e complaints made
against them. Mr. Wilberforce, who really deserved better treatment at
their hands, read to the House, on one occasion, an extract from a
newspaper, in which he was reported as having said, "Potatoes make men
healthy, vigorous, and active; but what is still more in their favour,
they make men tall; more especially was he led to say so as being rather
under the common size, and he must lament that his guardians had not
fostered him upon that genial vegetable." Mr. Martin, of Galway, has
immortalised himself by his complaint made about the same time, though
based upon a less solid foundation than that of the great Abolitionist.
The reporter having dashed his pen under some startling passages which
had fallen from the Hibernian orator's lips, the printer was called to
the bar. In defence he put in the report, containing the very words.
"That may be," said Martin; "_but did I spake them in italics_?" Of
course the printer was nonplussed by such a question, and the House was
convulsed with laughter. Happily, this state of things no longer exists,
and, in the language of Mr. Macaulay, it is now universally felt "that
the gallery in which the reporters sit, has become a fourth estate of the
realm." The publication of the debates, which seemed to the most liberal
statesmen full of danger to the great safeguards of public liberty, is
now regarded by many persons as a safeguard tantamount, and more than
tantamount, to all the rest put together. "Give me," said Sheridan,
whilst fighting the battle of the reporters on the floor of the
House--"give me but the liberties of the press, and I will give to the
minister a venal House of Peers--I will give him a corrupt and servile
House of Commons--I will give him the whole host of ministerial
influence--I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him
to purchase up submission and overawe resistance--and yet, armed with the
liberties of the press, I will go forth to meet him undismayed; I will
attack the mighty fabric he has raised with that mightier engine. I will
shake down from its height corruption, and bury it beneath the ruins of
the abuses it was meant to shelter."

The reporters have now a comfortable gallery to themselves--they have
cushions as soft to sit upon as those of M.P.'s--they have plenty of room
to write in, and whilst they wait their turns they may indulge in
criticism on high art or Chinese literature--on the divine melodies of
J