WILLIAM A KB MAliY.

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would not be given was a question which remained in suspensetill the last day of the session.*

One strange inconsistency in the conduct of the reformers ofthat generation deserves notice. It never occurred to any oneof those who were zealous for the Triennial Bill that every argu-ment which could be urged in favour of that bill was an argu-ment against the rules which had been framed in old times forthe purpose of keeping parliamentary deliberations anddivisions strictly secret. It is quite natural that a governmentwhich withholds political privileges from the commonaltyshould withhold also political information. But nothing canbe more irrational than to give power, and not to give theknowledge without which there is the greatest risk that powerwill be abused. What could be more absurd than to call con-stituent bodies frequently together that they might decidewhether their representative had done his duty by them, andyet strictly to interdict them from learning, on trustworthyauthority, what he had said or how he had voted? The ab-surdity however appears to have passed altogether unchal-lenged. It is highly probable that among the two hundredmembers of the House of Commons who voted for the thirdreading of the Triennial Bill there was not one who would havehesitated about sending to Newgate any person who had daredto publish a report of the debate on that bill, or a list of theAyes and the Noes. The truth is that the secrecy of parlia-mentary debates, a secrecy which would now be thought agrievance more intolerable than the Shipmoney or the StarChamber, was then inseparably associated, even in the mosthonest and intelligent minds, with constitutional freedom. Afew old men still living could remember times when a gentlemanwho was known at Whitehall to have let fall a sharp word

* Commons’ Journals; Grey’s Debates. The bill itself is among thearchives of the House of Lords.

CHAP.

XIX.

ifi'J'i.