LORDS AND COMMONS.—CONTINUED.
IRECTLY in front of the gallery where I am sitting, is the Reporter's Gallery. There are fifteen boxes for their use to take notes in, each reporter sitting separately from his comrade, and writing characters for dear life. These boxes resemble private boxes in our New York Opera House, with the difference that they have no roofs above them, and are open to the public gaze. Behind these fifteen boxes are seats for twenty more reporters, to take the place of those in the boxes in turn. Each reporter takes short-hand notes for a space of ten to fifteen minutes time, and is then relieved by his colleague, waiting above him, who steps into his place as the other retires to the Reporter's Room, in the corridor, to write out his notes, and thence to take them to the newspaper office, or else, if he chooses, he may send them by the small boys waiting in the gallery, who are employed by the newspapers at a salary of from eight to twelve British shillings a week to act as messengers. Late at night, it is customary for the reporter who has notes of a very important speech—which he desires to get to the composing-rooms of his journal, to take a cab from the Palace Yard, where there are dozens of them always waiting, and thus dash off to be in time for the press. The Times keeps thirteen reporters constantly in the gallery during the session, and the Standard as many more, if I am not mistaken. These men are all expert short-hand reporters, and receive from five to eight guineas per week, according to their capability. There is also a man who remains late to get the gist of what is said and done in debate, and from his notes he makes up a clear and comprehensive summary for the morning edition. Then there is the "leader-writer," "the editor" proper, and a "special reporter," who receive cards of admission to that part of the house under the Reporter's Gallery, and consequently on the floor of the House behind the Speaker's chair. This is a high favor, and only granted most sparingly, and with discretion.
There are generally to be found about twenty reporters in the gallery, but this number is greatly increased on a "field night," when it is usual to find as many as thirty-five or forty journalists in the gallery. From what I have seen of these parliamentary reporters they seem to be very deliberate in their movements, and they do not allow anything to hurry them. They are nearly all, however, very pleasant gentlemen, and with few exceptions, men of experience and scholarly attainments, two-thirds of them being men who have taken honors at the universities, or at Harrow, Eton, or Rugby, and in not a few instances they have begun life by taking minor orders in the church, and having toyed with journalism for some time they were unable at last to resist its feverish fascination. Some few of them are in the Inns of Court—embryo barristers during the day, and at night they practise short-hand, earn a respectable living, and gain experience from England's chosen representatives up in their secluded nooks in the gallery of the House. It was not always that the press and its reporters had such privileges as they now possess in the House of Commons.
DR. JOHNSON TAKING NOTES.
Before the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, there were no satisfactory records of the debates in the House. The fierce contests between Walpole, Windham, Pulteney, and others had, indeed, for some time before 1740, attracted attention to the proceedings of the House, and they had been regularly reported in a confused long-hand sort of fashion every month in the Gentleman's and London Magazine, the former publication commencing the debates in January, 1731, the latter in April, 1732, but no attempt can be said to have been made to convey more than the substance of the speeches until that department of the Gentleman's Magazine was intrusted to gruff old Samuel Johnson, in November, 1740. This is the commencement of the era of parliamentary reporting in England. Short-hand, before that time is involved in chaos, and it is doubtful if Johnson knew anything more than the rudiments of the then crude system of stenography.
Indeed, Johnson appears to have given more of his own eloquence than of what had actually been uttered in Parliament; but still, what he did was, in all probability, only to substitute one kind of eloquence for another—a better for a worse; or, it might be, sometimes, a worse for a better—and therefore, on the whole, the speeches written by him, though less true to the letter than those given by his predecessors, may be received as a more living, and, as such, a truer representation of the real debates than had ever before been produced.