of the details into which some speakers deemed it desirable to go was regarded by others as calculated to be offensive to the taste, if not injurious to the morals, of the community at large.  But the very fact of such an occasional enforcement of the standing orders under very peculiar circumstances implies a recognition of the propriety of its more ordinary violation; of the principle that publication ought to be the general rule, and secrecy the unusual exception.  And, indeed, it is, probably, no exaggeration to say that such publication is not only valuable, as the best and chief means of the political education of the people out-of-doors, but is indispensable to the working of our parliamentary system such as it has now become.  The successive Reform Bills, which have placed the electoral power in the hands of so vast a body of constituents as was never imagined in the last century, have evidently regarded the possession by the electors of a perfect knowledge of the language held and the votes given by their representatives as indispensable to the proper exercise of the franchises which they have conferred.  And, even if there had previously been no means provided for their acquisition of such information, it is certain that the electors would never have consented to be long kept in the dark on subjects of such interest.  In another point of view, the publication of the debates is equally desirable, in the interest of the members themselves, whether leaders or followers of the different parties.  Not to mention the stimulus that it affords to the cultivation of eloquence—­an incentive to which even those least inclined or accustomed to put themselves forward are not entirely insensible—­it enables the ministers to vindicate their measures to the nation at large, the leaders of the Opposition to explain their objections or resistance to those measures in their own persons, and not through the hired agency of pamphleteers, and each humbler member to prove to his constituents the fidelity with which he has acted up to the principles his assertion of which induced them to confide their interests and those of the kingdom to his judgment and integrity.  Secrecy and mystery may serve, or be supposed to serve, the interests of arbitrary rulers; perfect openness is the only principle on which a free constitution can be maintained and a free people governed.

It seems convenient to take all the measures which, in this first portion of the reign before us, affected the proceedings or constitution of Parliament together; and, indeed, one enactment of great importance, which was passed in 1770, it is hardly unreasonable to connect in some degree with the decision of the House which adjudged the seat for Middlesex to Colonel Luttrell.  Ever since the year 1704 it had been regarded as a settled point that the House of Commons had the exclusive right of determining every question concerning the election of its members.  But it was equally notorious