Appropriations for 1796.
The amendments from the committee being thus gone through, the bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading.[66]
Saturday, January 30.
Stenographer to the House.
The House then went into a Committee of the Whole on the report from the stenographical committee. The report was read.
Mr. Swanwick: then rose for the sake of asking information. He inquired whether the House were to sanction and authorize the reports of the proposed stenographer? He had very considerable apprehensions about the propriety of entering into the subject in any mode.
Mr. W. Smith replied, that the gentleman engaged by the committee had undertaken to have his reports ready for Mr. Brown, printer of the Philadelphia Gazette, in the morning of the succeeding day.
Mr. Swanwick rose again. He observed, that to give universal satisfaction was impracticable. So many gentlemen were to be satisfied, that it never could be accomplished. He observed that one of the principal causes of complaint against reporters was of a nature that did not admit a remedy. Gentlemen rose, in the ardor of discussion, and suffered many remarks to escape from them, which, neither in thought nor expression, were perfectly correct. If the reporter, as was his duty, took them down, and stated them exactly, gentlemen were irritated by seeing themselves exhibited in this shape, and then blame was cast on the reporter. Every degree of praise was due to the editor of a Philadelphia daily newspaper, whom Mr. S. named, and who had not only done every thing in his power to obtain the debates of the House at full length, but had frequently advertised, that if errors were committed by his reporter, they should, on application, be instantly rectified. More than this it was impossible to desire, for no mode of conduct could be more liberal or candid. But Mr. S. did not see the propriety of blending the House of Representatives and the editor of a newspaper in this business. The stenographer is to be called an officer of the House, while he receives eleven hundred dollars from the printer of a Philadelphia newspaper. He is thus also the officer of the printer, as well as ours. If we give the gentleman the proposed salary, we are to depend on him alone, whereas at present we have different reporters, and two or three of them frequently and mutually both corroborate and correct each other. What has escaped one reporter, or what he has misunderstood, is often observed by his competitor. The error is amended, or the defect supplied. Mr. S. farther observed, that as far as he had read or heard of, such an institution as the one now proposed, was never known under any Government, or in any country, that had hitherto existed. [It was observed, in some part of the debate, that an attempt of this kind was once made by the National Assembly of France.] Mr. S. expressed himself warmly against Government making any composition of the nature now proposed with a printer, and against any attempt for giving one newspaper an advantage over another, by any preference as to the copy. If Mr. S. wanted any person to be sure of dismission and disgrace, he could not name any other situation where that dismission and disgrace were so absolutely certain, as to a person accepting the proposed office of stenographer. If he did his duty, gentlemen would frequently not like to see their speeches exactly as delivered. If he altered them, his utility was at an end. It would therefore be much better to let the gentleman stay at his own business.
Mr. Giles objected particularly to the opposition made in this late stage of the business. He admitted that it was a delicate step, but he complained in strong terms of the inaccuracy of the reports now given. He observed that the object was not merely to find a stenographer who would satisfy the members of that House, but who would also give satisfactory information to the public at large.
Mr. Sherburne agreed with the gentleman last up, that the object of the resolution could not be merely to give satisfaction to members, but information to the public; though if it was important that the public should be informed of what was said in that House, the proposed resolution would be inadequate to its objects. But he conceived it more important for the public to be informed of what was done, and that, he observed, was not always to be inferred from what was said; as (the mind being always open to conviction) it had not been unusual in a former—he would not say the present—House, for gentlemen to argue one way, and vote another. As therefore, no certain inferences of the conduct of members would be drawn from their speeches, and as the public were more interested in their actions than their sayings, (a knowledge of which the present resolution was not, in his opinion, calculated to promote,) it would not meet his concurrence. But, Mr. S. further observed, that if the speech was to be considered as the infallible inditium of the subsequent conduct, as the avowed object of the resolution was to diffuse, through the various parts of the States a knowledge of that conduct, he should oppose it from a conviction that the means were not competent to the end. The resolution proposed a publication of the debates in a daily Philadelphia paper. These debates would necessarily be so voluminous as to engross the greater part of such a publication. Except in Philadelphia, New York, and one or two other large cities, there were no daily papers; in all other places, they were not published oftener than once, or, at most, twice, a week. The daily papers, in comparison with others, were few. If, therefore, a daily paper was engrossed by a detail of the debates, when would the public arrive at a knowledge of them through the more common medium of a weekly paper? The inhabitants of this, and a few other large towns, might be gratified, perhaps benefited, by a speedy perusal of them; but when would the citizens of more distant parts of the Union, through their usual weekly channels, be indulged with the like opportunities? The difference would be as one to six; and what the inhabitants of Philadelphia might become acquainted with in one year, the people of New England and Georgia would not be informed of in six years, unless they relinquished their own weekly publications for a Philadelphia paper.