'Hansard'

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Title:     'Hansard'
Author: Augustine Birrell [More Titles by Birrell]

'Men are we, and must mourn when e'en the shade of that which once was great has passed away.' This quotation--which, in obedience to the prevailing taste, I print as prose--was forced upon me by reading in the papers an account of some proceedings in a sale-room in Chancery Lane last Tuesday,[A] when the entire stock and copyright of Hansard's Parliamentary History and Debates were exposed for sale, and, it must be added, to ridicule. Yet 'Hansard' was once a name to conjure with. To be in it was an ambition--costly, troublesome, but animating; to know it was, if not a liberal education, at all events almost certain promotion; whilst to possess it for your very own was the outward and visible sign of serious statesmanship. No wonder that unimaginative men still believed that Hansard was a property with money in it. Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and majestic shadow thrown across the page of history? As the pious Catholic studies his Acta Sanctorum, so should the constitutionalist love to pore over the ipsissima verba of Parliamentary gladiators, and read their resolutions and their motions. 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. 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.

[Footnote A: March 8, 1902.]

But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market. 'Things are what they are,' said Bishop Butler in a passage which has lost its freshness; that is to say, they are worth what they will fetch. 'Why, then, should we desire to be deceived?' The test of truth remains undiscovered, but the test of present value is the auction mart. Tried by this test, it is plain that Hansard has fallen upon evil days. 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 L110, the other two but L70 each. And yet it is not long ago since a Hansard was worth three times as much. Where were our young politicians? There are serious men on both sides of the House. Men of their stamp twenty years ago would not have been happy without a Hansard to clothe their shelves with dignity and their minds with quotations. But these young men were not bidders.

As the sale proceeded, the discredit of Hansard became plainer and plainer. For the copyright, including, of course, the goodwill of the name--the right to call yourself 'Hansard' for years to come--not a penny was offered, and yet, as the auctioneer feelingly observed, only eighteen months ago it was valued at L60,000. The cold douche of the auction mart may brace the mind, but is apt to lower the price of commodities of this kind. Then came incomplete and unbound sets, with doleful results. For forty copies of the 'Indian Debates' for 1889 only a penny a copy was offered. It was rumoured that the bidder intended, had he been successful, to circulate the copies amongst the supporters of a National Council for India; but his purpose was frustrated by the auctioneer, who, mindful of the honour of the Empire, sorrowfully but firmly withdrew the lot, and proceeded to the next, amidst the jeers of a thoroughly demoralized audience. But this subject why pursue? 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.

The fact that nobody wants Hansard is not necessarily a rebuff to Parliamentary eloquence, yet these low prices jump with the times and undoubtedly indicate an impatience of oratory. We talk more than our ancestors, but we prove our good faith by doing it very badly. We have no Erskines at the Bar, but trials last longer than ever. 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. The statesmen of the time must be impervious to dulness; they must crush the artist within them to a powder. The new people who have come bounding into politics and are now claiming their share of the national inheritance are not orators by nature, and will never become so by culture; but they mean business, and that is well. Caleb Garth and not George Canning should be the model of the virtuous politician of the future.

[The end]
Augustine Birrell's essay: 'Hansard'

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