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Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

Textual Introduction - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868 [1850]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868, ed. John M. Robson and Bruce L. Kinzer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Textual Introduction

JOHN M. ROBSON

most of mill’s later speeches have never been republished.1 Those here collected2 are mainly from Parliamentary Debates and newspapers; one uniquely exists in manuscript and one in typescript, and four others are also extant in manuscript as well as in print; a handful appeared in pamphlets, and one was reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions.

Our goal, to include all Mill’s speeches in the House of Commons and in public,3 remains ideal, for several reasons. First, Mill kept no record of his speeches, and we have had to follow many trails, some clear, others overgrown. Locating the public, non-parliamentary speeches gave most difficulty. The existence of a few is signalled in correspondence and other documents, some are found in manuscript or in newspaper clippings in the Mill-Taylor Collection, and others have been located through that indispensable but tormenting aid, Palmer’s Index to The Times. The Times, however, did not report all Mill’s speeches, and we have had to search through files of other London (and occasionally provincial) papers. Under current and abiding conditions, such a search can never be final, and we have asked for and received help from scholars and institutions. Our success will be tested by time and the industry of others; our certain claim is only that we have found many more than were previously known. Locating Mill’s speeches in the House of Commons presents no comparable difficulty, the basic guide being the index in Parliamentary Debates. Even here, however, a couple of minor items appeared only after a search through St. Stephen’s Chronicle, a short-lived journal of parliamentary affairs.

A second problem lies in definition. What is “a speech”? Surely some interjections cannot qualify, and what of questions and replies, or series of short comments? No logical fineness seems here necessary, and our short answer is that all Mill’s remarks are of value in a complete record of his parliamentary career. For convenience we have ruled that all Mill’s recorded words on a specific subject of debate on one day constitute a speech. This policy would prove annoying if he had often made an isolated comment on an issue, which we would by this rule dignify as a speech; fortunately, almost all his interventions can be merged with others as part of a continuing discussion in Committee of the Whole. In fact, we have preserved only a few potentially irritating instances, of which Nos. 30, 35, and 78 are most likely to peeve; if there were more, another practice would be justifiable. The impatient will be grateful that Mill’s one recorded silent intervention is mentioned only in a footnote (No. 22, n1). And one intended speech is recorded only here: on 12 March, 1868, the Speaker was faced with several Members, including Mill, Agon-Ellis, and Pim, who wished to offer remarks on the Irish Church. Bernal Osborne moved that the Honourable Member for Westminster be next heard, thus occasioning “some laughter, mingled with cries of ‘Order’ ”; however, the Speaker ceded the floor to Agon-Ellis.4

Though a secondary goal is to give, through our text and editorial apparatus, a skeletal guide to Mill’s activities in the House of Commons, we have not elevated to textual status his seconding of an unsuccessful motion for a return of the number of times since the Act of Union the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended in Ireland or the number of acts of repression there since then, and of the number of Irish people sentenced for political offences, indicating which acts had been applied in each case (19 Mar., 1868; PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 190, col. 1939). We also have not given as textual items his notices of motion.5 All of these except two are mentioned in notes to speeches when the motions were made; in two cases, however, no speech was reported. On 5 March, 1867, on Mill’s motion, a return was ordered of the number of robberies of pillar letter-boxes in the metropolis and city of London, giving the number for each year separately from the period of the establishment of the system.6 And on 16 May, 1867, he gave notice of motion that certain petitions against the National Gallery Enlargement Bill be referred to a Select Committee on the Bill.7

THE TYPESCRIPT AND MANUSCRIPTS

the typescript is that of “Secular Education,” the first item. It transcribes a manuscript, not now located, formerly in the possession of Harold J. Laski, who published it in an appendix to his edition of Mill’s Autobiography.8 He had bought it as part of Lot 719 in Sotheby’s sale on 29 March, 1922, of the effects of Mary Taylor, Mill’s step-granddaughter.9 The extant manuscripts are printed here in Appendix D; a fragment is given as a variant note to No. 26; and a speech of Helen Taylor’s appears as Appendix F. The manuscript of No. 6, “The Westminster Election of 1865 [2],” was part of Lot 669 in the second Sotheby’s sale of Mary Taylor’s effects, on 27 July, 1927. Described as “Speech to the Electors of Westminster, Auto. Notes, 4 pp. 8vo,” it was bought in 1956 for the Mill-Taylor Collection from Myers for £46. The Houghton Library, Harvard, obtained the manuscript of No. 16, “Representation of the People [2],” as a gift from George Herbert Palmer, who bought it (as a sticker indicates) at the sale of Mill’s books and papers by the Avignon bookseller, Roumanille, on 21–28 May, 1905, after Helen Taylor had moved back to England. The fragment of No. 26, “The Disturbances in Jamaica [1],” in the Yale University Library, was presumably part of Lot 730 in the Sotheby’s sale of 29 March, 1922, which included “various unfinished MSS. in the hand of J.S. Mill, and various essays on the Education of Women, etc., by Helen Taylor a large parcel.” The provenance of the manuscript of No. 144, “Women’s Suffrage [1],” in the Mill-Taylor Collection, is not known. The Houghton Library, Harvard, also has the manuscript of No. 145, “The Education Bill,” which was donated by Mrs. Norman Himes; it was, like that of No. 6, part of Lot 669 in the Sotheby’s sale of 27 July, 1927, “Auto. Notes for a Speech of [sic] the Education League, 9 pp. 4to.” The fragment of Helen Taylor’s speech, “War and Peace,” our Appendix F, also part of the Himes donation to Harvard, is not identifiable as an item from these sales.

THE TEXTS

each item consists of a headnote, the text, and notes. The headnote gives the provenance of the copy-text, lists other versions, and provides the immediate context, with other closely relevant information. The notes, at the foot of the page, are substantive and textual. The substantive notes include Mill’s own (in the sequence *, †, etc.) and the editors’ (in numerical sequence, beginning anew in each item or section of an item). The textual notes normally record variant readings, with alphabetic markers in the text signalling the word or words for which the variant reading is a substitute; these too begin anew in each item or section of an item.

The texts themselves have been determined in ways appropriate to their kind and provenance. No overall principle presents itself, although in places our methods parallel those based on established principles; for reasons that will become obvious, new rules (with their exceptions) have had to be devised.

The problems originate in the recording and transmission of texts.10 Leaving aside for the moment the few instances where there is a holograph manuscript, we are faced in the non-parliamentary speeches with one or more reports taken in shorthand by recorders for the press or, in rare instances, for special interest groups, including the organizers of the meetings at which Mill spoke. If there is but one report, there are no decisions to make other than those resulting from a study of possible errors. But usually there is more than one report, and when there is, there are large as well as small differences. Most significantly, the reports differ in the length of the main text, in the reporting of answers to questions, and in incidental details. Also, there are differences in the emphasis given to particular parts of speeches, and in summary as against what purports to be (and undoubtedly sometimes is) a verbatim account. Furthermore, some reports are in direct speech, that is, the first person, present tense, but most are in indirect speech, that is, the third person, which by convention carries the past tense.11

Attempts to establish one text consequently must involve an initial choice of copy-text, and then a collation of goats and cabbages, as the French seem to say. If Mill indicates elsewhere, as he occasionally does, which text is to be preferred, we have followed his choice. The same decision might seem to be entailed when there is a pamphlet or other reprint; however, such a document may represent in places what he wished he had said rather than what he actually said. The latter elusive goal being ours, careful consideration must be given to internal criteria. The two most significant of these are comparative length and voice.

As to length, it may with reasonable certainty be assumed that reporters did not normally add (except perhaps transitional words); indeed the established rule was “When in doubt leave out.”12 So we have tended to accept the fullest account as copy-text. It is equally probable, however, that first-person are closer than third-person accounts to verbatim reporting, and are to be preferred for those portions of a speech that they cover. Fortunately, these two criteria seldom conflict, because first-person accounts are generally longer as well. Still, collation is necessary, for often reports that are inferior on these two grounds include matter not found in the copy-text. Consequently, it is necessary to compare what purport to be direct quotations with summaries, because the latter sometimes contain not merely ideas but words that seem prima facie and even after examination to represent something that was said. This comparison leaves one with a decision as to which substantives should be included in the final text; that is, which words or passages should be added from versions other than the copy-text, and which substituted for what are judged to be inferior wordings. In accidentals the copy-text is followed except in demonstrable deficiencies (which are less frequent than the major provenance, newspapers, would suggest). The result is inescapably eclectic, but, given the facts, all the better for its mixed parentage.

It is physically impossible to record all the variant readings without printing parallel texts of each version, a solution both economically impossible and morally inutile.13 Our decision has therefore been to give in variant notes (a) all the readings from the copy-text for which alternate versions have been preferred, (b) alternate readings that, while they have not seemed sufficiently grounded to justify elevation to the text, are possibly what Mill said, or may have influenced judgments of what he said, and (c) manuscript versions that, though probably not uttered, might have been (the recorded version being a mishearing or reporter’s “improvement”), or that have interest as suggesting an ad hoc change of mind.

The question will have arisen in editors’ minds as to why the extant manuscripts are not chosen as copy-text. The reason is simply stated, although its simplicity will not convince traditionalists. As indicated above, what we aim at, looking up to admit and so ensure that we cannot hit the target, is a record of what Mill actually said. A manuscript, even if he read from it (and that option was usually not open and seldom followed), gives only what he apparently intended to say—“apparently” because most speakers consciously leave open the possibility of departing from a text when, as is normally the case, the occasion calls for an alteration. Further, the intention, no matter how fixed, is often frustrated by circumstances, such as lack of time, and faltering memory or tongue.14 It would be foolish to assert that what Mill actually uttered always better fulfilled the intentions he had when he planned a speech, but certainly most of the modifications found in our collations suggest a later intention consciously if rapidly cancelling or modifying the earlier one. To enable others to test our judgments, however, we give the full manuscript texts in Appendix D.

Given our view that the best version of a speech reflects its circumstances, we have also recorded, in italic type, the audiences’ responses.15 Here again we have followed the copy-text, except in adding responses not there contained and in substituting wordings that are fuller or more precise. In choosing the wording of responses from among differing accounts, we have taken that which is most expressive and full, and not given the others in variant notes, except in the rare cases when there is some difference of tone or even full contradiction,16 or when the response can be seen as tied to a particular textual variant.17 The specific sources of the responses are given only when they form part of larger variants. The actual form of course reflects the different reporters’ (and perhaps editors’) views of how to indicate what happened;18 in surprisingly few cases do different versions suggest a bias towards or against Mill and his positions, but almost always they add not just colour but understanding to one’s reading. I hope, for instance, that the frequency with which audiences are reported to have responded with “(Laughter)” will modify at least interstitially the uninformed judgment that Mill was without humour.

A summary of the events leading up to Mill’s remarks is given in the headnotes. Except for the copy-texts, the dates of texts from daily newspapers are given only when they differ from that of the copy-text. Within the text itself the concluding events and remarks by others, and when appropriate intervening events and remarks, are supplied in italic type and, when summarized rather than quoted directly from the copy-text, also in square brackets. (This practice is quite straightforward except in the uncommon cases when a report moves from an apparent attempt to convey the main ideas, if not the words, into an obvious attempt to summarize the flow of the speech.) We have included in these summaries all references to Mill, sometimes embedded in long quotations.

In turning to Mill’s parliamentary speeches, it may be thought that one is leaving behind the excitement and weariness of textual problems. There is, after all, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates on which to rely. What is not generally known is that T. C. Hansard Jr., who was responsible for the series from the 1830s through the period when Mill was in the Commons, had no official mandate and, apart from rare occasions, no reporters of his own.19 In fact, Hansard proceeded in just the way we have, collating newspaper accounts and giving an eclectic text; he, however, indicates the sources of his texts only in the rare instances when an asterisk signals that a speech was sent to him by the Member; almost always one is left with the choice of taking his text as gospel or trying to unravel what he has given and then knitting all together again in a new—or perhaps the same?—pattern. Neither of these choices is attractive, and we have fallen somewhere between. His resources, being immediate and concerted, were better than ours can be, and he and his collators were extraordinarily practised in their craft; therefore we have taken his versions as copy-text, looking for confirmation in the few extant manuscript and pamphlet versions. As a check, however, we have compared the versions in The Times, which is thought to have been Hansard’s main source, because generally it provided the fullest record. To our surprise, it appears that almost never does Hansard’s text agree with that of The Times; indeed, in Mill’s case, we have found only a handful of speeches, all very short, where there is coincidence.20 As a further check, we have made a comparison with the versions in St. Stephen’s Chronicle, which reported parliamentary matters in 1867; here again there is but rare agreement with Parliamentary Debates, although there is not infrequent agreement with The Times.21 This search produced, as mentioned above, two minor speeches by Mill (on 8 March and 4 July), neither of which is in Parliamentary Debates or in Palmer’s Index to The Times, though both are summarized in The Times.

The results of all these comparisons are not trivial, but are also not sufficiently significant for us to adopt anything other than Parliamentary Debates as copy-text. It must not be thought that this decision removes all problems, for even the difficulty over person and tense arises: in No. 120, for instance, which combines several of Mill’s interventions, the first passage in Parliamentary Debates is in the first person, present tense, while the next two are in the third person, past tense; consequently, in adding a fourth from The Times that is not in Parliamentary Debates, we decided to leave it in the third person, past tense, to match what immediately preceded it.

As in the public speeches, we have accepted some variants to complement or replace parts of the copy-text, and have used the alternate texts for the responses in the House. The newspapers’ record of responses is, indeed, much fuller than Parliamentary Debates provides, and gives more to think about.22

Mill, as a prominent Member, was solicited for texts, and at least some of the reports in the Morning Star, the Daily News, and the Daily Telegraph may have had the benefit of his manuscript notes. Writing in June 1866 to Charles Ross, the chief parliamentary reporter for The Times, who had evidently asked him to supply such manuscript, Mill said that, so far as he had examined The Times’s report, it seemed so good that it had not suffered by the lack of his script. He continued:

If I understand your note correctly it would not be open to you, if you took a speech from myself, to give slips to the other papers. I am afraid, if this is so, that it will generally prevent me from availing myself of your obliging offer to receive such communications from me. It is of much more importance to be well reported in the Times than anywhere else, but one is so much more certain of being so, that if one has to choose between sending one’s notes to the Times or to the other papers one would rather do it to the others.23

He explained his practice to W.F. Rae on 2 June:

The reason I do not give my speeches to the Times, is that the Times would keep them to itself, while the other papers give slips to one another. It would be a great piece of servility to give anything that depends on me to the Times alone; denying it to the papers with whose politics I agree, and which have acted in the most friendly manner to me throughout.24

As mentioned above, occasionally Mill gave the nod to one or another account, crediting with the best report the Morning Star (Nos. 47 and 124) or the Daily Telegraph (No. 133), and it may be assumed that they were, as most sympathetic to his views, generally fuller in their accounts. But the presumption is not strong enough to override, in the case of the public speeches, the evidence from collation, or, in the case of the parliamentary speeches, the superior resources of Hansard.

In brief summary, we conclude that the text of public and parliamentary speeches, when there are competing authorities, must be eclectic, in the interest of providing the reader with the fullest account possible in one place. The assumptions behind particular choices of text are that (a) Mill did not normally give reporters a text (exceptions, as indicated above, are given special authority), and even when he did, his final intentions, which we respect, are better indicated in the reports of what he said than in what he planned to say; (b) normally reporters made no attempt at verbatim reporting (their highest goal being that of T.C. Hansard, a “full and accurate” account),25 but summarized and revised, taking little time over decisions, aiming to fill the available space with what in their view their editors and readers would find most important; (c) reporters and editors for various newspapers differed in their views of what was most important; (d) reporters and editors did not normally add passages, though they added transitional words or phrases to make their summaries coherent; and (e) as a result, the fullest text from any source probably contains more of what Mill actually said, and so should be used as copy-text, though any variant found in another version may accurately represent what Mill said in that particular passage.

EMENDATIONS TO THE TEXTS

in general, contractions and abbreviations are expanded to conform to what would be spoken. Other changes are listed in Appendix G, with explanations except when the change has been made for obvious reasons of sense (including easily identified typographical errors).

In conformity with modern practice, italic type is used for the titles of works published separately, while quotation marks are placed around titles of parts of separate publications. Foreign words and phrases are normalized to italic, as are the abbreviations for currency.

In the appendices giving questions and petitions, the dates that begin entries are styled uniformly. When a speech is reported in the first person, the introductory “Mr. J.S. Mill:” is not recorded.

VARIANT NOTES

the system of recording variant readings used throughout this edition is based on superscript letters in the text; these appear in pairs around words or phrases, or singly centred between words or between a word and punctuation. As explained above, in the few cases where there are manuscripts, these are printed in Appendix D, but some passages, interesting for various reasons, are also given as variants. The practice for the public speeches is illustrated in No. 4, where the Morning Star provides the copy-text, but alternate readings are adopted from the Daily News and The Times. For instance, on 12 a superscript italic lettera appears in the text at the beginning and end of a two-sentence passage; the variant note, beginning “a-aDN” gives the alternative reading from the Daily News (three sentences) and then, following a closing square bracket and “TT”, the alternative reading from The Times (two sentences). At 12d-d a sentence from the Daily News, not paralleled in the other version, is given in the text; the variant note reads “d-d+DN”. At 12e-e another passage from the Daily News is given in the text; the note indicates again the source and that it is an addition by “e-e+DN”, and then continues after a closing square bracket to give the alternative reading from The Times, beginning “TT”. When an alternative reading is not given in the text (as is the case with manuscript versions), a single centred superscript appears in the text at the place where the reading occurs. For example, at 20,b is centred between “debauching” and “the constituents”; the variant note reads “bManuscript (by strictly legal means of course)”. The interpretation is that the manuscript reads “debauching (by strictly legal means of course) the constituents”, and that, as reported in the copy-text, Mill omitted the parenthesis. The parliamentary speeches, again for reasons explained above, take Parliamentary Debates for copy-text, with a few variants noted from The Times and (for 1867) St. Stephen’s Chronicle; these are based on the same principles as those in the public speeches.

APPENDICES

appendix a gives the physical details about the manuscripts. Appendices B and C fill in the detail of Mill’s parliamentary career by giving his questions as a member of Select Committees, and the origins, subjects, and dates of the petitions he presented. Appendix D contains the full manuscript texts of speeches that are represented in the text proper by printed sources. Appendix E calls attention to occasions when it is known that Mill spoke, but no record is extant of his remarks. Appendix F supplies the text of a manuscript speech that is in Mill’s hand, but undoubtedly was prepared by his step-daughter, Helen Taylor, for her use. Appendix G lists and explains the textual emendations, while Appendix H is an index of persons and works cited in the text and Appendices B-D and F. Finally, there is an analytic Index, prepared by Dr. Jean O’Grady with her customary categorical and alphabetic skill.

ABBREVIATIONS

the following short forms are used, mainly in the variant notes, the headnotes, and in Appendix H. To avoid confusion with “MS” signalling the Morning Star, “Manuscript” is spelled out in full.

35=“Rationale of Representation” (1835)

B=The Beehive

CW=Collected Works of J.S. Mill

CS=Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question

D&D=Dissertations and Discussions

DN=Daily News

DT=Daily Telegraph

JP=Jamaica Papers

JSM=John Stuart Mill

MET=Manchester Examiner and Times

MP=Morning Post

MS=Morning Star

P=a pamphlet

P1=the 1st ed. of a pamphlet

P2=the 2nd ed. of a pamphlet

PD=Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)

PMG=Pall Mall Gazette

PP=Parliamentary Papers

R=Reasoner

S=Standard

SC=Mill’s library in Somerville College, Oxford

Scot=Scotsman

SSC=St. Stephen’s Chronicle

TT=The Times

W=Women’s Suffrage: Great Meeting in Edinburgh in the Music Hall, on 12th January 1871, under the Auspices of the Edinburgh Branch of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage (Edinburgh: printed Greig, 1871).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

for permission to publish manuscript materials, we are indebted to the National Provincial Bank, residual legatees of Mary Taylor, Mill’s step-granddaughter, and (for specific manuscripts) the British Library of Political and Economic Science, the Harvard University Library, and the Yale University Library. In addition to these, we are indebted to the librarians and staff of the British Library, the Institute of Historical Research (University of London), the Newspaper Library and the India Office Library and Records of the British Library, Somerville College Oxford, the University of London Library, the University of Toronto Library, and the Victoria University Library.

As ever our work has been gladdened and lessened by the warming and unstinted aid of individuals, among the host, Robin Alston, Sue Grace, J.R. de J. Jackson, Trevor Lloyd, Ray Maycock, Mary S. Miller, the late Francis E. Mineka, Pamela G. Nunn, Walter O’Grady, Helene E. Roberts, and Ann Christine Robson. Among the always helpful members of the Editorial Committee we are especially indebted to J.B. Conacher and Ann P. Robson, the former a mentor and guide to both, the latter a source of wise advice appreciated by one and almost always heeded by the other. The generous financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada was essential to the preparation and production of these volumes. The staff of the Mill Project are part of the efficient and indeed material causes, especially the Senior Research Assistant, Marion Filipiuk, and the Post-doctoral Fellow, Jean O’Grady, with the Editorial Assistant Rea Wilmshurst, each of whom showed in her individual way the constant and dedicated watchfulness, the inventive intelligence, and not least the interest that make our work a pleasure. The part-time junior members, Jonathan Cutmore, Michele Green, Margaret Paternek, Jannifer Smith-Rubenzahl, Elizabeth King, Marion Halmos, John Huxley, and John Sipos, all contributed to our pleasure and the edition’s profit.

[1 ]Headnotes to the individual items give details of publication and republication during Mill’s lifetime. In his unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, “The Collected Speeches of John Stuart Mill with Introduction and Notes” (Wisconsin, 1955), John Ellery included a substantial but incomplete collection of the speeches in raw form.

[2 ]His other extant speeches, all from the 1820s, are in Journals and Debating Speeches, Vols. XXVI-XXVII of the Collected Works.

[3 ]The only exception is the Inaugural Address at St. Andrews, which is included with Mill’s other educational writings in Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, CW, Vol. XXI, on the grounds that it was prepared for publication.

[4 ]The Times, 13 Mar., 7.

[5 ]It should be recorded, however, that when he gave notice of motion on 8 June, 1866, for a return of the numbers of those, otherwise qualified, who were denied the franchise because of their sex, the House responded with “Laughter” (The Times, 9 June, 6), and that when he gave notice of his motion to replace “man” with “person” in the Reform Bill of 1867, the response was mixed “Laughter and cheers” (The Times, 20 Mar., 6).

[6 ]Reported in The Times, 6 Mar., 6.

[7 ]Ibid., 17 May, 8.

[8 ]Oxford University Press, 1924, 326–30.

[9 ]For a full account of this collection, see the Textual Introduction to Journals and Debating Speeches, CW, Vols. XXVI-XXVII.

[10 ]For a fuller discussion of these matters, with special reference to Parliamentary Debates, see John M. Robson, What Did He Say? Editing Nineteenth-Century Speeches from Hansard and the Newspapers (Lethbridge: University of Lethbridge Press, 1988).

[11 ]More precisely, not the past tense, but one tense further back than would be used in reporting direct speech.

[12 ]Michael MacDonagh, TheReporters’ Gallery (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d. [1928?]), 73.

[13 ]One example, No. 4, of a comparatively short text in three versions, is given as an Appendix in Robson, What Did He Say?

[14 ]This frequent malaise was identified by a friend as being “tongue-struck.”

[15 ]In the parliamentary speeches, the names of Members, when added in parentheses after their constituencies, are also given in italics, as additions to the spoken word, as are the insertions of “(Mr. Mill)” following “he” in third-person reports.

[16 ]See No. 58i-i andx-x, the latter odd, as both contradictory responses may be read as the same answer to a rhetorical question.

[17 ]See No. 11d-d ande-e.

[18 ]That national habits and predilections are not irrelevant will occur to those with experience of the debates in the French Chambers, which are more Gallically dramatic. One must envy French editors who can choose, for example: “Voix des extrémités: Ce n’est pas la question!”; “De toutes parts: Aux voix l’amendement!”; “Bruits divers”; “Vif mouvement d’adhésion”; “Sensation prolongée”; “Rires aux extrémités”; “Hilarité générale et prolongée”; “Violente interruption”; “Profond silence” (less commonly found); “Vives réclamations à gauche”—and so on. The English satirical paper Judy commented: “the French press always keeps in type the following phrases during the sittings of the Corps Législatif:—‘Uproar,’ ‘Continued uproar,’ ‘Fresh uproar,’ ‘Signs of Denial,’ ‘Emotion,’ ‘Violence from the Opposition,’ ‘Offensive expressions from the left,’ in order that they may be ‘distributed’ among the speeches” (4 Mar., 1868, 240).

[19 ]The history of his operations and of the confusions resulting is given in Robson, What Did He Say?, with examples of abiding conundrums.

[20 ]Instances are No. 110, which has only two sentences of Mill’s, and No. 127, where there are five sentences, with one accidental difference. No. 57 exemplifies cases where the report in The Times differs markedly in arrangement as well as wording from that in Parliamentary Debates.

[21 ]In one case, No. 56, St. Stephen’s Chronicle is much closer to Parliamentary Debates than is The Times.

[22 ]See, for instance, No. 72, where we have added from The Times in one place, “(Loud cries of Oh!)”, and in several others, “(Oh, oh.)”, and cf. No. 88t-t. No. 62 illustrates cases where there are more responses in The Times, which here adds three to the one in Parliamentary Debates.

[23 ]LL, CW, XVI, 1173. The reference is presumably to No. 52, given in the House of Commons on 31 May, in which case the letter should be dated 1 or 2 June (see the next letter quoted). The only known speech by Mill in June was No. 53, delivered on the 23rd.

[24 ]Ibid., 1174.

[25 ]“Report from the Select Committee on Parliamentary Reporting,” Parliamentary Papers, 1878–79, XII, 30.