that the first printed reports of the speeches delivered in the Irish Parliament were published. They can hardly (says. O'Flanagan) be considered very reliable, as they were given from the recollection of Sir James Caldwell, and few have memories so accurate as to recollect what falls from several speakers on the same, or on different subjects.

The Commons and the City Printers.-In 1771, a contest between the House of Commons and the authorities of the City of London arose out of the publication by several printers of reports of parliamentary debates. The time was one of great political excitement, owing to the proceedings of the House in the case of Wilkes and the Middlesex elections, the Falkland Island question, &c. Colonel Onslow, a Lord of the Treasury, moved the reading of the resolutions of the 26th of February, 1728, which ran as follows: "That it is an indignity to, and a breach of privilege of, this House, for any person to presume to give in written or printed newspapers any account or minutes of debate, or other proceedings of this House, or any part thereof; and 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." The order having been read, some of the printers were summoned to the bar for infringing it. They took no notice of the summons, and the Serjeant-at-Arms in vain sought to find them. A proclamation was issued offering a reward for their apprehension, and two of them were arrested in the City, and carried before Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, who immediately discharged them. A messenger from the House attempting to arrest a third, was himself taken into custody for assault, and committed by Lord Mayor Crosby and the two aldermen to the Compter, but released on bail. The ground of committal was that, by the City charters, no citizen could be arrested east of Temple Bar without the Lord Mayor's authority. The House of Commons was furious, and sent Crosby and Oliver, who were both members, to the Tower. Wilkes was also called to the bar, but refused to obey, claiming his right to be summoned to his place as member for Middlesex. The other two remained in the Tower from March until Parliament was prorogued in May.

Fox on the Publication of Debates.-Soon after the meeting of Parliament in 1778, Colonel Luttrell, complaining that in a certain morning paper he had been grossly misrepresented, informed the House that, for his future safety and protection, he was determined to move that the standing order of the House for excluding strangers from the gallery should be strictly enforced. Mr. Fox (writes Earl Russell) laid down the true doctrine of publicity on this occasion. He said that " he was convinced the true and only method of preventing misrepresentation was by throwing open the gallery, and making the debates and decisions of the House as public as possible. There was less danger of misrepresentation in a full company than in a thin one, as there would be a greater number of persons to give evidence against the misrepresentation. The shutting of the gallery could not prevent the proceedings of the House from finding their way to public view; for, during a certain period when the gallery was kept empty, the debates were printed, let the manner of obtaining

them be what it might; and, in fact, the public had a right to know what passed in Parliament."

The Fourth Estate.-In contrast with the restrictions imposed upon reports of debates in former times, the following may be noted. Macaulay writes in 1828 (" Essay on Hallam's History"), "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.” And in 1871 we find Mr. Disraeli alluding, in the House of Commons, to a newspaper as being the classical authority" for reports of parliamentary proceedings.

Communication of Parliamentary Proceedings to the Sovereign. It is mentioned in other parts of this book (p. 299, &e.' that it has been the custom in recent times for the Minister leading in the House of Commons to send brief notes of its proceedings to the Queen The taking of notes for such a purpose was brought before the House of Commons on the 13th of May, 1879. Mr. Dillwyn then moved a resolu tion, "That, to prevent the growing abuse by her Majesty's Ministers of the prerogative and influence of the Crown, it is necessary that

the mode and limits of the action of the prerogative should be more strictly observed." In the course of the discussion a member Mr. Courtney) alluded to the fact that an officer of the Royal household (Lord Barrington) was taking notes, and said, "He saw before him at that moment a noble lord who was very busily engaged in what was an u doubted breach of the Constitution. They would all be sorry if anything serious should happen to that noble lord, but without knowing it he was exposing himself to the very gravest censure. (Oh,' and laughter.) For the benefit of those honourable members who laughed, he would read 1 passage from Sir Erskine May bearing on the point :- The privileges of Parliament,' said Sir Erskine, were systematically violated by the King (George III.). In order to guard against the arbitrary interference of the Crown in its proceedings, Parliament had established, for centuries, the constitutional doctrine that the King should not hear or give credit to reports of its debates, yet during the proceedings of the Commons against Wilkes the King obtained from Mr. Grenville the most minute and circumstantial reports.' It was a true and sound constitutional principle that the Crown should know only of the collective action of Parlisment that it should know nothing of the action of individual members of that House to guide it in the distribution of its favours. (Oh.”) Of course it might not be true that the noble lord he referred to took notes : of the proceedings of that House for transmission elsewhere; but such was the rumour." Mr. Gladstone (then in Opposition) declined to support the motion, and said: "The lore of the Constitution has been searched. even including resources which, though they are not those of a member of this House, yet, we rejoice to think, are in one and in a very important sense the resources of this House. The doctrine of the time of Mr. Gre ville in regard to the communication of the debates of this House to the Sovereign has been gravely and seriously adduced, in a great debate on s vote of censure on the Government, as a doctrine applicable to the present time, and some notes of my noble friend opposite, which, it is presumei.

he was making for the purpose of a very effective reply, were referred to. I can conceive that this House might object to the communication of the details of its procedure to the Crown, at a period when it objected to the communication of the details of its procedure to the nation. That was the doctrine of those times, and the practice was consistent. It would have been a false position for this House to have the details of its debates made known in private to the Sovereign while the nation was kept in ignorance; but can the honourable member for Liskeard really think that it should now be made an offence to communicate to the Sovereign the details of debates in the House of Commons, which are made known to all persons throughout the country, from the Sovereign to her subjects, not only with the knowledge, but with the virtual approval of this House, by every newspaper in the kingdom? I therefore must really decline to enter upon these high constitutional matters on the present occasion."

Origin of the Reporters' Gallery.-Mr. Spencer Walpole mentions that the destruction of the old Houses of Parliament was memorable for one great change. Up to that time the reporters in the House of Commons had always carried on their labours in the strangers' gallery. A separate gallery was provided for their use in the temporary house which was constructed in 1834. The Peers had preceded the Commons in this act of common sense. They provided accommodation for reporters from the 15th of October, 1831. But it must not be supposed (Mr. Walpole remarks) that this exceptional act of liberality on their Lordships' part in any way proved them to be in advance of the Commons. They were the first to provide accommodation for the press, not because they were more liberal than the Commons, but because they had more room.

Accommodation in the Reporters' Gallery.-Major Gosset, the Serjeant-at-Arms, gave evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons on parliamentary reporting in 1878, from which it appeared that numerous applications for seats in the reporters' gallery, on behalf of organs of the press, could not be acceded to. An enlargement of the gallery could only be effected by encroachment on the side galleries, and there was scarcely room for members. There were 19 front seats, and those were the only seats in which it was possible to report properly. Fifteen of these were devoted to the London daily press, three to the Press Associations, and one to Mr. Hansard. The total number of reporters was as follows:-The Central News and the Press Association, 10; Globe, 6; Hansard, 4; Morning Post, 11; Standard, 17; Morning Advertiser, 15; Daily Telegraph, 12; Times, 16; Daily News, 10; Pall Mall Gazette, 2; Daily Chronicle, 7; Echo, 2; Central Press, 3; Reuter's, 1; and the latter's representative could only occupy a back seat. (It will be understood that only one or two representatives from any of the above organs can be present in the gallery at the same time. The numbers given by Major Gosset showed the total of each reporting staff, the members of which enter the gallery in turn to discharge their duties.)

The Commons and the Press in 1875.—In April, 1875, a member (Mr. C. Lewis) brought before the House a complaint that the

Times and the Daily News had published evidence and documents laid before its Committee on Foreign Loans, then sitting. He referred to a resolution passed in 1827, to the effect that the publication of any such evidence, not reported to the House, was a breach of its undoubted privileges, and moved that the printers of the papers in question should be called to the bar. This was agreed to, and three days afterwards the printers attended to the summons. By this time, however, opportunity had been given to all parties in the House for reflection, and the Prime Minister (Mr. Disraeli) met the proposal of Mr. Lewis that the printers should be called in, by an amendment that the Foreign Loans Committee should report specially upon the matter. After some discussion, in the course of which Sir W. V. Harcourt (Attorney-General under Mr. Gladstone's Government) declared that the House had been got into a "undignified mess," Mr. Disraeli's resolution was carried, and also another, that the printers should be discharged from further attendance.

Power of the Reporters.-On the subject of reporting, Lord Lyttelton, in a letter to the Birmingham Post in 1871, wrote: “I do not complain of the reporters. To do so would be unjust in my casefoolish in any case; for we are absolutely at the mercy of those excellent and formidable personages, and to complain would make matters very much worse. I will tell two anecdotes. Mr. Cobbett, during the short time he was in Parliament, incessantly abused the reporters (whom he always called 'reporthers') for not fully reporting him. The consequence was that they ended by not reporting him at all. The late Lord Monteagle, when Mr. Spring Rice, in the House of Commons, once said something the reporters did not like. They sent him a formal warning that, unless he publicly apologised, reported he should not be. He did not apologise, and reported he was not for two years. At last the spell was broken by Mr. Murray, the bookseller, starting a new paper, called the Constitution. To ingratiate himself with Mr. Rice he reported his speeches, whereup the others gave in."

Reporting Freaks.-Although members of Parliament are indebted in the main to the reporters for the generally faithful, and sometimes improved, versions of their speeches given to the public, yet it must be admitted that the reporters of a past generation occasionally com mitted freaks at the expense of members, either in retaliation for such s step as clearing the galleries by drawing attention to "strangers," & merely by way of indulging their own sense of humour. An instance d the latter kind occurred in the case of Mr. Wilberforce. He was short in stature, and having alluded to potatoes in a debate, the reporter (probably Hibernian) put the following ludicrous passage into his speech: "For potatoes, Mr. Speaker, potatoes, Sir, make men healthy; potatoes make men tall. More especially do I feel this, because, being under the common size, I must ever lament that I was not fostered under that genial vegetable, the potato." The worthy member complained of this to the House, as an indignity offered to the representative of a large constituency; but the House would see only the humorous side of the question, and greeted his statement with shouts of laughter.

Emphasizing a Speech.-Mr. Martin, of Galway, once made a speech in which some very peculiar passages occurred, and the reporter underlined them. The printer of the paper, in which the report appeared as written, was called to the bar, but offered to prove that the report was an exact transcript of the member's words. "That may be," said Mr. Martin,

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but did I spake them in italics ?”

PARLIAMENTARY USAGES, &c.

Presence of the Sovereign in the Early Parliaments.The following is extracted, with abbreviation, from the learned and careful work of Professor Stubbs : The King's presence was deemed necessary at the opening and generally at the close of the session, but most frequently his duty was discharged when he had directed the Chancellor to state the causes of summons, and to thank the estates for their attendance. The Chancellor was his spokesman in most cases when he approved the election of the Speaker. His decision on petitions was expressed by an indorsement which the clerk of the Parliament read on the last day of the session as the King's answer. It was very seldom that he spoke, or was recorded to have spoken; and when it is recorded it is with exceptional solemnity. It is in 1363, after Edward III. has been more than thirty years on the throne, that we find him first distinctly making his will known to the Commons by his own mouth; they thank him for having done this in the last Parliament, from which we infer that he had spoken on the occasion of the dissolution. The Parliament of 1362 was that in which the use of English in legal transactions was ordered; that of 1365 was opened with an English speech, and it may be inferred that in giving the estates leave to depart, Edward himself had spoken in English, and that where in other cases the address of thanks is not said to have been spoken by the Chancellor, it was spoken by the King. In the last interview which he had with his Parliament, at Sheen in 1377, the parting words are put in his mouth. The days of serene supremacy passed away with Edward III. Richard II. is more than once said to have uttered haughty words in Parliament. He discussed in a long speech to the Commons the foreign policy which he had adopted, and acted as his own minister. The succeeding kings took a still more prominent part in Parliament. Henry IV., whose claim to the crown, spoken in English, made the occasion an era of constitutional progress, not only signified his wishes to the Parliament, but deigned to argue with the Commons; he laid himself open to the good advice of the Speaker, and condescended on various occasions both to defend himself and to silence his interlocutor; he soon learned that his dignity would not survive too great familiarity, and had to reprove the loquacity of the Speaker. Edward IV., who imitated the more popular usages of the rival House, likewise made speeches to both Lords and Commons; and in particular, in dissolving his first Parliament, addressed the Speaker in simple and touching language of gratitude and promise.