At times of vehement political excitement, or any special party conflict, pamphlets and periodical essays had enlightened their readers—­necessarily a select and small body—­on particular topics.  But standing orders of both Houses, often renewed, strictly forbade all publication of the debates which took place in either.  To a certain extent, these orders had come to be disregarded and evaded.  Almost ever since the accession of the House of Brunswick, a London publisher had given to the world an annual account of the Parliamentary proceedings and most interesting discussions of the year; and before the middle of the reign of George ii, two monthly magazines had given sketches of speeches made by leading members of each party.  The reporters, however, did not venture to give the names of the speakers at full length, but either disguised them under some general description, or at most gave their initials; and sometimes found that even this profession of deference to the standing orders did not insure them impunity.  As late as the year 1747, Cave, the proprietor and editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, was brought to the bar of the House of Commons for publishing an account of a recent debate, and only obtained his release by expressions of humble submission and the payment of heavy fees.  The awe, however, which his humiliation and peril had been intended to diffuse gradually wore off; the keen interest which was awakened by the ministerial changes at the beginning of the reign of George III., which have been already mentioned, naturally prompted a variety of efforts to gratify it by a revelation of the language concerning them which was held by statesmen of different parties; and these revelations were no longer confined to yearly or monthly publications.  More than one newspaper had of late adopted the practice of publishing what it affirmed to be a correct report of the debates of the previous day, though, in fact, each journal garbled them to suit the views of the party to which it belonged, and, to quote the words of the historian of the period, “misrepresented the language and arguments of the speakers in a manner which could hardly be considered accidental."[13] The speakers on the ministerial side in the debates on the Middlesex election had been especial objects of these misrepresentations; and, at the beginning of 1771, one of that party, Colonel Onslow, M.P. for Guilford, brought the subject before the House, complaining that many speeches, and his own among them, had been misrepresented by two newspapers which he named, and that “the practice had got to an infamous height, so that it had become absolutely necessary either to punish the offenders or to revise the standing orders."[14] And he accordingly moved “that the publication of the newspapers of which he complained was a contempt of the orders and a breach of the privileges of the House, and that the printers be ordered to attend the House at its next sitting.”  The habitual unfairness of the reports was admitted