Here and There in London

by J. Ewing Ritchie

contribution, if not to the business, at any rate to the amusement, of the evening. People call the present times fast; but men lived faster then. Sheridan drank brandy when he spoke. Pitt made one of his most brilliant speeches just after he had been vomiting from the quantity of port he had previously been drinking. Members, when they came into the House, not unfrequently saw two speakers where, in reality, there was but one; and the reporters were often in a state of similar bewilderment themselves: but they are gone, and the oratory they recorded has vanished from the senate. In the new gallery they can never hear what was heard in the old—the philosophy of Burke—the wit of Sheridan—the passionate attacks of Fox—or the cool replies of Pitt. The House has become less oratorical—less an imperial senate, more of a national “vestry.” It discusses fewer principles, and more railway bills. The age of Pitt and Fox went with Pitt and Fox. You cannot recall it—the age has altered. You find Pitt and Fox now in the newspaper office, not in the senate. The old gallery has looked down on great men. It could tell of an heroic race and of heroic deeds. It had seen the angry Charles.

It had heard Cromwell bid the mace be gone. It had re-echoed the first indignant accents of the elder Pitt. It had outlived a successful revolution. It had witnessed the triumph of reform. Can the new one witness more?

So much for the Reporters’ Gallery. We cannot take leave of the subject without remarking what obligations members are under to it. No man can long attend parliamentary debates without being very strongly impressed with that one great fact. The orators who are addressing empty benches and inattentive audiences are, in reality, speaking to the dozen reporters just before them. Colonel Sibthorpe, when he spoke, turned his face to them, in order that they might not miss a single word. You did not, the last time you were in the house, hear a single atom of Jones’s speech; you could merely see Jones, with an unhappy expression of face, and to the infinite annoyance of the House, waving his arms in an inelegant manner; yet how well Jones’s speech read in the Times the next day. Once upon a time a paper attempted to report literally what the members said—not what they should have said. They were threatened with so many actions for libel that they were all obliged to abandon the attempt;

and now the reporters take care that the speeches contain good grammar, if they do not contain good sense. Nor, most good-natured sir, are you under fewer obligations. It is owing to them that you read the debate over your muffins and coffee at your ease, in your morning gown and slippers, whilst otherwise you would have to remain in profound ignorance of it altogether, or would have to fight your way into the gallery as best you could, besides running a risk of catching cold or having your favourite corn trod on. Think, then, of the Reporters’ Gallery leniently. The brave fellows in it suffer much for you. Cowper makes the slave in the “Negro’s Complaint” exclaim—

“Think ye, masters, iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.”

A thinking public, at times, should reason in a similar manner. The reporters don’t find it all play. People should remember—if a debate be dull to read—how terrible it must be to hear!

THE LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS DURING THE SESSION.

England, Ireland, Scotland, and our forty colonies are ruled, not from Downing-street, not from Privy Councils at Buckingham Palace, nor by the Times newspaper, as some pretend, nor even by the stump orator, but by the Lobby of the House of Commons. This I know, that if I were a member of the United Kingdom Alliance, and wished to root up the liquor traffic in England—that if I were a Scotchman, and endeavoured to confirm and extend the provisions of the Forbes Mackenzie Act—that even were I of the Green Isle, and raised the cry of justice for Ireland, whatever that may mean—I’d plant myself in the Lobby of the House of Commons, and there win victory or die.

Externally the Lobby is a handsome one; little more. Mr. Timbs tells me it is “a rich apartment, forty-five feet square, and has on each side an archway, carved open screens, inscribed

Domine salvam fac Reginam, and windows painted with the arms of parliamentary boroughs. The brass gas standards by Hardman are elaborately chased. The doorways lead to the library, the post-office, vote paper office, central hall, &c.” Is this all? Yes, is the answer of one of the matter-of-fact class, of whom Peter Bell is such an illustrious example.