Some years ago a literary investigator came into my office and inquired
whether he could find a copy of Richard Tickell’s _Anticipation_ in
our library. He was thinking of sending to the British Museum for a
photostatic copy, in case we could not supply his need. We were able to
reply that we had sixteen editions of this book—ten of them printed in
the year 1778 alone. Now publishers do not re-issue a book unless someone
is reading it. The number of reprints induced me to read the book, and I
found it one of the best of eighteenth-century satires on the ponderous
serio-comic addresses delivered in what is still pleased to call itself
the M-th-r of P-rl—m-nts. Though Mr. Butterfield has restrained himself
in the matter of drawing parallels between the bumbling follies of that
legislative conclave, then and now, yet the writer of a foreword may be
permitted to do so.
In the summer of 1941, I received in the mail a pamphlet, in an envelope
which bore a Chinese postage stamp and the postmark of Shanghai. The
pamphlet was one of the familiar blue-covered fascicles which we all
recognize as the format of the _Parliamentary Debates_. This particular
fascicle purported to contain the debate for August 15, 1941, and was
typographically exact, even to the reproduction of the arms of H-s
Br-t-nn-c M-j-sty on the cover. An examination revealed it to be the
twentieth-century parallel of Tickell’s _Anticipation_—a satiric report
of the debates in the H—s- of C-mm-ns as of 1941. It was obvious German
propaganda, but so well done typographically that I found some of my
learned colleagues had read a part of it before it dawned on them that
the whole thing was analogous to Tickell’s _Anticipation_. But let no
American be complacent about the failure of the H—s- of C-mm-ns to
progress during the intervening one hundred and sixty-three years. Let
him dip into our own _C-ngr-ss—n-l R-c-rd_.
Mr. Butterfield and the publisher could have chosen no more appropriate
time than the present at which to issue the twentieth-century edition
of this book. It ought to be read by all students of American
history—elementary and advanced.