamount, to all the rest to- gether.' Carry le, on the other hand, writes very disrespect- fully of the Debates and the reporters. ' The practice of modern Parliaments,' he says, in the chapter on Stump Orator in Latter-Day Pamphlets, l with reporters sitting among them, and twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, listening to them, fills me with amazement.' Thus the arch cynic and scorner mocks at and derides some of the most sacred and cherished institutions of the country the legis- lature, the newspaper, and even the great heart of the people itself. He amplifies and emphasizes the attack in the chapter of the same work dealing with ' Parliaments.' ' Loving life,' he says, ' and time, which is the staff of life, I read no parliamentary debates and rarely any parlia- mentary speeches. But I am told there is not once in the seven years the smallest gleam of new intelligence thrown on any matter, earthly or divine, by an honourable gentleman on his legs in Parliament.' PREFACE vii The majority, no doubt, are on the side of Macaulay. But which of these views is the right one, or whether there may not be some truth in both, my book perhaps may help impartially to disclose. At any rate, this much is, I think, indisputable that the chief agency by which Parliament has been moulded to its present form, whatever may be its merits or defects, is the power of the Press, acting largely through the medium of the Reporters' Gallery, not only to exercise a constant and watchful supervision of its pro- ceedings, but to bring the force of public opinion to bear, swiftly and effectively, upon it. As for my book, it embodies, if I may say so without egotism, the fruit of years of reading and research, and a quarter of a century's experiences in the Reporters' Gallery. A few words of explanation as to its form may not be out of place. I first describe the Reporters' Gallery, as it is now in being, the nature and variety of its work, and the way that work is done. Then I trace historically how it came into existence, and slowly grew and developed. It is a strange story. The reporting of the Debates was, at the commencement, looked upon as a thing inimical to the authority and independence of Parliament, and those engaged in it were harried with fines and imprisonments. Then it was reluctantly tolerated as an unavoidable excrescence of Parliament. Finally, the Reporters' Gallery came to be fully recognized as an essential part of free, representative and deliberative assemblies. That is a consummation, surely, that from the first ad- mitted of no escape or evasion. It might be delayed, but it could not be conquered by any opposition, however reso- lute and stubborn. From the very moment when, at some viii PREFACE period anterior to the dawn of recorded history, the first rude conclave of wise men was summoned to deliberate upon the state of the nation out of which Parliament sprang the institution of the Reporters' Gallery became inevitable in the natural process of time and circumstance, and the development of new and democratic views of government and society. And it may also be said to be now a complete and irrevocable part of Parliament, a part that can never be lopped off and destroyed, so long as Parliament is in exist- ence. It will end only if and when Parliament itself is ever brought to an end, and the powers of government are vested in a despotism. MICHAEL MACDONAGH. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I IN THE GALLERY 1 II BEHIND THE SCENES ..... 10 III TRIALS OF A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER . 18 IV COMEDIES OF CONJECTURE .... 27 V THE REPORTER AND THE SPEECH . . 31 VI THE SKETCH- WRITER 41 VII LOBBYING 56 VIII IN HOURS OF EASE 72 IX THE SECRECY OF PARLIAMENT ... 81 X JOHN DYER, NEWS-LETTER WRITER . . 88 XI THE VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS ... 96 XII JOURNALS OF LORDS AND COMMONS . . 102 XIII FATHERS OF PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING . 109 ix CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XIV ' THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE ' . .118 XV THE COMMONS TAKE ACTION . . .128 XVI SAMUEL JOHNSON, PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 139 XVII JOHNSON'S COMPETITORS .... 148 XVIII THE JOHNSON TOUCH . . . .157 XIX ' THE UNREPORTED PARLIAMENT ' . .168 XX THE MEMBER, His CONSTITUENTS AND THE PRESS ....... 177 XXI ' LITTLE COCKING GEORGE ' . . .186 XXII RISE OF THE LONDON NEWSPAPERS . .192 XXIII THE DEFIANT PRINTERS . . . .199 XXIV A PROTRACTED DEBATE .... 206 XXV PRINTERS AT THE BAR .... 214 j XXVI THE CITY CORPORATION AND THE PRESS . 222 XXVII THE COMMONS AND THE LORD MAYOR . 230 XXVIII TUMULT IN PALACE YARD . . . .240 XXIX THE LORD MAYOR SENT TO THE TOWER 249 CONTENTS xi CHAP. PAGE XXX WHAT WAS THE RESULT ? . . . .258 XXXI ' MEMORY WOODFALL .... 265 XXXII DEVELOPMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 280 XXXIII CHARGES OF MISREPRESENTATION . . 289 XXXIV COLERIDGE AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 299 XXXV FIRST OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF THE REPORTERS ...... 308 XXXVI THE BOYCOTT OF WILLIAM WINDHAM . .313 XXXVII IRISH REVOLUTIONARY AND PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 321 XXXVIII A * TIMES ' REPORTER AT THE BAR . . 330 XXXIX LONGHAND REPORTING .... 337 XL DICKENS AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER . 345 XLI THE FIRST REPORTERS' GALLERIES . . 355 XLII DANIEL O'CONNELL AND THE REPORTERS . 362 XLIII CLEARING THE REPORTERS' GALLERY . . 370 XLIV PEEL, BROUGHAM, MACAULAY, DISRAELI . 379 i CONTENTS CHAP. PAGB XLV OPENING OF THE NEW GALLERIES . .392 XL VI ' MB. SPEAKER, I ESPY STRANGERS ' . .401 XLVII ADMISSION OF THE PROVINCIAL PRESS . 412 XL VIII THE LORDS AND THE REPORTERS . .418 XLIX 'HANSARD' 425 L THE OFFICIAL REPORT 438 CHAPTER I In the Gallery THERE is a gallery immediately over the Speaker's Chair which often distracts the attention of the visitor to the House of Commons from the proceedings on the floor. It is usually crowded. Instead of sitting still and listening like the occupants of the Strangers' Gallery, the men to be seen there are busily writing, and some of them even are constantly coming and going, appearing and disappearing through two side doors, with the alert movements and bustle of those engaged in hurried work. It is apparent to the observant stranger that this is the Reporters' Gallery, a place obviously distinct and apart from everything else appertaining to the House, and with its own separate signi- ficance. He knows from his experience as a newspaper reader that reporters and writers and artists are busy there so that the public may be enabled to see the rival political parties contending, at the closest quarters, for their opinions, with such faith and conviction as they can show, to observe how the great leaders on both sides personally bear them- selves in the encounter, and to read what they have to say in justification of the ideas and principles which they differ- ently think should influence domestic legislation and control the world-wide affairs of the Empire. 1 1 2 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY The stir and animation of the Reporters' Gallery is especi- ally noticeable on nights of important debates. The stran- ger probably watches with particular interest a process which he notices recurs every quarter of an hour, though, perhaps, he has but a dim comprehension of its purpose, It is the relieving of the reporters who are engaged in taking down in shorthand a great speech defending or attacking one of the chief Bills of the Session. Sitting in a row of little boxes in the front part of the Gallery are a couple of dozen reporters who, to use the phraseology of reporting, are ' on.' Their pencils may be seen flying across the pages of their notebooks, and there is an intent look on their faces as they concentrate all their energies on the task of trans- muting into hieroglyphics the emotion and passion, the reasoning and dialectics, of the orator. A minute or so before the time these men are to be relieved, a fresh relay of other reporters are observed leisurely taking their stations behind the row of boxes with notebook and pencil ready in their hands. Then when the clock over the Bar at the lower end of the Chamber indicates that the moment has come for these reporters to go * on,' they give the signal of relief, a touch on the shoulder, and it is instantly responded to by those in the boxes jumping out with a clatter that tells of the eagerness with which they give place to their colleagues. As the fresh reporters step into the boxes they take the speaker up * sharp,' often in the middle of the sentence which is being uttered while the process of relieving is taking place. The men who have thus been released from their posts disappear from the Gal- lery. But the most laborious part of their work is still before them that of transcribing the shorthand characters back again into the living language of the orator. The Reporters' Gallery is reserved exclusively for journal- ists. A Member of Parliament even is not allowed in. It is, perhaps, the only part of the House of Commons from which he is excluded. He may go into the Strangers' Gal- IN THE GALLERY 3 lery, the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery, the Diplomatic Gallery, the Peers' Gallery, and the Ladies' Gallery, for to all these he has free admittance, but if he should try to enter the Reporters' Gallery he will find the way barred. I have frequently seen the door closed by the attendant in the face of a Member of Parliament. Before he can get in there he must provide himself with a special order from the Ser- jeant-at-Arms. Nor is the Reporters' Gallery open to every journalist who cares to walk into it. Admission is obtained only by means of tickets issued by the Serjeant-at-Arms, in a limited number, to the newspapers whose position entitles them in the opinion of the Serjeant-at-Arms to representation in the Gallery by reporters, London correspondents, sketch- writers, leader-writers or artists. The tickets are of two classes, ' transferable ' and ' non-transferable.' A trans- ferable ticket may be used by any member of the staff of the newspaper to which it is issued, but the non-transferable ticket can be used only by the journalist whose name it bears. The names are sent by each editor to the office of the Serjeant-at-Arms before the opening of the Session. The non-transferable ticket is in this form : REPORTERS' GALLERY, HOUSE OF COMMONS. Not Transferable, SESSION 19 . MR. STEPHEN STAPLETON. The Examiner. H. D. ERSKINE. Provided with this piece of cardboard the journalist is allowed to pass through the outer gates of New Palace Yard by the vigilant policemen, and cross to the far and quiet corner it is at the end of the cloisters leading from 4 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the Clock Tower which gives access to the large wing of the Palace of Westminster set apart for the accommodation of the newspaper men. A constable is always on duty there. On the opening day of every Session he challenges each reporter, old or new, and demands his passport. Fresh tickets for the Reporters' Gallery are issued every Session for greater precaution those out of date have to be returned to the Serjeant-at-Arms and therefore to pass the police- man it is necessary for even the oldest and most famous of parliamentary journalists, as well as a new-comer, to have a new ticket for the new Session. In the case of a fresh arrival, the officer having satisfied himself that the ticket is in order and duly signed by the Serjeant-at-Arms leads the way with words of welcome to a small glass door that opens immediately on to a flight of stairs. It is the narrow and winding stairs up which thou- sands of reporters have ascended since 1852, the year the present Chamber was first used by the Commons and the Reporters' Gallery opened. Dimly lighted it used to be, and old reporters as they stumbled up it seemed to find that it grew steeper and more tortuous every new Session. Since 1904 the difficulties of ascent have been mitigated by a lift? which hoists to the three floors of the journalists' quarters. But no young reporter coming for the first time to the Gal- lery the goal of every young reporter's ambition and in the proper state of mind for the great adventure, would think of being carried up in the lift. He will prefer to walk up the long, narrow stairway ; and thus at once commence (for despite his great success, as he accounts it, he is still a dreamer of dazzling dreams), to make of the stairs step- ping-stones to higher things, to follow in the footsteps of the many men who, with the aid of the experience derived from the parliamentary reporting side of the newspaper calling, have won fame and rewards in law, politics and religion, as well as in still higher grades of journalism. 1 1 William Jerdan, the journalist and author, says he knows ' no IN THE GALLERY 5 On reaching the first floor the reporter passes through swing glass doors into the ante-rooms of the Gallery. There are two of these oak-panelled apartments. The first is mainly used by the messengers of the news agencies. A narrow passage leads from the first to the second. Here may be seen the few tables and desks for writing that con- stituted the original accommodation provided for the re- porters in 1852, and were thought good enough for them for many years afterwards. But the present interest of this room for us is that by passing through a door to the right or the left of it we step into the Reporters' Gallery. Imme- diately inside each of these doors sits an attendant. Both are in evening dress, and display over their shirt-fronts the badge which distinguishes all the messengers of the House of Commons a brass chain with a brass figure of Mercury attached. They are there to see that no unauthorized person gets into the Gallery. Accordingly, the new-comer is again accosted, and his credentials from the Serjeant-at-Arms are once more examined. These attendants, or messengers, are there also to preserve order and decorum. In that respect their post is a sinecure. During my quarter of a century in the Gallery only once have I seen a reporter forcibly turned out for contumaciousness. He struggled fiercely against ejection. I remember that the nice shirt- front of the attendant was crumpled and torn, and the sym- bol of sprightliness and swiftness wrenched from its chain. But he was overwhelmed, and cast forth unhappy wretch ! for ever. It is for many useful services that these messengers are held in kindly remembrance by all Gallery men. Often it happens that an unknown Member intervenes in debate. better preparatory school for the Bar or almost any description o! public life ' than the reporting of the Debates. ' By forcing the mind to consider many instructing and important questions it creates a sort of universality of talent,' and there were, in his time, many men ' in possession of high celebrity and station ' who owed their success entirely to this schooling. Autobiography? vol. 1, pp. 88-9. 6 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Then the question, ' Who is this ? ' runs round the Gallery, and the identification which answers it is quickly supplied by one or other of the attendants, to whom almost every face in the House is familiar. The Gallery is, perhaps, as well placed as it could be for hearing, having regard to the arrangements of the House. For though it is fourteen feet above the floor, on the same elevation as the side galleries for Members, it is directly over the Speaker's Chair, towards which Members are sup- posed to turn when addressing the House. The first im- pression one gets of it from the inside is that of its narrow and confined dimensions. It extends the entire width of the Chamber from wall to wall, and has short ' wings ' on each side encroaching upon the Members' galleries, from which they are separated by barriers with doors. The little sunk boxes for the reporters along the front of the Gallery are twenty-nine in number. At the back, close up to the carved oak wall, and separate from the boxes by a passage-way, is a raised bench, comfortably cushioned, and provided with a ledge, with ink-holes, for writing. Here about thirty-six other journalists find seats. The ledge is hinged in sections of a few feet, so that by lifting the section in front of him a man can slip in or out without disturbing or incommoding his colleagues. On what is called ' a big night ' that is the night of an interesting debate, to be followed, perhaps, by a critical division the Gallery is thronged ; and its congested state, at least while the leaders are speaking, shows that its accom- modation falls far short of the demands frequently made upon it. On such an occasion all the boxes are occupied. They are allotted to the exclusive use of the principal London and provincial newspapers, the news agencies, and the Official Debates staff, and being better situated than the bench behind for seeing and hearing, they are, as I have said, mostly occupied by note-takers. The men on the back bench are chiefly those who write the descriptive sketches, IN THE GALLERY 7 They occasionally jot down a telling or amusing point made by the right hon. gentleman one of the great debaters who is addressing the House ; and they eagerly scan the crowded and excited Chamber for incidents with which further to enliven their descriptions. In each corner of the Gallery, just inside the doors, there is standing room for about a dozen more journalists. Here may be seen mixed groups of sketch- writers, unable to find places on the back bench, and reporters, some of whom are the immediate successors of the men on guard in the boxes, and others, being free of work for a time, are present as idle spectators. There is a Reporters' Gallery also in the House of Lords. Separate tickets of admission to it are issued by the Lord Great Chamberlain, who exercises jurisdiction over the Peers' section of the Palace of Westminster. The ticket is in this form : SESSION 19. AVAILABLE DURING SESSION. Admit the Representative of THE EXAMINER to the Reporters' Gallery of the House of Lords. The Lords' Gallery is on the same plan as the Commons' Gallery. It is provided with boxes for the reporters in front, and, at the back, a bench with a writing-ledge for artists and sketch- writers. This Gallery is much smaller than the one in the other House. There are only twelve boxes and fourteen back seats. But on occasions of great public interest extra accommodation is afforded by appro- priating to journalists the first row of the Strangers' Gallery, which rises, on a higher plane, immediately behind. This concession was first granted to the reporters attend- ing the House of Lords in the year 1 906. The date is worthy of being put on record, for, in a sense, it marked the end of the ancient tradition or custom which, to secure the secrecy of debate, rigorously prohibited note-taking the 8 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY use of pencil and paper in any shape or form in the Strangers' Galleries of the new Houses of Parliament, or, at least, was the first departure from it. On August 6, 1880, Lord Denman complainingly related to an amused House of Lords how his desire to get one of his speeches specially reported by a shorthand- writer in the Strangers' Gallery was frustrated. Intending, as he said, to vindicate Lord St. Leonards the great lawyer from an imputation of injustice, he engaged the shorthand-writer to take down the speech for presentation to his old colleague, who was too feeble to come and hear it. The shorthand- writer was refused admission to the Reporters' Gallery without the necessary ticket from the Lord Great Chamber- lain, and Lord Denman gave him an order for the Strangers' Gallery. But the moment he took out his notebook and pencil he was warned by the attendant that if he attempted to use them he would be instantly removed. 1 The same rule applies to the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons. I was once prevented from taking notes there, though I was a member of the Reporters' Gallery at the time. It was in 1887, my first year as a parliamentary reporter. Having obtained two passes to the Strangers' Gallery, I went there with a friend to point out to him the leading personages of the House and its most interesting features. Parnell got up to speak, and as I wanted his speech for my paper, the Freeman's Journal, Dublin, I took out my notebook and began reporting the Irish leader. Presently I was observed by the attendant from his com- manding place on the top row of the Gallery, and hurrying down the gangway to me he peremptorily ordered me to stop, saying that no strangers, save the occupants of the Reporters' Gallery, were permitted to take notes in the House of Commons. I told him I was a member of the Reporters' Gallery, and further explained to him the reason why I was in the Strangers' Gallery, and how necessary it 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 255, p. 440. IN THE GALLERY 9 was for me to have ParnelPs speech. He said he had no option in the matter. There was no duty he had to carry out more strictly than that of preventing notes being written by strangers, or, if they were written, of obtaining possession of them ; and, in compliance with his demand, I had to tear out of my book the notes I had actually taken, and give them to him to be destroyed. Nevertheless, I had the satisfaction of taking notes in the Strangers' Gallery long afterwards without let or hindrance from the messengers. The historic occasion was the intro- duction of the People's Budget by Mr. Lloyd-George in 1909. So unprecedented was the demand for places in the Report- ers' Gallery that night that a section of the Strangers' Gallery was allotted to sketch-writers, and the Reporters' Gallery itself was reserved, as far as possible, for those reporting the speech. It was the first time in the long history of the House of Commons that note-taking was permitted in the Strangers' Gallery within sight of the Speaker, and animated simply by a natural curiosity to taste of things new and strange, I went round there to share in an experience that was limited to one night only. CHAPTER II Behind the Scenes ABOUT 260 journalists are employed in the Galleries of the two Houses, the Lobby of the House of Com- mons in which the London correspondents and the writers of political notes get most of their interesting gossip during the Session and in the committee-rooms of both Houses, upstairs, where commercial projects which need parlia- mentary sanction, and special matters of public policy, are investigated before the Bills or resolutions embodying them are passed into law. There are five varieties of the par- liamentary journalist. The largest and most important of the groups are the reporters of the Debates and committees. Then there are the sketch- writers ; the lobbyists ; the writers of London letters, and the artists. The diversity of their work has the common unifying aim of satisfying the inquisitiveness of the public in regard to Parliament. Two classes who follow the newspaper calling in London are excluded from the Reporters' Gallery women journal- ists and the representatives of the foreign Press. England is said to be the only country where foreign correspondents have no official recognition, and are denied access to the Reporters' Gallery of the Legislature. It is a long-standing grievance of the foreign correspondents, Continental and American, in London that they should be refused a courtesy which is so freely extended to British journalists abroad. When Phelps was United States Ambassador at St. James's, in 1884, he sent a very urgent letter to Mr. Speaker Peel, requesting admission into the Reporters' Gallery for the 10 BEHIND THE SCENES 11 London representative of a leading American newspaper ; but the reply was that no departure could be made from the rule which excludes foreign journalists. The representatives of the foreign Press again laid their case before the Select Committee of the House of Commons which sat in 1908 to consider the question of the reporting of the Debates, but they were again unsuccessful in pressing their claim. The view of the authorities of the House always has been that, having regard to the limited accommodation in the Gallery, the admission of the representatives of Reuter's Agency which has long had the right of entry, and which serves the newspapers of the world was the most they could do for the foreign Press. I remember well the flutter of mild excitement in the Reporters' Gallery caused by a movement in 1890 to obtain admittance for women journalists. ' Is there any reason why women should be prevented from reporting the pro- ceedings of Parliament to their fellow-women ? ' asked the Women's Penny Paper. ' Surely those who take an interest in political questions are entitled to see in the Women's Penny Paper some short record of the discussions which materially affect them.' Accordingly, Miss Julia Blain, a representa- tive of that journal, * written by women for women,' applied to the Serjeant-at-Arms for facilities to give its readers a summary of debates relating to women in the House of Commons. The following answer was returned : March 11, 1890. MADAM, In reply to your letter of the 10th, I regret to have to inform you that it is quite impossible for me to comply with your request. Not only have I no authority to admit ladies into the Reporters' Gallery, but the Gallery is already quite filled, and there is a long list of journals which are applicants for admission in the event of a vacancy taking place. I am, Madam, Yours faithfully, H. D. ERSKINE. 1 1 Miss Victoria Fer sang at the dinner of the Press Gallery in 12 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY When Miss Blain subsequently saw the Ser jeant-at-Arms he assured her that he had not the slightest personal feeling with regard to the presence of ladies in the Reporters' Gallery. In declining to grant her request he was simply acting according to his instructions. He added that he had never heard of such a thing before, and he plainly hinted that the time had not yet come if it ever came for permitting women to work in the Gallery. Charles Bradlaugh then a Member of Parliament interested him- self in the matter. He asked the Speaker what objection there was to the admission of women journalists. Mr. Peel enigmatically replied, to the accompaniment of much laughter, that ' it would lead to consequences which at present it is difficult to conceive ' ; and there the affair ended. The Serjeant-at-Arms was also reported to have said this to Miss Blain : ' The male journalists would, he thought, much resent the intrusion of women into the Gallery, and he was afraid that the consequent outcry would be terrific.' Some opposition was undoubtedly expressed in the Report- ers' Gallery. It was mainly composed of two elements the trade union feeling, and the club man's feeling. Some were apprehensive of being ruined by female cheap labour, and others supposed that their free and unaffected social intercourse would be fettered and made artificial by the presence of women with as they put it their different habits of thought and speech and manner. Woodcraft, the chief attendant in the Reporters' Gallery, was very emphatic in his opposition. ' It would not do at all,' he said to me. ' Why, ladies are not even allowed in the the House of Commons on Friday, when Sir Edward Grey was the chief guest. When it was suggested that she should sing Sir H. D. Erskine of Cardross, the Serjeant-at-Arms, was unable to find any precedent for permitting a woman to appear at such an entertain- ment within the precincts of the Houses of Parliament. Ultimately, however, he was induced to modify his views, and Miss Fer was allowed to sing. The Times, May 7, 1912. BEHIND THE SCENES 13 Strangers' Gallery. They have a Gallery of their own. If they want to come into the House as reporters they must have another special Gallery built for them. I could not have them here. There would be too much play going on.' Perhaps in that last sentence he shrewdly put his finger on the real difficulty. The number of men composing a staff varies on different newspapers and ranges from five to twelve. But be the staff large or small, the system of working is identical in every case. The reporters follow each other in regular rotation and at stated times, according to the roll, or list, drawn up by the chief. The * turns ' are usually a quarter of an hour, to begin with, and are shortened first to ten minutes and subsequently to five minutes, as the night advances, bringing nearer the hour at which the newspaper is to be printed. The object of this system of relays and short turns is to get the ' copy ' speedily to the compositors. The entire staff is quickly brought into operation ; the pre- paration of the report begins within less than half an hour after the House opens, and thenceforth until the close of the sitting there is a regular conveyance of ' copy ' by mes- sengers from Westminster to the newspaper offices in the Strand and Fleet Street. A reporter, then, has but to look at the time-table of his staff in order to learn precisely when he is due in the Gallery, and when he is to be relieved, which colleague pre- cedes him and which follows him. The usual practice is for the reporter to be at hand, or within call, one ' turn ' ahead of his own, in order to provide for the contingency of his immediate predecessor failing, from illness, forgetfulness, or any other cause, to appear at the proper time and relieve the man in the box. For a reporter to forget when he is due and thereby leave a colleague * on ' for more than the fifteen, ten or five minutes of the * turn ' is regarded as a grievous fault if, indeed, it be not the unforgivable sin especially when a Member who has to be reported fully is speaking. 14 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY But, apart from that, the conscientious reporter recognizes that it is desirable to be in the Gallery a few minutes at least before he is due in order that he may know the nature of the business before the House, or the drift of a speaker's argu- ment, and so be able to take up intelligently the report of the proceedings, or the thread of a speech, exactly at the point where his predecessor lays it down. When his ' turn ' is over and he is relieved by his successor the reporter goes to one of the writing-out rooms. He has a choice of several large and comfortable rooms in which to transcribe his notes. There is, in truth, a very extensive suite of apartments for the accommodation of the journalists behind the Gallery. It has been added to from time to time, since the opening of the House of Commons in 1852, as is apparent from the many stairs, with their curious twists and turns, and the rambling irregularity of the whole place, which makes it so delightfully puzzling to every new reporter in his first Session. Two of the writing-rooms, known as ' the first black ' and 6 the second black,' overlook New Palace Yard. Another, known as ' the long room,' affords glimpses of Speaker's Court. All are furnished with desks, tables and chairs, and ink, pens and stationery. The walls are hung with portraits of famous parliamentary journalists and original drawings by artists who have worked in the Gallery. These rooms are for the use of those who like to smoke while working. And here may be found not only reporters transcribing their notes, but descriptive writers, lobbyists and London corre- spondents, spinning from their imaginative and fertile brains light and gossipy sketches of scenes and incidents in the House, or reasoned criticisms of speeches and policies. In the two ' black ' rooms there is a good deal of unavoid- able bustle. The messengers of the newspapers and news- agencies come searching for ' copy,' which they carry off as I have already described in instalments, as it is written. But most journalists are too accustomed to writing amid BEHIND THE SCENES 15 noise and at high pressure to be distracted by the constant movement in the rooms. However, for those who need quietude or who do not smoke, there is ' No. 18,' one of the committee-rooms, somewhat remote from the Gallery, but, perhaps, the finest of the writing-rooms, from the windows of which are to be seen the life of the Thames and the historic towers of Lambeth Palace on the far side of its waters. The labour of the reporter in the preparation of his * copy ' depends upon the importance of the subject under discus- sion, and also the standing of the Member or Members who spoke during his ' turn.' In the case of a debate on a topic of little concern to the general public, carried on by Members of no great consequence, the reporter will have only a few lines to write. More space is allowed to Members recognized as authorities on living questions of the day. Sometimes the reporter gets instructions from his chief. It may be, ' You can put that into a line or two ' ; or, * Give him an eighth of a column ' ; or ' He is worth a quarter of a column.' Much is left to the reporter's own discretion. The opinion of both, however, is always qualified by the extent of the space which the editor proposes to give to the debate. It follows, therefore, that the amount which the reporter has to write varies in every * turn.' Occasionally during a sitting the occupants of the boxes may be observed follow- ing the speeches with idle pencils, for the most part, but always listening closely to the divergent political opinions that are being expressed, listening for the witty saying, the happy suggestion, the fresh outlook, listening for something expressed with originality and conviction, listening for the epigrammatic sentence in which is concentrated the essence of a Party's creed. And while the reporter is thus listening, and listening perhaps in vain, for a statement which lends itself to brief and lucid summary, something else of great moment may, without warning, be sprung upon him, turning his idle pencil into a busy one. A ' scene ' may explode 16 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY which must be described fully. Not a bitter and virulent word that is said in the heat engendered by a personal encounter or the clash of party antagonism must ever be missed. A great speech may also be suddenly and unex- pectedly delivered. The Leader of the House or some other Minister, or the Leader of the Opposition, may make a statement of intense national interest. Did not Sir Stafford Northcote, as Leader of the House, on a celebrated occasion, rise and say, ' Perhaps I may be allowed a few minutes before the House proceeds to business,' and with this casual preface proceed to announce that it was the intention of the Government forthwith to dissolve Parliament ? Thus was the death-knell of the wonderful Disraelian regime most prosaically sounded at question time on March 8, 1880. Every sentence of such momentous announcements, short or long, will be eagerly read all over the world. The reporter is therefore bound to secure every word of the speech if it be at all humanly possible. On such occasions the listless occupants of the boxes are aroused to intense activity, and their erstwhile relaxed faces assume a strained and anxious expression. And as all that is said on these occasions has fully to be written out, it accordingly happens that while the reporter may be able to dispose of one ' turn ' of a quarter of an hour quickly and pleasantly in a few minutes, a ver- batim, or first person, * turn ' of the same duration will occupy him in transcription an arduous hour and a half, or two hours, brooded over by a deep sense of responsibility. The quarters of the journalists behind the Gallery are therefore always humming with life, and occasionally tense with high excitement. Through it all the spinning out of copy, and its despatch to newspaper and telegraph offices, progresses regularly and smoothly. Let us suppose that a speech of weight and consequence is being made. The Prime Minister is, perhaps, unfolding the policy of the Govern- ment, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer is opening his Budget. Half an hour after he rises to the table and, BEHIND THE SCENES 17 spreading his notes on the despatch-box in front, begins his speech, the first part of it is being set up by newspaper compositors in London, or is being sent to the provinces by telegraphists in the Central Telegraph Offices. The second part, meanwhile, is in the pouches of messengers, hastening by train or bicycle to the newspaper offices, or is being trans- mitted by pneumatic tube from Westminster to St Martins- le-Grand. A third section is being transcribed in one of the writing-rooms by a group of reporters hot from the Gallery. A fourth, in the process of delivery, is being taken down by the reporters in the boxes. And, finally, a fresh relay of reporters is waiting with notebooks and pencils to record the part that is yet unspoken. CHAPTER III Trials of a Parliamentary Reporter THE trials of a parliamentary reporter, as I shall show, are many and grievous. But, first, what are his qualifications ? I find them admirably set out in a paper which I discovered unexpectedly in the Journals of the House of Lords. On May 18, 1849, a petition was presented to the House by " shorthand- writers, who are parliamentary and law reporters for the London newspapers," urging the appointment of an official staff for the reporting of the Debates. It says : That the qualifications of an efficient reporter in the Houses of Parliament are of a peculiar and varied character, comprising, amongst others, the following: 1. The power of taking down words as uttered by the speaker with accuracy, so as to have on paper the material from which to draw up a faithful transcript. 2. Experience in the forms of parliamentary proceedings. 3. A general acquaintance with the leading public questions which come under discussion from time to time. 4. And closely connected with the proceeding, a competent acquaintance with general history, politics and literature, and with the institutions, commerce, trade and manufactures of the United Kingdom and its Dependencies, together with a general knowledge of foreign politics. 5. Facility and accuracy in composition. 6. The power, arising in a great degree from the possession of the foregoing qualifications, of apprehending quickly the meaning of a speaker, of detecting accidental mistakes and inadvertencies and of following a chain of reasoning, so as to be able to prepare a report for publication without deviating from strict fidelity. 1 There are two main qualifications without which no one 1 Lords Journals, vol. 81, p. 227. 18 TRIALS OF A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 19 can hope to succeed as a recorder of the proceedings in Parliament. The first is that he must be a shorthand- writer, and the second is that he must be a reporter. A man could be the first without being the second, or the second without being the first. A shorthand- writer is one who is able to take down, word for word, the utterances of a speaker. A reporter is a person with quite a different capacity. He must have a knowledge of the subject under discussion, and such judgment and discretion, and gift for condensation as will enable him to divest the ideas and arguments of the speaker of diffuseness and verbiage, and present them clearly and concisely in print. Competency in both of these branches of reporting makes the efficient parliamentary reporter. He will have occasion to exercise them separately in the preparation of his copy in the course of a single sitting. There is no limit to the subjects, no boundaries to the places, that the House of Commons may not get into touch with on any night of a Session. That being so, the reporter, besides being a rapid note-taker, must be acquainted with the history and geo- graphy of the world, and especially of the British Empire, and also have so complete an understanding of current poli- tics and economics as to appreciate the subtle allusions which play about every great debate, for, without this equipment, he will not be able, on the one hand, fully to report the important speeches of Ministers and ex-Ministers, and, on the other, to condense judiciously the remarks of speakers who, while they do not bear to be reported ver- batim, have yet something of value and interest to say. It is difficult to attain, perhaps, complete efficiency in verbatim reporting in Parliament, because of the adverse circumstances in which it is practised. Short hand- writing has long ago been developed to the highest standard of excellence. Many of its cultured practitioners are to be found in the Reporters' Gallery. If errors occasionally appear in the reports, they are due more to a growing decad- 20 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY ence in parliamentary speaking than to any incompetency in parliamentary reporting. Unhappily for the reporters, Members of the House of Commons, and especially the emi- nent occupants of the two front benches, often neglect to cultivate a clear articulation, or even to take the little trouble of raising their voices which would alleviate one of the greatest afflictions of the reporters that of being unable often to hear and understand the muffled and mumbled wisdom of statesmen. The qualities in a speaker which the reporter most appre- ciates are lucid thinking and distinct expression ; and what- ever else they may possess, some of the great parliamentari- ans of the twentieth century lack these two gifts. Old reporters maintain that public speaking has undergone a complete change in manner, and perhaps in substance also. Bright, Disraeli, Gladstone and Chamberlain were masters of different styles of oratory, but they had this in com- mon they were direct and plain in the evolution of their thought and in the expression of it. I cannot say from my own experience that that was always true of Gladstone, for I have painful memories of endeavouring to unravel and smooth out very involved and tangled sentences of his ; but he had a voice that rang out like a bell ; and as he spoke like most of his historic contemporaries with deliberation and impressiveness, the reporters had no trouble, either in hearing him or taking down his words. The style of speaking that has become common in Parliament is what is called ' the conversational ' a flow of words so free and rapid that not infrequently the skill of the reporter in the use of ' the winged art ' is taxed to the uttermost to get them into his notebook, though it is not the speed of this new style that worries the reporter so much as its colloquial mode and subdued intonation. It is very clever talk in its way. It is simple, plain and natural, sometimes dropping, it may be, to a pedestrian and prosaic level, but on the whole a fitting instrument for the purposes of exposition and cri- TRIALS OF A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 21 ticism, and, being founded upon the solid facts of the case, it is, perhaps, more in consonance with actual life and reality than the old set speeches of lofty and studied elo- quence. But there are many occasions in Parliament when oratory is needed to arouse, as well as to express, high thoughts and warm feelings, and few of the strings of collo- quial speaking are of compass and elevation enough to touch the ardent heart of man. I do not mean to convey that the spirit of oratory has deserted the halls of St. Stephen's. 1 I have in mind but the general form which debating has assumed. Speeches of power, originality and genius have been made during the closing years of the nineteenth and the opening years of the twentieth centuries, which showed that parliamentarians can recover, when they please, some of that mighty oratorical inheritance which they seem, at times, to have either lost or deliberately discarded. I can recall finely delivered speeches by Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd-George, Mr. Winston Churchill, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Lord Morley of Blackburn, Mr. Ramsay Mac- Donald, Mr. John Redmond, Mr. T. M. Healy, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. F. E. Smith, Mr. William O'Brien, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Harcourt, Lord Hugh Cecil, Mr. Philip Snowden, in which were revived the uplifting fervour of parliamentary oratory in the days of its greatest glory the oratory that is the utterance of gifted men whose deep conviction of the greatness and righteousness of their cause inspires and transforms their advocacy of it. Then there is another annoyance from which the reporter suffers. I have said that the Reporters' Gallery is in the best possible position for hearing. Nevertheless, it is not perfect in that respect. The reporters are not only far removed from the floor, but they are above the heads of 1 Mr. Bonar Law, at the annual dinner of the Reporters' Gallery in 1913, made a remarkable statement in regard to parliamentary speaking : " I do not think I can honestly say I have ever heard one single eloquent speech in the House of Commons " (The Times, April 26, 1913). He entered Parliament in 1900. 22 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Members. When Members speak they are expected to address the Chair. ' In the Commons a Member addresses the Speaker,' says Sir Erskine May ; ( and it is irregular for him to direct his speech to the House, or to any Party on either side of the House." * If Members always faced the Speaker and also spoke up there would always be an assurance of what they said reaching the Reporters' Gallery placed as it is over the Speaker's Chair and of their words being recorded with absolute faithfulness. But the rule as to addressing the Speaker is almost as often broken as it is observed. It is not at all an infrequent occurrence, even for a Minister when making a statement of great moment and public interest, to turn his back to the Speaker as well as to the reporters and talk to his supporters below the gangway. On July 22, 1910, Mr. Balfour then Leader of the Oppo- sition had to explain, or complain, in the House that in the official report of the previous day's debate he had been represented as having stated ' exactly and precisely the contrary ' of what he did state ' with the utmost emphasis.' He had said ' inapplicable,' but was reported as having said ' applicable.' The missing prefix * in ' naturally made a difference, and Mr. Balfour very properly insisted upon the correction ; but the point of the incident was this wise comment which Mr. Speaker Lowther made upon it : There is something to be said for the reporters. I believe they have often difficulty in catching what is said because right honourable and honourable Members will not address me. It is very probable that Mr. Balfour, by a slip of the tongue, really said ' applicable ' for the report in The Times was to the same effect but, at any rate, the reporter sets down what he hears, and if he does not hear distinctly what was actually said he has to make the best guess at it 1 Law and Usage of Parliament (llth edition, 1906), p. 310. 5 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 19, pp. 1615-16. TRIALS OF A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 23 he can. It is amusing, as well as instructive, to note that a few minutes after the Speaker had given his timely admoni- tion to Members, Mr. Lloyd-George, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, rose to speak on the interesting subject of the new Civil List for King George, and The Times thus began its report of his speech : ' Speaking with his back to the Gallery, the right hon. gentleman was understood to say.' The reporter, armed with the Speaker's authority, was surely entitled to administer this little rebuke to the Minister. But tt was not to be expected that it would have any effect, when even the Speaker's censure had apparently passed from the mind of the Treasury Bench ten minutes after it had been uttered. At the annual dinner of the Reporters' Gallery, on May 3, 1912, Sir Edward Grey, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was the chief guest. He acknowledged the compliment in an admirable speech on parliamentary reporting and journalistic work generally. He protested that he could never understand how it was that a speech, possibly a long speech, perhaps a confused speech, was taken down, transcribed, put into type, and published in the newspapers within the limited space of time allowed for the whole operation. The whole thing was ' marvellous and mysterious ' to him. If Sir Edward Grey's speeches in the House on foreign affairs were correctly reported as, no doubt, they were it was a * marvellous and mysterious ' feat indeed. During the Session of 19U, on November 27, just six months before he complimented the reporters on their astonishing success in the pursuit of their avocation, he had occasion to make the greatest and most momentous speech of his career as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The good relations between England and France, on the one side, and Germany on the other, had been strained almost to the point of hiss- ing fire and slaughter at each other upon the question of the status of France in Morocco, and on the night I speak of the House of Commons was packed, floor and galleries, with 24 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY an audience eager to hear with rapt attention how the Foreign Secretary had handled that delicate international situation and how an appalling war had happily been averted. If ever there was a time when a Minister should have been deliberate in his utterance and audible and clear, surely it was this. The speech of the Foreign Secretary was awaited not only with interest but with anxiety by the whole of Europe, trembling, as it still was, from the peril of a terrible sanguinary struggle. The reporters were the ear of those far scattered millions outside the House of Commons. It was most essential that so grave a speech, which would be scrutinized and criticized in every Chancellery of Europe, should be reported with absolute accuracy, for its purpose was to explain how Germany was induced or compelled by England to consent to a French protectorate over Morocco. Yet Sir Edward Grey entirely ignored the journalists. He turned his back on the Reporters' Gallery, and leaning his left elbow negligently upon the despatch-box, and for- getting that he was really speaking to Christendom, he read his speech from a typescript to his supporters below the gang- way in a rapid and level conversational tone. It was a great speech undoubtedly. It displayed Sir Edward Grey's notable qualities of calm sobriety of mind and high integrity of character, and also the sagacity with which he had guided the foreign policy of the country through a very difficult crisis. And yet it was characteristic of the statesman's shyness and retiring disposition, that the performance was really more like that of a big self-conscious schoolboy reading to his fellows an essay for which he had been awarded the first prize, than that of England's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs speaking in the House of Commons on a matter of fateful import to Europe. The strain on the reporters was terrific. I had a quarter of an hour's ' turn ' of the speech for The Times. From my twenty-five years' experience as a parliamentary reporter I cannot recall any more paralysing ordeal, mental and physical. How wel- TRIALS OF A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 25 come was the relieving touch on the shoulder from the colleague who followed me, and with what joy did I give him place in the box ! On the whole, the Gallery answered well to the infuriating test to which its efficiency was put by Sir Edward Grey unwittingly, of course, for a thought of the reporters never entered his head at all. But it was inevitable that errors should have crept into the reports of a speech so monstrously delivered. The Times, a few days later, contained a letter signed ' P.V.,' the writer of which described himself as ' the doyen of the French Press in this country.' He complained of the little attention given to foreign correspondents by the British Government ; and the ' but scanty help ' they re- ceived from their British confreres, and then proceeded to call attention to discrepancies in the versions of Sir Edward Grey's speech published in different London newspapers. The Times, he said, gives a passage relating to ' our friend- ship with France ' it happens to have occurred in the part I reported as follows : ' . . . then the Anglo-French agree- ment as to Morocco will become . . . not an active but a passive factor in the relations between the two countries.' The writer of the letter adds : Another London newspaper gives a similar report of this passage of Sir Edward Grey's speech. In other newspapers, on the con- trary, Sir E. Grey is reported as having said a ' pacific ' factor or a ' great factor.' If the word used is ' pacific ' it has in this connexion but little sense, and it appears doubtful if it were used. If the words used were ' not an active but a passive factor,' they have both sense and a considerable importance. Of course there is a possible error, and ' pacific ' and ' passive ' may be taken one for the other in shorthand. But what about * not an active ' ? The writer further adds, in order to point the moral of the exclusion of foreign correspondents from the Reporters' Gallery : ' The matter is a serious one, for as the speech gets read in the English papers abroad, as it will be in a day or two, there will be a question as to the accuracy of these reports, and the discrepancy will give rise to endless and 26 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY possibly acrimonious discussion.' l But, as I think I have shown, ' P.V.' would not have found it easy to decide which is the correct rendering of the passage even if he had listened to the speech from the Reporters' Gallery. 1 The Times, December 1, 1911' CHAPTER IV Comedies of Conjecture HEARING is more defective in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons. The Chamber's decora- tions are very beautiful, but its acoustics are very bad. It was designed, of course, rather with the object of pleasing the eyes of the Lords than of making their speeches intelli- gible to the ears of the reporters. Moreover, while the reporters are perched up aloft at one end of the Chamber, the Lord Chancellor sits facing them on the Woolsack at the other. It is true that, unlike the Commons, who are re- quired to address the Speaker, the Lords speak, or are sup- posed to speak, not to the Lord Chancellor, but to the whole House. But it is noticeable that Lords who have had the advantage of having sat in the House of Commons before their elevation to the peerage carry with them to ' the other place' the custom they have learnt in the representative Chamber. They address the Lord Chancellor, turning their back, in doing so, on the Reporters' Gallery, and the example set by them, as the leading men in the House, is followed, generally, by the others. Consequently, it is not an uncom- mon thing for the reporters to be seen with their hands hollowed behind their ears painfully striving to catch the smothered sentences of a Minister who half turns his back on them as he talks to the Lord Chancellor in drawing-room, rather than in smoking-room, tones, or whispers important political announcements to the Leader of the Opposition, on the other side of the table, as if he were saying soft nothings to a lady in her boudoir. 27 28 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY It is the practice for the reporters, representing various newspapers, who have been ' on ' during an exceptionally difficult quarter of an hour to write out together. One of the group, who has possibly a better note than the others, reads aloud as he transcribes, and all the others as they write, practically from his dictation, follow the speech on their own notes, so that if he is stopped by a gap, or a doubt- ful phrase, some one else in the combination is usually able to come to the rescue. For the sake of accuracy it is fre- quently necessary to follow this course in regard to important pronouncements, so rapid is the rate of speaking, so involved the style, and so indistinct the utterance, of some of the men of the front rank in both Houses of Parliament. Though each of the reporters may not have succeeded in transferring to his notebook every sentence of the speech, five or six are almost certain to have between them a fairly complete record. Accordingly, by writing together and comparing notes they can turn out, for common use, something like a faithful reproduction of the speech as it was spoken. Were it not for this spirit of comradeship that prevails among the reporters, this desire to help each other out of a hole, it would sometimes be impossible to obtain accurately announcements of considerable public interest which are imperfectly heard. But even so, it occasionally happens that the reflection of a speech, obtained from the combined note- books of the group of reporters writing together, is faint and confused. The notes, jotted down as a sentence or half a sentence falls upon the ear, are necessarily fragmentary and disjointed ; and in these circumstances there is always a good deal of troublesome piecing together and dubious con- jecture on the part of the puzzled reporters, before light emerges from the darkness. It is very slow work, as well as disagreeable. The reporters show admirable patience in unravelling the difficulties of their task. But sometimes they become exasperated, and then there is a good deal of disputation among them as to what to retain or what to COMEDIES OF CONJECTURE 29 reject, or how to render a doubtful passage. And after all their labour it may turn out that expressions are mangled, or given meanings entirely different from that conveyed by the actual words used by the inaudible speaker. Most of the London newspapers of July 12, 1887, reported a humorous conversation between Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery in the House of Lords on the previous even- ing. The topic was the Egyptian Convention and its rati- fication. At the end of the colloquy Lord Rosebery was reported as having asked, ' Are we to understand that the British Plenipotentiary (Sir H. Drummond- Wolff) is in a state of suspended animation ? ' ; and the reply of the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was given as, * Perhaps it would be more correct to say that he is in a state of animated expectancy.' On the evening of the 12th Lord Salisbury complained, in the House of Lords, that the conversation had been incorrectly reported. He said the use of the words s animated expectancy ' was a very disrespectful way of speaking of Her Majesty's ambassa- dor, and added, ' I am sure I was never guilty of it.' Lord Rosebery was not then in his place, but two days afterwards he stated that he had looked at his share in the report and he assured their lordships he had never used the expression ' suspended animation.' * What the two noble lords really said was not divulged to the House. But it happened that a couple of months later, on September 26, 1887, Lord Rosebery presided at the inaugural meeting of an International Shorthand Congress in London, and having humorously asked which of the 481 systems of shorthand in vogue in the world was responsible for that wonderful newspaper report, gave the following account of the conversation : ' I said to Lord Salisbury, " Are we to understand, then, that Sir Henry Drummond- Wolff is in a state of agitated expectancy ? " to which Lord Salisbury replied, in a conversational manner, "I will 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 317 ; pp. 487 and 710. 30 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY telegraph and ask him, if you like." Lord Rosebery, addressing the Congress, added : Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the most painful and humiliating acts of my career. For a short time I flashed on the world in the light of a Sheridan, or a wit of a very high order ; and to have engaged in a contest of wit with Lord Salisbury is always an honourable thing, even if one gets the worst of it ; but on this occasion to have to come down from those lofty and exaggerated heights of brilliancy to this miserable substratum of prose and fact is indeed a very unfortunate and humiliating position. (Cheers and laughter.) However, ladies and gentlemen, I have satisfied, I think, the curiosity that once existed on a controversy which raged for some little time in the country papers. 1 1 Transactions of the International Shorthand Congress, pp. 18-19, CHAPTER V The Reporter and the Speech THE question is sometimes asked : Do the reporters find it necessary often to improve the speeches of Members of Parliament ? There is a story told of a par- liamentary reporter on The Times staff, in the 'Thirties and 'Forties of the nineteenth century, named Tyas, who was a man of uncommon classical attainments. He re- ported a speech by Brougham, and in the course of transcrib- ing his notes, the thought occurred to him that the argument would be illustrated by a certain quotation from Cicero, and accordingly he put it in to the extent of about twenty lines. Brougham adopted the passages of the Roman orator, for the speech, with the ornamental flourish interpolated by the reporter, will be found in the collection which he himself prepared for publication. 1 The reporter by no means thinks his duty extends to supplying the knowledge or the illustration lacking in the speech he transcribes. He finds, as a rule, that he has quite enough to do noting and writing out what has actually been said without making gratuitous additions to it. He is not responsible for the accuracy of the statements he reports, any more than he is responsible for the soundness and moral worth of the principles and theories he reports. If he were, his knowledge would have to be superhuman, for often in the course of a year he is called upon to deal with almost every subject in the whole field of truth and fact. He confines himself to correcting obvious slips, and he allows even these 1 Knight Hunt, The Fourth Estate (1850), vol. 2, p. 280. 31 32 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY to go forth if the value of an argument hang upon them to any extent. But his chief task is so to unwind the verbose skein as to make clear the hidden governing principle, the salient points, of the speaker ; to present the vague thought with definiteness, to give the language in which it is expressed consecutiveness and coherency. I should not be surprised to hear that it is a common experience for a visitor to the House of Commons, when he turns next morning with un- wonted interest to the parliamentary report in his newspaper in order to see how the debate to which he had listened is presented in print, to exclaim in wonder as if something in the nature of a miracle had happened. For he sees that the dull and dreary speeches which had so wearied him are given in ten crisp lines all a-sparkle. And I should not be surprised either to learn that the Members who took part in the debate were not so impressed as the stranger with the transformation their speeches had undergone between delivery and publication. They would probably prefer that what they said were given as they said it, on the prin- ciple that though it was a small thing it was their own. It will be gathered from this that a good deal of pruning and trimming takes place in the preparation of the Debates for the newspapers. In the case of a verbatim report, how- ever, the aim of the reporter is to give the sentences as he took them down without trimming or recasting. If such a speech is condensed it is because instructions have come from the newspaper office that the report must be kept down, as there is but little room for it owing to the abundance of other matter. But if the necessary space is available, the desire of the reporter is to give everything that is said, and, as far as possible, in the way it is said. Nevertheless, in first-person reports of speeches by even the leading par- liamentarians it is sometimes necessary to smooth out in- tricacies, to suppress a trite or aimless phrase, to omit purposeless repetition, to make a halting sentence march in due line with its companions, and to emphasize the main THE REPORTER AND THE SPEECH 33 point by careful adjustment and proportion. Indeed, there were few Members of Parliament in my time whose speeches were, as a rule, so correct and finished in diction that it would be presumptuous on the part of the reporter to pre- tend to make their language fresher or more forcible. In these I would include Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Churchill, Mr. John Redmond and Lord Hugh Cecil. Curiously enough, the two most powerful intellects that have been in Parliament for a long time, Mr. Balfour and Lord Morley of Blackburn, habitually clothed their original and profound reflections on political questions in sentences lax, loose and disjointed. I have sometimes thought that their reputations as speakers might possibly suffer if Morley 's pensive reflections and Balfour's philosophic dictums were printed as delivered, without the reporter's discreet emenda- tions and omissions. In reading the memoirs of famous Lords and Commons I have occasionally met with irritated criticisms, in con- versation or letters, of reports of their speeches which ap- peared in this newspaper or that. On the other hand, when they have had occasion to refer to the subject publicly they have handsomely declared their grateful indebtedness to the reporters. Mr. Balfour, as the guest of the members of the Reporters' Gallery, at their annual dinner in 1908, declared that speakers in the House of Commons owed more to the reporters than perhaps they were always prepared to admit. But even in his praise an undercurrent of jocose qualification may be detected. He said : We all of us owe to the kind attention of the reporter the excision of many superfluities, not always, perhaps, regarded as superfluities by the orator, the correction of many gross errors of grammar, and an improvement of our oratory which we may be reluctant to admit, but which is nevertheless there. In the name, therefore, not only of your guests this evening, but of that large body of loquacious gentlemen of which it appears I am the most loquacious, I beg to tender to this society my warm thanks, not merely for the hospitality which we have received from you this evening, but for the work 3 34 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY which you have done to improve our oratory, to spread our opinions, and to make clear the opinions which we conceive, at any rate, that we hold. 1 At the dinner in 1909 Mr. Asquith paid a similar compli- ment to his hosts. ( I acknowledge with a full sense of gratitude,' said he, speaking for Members of Parliament, * the debt which, from the most to the least reported, we all owe to those who give to our words, whether well or ill spoken, a larger audience, and a wider scope of appreciation and criticism than they could otherwise command.' He added : The new Member of Parliament, coming straight to Westminster with the laurels of victory round his brow, is only too happy if you do not carry the art of retrenchment of which you are such admirable masters, to the point at which you simply report him, ' The hon. gentleman rose in his place, and after a few observations resumed his seat ' (laughter) I can speak personally from a pretty full experience, having travelled, I think I may fairly say, the whole distance it is a long and dusty road between the opposite extremes of pitiless condensation and literal transcription. (Laughter and cheers.) With that experience in my mind and memory, I am not sure that I should not say, if I were in the palace of truth, that the last state was worse than the first. (Laughter.) I believe indeed that the verdict of most public, or at any rate parliamentary, speakers would be that the kindly sponge of sympathetic oblivion is often to be preferred to the cruel fidelity of the verbatim report. (Laughter.) 2 It would, indeed, be cruel to report the Debates with absolute literalness. There is a great deal of matter that is rambling and irrelevant. Hazy ideas and slovenliness of expression are only too common. But apart from that, the speeches of the great majority of Members must neces- sarily be summarized as the room for reporting them fully is not available. Still, even when condensing the remarks of a back-bench man the reporter endeavours to retain in his summary not only the opinion or argument, but, as far as possible, what is distinctive and characteristic in the 1 The Times, April 11, 1908. 2 The Times, May 15, 1909. THE REPORTER AND THE SPEECH 35 phraseology. If this were not the common practice of the reporters, the individuality of speeches, or their reflection of the temperament and diction of their authors, would be lost. All would be reduced, or raised, to the same mono- tonous level ; all would be alike in texture and kind, so far as the outward dress of language is concerned. And, more- over, the reader would rarely get into direct personal contact with the mind of the speaker. There is another question. Are the reporters impartial ? Some people may still retain the notion, which had a good deal of vogue in the early years of parliamentary reporting, that reporters ' colour ' their reports of speeches, according to their own political opinions, or those of their paper. The notion had really never any foundation in fact. A parlia- mentary reporter is no more influenced in his work by his views on politics than is a doctor or a lawyer. And as for the suggestion that reports are ' cooked ' in the newspaper office, a statement made by The Times so long ago as March 13, 1835, may be regarded as still of universal application. On that day the paper published a refutation by Charles Ross, a member of its parliamentary reporting staff, of a charge contained in an anonymous letter in The Morning Chronicle that his report of a speech by Richard Lalor Sheil, the Irish orator, in the House of Commons, dealing with Orange Societies in Ireland, was garbled and designedly incorrect ; and in a prefatory note The Times said : To avoid all cavil on the subject, we may add that our parlia- mentary reports are published precisely in the state in which they are furnished to us by the reporters, with no other alteration than the correction of such trifling errors as must now and then occur in compositions executed with such surprising rapidity as these are, Ross showed that his summary of Sheil's speech did ample justice to the arguments by comparing it with the full report given by The Morning Chronicle from the speaker's manuscript. He pointed out also that owing to Sheil's peculiar mannerisms in speaking very little of what he said 36 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY was understood by the reporters. ' The usual observation in the Gallery,' says Ross, ' is that he talks like a foreigner ; and it is remarkable that whilst he was speaking on the night in question I turned to a gentleman behind me and said, " Did you ever hear any thing like this ? " His answer was jokingly, "He is talking French." If, therefore, Mr. Sheil's speech had been one which I thought worth giving at some length, I should have asked him to be kind enough to write it for me. As it was, I was content with such points as I could make out.' * Ross added that he wrote out, or compared notes, with the reporter of The Morning Chronicle, so that if that newspaper had used its own report of the speech it would have been found to resemble The Times report in every essential particular. Mr. Balfour, in his speech at the dinner of the Reporters' Gallery in 1908 was, indeed, most emphatic in his testimony that the re- ports were * absolutely impartial.' In The Times of Novem- ber 23, 1902, will be found the following interesting letter from Lord Morley, or John Morley, as he was then, on the same subject : SIR, I am so much indebted to the care, skill, and probity of reporters certainly not least to your own reporting staff that I should like to correct any erroneous impression from a sentence that fell from me on Friday night at the National Liberal Club. I said, incidentally and to guard my own accuracy, that I did not find certain words of Mr. Middlemore's in The Times ; and it is true, I think, that a sentence about * the man in the street,' which struck me particularly, had slipped out. But I did not mean to say, and it would not have been true, that the other operative sentences were omitted. They are not omitted. You would hardly expect me to declare that I never on any occasion detect mild traces of partisanship in your own observations, but I shall be glad if you will allow me to say very freely that I never find a sign of it in your parliamentary reports, and I regret having conveyed an erroneous impression. 1 Gladstone when asked once who was the most eloquent speaker he had ever heard in the House of Commons replied, without hesita- tion, ' Richard Lalor Sheil.' Some one who heard him express the opinion asked, ' But did not Mr. Sheil scream a good deal in his speeches ? ' ' Sir, he was all scream,' replied Gladstone. THE REPORTER AND THE SPEECH 37 I do not maintain that the parliamentary reporters always suppress their feelings and opinions in the discharge of their duties. Human nature will assert itself, even in journal- ists, as the following extract from a debate in the House of Lords in July, 1867, indicates : The Marquess of Westmeath said he wished to call their lordships' attention to a serious breach of privilege. Mr. Edward Harper informed him that he was in the Strangers' Gallery during the discussion which took place in the House a few nights ago on the Bill to abolish the declaration against transubstantiation, and that he heard one of the reporters say in a loud tone to one of his colleagues as he entered the reporters' room, ' That damned old idiot West- meath (great laughter) is speaking. I will take care not to give a word of what he says.' Mr. Harper also informed him that the following incident took place during the discussion : While some of the reporters were leaving the reporters' box and being replaced by other reporters one of the former said to one of the latter, * What a pity it is that there is no one to send this drivelling idiot Westmeath to a lunatic asylum.' (Great laughter.) ' Great laughter ' was the greeting which the other peers deemed appropriate to the recital of Lord Westmeath's grievance. Perhaps they thought the ejaculations of the reporters, if strong, were perfect in their descriptive accuracy. The noble lord retaliated on the reporters by applying to them the grand old crushing phrase ' Jesuits in disguise.' As an intense Protestant he had opposed the Bill to abolish the declaration against transubstantiation contained in the oath of allegiance then taken by non-Catholic Members of Parliament. Not a word of what he said was reported in the newspapers. He laid his complaint before the House on July 16, 1867. He said a belief was prevalent that re- ports of what passed in the House of Parliament were rather faithfully given. No opinion, however, could be more fallacious. ' There is,' he said, ' a Jesuitical treachery in action in the Reporters' Gallery with a view to the falsifi- cation of the reports.' He therefore denounced ' the foul play of those reporters ' and appealed to the House to put an end to ' the detestable and infernal system ' which his 38 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY eavesdropping and tale-bearing friend, Mr. Edward Harper, had so fortuitously discovered. 1 But the Lords took no action, and no doubt the reporters as is their way felt hugely delighted and complimented at being taken for Jesuits. Another peer, Lord Lyttelton, who a few years later fancied that he had reason to complain of the reports of his speeches, was more discreet in giving expression to his sense of injury. There is a letter from him in The Times of May 6, 1871, repudiating the suggestion that he was always writing to the newspapers to correct his speeches. Having admitted that he was difficult to report, he humorously added : * I repeat that I do not complain of the reporters. To do so would be unjust in my case very foolish in any case, for we are absolutely at the mercy of those excellent and formidable personages, and to complain would be to make matters very much worse.' Then he told two anec- dotes in illustration of what he meant. Cobbett incessantly abused those whom he always sneeringly referred to as ' reporthers,' for not fully reporting him. They punished him by not reporting him at all. Spring Rice (the Whig statesman, afterwards the first Lord Monteagle), said some- thing about the reporters which they did not like. As he declined to give them the apology for which they asked, he was not reported for several years. The ostracism, or pro- scription, was broken, according to Lord Lyttelton, when Murray, the publisher, started a new paper called The Con- stitution, and, to ingratiate himself with Spring Rice, re- ported his speeches, whereupon the other papers were obliged to report him also. 2 1 The account given by Lord Westmeath of what Harper over- heard in the Reporters' Gallery is not reported in The Parliamen- tary Debates, or in The Times, though, curiously enough, references to it are made in some of the subsequent speeches which both authorities record, and which, in the circumstances, must be quite unintelligible to those who know not the facts. 2 Lord Lyttelton probably refers to The Representative which THE REPORTER AND THE SPEECH 39 I am also bound to confess that in the writing-rooms, while the reporters, after a bad quarter of an hour in the box, are endeavouring to read the riddle of the hieroglyphics in their note-books, Radicals might be heard denouncing Mr. Asquith for dropping his voice, and Unionists saying equally uncomplimentary things of Lord Hugh Cecil for his exas- perating fluency and swiftness of speech. At the Gallery dinner of 1911 Mr. F. E. Smith, who was one of the guests, referred to the ban put on him by one of the Liberal papers in the provinces at the opening of his political career. He protested humorously that he did not know why the paper should have declined to report him, as he was sure there was nothing improper in anything he ever said. But Mr. W. J. Flynn, of the Official Debates Staff, reminded Mr. Smith that ' if his speeches were not improper they were certainly fast.' There is one more point to explain in connexion with the preparation of the report. As each man transcribes his notes he indicates on his slips that it is his first, or second, or third ' turn,' as the case may be. Not only that, but on his first slip he mentions the time of his turn, ( 6 to 6.15,' the name of the colleague he relieved, f Ponsonby follows Wheeler,' and states also who was addressing the House, ' Harcourt speaking.' This is done right through, * turn ' after ' turn,' to guide the printer in the proper sequence of the report as it is being put into type. It may seem to the outsider an elaborate system of precaution ; but such is the hurry and John Murray, the sagacious publisher, was induced by the irresistible Benjamin Disraeli at the age of twenty, to bring out, greatly to his loss in pocket and disturbance of mind. The first number appeared on January 25, 1826. It consisted like The Times of four pages with five columns each, and such was the interest the public then took in the Debates that, it gave again like The Times sixteen or seventeen of its twenty columns frequently to the parliamentary report. The Representative, after a brief and inglori- ous existence of six months, came to an end on July 29, 1826 and Murray lost 26,000 by it, 40 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY excitement in the printing office, especially as the hour for putting the stereotyped plates in the machines draws nigh, that the greatest care is needful in order to avoid ' mixes '- such incongruous, not to say grotesque, jumblings, for in- stance, as the wild and unpremeditated Cymric strains, fresh from the hills of Wales, of Mr. Lloyd George's Radicalism and Nonconformity, with the Tory and High Church reflec- tions of Lord Hugh Cecil, sounding as if they had been fashioned at the Oxford Union which, however amusing they may be to the general reader, do not, to say the least, tend to the gaiety of the newspaper office CHAPTER VI The Sketch- Writer THE representatives of the provincial newspapers were admitted into the Gallery only in 1881. The story of the opening of the doors to them will be told at its proper place chronologically, in my history of the evolution and development of the Gallery. I mention the circumstance here because it led to a remarkable extension of the scope of parliamentary journalism. That was the describing, as well as the reporting of the proceedings in both Houses, which has been common to all the newspapers of the country for many years now. At first, the effect of the admission of the country journal- ists into the Gallery was a rivalry between the London and provincial newspapers in the production of more extended accounts of the Debates. The speeches of unimportant Members were reported at substantial length, and those of Ministers and ex-Ministers were given fully and in the first person. At the same time the provincial newspapers led the way in the general adoption of a new parliamentary feature as a set off, or relief, to this surfeit of massive blocks of speeches. They set the example of giving a descriptive summary, or sketch, presenting pictures of the parliamentary arena and its leading personages, in addition to the ordinary long report of the Debates. It is true that vivid impression- ist articles of the kind were written thirty years earlier. One of its first exponents, if not its actual inventor, was a clever Irish journalist named Edward Michael Whitty (son of Michael James Whitty, founder of The Liverpool 41 42 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Daily Post, in 1855, the first penny daily paper published in the United Kingdom), who, in 1852 and 1853 wrote for The Leader, an influential London weekly journal of the time, a series of sketches of characters and manners in both Houses, signed ' The Stranger in Parliament.' The idea of the sketch might be traced back partly to the summaries of the proceedings of Parliament in The Times, which were commenced by Horace Twiss, 1 and to the political articles by William Mudford, ' The Silent Member,' in Blackwood's Magazine of the 'Forties. 2 It was introduced into daily journalism in the 'Seventies by a still more brilliant and famous English journalist, Henry William Lucy, of The Daily News. But it was the enterprise of the provincial news- paper, following the example of The Daily News, when, in the early 'Eighties they obtained places in the Reporters' Gallery, that brought about a notable expansion, in numbers, activity and ability, of the then small group of parlia- mentary sketch- writers and political gossips. Disraeli, in a letter to his sister, dated January 23, 1840, points out with a shrewdness and taste that is quite journalis- tic, the defects of the ordinary heavy and solid parliamentary 1 See the article on Twiss by Mr. W. L. Courtney in the Dictionary of National Biography. Twiss was elected to Parliament in 1820, and served in a subordinate office in the Wellington Administration from 1828 to 1830. He was out of Parliament from 1831 to 1835, and lost his seat again in 1837. * During these years while Twiss was out of Parliament and out of office,' Mr. Courtney says, ' he utilized his influence with The Times ; he originated the summary of the debates in Parliament, and occasionally he wrote leaders.' Twiss wrote the biography of Eldon, the Lord Chancellor. He died in 1849. 2 Mudford was editor of The Courier which supported Can- ning. After that statesman's death he declined to uphold the proprietors in a change of policy and publicly withdrew from the control of the newspaper. Settling at Canterbury, he con- ducted The Kentish Observer for many years, and then returned to London to edit John Bull. He died in 1848. One of his sons was editor of The Standard at the close of the nineteenth century. He was taken from the Reporters' Gallery to fill the position. THE SKETCH- WRITER 43 report that it gives little or no help to the reader to realize the scene in the House when a great speech is being made. ' The curious thing,' he writes, ' is that The Times, which gives an admirable report of what I said, gives a most in- efficient impression of the effect produced.' Then he goes on to convey to his sister an impression of the incidents attending the delivery of the speech, which would have been supplied by a sketch-writer, had there been one at work in the Gallery that night. ' I never heard more continued cheering : the House very full, about half-past ten when I sat down, a prime hour, and every man of distinction there. I never spoke better even in Bucks. It is in vain to give you any account of all the compliments, all the congratula- tions, the shaking of hands, etc., which I received in the lobby during the division, but time and this damned post prevent all communication.' It has, accordingly, come to pass that on great nights in both Houses of Parliament the raised back-bench of the Reporters' Gallery is crowded with occupants, as well as the low line of sunken boxes in front. The men at the back are those by whom the proceedings and personalities of Par- liament are described and criticized, dispassionately and good-humoredly enough, but, above all, graphically. They differ from the men in the boxes as much in their personal bearing as in the nature of their work. The reporters, as they come and go in turns during a weighty speech which has to be given fully, are sometimes in a state of suppressed nervous excitement due to the doubt of being able success- fully to cope with the torrent of the orator's words, or the strain of accomplishing it. And all the while the sketch- writers sit imperturbably behind, jotting down on the broad margins of their order-papers a stray phrase from the speech that is striking and characteristic, or a happy thought of their own. They look down on the scene from a position somewhat dispassionately lofty and apart like that of a judge upon the Bench, and their eyes are the shrewd, steady, 44 THE REPORTERS 5 GALLERY whimsical eyes of men always watching, judging, considering, weighing up. 1 The reporters in the boxes ply their pencils with such nimbleness and precision that they are enabled to give to the public the ideas and language of the statesmen and politicians. The pens of the men sitting upon the back- bench have the still more magical power of making pictures. They describe the environment in which the Debates take shape and colour. We see the confident smile of the orator, or the nervous twitching of his mouth, as he rises to the Table to make the important speech which the crowded House has assembled to hear. His manner of speaking is analysed. The expressions of his face, the intonations of his voice, the gestures of his hands, his animation and feeling, the varying effects of the speech upon the audience as it progresses when and why it was cheered or laughed at or ironically greeted are also described. We are brought into touch with human nature and human feeling in Par- liament, with the sincerity, the pathos, the whimsicality of the proceedings, their laughter and sadness, their passion and pretence, by observers acutely sensible to impressions and skilful in their interpretative delineation. And what do statesmen think of the work of the sketch- writer ? I can give two very interesting and somewhat 1 There has always been a curious sense of antagonism between the reporters and the sketch-writers, or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, a resentment by the old reporters of the admission of the sketch-writers into the Gallery. This feeling will be found expressed in the evidence given by reporters before the various Select Committees appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into the question of the reporting of the Debates, or the facilities afforded for doing the work. For instance, Mr. J. F. McCallum, chief of the Press Association staff, said to the Select Committee of 1908 ' I came into the Gallery first in 1877, and the place is a very different place now. We are simply crowded out by sketch- writers ; and these gentlemen, who are rather lofty, have very little regard to the convenience of the reporter, thinking that they are a cut above him. They will chatter when he is busy taking notes, making his task sometimes excessively difficult.' THE SKETCH-WRITER 45 varying estimates by two of the most distinguished Parlia- mentarians in the opening decades of the Twentieth Century. At the Gallery dinner in 1908 Mr. Asquith said this : To a Member of the House of Commons the shorthand writer, the recording, the accusing angel though he be, is in these days a less formidable figure than the picturesque author of the descriptive summary. (Laughter.) His reign began a good many years ago now, and, if I may quote a phrase of Sir Walter Scott, ' with a big bow-wow ' (laughter yes (turning to Mr. Lucy) I have my eye upon you (more laughter) never mordant, always kindly and genial, still I am glad to say, at this moment as articulate and as audible as ever of Toby M.P. 1 (Laughter and cheers.) But we poor victims may say with King Lear in these days ' The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me ! ' (Laughter.) Yes, you do not realize it, but a severe ordeal it is, and I suppose for one person who reads the report there are thousands who read the summary and the sketch. And it is the hand that pens that sketch which not only makes havoc of our reputation with our constituents, but which slowly undermines such dwindling and precarious remains of authority as we possess in the domestic circle. (Laughter.) It shatters such illusion as remains not only in the minds of the public, but in our own homes. (Laughter.) At the Gallery dinner of 1911, the chief guest was Mr. Lloyd George. He was more serious and critical on the subject of the sketch-writer than Mr. Asquith, for he said : I think the Press Gallery has grown in power during the time I have been in the House, and the sketch-writer has become the real terror of the Parliamentarian. He is universally read, and there- fore he is very dangerous. (Laughter.) Since my younger days in Parliament the sketch-writer has developed his functions enormously, and people depend for their impressions of Parliament on his writings. I think, on the whole, an impression is created which rather under-estimates the capacity of Parliament. Men enter the House of Commons because they represent something in their district, and it is not merely an intelli- gent, but a capable Assembly, one well worthy of the great functions it is called upon to discharge. Mr. Balfour, at the dinner in 1908, said a thing that was interesting not only as a criticism of the work of the sketch- 1 Lucy signed his parliamentary sketches in Punch, "Toby M.P," 46 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY writers, but as a refutation of the popular belief of his day, that his sole intercourse with newspapers was the reading of the contents-bills as he strolled leisurely through the streets. That was that you would get conflicting impres- sions of a particular debate by reading the descriptive sum- maries of it in different newspapers Unionist, Liberal, Nationalist and Labour. As a philosopher, Mr. Balfour would, no doubt, admit that absolute impartiality or cold neutrality is hardly to be found, and must not be expected, in any expression of the human mind. Indeed, it is now but a platitude to say that we are all swayed hither or thither, unwittingly and all unconsciously, it may be, by the impulses of the prejudices and prepossessions which Nature implanted in us at the start, or which our environ- ment made a part of us as we grew up. But allowing for the influence of personal attractions or repulsions always slight in the case of journalists, such is the broad-mindedness engendered by their calling these sketches are honestly written, as a rule, and fairly reflect the tone and sense of the parliamentary scene. Whitty, the first of the sketch-writers, is something of a satirist. In his writings * there is an undertone of mockery at the pretensions and insincerities of Members of Parliament. He also depicts their physical peculiarities in the plainest and bluntest fashion. Here, for instance, is his portrait of the novelist, Sir Edward Lytton (afterwards Lord Lytton) in 1852 : He was listened to ; but I question the effect for what he said was worthless, and it was said in a way which could not recommend it. Sir Edward's appearance is not happy, and on looking at him you wonder how such a dismal-looking personage could turn out some of the best novels of the day. And there is no brightening 1 Whitty published anonymously in 1853 a volume of his articles from The Leader entitled History of the Session, 1852-3. In 1906 they were republished with an introduction by Justin McCarthy, M.P., as St. Stephen's in the Fifties. Whitty went to Australia and died at Melbourne in 1860 at the age of thirty-three. THE^SKETCH- WRITER 47 of the eyes or face when he is in action : he lifts his voice up and down, and he sways his body backwards and forwards, and he wields his long ape-like arm, right and left, with a dull, heavy regu- larity that suggests nothing of the emotional, poetic intellect he insists in all his prefaces upon possessing. He had got his speech off this day week, and he plodded through it as a dull boy would through one of Chatham's ' My lords, I am astonished and shocked to hear ' orations. Incidentally we learn that at this time it was the custom of Members to suck oranges for refreshment in the House. ' He sat down intensely satisfied,' says Whitty, still referring to Lytton, ' plunging into an orange with the avidity of a Demosthenes, after having upset a Philip for the sixth time seeming as he sucked it, and yellowed his pale face with it, supremely ludicrous.' We are also told of another prac- tice which has likewise long since disappeared, that of a preliminary bow to the Speaker by a Member on rising to address the House. If a Member is seen under the influence of drink Whitty says so, and unsparingly describes his in- coherencies and antics. One night there was a great row because Gavan Duffy, an Irishman, described the House as ' corrupt,' and towards the end of it this incident occurred : At one moment anything insulting to Duffy would have been cheered the most frightful personalities would have been welcomed, and, though the House repented the blackguardism when Duffy remonstrated, it did cheer Mr. , who was in a white waistcoat, when he was mean enough and cowardly enough, to attempt a kick at a ' down ' man, by his declaration of opinion that because he would not apologize Mr. Duffy was a a ' I don't wish (with a lurch) to use an improper expression (grasping the rail of his seat) but not a a gennemelan.' On another night this happened : A gentleman rushed in, lurched about, and took his stand near the middle of the floor. ' Misther Spaiker, Surr.' All eyes were on the voice and the reeling figure ; and dead amazement crept over the faces of the seven Members present, and Secretary Wilson shut his eyes. The voice was undoubtedly in possession of the floor it was a matter of calculation when it should take possession, hori- zontally, of the said floor. ' Surr,' said it again, and the Speaker said ' Order, order ' in faint and appalled tones ; and the eyes of 48 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the seven Members and the thin galleries were on the gentleman in the staggering voice who could not get beyond the exordium of his oration. What was it ? has anything serious happened ? for one did not know at first whether it was drink or agitation which affected the orator. There is a good deal more to the same effect that is rather heartless and unfeeling considering that it was printed a day or two after the hon. gentleman had made a fool of himself in his cups, when there was no difficulty in identifying him. If such an incident were to occur to-day which is almost inconceivable, such is the change that has taken place in manners and customs I have no doubt that the sensibility of no one outside the House would be ruffled by it, for the veil of charity and silence would be drawn over it by the sketch- writers. The second of the notable sketch- writers, Henry William Lucy, inaugurated a genial way of describing the personal, as apart from the political, side of Parliament. There is an agreeable relish of good-natured humour in his portrayal of characteristics of Members, and exhibitions of vanity and absurdity on the floor of the House, and an admirable impartiality also, for he is singularly free from bias and predilection. The example of the light, friendly touch which he set has been followed by sketch- writers generally. 1 Some of them dwell at too great a length, perhaps, upon the human side of Parliament. They are disposed to ignore that conflict of political opinion to which so much of the interest of Parliament is really due. To them Parliament is rather a theatre on whose stage the human comedy is enacted, and they regard themselves as critics at the play 1 Several volumes of Lucy's sketches have been published. Fine newspaper work of the same kind, also historically valuable, will be found in Scenes in the Commons (1884), by David Anderson of The Daily Telegraph ; The Story of the Home Rule Session (1894), by T. P. O'Connor; The Asquith Parliament (1906-1 909), by Charles T. King of The Daily Express ; The Old Order Changeth (1911), by Frank Dilnot of The Daily Mail, and Liberalism and the House of Lords (1912), by Harry Jones of The Daily Chronicle. THE SKETCH- WRITER 49 whose duty it is to write about the personal idiosyncrasies of the chief actors, their manners, language, dress. And undoubtedly they provide a large section of the public with exactly what they want. Probably to the average news- paper reader Parliament is not primarily a great struggle for supremacy between opposing political ideas. It is rather a conflict between personalities they love and hate, between men they sulkily distrust and men to whom they gladly give their confidence. It is true, as Mr. Balfour said, that one would get some- what varying impressions of a debate from the sketches in newspapers of different political opinions. I can also be- lieve that a Member has been puzzled at times by the conflicting judgments passed on him, as a politician, as a debater, and the inconsistent impressions his manners and methods appear to make on the minds of the sketch- writers. But is not this diversity of treatment quite in the nature of things ? The painter and the sketch- writer prac- tise different forms of the art of representation ; and just as no two artists will paint the same landscape alike, so no two journalists will quite agree in their description of the same spectacle. What the difference of treatment denotes is not a perversion of the facts by one journalist or the other, but the varying standpoints from which a thing is viewed by different personalities. The sketch- writer, like the painter, puts into his picture the scene as he sees it through the softening haze or the golden glow of his own temperament, or his sense of what is essential and what is insignificant. He infuses his writings with the quality of his own imagination, and stamps it with the mark of his individual mind. A sketch-writer who afterwards became eminent as a writer of fiction with a jasis of social philosophy was Wil- liam Hale White, better known as * Mark Rutherford.' He recounts his experiences, and comments rather despondingly upon them, in Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, which is a 4 50 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY continuation of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford. As he was looking round for some employment, he says : ' At last I remembered that a relative of mine who held some office in the House of Commons added to his income by writing descriptive accounts of the debates, throwing in by way of supplement any stray scraps of gossip which he was enabled to collect.' This relative was, in fact, his father, William White, then door-keeper of the House of Commons, and when, acting on his father's suggestion, he sought for and obtained commissions from two provincial newspapers to supply them with a parliamentary letter, his father was able to do him the further service of getting him admission every night into the Strangers' Gallery. For a time he was ' rather interested ' in his work, but owing to the reiteration of argument in the House it after- wards became * tedious beyond measure.' * Half of my occupation soon came to an end,' he adds. ' One of my editors sent me a petulant note telling me that all I wrote he could easily find out for himself, and that he required something more " graphic and personal." I could do no better, or rather I ought to say, no worse than I had been doing. These letters were a great trouble to me. I was always conscious of writing so much of which I was not certain, and so much which was indifferent to me. The unfairness of parties haunted me.' Though he does not say so in his book, the other paper was The Rochdale Observer, to which he contributed for some years, beginning in 1867, a parliamentary sketch under the title ' Letters by a Radical,' twice a week. The work, as we have seen, was not congenial to him. He seems to have thought that there was in Par- liament too much sacrifice of principle to party expediencies by those whose sayings and motives and actions he had to describe. He also disliked the anonymity and isolation of his writings. ' I wrote for an abstraction and spoke to empty space.' On one occasion only did he receive the slightest recognition beyond payment. ' Once, I remember,' THE SKETCH-WRITER 51 he says, ' that I accused a Member of a discreditable manoeu- vre to consume the time of the House, and as he represented a borough in my district he wrote to the editor denying the charge. The editor without inquiry and I believe I was mistaken instantly congratulated me on having " scored." This is a touch which shows that ' Mark Rutherford ' was not wholly devoid of humour, as his books might lead one to suppose. But he was temperamentally incapable of pouring out any libation of emotion or sentiment in writing of the House of Commons, and to be a successful sketch- writer one must have an intense interest in Parliament, the ways of its Members, and in the political conflict as well. Lord Hartington, speaking in the House, on May 4, 1875, in relation to the power then possessed by every Member to have the Reporters' Gallery cleared merely by ' spying strangers,' called attention to the movement then notice- able in the Press to substitute * somewhat sensational de- scriptions of the proceedings of the House ' in place of the old formal reports of the Debates. ' I have never, however, seen any account of these proceedings to which I could for a moment suppose the House would desire to take exception,' he said, ' but still it is possible that this system might be developed to such an extent as might tend to bring the House into contempt, when it would be necessary for the House to take notice of them.' x The feeling of hostility to the sketch obviously underlying these observations, though it is restrained in expression, must have been com- mon in both Houses ; yet it speaks well either for the good taste of the writers or the moderation of Members of Par- liament or both combined, that only once has a complaint being made in the House of Commons of a provocative depre- ciation in a sketch. On March 29, 1893, Mr. T. W. Russell, then a conspicuous fighting Member of the Unionist Party, brought to the notice of the House a personal matter in- volving, as he thought, the privileges of Parliament. e I 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 224, p. 54, 52 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY desire to say I have no wish to come into collision with the newspaper Press,' he said. ' I am perfectly willing to be criticized, and I am perfectly willing to be abused by such newspapers as choose to criticize and abuse me. But when they make statements concerning Members of the House which are absolutely false, I think it is time for Members to ask for the protection of the House.' Having explained that he took this action on the advice of the leaders of his Party, Mr. Balfour and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Mr. Russell read extracts from the Daily Chronicle (London), written by Mr. H. W. Massingham, a very trenchant writer of a parliamentary sketch, in which Radical opinion and graphic description were finely blended. ' After the Chief Secretary (Mr. John Morley) came an unsupportable interval of " T. W.," ' Mr. Massingham wrote, ' each rasping sentence wound up with the paralytic energy of this tireless mercenary of Unionism.' The sting in the sentence for Mr. Russell was in the tail. It is curious how in politics men advance and deny charges of payment for political services as the last, unendurable insult. ' I wish to say emphatically to the House,' Mr. Russell declared, ' that since I entered Parliament seven years ago, I have not received one farthing, either from the Unionist Party or any other Party, from any individual or set of individuals, for any service inside the House or outside it.' The passage, Mr. Russell added, ' was written by a gentleman who, by the privilege of this House is allowed access to the Lobby, and I say that makes it all the worse.' Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister, and Leader of the House of Commons, paid a well-deserved tribute to Mr. Russell's sincerity and dis- interestedness. He said he had no doubt that the use of the word ' mercenary ' was due to ' a temporary inadvert- ence ' on the part of the writer ; but any application of it to a Member of Parliament was distinctly to be condemned. The hon. member Gladstone further said had in the most satisfactory manner disposed of the whole question as re- THE SKETCH-WRITER 53 gards himself ; and he had no doubt that the writer of the article would regret the error and the offence into which he had been betrayed. On the advice of Mr. Goschen, and Sir Henry James, speaking on behalf of the Opposition, Mr. Russell allowed the matter to drop. But it came up again in the House next day in a new aspect. Mr. Sexton, of the Irish Nationalist Party, called attention to a letter from H. D. Erskine, the Serjeant-at- Arms, addressed to the editor of the Daily Chronicle, and dated March 29 which was published in the newspaper that day and he asked whether the Serjeant-at-Arms had acted on his own initiative or under the direction of the Speaker. The letter was as follows : DEAR SIR, As Mr. T. W. Russell stated in the House this morning that the expression of which he complained was written by a member of your staff having access to the House of Commons, it is my duty to ask you, if that is the case, to warn the person concerned that his conduct has been an abuse of the privilege which has been granted to him, and that very serious notice must be taken of it if anything of the kind occurs again. Mr. Speaker Peel said that the Serjeant-at-Arms showed him the letter, and he entirely approved of it. But it was never intended that the letter should be published. * It was a private and friendly letter written to the editor, and was, I understand, marked " private." That very much alters the case.' Mr. Peel added : I think, if I may be allowed to say so, that the Press has a very keen sense of its responsibilities as well as of its rights. There are gentlemen who are allowed the privilege of admission into the Lobby. In this case the objection was not against the word * mercenary, 3 but against a description of some supposed personal characteristic of the hon. gentleman, the Member for South Tyrone. I must say that such words were grossly offensive. I think the Serjeant-at- Arms did his duty in writing a private and friendly letter to the editor expressing the hope that the remarks of the member of his staff would be couched in more decent language than they were on this occasion. 1 1 Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, vol. 10, pp. 1401-6, and 1507-10. 54 THE REPORTERS 5 GALLERY Still, the main intent of the sketch- writers is to be readable, to present a picture that will attract and please, and to secure that end they place no bounds to their application and industry. An interesting account of how they work has been given in a newspaper article by Mr. John Foster Fraser, one of the most famous of descriptive writers. He says : The conscientious descriptive writer has a constant nightmare that he may miss something. The temper of Parliament is as uncertain as the English climate. You may sit for three solid hours waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up that will lend itself to dramatic treatment, and get nothing. In lowness of spirits you go off to have a cup of tea, or a chop, and as a perverse provi- dence watches over the journalist you will be sighing there is nothing to write about when a man will come in and carelessly remark there has been no end of a shindy between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Lloyd George, or that an extremely humorous thing has just happened to one of the Irishmen. You've missed it, and you are angry. The descriptive writer to whom chance and circumstance have been so unkind as to take him out of the Gallery before the unexpected happens is, however, never left in the lurch by his more fortunate colleagues. Mr. Foster Fraser adds : But here the comradeship of the Gallery again comes in, and you soon hunt up a friend who has seen it all, and he describes the scene to you, knowing you will do the same for him should occasion arise. It is only by this means a parliamentary descriptive writer can be omnipresent. Personally, however, I make a point of being in the Gallery whenever I can. There is always something that lends itself to descriptive treatment, something trifling, maybe, in itself, and yet which all helps to make a particular impression on the mind and produce a particular atmosphere throughout one's article. They have made the working of the House of Commons, and the personal characteristics of its distinguished Members familiarly known to newspaper readers. Whatever their shortcomings may be, it must be allowed that they feed and stimulate the public interest in Parliament, and that is no bad piece of work for the nation. They are also contributing THE SKETCH- WRITER 55 good material to the stock that is ever accumulating for the future historian. Their sketches are not of passing interest merely, dealing with the trivial and irrelevant. On the contrary, they become more permanently and profoundly valuable as the times and men they relate to recede more and more into the past. Is it not well that posterity should have these intimate sketches of statesmen as they appear in the parliamentary arena, even though the value they will have for generations to come should turn out to be as so often happens that pathetic interest which belongs to the futility of political thought and effort made hopelessly mistaken by events long after these statesmen, so mighty in their day, are dead and gone ? And, to rise to a higher historical altitude, what would we not give for a descriptive account by a seventeenth-century T. P. O'Connor so capable of powerfully presenting the dramatic and signifi- cant in the proceedings of Parliament of Charles the First's raid on the House of Commons, and the still more daring expulsion of the people's representatives by Oliver Crom- well? CHAPTER VII Lobbying THERE is still another sort of parliamentary journalist known as the ' lobbyist.' He must not be confounded with those who work in the Reporters' Gallery, for ' lobby- ing ' is a journalistic function differing entirely from both reporting and sketch- writing. The lobbyist frequents the Lobby of the House of Commons, with the special permission of the Speaker and the Serjeant-at-Arms, on the search for news. He gathers the political gossip of Members, the official communications of the Government and the Op- position, and serves them up in brief, crisp paragraphs, often with spicy personal comments, in the ' London Let- ters ' of the provincial Press or in the columns headed ' Political Notes ' of the London morning journals. ' The Lobby,' by which name the antechamber of the House of Commons is universally known, is a spacious square hall. Its four symmetrical walls are of limestone of a rather drab colour, with floriated embellishment, and have win- dows of painted glass. The ceiling is of carved oak, with coloured armorial devices. The tesselated pavement, into which the motto ' God Save the Queen ' has been worked, has probably been trodden by more distinguished men and women of every race than have walked the floor of any other hall in the world. Under lofty archways of exactly similar proportions and arrangements are four massive swing-doors with glass panels, through which Members and visitors con- tinually come and go while the House of Commons is sitting. One door gives entrance from the fine Central Hall, to which 56 LOBBYING 57 the general public have admittance ; the opposite door leads directly into the Legislative Chamber ; the door to the right admits to the refreshment-rooms, libraries, and smoking- rooms of the Members ; and its opposite door leads out into New Palace Yard. Such is the outward semblance of that famous Lobby of the House of Commons, which is often more the centre of political activity than the Legislative Chamber itself. Bill after Bill may be introduced in the House, and business may be progressing with the surety and uneventfulness which all Governments desire, but to get at the true inwardness of things political one must walk the Lobby. There it is that events are turned over and discussed from the inside. It is there you will learn what is going on behind the scenes, the secret moves and counter-moves in the great game which is being fought for place and power by the rival political parties. Before seven o'clock and after ten the three hours' interval being what is known in Parliamentary circles as * the dinner- hour ' the bustle and excitement of the Lobby are most exhilarating, and to all who take an interest in politics and personages it is then the most interesting of all places. It is thronged with Members. Some are in great good humour over the latest party success in the House or in the country, others are discussing with long faces the misfortunes of their cause. But, obviously, all, however divided they may be by political opinion, are animated in their intercourse with one another by a unifying spirit of gay comradeship in this common centre of neutrality. And others beside Members are present. Agents of political associations, the men who conduct the political campaign in the constituencies, looking after the important work of registration and seeing that the local forces are properly organized for the fight in the polling- booths on the day of the election, are admitted to the Lobby to consult, as occasion requires, with the leaders of their Parties. Moreover, the constant visitor is almost certain to see there most of the notabilities of the day in all walks 58 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of life commercial magnates, poets, painters, and soldiers, and not only foreign plenipotentiaries from the Continent, but also coloured potentates in all their barbaric splendour. Peers mix in the throng. And as the Lobby is the centre of the social life of Parliament as well as of its political activi- ties, at night ladies in elegant costumes add a fresh and alluring charm to the scene. The hum of conversation is at times so loud, and the laughter of a group, in which one of the humorists of the House is a central figure, breaks out so unrestrainedly, that the buzz disturbs the legislators at work in the Chamber, and brings out a messenger of the Serjeant-at-Arms with an appeal for less noise. In the Lobby are some thirty journalists representing the London and the leading provincial daily papers and news agencies. The lobbyist is a production of comparatively recent years. He was scarcely heard of before 1870. Up to that time the Lobby was open to all comers. William White, the observant House of Commons doorkeeper, 1 in his book on The Inner Life of the House of Commons, de- scribes the Lobby in the 'Sixties as crowded with strangers who had come right up to the precincts of the House to gain a glimpse of the great Parliamentarians whose names were in e\nery mouth. He relates how, on one occasion, the Members were hampered in a division by the throng of strangers in the Lobby, even the police being unable to dis- tinguish between legislators and casual visitors. Mr. Speaker Denison records in his Diary under date March 1, 1870, a 1 White was a bookseller at Bedford when in 1854 he was appointed by the Serjeant-at-Arms, Lord Charles James Fox Russell, assistant doorkeeper, and, soon afterwards, doorkeeper, of the House of Commons. He wrote pleasant descriptions of the men, manners and customs of the House, in weekly letters to The Illustrated Times from 1856 to 1871. These sketches were published in 1897, in two volumes, under the title The Inner Life of the House of Commons, with introductions by the author's son, Mr. W. Holt White, better known as * Mark Rutherford ' who, as I have already mentioned, was himself a parliamentary journalist, and Mr. Justin McCarthy, M.P. LOBBYING 59 change that was made for the convenience of Members. ' The Lobby up to the door of the House was,' he says, * open to strangers and continually crowded by them, so that Members could not get to the Vote Office, or to the refreshment room, or to and from the House, without being pressed upon and thronged, not only by constituents, but by members of deputations and other strangers, to their excessive inconvenience.' He therefore arranged with the Serjeant-at-Arms that the Lobby should be kept free of strangers and reserved exclusively for the use of Members. All strangers had to remain in the Central Hall, and any one who wanted an interview with a Member was required to send in a message asking for it. 1 However, this rule ceased, in time, to be strictly observed; the Lobby became, once more, open to all and sundry ; and the journalist had to carry on his work under difficulties, taking his chance of interviewing Members with parliamentary agents, consti- tuents seeking orders, deputations, and all the other types of visitors to Westminster All that has been long since finally changed. After the Irish- American dynamite out- rages in 1884 access to the Lobby was restricted to journal- ists and political agents on the Serjeant-at-Arms' list, and to strangers who are accompanied by a Member. Who was the originator of what is called * Lobbying ' in the House of Commons ? Sir H. W. Lucy claims that dis- tinction, and his claim appears to be well founded. 'In the old days journalists engaged in Parliament had very little personal contact with Members in the Lobby,' he says. ' I happened to know a number of the Members, and I con- tributed political paragraphs to the Daily News. Of course, everybody was much shocked at this journalistic innovation, but it was a decided success. I found plenty of information coming to hand, and as time went on I paid more and more attention to the Lobby. Now, when Parliament is sitting, I am always at the House from the time the Speaker takes 1 Notes from My Journal, 253. 60 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the Chair till he leaves it.' He adds : ' Other papers soon employed lobbyists ; but the London papers, apart from the Daily News, stood out the longest. The Times was the last journal to have a representative in the Lobby.' This was in 1891, when Ernest W. Pitt was appointed. Now, every daily paper is represented in the Lobby, and the * Political Notes ' or the ' London Letter ' is an interesting feature of all the journals of the Kingdom that aim to be well-informed. Mr. Spencer Leigh Hughes, who wrote of politics with so genial an ironic merriment, and who was himself a Gallery- man and a lobbyist, before he was returned to Parliament as a Radical, paid a graceful newspaper tribute, as wise as it was witty, to Pitt, of The Times, after the death of that renowned lobbyist in 1908. Pitt in the Lobby is thus described : He said very little indeed, but he was what may be called a voracious listener, and he could listen in such a way as to encourage the other man to talk. I have often watched him when some Member has been eagerly confiding some information. At stated intervals Mr. Pitt would give a solemn nod, and you would think from his serious demeanour that the Member was uttering the last word of wisdom about something or other. But afterwards, if I alluded to the incident, he would sometimes say, as I enjoyed his friendship, ' Ah, poor fellow ! He thinks he knows all about it, but he knows nothing.' For it was not easy to tell Mr. Pitt some move in the game of which he had not heard but he never dis- couraged men by showing this previous knowledge, for he knew well enough that every one may be useful some time or other. Thus he endured what may be called the * chestnuts ' of political information with an equanimity and a complacence worthy of a martyr. He had his own political views and opinions, but they were never obtruded. It is true that the leading statesmen are rarely to be seen in the Lobby. Gladstone was observed there but once in ten years, and on that occasion he had to inquire his way to the Whips' room, so unfamiliar was the place to him. Sir William Harcourt in a speech made a reference to the Lobby which is not at all complimentary. ' I have heard rumours LOBBYING 61 of a dissolution of the House of Commons,' said he in 1891. 1 It is one of those silly things which are buzzed about by bluebottles in the Lobby. You will hear more nonsense in the House of Commons' Lobby in one hour than anywhere else in a month.' It is also the fact that Ministers with State secrets in their keeping display, when they come into contact with a newspaper man especially in the fierce light of the Lobby of the House of Commons, with its hun- dred eyes eager and suspicious a shyness and taciturnity which in public men, in this age of publicity, is very remark- able. But, then, Ministers are bound by the oath of the Privy Council to hold Government secrets in the strictest confidence, and, naturally, when they meet a journalist they are apprehensive of his wiles, and; in self-protection, adopt an attitude that is rather guarded and distant should the talk turn at all upon the political situation. This reti- cence with respect to important political news is still more marked, if that were possible, in the case of officials. Never- theless, the lobbyist succeeds in obtaining the very informa- tion which he desires, and the very information, too, which Ministers often are anxious to withhold. How, then, do these political secrets leak out ? Simply enough in some cases. For instance, the historic resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first Unionist Government a piece of news startling to the unsuspecting public was communi- cated to The Times by the retiring Minister himself. Having failed to induce the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, to consent to the reduction of expenditure on the Army, he despatched his letter of resignation from the Carlton Club, late on the night of December 22, 1886. ' After writing this letter,' says his son, Winston Churchill, ' he went down to The Times office, imparted his priceless information to Mr. Buckle, authorized him to make it public, and so to bed.' 1 * Of course, you will be friendly to me in your leading 1 Lord Randolph Churchill, 620. 62 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY article ? ' pleaded Lord Randolph Churchill, according to another story. ' Certainly not,' replied the editor. ' But there is not another paper in England that would not show some gratitude for such a piece of news,' protested the politician. ' That may be true, but you cannot bribe The Times? said the editor. ' This news is enormously import- ant. It will make a great sensation. But if you choose to have it so, you can give it to some other newspaper, and not one line of it will appear in our columns to-morrow.' But Churchill left his secret with The Times, and with the an- nouncement next morning there was a strong article severely censuring him for deserting his leader. Here, again, is an illustration of quite a different way in which Cabinet secrets get into the newspapers. In 1881, a year of great political excitement in Ireland, when W. E. Forster was Chief Secretary, the Freeman's Journal of Dub- lin startled the kingdom by publishing some correspondence between Mr. Forster and Mr. Gladstone, containing matters of great State importance. The letters, for one thing, showed that the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary were not quite in agreement as to the Irish policy of the Government. How did the newspaper get possession of these documents ? At first some of the clerks of the Irish Office in London were suspected of having copied them and given them to a lobbyist ; but, after an investigation, conducted by the most astute minds of the detective depart- ment, it was found that a reporter had surreptitiously taken the letters from the brief of a leading counsel for the Crown, in court, during the trial of some of the leaders of the Land League for conspiracy in Dublin. Undoubtedly, not only Members but statesmen also 1 blab ' at times. When the Ministry of Lord Derby fell in June, 1859, Queen Victoria sent for Earl Granville to form an Administration, as neither of the rivals for the leadership of the Whig Party, Lord Palmer st on and Lord John Russell, was a favourite of hers. Granville failed in LOBBYING 63 the task, and Palmerston ultimately became Prime Minister. But the point of the episode for us is that it led to Queen Victoria sending a letter to Granville in the following terms The Queen is much shocked to find her whole conversation with Lord Granville yesterday and the day before detailed in this morn- ing's leading article of the Times. What passes between her and a Minister in her own room in a confidential intercourse ought to be sacred, and it will be evident to Lord Granville that if it were not so, the Queen would be precluded from treating her Ministers with that unreserved confidence which can alone render a thorough understanding possible. Moreover, any Minister could state what he pleased, against which the Queen could have no protection, as she could not well insert contradictions or explanations in the news- papers herself. Granville, in reply, expressed his deep consciousness of her Majesty's reproof, and his great annoyance at The Times article. He said it was true he had given to many of his political friends an account of his interview with her Majesty, believing her Majesty had authorized him so to do, and also because he found attempts had been made to attribute every sort of motive to the negotiations which might render the Court unpopular. 1 Attention was drawn to the matter also in the House of Lords on June 17, 1859, by Lord Derby, who described it as ' a violation of official decorum and con- stitutional practice.' In his explanation Granville frankly attributed the disclosure to his own failure to observe ade- quate discretion. He also said : * I very deeply regret that I did not use that complete reserve which would have en- tirely precluded the possibility of publicity being given to a conversation, the purport of which could have been properly stated by me only in my place in Parliament, and at the proper time.' 2 It is not necessary for a Minister or a Member openly to convey to a newspaper an item of secret political information which he holds under trust. There are various devious ways 1 Letters of Queen Victoria, 1837-1861, vol. 3, pp. 443-4. 2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 154, pp. 423-30. 64 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY in which he can do it and save his face, or satisfy his con- science. A lobbyist told me that he once got a message to meet the representative of the constituency in which his paper was published. The interview took place at one of the windows in the corridor of the committee-rooms, which are provided with writing ledges, and after a brief talk about things in general the Member hurriedly departed. But he left after him on the ledge, as if forgetfully, a document which the journalist discovered to be the draft of the Report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons then sitting to inquire into a subject which excited considerable public interest. Not a word had passed between them about this document. The lobbyist returned the draft with a note simply saying that he found it on the ledge after the Member had left. But next morning the substance of the Report appeared exclusively in his newspaper, a ' fine scoop,' as it is called in newspaper circles. This particular lobbyist tasted one of the joys of life, and his discomfited competitors its bitterness. There was a great ado in the House of Com- mons. Attention was called to the matter by the Chairman of the Committee. * Who betrayed the secret ? ' he asked. Echo answered ' Who ? ' The work of the lobbyist is, therefore, by no means specu- lation and invention. Of course his success depends, in some measure, on the position and influence of the journal he represents. But there are sources of information open to all lobbyists alike. In addition to the common gossip of the Lobby, yielding good material for political notes, there are parliamentary papers of various kinds, such as Blue- books, reports of Committees, copies of new Bills, intended amendments to Bills, resolutions and motions, out of which interesting paragraphs can be made. When there is little news to be had, when the lobbyist is (as he himself would say) * gravelled by lack of matter,' can he be blamed if he has recourse to his imagination and invention in order to supply his newspaper with the column or so of gossip ex- LOBBYING 65 pected nightly of him ? At any rate, there is a story told that a provincial journalist was seated on the stairs leading from the Lobby to the Peers' Gallery in the House of Com- mons one night, ruminating on the lack of political news, when Gladstone happened to come down unobserved by him. ' Will you kindly allow me to pass ? ' said the Prime Minister, as he then was, to the pensively cogitating journal- ist. Up jumped the lobbyist and stood aside, and Gladstone passed on with a gracious nod of recognition. The incident, trifling though it was, gave the lobbyist a hint of that of which he stood most in need a good half-column of political news. Going straight away to the telegraph office, he sent off a message to his paper : ' Meeting Mr. Gladstone this evening in the Lobby, I had a brief but interesting conver- sation with him,' etc., etc. The half-column of talk which followed contained nothing that was really new. It was mainly a recapitulation of views recently expressed in speeches by Mr. Gladstone ; but such is the shortness of the public memory that, served up as it was in the vivid form of an interview, it was accepted as a fresh political communication of importance from the Prime Minister. Its authenticity was never denied by Mr. Gladstone, as it in no way misrepresented his opinions. Mr. Justin McCarthy used to tell a story of the way in which Lord Randolph Churchill and he once played a joke on a lobbyist. As they were talking one evening in the Lobby, Lord Randolph Churchill noticed that this journalist was suspiciously watching them. ' Look at that fellow,' he whispered to McCarthy. * He has his eye on us, and I am quite sure he thinks we are concocting some tremendous machination. Now, if you don't mind, we'll keep talking together on any subject you like, and you see if there isn't a bit of startling news in his paper to-morrow.' McCarthy fell in with the humour of Churchill ; and sure enough there did appear in the paper next morning speculations of a plot being on foot between the Tories and the Irish Nationalists. 5 66 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY But the journalists can play jokes also. One of them I well remember. There was a celebrated by-election when the first Unionist Administration was in office. It was one of those contests of which it is impossible to foretell the result, each side being confident of victory, and each agreeing that the majority, whichever way it went, would be very small. The issue was therefore awaited with the interest that uncertainty arouses. One of the lobbyists arranged with a journalist who was reporting the election for a news agency to send to the Whip of the beaten candidate's party a telegram announcing the victory of that candidate as soon as the counting of the votes had reached a stage to make it easy to guess who would be the winner. Accord- ingly, about ten o'clock at night, when the result was expected, and the Lobby was crowded with excited groups of politicians, Mr. Marjoribanks, then the Chief Whip of the Liberal Party, was handed a telegram. Eagerly opening it, he read the message, and then cried out exultingly, ' We have won ! We have won ! ' He rushed into the House, followed by cheering Liberals, and announced the glad tidings to Mr. Gladstone and others on the front Opposition bench. Up jumped the Irish Members with racial exuber- ance of feeling ; some of them even climbed on to the benches, and, waving hats and handkerchiefs over their heads, roared themselves hoarse in the extravagance of their delight. By a curious coincidence it happened that Mr. Balfour, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, was addressing the House at the moment and, as the result of the election was regarded as a repudiation of his policy of coercion, the Nationalists shouted with all the greater joy. He was unable to proceed with his speech for a few minutes. It was obvious that the news had depressed him, and he stood silent with his elbow on the table, until the wild storm of enthusiasm had spent its force. All of a sudden another wild outburst of applause was heard in the Lobby. The Irishmen again rose to their feet and renewed their shouts, LOBBYING 67 but the spectacle of the Tory gladiator, Ashmead-Bartlett a telegram in his hand and victory blazing in his eyes rushing up the floor towards the Treasury Bench told them that some strange and startling development had taken place, and they sat down in silence, with puzzled and rather shame- faced looks. The correct result of the election had arrived. The Conservative, not the Liberal, was victorious ! It was now the turn of the Unionists to cheer, and as they who cheer last cheer best, there never was heard in the Chamber cheer- ing so wild and uproarious or such bursts of mocking laughter. Mr. Balfour resumed his speech in mighty spirits ; but, what was more to the purpose of the lobbyists and the sketch-writers, they had, thanks to this little joke, no lack of most readable ' copy ' that night. But these stories show us the lobbyists only in their lighter mood, or a rarer mood still that of wild adventure in search of a * scoop.' Their sole duty is to provide authentic political news, and seriously and wisely to com- ment upon it. Their thorough understanding of the political situation, which they spare no pains to obtain, is well illustrated by the following story of Pitt, told by Spencer Leigh Hughes, and his shrewd deductions by a process of pure reasoning from the facts: I have always thought his forecast of the General Election of 1892 was most wonderful. Mr. Pitt went all over the Kingdom before that great struggle, forming his opinion as to the chances of parties here, there, and elsewhere. His final forecast was this Gladstone would have a majority of forty- two. I happen to know that the late Mr. Powell Williams, himself a very shrewd electioneerer, who saw Mr. Pitt's figures before they were published, strongly advised him to alter them. Mr. Powell Williams said he was certain that the Gladstonian majority would not be more than twenty. Mr. Pitt was unmoved, and stuck to his own opinion. Then Mr. Powell Williams said that Mr. Chamberlain, a mighty man in such affairs, had gone carefully into the subject, considering each con- stituency, and was also convinced that the majority would not exceed twenty. This might well have shaken some men but Mr. Pitt stuck steadily to his prediction of forty- two. And when the elections were all over Mr. Gladstone came out with a majority of 68 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY forty-four. Mr. Pitt had been wrong in one case, and one only, and by giving one constituency to the Unionists which should have been given to Gladstone, his total was wrong by two. Any one who has ever had anything to do with political prediction or elec- tioneering forecasts will agree that such a triumph was little short of the miraculous. Among London correspondents for provincial newspapers who attained to high distinction were Alfred F. Robbins of The Daily Post, Birmingham ; James M. Tuohy of The Freeman's Journal, Dublin, and Alexander Mackintosh of The Free Press, Aberdeen. Their daily letters over a very long course of years were the finest journalism of the kind, they were always so well informed, and showed so true and sagacious a grasp of current political movements ; and when the time comes for writing the inner history of such strange and dramatic episodes and mutations of politics and parties as the Land League movement, the downfall of Parnell, the split of the Liberal Party on the question of Home Rule, the starting of the Tariff Reform movement by Joseph Cham- berlain, and its many vicissitudes, the astonishing rise of Radicalism in the first decade of the twentieth century ; the formation of the Labour Party ; the overthrow of the House of Lords, the third Home Rule campaign, abundance of very valuable material will be found in the London corre- spondence of these able and resourceful writers. Members are, as a rule, very obliging to the lobbyists. At least, each makes it his business to see that the repre- sentative of his own local paper is not stranded in any mat- ter if he can help it. Of course, Members have axes of their own to grind, as the Americans say. They have, in a word, their reputations to advance. In this age, when popular favour is the very breath of the nostrils of public men, it is essential that they should stand well with their local Press. In many cases, indeed, their very political existence depends upon their relations with the organs of opinion in their constituencies. ' I absolutely disregard all Press criticisms, except those of my own local paper, The LOBBYING 69 Skibbereen Eagle,' said an Irishman once in the House of Commons, and that is the sentiment also of most Members. Therefore it is that in these days, when on the one hand the craze for notoriety is so widespread, and on the other the appetite for news so insatiable, the journalist is a welcome visitor to the Lobby of the House of Commons, where so late as the early Victorian period what time the inquisitive- ness of newspapers was still regarded as gross impertinence he was mocked at as a low fellow and treated with all manner of ignominy and reproach. And yet then as now he wanted only news. A certain noble lord who was drinking at the bar which once stood in the Lobby thought that a newspaper man was watching him. ' Hallo,' cried he, ' put down in your notebook that I have just drunk a glass of wine.' * I certainly would,' was the journalist's reply, ' if I saw your lordship drinking a glass of water.' Often in the past, when parliamentary news of interest and importance to Members, such as the reports of Select Committees, reached them first through the newspapers, rather than through the official channels of information, there used to be protests in the House about breaches of privilege, and even suggestions of bringing the offending lobbyists to the Bar, according to ancient custom, and have them severely spoken to by the Speaker, if not committed to the Clock Tower. The last occasion on which the House of Commons made a pretence of being resentful of the enter- prise of the lobbyists in this direction was on May 13, 1906, when complaint was made of the premature publication in The Times of the finding of a Select Committee on the Hous- ing of the Working Classes. The Prime Minister, Sir H. Campbell Bannerman, rightly said that for these leakages Members of the Committees were themselves to blame. ' My memory goes back a great number of years,' he said in the course of some reflections on lobbying, ' to a time when there was less soliciting in the immediate neigh- bourhood of the House, and Members were not assailed at 70 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY every step by gentlemen whose object it is to screw out of them all the information they can. If Members are foolish enough to succumb to this species of terrorization or per- suasion I do not know which these things will happen ; but let us hope that Members, now that they have heard this little discussion, may button up the recesses of their minds against these encroachments.' Mr. Speaker Lowther was asked whether he thought it right in the circumstances to admit the representative of the guilty newspaper to the Reporters' Gallery and the Lobby. ' Of course,' he replied, ' if there were any question of misconduct on the part of any paper admitted to the Press Gallery or Lobby I should at once take notice of it ; but I am not in a position to say, when a paper is handed by an hon. Member of this House to a newspaper and then published by that newspaper, that any charge of misconduct can be made against the news- paper.' The cheers with which the remarks of the Speaker were greeted showed that he had expressed the general common- sense of the House. ' The best way to stop a leakage,' he added, amid laughter, ' is to fill up the hole.' So it may be said that there is now no desire in the House of Commons unduly to interfere with the lobbyists in the pursuit of their calling. They may safely be relied upon not to do anything illegitimate or wrong. The severest trial of the lobbyist is the possession of news which he cannot honourably publish. Yet no man has so many political secrets and secrets of private life, which, if he were free to make public, would cause a rush for his newspaper. Paradoxical though it may seem, a journalist is perhaps the most uncommunica- tive of men in the sense that no man has a better hold on his tongue, and there is no more trustworthy confidant of a secret. So discreet is he that he inspires confidence ; and the stories he is told, which he dare not use, he will whisper to no one, for fear they might reach a less scrupulous repre- sentative of some rival organ. But think how tantalising LOBBYING 71 is this position ! Here is a man who lives by printing things, possessed of many secrets, startling and entertaining, which he must not print. Is there not something of the ironic element of tragedy in the situation ? No wonder that many lobbyists walk stoop-shouldered, with weary eyes cast upon the ground, as if they were literally bowed down by the burden of confidences which they cannot throw off in the form of newspaper paragraphs. John Morley tells a pleasant story of how a great political secret was kept sacredly inviolate by three poor Irish journalists. As Chief Secretary for Ireland, he was in close communication with Parnell during the preparation of the first Home Rule Bill of 1886. One day the Irish leader asked if he might have a draft of its main provisions for submission to half a dozen of his confidential colleagues. ' After some demur,' we are told, ' the Irish Secretary con- sented, warning him of the damaging consequences of any premature divulgation. The draft was duly returned, and not a word leaked out.' Morley adds that some time after- wards Parnell recalled the incident to him. ' Three of the men to whom I showed the draft were newspaper men,' said the Irish leader, ' and they were poor men, and any news- paper would have given them a thousand pounds for it. No wonderful virtue, you may say. But how many of your House of Commons would believe it ? ' 1 Of course there was no conflict in the minds of these poor Irish journalists between cupidity and honour. Every reputable lobbyist knows that the disclosure of a secret obtained in such circumstances would not only be a gross breach of the sanctity of private confidences, but a blot on the integrity and good name of the Press. But the weight of that political secret one of the most eventful in the nineteenth century must have been terribly burdensome to journalists having strong within them the professional instinct to proclaim things from the housetop. 1 Life of Gladstone (1903), vol. 3, p. 320, CHAPTER VIII In Hours of Ease THE work of the parliamentary reporter is irksome and dreary at times, as well as responsible and exacting ; but it has undoubtedly some pleasant compensations. When the reporter has finished writing his ' turn ' and given his ' copy ' to the messenger of his newspaper he refers to the list to see when he is due again in the box. The free time at his disposal between ' turns ' varies considerably, depending, as it does, on ever varying circumstances. It may be only a few minutes. It may be half an hour, or even an hour. It depends entirely on whether he has had a stiff 1 turn ' or a light ' turn,' as I have already explained. But be his interval long or short, it does not matter to him as a reporter what is happening meanwhile in the House. He is not due as we say and consequently he is not respon- sible. He may, if he pleases, return to the Gallery, as a spectator, if the debate is lively if T. M. Healy, Lloyd- George, or F. E. Smith is * up ' but there is no call on him to put in an appearance for note-taking until his next turn comes round. The parliamentary journalists, whether reporters, sketch- writers or lobbyists, are in no want of means for rest, recrea- tion and refreshment in association with the Gallery, thanks to the willingness which the authorities of the House have shown, since 1880, to consider favourably all suggestions for their convenience and comfort, and the Board of Works to carry out such structural alterations and additions as may be necessary to secure that object. We have been to 72 IN HOURS OF EASE 73 the writing-rooms where reporters with wrinkled brows were to be observed striving to evolve brevity and harmony out of a long and rambling speech. The prompt execution of their work is required of them. Compositors and the print- ing press wait for no reporter. If they do not get his copy at the proper time, they fill the hiatus with something else and go forward. The reporter must, therefore, be a model of promptitude. And with great haste he must combine great care. If he misreports something imperfectly heard, or confusedly expressed, or not clearly understood, attention is almost sure to be called to the error, and no newspaper editor likes to have to publish a contradiction or correction. The reporter has one golden rule : ' When in doubt leave out.' That does not always save him in the peculiarly trying position he so often finds himself, when he sits down in the writing-room with his notebook open before him, to call back ' the words that breathe and the thoughts that burn ' perhaps from phonographic dots and dashes. Nevertheless, look into the smoking-room, and you may see the same men whom you saw in the writing-room their hard task over and done easing off the strain and bustle of the ' turn ' by puffing at a pipe or cigar, scanning the illustrated weeklies and magazines, or gossiping with com- rades. As a rule, expressions of deep contentment are on their faces. Still it may be that some of them are giving vent to the feelings and convictions which they keep under such admirable control in the Gallery. It is many years now since an outburst of political excitement in the Gallery has been witnessed. .One night during the discussion in committee on the Irish Coercion Bill, brought in by Mr. Balfour in 1887, a few months after his appointment as Chief Secretary for Ireland, there was a demonstration in the Nationalist quarter of the House. The impassioned cheers from the floor proved too infectious and inspiring for Keppel Hopkins in the box of the Freeman's Journal, and springing to his feet he waved his notebook over his 74 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY head and swelled and further enkindled the applause as it rolled past him on its way to the ceiling. It was but a momentary ebullition. In another second the excited reporter had repressed his feelings, and resumed imper- turbably the taking of notes. In the smoking-room, how- ever, it is a common thing for a reporter to flare up into scornful comment on the futility of the speech he has just transcribed, or flat contradiction of its political argument, and address his remarks at large to every one present. Go next door and you will find a deep silence prevailing, and see, through the softening haze of tobacco, other journal- ists playing chess and draughts. On the same corridor there is a library its shelves well stocked with history, poetry and fiction with which the names of two Daily Telegraph men are inseparably associated, James Macintire, its original founder, and Malcolm Macaskill, who was librarian in the year 1912, when it was reorganized and considerably enlarged. Close by is a dining-room, catered for by the Kitchen Committee of the House of Commons, where lun- cheons and dinners are served well and cheaply. There are also a tea-room and a refreshment bar, both in the charge of waitresses. The pictures which are hung in all these rooms form a collection of the highest parliamentary and journalistic interest. There are steel engravings of renowned par- liamentarians, and stirring scenes from parliamentary his- tory. The bar is decorated with the famous Vanity Fair cartoons of Lords and Commons, a very acceptable gift made by Emsley Carr, of the Western Mail, Cardiff, and an inexhaustible source of interest. There are also portraits of celebrated reporters in the various rooms. Dr. Samuel Johnson, the most famous of all parliamentary journalists, is to be seen in a fine mezzotint engraving by Doughty, dated 1779, of the well-known portrait by Sir Joshua Rey- nolds. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Dickens are in the collection. So is Gerald Griffin, the Irish poet and IN HOURS OF EASE 75 novelist. Here is Sir William Howard Russell, one of the first of war correspondents. He was in the Gallery the night he received instructions from the editor of The Times to go out to the Crimea on that mission, the record of which is imperishable in the history of journalism. Other men there are who achieved fame in fields outside journalism after service in the Gallery. For instance, Charles Russell, who became Lord Chief Justice and Lord Russell of Killo- wen, Justin McCarthy, who led for a time the Irish Party in the House of Commons, Sir Edward Clarke, one of the greatest of advocates at the Bar, and T. P. O'Connor, equally successful as a House of Commons man and as a writer about Parliament. Many of the likenesses are those of old men who spent in the Gallery all the years of their working lives. These include Charles Ross, of The Times ; James Mould, of The Standard ; Henry M. Dunphy, of The Morning Post ; and John James Byrne, of The Morning Advertiser, four journalists who saw the birth of the Reporters' Gallery, as it is now known that Gallery whose end probably no man shall see. Among the more celebrated of their suc- cessors, whose portraits hang upon the walls, there is Thomp- son Cowper, of The Times. He was a man of a vast range of historical and biographical knowledge. Of all the con- tributors to the first issue of the National Dictionary of Bio- graphy, he has the distinction of having written the largest number of its articles. Here also are William Jeans, of The Dundee Advertiser, who was ' Father of the Gallery ' that is the journalist with the longest service in the Gallery before his retirement in 1912, and the author of Parlia- mentary Reminiscences ; Bernard Bussey, who wrote the descriptive summary for The Glasgow Herald during the last three decades of the nineteenth century ; A. A. Brodribb, chief of The Times staff for many years ; John D. Irvine, who after thirty years in the Gallery in which time he rendered many signal services in the way of promoting the comfort and convenience of Gallerymen became in 1912 76 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY a famous special correspondent of The Morning Post ; and Harry Y. Bussey, chief of The Morning Post staff, and the writer of its sketch for many years. There is a memorial to Edward O'Shaughnessy, of the Irish Daily Independent (Dublin), who was Chairman of the Gallery when he died young in 1905. In this large and varied collection of por- traits one unexpected figure is to be seen a young man in fencing costume standing at attention with a foil in his hand. That is E. M. Amphlett, of The Times, who was as expert with the sword as with the pen, and represented England in several international fencing competitions. Other evi- dence of the versatility of Gallerymen may also be seen in the large seascapes in oils painted by J. Callingham, of The Morning Advertiser. There are also a fine series of original cartoons by R. T; Reid, of Punch, Sir Frank Carruthers Gould, of The Westminster Gazette, both of whom were members of the Gallery. The affairs of the Gallery are managed by a committee elected yearly by the journalists from among themselves. The money for the payment of the necessary expenses is provided by a sessional subscription of 2s. 6d. The Com- mittee are also in a position to help old and necessitous journalists who have worked in the Gallery. There is a special fund for the purpose called ' The Lucy Trust,' to which members of the Gallery voluntarily pay five shillings a year. It was founded in 1902 by Sir Henry Lucy, who, on January 23 of that year, sent the following letter to the Chairman of the Gallery : MY DEAR SIR, On the threshold of my thirtieth session in the Press Gallery of the House of Commons I should esteem it a privilege if I might be permitted in some small way to make permanent record of my esteem for the Brotherhood among whom I have so long worked. We have from time to time brought under our notice the case of comrades in temporary need, owing to no fault of their own, or of the widows and children of Gallery men to whom a few pounds would be of service. It has occurred to me that the Com- mittee might be disposed to add to their other invaluable services IN HOUKS OF EASE 77 to the Gallery the undertaking of a trust to dispose of a small assured annual fund for distribution in these directions. I would suggest that a sub -commit tee of three be annually appointed to discharge the duty, an essential condition of its working being absolute secrecy as to the apportionment of the little gifts. If the proposal meets the approval of the Committee I shall be glad to hand you a cheque for 1,000, the interest to be available (as long as a Press Gallery exists) for the purpose indicated. 1 In 1913 Lucy rendered another most generous and bene- ficent service to the Gallery. At the Gallery dinner that year, Bonar Law, the chief guest, announced that Lucy had sent 1,000 to the London Hospital for the endowment of a bed in perpetuity for the use of parliamentary journalists, and their wives and children, when stricken by disease or accident. The committee is regularly in communication with the officers of the House in the interest of the Gallery. Indeed, the reporters are afforded every aid to the easy and quick discharge of their duties. There is a generous supply of such useful parliamentary papers as the ' Orders of the Day ' the agenda of business Bills and the amendments put down to Bills. In one of the writing-rooms are to be found copies of the replies of Ministers to the questions put to them at the opening of every sitting. Members generally are most considerate in sending up, if requested, their notes, or copies of any statistics or other quotations used by them in their speeches. Just behind the Gallery is a letter-shoot, upon and down which are constantly passing communica- tions between journalists and Members. Close by is a telegraph office. Here the reports for country newspapers are transmitted by pneumatic tube to the Central Telegraph Office, whence, as I have already described, they are wired to the provinces. At one time the regulations for decorum in the Gallery were not only strict, but austere. No one was allowed to relax his ponderous strength, even in an idle time after a 1 Lucy, Sixty Years in the Wilderness (first series, 1909), pp. 108-9. 78 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY stiff ' turn/ by keeping his hands in his pockets in a lounging way. Every reporter in the Gallery had to sit or stand erect and stiffly if he were not writing. I can recall when an unwritten sumptuary order prohibited the wearing of clothes of a light colour in the Gallery. Black was then considered by the authorities of the House to be the most appropriate hue for the dress of those who reported the proceedings of Parliament. When I first entered the Gallery in 1887 the frock-coat and the silk hat were indispensable parts of a reporter's attire. In fact the doorkeeper, or attendant, first looked you over to see if you wore the regulation dress before he even asked you for the admission ticket signed by the Serjeant-at-Arms. This etiquette as regards attire applied to the Gallery because it prevailed in the House. Even as late as the opening of the nineteenth century Ministers wore Court dress and their orders and ribbons on the nights of important debates. Hence the origin of the phrase, ' full-dress de- bate,' which is still current in parliamentary circles. It was many years after this picturesque habit fell into disuse that, in the Victorian era, the tall hat and frock-coat became the recognized attire of a Member of Parliament ; and quite a sensation was caused in the 'Seventies when John Mar- tin, a Nationalist Member, was seen wearing a jacket and a soft hat. JThe end of the reign of the frock-coat and tall hat in Parliament was still a long way off, but that was the beginning of the sartorial revolution. In the case of the Reporters' Gallery the beginning of the end set in when a distinguished journalist who wrote the sketch for a leading provincial paper appeared one evening after a long bicycle ride in grey tweeds and knickerbockers. Woodcraft, the doorkeeper, was put into a state of apprehension lest the Serjeant-at-Arms who sits in a commanding position at the other end of the House should catch sight of the strange figure and reprimand him for permitting it to appear within his ken. Old reporters were indignant at what they re- IN HOURS OF EASE 79 garded as a breach of the traditional etiquette of the Gallery. But as nothing else happened, this daring departure in the matter of dress led at least to the deposition of the frock- coat and tall hat among journalists, as well as among parliamentarians . Indeed, in some respects greater freedom prevails in the Reporters' Gallery than in any other part of the House of Commons. For instance, Members of Parliament, not to speak of strangers, are not permitted to read newspapers in the Chamber. Only those helpers in the making of news- papers, the reporters, are allowed that privilege or indulgence. It was denied to them in days not very long ago. A little laxity was gradually permitted, on condition that the news- paper was kept out of the sight of the watchful Serjeant-at- Arms. Now the deed is done in the open, and the attend- ants never say nay, unless the newspaper is ostentatiously perused. The journalists are grateful for the relaxation. As may be supposed, the prohibition of the scanning of newspapers in the Gallery would hamper them greatly in their work. One of the most famous of the parliamentary reporters of the eighteenth century was William Woodfall, of the Morning Chronicle. John Taylor, the journalist and mis- cellaneous writer, once congratulated him on having a son old enough to assist him during a laborious week in Par- liament. * Yes,' said Woodfall, ' and Charles Fox is to have a heavy debate on Saturday. What, does he think that reporters are made of iron ? ' Taylor's comment is : ' There is a ludicrous simplicity in his thus supposing that a great politician, with an object of consequence to his Party in view, should have thought of parliamentary re- porters.' 1 I have known a Prime Minister to agree to an early rising of the House of Commons in order to accommo- date the reporters. One Friday, in 1898, it was intended by the Unionist Government, of which Mr. Balfour was 1 Taylor, Records of My Life, vol. 2, 250. 80 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the head, to keep the House sitting late in order to get on with urgent public business, but when the right hon. gentleman was told that the members of the Gallery had been invited to dine with the Lord Mayor (Sir Horatio Davies) at the Mansion House that evening he at once arranged for the House to be up at 7 o'clock. There is, occasionally, a more general recognition of the Reporters' Gallery by Members of Parliament. One of the objections that is raised by every Opposition to the proposal of every Government to suspend 'the 11 o'clock rule ' and sit late for the despatch of business is that the proceedings will not be reported. That, indeed, is so. After 11 o'clock the hour at which opposed business comes automatically to an end in the ordinary course only one, two, or three members of the reporting staff (the number varies with different newspapers) stay on till the close of the sitting. The usual instructions of ' the victims ' (as they are called) is to ' put everything into lines.' If a great debate is pro- longed after 11 o'clock or if an interesting question is to be raised on the motion for the adjournment of the House, ' victims are suspended ' by the chiefs and the full strength of the staffs remain. But if the subject is relatively unim- portant ' lines only ' is the rule, until about half-past one or two o'clock. Should the House sit beyond that hour, not even ' lines ' can be taken by the printers ; and the news- papers appear in the morning with the statement at the end of the parliamentary report : ' The House was still sitting when we went to press.' CHAPTER IX The Secrecy of Parliament THE Reporters' Gallery is thus an elaborate organization for the spreading of news of the Imperial Parliament to all the ends of the earth. Yet every journalist who has a part in that nightly scene of vigilant observation and un- relaxing activity in recording the proceedings, and the editor of every newspaper which prints the speeches of Lords or Commons, or a descriptive sketch of the scene in either House, violates the law and custom of Parliament. For 'to presume to print or ^publish in print any matter relating to Parliament ' is declared to be a breach of privilege, punish- able by fine and imprisonment, in many resolutions that still remain unrescinded in the Journals of both Houses. The explanation of these orders against the disclosure of the Debates is to be found in the history of the constitutional struggle between the Crown and the Parliament which began under Elizabeth, and was continued with ever-increasing intensity through the reigns of the Stuarts. To keep the speeches of the Commons from the knowledge of the Sove- reign was rightly deemed to be essential to freedom of action on the part of the nation's representatives, throughout that long and bitter contest. From the earliest times, indeed, every Member was bound ' to keep secret and not to disclose the secret of things done and spoken in the Parliament House to any manner of person, unless he be one of the same House,' under pain of expulsion or imprisonment. 1 1 John Hooker, Usage of Keeping the Parliaments in England, written in the sixteenth century, and included in Lord Mountmorres's History of the Irish Parliament (1792), vol. 1, p. 143. 81 6 82 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY During the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1859, Sir Edward Hobby complained that matters then being discussed in the House were the subject of common gossip ; and the Speaker delivered a solemn admonition to Members not to talk of the affairs of the House out of doors, and to give no written account of its proceedings to any person whatsoever. 1 The first record in the Journals of the House of Commons of action taken by the House in a case of unauthorized dis- closure of its proceedings was in the year 1626. Charles I had been on the Throne only twelve months, and already his chief anxiety was to make himself an absolute ruler. On April 5 the House of Commons which then met in the morning adjourned for the purpose of presenting a Remon- strance to his Majesty at Whitehall in the course of the afternoon. When the House reassembled, after the pre- sentation, at three o'clock, it was stated that a scrivener ' one Turnor, dwelling without Westminster Hall door/ had sold a copy of the Remonstrance before it was presented to the King. ' The Serjeant sent for him,' says the record, ' but answer brought he was not within.' 2 Two years later, on April 11, 1628, the attention of the House was called to ' a book in print concerning some proceedings in Parliament.' A committee was appointed to inquire who printed the book and why he printed it ; but nothing further is disclosed, most disappointingly, in relation to this, the first recorded case of actual publication. 3 During the ensuing twelve years the House of Commons appears to have been untroubled by any violation of the secrecy which it so jealously guarded. Then a case oc- curred, which is entered in the Journals, with interesting particularity. On January 8, 1640, it was ordered : c That Overton, the stationer, who false printed an order of this House, without any authority of this House, and made 1 D'Ewes, Journals, 432-3. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 1, pp. 843-4. 3 Commons Journals, vol. 1, p. 882. THE SECRECY OF PARLIAMENT 83 additions of his own, be sent for by Mr. Speaker's warrant to be here to-morrow morning.' On the following day, accordingly, Overtoil was brought to the Bar, where he humbly acknowledged his offence and asked forgiveness. The record says : He was commanded to withdraw. And then, after some debate in the House, he was called in again and, kneeling upon his Knees Mr. Speaker told him, that his Offence was of a high nature to pre- sume, upon his own authority, to print any Order of this House, * and not only so, but to misprint it, and to make Additions to it of your own : And, however, the House does incline to extend Mercy to you at this time in letting you pass with this sharp Repre- hension only : Yet they would have you call in and suppress so many of the Copies as you can and to take Care how you run into the like great Offence again.' l When next the House was moved to enforce its privilege to conduct its deliberations behind closed doors its action was directed, not against outsiders, but against its own Members. In 1641 Lord Digby printed a speech he made on the passing of the Bill of Attainder, under which Straf- ford was beheaded on Tower Hill just a month before, and the matter was brought to the notice of the House. It was then resolved by the Commons : That no Member of the House shall either give a copy, or publish in print, anything that he shall speak here, without leave of the House. The Commons also declared that the publication of Digby 's speech ' deserves the brand of this House ' ; and it was ordered to be * burnt publickly by the hands of the common hangman ' in Palace Yard, Westminster, Cheapside and Smithfield. 2 At this time it seems to have been the custom of some Members to take notes of the Debates. One of the most industrious in the use of pencil and tablets was Sir Simonds D'Ewes, the antiquarian. He sat in the Long Parliament, 1 Commons Journals, vol. 2, p. 65. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 2, pp. 208-9. 84 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY and, having access to the official records which were then in existence, compiled that most valuable work, Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. Probably it was this note-taking which led the House, on July 13, 1641 a few days after the action in regard to Lord Digby to pass an order directing Members * to deliver out no copy or notes of anything that is brought into the House, propounded or agitated in the House.' * Before many months had passed these resolutions were violated. Sir Edward Dering was a moderate man in an Assembly composed mainly of extremists. He tried to pursue a middle course in the contest between Charles I and the Parliament a futile as well as a hazardous experi- ment in a time of revolution and to prove his consistency to an indifferent country he published A Collection of Speeches on Religion. On February 2, 1642, the House of Commons proclaimed the book to be ' against the honour and privi- lege of the House, and scandalous to the House,' and ordered it to be ignominiously burned by ' the common hangman ' at Westminster, Cheapside and Smithfield. Not only was Dering disabled from sitting any longer in the House, and a warrant issued for the election of a new Member for Kent in his place, but, by 86 votes to 81, he was committed as a prisoner to the Tower during the pleasure of the House. As he knelt at the Bar, these condemnations of his book and himself were pronounced by the Speaker. 2 No doubt the ancient rule or custom which prohibited Members from reading their speeches had its origin in the fear that the practice, if condoned, might tend to the divulg- ing to outsiders of what was said in the House. The earliest recorded instance of this apprehension is dated January 7> 1674. Mr. Mallet was interrupted in the reading of his speech by Sir Charles Harbord, who said it was a dangerous practice. * The Attorney, now Lord Keeper,' he mentioned, 1 Commons Journals, vol. 2, p. 220. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 2, p. 411. THE SECRECY OF PARLIAMENT 85 ' reprimanded him once only for making use of heads in a paper.' Other Members pleaded by way of excuse that as Mallet's memory was imperfect he found it necessary to write down what he intended to say. * You may but wink, and it is the same thing,' said one. Mallet was allowed to proceed, as he had almost done, but the hope that the read- ing of a speech would not be permitted again was generally expressed. 1 In order to guard still further the secrecy of the proceed- ings, strangers were rigorously excluded from both Houses. ' No manner of person being not one of the Parliament,' says John Hooker, the antiquary, writing about the middle of the sixteenth century, ' ought to enter or come within the House, as long as the sitting is there, upon pain of imprison- ment, or such other punishment as by the House shall be ordered and adjudged.' 2 The first discovery of a stranger mentioned in the Journals of the House of Commons relates to the year 1575. Charles Johnson, ' of the Inner Temple, gentleman,' was the offender. He excused himself by plead- ing ignorance, but the House was suspicious and he was committed to the Serjeant's Ward. 3 Notwithstanding this antipathy of the Commons to the presence of strangers at their debates, and the strict meas- ures taken for their exclusion, D'Ewes relates several in- stances of persons having evaded the vigilance of the door- keepers, and, through inadvertence or intentionally, in- truded themselves on the House, during the reign of Eliza- beth. In 1584 Richard Robinson, a skinner by trade, was discovered to have sat within the House, * by the space of two hours during the whole time of the speeches delivered by Mr. Chancellor and the Vice-Chancellor.' He was imme- diately brought to the Bar, and there * stript to the shirt 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 4, p. 620. 2 Lord Mountmorres, History of the Principal Transactions o the Irish Parliament from 1634 to 1666, vol. 1, p. 143. 8 Commons Journals, vol. 1, p. 105, 86 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY and his pockets all searched,' after which he was removed in the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. A committee was appointed to inquire into the prisoner's antecedents and character, but nothing incriminatory was discovered, and being again brought to the Bar, he was censured by the Speaker, and made to take not only the oath of allegiance and supremacy, but also to swear to keep secret what he had heard. Curiously enough, on the very same day another intruder was detected. This was * Charles Morgan, gentle- man servant unto Sir George Carie, one of the knights of the shire of the county of Southampton,' who was found standing within the House, ' near unto the door.' ' And as it was thought of mere ignorance and simplicity without any evil purpose or meaning,' he was discharged on taking the oath of supremacy and paying his fees. 1 The officers of the House must have had some difficulty in identifying strangers from Members, for in 1586 two other persons ( presumed to come into the House being not Mem- bers of the same.' These were Edward Moore, a chandler, and John Turner, a butcher, both from Shoreditch. The House was satisfied that they, too, had committed this grave offence through ' ignorance and sheer simplicity and not of any pretended purpose,' and on their making humble sub- mission and asking pardon, it was agreed ' that they shall be discharged and set at liberty, taking first the oath of supremacy openly in this House, which they so then did and afterwards departed.' 2 The taking of the oath of supremacy was, no doubt, insisted upon for fear the offend- ers, with all their apparent guilelessness, should happen to be Roman Catholic spies after all. Two other cases may be quoted from D'Ewes by way of illustrating the ease with which strangers wandered into the House of Commons and the apprehension excited in the House by these intrusions on its privacy. Both occurred 1 D'Ewes, Journals, 334. 2 D'Ewes, Journals, 394. THE SECRECY OF PARLIAMENT 87 on different days of March, 1593. One of the strangers was John Legge, a servant of the Earl of Northampton. He was rather severely punished. In addition to being repri- manded by the Speaker, the celebrated Sir Edward Coke, he was imprisoned in the Serjeant's Ward for seven days. The other was Mathew Jones, gentleman. As he appeared to be ' a simple ignorant old man,' he was released after being admonished by the Speaker. 1 The first Parliament to make a definite order against the presence of strangers, as disclosed by the Journals of the House of Commons, was the Long Parliament. In 1650 the House resolved : ' That the Serjeant do not permit any person to come into the House whilst the House is sitting, save only Members, the Minister that prays, and the officers attending the House.' 2 In 1688 the Serjeant-at-Arms was directed to ' take into his custody any stranger, or strangers, that he shall see, or be informed to be, in the House or Gallery, while the House or any committee of the whole House is sitting.' 3 This order was renewed in 1689. Obvi- ously it refers to strangers who evaded the watchfulness of the doorkeepers ; but later in the same year it was provided that no Member was to presume to bring strangers into House or Gallery. 4 From 1689 the rule for the exclusion of strangers was re-enacted annually on the motion of a Member until 1713, when it was included in the Sessional Orders, formally adopted at the opening of every Session. Strangers, nevertheless, occasionally found their way into the House. In 1692 a ' madman ' named John Thomas, who * passed into the House,' was ordered to be ' put into Bedlam.' 5 1 D'Ewes, Journals, 491 and 512. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 6, p. 512. 3 Commons Journals, vol. 10, p. 35. 4 Commons Journals, vol. 10, p. 291. 5 Commons Journals, vol. 10, p. 740, CHAPTER X John Dyer, News-Letter Writer PARLIAMENT emerged victoriously from the long contest with the Crown. By the Revolution of 1688 it established itself firmly and enduringly as the highest and most potent authority in the land. Its desire to keep its proceedings private survived this exaltation of its place and power. The conduct of its deliberations behind closed doors had the sanction of custom and tradition. Members were familiar with it, and they disliked change. These in themselves were appealing reasons for continuing in the old ways. But there was a stronger motive still for retaining the ancient system of sitting behind the veil. So constant had been the devotion of the finer and more independent Members of the House of Commons for years to the idea of concealing its deliberations from the knowledge of all outside its walls, that secrecy became a fetish with parliamentarians, a mystical affirmation, as it were, of the divinity of the House, an occult agency for keeping that august assembly predominant and the centre and source of all power. It was no longer needed as a protection against the King. The King was now subservient to the will of Parliament. In the new constitutional situation arising from the establish- ment of limited Monarchy, Parliament continued to shroud itself in mystery, but its motive in doing so took a curious turn, for it was from the people that it now desired its working to remain hidden. It is true that, in a sense, Par- liament was elected by the people. It is also true that to pass laws for the immediate good of the people as well as 88 JOHN DYER, NEWS-LETTER WRITER 89 for the security of the State was the object of its existence. But with the reasons for legislation it was thought the people had no legitimate concern. They were expected to submit without question to the laws and imposts of Parliament. According to the accepted principles of the responsibilities of authority, the meaning of representation in Parliament, and the nature and limit of popular liberty, the common people were not entitled to be informed of the counsels and actions of their superiors or to meddle in any way with the course of Government. Thus it came to pass that the privi- lege of Parliament was diverted, with all its punitive force, against reporters, editors, publishers and printers who ven- tured either to divulge the proceedings of Lords and Com- mons or to comment upon them, for their own business profit and the enlightenment of the public. In fact, no sooner had the contest between Parliament and the Crown ended, than the struggle between Parliament and the People began. It happened just then that the Press was having its in- significant origin in the ' news-letter,' a small manuscript sheet which was circulated in the London coffee-houses, and sent by post or messenger to the chief centres of the provinces, and the great country houses of the aristocracy. With this new agency of public instruction and opinion, Parliament, as a secret conclave, came into collision imme- diately after the Revolution. Before that, in the reigns of Charles I and Charles II, the most binding restrictions had been imposed upon the printing press. Indeed, printing in the view of Parliament was a hostile and disruptive force to be destroyed, if possible, and, failing that, to be confined in its' operations within the narrowest limits. No pamph- lets, books, or papers of any kind, for the circulation of ideas or knowledge, could be printed without the leave and licence of the House of Commons. The printing of home news was especially regarded as an interference with the affairs of State, and, unless licensed and censored by royal authority, 90 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY was punishable as a breach of the peace and disturbance of the kingdom. But the ' news-letter,' being in manuscript, produced privately and circulated only among subscribers, could not well be brought within the operation of this strin- gent system of licensing. For this reason the written ' news-letter ' was a more valuable source of information in regard to home affairs than the printed ' news-paper,' which was compelled to confine itself to scraps of foreign intelligence. The producers of the * news-letter ' were chiefly scriveners employed at the law courts in Westminster Hall, and they obtained their parliamentary intelligence from the messengers and other inferior officials of the Houses of Parliament, or from the gossip of the Hall, just as the writers of political notes to-day find some of their informa- tion in the talk of the Lobby of the House of Commons. They seem to have charged five pounds a year for their letters. That, at least, was the subscription obtained by Henry Muddiman, who enjoyed a monopoly of news-letter writing in the early years of Charles II. 1 The first of the ' news-writers ' to attempt to penetrate the hooded mystery of the House of Commons, in the in- terest of his readers, was named John Dyer. He has the distinction of being mentioned by Macaulay. ' He affected to be a Tory and a High Churchman,' the Whig historian says, ' and was consequently regarded by the foxhunting lords of manors, all over the kingdom, as an oracle.' There are also several references to him by the contemporary diarist, Narcissus Luttrell. The reports of current events he furnished in his ' news-letter ' appear to have had a strong flavour of Jacobitism. In 1693 he was twice in trouble for ' writing false news ' and for ' writing seditious news against the Government,' and was bound to his good behaviour for a year. 2 1 J. B. Williams, A History of English Journalism to the Founda- tion of the Gazette (1908), 183. 8 Luttrell, Relation of State Affairs (1857), vol. 3, pp. 166, 237 JOHN DYER, NEWS-LETTER WRITER 91 In 1694, during the sixth Session of William and Mary's second Parliament, Dyer fell under the displeasure of the House of Commons. ' A complaint being made to this House,' says the official minute of December 21, 1694, ' that Dyer, a news-letter writer, has presumed in his news- letter to take notice of the proceedings of the House,' it was resolved that he should be summoned by the Serjeant-at- Arms to attend the House the next day, at 10 o'clock in the morning, to answer the said complaint.' 1 The next day, December 22, 1694, was a remarkable day in parliamentary history. The Triennial Act which provided that no Parlia- ment should last more than three years received the Royal Assent. 2 There was a large gathering of Peers and Commons in the House of Lords for the ceremony ; and when William III gave his assent to the ' Bill for the frequent meeting and calling of Parliaments,' the assembly raised * a loud hum,' in the language of Narcissus Luttrell. Then on the return of the Commons to their Chamber, Dyer was brought to the Bar in the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms to answer the charge of having presumed to give the people just a little news of the doings of this Parliament, which in future they were now to be called upon to elect every three years. He was the first of a long line of editors, publishers, printers and reporters who had to stand at the same Bar for having traded in the same contraband intelligence. At the Bar, Dyer, according to the official record, ' Ac- knowledging his offence, humbly begged the pardon of the House for the same.' He was ' upon his knees reprimanded by the Speaker for his great presumption,' and on paying 1 Commons Journals, vol. 11, pp. 192-3. 3 So the law remained until the beginning of the reign of George I when, in 1716, a Parliament elected to sit only for three years prolonged its own existence as well as the existence of its successors to a period of seven years by passing the Septennial Act. Under the Parliament Act of 1912 the term was reduced to five years. 92 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY his fees was discharged. The House then passed the following resolution : That no news-letter writers do in their letters, or other papers that they disperse, presume to intermeddle with the debates or any other proceedings of this House. 1 The coffee-house was, at this time, a most popular insti- tution with the middle classes. It was frequented by mer- chants, lawyers, doctors, authors and clergymen, for social intercourse and amusement, and the discussion of news, ideas and scandal. Knowing that it was from the coffee- houses the news-letter writers derived their chief support, the House of Commons threatened to punish the keepers of these centres of gossip who took in news-letters containing parliamentary intelligence. Griffith Card, a writer like Dyer, was brought to the Bar on February 11, 1695, for having in his news-letter ' dispersed at Garraway's coffee- house, and other coffee-houses,' misrepresented the proceed- ings of the House ; and with him was Jeremiah Stokes, ' who keeps Garraway's coffee-house.' Stokes, however, was let go ; and Card, after being reprimanded on his knees by the Speaker, was discharged ' without paying his fees, in respect of his poverty.' a The more sturdy Dyer continued unrepentant in the pur- suit of his forbidden calling. Again and again he appeared at the Bar in the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms, confessed his fault, and asked the forgiveness of the House, paid his fees and was released, only to go on in the same way pur- veying news, meagre and scrappy, of the doings of Parlia- ment. The next move of the authorities was to put a bann upon his productions. Two prisoners ' were fined for taking in Dyer's news-letters ' at the Old Bailey in October, 1695. 3 Luttrell further states in his Diary for November, 1695, * Dyer, the news-letter writer, was also apprehended, having 1 Commons Journals, vol. 11, pp. 192-3. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 11, p. 439. Luttrell, Relation of State Affairs, vol. 3, p. 542. JOHN DYER, NEWS-LETTER WRITER 93 absconded a considerable time.' l I find it stated in the Journals that on February 17, 1696, a complaint was made to the House of Commons that Dyer had again * presumed to meddle with the proceedings ' of the House. The Ser- jeant-at-Arms was directed to bring him to the Bar on the following day. 2 There is no mention'of Dyer in the subse- quent records. No doubt he absconded. But on January 18, 1697, there is this entry : ' That Mr. Dyer, news-letter writer, had in his news-letter, sent to Bristol and other places, presumed to meddle with the proceedings of this House.' 8 An order was once more made for his attendance at the Bar. He did not appear the next day, or the next, or, indeed, for many a day afterwards. Apparently he was still at large. But Luttrell, writing under date April 6, 1697, says : Yesterday Dyer, the news -writer, was taken into custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms, a warrant having been issued against him some time since, on which he absconded. 4 Again, on February 25, 1702, a complaint was made to the House of Commons that Dyer, in his news-letter, dated February 13, had ' misrepresented the proceedings of this House ' in relation to the Act for enlarging the time for taking the Oath of Abjuration. Once more he ignored the order to attend, though it was served personally on him by the messenger of the Serjeant-at-Arms, and the Solicitor- General was instructed to prosecute him. 5 He long sur- vived the harrying of the Commons, and won a place in the history of literature as well as in the history of politics. Addison in his essay, ' A Business Meeting,' written on Octo- ber 25, 1709, mentions that ' Sir Harry Quickset, of Stafford- shire, Baronet,' went to Dicks' coffee-house in Fleet Street, 1 Relation of State Affairs, vol. 3, p. 547. 3 Commons Journals, vol. 11, p. 710. 3 Commons Journals, vol. 12, p. 48. * Relation of State Affairs, vol. 6, p. 206 5 Commons Journals, vol. 14, pp. 207-8 94 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY and ' called for a mug of ale and Dyer's Letter.' ' The boy brought the ale in an instant, but said they did not take in the Letter. (t No ! " says Sir Harry, '' then take back your mug ; we are like, indeed, to have good liquor at this House ! " ' The essayist in the Spectator of July 26, 1711, also describes a scene at Sir Roger de Cover ley's. The com- pany sat around a pot of coffee and listened to the old knight reading Dyer's Letter. * Which he does,' says Addison, * with his spectacles upon his nose, and in an audible voice, smiling very often at those little strokes of satire which are so frequent in the writings of that author.' The incident shows the importance of the news-letter in those days as the only source of a regular supply of news necessarily scanty though it was in extent, and, perhaps, somewhat unreliable as to authenticity and the welcome given to it in the country houses. The example set by Dyer seems to have influenced other news-letter writers also to extend the field of their operations by adding Parliament to their subjects of news and comment. But the House of Commons was still resolute in its pursuit of those who abused its privilege by telling the public what was done or said at its sittings. On June 3, 1703, the Speaker acquainted the House that * there was come to his hands several written papers which had been dispersed at coffee-houses wherein the proceedings of the House are mis- represented, and several false things inserted as if they had been Votes of the House.' The House thereupon solemnly repeated the order which the presumption of Dyer had first called forth nine years previously : That no news -writer do in their letters, or other papers that they disperse, presume to intermeddle with the debates or any other proceeding of this House. 1 The Lords set themselves just as sternly as the Commons against the unauthorized publication of their proceedings. 1 Commons Journals, vol. 14, p. 270. JOHN DYER, NEWS-LETTER WRITER 95 On February 27, 1698, John Churchill, a printer, was brought to the Bar of the House of Lords and reprimanded by the Lord Chancellor, for having published a book entitled Cases in Parliament resolved and adjudged upon Petitions and Writs of Error. The following Standing Order was then passed, and ' set on the doors ' of the House : That it is a breach of the privilege of this House for any person whatsoever to print, or publish in print, anything relating to the proceedings of this House without the leave of this House. 1 Yet this was a period when notable debates took place in both Houses, faint echoes of which alone survive in con- temporary chronicles. They have not been authentically preserved, for it was illegal to report them. We are told also that there were great parliamentary orators right through the eighteenth century. The fame of many of them rests entirely upon the evidence of contemporary writers. Their speeches have perished in the silences of the Houses, locked against reporters. One of the earliest of them, that eminent Tory statesman, Henry St. John, in the Commons, and afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, in the Lords, was, by all accounts, among the most luminous speakers that has ever appeared in the parliamentary arena. Yet he is best remembered as an orator in the well-known aspiration of William Pitt that he would more gladly re- cover a speech by him than all the lost literature of the ancient world. The moment the voice of Bolingbroke ceased, his oration was dead. 1 Lords Journal, vol. 16, p. 391. CHAPTER XI The Votes and Proceedings OF the course and drift of parliamentary business during the Session the country, it may be said, either knew nothing or else heard, in violation of the law, details that were meagre and scrappy and unreliable. Certain things there were, of course, which the country had to be told of officially. At the opening of each Session the state of public affairs was dealt with in the King's Speech. The Acts passed were from the earliest times promulgated in the county courts, and other local tribunals. 1 Any individual affected by an order of the Lords or the Commons could obtain a transcript of it from the Clerk on payment of a fee. 2 Matters relating to the community generally, such as the resolutions adopted, the money voted to the King for the public services, the taxes imposed, were recorded in the Votes and Proceedings of the House of Commons. The regular daily publication of these minutes, however, did not begin until 1680 ; and, even so, the people continued to walk in darkness for a long time afterwards as to the reasons why their representatives supported or opposed the Govern- ment which commanded them to pay these taxes and obey these laws. Before 1680, when the Government was disposed to satisfy the public mind in regard to some particular matter or trans- action, or had a reason, good to itself, for taking the country 1 Report of the Select Committee on Publication of Printed Papers (1837), p. 3. 2 Hakewel, The Old Manner of Holding Parliaments, p. 30. 96 THE VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS 97 into its confidence, a broadside was printed and posted at Westminster Hall, Whitehall and the Mansion House, or a newspaper its original name was * newsbook ' was pub- lished for a time by authority, or Members were directed to see to the distribution of the announcement in their con- stituencies. The Long Parliament appears from the Jour- nals of the House of Commons to have been the first Parlia- ment officially to make public part of its proceedings. This it did in 1641, the second year of its protracted existence. On July 31 the House of Commons passed a resolution stating 'that the Protestation made by them is fit to be taken by every person that is well affected in religion, and to the good of the Commonwealth,' and that a person who refused to subscribe to the Protestation was ' unfit to bear office in the Church or Commonwealth.' It was further resolved ' that these votes be printed by the Clerk, and attested under his hand ' the first instance that can be discovered of any parliamentary proceeding being deno- minated Votes and an order was also made for the dis- persing of the votes at the Cinque Ports by the knights and burgesses. 1 The Long Parliament also ordered the issue of ' The Diurnal Occurrences or Daily Proceedings of both Houses in this great and happy Parliament from the 3rd of Novem- ber, 1640, to the 3rd of November, 1641,' which gave not only an account of the business done in Parliament, but reports of proceedings in the country supplied by Members. This was followed by weekly issues of ' Diurnal Occurrences,' each of which generally contained eight closely printed pages in small quarto ; and it was open to any printer to republish the matter they contained. 2 1 Commons Journals, vol. 2, p. 230. 2 Fox Bourne, English Newspapers, vol. 7, pp. 9-10. It will be remembered that as I have pointed out in the preceding chapter Members were, at the same time, prohibited from printing, or other- wise circulating, anything they said in the House of Commons. : 98 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY There can be no doubt that the information contained in these papers was intended not exclusively for Members, but for the country generally. ' This is shown,' says a valuable parliamentary report which was presented to the House of Commons in 1837, ' by the subsequent proceedings of the House with regard to the order for printing of 1641, and by the appointment of a committee in the subsequent year to consider " the best way of divulging, dispersing and publish- ing the orders, and votes, and also the declarations of the House through the kingdom, and of the well and true printing of them." This committee presented on the 16th of June, 1642, an order for dispersing and divulging the orders and declara- tions of the House through the sheriffs, under-sheriffs, constables, headboroughs, and tithing men of the several counties, with directions for the speedy publication to the inhabitants, and an order was made for the payment of the expense. 1 The object of the House of Commons was to stand well with the country in the struggle with Charles I. And it took care that the people should be informed of its proceed- ings only by its own action and through its own official channels, for in 1642, also, it made an order that ' whatever person soever shall print or sell any Act or passage of this House under the name of a diurnal, or otherwise, without the particular licence of this House, shall be reputed a high contemner and breaker of the privileges of Parliament, and so punished accordingly.' 2 The Lords also occasionally printed particular papers, and they hedged their action round with the same precau- tions as did the Commons. On July 16, 1642, a committee was appointed ( to consider of a print that the Orders and Declarations set forth by this House shall be printed in.' 8 1 Report of the Select Committee on Publication of Printed Papers (1837), p. 3. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 2, p. 501. 3 Lords Journals, vol. 5, p. 214. THE VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS 99 In the following year, on January 14, it resolved : ' That the Clerk of the Parliaments shall provide a printer that shall print those things that shall be appointed by Parlia- ment.' On that very day a number of persons were brought to the Bar, in the custody of Black Rod, ' for printing false and scandalous pamphlets.' An order was made that they were not to be released ' before they put in good security for their better behaviour for the future,' and, more than that, * that they do not hereafter print any Thing concerning the Parliament without special order under the hands of the Clerk of either Houses of Parliament.' 1 But not till fourteen years before Dyer stood for the first time at the Bar of the House of Commons was it decided to publish every morning during the Session what was done in the House the preceding day. The Parliament in which this decision was come to was the last but one of Charles II. At the time not only Parliament but the whole country was in agitation over the Exclusion Bill to deprive the Duke of York brother of the King of the succession to the Throne because he was a Catholic. The Bill passed through the House of Commons only to be rejected by a large major- ity in the House of Lords. And in the midst of all the com- motion, on October 30, 1680, the Commons came, for reasons unrecorded, to the following resolution : That the Votes of this House be printed, being first perused and signed by Mr, Speaker. The Speaker was also requested to nominate and appoint printers to print the same. 2 In the following year, on March 24, 1681, when the motion for the printing of the Votes was again proposed, there was an interesting discussion which discloses the reasons why this course was taken. Sir John Hotham said the last Parliament was moved to print the Votes for the security 1 Lords Journals, vol. 5, p. 664. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 9, p. 643. 100 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of the nation and the honour of the King. ' It prevented ill representations of us to the world by false copies of our Votes/ he added. The only objection that was raised to the motion came from a Minister, Mr. Secretary Jenkins, who declared that publication would lower the dignity of the House. ' I beg pardon if I consent not to the motion,' he said. ' Consider the gravity of this assembly. There is no great assembly in Christendom that does it. It is against the gravity of this assembly, and it is a sort of appeal to the people. It is against your gravity, and I am against it.' Mr. Boscawen admitted it was proper that what passed in Privy Council should be kept secret. ' But,' he continued, * your Journal-Books are open, and copies of your Votes in every coffee-house ; and if you print them not half Votes will be dispersed to your prejudice. This printing is like plain Englishmen who are not ashamed of what they do ; and the people you represent will have a true account of what you do. You may prevent publishing what parts of your transactions you will, and print the rest.' ' Pray who sent us hither ? ' asked Sir Francis Winnington. * The Privy Council is constituted by the King, but the House of Commons is by choice of the people. I think it not natural, nor rational, that the people who sent us hither should not be informed of your action. In the Long Parliament it was a trade amongst clerks to write Votes, and it was then said by a learned gentleman, " That it was no offence to inform the people of the Votes of Parliament, etc., and they ought to have notice of them." The motion was carried and to the ' care and oversight of the Speaker ' was com- mitted the printing of The Votes and Proceedings. 1 1 This discussion will be found in The Parliamentary History (vol. 4, pp. 1,3068), the publication of which was commenced in 1806. No reference to its origin or source is there given ; but the Select Committee on the Publication of Printed Papers (1837) state in their report that it was printed contemporaneously, and is to be found in a volume of Votes and Proceedings of the years 1680 and 1681, which, with others, was presented to the Library of the House of Commons by Mr. C. W. Williams Wynn, M.P, THE VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS 101 It was in these Votes and Proceedings that the only autho- rized information concerning the House of Commons was communicated to the public. Nothing was allowed to appear which it did not suit the object of the Government to publish, and what was made known was communicated in the most meagre and formal style. Still, it was some- thing to have these Votes and Proceedings not only circu- lated for the use of Members, but sold to the public and, at a later stage, permitted to be republished by such news- papers as cared to pay a gratuity to the printers. Things said, however, were not suffered to be printed at all. Only things done were recorded. Moreover, the Commons took the precaution of providing that the order for the Votes and Proceedings should be re- newed every Session. It was suspended from February 25, 1702, until November 23, 1703. 1 This was due to a differ- ence which arose between the two Houses on two matters the first concerning a Bill brought in by the Commons for preventing occasional Conformity, and the second on the subject of Public Accounts. After warm debates and several conferences which led to no result both Houses pub- lished their proceedings, by way of an appeal to the Nation, 2 an extraordinary course, indeed, considering their passion for doing things in secret. 1 Commons Journals, vol. 14, pp. 208 and 231. 2 Report of Select Committee on Publication of Printed Papers (1837), pp. 2 and 21. CHAPTER XII Journals of Lords and Commons THE responsibility for the preparation of The Votes and Proceedings of the Commons rests with the Clerk of the House ' the under Clerk of the Parliament to attend upon the Commons,' as he is styled in the ancient phraseo- logy of the patent of his appointment under the Great Seal. He is first mentioned in the Rolls of Parliament for the year 1388. Before he enters upon his office he takes an oath ' to attend upon the Commons of this realm of Great Britain, making true entries, remembrances and journals of the things done and past in the same.' 1 As his primary duty was from the earliest times thus to record the proceedings of the House, the Clerk may be called the first of the par- liamentary reporters. But the actual work of preparing the Votes and Proceedings is done by the two Clerks-Assistant who sit with him at the Table, and, like him, wear wig and gown. They, too, hold their offices from the Crown. The first Clerk- Assistant was appointed in 1640, but it was not until 1801, at the Union of the Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland, that the post of the second Clerk- Assistant was created. It is their duty to keep two minute-books at the Table in which every act, order and proceeding of the House, and every communication made to it, is entered. The object of keep- ing the minutes in duplicate is to ensure accuracy and to make certain that every matter is duly recorded. The Clerk is prohibited from taking notes of speeches or * Report of Select Committee on Parliamentary Proceedings (1862). 102 JOURNALS OF LORDS AND COMMONS 103 making any entry concerning the Debates. This Order was passed by the House in 1628 during the reign of Charles I. It had been the custom of the Clerk to record in the Journals the points of speeches in the earlier debates on the preroga- tive of the Crown and the liberty of the subject ; but as the King, like his father, James I, used to send for the Journals and peruse their contents, the House, on April 17, 1628, declared that these entries had been made without warrant, and directed that they be discontinued, 1 as a safeguard against the opinions expressed in the House coming to the knowledge of the Sovereign. This rule was emphasized on April 25, 1640, when John Rushworth, the newly appointed Clerk-Assistant, who was noticed by Members to be a most industrious note-taker in shorthand as he sat at the Table, was ordered not to take any notes without the previous direction of the House. 2 There would seem to have been a violation of this rule, followed by a disclosure of the proceedings of the House, very soon afterwards, for on December 1, 1640, it was ordered that the Clerk and his assistant should not allow copies of any argument or speech whatever to go forth from the House. 3 Rushworth, however, was an inveterate com- piler, who could not be suppressed. When Charles I made his memorable descent upon the House of Commons in January, 1642, to seize the five Members who had spoken disrespectfully of Prerogative in debate, Rushworth took down in shorthand the speech made by the King. His Majesty sent for Rushworth, subsequently, and asked for a transcript of the notes. Rushworth, in his account of the interview, says that at first he refused to comply with the King's command, pointing out that a Member had been sent to the Tower by the Commons for communicating to the Sovereign opinions expressed in debate. But, he adds, 1 Commons Journals, vol. 1, p. 885. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 2, p. 12. * Commons Journals, vol. 2, p, 42, 104 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY he was obliged ultimately to yield ; and the King caused the speech immediately to be printed and published. 1 Since then the rule against the Clerks entering notes of the speeches in their minute-books has prevailed. A speech by the Speaker on a great occasion is sometimes inserted in the Journals by order of the House. But the only exception to the rule as it affects the Clerk is when the Clerk is directed to take down the words of a Member which have been objected to on the ground that they are dis- orderly. From these minute-books, confined as they are to things done as distinguished from things said, the Votes and Proceedings are made up at the end of each sitting, and, signed by the Speaker, are printed and circulated the next morning. 2 Another and more permanent official record of the transac- tions of the House of Commons are the Journals. The entries are compiled from the Votes and Proceedings, but are fuller and more explicit, and as they are printed during the course of each Session the complete volume for the Session is usually published shortly after the Prorogation. 3 It was not until 1742 that the House of Commons was moved to order the printing of the Journals. On May 31 in that year a committee to whom the question had been referred, reported in favour of the project. They said that some of the Journals ' were almost illegible, and others in some parts destroyed or defaced by mildew.' In a state- ment respecting the periods covered by the Journals the Clerk, Nicholas Harding, said they began in 1547. This was the first year of the reign of Edward VI, and also the year in which the Commons commenced their sittings in 1 The complete story is told in the Commons Journals, vol. 2, p. 368, Rushworth's Historical Collections, vol. 4, p. 478, and the Parliamentary History, vol. 2, p. 1,009. 2 Report from the Select Committee on Parliamentary Proceedings (1862). 3 Report from the Select Committee on Parliamentary Proceedings (1862). JOURNALS OF LORDS AND COMMONS 105 St. Stephen's Chapel, which was assigned to them for the purpose by the young King. There was a serious blank in the Journals. Those for the years 1581 to 1603 could not be found, and it was supposed they had been dispersed or destroyed during the confusion of the Rebellion in the reign of Charles I. 1 ' I am entitled,' the Clerk added, ' by virtue of my office which is granted to me for my life, to several fees for searches in the Journals and copies of them, which fees must be inconsiderable if the House should think fit to order the Journals to be printed.' He, therefore, expressed the hope that he might be thought not unworthy of receiving some recompense for his loss, and for the pains he must necessarily, and should willingly, take in preparing the work for the Press. The House, having taken into consideration the report of the committee, agreed to the printing of 1,000 copies of the Journals t for the use of Members of this House,' as they were careful to add, and fixed the Clerk's recompense at 1,000. It was also ordered : That the said Journals be printed by such person as shall be licensed by Mr. Speaker, and that no other person do presume to print the same. The printer appointed by Mr. Speaker Onslow was Samuel Richardson, of Salisbury Court, who two years previously had published his first novel, Pamela. 2 Eight years later the importance of the Journals was still further recognized by the House. In 1750 a new official called ' the Clerk of the Journals ' was appointed. It is a position of trust and responsibility, for he is the compiler of the Journals, and as such has the custody of all the books and papers relating to the business of the House. 1 There are other records of those years. The lacuna is filled to a great extent by the Journals of all the Parliaments during the Eeign of Queen Elizabeth, compiled chiefly from the existing Journals of the House by Sir Simonds D'Ewes while he sat in the Long Parliament, and published in 1682, thirty-two years after his death * Commons Journals, vol. 24, pp. 262-66. 106 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY The Lords were ten years behind the Commons in deciding to print their Journals. An incident, curious in its way and of considerable interest and importance to contemporary historians, which took place twenty-three years earlier, shows how sacrosanct were the Journals in the eyes of the Peers. Thomas Rymer, the archaeologist, was commis- sioned by the Government of William III in 1693 to collect and publish the public conventions of Great Britain with foreign Powers. He brought out seventeen volumes, known as Foedera, the cost of which was subsidised by the State. After Rymer's death in 1713 his assistant in the work, Robert Sanderson, Clerk of the Rolls, compiled three sup- plementary volumes. On May 7, 1729, the Committee of Public Records reported to the House of Lorcls that the eighteenth volume of ' the late Mr. Rymer's Foedera ' con- tained an extract from the Journals in breach of the privi- leges of the House. Though the extract was of a date so far removed as that of Charles I the House decided that it must be expunged. Tonsor, the printer of Foedera, was directed to deposit with the Clerk- Assistant such impressions of the eighteenth volume as remained undisposed of ; and when this was done the following order was made : That such part of the said books as is a Copy of the said Journals of this House be taken out of each respective volume ; and that the Clerk-Assistant do take care the same be burnt and destroyed, which when done the said Mr. Tonsor may have the remaining part of the said books delivered to him. 1 The manuscript Journals of the House of Lords appear to have been kept in as haphazard a fashion as the Journals of the House of Commons. On June 1, 1717, the Clerk of the Parliaments having brought to the notice of the Lords the defective state of the Parliament Office, where the official records of the House were deposited, a committee was ap- pointed not only to view the store-rooms, but to make what observations they should think fit concerning the condition 1 Lords Journals, vol. 23, p. 422, JOURNALS OF LORDS AND COMMONS 107 of the Journals. The committee reported on July 4, 1717, that the Journals were ' very indifferently bound ' ; that * by reason of the frequent use made of them divers sheets or leaves therein are become loose ' ; that, moreover, they were badly kept, as entries relating to the same Session were ' transposed in different books ' and that there was an index only to a few volumes. The House made an order for the rebinding of such volumes as required it, and for the completion of the index. 1 The question of printing the Journals was determined by the Lords on March 9, 1767. They adopted the following courtly address to George III : We are persuaded that it will be entirely agreeable to His Most Gracious Majesty to transmit to future ages those monuments and remains of our ancestors, so necessary and useful to the knowledge and preservation of our excellent Constitution, as we desire to transmit to posterity, along with them, the many signal proofs recorded in our Journals that His Majesty has already given of His paternal attention to the happiness of His people. 2 The King's reply was reported to the House by the Lord Chamberlain on March 11. His Majesty received the address ' very graciously,' and * was pleased to say ' : ' He would give all proper directions for carrying into execution a matter so useful, and that would do so much honour to the nation.' 3 The Journals begin in 1509. Those for the reign of Henry VIII are incomplete. On May 6, 1771, the sub-committee appointed by the Lords to superintend the work reported that thirteen volumes had been printed, and stated that after the most diligent inquiries they had not been able to discover any Journals prior to the first year of Henry VIII, ' although they have reason to believe that some Journal of the reign of Henry VII was extant about the end of the last century ' ; nor any of the Journals ' known long ago 1 Lords Journals, vol. 20, pp. 486, 530. 2 Lords Journals, vol. 31, p. 509. * Lords Journals, vol. 31, p. 514, 108 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY to be missing ' of some years during the reign of Henry VIII. To supply these deficiencies ' in some measure ' they had directed the Rolls of Parliament of those years ' as far as they point out the proceedings of Parliament ' to be printed. 1 Some of the manuscript Journals of the House of Lords were lost after the fire of 1834, which destroyed the Palace of Westminster. They consisted of twelve volumes relating to fourteen years in the latter part of the eighteenth, and the early part of the nineteenth, centuries. In July, 1849, a gentleman accidentally discovered them in a cheese- monger's shop in the Walworth Road, London, where they were about to be used as wrapping paper for the butter and lard of the poor inhabitants of the district. The account given by the tradesman of the way they came into his pos- session illustrates the astonishingly careless manner in which these invaluable parliamentary chronicles were looked after at St. Stephen's. He said he bought the volumes, with about a ton weight of other documents, as waste paper, at a sale of the effects of Mr. Croft, one of the librarians of the House of Lords, who had recently died. 2 The Lords did not regularly print any minutes of their transactions, equivalent to the Votes and Proceedings of the Commons, until as late as the year 1824. 3 1 Lords Journals, vol. 33, p. 214. The Rolls of Parliament begin with 1278 and end with 1503. They consist of parliamentary petitions, pleas and proceedings kept by Chancery officials, and were printed, by Order of the House of Lords, in six folio volumes, during the years 1767 to 1777, under the title Rotuli Parliamentum. 2 Annual Register, 1849, Chronicle, pp. 77-8. 3 Report of the Select Committee on Parliamentary Proceedings ( 1 862 ). CHAPTER XIII The Fathers of Parliamentary Reporting THE News-letter went slowly out of fashion concurrently with the tardy development of the printing press. In 1722 the newspaper had come into competition with the news-letter as a purveyor of parliamentary intelligence, for on January 23 of that year a complaint was made in the House of Commons, that the debates and proceedings * were frequently misrepresented in written and printed News Letters and Papers,' which was the first mention of the newspaper ; and it is significant that the resolution passed by the House not only included in its condemnation the printers and publishers of offending newspapers, but its scope was extended to protect Committees of the House as well as the House itself. The resolution was in these terms : That no News Writers do presume in their Letters, or other Papers, that they disperse as Minutes, or under any other denomina- tion, to intermeddle with the Debates or any other Proceedings of this House or any Committee thereof. That no Printer or Publisher of any printed News Papers do presume to insert in any such Papers any Debates or any other Proceedings of this House or any Committee thereof. 1 But the work of letting the public know what was said and done in Parliament, in spite of the risk of pains and penalties, was taken up not so much by the newspapers as by the monthly magazines. The pioneer in the writing of a regular and continuous monthly chronicle of parlia- mentary proceedings was Abel Boyer, a Frenchman, born 1 Commons Journals, vol. 20, p. 29. 109 110 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY in 1667, who came to London in 1689, composed a French grammar and dictionary for the use of English students, and developed into a most prolific miscellaneous writer. He edited a newspaper called The Postboy ; he wrote a Life of Queen Anne ; and produced many political pamphlets in the interest of the Whigs. In January, 1711, he commenced the publication of a magazine with the title of The Political State of Great Britain, which was described as ' an impartial account of the most material occurrences, etc., Civil and Military ' in the form of ' a monthly letter to a friend in Holland.' In this periodi- cal he wrote an account of the proceedings of Parliament, and occasionally even supplied summaries of the debates, giving the names of the speakers slightly veiled as ( Duke of B ' ; ' Lord H x ' ; and ' Sir J n P y ' ; though sometimes they appeared without any attempt at conceal- ment. The extraordinary thing in relation to Boyer's enterprise is that he carried it on for eighteen years without molestation. Such was his ' caution and circumspection,' as he says himself, writing in 1729, * that no offence has been taken nor any complaint made against these accounts in the honourable House of Commons,' More than that, he says that * many eminent and public-spirited Members of that hon. Assembly ' had furnished him, at divers times, with their own speeches, and among those that were dead he mentions, ' with reverence to their memories ' Earl Stanhope, Lord Lechmere and Mr. Hampden. Boyer was, at last, attacked from a most unexpected quarter. He tells the story in the preface to volume 37 of The Political State for the year 1729. It turned out to be also his valedictory address to his readers. He says he could not entertain the hope of being able to carry on the magazine, personally, much longer as he laboured under ' the disadvantages of a crazy constitution, broken with age, constant labour, and a complication of a stubborn gout and rheumatism.' But the chief difficulty against FATHERS OF PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 111 which he had to contend was 'the sordid and misguided malice and envy of certain printers and booksellers.' Then he gives the following letter which came to him from his publisher : February 6, 1728. SIR, The proprietors of the Votes have been with me desiring me to acquaint you that if you meddle with the Parliamentary Pro- ceedings in your Political State you will certainly be taken into custody for the same. I thought it my duty to acquaint you there- with, that you may proceed accordingly ; and am, sir, Your obedient servant, THOMAS WARNER. The proprietors, or rather the printers, of the Votes and Proceedings, were an association of booksellers who, no doubt, deemed themselves injured as traders by Boyer's infringement of their monopoly. Boyer, however, decided to fight, though this determination, as will be seen, was tempered by discretion. In his pronouncement, which he grandly dates * From my House in the Five Fields near Chelsea College, February 9, 1728-9,' he denounces the * high presumption and indiscretion ' of any private indivi- duals * to anticipate the resolutions, censure and judgment ' of the House of Commons. To that noble Assembly he intended to appeal. ' Yet,' he goes on, * I pay so great a deference to anything that carries the aspect of Authority that I have thought fit to cancel a whole half-sheet which had already passed the Press, and which contain'd an account of the Parliamentary Proceedings for the month of January last.' He was convinced that his readers would but temporarily suffer. * For it cannot enter my thoughts,' he says * that so polite and so civilized a Nation as ours will ever become so barbarous and so Gothick as to suppress history.' J The next volume, 38, of The Political State that for the 1 Preface to vol. 37 of The Political State (1729). 112 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY concluding six months of 1729 ends with an account of Boyer's death on November 16, and his burial in Chelsea churchyard. The Political State did not cease to exist with its founder and editor. Nor did it discontinue its parliamentary intelligence. For ten years afterwards it furnished its readers with belated accounts of the Debates undeterred, and even undisturbed, by either the printers of the Votes and Proceedings, or the Standing Orders of Parliament. The information still seems to have been obtained mainly from the messengers and other minor officials of Lords and Commons. But such was the success of The Political State in that respect that it brought imitators into the field. The greatest and most renowned of these was Edward Cave of The Gentleman's Magazine. Like the good trades- man that he was the motive of Cave was entirely mercenary. He was moved by no democratic impulse that to be governed by a secret junto, assembled at St. Stephen's, was incom- patible with the freedom and rights of the people. Like his predecessor he began to publish parliamentary news, not for glory but for gain, as a commercial experiment, and finding that it increased the circulation of his magazine he extended his operations to the Debates. Thus from things accidental and haphazard, or from the motives of the market-place, great movements and issues often arise. Cave was the son of a cobbler, and was born at Newton, near Rugby, in 1691. Having the right of admittance to Rugby Grammar School, he availed of it, and entered the school in 1700. But he was soon compelled to leave for having joined in the boyish prank of robbing the hen- roost of the wife of the master of the school. He then came to London and was apprenticed to a printer. He completed his time in due course and became a journeyman, and entering the service of the Post Office was ultimately appointed to the important post of Clerk of the Franks. His official position brought him into intercourse with FATHERS OF PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 113 Members of both Houses of Parliament ; and obtaining from them intelligence of their proceedings at St. Stephen's he began in 1725 to furnish country papers with notes on the Debates, embodied in a ' News-letter/ for which he charged a guinea a week. The practice was undoubtedly a breach of the privileges of Parliament, and it was inevitable that in time Cave should suffer for it in fine and imprison- ment. On March 14, 1728, complaint was made in the House of Commons, of ' a printed pamphlet, entitled The Gloucester Journal, with the most material occurrences, foreign and domestick ' having, two days before, printed the resolu- tions and proceedings of the Commons, ' in contempt of the order and in breach of the privilege of this House.' An order was made requiring the printer of the newspaper, Robert Raikes of Gloucester, 1 and the bookseller from whom the copy of the newspaper in question had been bought, F. Wilson of Bristol, to attend the House and answer to the charge, on that day fortnight. No information is given in the Journals of the House of Commons as to the nature of the publication which was thus declared to be a breach of privilege, but a reference to The Gloucester Journal of March 12, 1728, shows that it was a very simple and tame report and apparently quite exact. It consisted of a brief paragraph, said to be * From Wye's Letter,' and dated ' Westminster, March 5.' The voting in Committee ' to consider of the State of the Nation in relation to the National Debt ' is given ; and there follows this further piece of news ' The Debates on the said question, wherein Mr. Pulteney and Sir Robert Wai- pole were chiefly engaged, one against the other, lasted till 9 at night.' Such was the sole offence of the newspaper. 1 Raikes founded The Gloucester Journal in 1722. One of the oldest country newspapers, it is still in existence. Raikes was the father of the philanthropist, Robert Raikes, promoter of Sunday Schools (born 1735 ; died 1811) who also conducted The Gloucester Journal. 8 114 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY On the day appointed, March 28, Raikes and Wilson were brought to the Bar. Raikes admitted having printed the newspaper ; and said ' he had obtained the intelligence therein mentioned which relates to the Proceedings of this House from Edward Cave of the Post Office, London,' adding that Wilson had no concern in the matter. The bookseller was discharged. Raikes was adjudged guilty of a breach of privilege, and committed to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. 1 On the order of the House, Cave attended at the Bar on March 30, and was examined as to his part in the trans- action. He owned to having sent several News-letters relating to the House to Raikes. It was then resolved : ' That Edward Cave having presumed to disperse written News-letters containing accounts of the proceedings of this House is guilty of a breach of privilege of this House.' 2 Cave, in his statement, named tljree men, William Wye, John Stanley and Elias Delfrench as having assisted him in his enterprise as London correspondent. In what way they helped him the Journals do not state, but they, too, were brought to the Bar on April 3, and having been pro- nounced guilty of breach of privilege, were sent to keep Cave company in the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. Five days later Raikes was again brought to the Bar, * where he, upon his knees, received a reprimand from Mr. Speaker,' and on paying his fees was discharged. On the same day a petition from Cave was read to the House, ' expressing his great sorrow for his said offence, and most humbly begging pardon for the same, and praying (in regard he has a wife and family who by reason of his confine- ment will suffer very much) that he may be discharged out of custody, paying his fees.' Similar petitions were received from his assistants. The four of them were brought in 1 Commons Journals, vol. 21, pp. 85 and 104. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 21, p. 108. FATHERS OF PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 116 custody to the Bar on April 10, and kneeling down were reprimanded by the Speaker. They were thsn discharged, but not before they had paid their fees. 1 , An order for the discharge of a prisoner of the House of Commons in those days was always conditional on his ' paying his fees.' These fees were paid to several officers and servants of the House, and amounted to a considerable sum. In the year 1700, the amounts were revised by the House, and entered in the Journals. The fees paid to the Serjeant-at-Arms were as follows : For taking a Knight into custody, 5. For taking a Gentleman into custody, 3 6s. 8d. For every day in custody, 1. For bring- ing a criminal to the Bar, 6s. 8d. For riding charges, sixpence a mile. In addition to these fees, the following had also to be paid : the Speaker's secretary, for every warrant signed by Mr. Speaker, 10s. ; the Clerk, for every order for the commitment or discharge of any prisoner, 6s. Sd. ; the housekeeper, for every prisoner committed by the House, 5s. ; the two door-keepers, upon the discharge of every prisoner, 2s. 6d. ; the messengers, for serving the summons of the House, 6s. Sd. ; the messengers for attending a prisoner, per diem, 6s. Sd* The fees which Raikes had to pay including the expenses of the messengers' journey from London to Gloucester and back at sixpence a mile were very heavy. In Raikes' file copy of his newspaper, there is written in ink, probably by the editor himself, at the head of the little item of par- liamentary intelligence that was so big with trouble for him, * The Woful Paragraph,' and at its foot, * This para- graph cost R. R. 40.' But the afflictions of the poor editor lid not end there. Stories were circulated locally on his jing summoned before the House of Commons that he a disaffected person, and against this misrepresenta- 1 Commons Journals, vol. 21, pp. 119 and 127. 2 Parliamentary History, vol. 8, pp. 1,004-6. 116 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY tion he deemed it necessary to publish the following protest in his newspaper on March 30 : ' Since the printer hereof hath been under the displeasure of the House it hath been industriously and maliciously insinuated that it is for printing against the Government, which is a false and scandalous aspersion.' But this sharp discipline of imprisonment, fees and misrepresentation combined did not deter Raikes, or his newspaper, from committing again in the following year the offence of publishing intelligence of the House of Com- mons ; and the House took further action to chasten him into the proper mood of submission and humility. On February 18, 1729, the attention of the House was called to the issue of The Gloucester Journal for February 11, 'wherein the proceedings of this House are printed, in contempt of the order and in breach of the privilege of this House,' and an order was again made for the attendance of Raikes at the Bar. He did not appear on February 28, but sent a petition stating that he was ill of a fever and unable to travel, and pleading that the report complained of was published without his knowledge, and contrary to the orders given by him to his servant before the commence- ment of the Session not to print any of the votes or resolu- tions of the House. He added that the paragraph com- plained of was taken from a News-letter not communicated to the journal direct, but ' sent by Mr. Gythens, Clerk of the Bristol Road, or his assistant, to the King's Head Inn, in Gloucester,' which shows that these narratives were supplied in places of popular resort as well as to newspapers. Taking these circumstances into their merciful consideration, the House ' discharged Mr. Raikes from attendance,' but ordered Gythens who, like Cave, was an official of the Post Office and his assistant, John Stanley, to attend at the Bar. The House then passed the following resolu- tions nemine contradicente : ' That it is an indignity to and a breach of the privilege of this FATHERS OF PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 117 House for any person to presume to give, in written or printed newspapers, an account or minutes of the Debates or other Pro- ceeding of this House, or of any Committee thereof.' ' That upon discovery of the authors, printers or publishers of any such written or printed newspaper, this House will proceed against the offenders with the utmost severity.' x On March 3 t Robert Giddins ' so the name is given in the Journals ' of the Post Office, London/ and John Stanley, were brought to the Bar and examined. Stanley confessed that the written News-letter, copied into The Gloucester Journal, was his composition. The House resolved that he was guilty of breach of privilege and committed him to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. 1 Commons Journals, vol. 21, p. 238. i CHAPTER XIV c The Gentleman's Magazine ' N the early days of the year 1731 Cave opened a small printing office at St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, for the production of a magazine. The first number appeared in January of that year. It was called The Gentleman's Magazine, or Monthly Intelligencer, by 'Sylvanus Urban, gent.' and on its title-page bore a rude woodcut of the gateway of the ancient priory of the Knights of St. John. The printer's name was given as ' Edward Cave, Junior,' a supposititious nephew invented by the conductor, to stand between him and State prosecutions. The introduction to the first number stated that the object of the undertaking was, in the first place, { to give monthly a view of all the pieces of wit, humour and intelligence, duly offered to the Publick in the Newspapers (which of late are so multiplied, as to render impossible, unless a man makes it a business, to consult them all),' and in the next place, to ' join there- with some other Matters of Use or Amusement that will be communicated to us.' The original intention, therefore, was to produce not so much a newspaper as a monthly miscellany, in which would be gathered together all that was brightest and most interesting from other periodicals. The first number consisted of forty-two pages in double columns. Nineteen pages were made up of extracts from newspapers of the previous month, and a digest of home and foreign news. Soon, however, the copying from other publications was discontinued, and there was given original matter in the form of poems and essays 118 THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE 119 In the May, or fifth, number of the magazine, parlia- mentary intelligence was first published. The news con- sisted solely of the King's Speech to both Houses at the opening of the Session and a list of the Acts that had been passed, copied, no doubt, from the Votes and Proceedings, and therefore in strict conformity with the Standing Order. In the following year, however, Cave commenced to publish reports of the Debates in both Houses, thus venturing on the dangerous course of telling the public not only what was done but what was said in Parliament. The reports began in the number for July, 1732, and were continued in all the subsequent issues of the magazine for that year. Only meagre summaries of the remarks of Members were given in the third person. As Parliament was then in Recess the report dealt with a Session that was over and gone, for it was commonly presumed that the Resolutions of Parliament against publishing any of its proceedings were only in force while Parliament was sitting ; and with a view still further to evade responsibility the pretence was made of disguising the names of the Members by giving only the initial and final letters. At the end of the second instalment of the reports, in the August number of the magazine, the following note appeared : 'N.B. The farther Proceedings and Debates will be continued in this manner in our future Numbers. We don't pretend to give the very words of every speech, but we hope we have done justice to the arguments on each side.' In some cases the name of the speaker was not given at all. The remarks were thus introduced * one answer to the following effect was given,' or ' a reply that was in substance as follows.' Over all the early reports there is a hesitating and apologetic air, as if something of a disagreeable nature or prone to bring unpleasant consequences was being done. The public appear to have greatly relished the reports. 120 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY To be told what their representatives were saying in Parlia- ment was a novel experience, and it was all the more enter- taining that it was being done surreptitiously, in defiance of the expressed desire of both Houses. Every number of The Gentleman 1 s Magazine for 1733 contained reports of the Debates. In the early numbers the proceedings of the Session of 1732 were still being published ; and in the numbers for the latter half of the year, when Parliament had risen, the proceedings for the Session of 1733 were given. The reports also grew in length. One debate is prefaced by the note : l To satisfy the impatience of our Readers we shall give them occasionally some entire speeches in Parliament.' For instance there is given the speech of Sir R t W le ' (Sir Robert Walpole, the First Minister) bringing in a Bill for reviving the duty on salt, which was abolished two years before. The Bill was intended to give financial relief to the landed classes by making taxation more general, but it was presented by Walpole as an effort to raise the supply for the year in a way that by falling equally upon all would be burthensome to none. Here is an extract from his speech, as an example of the first report- ing of parliamentary debates, and excellently done it is, too : ' If it is approved of, I shall rejoice in having been the author of a measure which I think will contribute so much to the good of my country in general, and to the relief of those who have for many years borne so great a share of the publick burthen ; and if it happens not to meet with the approbation of this House, I shall have the testimony of a good conscience for my comforter, for since I have no other view but only a sincere and an honest intention to give relief to my fellow-subjects I never can have occasion to repent, nor do I dread those reproaches which may be unjustly thrown upon me or upon the measure I am to propose. These are things which in all publick transactions every man must expect. No pub- lick measure can be proposed but what may be against the private interest and selfish views of some particular men ; but I fear not the enmity and I despise the revilings of such persons.' The chief speech against the Bill was made by 'Mr. 'THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE' 121 P r.' Having pointed out that the tax upon salt was abolished only two years before on the grounds that it pressed heavily upon the poor and hampered trade, he proceeded to say : * Why we should so suddenly alter our opinion, and resolve to grind the face of the poor in order to relieve a few of the rich, I can see no reason. I say a few of the rich, for it may be easily made appear that the relief proposed will be no relief at all to the landed gentlemen of small fortunes, and even to the rich it will be but a small present ease, which will be attended with most heavy and most fatal consequences.' These reports are well done, and interesting to read. But are they authentic ? Do they express the arguments of the speakers in the speakers' language ? The manner in which Cave obtained his reports is thus described by Sir John Hawkins : ' His method of proceeding is variously reported, but I have been informed by some who were much about him that, taking with him a friend or two, he found means to procure for them and himself admission into the Gallery of the House of Commons, or to some concealed station in the other, and that then they privately took down notes of the several speeches, and the general tendency and substance of the arguments. Thus furnished, Cave and his associates would adjourn to a neighbouring tavern and compare and adjust their notes, by means whereof, and the help of their memories, they became enabled at least to fix the substance of what they had lately heard and remarked. The reducing this crude matter into form was the work of a future day and an abler hand Guthrie the historian, a writer for the booksellers, whom Cave retained for the purpose.' * A Scotsman and the son of an Episcopalian clergyman, William Guthrie was born at Brechin, Forfarshire, in 1708, was educated at Aberdeen University, and coming to London in 1730 to make a living by his pen was engaged by Cave in 1735 to compose the parliamentary debates for The Gentleman's Magazine. He became an industrious and voluminous historian later in life. He wrote a History of England in four L volumes, a History of Scotland in ten 1 Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (2nd edition, 1787), p. 95. 122 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY volumes and a History of the World in twelve volumes. His historical writings are now forgotten, and he himself finds a small place in the narrative of journalistic annals solely as the man whose fanciful mind and skilful pen elaborated and adorned into orations the rude and rough notes of remarks by Lords and Commons gathered by Cave often from the attendants and messengers of both Houses. But all the speeches published in The Gentleman's Maga- zine were not Guthrie's essays on the political questions of the day. Both Lords and Commons at times privately sent the manuscripts of their speeches to Cave. Perhaps they preferred to have published what they really said however crude it might appear to others than the stirring and convincing orations attributed to them but which they had never delivered. In the volume of The Gentleman's Magazine for 1736, a speech in the House of Lords is given without a name, and another in the Commons is put down to ' Sir J n St. A n, Knight of the shire for the County of C w 11.' There is a -note appended in which the hope is expressed by the conductors of the Magazine that ' it will be found correctly taken and printed as delivered, since we should be very sorry to make a mistake ' ; and they add that they would be * grateful for any authentick intelli- gence in matters of such importance and tenderness as the speeches in Parliament.' As a matter of fact, however, many of the reports which appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine were appropriated, without acknowledgment, from The Political State, and Cave's rival, The London Magazine, also went to the same source for its parliamentary intelligence. This borrowing, or rather pillaging, went on for as long as five years. The Political State could not seek redress in the law courts for breach of copyright as the news was contraband. It had to be content with such advantage as it derived from being first out with the reports by a couple of months, though the profit in that respect may have been but small, as its C THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE' 123 price was one-and-sixpence, or a shilling more than that of its belated but cheaper rivals. It was in 1737, when The Political State discontinued its enterprise, that both The Gentleman's Magazine and The London Magazine took to independent parliamentary reporting. Meantime, Cave had lost his position at the Post Office. In an obituary of Cave, written by Dr. Johnson and pub- lished in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1754, it is implied that his strictness as Clerk of the Franks had aroused enmity against him in Parliament. It is said that he stopped franks which were given by Members to their friends, because he thought such an extension of a peculiar right was illegal ; and that for this action he was dismissed from his post. He was undoubtedly cited before a Com- mittee of the House of Commons to explain certain practices in the discharge of his duties ; but the matter of complaint was the tampering with letters and not the stopping of franks. In 1735 an outcry was raised that letters, and particularly those of Members of the Opposition in the House of Commons, were opened at the Post Office. It was insinuated that the practice was encouraged by the First Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, for political and revenue purposes, a knowledge being thereby obtained of the doings of opponents and the dealings of merchants. The Government, however, consented to the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the matter. On March 28, 1735, the committee reported to the House the result of their investigations. They stated that having examined the officers of the Post Office they found that ' the person who could give the most material evidence in the affair ' was * Mr. Edward Cave, who called himself supervisor of the franks.' Accordingly, Cave was summoned to give evidence. He said he had a general direction to charge all letters not wholly superscribed by Members, and those letters which, though superscribed by Members, did not 124 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY relate to the business of Members. Being asked, ' What rule he had to know whether letters were about the Mem- bers' business or not ? ' he replied that he often guessed. For instance, if a letter came from a place where he knew the Member who had signed the cover was not staying at the time, he charged postage. Then followed this remark- able admission. ' That he could frequently see, by the help of a candle, through a cover directed to a Member, an enclosed letter directed to another person, in which case his way was to charge it.' The committee strongly condemned these methods, and passed a resolution, which the House of Commons endorsed, declaring that it was a breach of privilege ' to detain or delay, open or look into, by any means whatsoever, any letter directed to or signed by the proper hand of any Member,' without a warrant from one of the principal Secretaries of State. 1 It was said in the coffee-houses that Cave's object in examining letters was more to obtain news than to raise revenue. The charge was never proved. At any rate, Cave lost his appointment at the Post Office. He had, however, a most valuable property in The Gentleman's Magazine. Its sale was over 10,000 copies, and soon the circulation rose to 15,000 a month. Cave became a pros- perous man. He set up a coach and pair, and on the door- panels he had painted, in place of a coat-of-arms and crest, a sketch of St. John's Gate. The success of The Gentleman's Magazine tempted many rivals to compete with it for the favour of the public. ' In a few years a multitude of magazines arose and perished,' says Johnson, in his obituary of Cave. ' Only The London Magazine, supported by a powerful association of book- sellers, and circulated with all the art and cunning of the trade, exempted itself from the general fate of Cave's invaders, and obtained for some years, though not an equal 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 9, pp. 839-48. 'THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE 5 125 yet a considerable sale.' The London Magazine, conducted by Thomas Astley, had appeared in the field within the second year of the starting of The Gentleman's Magazine. Its first number was published in April, 1732. As the success of the earlier periodical was ascribed chiefly to its reports of the proceedings in Parliament, so its rival strove to beat it by supplying timelier and more complete accounts of the Debates. Notes of the speeches were obtained by Astley in the same manner as by Cave ; and this raw material was transformed into the finished article by Thomas Gordon a Scotsman like Guthrie who had published in 1728 a translation of Tacitus. Of the two magazines, the London was undoubtedly the first out with the Debates. In the preface to volume 6 for the year 1737 it indulges in loud crowing over the earlier appearance and greater merit and exactness of its reports. The speeches to be read elsewhere were worth- less, ' Such imperfect, confused and blundering extracts as may, sometime, be purchased for a trifle from persons who have neither sense to comprehend, memory to retain, nor skill to digest what they hear.' Evidently there had grown up quite a traffic in reports of parliamentary speeches, so great was the popular demand for them. ' When such pieces have been offered to us for sale ' the preface goes on ' we have rejected them with disdain, and upon this, we suppose, some of them have found their way to our Brother Collectors who seem to be fond of those pieces they can purchase for a small price, in order that they may have something to brag of as their own, though the publishing of such pieces for sale be really a sort of insult upon the understandings of the purchasers.' After much more in the same sarcastic vein the conductor of The London Magazine proceeds to point out blunders in the reports given by ' Dr. Urban and his fellow-crafts- men,' for ' craftsmen ' they may probably be called as ' the head seems to have very little share in anything they 126 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY publish,' and then goes on to proclaim the merits of its own compilations in the following fashion : * It would be easy for us to fill up our MAGAZINE, at a very cheap rate, with such wretched stuff ; but if we had no regard for our readers, that respect which is due to those who have a share in the government of our country shall always prevent our taking any account, and much more pretending to give any extract of what is spoken by either of them, without having it first examined and approved by gentlemen whose knowledge and judgment we can depend on. When we can procure such an extract of any remark- able speech, be it at never so high a rate, we shall communicate it with pleasure ; and in all Debates, where we can procure no such extracts of any of the particular speeches we shall, as heretofore, give our readers an account of the Debate in general without any prejudice or partiality for either side of the question.' The Gentleman's Magazine retaliated in the most crushing of all retorts in such a controversy that of the bigger circulation. In the preface to the volume for the year 1736 the sixth of the series there are verses in which the existence of the rivals is first noticed. The poet despises them, of course, and bids them defiance " Happy in this, that while his Rivals fall, Ten thousand monthly for his Labours call." In the volume for 1738 appears the answer to the open attack of The London Magazine in the previous year. It was written by Johnson. He points out that the success of The Gentleman's Magazine had given rise to about twenty imitations of it, which were ' either all dead or very little regarded by the world ' ; and asserted that the chief and most unhappy of all the competitors had ' seventy thousand London Magazines mouldering in their Warehouses, returned from all parts of the Kingdom, unfolded, unread and dis- regarded.' Hawkins in his Life of Johnson says the reports in The London Magazine were based on ' documents less authentic ' than those in The Gentleman's Magazine. But Wright the compiler of The Parliamentary History disputes this state- 'THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE ' 127 ment, and he is a better authority on the subject. In the preface to volume 10 of the History (published in 1812) he points out that the debates of the Session of 1737, as they stand in The Gentleman's Magazine of that year, ' are copied verbatim, down to the very errors of the Press ' from The London Magazine. The London Magazine in February, 1737, inserted an advertisement in a newspaper called The Craftsman, stating that ' the only valuable part of The Gentleman's Magazine for the last six months ' in all 230 pages of the parliamentary Debates was ' stolen from The London Magazine,' which, shows, it went on to say, ' what the readers of that stale collection may expect in the ensuing year.' To this The Gentleman's Magazine retorted that The London Magazine ( had actually copied or stolen (to use their own word when not speaking of themselves), about 1,000 pages of the debates from The Political State. ' without mentioning where they had them.' x 1 The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 8, p. 68. CHAPTER XV The Commons Take Action THE rival magazines had a common enemy, which they were united in dreading and trying to placate. This was the Assembly over the reporting of whose proceed- ings they fell out, as competitors, and abused each other. It is evident that the conductors of both magazines were apprehensive that Parliament, at any moment, might condemn them to fines and imprisonment for the very cause of their bitter rivalry. Each, accordingly, was in the habit of making apologies and exculpations for the reports of the Debates. On the eve of the outburst of indig- nation at their conduct, to which the House of Commons unanimously gave vent in 1738, they were both particularly anxious to prove the innocence and propriety of their action, as if some premonition of the coming storm were in the air. The Gentleman's Magazine printed this excuse and plea : ' The candid reader who knows the difficulty, and, sometimes, danger, of publishing speeches in P 1, will easily conceive that it is impossible to do it in the very words of the speakers. With regard to the major part, we pretend only to represent the sense as near as may be expected in a summary way ; and therefore as to any little expression being mistaken, which does not affect the scope of the argument in general, we hope, as not being done with design, it will be favourably overlooked.' The London Magazine pointed out that the gentleman who wrote the reports ' appeared so impartial in what he has been pleased to communicate ' that country readers 128 THE COMMONS TAKE ACTION 129 had sent many letters desiring to know ' whether he be a Whig or Tory, a Courtier or a Patriot, and both sides, we find, complain that he has not done justice to their side of the question.' The conductors of the magazine declared that as the gentleman's principles were unknown to them they could not satisfy the curiosity of their readers, but they offered to print statements in support of either side if prepared in such a way as was agreeable to their readers and safe to publish. They then proceeded to say : ' After such a declaration, we hope no gentleman will accuse us of prejudice or partiality ; and when political questions are fairly and impartially debated, and with that freedom which the estab- lished laws of our country admit of, the publishing of such a debate can give offence to no man who is a friend to the liberties of the people. For, as Superstition can never be established or supported but by rendering or keeping the people ignorant of the principles of true Religion, so Slavery or arbitrary power can never be estab- lished or supported but by rendering or keeping the people ignorant of the principles of Free-Government.' The House of Commons took action on April 13, 1738. It was the Speaker, Arthur Onslow, who called the attention of the House to the reporting of the Debates. The practice, he said, reflected on the dignity of the Assembly and rendered their proceedings liable to very great misrepresentation. In the course of the discussion many opinions curious and obsolete in the twentieth century were expressed. Indeed, it seems almost incredible now that they could ever have been entertained. It was agreed that the Resolution of the House against the publication of their proceedings was in force during the Recess, as well as during the Session ; but while Mem- bers, generally, were indignant that the public should be given at any time any inkling of the nature of the speeches delivered in Parliament, it was felt that the earlier and prompter the magazines and newspapers were in supplying reports the more they aggravated their offence. ' If you do not either punish these persons, or take some effective 9 130 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY method of checking them, you may soon expect to see your votes, your proceedings, and your speeches printed and hawked about the streets while we are sitting in the House,' said Sir William Yonge. Sir Thomas Winnington was extremely wrathful. ' You will have,' said he, * every word that is spoken here by gentlemen misrepresented by fellows who thrust themselves into the Gallery ; you will have the speeches of the House every day printed, even during the Session, and we shall be looked upon as the most con- temptible assembly on the face of the earth.' William Pulteney, the leader of the Tory Opposition, agreed that a stop should be put to the practice. His arguments are strangely out of touch with these days when a Member of Parliament is becoming more and more the delegate of his constituency rather than its representative ; and when speeches in the House of Commons are mainly addressed to the electorate outside. ' I think,' said he, ' no appeals should be made to the public with regard to what is said in this assembly, and to print or publish the speeches of gentlemen in this House, even though they are not misrepresented, looks very like making them account- able without doors for what they said within. Besides, sir, we know very well that no man can be guarded in his expressions as to wish to see anything he says in this House in print.' He said he remembered the time when the House was so cautious of doing anything that might look like an appeal to the constituents that not even the Votes for the day were printed without leave, a Motion to that effect being moved, each night, by a Minister, put from the Chair, and agreed to by the House. Why this custom was discontinued, he was unable to explain. 1 1 As I have already indicated, it was in 1680 that the House of Commons first agreed to the printing daily of the ' Votes ' or minutes of the proceedings taken by the Clerks and their distri- bution to Members. This practice has been continued ever since, and is authorised by an Order of the House passed formally at the beginning of each Session. THE COMMONS TAKE ACTION 131 It is clear from all this that the House still retained their ancient resentfulness against any outside influence what- ever being brought to bear upon them. But the objection was also raised that the publication of the Debates exposed Members to the danger of having their opinions and actions falsely or incorrectly presented to the country. The speech of Sir Robert Walpole, the Whig leader of the House, would seem to show that the Parliamentary reporters who pre- ceded Dr. Johnson also took good care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it. He said : ' I have read some debates in this House, sir, in which I have been made to speak the very reverse of what I said. I have read others of them wherein all the weight of learning and argument has been thrown into one side, and in the other nothing but what was low, mean, and ridiculous. And yet when it comes to the question the decision has gone against the side which upon the face of the debate had reason and justice to support it. So that, sir, had I been a stranger to the proceedings, and to the nature of the argu- ments themselves, I must have thought this to be one of the most contemptible assemblies on the face of the earth. What notions then, sir, can the public, who have no other means of being informed of the debates of this House than what they had from these papers, entertain of the wisdom and ability of an assembly who are repre- sented therein to carry almost every point against the strongest and the plainest arguments and appearances ? ' For the matter of that, even in the twentieth century, victory in the division lobbies is always on the side of the big battalions quite irrespective of the weight of argument in debate. Indeed debate in Parliament has always been like the impact of two unyielding forces, producing no change, but plenty of hot excitement and enthusiasm, and stern resolution on each side to remain firm and unyielding to the last. It was from the lips of Tories that the still small voice of constitutional principle and reason made itself heard. Sir William Windham urged the House to be very cautious lest in taking measures to preserve themselves from mis- representation they encroached upon both the liberty of 132 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the Press and the rights of the electors. What he said weighed with him was ' the prejudice which the public will think they sustain by being deprived of all knowledge of what passes in this House otherwise than by the printed Votes, which are very limited and imperfect for satisfying their curiosity of knowing in what manner their representa- tives act within doors ' ; and if he were sure that the senti- ments of Members would not be misrepresented he would * be against our coming to any Resolution that could deprive them of a knowledge that is so necessary for their being able to judge of the merits of their representatives within doors.' Following somewhat on the same lines, Pulteney also said that though he was as much as any Member for putting a stop to the ' scandalous practice ' of publishing the debates, he was against doing it in a manner that might affect ' the Liberty of the Press,' or make it seem as if the House claimed a privilege to which they had no title. He agreed that the House had a right to punish any printer who published their proceedings, or any part of them, during the Recess, because their privileges as a House of Parliament existed during the whole continuance of Parliament, but as it had long been the practice to print some account of their pro- ceedings during the Recess, he was against punishing any person for what was passed, because very possibly the offenders did not know they were doing amiss. He further declared that the Resolution against publishing the debates expired at the end of every Parliament, and that at the Dissolution, therefore, every one was at liberty to publish what he pleased concerning the dead Assembly. It was true, he said, that the Lords had the power of calling printers to an account for publishing any part of their proceedings for twenty, thirty or forty years back. But there was an important difference between the two Houses. ' The House of Peers is a Court of Record,' said he ; ' and as such its rights and privileges never die. Whereas this House never THE COMMONS TAKE ACTION 133 pretended to be a Court of Record ; our privileges expire at the end of every Parliament, and the next House of Commons is quite different from the last.' The following resolution which was drawn up by the Speaker, was adopted unanimously : ' That it is a high indignity to, and a notorious breach of the privilege of, this House for any news-writer in letters or other papers (as minutes or under any other denomination), or for any printer or publisher of any printed newspaper, of any denomination, to presume to insert in the said letters or papers, or to give therein any account of the doings or other proceedings of this House, or any Committee thereof, as well during the Recess as the sitting of Parliament, and that this House will proceed with the utmost severity against such offenders.' Some interesting questions now suggest themselves. How has it happened that so fine a report of this memorable debate is available to-day ? Is it, for the most part, imaginary ? Has it been spun from the brain of an able hack-writer of the day, with the sole assistance of notes, scanty, imperfect and, perhaps, inaccurate, supplied by a messenger who listened surreptitiously at the door of the House of Commons ? These are questions not easy to answer. I found the debate in Chandler's Collection, so called from the publisher, Richard Chandler. The full title of the work is * History and Proceedings of the House of Commons from the Restoration to the Present Time, 5 and it was published in 1742 in thirteen volumes. The speeches are said to have been * collected from the best authorities ' but no particulars as to their source or origin are given. Only two years earlier the House of Lords sent to prison the publisher of a similar work. A complaint was made to the House on February 26, 1740, that a work entitled ' A compleat Collection of the Debates in Parliament (both Lords and Commons) in nine volumes, octavo ' had just been placed on sale at the book-shops. The Lords in their high indignation directed the Clerk to read the resolution of 134 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY February 27, 1698, against the printing or publication of anything in reference to their proceedings, and then appointed a committee to discover who was the printer and publisher of this breach of their privilege. On March 2, the committee reported that John Torbuck, of Clare Court, Drury Lane, was the printer and publisher of the volumes. He told the committee ' that he printed the same from a printed copy of the said books which he pur- chased of John Smith, bookseller in Dublin ' and refused to name any of the persons whom he employed in the enterprise. He was brought to the Bar, and committed to Newgate during the pleasure of the House. 1 The Commons did not proceed against Chandler, and their inaction may, perhaps, be evidence, however slight, of the authenticity of his report of the debate of 1738. Still, the probability is that while the drift of opinion in the debate has been preserved, there is so little in the speeches of the speakers to whom they are attributed, as regards ideas, arguments and language, and so much that is pure invention, that in these days of perfect reporting they would be repudiated, with anger and resentment. 2 All that is absolutely certain, therefore, is the resolution adopted by the Commons. 8 Would the threat of condign punishment embodied in the Resolution put a stop to this bogus system of parlia- mentary reporting ? In a way, it is curious to speculate on how the conductors of the magazines brought themselves to think that there was anything of real worth or impor- tance in this branch of news-gathering. There was the point of its morality. It was given to the public under false pretences. That aspect of the matter, no doubt, 1 Lords Journals, vol. 25, pp. 610 and 615. 2 For the debate see Chandler's Collection, vol. 10, pp. 278-87. It has been reprinted in The Parliamentary History, vol. 10, pp. 800- 12. 3 Commons Journals, vol. 23, p. 148. THE COMMONS TAKE ACTION 135 but little troubled the consciences of the conductors of the magazines. If they could they would have given true versions of the speeches, and as they were unable to do that they did not scruple to invent them. And how did the readers regard these reports ? Did they accept them as true ? No doubt they did. The speeches were in print ; and the sacredness of print was, in those days, a sufficient guarantee that everything as it was set down had actually been said and done in Parliament. Certainly, the public liked the reports. Their curiosity was agreeably stirred by these glimpses behind the shrouded doors of St. Stephen's ; and as it followed that the more their desire for an illumination of the darkness in which their repre- sentatives made laws was gratified the more eagerly they purchased the magazines, so the printers and publishers of these periodicals were determined not to abandon so lucrative a business, however low its standard of ethics, or severe the penalties of pursuing it. The clever and not very scrupulous resources of magazine enterprise therefore proved capable of coping even with this new and most dangerous emergency. With a view to circumventing the Resolution both the rivals adopted ingenious and amusing methods of reporting the Debates. The London Magazine was first in the field with its ruse. Parliament was prorogued on May 20, 1738. In the May number of the magazine, which was published at the end of the month, the reporting of the * Proceedings of a Political Club ' was commenced. This new feature was introduced by a letter addressed ' To the author of The London Maga- zine ' from the secretary to the club, which thus opened : ' As it is now rendered unsafe for you to entertain the publick with any account of the Proceedings or Debates of those who rule over us, it may be thought not altogether improper to substitute in its stead the Journals of a political and learned Club of young noblemen and gentlemen estab- lished some time ago here in London to which I have the 136 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY honour of being secretary.' It was further stated that as the members of the club hoped one day to enter Parlia- ment, they proposed, in order to qualify themselves for that high position, to confine their discussions to such questions as were debated in either House. Roman appella- tions, such as ' The Hon. Scipio Africanus,' ' L. Aemilius Mamercinus,' ' M. Tullius Cicero, 5 ' M. Agrippa, 5 ' Julius Florus,' ' Pomponius Atticus,' were used, and in these characters the most celebrated Members of the two Houses of Parliament were disguised. Cave's device in The Gentleman's Magazine was to publish the proceedings in Parliament as ' Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia.' They were commenced in June, 1738 a month in the wake of The London Magazine and were presented as a sequel to Captain Lemuel Gulliver's travels in Lilliput. ' We doubt not,' said the introduction which was written by Johnson, ' but our readers will be much pleased with an appendix to Captain Gulliver's account, which we received last month, and which the late Resolution of the House of Commons, whereby we are forbidden to insert any account of the proceedings of the British Parliament, gives us an opportunity of com- municating in their room.' Peers and Commons like the characters in Gulliver's Lilliput bore quaint and bar- baric pseudonyms. The Commons formed * The House of Clinab ;' and the Lords ' The House of Hurpes ' ; and by transposing, or slightly disarranging the letters of their names, Sir Robert Walpole, became ' Sir Rubs Waleup ' ; Lord Talbot, the ' Hurgo Toblat ' ; Pulteney, ' Pulnub ' ; Pelham, ' Plemahm ' ; Bedford, ' Betfort.' Each magazine afterwards furnished a key to these fictitious titles, The Gentleman's Magazine in the volume for 1739, andT^e London Magazine in the volume for 1742. Such was the position of affairs when Samuel Johnson succeeded William Guthrie as parliamentary reporter for The Gentleman's Magazine. Johnson at the time was THE COMMONS TAKE ACTION 137 thirty years of age, and had been three years in London, with his wife, vainly seeking for a means of livelihood by his versatile pen and his scholarly attainments. The rate at which he was paid for the reports is not known, but, no doubt, it was wretchedly low. Cave was described by Johnson, in after years, as a penurious paymaster. ' He would contract for lines by the hundred, and expect the long hundred,' said Johnson to Boswell ; ' but he was a good man, and always delighted to have his friends at his table.' Boswell says that Johnson told him he was the sole composer of the Parliamentary Debates in The Gentleman's Magazine for the three years, 1741, 1742 and 1743. ' He was not, however, precisely exact in his statement which he mentioned from hasty recollection,' says Boswell, * for it is sufficiently evident that his composition of these began November 19, 1740, and ended February 23, 1743.' John Wilson Croker, in his edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, contends that Boswell must refer in this comment to ' the sole and exclusive composition ' of the Debates by Johnson. He believed that Johnson was employed on the Debates for six years, from June, 1738, when they assumed the Lilli- putian disguise until 1744. Boswell, certainly gives a letter from Johnson to Cave, written in August or Sep- tember, 1738, in which there is the following passage, in answer apparently to a complaint by Cave as to the dis- charge of his duty of revision : * If I have made fewer alterations than usual in the Debates it was only because there appeared, and still appears to be, less need of altera- tion.' On the other hand, Dr. Birkbeck Hill, another and later editor of Boswell, asserts that Croker is certainly wrong in regard to the period of Johnson's compilation of the Debates. ' Even if we had not Johnson's own statement,' he says, 1 from the style of the earlier Debates we could have seen that they were not written by him.' He thinks it 138 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY absurd to attribute to Johnson reports in which such passages occur as these : ' There never was any measure pursued more consistent with, more consequential of, the sense of the House ' ; ' That was the only expression that the least shadow of fault was found with.' It is probable that Johnson was first employed by Cave in 1738 as his letter of that year to the editor indicates to improve the reports written by Guthrie, who was not quite proficient in the trimming and rounding of sentences. The speeches in The Gentlemari 's Magazine for which Johnson was solely responsible are those that were spoken between November 25, 1740, and February 22, 1743. 1 1 Boswell's Life of Johnson, edited by George Birkbeck Hill (1887), vol. 1, p. 509. CHAPTER XVI Samuel Johnson, Parliamentary Reporter SAMUEL FOOTE, wit, dramatist, and mimic, entertained at his dinner-table in London one evening in 1770 a number of the celebrities of the time. Wedderburn, the Scottish lawyer, who afterwards, as Lord Loughborough became Lord Chancellor, Arthur Murphy, the Irish dramat- ist and actor, and Dr. Francis, father of Sir Philip Francis whose memory endures as the reputed author of Junius, were of the company. But the chief guest was Dr. Samuel Johnson, then at the summit of his fame as the mighty and infallible sage of literature. The conversation turned on the subject of parliamentary oratory. Francis who had made a special study of Demos- thenes, and had published translations of the Greek orator's addresses, asserted that a speech delivered in the House of Commons by the elder William Pitt in 1741 surpassed in feeling and beauty of language the finest efforts of the most eloquent speaker of antiquity. Wedderburn remem- bered the speech, and cited some of its passages amid the applause of the company. 4 That speech I wrote in a garret in Exeter Street.' So said Johnson, who till then had taken no part in the con- versation. The remark, as Arthur Murphy relates in his Essay on Johnson, struck the guests with amazement. ' How could it have been written by you, sir ? " asked the bewildered Dr. Francis. ' Sir,' said Johnson, ' I wrote it in Exeter Street. I never was in the Gallery of the 139 140 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY House of Commons but once. Cave had interest with the doorkeepers ; he and the persons employed under him got admittance ; they brought away the subjects of dis- cussion, the names of the speakers, the side they took, and the order in which they rose, together with notes of the various arguments adduced in the course of the debate. The whole was afterwards communicated to me, and I composed the speeches in the form they now have in the Parliamentary Debates, for the speeches of that period are all printed from Cave's magazine.' Francis enthusiasti- cally exclaimed, ( Then, sir, you have surpassed Demos- thenes himself.' It was on this occasion that Johnson, having been praised for his impartiality in dealing out reason and eloquence with an equal hand to both political parties in these reports, replied : ' That is not quite true. I saved appearances tolerably well ; but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it,' a famous saying which has become inseparably associated with his career as a parliamentary reporter. 1 This speech of William Pitt the elder better known now as the Earl of Chatham which Johnson composed in a garret in Exeter Street, off the Strand, finds a place to-day in collections of orations and in school reading-books as a splendid example of ready retort and scathing philippic. It is the famous speech in which Pitt answered the accusa- tion of ' the atrocious crime of being a young man ' which was brought against him by Horatio Walpole. On January 27, 1741, the House of Commons was debating a Bill intro- duced by the Whig Government of Sir Robert Walpole, for the better and speedier manning of the Fleet by giving power to the press-gang forcibly to enter domiciles and impress seafaring men. As an illustration of the disguised manner in which the debates were presented, I quote the introduction to this report in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1 Murphy, Essay on the Life and Genius of Dr. Johnson (1792), pp. 43-5. < SAMUEL JOHNSON Ul which was not published until September of the same year in the parliamentary Recess : ' In the fourteenth of Gorgenti II, on the 24th day of the seventh Session of the 8th Senate of Great Lilliput, it was ordered that leave be given to bring in a Bill for the Encouragement and Increase of Seamen and for the better and speedier manning of His Majesty's Fleet ; and that the Admiral Werga, the Urg, Cluckerbutt and the Attorney-General do prepare and bring in the same ; and on the 40th day it was brought in by the Admiral Werga." Pitt vigorously attacked the Bill. He was thirty-three years old and was leader of * the Boys,' as the younger Tory opponents of Walpole were called. Horatio Walpole the brother of the Prime Minister, and a member of the Government then in his sixty-third year, taunted Pitt with the juvenile character of his arguments and style of delivery. Johnson, who wrote the accusation as well as the retort in the Exeter Street garret, puts the following passages in reference to Pitt in the mouth of Horatio Wal- pole : * Formidable sounds and furious declamations, confident tions and lofty periods, may affect the young and [inexperienced, and perhaps the gentleman may have contracted his habits of oratory by conversing more with those of his own age than with such as have had more opportunities of acquiring knowledge and more successful methods of communicating their sentiments. ' If the heat of his temper, sir, would suffer him to attend to those whose age and long acquaintance with business give them an indis- putable right to deference and superiority, he would learn in time to reason rather than declaim, and to prefer justness of argument and an accurate knowledge of facts to sounding epithets and splendid superlatives, which may disturb the imagination for a moment but leave no lasting impression upon the mind. He will learn, sir, that to accuse and prove are very different, and that reproaches unsupported by evidence affect only the character of him that utters them. * Excursions of fancy and flights of oratory are, indeed, pardonable in young men but in no other. And it would surely contribute more, even to the purpose for which some gentlemen appear to speak, that of depreciating the conduct of the Adminnistration, to prove the inconvenience and injustice of this Bill, than barely to assert them, with whatever magnificence of language, or appearance of zeal, honesty or compassion.' Then up rose Pitt, aflame with indignation, and in 142 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the imagination of Samuel Johnson, parliamentary reporter overwhelmed his opponent with a speech which thus opened : * SIR, The atrocious crime of being a young man, with which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of the number who are ignorant in spite of experience. Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I will not, sir, assume the province of determining, but surely age may become justly contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided. The wretch that, after having seen the consequences of a thousand errors, con- tinues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insults. Much more, sir, is he to be abhorred who, as he advanced in age has receded from virtue, and becomes more wicked with less tempta- tion ; who prostitutes himself for money which he cannot enjoy and spends the remains of his life in the ruin of his country. But youth, sir, is not my only crime. I have been accused of acting a theatrical part. A theatrical part may either imply some peculiarities of gesture, or a dissimulation of my real sentiments, and an adoption of the opinions and language of another man. In the first sense, sir, the charge is too trifling to be confuted, and deserves only to be mentioned that it may be despised. I am at liberty, like every other man, to use my own language ; and though I may perhaps have some ambition to please this gentleman I shall not lay myself under any restraint, nor very solicitously copy his diction, or his mien, however matured by age or modelled by experience. If any man shall, by charging me with theatrical behaviour, imply that I utter any sentiments but my own I shall treat him as a calumniator and a villain, nor shall any protection shelter him from the treatment which he deserves. I shall on such an occasion, without scruple, trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity intrench themselves, nor shall anything but age restrain my resentment ; age, which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment.' I shall not attempt to deny a suspicion that here arises in my mind nor, indeed, even to apologize for it that this is precisely what Horace Walpole and Pitt would have said had each been Johnson. SAMUEL JOHNSON H3 William Coxe, Archdeacon of Wilts, in his Memoirs of Horatio, Lord Walpole, published early in the nineteenth century, says : ' This celebrated retort of Mr. Pitt existed only in Johnson's imagination, who penned these debates, and is one of the instances which realize his assertion (( that he took care the Whig dogs should not have the better of it." Coxe also gives an anecdote communicated by Lord Sydney, on the authority of his father who was present in the House of Commons to exhibit the slender foundation on which Pitt's splendid philippic was reared by Johnson : ' In a debate in which Mr. Pitt, Mr. Lyttleton, and perhaps some of the Grenvilles, who were then all young men, had violently attacked Mr. Horace Walpole, he, in reply, " lamented that, having been so long in business, he found that such young men were so much better informed in political matters than himself ; he had, however, one consolation, which was, that he had a son not twenty years old, and he had the satisfaction to hope that he was as much wiser than them as they were than his father." Mr. Pitt got up with great warmth, beginning with these words : " With the greatest reverence to the grey hairs of the honourable gentleman." Mr. Walpole pulled off his wig, and showed his head covered with grey hair, which occasioned a general laughter, in which Mr. Pitt joined, and all warmth immediately subsided.' * But according to Johnson's report the personalities of the debate did not end with this conflict between the audacity of youth and the experience of age. Pitt in the full flood of his indignation, according to Johnson, proceeded to say, ' I will exert my endeavours, at whatever hazard, to repel the aggressor, and drag the thief to justice, who- ever may protect them in their villainy and whoever may partake of their plunder ' when he was stopped and called to order by Thomas Winnington. The interruption led 1 Coxe, Memoirs of Horatio, Lord Walpole (1808), vol. 2, p. 184. Pitt's reply to Horace Walpole is included in a volume of Famous Speeches, selected and edited with introductory notes by Mr. Herbert Paul, the historian, which was published in 1910. There is nothing to indicate that it is an essay by Johnson rather than a speech by Pitt. 144 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY to a passage-at-arms between Winnington and Pitt, which shows Johnson's inexhaustible command of powerful words, and his skill, as well, in attack and retort, equally pointed and ironical : Mr. Winnington : I do not, sir, undertake to decide the controversy between the two gentlemen, but must be allowed to observe, that no diversity of opinion can justify the violation of decency, and the use of rude and virulent expressions ; expressions dictated only by resentment and uttered without regard to Mr. Pitt called to order, and said : Sir ; if this be to preserve order, there is no danger of indecency from the most licentious tongues ; for what calumny can be more atrocious, or what reproach more severe, than that of speaking with regard to anything but truth. Order may sometimes be broken, by passion, or inadvertency, but will hardly be re-established by monitors like this, who cannot govern his own passion, whilst he is restraining the impetuosity of others. Happy, sir, would it be for mankind, if every one knew his own province ; we should not then see the same man at once a criminal and a judge ; nor would this gentleman assume the right of dictating to others what he has not learned himself. That I may return in some degree the favour which he intends for me, I will advise him never hereafter to exert himself on the subject of order ; but whenever he finds himself inclined to speak on such occasions, to remember how he has now succeeded, and condemn in silence what his censures will never perform. Mr. Winnington : Sir ; as I was hindered by the gentleman's ardour and impetuosity from concluding my sentence, none but myself can know the equity or partiality of my intentions, and therefore, as I cannot justly be condemned, I ought to be supposed innocent ; nor ought he to cen- sure a fault of which he cannot be certain that it would ever have been committed. He has, indeed, exalted himself to a degree of authority never yet assumed by any member of this House, that of condemning others to silence. I am henceforward, by his inviolable decree, to sit and hear his harangues without daring to oppose him. How wide he may extend his authority or whom he will proceed to include in the same sentence, I shall not determine ; having not yet arrived at the same degree of sagacity with himself, not being able to foreknow what another is going to pronounce. If I had given offence by any improper sallies of passion, I ought to have been censured by the concurrent voice of the House, or SAMUEL JOHNSON 145 have received a reprimand, sir, from you, to whom I should have submitted without opposition ; but I will not be doomed to silence by one who has no pretensions to authority, and whose arbitrary decisions can only tend to introduce uproar, discord, and confusion. l Johnson as I have said, composed the debates in both Houses of Parliament for The Gentleman's Magazine from November 25, 1740, to November 22, 1743. We have his own statement that he was but once in the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons. Bos well mentions that he worked from the scanty notes furnished by persons employed by Cave to attend in both Houses of Parliament. ' Some- times, however, as he himself told me,' adds Bos well, * he had nothing more indicated to him than the names of the several speakers and the part which they had taken in the debate.' In The Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1741, there is republished an account of the debate in 1657 between Oliver Cromwell and a Committee of the House of Commons who brought him a proposal on behalf of the House that he should assume the title of King. The report is described as * abridged, modified and digested ' and the work of com- pression was done by Johnson. In a brief introduction he expresses some interesting but unexpected views on shorthand and its limitations. He says that the full account of the debate, published in 1660, was found * by no means adapted to the taste of those who expected entertainment and instruction at the same time ' and then proceeds : 'For the speeches being taken, probably in shorthand, without omissions of passages less important, and of such words as the writer imagined himself able to supply from the general contexture of the sentence and drift of the discourse which is frequently practised by shorthand writers are, either for want of memory or care of the copies, so ungrammatical, intricate and obscure, so full of broken hints, imperfect sentences and uncouth expressions, that very few would have resolution or curiosity sufficient to labour in search of knowledge through so many obstructions.' 1 The debate was published in The Gentleman's Magazine of 1741, pp. 568-71. It is reproduced in The Parliamentary History, vol. 12. 10 146 Mffi REPORTERS' GALLERY Johnson accordingly presents the discussion in a consecu- tive and coherent summary. He avoids the repetition so common in a full report of a debate by giving each argument but once, inserting in the margin opposite to it the name of the speaker ; and as is proper in a summary- writer uses his own language and phraseology throughout. It is to be regretted,' says John Wilson Croker, c that Johnson did not rather reprint the original report, which the editors of The Parliamentary History do not appear to have seen.' 1 The summary would certainly appeal to those bent only on entertainment ; but for the purposes of instruction reference must be made to the complete account. Fortunately there exist two independent reports of the proceedings in Parliament, from November, 1740, to Febru- ary, 1743, besides the compilations by Johnson namely, the accounts in The London Magazine of debates in both Houses, which were produced by Gordon in the same manner as those in The Gentleman's Magazine by Johnson ; and the reports of speeches in the House of Lords by Dr. Thomas Seeker, Bishop of Oxford, at this period, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, who appears from his own repre- sentation to have taken them down in shorthand as they were delivered and afterwards transcribed them into long- hand. Seeker's reports, which are in the manuscript room of the British Museum, have been incorporated in The Parliamentary History. It is most interesting to compare both the Seeker and The London Magazine versions of the debates with the reports furnished by Johnson. On Decem- ber 9, 1740, the Whig Duke of Argyle called attention in the House of Lords to the state of the Army. According to Seeker's report, the speech of the Duke was a plain, matter- of-fact utterance bristling with statistics about the Army, none of which are included in Johnson's compilation. Here is one passage from Seeker, referring to the methods em- 1 Croker's Boswell (1848), p. 44. SAMUEL JOHNSON 147 ployed by the Secretary of War to increase the number of officers in the Army : ' Tradesmen from the counter were made officers, and numbers taken from school looked as if their cockades would tumble them over.' Here is the passage, attacking the Secretary of War for the class of officers he selected, rendered in the grand John- sonian style, in Johnson's report : * And surely no man, my lords, could have made choice of such wretches for military commands, but to show that nothing but his own private inclinations should influence his conduct, and that he considered himself as supreme and unaccountable. For we have seen, my lords, the same animals to-day cringing behind a counter, and to-morrow swelling in a military dress, we have seen boys sent from school in despair of improvement, and entrusted with military command fools that cannot learn this duty, and children that cannot perform it ; the dross of the nation has been swept together to compose our new forces, and every man who was too stupid or infamous to learn or carry on a trade has been placed by this great disposer of honours above the necessity of application or the reach of censure. Did not sometimes indignation, and sometimes pity, check the sallies of mirth it would not be a disagreeable entertain- ment, my lords, to observe in the Park the various appearances of these raw commanders, when they are exposing their new scarlet to view and strutting, with the first raptures of sudden elevation ; to see the mechanic now modelling his men and the stripling tottering beneath the weight of his cockade, or to hear the conversations of these new adventurers and the instructive dialogues of schoolboys and shopkeepers.' CHAPTER XVII Johnson's Competitors EQUALLY interesting are the various reports of the famous Tory attack on Sir Robert Walpole in both Houses of Parliament on February 13, 1741. The motion that an address be presented to the King praying his Majesty to remove his first Minister from his presence and his Coun- cils for ever, was moved in the House of Lords by Lord Carteret. The opening sentences of the noble lord's speech are thus reported by Bishop Seeker in his swift and direct fashion : ' I am glad to see the House so full. The honour of the nation is at stake. And the oldest man hath not known such circumstances as we are in. When storms rise you must see what pilots you have and take methods to make the nation easy.' The report in the London Magazine of May, 1741, of the opening passages of Carteret's speech is fuller and more flowing : ' MY LORDS, It is the duty of Parliament and especially of this House to give our Sovereign our most sincere advice not only when it is asked, but often when it is not desired by the Crown. As members of the House we are in duty bound to have a watchful eye over the public measures His Majesty is advised to pursue, and over the chief Minister he is pleased to employ in the administration of public affairs ; and when we are of opinion that the measures he has advised to pursue are wrong or that the Ministers he is pleased to e mploy are weak or wicked it is our duty and our business, while we sit here, to warn our Sovereign of his danger and to remove weak or wicked Councillors from about his Throne.' In the following July and August Johnson's version of the 148 JOHNSON'S COMPETITORS 149 debate appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine. It is thus introduced : < Proceedings in the Senate of Great Lilliput continued. Debate on the motion for addressing the Em- peror to remove Sir Rub. Waleop. Speeches of the Hurgos, Quadrert and Adonling, and the Nardac Secretary.' The opening sentences of the report of the speech of Carteret (' Quadrert ') are characteristically Johnsonese, grandiose and ponderous : * MY LORDS, As the motion which I am about to make is of the highest importance and of the most extensive consequences ; as it cannot but meet with all the opposition which the prejudices of some and the interest of others can raise against it ; as it must have the whole force of ministerial influence to encounter without any assistance but from justice and reason, I hope to be excused by your lordships for spending some time in endeavouring to show that it wants no other support, that it is not founded upon doubtful suspicions but upon uncontestable facts, that it is not dictated by private interest but by the sincerest regard to public happiness, not abetted by the personal malevolence of particular men but enforced by the voice of the people a voice which ought always to be attended to and generally to be obeyed.' Walpole was accused of having bribed Members of both Houses of Parliament in order to maintain himself in office. In the report written by Gordon for the London Magazine, Carteret is represented as having formulated this charge in these terms : ' The same Minister has had the misfortune, by his conduct, to propagate and establish a general opinion throughout the nation that corruption is the only art of Government he understands : that by corrupt means he gets his creatures and tools chosen at most of the elections in the kingdom : that both Houses of Parliament are induced by a corrupt influence to approve of his measures, and that the public money is squandered away for the sake of giving him a legal support. This charge cannot be proved as long as he has the disposal of all the money and all the favours of the Crown. But it is so well established by common fame, and so generally believed, that if you refuse to put the question upon a fair and impartial issue by first putting it out of the power of the person accused to screen himself by means of that very crime of which he is accused, the 150 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY world will be confirmed in that opinion which is already too general and too steadfastly believed. As the weakness of our late measures is manifest to the whole world, as the unpopularity of this Minister is known to every man that converses with any independent person in the nation, and as he is generally suspected of being a most notable corruptor, if you put a negative on the motion I am to make I am afraid it may affect the honour, the character and the dignity of this House by making the world suppose that very negative to proceed from the influence of corruption.' What Carteret said with regard to Walpole's methods of corruption is, according to Johnson, in the Gentleman's Magazine, as follows : ' For, that corruption has found its way into one of the Houses of the Legislature is universally believed, and without scruple maintained, by every man in the nation who is not evidently restrained from speaking as he thinks ; and that any man can ever be of a different opinion, that any man can ever affirm that he thinks other- wise would be, in any age, the subject of astonishment. That an immense revenue is divided among the Members of the other House, by known salaries and public employments, is apparent ; that large sums are privately scattered on pressing exigencies, that some late transactions of the Ministry were not confirmed but at a high price, the present condition of the Civil List a Civil List vastly superior to all the known expenses of the Crown makes highly probable. That the Commons themselves suspect the determinations of their Assembly to be influenced by some other motives than justice and truth is evident from the Bill this day sent hither for our concurrence (Place Bill) ; and surely no aggravation can be added to the crimes of that man who has patronized our enemies, and given up our navigation, sunk his country into contempt abroad and into poverty at home, plundered the people and corrupted the Legislature.' Dr. Seeker thus briefly reports this part of Carteret's attack upon Walpole : 'The Place Bill just come from the Commons says, there had foeen undue influence there. None of them contradicts it, and they know best.' The motion against Walpole in the House of Commons was jnoved by Mr. Sandys. The reports of his speech fur- JOHNSON'S COMPETITORS 151 nished by Gordon and Johnson are so entirely dissimilar that the remarks which they respectively attribute to him might well have been made by two men who treated the subject independently and from different points of view. Gor- don's version has more of the note of authenticity, and may have been supplied by Sandys. It appeared in print nearly a year before Johnson's report. As I have already stated, the debate in both Houses took place on the same day, February 13, 1741. But while Johnson's account of the proceedings in the House of Lords was published in July and August of the same year, it was not until the spring of 1743 that his report of the proceedings in the House of Commons appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine (at which time Walpole was in the House of Lords), just eleven months after the publication of Gordon's report in The London Maga- zine. Johnson therefore had the opportunity of reading Gordon's version of Sandys' speech before he wrote his own. Nevertheless, Johnson was not influenced in the faintest degree by Gordon. He makes Sandys advance fresh argu- ments in support of his motion. In Gordon's report of the speech there is an interesting opinion expressed as to the office of Prime Minister and its proper relation to the offices of the other Ministers, which shows that the joint responsibility of the Cabinet was hardly thought of then : ' According to our Constitution we can have no sole and prime minister. We ought always to have several prime ministers or officers of state. Every such officer has his own proper department, and no officer ought to meddle in the affairs belonging to the department of another. But it is publicly known that this minister, having obtained a sole influence over all our public counsels, has not only assumed the sole direction of all public affairs, but has got every officer of state removed that would not follow his direction, even in the affairs belonging to his own department. By this means he hath monopolized all the favours of the Crown, and engrossed the sole disposal of all places, pensions, titles and ribbons, as well as all preferments, civil, military and ecclesiastical.' In Johnson's report there is no reference to this question 152 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of the constitutional relations between the head of the Government and the other Ministers. But accusations of corruption against Walpole run through it all, and they are presented in language of overwhelming indignation. Here is an extract which is characteristic of the whole report : ' No expedient has been forgotten that might diffuse corruption and promote dependence ; fear and hope have been equally employed ; those who could not be terrified have been caressed, and those whose understanding enabled them to discover the tendency of false caresses have been harassed with menaces and hardships. Not only the great employments of the kingdom, but every petty post, sir, has been divided upon various pretences, under various denomi- nations. Thus those offices which formerly secured a single vote, because they were usually conferred upon men of spirit and integrity have now been made sufficient to influence boroughs, by being distributed among wretches who have neither understanding to know their duty, nor resolution to perform it, and who, therefore, sell their honesty and their freedom at a very low rate.' Coxe, in his Memoirs of Walpole, gives Sir Robert Wai- pole's speech in his own defence, delivered in the House of Commons, which the assailed Minister himself committed to writing. I quote just the first three sentences : ' SIR, It has been observed by several gentlemen in vindication of this motion that if it should be carried neither my life, liberty, nor estate will be affected. But do the honourable gentlemen consider my character and reputation of no moment ? Is it no imputation to be arraigned before this House in which I have sat forty years and to have my name transmitted to posterity with disgrace and infamy ? * * It is impossible to mistake the genuine ring of these pas- sages. They are manifestly the words of a man who is moved to indignation in defence of his honour and his posi- tion in the Councils of the Nation. On the other hand, Johnson's version of the speech suggests a man who is thinking solely of the literary form in which he conveys his ideas, picking and choosing his words, and careful not to use one of one syllable where another of two or more syllables 1 Coxe, Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford (1798), vol. 1, p. 657. JOHNSON'S COMPETITORS 153 can be made to answer the purpose. Here are the opening sentences : ' SIR, Having now heard the charge against me, with all the aggravation which suspicion has been able to form and eloquence to enforce, after the most fruitful inventions have combined to multiply crimes against me, and the most artful rhetoric has been employed to blacken them, I stand up to offer to the House a plain unstudied defence ; nor do I solicit any other than I shall appear to deserve, or wish to be protected in this storm of accusation by any other shelter than that of innocence.' Walpole, according to his own report of his speech, thus met the charges that were brought against him : ' What is this unbounded sole power which is imputed to me ? How has it discovered itself, and how has it been proved ? What have been the effects of the corruption, ambition and avarice with which I am so abundantly charged ? Have I ever been suspected of being corrupted ? A strange phenomenon, a corruptor himself not corrupt ! Is ambition imputed to me ? Why then do I still continue a Commoner ? I, who refused a white staff and a peerage. I had, indeed, like to have forgotten the little ornament about my shoulders, which gentlemen have so repeatedly mentioned in terms of sarcastic obloquy. But surely, though this may be regarded with envy or indignation in another place it cannot be supposed to raise any resentment in this House, where many may be pleased to see those honours which their ances- tors have worn restored again to the Commons. Have I given any symptoms of an avaricious disposition ? Have I obtained any grants from the Crown since I have been placed at the head of the Treasury ? Has my conduct been different from that which others in the same station would have followed ? Have I acted wrong in giving the place of auditor to my son and in providing for my own family ? I trust that their advancement will not be imputed to me as a crime, unless it shall be proved that I placed them in offices of trust and responsibility for which they were unfit.' In Johnson's report of the speech the following passages are notable for the unusually close resemblance they bear to the foregoing arguments and language which, it would seem, were actually used by Walpole : * With regard to the employments which have been granted to my family, I know not whether any man can accuse me of doing 154 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY what he would not have done in the same circumstances ; nor do I believe that the most abstemious of my accusers, had he been able to obtain the same interest, would not have employed it to the same end. It will not surely be expected that I should obstruct his majesty's favours when offered to my family, and I hope their advancement cannot be imputed to me as a crime unless it shall appear that I procured them by false representations of their virtue or abilities. As to myself, I know not how I have given occasion to any charge of rapacity or avarice, or why I should be suspected of making exorbitant demands upon his majesty's liberality, since, except the places which I am known to possess, I have obtained no grant from the Crown, or fewer at least than perhaps any man who has been supposed to have enjoyed the confidence of his sovereign. All that has been given me is a little house at a small distance from this city, worth about seven hundred pounds, which I obtained that I might enjoy the quiet of retirement without remitting my atten- dance on my office. The little ornament upon my shoulder I had indeed forgot, but this surely cannot be mentioned as a proof of avarice ; nor, though it may be looked on with envy or indignation in another place, can it be supposed to raise any resentment in this House, where many must be pleased to see those honours which their ancestors have worn restored again to the Commons.' The public evidently enjoyed the parliamentary reports, even though their appearance was belated, and the names of Members who spoke were disguised under barbaric appella- tions which contemporaries even must have found it diffi- cult, in many cases, to penetrate. The rivalry between the two monthly magazines which published reports was, accordingly, very keen, and it often found expression in reciprocal recrimination and abuse, of which I have already given examples. The London Magazine was usually first in the field. In its number for October, 1742, The Gentle- man's Magazine acknowledges that a report of the proceed- ings in Parliament which it then supplied had already ap- peared elsewhere ; but it proceeded caustically to remark that those who had prepared the earlier report were mani- festly unacquainted with what had really happened at St. Stephen's on the occasion in question. Not only had they mentioned but six speakers out of the twenty who had taken JOHNSON'S COMPETITORS 155 part in the debate, but they had attributed the arguments of one man to another. ' To put the words of one statesman into the mouth of another is,' said The Gentleman's Maga- zine, l with these people a common mistake ' ; and it goes on to exclaim : * What confusion such an error must make in a learned and political argument we need not inform our readers, nor how successfully these compilers contribute, as they have long boasted, towards enabling the people of these nations to form a right judgment with respect to every political dispute that shall occur.' The London Magazine replied to this challenge in the preface to its completed volume for the year 1742. It said it had been ' impudently attacked by a little busy prag- matical Fellow who calls himself Sylvanus Urban? and who had the assurance to pretend to know what passed in ' The Political Club ' better than the Secretary, when it was well known he was never admitted to the Club, or into the con- versation of any gentleman belonging to it. ' The speeches he gives, except when he steals from us, may most justly be called Lilliputian speeches,' it went on to say, ' and there- fore they may be proper enough for a Lilliputian Senate, but surely he has not the impudence to palm his empty and unmeaning, or nonsensical stuff upon his readers as the Debates of the Political Club, or of any other Assembly of Gentlemen in the Kingdom.' The charge that The Gentleman's Magazine stole from The London Magazine is without foundation. As I have already indicated, there is no evidence that Johnson helped himself in any way from the reports of his rival which came out first. There is a case of a speech which appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine word for word with one comic exception as it appeared eight months before in The London Magazine. The speech as reported in The Gentle- man's Magazine for February, 1744, was delivered by Sir John St. Aubyn no attempt being made to disguise his name on a vote in the House of Commons for the pay of 156 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY 16,000 Hanoverian troops in the service of Great Britain. St. Aubyn was against the vote on the ground that it was 1 big with mischief ' to the country. He declared that opposition to the vote * must determine from this very day who deserves the character and appellation of a Lillipu- tian,' and went on to say that this was the last opportunity which, perhaps, he might ever have ' of speaking with the freedom of a Lilliputian in this Assembly.' The speech was published in The London Magazine for June, 1743. It was thus introduced : ' The speech of L. Sergius Fidenas, in answer to that made by L. Valerius Flaccus in the begin- ning of this debate, which we gave in our last, coming too late to be inserted in its proper place, we shall give it here, as follows.' But instead of * Lilliputian ' the designation ' Englishman ' is used. Probably St. Aubyn sent a copy of his speech to both magazines. But if Johnson's withers were unwrung by the charge that he stole from The London Magazine, he must have been aroused to bellowing indignation by the criticisms of the style and grammar of his reports in which his rival also indulged. Two examples may be given. ' " Prescribe the course of publick enquiries " is nonsense. If he means anything he means and ought to have said, " prescribe a method of proceeding in all public inquiries." ' " Because I shall not be easily suspected," is nonsense. He should have said, " I cannot be suspected." CHAPTER XVIII The Johnson Touch OLDSMITH once said in Johnson's presence that he thought he could write a good fable. He added that the animals introduced in most of these compositions seldom talked in character. ' For instance,' said he, * there is the fable of the little fishes who saw birds fly over their heads, and, envying them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds.' ' The skill,' he contended, ' consists in making them talk like little fishes.' Johnson was immensely tickled by what he conceived to be the absurdity of making little fishes talk like little fishes. It shook his immense sides with laughter. * Why, Dr, Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think,' retorted Goldsmith, ' for if you were to make little fishes talk they would talk like whales.' That is exactly what Johnson has done in his compilations of the debates in Parliament. The empty-headed and tongue-tied country squire, the shrewd and eloquent states- man in office, the keen and irresponsible critic in opposition all speak in the same pompous and rolling polysyllabic strain. One evening at Sir Joshua Reynolds's table Johnson repeated a line which had been applied to him : * You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth.' * Miss Reynolds,' writes Boswell, * not perceiving at once the meaning of this he was obliged to explain it to her, which had something of an awk- ward and ludicrous effect. " Why, madam," said Johnson, " it has a reference to me, as using big words, which require the mouth of a giant to pronounce them. Gargantua is the name of a giant in Rabelais." It would indeed require 157 158 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the mouth of Gargantua to give due expression to the grand and magnificent language ' the sounding epithets and the splendid superlatives ' which Johnson ascribes to all Members of Parliament indiscriminately. The reports of the speeches lack the contrast the light and shade of varying individuality. Johnson seems to have made no effort to arrive at an understanding of the character or temperament of each speaker, or to obtain a knowledge of his educational training, literary ability, or any other mental quality, which might be a guide to the nature of the language he would be likely to use in the expression of his political views. Hawkins says Johnson was never within the walls of either House of Parliament. According to Murphy he had been inside the House of Com- mons only once. He therefore must have been unacquainted with the individual peculiarities and style of most of the Members of Parliament, whether Peers or Commoners. Their names, and the side they supported which, as a rule, was all the information he was supplied with suggested little or nothing to him as to their powers of self-expression. Accordingly he spun their speeches entirely out of his own inexhaustible capacity for argument and disputation, and his astonishing command of sonorous and rhetorical sen- tences. It seems, indeed, reading these debates, as if all the speeches Whig as well as Tory had been delivered by one eloquent, solemn, faultless, cold, superior speaker, entirely devoid of humour, and with an amazing facility in the use of big, big words. ' How he does talk ! Every sentence is an essay ! ' exclaimed the American young lady on listening to Johnson's conversation with Boswell in the Oxford coach. Every sentence in every speech, no matter to whom it may be ascribed to the fluent debater or to the man of incoherent words is a disquisition. What must have been the feelings of the unready in reading the powerful orations set down to their credit ? Must they not have had sad sinkings of heart at the consciousness of their in- THE JOHNSON TOUCH 159 ability to compose or give utterance to these grand and rolling phrases ? And it was not only oratorical accomplishments that were attributed to them. They were endowed also with political prescience which they knew, only too well, they entirely lacked. The curious question remains Is there reality in John- son's boast that he * always took care not to let the Whig dogs have the best of it,' or is it simply a humorous exag- geration ? Is he weak in argument and dull and colourless in the speeches credited to Whigs ? Is he eloquent, forcible, and convincing in the speeches he has put in the mouths of the Tories ? Johnson all through his life hated the Whigs. ' Sir, the first Whig was the Devil,' said he on one occasion. ' Sir,' said he at another time, referring to one of his friends of whom he had a very high opinion, ' Sir, he is a cursed Whig, a bottomless Whig, as they all are now.' But it seems to me that Johnson, despite his strong political pre- judices, deals out with even-handed justice, to Whig and Tory alike, his treasures of eloquence, argument, and logic, as well as his abundant high-sounding polysyllables. He does not endeavour to make the Tory out-argue the Whig. The impression left on my mind by the reading of these parliamentary reports is that Johnson brought the great powers of his intellect to bear upon both sides of a question, and makes each speaker say what, in his judgment, an able man ought to have said in support of his Party in the matter at issue. Johnson supplied a most interesting report of a debate in the House of Commons on December 2, 1740, on a printed paper entitled ' Considerations upon the Embargo on Pro- vision of Victual,' which will be found in a supplement to The Gentleman's Magazine for 1741. The pamphlet was distributed to Members at the door of the House the day before, and the Whigs arraigned it as an attempt by the Tories to excite discontent in the minds of the people. This 160 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY report establishes Johnson's endeavour to present each side of a controversy with equal skill and persuasiveness. Sir Robert Walpole hinted that the paper must have been written by a Tory Member. Pulteney, the leader of the Opposition, denied the imputation, and then pro- ceeded : ' There are indeed some passages which would not disgrace the greatest abilities, and some maxims true in themselves though per- haps fallaciously applied, and at least such an appearance of reason- ing and knowledge as sets the writer far above the level of the con- temptible scribblers of ministerial vindictiveness a herd of wretches whom neither information can enlighten nor affluence elevate, low drudges of scurrility whose scandal is harmless for want of wit, and whose opposition is only troublesome from the pertinaciousness of stupidity.' Strong and abusive language truly ! Johnson gave the whip there to the Whig pamphleteers with an unsparing hand. See now how he applies it to Tory political writers. Walpole having declared that he rarely read the effusions of the pamphleteers of either party, proceeded : ' I have never from an accidental inspection of their performances discovered any reason to exalt the authors who write against the Administration to a higher degree of reputation than their opponents. The writers for the Opposition appear to me to be nothing more than echoes of their predecessors, or, what is still more despicable, of themselves, and to have produced nothing in the last seven years which had not been said seven years before.' He then went on to depreciate the value of controversial political pamphlets : ' The reputation of controversial writers arises generally from the prepossession of their readers in favour of the opinions which they endeavour to defend. Men easily admit the force of an argument which tends to support notions that it is their interest to diffuse ; and readily find wit and spirit in a satire pointed at characters which they desire to depress. But to the opposite party, and even to themselves when their passions have subsided, and their interest is disunited from the question, those arguments appear only loud assertions or empty sophistry, and that wit which was clamorously praised discovers itself to be only impudence or low conceit. The spirit evaporates and the malignity only remains.' THE JOHNSON TOUCH 161 In after years Johnson was very amused to find in the edition of Lord Chesterfield's miscellaneous works, pub- lished in 1777, a speech he had composed which the editor, Dr. Maty, then the librarian of the British Museum, said recalled ' the strong nervous style of Demosthenes,' and * the witty ironical manner of Tully.' ' That Lord Chester- field had studied with attention these great models,' con- tinues the deluded Maty, ' and endeavoured to imitate them will not escape the notice of those who will be at the trouble of comparing their orations with his. But his imitation is that of a man of genius and taste, who improves whatever he touches, not of that herd of retailers so justly distin- guished by the name of imitator es, servile pacus.' There are many authorities for the statement that John- son, towards the end of his career, confessed that the debates were fictitious, in the sense that they were composed rather than reported by him, and expressed regret for the deceit he was compelled by circumstances to practise. Hawkins states that Johnson, on hearing that Tobias Smollet was engaged on a History of England, warned him not to rely upon the Parliamentary Debates as given in The Gentleman's Magazine, ( for they were not authentic, but, excepting as to their general import, the work of his own imagination.' * If Smollet received such a caution he disregarded it, for he uses the debates in The Gentleman's Magazine for the pur- poses of his History. ( The Duke of Argyle,' he says, re- ferring to a speech delivered in the year 1740, but not re- ported by Johnson, * spoke with an astonishing impetuosity of eloquence that rolled like a river which had overflowed its banks and deluged the whole adjacent country.' And writ- ing of Lord Carteret's famous motion against Sir Robert Walpole in 1741, which was reported by Johnson, he says : * The speech that ushered in this memorable motion would not have disgraced a Cicero. It was embellished with all the ornaments 1 Life of Johnson (2nd edition, 1787), p, 123. 11 162 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of rhetoric and warmed with a noble spirit of patriot indignation. The Duke of Argyle, Lord Bathurst, and his other colleagues, seemed to be animated with uncommon fervour and even inspired by the subject. A man of imagination in reading these speeches will think himself transported into the Roman Senate before the ruin of that Republic.' 1 It is certain, however, that Johnson as an old man was ashamed of his work as a parliamentary reporter. Bos well says : ' Johnson told me that, as soon as he found that the speeches were thought genuine, he determined that he would write no more of them, ' for he would not be accessory to the propagation of falsehood.' And such was the tenderness of his conscience that a short time before his death he expressed his regret for his having been the author of fictions which had passed for realities.' In the introduction to the Parliamentary Debates which appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1743, it is announced that the report of the debate on Carteret's motion against Walpole, published in the magazine in July and August, 1741, ' appeared so interesting and important that it was translated into the Etat Politic de VEurope, printed at The Hague, and also into Spanish and High Dutch.' Dr. George Birkbeck Hill says it seems almost capable of proof that when Johnson learnt this his conscience received a shock, and he points out that the last debate which Johnson wrote was for the 22nd of that very month of February, 1743, when the boastful announcement appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine. ' His task suddenly came to an end,' says Dr. Birkbeck Hill. ' Among foreign nations his speeches were read as the very words of English states- men. To the propagation of such a falsehood as this he would no longer be accessory.' 2 Dr. John Nichols, who attended Johnson in his last ill- ness, gave Boswell an account of a conversation he had with his patient on this subject, within a few days of his death 1 Smollet, History of England, vol. 3, p. 73. Boswell's Life of Johnson (1887), vol. 1, p. 505. THE JOHNSON TOUCH 163 Johnson then said : ' That the Parliamentary Debates were the only part of his writings which gave him any compunc- tion, but that at the time he wrote them he had no concep- tion he was imposing upon the world, though they were frequently written from very slender materials and often from none at all the mere coinage of his own imagination.' Some interesting information is also given as to the rate at which Johnson composed the debates. He was able to turn out in an hour as much ' copy ' as would fill three columns of The Gentleman's Magazine. * He never wrote any part of his works with equal velocity,' it is said. * Three columns of the magazine in an hour was no uncommon effort, which was faster than most persons could have transcribed that quantity.' As there were 450 words in the column of The Gentleman's Magazine, Johnson composed at the rate of 1,350 words an hour, a speed that is exceptionally high with writers of original matter, and may be described as fast in the case of reporters transcribing their shorthand notes of speeches. The debates compiled by Johnson have been embodied in the Parliamentary History, where they may be read, divested of their barbaric disguise, and in due sequence in volumes eleven and twelve. Wright, the compiler of the Parliamentary History, accepts them as genuine expressions of the opinions of the various speakers in their actual words. * The Debates prepared by Dr. Johnson are,' he says in the preface to volume nine (published in 1811), * unusually authentic, and exhibit not only the sentiments delivered, but the very language in which they were expressed, in so far as that language was not offensive to the correctness of Johnson's judgment and the classical elegance of his taste.' Nevertheless, as records of the speeches in the period they cover, they are practically worthless. 1 Would the reports 1 Horace Walpole spoke in the House of Commons for the first time on March 23, 1742, against the motion for the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the conduct of his father, Sir Robert 164 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of the proceedings in Parliament furnished by Hansard to- day be of any value if the speeches were supplied, not by corps of trained short hand- writers, but by a staff of imagina- tive romancers ? What Arthur Murphy said of Johnson's Debates in the middle of the eighteenth century remains true. * They are " dramas " which may be perused for amusement rather than for instruction.' What a pity it is that the career of Samuel Johnson, as a parliamentary reporter, was not rounded off by his appear- ance at the Bar, in the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms, to receive, as he knelt in a penitential attitude, the censure of the Speaker for these impressive reports of speeches which Members not only never made, but were incapable of making. How happy Boswell would have been in writing the Doctor's impressions of so great an experience. Had such a scene occurred, the pages of history would, indeed, have been further enriched by the record. As for the editor of The Gentleman's Magazine, he had more of this experience than he at all relished. On April 3, 1747, Black Rod was directed by the Lords to arrest Cave and bring him to the Bar. His offence was the publication in the March number of The Gentleman's Magazine of an account of the trial and conviction of Simon, Lord Lovat, the Jaco- bite, before his peers in Westminster Hall. Thomas Astley, of The London Magazine, was also arrested for the same offence. 1 A petition from Astley was read on April 7. He promised that if the House would have ' regard to his in- firmities ' and order his discharge he should never offend again. On the following day he was brought to the Bar and examined as to how he came by the debates which he published in his magazine. * They were generally sent him Walpole. ' This speech,' he says in one of his letters, ' was published in the magazine but was entirely false, and had not one paragraph of my real speech in it.' Letters of Horace Walpole (edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee), vol. 1, p. xxxvi. 1 Lords Journals, vol. 27, p. 94. THE JOHNSON TOUCH 165 by the penny post, or by messengers,' he explained, ' pur- suant to advertisements frequently inserted inviting persons to furnish him with matters of that nature.' But ' being more strictly inquired of touching that affair,' he explained, ' that he was supplied with a great many speeches by one Mr. Clark, whom he supposed was an attorney, and died in May last, but whether they were fictitious or genuine he knew not, and for all he knew they might be made by himself.' Being asked, what gratuity he gave to this mysterious Mr. Clark, he said, ' he had given him ten guineas at a time,' and added that since Clark's death he had received no speeches but by the post. The consideration of the matter was referred to a committee. 1 The report, which this committee made to the House on April 30, contains some curious statements which were extracted from the two editors. Cave told them the report of Lovat's trial was * from a printed paper which was left at his house directed to him,' but he did not know from whom it came. In reply to the question, ' How he came by the speeches which he printed in The Gentleman's Magazine ? ' he said : He got into the House and heard them and made use of a black- lead pencil and only took notes of some remarkable passages, and from his memory he put them together himself. Notice being taken to him, ' That some of the speeches were very long, consisting of several pages,' he said, ' He wrote them himself, from notes which he took, assisted by his memory.' Being asked ' Whether he printed no speeches but such as were so put together by himself from his own notes ? ' he said, ' Sometimes he has had speeches sent him by very eminent persons ; that he has had speeches sent him by the Members themselves, and has had assistance from some Members who have taken notes of other Members' speeches.' Being asked, ' If he ever had any person whom he kept in pay to make speeches for him ? ' he said, * He never had.' Astley stated he had been told by Clark, his reporter, that he sometimes got into the House of Lords ' behind the * Lords Journals, vol. 27, p. 101, 166 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY throne,' that he was also helped by friends with notes of speeches, and that sometimes the speeches were supplied by Members themselves. The House ordered that Astley, * in regard of his lameness with the gout as not to be able to walk,' be discharged on paying his fees ; but Cave, in addition to having to pay his fees, was brought to the Bar where, on his knees, he was reprimanded by the Lord Chancellor. 1 Notwithstanding Cave's denial that he ever had any one in his pay * to make speeches ' for him, it is the fact that Johnson was succeeded by Hawkes&ury the writer of a biography of Swift as the compiler of the debates for The Gentleman's Magazine. But as a result of this action of the Lords the reports of the Senate of Lilliputia, with its Hurgoes and Clinabs, passed away for ever. The Gentleman* 's Maga- zine did not resume the publication of speeches made in Parliament until 1752, and then only with the greatest circumspection. In the number for June of that year a few speeches of the Session of 1752 are introduced by a letter addressed ' To the author of The Gentleman's Maga- zine ' in these terms : The following heads of speeches in the H of C were given me by a gentleman who is of opinion that Members of Parliament are accountable to their constituents for what they say, as well as what they do, in their legislative capacity, that no honest man who is intrusted with the liberties and purses of the people will be ever unwilling to have his whole conduct laid before those who so intrusted him without disguise ; that if every gentleman acted upon this just, this honourable, this constitutional principle, the electors themselves only would be to blame if they re-elected a person guilty of a breach of so important a trust. 1 Lords Journals, vol. 27, pp. 107-8. At this time Henry Pelham was Prime Minister. He was urged to institute similar proceedings against the magazines on behalf of the House of Commons. " Let them alone," said he, "they make better speeches for us than we can ourselves." Coxe, Memoirs of the Pelham Administration, vo\, I, p. 388, THE JOHNSON TOUCH 167 Cave died at St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, in January, 1754, with his hand clasped by the hand of Doctor Johnson. His due is a high place in the remembrance and regard of those who prize the freedom and enterprise of the Press. CHAPTER XIX c The Unreported Parliament ' THE Parliament which first met on May 10, 1768, and was dissolved on June 22, 1774, was perhaps the most oligarchic that ever sat. In it the dispute concerning taxa- tion, which was ultimately to cause the loss of the American colonies, developed to an acute controversial stage. The House of Commons not only expelled John Wilkes for sedi- tious libel, as they had theoretically a constitutional title to do, but reviving the dispensing power of the Stuarts, they denied to the Middlesex electors the right of returning him again by declaring that he was ineligible for election. An Assembly so arbitrary and despotic had little regard for the freedom of the Press. In its time it was called * The Unre- ported Parliament,' because the strict enforcement of the Sessional Order for the exclusion of strangers prevented the publication of anything but the most scrappy and im- perfect outline of its proceedings. The contention in the House of Commons on the question was bitter in the extreme. On the one side was the dominant class who felt that the established order of things depended for its maintenance largely upon the secrecy of Parliament. The purveyance of news by the Press was in satisfaction of an inquisitiveness on the part of the ignorant and unbred, which was at once an impertinence and a danger to the State. For what must it inevitably lead to ? The criti- cism of public men and public affairs in public prints. There could be nothing more ' scandalous and seditious/ according to the favourite phrase of Parliament when de- 168 'THE UNREPORTED PARLIAMENT' 169 nouncing such publications and committing their printers to gaol. On the other side were a few independent Members who desired to emancipate Parliament from the stagnating thraldom of a custom which, having long outlived its use- fulness, should have been swept away with other constitu- tional encumbrances at the Revolution, and thought the time had come when theory and speculation in politics might be given vent to in the public prints for the sake of enlightenment and progress. It curiously happens that what is called ' the unreported Parliament ' is the very Parliament that has been best reported before the establishment of the Reporters' Gallery and the general use of shorthand. For if no contemporary accounts of its proceedings were permitted to appear in the Press, one of its Members who knew Gurney's system of shorthand took copious notes of its Debates, greatly to the enlightenment of posterity. This was Sir Henry Cavendish eldest son of Sir Henry Cavendish, baronet, of Doveridge Hall, Derbyshire who represented Lostwithiel, Cornwall, in that Parliament, the second of George III. 1 The original shorthand notes taken by Cavendish, and the transcript of the early sections written out, apparently, under the inspection or from the dictation of the reporter are contained in forty-eight quarto volumes deposited in the British Museum. 2 The untranscribed notes are easily de- cipherable by any one acquainted with Gurney's shorthand. 1 Cavendish succeeded to the baronetcy on his father's death in 1776. He was appointed Receiver General for Ireland in 1779, and in 1795 was made deputy Vice-Treasurer. He sat in the Irish House of Commons for many years. In 1792 his wife was raised to the peerage of Ireland as Baroness Waterpark. Cavendish died at Blackrock, Dublin, in 1804, and on the decease of his widow in 1807, their eldest son, Sir Richard Cavendish, became Lord Waterpark. 2 The Egerton Manuscripts, Nos. 215-63. This valuable collec- tion of papers and autographs were left to the British Museum by Francis Egerton, eighth Earl of Bridgewater (1756-1829), scholar and antiquarian. 170 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY About half the reports have been printed. John Wright, who was employed by William Cobbett to compile The Parliamentary History in the early years of the nineteenth century, published, by subscription, from 1841 to 1843, Sir Henry Cavendish's Debates, intending to extend the work to four volumes, but the scheme was not adequately supported and only two volumes appeared. 1 Cavendish evidently contemplated the publication of his notes, for he wrote, by way of an introduction or preface to them, an interesting account of his experiences as a parlia- mentary reporter. He says : My original design was to take down the heads only of the several speeches ; but finding, by practice, even my inferior skill adequate to something rather more extensive, in the subsequent sessions of this Parliament the debates will be found more at large ; except in the case of a few members whose rapid delivery outran my ability to keep up with them. I am conscious of the many imperfections that will be found in them ; some most certainly from inability ; some from my peculiar and inconvenient situation at the time of writing them ; and some, I am sorry to say, from the disorder that now and then used to prevail in the House where sometimes members, from an eagerness to hear others, or themselves, made so much noise as to drown the voice of the person speaking ; some- times premature applause for a former part of a sentence prevented the House from hearing the latter ; and sometimes those favourite words, ' hear, hear,' so frequently echoed through the House, forbade all hearing. Many gaps, many broken sentences will be found ; but even many of the broken sentences will, I believe, not be altogether useless. Several speeches of the most able members are very imper- 1 Brougham was greatly interested in Wright's design of publish- ing the Cavendish reports. He not only wrote to several persons of distinction soliciting support for the undertaking, but in the House of Lords called the attention of the Government to its utility from a public point of view. In 1853, when Wright was dead, John Wilson Croker wrote to Palmers ton, then Home Secretary, suggesting the completion of the work at the expense of the State. Palmerston replied, ' I will communicate with my colleagues about Cavendish Debates, of which, like you, I have only a portion,' but nothing was done. Lord Rosebery addressing the International Shorthand Congress, 1887, referred to the non-publication of these reports as ' a great disgrace to us as a Nation,' 'THE UNREPORTED PARLIAMENT' 171 feet ; many ' sublime and beautiful ' passages are lost, I fear, for ever ; the only comfort I have is, that I believe I have preserved more than the memory of any individual has. I have not in the smallest degree, certainly not wilfully, altered or misrepresented the sentiments of any one member. The very first discussion reported by Cavendish on the opening day of the new Parliament, May 10, 1768, after the election of the Speaker, was in reference to the Sessional Order for the exclusion of strangers. The report illustrates Cavendish's style of giving the statement of opinion, blunt and direct, or the essence concentrated of the argument : Lord Barrington It has always been my opinion that strangers should not be allowed to come into the House to hear our debates. Mr. Seymour I am sorry to differ from the noble lord. I think strangers are entitled to hear our debates. Mr. George Grenville I ever wished to have what is done here well known. A few days later, on May 18, before the House proceeded to discuss a motion relating to the outlawry of John Wilkes, Cavendish records : Sir Joseph Mawbey moved to have a gentleman brought into the House ; but Mr. Rose Fuller opposed it ; so, of course, agreeably to the standing order for the exclusion of strangers, he could not come in if any Member opposed it. These extracts show that the general body of Members continued to resent those inroads upon their privacy by strangers who, for all they knew, might be prying newspaper- men intent on furtively taking notes for the purpose of printing them. But the minority, small in numbers though independent and resolute in character, objected just as strongly to the rigorous enforcement of the order. John Hat sell, the Clerk of the House he filled the post from 1768 until 1797 states that strangers were seldom excluded without a violent struggle from some quarters of the House. ' But in about half an hour the confusion subsides,' he writes, ' and the dispute ends by clearing the House, for if any one insist upon it the Speaker must enforce the Order and the 172 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY House must be cleared.' * The House has in many instances winked at the breach of it,' Hatsell continues, ' and it has often been understood that the observance of it should be remitted with respect to Peers, Members of the Irish Par- liament, eldest sons of Members, and with other exceptions. But this has been only on sufferance.' * The Gallery was cleared in order to embarrass a political opponent. It was done on the motion of some Member, acting in the interest of the Administration, so as to neutralize, as far as possible, the effect of an attack upon the Ministers which was expected to be trenchant and eloquent. The frequency with which it was done at this period tells of the rising energy and enter- prise of the Press, and the insistence with which journalists were beginning to knock at the door of the House. Not only did strangers get into the House, but an intruder once actually voted in a division. It happened on February 27, 1771. The simple expedient of providing separate division lobbies for the * ayes ' and ' noes ' was not thought of until the middle of the nineteenth century. When the House divided it was the practice to count the Members on one side in the Chamber itself, and those on the other side in the lobby, or ante-room, outside. If any strangers were in the Gallery when a division was challenged, they were immediately turned out of the Chamber. It was in these circumstances that the House, on the occasion referred to, divided on the question whether it should go into committee on a Bill. The 'ayes' were 155, and the 'noes' 156. Accordingly, the Speaker declared that the ' noes ' had it. The record in the Journals then goes on to say : But it having happened that among the Members who wer 1 Precedents and Proceedings in the House of Commons, vol. 2, pp. 181-2 (1818 edition). This work was first published in 1781, in four volumes. The fourth and last edition appeared in 1818, with notes and observations by Lord Colchester who, as Charles Abbot, was Speaker for the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century. ' THE UNREPORTED PARLIAMENT' 173 coming in on the division a stranger, who had continued in the lobby after it was cleared, had come in and was told as One of the Noes, several Members objected to the validity of the division, and insisted that the question ought to be put again, and the sense of the House again taken. Mr. Speaker immediately on declaring the numbers had ordered the doors of the House to be locked in order that no Member might go forth. The stranger was then brought to the Bar and examined, and it appearing that what he had done was from ignorance and inadvertency, and without any intention of passing for a Member on the division, and being known to several Members as a man of good character, he was for the present ordered to be taken from the Bar. The House again divided on the same question, with the result that this time the numbers were, ayes 154, noes 164, each side being one less than in the first division. ' By which it appeared,' say the Journals, ' that notwithstanding the immediate order of the Speaker one Member had gone forth. The stranger was then again brought to the Bar, and, by general consent of the House, dismissed with a caution from Mr. Speaker not to be guilty of the like offence again.' l Sir Henry Cavendish supplies an account of the statements made by the stranger at the Bar in reply to questions put by the Speaker. His name, he said, was Thomas Hunt. He followed no business, but lived upon his fortune in Lon- don. He said he had been used to come unto the House and Gallery, and made the extraordinary admission, 'I have been told in divisions before this.' In reply to other questions put by Members he said he had heard there was to be a grand debate that day, but did not know that the numbers in the division were likely to be nearly equal. He also denied that he came to take the speeches of Members. * This gentleman,' said Dunning, by way of a joke, ' may very possibly have assisted in making former majorities.' ' From his great simplicity I am sure he is incapable of a plot,' said Mr. Tucker, expressing the general opinion of the House. The Speaker discharged him with the caution that 1 Commons Journals, vol. 33, p. 212. 174 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY if he were found in the House again he must not expect to meet with the same indulgence. 1 Edmund Burke, one of the greatest of Members of Par- liament, sat in that House of Commons, and made it addi- tionally memorable by the distinguished and valiant services he rendered to the cause of the unfettered publication of the Debates. He first took his seat in the preceding Par- liament in January, 1766, for the pocket borough of Wen- do ver, to which he was recommended by its patron, Lord Rockingham. None of his speeches in that Parliament have been preserved. Cavendish's reports contain as many as 250 of the speeches which that profound thinker and orator made in the course of ' the unreported Parliament.' In the speeches he delivered in 1768, 1769 and the early part of 1770 may be traced as Wright points out in his notes to the Cavendish Debates the germs of his famous pamphlet, Thoughts on the Present Discontents, which ap- peared in April, 1770 ; and, indeed, it is probable he was induced to disseminate in this way the political ideas to which he first gave expression in the House of Commons, because of the impossibility of having the speeches reported in the Press. But had the fullest liberty of reporting the Debates been then allowed it is doubtful whether Burke's speeches would have gone the rounds in the Press. As shorthand was, at that time, in its early and imperfect stage of development, the reporters would have been unable to cope with the sweep of Burke's gorgeous rhetoric, or to take completely down his generalizations and speculations, which related not so much to the subjects of debate as to principles of politics which are of universal application in all times and in all places. And even if the reporters were as skilled in the use of shorthand as their successors are to-day, the editors had little space in the small newspapers of the period for Burke's long and portentous pronouncements and, indeed, less 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 333-6. 'THE UNREPORTED PARLIAMENT' 175 inclination to inflict them upon their readers. All con- temporary accounts agree that Burke's speeches failed to make any immediate impression. Perhaps the mightiest speeches he ever made were those on * American Taxation,' April 19, 1774, and on ' Conciliation with the Colonies,' March 22, 1775. Yet neither of them did what a speech must do if it is to succeed in its object mentally arousing all its hearers ; enlightening, convincing and fortifying supporters ; throwing doubt or confusion into the minds of opponents. In fact, the greater of the two, that on ' Conciliation with the Colonies,' so bored the House that most of it was spoken to empty benches. It was the manner of the speaker and not the matter that wearied the Com- mons. The speech seems to have been delivered in a harsh voice and monotonously, without action or animation. Even to-day such a speech would hardly be listened to or reported adequately. The reporters would put down their pencils and Members would disappear into the Lobby, for human nature is just as intolerant of the ponderous and dreary in the twentieth century as it was in the eighteenth. It was only when the colleagues of Burke read the speech afterwards in print that greatly to their astonishment which will be found confessed in memoirs of the period they came to see how richly set it is with ideas of imperish- able splendour. Fortunately, these two speeches of shining character and unfading interest were written out by Burke and published in pamphlet form by Dodsley in 1775. Burke states in the preface to the speech on ' American Taxation ' that the means of gratifying the public desire of having it printed was obligingly furnished from the notes of some Members of Parliament. He was assisted in its preparation chiefly by Sir Henry Cavendish. One reporter's touch will be found in the speech. Burke is halfway through his argu- ment when, in the middle of a sentence, he suddenly breaks off to ask : c I hope I am not going into a narrative trouble- 176 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY some to the House ? ' and was answered by ' a cry of "Go on, go on." But the wonderful thing in regard to these speeches is that each reads to-day as if it had been taken down by an expert shorthand-writer when coming in a rushing flood of emotion and argument from the mouth of the orator, so rhetorical is the form, so fervid and flexible the style, so warm is it even with the human atmosphere that pervades a speech made spontaneously to a living and shouting audience and not simply written out in the isolation and silence of a closet. CHAPTER XX The Member, His Constituents and the Press THE question naturally suggests itself, What incentive had a political genius like Burke to take pains with his speeches when he knew that no vote would be gained by them in the House of Commons, and no report of them would go forth to guide and influence public opinion out- side ? There is an illuminating answer which was given by Burke himself on the point when it was put to him by Bos well. He said it was very well worth while for a man to take pains to speak well in Parliament, as by it he gradu- ally established a certain reputation and consequence in the general opinion. ' Aye, sir,' said Dr. Johnson, breaking in with another reason ; ' and there is a gratification of pride. Though we cannot out-vote them, we will out-argue them.' This extract from BoswelPs Life of Johnson provides the key to an understanding of the position of those mighty parliamentarians who, for centuries, were content to make great speeches to a few hundred colleagues often to a few dozen only though they knew the only record which would be left of them was such impression as they succeeded in making on the minds of their listeners, and that, at best, did not endure for long. Burke, in his speech on * American Taxation,' said of Charles Townshend, that he had that passion for fame which is the instinct of all great souls. ' He worshipped that goddess wheresoever she appeared,' 177 12 178 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY said the orator, but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favourite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House of Commons.' In the eighteenth century the House of Commons without even a ray of that limelight splendour which is now shed upon it so dazzlingly by the Press was the arena in which a man won fame or notoriety as a speaker most quickly and surely, just as it is in the twentieth cen- tury. His audience then were few, but very fit. They listened sedately and decorously, for there were few outbursts of cheering ; but they listened critically like the true con- noisseurs of oratory that they were relishing the force and aptness of the arguments, and the fine rhetorical phrases, and also the bitter personal attack which occasionally lit up the speech like a flash of steel. And each speaker did his best to move and impress his audience as much by the beauty as by the truth, by the eloquence as by the argument, of his speech ; well knowing and here a touch of vanity came in that Members would enhance his reputation by carrying striking passages and phrases to the coffee-houses in town, and circulate them still further afield when, in the Recess, they dispersed to their country houses. But the desire for the privacy of their proceedings in the House of Commons was with most of them, as it had been with their predecessors, instinctive and primitive. To them the idea of admitting the reporters appeared no less absurd, and no less repugnant, as a breach of ancient custom and the proprieties, as the suggestion to allow the Press to be represented at Cabinet meetings, or at the Privy Council, presided over by the King, would be to-day to those associa- ted with the government and administration of the kingdom. Secrecy was essential, in their opinion, to the right and proper consideration of public affairs. Secrecy also contributed, in their view, to the dignity of Parliament, that dignity of which they themselves formed a part. Their reverence for Parliament, its greatness and majesty, was intensified by the veiled existence it had led for centuries. Their inherited THE MEMBER AND HIS CONSTITUENTS 179 habits of thought their canons of taste, their notions of propriety would be offended if their proceedings were to be ' bawled in the newspapers,' a phrase used contemptu- ously by Burke in his speech on ' American Taxation.' So profound was the sense of tradition, and so active the influ- ence of the past, that such a publication of their proceedings was to them an outrage hard to conceive and certainly never to be tolerated. But there were other motives also. At this period of the eighteenth century Parliament presented a strange picture of the venality of Statesmen, and the cor- ruption and servility of Members. Tories and Whigs were then as one in passively desiring that the settlement of the Revolution when the autocracy of Parliament was sub- stituted for the autocracy of the monarchy should con- tinue undisturbed ; and, indeed, it may be said that the only active policy of both was the supersession of each other in power mainly for the sake of the spoils. A change of Government very rarely took place, but when it did take place nothing was really changed save a few of the names of the clique of aristocrats seated on the Treasury bench. The ruling caste not unnaturally considered that by the continu- ance of the existing mode of conducting the proceedings of Parliament they could best maintain their position and powers, with all the well-paid posts and sinecures of Govern- ment as their perquisites. For undoubtedly the secrecy of Parliament was found to be a convenient sable cloak for covering meanness in high places which to us knowing the character for probity and uprightness of those in high places to-day is wellnigh incredible. Still, the motive that most powerfully swayed those who were opposed to the admission of strangers, and the publi- cation of the Debates, was a fastidious contempt, if not a distrust, of the common people, and the desire to keep them severely in their proper place. It was not alone that Par- liament w r ould suffer in dignity and reputation if its delibera- tions were exposed to the curious and prying eyes of the 180 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY vulgar. A worse eventuality, one more hateful to con- template, was probable. Parliament might be subjected to the affront of being criticized, or even called to account, by the unthinking multitude. Socially considered, the people were most useful and highly to be appreciated so long as they confined themselves to what would appear to be their sole end in life to do the hard and dirty work of the world so that the surroundings of their betters might be kept sweet and wholesome. But politically they were, at best, ignorant and irresponsible children over whom it was the duty of their betters to exercise a parental and protective care. To allow them a direct voice in the control of public affairs would be utter madness, for it would swiftly preci- pitate the end of all things. It is true that many years were yet to pass before politi- cians rightly gauged the importance and power of the Press as a vehicle for the teaching and circulation of political opinion. Nevertheless, some of those who will be found conspicuously on the side of Parliament in the coming strug- gle with the Press had, undoubtedly, a conception, however dim, that the insignificant and despicable sheets of badly printed matter which constituted the newspapers of the period had in them the promise of stupendous things in the way of democratic developments. Already, indeed, the Press was not content with gathering news for the people. What was greater still, what, in truth, turned out to be a matter of tremendous import, the Press was beginning to express for the people some of their hitherto inarticulate thoughts and aspirations in regard to the conditions of their life. It was a case rather of coming events casting their shadows before. But one thing, at least, emerged near and clear from a prospect that was faint and uncertain in the distance. The acuter minds among the ruling classes saw that once the reporters were permitted to attend the sit- tings of Parliament it would not be long before the con- trolling influence of the people would commence to operate THE MEMBER AND HIS CONSTITUENTS 181 upon the opinions and actions of the representatives, and that it would be brought to bear more directly and in ever- increasing strength as time went on. That was an evil to be resisted to the last. For, as I have already indicated, the people, in the opinion of the ruling classes, had neither the mental capacity nor the sense of responsibility necessary to guide them aright, if they were permitted to interfere in legislation, taxation or any of the other functions of Parlia- ment. Constitutional government really existed, in the sense that Parliament was the supreme organ of sovereignty, but representative Government government for the people, by the people, and through the people only nominally existed. The Members of the House of Commons were partly nominated and partly elected on a restricted franchise. But the real drawback of the system, at least according to the standard of democratic opinion generally accepted in the twentieth century, was that most of the representatives of the people ' as they were called even then had an entirely false notion of their relations with the people whom they represented. The people elected them, more or less, to sit in Parliament. That was the only part the people were expected to take or allowed to take in public affairs. Once elected, the Members claimed complete independence of the people and complete freedom of judgment and action in the House of Commons. It was sufficient for the people to know what Parliament accomplished what taxes it imposed, what Acts it passed from the brief but duly authenticated information given in The Votes and Proceed- ings. The reasons why they were called upon to pay cer- tain new taxes and obey certain new laws were no concern of theirs. Parliament must be free and uncontrolled self- contained and self-contented in the management of public affairs. When a Member brought his mind to bear on any political question, his conscience and his experience must be his sole guide. Every consideration must be excluded 182 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY save that of his own personal view of the public welfare. It was forgotten, perhaps, that self-interest and ambition were also powerful factors in swaying the decisions of Mem- bers, and that the best corrective of such faults in the repre- sentatives was the full publicity of their proceedings. Only the small group of independent Members were ani- mated by an ideal or aspiration that would now be accounted democratic. To them it was preposterous to maintain in a time of limited Monarchy and constitutional Government a system of secrecy which was designed as a safeguard against an absolute King and subservient courtiers. They also thought that unless Parliament were curbed by the restraining force of public opinion it might prove itself, in the name of liberty, as tyrannous as the arbitrary ruler it had supplanted. Members holding these opinions were, as I have said, relatively few in number, though they were influential on account of their ability, courage and high character. Burke may be regarded as their inspirer and prophet. Yet Burke believed the people were incompetent to judge either general schemes of policy or the details of a particular measure ; and as he said in his speech on ' Duration of Parliaments ' they could no more rightly interfere with their representative than a trustee could pro- perly be interfered with by a man who had appointed him voluntarily and deliberately. He was in favour of publish- ing the Debates to show what Members said. He was also in favour of publishing the division lists, to show how Mem- bers voted. 1 By these means the constituents would be enabled to ascertain for themselves whether their trustees in Parliament were faithful or untrue. By these means also the country would be informed of the arguments by which the policy of the Government was defended or con- demned. No doubt, in his Thoughts on the Present Dis- content, Burke says : ' The House of Commons can never 1 The House did not commence the publication of the division lists until 1836. THE MEMBER AND HIS CONSTITUENTS 183 be a control on other parts of Government unless they are controlled themselves by their constituents.' But a study of the body of his doctrines will show, I think, that he con- cedes to the constituents simply the right to dismiss their representative at the General Election if he had failed to please them. Burke held strongly to the opinion that the Member of Parliament was not a delegate, but a representa- tive or trustee. So he said on the hustings at Bristol when he himself failed to account to the electors for his actions in Parliament, or rather to justify them to their satisfac- tion, and was accordingly dismissed. He would not allow the people a direct control of the functions of Parliament. He would not give to them that veto on the acts of the legis- lative body which the Referendum implies. And if he would not give to the people the power to stop things, much less would he give to them the power to initiate things and make them go. The choice of the representative lay with the constituents. The greatest care should be taken by the constituents to select a man of the highest character. It was an obligation of honour on the representative to do his utmost to serve his constituents. But he must be allowed by them unfettered freedom of opinion and action in the due subordination of local calls to the higher and comprehensive interests of the nation. If the constituents were dissatisfied with the representative, they need not return him again when he resought their suffrages at the General Election. Such was the view of Burke as to the legitimate relations between the Members and the electors. Its application, however, was limited to the counties and large boroughs. In the case of the pocket boroughs which formed no small part of the constituencies, the people could neither choose the representatives nor dismiss them. The opinion and action of the Member for a pocket borough were controlled by the whim and caprice of one man the owner, or patron, of the seat. But the view of Burke as to the ties that pro- perly bound the elected representative and the electors was 184 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the view generally held in his day by those who thought on the matter at all. It is still widely entertained, but it is doubt- ful whether it is now anything more than a pious opinion. In theory only is the Member an independent representative. He is practically the delegate of the political majority in his constituency to the Council of the Nation at Westmin- ster in fact, a Party delegate pledged to support the politi- cal programme of his Party as expounded by its leaders and directed by its Whips. This change in opinion, and the consequent rise of the Party caucus, has been largely effected by the influence of the Press, and whether it has been for good or evil will probably always be a subject of contro- versy. But it is unlikely that the admirable code of political ethics which Burke has laid down for the guidance of states- men, irrespective of Party, will ever be superseded by some- thing better, or its lustre dimmed by grey forgetfulness and neglect. Before 1771, however, the people at large were untroubled by this question of the proper constitutional relations between the Member and his constituents. Indeed, they had no definite political ideas or aims, and were but little concerned with public affairs at all. The people could not look for leadership or guidance to a Parliament which conducted its Debates in private, deliberately for the purpose of concealing them. And the people seemed to be quite indifferent. It was the Press that stirred them to take an interest in Par- liament. At first the Press could appeal to no higher emo- tion than curiosity for support in its efforts to draw the curtains of Parliament aside. It owed its own rise to the awakening in the human mind of an interest in life and all contemporary happenings and surroundings, and it was in order to satisfy the public appetite for new experiences and new sensations that it turned its attention to the Legislature. Tremendous political results, undreamt of at the time, were slowly to follow from this enterprise on the part of the Press. Parliament was to cease to be an autocracy working in THE MEMBER AND HIS CONSTITUENTS 185 secret, and independent, practically, of all popular control. Thenceforward it was compelled gradually to emerge from its twilight seclusion into the wide open day of publicity, to submit its proceedings to the scrutiny of the country and the conduct and policy of its Members to public criticism. The Nation, in fact, was to be called in to assist Parliament in its deliberations. And as the final outcome of it all, the one object of Parliament has come to be that of doing the will of the people. CHAPTER XXI Little Cocking George /COLONEL GEORGE ONSLOW, M.P., a bluff and \^>< swaggering gentleman, was walking down Piccadilly, one morning in December, 1768, when his attention was attracted by a large group of people at the corner of Bond Street eagerly discussing the contents of a placard upon the wall. The bill contained an interesting variant of the accepted report of that historic speech which Cromwell made when he dissolved or dispersed the Long Parliament by force. * It is high time for me,' the Protector was repre- sented by the bill as having said, ' to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would, like Esau, sell your country for a mess of pottage, and, like Judas, betray your God for a few pieces of silver.' He went on to say, among other bitter things : ' Ye have no more religion than my horse ' ; ' You who are deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourself the greatest grievance,' and he thus concluded : ' Go, get you out ! Make haste ! Ye venal slaves, begone ! Go ! Take away that shining bauble ' referring, of course, to the Mace ' and lock up the doors.' Not a word of comment was prefixed or appended to the speech. But the object of those who had it printed and posted upon the walls was obvious enough. It was intended to be applied to the existing Parliament. * Ye are a pack 186 < LITTLE COCKING GEORGE' 187 of mercenary wretches.' That one sentence alone sufficiently expressed the rising popular disaffection towards the House of Commons. The indignation of Colonel Onslow was moved to its depths by this libel on Parliament. He was of a choleric disposition, and barrack-square peremptoriness. Like most of his class he was imbued with the notion that liberty of thought and speech could never be safely permitted in the interest of the State and society. It was a fermenting time for the populace, and therefore a time of uncertainty and uneasiness for the ruling class. The nation was becoming somewhat restless under disturbing and enlarging political influences. There was not only the alarming dispute between the Government and the American Colonies on the question of taxation, and the disquieting contest with the electors of Middlesex over their right to select John Wilkes as their representative, but those amazing letters of the mysterious Junius, raising novel and dangerous issues in politics, were appearing in The Public Advertiser, the greatest and most successful newspaper of the period. Colonel Onslow immediately took action, decisive and high-handed. He tore the placard from the wall. He appre- hended and gave into custody a man named Denis Slade who acknowledged he had put up the placard at the instiga- tion of one Joseph Thornton, who though he is referred to as a milkman by occupation, was surely a levelling demo- crat. And that afternoon, in the House of Commons, Colonel Onslow called attention to the outrage, and asked the House to condemn it and visit its authors with severe punishment. Sir Joseph Mawbey, one of the Members for South wark, and a leader of the Independent group more or less moved by popular sympathies denounced Colonel Onslow. In his opinion the tearing down of the paper was an infringe- ment of the freedom of the Press, and the arrest of Slade for sticking it up an attack on the liberty of the subject. 188 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY ' I think myself called upon to vindicate what I have done,' said Colonel Onslow. ' I am not an enemy to the liberty of the Press. I think people have a right to print things against Ministers and private persons. I am a Whig in principle. If I were to see a man lift up a musket at the King, I would shoot that man.' The House sided with Onslow rather than with Mawbey. The next day Slade and Thornton were brought to the Bar. Thornton confessed that he gave directions to Slade to post up the bill, but he did not think it was an offence, and he begged pardon of the House. However, the House resolved that Cromwell's speech had been posted on the wall, ' with a view of inflaming the minds of the people at this time against the honour and in breach of the privilege of this House,' and Thornton was committed to Newgate. 1 Among historic parliamentary names ' Onslow ' holds a high position. Three Onslows have been Speakers. One of them, Arthur Onslow, who filled the position from 1728 to 1761, was not only the longest but perhaps also the most distinguished occupant of the Chair. The name, moreover, is associated prominently, on the side of privilege, with the dramatic and the last and victorious struggle of the Press for the right to inform the people of the speeches and actions of their representatives in Parliament of which the tearing down of the Cromwell placard was the opening incident. There were two Onslows in the House of Commons at this time, and as both had the Christian name of George they are sometimes confused in the histories of the period. The Onslow who saw sedition in the posting of Cromwell's speech was a lieutenant-colonel in the 1st Footguards and Member for the borough of Guildford, Surrey. Horace Walpole's contemporary picture of the man shows that he was fussy, interfering and blundering. * One of those burlesque orators,' says the eighteenth-century gossip, 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 1, pp. 100-2. 4 LITTLE COCKING GEORGE' 189 ' who are favoured in all public assemblies, and to whom one or two happy sallies of impudence secure a constant attention, though their voice and manner are often their only patents, and who, being laughed at for absurdity as frequently as for humour, obtain a licence for what they please ' * A more pithy and perhaps apter description of him was soon to appear in the public journals. Short and round in form and soaring in disposition, he became popularly known as * little Cocking George. ' In his proceedings against the printers of newspapers which dared to publish the proceedings of Parliament Colonel Onslow was actively assisted by his cousin, Mr. George Onslow, the son of the famous Speaker, Arthur Onslow. At the age of twenty-three Mr. George Onslow entered the House of Commons in 1754 as Member for Rye. His father had then been Speaker for twenty-six years. At the General Election of April, 1761, he succeeded his father who, in that year retired from the Chair after thirty- three years' service as Member for Surrey ; and on his father's death in 1768, fell in for the annuity of 3,000 granted by Parliament for the lives of the ex-Speaker and his eldest son. Horace Walpole refers to him as ' a noisy indiscreet man ' 2 ; and Junius calls him * a false, silly fellow.' 3 The opening of the campaign against the newspaper is briefly recorded by Cavendish. On February 5, 1771, Colonel Onslow called attention ' to the practice, now so general, of misrepresenting in the newspapers the speeches of Members,' which, he said, must be the work of strangers. He moved that the Resolution passed by the House on 1 Walpole, Memoirs of the Eeign of George III, vol. 2, p. 286. 2 Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, vol. 4, p. 218. 3 Woodfall, Letters of Junius, vol. l,p. 198. Mr. George Onslow continued to represent Surrey in the House of Commons until his accession to the peerage as Baron Cranley in 1776. In 1801 he was created Earl of Onslow. 190 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY February 26, 1728, that it was a breach of privilege to give in written or printed newspapers any account of the proceedings of the House, be read. It was read accord- ingly ; and was ordered to be printed in the Votes of the day. On the same day there was ' a call of the House ' an old procedure that has long been obsolete in pursuance of a motion of which notice had been given by Edmund Burke. Cavendish says it occupied about two hours, and that of the 558 Members then constituting the House 474 answered to their names. Two days later, on February 7, when a motion by Sir George Savile ' for a Bill to secure the rights of the electors of Great Britain ' was down for consideration, Sir John Turner moved the enforcement of the Standing Order for the exclusion of strangers. ' As there were so many Members at the call of the House on Tuesday, I conclude,' said he, ' they are still in town, and that we shall be crowded.' He added, jocosely, ' I am not so cold as I was.' ' The order,' Cavendish writes, ' was read, and the House cleared of all strangers, except a few Members of the Irish House of Commons.' Then Sir Joseph Mawbey said that from the deserted appearance of the House he suspected that many Members had gone out of town. ' Several hon. gentlemen complain of cold,' he remarked ; and he noticed that even Sir John Turner had ' got his great coat on.' 1 Colonel Onslow sup- ported the motion. He said that as no Member would misrepresent the speeches made in the House the offence 1 The Chamber must have been very cold in those days judging from the number of jokes to which the subject gave rise. It is related in The Political Register that when Sir George Savile rose to bring in his Bill relating to the rights of the electors, the Members of the Court Party poured out of the House in order to dine while he was speaking ; and that ' Counsellor Leigh said to Lord Clare as he was going out " Fye, fye, my lord, is the House too hot for you ? " while he was shivering with the cold and thrusting his hands up his great muff.' 'LITTLE COCKING GEORGE' 191 must be committed by strangers. ' With regard to mis- representation,' said Mr. William Burke, * it is more likely to take place from strangers being kept out. If they are not permitted freely to report the speeches of Members they will set about inventing them.' f The hon. gentleman need not be discontented,' he went on, referring to Col. Onslow. ' Many very good speeches of his and of other Members have been printed.' 1 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 243-5. CHAPTER XXII Rise of the London Newspapers THESE skirmishes between the Court and Independent groups of Members in the House, preliminary to the great and prolonged fight on the question of the report- ing of the Debates, are interesting as showing how strangers were still excluded whenever an important discussion was coming on. It is probable, therefore, that the information of what was said and done behind the closed doors of the House of Commons which got into the newspapers, was supplied by Independents if, indeed, they did not actually write the reports. One of the most notable collectors of parliamentary news at this time was John Almon, who subsequently became a famous bookseller in Piccadilly and a publisher of newspapers and magazines. His method, as he himself described it, was that ' he employed himself sedulously in obtaining from different gentlemen, by con- versation at his own house, and sometimes at their houses, sufficient information to write a sketch of every day's debate on the most important and interesting questions,' which he printed in The London Evening Post, a paper pub- lished three times a week. The success of the Post tempted The St. James* Chronicle another tri-weekly paper hazardously to provide the same contraband news. They employed * one Wall who went down to the House of Com- mons every evening to pick up what he could in the Lobby, in the coffee-houses, etc. ' ; but, according to Almon, ' it was impossible he should be accurate ; however by per- everance and habit, and sometimes by getting admission 192 RISE OF THE LONDON NEWSPAPERS 193 into the Gallery, he improved.' 1 The printers of other London newspapers were encouraged, not less by the impunity enjoyed by their contemporaries as by the growing demand for parliamentary news, to publish accounts of the Debates which, in some cases, they obtained independently themselves, and, in others, lifted from the columns of their more enterprising rivals. Not for more than ten years had a printer or editor been brought to the Bar of the House of Commons. The last occasion was on February 1, 1760, when the publishers of four London newspapers were declared guilty of breach of privilege, and on expressing their sorrow were reprimanded and discharged, though not till they had first paid their fees.* Accordingly, reports were now being given in the tri-weekly papers more fre- quently and more fully than had ever been the case before, and more and more urgent and imperious became the knock- ing at the closed doors of Parliament by journalists who wanted admission as spectators and notetakers. Of the proceedings on February 7, 1771, an account appeared some days afterwards in several of the London newspapers being copied from one to another which I give as an interesting specimen of the parliamentary report- ing of the time : ' On Thursday, before Sir G. S. moved in a certain club on election matters, Sir J. T. one of Lord B.'s lords of the treasury got up and proposed that as there had been so lately a call of the club and they were likely to be crowded the room should be cleared. The standing vote of the room was accordingly read and the S. at A. had authority to seize all strangers and not to dismiss them without the leave of the club. Before the Gallery was quite evacuated some Irish Members of a club on the other side of the water were excepted, but very few remained behind though the hon T. T., like a true Englishman, beckoned them to resume their seats. The S. and the door-keepers were afterwards obliged to go several times and to drag out a few persons who were unwilling to leave the Gallery. 1 Memoirs of John Almon (1790), 119. 2 Commons Journals, vol. 28, pp. 741, 745. 13 194 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY After the room was cleared, Sir Joseph M. begged Sir J. T., if he was too hot, to pull off his great coat. Sir J. answered that he felt no inconvenience from it, but when he did he would take his advice. George O., who showed himself such a dear old friend to Mr. Wilkes, got up and discovered the same friendship for the press. He said that as long as the newspapers published the debates he would always move the club to take this step ; that none but the club had the right to print them, and that this would show whether any gentleman of the club were concerned in writing them. Several Members got up and said that they were astonished to hear him support this motion ; that the writer, whoever he was, had greatly improved his speeches and made them sense and grammar.' Such a publication was undoubtedly contrary to the Resolution of the House, and therefore a breach of privilege. But, apart from that, it is a question whether it gave, in any sense, a true or a fair or a decent representation of the sentiments and expressions of the Members who took part in the discussion. It certainly is not an impartial report. Rather does it partake more of the ' parliamentary sketch,' combining description and comment, which became so common a feature of the newspapers in the con- cluding quarter of the nineteenth century. No notice was taken of it in the House. The disguise in which it was presented, while thin enough to be seen through by readers, was sufficient to safeguard the newspapers against the penalties of breach of privilege. But another report, dealing with the reassertion by the House on February 5, of their Resolution against the publication of their proceedings, which appeared without any mask or cloak, provoked the House to drastic action. This report, which was to pre- cipitate the bitter and prolonged contest that ensued between Parliament and the Press, appeared in The Middlesex Journal and Chronicle of Liberty 1 for February 7, 1771, and was as follows : It was reported that a scheme was at last hit upon by the Ministry 1 This tri-weekly newspaper, the first number of which appeared on April 4, 1769, was started by Lord Mayor Beckford in support of Wilkes and his right to sit in Parliament. RISE OP THE LONDON NEWSPAPERS 195 to prevent the public being informed of their iniquity ; accordingly on Tuesday last little Cocking George Onslow made a motion, * That the order against printing the Debates should be read, and entered on the minutes of the day.' Mr. Charles Turner opposed the motion with great spirit : he said, that not only the debates ought to be published but a list of the divisions likewise ; and he affirmed that no man would object to it unless he was ashamed of the vote he gave. Mr. Edmund Burke supported Mr. Turner's opinion ; he said, that so far from its being proper to conceal their debates, he wished they would follow the ancient rule, which was to record them in the Journals. In The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, of February 8, practically the same report was published, save that an attempt was made to conceal its application to the House of Commons. It was thus introduced : ' A corre- spondent belonging to the Lower Room of the Robin Hood Society informs us,' etc., the names are given as * Mr. O W ' ; ' Mr. Ed d B ke,' ' Mr. Ch rl s T rn er,' and the reference to ' little Cocking George ' is omitted. These reports indicate that a new style of journalist had arrived. The older purveyors of parliamentary news were simply tradesmen, having no other object in view than that of selling their papers. Their places had now been taken by the political journalist who also wanted to make money but aimed at making it by serving up his news seasoned with opinions and prejudices in the interest of a political cause. It was the commencement of the use of the public journals for their second great purpose the dissemination of views, as well as the circulation of news. This develop- ment but strengthened the mingled contempt and dread of the newspapers entertained by the ruling class. It was bad enough to have journalists invading the privacy of Parliament, peering and prying on sacred ground, and then printing for every one to read what was said and done by Members ; without these ill-bred fellows of so low and parasitical an occupation outraging good taste, as well as further undermining the proud isolation of Par- 196 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY liament by misrepresenting and abusing those Members with whose political opinions they disagreed. And it must be acknowledged that the Onslows of the time, and the others who desired with them to continue to walk in the old and dignified traditional ways, had good ground for at least some of their objections to the methods of the news- papers. After all, if a Member was to be reported in the Press the words attributed to him should be his own words, correctly and fairly set down, and not words chosen often for the purpose of misrepresenting him by some unknown writer who, uninvited, impudently presumed to collaborate with him in the public expression of his views. Accordingly, it was not surprising that at the sitting of the House of Commons on February 8, Colonel Onslow should have moved that John Wheble of The Middlesex Journal and R. Thompson of The Gazetteer, be ordered to attend at the Bar to answer a charge of breach of privilege on account of these reports. He said that in these reports Members were represented to the world as saying what they did not say, and their interests in their constituencies were thereby hurt. Even in the days of the most violent opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, no speeches were pub- lished except during the interval of Parliament and then only in a decent manner. ' Sometimes I am held up a villain,' continued Colonel Onslow, ' sometimes I am held up as an idiot, and sometimes as both. To-day they call me " little Cocking George." They will find, sir, I am a cock they will not easily beat.' Thomas Townshend, junior, doubted whether any good was likely to result from the course the House was asked to take. In his opinion it would be better to treat the reports with contempt. 1 *I wish,' said Alderman Tre- 1 Townshend was the eldest son of Thomas Townshend, son of Viscount Townshend, and, at this time, was Member for Whitechurch. In 1782 he was appointed one of the Principal Secretaries of State, and in the following year was raised to the peerage as Lord Sydney. He died in 1800. RISE OF THE LONDON NEWSPAPERS 197 cothick, one of the representatives of the City of London, ' every man in England could hear what passes in this House.' ' The hon. gentleman who spoke last,' said Mr. George Onslow, ' has advanced the doctrine that this House has no right to impose silence or punishment on the printers of these newspapers. I hope no gentleman will agree with him in that opinion.' Mr. Thomas de Grey said he would check not the fair liberty of the Press, but its licentiousness. Badly as Members were treated in the London journals, they fared much worse in the provincial papers. ' I by no means approve of the licentiousness of the Press,' said Mr. Richard Whitworth, Member for the borough of Stafford, ' but before we proceed further let gentlemen consider what sort of figure they will make when the printer will say, Gentlemen, these are none of your speeches ; you have all confessed they are not your speeches. How shall we look in the face of the printer when he tells us that they are the speeches of the society in Butcher Row.' Mr. Rose Fuller said that perhaps the printing of the debates might be allowed after the close of the Session as in former times provided it was done with decency and without attributing motives to Members. Mr. Dowdeswell 1 maintained that the conduct of Members should be open to public inquiry. ' Let it be published how every man has voted,' said he. ' Instead of putting an end to the practice complained of,' said Lord John Cavendish, ' the measure proposed will increase it by pro- moting the sale of the papers, and making the talk of the town respecting them ten times greater.' 1 Dowdeswell was virtually leader of the Opposition. He had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Whig Administration of Lord Rockingham in 1765. Edmund Burke, who had been Rocking- hani's private secretary, acted with Dowdeswell. Besides the moderate Whigs, there was also in the Opposition an extreme Radical section of which Alderman Trecothick and Alderman Sawbridge, the representatives of the City of London, were the most conspicuous Members, 198 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY A speech by Edmund Burke concluded the discussion. He said the Press had frequently made him express senti- ments regarding the Constitution and also the dispute with America directly contrary to those he had uttered in the House. But he was opposed to these attempts to suppress all criticism of Parliament in the newspapers. ' It must increase the evil ; it must be ineffectual ; it must make the House more and more odious,' said he. ' You shut your doors against the public : you are calling printers to your Bar ; step by step you are drawing yourselves away from the opinion of the people. This will not compose them. You will thereby increase the odium. As long as the people feel an interest in examining into the proceedings of Parliament, so long will they find a man that will print them.' The House then divided on the motion that the said newspapers be delivered in at the table and read by the Clerk. For the motion, 90 ; against, 55 majority for, 45. The Clerk accordingly proceeded to read the para- graphs complained of. ' It is common asserted that Lord Mansfield will resign ' ' A great laugh,' says Cavendish, 1 this being the wrong passage.' When the proper par- graphs were read by the Clerk, it was ordered that the printers, Wheble and Thompson, should attend at the Bar on the following Monday. 1 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 256-60. CHAPTER XXIII The Defiant Printers THE printers did not appear on the following Monday, which was February 11,1771. They ignored or evaded the order of the House. Nothing, however, was done by the Commons. More than a week was allowed to elapse, in the hope, perhaps, that by giving the printers a little time they would come to recognize the error of their ways and render submission to the House. But on Tuesday, February 19, when the order for their attendance was read, they still made no appearance and sent no apology. The messenger of the Serjeant-at-Arms, examined at the Bar, stated that he had served the printers with the order of February 8, by leaving it at their places of residence. That order was for attendance on February 11. He had not served them with any fresh order to appear on February 19. Colonel Onslow then moved that as Wheble and Thompson had not attended the House 'this day,' in obedience to the order of the House, they were guilty of contempt. The motion was objected to by the Opposition who contended that the printers could not be held guilty of contempt of an order with which they had not been served. On the other hand, it was argued that once an order to appear at the Bar was issued, the person concerned was bound to be in attendance at every sitting until he was discharged by direction of the House. However, it was decided by Onslow and his supporters to give the printers 200 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY another chance. A motion directing them to attend on February 21, was carried by H5 votes to 31. x Thursday, February 21, came and there were still no printers at the Bar. The messenger who had been sent forth with the second order for their attendance had failed to serve either of them personally. He stated that on the evening of the day the order was issued he went to the house of Thompson in Newgate Street and was told by the servant that the printer was not at home. He then left a copy of the order with the servant, directing him to give it to his master on his return. The next day he called again only to be informed by the servant that the master was still absent. Exactly the same report was made by the messenger in the case of Wheble, who lived in Paternoster Row. 2 The Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton, then made an interest- ing statement on the service of orders of the House. He was sorry to say that, with regard to the mode of proceeding in matters of this sort, not a great deal of guidance was to be found in the Journals. His own view was that merely the leaving of the order for the attendance of the person at his place of abode was not sufficient to justify proceedings against him for contempt should he fail to obey the order. * In the present instance,' said he, * I do not think it would be a degradation for this House to adopt a proceeding analogous to that of the Courts of criminal judicature. To punish a man there for contempt you must either serve him personally, or lay the foundation for that sort of service which the Courts consider equivalent to a personal service.' 1 What, sir,' would you have us adopt the proceedings of Westminster Hall ? ' cried Colonel Onslow, apparently aghast at the suggestion. ' Very far from it. I never had such an idea,' the Speaker hastened to explain. ' What, I would beg leave to suggest is this,' he went on, * that the 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, p. 71. 8 Commons Journals, vol. 33, p. 194, THE DEFIANT PRINTERS 201 parties should be ordered to attend on Tuesday, and that the service of such order, by leaving a copy of it at their usual places of abode, should be deemed equal to personal service, and be good service.' The suggestion of the Speaker was ultimately adopted. 1 The King seems to have doubted the expediency of these proceedings. On that very day, February 21, 1771, he wrote to Lord North, the Prime Minister, recommending in the strongest manner that every caution should be used to prevent the affair of the printers becoming serious. His Majesty also wished to have the matter transferred to the House of Lords for a peculiar reason. ' It is highly necessary,' he says, * that this strange and lawless method of publishing debates in the papers should be put a stop to, but is not the House of Lords, as a Court of Record, the best Court to bring such miscreants before as it can fine as well as imprison, and as the Lords have broader shoulders to support any odium that this salutary measure may occasion in the minds of the vulgar ? ' 2 North was the humble servant rather than the responsible adviser of the King. His Majesty practically controlled and directed the policy of his Ministers. But in this case the royal counsel could not possibly be acted upon. The Commons had carried the matter so far that they were bound to see it through on their own account ; and, moreover, they were more directly interested in it than the Lords. On Tuesday, February 26, the printers were found to be still contumacious. They put in no appearance. The messenger reported that he went to the houses of Wheble and Thompson on the previous Thursday evening. Both of them were away from home. In each case he left a copy of the order for attendance with the servant, and in each case the servant promised to give it to his master on his return. 3 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 321-2. 2 Correspondence of George III with Lord North, vol. 1, pp. 67-8, 9 Commons Journals, vol, 33, p. 208, 202 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Colonel Onslow then moved that Wheble and Thompson for their contempt in not obeying the order of the House be taken into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms or his deputy. ' I wish to make one observation upon the impro- priety of this motion,' said Mr. R. Whitworth. ' The messenger went at night not to the dwelling-houses, but to the shops. I was looking lately into our Journals and there I found an order for taking up one Hoskins. On the messenger taking the warrant, and inquiring whether Hoskins was at home, he was asked " What have you got there ? " " The warrant of the Speaker to take you into custody," he answered. " The Speaker ! " replied the other, " upon my word I do not know any such gentleman ; it cannot be for me." " Yes, it is ; I am to take you into custody." Upon which the messenger and the order were turned out of the house. If our messenger and warrant should be treated with the same sort of contempt the House, I apprehend, will make a strange figure. If we send out our warrants and orders and they cannot be executed upon the parties the world will be apt to conclude we have no legal power to do what we are attempting. I do not know whether it is parliamentary to call the legality of your power in question ; but I will say that there is a general contempt of the orders of the House. This frivolous accusation has drawn a contempt upon your proceedings.' Mr. Seymour also ridiculed the solemnity with which Colonel Onslow had opened the proceedings. ' The whole French court,' he said, 'with their gaudy coaches and jack-boots going to hunt a little hare is nothing in comparison.' Colonel Onslow was uncompromising. ' Notwithstanding,' said he, ' the severe reflections that have been cast upon me here, and the abuse of me out of doors, nothing shall deter me from doing my duty as a Member of this House.' ' If I have to bring all the morning printers one day, and all the evening printers another, I certainly will persevere,' l\e vowe(J. * If the House will support me I will try to go THE DEFIANT PRINTERS 203 through the business.' The motion was then put and on a division was carried by a majority of 143, the minority who opposed it numbering only 17. 1 The printers continued to treat with contempt the order of the House of Commons. In vain did the deputy Ser- jeant-at-Arms endeavour to arrest them. He was told they were not at home when he called, and their servants derisively slammed the door in his face. He reported to the House, on March 4, that though he had been several times at the respective abodes of the printers, and had made diligent search for them, he had not been able to take them into custody. 2 On the motion of Colonel Onslow the House then adopted an address to the Crown, praying for the issue of a Royal Proclamation offering for the apprehension of the offenders rewards of 50 each. The leading paragraph of the Pro- clamation, published in The London Gazette of March 9, was as follows : ' We have thought fit, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council, to issue this Our Royal Proclamation, hereby requiring and command- ing all Our loving subjects whatsoever, to discover and apprehend, or cause the said John Wheble and R. Thompson, or either of them, to be discovered and apprehended, and to carry him, or them, before some of Our justices of the peace, or Chief Magistrates of the county, town or place where he or they shall be apprehended, who are respectively required to secure the said John Wheble and R. Thompson, and thereof give speedy notice to one of Our principal Secretaries of State, to the end he or they may be forthcoming, to be dealt with withal and proceeded against according to law.' This policy of resistance adopted by the printers, this studied and disdainful flouting of the orders, summons and writs of the House of Commons, was a thing then unfamiliar and unexpected as well as audacious. As we have seen, conductors of magazines and newspapers sum- moned hitherto had obeyed the order of the House with the most respectful submission, and the appointed day and 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 322-3. 58 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, p. 74 f 204 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY hour saw them on their knees at the Bar humbly confessing their fault, promising never to offend again, and thankful to be allowed to escape with no further penalty than the payment of the fees of the officials and servitors, however heavy and exorbitant they might be. But that timid and yielding type of newspaper conductor had disappeared, never to be seen again. In their places were men who politically took the view that the public had a constitu- tional right to be told of the proceedings in Parliament, and that the proper agency for the conveyance of the infor- mation was the Press. This was the correct view, assuredly, though it is a question whether the action of the printers and editors was not more induced by the commercial motive of supplying a commodity for which there was an enlarging and lucrative market. But whatever their true aims may have been, they fought for the principle of the Liberty of the Press with a conviction and courage which is amazing, having regard to the omnipotence of the authority whose ancient tradition and jealousy they were thereby violating. Indubitably many of their reports were as we have seen rife with misrepresentation and abuse, which contrasted un- favourably with the respect for the Resolutions of Parlia- ment, and the acknowledgment of its exalted and dignified position, afforded as well by the excellence of the accounts of the Debates, as by the disguises in which they were presented, by The Gentleman's Magazine and The London Magazine a few years earlier. These excesses were due however, to the difficulty placed in the way of the news- papers to obtain legitimate and authentic reports by the exclusion of strangers from the House of Commons, as well as to their natural resentment against particular Mem- bers who were zealously pertinacious not only in rendering their task troublesome and hazardous but in hounding them to commercial ruin. The two Onslows especially were referred to in opprobrious terms. Colonel Onslow was not only ' little Cocking George ' ; but as the contest THE DEFIANT PRINTERS 205 developed, he became ' the little scoundrel ' * and ' that little paltry insignificant insect,' * and he and his cousin were compared to * the constellation of the two bears in the heavens,' one being called ' the great scoundrel ' and the other * the little scoundrel.' 3 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, p. 258. * Ibid., vol. 2, p. 377. * Ibid., vol. 2, p. 379. CAHPTER XXIV A Protracted Debate ONSLOW was determined to bend these newspaper men or break them. Certainly their attacks were calculated to arouse the anger of one less touchy and choleric than the Colonel. He became more arrogant and truculent like a man convinced not only of the righteousness of his cause but of the contemptible pettiness of those who sought to thwart it and set him at nought. On March 12, he got up in the House of Commons to bring similar charges of breach of privilege against the printers of six other London newspapers. These were William Woodfall of The Morn- ing Chronicle ; Thomas Evans of The London Packet ; Henry Baldwin of The St. James' Chronicle ; John Miller of The London Evening Post ; S. Bladon of The General Evening Post, and T. Wright of The Whitehall Evening Post. Onslow first moved that The Morning Chronicle of March 4, be delivered in at the table, and its contents read by the Clerk. ' I come here to deliver my sentiments in a plain, rough way. I, sir, was bred a soldier. I do not pretend to understand grammar, but, like an honest man, I shall speak my mind freely, which I now rise to do, though not with ill-humour.' In this way the bluff but hasty and headstrong soldier began his speech. In illustration of his professed desire to treat the offending newspapers with mildness rather than with severity he mentioned that having accidentally met { an old friend of mine who stood some years ago in the pillory ' Williams, the bookseller, who in February, 1765, was condemned to the pillory for reprint- 206 A PROTRACTED DEBATE 207 ing the North Briton he desired him to go to the printers and tell them that if they did not stop publishing the debates they would be brought before the House. 'As to what they have said of me, I do not care twopence,' he proceeded, * but as they have not thought fit to profit by the caution given to them, I feel it my duty to stand up in support of the old and established rules and orders of the House, for I think there is an end of everything if we are to be got the better of in this manner.' Thomas Townshend, junior, at once rose in protest against the motion. He said he had met with hundreds of persons who thought the contest between the House and the printers was very ridiculous, and below the dignity of Parliament, and that no good could possibly result from it. He was interrupted by Colonel Onslow, who rose to order. ' I will never,' said he, ' suffer any gentleman to say that what I have done is foolish and ridiculous.' Townshend rejoined that if he had said that what the House had done was ridiculous he should have been guilty of a breach of order ; but he had said simply that he had met hundreds of persons who considered the proceedings ridiculous. * I therefore object to our entering into a consideration of them,' he went on. * I look upon the publications with the contempt they deserve, but with very little indignation. As far as my name is mentioned it gives me neither pleasure nor concern. I never pay any attention to what the newspapers say of me.' On the other hand, Mr. Robert Ongley, Member for the County of Bedford, bore testimony to the excellence of the reports. ' I have never read more than one of my speeches in the papers,' said he, * and then they made a better one for me than I could have made myself.' But as he was concerned for the honour and privileges of the House he supported the motion. ' It must operate very strongly upon any Assembly,' said he, 'if the arguments made use of in it are to be held out to the country in such 208 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY colours as every blackguard scribbler may think fit to give them.' Fearful of being misrepresented Members would refrain from expressing their sentiments as freely as they would otherwise do. ' Sir,' retorted Sir Joseph Mawbey, ' what a man says in his place here he ought not to be ashamed of. I cannot see how any mischief can arise from our proceedings being published.' ' I never disguised any one of my opinions from a fear of its being known out of doors, and I conclude every other gentleman has done the same,' replied Lord Strange otherwise Lord Stanley, son of the Earl of Derby c but I do not choose that these people should tell the world that such and such was my opinion when it was not. The other day they made me call a gentleman to order for what he did not say.' The motion was carried by 140 votes to 43. The news- paper was then put in, and the Clerk read from it, ' Authentic account of the debate, February 4, on the Spanish Papers.' Colonel Onslow next moved that The St. James' Chronicle of March 7, printed by Henry Baldwin, be delivered in and read. ' The honourable gentleman's avidity for prosecuting these printers reminds me,' said George Dempster, * of Sir Gregory Gazette in the play, whose passion for news- papers made him exclaim, " What ! a hundred in one day ! " I beg him to consider how he is trifling with the time of the House, and how much all this is below the dignity of Parliament. He is attacking a hydra that will shoot out a hundred heads for every one he cuts off.' There was another division. This time the ayes were \ 12 and the noes 37. The Clerk then read from the newspaper, ' Debates of the Representatives of the People of Utopia.' Some amuse- ment was imparted to the discussion by the circumstance that in this report Jeremiah Dyson, the Member for Wey- mouth, was represented as ' Jeremiah Weymouth, Esquire, the d n of this country ' * and Constantine Phipps, Member for the City of Lincoln, as ' Constantine Lincoln.' 1 Dyson had been Clerk to the House of Commons. He resigned A PROTRACTED DEBATE 209 Colonel Barre for the purpose of throwing ridicule on the proceedings moved ' That " Jeremiah Wey mouth, esquire, the d n of this country " is not a Member of this House.' Charles Jenkinson 1 objected to this interruption of a serious debate. ' I could name,' he proceeded to say when Edmund Burke, assuming that he was referring to ' Jeremiah Weymouth ' interposed with the hilarious cry * Name him ! ' ' This is not a question that calls for laughter,' said Jenkinson severely. * I am little disposed to hunt down printers,' he continued ; ' but the honour of the House should not be treated with contempt.' Colonel Barre protested that his motion was intended seriously. * Now, sir,' said he, ' I beg to ask whether it is not possible for " Jeremiah Weymouth, the d n of this country " to be a member of the Robin Hood Club, or a member of the Diet of Sweden ? " D n " may mean dragon, dean, deacon.' He appealed to Lord North to give the House some light on the subject. The answer of the Prime Minister was to move the previous question, which meant that the principal question should be put, and was then a form of closure. But the discussion went on, and in the main was most acrimonious. The Opposition disputed every step of this hostile action against the printers, by availing themselves of motions for adjournment and other forms of procedure calculated to thwart or delay the proceedings. For instance, the motion that ' Henry Baldwin do attend this House on Thursday ' was met by the motion * that the House do now adjourn.' Edmund Burke spoke powerfully against the harrying of the printers. ' It is my opinion that what you are doing is not for the honour of this House,' he said. in 1762, and in the same year was elected a Member of Parliament. He was a retainer of the Court and had the reputation of being always on the look-out for jobs and perquisites. 1 In 1786 he was created Lord Hawkesbury, and in 1796, Earl of Liverpool. 14 216 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY ' It is my opinion that you are walking through new and untrodden ways. There is not an inch that has not been contested with the people. You are not bound to exercise every right you possess. Your prudence should regulate the exercise of your power. Power not exercised in wisdom wil] be found to be terror, and will end in weakness. If hitherto we have not been wise before the event let us be so for the time to come. You have been baffled.' When Colonel Onslow next moved that The London Packet for February 27, printed by Thomas Evans, be delivered in at the table and read, Sir William Meredith, Member for Liverpool, moved the adjournment of the debate. ' As long as I have health and strength,' he said, * I will stay in the House to oppose this wretched proceeding. I will go on dividing the House as long as I have a single Member to second me.' So the proceedings were vexatiously prolonged. The Speaker gave expression to his weariness. ' I am heartily tired of this business, and should be glad to put an end to it,' he said. When Onslow proposed that Evans ' do attend the House on Thursday next,' Colonel Barre moved an amendment leaving out the word ' next ' and substituting ' Thursday six weeks.' That was defeated by 87 to 18 votes. The Speaker now protested not so much against the prolongation of the sitting, as the discreditable nature of the debate. ' I am not fatigued bodily,' he said, 1 but my mind is much hurt at these proceedings. I am weary, sick, tired ; and should be happy if I knew how to help the House and myself.' Thereupon the following interesting discussion took place : Colonel Barre I rise to put a question to you, sir ; and it is a serious one. I cannot for my soul conceive that you, sitting in the Chair, would throw out the smallest reproach against any one set of men. But what you said conveyed to my mind the impression that every man who felt for the honour of the House, must consider what is now going on ridiculous. I hope you did not mean to cast any reflection on the gentlemen who are striving to defeat this wicked measure ; for I think it wicked in any man to embark the A PROTRACTED DEBATE 211 House in a business out of which it will be impossible to come with honour. The Speaker I said nothing to deserve the imputation cast on me by the honourable Member ; as if I, who am bound to know no side, had cast a reflection on one side of the House. Not a word escaped my lips that went to throw blame on either side. I lament from my soul that I am in this situation, for I do not know how I am to get out of it. Mr. Edmund Burke Your situation, Mr. Speaker, at this moment is, indeed, truly lamentable. We are hampered every way. This Standing Order has put a stand to the business of the Nation. Will you say that this is a wise proceeding ? Has any gentleman shown us the way out of it ? Has former experience given us a light out of it ? Argument is not heard upon the subject. Instead of sup- pressing libels you suppress the business of the House. I shall not be deterred from going out in these divisions by gentlemen saying it is childish business. If we had been contented with giving a single negative to the proceeding we should have had printers at our Bar by dozens. Better far was it to make one stand. But the proceedings waxed only more ludicrous. * I shall now move an amendment which will take up some time to debate,' Whitworth said. * In a matter of this impor- tance, in which the honour and dignity of the House are concerned, gentlemen cannot object to sit a little later than usual. In such a case our constitutions are of little consideration. I am for proceeding with these divisions if we should be here till this time to-morrow night.' He then moved, as an amendment to the question, ' that Thomas Evans do attend the House on Thursday next,' to add the words, ' together with all his compositors, pressmen, cor- rectors, blackers and devils.' The reporter, Sir Henry Cavendish, adds the note : ' He spoke a long time.' Edmund Burke supported the amendment. ' I think,' said he, * your order will be imperfect in its operation if all these pressmen, compositors, blackers and devils are not brought here. It would be as irregular for the printer to come to your Bar without them, as it would be for you, sir, to come to the House without your mace, or a marshal of the King's Bench without his tipstaff, or a First Lord of the Treasury 212 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY without his majority. If there is anything ludicrous in this motion it is a recommendation with me.' Alderman Townsend said he did not agree to the whole amendment, and moved that ' devils ' be left out. ' The devil,' said Edmund Burke, still in a facetious mood, * is the most material personage in this whole business, the most material evidence for the discovery of these contemners of your power.' The Speaker evidently was scandalized. * This motion will go into the Journals. What will posterity say ? ' he asked. When the amendment was put 74 voted against it, and only 7 for it. The minority, it will be seen had fallen to a very low figure. Charles Fox, 1 who had been active as a teller for the Government in the divisions, called attention to this shrinkage in the numbers of their opponents and denounced * the conduct of gentlemen opposite ' as ' so childish and so full of trick.' ' Some gentlemen,' explained William Burke, ' wishing naturally for a glass of wine have lost the credit of supporting the last division.' ' We get up to spin out the time,' said Colonel Barre. ' We have no other way left us. This business, shameful in its origin, has brought disgrace upon us. It cannot be put an end to unless some concession is made. If this could last three days longer, I, for one, could stand it. I shall not retire on the score of health, but to prepare myself for the East India Bill. I shall go home after the next division.' But Turner vowed that he would sit on if he could get two gentle- men to divide with him. ' I also wished for small divisions,' he said. * I do not like to see Members crowding in at the end of a debate for the sake of the loaves and fishes. With 1 Fox was returned to the House of Commons at the General Election of 1768, when he was but a youth of nineteen, and being under age was really ineligible. The seat was bought for him by his father, the first Lord Holland. For some years he was an anti- democrat, and a fiery supporter of the Tory Government in their warfare against the Press. Beginning as a reactionary he ended as a reformer. The change in his politics took place in 1774. A PROTRACTED DEBATE 213 only fifteen gentlemen having the interest of the people at heart I would laugh at any majority.' But if the Members did not grow weary of talking and dividing, the reporter, Sir Henry Cavendish, got tired unfor- tunately of recording the proceedings. When, at long last, the question e that Thomas Evans do attend the House on Thursday next ' was carried by 76 votes to 12, Cavendish writes : ' It was now half-past 2 o'clock. After seven more divisions, which ended in ordering the other three printers to attend the House upon Thursday, the House adjourned at 5 o'clock in the morning.' 1 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 377-400. CHAPTER XXV Printers at the Bar OWING to the prolongation of Tuesday's discussions till late on the Wednesday morning, the House of Commons did not meet at all on the Wednesday evening. On the following day, Thursday, March 14 the day ap- pointed for the appearance of the six other printers at the Bar for having infringed the order against the publication of the Debates the House assembled in the same distracted and bitter mood as was revealed in Tuesday's proceedings. Four of the printers were in attendance. One of the absen- tees, William Woodfall of The Morning Chronicle, was re- ported to be in the custody of Black Rod, undergoing punishment by order of the House of Lords for having published their proceedings. The other, Miller of The London Evening Post, stood out. He ignored the summons of the House of Commons as Wheble and Thompson had done, and a warrant was accordingly issued for his arrest also. In regard to the four printers who made submission, there arose a hot and acrimonious contest between the Tories and the Whigs on the question whether they should be called in and asked for explanations, or whether the matter should be postponed with a view to an amicable settlement. The discussion exceeded in bitterness that of Tuesday itself one of the angriest debates on record and it was likewise prolonged in a manner that would now be called obstructive, for the House again did not adjourn until close on five o'clock in the morning. The debate was opened by Colonel Onslow. He was in 214 PRINTERS AT THE BAR 215 a congratulatory and softened mood. ' I am very happy to acquaint the House,' said he, ( that four of the printers are come in the most respectful manner in obedience to the order of the House, which act, I hope, will plead strongly in their favour. Great pains, I have no doubt, were taken to make them disobey it.' 'I am glad,' remarked Colonel Jennings, ' it is meant only to fire a little powder at these people.' Most of the Opposition, led by Edmund Burke, were, however, disposed to fight to the last. They desired that the House should proceed with the other Orders of the Day. Colonel Barre was especially concerned that the East India Bill, which was down for consideration, should be discussed. Turner threatened to repeat the dilatory tactics of Tuesday, and by means of frequent motions and divisions, greatly delay if not entirely frustrate, any decision being come to with respect to the printers. The excited temper of the House and the snappish character of the talk were also seen in the bitter personalities that were indulged in frequently. Lord North who had kept his followers in the House all night on Tuesday to support Colonel Onslow now insisted that before any Bills were taken the printers must be first called in. He said the proceedings of Tuesday were most unusual ; in fact, nothing of the kind had ever happened before. ' If it shall ever appear,' he said, ' that a small minority, by frequent divisions, can succeed in forcing the majority to a decision upon any question, the authority of Parliament is at an end. It loses its energy. Such a body cannot act.' This declaration was construed by the Opposition as a threat that a measure would be proposed which, by depriving the minority of the right of dividing as often as they thought fit upon every question, would strike a blow at freedom of debate. On the other hand, the opinion that there could be no more praiseworthy object soon found expression in the ranks of the Ministerial- ists. ' I am free to declare,' said Mr. Stephen Fox (brother 216 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY to Charles James Fox, and afterwards the second Lord Holland), ' that I am ready to bring forward a motion to put an end to such indecent, as well as unusual, conduct, or to second any gentleman who may.' The nature and depth of the feelings of the Radical section of the Opposition may be gauged by the defiant and passionate exclamation of James Townsend, an Alderman of the City of London, who sat for West Looe, in Cornwall. He wished to God that he could interrupt not only the business of the House, but the business of the Kingdom, in order to frustrate the intentions of a tyrannical majority. Edmund Burke also gloried in having taken part in the obstructive tactics on Tuesday. ' Posterity will bless the pertinaciousness of that day,' said he in a fine phrase. e Good God, sir,' he exclaimed, ' what were we to do ? The honourable gentleman brought us six printers, and threat- ened us with more. The principle will go to all publica- tions. I could see no other way of getting out of it than by making the business as troublesome as possible. The only shame I take to myself is that I never did it before.' Then the Speaker interposed. He was distressed and alarmed by the proceedings. * I beg I may be heard for a minute,' he said. ' If this matter is to go on to-day it will be impos- sible to finish it before six or seven in the morning. I must desire the House to get one more able and fit. It is out of my power to remain in the Chair so long.' But this appeal of the Speaker and threat of resignation had no effect in softening asperities or curtailing the debate. General Conway who had been Secretary of State in the Rockingham Administration made an attack upon Ed- mund Burke. ' The honourable gentleman,' said he, ' has a very ingenious manner of supporting disorder in this House. If it goes on I shall feel myself bound to support some little degree of decency that it may not be totally annihilated.' If the House were to be turned into a bear garden by moving adjournment upon adjournment, then PRINTERS AT THE BAR 217 he should as soon expect to see a question fairly decided in Hockley-in-the-Hole as in St. Stephen's Chapel. Burke angrily repelled the attack t extraordinary in its nature, extraordinary in its manner ; in its nature groundless, in its manner indecent ' which had been made upon him. Mr. George Onslow intervened, and by a proud indirect reference to his descent from three Speakers, drew the mockery and sarcasm of the Opposition upon himself. ' Descended from parliamentary men,' he said, ' we must have had no hearts if we had suffered the Standing Orders of the House to be set at defiance.' ' Though I have no parliamentary blood in my veins,' said George Dempster, ' I consider myself as well qualified to give an opinion upon the subject before us as the man who can boast that four or five of his ancestors filled that Chair.' Edmund Burke was more withering. Dealing with both Onslow and Conway, he said : I desire to offer a few words to the House, if it is still an elective and not an hereditary body. I am not descended from Members of Parliament, nor am I descended from any distinguished character whatever. My father left me nothing in the world but good prin- ciples, good instruction, good example, which I have never departed from. The honourable gentleman says he has his character to keep. My circumstances will bear witness to my character. The honourable gentleman has attacked it grossly, wantonly, disorderly. I gave him no provocation. He began a set, determinate attack upon me. As I have resisted many attacks from that quarter as I have resisted many attacks from the hereditary line of Tories and the hereditary line of Whigs so will I continue to resist them. I have an utter contempt for the distinction, and for those who are capable of using it. Tied as I am to the stake, and baited as I am by these gentlemen, I have nothing left me to do but to give a little bit of the horn to the one and to the other for the diversion of the House. This kind of parliamentary genealogy, this Herald's Office that you have erected in this House At this point Burke, noticing a movement of the Prime Minister on the Treasury Bench, stopped his attack, to remark, ' I see the noble lord is about to rise to order. Before he sits down I have no doubt he will say something 218 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY disorderly.' Lord North did rise to a point of order, which was that, in the circumstances, Burke was entitled only to explain and not to reply. Dowdeswell rose to assert the right which every man had to protect his character. ' I never knew a Member stopped for justifying himself upon being accused. I should have thought ill of my honourable friend if he had not stood up in his own justification. What the honourable General said met with wonderful applause from the gentlemen opposite. And yet my honourable friend is to be confined to explanation.' Richard Rigby who was both Paymaster-General of the Forces and Master of the Rolls in Ireland admitted that when a man's character was attacked he had a right to justify it. But had Burke confined himself to that ? ' Did he not say something about the genealogical table ? ' continued Rigby. ' Was it within the rules and orders of the House to say one word about the Herald's Office ? ' ' Surely,' cried the Speaker, ' this debate has taken a turn that must make every man unhappy ! Surely every gentleman who thinks his character attacked has a right not merely to explain but to justify ! ' General Conway then rose to explain that in what he had said he meant nothing personal. ' I spoke upon public grounds and public grounds only,' he went on. ' When I said I had a character to keep I had not the most distant idea of comparing characters with the honourable gentleman.' But Burke was not mollified. He turned more fiercely than ever upon Mr. George Onslow for his boast that the part he and his cousin were taking was well becoming the descendants of great parliamentarians. Here is a further extract from the report made by Cavendish : Mr. Edmund Burke This business was pressed upon the House under the idea of its being agreeable to a Standing Order which you could not resist, coming as it did from a gentleman whose father was a parliamentary man, a gentleman with ' Order ' running in his blood, with ' Order ' running through his veins. As he boasts PRINTERS AT THE BAR 219 of his father, his son will never boast of him (cries of ' Order ' ). I am speaking to order. I wish to know, Mr. Speaker, whether men are born parliamentary, or whether they are to form themselves under your discipline ? The Speaker The honourable gentleman must excuse me. That is no part of his justification. For God's sake let us go on with the debate. Mr. Edmund Burke, who was received with cries of ' Spoke ! spoke ! spoke ! ' said I neither see nor care who calls out spoke ! spoke ! spoke ! Is it any derogation to a person that his father was not a Member of Parliament ? Mr. George Onslow I never said any such thing. What I said was that gentlemen who were parliamentary men themselves, and descended from parliamentary men, could not suffer this breach of a Standing Order to pass unnoticed. What reflection did that cast upon any one ? Ultimately the question ' that the said order be post- poned ' was put and the House divided. The numbers were for, 24; against, 117. 1 All this time the four printers in attendance were waiting in the Lobby. Three of them were brought to the Bar and dealt with separately, for when it came to the turn of Evans, of The London Packet, it was found that he had gone away. Every motion was debated and a division challenged upon it by the Opposition. The proceedings at this stage were not reported by Cavendish, and the only account available is the official record in the Journals. The first printer called in was Baldwin, of The St. James's Chronicle. He was heard in defence of the charge and then removed. It was proposed : ' That the said Henry Baldwin in having printed in a newspaper the debates, and misrepresented the speeches of several of the Members of this House, is guilty of a breach of the privilege of this House,' and the motion was carried by 92 votes to 20. ' Then the said Henry Baldwin was again called in,' says the Journals ; ' and Mr. Speaker acquainted him with the said resolution. And he confessed he was sorry for the trouble he had given the House, and that if it was the 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 392-400. 220 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY opinion of the House that he should discontinue printing the debates of the House he would certainly obey their direc- tions, though it would be attended with the ruin of his paper.' Baldwin was once more removed from the Bar. Mr. Onslow then moved, 'That the said Henry Baldwin be now brought to the Bar of this House, and upon his knees reprimanded by Mr. Speaker for his said offence.' To this an amendment was proposed by leaving out the words, * upon his knees reprimanded by Mr. Speaker for his said offence ' and inserting ' be discharged.' The amendment was rejected by 86 votes to 16. ' So it was resolved the affirmative,' say the Journals, ' and he .was brought in accordingly and upon his knees reprimanded by Mr. Speaker ; and was ordered to be discharged, paying his fees.' The proceedings took the same course in the case of Wright, of The Whitehall Evening Post. At the Bar he said, ' He was sorry he had incurred the displeasure of the House ; that he had printed the debates therein at the instance of several applications from his customers in the country ; and that he was under apprehensions that if he had not printed the said debates his paper would have been ruined,' but he submitted himself to the House. He also had to kneel and receive the reprimand of Mr. Speaker. 1 Bladon, of The General Evening Post, made a very humble submission. He said he had always taken care that his paper should give no offence to the House, and that he came to the Bar with a fixed resolution of acknowledging his error. 'This confession operated so favourably with the Ministerial part of the House,' the Parliamentary His- tory states, ' that they moved, " That the said Samuel 1 Baldwin and Wright were the last printers or journalists who knelt at the Bar while they were being censured by the Speaker. The practice of compelling prisoners to go upon their knees at the Bar was discontinued by order of the House on March 16, 1772, owing to the successful contumacy of a Scotsman named Alexander Murray, who told the Speaker that he knelt only to God. Commons Journals, vol. 33, p. 594, PRINTERS AT THE BAR 221 Bladon be discharged from any further attendance on this House." Upon which the minority moved an amendment thereto, by inserting after " Samuel Bladon " the words " having declared to the House that he came here with a fixed resolution to confess and having confessed." By which they meant to show the partiality of the House in acquitting a man who had confessed himself guilty.' How- ever, only 8 voted for the amendment, while there were 70 against it. So Bladon was discharged without a reprimand. In the case of Evans, of The London Packet, the House was informed that the printer had answered to the summons, but 'that some particular circumstances had obliged him to withdraw from his attendance on this House.' It is further stated that * A member in his place acquainted the House that he had heard in the Lobby that the wife of the said Thomas Evans had broke her leg.' Nevertheless it was ordered that Evans should attend the House on the following Tuesday. 1 Evans, however, joined Wheble, Thompson and Miller in defying the authority of the House. Writing from Pater- noster Row, on March 9, he sent a letter to the Speaker, in which he said he was in attendance at the House of Com- mons on Thursday and remained till Friday morning. ' When,' he proceeded, ' I t took the liberty of returning home, believing this act entirely justifiable, as the order only re- quired my attendance in the morning, and I had to that time made an addition of twelve hours.' He went on to say that understanding that the House intended to punish him for what he * deemed a merit rather than a crime,' he must protest against such a course, as the House of Commons was not a court of justice, adding : * If I must be tried, I must be tried by my equals, by a jury of unbiassed men, and not by gentlemen who, though a Party, think proper to assume the office of judge and jury.' 2 1 Commons Journals, vol. 33, pp. 258-260. Parliamentary History, vol. 17, pp. 83-90. 2 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, p. 87. CHAPTER XXVI The City Corporation and the Press WHEBLE and Thompson were still at large. On March 14 the day the House of Commons were reprimand- ing the other four printers who had obeyed their summons Wheble sent to the Speaker a letter enclosing the opinion of counsel that the proceedings taken against him by the House were illegal, and declaring, on his own part, that it was his intention to yield obedience only to the laws of the land. He said that a few days previously, on returning home from the country, whither his business had carried him, he was astonished to hear ' that some persons, pretend- ing to be the deputy Serjeant and messengers of the House of Commons, had called several times at my house in my absence, declaring their intention to take me into custody by virtue of a pretended warrant from the Speaker ' ; and in consequence of this information, ' being better versed in printing than in law,' he thought it proper to take the advice of counsel upon his case. Counsel, R. Morris, Lincoln's Inn, stated that he was clearly and decisively of opinion that Wheble was not com- pellable by law to attend the House of Commons in pursu- ance of the written order that had been served upon him. That order was in the following terms : Jo vis, 21 die February, 1771. Ordered, That J. Wheble do attend this House upon Tuesday morning next. Ordered, That the service of the said order, by leaving a copy of the same at the usual place of abode of the said J. Wheble, be deemed equal to personal service, and be good service. (Copy) J. HATSELL, Cl. Dom. Com, 222 THE CITY CORPORATION AND THE PRESS 223 Counsel thus commented upon the form of the order : The order itself is worded in so injudicial and unclerk-like a manner that it is covered with objections almost from the first letter to the last. I know not that an Englishman is required to understand Latin, especially since the Act of Parliament that all processes of the law shall be in English, and in no other language whatsoever ; amongst others process orders being particularly enumerated, if this order be not a process of law it can have no effect, and, if it is, it ought to be in English, whereas the Order in question contains words in a strange language, without having the exemption of being technical Latin words. J. Wheble is a description of nobody. It might as well have been written eye Wheble, or nose Wheble, either of them would have been as much the name of John Wheble as the former. Besides, a person is not legally named without a proper addition of quality and abode, which is not so much as attempted at in this pretended order. If the House of Commons had power to issue this summons it ought to be signed by the Speaker, and not by a person using certain cabalistical expressions, which may possibly be construed to mean Clerk of the House of Commons. The Speaker ought also to recite that he had an express authority given him by the House before he presumes to issue any summons or warrant whatsoever. It is the office of the Speaker, and not of the Clerk, to authenticate the acts of the House. 1 The very next day the element of farce was introduced into this high constitutional struggle between Parliament and the Press. Thompson and Wheble were arrested collusively, it is said, by two of their friends or workmen and brought up before the City magistrates. Wheble was apprehended by a journeyman printer named Carpenter, and taken to the Guildhall. It happened more by ar- rangement, perhaps, than by accident that the sitting magistrate on that very day at the Guildhall was no other than John Wilkes, at whose cost in imprisonment, expulsion from Parliament, and the loss of his seat as Member of Middlesex, the House of Commons had exalted their privi- lege above the law. Set free in 1770, the Ward of Farring- 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, pp. 90-6. 224 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY don Without had chosen the popular hero and idol as their Alderman, and in virtue of that position here he was to decide the issue whether or not Wheble could be legally apprehended and seized in the City under the Royal Pro- clamation and the Speaker's warrant. ' Of what crime is this man accused ? ' asked Wilkes sternly. ' I don't accuse him of any crime,' answered Car- penter ; * I have no charge to bring against him. I have no other reason for apprehending him than the desire to obey the Royal Proclamation and obtain the reward of fifty pounds.' Wilkes, with a fine display of pretended indignation, immediately liberated Wheble. As Carpenter was neither a City constable nor a police officer, Wilkes bound Wheble over to prosecute him, at the ensuing Ses- sions in London, for illegal arrest. Yet he gave Carpenter a certificate of having apprehended Wheble in support of his claim on the Treasury for the reward offered in the Royal Proclamation. He did more. He treated himself to the satisfaction of sending a letter to his old antagonist, Lord Halifax, the Secretary of State having charge of home affairs, describing what had occurred, and simulating a desire for his lordship's approval of his action. ' As I found that there was no legal cause of complaint against Wheble,' he wrote, ' I thought it certainly my duty to adjudge that he had been apprehended in the City illegally in direct viola- tion of the rights of an Englishman, and of the chartered privileges of a citizen of this Metropolis, and to discharge him.' l On the same day, March 15, Thompson as I have already stated was also arrested. He, too, was apprehended by another friendly journeyman printer. Taken before Alder- man Oliver at the Mansion House, he was directly set at liberty as one guiltless of any crime ; but the man who took him into custody was given as in the case of Wheble a 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, p. 95. THE CITY CORPORATION AND THE PRESS 225 certificate that he had acted in pursuance of the Royal Proclamation and was entitled to the reward. Both the captors duly presented their claims for the reward, only to have them refused by the Treasury. The collusion was so obvious that Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, when asked in the House of Commons why the rewards had not been paid, replied in an amusing speech. ' He is neither more nor less than a printer's devil, a devil to this Mr. Wheble,' he said, in reference to Carpenter. ' I suspect the devil has been outwitted,' he continued. ' Whether he has or has not, I hope the devil will find no friends in this House, as, in that case, there might be the devil to pay.' * The proceedings in the City were intended, of course, to make the House of Commons ridiculous^, as well as odious, in the eyes of the populace. They were laughable proceed- ings in a way, but they had a^erlous side, and this was the proof they afforded that the printers in their fight for the right to publish the Debates were sustained by the powerful support of the authorities of the City of London. On the following day, JMTarch 16, there was a dramatic development in the situation that was not the less ominous because it had obviously been carefully prearranged. The City Cor- poration completely unmasked their battery, of the existence of which, behind the City ramparts, a hint had been given in the lettW of Wilkes to the Secretary of State. It was to pit the privileges of the City of London against the privi- leges of the House of Commons ; to deny and oppose the jurisdiction of the House of Commons within the boundaries of the City. 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, p. 437. In all the historical accounts of these transactions which I have read it is assumed that Wheble's arrest by Carpenter w^s collusive. The following extract, which I take from Andrew's tiistory of British Journalism (vol. 1, p. 202), points to a different conclusion: ' On July 30, 1771, Edward Irwin Carpenter, a printer wl>o had arrested Wheble, was tried at Guildhall for assault, found guilty, fined one shilling and imprisoned for two months in Wood Street Compter.' 15 226 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY A messenger of the House of Commons, named Whittam, was sent by the Serjeant-at-Arms to the City to take Miller, of The London Evening Post, into custody under a warrant from the Speaker. Whittam found Miller in his shop in Paternoster Row. The printer made no attempt to evade the messenger, but declined to yield himself prisoner. The messenger then laid his hand on the printer's shoulder, saying that he arrested him under the warrant of the Speaker of the House of Commons. As the visit of the messenger was expected, plans had been laid to frustrate his object. Outside the shop a constable of the City was in waiting. Miller called him in and gave Whittam into custody on a charge of assault in his own domicile and illegal arrest. The party went to the Guildhall, but the sitting justice, John Wilkes, had discharged the business of the day and was gone. They then proceeded to the Mansion House. The Lord Mayor, Brass Crosby, M.P., 1 was in bed, ill of the gout. However, he heard in his chamber the complaints of Miller and Whittam, and adjourned the cases till six o'clock in the evening, on the application of Whittam, who desired to communicate with the Serjeant-at-Arms. At six o'clock the Lord Mayor again adjudicated in his bed- chamber. He was supported by Alderman John Wilkes and Alderman Oliver, M.P. Counsellor Morris appeared on behalf of Miller. The deputy Serjeant-at-Arms, John Clementson, was also in attendance. At the opening of the proceedings Clementson demanded, on behalf of the Speaker of the House of Commons, the release of the messenger and the commitment of Miller to his custody. Both applica- tions were refused. * Are you a constable within the City of London ? ' asked the Lord Mayor of Whittam. 'No,' was the messenger's reply. ' Was your warrant backed by any City magistrate ? ' inquired the Lord Mayor. The 1 Brass Crosby was born at Stockton-upon-Tees in 1725, and was an attorney by profession. He sat in Parliament as one of the Members for Honiton. THE CITY CORPORATION AND THE PRESS 227 messenger again answered 'No.' He also admitted that he did not accuse Miller of any crime, but had taken him into custody solely by virtue of the order of the House of Commons. The Lord Mayor then decided that the arrest of Miller was illegal, and discharged him from the custody of the messenger. ' It was very extraordinary,' he said, 'for any citizen to be taken up in the City of London without the knowledge or authority of the Lord Mayor, or some other magistrate of the City ; and if this was permitted to be the case it would be trampling on the laws, and there would be an end of the rights, of this City.' The Court next proceeded to hear Miller's charge against Whittam of assault and false imprisonment. The deputy Serjeant-at-Arms renewed his appli cation that the messen- ger of the Commons should be released, and the printer given into his custody. He was informed that the arrest of a citizen in the City of London, without the authority of one of its magistrates, was a violation of the City charters, and that an arrest by a person who was not a constable was a breach of the law of the land. Upon these grounds the messenger of the House of Commons was directed to give bail to appear at the next Sessions for the City of London in answer to the charge. On the advice of the deputy Ser- jeant-at-Arms he refused to give bail. An order was then made out for his committal to the Compter the City prison to await his trial at the Sessions. The deputy Serjeant- at-Arms then said, * I waited for this, and now that I see the warrant of commitment actually signed I will offer bail ' ; and bail having been given the messenger was set at liberty. * The Mansion House was exceedingly full of people,' says The Parliamentary History, ' but not the least confusion or disturbance happened.' * The charter upon which the magistrates acted was granted to the City by Edward III in the first year of his reign, 1327. It exempted the citizens from any process of law being served 1 Parliamentary History, voL 17, pp. 96-102. 228 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY upon them but by the officers of the City. The charter had been recognized by Acts of Parliament. Moreover, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen on their election had taken an oath to defend the liberties and privileges of the City. But they recognized that this flouting of the authority of the House of Commons could not fail to have consequences un- pleasant to themselves. Crosby, indeed, begged his col- leagues to leave to him the entire responsibility of their action. Turning to Wilkes he said : ' You, I think, have enough on your hands already.' Wilkes insisted, however, on putting his name to the order of commitment ; and it was, in fact, signed by the three magistrates. John Almon says that this plan of resisting the order of the House of Commons was settled by Miller, editor of The London Evening Post, and him, in consultation with Wilkes and some of the other City magistrates. l John Home Tooke is also credited with having inspired the action of the City authorities, ' Even Mr. Wilkes himself,' says Stephens, the friend and biographer of Tooke, ' was at first appalled at the idea of opposing the resolutions of the Commons, aided by the proclamation of the Crown, and would not promise his support.' It was only on learning that the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver had engaged to Tooke that they would * vindicate the liberty of the Press ' that Wilkes volunteered his services. 2 Tooke established in 1769 ' The Society for supporting the Bill of Rights.' Its ostensible object was the preserva- tion of the Constitution as established at the Revolution ; but its real purpose was the radical alteration of the Con- stitution, and that it could not openly proclaim because of the stern repression of all reforming zeal by the Government. It encouraged the newspapers by moral and material support, especially The London Evening Post, The Public Advertiser, 1 Memoirs of John Almon, 120. 2 Alexander Stephens, Memoir* of John Home Tooke, vol. 1, p. 335 (1813). THE CITY CORPORATION AND THE PRESS 229 and The Middlesex Journal, in their advocacy of the abolition of public abuses and the mitigation of laws which harshly affected the individual. 1 But Tooke had furiously quar- relled with Wilkes, and though he was in complete sympathy with the movement for the admission of the Press to Par- liament, he was indisposed to take any great part in it, as he was one of the bitterest personal antagonists of its most conspicuous personage. The strings were really pulled by Wilkes. By his clever manipulation, in the interest of the newspapers, of the City man's devotion to the City, he at once revenged himself for his wrongs at the hands of the House of Commons, and put fresh life into his waning popularity. Thus was the Press encouraged and strengthened in its contest with the House of Commons, and the public interest in the struggle intensified, by the action of the powerful Corporation of London, as audacious as it was resolute. The City politically was Radical, in the contemporary meaning of the word which, of course, had then a narrower significance than it possesses in the democratic environment of the twentieth century. Therefore, apart from its desire to uphold its ancient privileges, it rallied to the side of the Press because it thought that the newspapers were fighting for a sound principle making Parliament amenable to public opinion so that it might cease to be the despot and become the protector of the people. 1 Stephens, Life of John Home Tooke, vol. 1, p. 167. CHAPTER XXVII The Commons and the Lord Mayor THE Lord Mayor's commitment of the messenger of the House of Commons for apprehending Miller, the printer, and his denial, in language amazing for its audacity and plain-speaking, of the legality of the Speaker's warrant, naturally aroused the utmost indignation among Members of Parliament. Did not this interdiction of the Speaker's warrant strike at the very root of the prestige and authority of the House of Commons ? If the power of the House to arrest was allowed to be thus denied, would it not become impossible to get witnesses and other persons to attend on summons ? These were tremendous questions calling for emphatic and unequivocal answer. On Monday, March 18, the Speaker acquainted the House of the treatment their messenger had received as a matter affecting their privileges. ' The House/ he said, * will give me leave to lay before them an account of some very extra- ordinary proceedings, indeed, which have happened since we last met here.' He then recounted the adventures of Whittam, the messenger, up to the time when he was ar- rested for having illegally taken Miller, the printer, into cus- tody. To this stage the proceedings had advanced when he was informed of them. He immediately sent for the Ser- jeant-at-Arms, or, if he could not be found, his deputy, and in less than half an hour the deputy presented himself. The Speaker then went on to say : ' I then gave him these directions ; and I submit to the House 230 THE COMMONS AND THE LOED MAYOR 231 whether in doing so I did what was wrong. I ordered him to go in my name, and as your Speaker, and wherever he found the messenger to demand his enlargement. I ordered him to show the warrant to any person who wanted to see it or hear it read, for I thought if your warrant received an additional indignity by being burnt or torn, you would not have liked to have heard of it. I ordered him, if he found the messenger carried before a magistrate, or magistrates, to demand him at the hand of that magistrate or magistrates in your name. I likewise directed him, that if the magistrates did not think fit to give up your messenger, and to deliver Miller personally (for I ordered him to require a restoration of Miller), if they were disposed to proceed in this business to ex- tremities, to have patience and wait till the messenger was committed, My reason for so doing was that we might then by law, as we were entitled, have a copy of the commitment to produce, that it might appear who had been the committing magistrate upon the occasion. What my directions were I repeated to him, and asked him if he understood them, upon which he wished them to be reduced to writing that there might be no mistake. I dismissed him a little before five o'clock, and heard nothing more of the matter till between eight and nine, when your deputy Serjeant-at-Arms came back to my house, together with Whittam, your messenger, who had arrested Miller.' He retailed the account given him by the deputy Ser- jeant-at-Arms of the proceedings before the Lord Mayor, and continued : ' The Lord Mayor then directed a warrant for the commitment of Whittam to be signed, but, before he was actually taken away to the Compter, the deputy Serjeant, thinking he had gone far enough, offered bail, which was accepted. When I heard this, I own I was a little hurt to find that in that particular the directions I had given to the deputy Serjeant were not followed. If he had regarded what I said to him, the business would not have been so done. I then explained to him why I wished the messenger might have been committed, that we should then have had the warrant and the names of the magistrates who had signed it. I desired him to go back and try and get it. He returned without it. He told me he had gone to demand it, and that the Lord Mayor had informed him he did not know what had become of it ; as nothing had been done under it it might be destroyed. He was told to come the next morning, when he was informed that the warrant was lost, and they could not find a copy of it. Thus I have stated to the House, as clearly and correctly as I could, the particulars of this business, I leave it to the wisdom 232 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of this House to consider what it will be fit to do upon so important and so extraordinary a transaction.' The crowded House was deeply moved by the Speaker's recital of the circumstances, calm though it was and un- touched by exaggeration. It was generally recognized that an outrage had been perpetrated upon the House of Com- mons. The action of the Lord Mayor was intolerable. The arrogant pretensions of the City called for speedy repudiation and stern punishment. The authority of Parliament must be signally vindicated. Colonel Onslow was present. He was the persistent and relentless leader of the campaign against the Press, but he was not now so happy as he had been in the consciousness of such a distinction. In truth, he was alarmed at the serious turn which events had taken. He was willing even to drop all further proceedings against the newspapers. But the business was no longer left in his hands. The Government were of opinion that a situation so difficult and delicate demanded more considered and authoritative treatment than it was likely to receive from the blustering and blundering soldier. North, in fact, made it a ministerial question. He did so at the instigation of the King, but against his own convictions. Horace Walpole says that at a meeting of some of the supporters of the Government held at North's house, ' the ruling spirit was moderation ' ; but that at a larger and more representative gathering the next night 'firmness and penal measures' were decided on. 1 This sudden change of feeling was brought about by a letter from the King. On March 17 his Majesty wrote to North, ' The authority of the House of Commons is totally annihilated if it is not in an exemplary manner supported to-morrow by instantly committing the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver to the Tower.' He added : ' As to Wilkes, he is below the notice of the House.' 2 The Government, accordingly, took upon themselves the 1 Memoirs of George III, vol. 4, p. 191. 2 Correspondence of George III with Lord North, vol. 1, pp. 57-8, THE COMMONS AND THE LORD MAYOR 233 entire and exclusive responsibility for the subsequent pro- ceedings in vindication of the authority of Parliament. To Welbore Ellis, a Privy Councillor and Minister, was entrusted the conduct of the action taken by the House of Commons against the Lord Mayor on March 18. He con- fined himself to moving that the Lord Mayor do attend the House in his place on the following day. The debate which followed was notable for its moderation. Instead of the spectacle of an Assembly divided against itself, all passion and turbulence, that had been presented in the discussions relative to the printers, there was now to be seen an almost complete union of sentiment and feeling between all sections of the House, and calmness, gravity and determination. The Opposition agreed that the Commons' privilege of com- mitment for contempt must be asserted against the prepos- terous claim of the City to override it. All that they pleaded for was that the undoubted powers of the House should not be employed against the liberties of the people ; and they suggested the adjournment of the matter until Friday to allow of its thoroughly unbiassed consideration. Sir William Meredith appealed to the House to pause before they took one step in a matter which might involve the House, the Kingdom, the King and his posterity in the most serious consequences. * I expected to be told,' he said, ' that our dignity is so much concerned that we cannot pause for a moment. Is it, sir, for our dignity to be eternally at war with the people ? Is it for our dignity to proceed upon a matter of privilege founded in absurdity ? ' Welbore Ellis, who spoke again, contended that it was not so much the dignity of the House that was at stake, as its very existence. ' For,' he proceeded, ' if this House has not the exercise of a coercive power to bring persons before you upon questions of privilege, you are, from that hour, divested of all possibility of executing any of the great trusts for which you are sent here by the electors of Great Britain.' ' The treatment you have received has no precedent,' said 234 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Bamber Gascoyne. ' If you yield you give away the power of the Commons of England.' Sir Gilbert Elliot also made a stirring exhortation to Members to stand by the House of Commons against which the magistrates of the City had drawn the sword. ' If they come against us with all their City behind them,' he cried, ' I will not be the man to fall back. Are we, the Commons of England, the representa- tives of the people, afraid to defend the law and custom of Parliament against the Lord Mayor of London and two of the Aldermen ? ' Edmund Burke also spoke. Obviously, he was anxious to discover, by postponing the business, some means of averting further collision between the House of Commons and the City on a question of popular rights. ' I allow that the privilege contended for to-day is the absolute, inalien- able, indefeasible privilege of this House. I would assert it at Charing Cross or elsewhere,' he declared. But he would tremble for the existence of Parliament, he would tremble for the liberty of the subject, if the House could make whatever orders they pleased. ' The value of your privileges, 5 he said, ' consists in the moderate exercise of them.' Their aim should be to make their authority recon- cilable with the opinions of the people. Young Fox was con- temptuous of the claim that it was the people against whom Parliament was now in conflict. In the minds of hon. Members who took that view ' the people of England ' was only another name for whatever class or group or handful of men that might happen at the moment to be in rebellion against the people's representatives. One year the free- holders of Middlesex were ' the people of England ' ; next year the citizens of London were ' the people of England,' and now the meaning of the term, which ought to embrace the whole Nation, had been narrowed down until it came to stand for the Lord Mayor and a couple of Aldermen. The Prime Minister, like Burke, lamented the unhappy situation into which the House had been brought ; but took THE COMMONS AND THE LORD MAYOR 235 an entirely different view of its import, and proclaimed that there must be no surrender, or even yielding, on the part of the Commons. ' The situation is, indeed, an unhappy one where we are brought to a point that we must contest for our very existence,' he said. ' But let it be ever so un- happy, contest it we must. For if we give up the cause in which our existence is involved, what more shall we have to contend for ? Issue has been joined with the House upon its essential authority. If we decline the contest, shall we not be supposed to have given up that authority ? We must, therefore, go on, and go on, I trust, we shall with moderation ; for never since I sat in Parliament have I heard a debate conducted with more moderation.' Colonel Onslow appealed to his ancestors in justification of his action in regard to the printers. ' I had no object in view but the honour of the House. I had no private motive, so help me God ! ' he exclaimed. ' I may be mistaken. It may be the prejudice of education. If I have erred I have erred with my ancestors. Could I have supposed that the Lord Mayor would have acted as he has done ? I have frequently drunk a bottle of wine with him. If I had fore- seen what has happened, I believe I should not have done it.' Then it occurred to Colonel Luttrell that there was another Member of the House to blame as well as the Lord Mayor. This was Alderman Oliver, who should likewise be directed to attend and explain his conduct. ' I thank the honourable gentleman for his land recollection of me,' said Oliver. ' I was as much surprised as he could be at finding myself left so long out of the question. Whatever guilt the Lord Mayor is taxed with, lam equally culpable.' He declared that whenever the privileges of the House should come into competition with his oath as a magistrate he would despise the one and adhere to the other. ' I love good government, free government, and will support it at the hazard of my life,' he cried. * Privilege of Parliament, when carried to the extreme, is a most dangerous thing. 236 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Whenever King, Lords or Commons assume unlimited power I will oppose that power.' The amendment to postpone the business till Friday was negative, and the original ques- tion that the Lord Mayor do attend in his place the next day, with the addition of the words, ' if his health will per- mit,' was agreed to. 1 The Lord Mayor was in his place on the following day, March 19. His defiance of the House had made him the hero of the populace. That morning handbills were widely distributed in the City, addressed ' to the liverymen, free- men and citizens of London,' and announcing that Brass Crosby would leave the Mansion House for the House of Commons at two o'clock. 'Although our Lord Mayor,' it said, ' has been confined to his room for sixteen days with a severe fit of the gout, and is still indisposed, he is deter- mined to be this day in his seat at the House of Commons to support your rights and privileges, even though he should be obliged to be carried in a litter.' A large and excited crowd of people accompanied the Lord Mayor in his carriage to Westminster. The feeling in the City was most defiant. ' If the House of Commons have a Serjeant-at-Arms, we have a Serjeant-at-Mace.' ' If the House of Commons can send our citizens to Newgate, we can send their messenger to the Compter.' Such were the boasts the citizens indulged in as they passed, cheering and shouting, through the Strand and Whitehall. It was with difficulty they were restrained from pushing into the Chamber behind the Lord Mayor as he was carried in by three Members, a ludicrously pathetic figure, with his feet, legs and thighs wrapped in flannel. Cavendish thus quaintly opens his report of the proceed- ings in the House of Commons : ' The Speaker, upon a great huzza being made at the Lord Mayor's coming, ordered the Lobby to be cleared.' The Lord Mayor was so ill that leave to speak sitting was given him. His vindication of his conduct was temperate and brief. It amounted simply 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 400-21. THE COMMONS AND THE LORD MAYOR 237 to this, that by the charters of the City, confirmed by Act of Parliament,' no warrant, or command, process or attachment ' could be executed within the City but by its own magis- trates, and that as he had sworn to act as Lord Mayor, in conformity with these charters, he should have been guilty of perjury if he had not discharged Miller and committed the messenger of the House for assault. He then asked that counsel be heard at the Bar in defence of the City. To this the Speaker replied that the House was so tender of its privileges that it could not allow counsel to discuss them. Joseph Dunning argued that if it could be made out that the charters of the City had obtained parliamentary confirma- tion the privileges of the House could not be set up against an Act of Parliament. Before this legal point was decided, the Lord Mayor asked permission to go home on account of his illness. The Speaker suggested that perhaps accommodation could be provided in his room. ' Is there a bed there ? ' asked the Lord Mayor. 'No,' replied the Speaker. The Prime Minister said that as ' the honourable magistrate's health ' did not permit him to remain in the House, there was no objection to his retiring. The Lord Mayor then, by leave of the House, withdrew. In the afternoon other handbills had been circulated in the City. The citizens and ' all the friends of freedom in this Metropolis ' were invited * to bring the Lord Mayor back again in triumph from the House of Commons and attend him to the Mansion House.' Accord- ingly, about five o'clock, when he left the House of Commons, he was greeted by another great concourse of zealous ad- mirers and escorted to the City. At St. Paul's, the people removed the horses and drew the coach to the Mansion House. In the House of Commons, after the Lord Mayor had left, it was moved by Lord Strange that the further consideration of the matter be adjourned until Friday. Charles Fox, in a violent speech, protested that delay was dangerous. He 238 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY also called the attention of the House to the fact that ' there were two other criminals, Alderman Oliver and Alderman Wilkes,' against whom he urged that proceedings should also be taken. ' The plain question,' he said, ' is whether we shall die or live. If I saw an assassin I would At this point he was interrupted and called to order. ' Of all assassins,' said Colonel Barre, ' the worst is he who stabs a man behind his back.' Fox explained that what he meant to say was not that ' the honourable Alderman ' was an assas- sin, but that he would resist the man who attempted to destroy the privileges of the House as he would resist an assassin. It was at length decided to postpone the further consideration of the matter until Friday, and an order was made for the attendance of Oliver in his place on that day. 1 The House then proceeded to a daring assertion of their privilege of commitment and their contempt of the action of the Lord Mayor in thwarting its execution. Lord North called attention to the fact that all this time the messenger of the House was under a recognisance. ' The House, I am sure, will not allow him to remain so any longer,' he said. Accord- ingly he moved that James Morgan, clerk to the Lord Mayor, do attend the House the next day with the minutes taken of the proceedings at the Mansion House when Whittam, the messenger, was committed for * the supposed assault and imprisonment of J. Miller.' Dowdeswell opposed the motion. The defence of the Lord Mayor that he rested his action upon the charters of the City might be well estab- lished. Moreover, said Dowdeswell, there was no instance of a Member or messenger of the House being discharged out of custody in the case of a breach of the peace. Wed- derburn, the Solicitor-General, asserted that a messenger of the House was as much entitled to privilege as Mr. Speaker himself. ' If we are not competent to decide upon this question,' he said, ' I hope some one will stand up and move that you, sir, shall carry your mace into the City and humbly 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 422-8. THE COMMONS AND THE LORD MAYOR 239 beg pardon of the Lord Mayor.' The motion was adopted by 188 votes to 56. Morgan came to the House on the following day with the minute-book, and the entry in it requiring the messenger of the House to appear at the next quarter Sessions having been read, Lord North moved, 'That James Morgan, Clerk to the Lord Mayor, do at the Table expunge the said entry.' Horace Walpole says the House ' tore out the messenger's recognisance.' l What happened was that Morgan stroked out the lines with a pen. It was a violent and arbitrary act, amounting to a falsification of the City records. It was next agreed by the House, on the motion of the Prime Minister, ' That no prosecution, suit or pro- ceeding be commenced or carried on for or on account of the said pretended assault or false imprisonment.' In the report of the proceedings given in the Annual Register for 1771, written by Edmund Burke, it is stated that most of the Members of the Opposition left the House during this transaction, denouncing it as ' an unprecedented act of violence,' ' stopping the course of justice and suspending the law of the land.' * A few weeks later Chatham, in the House of Lords, stigmatized it as * the act of a mob, and not of a Parliament.' In this speech, which was made on May 1, 1771, moving for an Address to the King to dissolve Par- liament, Chatham made a furious attack on the Ministers for their conduct in relation to the Middlesex election and the newspapers. He also eloquently defended the publica- tion of the Debates. ' Where was the injury if the Members acted upon honest principles ? ' he asked. ' For a public Assembly to be afraid of having their deliberations pub- lished is monstrous and speaks for itself.' He added that 1 the practice of locking the door ' was ' sufficient to open the eyes of the blind.' ' They must see that all is not well within,' said he. 8 1 Memoirs of George III, vol. 4, p. 194. 2 Annual Register for 1771, p. 66. 8 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, p. 221. CHAPTER XXVIII Tumult in Palace Yard THE unity between Members in a common desire to uphold the authority and power of Parliament did not long endure. In the further proceedings of the House to complete the vindication of their supremacy by sending the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver to the Tower, the relations between the majority and minority became as bitter and rancorous as ever. On the same day that the House compelled the Lord Mayor's clerk to erase the minute of the conviction of their messenger, there was a motion by Alderman Trecothick that the Lord Mayor be heard by counsel in support of the chartered privileges of the City. It was opposed by Welbore Ellis. He argued that the House was in need of no assist- ance to understand the meaning of the City charters. ' The law of Parliament,' he said, ' is the law of the land.' The orders of the House of Commons ran not only in the City of London, but throughout Great Britain generally. Edmund Burke urged the reasonableness of hearing counsel, not in attack on the privilege of Parliament, but in defence of the Lord Mayor's action. Lord North agreed to the suggestion only to reduce it to an absurdity. Apparently anxious to avoid a direct issue, he moved ' That the Lord Mayor be at liberty to be heard upon Friday by his counsel, upon all such points as do not controvert the privilege of the House, thus adroitly preventing counsel from arguing the favourite point of the minority that the orders of the House of Commons could not override the law of the land. Burke 240 TUMULT IN PALACE YARD 241 gave vent to his anger at the Prime Minister's subterfuge in declamatory cries. Was counsel not to be permitted to speak in defence of the rights of the people ! This was an attempt to lay down a rule which would make it impossible ever to restrain the privilege of Parliament, no matter to what lengths it might be pressed ! ' I wish I had a voice of thunder,' he exclaimed, ' to rouse gentlemen to a sense of the confusion and desolation that this rule will bring on the House of Commons.' The motion was agreed to, how- ever. 1 The Opposition likewise endeavoured to confuse and complicate the issue. Their object was to embarrass the Government. John Calcraft, a Member of the Opposition in the House of Commons, writing to Lord Chatham on March 24, 1771, says : ' The Ministers avow Wilkes too dan- gerous to meddle with. He is to do what he pleases ; we are to submit. So his Majesty orders ; he will have nothing more to do with that devil Wilkes.' 2 That being so, the Opposition desired to have Wilkes brought to the Bar and heard in vindication of his part in the commitment of the messenger of the House. Sir Joseph Mawbey had moved that Wilkes be required to attend on that very day, March 20. On the order being read Mawbey explained that he had made the motion without any communication with Wilkes ; but on coming to the House that day he had re- ceived a letter from Wilkes with a request that it be delivered to the Speaker and read to the House. The communication amounted to a refusal by Wilkes to attend the House unless he was allowed to come as Member for Middlesex. The Speaker angrily declined even to receive the letter. ' I desire to know,' said he, * whether this is treating me as I ought to be treated ? ' Mawbey protested that he had meant no disrespect to the Chair. The Speaker further declared there was a discretion vested in him either to com- 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 428-36. 2 Correspondence of the Earl of Chatham, vol. 4, pp. 122-3. 16 242 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY municate to the House or to suppress letters addressed to him. He had already declined to read to the House several communications of the kind. ' I know I do this at my peril,' said he. ' Every man who does his duty does many things at his peril.' Probably if he did read this letter from Mr. Wilkes he would 'throw the House into a flame.' Then Lord North remarked, f I am very indifferent about Mr. Wilkes ' ; but on his motion the order requiring the attend- ance of the Alderman of the Farringdon Without was post- poned until Monday, March 25. The letter from Wilkes was as follows : ' When I have been admitted to my seat I will immediately give the House the most exact detail, which will necessarily com- prehend a full justification of my conduct relative to the late illegal Proclamation equally injurious to the honour of the Crown, and the rights of the subject and likewise the whole business of the printers. I have acted entirely from a sense of duty to this great City whose franchises I am sworn to maintain, and to my country whose noble Constitution I reverence, and whose liberties at the price of my blood, at the last moment of my life, I will defend and sup- port.' On Friday, March 22 the day upon which the Lord Mayor was to be heard by counsel the Speaker announced that the Lord Mayor had written to him saying he was unable to attend owing to his continued indisposition and that he would come as soon as his health was sufficiently restored. However, on the following Monday, March 25, both the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver were in their places. They were accompanied from the Mansion House to the House of Commons by enormous and menacing crowds. The significance of the occasion was seen in the eager and expectant throng of Members in the Chamber. A question of the gravest moment was at stake. The Government had sent out one of the earliest forms of those appeals for support known as ' Whips.' ' You are most earnestly 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, p. 114. TUMULT IN PALACE YARD 243 requested, ' it ran, ' to attend early to-morrow, on an affair of the last importance to the Constitution and rights and privileges of the people of England.' As a rallying cry it could not have been better or more adroitly expressed. It sounds like a trumpet call. The Government thus declared that what they were really fighting for were f the Constitu- tion, and rights and privileges of the people of England,' of which the Corporation of the City of London arrogantly and foolishly claimed to be the champions. The true bul- wark of the people's liberties was the supremacy of Parlia- ment. What, then, was the elementary and fundamental consideration in this controversy ? It was the upholding of the rights and powers of the House of Commons. The authority of the House would not only be reduced to im- potency, but turned into a mockery and derision also if the Lord Mayor's contemptuous treatment of its orders were condoned. On the other side a question of no less conse- quence and weight was asked, * Which shall prevail the will of the people, or the will of the representatives of the people in Parliament ? ' The privilege of the House of Commons was being put to perverse and tyrannical uses. It was being turned into an intolerable agency of oppression. Its absolute and irresponsible application must be withstood or curbed in the interests of the rights and liberties of the nation. Thus there were high principles at stake. If the harassing of the printers by the House of Commons had been petty and ignoble there was such a pitiful disparity be- tween the parties in the quarrel it must be said that in this development of the contest there were great and worthy antagonists pitted against each other. It is true that on the side of Parliament there were some men of the ruling class who saw things only in relation to the jeopardy in which they thought their privileged position stood. As in all great movements mean and sordid motives jostled aims that were high-minded and noble. Even in that self-seeking Assembly there were many supporters of the Government 244 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY in whose action there was no element of selfishness. If some of the speeches in support of privilege were infused with a reactionary hatred and contempt of those principles of freedom of opinion and popular control which have long been the cherished conviction of all political parties in this country, there were other speeches, on the same side, ani- mated by a conservative sense of the wisdom of following in the ancient ways trodden out by generations of their forefathers, and of the danger of making in the dark a new departure which led no one knew whither. Accordingly the debate was moving as well as historic. Members on both sides rising to the height of the subject and the occasion spoke well, and in their words gave evidence of deep con- viction and deeper feeling. At the opening of the proceedings in the House on that day, March 25, 1771, Lord North moved that the order for the attendance of Wilkes be postponed. It was well known that Wilkes could only be brought to the Bar by force. His object was to drive the Ministers to the extreme step of arresting him. But the Ministers were indisposed to add to the difficulty and complication of the situation by resort- ing to extreme measures against him, especially as they had the Lord Mayor a more imposing, if less formidable, antagonist in their clutches. Brass Crosby addressed the House sitting, as he was still suffering from the gout. He declined to avail himself of the permission to be heard by counsel. The Corporation had appointed a committee to employ a lawyer, and to draw on its funds for any sum not exceeding 500 ; but on con- sideration it was decided as counsel was to be cribbed and confined in his speech at the Bar to the question of mitiga- tion of punishment that the Lord Mayor should content himself with putting in documentary evidence of the City charters, and of the oaths to preserve the privileges of the City taken by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Having done so, Brass Crosby, in a few words, protested that he had TUMULT IN PALACE YARD 245 acted agreeably to the Constitution and the laws of the land in endeavouring to protect the liberty of the subject. The debate was protracted and angry. Welbore Ellis moved that the actions of the Lord Mayor in releasing a person taken into custody by virtue of the Speaker's warrant, apprehending the messenger of the House, and holding him to bail, were, severally, breaches of privilege. The motion was seconded by Mr. George Onslow. Sir George Sevile one of the representatives of the county of York in five suc- cessive Parliaments acting for the minority, tried to evade any further proceedings by the method of moving the previous question, in which he was seconded by Dow- deswell. During the discussion the rumbling hum of popular tumult penetrated into the Chamber. The crowd outside were turbulently demonstrating the reality and intensity of their opposition to the proceedings. ' If we have not spirit to maintain an essential privilege struck at in so unprece- dented a manner,' cried General Con way, * let the mob that is now at our doors come in and drag us from our seats.' The people were most intimidatory. Several Members who came in late recounted their unpleasant experiences. The supporters of the Ministers were mobbed. Sir Alderman Gilmour said an attempt was made to prevent him getting into the House. ' I was told by the mob that I should not come in except I was for the Lord Mayor,' he said. Mr. Scamer stated that the mob asked him which way he in- tended to vote ; and that he replied he was ' an independent man ' and would not tolerate such a question ' within or without ' the House. The Speaker then directed the deputy Serjeant-at-Arms to take care that Members had free access to the Chamber. But that order was easier given than carried out. The deputy Serjeant-at-Arms informed the House that the High Constable of Westminster was unable to disperse the crowd though he had helping him fifty out of the eighty constables 246 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY at his service. The High Constable, who was summoned at once to the Bar, confirmed the statement of the deputy Serjeant-at-Arms. He declared he could not ' make the way clear for Members ' without further assistance. Greatly alarmed, the House sent for the magistrates of Westminster. ' Go forthwith and .disperse the rioters,' was the command of the Speaker. The debate was then resumed. After a time the Speaker interposed to make the announcement that he had received word that the mob had been dispersed by the magistrates. But when the magistrates were called in they could only say they had succeeded in clearing a passage through the crowd for Members. At this stage it happened that the Lord Mayor had to leave, he felt so ill, and as the crowd escorted him back to the Mansion House the Commons were relieved from a dangerous situation. The motion for the previous question was put at twenty minutes to 12 o'clock, and defeated by 270 votes to 90. It was then agreed to adjourn the order for the attendance of the Lord Mayor until the following Monday that day week * if his health would then permit.' But late as the hour was, the House proceeded with the case against Alder- man Oliver. He was called on for his defence. It was very brief, and most defiant. ' I know the punishment I am to receive is determined upon,' said he. ' I have nothing to say, neither in my own defence nor in the defence of the City of London. Do what you please. I defy you.' A motion that Alderman Oliver had been guilty of a breach of privilege was immediately adopted. Then his committal to the Tower was moved by Welbore Ellis and seconded by Mr. George Onslow. Colonel Barre declared he would not be a witness to this ' infamous conduct,' and he was followed out of the Chamber by seven or eight other Members. The debate, nevertheless, went on, and was pro- tracted by other Members of the Opposition far into the morning. An amendment was moved that Oliver be repri- manded by the Speaker ; but at half-past three o'clock his TUMULT IN PALACE YARD 247 commitment to the Tower was agreed to by 170 to 38 votes. 1 Oliver was permitted to stay at his house in Fenchurch Street for the remainder of the night ; and as early as eight o'clock in the morning the Serjeant-at-Arms took him in a coach to the Tower. On the same day the Court of Common Council resolved that the expenses of his table, during his stay in the Tower, should be defrayed by the City. 2 Oliver, however, decided to live the simple life as a prisoner. On the following day, Wednesday, March 27, the Lord Mayor went down to the House, eager to share, without delay, the captivity of Oliver. He left the Mansion House at one o'clock, accompanied by a crowd that was larger and more tumultuous than ever. It was mainly a most respect- able concourse of merchants, shopkeepers and tradesmen, showing the exasperation provoked among the better classes of the City against the House of Commons. The line of carriages in the procession extended from St. Paul's to Charing Cross. But the City's spirit of resistance was stiffened by the presence of a large unruly element of the working classes, determined to stop at nothing, however extreme, to avenge the treatment of the Lord Mayor. Such was the commotion in Old Palace Yard that Members had the utmost difficulty getting into the House. Every car- riage was stopped by the crowd. The coachman was com- pelled to give the name of his master ; and the master was cheered if he were on the side of the Lord Mayor or mobbed if he were on the side of the House. The constables were powerless. Their staves were wrested from them, and used in the furtherance of violence. The Prime Minister was pulled out of his carriage. He was struck on the head by a constable's baton, and was otherwise roughly handled. He escaped with his life into Westminster Hall only by the timely help of Sir William Meredith, M.P., one of the fore- most champions of the City. His coach was demolished. 1 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 443-67. 2 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, p. 155. 248 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY His hat also fell into the hands of the mob, and was torn into small pieces, which were distributed as mementoes of the occasion. 1 As the crowd were maltreating him, North called out ' Gentlemen, gentlemen, is this liberty ? Do you call this liberty ? ' ' Yes,' grimly answered one of his assailants, ' and great liberty, too.' * The carriages of Charles Fox and his brother Stephen were also wrecked ; and their clothes were torn and their persons bespattered with mud. 1 Horace Walpole, Memoirs of George III, vol. 4, p. 201. 2 Memoir of Brass Crosby (1829), 34. CHAPTER XXIX The Lord Mayor sent to the Tower THE House naturally was incensed and somewhat terri- fied by the tumult at their doors. It was eight o'clock before the Commons could proceed to business. The magistrates of Westminster were sent for by the Speaker, and directed to disperse the mob assembled about the pas- sages to the House. Only a little time elapsed before the Speaker announced a most disquieting message from them. They said their attempt to read the Riot Act had been frus- trated, and they were unable in consequence to preserve the peace. ' I shall not be the last man attacked,' declared the Speaker, solemnly, conjuring up a murderous raid upon the House. Wedderburn, the Soliticor-General, stated that most of the City magistrates had come to Westminster ' in procession at the head of the mob.' Was that proper con- duct for persons filling the office of magistrate ? Was it fit treatment of the House of Commons ? He hoped before the House broke up there would be an inquiry instituted into the reasons for the assembling of * the mob,' and the means that had been taken to bring them together. The two Sheriffs who were primarily responsible for the preserva- tion of order were Members of the House. The Speaker asked them for an explanation of their neglect of duty. They replied by deprecating the use of so contemptuous a term as ' mob ' to the crowd outside. These people so they asserted were most respectable citizens and men of pro- perty. 249 250 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY The Prime Minister was seen to weep. 1 North in tears ! North, the cool, the bland, the humorist, of whom it was said that the most provoking feature of his demeanour to- wards the Opposition was his lazy, sleepy indifference to their attacks ! Wounded vanity and nervous strain com- pelled him now to tears. A rumour flew round the House that he intended to resign. When he rose to speak a hush fell upon the Assembly, and Members bent towards the Treasury Bench with strained attention so that they might not miss a word of what he had to say. And if the situation brought tears to his eyes it brought no irresolution to his mind or conscience. He was determined to shrink from no action, however grave might be its ultimate consequences, that was considered necessary in vindication of the privi- leges of the House of Commons. As he had not come into office at his own desire, he said, so his love of ease and retire- ment urged him now to resign. ' But,' he asked, ' is it possible for any man with a grain of sense, with the least love of his country, to think of withdrawing at such a moment from the service of his King and country ? ' He added, in a vein not far removed from the hysterical : ' There are but two ways in which I can go out now by the will of my Sovereign, which I shall ever be ready to obey ; or by the pleasure of the gentlemen now at our doors, when they shall be able to do a little more than they have done this day.' 2 Meanwhile the crowd was clamouring in the passages leading to the Chamber as well as outside in Palace Yard. Their menacing shouts were borne in through the open win- dows, and that they were still doing violence, as well as threatening it, was proved by the torn and dishevelled clothes of such supporters of the Government as succeeded in reaching the House. Each night of their proceedings the indignation of the populace had gathered fresh weight 1 Lord Mahon, History of England, vol. 5, p. 435. 2 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, p, 480. THE LORD MAYOR SENT TO THE TOWER 251 and impetus. On this, the final night, it seemed as if its violence would overwhelm the House of Commons. In the last resort the military would have been called out. A large force of horse and foot were in readiness close to St. Stephen's in case their services should be needed. 1 The crowd was, as I have said, representative of the trade and commerce of the City. That indeed was the most curious and ominous feature of these nightly demonstrations. Thousands of staid and cautious merchants, the heads of great business concerns, countenanced, if they did not actually take part in, the disorder and turbulence ; and they willingly ran the risk of having their shouts drowned in the rattle of musketry, and of being sent flying from the streets before the thunder- ing hoofs and lightning swords of cavalry. Ultimately the Sheriffs, accompanied by the Members of influence on the popular side, such as Edmund Burke, Lord John Cavendish, and Sir George Sevile, agreed to go out and use all their powers of persuasion to appease the passions of the people, and thus avert developments still more alarm- ing the incalculable terror that always lurks behind a large and unruly crowd. They succeeded in inducing the people to disperse by assuring them that it was the wish of the Lord Mayor that they should go home. * Come, my lads, let us give the Lord Mayor three cheers and leave him,' cried one of the leaders, and having shouted defiance of the House of Commons most of them went away. Members then proceeded, not to consider the case of the Lord Mayor, but to work themselves into angry recrimina- tions over the cause and significance of the popular tumult. At this point the printed reports of Cavendish abruptly end. 2 All that is known of the subsequent debate is that 1 History of Lord North's Administration, 44. 2 Cavendish Debates, vol. 2, pp. 467-80. As I have already mentioned the publication of the Cavendish Debates was suspended on account of the lack of financial support. 252 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the House decided by 202 votes to 39 to send the Lord Mayor also to the Tower. 1 Charles Fox made an able and impetuous speech, well attuned in its boldness to the determination of the Minis- terialists. ' The business of the people is to choose us. It is ours to maintain the independence of Parliament,' he exclaimed. e Whether that independence is attacked by the people or the Crown is a matter of little consequence. It is the attack, not the quarter it proceeds from, that we are to punish ; and if we are to be controlled in our necessary jurisdiction, can it signify whether faction intimidate us with a rabble, or the King surround us with his guard ? If we are driven from the direct line of justice by the threats of the mob, our existence is useless to the community. The minority within doors need only assault us by their myr- midons without to gain their ends upon every occasion.' * Welbore Ellis said that as the crimes of which the Lord Mayor had been guilty were greater in degree than those of Alderman Oliver, he ought to meet with as severe imprison- ment, at least. However, as the Lord Mayor was not in good health the House would probably show him mercy by agreeing to commit him to the gentler custody of the Ser- jeant-at-Arms. But the Lord Mayor rejected with scorn and indignation any concession or indulgence. ' I ask no favour of this House,' he said. * I crave no mercy from the Treasury Bench. I am ready to go to my honourable friend in the Tower, if the House shall order me. My conscience is clear and tells me that I have kept my oath, and done my duty to the City, of which I have the honour to be chief magistrate, and to my country. I will never betray the privileges of the citizens nor the rights of the people.' 8 By 202 votes to 39 the House decided to commit him to the Tower. 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, pp. 155-62. 2 Sir George Trevelyan, Early Years of Charles James Fox, pp. 367-8. 3 Memoirs of Brass Crosby (1829), pp. 35-6, THE LORD MAYOR SENT TO THE TOWER 253 It was half-past twelve o'clock at night before this con- clusion was arrived at, and shortly afterwards, when the necessary order addressed to the Lieutenant' of the Tower was made out, the Lord Mayor was carried off a gout- stricken figure swathed in flannels in the custody of Cle- mentson, the deputy Serjeant-at-Arms. The King in a letter to Lord North had pointed out the necessity of taking measures to prevent a riot. ' Might not the conducting hi in by water be the most private manner ? ' his Majesty asked. 1 The Lord Mayor, however, was conveyed not by river, but by land in his own coach. Late as was the hour, a huge crowd was still waiting in Whitehall. They took the horses from the carriage and drew it as far as Temple Bar. Here they shut the gates, and vowing that no emissary of the House of Commons should enter the City, they attempted to pull the deputy Serjeant-at-Arms out of the coach. Cle- ment son was in serious peril. A rope was produced with the evident intention of hanging him from the nearest lamp- post. To save the life of the deputy Serjeant-at-Arms, the Lord Mayor found it easy to say the thing that was not. He protested that ho was not being taken to the Tower at all, and that the person supposed to be an officer of the House of Commons was really one of his domestic attendants. The Lord Mayor was then brought by the crowd to the Mansion House ; and as soon as the people dispersed he drove quietly and unobserved in a hackney coach to the Tower. 2 Horace Walpole says : * When he entered the Tower he was half-drunk, swore, and behaved with a jollity ill-becom- ing the gravity of his office or cause.' 8 This passage is in keeping with disparagements of the Lord Mayor to be found in other contemporary records. It was said that he was of humble origin ; that his manners were rude and his appear- 1 Correspondence of George III with Lord North, vol. 7, p. 05. 2 Memoir of Brass Crosby, p. 37. 8 Memoirs of George III, vol. 4, p. 202. 254 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY ance coarse, that he followed the low occupation of an attor- ney, in contrast with his fellow-prisoner, Alderman Oliver, who was a West India merchant and a perfect gentleman. 1 But even if he were vulgar and fond of drink and suffered from the gout, he acted well his part in a situation that was trying and dangerous, and had a touch of the ridiculous also, and his daring and stubborn action greatly accelerated the opening of Parliament to the Press. On the next day, March 28, the House of Commons ap- pointed a Secret Committee ' to examine into the facts and circumstances of the obstructions to the execution of their orders. A ballot was taken for the election of twenty-one members of the committee. This was done by every Mem- ber dropping his list of twenty-one into a glass urn, with the result that the committee was composed entirely of staunch supporters of the Ministry. The House then ad- journed for the Easter holidays, until April 9. Wilkes had been directed to attend on April 8, but the Government, by intentionally extending the adjournment over that day, again evaded the order. The Secret Committee reported the result of their delibera- tions to the House on April 30. They said that on examina- tion of the authorities it appeared to them * that this House has, from the earliest times, asserted and exercised the power and authority of summoning before them any commoner, and that this power and authority has ever extended as well to the City of London, without exception on account of charters from the Crown, or any pretence of separate jurisdiction, as to every other part of the Realm.' They also declared ' that the House have ever considered every branch of the Civil authority of this Government as bound (when required) to be aiding and assisting to carry into exe- cution the warrants and orders of this House.' Finally, they submitted for consideration ' whether it might not be 1 Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham, vol. 2, pp. 205-6. THE LORD MAYOR SENT TO THE TOWER 255 expedient ' that the House should order that Miller be taken into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. ' The Report being read, the House burst into a roar of laughter at the impotency of the conclusion.' So says The Parliamentary History. ' Mr. Burke,' we are further in- formed, * with infinite humour ridiculed the whole pro- ceeding. He concluded with a story of some mice who held a consultation what to do with a cat that tormented them. They voted that the cat should be tied up to prevent her depredations for the future, but unfortunately forgot how to tie her up.' That, he said, was the present situation of the House. ' The committee advise us to take up J. Miller,' he went on, ' but unfortunately forgot to tell us how we can follow their advice.' Mr. Whitworth ' in a ludicrous man- ner ' moved that the thanks of the House be given to the committee ' for the judicious and effectual means they had chosen for enforcing due obedience to the orders of this House, and for advising this House to apprehend J. Miller.' * This was seconded,' the record proceeds, * by Sir Robert Clayton, in a manner equally ludicrous.' Lord North put a stop to the fun by moving an adjournment, which was carried. 1 But the cause of the Ministry did not go down amid this outburst of hilarious ridicule from the Opposition benches. Indeed, the House of Commons won in the assertion of their privilege. An attempt which was made in April to effect the liberation of the imprisoned City magistrates by applying to the Courts for writs of habeas corpus was defeated. The judges refused to give them the relief they sought for, that is to release them and bind them on bail to appear in the High Court in answer to the charges of the House of Commons. The Lord Chief Justice, Sir William de Grey, said it was a case in which they could not meddle. ' When the House of Commons adjudge anything to be a 1 The Parliamentary History, vol. 17, pp. 186-214. 256 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY contempt or a breach of privilege,' he said, ' their adjudica- tion is a conviction, and their commitment in consequence is execution. And no court can discharge or bail a person who is in execution by the judgment of any other court. Mansfield, the Chief Justice, likewise agreed that no court had jurisdiction over the House of Commons. 1 Thus the most eminent judges gave testimony to the legality of the proceedings of the House of Commons in this particular matter, and generally to its supremacy as the highest tri- bunal. The City authorities tried another encounter with the House by indicting its officer, Whittam, for having ille- gally executed their orders. A true bill was found against him by the Grand Jury, but the Attorney General stopped further proceedings by entering a nolle proseque. 2 The City magistrates were confined in the Tower until the prorogation of Parliament, when the warrants of the House of Commons lapsed. But their imprisonment was more of a picnic than a punishment. Addresses and presents were showered upon them from all parts of the country. On March 30 a deputation of the chief Members of the Whig Party, headed by the Marquis of Rockingham, and including Edmund Burke, paid them a visit of sympathy. As the upholders of municipal rights several corporations made them freemen of their cities and boroughs. As champions of the law of the land they were voted the thanks of the grand juries of several counties. 3 Their chief opponents were hanged in effigy on Tower Hill. Among the gibbeted was Colonel Onslow. Addressing the Speaker subsequently in the House of Commons, he said : ' I had the honour, sir, to be hanged in effigy on Tower Hill on the same gibbet with you. Indeed, in the dying speeches the patriots paid me the 1 The arguments are given at length in Wilson's Reports, vol. 3, p. 188. 2 Erskine May, Constitutional History of England (3rd edition, 1871), vol. 1, p. 45. 3 William Massey, History of the Reign of George III (2nd edition, 1865), vol. 2, p. 94. THE LORD MAYOR SENT TO THE TOWER 257 greater compliment, for they gave out that I died penitent, but that you, sir, remained hardened to the last.' No wonder, as the record says, ' a burst of laughter ensued.' 1 The operation of privilege is limited to the duration of the Session. Therefore, at the end of the Session, on May 8, 1771, after six weeks' incarceration, the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver were set free in a blaze of glory. They were received at the gates of the Tower by the common councillors and aldermen, all in their robes ; and a salute of twenty-one guns was fired on Tower Hill by the Honourable Artillery Company. A triumphal procession of fifty-three carriages accompanied them to the Mansion House, amid such demonstrations of joy as the ringing of Church bells and the acclamations of the people. Their noble and spirited conduct as ' the guardians of the City's rights and the Nation's liberties ' was extolled on all sides. The Cor- poration presented them with silver cups. An obelisk, in commemoration of their fight for the freedom of the Press, was erected at St. George's Circus, Southwark. There it stood for many years, teaching a little history to casual passers-by, until it was removed in 1905 to the neighbouring grounds of the Bethlehem Hospital in Lambeth Road by the borough council, who most likely were ignorant of the significance of the memorial, in order to give place to a superfluous, as well as unsightly, clock-tower provided by a local tradesman. Brass Crosby died, in 1793, at his house in Chatham Place, Blackfriars, and was buried in Chelsfield Church, Orpington, Kent, where there is a monument to his memory. 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 17, p. 1,025. 17 CHAPTER XXX What was the Result ? OUT of the struggle of 1771 emerged the fact that the privilege of the Commons is law, and that no claim of any outside body whatever or recognized right, even can avail against them in arresting and punishing for its contempt. But, at the same time, they were taught the lesson that this essential part of the power and dignity of Parliament must not be employed to thwart the desires of the people. And that was the justification of the action of the Lord Mayor and citizens of London. The right divine which the House of Commons claimed to do what it liked with those who made it, or called it into being, and not only claimed but asserted by means of its privilege, was shattered for ever against the City's violent manifesta- tions of resistance and defiance. The true relations between Parliament and the Nation that of servant and master, not master and servant was established. That being so, it was well, indeed, that the orders and warrants of the Commons were not permitted to be contemptuously treated as mere idle breath and waste paper. For henceforth they were to be used in the interest of the people and not against them. The House of Commons therefore did right in holding fast to privilege unimpaired. The Lord Mayor and citizens of London did equally well in opposing its unright- eous and unconstitutional use. To deny to the people all knowledge of the views of Members with respect to the laws and the taxes was a direct violation of the principles of representative government ; and the use of privilege 258 WHAT WAS THE RESULT? 259 in support of such a policy by a House of Commons out of touch with the people and antagonistic to their aspirations, was an act of tyranny to be forcibly resisted. It was for a great principle, then, that Lord Mayor Crosby and Alderman Oliver went so joyfully to the Tower. Their protestation that the writ of the House of Commons did not run in the City was arrogant and preposterous. Par- liament could not possibly allow a co-ordinate authority to be set up at its doors. The City Corporation properly failed in asserting it and failed so completely that it was never heard of again. But though in the dust raised by the larger and as it seemed more important controversy over the question of privilege, the newspapers and their grievances were lost to view, the real object of the din and clamour, outside and inside the House of Commons, was the lifting of the veil which shrouded the working of Parliament. In that object the City was successful. The House of Commons wisely forbore to renew the contest with the Press in the Session of 1772. Even the Lords yielded. Three years later, in 1775, they were on the verge of entering upon an exactly similar contest with a City printer. Lord Lyttelton having complained that the Debates were being reported, the House sent their Serjeant, Sir Francis Moles- worth, to take the printer, Kendell, a citizen of London, into custody. The man was not at home when the Serjeant called. But next day, at the instigation of John Wilkes then Lord Mayor of London the printer wrote to the Serjeant telling the time he would be at home and inviting a visit. The Lords, however, wisely decided to let the matter drop. ' They did not dare,' says Horace Walpole, * to send their Serjeant again as Wilkes was determined to commit him to prison, and then the Lords must have com- mitted Wilkes himself to the Tower, which they did not dare to venture.' 1 1 Journals of the Reign of George III (edited by Dr. Doran), vol. 1, pp, 458-9, 260 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY The Sheriffs of London in an address to the Livery, in 1772, boastfully proclaimed the victory of the City in forcing the House of Commons tacitly to acknowledge the claim of the constituencies to be informed of the actions of their representatives in Parliament. ' Several honest printers,' said the Sheriffs, ' in defiance of their illegal orders gave the public all the particulars of their proceedings during the last Session proceedings which the House prudently endeavoured to hide in darkness suited to their deeds. The same persons who asserted our rights during the last, have, during the present Session, continued the exercise of it to its fullest extent.' As for Miller of The London Evening Post, notwithstanding the report of the Secret Committee that he should be taken into custody he ' is still at large, still continues the severest attacks on them by faithfully publishing their proceedings, still braves their indignation, and sleeps securely in the City.' * The Commons did not yield in 1772 because they had become satisfied that the country was most naturally and properly interested in the speeches and actions of its repre- sentatives in Parliament, and that it was the legitimate purpose of the Press to satisfy its curiosity. A choice of two evils for so the Commons regarded them lay before the House. They had either to ignore the publication of their proceedings, in breach of their ancient order, or else be prepared to resort to extreme force in order to beat down the exasperated popular resistance which attempts to suppress the newspapers would now inevitably encounter. They gave a tacit but sombre acquiescence to the less violent solution of the difficulty. Secrecy was enjoined, but ceased to be enforced. The Commons suffered the reporting of the Debates to continue without protest or objection on their part, but they still looked upon it with suspicion and dislike, and put every obstacle in the way 1 Alexander Andrews, History of British Journalism (1859), vol, 1, pp. 204-5. WHAT WAS THE RESULT ? 261 of its practice especially that of clearing the Galleries. For many years to come the reporters were still regarded as pernicious interlopers and eavesdroppers, and as such they were tormented and harried. For many years to come the use of pencil and paper by strangers in the Gallery was strictly prohibited. But no further attempt was made to punish merely for publication. Printers, editors and reporters will often be seen at the Bar of the House of Commons, even till late in the nineteenth century ; but it will be found that the offence with which they are charged is not the reporting of the speeches, but their misrepresen- tation, or the publication of attacks upon the honour of the House or the character of individual Members. The Session of 1772 opened on January 22. In Miller's paper, The London Evening Post, it was said, the next day, that no meeting of Parliament had ever been so little noticed. ' Very few have mentioned it, and many did not seem even to know of it.' It had lost all respect with the people, and the most despicable opinion was entertained of its authority and character. On January 25, the paper contained a significant piece of news. ' No persons since the first day of meeting have been admitted into the Gallery of the House of Commons without an order from the Speaker. ' Nevertheless, in the same number, which appeared on a Saturday, the following announcement was printed con- spicuously in large type : An authentic narrative of the proceedings of the Hon. House of Commons during this week will be given in this Paper on Tues- day next and continued every Tuesday during the present Session, At first only short descriptive and partisan paragraphs, such as what follows, were given : Mr. Dowdeswell spoke well for the Bill and Mr. Burke inimitably, answering Lord North, exposing the flimsiness of his arguments and showing a depth of reason and oratory amazingly great, 262 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY But as the Session progressed the reports grew in length and included summaries of the speeches. Miller took another bold step in defiance of the orders of the House of Commons. On Saturday, February 1, he proclaimed his intention to publish regularly the Votes and Proceedings, though they contained the standing official announcement that So and So had been appointed printers by the Speaker, * and that no other person do presume to print the same.' ' Matters in which the community at large are so much interested,' said the bold Miller, ' should in their circulation be as free as the air we breathe.' Thence- forth two reports appeared in this tri- weekly paper. ' The faithful narrative of the proceedings of Parliament,' was published on the Tuesday ; and The Votes and Proceedings of the House of Commons in the other two issues of the week. The Morning Chronicle, a daily paper, also regularly supplied parliamentary reports. In the number for June 13, 1772, after the prorogation, they returned most grateful thanks * to our noble and worthy friends in both Houses whose very frequent assistance has enabled us uniformly to maintain the character of the most impartial, the most early and the most authentic registers of every important parliamentary occurrence.' They added that Parliament 1 conscious of their want of a legal right ' had not attempted a single effort during the Session to prevent these publica- tions. ' This important matter may therefore be looked upon as settled,' they said, ' and the electors of Great Britain will hereafter be allowed the wonderful privilege of knowing how faithfully their representatives discharge their duty.' It is curious to find The Gentleman's Magazine showing more timidity and caution than the newspapers. In the early monthly numbers for the year 1772 they published accounts of the proceedings in the previous Session, con- cealed in the old manner, by the odd description, ' Debates of a newly established Society on the affair of the Printers,' WHAT WAS THE RESULT? 263 During the progress of the contest between Parliament and the City the magazine gave but summaries of a few of the speeches, and it was not until eight months after the event that it was emboldened to supply its readers with the connected story. Thus the proceedings of Parliament were still disclosed by the newspapers and magazines only in a partial, imperfect and belated manner. But that there were no prosecutions, no citations to the Bar, was the great fact of the situation. This was not a confession on the part of the ruling class that they desired to make atonement for their past conduct which lay heavy on their conscience. Nor was it a con- fession of indifference. It was a confession of failure. They were as reluctant as ever to make the slightest depar- ture from ancient customs and tradition. But they had been taught the lesson that they should only further alienate public opinion were they to continue to enforce the Standing Orders, and in the circumstances they deemed it more expe- dient to surrender passively to the claim of the Press. The publication of the proceedings of Parliament, though con- tinuing to be technically a breach of privilege, acquired freedom and immunity. The House of Commons ceased to be a secret conclave. It seems a commonplace in the twentieth century to say that the reason why a particular course is determined on by Parliament is not a private matter concerning Parliament alone, but a public matter, as to which the country, being directly and intimately affected by it, has the right to be fully informed. But in the eighteenth century it was regarded as a tremendous concession. The House of Commons made it with extreme reluctance, and having made it, the House was never the same again. It broke with its past, completely and irre- vocably. The position upon which it had insisted since it established its rights as against the Crown that no out- side influence whatsoever should be allowed to affect its decisions was no longer tenable. An ancient political 264 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY system was shaken to its foundations. Parliament was in future to be based not so much upon tradition and custom as upon contemporary opinion. The change was not instan- taneous. For the movement then set going by the agency of the Press to adapt Parliament to the ever changing needs and aspirations of the people is still in progress. But truly in 1771 a page of history was turned, and an entirely new phase of constitutional development entered upon. The full effects of the democratic movement were un- dreamt of at the time by any of its supporters or opponents. Those on the popular side had no purpose in view save the immediate one of opening the doors of Parliament to the Press. Their conception of freedom was the satisfac- tion of the need or desire of the people to know what their representatives were doing and saying in Parliament. Beyond that they did not look. They had no thought of the distant consequences of their agitation the complete transformation of the character of Parliament as a repre- sentative institution. If some of the results had been foreseen the blaze of publicity in which Parliament works ; the free and scarcely controlled newspaper criticism ; the irresistible pressure of outside public opinion ; the election of Members as pledged Party nominees, their subjection to their constituencies as much as to their consciences ; how- ever orderly and logically have been their evolution, Burke himself would have deeply deplored them for if he were a stout democrat in a period of Tory stagnation he would have been a timid Conservative in an age of Radical inno- vation and, perhaps, he would be also glad to think these things were to come to pass in a world of which only his corporeal dust formed a part. CHAPTER XXXI "Memory Woodfall " IT will be remembered that on March 14, 1771, the day appointed for the appearance at the Bar of the House of Commons of the six printers, one of them, William Wood- fall of The Morning Chronicle, failed to answer to his name, being then a prisoner of the House of Lords. If he was not actually the first of the parliamentary reporters in the real sense of the term he is the most famous of those who, departing from the practice of composing the speeches from notes supplied by others, heard themselves in the Gallery of the House of Commons, or at the Bar of the House of Lords, the debates which they reported. It was in the service of his calling as a reporter of the proceedings in Parliament that Woodfall had been thrown into prison by the House of Lords, and his offence is not only curious, from a journalistic point of view, but is also constitutionally interesting and important, as it was in relation to one of the few instances in which lay peers joined the law peers in the decision of a case heard before the House of Lords as the supreme Court of Appeal. There was a dispute about a large estate in Yorkshire in which Lord Pomfret was concerned. Though the verdict of the local jury was against him he appealed to the House of Lords by whom a new trial was ordered, and this rehearing ended in a verdict in his favour. But the point is that the decision in the House of Lords was carried not by the votes of the law Peers but, as Horace Walpole says, by ' the notorious partiality of the Court Lords,' who rallying to the 265 266 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY aid of their friend, Lord Pomfret, took part in the division. 1 It was for his report of this case that William Woodfall got into trouble with the House of Lords. On Friday, March 8, 1771, complaint was made in the House of Lords of paragraphs in The Morning Chronicle of that day * containing a false and scandalous misrepre- sentation ' of the proceedings of the House. One of the messengers of the House having stated that ' he bought the said newspaper at the shop of P. Shatwell, opposite Durham Yard in the Strand,' an order was made for the attendance of the newsagent on the [following Tuesday. Shatwell appeared at the Bar, accordingly, and having been sworn declared that The Morning Chronicle was brought to him every morning by the servants of William Wood- fall, of Silver Street, White Fryars, who was the printer. It was ordered that Black Rod ' forthwith attach the body of the said William Woodfall and bring him in safe custody to the Bar of this House to answer for his offence.' 2 On March 14, Black Rod acquainted the House that Woodfall had surrendered himself and was in his custody. The official record of the examination of the journalist states : And being brought to the Bar accordingly the said Paper was shown to him, and he was asked ' If he was the printer of the said Paper ? ' said, ' That he was the printer and publisher of that Paper.' Being asked, ' How he came to print the paragraphs com- plained of ? ' said, ' That on Thursday night last, between the hours of eight and ten, he received several packets containing paragraphs for the said Paper ; that the said paragraphs were very numerous ; that being obliged to go out about business he forgot to read them all, and that it was owing to that these para- graphs were inserted, which, if he had read, should not have been printed ; that upon discovering what had been done he intended to have printed an expiatory paragraph, but, upon consideration, thought it more prudent to acknowledge his Offence, express his Sorrow for having committed it, and throw himself upon the Mercy of this House. 1 Walpole, Memoirs of George III, vol. 4, pp. 188-9 (1894 edition). 3 Lord? Journals, vol. 33, pp. 104 and 110, 'MEMORY WOODFALL' 267 Nevertheless, he was condemned as guilty of * a gross and insolent breach ' of the privilege of the House, was fined 100 and committed to Newgate for a month. 1 Six days later a petition from Woodfall was read to the House. On being taken to Newgate he found ' to his unspeakable distress,' that ' the part of the buildings adjoin- ing to the Press Yard (and where State prisoners had heretofore been usually put) had been lately taken down, and that no accommodation could be obtained for him better than a place among the criminals charged with the most heinous crimes, or among the debtors who are at present so numerous that their Lordships' Petitioner had the most fatal consequences to dread from the noxious effluvia occasioned by a number of bodies (many of them very uncleanly) confined in a prison uncommonly close, and from its nature and situation always unhealthy.' He points out that he ' is a young man that has an increasing family ' and goes on to say : ' The justice of their Lord- ships' sentence the Petitioner most fully acknowledges, but as a few days' imprisonment, in the present situation of Newgate, is equal or more in punishment to an imprison- ment for the time of their Lordships' Order, when other accommodations could have been obtained, their Lordships' Petitioner, conscious of neither wantonly or wilfully offending their Lordships, and entertaining the highest Idea of their Lordship's Mercy and Humanity, most humbly prays an immediate enlargement from his present dangerous con- finement ; and, as in duty bound, will ever pray.' His petition was successful. An order was made for his dis- charge upon payment of the fine of 100 and the fees of Black Rod. 2 Woodfall came of a family of printers and editors. Henry Woodfall, his grandfather, was a printer in the time of Queen Anne. His father, the second Henry Woodfall, another 1 Lords Journals, vol. 33, pp. 113-14. 2 Lords Journals, vol. 33, pp. 125-6. 268 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY printer, had the distinction of serving as Master of the Stationers' Company. The name of his elder brother, Henry Sampson Woodfall, is honourably associated with the struggle for the liberty of the Press in the last half of the eighteenth century. From 1758 to 1793 he was the conductor of the famous paper, The Public Advertiser, to which the mysterious ( Junius ' sent his brilliant and ran- corous disquisitions upon public affairs, and was tried at the Guildhall for publishing the famous Letter to the King. William was first apprenticed to a bookseller in Pater- noster Row, and then tested his luck as an actor before he found his vocation in the family calling of printer and editor at the age of 24. A new Whig newspaper called the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, was founded in 1769, with William Woodfall as conductor. He was repor- ter, editor and printer, a curious combination of duties, not uncommon in those days but in these only to be found in the backwoods of America. For twenty years he was responsible for The Morning Chronicle. When he seceded from it in 1789 he established The Diary, another daily newspaper, on his own account. The particular branch of journalistic work in which William Woodfall excelled was the accurate production and early publication of parliamentary reports. He was the first to print an account of the Debates in the House of Commons the day after they took place. His method of reporting was entirely to rely upon his memory. He could not write shorthand. Even if he could he would not have been permitted to use it in the reporting of the Debates. For though reporters were now admitted as members of the general public the taking of notes was contrary to the orders of the House, and for years yet to come it was to be strictly prohibited. It was Woodf all's custom to sit in the Strangers' Gallery during a debate, leaning forward with both hands clasped on his stick, and his eyes closed, in an intently listening attitude. It was only when a new ' MEMORY WOODFALL' 269 Member, or a Member whose voice was unfamiliar to him addressed the House, that he raised his head to ask for the speaker's name and having got it he became absorbed in the debate again. 1 Thus he would give ear to the talk during a long sitting of the House of Commons, with no other refreshment than a hard-boiled egg ; and at the adjournment he would repair to the office of The Morning Chronicle to spin out a report from his retentive memory , with the help only of notes which he occasionally received from some of the speakers. Woodfall had rivals who copied his method of reporting, and pressed him close. One of the most celebrated was Wil- liam Radcliffe (husband of the sensational novelist who wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho), the proprietor and editor of The English Chronicle and afterwards of The Morning Herald. Of him it is recorded that he would carry the substance of a debate in his head direct to the printing-room, and there dictate his report to two compositors, giving each alternately a sentence of a different speech to put into type, without the least hesitation or confusion. 2 But Woodfall outshone all his rivals in contemporary distinction. Indeed, he was popularly supposed to be endowed as a reporter with powers somewhat akin to the supernatural ; and such was his fame that the first trembling question of the awestricken visitor from the country, on entering the House of Commons was : ' Which is Memory Woodfall and which is Mr. Speaker ? ' Woodfall was allowed few opportunities of exercising his gifts as a reporter during the great debates on the rela- tions between the American colonies and the Mother Country, for the Lobby and Gallery were regularly cleared of strangers. When Burke moved his famous Resolution for conciliation with America on March 22, 1775, the Standing Order for 1 Records of My Life, vol. 2, p. 245, by John Taylor (1757-1832), journalist and miscellaneous writer. 2 Andrews, History of British Journalism, vol. 1, p. 196. 270 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the exclusion of strangers was strictly enforced. 1 The same course was pursued on November 16, 1775, when he brought in his Bill for composing the troubles with the Colonies. Woodfall wrote in The Morning Chronicle : ' No Englishmen, except the Members, were admitted during this debate, the only strangers in the Gallery were four women of quality and a few foreigners.' 2 The opening of the Strangers' Gallery would have increased the breadth and value of the debate outside the House, and have had an educative influence upon the public mind, but this was exactly what the Ministry desired to prevent. Fox was at this time in opposition to the policy of the Government. He was as vehemently in favour of the admission of the Press now as he had been against it a few years before. Speaking in Committee on the Budget on April 24, 1776, he protested against the exclusion of the public as a breach of the Constitution. 3 In this opinion he was supported by the Opposition. Mr. Temple Luttrell, on April 30, 1777, moved that the order for the exclusion of strangers should be taken into consideration by a Com- mittee of the House with a view to its alteration. * There was a constitutional right in their constituents,' he con- tended in words that must have sounded bold and revo- lutionary to the House, ' to satisfy themselves how far their delegates did, or did not, discharge the trust reposed on them with firmness and fidelity, and to form some judg- ment whether their principles and legislature suffrages might merit a renewal of the trust on a future occasion.' The motion was seconded by John Wilkes, back in the House of Commons again. It was opposed by Lord North. He said it had been the custom hitherto to admit strangers on Budget nights ; but he believed the House would be 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 18, p. 540. 2 Parliamentary History, vol. 18, p. 963. 3 Parliamentary History, vol. 18, p. 1,325. 'MEMORY WOODFALL* 271 of his opinion not to open the doors on any occasion, not even for the Budget, in future. ' What good could result from strangers being in the Gallery ? ' Rigby asked, and thus answered his question : ' Only to print speeches in newspapers of all sorts.' The motion was, of course, rejected. 1 Accounts of the proceedings of the House appeared, nevertheless, in the newspapers. On January 29, 1778, Colonel Luttrell complained of having been misrepresented. ' I am convinced,' Fox said, ' that the true and only method of preventing misrepresentation is by throwing open the Gallery, and making the debates and decisions of the House as public as possible.' Two significant things were dis- closed by the discussion. It came out that the order for the exclusion of strangers was sometimes relaxed by the Speaker at his own discretion. The second was that Colonel Luttrell refrained from moving the old familiar motion that the printer of the newspaper should be brought to the Bar. 8 The Lords apparently were more indulgent to strangers than the Commons. Visitors were permitted to stand at the Bar. Woodfall would seem to have been there on April 7, 1778, when Chatham made what was to be his last speech, for shortly after he had spoken the tongue of the orator was silenced for ever by a stroke of paralysis. There was a proposal that peace should be made with the American Colonies so that the country might concentrate all its forces in an attack upon France which had come to the help of the rebels, and Chatham rose from his sick- bed that day to protest against ' the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy.' According to contemporary accounts of his eloquence he must be ranked with the greatest orators of ancient and modern times. But all that survives of numbers of his speeches in both 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 19, pp. 206-11. 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 19, pp. 647-50. 272 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Houses are a few disjointed passages, for the preservation of some of which, meagre and inadequate though they be, Woodfall has to be thanked by posterity. In The Morning Chronicle of the next day there is a brief report of Chatham's final words in the House of Lords. ' We are conscious,' says Woodfall at the end of his summary, ' that we have not given the exact words of the Earl of Chatham's speech ; his lordship's illness deprived us of hearing all that he said distinctly enough to catch every expression ; we have there- fore only aimed at giving the substance of his argument.' The most stirring passages of the report are these : Could it be possible that we were the same people who but fifteen years ago were the envy and the admiration of the world ? How were we altered and what had made the alteration ? He feared there was something in the dark, something near the Throne, which gave motion to administration something unseen which caused such pusillanimous, such timid, such dastardly counsels. What were we to sit down in ignominious tameness and say, ' Take from us what you will, but in God's name let us be at peace ' ? Were we blinded by despair ? Could we forget that we were English- men ? Could we forget that the nation had stood the Danish irruptions, had stood the irruptions of other nations, had stood the inroads of the Scottish, had stood the Norman conquest, had stood the threatened invasion by the famous Spanish Armada, and the various efforts of the Bourbon compacts ! Why, then, should we now give up all without endeavouring to prevent our losses, without a blow, without an attempt to resent the insults offered to us ? If France and Spain were for war, why not try an issue with them ? If we fell afterwards we should fall decently and like men. In The Morning Post a newspaper which was founded six years previously Chatham is reported as having apostrophized England in these terms : It had arisen bright and flowing from the Danish irruption ! the Roman invasion ! the Gallic depredation ! It had escaped the menace of destruction which the Spanish Armada once held over it, and having superseded every difficulty, fifteen years ago, stood on the exalted pinnacle of glory ; on the very heights of national grandeur. The English dictated to all Europe ! Now so far had she degenerated from this superiority that she deigned to acquiesce in insults, and sit down quite under the worst indignities ! What, 'MEMORY WOODFALL* 273 were we changed ? Were we not Englishmen ? Did not the same blood run in our veins, and the same hearts animate us ? The national danger, indeed, was great ; but though he knew of no means of extricating us immediately from this dilemma yet this he knew that nothing was so bad as despair. The differences in language and expression apparent in these versions of the same passages indicate that only the spirit or sentiment of the orator was captured by the repor- ters. Still, Woodf all's reputation continued to grow. In 1785 he was invited to Dublin to report two important debates in the Irish Parliament on the commercial relations between Great Britain and Ireland. So eager was the curiosity to see the distinguished visitor that crowds followed him in the streets. 1 His report, which was printed in pam- phlet form, running to 200 pages, was entitled ' An Im- partial Sketch ' of the debates on the motion made on August 12, 1785, by Thomas Orde for leave to bring in a Bill for effectuating the intercourse and commerce between Great Britain and Ireland on permanent and equitable principles for the mutual benefit of both countries, and on the introduction of the Bill a week later. It contains speeches by the famous orators Grattan and Flood. WoodfalPs versions of the parliamentary debates were thus generally accepted as wonderful for their fulness and accuracy. In our times, when reporting has attained to so high a perfection owing to the skill and speed with which shorthand is used, they would be regarded as summaries, unbalanced and inadequate, of important speeches at least. Still, they reflected with far greater faithfulness what was actually spoken than the more or less imaginary reports of Dr. Johnson, who did not himself hear the speeches, and wrote not what the speakers said but what, in his judgment, they ought to have said. The fame which Woodf all enjoyed in his day is reflected 1 John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1, pp. 303-4. 18 274 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY in contemporary diaries and memoirs. The references to him are not always complimentary to his accuracy as a reporter. Earl Stanhope, the historian, points out that while the great merits of William Pitt's maiden speech on February 26, 1781, in support of Burke's motion for economi- cal reform, were universally acknowledged at the time, these merits are scarcely to be traced in the meagre report of the speech which has alone been preserved. e So imper- fect, indeed, was still, and for many years afterwards, the parliamentary system of reporting,' Stanhope says, ' that it totally fails to give any just idea of the great orators of the time, except in a few salient passages, and unless, as was the case with Burke in his chief speeches, they pre- pared their own compositions for the Press.' That being so, he refrains from citing passages from the versions of Pitt's speeches except in the few cases where it is known that Pitt corrected the newspaper reports for publication in pamphlet form. 1 But a later biographer of Pitt, Dr. Holland Rose, does not accept this view, and being satisfied that Woodfall reported the debates ' almost always faith- fully ' he makes free use of the records of Pitt's speeches. 2 This testimony to the trustworthiness of Woodfall's reports comes from Anthony Storer, who was a Member of the House of Commons at the time. Writing to Lord Carlisle, on February 28, 1781, in reference to Pitt's maiden speech, Storer says : ' The debates in Parliament are frequent, and when they happen Mr. Woodfall reports them very much at large, and almost always faithfully.' 3 On the other hand, Mrs. Tickell, writing to her brother- in-law, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, sympathizes with him on having been misreported, and says the culprit, Woodfall, ' ought to be tossed in a blanket.' 4 Then there is the 1 Stanhope, Life of William Pitt, vol. 1, p. 56 (1861). 2 William Pitt and National Revival, p. 85 (1911). 3 George Selwyn, His Letters and His Life, p. 132 (1899). 4 Walter Sichel, Sheridan, vol. 2, p. 448 (1909). 'MEMORY WOODFALL' 275 statement of Daniel Pultney, who sat in the House of Commons for a pocket borough belonging to the Duke of Rutland, and who, writing on March 19, 1788, to his patron, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in reference to the reports of a speech by Sheridan attacking his Excellency, says the speaker did not say ' one-half the nonsense Mr. Woodfall has made him say,' and that the reporters, with whom Sheridan was a favourite, * are always determined to make him pointed as they call it in reply, and when they do not understand what he says they give him any abuse of their own.' 1 Thomas Moore in his Memoirs of Sheridan tells a story of Woodfall, which he repeats in his Diary dated January 8, 1819. When Sheridan made his maiden speech, on Novem- ber 20, 1780, against a petition to unseat him for bribery, he went up to the Gallery to ask his friend, Woodfall, how he thought he had done. Woodfall answered : * I think this is not your line. No, Sheridan ; you had better stick to those pursuits you are so much more fitted for.' Upon which Sheridan striking his forehead with his hand exclaimed : ' It is in me, by God ; and it shall come out.' It was in Sheridan, and it did come out. And it is to Woodfall that we owe the best report extant, perhaps, of one of the most celebrated of parliamentary orations the speech in which Sheridan moved in the House of Commons on February 7, 1787, that the spoliation of the Begums of Oude should be included in the articles of the impeach- ment of Warren Hastings. So great was the sensation caused by this speech the effects of which upon its hearers, Thomas Moore says, has no parallel in the annals of ancient or modern eloquence that the Prime Minister, William Pitt, consented to the adjournment of the House for the extraordinary reason that the minds of Members ' under the wand of the enchanter ' were too agitated to continue 1 The Rutland Manuscripts, vol. 3, p. 379. 276 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the discussion of the question. 1 I have read Woodfall's report in The Morning Chronicle of the following day. The newspaper is a small sheet of four pages, with four columns each. The speech fills just a page, and is preceded by the following modest apology : It would be the most arrogant presumption in the Reporter of a newspaper were he to attempt to follow Mr. Sheridan under an expectation of its being in his power to do him justice. A faint sketch of the outlines of his speech which, like the title to an elegant and copious work, may give the reader an idea of the nature of the contents, is all that can be pretended to, and we heartily wish we were able to do even that better ; but we ardently hope the speech will be given to the publick completely and correctly in a separate publication. Sheridan spoke for five hours and a half, and in that time at the average rate of talking he must have uttered at least thirty -two thousand words. Woodf all's report contains only four thousand words, just one-eighth of what Sheridan probably said. If the oration were reported fully and in the first person, as great parliamentary speeches are now reported, it would fill sixteen columns of The Times, and could hardly have been got into two numbers of The Morning Chronicle. Woodfall merely gave the essence of Sheridan's argument, making no attempt to catch the fire and passion of the orator or reproduce his ornate phraseology. ' Mr. Sheridan,' says he in the course of his report, ' whenever occasion offered, animated his speech and gave it abundant variety and attraction, by blending glowing expressions and figures of rhetoric with his pursuit of detail and his narration of facts.' To report Sheridan, the prolix and fantastic, fully and accurately would have been a difficult feat in any circumstances. Only the most expert short- hand-writer could have hoped to capture the orator's glitter- ing tropes, images, and invocations on the wing, and convey them to his note-book. To Woodfall, unequipped with 1 Thomas Moore, Memoirs of Eichard Brinsley Sheridan (3rd edition, 1825), vol. 1, pp. 450-1. 1 MEMORY WOODFALL' 277 shorthand, it was an impossible task. And thus it is that Thomas Moore has occasion to lament that of this remark- able speech there is no report. ' For,' says he, ' it would be absurd to dignify with that appellation the meagre and lifeless sketch which is given in Annual Registers and Parliamentary Debates.' Even the compiler of the report of the speech embodied in The Parliamentary History which was prepared from various contemporary accounts, twenty years afterwards says, ' It is utterly impossible to attempt more than an outline of this unprecedented exertion of talents and judgment. We have endeavoured to prepare a faithful miniature of an unequalled original.' 1 Indeed, Fraser Rae, in his biography of Sheridan, says of all the versions of what the orator said that of the Par- liamentary History is the worst and most absurd. He states that he found among Sheridan's papers a copy of The London Chronicle which, he thinks, may have been preserved because it contained the best report of the speech. 1 I have read the account in The London Chronicle. The newspaper itself was a small sheet, not half the size of The Morning Chronicle and was published bi-weekly. The famous speech was delivered on a Wednesday. The London Chronicle containing the report was not published until the following Saturday, so that it had the advantage of seeing the different versions which appeared in the daily news- papers on the Thursday. Nevertheless, I think the account written red-hot by Woodfall, while the spell of the orator was upon him, is the finer of the two, however much it may fail in doing justice to the speech. In the course of his attack upon Hastings, Sheridan used, as a figure of speech, a contrast between the move- ments of a serpent and an arrow, the various renderings of which curiously illustrate the limitations of the method 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 26, p. 275. 3 W. Fraser Rae, Sheridan, vol. 2, pp. 62-3 (1896), 278 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of reporting then in vogue. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who heard the speech, says in his Memoirs that many of its passages were dramatic, and gives this one as an illustra- tion : A crooked, circuitous policy regulates all his actions. He can no more go straight forward to his object than a snake can proceed without writhing in curves, or can imitate the tindeviating swiftness of an arrow. 1 Here are two other versions : Parliamentary History As well might the writhing obliquity of the serpent be compared to the swift directness of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings' ambition to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. The London Chronicle The serpent could as well assume the direct flight of an arrow as Hastings could pursue his object by a direct course. Woodfall, in The Morning Chronicle gives a finer rendering of the passage : It seemed that all his actions were directed by a low, underhand, crooked policy, that he could no more go straightforward to his object than a snake could be made to proceed without writhing in curves or to imitate the direct and unvaried swiftness of an arrow. Sichel in his Sheridan says he discovered a printed copy of the speech published in London by W. Richardson, bookseller, under the Royal Exchange which is not to be found in the library of the British Museum. ' It appears,' he says, * to have been taken from a shorthand report which, though imperfect and free from the long details of evidence, preserves some of the flowers of the speech, and a taste of the freshness of the whole.' 2 In this report, however, the following weak and halting version of the simile is given : 1 Memoirs of My Own Time (edited by Wheatley, 1884), vol. 4, p. 387. Walter Sichel, Sheridan, vol. 2, pp. 126-7 (1909). ' MEMORY WOODFALL' 279 The serpent may as well abandon the characteristic obliquity of his motion for the direct flight of an arrow, as he can excuse his purpose with honesty and fairness. He is all shuffling, twisting, cold and little. In like manner, Woodfall's rendering of the peroration is the best. In Richardson's report, Sheridan is represented as saying : The omnipotence of a British Parliament will be demonstrated by extending protection to the helpless and weak in every quarter of the globe. And the blessings of people thus rescued from the grip of avarice, armed with authority, will not be lost. Heaven itself will condescend to be your proxy in receiving the heartfelt gratitude of thousands. The same idea, but very differently expressed, is con- veyed in these two versions : The London Chronicle And would the blessings of the people, thus saved, dissipate in empty air ? No ! If I may dare to use the figure, Heaven itself shall become the agent to receive the blessings of their pious gratitude, and to waft them to your bosoms. Parliamentary History If I may use the figure, we shall con- stitute Heaven itself our proxy to receive for us the blessings of their pious gratitude and the prayers of their thanksgiving. Woodfall's report is as follows : On the present occasion they were called upon to relieve millions from misery and oppression. It was true they could not see the innumerable beings whose wretchedness they would relieve, but for that reason the more magnanimous they would be, the more glorious their determination to punish this enormous delinquency. They were called upon to stretch the strong arm of justice across the globe, to show in glowing colours the greatness and the power of a British Parliament, which, however divided on party and political considerations, joined hand and hand in reprobating injustice, in stigmatizing inhumanity, and in delivering over to condign punishment those who used unlimited power merely for the purposes of tyranny, rapacity and perfidy. By voting for the motion they would, as it were, make Heaven their proxy to receive the prayers, thanksgivings and praises of all Asia. CHAPTER XXXII Development of Parliamentary Reporting WOODFALL was allowed to pursue his calling un- molested by either House. Once only was his name brought before the Commons, but nothing unpleasant happened to him. On January 28, 1783, Mr. Speaker Cornwall was puzzled to receive from Woodfall, as printer of The Morning Chronicle, a communication thanking him for * the obliging letter he did him the honour to send him ' ; and assuring him that if on any other occasion * he should wish to caution the printers against taking particular notice of anything that might have passed in the House ' he would be only too happy to have the warning conveyed to all the newspapers. Woodfall went on to say : He need scarcely add that he himself will strictly adhere to the advice imported in any such hint, being anxious so to conduct his paper as to steer clear of offence to public bodies and private indivi- duals, and being also perfectly conscious that he can receive no hint from Mr. Speaker which will not be deserving of his most grateful acknowledgments. The Speaker was naturally mystified, for the last thing he would think of doing was to write to a printer of a public print in regard to any proceedings of the House of Commons whatever, and great was his indignation, therefore, when on consulting the morning papers he found that some insolent wretch had actually forged his name in a notice to them against publishing anything about the Preliminary Articles of Peace with France and Spain which were to be discussed in the House that night until an authentic 280 PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 281 copy was sent them at the proper time. He brought the matter to the notice of the House as a reflection on the dignity of the Chair ; and it was moved by Mr. Secretary Townshend that the bogus communication from the Speaker, and Woodf all's letter, be referred to a Committee for report. The House, however, deprecated treating so seriously a stupid joke, and the Speaker having said he was content with calling the attention of the House to the matter the motion was withdrawn. 1 Woodfall was more cautious in reporting the proceedings of the House of Lords. While several columns are given to the Commons in The Morning Chronicle the Lords are dismissed in as many lines. A journalistic contemporary of Woodfall states that the reporter told him he first pub- lished the debates in the House of Lords ' on the appearance of the Bill for embanking the river and erecting the noble terrace now called the Adelphi, at which period his slumbers were discomposed by nightly visions of Newgate, yeoman- ushers and serjeants-at-arms.' * The Act of Parliament authorizing the brothers Adam, architects and builders, to make the necessary encroachments on the Thames for the construction of Adelphi Terrace, was passed in 1771 s the very year that Woodfall was imprisoned and fined by the House of Lords but it was some years after this before the reporters ventured to draw the curtains of the hereditary Chamber, and regularly tell the public what was said there as well as what was done. A time, however, came when Woodfall had to fear, not so much the ire of Lords or Commons, as the competition and jealousy of rival reporters. Another London paper called The Gazetteer began to press The Morning Chronicle close as a purveyor of parliamentary news. Woodfall 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 23, pp. 361-4. 2 Alexander Stephens, Life of Home Tooke (1813), vol. 1, p. 351. 8 Wheatley & Cunningham, London, Past and Present, vol. 1, p. 5 (1891), 282 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY pretended to treat with disdain these attempts to oust him from his position as the greatest recorder of the Debates? He contemptuously kept his fellow-craftsmen at a distance. They retaliated by playing a practical joke upon him. As I have already said, his sole refreshment during a long sitting of the House of Commons was a hard-boiled egg, the shell of which he would peal off in his hat when the hour came for his frugal meal. Greatly to his discomfiture one night, the contents of his egg streamed in a mess over his clothes. A rival reporter had filched the hard-boiled egg from his pocket and substituted an unboiled one in its place. Woodfall left The Morning Chronicle in 1789 when its ownership changed hands. One of the new proprietors of the paper, James Perry, became editor. He had already revolutionized the system of reporting the Debates. Born at Aberdeen in 1756, the son of a carpenter and builder, Perry was first a draper's assistant and next an actor before he made his way to London at the age of twenty-one, and tried his fortune as a journalist. In 1783 he was appointed editor of The Gazetteer, which, under his direction, became the most formidable rival of The Morning Chronicle in the publica- tion of the Debates. Perry introduced a new system of reporting. Each paper had but one parliamentary reporter, following the example of The Morning Chronicle, but while Woodfall produced his report the next day, the other papers, including The Gazetteer, were content to give instalments of the Debates several days late, and even to continue them for weeks after the Session had closed. Perry changed all that. It was not only that he published the Debates the next day, but in order to ensure this prompt production he organized a corps of reporters who, in regular succession, did duty in the Gallery for a certain time and when relieved transcribed their notes at the office. 1 In The Morning Chronicle Perry paid even more attention to the parliamen- 1 F. Knight Hunt, The Fourth Estate, vol. 2, pp. 102-3 (1850). PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 283 tary reports, and developed still further his simple device of the division of labour to effect their speedy preparation. Part of the money with which he bought the newspaper was advanced by Bellamy, a wine merchant doing business in Chandos Street, but better known in parliamentary history as the caterer of the House of Commons, who made a fortune by serving hungry Members of Parliament with a chop or a steak and a glass of port or sherry from the wood. He was also door-keeper of the House, and as such was able greatly to assist Perry in getting seats for his reporters in the Gallery, and facilitating the quick dispatch of their ' copy ' to the office of The Morning Chronicle. 1 It was in these circumstances that Woodfall came to start a daily paper of his own called The Diary, or Wood- fall's Register. Like most of its contemporaries, it was a small sheet of four pages, and its price was three-pence. In the first number, which appeared on Monday, March 30, 1789, Woodfall printed an address * To the Public ' in which he set forth the policy and aims of the paper. He states that he had hitherto * the happiness to experience the public partiality in an eminent degree ' as a parliamen- tary reporter. ' Early in life,' he says, * he entered upon the task, and he soon found his endeavours to rescue the Members of both Houses from the gross misrepresentations of their interested opponents were felt and acknowledged. 5 For some years he has had to contend with superior numbers a reference to the attempt to beat him by the employment of staffs of reporters. He claims no other merit but that of ' an honest intention to do such justice to the speakers as the pressure of time, the extent of his judgment and ability, and all the circumstances of the case ' would admit, and the public might rest assured that ' he will steadily pursue the same line of conduct in the future.' In subsequent issues of the paper he gave three or four columns of the Debates in the House of Commons with 1 Monthly Magazine, 1821 and 1822. 284 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the heading 'Hasty Sketch.' On Monday, May 4, 1789, there was a note explaining that it was utterly impossible to publish The Diary early when it contained a long account of a debate which took place in Parliament the night before ; and that for the future the paper would give the hour at which the previous issue appeared. The first of these in- timations, referring to Saturday's paper, was as follows : The printer most respectfully informs the Publick that he came home from the House of Commons on Friday night by half-past 10 o'clock and that a publication of The Diary was made on Saturday between the hours of 4 and 5 o'clock. On that Monday night there was a long and late debate in the House of Commons arising out of the trial of Warren Hastings the House did not rise until half-past one o'clock and ten of the sixteen columns of The Diary of Tuesday were devoted to it. In Wednesday's paper there was a note that the printer ' Came home from the House of Com- mons at half -past two o'clock,' and that the publication took place between six and seven o'clock on Tuesday even- ing. All but two columns of the paper for Saturday, May 9, were devoted to a report of the debate on Friday night lasting till eleven o'clock on a motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts against Nonconformists. In Monday's issue Woodfall states ' it was half after eleven when he sat down to write ' and boasts that notwithstanding the extreme length of the report the paper was out at eight o'clock on Saturday evening. As these announcements indicate, The Diary was rarely able to appear in the morning or at noon. While Parlia- ment was sitting it was more of an evening paper, so often had the publication to be delayed in order to get in the report of the Debates. We can picture to ourselves Wood- fall sitting at the back of the stuffy and dimly lighted Strangers' Gallery through a long debate, taking no notes, but committing points, arguments and eloquent passages to his amazingly retentive memory, going to the newspaper* PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 285 office at Salisbury Square, off Fleet Street, at midnight or in the early morning, and there writing out his report, which he sent, slip by slip, to the compositors. The hour of publication, therefore, varied according to the time the House of Commons sat and the nature of its business. If the debate was important the readers of The Diary had news of it only at their supper. The Morning Chronicle, on the other hand, was, at the latest, always out by the mid-day meal. Woodfall was finding that single-handed he was no match for Perry's staff of reporters in the matter of speedy publication. In The Diary for April 20, 1791, there is a report, nine columns long, of the debate initiated the night before by William Wilberforce for the abolition of the African slave trade. The House of Commons sat till four o'clock in the morning discussing the motion, only to defeat it by 163 votes to 88, or a majority of 75. Right in the middle of the report there is inserted this note between brackets : [The very late hour at which the House rose will not permit us to do more than barely to state the turn and tendency of the speeches of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox which were most admirable. In to-morrow's paper we shall endeavour to detail them.] This ' enlarged detail ' as it is called, next day of the speeches of these statesmen (both of whom spoke in support of abolition) gives nearly three columns to Pitt and over four to Fox. But Perry, in The Morning Chronicle of April 20, had twelve and a half columns of the debate and a fine report it was too, which was circulated and read all over the town long before The Diary came out. The day of the one-man parliamentary reporter, however capable, was gone. The newspaper which supplied the fullest reports of the Debates most expeditiously got the support of the public. Thus it was that while the early Morning Chronicle was steadily rising in fame and fortune, the belated Diary was losing reputation and money. The result was inevitable. 286 THE REPORTERS 5 GALLERY On Saturday, August 31, 1793, The Diary appeared for the last time. The number contains a long address from the printer. Woodfall begins by saying that having been in the service of the public twenty -five years, and now feeling himself under the necessity of quitting it, he desires to have a few words with his kind masters and mistresses at parting. So ill had he been that he was able to attend the Houses of Parliament for two or three days only during the past Session. The wonder was, indeed, that he had been able to undergo the extreme fatigue attending the discharge of his arduous duties as a parliamentary reporter for so many years without sustaining serious injury to his health and constitution. He had been incited to these extraordinary exertions ' for such, now they are nearly at an end, he may, without imputation of vanity, be permitted to term them ' by the flattering encouragement he experienced from the first men in the kingdom most competent to decide how far his reports did tolerable justice to the arguments of the very distinguished orators that have taken part in the debates of Parliament during as busy, interesting and important a period of the British History as any recorded in our annals. Then he goes on : Increase of reputation in a path of literature, untrodden before in so publick a manner during the present century, excited many rivals, and of late years he has found himself obliged to contest with an host of able competitors who, while he kept the field singly, came forward in chosen bands avowedly to drive him from his post. It is his utmost ambition to have found, by the continuance of the publick favour, that it has been the general opinion that against all his opponents he made, at least, no despicable stand. It was a manly and dignified farewell. He was a candi- date for the office of City Remembrancer a post under the Corporation of the City of London but failed to get it. He wrote criticisms of new plays for the newspapers. Towards the end of his life he got back again on The Morning Chronicle, as the reporter of the House of Lords. John Campbell who, in the opening years of the nineteenth PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING 287 century was on the House of Commons staff of The Morning Chronicle, and long afterwards became Lord Chancellor, has left a vivid sketch of Woodfall at the Bar of the House of Lords. At that time no one in ' boots ' was allowed to enter the space below the Bar, all strangers were obliged to remain standing, and the door-keepers had strict orders to allow no one to take notes. ' The reports of the pro- ceedings in the Lords which appeared in The Chronicle, very scanty and meagre,' says Campbell in his diary, ' were supplied by William Woodfall, a contemporary of Junius, now a very old gentleman, dressed in a suit of brown dittos with salmon-coloured silk stockings, gold buckles, a tie wig and an amber-headed cane.' Quite an ancient buck, indeed. Yet he was not so old and his remarkable mental gifts had survived. ' He was gifted with a marvellous memory,' Campbell continues. ' Immediately after prayers he took his post at the Bar, leaning over it, and there he remained till the House adjourned. He then went home and wrote his report which he sent to the printing-office.' Campbell unkindly adds : * The Lords were punished for their absurd regulations by a very vapid and pointless account of their speeches.' * On July 27, 1803, Woodfall was seen for the last time at the Bar of the House of Lords. He died on August 1, 1803, at the age of fifty-eight, in Queen Street, Westminster, and was buried in St. Margaret's Churchyard, on August 6. 2 There could be no more appropriate resting-place for this great parliamentary reporter than a spot under the shadow of the church of the House of Commons, and separated only by the roadway from the scene of his toil- some and hazardous activities leading, yet, to brilliant journalistic triumphs. Unhappily the grave has been obliterated. According to the report of a medical officer of health issued in 1850 the churchyard had been for many 1 The Hon. Mrs. Hardcastle, Life of Lord Campbell, vol. 1, p. 108, 1 Gentleman's Magazine for 1803 part II, p. 792. 288 THE REPORTERS 1 GALLERY years * a standing disgrace to the parish ' owing to its over- crowded condition, and its offensive emanations were * prejudicial to the air supplied to the Houses of Parliament.' So it came to pass that the churchyard was levelled and paved over with the gravestones. 1 For many years the grounds around St. Margaret's Church have been verdant with grass. One cannot help a feeling of regret that the grave of ' Memory Woodfall ' was not preserved. But it is a wholesome practice, this turning of the old churchyards of London into open spaces, with trees and grass and shade in the summer, so that young children may tell the tale of ever resurgent life by innocently romping and laughing over dead men's bones even those of parliamentary reporters. 1 Thornbury, Old and New London, vol. 3 p. 575. CHAPTER XXXIII Charges of Misrepresentation IF the reporters were no longer shut out of the House of Commons they were still tormented with troubles and vexations inside. They had to scramble for places in the Strangers' Gallery with the general public, people whose sole object was to see one of the sights of London. Towards the close of the eighteenth century they were per- mitted to take notes on the back row, if they could find seats there. The use of notebooks and pencils by ' strangers ' was still an unholy sight in the eyes of the Speaker, and it was only by sitting remotely in the shadows that the repor- ters could pursue their calling without being observed from the Chair. To secure even places on the back row the reporters had to be early at the outer doors of St. Stephen's, especially on occasions of particular interest and importance, for they had no recognized right or claim to the bench as against other ' strangers ' ; and it was a case either of first come first served, or of luck or strength or speed in the rush and struggle up the stairs to the Gallery. The back row was the worst of all places for seeing and hearing. Each Member who spoke, having to address his remarks to the Speaker, turned away from the Gallery. Moreover, between the reporters sitting on the bench furthest back, and so high that their heads almost touched the ceiling and the body of the House were five or six rows of ' strangers ' whose movements and whispered conversation tended to make it additionally difficult for them to follow the pro- ceedings. And to add a finer edge still to the acuteness of 289 19 290 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the reporter's mental perturbation in finding it almost impossible to hear what was said, there was the over- hanging fear of being haled to the Bar and brought to account for any mistake, however accidental and innocent, into which he might fall. There were many distinguished and arresting personages in the House of Commons at that time. And what did they think of the manner in which the knowledge and insight they brought to the discussion of public questions were recorded in the Press ? Some of the Members, at least, believed that misrepresentations of their speeches were deliberate and malicious when they appeared in news- papers opposed to them politically. William Wilberforce was of that opinion. * It was a Standing Order of the House that strangers should be excluded from the Gallery,' said he, speaking on December 20, 1798, ' but this order had not been rigorously enforced ; and somehow or other statements had been made in the public newspapers said to be reports of what had passed within the House ; but in various instances, which had come within his knowledge, they had contained misrepresentations, and had an evident tendency to prejudice the public mind against the delibera- tions of Parliament.' Probably, what he meant if he did not actually say it was that these misrepresentations were calculated to turn electors against their representative ; for he went on to mention that while he was on a visit in the country people told him they had read in the newspapers that he had spoken and voted one way when, as a matter of fact, he had spoken and voted differently. But that was not the only grievance he had against the public prints. ' Some of these vehicles,' he said, ' had contented them- selves with merely stating that some hon. Members had made a very able and eloquent speech, whilst the speech of another, in opposition to it, had been given at great length.' If Wilberforce were alive to-day he would find that the reports had not changed very much in that respect. CHARGES OF MISREPRESENTATION 291 The newspapers naturally pay special attention to the speeches of their own local representatives or members of the political party which they support. Wilberforce declared he was far from objecting to the Debates being made public if they were correctly reported. ' But,' said he, in conclusion, * if this were found impossible, it would become matter for serious consideration whether the House should not say, either that what passed there should be fairly stated or not at all.' 1 Nothing further was said and nothing was done. Just a week later there took place the last debate in the House of Commons on the relations between Parliament and the Press, which is most interesting as it shows the prevailing opinions on the subject at the close of the eighteenth cen- tury ; and has the additional value that it seems, inciden- tally, to prove that the charges against the newspapers of wilful misrepresentation were hardly justified. On December 27, 1798, George Tierney, a distinguished Member of the Whig Opposition, complained of having been misrepresented in The Times. He said no Member was less desirous than he was ' to curtail the liberty which the House allowed to the editors of newspapers of gratifying the curiosity of the public by publishing its Debates ' or was more willing to make allowance ' for those inaccuracies to which publications made in so great a hurry must be incident.' But the report in question was published on December 26, four days after the debate had taken place, under the heading, * A conversation between Mr. Pitt and Mr. Tierney,' filling four columns, in which his share of the discussion was ' replete with the most glaring misrepre- sentations ' that must have been wilful ' as the report was intermixed with the editor's political animadversions.' The conversation was in reference to Lord Auckland of whom Tierney had said erroneously, as it turned out 1 Parliamentary History, vol. 34, pp. 109-11. 292 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY that he had evaded the payment of the new income tax. The report in The Times extended to three columns, and by way of introduction it was said that the conversation ' having been misstated in many papers, particularly in The Morning Chronicle, and having been but briefly told in The Times,'' it was thought right, ' in justice to all parties, as well as with a view to public benefit ' to give a fuller and clearer account of it. The Speaker, Henry Addington, ruled that a mere com- plaint of misrepresentation was not in itself a proper matter for the consideration of the House. In his opinion the right course was to call attention to The Times report as a violation of the Standing Order against the publication of the proceedings of the House, and then to complain of the misrepresentation as an aggravation of the offence. Accordingly, the general question of the reporting of the Debates was made the chief topic of the discussion. The views of William Pitt on the subject were heard for the first time. ' I should be very sorry,' said the Prime Minister, ' to interpose the authority of the House in restrict- ing what has long been permitted as a medium of com- munication between the House and the public. But, sir, the daily occasions which are given by the public prints for complaints from every quarter of the House of misrepre- senting and misstating what passes in it require the attentive consideration of the House to devise some means of check- ing or preventing this growing abuse.' Among the Ministers divided counsels prevailed. One of Pitt's leading colleagues, Mr. Secretary Dundas, pointed out that the motion, if carried, would have a very wide penal application. For the printers and editors of all the newspapers being equally guilty with The Times of publishing the Debates would be equally liable to censure and punishment for breach of privilege. Appalled at this prospect, he suggested that the motion be withdrawn. Tierney refused to budge, and was backed up by another Minister, William Windham, CHARGES OF MISREPRESENTATION 293 Secretary at War, who held that the reporting of the pro- ceedings had become a great evil, and should be checked. Wilberforce agreed with Dundas that if any action were taken against The Times it must be extended to the other newspapers. Then, on the motion of Pitt, the further con- sideration of the matter was adjourned until December 31. Meantime, Wilberforce wrote a letter to Lord Muncaster which affords us a peep behind the scenes. * The most gross and scandalous misrepresentations of my speeches have been lately made in The Morning Chronicle' he says, ' and there seems a general disposition to proceed against the Opposition papers if Tierney compels us to proceed against The Times.' He adds : ' There never was given in any paper a tolerable account of one of the most masterly pieces of reasoning I ever heard, when Pitt contended at large with a view to prove the impracticability and injustice of taxing capital rather than income.' * On the day appointed for the resumption of the debate, Tierney asked for leave to withdraw his motion. He said he was satisfied there had been no intention on the part of The Times to misrepresent him, and that he recognized it was to the interest of editors that reports should be fair and accurate. But Windham objected to the motion being withdrawn and made a speech at once philosophical in its tone and most reactionary in its teachings, pointing out the grave constitutional dangers that lurked in the reporting of the Debates by the newspapers. Some people smiled at the spectacle of a House of Parliament giving its serious attention to what they pleased to regard as trifles. That was a fatally mistaken view. * He knew how things apparently trivial in their nature produced prodigious effects. To things apparently trivial, at first sight, was owing the downfall of France. 2 Things of a trivial nature 1 Life of William Wilberforce (by his sons), vol. 2, pp. 323-4 (1837). * Windham began his political career as a pupil of Burke. Like 294 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY were passed by as unworthy of notice, and in less than twelve months afterwards there tumbled a whole kingdom into a heap of ruins and with its fall there appeared calamities which no mortal, not bereft of the feelings of humanity, could behold without horror.' He went on to argue that the publication of parliamentary proceedings would produce ' very serious consequences,' consequences so serious, indeed, as ' to change the Government from a representative to an entirely democratic one,' for it meant ' calling every day on the public to judge of the proceedings of Parliament.' The House seemed to be brought back again to the momentous year of 1771, if not to a period farther remote when the suppression of reporting was the strict rule, and fining and imprisonment the means of enforcing it. As the speech entirely misconceived the right relations between the people and their representatives, so it was frankly hostile to the democratic spirit then beginning slowly to move the minds of some thinkers in favour of the spread of political ideas and their free discussion. Windham also contended that reporting struck directly at the dignity of the House. ' What,' he asked, ' was to be the character of the House in the eye of the public if not only what passed in it was to be reported in the news- papers, but a description was to be given also of the tone, manner and action of each Member, like that of a criticism of another description of persons of whom he had no dis- position to speak contumeliously, but of whom it was no disparagement to say that they were more adapted than the Senate for public entertainment he meant persons who were called actors.' Apparently, the parliamentary sketch- writer with his intimate touch had already appeared. ' What,' he proceeded to ask, ' was to become of the dignity Burke he took alarm at the excesses of the French Revolution ; and fearful lest the new ideas might spread at home he supported the repressive measures of the Government against movements for reform. In 1794 he took office under Pitt with a seat in the Cabinet. CHARGES OF MISREPRESENTATION 295 of the House if the manners and gestures, and tone and action of each Member were to be subject to the licence, the abuse, the ribaldry of newspapers ? ' Wilberforce also spoke. He now made it clear that in calling the attention of the House, a few weeks before, to the publication of the Debates, it was far from his purpose to favour the exclusion of the reporters. It was misrepre- sentation, and misrepresentation alone, that he complained of. The reporting of the speeches of Members in his opinion was not injurious but highly beneficial to the country. How else could the people be in a position rightly to deter- mine at the dissolution of a Parliament whether to continue their trust in the same hands or transfer it to others ? Ultimately the motion was withdrawn by leave of the House. l In the House of Lords a simitar complaint of newspaper misrepresentation was discussed on March 21, 1801. The Morning Herald of that date, in its report of what took place in the House of Lords the day before stated that Lord Suffolk was speaking on the high prices of provisions and urging that something should be done to save the people from starvation, when he was interrupted by the Duke of Athol who held that these remarks were out of order, whereupon Lord Holland declared : ' The noble duke had himself been guilty of a violent breach of order and good breeding. He advised him to consider the rules of the House before attempting to teach them to others.' It was on the rebuke of the Duke of Athol, attributed to Lord Holland, that the charge of misrepresentation was founded. The Morning Herald gave no explanation of its mistake, and published no report of the discussion upon it in the House of Lords. An account of what was said is, however, to be found in The Morning Chronicle. ' The well-known character of the noble duke,' said Lord Auck- Parliamentary History, vol. 34, pj>, 148-169, 296 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY land, ' placed him far above such an imputation, and it was notorious to all their lordships that no such words had been used (a general cry of ' hear, hear '). The state- ment then was false. If it had not been false it would still have been a breach of privilege ; but it was a false statement and required animadversion.' Loughborough, the Lord Chancellor, like the Speaker of the House of Commons, laid it down that publication was a breach of privilege. 'To print and publish reports of the Debates or any con- versation that passed in the House, was,' said he, ' a well- known breach of the privileges of that House. But the offence was much aggravated when any person took upon himself to mistake what passed, and express in language of his own widely differing from that which was spoken.' On March 23, the printer, H. Brown, and the publisher, T. Glassington, were brought to the Bar of the House of Lords for a breach of privilege. They were asked what they had to say in their defence. ' Whereupon,' says the official record ' they acknowledged their said offence, and desired to throw themselves upon the mercy of the House.' They were ' severely reprimanded ' by the Lord Chancellor, and discharged on paying their fees. 1 The Morning Herald of the following day contains the first reference to the trouble which had befallen it. It merely states that its printer and publisher were brought to the Bar of the House of Lords to answer a complaint ; and that the Lord Chan- cellor, ' after a gentle reprimand,' ordered them to be dis- charged on paying their fees. It is significant that in neither House was there any one to stand up in defence of the Press. If Wilberforce was against the suppression of parliamentary reporting he was censorious as to its shortcomings. The best friends of the reporters only gave an indulgent and patronizing appro- bation of their work. In truth, there was still a general 1 Lords Journals, vol. 43, pp. 60-61, CHARGES OF MISREPRESENTATION 297 distrust of this searchlight which the newspapers had brought to bear upon Parliament. The utility of report- ing in the dissemination of principles and policies was but slowly seen by statesmen, and naturally this recognition kept pace with the gradual development of the newspapers in ability, circulation and influence, and the attainment by the reporters of dexterity in the use of shorthand. At that period, the principal daily newspapers The Times, The Morning Chronicle, The True Briton, The Morning Post were all of a common form, consisting of four small pages of four columns each, crudely printed, raw and experimental in appearance, with scarcely any promise of that wonderful thing, the present morning newspaper, which more, per- haps, than any other characteristic production of the age, bears witness to human inventiveness, energy and enter- prize, in their highest forms. However, such as they were, the newspapers of the period devoted almost all their space, during the Parliamentary Session, to the reporting of Debates, a proof, at least, of their desire to satisfy that interest in Parliament which they had awakened in the public mind. But it is doubtful whether their reports possessed the essential quality of accuracy to any great degree. A contemporary writer pays a rather high-flown compli- ment to the reporters of the time. Referring to Woodfall, he says : ' This eminent reporter was succeeded in both Houses by gentlemen not only possessing more retentive memories but also better cultivated minds, who usually clothe the ideas of the Members in elegant language, and insert all the learned quotations with classical fidelity and critical correctness.' 1 It may have been, therefore, that the aim of the reporters was chiefly to interpret the sober and prosaic statements of Members of Parliament in terms of literary art, and make them shimmer with the bright 1 Alexander Stephens, Life of John Home Tooke, vol. 1, p. 351, 298 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY play of wit and fancy. And, as a consequence of this, it may have been that serious statesmen, trained in a long tradition of the supreme necessity of punctiliousness and exactitude of expression, having made deliberate speeches on grave and delicate subjects, opened their morning paper with trepidation, and groaned alike under the inexactitude of statement of fact and the ornate and flowery passages often attributed to them. It may have been also that statesmen who only half revealed, or, indeed, purposely obscured, their meaning they are not unknown in political history did not at all relish being found out and unmasked by the success of the reporters in making clear and straight- forward statements that were meant to puzzle and bewilder. Nor do these exhaust the possible grounds of complaint against the reporters. There is still another grievance upon which Wilberforce threw some light. It may have been that a Member having exhausted to his heart's content all his powers of sagacity and omniscience in expounding the true significance of the subject under discussion, finds himself coldly dismissed by the reporters in the line : 'Mr. Blank also spoke.' But that there was any deliberate misrepresentation due to political bias it is impossible to believe. Most of the mistakes in reporting were attributable to the adverse circumstances under which the journalists had to work. Parliamentary reporters are liable to error, but as a class they have always been politically unprejudiced and incorruptible. CHAPTER XXXIV Coleridge as a Parliamentary Reporter SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE in a letter to Robert Southey, dated February 18, 1800, writes : < Read Pitt's speech in The Morning Post of to-day. I reported the whole with notes so scanty that Mr. Pitt is much obliged to me. For, by Heaven, he never talked so eloquently in his lifetime. He is a stupid, insipid charla- tan, that Pitt. Indeed, except Fox, I, you, or anybody, might learn to speak better than any man in the House.' 1 The letter is remarkable for the evidence it affords of the length to which politicians, in that time of fierce partisan- ship, went in the disparagement of their opponents. Hating Pitt as a politician, Coleridge felt bound to think contemptu- ously of him as a debater. But the letter is, perhaps, more interesting still as an illustration of that curious weakness, so frequently to be observed in famous men, of feeling unduly proud and elated on account of having done something totally different in its nature from the achievements which won them their great renown. It would seem as if his wonderful poem, * The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' gave less exaltation to Coleridge than his version of what William Pitt said on a certain night in the House of Commons. The poet was twenty-six years of age when, having run away from Cambridge University, served for a few months in a dragoon regiment, and got married, he came to London, towards the end of 1799, to write for The Morning Post, * Coleridge, Letters, pp. 326-7, 299 300 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY with whose policy of opposition to Pitt he was then in sym- pathy. Pitt's speech was in support of the continuance of the war against Bonaparte, who, on his appointment as First Consul of France, had offered to negotiate terms of peace. It was made on February 17, 1800, and Coleridge's report appeared next day in The Morning Post. So great was the poet's pride in his work that he boasted of it also to his friend, Thomas Poole. He says : ' My report of Pitt's speech made a great noise here ' ; and still swayed by that spirit of perversity, which, it would seem, not even the poet and philosopher can escape, when they touch party politics, he adds : ' What a degraded animal man is to see anything to admire in that wretched rant ! ' But as Coleridge did not write shorthand it may fairly be doubted whether the rant if it is rant is his or Pitt's. James Gillman, with whom Coleridge lived at Hampstead, London, for the last twenty years of his life, says that Canning, calling next day at the newspaper office on business, inquired of the editor who did the report, and, though the name of the reporter was not disclosed, remarked : ' It does more credit to the author's head than to his memory.' If Canning did not make that double-edged comment on the speech for the story is denied he certainly had warrant for doing so. It is unsafe to place unquestioning reliance upon the newspaper versions of speeches in Parliament at that time of long- hand reporting, for they are likely to reflect the mind of the reporter more than the mind of the speaker. At any rate, Coleridge in describing Pitt's speech as ' wretched rant ' does an injustice to his own intellectual powers in living dis- course. A brilliant and inexhaustible talker himself, he could not have avoided imparting to his version of Pitt's speech some of his own reflections, knowledge and eloquence. Gillman in his incomplete Life of Coleridge, which was published in 1838, tells the story of the poet's feat of par- liamentary reporting. As Pitt was expected to make an important speech on the night in question, Coleridge was COLERIDGE AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 301 asked by the editor of The Morning Post to supply the report. * Those who are acquainted with the Gallery of the House on a press night, when a man can scarcely find elbow room/ says Gillman, ' will better understand how incom- petent Coleridge was for such an undertaking.' In order to secure a seat in the Gallery the poet went down to West- minster at seven o'clock in the morning, hours before the doors were opened ; and so exhausted was he by the long wait that he fell asleep during Pitt's speech and only heard passages of it by starts when his slumbers were broken. ' On his return,' Gillman continues, ' the proprietor being anxious for the report, Coleridge informed him of the result, and finding his anxiety great volunteered a speech for Mr. Pitt, which he wrote offhand, and which answered the pur- pose exceedingly well.' 1 The editor and owner of The Morning Post, Daniel Stuart, was alive when this account was published, thirty-eight years after the event. Statements had also been made that though the articles and poems contributed by Coleridge had raised the circulation of the paper, he received only a miser- able wage from its wealthy proprietor. Stuart was moved by these misrepresentations as he calls them to write a long letter to The Gentleman's Magazine in self-defence, lest he should be held up to posterity as an ungrateful and niggardly employer who rolled in his carriage while the unhappy poet who made his fortune starved in a garret. He says Coleridge was wayward and unreliable. * I took him to the Gallery of the House of Commons,' he says, ' in hopes he would assist me in parliamentary reporting, and that a near view of men and things would bring up new topics to his mind. But he never could write a thing that was immediately required of him. The thought of com- pulsion disarmed him.' Stuart also controverts Gillman's account of the reporting of Pitt's speech. He says : 1 Gillman, Life of Coleridge, pp. 207-8. 302 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY ' Coleridge who was with me in the Gallery certainly reported a part, if not all, of that speech, which was not a very long line. On one occasion a shorthand -writer, reporting for me, enfeebled and lowered the style of the speaker, on which Coleridge said it was passing the speech through the " flatting mills." If I doubt whether it was not on the occasion of this speech he said so, it is because to have written the whole of it immediately was an effort unlike Coleridge's habits. But that he did report all or part I well remember.' l I have read three versions of the speech, in The Times, The True Briton and The Morning Post, and they differ substantially, though perhaps, more in phraseology than in tone and spirit. It is interesting to compare how parti- cular passages are rendered in the three reports. George Tierney, who was Pitt's relentless opponent, had asked for a declaration, without ' buts or ifs,' or special pleading, whether or not the restoration of the monarchy in France was the real and sole object of Ministers. In the reports of Pitt's reply which appeared in the three newspapers the next morning the ' buts ' and the ' ifs ' are, by a curious agreement, italicised, the reason being, no doubt, that the Minister particularly emphasized them. According to The Times he said : 'First with respect to the restoration of Royalty, he says that he cannot obtain an explicit and satisfactory answer, and that all explanation is modified with an if and a but and other particles of special pleading in politics. I assure the hon. gentleman that the system of special pleading is as completely erased from my mind as from his. Though I wish for the restoration of Royalty, I do not look to it as my sole object. But I have no hesitation to declare that it would, if effected, lead with more certainty to security than any other. But in this important consideration the dangers of Peace should be fairly compared with the dangers of the War ; and if you can show to me that there is a better chance of obtaining security in Peace than in the prosecution of War ; if our resources are powerful while those of the enemy are every day impairing, then will it follow that the vigorous continuance of hostilities is the most effectual mode of obtaining that security which we so 1 Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 10 (new series), pp. 485-8 (1838). COLERIDGE AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 303 earnestly desire. These are, sir, the " ifs " and " buts " with which the hon. gentleman is dissatisfied. This is the special pleading by which I desire to be tried by God and my country.' The report in The Parliamentary History, or Hansard, for the Session of 1800 a volume which was not published until 1819 is taken from a collection of Pitt's speeches in four volumes, which appeared in 1806, after the statesman's death. Hathaway, the editor of the work, states that the speeches were collected from public reports of * admitted authority ' ; and that a few of them ' underwent the revision of Mr. Pitt himself,' though he does not specify those that were thus corrected. I find that the version which he gives of this particular speech appeared originally in The True Briton. Daniel Stuart, in his letter to The Gentleman's Magazine, says the report in that newspaper was done by Mr. Clarke, ' now conductor of The London Gazette ' (1838), and was superior to Coleridge's, being ' not only the most faithful but the most splendid.' It gives Pitt's reply in the following fashion : Now, Sir, I never had much liking to special pleading, and if ever I had any it is by this time almost entirely gone. He has, besides, so abridged me of the use of particles that though I am not par- ticularly attached to the sound of an if or a but I would be much obliged to him if he would give me some others to supply their places. Is this, however, a light matter that it should be treated in so light a manner ? The restoration of the French monarchy I consider as a most desirable object, because I think that it would afford the best security to this country and to Europe. But this object may not be attainable ; and if it be not attainable we must be satisfied with the best security we can find independent of it. Peace is most desirable to this country ; but negotiations may be attended with greater evils than could be counterbalanced by any benefits which would result from it. And if this be found to be the case ; if it offered no prospect of security ; if it threaten all the evils which we have been struggling to avert ; if the prosecution of the war afford the prospect of attaining complete security, and if it may be prosecuted with increasing commerce, with increasing means, and with increasing prosperity, except what may result from the visitations of the seasons, then, I say, that it is prudent in us not to negotiate at the present moment, These are my buts and 304 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY my ifs. This is my plea, and on no other do I wish to be tried by God and my country. Now let us see how the author of that weird and enchanting poem, ' The Antient Mariner,' bent himself to the prosaic task of recording the same passages. I think it will be agreed that they were most finely rendered of all by the poet, philosopher and metaphysician : But, Sir, the honourable gentleman says he thinks the war neither just nor necessary, and calls upon me, without the qualifying reser- vations and circuitous distinctions of a special pleader, in short, without Buts or Ifs, to state the real object ; and affirms that despite these buts and ifs the restoration of monarchy in France is the real and sole object of Ministers, and that all else contained in the official notes are unmeaning words and distinctions fallacious, and perhaps meant to deceive. Is it, Sir, to be treated as a fallacious distinction that the restoration of the monarchy is not my sole or ultimate object ; that my ultimate object is security ; that I think no pledge for that security so unequivocal as the restoration of the monarchy and no means so natural and effectual ? But if you can present any other mode that mode I will adopt. I am unwilling to accept an inadequate security ; but the nature of the security which it may be our interest to demand must depend on the relative and comparative dangers of continuing the war or concluding a peace. And if the danger of the war should be greater than that of peace, and if you can show t to me that there is no chance of diminish- ing Jacobinism by war, and if you can evince that we are exhausting our means more than our enemies are exhausting theirs, then I am ready to conclude a peace without the restoration of the monarchy- These are the ifs and the buts which I shall continue to introduce, not the insidious and confounded subtleties of special pleading, but the just and necessary distinctions of intelligible prudence. I am conscious of sincere and honest intentions in the use of them, and I desire to be tried by no other than God and my country. Tierney also contended that the dangers of Jacobinism had passed away. According to The Times report, Pitt said, in reply : ' But how long has the hon. gentleman discovered that French Jacobinism does not exist ? If he examines the dreadful system of Robespierre, if he reverts to the perfidy and devastation of the Triumvirate, if he considers the horrible policy of France under the five directors, if he investigates the operation of Jacobinism in COLERIDGE AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 305 all its successive changes, shapes and modifications, from the com- mencement of its appearance down to the present moment, does he candidly think that he will find sufficient grounds in his most minute and laborious researches to enable him to affect that French Jacobinism is no longer in existence.' In The True Briton the passages are thus rendered : How or where did the hon. gentleman discover that the Jacobin- ism of Robespierre, of Barrere, of the triumvirate, of the five direc- tors, has all disappeared, because it has all been centred in one man who was reared and nursed in its bosom, whose celebrity was gained under its auspices, who was at once the child and champion of all its atrocities. Coleridge's version of the passages in The Morning Post is again the finest of all : But now it seems, we are at once to remit our zeal and our sus- picion ; that Jacobinism which alarmed us under the stumbling and drunken tyranny of Robespierre, that Jacobinism which insulted and roused us under the short-sighted ambition of the five Directors ; that Jacobinism to which we have sworn enmity through every shifting of every bloody scene, though all those abhorred mockeries which have profaned the name of liberty to all the varieties of usurpation, to this Jacobinism we are now to reconcile ourselves because all its arts and all its energies are united under one person, the Child and the Champion of Jacobinism, who has been reared in its principles, who has fought its battles, who has systematized its ambition, at once the fiercest instrument of its fanaticism and the gaudiest puppet of its folly.' It will be noticed that in Coleridge's report Pitt refers to Buonaparte as ' the child and champion of Jacobinism,' that in The True Briton the words are ' the child and champion of all its atrocities,' and that no version of this remarkable phrase is to be found in The Times. Daniel Stuart, in his letter to The Gentleman's Magazine, says that Coleridge reported Pitt's words as * the child and nursling of Jacobin- ism,' and that it was with difficulty he could prevail on him to adopt the description which he says Pitt actually employed namely ' the child and champion of Jacobinism.' Many years afterwards the very note-book, in which Coleridge jotted down in pencil fragmentary sentences of the speech, 20 306 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY was discovered. It contained a different rendering of the phrase c the nursling and champion of Jacobinism ' which is more effective than the one given in The Morning Post. Therefore, it is probable that Stuart had forgotten in the lapse of thirty-eight years the exact purport of the contention between him and Coleridge as to the words used by Pitt, and if, as seems likely, he induced Coleridge to adopt ( child and champion of Jacobinism,' instead of ' nursling and champion of Jacobinism ' he was responsible for a distinct weakening of the phraseology. The notes taken by Coleridge consisted for the most part of flying and spasmodic jottings. From these, with the aid of his natural wit and penetration, and his instinct for words, he had to weave, in the chill and numbing small hours of the morning, that vivid impression of Pitt's argument and contention, and the language, more or less, in which the statesman expressed them, which may last for ever as a speci- men of parliamentary oratory. He appears, however, not to have departed to any great extent from the hints given in his skeleton sentences. ' How far Coleridge may have reconstructed Pitt's speech as he went along it is impossible to say,' writes the editor of the Letters, Mr. Hartley Coleridge, ' but the speech, as reported, follows pretty closely the outlines in the notebook.' 1 Coleridge soon had enough of parliamentary reporting. He was physically and temperamentally unsuited for the work. He was a born talker. It was not a parliamentary reporter he should have been, but a parliamentary orator. He used to say that whatever difficulties he might feel in the expression of his meaning in writing, he never experi- enced the smallest hitch in the utterance of his most subtle reasonings by word of mouth. Was it not, then, a strange and incongruous phase of his career that he with a brain so extraordinarily fertile in brilliant thoughts on all sorts of subjects as we may see in his Table Talk should have 1 Coleridge, Letters, p. 327. COLERIDGE AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 307 set himself to the task of recording the reflections on politics of men of far inferior intellects ? In a letter he wrote to Southey early in 1800, before Pitt's speech on the war, he says : ' I shall give up this newspaper business ; it is too, too fatiguing. I have attended the Debates twice, and the first time I was twenty-five hours in activity, and that of a very unpleasant kind ; and the second time from ten in the morning till four o'clock the next morning.' 1 The subsequent letter to Southey, dated February 18, 1800, in which he so boastfully recorded his feat in reporting Pitt, also contains the following passages : * I have not a moment's time, and my head aches. I was up till five o'clock this morning. My brain is so overworked that I could doze troublously and with cold limbs, so affected was my circulation. I shall do no more for Stuart.' Just a few weeks later, in March, 1800, we find him writing to Poole that Stuart had offered him half shares in The Morning Post and The Courier another paper in which Stuart had also an interest on the condition that he gave them all his services. He calculated that this would bring him an income of 2,000 a year. ' But I told him,' he says, ' that I would not give up the country and the lazy reading of old folios for two thousand times 2,000 in short, that beyond 350 a year I considered money a real evil.' 2 In July, 1800, he removed with his family to Greta Hall, Kes- wick. 1 Coleridge, Letters, p. 324. 2 Coleridge, Essays on His Own Times (1866), edited by his daughter, Sara Coleridge, p. xci. CHAPTER XXXV First Official Recognition of the Reporters THE reporting of Pitt's speech kept the mind and body of Coleridge on a strain for at least twenty-four con- secutive hours. In order to secure a place in the Stranger's Gallery the poet had to be at the outer door of the Houses of Parliament as early as seven o'clock in the morning. It was seven o'clock the next morning before the transcription of his notes was finished, and he was free to leave the office of The Morning Post. At that time it was the custom usually to open the Gallery for the admission of strangers at noon, though the pro- ceedings did not commence until four o'clock. The re- porters, as I have already mentioned, were permitted to take notes on the back row of the Strangers' Gallery. But they had no recognized right, title or claim to places on this bench as against other visitors. The reporters, there- fore, had to go down to Westminster early in the morning especially on days when important debates were expected to wait with the crowd until the Gallery was opened at twelve o'clock, when they joined in a mad rush up the stairs and a scramble for the best places. Business, as I have said, began at four o'clock. The House sat, as a rule, till close on midnight, and, occasionally, even for one or two hours later. The reporters were compelled to remain in the Gal- lery, or its precincts, all the time. Refreshments were sup- plied to them, and other visitors, from Bellamy's, the famous eating-house for Lords and Commons. ' On a landing at the top of the stairs on a small table,' says William Jerdan 308 OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF THE REPORTERS 309 parliamentary reporter himself ' they could have the most excellent cold beef and beetroot salad for three shil- lings and sixpence.' 1 The amount of physical and intel- lectual energy expended by the reporters in the discharge of their duties, in such circumstances despite the mitiga- tion of cold beef and beetroot must have been enormous. The year 1803 should be held memorable in the annals oi the Reporters' Gallery. For in it there occurred the first slight official recognition of the existence of the reporters, and a faint discounting of the ancient constitutional fiction that Parliament in deliberation is neither seen nor heard by the public. Mr. Speaker Abbot acknowledged the report- ers' right to the exclusive occupation of the back row of the Strangers' Gallery. It was brought about by an accidental circumstance of some importance rather than by the in- evitable, if slow, operation of public opinion. The fateful war with Napoleon had commenced. It was to be debated for two nights in the House of Commons. On the first night, Monday, May 23, 1803, William Pitt was to make a great speech in support of the war. An immense crowd gathered in the lobbies at an early hour, though the Gallery doors were not to be opened that day until half-past three o'clock. When they were opened there was the usual wild scamper up the narrow staircase for seats in which the re- porters were unsuccessful. The occupants of the back row refused to budge. Even the alluring prospect held out to them by the reporters that if they would give up their places and go home they could read Pitt's speech in print the fol- lowing morning failed to move them. In the circumstances no one was able to peruse the speech in the newspapers. Pitt's oration was lost to the public. The Morning Chronicle had foreseen what would happen. In its issue of Saturday, May 21, 1803, it published a note announcing that, contrary to the usual practice of opening 1 Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 85. 310 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the Gallery at noon, so that it filled gradually, the Speaker had directed that the Standing Order against the admission of strangers until after prayers was to be put in force. The crush that must ensue, it said, would endanger limb and life. ' This will be peculiarly severe on those who attend to take the Debates,' it went on to say. * It would be much better if the House would forbid the publishing of Debates altogether than to render it impossible to report them as they might be. How is it to be expected that persons obliged to struggle in a crowd the whole day should be able to go through the fatigue of writing the debate ? ' In the London daily papers of Tuesday, May 24 the morning after the debate there appeared, instead of the customary parliamentary reports, complaints of the treat- ment meted out to the Press by the authorities of the House of Commons. ' The public upon looking over our paper of to-day,' says The Times, ' will, no doubt, be very much sur- prised not to find a report of last night's debate in the House of Commons.' The omission, it proceeded to explain, was due to the exclusion of its reporters with those of all the other newspapers. In its description of the scene The Times states that when the doors were opened at half-past three o'clock the disappointment of the great crowd seeking admis- sion was extreme at finding that the Gallery was already nearly filled with the friends of Members who had been smuggled there through the body of the House. Of those outside not more than four or five got places, after suffering a most severe pressure in the passages to the Gallery and living in constant danger of having a leg or an arm broken. 'We cannot contend with impossibilities,' it says finally. The Morning Chronicle, likewise, had no report. It cor- rects the announcement it made on the Saturday that the delay in the opening of the doors until after prayers was due to the Speaker, by stating it was adopted at the desire of many Members who were determined that their friends should have a preference. ' The reporters,' it says, ' after OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF THE REPORTERS 311 suffering great inconvenience from the pressure of a pro- digious crowd, from eight or nine in the morning, were unable to make good their admission into the Gallery. No paper had a single reporter in the House of Commons, so that the debate, we believe, is entirely lost.' Indeed, only bits and scraps of the speeches were recovered, and these will be found preserved in The Parliamentary History, con- stituting, as it says, * a very imperfect sketch.' The effect on the authorities of the House is thus recorded by Abbot, the Speaker, in his Diary, under date May 24, 1803 : Settled with Serjeant -at -Arms that the Gallery door should be opened every day, if required, at twelve ; and the Serjeant would let the housekeeper understand that the newswriters might be let in in their usual places (the back row of the Gallery), as being understood to have the order of particular Members, like any other stranger. 1 This order made access to the Gallery easy for the re- porters, and established their right to places on the back bench. It may seem a small concession, but it was con- sidered by the reporters a substantial and valuable gain, and they were most thankful for it. However, it did not last very long. Before twelve months had passed there was a return to the old want of consideration for the con- venience of the reporters. The Times of April 21, 1804, contains an account of a scene in the lobbies of the House the night before, which was an exact repetition of that which occurred on May 23, 1903. In anticipation of a debate of considerable interest there was a crowd so great as ' to make the lobbies resemble the entrance into a theatre than a Senate house ' ; and when the doors were opened at ' a later hour than usual,' the Gallery was found to be ' in great part filled by the orders of Members in favour of persons admitted through the House itself,' so that ' the gentlemen who are in the habit of reporting the Debates found them- 1 Diary of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester (1861), vol. 1, p. 421. 312 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY selves (after a severe struggle in the little confined staircase, where windows were broken, and, we believe, two or three accidents happened) excluded from the Gallery.' The Times mildly pleaded for a revival of the temporary accom- modation which was afforded to the reporters in the previous Session. All classes of society, it said, looked with eagerness to the reports of the discussions in Parliament ' to discover the grand reasons on which laws are framed, the different views by which our Senatorial parties are guided, and the principles of policy that are best suited to the Constitution and to the interests of the Nation.' Was it not strange, therefore, it asked, that the reporting of the Debates should he attended on many occasions with peculiar difficulties, and that 'like the precious metals of Peru, the splendid oratory of the British Senate could only be developed by exertions almost beyond human power ? ' CHAPTER XXXVI The Boycott of William Windham THE belief still prevailed among an ever dwindling, but yet comparatively large, circle of Members of the House of Commons that the publication of the Debates was an excrescence of Parliament ; and, more decided still, that the reporter was a nuisance, on account largely of the incompleteness and inaccuracy with which he did his work. This attitude of cold aloofness and superiority taken up by the average Member in regard to the reporters is well illustrated by a debate which took place on February 6, 1810. At that time the Standing Order for excluding strangers was frequently put in force. During the inquiry conducted by the House itself into the circumstances of the unfortunate expedition to the Scheldt the Gallery was cleared every night, though official minutes of the evidence, two or three days later, was issued to the Press. Sheridan moved that the Standing Order be referred to a committee with a view to their devising some restrictions on its application. He protested against the public being deprived of all knowledge of the proceedings of the House of Commons, by the whim of any individual Member who was moved merely to say : 'Mr. Speaker, I spy strangers.' His suggestion was that when the reporters were thus turned out the Member should give reasons for his action, and if he failed to get the support of a majority the Gallery should be at once reopened. Of course, this wayward child of genius the embodiment of the sanguine and visionary temperament in politics was all on the side of full freedom of publication. He paid a 313 314 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY nice compliment to the integrity and impartiality of the reporters. The editors of the newspapers, he asserted, had been uniformly guided by the strictest impartiality in com- municating the transactions of the House to the public. ' But,' he went on, ' were even the editors inclined from motives of their own, or corrupt views by self-interest, to excite any improper prejudice by mutilated or unjustifiable statements, he was confident that not one of the gentlemen who were in the habit of taking the reports of that House would lend himself to such an improper service.' William Windham not only opposed Sheridan's motion, but was most contemptuous of the upstart pretensions of these low-down newspaper men. He said that among the persons who ' made a trade of what they obtained in the Galleries,' were to be found ' men of all descriptions bank- rupts, lottery-office keepers, footmen and decayed trades- men.' The editors were just as despicable a lot. ' He did not know any of the conductors of the Press, but he under- stood them to be a set of men who would give into the cor- rupt misrepresentation of opposite sides.' Windham was one of Pitt's Ministers at the opening of the century. In 1806 he was a colleague of Fox in the Grenville Administration. So changeable was he in his political views that he was known as * Weathercock Windham.' But there was one opinion to which he held steadfast. Through all his wanderings from Party to Party he never wavered in his antipathy to the reporting of the Debates and his gloomy fears of what must follow if no restrictions were placed upon it. On February 6, 1810, he repeated with still more serious and dogged conviction what he had said on December 31, 1798. The free publication of the pro- ceedings of the House meant a change in the Constitution, from representative government, * which presumed confi- dence in an elected representative Assembly,' to that of ' a democracy in which everything was done by the people.' It was this new and abhorrent principle of democratic THE BOYCOTT OF WILLIAM WINDHAM 315 government which had led to licence and anarchy in France. He declined to be a party to the opening of sluices which would let the tide of revolution into this country. These sentiments evoked from Sheridan some passages about the power and influence of the Press characteristic of the dash and sparkle of his rhetoric. He exclaimed : Give me the liberty of the Press and I will give the Minister a venal House of Peers, I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons ; I will give him the full swing of the patronage of Office, I will give him the whole host of Ministerial influence, I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him to purchase up submission and to overawe resistance. And, yet, armed with the liberty of the Press, I will go forth to meet him undismayed, I will attack the mighty fabric he has raised with that mightier engine, I will shake down from its height corruption and bury it beneath the ruins of the abuses it was meant to shelter. This panegyric of the Press may have had the effect of so terrifying certain Members of the House of Commons as to harden them against the opening of their doors freely to the emissaries of such a mighty power. They rejected Sheridan's motion by a majority of 86 80 voting for it and 166 against. 1 The sneers of Windham naturally stirred up feelings of indignation and resentment among the reporters. In The Morning Post of February 9, 1810, there is a very fine reply to the attack in a letter signed ' A reporter of the Parliamentary Debates for the Morning Post.' The writer says the bare recollection of Windham 's reference to the reporters as ' a worthless and venal set of men ' raised in his cheek ' the blush of shame and indignation.' What is more to the point, he tells an interesting story in disproof of the slander. He says a Member of the House of Commons sent him a note requesting that he would pay particular attention to a speech he was about to deliver, and adding that he should make a handsome pecuniary acknowledgment of his trouble. He returned no answer to the note and 1 Parliamentary Debates (1st series), vol. 15, pp. 323-45. 316 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY treated the speech as it appeared to him, in the exercise of his judgment, to deserve. * The next day,' he proceeds, ' the hon. Member inclosed to me a check upon his banker. This I instantly returned, accompanied by a few lines in which I observed that he had entirely mistaken my char- acter, and, I firmly believed, the character of all my coadju- tors, if he imagined that we were to be influenced in the performance of that which we conceived to be a public duty by any private consideration.' It was subsequently disclosed, he adds, that the Member had made a similar application to the reporter of another newspaper which was likewise indignantly rejected. But the reporters did more than publish refutations of the charge of venality which had been brought against them. They retaliated on Windham by refusing to report the speeches of a man who seemed to regard them with personal malevolence. Perhaps mortification at being ill-reported gave added venom to Windham's onslaught upon the representatives of the Press. In 1812, after his death, a collection of his speeches was brought out by his secretary, Thomas Amyot, who, apologizing for the scantiness of some of the reports, says it was not till late in his parliamentary career ' that his peculiar style of eloquence was sufficiently understood or attended to by those who furnished the public with the substance of the Debates.' ' The reporters,' Amyot also says, ' often caught little more than those playful allusions and whimsical quotations which diverted the House but which he really used merely by way of illustration.' These jokes, appearing unaccompanied with the arguments which they were intended to illustrate, he adds, made a speech by Windham appear ' more like a leaf torn out of a jest-book ' than a logical political discourse. 1 Windham showed a desire to have the best reports of his speeches obtainable from the newspapers preserved in 1 Speeches in Parliament of William Windham, vol. 1, pp. 22-3 and 134-5. THE BOYCOTT OF WILLIAM WINDHAM 317 Hansard. Naturally, he was careful that the opinions attributed to him, and the form in which they were expressed, should be as correct as possible in case posterity cared to read them when he was dead and gone. William Cobbett, the proprietor of Hansard, exposed this amiable weakness of the statesman in The Political Register of the Saturday following Windham's attack on the reporters. What a pretentious and egotistical humbug he was ! How hollow was his boasted contempt of the newspapers ! ' This same gentleman,' says Cobbett, ' has given Mr. Wright (the editor of Hansard) more trouble about his speeches than, if it had been duly paid for, would have cost, according to Mr. Wright's time, five hundred pounds.' The editor received two hundred notes and letters from Windham in references to his speeches. More than that, Windham made elaborate corrections in the proofs. The printer's bill for the Debates of the past Session alone contained this item in respect of extra cost for alterations : ' Corrections, revises, slips, etc., of Mr. Windham's speeches (various), 9 Us. 6d. 9 The reporters' boycott of Windham lasted till his death, which occurred within a few months, on May 11, 1810. Amyot states that even in that short period some valuable speeches by Windham were wholly lost, while of others there were preserved only a few slight and unsatisfactory fragments. George Tierney also fell under the ban of the reporters. He supported Sheridan's motion, but he referred most disparagingly to the newspaper accounts of the Debates. 4 He himself seldom if ever looked into the reports so that he could speak impartially,' he said ; ' but when he did he remembered to have felt considerable pain that senti- ments should be put into his mouth, and should go down to his constituents, one syllable of which he had never uttered.' He acquitted the reporters of intentionally misrepresenting the speeches, because, obviously, it was 318 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY to their own interest to be as accurate as they could ; but he asked one favour of them ' and that was that they should do him the kindness to let him alone altogether.' * The reporters sitting on the back row of the Strangers' Gallery heard the mocking laughter with which the House received the sally, and they decided to send Tierney to keep Windham company in the outer darkness and silence. 2 Shortly afterwards, in the course of the same Session, the reporters were again the subject of an interesting debate in the House of Commons. ' That no person who has written for hire in the newspapers shall be admitted to do exercises to entitle him to be called to the Bar.' Such were the terms of a bye-law enacted in 1807 by the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn, excluding journalists from their Society. Many of the parliamentary reporters were students for the Bar, and great was their indignation on discovering this proscription of their class at a time when they were also being attacked in Parliament. Sheridan brought the matter forward in the House of Commons on March 23, 1810, by presenting a petition from George Farquharson, a parliamentary reporter, com- plaining that he had been deprived of his right of studying the Law at Lincoln's Inn because he had written for the newspapers. Windham immediately proposed that all strangers should withdraw. He was in quite a facetious vein. He understood that Sheridan's motion related to persons present, ' though not in the lower part of the House,' 1 Parliamentary Debates (1st series), vol. 15, p. 336. 2 After Tierney 's death on January 25, 1830, The Morning Chroni- cle thus wrote of him as a parliamentary speaker ' His sneer was withering. Of all speakers, contemporaries of Mr. Tierney, no one was so much dreaded as he was. His irony was inimitable. From the simplicity of his language the reporter never misunderstood him ; but from the rapidity of his colloquial turns, and the instant roar with which they were followed in the House, it was impossible to record all that fell from him ; and the reports, therefore, though almost always characteristic of him, were far from complete.' THE BOYCOTT OF WILLIAM WINDHAM 319 and probably the right hon. gentlemen intended to say complimentary things of them. ' But,' he went on, ' as it was not the custom to drink the chairman's health until he had withdrawn, he would recommend that a similar movement should take place among those gentlemen.' The Gallery was accordingly cleared. If the reporters would not report him they should report nobody if he could help it. Nevertheless, accounts of the debate appeared in the newspapers. The resources of the reporters were not exhausted by their exclusion from the Gallery. They took care that a discussion in which they were so deeply concerned should not perish unrecorded in the Press. Among the compliments paid them was this striking refuta- tion by Sheridan of Windham's disparaging remarks : Of about twenty-three gentlemen who are now employed in reporting Parliamentary Debates for the newspapers no less than eighteen were men regularly educated at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, Edinburgh or Dublin, most of them graduates at those Universities, and several of them had gained prizes and other distinctions there by their literary attainments. In the House at that time sat James Stephen, a distin- guished barrister, who subsequently became Master in Chancery, and one of Wilberforce's most prominent sup- porters in the agitation against the slave trade. In a moving speech he told the House that in order to support himself while he was studying for the Bar at Lincoln's Inn he had reported the Debates in Parliament. Amid sympathetic cheers he proceeded to say : I feel, sir, not at all abashed at this avowal. It is an incident of my life which I am much more disposed to be proud of, or, let me rather say, to be grateful for to a kind disposing Providence than to blush for. I should indeed blush to be supposed to be ashamed of it. I do not believe that any gentleman in this House, or in any profession, will think meanly of me on this account. But should there be such a man I hope I shall never hear of it, for I should be tempted to hold him in more contempt than it is allowable for us, frail beings, to feel for any of our fellow -mortals. 320 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY The bye-law was universally reprobated for its selfishness and illiberality. The Solicitor-General (Sir T. Plomer) confessed that he was one of the few Benchers of Lincoln's Inn ' who, on the suggestion of eight barristers had hastily adopted the regulation which he would not undertake to defend,' but undertook rather to have it revised and altered if not wholly revoked. The motion was then withdrawn. 1 Soon the obnoxious bye-law was rescinded. The reporters had scored a triumph. 1 Parliamentary Debates, vol. 16, pp. 27-39, CHAPTER XXXVII Irish Revolutionary and Parliamentary Reporter IT might seem, at first sight, a curious chance of fate that made a parliamentary reporter also of Peter Finnerty, the most daring and adventurous of the journalis- tic agents of the revolutionary United Irishmen at the end of the eighteenth century. The son of a small shopkeeper he was born in the little country town of Loughrea, County Galway, in 1766. He served an apprenticeship to a printer in Dublin, and was appointed conductor and publisher of The Press, the organ of the United Irishmen, on its establishment in October, 1797. Two months had scarcely elapsed when he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for a seditious libel. Before he was taken to gaol he had to stand for an hour in the pillory opposite the courthouse in Green Street, Dublin. ' My friends,' said he, addressing the large crowd which had assembled to show their sympathy with his opinions, ' You see how cheerfully I can suffer. I can suffer anything provided it promotes the liberty of my country.' When he regained his liberty he found that The Press had been suppressed ; and that the United Irishmen had risen and been defeated. He came to London and obtaining an appointment on The Morning Chronicle attended, as a reporter, the first Sessions of the Imperial Parliament after 321 21 322 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Even for such a man as Finnerty there was nothing incongruous in such an occupation. It brought him into touch with distinguished Parliamentarians the men of ideas who count in the con- stitutional side of political movements and, at any rate, the spell which the work undoubtedly threw upon him, left unmitigated his own native, inborn propensity for the role of a man of action. At that time there was quite a number of Irishmen among the parliamentary reporters for the London newspapers. William Windham's general attack upon the representatives of the Press in 1810 was relieved by a humorous sally at the expense of the Irish section of them. He said they came over from Ireland and took their chance of becoming e porters ' or ' reporters.' One of them was Mark Supple, from whom no more than from Peter Finnerty all the wild energy and flame of his native character had been eliminated by his occupation and the environment in which he pursued it. Peter used to tell a delicious story of Mark. As he sat in the Gallery one night he took advantage of a pause in the debate to shout for ' A song from Mr. Speaker.' The affronted dignitary in the Chair that embodiment of solemnity, Henry Addington conveyed censure and re- buke on his frowning brow ; but the House went off in a roar, and even the usually cold, haughty and unapproachable Pitt was to be seen on the Treasury Bench trying to suppress, or conceal from the Speaker, his uncontrollable merriment. But decorum must be maintained among * strangers,' and the Serjeant-at-Arms rushed upstairs to remove the offender. According to Finnerty, Supple carried as much wit and fun as he knew what to do with. No wonder, then, that on this occasion he was disposed to make the most of his audacious joke. He pointed out a fat Quaker to the Serjeant-at-Arms as the delinquent, and the fat Quaker, greatly to his astonishment, was taken into custody. Ulti- mately, however, Mark confessed his practical joke, and IRISH REVOLUTIONARY 323 after a few hours' confinement, made an apology, and was released. William Jerdan, the journalist, who arrived in London from Scotland in 1806, was a colleague of Mark Supple for years. ' Decorous people ought not to laugh at funerals/ he says ; ' or the anecdotes of Supple related in the mourning coaches which followed his hearse would, much as he was really regretted, have convulsed Niobe all tears.' x Peter Finnerty himself once perpetrated a delightful parliamentary hoax. He was the only occupant of the Gallery early one evening, and when his colleagues arrived he dictated to them an extraordinary speech which he said had been delivered by William Wilberforce, one of the most serious Members of the House. And so next morning, to the amazement of readers, every London paper reported that the champion of the negro slave had said, ' Had it been my lot to be born in Ireland, where my food would have principally consisted of the potato, that most nutritious and salubrious root, instead of being the poor, infirm, shrivelled, stunted creature you now behold in me, I would have been a tall, stout, athletic man and able to carry an enormous weight.' But the adventures of Finnerty were, on the whole, of much sterner stuff. There was more of the irony than the humour of human affairs in them, and they evoked not pealing laughter but the satiric grin. In the year 1809 an immense fleet, with transports carrying 40,000 troops, set sail from this country to strike at Napoleon in the Low Countries. On account of its failure it is known in history as the ill-fated Walcheren Expedition. Finnerty contrived to accompany it as the representative of The Morning Chronicle, though ostensibly in the capacity of private secretary to the captain of one of the ships. This venture on the roving and perilous career of a war correspondent 1 Jordan, Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 87 (1852). 324 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY was, perhaps, more in harmony with his disposition than the role of parliamentary reporter. But it was of very brief duration. The authorities were unaware that he had gone off with the expedition until some of his letters appeared in print. An order was immediately sent to the Admiral of the Fleet to inquire of all the vessels whether a news- paper man named Finnerty was on board, and, if found, to send him home. Finnerty was soon discovered and a revenue cutter brought him back compulsorily to England. He was mightily indignant. In a letter which he pub- lished over his own name in The Morning Chronicle he laid the blame on Lord Castlereagh, who was then Secretary for War. He said he had lost 500, the amount which he calculated he would have earned by his letters to the newspaper. It was not the first time he had suffered from the personal malice of Lord Castlereagh. His lordship, as Secretary for Ireland, had not only got him imprisoned for two years, but had suppressed the Rebellion of 1798 with merciless cruelty. For this Finnerty was tried for libel, and being convicted on February 7, 1811, was com- mitted to the gaol of Lincoln Castle for eighteen months. 1 On June 21, 1811, Whitbread presented to the House of Commons a memorial from Finnerty in which he accused his gaolers of cruelty in placing him with felons and refusing him air and exercise. Other eminent Radicals, such as Sir Francis Burdett ; Henry Brougham and Sir Samuel Romilly, bore testimony to the high character ,of the im- prisoned journalist, and appealed to the Government to see that he received more humane treatment. Castlereagh said he had brought the action against Finnerty in order to redeem his character from an odious charge ; but he had every desire to render the confinement of the prisoner as mild as was compatible with the sentence ; and Ryder, the Home Secretary, undertook to recommend to the prison authorities the adoption of measures more calculated 1 Annual Register for 1811, pp. 240-3. IRISH REVOLUTIONARY 325 to promote the health of the prisoner. 1 The matter came before the House again on July, 1811. A petition was received from the gaoler declaring that Finnerty had been allowed to take the air and exercise in his courtyard and private garden until it was discovered that the prisoner had abused the indulgence thus granted to him by attempt- ing to seduce the upper turnkey from his duty. This accu- sation was denied by Finnerty in a letter which was read to the House by Whitbread. But Ryder, the Home Secre- tary, stated that as result of the inquiry he had instituted he was convinced that for some parts of the prisoner's complaint there was not the slightest ground and that the remainder was excessively exaggerated. 8 It is significant, however, that on his release Finnerty was presented with a sum of 2,000 raised by public sub- scription. 8 There could hardly be a more signal proof of his renown as a journalist, and the esteem in which he was held. He remained a fierce and somewhat tragic figure to the end, always waging war against wrong as he con- ceived it and always getting worsted in the encounter. With his native impulsiveness he used the first piece of ordnance available against the enemy without thinking of its recoil upon himself. On the night of June 15, 1819, business in the House of Commons was interrupted by the Serjeant-at-Arms announc- ing that he had a stranger in custody. l Bring him to the Bar,' said the Speaker. The prisoner was Peter Finnerty, charged with disorderly conduct in the Strangers' Gallery. 1 Parliamentary Debates, vol. 20, pp. 723-43. 2 Parliamentary Debates, vol. 20, pp. 774-6. 3 'In 1811 Shelley wrote and published A Practical Essay on the Existing State of Things, price two shillings. The editor of the Dublin Weekly Messenger, March, 1812, stated that the profits arising from the sale of the book amounted to nearly a hundred pounds, and that this sum was subscribed by Shelley as his con- tribution to the fund then being raised for the support of Mr. Peter Finnerty. But not a copy of the poem is known,' The Irish Book Lover ^ May, 1912, 326 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY There had been no real amelioration of the harassing con- ditions under which the reporters pursued their avocation. A room had been set apart for them in which they could await their turns or transcribe their notes ; and an additional small door had been opened in the Gallery so that they might come and go with greater ease and convenience. But they were still strictly forbidden to take notes anywhere save on the back row. If they were unable to obtain places on the back row, or moved to seats lower down the Gallery, the better to see and to hear, they had to rely upon their memory, or to take fugitive notes by stealth in order to escape the watchful eyes of the officials. The reporting of Parliament was, in truth, attempted under a concurrence of every difficulty and disadvantage tending to failure and defeat. Yet such has always been the dauntless enterprise of the Press, that it ever faces all obstacles and submits to any inconvenience, however laborious and painful, rather than give up its pursuit of news. The disorderly conduct of which Finnerty was guilty according to the story told by the attendant in the Gallery was that he sat in the front row contumaciously taking notes in the most conspicuous manner, and when told to desist used opprobrious language, and flourished his note- book all the higher. It is clear that this was an act of rebellion on Finnerty 's part. The business before the House of Commons that night was the investigation of a charge of having misrepresented a Member brought against a reporter of The Times named John Payne Collier, who afterwards won distinction as a Shakespearean critic. The misrepresentation consisted merely of attributing to one Member a remark which fell from another a mistake that was quite unintentional and due to the difficulty of seeing and hearing from the back row. To a man of a generous and impulsive nature like Finnerty, a man, too, who had in his blood a natural impatience of all indefensible restrictions and restraint, it was intolerable that the repor- IRISH REVOLUTIONARY 327 ters should be relegated to the remoteness and shadows of the back row and yet be held accountable for any error of mishearing into which they might consequently fall. So in open defiance of the regulations he occupied the most prominent place available in the Gallery, and, with a large note-book held high in his hand, took notes, and took them so as to emphasize his resentment and his combativeness with a vigorous display of elbow movement. Finnerty was joined in the demonstration by two English reporters ; but with their characteristic command of them- selves and intuitive discretion they stopped short on the remonstrance of the attendant. In such a situation, how- ever, Finnerty was the sort of man to regard the interference of the attendant as officious and fussy, and to resent it in language of a strong and decided flavour. But as in all encounters of the kind there was a conflict of testimony in the evidence of ' strangers,' who were examined at the Bar, as to the exact terms of both the attendant's remark and the reporter's reply. Did the attendant address the reporter insolently as * Finnerty ' ? Did the reporter tell the attendant brusquely to ' go to hell.' Some of the wit- nesses averred that the attendant most politely said, 4 Mr. Finnerty, please ' ; others declared that the reporter's response was no worse than ' I don't care a damn for you.' Finnerty made no attempt to draw a picture of himself as something shy and lurking, rudely torn from his hiding-place and brought against his will and disposition into the blaze of publicity that lights the Bar of the House of Commons. He candidly avowed that he had deliberately advanced from the back to the front row, because the business of the evening was a matter in which he as a reporter was deeply concerned ; but he could not admit that he had used the expressions attributed to him, for though he had a moderate command of strong language he had no recollection of employing any of it when disturbed in the legitimate pursuit of his calling by the attendant. 328 THE REPORTERS* GALLERY He was removed from the Bar while the House deliberated on his offence. It was moved by a Member named Ryder that he be committed to Newgate. Then Sir James Mackin- tosh, the eminent Whig politician, historian, and philosopher, interposed on his behalf. He said he had seen Finnerty in the Lobby, and while the reporter persisted in denying that he had used improper language, he was ready to express his sincere sorrow for having given offence, if without any recollection of it he had done so. In the circumstances, the House relented. The Minister to whom, as Leader of the House, it fell to move that the reporter be repri- manded and discharged was Finnerty's old antagonist, Lord Castlereagh, bland and conciliatory as a man if an implacable politician. Finnerty was brought to the Bar again and asked what he had to say in extenuation of his conduct. He was volu- able and plausible in accepting the inevitable, lest a worst thing might befall him. * At the time the circumstances occurred,' said he, ' my mind was engaged in the most intense application to the honourable gentleman who was then addressing the House, and whose sentiments I was anxious to take down correctly. At this juncture I was interrupted, and God knows what might have escaped me ! But I am not conscious of having said anything offensive. If I have done so, I am sorry for it, but I again say I have no recollection of it. 3 Manners-Sutton, the Speaker, in administering the reprimand, solemnly warned all the reporters, that while they availed themselves of the indulgence of the House they should be most cautious not to abuse it. 'I have now to inform you,' said he to Finnerty, * that you are discharged upon the payment of your fees.' To mark the solemnity of the occasion it was resolved : e That what has been now said by Mr. Speaker in reprimand- ing the said Peter Finnerty be entered on the Journals of the House.' 1 1 Commons Journals, vol, 74, p. 537, IRISH REVOLUTIONARY 329 I discovered in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1822, the last word on Finnerty's strangely chequered career. It runs 'Death: May 11, at Westminster, aged 56, the well-known Mr. Peter Finnerty, many years an active reporter for The Morning Chronicle* To him belongs the distinction of being the last reporter that was brought to the Bar of the House of Commons. CHAPTER XXXVIII A Times Reporter at the Bar ON June 14, 1819 the day preceding that on which Finnerty was brought to the Bar George Canning called the attention of the House of Commons, as a matter of privilege, to a misrepresentation, affecting him personally, which appeared in a speech by Joseph Hume as reported in The Times* According to the report some remarks by Hume on the miseries of the poor excited laughter on the Treasury Bench, and thereupon Hume, to the accom- paniment of loud approving cheers, picked out Canning from the merry Ministers by severely attacking him for his habitual ridiculing of the sufferings of his fellow-creatures. Unfortunately for the reporter, Canning was not in the House at all when the speech was made, and the speech, as made, contained no such rebuke of the right hon. gentle- man. No man, said Canning, could be more sensible than he was of the expediency of suffering all that passed within the walls of the House to be communicated to the public at large. But there must be no abuse of this newspaper reporting, which took place by the connivance rather than by the permission of the House. He thought the candid 1 Samuel Carter Hall, who was a parliamentary reporter in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, writes : ' A common toast of reporters at social meetings was " Joseph Hume getting up, and George Canning sitting down." The meaning was this : the reporter who had to report the one so abridged his task that a quarter of an hour's subsequent work was all that was required of him, while to have an hour of Canning implied three or four hours' toil at the office.' Retrospect of a Long Life (1883), vol. 1, p. 113, A ' TIMES' REPORTER AT THE BAR 331 mind must admit that the misrepresentation of which he complained was ' so gross and malignant ' as to leave no doubt that it was done deliberately. With these prefatory remarks he proceeded to relate what had occurred. On June 8, Hume made a speech on the subject of public income and expenditure, which was reported in The Times. The hon. gentleman speaking of the economy which should be observed was made to say : * Instead of that, he saw a military mania prevalent that cost the country incalculable sums ; bands, trapped in scarlet and gold, were daily paraded through the streets, as if to mock the squalid poverty of the lower orders.' Here the editor put in a remark of ' laughter from the Ministerial benches.' The report then went on, and the hon. Member was made to say : ' Ministers might laugh, but let them look at the other side of the picture ; let them survey the misery of the poor, industrious wretches at Carlisle ; or even of the unhappy beings they met in our streets, and he believed there would be found but one man among them who would still keep a smile upon his countenance ; and that would be a smile of self -congratulation from a right hon. gentleman (Mr. Canning) that by habitually turning into ridicule the sufferings of his fellow-creatures he had been able to place himself so far above their unhappy condition.' To this was added the words ' Continued cheers ! ' Canning went on to say that as he was not in the House at the time when Hume spoke he sent a friend to the hon. Member with a copy of the newspaper and an inquiry whether he had used the language attributed to him. If Hume had made such a charge against Canning and had stuck to it, Canning would have invited him out to Putney Heath some morning to be shot at, just as Castlereagh and himself had fired loaded pistols at each other, on account of a misunderstanding when they were Members of the same Administration a few years previously. But Hume was able to assure Canning that he had made no such attack upon him, that they were both the victims of a strange case of misreporting. Canning lifted up his voice in righteous disparagement 332 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of the base concocter of this outrageous slander. * That which originated in a source not respectable,' he cried ; ' that which rested on such authority as that of the wretch, whoever he might be, who had penned this paragraph was far below contempt in his estimation.' But he had a duty to discharge to the House. It was on behalf of Members who would rather suffer a misrepresentation in silence than advertise it that he asked the House to take notice of this libel which was all the more infamous because the author of it had made the name of an honourable Member a cover for a slander which he had not himself the courage openly to avow. It was true that in The Times of that morning there was published ' an apology or atonement ' for the misrepresentation to which the attention of the editor had been called by Hume and ascribing the error to human infirmity. The apology, Canning declared, was a greater offence than the misrepresentation. It was impossible to believe that the long and artificially con- structed sentence in which the libel was embodied could have been due to an error or accident. The suggestion conveyed by Canning was that it was maliciously con- cocted by the editor in the newspaper office. But what was most hard for Canning to bear was the implication that he had complacently taken his punishment from Hume. * The report,' said he, * represented him as receiving as sharp a rebuke as could be made, without saying a single word in reply, and depicted him with a smile flickering on his lips whilst bearing a chastisement too severe for any being with the feelings of a man to have borne with tranquillity.' Hume also spoke. He said he had not made the attack he was represented as having made on Canning. His only reference to the right hon. gentleman was an allusion to his absence from the Treasury Bench. ' The report,' he declared, ' was a gross calumny on the character of the right hon. gentleman, and a strange misrepresentation of what he himself had said,' A 'TIMES' REPORTER AT THE BAR 333 The next day the publisher of The Times, C. Bell, appeared at the Bar in answer to the summons of the House. He stated that Hume's speech was supplied by John Payne Collier, a member of the parliamentary staff, and produced the ' copy,' or manuscript of the reporter. Collier was then called in and examined by the Speaker. He expressed the deepest regret for the mistake which was due, he ex- plained, to the difficulty of seeing and hearing from the back row, where the reporters were obliged to sit, and the distraction and confusion arising from the movements and talking of the visitors to the Gallery who had places in front of; them. He went on to make a very curious admission. He said that owing to the number of persons passing and repassing the seat which he occupied it was put out of his power to follow Hume regularly through his speech. ' Anxious to collect what had occurred during the confusion to which I have alluded,' said he, ' I asked a stranger who was placed before me, and from him I received if not the exact words at least the point which I afterwards embodied in my report.' It is hardly possible that he could have got the terms of the attack on Canning which he attributed to Hume from the stranger. Probably what happened was that the stranger told him Hume had made some reference to Canning, and hastily jumping to the conclusion that it was in the nature of a rebuke he evolved that long and winding sentence of condemnation from his own brain, and, greatly daring and indiscreet, put it into the mouth of Hume, the most placid and good-natured of men. However, he was now, naturally, most penitent. As to any intention of misrepresenting what had occurred, he totally disclaimed it. It was the first time, during the ten years he had been engaged in reporting, that any objec- tion had been made to any report which came from his hands. The House, nevertheless, passed an appalling resolution. It denounced the report as ' a scandalous misrepresentation 334 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of the debates and proceedings of the House,' as ' a calum- nious libel on the character of one of its Members,' and as * an aggravated breach of its privileges.' Then arose the question, what was the fitting punishment for the author of all those terrible misdeeds. Wynn, a Member of the Government, moved that Collier be committed to New- gate. It is clear from the discussion that the reporter had made a most favourable impression by his demeanour at the Bar, and the frankness and sincerity of his explanation. Brougham, among others, urged more lenient treatment. Ultimately it was decided to commit Collier to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. After a night in the lock-up he was brought again to the Bar, when he was reprimanded by Mr. Speaker and discharged on paying the usual fees. ' Let not, however, that lenity be misunderstood,' said the Speaker, looking most severely from under his great wig at the reporter facing him at the Bar ; ' let it not be for- gotten that it is alone from the indulgence of this House that there is room for the committal of any such offence, and that the abuse of such indulgence aggravates the offence. Let this be a public warning that the repetition of this offence, after the notice that has been now taken of it, cannot but be considered as wilful, and by whomsoever it may be committed it will assuredly be visited with the utmost rigour and the severest punishment.' The speech of the Speaker was, by order, recorded in the Journals of the House. 1 The Times of June 16, called attention, editorially, to the refutation of Canning's insinuation that the attack upon him had been fabricated in the office. The reporter had come forward and avowed his fault with such candour coupled with such * explanation and palliatives of his error ' as had left a deep impression on the House. ' Indeed,' it says, ' Members of both sides and all parties afterwards 1 Commons Journals, vol. 74, p, 641. Parliamentary Debates, vol. 40, pp. 1,137-1,199. A 'TIMES' REPORTER AT THE BAR 335 united in applauding his conduct, and came forward to render him personally their congratulations upon the pro- priety of his demeanour.' On the next day The Times contemplated, with a shudder, that it would have been ' loaded with the obloquy of the basest forgery,' had it not been for the accident that the reporter's copy had been preserved. ' Happily,' it says, ' the copy was forthcoming ; it was clearly written, and, which was of more consequence still, there was the fair signet of truth and sincerity on the brow of the author who avowed it as his own.' Then there followed the lesson of the whole transaction. ' This should teach men candour, mildness and liberality in judging of the conduct of their fellow-creatures.' The editor of The Times was Thomas Barnes, who had himself been a parliamentary reporter for the paper before his appointment to its editorial chair in 1817 ; and the proprietor was John Walter the second. Henry Crabb Robinson, the journalist and diarist, was a colleague of Collier, and one of his closest friends. He says he was exceedingly alarmed lest this trouble might bring harm to Collier in the office, but to his great satisfaction he found that, on the contrary, Collier had raised himself in Walter's good opinion. For by his gentlemanly behaviour at the Bar he had reflected credit upon the reporters generally, and had completely relieved Walter from the imputation of having altered the report. Two interesting extracts from Robinson's Diary may be given : June 16 I called on Collier in the House of Commons prison ; he was in good spirits. Mrs. Collier was there, and Walter, too, with Barnes. I chatted with Walter about the propriety of petitioning. He wished Collier to be in custody till the end of the Session, but I differed in opinion, and corrected the petition which was ultimately adopted. June 23 I called late on Mrs. John Collier. She informs me that Walter has been doing a very handsome thing by John Collier. He gave him a banknote for 50, saying he need not return the 336 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY surplus after paying the fees, and hoped that it would be some compensation for the inconvenience he had suffered by his imprison- ment. Now, the fees amounted to no more than 14 or 15. This is very generous, certainly. 1 1 Crabb Robinson, Diary, vol. 1, p. 330 (1872 edition). CHAPTER XXXIX Longhand Reporting' was among the first parliamentary reporters who used shorthand. He was born in London in 1789. The father of Collier was a reporter also, associated at different periods with The Morning Chronicle and The Times ; and as he established a system of news-letters to provincial towns he might be described as one of the earliest of that section of journalists known as London Correspon- dents. He was succeeded by his son on the reporting staff of The Times in 1809. In 1821 the son joined The Morning Chronicle, and remained in its service until 1850 when he was appointed secretary to a Royal Commission for the purpose of inquiring into the management of the British Museum. Early in his career the younger Collier reported a series of lectures on Shakespeare which were delivered by Coleridge in London, and the notes of which he afterwards published. In the preface to the book he says : ' My father taught me at an early age the use of abbreviated characters, and I hardly know any species of instruction that in after life has stood me in greater stead.' I have met with a story of a reporter, described as a very experienced shorthand writer, who was employed to take down Coleridge's lectures on Shakespeare, and failed to fulfil his engagement satis- factorily. Coleridge was most difficult to report, for his thoughts were transcendental, or abstrusely speculative, and he clothed them in language appropriately imaginative, aesthetic and subtle. Moreover, he was also rapid in delivery. 337 22 338 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY He once said that in writing he found it far from easy to express his meaning, but that when speaking his most subtle fancies flowed from him without the smallest hitch or impediment. I do not know whether Collier was the unfortunate shorthand writer of the story whose manu- script of Coleridge's lectures was found to be almost wholly unintelligible. But the guileless explanation which this reporter gave for his failure was the unexpectedness of the lecturer's ideas and expressions. He said that with regard to other speakers whom he had reported, however rapid or involved they might be, he had been almost always able to guess the form of the latter part of each sentence by the form of the beginning an experience common enough with all reporters but that the conclusion of every one of Coleridge's sentences was a surprise to him. The excuse, however, is rather inadequate. Probably the reporter was a longhand writer, or else an imperfect shorthand writer. All reporting by persons inadequately equipped for the work must be mainly a process of ingenious guessing. In this case the reporter, owing probably to the unfamiliarity of Coleridge's ideas and language to him, failed completely to conjecture or surmise aright. An expert shorthand writer could have caught with equal ease the ending as well as the commencement of Coleridge's sentences, as they dropped from the lecturer's lips. In the opening decades of the nineteenth century there were still many longhand writers employed in the reporting of the Debates. Shorthand seemed, indeed, to be regarded by them with some contempt. At any rate it was supposed to be more of a hindrance than a help in reporting. There was John Campbell, the famous Lord Chancellor, who as I have already mentioned, began his career as a parlia- mentary reporter for The Morning Chronicle. In his autobiography he indulges in some singular reflections on the subject of reporting. ' I knew nothing, and did not desire to know anything, of shorthand,' he says. ' Short- LONGHAND REPORTING 339 hand writers are wholly incompetent to report a good speech, because they attend to words without entering into the thoughts of the speaker.' He tells us that he acquired such facility and skill in reporting that the best speakers were assigned to him ; and that one of his greatest feats was the writing of six columns of Sheridan in the Session of 1800. His method of working is thus indirectly described by himself : To have a good report of a speech the reporter must thoroughly understand the subject discussed and be qualified to follow the reasoning, to feel the pathos, to relish the wit and to be warmed by the eloquence of the speaker. He must apprehend the whole scope of the speech, as well as attend to the happy phraseology in which the ideas of the speaker are expressed. He should take down notes in abbreviated longhand as he can for aids to his memory. He must then retire to his room, and looking at these recollect the speech as it was delivered, and give it with all the fidelity, point and spirit, as the speaker would write if out if preparing it for the Press. Fidelity is the first and indispensable requisite, but this does not demand an exposure of inaccuracies and repetitions. 1 Indeed it seems to have been the chief aim of the old long-hand writer to reflect in his report the qualities of his own mind much more than the mind of the speaker. That being so, a good deal depended upon the mental gifts of the reporter. The old longhand writers were usually able and highly cultured men, and when condensation was necessary, as in the case of second-rate speakers, they were fit to seize the main points and arguments, and by the process of transmuting them through their accomplished minds, made of them speeches so eloquent and moving that those to whom they were attributed read them in print with mingled wonder and pride. ' Many years ago,' James Grant writes in The Newspaper Press, ' there was Mr. Tyas in the reporting department of The Times who never wrote shorthand but a contracted longhand of his own, yet he was admitted on all hands to be the best reporter in the 1 The Hon. Mrs. Hardcastle, Life of Lord Campbell, vol. 1, pp. 105-7. 340 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Gallery, and, as a proof of that, there was a sort of rivalry among speakers as to who should have him when address- ing the House.' The opinions of the speaker were the essential thing, in the view of these old reporters, and the exact words in which he expressed them were immaterial. That rule is good enough for application in regard to the crude efforts of commonplace speakers. But it is a different matter entirely when the famous master minds of Parlia- ment come to be dealt with Chatham, Burke, Fox, Pitt, Sheridan the brilliant rhetoricians, the original and inde- pendent thinkers, who deemed the Houses of Parliament the proper place for the promulgation of their great ideas and large views. What was required in reporting these speeches was fulness and accuracy, and again fulness and accuracy. For the language of the orator was as equally worth preserving as his opinions. If we had the speeches of these great Parliamentarians reported as they were actually spoken, they would be of immense historical value to us, not only for the proper understanding of their political views, but also of their personal idiosyncrasies, for a man often discloses himself completely in debate. But it is to be feared that under the regime of the longhand reporters who took beauty of expression and grace of form for their first object, and truth and accuracy for their second only these speeches, of great personal as well as of political interest, have come down to us without any assurance whatever except in the case of Burke who wrote his chief efforts that they rightly represent what was said, and still less that they preserve the distinctive individual diction of the orators. It was imperfect reporting, this reporting in what may be called the grand style, and that is saying enough in its condemnation. In Lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors I came by chance upon a story of Lord Loughborough which bears directly upon the point of the relative merits of shorthand LONGHAND REPORTING 341 and longhand reports. On being asked whether, when he was a Member of the House of Commons, 1 he really made a particular speech which the newspapers had ascribed to him, Loughborough replied : ' Why, to be sure, there are many things in that speech which I did say, and there are more I wish I had said.' 2 Evidently the old-fashioned longhand reporters often rendered a service to some Par- liamentarians. But they must have more frequently irritated others. In any case a report prepared by long- hand is really as much the essay of the writer as the speech of the speaker. It may give a good notion of the speaker's argument, but it gives it not so much in the speaker's as in the writer's vocabulary ; and most of it is bound to be not what the speaker actually said, but what the writer thought he said, which may often be an entirely different thing. Still, as I have said, most of the eminent men who reported Parliament for the Press in the early years of the nineteenth century wrote, like Coleridge, a contracted longhand. It has been stated that Thomas Campbell, author of The Pleasures of Hope, was a parliamentary reporter for The Morning Chronicle as well as a contributor of verse to its columns. But James Grant, who worked for The Morning Chronicle in 1833, when there were still in the Reporters' Gallery veterans of the first years of the century, states that Campbell was never mentioned as one who had been of the fraternity. Grant adds that from his slight personal acquaintance with Campbell he could say unhesitatingly that he did not possess the qualifications for the office, and that the statement that the poet had been a parliamentary reporter might be dismissed as without foundation. 3 James Black, the famous editor of The Morning Chronicle, 1 As Alexander Wedderburn he was in the House of Commons at the time of the memorable struggle with the Press in the year 1771. 2 Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. 6, p. 93. The Newspaper Press (1871), vol. 1, pp. 273-4. 342 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY began his connexion with the paper as a parliamentary reporter. He was born at Dunse, Berwickshire, on a farm where his father was employed as a labourer. For a few years he lived in Edinburgh, supporting himself as a clerk, and attended classes at the University. In 1810 he walked all the way to London, relying on the hospitality of farmers, and obtained a post on the parliamentary staff of The Morning Chronicle. He was a longhand writer, and was considered to be very rapid, but his principal merit is said to have consisted in the celerity with which he used to arrive at the office of the paper in the Strand from the House of Commons. After ten years' service in the Gallery, he succeeded Perry as the political director of The Morning Chronicle in 1817. Allan Cunningham, on arriving in London in 1810 at the age of twenty-six got employment on The Day as a par- liamentary reporter. He was not a shorthand writer ; and how he worked he thus describes in a letter to his brother James, dated December 29, 1810 : * I have written a number of speeches for both Lords and Commons. I find it quite easy for I collect notes for one hour from what is said, just, I mean, as the speaker delivers it. This outline I have to return to the newspaper office with, and write out into three columns of debate. These columns will take me from four or five hours, and then I return to my home. Now this is pretty severe work, but I have so many days of leisure to sweeten all this that I enjoy my situation with much satisfaction.' 1 William Hazlitt reported for The Morning Chronicle from 1812 to 1814. A very wise thing was said by him of reporting in those days, when it was but in its swaddling clothes. ' Though the best speeches are the worst reported/ said he, ' the worst are made better than they are, and so both find a convenient newspaper level.' Of himself as a reporter it was said that he gave the speakers credit for delivering better grammar and more sense than they were 1 Kev. D. Hogg, Life of Allan Cunningham, pp. 86-7. LONGHAND REPORTING 343 entitled to, a complaint from which reporters are not entirely free even now. Carew Hazlitt, the grandson of the essayist, says he took notes of a very hurried description in longhand, restricting himself to general heads and salient points of the speeches, and ' very strange specimens of caligraphy ' they were, considering that, as a rule, he wrote a beautifully clear hand. Sometimes he was unable satisfactorily to decipher these notes, but as he had a retentive and accurate memory his grandson doubts whether anything worth preserving was lost. 1 Yet Hazlitt once lost an entire speech through his weak- ness of becoming absorbed in admiration of an intellectual performance when listening to some favourite orator. It fell to him to have to report a speech in support of Catholic Emancipation by William Conyngham Plunket, one of the finest orators Ireland has ever sent to St. Stephen's. So thrilling was the speech that Hazlitt, entirely forgetting he was there not to listen but to report, sat through it all entranced with idle pencil. A reporter needs to combine with his alert mind a cold sensibility. Gerald Griffin, the Irish novelist, author of The Collegians upon which that popular play The Colleen Bawn was founded, was a parliamentary reporter in 1826. In a letter which he sent home, recounting his experiences on the opening night of the Session, he says : ' I have, on the first night I attended the House, had the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech to report ( a deuced cramp piece of work as Tony Lumpkin says) and I understand my report gave high satisfaction. Indeed the proprietor told me I should never again have to give so much matter as I furnished that night, and promised to raise my salary. 5 He was not greatly impressed by the oratory of some of the leaders of the Nation. Writing to his father he says : 1 W. Carew Hazlitt, Memoirs of William Hazlitt (1867), vol. 1, p. 195. 344 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY You would be surprised, I dare say, if you heard some of those folk speak who enjoy so high a reputation for parliamentary elo- quence. There are many whom I supposed persons of extraordinary ability, and I am astounded on seeing them get up in the House to find what absolute blockheads they are. H for instance. He is the most stupid, tiresome, actual ass that ever opened his lips. It is solely to the reporters he is indebted for the straightforward sensible air his speeches assume. But there are other splendid fellows whom it is positively inspiring to listen to. 1 1 Dr. D. Griffin, Life of Gerald Griffin, p. 156. CHAPTER XL Dickens as a Parliamentary Reporter /CHARLES DICKENS is the most famous of parlia- V^>< mentary reporters. It was the calling which he had selected and carefully prepared himself for, before the success of the Sketches by Boz written in his spare time as a journal- ist revealed to him his real career. There is little informa- tion as to this passing but interesting phase of his varied history to be found in the Life by his friend, John Forster, and scant as it is it contains some inaccuracies which most of the writers who have dealt with the novelist have copied. Of his experiences as a parliamentary reporter Dickens himself gives a vivid glimpse in a passage very characteristic of his skill in seizing the humorous associations of any- thing he set himself to describe. It was spoken as president of the annual dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund when, as he said, he ' held a brief for his brothers ' in May, 1865. ' I have worn my knees,' said he, ' by writing on them on the old back row of the old Gallery of the old House of Commons ; and I have worn my feet standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep, kept in wait- ing, say, until the Woolsack might want restuffing.' As we shall see, Dickens though neither he himself nor his biographer mentions it was a witness of that most memor- able event both for politics and the Press, the official estab- lishment of a Reporters' Gallery in each House of Parlia- ment, and had the distinction of being one of its original members. 345 346 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Forster states that John Dickens, the novelist's father, obtained a place on the parliamentary reporting staff of the Morning Herald in 1828. The elder Dickens, in that year, was well advanced in middle age. In 1821 or 1822 he lost his position as clerk in the Navy-Pay Office at Chat- ham, and having brought his family to London and got involved in financial troubles he was, in 1824, confined by his creditors in the Marshalsea, a debtor's prison on the Surrey side of the Thames. Incredible though it may seem, having regard to the weak nature of the man, his age and the harassing circumstances of his life, John Dickens suc- ceeded in obtaining employment as a parliamentary reporter as early as 1823. Samuel Carter Hall says that when he joined The British Press as a parliamentary reporter in 1823 ' the elder Dickens, a gentleman of no great intellectual capacity ' was a member of the corps. 1 Probably John Dickens owed this engagement to his wife's brother, John Henry Barrow, who was a barrister- at-law and parliamentary reporter. In 1828, Barrow started a rival to Hansard, the well-known compilation of the debates of both Houses. This was called the Mirror of Parliament. Its publication was suspended in January, 1837, after a continuous run of nine years, and though it was revived again in November, 1837, it finally collapsed through want of public support in October, 1841. Like Hansard it was mainly compiled from the reports which had already appeared in the London daily newspapers, but extended, in some degree, from notes taken by its own small staff of reporters, with occasionally assistance from Members who supplied manuscripts of their speeches. It was with this enterprise that John Dickens was con- nected towards the end of his life. He was employed by his brother-in-law, not as a parliamentary reporter but as a clerical assistant in the production of The Mirror. 1 Retrospect of a Long Life, vol. 1, pp. 110-11. DICKENS AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 347 At any rate, it was this association of his father with parliamentary reporting that turned the attention of Dickens then a youth employed as a clerk in a solicitor's office to journalism, and made him dream of finding in it the fruition of his hopes and ambitions. The story is told in the autobiographical parts of David Copperfield pub- lished in numbers from May, 1849, to November, 1850 Dickens' greatest novel, and, as he said himself, the favourite child of his heart. Copperfield had heard that many men distinguished in various pursuits had begun life by reporting the Debates in Parliament. He consulted his friend, Tommy Traddles, as to how he should qualify himself for the work. He was told that he must learn shorthand. But it was by no means a case of no sooner said than done. 'A perfect and entire command of the mystery of short- hand writing ' was, he was discouragingly informed, ' about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages.' But David set himself grimly to the task. ' I'll buy a book with a good scheme of this art in it,' said he ; ' I'll work at it at the Commons, where I haven't half enough to do ; I'll take down the speeches in our Court as practice.' Ac- cordingly he bought ' an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography ' which cost him 105. 6d. ' and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me,' he says, 'in a few weeks to the confines of distraction.' The particular form of the art which Dickens learned is not mentioned in David Copperfield nor in the Life by Forster. But it was Gurney's, invented and first published in 1750 by Thomas Gurney, who combined the entirely different avocations of clockmaker, with a shop in the City, and official reporter at the Old Bailey. Thomas was the first of a long line of distinguished shorthand writers, named Gurney. His son, Joseph, also an official reporter, improved the system. For close on twenty years before Dickens selected it as the system he should learn, it had a parliamen- tary sanction, for it was practised by William Brodie Gurney 348 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY grandson of the inventor who in 1813 was appointed by the House of Commons shorthand writer to provide official reports of the evidence given before Committees of the House. William Brodie Gurney brought out in 1824 the fifteenth edition of Gurnets Brachygraphy, which is described as ' an easy and compendious system of shorthand ' ; and it was this issue that Dickens became possessed of on payment of half a guinea. I have seen a copy of the little book, with its portrait of Thomas Gurney and its engraved plates of the strokes, circles, dots and dashes of the system, in the British Museum Library. The troubles of Dickens in mastering the system are humorously described in David Copper field. How ' the changes that were wrung upon dots ' ; * the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles ' ; ' the unaccountable consequences that resulted from marks like flies' legs ' ; ' the tremendous effects of a curve in the wrong place,' perplexed him ! And then the hopelessness of being able to decipher them when he took down passages dictated for the purpose of testing his pro- gress. ' I might as well,' he says, ' have copied the Chinese inscriptions on an immense collection of tea chests, or the golden characters on all the great red and green bottles in the chemist's shops.' Dickens practised the art at Doctors Commons, and in the Law Courts, which he attended as a solicitor's clerk, for nearly two years. The victory then was won. ' I have tamed the savage stenographic mystery,' exclaims David Copperfield. At the same time Dickens was a constant reader at the British Museum with a view to obtaining that varied knowledge without which, as he knew, he could never achieve success as a reporter of the highest class. Forster says that Charles Dickens began his career as a parliamentary reporter in 1831, at the age of nineteen, on an evening paper called The True Sun. As a matter of fact DICKENS AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 349 The True Sun was not started until 1832. It was an offshoot of The Sun, another evening paper which had been founded as an organ of Toryism by William Pitt when he was Prime Minister, but which subsequently came to support the Whigs. The proprietors of it quarrelled, and one of them named Patrick Grant, seceding with part of the capital and some of the staff, established The True Sun, the first number of which appeared on Monday, March 5, 1832. It is strange that Forster should have made this slip, for he was appointed dramatic critic of the paper and thus came to know Dickens. He says there was a threatened strike of the reporters, their spokesman was a young man ' whose keen animation of look would have arrested attention anywhere,' and whose name, Forster learnt, was Charles Dickens. It was the beginning of an intimate and life- long friendship between the two journalists. Therefore, if Dickens began his career as a parliamentary reporter in 1831 he must have been asssociated with some other newspaper, or with his uncle's Mirror of Parliament ; and if he really got his start on The True Sun Forster ante- dates by a year the beginning of his association with the Reporters' Gallery. Parliament was sitting in March, 1832, and was immensely stirring with new ideas, achievement and promise. The House of Commons was in Committee on the third and final Reform Bill which the Lords ultimately passed, knowing that King William had agreed to create additional peers if that were necessary in order to carry the measure through. The first number of The True Sun contained but a very brief account of the proceedings in both Houses on that day, March 5 ; but in the second issue that of the next day this account was extended to nine columns, four being devoted to the Commons and five to the Lords. This procedure was followed throughout the Session. Among the Parliamentarians whose speeches were reported by Dickens there were several whose names will long survive 350 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY in history. Lord John Russell was in charge of the Reform Bill. Lord Althorp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Whig Administration, was Leader of the House, and the Foreign Secretary was the jaunty Palmerston. Sir Robert Peel was Leader of the Opposition, and on the back benches were such men of high ability and strong character as Daniel O'Connell, William Cobbett and Joseph Hume. In the House of Lords was Grey, the Prime Minister. 1 The erratic Brougham was Lord Chancellor, and his chief opponent on the question of Reform was the brilliant Lyndhurst. Wellington was there leading the Tory Opposition ; and in the Ministry was Melbourne, soon to become Prime Minister for a long term of years. In the Session of 1833, Dickens transferred his services from The True Sun to The Mirror of Parliament. The outstanding event of that Session was the fierce and relent- less contest on the floor of the House of Commons between Edward Stanley (afterwards the 14th Earl of Derby and Prime Minister) as Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Daniel O'Connell, the mighty Irish Leader, two of the ablest and most powerful orators that have ever appeared in the par- liamentary arena. So bitter was the personal as well as the political antagonism between the two men that there would have been a duel had not O'Connell, in remorse for having killed a man, foresworn such a mode of settling differences. At that time Ireland was in the turmoil of a peasant uprising against the payment of tithes. Stanley induced the Cabinet reluctantly to agree to the introduction of a Coercion Bill. It was brought in on February 27, 1833, by Althorp who spoke of it in so tepid and half-hearted a manner that it seemed destined to a speedy end. A few 1 Dickens, as a reporter, disliked Lord Grey and his style of speaking. ' The shape of his head (I see it now) was misery to me and weighed down my youth,' he wrote thirty years afterwards. DICKENS AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 351 hours later Stanley got up and drew so terrible a picture of the state of things in Ireland, for which he held O'Connell responsible, that he completely turned the indifference of the House into a determination to carry the Bill. Lord John Russell in his Recollections describes it as one of the greatest triumphs ever won in a popular Assembly by the powers of oratory. In order to provide a full and accurate report of this speech for the Mirror of Parliament, Stanley, at the editor's invitation, agreed to dictate it to one of the reporters, a few days afterwards, and Barrow entrusted the task to his young nephew. The story is told that when thirty- seven years later Dickens attended a breakfast given by Gladstone, as Prime Minister, in Carlton House Terrace a month or two before the death of the novelist he found the aspect of the dining-room curiously familiar, and casting his mind back recalled that it was the very place in which he took down the speech at Stanley's dic- tation. It will be found fully set out in the first of the four heavy 7 folio volumes of The Mirror of Parliament devoted to the Session of 1833. The editor boasts that in some instances entire speeches on important subjects, ' either omitted altogether from, or strangely mutilated in, the public jour- nals ' were faithfully preserved. No doubt he had the speech of Stanley in his mind. He also records with pride, as a compliment to the excellence of his reports, that during the Session The Mirror was quoted in debate, as an autho- rity, no less than five times in the House of Lords and twenty-seven times in the House of Commons. There are some curious discrepancies in the reports of the speech. By way of illustration let us take the perora- tion, or concluding sentences, which, in the case of a speech of similar importance delivered in Parliament to-day, would be reported in all the morning papers in absolutely identical terms. 352 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Here, for instance, are the versions of the concluding sentences of the speech which appeared in two of the lead- ing London papers : The Times. The object the Government had in view in framing, this enactment was the protection of Constitutional right, of legal privilege, of property nay, of life itself against the effects of a system of lawless violence and outrage. In effecting that object they would respect Con- stitutional rights, and guard their exercise ; and if in so doing they were compelled to sanction an infringement, for a little time, upon the law, it would be preferable to allowing the law to be abused and trampled under foot, as it must be unless the authority of Par- liament interfered to rescue Ireland from its present state of anarchy and tyranny, The Morning Post. He called upon them, in the name of all they valued, to infringe for a time, the prin- ciples of the Constitution, to allow some inroad upon the laws, for the purpose of applying a remedy to a state of things in which there was no security for life and property, and in which, if suffered long to continue, liberty, property, Constitution, law and justice must be swal- lowed in one undistinguishing ruin. The spirit of the sentiments attributed to Stanley by both newspapers is the same ; but the form in which the sentiments are expressed is so different in each case that the speeches might well have been delivered by two men of the same way of thinking. The versions of the speeches preserved in the Parliamentary Debates, or Hansard, and in The Mirror of Parliament, varying considerably as they do, make still more curious this strange exhibition of dis- crepancies in reporting. The report embodied in Hansard was lifted bodily from The Morning Chronicle. That in The Mirror was, of course, Stanley's own version as dic- tated to Dickens. DICKENS AS A PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER 353 Hansard. He called on them by their vote that night to sanction the declaration that they would rather infringe for a time upon the laws, than suffer all liberty, all laws, all Constitutional rights, all security for life and property to be absorbed as it must be unless Parliament interfered in one wide gulf of ruin and tyranny. Mirror of Parliament. I now call upon you, in the name of liberty, as you wish to see Constitutional freedom, the rights of property, life itself, protected against this system of violence and praedial outrage ; I call upon you, as you respect Constitutional rights, to guard their exercise from those who put on the mask of liberty the more safely to attack them, who use those associations to check every germ of public opinion ; I call upon you to sanction by your vote this night, the doctrine that you would rather infringe for a time the laws of the Con- stitution than suffer these laws altogether, with all Constitu- tional rights, to be absorbed as they must be unless Parliament interferes in one indistinguish- able ruin of tyranny. The discrepancies in these reports were probably due in a large measure to the difficulty of hearing in the remote back bench of the Strangers' Gallery where the voices of Members were often almost inaudible. The report of a debate given in The Times for May 27, 1834, is interlarded with the following remarks which strikingly show how trying must have been the task of the bothered reporters in obtaining anything like an accurate account of the proceedings : A discussion of some length took place on this amendment, but of so confused and desultory a nature that we cannot pretend to report upon it with any degree of accuracy. In reference to an observation by Mr. Roebuck which did not reach us. Lord Althorp made a reply of some length of which we only heard the following sentence. A long, desultory conversation which was wholly inaudible in the Gallery here ensued. 23 354 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY A long conversation followed which was not intelligible in the Gallery. After a short discussion, the purport of which it was impossible to collect. Such we understand to be the purport of the noble Lord's remarks which were very indistinctly heard in the Gallery. Dickens, the imaginative and sensitive, had other troubles as a reporter. O'Connell made some powerful speeches during the progress of the Coercion Bill through the House of Commons. One of them had a disturbing effect on Dickens. He used to relate that he was compelled to lay down his pencil so moved was he by the pathos of the orator's descriptions of a widow seeking her only son among the peasants killed by the military in a tithe riot, and of a young girl shot, on another occasion, while leading her blind grandfather along a country lane. CHAPTER XLI The First Reporters' Galleries /CHARLES DICKENS, as I have already said, saw the \^A establishment of the Reporters' Gallery, the effect of which upon the Constitutional development of the king- dom has been most profound. The Peers preceded the Commons by three years in recog- nizing that a Reporters' Gallery had become an essential adjunct of their Chamber. As we have seen, at the opening of the nineteenth century the reporters were permitted to stand with other strangers below the Bar of the House of Lords, and listen to the Debates. In time the taking of notes was allowed provided it was done furtively, or with some pretence of concealment. One evening Lord Chan- cellor Eldon came down to the Bar to receive from Mr. Speaker a message from the Commons, and with the expan- sive sleeve of his flowing gown knocked the note-book from the hand of a too forward and indiscreet reporter. For a moment the panic-stricken attendants were fearful of dis- missal for not having kept the reporter in his proper place. The journalists were convinced it was their last appearance at the Bar. But an amazing thing happened. The mighty Lord High Chancellor, in his wig and gown, before that assembly of Lords and Commons, actually stooped and picked up the note-book, and with a smile and a word of apology handed it to the reporter ! Was there ever such a totally unexpected and astonishing scene since Charles the Fifth picked up Titian's brush for him ! From that evening all the ridiculous make-belief that no notes were 355 356 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY being taken of the proceedings was at an end. Peter Finnerty might have flourished his note-book as ostenta- tiously as he pleased at the Bar of the Louse of Lords, without running the risk of having to send an attendant to perdition. During the debates in the House of Lords on the Catholic Emancipation Bill of 1828 so great were the crowds of strangers that a portion of the space below the Bar was railed off and allotted to the exclusive use of the reporters. Dickens took notes there in 1831. A still more memorable event occurred in that same year. On the ever to be remembered October 15, 1831, the Lords took the sensible, yet porten- tous, action of providing a Gallery for the reporters. It arose out of the discussions of the second Reform Bill. This measure, having passed through the House of Commons, was brought to the Lords on September 21, 1831. It was thrown out, on the motion for the second reading, on Octo- ber 7, 1831. Parliament was dissolved soon afterwards. But before the Dissolution the Lords referred to a Com- mittee the question of what additional accommodation for strangers could be provided in their Chamber, in view of the intense public interest that was being taken in their proceedings. The Committee reported on October 15, 1831. They recommended that a Gallery for strangers should be erected at the end of the Chamber, beyond the Bar, and over the principal entrance, and the Lords agreed to it unanimously. Not a word was said about the Press either in the report of the Committee, or in the discussion upon it. But it was understood, all the same, that special and separate accommodation for the reporters was to be provided in the Gallery. The officials were to see that the thing was done without their Lordships being asked to stultify themselves and be made to look foolish by formally sanctioning it. They pretended still to adhere to their Standing Order against publication, still to be blind to the changed political conditions, still to be impervious to the THE FIRST REPORTERS' GALLERIES 357 new ideas as regards the Press ; but, nevertheless, by implication, if not directly, they thus unsaid all the past fulminations of their House against the reporting of their proceedings. It is rarely that Hansard contains a note by way of comment or explanation. But the compilers, deeply concerned, as they were, with parliamentary report- ing, properly thought it right to call public attention to the true import of the Lords' decision. In a note following their report of the proceedings on October 15, 1831, they say: 'The erection of this Gallery is an epoch in the history of the House of Lords. In it, by their Lordships' approbation, was pro- vided accommodation for the reporters of the Public Press, though according to their Lordships' Standing Order it still remains a breach of their privilege to report their Debates.' 1 The Gallery was first used at the opening of the new Parliament on December 6, 1831. The entire of the front bench was appropriated exclusively to the reporters. It does not seem much of a concession, at this distance of time. The reporters of the period regarded it as a great boon. Dickens and his colleagues had need no longer to huddle together at the Bar as if like sheep kept in waiting until the Woolsack might want restuffing. But in a few years still greater things were recorded. The Houses of Parliament were burnt down on October 16 1834. The Legislature assembled in temporary buildings in February, 1835. The bare walls of the House of Lords and of the Painted Chamber had escaped destruction. The first was fitted up for the Commons and the other for the Peers. In both Chambers special arrangements were made for the reporters. They had the exclusive use of the front seats in the Strangers' Gallery of the Lords as before the fire, with, however, better facilities to come and go and, in addition, a broad writing-board, or desk, was put up in front of the seats for their use. In the House 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 8, pp. 812-13, 358 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of Commons they were provided with a Gallery all to them- selves. This Gallery was put up immediately behind the Speakers' Chair ; and by reason of its position the reporters had the great additional advantage in the discharge of their duties that the various Members addressing the House turned their faces to them and not, as hitherto, their backs. There was also a small room behind the Gallery where they could await their turns and transcribe their notes. 1 The day the first Reporters' Gallery of the House of Commons was first used should be for ever famous in the history of those two democratic institutions, the Parliament and the Press. It was February 19, 1835. On that day Parliament met for a new Session in its new Chambers. So great was the crowd attracted to the House of Commons that the Gallery appropriated to strangers was filled up a few minutes after the opening of the doors. ' We regret to say that some of the reflux from that Gallery found their way to that which was intended exclusively for the Press, to the great annoyance and inconvenience of the reporters,' complains The Times of the following day. No blame was attributed to the officials of the House. 'They did their best to render the accommodation pre- pared for the Press available,' says The Times ; ' but on the first day of a Session, they could not know, in every instance, who were reporters and who were not ; and of this many strangers availed themselves by passing them- selves in as reporters.' The newspaper took it for granted that the recurrence of this inconvenience would be pre- vented. It is evident that the system of issuing tickets of admission to the Reporters' Gallery had not yet come into operation. Dickens spent another Session, that of 1834, on The Mirror of Parliament. In the following year he joined the staff of the famous Whig newspaper The Morning Chronicle, then in its best days under the editorship of John * The Times, February 4, 1835, THE FIRST REPORTERS' GALLERIES 359 Black, and had a salary of five guineas a week. He was in his twenty-third year, the handsome and romantic youth with flowing locks of Maclise's charming portrait. Dickens had the reputation of being one of the fastest notetakers of the time. ' No more talented reporter then occupied a seat in the Gallery,' says James Grant, of The Morning Chronicle. ' And let me here remark,' Grant goes on to say, ' that literary abilities of a high order with reporting capacity of a superior kind are seldom found in conjunction- They were so in the case of Mr. Dickens in a measure which I venture to say they never were before in any other man since parliamentary reporting was known.' l Grant was a Scotsman, born at Elgin, Morayshire, in 1802, and coming to London in 1833 got employment as a reporter of the debates in Parliament. From 1850 to 1870 he was editor of The Morning Advertiser, and it was on his retire- ment from active journalism that he wrote The Newspaper Press in two volumes. It is not very trustworthy as a history of the Press, but it contains some interesting and valuable reminiscences by Grant as a parliamentary reporter. He also wrote Random Recollections of the Lords and Com- mons. The reporters of The Morning Chronicle, like those of the other London papers, took, in succession, ' turns ' three- quarters of an hour long. When each reporter was relieved by his successor he went to the newspaper office in the Strand to transcribe his notes, and was back again in his place in the Reporters' Gallery by the time his next turn was due. Grant relates his own personal experiences during a great debate which lasted a whole week. He had the first turn each night of that week. On being relieved in three-quarters of an hour he walked to The Morning Chroni- cle office, which stood opposite Somerset House. * It took me,' he says, ' more than three hours to write out in the pffice the notes I had taken in the House, and just as I * The Newspaper Press, vol. 1, p. 298, 360 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY had completed that duty I was what is called " due " for my second turn. I had consequently to trudge down again to the House to resume for another three-quarters of an hour my speech-taking duties, and that part of my labour done I had to return to the office of the paper to write out in a state fit for the compositors to read the notes which I had taken in the House which nobody but myself could read, and, to say the truth, which I could hardly read myself.' The transcription of his second turn occupied him, he says till five o'clock in the morning twelve hours after he had begun his night's work and before he could get home to bed it was close on six o'clock. 'And this state of things,' he writes, ' lasted for five consecutive days, at the end of which time my exhaustion was so complete that I felt I must have sunk under it had there been a sixth day.' x Grant says he had seen it affirmed that Dickens, as a parliamentary reporter, had been known to write a column and a half of a speech in an hour. He felt sure that Dickens himself had never said anything of the kind. ' I venture to affirm,' he adds, and all reporters will agree with him, 'that such a feat of swift penmanship was never accom- plished either by Mr. Dickens or by any one else. I might go further and say that in the existing mode of penmanship it never will. The thing is a mechanical impossibility.' Grant further states that Dickens was exceedingly reserved in manners and formed no intimacies with the other reporters. This detachment is hardly credible. Dickens was never either excessively shy or given to solitary habits. He always kept in close contact with his fellow- men and the world, and even in the days of his success was approachable, simple and pleasant. But his thoughts were now decisively turning from newspaper reporting to creative literature. He had in fact published Sketches by Boz ; and in the year 1836, when, 1 The Newspaper Press, vol. 2, pp. 182-3. THE FIRST REPORTERS' GALLERIES 361 at the close of the Session, his labours as a parliamentary reporter came to an end, he was engaged in writing the immortal Pickwick. But the first of his sketches was entitled ' A Dinner at Poplar Walk,' and appeared in The Monthly Magazine for December, 1833. Forster relates how the young author bought a copy of the magazine at a shop in the Strand ; and going on to Westminster turned into the Hall to read his first imaginative contribution in print with eyes dimmed by joy and pride. There we may appropriately leave the most famous of parliamentary reporters. Westminster Hall has many great historic associations. Not the least enduring and moving is the spectacle of Dickens reading there the first of the creations of his teeming fancy. CHAPTER XLII Daniel O'Connell and the Reporters ONE of the most curious and amusing episodes in the history of the Gallery is the quarrel between Daniel O'Connell and the reporters. Accustomed as he had been for many years to full first-person reports in Ireland, O'Con- nell was sorely mortified on finding that the London news- papers gave only summarized reports in the third-person of his speeches in the House of Commons. Yet it seems to me, after an examination of the leading London news- papers of the period, that O'Connell was among the twelve best reported Members of Parliament, at least with respect to the amount of space given to their speeches. That, of course, was simply the due of a man of O'ConnelPs emi- nence, as the representative of six millions of the Irish people, and his extraordinary powers as an orator. But he was dissatisfied with the reports ; and a common com- plaint in his correspondence with friends is ' My speech last night was burked.' He meant that it was deliberately suppressed ; for he was not free of the delusion, so common among public men at the time, that the reporters were but the party instruments of the politics of their papers, and that not only did they report well or badly, according as the speeches reflected their own political outlook, but that they often maliciously perverted the utterances of political opponents in order to make them ridiculous. A comic instance to the point occurred on September 12, 1831, when Colonel Sibthorp, a well-known eccentric Member of the period, made a complaint against The Times 363 DANIEL O'CONNELL AND THE REPORTERS 363 of having given a totally false version of a speech he made against the Reform Bill, by interspersing it with such expressions of derision as * a laugh ' ; ' laughter ' ; * con- tinued laughter ' ; ' bursts of laughter ' ; ' oh, oh ' ; ' ques- tion, question ' and ' order, order,' which he asserted, the House had never used. The report began by saying, ' Colonel Sib thorp rose with violent agitation, and declared that he had opposed the Bill fairly and fearlessly.' It then proceeded : He could tell them that their labours were only commenced (laughter). He did not understand being treated with contempt (continued laughter). He would tell those who laughed at him either in the House or out of the House, that he would support his opinions and vindicate himself to the last hour he had to breathe (laughter, and cries of 'hear, hear'). He regretted that the Bill had passed so soon (bursts of laughter). The Bill had passed too speedily ( ' question, question ' ). If his opponents were tired he would not give up ( ' order, order ' ). He would never give in (laughter). He was never yet put down in the House and never would be (laughter). He was never put down out of the House, and he defied the hon. members opposite, who were laughing at him, to put him down ('oh, oh,' and laughter). Commenting on this report, Colonel Sibthorp said it was apparent that the object of The Times was to vilify him and degrade the House in the eyes of the public, and he concluded by moving that the printer and publisher be called to the Bar. Very little sympathy was given by the House to the hon. and gallant Member. It would turn Parliament to ridicule, Joseph Hume thought, if the editor of a news- paper was brought to the Bar for having inserted ' laughter ' in the report of a Member's speech. ' The House could never, consistently with its own dignity,' said O'Connell, ' summon a man to appear at the Bar, except on some affair of impor- tance and solemnity. No one could say that the question whether the reporter had, or had not, put too many ' laughs ' into his account of the gentleman's speech was a matter either important or solemn.' Lord Althorp, the Leader of the House, agreed with O'Connell. He said he was 364 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY present when the speech was delivered, and he was sure there had not been that excessive laughter which the report represented. But exaggeration of that kind did not warrant the House to enter into a contest with the Press. ' In his time/ he said, ' he had seen several newspaper publishers called to the Bar for breach of privilege, and the more he witnessed the effects of such actions the more he was con- vinced of their inexpediency, and consequently the more he was disposed to avoid their recurrence.' One Member, George Sinclair, declared that the report was verbatim et literatim correct. Col. Sibthorp's motion was rejected by 73 votes to 7. Occasionally, when O'Connell intended to speak on an Irish subject, he engaged a reporter to supply a report to the Dublin journals. In a note from his friend, Jeremy Bentham, dated June 23, 1830, announcing that Sir Francis Burdett had agreed to present a petition to the House of Commons in support of the codification of the laws, the old philosopher added : ' One reason why he should move rather than you is that, besides his being more in favour with honourable corruptionists than you, and thus standing a better chance of obtaining a hearing for so unusual an address, he is more in the favour of the reporters lately, with so much propriety, yclept the fourth estate. However, if what I hear just now is true, you have in pay a reporter of your own ; still, the only reservoirs into which that pump will inject your speeches are the Irish newspapers.' In the debate on a motion by Thomas Sadler on June 19, 1832, in favour of the introduction of the Poor Law system into Ireland, O'Connell made an important speech which illustrates his Conservatism by showing how opposed he was to social innovations as distinct from political. l If my ambition,' said he, ' was simply mob popularity a motive which has been too often ascribed to me I should pursue a different course from that which I now adopt. Throughout my political life I have only supported such DANIEL O'CONNELL AND THE REPORTERS 365 measures as I conceived would benefit my country ; and it is because I am persuaded that the Poor Laws would have a contrary effect that I oppose their introduction.' The principle upon which the Poor Laws were founded was, he contended, c that the people ought to rely upon the pockets of their more wealthy neighbours instead of upon their own exertions,' and to that he could never subscribe. ' Institutions for the relief of the sick and the suffering are,' he continued, ' very different in their nature from Poor Laws, and do not hold out discouragement to industry. For instance, no man will voluntarily break his leg or incur a fever for the gratification of getting into an hospital. To this extent, and under these circumstances, I admit that the poor are entitled to relief ; but I deny that the right goes one whit farther.' The report of this speech which appeared in The Times the next day was regarded by O'Connell as an inaccurate representation of the opinions he had expressed. He brought the matter under the notice of the House of Commons that evening, June 20, 1832, as a breach of privilege. ' During the last thirty years,' he said, ' more calumnies have been poured out against me than were ever uttered against any one before, and I do not feel myself one bit the worse. But while I can bear that others should calumniate me, I think it is going too far to make me tell a lie of myself, and traduce myself, as I appear to do in The Times this morning.' Henry Hunt, who had followed O'Connell in the debate on the Poor Law and was reported in The Times as having attacked O'Connell for inconsistency, also repu- diated the expressions put into his mouth. ' This was not to be attributed to the editor of the paper,' he said ; * but to the reporter for the hour, because afterwards, at a later period of the night, in the speech which he made on the subject of flogging in the Army, he must say that he was very fairly reported.' x 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, voL 13, pp. 906-9, 366 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY O'Connell did not press the matter further in the House of Commons. But he addressed a letter of complaint to The Times. The editor, in reply, declared that his indigna- tion exceeded even Mr. O'Connell's at the ' gross misrepre- sentation ' with which his reporter was charged. * There are,' he said, ' certainly many points on which you and the conductors of The Times hold very different opinions, but this very circumstance makes me particularly and sensitively anxious that every word which falls from you should be reported with the most scrupulous precision, and I should treat any attempt to distort the expression of your opinions as an act of intolerable baseness.' He added that unless Mr. Nugent, the reporter, was able to explain the mis-statements in the report to O'Connell's satisfaction, his connexion with The Times should cease. Mr. E. Nugent, who was not only a man of some literary distinction, but an Irishman and a Roman Catholic, accord- ingly waited upon O'Connell. Of what happened exactly at this interview there is no authoritative evidence ; for when the fact that it took place was publicly disclosed about thirteen months later at the same time that O'Con- nell's correspondence with the editor of The Times was published absolutely contradictory versions of it were given, as we shall see, by the Irish leader and the Irish reporter. There is one humorous account, which used to be told by O'Connell himself. According to it, Nugent ascribed the errors in his report to the difficulty of hearing in the Gallery. He added that it also unfortunately hap- pened that during his walk from the House of Commons to the office to write out the report, the rain, which was falling heavily at the time, streamed into the pocket containing the note-book, and obliterated some of the shorthand characters. * Well,' said O'Connell good-humouredly, ' that was the most extraordinary shower of rain I ever heard of, for it not only washed out the speech I made from your note-book, but washed in another and an entirely DANIEL O'CONNELL AND THE REPORTERS 367 different one.' 1 However, he was perfectly satisfied that his charge of deliberate misrepresentation was unfounded, and on June 22, in the House of Commons, he withdrew it, tendered his apology to the conductors of The Times, and laid the blame for the inaccuracies upon the totally inade- quate accommodation for reporters in the House. 2 The Times of June 23, 1832, editorially acknowledged that O'Connell had * in very handsome and generous terms ' exonerated their reporter of any intention to misrepresent his speech. They went on to say : We are glad of this for the sake of the reporter whose character for integrity was involved in the charge. We exert the greatest care to secure the assistance of able and honourable men to report the proceedings in Parliament ; and there is scarcely a gentleman on our establishment who is not by education and habits the equal of any Member whose opinions he is engaged to record. Our con- fidence, therefore, in their accuracy is all but implicit ; but we always attend to complaints by Members of Parliament, and investi- gate them with more labour and anxiety than even the most lynx- sighted of our enemies would exercise. Thus amicably ended O'Connell's first encounter with the parliamentary reporters. The next engagement was of a more serious character. O'Connell was still dissatisfied with the amount of space given to him in the newspapers. On July 5, 1833, he wrote to a friend : * The reporting in the newspapers is scandalous. I made a speech last night which was more cheered than any, I believe, I ever made. The report is in a few insignifi- cant lines.' 3 At this time the Bill for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies was before the House of Commons. O'Connell made many brilliant speeches in support of the measure, and he was vexed that no adequate record as he conceived it of his services in the abolition of slavery, 1 Michael MacDonagh, The Life of Daniel O'Connell (1903), p. 278. 2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 13, pp. 951-2. 8 W. J. FitzPatrick, Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell, vol. 1, p, 372, 368 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of which he was particularly proud, was provided by the Press. Accordingly, at a meeting of Radicals held in July, 1833, for the purpose of promoting a memorial to John Cartwright, ' the Father of Parliamentary Reform,' he made the following characteristically vehement and exagger- ated onslaught on the Press : But why did he talk of newspapers ? It was all vain for the public to expect from newspapers, as they were then constituted and managed, anything like honesty. No ; they would have nothing but the distillation of individual malignity and the con- centration of private hate through those foul mediums. What did the newspapers do but evil ? People might talk of them as they liked ; but he maintained that, constituted and managed as they were, they did nothing but evil. Such atrocious proceedings on the part of the newspaper press were unparalleled. It was in vain to think that they would grow better. The Times, the mighty Times, had during all that period the worst reports of the Parlia- mentary proceedings the very worst, because they were designedly bad. The Chronicle once the friend of the people, now how fallen had them equally bad, because with the same intentions. But both were in the hands of Ministers, and that fully explained the matter. Complaints were made daily and hourly by members of Parliament of the infamous reports of their sentiments which appeared in the morning papers private complaints, he admitted. Perhaps members had their own reasons for not making them public, but he had none. He knew well that there was no enemy more feared by a public man than a newspaper ; but he was not afraid of them at all, he defied their utmost power and ingenuity. That was going very far, but far as it was O'Connell did not stop there. He was probably egged on by other Mem- bers of Parliament who also felt their sense of their dignity outraged by the brief reports of their speeches in the Press, for on July 25, 1833, he called the attention of the House of Commons 'to a matter which he considered of great importance the manner in which the proceedings of the House were reported in the public prints.' He particularly complained of The Morning Chronicle and The Times, and moved, as a beginning, that the printer of the former newspaper be brought to the Bar for a breach of privilege in publishing the Debates of the House. The most charit- DANIEL O'CONNELL AND THE REPORTERS 369 able view which he said he could take of the inferiority of the reports was that only incapable men would accept the low wages paid for the work. But there might also be the motive of political animus. ' Of all the morning papers,' said he, f The Morning Post was the one in which he observed the greatest impartiality and care, a circumstance which probably arose from the reporters being generally Scotch- men.' 1 The motion was seconded by one of O'ConnelPs followers, named O'Dwyer, who had himself been a parliamentary reporter. Lord John Russell opposed the motion on behalf of the Whig Government, then in office. He pointed out the dilemma in which the House would be landed if they were to agree to the motion. e Supposing,' said he, ' the proprietors or the editors of those newspapers attended at the Bar and promised that in future the speeches of the hon. Members should be fairly reported, was the House to dismiss them after a declaration made by them that they would commit a breach of privilege ? ' O'Connell withdrew his motion, but threatened to bring it on again if the reporters did not mend their manners. 2 1 After this statement, in the report which appeared in The Morning Post the next day, the following editorial comment was inserted : ' (The general accuracy of the hon. and learned gentleman's charges against the reporters and reports may be judged of by the fact that there is not one Scotchman connected with the reporting department of this Journal).' 2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 18, pp. 1,242-52. 24 CHAPTER XLIII Clearing the Reporters' Gallery NO more serious or damaging accusation could be brought against the reporters than that they by design and set purpose misreported speeches. The charge was as unfounded as it was unjust, though, of course, it was not made by O'Connell knowing it to be false. The reporters indignantly resented the gross reflection upon their professional honour ; and in The Times of July 26, 1833, the following declaration, signed by its parliamentary staff appeared : Without any wish to prejudice the interests of the establishment with which many of us have been long connected, and to which all of us are sincerely attached, we have deliberately resolved not to report any speech of Mr. O'ConnelPs until he shall have retracted, as publicly as he made, the calumnious assertion that our reports are * designedly false.' We are ready and willing to take upon ourselves personally all the consequences with which the House of Commons may think fit to visit this our determination. Respect for our own characters has dictated this resolution, and, be the consequences to us what they may, we will abide by it. We beg, as an act of justice to us, that you will publish this our declaration. The Times' reporters were supported by the reporters of The Morning Chronicle in which, on July 27, a letter in these terms was published : We, the Parliamentary reporters of The Morning Chronicle, feel it due to our honour and character thus publicly to repel, as far as we are concerned, with the utmost scorn and indignation, the false and calumnious charges which have been brought by Mr. O'Connell against the reporters of the proceedings in Parliament. The decision of the reporters not to report a Member of 370 CLEARING THE REPORTERS' GALLERY 371 Parliament who had offended them was, we know, not unprecedented. During the discussion on O'Connell's motion on July 25, 1833, Lord John Russell said : * He recollected that his noble and learned friend, the present Lord Chancellor (Lord Brougham) having, when a Member of that House, let fall some expressions not personally agreeable to the reporters, the punishment inflicted upon him was the entire suppression of his speeches on questions of law and foreign and domestic policy.' On the evening of the day that the reporters of The Times proclaimed a boycott, the subject of it, O'Connell, again brought up the question of the newspaper reports in the House of Commons. He moved that the proprietor and printer of The Times be brought to the Bar to answer for an infringement of the privileges of the House. Joseph Hume seconded the motion. The Irish Repealers and the British Radicals supported his proposal that to ensure fulness and accuracy in the record of the proceedings a staff of reporters should be employed by the House and sworn faithfully to discharge their trust. But Members generally testified to the adequacy, fairness, and impar- tiality of the newspaper reports. I do not hesitate to say,' declared Sir Robert Peel, ' that in my opinion a verbal report of our speeches would not raise the character of this House.' The Leader of the Opposition added : ' To speak of so humble an individual as myself, I should exceedingly deprecate any verbal report of what might fall from me.' * The motion was agreed to. But on July 29, the day that the proprietor and printer of The Times were summoned to appear at the Bar, it was moved that the order be dis- charged. Sir Robert Peel made a most interesting speech in vindication of the reporters. He had been twenty years in Parliament, and he had never had reason to complain of any wilful misrepresentation or any omission amounting to a misrepresentation ; and in his opinion the duty of 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 20, pp. 6-13, 372 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY supplying the public with an account of the proceedings of Parliament was performed with great impartiality and fidelity. He went on to say : He would mention another circumstance. He had been in office fifteen years, and he had never received any communication, directly or indirectly, from any gentleman connected with the newspapers and he thought it highly creditable to that body asking for a single favour, on condition of placing his speeches in a favourable light. Whatever testimony, therefore, he bore to their conduct had this recommendation that it was completely impartial. He further said he understood that there were forty or fifty reporters attending the Gallery, ' some of them holding commissions in the Army and Navy, several at the Bar, most of them having received an academical edu- cation and occupying, therefore, the situation of gentlemen,' and naturally they felt sore at the imputation of ' designed and deliberate falsehood.' He then proceeded : At the same time he could not think that any wrong they might endure from the hon. and learned Member could justify them in suppressing his speeches. They were, though not officially or publicly recognized as such, yet they were in fact, public servants. They entered into an implied engagement of fidelity in their reports, not only with that House but with the public, and whatever wrong they might have reason to complain of from an individual Member they ought to recollect that they had a paramount duty to discharge to that House and the public, and ought not to make a private quarrel with any individual a pretext for the neglect of that duty. Lord Althorp, the Leader of the House, appealed to O'Connell to withdraw his motion. ' The hon. and learned gentleman,' he said, ' would have consulted much better his own situation and his rank in society by not entering into such a contest.' These compliments failed to appease O'Connell. He pressed his motion to a division, and got well beaten. It was lost by 153 votes to 48, or the large majority of 105. 1 O'Connell revived the story of his interview with Nugent, The Times reporter, in 1832 ; and thus described what 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 20, pp. 67-95. CLEARING THE REPORTERS' GALLERY 373 occurred. ' Well,' I said, ' what have you to say for your, self ? Were either of those speeches ever made ? ' He said, ' I am bound to say they were not ; I cannot deny it.' ' What excuse have you ? ' I inquired. c Sir,' said he, ' there was a great noise in the Gallery at the time you were speaking.' O'Connell added that Nugent threw him- self on his mercy, pleading that he had no other means of subsistence but as a reporter. * I said at once, " I forgive you, and I will do what I can to get you off." On July 29, 1833, The Times published a letter, a column and a half long, which Nugent addressed to the Members of the House of Commons, in refutation of O'Connell's account of the interview. He began : c I will not con- descend to notice the " massa " tone, expressive of the arrogant disposition of the man, and his long habits of power, nor the " sirs " with which this statement is art- fully studded, in order to convey the impression that I was some menial-minded houndling that felt awed by the presence of a Member of Parliament.' * Bring me to your Bar,' he cried in a fine rage ' and judge for yourself if mine is a cringing temperament ! Cringe to mortal man ! Cringe to Mr. O'Connell, of all men ! Cringe ! I know not what it means.' Why, at the very time he was represented as meanly having thrown himself on the mercy of O'Connell and begged for his bread, he was a contributor to two periodicals, and was writing a volume for Lardner's Cyclo- paedia. So far from throwing himself on O'Connell's mercy, he set the man at defiance, and maintained that his report was correct. And to prove that he had no animus whatever against O'Connell he mentioned that during that very Session he reported a speech of O'Connell on the Irish Coercion Bill, to the extent of eight columns in The Times. ' Does he remember that on that occasion, on giving me some documents important to the illustration of his speech, he warmly clasped my hand in his most impressive manner, told me all angry recollections con- 374 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY nected with the transaction of the preceding year had long since been dismissed from his mind, that he was con- vinced I was a gentleman of high feelings who would be incapable of wilfully misrepresenting him ? ' Nugent went on to relate an interesting incident by way of showing his own feelings towards O'Connell. In the course of the debate on the Irish Coercion Bill, Bulwer designated O'Con- nell as ' a man whom the wrongs of his country had made the first orator of modern times.' It chanced that Nugent looked over the speech of which Bulwer had supplied the manuscript, and noticing that this compliment was omitted he got his colleague, who was responsible for the report, to insert it. But the reporters had not taken into account in their reckoning the determination and adroitness of O'Connell, and his power over them as a Member of Parliament. He had spoken several times, while the question of privilege was under consideration, and was not reported. ' Well,' said he, ' if The Times does not report me, it shall not report anybody else ; that is flat.' Under the Standing Order of the House it was still in the power of any Member to have the galleries cleared by simply saying to the Speaker, ' I spy strangers.' Immediately after the result of the division on the night of July 29 was announced, O'Connell rose, and called the Speaker's attention to the fact that there were strangers present. The galleries were instantly cleared, and no report appeared in the newspapers next day of the subsequent proceedings in the House. The reporters now saw that they had made a tactical mistake. O'Connell had made it clear that, night after night, he would have them excluded from the House until they removed the ban they had placed upon him, and they wisely took advantage of their defence and justification by the debate and the division to retreat from the untenable position they had taken up. In The Times of July 30 the following fulmination appeared : CLEARING THE REPORTERS' GALLERY 375 The reporters of The Times have heard with pride and with satisfaction the testimony that has been borne by almost all that is eminent, almost all that is respectable, in the House of Commons to the accuracy and fidelity of their reports of the proceedings of that honourable House. They have witnessed, moreover, what they never doubted they should experience the utter absence of all sympathy on the part of the House with the querulous calum- nies which their foul-mouthed pot-house slanderer delivered at the Eyre Arms ; and as the reporters cannot conceal from themselves that the vote of the House of Commons last night was a full and a crowning vindication of their honour, their integrity, and their competence, they hasten with pleasure to declare that it is impossible for them not to feel that they should be wanting in respect to them- selves, and that they should prove that they were not worthy the high opinion which the great body of England's representatives have so handsomely and so signally pronounced in their favour, if they did not admit and acknowledge, without hesitation or reserve, that so distinguished, so unimpeachable, and so flattering a testi- mony from that high and honourable assembly is a most ample satisfaction for the wrong inflicted by the great almsman at the dinner of the Cartwright Club, where he presided as chairman. The reporters added that their feelings of contempt for O'Connell should no longer induce them to embarrass or inconvenience the proceedings of the high-minded and independent body of gentlemen who constitute the House of Commons, and they thus concluded : The reporters therefore beg leave to state, publicly and explicitly, that they will this day return to their duty as usual ; and that, out of respect to the House of Commons, and to prevent inconveni- ence to the public, they will for the future deal with Mr. O'Connell as with other members of the House, no better and no worse, though they cannot help feeling the bitterest scorn and contempt for the malignant and malicious falsehood by which they were provoked, but which, on reflection, they are inclined to believe they almost degraded themselves by noticing. James Grant says that the exclusion of the reporters had a most depressing effect upon Members. ' There was no animation in their manner,' he writes, ' scarcely any attempt at that wit and sarcasm at each other's expense so often made on other occasions. Their speeches were dull in the highest degree, and for the first time within my recollection they kept their word when, on commencing 376 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY their orations, they promised not to trespass at any length on the patience of the House. Their speeches had entirely the merit of being short : I cannot say they were sweet. The secret of all this was, they knew their eloquence would not grace the newspapers of the following morning.' 1 However, the cloud that hung over Parliament was quickly dispelled. On the evening of July 30, the House of Commons went into Committee on the Slavery Abolition Bill. O'Connell asked the Chairman of Committees (Mr. Bernal) whether he possessed the same privilege as the Speaker to order the gallery to be cleared of strangers. ' Yes,' replied the Chairman ; ' if any honourable Member chooses to say that he sees strangers in the gallery, it will be my duty to order the gallery to be cleared.' ' Oh, very well, sir,' said O'Connell ; ' but I do not intend to look that way at present.' The reporters had given way. ' He would not,' he said, ' advert to the scurrilous manner in which that avowal had been made ; but if gentlemen were desirous of seeing an excellent specimen of scurrility he would recommend them to read The Times of that morn- ing.' * His speech that evening on an amendment to the Slavery Abolition Bill was reported at considerable length in the London papers. ' I have conquered the tyranny of the Press,' he wrote exultingly to his friend, P. W. FitzPatrick, of Dublin on August 5, 1833. 'I am the only person to whom the scoundrel reporters ever struck. They have done it, to be sure, in congenial Billingsgate ; but the thing is done.' 3 1 Eandom Recollections of the House of Commons (1836), p. 48. 2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 20, pp. 130-1. 3 Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell, vol. 1, p. 378. Charles Ross, one of The Times reporters who signed the letter abusing O'Connell made the following statement in reference to O'ConnelPs complaint of misrepresentation to a Select Committee on Parlia- mentary Reporting which sat in 1878 'I did not know at the time, but I did know subsequently that he (O'Connell) was justified CLEARING THE REPORTERS' GALLERY 377 O'ConnelFs son, John, had a similar encounter with the parliamentary reporters in 1849. As a protest against the brief and inaccurate reports of discussions on Irish questions published by the London newspapers, he espied strangers and had the galleries cleared on the night of May 18, when the House was in Committee on the Parliamentary Oaths Bill. The Times, the next morning, published an extraordinary attack on the hon. Member which reads like a page from Thackeray. 'Mr. John O'Connell,' it says, ' is an exaggeration and a caricature of the national defects of his countrymen. We find him ever in extremes. He is all for what he would call " sthoppin the supploys," or " excluthin sthrangers " upon the slightest provocation. He has but one weapon and that a shillelagh, which he handles upon all occasions like a tent-tumbler at Donny- brook Fair in the palmy days of the Irish festival.' The article goes on to say that the reporters standing at the other side of the closed door of the Gallery heard groans and hisses in the House, and it is suggested, in explanation of these noises, that John O'Connell was prominently before the House. ' We do not absolutely say he was speaking for, of course, the proceedings were all snug and under the rose. For all we know he may have been dancing a jig on the floor of the House after the fashion of the Mulli- gan of Bally-mulligan. The hisses heard outside might have been the expression of the value of Mr. John O'Connell's performances. He might again have been entertaining the House with the song of the " Roaring Beggar," or the " Shan Van Voght." The tones of feeling heard outside would not, from their nature, exclude such an hypothesis. He might have been enumerating the great pecuniary sacri- fices the O'Connell family had made for the benefit of the in those remarks, although they should not have been applied to a class, when it was owing to the misconduct of an individual, a countryman of his own too.' The ' individual,' no doubt, was Nugent. 378 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY poor Irish.' They were thus left to float on a sea of con- jecture, and could only catch at one probability which was that Mr. John O'Connell was in some way before the House. A few weeks later on June 8, John O'Connell again had the reporters excluded. The House was in Committee on the Poor Relief (Ireland) Bill, and when the hon. Member rose to speak most of the reporters ostentatiously left the Gallery. ' Sir,' said O'Connell, addressing the Chairman of Committees, ' after the specimen of fairness which I experienced when I was going to express my opinion on the Poor-law, just before the last division, there is but one course left to me either to insist upon the House enforcing justice to its Members, or by doing away with an absurd practice, and therefore, sir, I see strangers present (waving his hat towards the Reporters' Gallery).' 1 On May 24, the House had rejected a motion to do away with the 1 absurd practice ' referred to by John O'Connell. It was moved by Col. Thompson that a motion for the exclu- sion of strangers should be put on the same level as other motions, namely, that it should be proposed and seconded and agreed to, or carried by a majority. The proposal was negatived. 2 But, as we shall see presently, it was the solu- tion of the difficulty that was accepted many years after- wards. 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 105, p. 1,320. 2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 105, pp. 965-7. CHAPTER XLIV Peel, Brougham, Macaulay, Disraeli BUT though the material lot of the parliamentary reporters was hardly comfortable yet, or even easy, there had been an immense advance and improvement in their moral position in the universal recognition of their calling as one conducive to the public interest, and the consequent easing of the control of Parliament over its exercise. Lords and Commons, for instance, had alike come gradually to perceive that however their speeches might be misreported, to call attention to the errors as a breach of privilege would only make them ridiculous in the eyes of the community. For such mistakes, uninten- tional as they always are, of course, there is a sufficient redress in a letter of correction to the newspaper at fault. The most exciting personal controversy in the House of Commons, with regard to a disputed passage in a newspaper report of a speech, took place in 1846. To revenge them- selves on Peel for having abolished the Corn Laws, the Protectionists in the Tory Party, led by Lord George Ben- tinck, united with the Whig Opposition under Lord John Russell in resisting the Irish Coercion Bill of the Govern- ment, and, by thus bringing about the defeat of the measure, drove Peel from Office. In the course of the debate on the second reading of the Bill, Lord George Bentinck brought the serious charge of political dishonesty against Peel. ' I have lived long enough, 5 said he, ' to remember, and to remember with sorrow with deep and heartfelt sorrow the time when the right hon. gentleman chased 379 380 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY and hunted an illustrious relative of mine to death.' The reference was to Canning. In 1827 Peel seceded from the Government because he could not support Canning, then Prime Minister, in his desire to remove the disabilities of Roman Catholics. Two years later, as is well known, Peel himself, then Leader of the House of Commons, introduced the Catholic Emancipation Bill, and carried it into law. According to Bentinck, in 1846, Peel told the House of Commons in 1829 that he had changed his opinion on the subject of Catholic Emancipation as early as 1825, and had then informed Lord Liverpool, the head of the Ministry, of which he was a Member, that he could no longer oppose the admission of Catholics to Parliament. In these circum- stances, Bentinck asserted that it was base and dishonest of Peel to have hounded Canning to death in 1827 for trying to forward Catholic Emancipation, when, by his own admis- sion, he was himself favourable to the measure since 1825. ' A second time has the right hon. baronet insulted the honour of Parliament and of the country,' exclaimed Ben- tinck, * and it is now time that atonement should be made to the betrayed constituencies of the Empire.' Four days later, on June 12, 1846, Peel replied to Ben- tinck. He gave the statement an unequivocal denial. He declared that the charge that in 182 9 he had avowed a change of opinion in 1825, which change of opinion he con- cealed in 1827, was utterly and entirely without foundation. The report of Peel's great speech of 1829 on Catholic Emanci- pation given in Hansard is a republication of the authorised version which, revised and corrected by the Minister, was published in pamphlet form at the time. The passage upon which Bentinck based his charge against Peel is not to be found in that report. But Disraeli, who was Ben- tinck's first lieutenant in the campaign of the Protectionists against Peel, speaking on June 15, brought forward inde- pendent evidence in refutation of Peel's denial, which greatly impressed the House and country. The passage was PEEL, BROUGHAM, MACAULAY, DISRAELI 381 traced to two independent reports of Peel's speech in The Times report, of the following day, and in the report published in The Mirror of Parliament, which, as I have already explained, was a rival of Hansard. More than that, Disraeli pointed out that there appeared also in The Mirror of Parliament a speech made by Sir Edward Knatchbull in answer to Peel, on the same evening, in which he referred to Peel's admission and censured it in a spirit of bitter reproach. * If, as he now says, he had discovered in 1825 the necessity of passing this question, I ask,' said Knatch- bull, ' why he did not say so in 1827, and give his support to Mr. Canning then, when the supposed difference between him and Mr. Canning obtained for him the support of many honourable gentlemen who differed from Mr. Canning only on that, which I confess was the case with me.' The case against Peel seemed conclusive. His answer was awaited with intense public interest. It was not given until four nights later. The House was packed with Mem- bers and strangers to hear it. Peel explained that the delay in replying to Disraeli was due to a search he had caused to be made in a confused and complicated mass of correspondence relating to 1825, stored at his country house, to see if any document throwing light on the question of his supposed change of opinion in that year could be found. Nothing, however, was discovered. But when he came to deal with the reports of his speech of 1829 he made assertions to prove that the disputed passage had behind it the authority of but one single parliamentary reporter. The information which enabled him to make these state- ments was supplied to him, he said, by gentlemen connected with the Press, beyond his control, and beyond his influence. In the first place he denied that any independent report had been made for The Mirror of Parliament. In the second place, the equivocal expression appeared only in one news- paper, The Times, and it was that report of The Times which was engrafted into The Mirror of Parliament. 382 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Lord George Bentinck immediately flouted the explana- tion. He reiterated the charges to the House, and declared that they either were not met, or had been evaded. Dis- raeli, however, acknowledges in his Life of Lord George Bentinck that Peel's honour was vindicated. The truth about this interesting episode, he says, appears to be this : That Sir Robert Peel, in 1829, having to make a complicated and very embarrassing statement respecting his change of opinion and policy with regard to the Roman Catholics, and to refer by dates to several periods, both as to his positive and contingent conduct upon that subject, conveyed by some expressions a meaning to the House of a very perplexing character, and quite different from that which he intended ; that the reporter of The Times caught the sentence, and, although it was inconsistent with the reputation of Sir Robert Peel, perhaps imperfectly preserved it ; that the reporters of the other journals, not comprehending the remark, and deeming it quite incongruous and contrary to received impres- sions, omitted it, as under such circumstances is not unusual ; that Sir Robert Peel, when he corrected the version of his speech, which he did from the report of The Times, finding a sentence which con- veyed a false meaning, and which was authorized by no analogous expressions in the other papers, very properly struck it out ; that the reporter of The Times who, after due comparison and consulta- tion with the reporters of some other principal journals, prepared with those the matured version of The Mirror of Parliament, adhered to his text with the general concurrence of his colleagues, and thus embalmed the error. 1 Disraeli adds, ' Perplexing as it is, we have no doubt that the speech of Sir Edward Knatchbull can be explained to the entire vindication of Sir Robert Peel ; the solution of this, however, as far as we are concerned, must be left to Aedipus, with a full admission that though Lord George Bentinck was perfectly justified in making the particular change which he advanced, it was without real foundation.' There is, it seems to me, a simple solution of the mystery of Knatchbull's speech. Knatchbull wrote out his speech for The Mirror of Parliament many days after its delivery. In doing so he probably had before him The Times report of Peel's speech to which his own was a reply, and finding 1 Lord George Bentinck (1861 edition), p. 205. PEEL, BROUGHAM, MACAULAY, DISRAELI 383 in it the passage relating to 1825, he no doubt inserted in his manuscript comments upon the alleged admission which, in fact, he had not made in the House, having when he spoke, of course, no remembrance that anything of the kind had been said by Peel. Brougham was one of the last to complain in the House of Lords that he had been intentionally misrepresented when, in fact, he had merely been incorrectly reported. That was on May 30, 1850. The speech was in reference to the Divorce Bill, and the report complained of appeared in the Globe and Daily News. Brougham was highly indig- nant. He said that no person had ever been more the object of the most indiscriminate and the most absurd, as well as the most unfounded abuse, than he. Neverthe- less, he never took any notice of it, but left the truth to come out in the natural lapse of events. ' All public men,' said he, * are exposed to attacks, and no public man should shrink from, or be too sensitive to, such attacks.' But it was another matter to put words into his mouth he had never uttered for the express purpose of calumniating him. Brougham, however, contented himself with a refutation of the opinions attributed to him in the report. 1 Macaulay was the terror of the reporters. Often the expertest of shorthand writers were unable to do more than to set down the substance of what he said, as he thundered along with the velocity of an express that does not stop even at the chief stations. * I delivered my speech much more slowly than any that I have ever before made,' he tells his sister, Hannah, in 1831, ' and it is in consequence better reported than its predecessors, though not well.' 2 In 1853 a bookseller named Vizetelly published without authority a collection of his speeches in two volumes. Most of the speeches were made in the House of Commons, 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. Ill, pp. 452-6. 2 Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (popular edition, 1889), 165. 384 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY and though Vizetelly reprinted his reports from Hansard they appear to have contained many errors, save in a few cases where Macaulay himself corrected the proofs for Hansard. Macaulay was deeply annoyed by the publication especially as it professed to have been made with his sanc- tion, and he at once set about preparing an authorized edition of his speeches, most reluctantly laying aside as he says in his preface to the edition his History of England which was then the business and pleasure of his life. Several of Vizetelly 's versions of his speeches, he says in his preface, bear ' scarcely the faintest resemblance ' to the speeches which he really made. ' The substance of what I said is perpetually misrepresented,' he goes on to declare, without any mincing of words. ' The con- nexion of the arguments is altogether lost. Extravagant blunders are put into my mouth in almost every page. An editor who was not grossly ignorant would have perceived that no person to whom the House of Commons would listen could possibly have been guilty of such blunders.' Vizetelly is rhetorically pilloried : - He took the very worst report extant, compared it with no other report, removed no blemish however obvious or however ludicrous, gave to the world some hundreds of pages utterly contemptible both in matter or manner, and prefixed my name to them. The least that he should have done was to consult the files of The Times newspaper. I have frequently done so, when I have noticed in his book any passage more than ordinarily absurd ; and I have almost invariably found that, in The Times newspaper, my meaning had been correctly reported, though often in words different from those which I had used. Macaulay admits, however, that he was difficult to report. * My delivery is, I believe, too rapid,' he says. ' Very able shorthand writers have sometimes complained that they could not follow me, and have contented them- selves with setting down the substance of what I said.' 1 1 Preface to Speeches of Lord Macaulay, corrected by himself (1853). PEEL, BROUGHAM, MACAULAY, DISRAELI 385 For the purposes of comparison I will quote passages from the two reports of Macaulay 's speech on the Dissenters' Chapels Bill in the House of Commons, June 6, 1844. The Bill was introduced by the Government of Sir Robert Peel to frustrate a movement to deprive the Unitarians of their chapels on the ground that their original founders were Trinitarians. Macaulay speaking in support of the Bill, according to Vizetelly's report, said : Now, are these chapels places of which a British Legislature will consent to rob their possessors ? I say ' rob ' I can use no other, no lighter word. How would you feel were such a proposition made as to other property ? Would it be borne ? And what are those who oppose this Bill to get in comparison to what those who are injuriously affected by it are to lose ? What feelings have these latter associated with Priestley's pulpit with Dr. Lardner's pulpit ? What feelings have they connected with the places wherein Unitarian doctrines have so long been taught, and around which are the gravestones which pious love has placed over the remains of dearly -prized sisters, wives, fathers, brothers that these associa- tions are to be so rudely disregarded and structures wrenched from those to whom they are so valuable ? To those who seek to obtain possession of them, they are of no value beyond that which belongs to any place in which they can get a roof over their heads. If we throw out this Bill, we rob one party of that which that party considers to be valuable, to bestow it upon another stronger party who will only value it as a trophy of victory won and as an evidence of the humiliation and mortification of those from whom it has been wrested. The other report of this speech was published by the Unitarians in pamphlet form, and was adopted by Macaulay for his own collection. * It was not corrected by me,' he says, ' but it generally, though not uniformly, exhibits with fidelity the substance of what I said.' In reading its glowing version of the halting and listless passages I have quoted from Vizetelly's edition, it is impossible not to feel that here, indeed, is the real Macaulay. It shows that Macaulay cannot be condensed. To abbreviate a speech of his is to destroy its integrity, to mutilate an essential or characteristic feature of his oratory : 25 386 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY And will a British Parliament rob the possessors of these buildings ? I can use no other word. How should we feel if it were proposed to deprive any other class of men of land held during so long a time, and improved at so large a cost ? And if this property should be transferred to those who covet it, what would they gain in com- parison with what the present occupants would lose ? The pulpit of Priestley, the pulpit of Lardner, are objects of reverence to con- gregations which hold the tenets of Priestley and Lardner. To the intruders those pulpits will be nothing ; nay, worse than nothing ; memorials of heresiarchs. Within these chapels and all around them are the tablets which the pious affection of four generations has placed over the remains of dear mothers and sisters, wives and daughters, of eloquent preachers, of learned theological writers. To the Unitarian, the building which contains these memorials is a hallowed building. To the intruder, it is of no more value than any other room in which he can find a bench to sit on and a roof to cover him. If, therefore, we throw out this Bill, we do not merely rob one set of people in order to make a present to another set. That would be bad enough. But we rob the Unitarians of that which they regard as a most precious treasure ; of that which is endeared to them by the strongest religious and the strongest domes- tic associations ; of that which cannot be wrenched from them without inflicting on them the bitterest pain and humiliation. To the Trinitarians we give that which can to them be of little or no value, except as a trophy of a most inglorious victory won in a most unjust war. The interest with which Disraeli looked out for reports of his speeches in the early years of his parliamentary career is manifest in his Letters to His Sister. He tells her from time to time, where she will find satisfactory accounts of those efforts. ' The Times report good ' ; * well reported in The Times,' are frequently met with. In the course of the Session of 1839 he made what he considered to be a fine speech in Committee on a Bill ; but ' unfortunately, as generally happens on long Committee nights, there was scarcely a reporter in the Gallery.' On August 30, 1848, he writes in reference to a speech of his on the 16th of the month : ' I have no cause to complain of the reporters. The version of The Times, which now sells 40,000 a day, is almost verbatim, six first-rate shorthand writers having been employed. The Chronicle is hardly inferior, tho' PEEL, BROUGHAM, MACAULAY, DISRAELI 387 it only sells 4,000 ; The Herald 5,000.' On July 8, 1849, he says : ' My speech last night was at 2.30, and conse- quently not a semblance of a report in the journals.' By 1851 he had become more fastidious and exacting as to the extent and correctness of the reports of his speeches. He complains to his sister of one report as * incoherent and contradictory nonsense.' ' It made me blush,' he adds, ' though I ought to be hardened by this time on such a subject.' After Disraeli had become Prime Minister, the question whether a verbatim report of all speeches in Parliament ought to be published in Hansard, came up in a conversation between him and Sir William Eraser. * I suppose,' said Eraser, telling the story in Disraeli and His Day, ' you look down with Olympian severity on those matters.' ' On the contrary, I feel on the matter acutely,' was Disraeli's reply. ' I don't so . much object to what they leave out, I am deeply annoyed at what they put in. For example, every one believes that I have said that my views as to the admission of Jews into Parliament are peculiar and mysterious. Peculiar they are, for obvious reasons ; but at no period of my life was I capable of utter- ing such arrant nonsense as to say that they are mysterious.' The other side of the picture is presented in a passage from a speech by Palmerston when he was Prime Minister to his constituents at Romsey in 1859 : Now it is quite marvellous to see the accuracy with which the debates in the House of Commons are reported. When the speeches are such as are calculated to attract attention they are reported word for word, as they are uttered ; and how it is possible for the human hand to follow the voice with such rapidity and such exact- ness, I am at a loss to conceive. 1 It would seem that Macaulay or Disraeli, unlike Canning, could not have successfully raised any of these cases of misreporting as a breach of privilege, at least during the Speaker ship of John Evelyn Denison. One night in 1859 1 The Times, December 22 1859 388 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Mr. Stuart- Wortley rose to complain of having been mis- represented in a newspaper. Apparently his speech and the speech of another Member had got mixed in one of those accidents that occasionally will happen in the rush and hurry of making-up the columns and pages of a morn- ing journal. The Speaker, however, ruled him out of order, as he said he did not propose to conclude with a motion relating to the subject of his complaint. Referring to the incident, Denison says : ' The House approved. The House does not recognize the reports of debates. Therefore, a correct or incorrect report is out of its cognisance. The House does not permit the reports of speeches made in the same Session to be referred to. The whole proceeding was irregular.' x It is clear, I think, from this comment that if Mr. Wortley had concluded with a motion to bring the printer or the reporter to the Bar for a breach of privilege the Speaker would have declined to put the motion from the Chair. The House, despite its Standing Order, was losing, or freely relinquishing, all control over the reporting of its pro- ceedings. Another most important decision, which was given in the law courts in 1868, is that a newspaper is not answerable for the publication of a libel contained in a correct report of proceedings in Parliament. Anything that a Member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords may say within the House is privileged. No words spoken by him in the course of parliamentary proceedings is actionable. But if he publishes his speech outside the House he is held liable for any defamatory statements it may contain. This law was laid down as the result of a curious action for libel that was brought in 1813 against Thomas Creevey (author of The Creevey Papers), a well known Member of Parliament at the time. In the course of a speech which Creevey made in the 1 Notes from My Journal, p. 31. PEEL, BROUGHAM, MACAULAY, DISRAELI 389 House of Commons he assailed the character of one Robert Kirkpatrick, who was Inspector-General of Taxes at Liver- pool ; and being dissatisfied with the version of the speech that appeared in the Press he sent a full report of it to the Liverpool Mercury. He was prosecuted for libel at the Lancaster Assizes before Sir Simon le Blanc and a special jury. Henry Brougham, who appeared for the defendant, submitted that a Member of Parliament could not be held accountable for publishing a true report of what passed in Parliament. The judge decided adversely on the point of privilege. He held that if a Member of Parliament published his speech he was liable for the state- ments it contained just as if it were any other kind of pub- lication. The jury convicted Creevey of libel, and he was fined 100. The Court of King's Bench subsequently refused unanimously an application for a new trial. 1 No question was raised as to any liability of the news- paper in having published a speech made in Parliament which contained an attack on the character of an individual. But it was not until fifty-five years later that this point was settled. A decision of the Court of Queen's Bench in the case of ' Wason v. Walter ' laid it down that news- papers may publish a full and fair report of the parliamen- tary debates without giving rise to civil liability or criminal proceedings if the report should include defamatory matter at the suit of the person whose character had been called in question. The Times of February 13, 1867, contained, as usual during the Session, a report of the proceedings in the House of Lords on the previous evening. Wason presented a petition to the House alleging that Sir Fitzroy Kelly, lately appointed Lord Chief Baron, had, thirty-two years before, as a barrister made a statement, which was false to his own knowledge, for the purpose of deceiving an Election Committee of the House of Commons ; praying for an 1 Annual Register* 1813, appendix to Chronicle, 268-9. 390 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY inquiry into the charge, and, if it were found to be true, the removal of the judge from the Bench. The allegation was utterly refuted ; and in the course of the debate it was referred to as ' a fabrication,' and as being ' slanderous, and calumnious.' It was for reporting these expressions that Wason instituted an action for libel against the pro- prietor of The Times. It was heard before Lord Chief Justice Cockburn. The jury found for the defendant. The Lord Chief Justice in his charge to the jury told them that if they were satisfied the matter complained of as a libel was a faithful and correct report of the proceedings in the House of Lords, and of the speeches made on that occasion, it was a privileged publication. One of the arguments of counsel for the plaintiff was that the publica- tion of parliamentary proceedings was illegal, as it was in contravention of the ancient Standing Orders of both Houses. Cockburn, however, drew a distinction between the theory of obsolete Standing Orders and the practice of Parliament in sanctioning and encouraging the publica- tion of its proceedings, and actually giving every facility to those who reported them. ' Practically,' said the Lord Chief Justice, ' such publication is sanctioned by Parliament ; it is essential to the working of our parliamentary system, and to the welfare of the nation.' ' For the present pur- pose,' he said, ' we must treat such publication as in every respect lawful, and hold that while honestly and faithfully carried on those who publish them will be free from legal responsibility, though the character of individuals may incidentally be injuriously affected.' At the same time the judge carefully distinguished between publication of a defamatory speech by the newspapers, in the interest of the public, and publication of such a speech by an individual. ' There is obviously a very material difference,' he said, * between the publication of a speech made in Parliament for the express purpose of attacking the conduct of an individual, and afterwards PEEL, BROUGHAM, MACAULAY, DISRAELI 391 published with a like purpose and effect, and the faithful publication of parliamentary reports in their entirety with a view to afford information to the public, and with a total absence of hostile intention, or malicious motive towards any one.' x Law Reports, vol. 4, Queen's Bench, 1868-1869, p. 73. CHAPTER XLV Opening of the New Galleries MEANWHILE the new Palace of Westminster, a splendid conception of the architectural genius of Charles Barry, was gradually enfolding within its vast and stately proportions the temporary Chambers used by Lords and Commons since the great fire of 1834. As I have already stated, Parliament officially recognized the Press by the provision of Galleries for the reporters in both of these transitory structures. Galleries for the Press representatives those that now exist were made essential parts of the permanent Chambers provided for the two Houses of the Legislature in the new Palace. At last, the Reporters' Gallery was erected on a firm and enduring basis. It was an acknowledgment that henceforth it was to be an abiding adjunct of Parliament. The Commons did not take possession of their new Chamber until 1852. The new Chamber of the Lords was in use five years earlier. On April 15, 1847, after the Easter recess, the Lords met for the first time in their splendid hall. 1 The artist and the historian had combined to produce its beautifully toned and delicately lighted decorations, frescoes, statues and painted windows. Even the Reporters' Gallery, facing the Throne though it at first was but a temporary improvisation was externally a mass of gilded ornaments. Many of the reporters who occupied it on that memorable day must have been able to recall memories of the discomforts attending the pursuit 1 The Times, April 16, 1847. 392 OPENING OF THE NEW GALLERIES 393 of their calling in the old Houses of Parliament, when they used to sit in the darkness of the remote back bench, and lean forward with an air of uncertainty and uneasiness, and no doubt they now smiled gaily in the light of the glory of colour in their new surroundings, and congratulated each other on so significant a development in the friendly and intimate relations between Parliament and the Press- The Gallery contained twelve sunken stalls or boxes in the front for the reporters who were actually taking notes of the debate, and fourteen seats behind for the reliefs awaiting their turns. There was, furthermore, room and verge enough for the reporters to come and go without disturbing each other. No wonder they were pleased with the arrange- ments, not so much, perhaps, on account of their own ease and comfort, as for the added sense of reliability with which they could now do their work. The Gallery was, at first, but a temporary structure, so that its position and arrangements might be put to the test of practical experience by the reporters before it was finally adopted. Two years later, in 1849, the Lords appointed a Select Committee to consider the accommoda- tion in the new Chamber. In their report, which was presented on July 27, 1849, they stated they had examined ' Mr. Dod, senior reporter and secretary to the Reporters' Committee,' 1 who said the reporters heard the speeches distinctly in the temporary structure. Accordingly, they recommended ' a permanent Gallery ' on the plan sub- 1 ' Dod ' like ' Hansard ' is a household name in Parliament. Dad's Parliamentary Companion, which is published annually and contains brief biographies of Lords and Commons, was originated in 1832, in association with the first Reform Parliament, by Charles Roger Dod. The son of an Irish Episcopalian clergyman, he was born in Leitrim in 1793, settled in London in 1818, and for twenty- three years was a member of the parliamentary staff of The Times. He was chief of the staff, and apparently the oldest man in the Gallery, at the time he was consulted by the Lords as to the acco m- modation provided for the reporters, 394 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY mitted by Barry, the architect, with certain alterations which, in his opinion, would make it still more easy to hear what was going on below. Then on July 30, the House agreed to an address to the Crown praying that the Gallery recommended by the Select Committee be erected, and the Crown's consent having been obtained the Gallery, as it now exists, was provided. 1 The complete and final recognition of the reporters by the Commons took place in 1850. On May 30, in that year, there was an experimental sitting of the Commons in their new Chamber. The House met at 12 o'clock with the Speaker, Charles Shaw Lefevre, in the Chair. Business proceeded as usual, but Members were permitted to move about the Chamber as they pleased in order to make acousti- cal experiments and even to interrupt the proceedings with pertinent suggestions and remarks. ' Sir, we do not know what is going forward, 5 exclaimed one of a group of Members in the Strangers' Gallery opposite the Chair. ' Sir,' cried another later on, ' I don't know whether you can hear down there, but we certainly can't hear at all here.' The House contained a Reporters' Gallery, not as an excrescence or makeshift, as in the temporary Chamber, but as an integrant part, necessary to constitute a whole or entire entity. It was raised behind the Speaker's Chair, and though this was the best possible position for its pur- pose, the leading men of the Assembly deemed it most important to make sure that in it the proceedings on the floor were audible. Accordingly the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, and the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Robert Peel, went up to the Reporters' Gallery personally to put the matter to the test. They were dissatisfied with the acoustic properties of the Chamber, a defect which was sup- posed to be due to its lofty carved and gilded ceiling, simi- lar to the beautiful inner roof of the House of Lords. 2 So 1 Lords Journals, vol. 81, p. 561 and p. 585. 2 The Times, May 31, 1850, and Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. Ill, pp. 458-60, OPENING OF THE NEW GALLERIES 395 the Commons went back to their temporary Chamber again for another two years until a false ceiling was put in below the original roof. It may be said, indeed, that they willingly spoiled the architectural beauty of their House so that the reporters might hear their debates. At the opening of Parliament on February 3, 1852, by Queen Victoria, the Commons entered into occupation of their new Chamber and the reporters took possession of their new Gallery. House and Gallery appeared in their true perspective, closely related parts of a great whole, one and indivisible. The Reporters' Gallery then had nineteen boxes in the front, and accommodation at the back for nineteen other Press representatives on seats with writing ledges. There were two retiring -rooms imme- diately behind the Gallery (those that are now mainly given up to telegraph instruments and the boy mes- sengers of the news-agencies and newspapers) where the reporters could await their turns and refer to books and papers. The old reporters accepted this accommodation with the warmest satisfaction. The reports for the London papers were not prepared, as a rule, in the retiring-rooms. The old system of taking long turns in the box, and then going to the newspaper offices in Fleet Street and Blackfriars to prepare the copy, was still continued. Nevertheless, a good deal of writing had to be done, especially for the provincial papers, in the retiring-rooms ; and for rest and refreshment between their turns many of the reporters repaired to some of the neighbouring taverns in Bridge Street. For several years after the Palace of Westminster had been erected there was a row of old houses on the north side of the new Palace Yard, where the railings front the line of catalpa trees. In the centre of the row was a hostelry known as the Pig and Whistle, which was the favourite resort of parliamentary journalists for a hot meal and a smoke over a pint of beer. But when these 396 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY houses were pulled down, the reporters had to be content with a cold collation of ham or beef and a cup of tea pro- vided by the caretaker of the Gallery, Henry Wright, in the ante-rooms, which were ill-lighted and badly ventilated ; and the only place they could smoke in was a room, like a cellar, in the yard below, opposite to the entrance to their Gallery staircase, known as the ' Star Chamber ' from the fact that it marks the site of that historic apartment of Old Westminster Palace. As the old reporters disappeared and young men took their places there'was naturally much grumbling at this rude accommodation. The new-comers had never sat on the stuffy back seats of the Strangers' Gallery, in the old House of Commons, or elbowed and jostled with idle visitors at the Bar of the old House of Lords ; and they were not disposed, like their prede- cessors, to cultivate parliamentary reporting on a pint of beer. But their complaints, however loudly and emphatically expressed, were unheeded on the floor of the House. The relations between Members and reporters were coldly distant in the 3 50's and '60's of the nineteenth century. Even as late as 1867, Wemyss Reid of The Leeds Mercury scan- dalized his colleagues in the Gallery by a show of familiarity with a Member, although the Member was the proprietor of the newspaper for which he worked. On the first night he entered the Gallery, his employer, Edward Baines, then a distinguished Member of the House, came up to the Members' Gallery adjoining the Reporters' Gallery, to welcome him, and point out to him the celebrities on the floor. 'I little knew what offence I was giving to my colleagues,' says Reid in his Autobiography. He found out subsequently that if by any chance a reporter were detected in conversation with even the most obscure Member he was expected to give some explanation of his conduct to his friends. * It may be imagined, then,' he says, ' with what feelings the veterans of the Gallery saw a newcomer, OPENING OF THE NEW GALLERIES 397 on his very first appearance in the Gallery, talking on friendly and confidential terms with a well-known Member of the House. Some of the old hands positively snorted at me in their indignation, and one of the few friends I had in the Gallery earnestly warned me that the recurrence of such an incident would prove fatal to my career as a par- liamentary reporter.' Well might he ask, writing many years afterwards, ' Who would have imagined then that the relations of journalists and Members would ever assume their present intimate character ? ' 1 It happened in that very year, 1867, that a Select Com- mittee was appointed to consider whether any alteration could be made in the arrangements of the House of Commons so as to enable a greater number of Members to hear and take part in the proceedings. The reporters decided to lay the grievance of their accommodation before the Com- mittee. Nowadays any representations made on behalf of the reporters are certain of obtaining the most courteous consideration at the hands of the officials of the House. The inquiry of 1867 showed that something like a state of belligerency existed between the Gallery and the Serjeant- at-Arms. George Clifford of The Times was the spokesman of the reporters. ' I am desired to say,' he said to the Committee, 'that the whole body of the reporters receive from the Members of the House every possible facility in the per- formance of their duties ; yet that the relations in which they stand to the officials of the House are rather those of a former period, and that the officials seem to be inspired by a sort of traditional antagonism to the reporters which does not exist at all between the House and the reporters.' After repeated applications the authorities had consented, a few years previously, to allow the reporters the use of one of the Committee-rooms, just beyond the corridor of the ladies' gallery, to which a doorway gave access from 1 Stuart J. Reid, Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid, pp. 123-4. 398 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY their quarters. But even this concession was grudgingly made ; and Lord Charles James Fox Russell, the then Serjeant-at-Arms, had the room kept locked until a quarter to five, so that the work of transcribing notes during the morning sittings held for the consideration of the Reform Bill of 1867 had to be done by the reporters in the dens behind the Gallery, or at writing-ledges under the windows of the Committee-rooms corridor. A very respectful appeal was made to the Serjeant-at-Arms, said Clifford, for the use of the Committee-room in the afternoon as well as at night, but it was refused. One day Colonel Forrester, the assistant Serjeant-at-Arms, came along the corridor. His attention was drawn to eight or ten reporters who were writing there, but he would not permit them to go into the Committee-room, and said it should not be opened until a quarter to five. ' We asked Col. Forrester what reason there was for that expulsion,' Clifford went on to say ; ' he could give us no reason, but referred us to the Serjeant-at-Arms.' Clifford's evidence also showed the jealousy with which the reporters regarded the presence in the Gallery of editors and leader-writers. It appeared that on important nights these personages crowded the back seats to such an extent that the reporters were impeded in their work ; and Clifford suggested that they be put somewhere by themselves so that the Gallery might be reserved exclusively to the repor- ters. Lord Charles James Fox Russell pounced upon this suggestion in order to make a score against the reporters. He stated that the reason why he admitted editors to the Gallery was that some of them told him 'it was very necessary to watch their reporters.' Indeed, he took no pains to conceal his dislike of the reporters, or the annoy- ance which their complaints had caused him, and, in rather mean-spirited revenge, made many a spitefully sarcastic gibe at their expense. In illustration of the pretence of these reporters he mentioned he had heard they wanted OPENING OF THE NEW GALLERIES 399 the ' Delphin Classics ' added to their little collection of reference books. ' I remember my brother, Lord Russell, telling me,' he proceeded, ' that whenever he quoted the classics in former days the passages were always reported (and quotation some forty years ago was a far more common practice than it is now. I believe a speech was scarcely complete without one, but they are very much in disuse now), but that, latterly, whenever he quoted Latin he always had a request from the Gallery that he would send the quotation up to them, which does not look as if the reporters would require the " Delphin Classics." The Serjeant-at-Arms also jeered at the preposterous application of the reporters for additional accommodation to serve their ease and comfort. ' The arrangements formerly,' he said, ' as regarded the Gallery were, I may say, of the rudest description. The reporters seemed to require only the necessaries of life, not the luxuries. They used, I am told, to have just a glass of spirits and water and biscuits or anything of that sort. Now they can have their tea at the back of the Gallery, and they also have another room to which they can go down whenever they require.' The room downstairs was the * star chamber ' ; and as for the retiring-rooms at the back of the Gallery which Lord Charles Russell thought sufficient for the requirements of the reporters, James Mould, chief of The Standard staff, described them to the Committee as a ' black hole ' in which the journalists were being ' poisoned.' But that whimsical old despot of an aristocrat, the Ser- jeant-at-Arms, had his indisputable way. Having set the Committee-room bubbling with laughter by the playful spirit of devilry in which he presented the shortcomings and pretensions of the dogs of reporters, he proceeded to browbeat and intimidate the representatives of the Commons whose mace he condescended to shoulder because, being a younger son of the ducal house of Bedford, he was in want of 1,200 a year and a residence rent free in the 400 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY Palace of Westminster. The reporters, through Clifford, had asked to be brought under ' the protection of the House. 5 The Serjeant-at-Arms retorted by saying that the House of Commons was, as a matter of fact, under his protection. He pointed out again and again, with the manifest purpose of overawing the Committee, that he had been appointed by the Queen to attend Mr. Speaker, that consequently the House had no control over him, that he was responsible for keeping order in the Reporters' Gallery, and meant to see that order was kept there or he would know the reason why ; and finally he hinted that the House would be a worthy object of pity if it had to deal directly with such a bad lot as these newspaper men. The controversy shook the Reporters' Gallery with laughter, I have no doubt, as well as with indignation but the House was unmoved. For the Committee, with that curious subservience which used to mark the relations of the Com- mons with their officials the Speaker, the Clerk, the Serjeant-at-Arms in times gone by, made no answer to the appeal of the reporters. CHAPTER XLVI c Mr. Speaker, I espy Strangers ' THE action of the O'Connells, father and son, in having the reporters turned out of their Gallery had shown that the freedom of reporting the Debates was still unsettled, inasmuch as it precariously depended on the irritation or the caprice of a single Member. In consequence of the clearing of the Galleries in 1849, on the motion of John O'Connell, a Select Committee was appointed to consider the practice of the House as regards the exclusion of stran- gers. They presented a very brief report in which they declared in favour of nothing being done. They said ' the existing usage of excluding strangers during a division, and upon the notice of an individual Member that strangers are present, has prevailed from a very early period of par- liamentary history,' that ' the instances in which the power of an individual Member to exclude has been exercised have been very rare ' ; and they recommended that * there is not sufficient ground for making any alteration in the existing practice.' l This report is characteristic of the traditional reluctance of the House to make any change in its rules or customs. It preferred to continue to rely on the discretion of Members and the force of general opinion to prevent the abuse of the practice of espying strangers. A quarter of a century was yet to elapse before the con- clusion was forced upon the House by circumstances peculiar and unpleasant that this general understanding was not 1 Report of the Select Committee on Strangers, 1849. 401 26 402 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY to be relied on, and therefore must give way to a positive rule. However, the custom of clearing the Galleries before a division, to which the Committee of 1849 also referred, was abolished very soon afterwards. The reporters used to be turned out with the other strangers, and for the quarter of an hour that a division usually lasted they were huddled together in the small ante-room awaiting the re-opening of their Gallery. The clearing of the Galleries in this way, when a division was challenged, was always accompanied by noise in the Chamber and confusion in the outer Lobbies. It often happened that some of the Mem- bers, hastening from distant parts of the building, at the summons of the division bells, were so delayed by the out- coming stream of strangers that the doors were locked before they reached the Chamber and their votes were accordingly lost. This custom, with all its inconvenience and discomfort, continued for a time even in the new Cham- ber, opened in 1852, when the chief objection to the presence of strangers the fear that they might inadvertently be numbered in a division was removed by the provision of two lobbies for * ayes ' and ' noes ' into which Members withdrew to be counted and have their names taken down. It was in 1853 that, on the recommendation of a Select Committee, a change was made, and the Speaker's or Chair- man's command ' Strangers will withdraw,' when a division was challenged, was applied only to those occupying seats below the Bar, to the right and left of the principal entrance to the Chamber. 1 The proceedings which in 1875 led to the modification of the usage by which a single member could have the Galleries cleared by simply saying, * Mr. Speaker, I espy 1 In 1905, when a new system of taking divisions was introduced, strangers seated on these back benches under the galleries ceased to be disturbed ; and the Speaker's or Chairman's order was changed to, ' Clear the Bar.' 'MR. SPEAKER, I ESPY STRANGERS' 403 strangers ' began at the sittings of a Select Committee in one of the rooms upstairs. On April 13, 1875, Charles Lewis, the Conservative Member for Londonderry, com- plained of the publication in The Times and Daily News of evidence taken before the Select Committee on Foreign Loans, and the House decided that these newspapers were guilty of a breach of privilege. The reporting of the pro- ceedings of Committees, was, as we have already seen, always a breach of privilege, in fact or in theory, like the reporting of the proceedings of the House itself. But as late as 1837 the House made a special declaration of the secrecy of its Committees by passing the following resolu- tion : * That according to the undoubted privilege of this House, and for the due protection of the public interest, the evidence taken by any Select Committee of this House, and documents presented, ought not to be published by any Member of such Committee, nor by any other person.' This resolution was come to because of the action of Harvey, the Radical Member for South wark, and pro- prietor and editor of The True Sun, in publishing reports of the evidence given before the Select Committee to inquire into the working of the new poor law, without the authority of the Committee, and before the proceedings were reported to the House. Harvey was informed by the Speaker that the publication was a breach of privilege, and the Chairman of the Committee warned him that if he persisted in dis- closing the evidence the matter would be laid before the House ; but he declared that in the public interest he would continue to send reports to the Press even if the result should be his committal to Newgate or his expulsion from Parliament. Accordingly, on April 21, 1837, Lord John Russell, as Leader of the House, took action. He pointed out the injury to the State that might ensue were every Member of a Committee allowed a discretion to publish its proceedings. There was a Committee on Canada at 404 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY which it had been necessary to examine the Duke of Welling- ton as to the military defences of the Colonies, and another on Bank Charters before which Mr. Rothschild had to enter into much of his own private financial transactions. In both these cases it was decided by the Committee that the evidence was not to be reported to the House, and indeed the evidence was given only on the undertaking that it would be treated as strictly confidential. It came out in the discussion of the matter by the House that the newspapers constantly published reports of Com- mittee proceedings. The Speaker, Mr. Abercromby, then stated the position of affairs from the official point of view. He said the evidence taken before a Select Com- mittee was printed solely for the use of the Members of the Committee. This practice began in 1814. It was the rule that permission to have the evidence printed by the printer of the House must first be obtained from the Speaker, on the application of the Chairman of Committees, and that permission was always granted by the Speaker on the clear understanding that the evidence was to be printed for the use only of Members of the Committee. The Com- mittee, in fact, had not the power to order the printing, much less the publication in the Press, of any evidence taken before it, and any action of the kind would be an undoubted violation of the privileges of the House. The resolution embodying the sense of the House which I have quoted, was moved by Lord John Russell and carried by 131 votes to 18, or a majority of 113. In the minority were Daniel O'Connell, and John Walter, proprietor of The Times* As a concession to public opinion, the Select Committee were afterwards prevailed upon to report the evidence to the House from day to day so that it might be published without undue delay in the Press. It was in accordance with this resolution of 1837 that the House in 1875 declared that the publication by The 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 38, pp. 170-198. ' MR. SPEAKER, I ESPY STRANGERS' 405 Times and the Daily News of the evidence given before the Select Committee on Foreign Loans was a breach of privilege. The Committee was appointed for the purpose of inquiring into conditions of certain loans raised by some of the South American states, and notably by Honduras, in which the confidence of British investors had been mis- placed ; and Lewis's complaint against the two newspapers was that they published a letter from the Honduras Minister in Paris, addressed to the Chairman of the Committee, reflecting on the character of Captain Bedford Pirn, M.P., who had previously made a statement to the Committee. It was urged, in opposition to the motion, that the resolu- tion of 1837 had long since ceased to be acted upon. The House, it was said, had unquestionably the right to prevent the publication of the proceedings of its Committees, when it thought fit ; but it generally permitted it ; and, in fact, accommodation for reporters was provided in the Committee- rooms. However, Disraeli, who was then Prime Minister, acquiesced in the opinion that there had been a breach of privilege, and when this was agreed to Lewis successfully followed it up with another motion summoning the printers of the two newspapers to appear at the Bar. 1 On April 16 the printers were in attendance, but Disraeli carried a motion that the order to bring them to the Bar be ' read and discharged ' ; and it was further agreed to ask the Committee to report to the House whether or not a copy of the letter was given to the Press by them or on their behalf. 2 The report of the Committee was presented to the House on April 1 9. It stated that after the letter had been publicly read in the Committee-room the reporters sent a note to the Chairman asking to be allowed to see it in order to compare it with their notes, and the Chairman, acting on behalf of the Committee, complied with their request, so 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 223, pp. 787-811. 2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 223, pp. 1,114-52. 406 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY that the letter should be published in a correct form. On the following day Lewis asked the Prime Minister whether it was his intention to take any action on the report. The reply of Disraeli was that as the document was read as part of the proceedings in Committee, and as the reporters had obtained it by application to the Chairman he did not propose to make any motion. 1 The Irish Nationalists were then beginning to take that exceedingly active interest in all the business of the House which subsequently came to be known as ' obstruction.' One of the ablest members of the Party was A. M. Sullivan, the editor of The Nation (Dublin) ; and partly in his zeal as a journalist for the liberty of the Press he asked the Prime Minister, on April 22, 1875, whether, considering the anomalous relations between Parliament and the Press, which had just been disclosed, he would propose some reform which while maintaining the due control of the House over the publication of its proceedings, would relieve the Press from the hazards at which it performed its important and useful functions. Disraeli replied in a sentence. It was not, at present, the intention of the Government to introduce any reform of the kind. Sullivan thereupon gave notice that in order to force the House to take action he would the next day ' espy strangers,' and would exercise his right to clear the Galleries in the same way every night if necessary. However on the next day, Lord Hartington, the Leader of the Opposition, stated that he proposed to move a resolution with a view to establishing more reasonable and regular relations between Parliament and the Press ; and Sullivan announced that, in the circumstances, he would not proceed on the course which he had determined otherwise to take. 2 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 223, pp. 1,225-8 and 1,283. 2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 223, pp. 1,451 and 1,511-13. On April 23, 1875, the chief business was the consideration of a motion by Dr. Kenealy that a Royal Commission be appointed 'MR. SPEAKER, I ESPY STRANGERS' 407 Only four days later, and before Lord Hartington had the opportunity of moving his resolution, an incident occurred in the House which brought the situation to a climax that was as unpleasant as it was undignified. On April 27 the House was crowded to hear the debate on a motion by Henry Chaplin expressing apprehension in regard to the export of the best stud horses and brood mares from the country. The Prince of Wales (afterwards King Ed- ward) sat conspicuously over the clock. The Peers' Gallery was crowded. The German Ambassador was in the Dis- tinguished Strangers' Gallery. Just as the Speaker (Henry Bouverie Brand) was about to call on Mr. Chaplin, the celebrated Irish Member, Joseph Biggar, intervened and called attention to the presence of strangers. The Speaker hesitated. He was struck aghast by Biggar's impudence and audacity. The House gave inadequate vent in sup- pressed murmurs to its fierce indignation at what it con- ceived to be a deliberate insult to the heir to the Throne. ' Do I understand,' said the Speaker deliberately, * the hon. Member to take notice of the presence of strangers in the House ? ' ' I do, sir,' was Biggar's unabashed reply. ' That being so,' said the Speaker, ' I must ask strangers to withdraw. ' All the Galleries were accordingly cleared, and the reporters had to go out as well as the Prince of Wales. A scene of great excitement followed. The action of Biggar was denounced on all sides as most discreditable. The Prime Minister, amid tremendous cheering, promptly moved the suspension for the night of the rule for the exclusion of strangers. ' I think the course pursued by the hon. Member,' said Disraeli, ' tends to the discredit of this House, and that if such proceedings are resorted to inquire into the trial and conviction of the Claimant. The division was one of the most remarkable that has ever taken place in the House. The numbers were for, 1 ; against, 433. The solitary Member who went into the ' aye ' lobby was Major O' Gorman, the whimsical Irishman. Kenealy and Whalley were the tellers. 408 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY to the country will cease to believe that this House is what notwithstanding there may be exceptions I believe it to be, an assembly of English gentlemen.' Lord Hartington seconded the motion as Leader of the Opposition. Biggar explained that his sole purpose was to call attention to ( the unsatisfactory position in which the Press stood in relation to the House.' Even so, Biggar's daring and freakish conduct was repudiated by several of his own Irish colleagues. The motion was unanimously agreed to, and after an exclusion of twenty minutes the Prince of Wales, the reporters and all the other strangers of high and low degree were readmitted to their respective Gal- leries. 1 Lord Hartington's motion was debated on May 4, 1875. It dealt with the two aspects of the relations between Par- liament and the Press the publication of the Debates and the position of strangers. It declared, in the first place, that the House would not entertain any complaint in respect of the publication of its own proceedings or the proceedings of any of its Committees save and except those 4 conducted with closed doors ' or the publication of which ' shall have been expressly prohibited ' or in the case of * wilful misrepresentation.' It further declared that stran- gers should not be directed to withdraw * otherwise than by order of the House.' Disraeli opposed the motion. He was reluctant to alter the ancient rules of Parliament. It was because of the jealousy with which all the most eminent Members of the House had for centuries resisted any attempt to tamper with its privileges that, he argued, there existed a law of Parliament as beneficial as it was powerful. Robert Lowe (afterwards Lord Sherbrooke) spoke in support of the motion. He boldly asserted that the use of the Standing Order against strangers so as to exclude the reporters was a greater breach of the privileges of Parliament than its formal abrogation. 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 223, pp. 1,692-94. 'MR. SPEAKER, I ESPY STRANGERS' 409 At this stage there was a dramatic interposition by A. M. Sullivan. ' Mr. Speaker/ said he, * I espy strangers in the Gallery behind your chair.' The House roared its angry protest in vain. ' Notice having been taken of the presence of strangers,' said the Speaker, ' I have no alterna- tive but to call on them to withdraw.' Great disorder prevailed when, after the Galleries had been cleared, the intense and ardent Sullivan, as a journalist, endeavoured to justify his action. 1 ' We will not submit to ignominious suff ranee in the Gallery,' he cried. ' The sun has set upon the last day of Press slavery. Either we wield a beneficent power, or the day has come when you must say yea or nay.' Disraeli evidently shrank from resorting to a suspension of the Standing Order for a second time within a few days. All he could suggest was an adjournment of the debate, and this was ultimately agreed to. Sullivan had again demonstrated the power of a single Member to render the proceedings of the House incon- clusive. 2 The matter came on again on May 31. A division was then taken on the first part of Lord Hartington's motion which proposed an official recognition of the publication of the Debates. It was defeated by a majority of 107, the voting being 147 for and 254 against. Thus did the House proclaim its determination to preserve unrepealed the ancient rule that the publication of its proceedings is a breach of privilege. It was generally recognized, how- ever, that this restraint on the reporters had become anti- quated, despotic and intolerable in the conditions of the modern freedom of the Press and therefore absolutely 1 Notwithstanding the exclusion of the reporters, accounts of what passed in the House when it sat with closed doors on April 27, and May 31, 1875, were published in the newspapers and have been embodied in Hansard. These reports were supplied by Mem- bers to The Times and the other principal journals. 2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 224, pp. 48-93. 410 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY inoperative. All that the vote of the House really amounted to was the pious expression of its opinion that it was need- less formally to abrogate any of these survivals of the past when they had ceased to be harmful by falling into disuse; The House then proceeded to discuss the second part of Lord Hartington's motion which related to the exclusion of strangers. In this case the efficiency as well as the dignity of the House was at stake, so remote was the pro- cedure from the ideas and requirements of modern times. Disraeli was, therefore, driven to take action ; and the House showed no reluctance to follow his lead. The follow- ing rule, making the exclusion of strangers and the Press dependent upon a distinct vote of the whole House, was agreed to on the motion of the Prime Minister : That if at any sitting of the House, or in Committee, any Member shall take notice that strangers are present, Mr. Speaker or the Chairman (as the case may be) shall forthwith put the question * That strangers be ordered to withdraw ' without permitting any debate or amendment. Provided that the Speaker or the Chair- man may whenever he thinks fit order the withdrawal of strangers from any part of the House. 1 Since then the Reporters' Gallery has only once been cleared. In 1878, the Earl of Leitrim was shot dead on his estate in Donegal, and his secretary and the driver of his car who were with him shared his fate. The crime was brought before the House of Commons by the Irish Members on April 12, 1878, with the object of showing that the Earl was assassinated, not because his tenantry preferred to murder him rather than pay his rents, but because of his immorality in debauching the peasant girls of the district. Colonel King-Harman then moved in the interest of decency and good feeling, as he said, that strangers should withdraw, The motion was carried by fifty-seven votes to twelve. Parnell and Frank Hugh O'Donnell being the tellers for the minority which included Gladstone and Lord Harting- 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 224, pp. 1,136-85. 'MR. SPEAKER, I ESPY STRANGERS' 411 ton. 1 It is probable that never again will the Order of the House of Commons for the exclusion of strangers be put into operation. Failure has attended every attempt to close the doors since 1878. The right of the people to be informed through the Press of all that passes within the walls of St. Stephen's may now be regarded as unconditional and superior to all other considerations. 1 1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 239, pp. 1,259-63. CHAPTER XLVII Admission of the Provincial Press AT this time none of the great provincial newspapers in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Shef- field, Dublin, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, had the privilege of sending its own staff of reporters to the Gallery. Admis- sion was confined exclusively to the accredited representatives of the London newspapers and news-agencies. ' I have very frequently been pressed very strongly, indeed,' said Lord Charles Russell, the Serjeant-at-Arms, to the Select Committee of 1867, in a characteristic passage, 'by Scotch and Irish Members to allow representatives of Scotch and Irish Press seats in the Gallery, which I have always fought against. I considered that the best way to serve the interests of the public in the Reporters' Gallery was to give every accommodation to the London Press, and to restrict it entirely to the London Press.' The London correspondents of some of the provincial newspapers got into the Gallery by means of superfluous transferable tickets possessed by the news-agencies and the London Press, or as members of their reporting staffs. Wemyss Reid says that in order to obtain ' the coveted Gallery ticket,' on his appointment as London correspondent of The Leeds Mercury in 1867, he proffered his 'gratuitous services as an occasional reporter on The Morning Star ' and his offer was accepted. 1 But so far as the reports of the proceedings 1 Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid, p. 121. 412 ADMISSION OF THE PROVINCIAL PRESS 413 are concerned the local papers had to be content with those supplied by the news-agencies. At first the summaries of the Debates were sent to them by the Electric and Inter- national, and the British and Magnetic, Telegraph Com- panies the original proprietors of the country's telegraph services each of which employed a small staff of reporters in the Gallery. It was after the purchase of the telegraph lines by the State in 1870 that the Press Association and Central News were formed, and for several years they supplied, between them, the whole of the parliamentary intelligence which appeared in the newspapers of the provinces. Justin McCarthy, who was afterwards to become a dis- tinguished Member of Parliament and to succeed the deposed Parnell in the leadership of the Irish Party, tells a strange story of the days of his journalistic youth, when he had to assist in reporting Gladstone's first Budget speech, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1853, for the Liverpool Post, under very peculiar circumstances. A place in the Reporters' Gallery was, of course, quite unobtainable at that time for the representatives of the Liverpool Post ; but the conductors of the newspaper induced Edward Card well, who had formerly sat for Liverpool, and was then a Member of the Cabinet, to try to get their reporters into the House, somewhere or other ; and, extraordinary to relate, he obtained places for them in the corridor, or passage-way, just behind the Strangers' Gallery. Card- well's success in this undertaking is very remarkable because then, as now, note-taking is strictly prohibited in all parts of the House allotted to strangers, save the Reporters' Gallery. McCarthy says that when he and his two colleagues found themselves seated at a small table in this obscure passage, separated from the crowded Strangers' Gallery by a latticed partition, and at a long distance from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they became apprehensive of the failure of their mission through sheer inability to hear what was said. Yet, such were the clear, ringing tones 414 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY of Gladstone's voice, not a word of the Budget speech was lost to them. Justin McCarthy describes a second journalistic experi- ence which makes vividly manifest the difficulties that so often attend the work of the parliamentary reporter. Two years afterwards the three reporters of the Liverpool Post were again sent down to London, to report another Budget speech which was to be made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. This time they obtained one place on the back bench of the Reporters' Gallery (how they got it McCarthy does not explain) which they were to occupy in turns as they relieved each other during the speech. ' I sat in the outer room waiting and watching the clock,' says McCarthy. ' At a certain moment I was to go into the Gallery and take the place of one of my comrades, who was at once to come out. The moment arrived, and I went in. I had never been in the Reporters' Gallery before, and felt con- fused and dazed by the novelty of the situation. My com- rade had instantly to give place to me, and leave the Gallery ; but as he passed he had time to turn on me a countenance of despair.' Something had gone wrong. What it was McCarthy quickly discovered on taking his place on the back bench, behind the writing-ledge. He first noticed that all the reporters in the line of boxes fronting the Gallery were straining forward, each with his left hand hollowed over his ear, and with his right jotting down a hasty note now and again ; and then he became aware of a muttering or whispering in the region of the Treasury Bench. This was Cornewall Lewis making his Budget statement so unintelligibly as to bewilder the reporters. So far as McCarthy himself was concerned, it was through the speech of Gladstone, who afterwards spoke in criticism of the Budget, that he got glimmerings of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposals. 1 Despite the exclusion of the provincial newspaper repre- 1 Justin McCarthy, Reminiscences, vol. 1, pp. 19-24. ADMISSION OF THE PROVINCIAL PRESS 415 sentatives the membership of the Gallery continued steadily to grow. James Grant says that when he commenced his career in the Gallery, on the Morning Chronicle, in 1834, the number of reporters did not exceed 60. In 1871, when he retired, the number was 105. 1 In 1870 the General Post Office, as I have said, obtained possession of the tele- graph systems of the country, and at once reduced the rates for Press messages. The enterprising provincial newspapers thereupon became still more desirous of admis- sion to the Reporters' Gallery, and, in consequence, still more persistent in their demand for the opening of its doors to them as a right. Parliament, always reluctant to inter- fere with the settled order of things, and still less with the routine of its officials' duties, was not stirred to take action for many a year yet. It was not in fact until 1878, that the House of Commons referred the question of pro- vincial newspaper accommodation in the Gallery to a Select Committee which it then appointed primarily to consider the advisability of having an official report of its proceedings. At that time the original nineteen boxes for reporters were thus appropriated 15 to the London morning and evening papers, 3 to the Press agencies which supplied reports to the provincial newspapers, and 1 to Mr. Hansard for his staff who compiled the Parliamentary Debates. The then Serjeant-at-Arms, Ralph Allen Gosset, stated, in the course of his evidence to the Committee, that 123 tickets of admission to the Gallery were issued, and were distributed as follows : The Times, 16 ; Morning Post, 11 ; Standard, 17 ; Morning Advertiser, 15 ; Daily Telegraph, 12 ; Daily News, 10 ; Daily Chronicle, 7 ; Globe, 6 ; Pall Mall Gazette, 2 ; Echo, 2 ; Press Association, 10 ; Central News, 7 ; Sun and Central Press, 3 ; Hansard, 4 ; Reuters' Agency, 1. The 123 journalists who were entitled to use the Gallery were not all reporters. The newspapers then, as now, 1 The Newspaper Press, vol. 2, p. 173. 416 THE REPORTERS' GALLERY reserved some of their tickets for their editors, leader- writers and summary- writers. The Committee reported in 1879. They recommended a ' wing ' extention of the Reporters' Gallery, on each side, as far as the first doors giving entrance into the Members' Gallery ; and they calculated that the space thus taken from the Members' Gallery would give room for eight additional reporters' boxes on each side, as well ab extra accommodation in the way of a back bench and writing-ledge. The suggested enlargement of the Gallery was carried out in 1881. Five boxes were added at each side. A ledge was also provided at each side, which afforded sitting and writing accommodation for four additional journalists. These boxes and seats were given to the chief provincial newspapers. At the same time that the Gallery was thus substantially enlarged, Shaw Lefevre, the First Com- missioner of Works in the Gladstone Administration, made generous provision for the convenience and comfort of the reporters. On the death of Colonel Forrester, assistant Serjeant-at-Arms, his quarters, overlooking the Members' entrance to the House from New Palace Yard, were turned into a commodious and well-lighted suite of writing, dining and smoking rooms for the journalists. The Press was thereby fully recognized as part and parcel of the permanent establishment at St. Stephen's. Since then the accommo- dation has been gradually added to, giving still more space and freedom of movement to the reporters behind the scenes, until what is to all intents and purposes a spacious and well-equipped club, has been hospitably provided for the Press by Parliament. 1 1 The friendly relations that have long existed between the authorities of the House and the Gallery were pleasantly shown on June 26, 1911, when Sir H. D. Erskine and Lady Horatia Erskine received presentations from the Members of the Reporters' Gallery and the journalists in the Lobby, on the occasion of their golden wedding. Mr. Gilbert Watson (of The Yorkshire Post), Chairman of the Reporters' Gallery, made the presentation on behalf of his ADMISSION OF THE PROVINCIAL PRESS 417 colleagues. It consisted of a silver salver and a bouquet of flowers for Lady Horatia Erskine. The presentation of a silver inkstand on behalf of the Lobbyists was made by Mr. Fred Piper, of The Daily News. ' No one,' said the Serjeant -at -Arms, ' could appre- ciate more fully than he did the difficulties the Press Gallery had to encounter in carrying out the work of their great profession, and his endeavour had always been to do everything in his power to grease the wheels of their coach.'