The Imperial Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland, in addition to
its other varied and important functions, fulfils, through one of its
branches, that of a great national book manufactory. Every session,
the House of Commons issues a whole library of valuable works,
containing information of the most ample and searching kind on
subjects of a very miscellaneous character. These are the Blue-books,
of which everybody has heard: many jokes are extant as to their
imposing bulk and great weight, literally and figuratively; and a
generation eminently addicted to light reading, may well look with
horror on these thick and closely-printed folios. But, in truth, they
are not for the mere _reader_: they are for the historian, and student
of any given subject; they are storehouses of material, not digested
treatises. True it is, that their great size sometimes defeats its
object--the valuable portion of the material is sometimes buried under
the comparatively worthless heap that surrounds it--the golden grains
lost amid the chaff. But in a case of this kind, the error of
redundancy is one on the safe side; let a subject in all its bearings
be thoroughly and fully brought up, and it is the fault or failing of
him who sets about the study of it, if he is appalled at the amount of
information on which he has to work, or cannot discriminate and seize
upon the salient points, or on those which are necessary for his own
special purposes.
Few persons, we believe, who have not had occasion to consult these
parliamentary volumes in a systematic manner, are at all aware of the
immense labour that is bestowed upon them, and the care and
completeness with which they are compiled and arranged. Indeed, we
daresay few readers have any accurate notions of the actual number of
parliamentary papers annually issued, or of the nature of their
contents. From even a very cursory examination of the literary result
of a parliamentary session, the previously uninformed investigator
could not fail to rise with a greatly augmented estimate of the
functions of the great ruling body of the state--the guarding and
directing power in the multitudinous affairs of the British Empire--an
empire that extends over every possible variety of country and
climate, and includes under its powerful, yet mild and beneficent
sway, tribes of every colour of skin, and of every shade of religious
belief. Such a survey, in fact, tends to impress one more fully and
immediately than could well be fancied, with the magnitude of the
business of the British legislature, and the consequent weighty
responsibilities imposed upon its members. But, great as the burden
is, it is distributed over so many shoulders, that it appears to press
heavily, and really does so, only on a few who support it at the more
trying points.
The session 1851 is the latest of whose labours, as they appear in the
form of parliamentary records, an account can be given. By the
admirable system of arrangement we have referred to, each
parliamentary 'paper,' whether it issues in the shape of a bulky
Blue-book--that is to say, as a thick, stitched folio volume, in a
dark-blue cover--or as a mere 'paper'--an uncovered folio of a single
sheet of two or four pages, or several stitched together, but not
attaining the dignity of the blue cover--is marked as belonging to a
certain class; and when the issue of the session is complete, a full
set of 'Titles, Contents, and Indexes' to the whole is supplied, so
that they can all be classified and bound up in due order with the
utmost ease and celerity. The _Titles, Contents, and Indexes to the
Sessional Printed Papers of Session_ 1851 are at present before us, in
the shape of a folio Blue-book about an inch and a half thick, from
which we think we may pick some facts of interest.
It must be premised, that the session 1851 was considered by
politicians a peculiarly barren and unfruitful one, as the Great
Exhibition, in conjunction with ministerial difficulties, and the
monster debates on the Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill, tended greatly to
impede the ordinary business of the Houses, and gave an air of tedium
and languor to the whole proceedings. Nevertheless, the papers for the
year amount to no less than sixty volumes! Of these, the first six
contain Public Bills. A bill, as most of our readers must be aware, is
a measure submitted to the consideration of parliament with the view
of its being adopted into the legal code of the country, for which it
must receive the sanction of both Houses and the assent of the crown.
When a bill has 'passed' through the Lords and Commons, and received
the royal assent, it becomes an 'act'--that is, a law. A bill, in
passing through the Houses, is subjected to numerous amendments and
alterations in form, and is often printed, for the use of members and
other parties interested, three or four times after such alterations,
before it comes forth in its final and permanent form as an act. Thus,
the famous Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill is to be found in three several
shapes among the bills before it reappears for the fourth time as an
act. Again, the word 'public' prefixed to these six volumes of bills,
reminds us of the vast amount of business that comes before parliament
and its committees in the shape of 'private' bills, of which no record
appears here. These are bills of special and individual application,
such as when a public company seeks an act of incorporation, the
possessor of an entailed estate desires to sell a portion of ground,
a railway directory asks for powers of various kinds, and so on.
An examination of the contents of these six volumes would shew how
many and diverse are the subjects that turn up in parliament in the
course of a single and brief session; but to enter on it
satisfactorily would require a great amount of space, and might, after
all, be more tedious than profitable. A glance at those actually
passed may suffice. These were 106 in number: the first is, 'An Act to
amend the Passengers' Act of 1849;' and the hundred and sixth, 'An Act
to appoint Commissioners to inquire into the Existence of Bribery in
St Albans.' Besides the acts of an ordinary or routine character, we
find the following among the subjects legislated on:--The Marine
Forces, Leases for Mills in Ireland, Protection of Original Designs,
the Protection of Servants and Apprentices, the Sale of Arsenic,
Highways in Wales, Sites for Schools, Herring-Fishery, Prisons in
Scotland, Common Lodging-Houses, Window and House Duties, Marriages in
India, Ecclesiastical Titles, Smithfield Market, Settlement of the
Boundaries of Canada and New Brunswick, Highland Roads and Bridges,
Gunpowder Magazine at Liverpool, Management of the Insane in India,
Lands in New Zealand, Representative Peers of Scotland, Emigration,
Law of Evidence, Criminal Justice, &c.
Following the six volumes of bills, are fifteen volumes of _Reports
from Committees_, which are again succeeded by nine volumes of
_Reports from Commissioners_. These two sections of the literature of
parliament form vast stores of material on an immense number of
subjects, into which he who digs laboriously is sure to be rewarded in
the end. They contain great masses of 'evidence,' extracted by the
examinations of committees and commissioners from the parties believed
to be best qualified to give correct and full information on the
various subjects on which they are examined, and these opinions are
supported by facts and authentic statements and statistics, invaluable
to the investigator. The first volume of last year's Reports from
Committees opens with that on the Edinburgh Annuity Tax, the fifteenth
contains that on Steam Communications with India. There are four
volumes on Customs, two on Ceylon, one on Church-rates, one on the
Caffre Tribes, one on Newspaper Stamps, &c.; while other volumes
contain Reports on the Property Tax, the Militia, the Ordnance Survey,
Public Libraries, Law of Partnership, &c. From commissioners, we have
Reports on Fisheries, Emigration, National Gallery, Public Records,
Board of Health, Factories, Furnaces, Mines and Collieries, Education,
Maynooth College, Prisons, Public Works, &c.
The fourth section of these parliamentary papers for 1851 amounts to
thirty volumes, and consists of _Accounts and Papers_. It is in these
that the statist finds inexhaustible wealth of material, long columns
of figures with large totals, tables of the most complicated yet the
clearest construction, containing a multiplicity of details bearing on
the riches and resources of the empire in its most general and most
minute particulars. Thus the first volume relates to 'Finance,' and
includes the accounts of the Public Income and Expenditure, Public and
National Debt, Income Tax, Public Works, and a vast variety of other
subjects. The second volume is made up of the 'Estimates' for the
Army, Navy, Ordnance, and 'Civil Services,' which includes Public
Works, Public Salaries, Law and Justice, Education, Colonial and
Consular Services, &c. The third volume is filled with Army and Navy
Accounts and Returns. The next six volumes refer to the colonies, and
consist of Accounts, Dispatches, Correspondence. The tenth is occupied
with the subject of Emigration; and the eleventh with the Government
of our Eastern Empire in all its vast machinery and complicated
relations. The remaining volumes--for space would fail us to enumerate
them in detail--treat of such subjects as the Census, Education,
Convict Discipline, Poor, Post-office, Railways, Shipping, Quarantine,
Trade and Navigation Returns, Revenue, Population and Commerce,
Piracy, the Slave Trade, and Treaties and Conventions with Foreign
States. Last of all, as volume sixty of the set, we have the
_Numerical List and General Index_, itself a goodly tome of nearly 200
pages, compiled with immense care, and arranged so perspicuously as to
afford the utmost facilities for reference.
These papers, as we have said, differ greatly in size. Some consist of
but a single page, others swell up to volumes two or three inches
thick, and of perhaps 2000 pages. As to the contents, the majority
display a mixture of letterpress with tabular matter; and while some
are wholly letterpress, others present an alarming and endless array
of figures--filing along, page after page, in irresistible battalions.
In many, valuable maps and plans are incorporated, with occasional
designs for public works, &c.
Besides these returns and papers of permanent value, there are daily
issued during the session programmes of the business of the day,
entitled _Votes and Proceedings_, and containing a list of the
subjects, the motions, petitions, bills, &c., that are to be brought
before the House, according to 'the orders of the day.' These, and all
the other papers issued by parliament, may be obtained regularly
through 'all the booksellers,' by any person desiring to have them.
Their prices are fixed; and in the case of the larger papers, the
price is printed on the back of each. Copies of bills and returns may
be had separately, on payment of these affixed prices; and indeed few
parties require complete sets. Some public libraries take them, as do
most of the London, and one or two provincial newspapers, by which the
gentlemen of the press are enabled to compile the numerous articles
and paragraphs with which all newspaper readers are familiar, and
which usually begin: 'By a return just issued, we learn,' &c.; or:
'From a parliamentary paper recently printed, it appears,' &c. The
public is often considerably indebted to the labours of newspaper men
in regard to these papers, for the exigence of space, and the
necessity of beating everything into a readable shape, require them to
condense the voluminous details of the returns; and their sum and
substance is thus given without any encumbering extraneous matter.
The cost of complete series of the papers varies from session to
session, according to the number issued, ranging usually about L.12 or
L.14.