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Updated: June 21, 2025
"Nothing can be more ill-natured among politicians, than to look back into Hansard's Debates, to see what has been said by particular men upon particular occasions, and to contrast such speeches with present opinions and therefore I forbear to introduce some inviting passages upon taking oaths in their plain and obvious sense, both in debates on the Catholic Question and upon that fatal and Mezentian oath which binds the Irish to the English Church."
He had armed himself for this occasion with an arsenal of quotations from Audley's speeches, taken out of Hansard's Debates; and, garbling these texts in the unfairest and most ingenious manner, he contrived to split consistency into such fragments of inconsistency to cut so many harmless sentences into such unpopular, arbitrary, tyrannical segments of doctrine that he made a very pretty case against the enlightened and incorruptible Egerton, as shuffler and trimmer, defender of jobs, and eulogist of Manchester massacres, etc.
Surely, of all human trades ever heard of, the trade of Owning Land in England ought not to bully us for drink money just now!" "Hansard's Debates," continues Crabbe farther on, "present many inconsistencies of speech; lamentable unveracities uttered in Parliament, by one and indeed by all; in which sad list Sir Robert Peel stands for his share among others.
I merely mention these 'extravagancies' to show that my dress was neither improper nor extraordinary." See the Narrative, ubi supra. See Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, N. S., Vol. xxiv., 551-555. Some further particulars may be found in 8 Bingham, 376; also in 5 C. & P., 342.
Where else save in the pages of Hansard can we make ourselves fully acquainted with the history of the Mother of Free Institutions? It is, no doubt, dull, but with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of Hansard's Debates is better than the incongruous chirpings of the new 'humourists. Besides, its dulness is exaggerated.
There are not half a dozen men in the House of Commons who can make a speech, properly so called, but the session is none the shorter on that account. Hansard's Debates are said to be dull to read, but there is a sterner fate than reading a dull debate: you may be called upon to listen to one.
If a reader cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not Hansard's. But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to pass unchallenged. Since when has it become a crime to be dull? Our fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause. We are ashamed, but without ceasing to be dull. But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market.
'Oh! said the Solicitor-General, 'if you had seen what I have seen, if you had had access to the pile of documents I have waded through, you would have no hesitation in granting the money. When the House asked for a sight of these convincing documents, the noble lord got up and quoted to them Hansard's Parliamentary Debates and the Reports of Lord Castlereagh's and Lord Liverpool's speeches.
Stockdale, encouraged by this success, when, in spite of the result of the late trial, Hansard continued to sell the report, brought a fresh action; but now the House forbade the publishers to plead to it; and, as they obeyed the prohibition, and forbore to plead, the case eventually came before the Sheriff's Court; fresh damages were given, and, in obedience to the writ of the Queen's Bench, the sheriffs seized Hansard's goods, and sold them to satisfy the judgment.
The bottled dreariness of Parliament is falling, falling, falling. An Elizabethan song-book, the original edition of Gray's Elegy, or Peregrine Pickle, is worth more than, or nearly as much as, the 458 volumes of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Three complete sets were sold last Tuesday; one brought £110, the other two but £70 each.
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