The Mother of Parliaments

The parliamentary articles in the "Gentleman's Magazine" were published under the title of the "Senate of Lilliput," the real names of the various debaters being replaced by pseudonyms which deceived nobody.445 This periodical is famous as being the medium through which Dr. Johnson originally published his political views. When he was first employed by Cave upon the staff of his paper Johnson was still struggling, not for fame, but for existence, and had no objection to any form of literary labour so long as it provided him with a means of livelihood. His original duties consisted in revising the rough notes made by Guthrie, but by 1740 he had become entirely responsible for the parliamentary articles, and five years later succeeded Guthrie in the editorial chair.

The reports of the proceedings were often written under great difficulties. Dr. Johnson would at times be compelled to invent the whole debate, depending solely upon his imagination, and being provided with nothing more inspiring than a list of the speakers and of the subjects under discussion. "I wrote that in a garret!" he is always supposed to have said of a much admired speech of Pitt's, and perhaps the oratorical fame of many a statesman of that day is due to Dr. Johnson's literary skill. His style was as a rule far too perfect to pass for that of an ordinary member of Parliament, and in his reports he is often accused of giving not so much what the speakers said as what they ought to have said. Nor was his pen an entirely impartial one, for he always took care, as he explained to Boswell, that the "Whig dogs" should not have the best of it in debate. Writing as he did, very hurriedly and from scanty materials, the compilation of parliamentary reports gave him little satisfaction. As soon as he found that his debates were thought to be genuine, he determined to cease their composition, and in the later years of his life often expressed regret at having been engaged in work of this kind.

The "London Magazine" was the next journal to publish debates, imitating the methods of the "Gentleman's Magazine," by pretending to report the proceedings of an imaginary Roman Senate, and alluding to the speakers by more or less appropriate Latin names.

In spite of these various efforts to establish the liberty of the Press, the attitude of Parliament long remained antagonistic. In 1728 a fresh resolution was passed in the House declaring it to be a breach of privilege for any one to print any account of the debates, and in the following year a printer of Gloucester was summoned to the bar of the Lords and severely reprimanded for publishing a report of their proceedings.446 In 1738 Speaker Onslow brought up the subject of parliamentary reporting in the Commons, and a debate ensued. "If we do not put a speedy stop to this practice," said Winnington, "you will have the speeches of this House every day printed, even during your session, and we shall be looked upon as the most contemptible assembly on the face of the earth." Pelham, however, was inclined to deal lightly with the Press. "Let them alone," he said once, "they make better speeches for us than we can make for ourselves."447 But it was a long time before this sensible view became general.

The struggle between Press and Parliament reached a climax in 1771, when Wilkes's paper, the "North Briton," was publishing the much discussed "Junius letters." Public opinion was by this time becoming gradually alive to the necessity for granting freedom to the Press, and needed but the opportunity to express itself openly upon the subject. The occasion had at length arrived. The Commons in this year were much incensed at the behaviour of some wretched City printers who had offended against the privileges of the House, and despatched the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest them. After much difficulty two of the culprits were apprehended, but on being taken before the City Aldermen the latter at once ordered their release. When a messenger from the House of Commons attempted to arrest another printer, he was himself seized and carried before the civic authorities, charged with assault. The House was furious at this treatment of their officer, and committed the Lord Mayor and one of the offending aldermen – both members of Parliament – to the Tower.

The Press on this occasion found a worthy champion in Edmund Burke. On the 2nd of March, in a debate which lasted twenty-two hours, Burke effectually held his own, and so bullied and ridiculed the House that he brought the whole business to a standstill. By continually forcing divisions and making use of other obstructive tactics, he managed to delay the parliamentary attempt to muzzle the Press, and gained a great victory for the cause of freedom.

From being actively disliked the Reporters gradually grew to be tolerated, and finally courted and cultivated. Members who had formerly objected to the publication of their speeches soon began to complain with equal bitterness that they were not reported at all. Others, again, grumbled at being misreported, words being attributed to them for which they altogether declined to be responsible. Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Loughborough, complained, in 1771, that the reporting in the Commons was shocking. Of the report of one speech which he was supposed to have delivered he said that "to be sure, there are in that report a few things which I did say, but many things which I am glad I did not say, and some things which I wish I could have said."448 Burke's famous sentiment that "Virtue does not depend on climates or degrees" was first printed as "on climaxes and trees." When Sheridan made his great speech at the trial of Warren Hastings, the "Morning Chronicle" reported him as having said that "nothing equal in criminality was to be traced either in ancient or modern history, in the correct periods of Tacitus, or the luminous page of Gibbon."449 The historian was delighted at being mentioned in so flattering a fashion; "I could not hear without emotion the personal compliment," he says in his autobiography. But when Sheridan was asked how he came to apply the epithet "luminous" to Gibbon, "I said Vo-luminous!" he replied shortly.450

Cobbett, too, suffered much from bad reporting, and when he ventured to find fault, the Press retaliated by ceasing to report him at all. Spring-Rice (afterwards Lord Monteagle) was punished in a similar fashion for two years, because he had said something deprecatory of journalism. Another member complained that his speeches had been published in the papers with certain of the sentences printed in italics. "I never spoke in italics in my life!" he exclaimed indignantly.

O'Connell in 1833 accused a reporter of wilfully perverting one of his speeches. By way of excuse the Pressman stated that on his way home from the House he had been caught in a shower of rain, which had washed out many of his notes. This explanation did not satisfy the Liberator, who justly remarked that it must surely have been an extraordinary shower which could not only wash out one speech, but actually wash in another!451 He was never a favourite of the Press, and they finally decided to discontinue the report of his speeches. As a means of revenge, he determined to prevent all newspaper reporting, and for some time succeeded in doing so. With this end in view, he made a practice of "espying strangers" on every opportunity, and each time he did so the galleries had to be cleared. The withdrawal of the reporters had a natural but most depressing effect upon the oratory of Parliament. "For the first time within my recollection," says Grant, "members kept their word when, on commencing their orations, they promised not to trespass at any length on the patience of the House."452

The "Diary," published in 1769, and edited by William Woodfall, was the first paper to give accounts of the parliamentary debates on the day after they had taken place. Woodfall had a marvellous memory, and would sit in the gallery or stand at the bar of either House for hours, without taking a note of any kind, and afterwards reproduce the speeches verbatim. He seemed not to require rest or refreshment, but occasionally fortified himself with a hard-boiled egg. His efforts were, however, spasmodic and irregular, and it was not until 1802, when William Cobbett started the "Weekly Political Register," which afterwards published the debates as supplements under the title of "Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates," that the system of providing regular reports of the proceedings was inaugurated. In 1809 the publication of the "Weekly Political Register" was transferred to T. C. Hansard, whose name has been so long and honourably connected with parliamentary reporting that it is still used colloquially to describe the official volumes.

For over fifty years Hansard carried on the publication of debates as a private speculation, by which time the Government had realised the useful nature of his labours, and assisted him by subscribing for a certain number of sets of the reports for public distribution. In 1877 a Treasury grant was made to enable him to continue the good work with greater fullness and facility, and twelve years later he sold his rights to a syndicate. This new venture proved anything but a financial success, and the publication of the "Parliamentary Debates," as they are now called, was then undertaken by the official Government printers, the reports being composed from notes furnished by the staff of the "Times."

It was not until 1909 that the present system was instituted, and both Houses, while leaving the printing of debates in the hands of the King's Printer, provided themselves with a regular staff of reporters, who were their own officials and unconnected with any company or newspaper.

Up to the time of the Fire, reporters in the Commons always sat in the back row of the Strangers' Gallery, to which they obtained admission by a sessional payment of three guineas. In 1831, the House of Lords provided separate accommodation for the Press, and in the temporary House which was constructed in 1834 a special gallery was reserved for their use.

The Press Gallery in the present House of Commons holds about sixty persons, and is situated exactly behind and above the Speaker's chair. Reporters of the newspapers in the Lords occupy a similar position, but as the acoustic properties of the Upper Chamber are notoriously bad, a special arrangement has existed for some years, whereby the official reporter of the "Parliamentary Debates" is given a seat on the floor of the House immediately behind the Clerks at the Table.

A hundred years ago the path of the Pressman was not so smooth as it is to-day. Up to 1840 the publication of debates was undertaken at the risk of the printer. In that year Hansard published the report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, in which a certain book was referred to as "disgusting and obscene." Stockdale, the publisher of the book in question, took the matter into Court and obtained £600 damages for libel. The House retorted by summoning to the bar the Sheriffs of Middlesex who had tried the case, and reprimanded them for their contempt of its privileges. After this Lord John Russell took the first opportunity of introducing a Bill rendering all publication of speeches and documents, if by the authority of Parliament, matters of privilege not amenable to ordinary law. A member of Parliament cannot, however, claim privilege for publishing or circulating the report of any libellous speech made in the House, though he is, of course, protected there for anything he may say. The suggestion that privilege of Parliament should protect members from being proceeded against for writing and publishing libellous articles was discussed in November, 1763, and finally relinquished by a large majority.453

The subject of reporting cannot be left without some mention of that official amateur reporter who sits upon the Treasury bench and prepares his nightly précis of the day's parliamentary proceedings. Amateur reporters there have always been in the Commons from the days of Sir Symonds D'Ewes and Sir Henry Cavendish454 to the present time; but there is only one upon the floor of the House whose duties have ever been officially recognised.

In accordance with a custom of many years standing the Leader of the House of Commons writes a nightly letter to the sovereign, whenever the House is sitting, giving a brief résumé of the debates. This letter, often composed somewhat hastily during the course of an exciting debate, is at once sent off in an official dispatch box to His Majesty, and is subsequently filed in the library at Buckingham Palace.455 The practice dates from the reign of George III., who required George Grenville, then Leader of the House of Commons, to provide him with daily reports of the debates relating to the contest between Parliament and John Wilkes.

The sovereign is not supposed to enter the Lower House – Charles I. was the only monarch who broke this rule – and thus, in days before debates were published at length in the papers, the Crown had no means of ascertaining the doings of the Commons save through the medium of this letter. The need for this one-sided nightly correspondence no longer exists, but the custom still prevails, and adds one more to the already multifarious duties of the Leader of the House, though nowadays it is occasionally delegated to some other Minister, or to one of the Whips.

To-day Press and Parliament are mutually dependent. A great newspaper proprietor who was recently asked which of the two he considered to be the most powerful, found some difficulty in replying. "The Press is the voice without which Parliament could not speak," he said. "On the other hand, Parliament is the law-making machine without which the Press could not act." The question of their relative power and importance must be left to the decision of individual judgment and taste. "Give me but the liberty of the Press," said Sheridan in 1810, in answer to the Premier, Spencer Perceval, "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 influences, I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him to purchase submission and 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 reared with that mightier engine; I will shake down from its height corruption, and lay it beneath the ruins of the abuses it was meant to shelter!"456