The ever-memorable contest between parliament and the press began at the close of the year 1770. The house of commons followed up another solemn threat by prompt action. Two printers, Thompson and Wheble, were ordered to attend at the bar, and, upon their contempt, were ordered into custody. On Mar. 12, 1771, complaint was made against W. Woodfall, printer of the Moming Chronicle; Miller, of the London Even ing Post; and four other printers of London daily papers, for printing the proceedings of the house. The debates were unusually violent; there were 23 divisions: and the house did not adjourn until four A.N. The printers were ordered to attend. Some sur rendered, and on asking pardon on their knees at the bar, were discharged. Miller, no:: surrendering, was ordered into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. His messenger arrested Miller within the precincts of the city of London, and was immediately given into custody by Miller for assault, and carried before the lord mayor, the Brass Crosby. The deputy sergeart-at-arms attended before the lord mayor, and explained the circumstances; but his lordship declared the speaker's warrant illegal, dis charged Miller from custody, and committed the messenger for assault. Wheble and Thompson had been carried respectively before aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, who imme diately discharged them, and bound them over to prosecute, and the speaker's messengef to answer a charge of assault and false imprisonment. The house of commons was furious. It had had enough of Wilkes, but ordered the attendance of the lord mayor (a member of the house) in his place. and also of alderman Oliver. The aldermen of Lon don attended the house, and pleaded their own cause, alleging that their charters exempted the citizens from any law process being served upon them except by their own officers. The house ordered its various resolutions to be read, prohibiting the reporting of its proceedings by any, even its own members, and then committed ajderman Oliver to the tower. The lord mayor, who was suffering from gout, was excused from further attendance that day, hut Wilkes was ordered to attend at the bar on April 8. The defiant alderman was ready for the fray, but the house evaded the meeting by adjourning from the 7th to the 9th. The lord mayor, on the 27th, was sent to join alderman Oliver in the tower. The city of London loudly protested against the arbitrary proceedings of the house, and the whole country responded to the appeal. The power of parliament to imprison ceases at the end of the current session, and on the day of prorogation, July 23. the lord mayor and alderman Oliver marched out of the tower in triumph, and at night the city was illuminated. A few days afterward, the speaker's messenger who had arrested Wheble was tried at Guildhall for the assault, found guilty, fined is., and imprisoned for two months in the Compter. Next session, the house of commons tacitly acknowledged itself beaten. The printers defied the house, continued to publish their proceedings, and slept, notwithstanding. secure in their beds. In a short time, the house of lords also conceded the point. The victory was complete, and no attempt has since been made to restrain the publication of the debates and proceedings of parliament. The resolution affirming that it is a high indignity to, and " notorious breach of, the privileges of the house to publish the debates." still remains unrevoked on the journals. Although debates are now daily cited in parliament from printed reports, and galleries have been constructed for the accommodation of the reporters, yet for some years after the triumph of the press, the gallery of the lower house was occasionally shut during debates. During the American war, the public were more than once excluded from the gallery for a whole session. It is still in the power of any member, who may call the speaker's attention to the fact that "strangers are present," to exclude the public and the reporters from the house. The power has frequently been exercised during living memory, but on such occasions some one or more Members who have dissented from this course have taken notes of the speeches, and, have avowedly sent them to the newspapers.
The old machinery of newspaper reporting was susceptible of immense improvement. One of the Woodfalls (a brother of the Woodfall of Junius) had so retentive a memory that he went by the name of "Memory Woodfall." When editor of the Morning Chronicle, he used to listen to a debate in the gallery, and write it out next clay, the taking of notes being at that time forbidden. The employment of only one reporter for the whole night necessarily caused great delay in the publication of the paper, Woodfall's journal sometimes not being ready until nine or ten o'clock at night. The first great improvement was made by iNfr. Perry. a native of Aberdeen, who succeeded Woodfall in the management of the Morning Chronicle. Ile established a corps of parliamentary reporters to attend the debates of both houses every night in succession. He thus brought out the 'night's debate on the following morning, anticipating his rivals by ten or twelve hours. The superior exee:lence of the reports thus obtained, us well as their more rapid publication, soon made the new system universal. The improvement in the reports of the dehates front the period of the American war until the year 1815, was but gradual. At the close of the war, however, public attention being directed with almost exclusive anxiety to domestic affairs. the public:16(m of parliamentary debates became an object of national importance, and in the course of a few years assumed its present full, detailed, and accurate character. Increased facilities for the discharge of their important and arduous duties were from time to tittle given to the reporters. Formerly, they had no means of entering the strangers' gallery except those which were common to the public generally. On clays when an interesting debate was expected, they were obliged to take their places on the stairs early in the forenoon, and, after standing there for many hours, to depend for their chance of getting in by battling their way in the crowd when the door opened. It happened one night (luring Mr. Pitt's premiership that the gallery was more than usually thronged in expectation of au important speech from the minister. The reporters, unable either by force or entreaty to obtain even tolerable accommodation, took counsel together. They left the house; and next morning, "instead of the rounded periods of the minister, there appeared nothing but one dire blank, accompanied by a strong comment on the grievance in which it had originated." Mr. speaker Abbott, not, as it was believed, without concert with the vexed and aggrieved minister, immediately directed the appropriation of the uppermost bench of the gallery to the repOrters' exclu sive use, with a door in the center, by which they alone had a right to enter. Soon after, a small "reporters' room" was added. The lords followed the lower house in providing accommodation for the press. During the debates on Catholic emancipation, a small space below the bar was railed off for them, and a session or two afterward, a seat was formally set apart for the reporters. When the houses of parliament were destroyed by fire in 1831, an exclusive gallery was allotted to the reporters in both chambers of the temporary structure in which the legislature held its sittings. This arrangement has been continued in the splendid new palace of Westminster, in which the two houses now hold their deliberations. In the house of lords, the reporters' gallery faces the throne and the woolsack, and is one of the most prominent internal features of the edifice. Complaint having been made of the inaudibility of the speakers, their lordships appointed a select committee, examined the reporters, the architect, etc., and took all possible measures to make themselves heard in the gallery. In the house of commons, the reporters' gallery is behind the chair. Both houses provide them with rooms and other convenienees'for transcribing their notes. In the lower house, one of the committee rooms has been set apart for their use; and a room occupying the site of the old star chamber has recently been given to them for a club-room.