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Updated: September 17, 2025
He related with unusual fervour that the effect of this personality was incomparable, a thing quite unique in his experience, something indeed incommunicable to those who had not met the man; yet, checking himself of a sudden, and as it were shaking himself free of a superstition, he added resolutely, "But I was reading some of his speeches in Hansard only the other day, and upon my word there's nothing in them!"
After asking various questions in the House of Commons, to which I received unsatisfactory replies, I brought the subject of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States before the House of Commons late one night in February, 1865. My observations, as reported in "Hansard," were:
'I should say about three-and-twenty, my lord; but it is a mere guess. 'Three-and-twenty is he? I suspect you are right he can't be more. But what a deal the fellow has crammed for that time plenty of rubbish, no doubt: old dramatists and such like; but he is well up in his treaties; and there's not a speaker of eminence in the House that he cannot make contradict himself out of Hansard.
I was ready to promise anything, for it was very unpleasant rolling about up there in the dark. After some hesitation and further talk, Tom Hansard, that was the topman's name, cut off the lashings. I gave him five shillings, all the money I had in my pocket. "You'll keep it secret, sir," said he. "You'll say nothing against a poor fellow like me, sir; that you won't, I know."
The Society did not boast a Hansard; an omission which, as time went on, some among its orators had no reason to regret. Faint recollections still survive of a discussion upon the august topic of the character of George the Third. "To whom do we owe it," asked Macaulay, "that while Europe was convulsed with anarchy and desolated with war, England alone remained tranquil, prosperous, and secure?
From Hansard. When this debate began it was not my intention to take any part in it; for I had very lately, in another place and to a larger audience, added my contribution to the great national deliberation upon Irish affairs which is now in progress.
At least ten million people must, since 1903, have taken part in the present Tariff Reform controversy; and that controversy would have degenerated into mere Bedlam if it had not been for the existence of the Board of Trade Returns, with whose figures both sides had at least to appear to square their arguments. Bonar's Malthus, chap. vii. Hansard, Feb. 4th, 5th, 6th, 1830.
It is, for the reason already cited at the beginning, a painful one. The glory of Hansard has departed for ever. Like a new-fangled and sham religion, it began in pride and ended in a police-court, instead of beginning in a police-court and ending in pride, which is the now well-defined course of true religion.
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.
Walker, in his account of the sufferings of the clergy, gives a long list. This Act or ordinance of Parliament involved some of our excellent ancestors in trouble. Hansard Knollys, Wm. Kiffin, Mr. Lamb, and many others, were imprisoned for short periods; Edward Barbour for eleven months. To avoid the informers, adult baptism was performed at midnight; for this Henry Denne suffered imprisonment.
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