Return to Table of Contents

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.