CHAPTER IV. PUBLIC HISTORIOGRAPHY AND PUBLIC PRINTING. Albeit that mortal folk are marvellously separated both by land and water,.. yet are they and their acts (done peradventure by the space of a thousand years), compacted together by the Historiographer, as it were the deeds of one self-same city, and in one man's life. Wherefore I say that History may well be called a Divine Providence. ..... It is the keeper of such things as have been virtuously done, and the witness of evil deeds. By the benefit of History, all noble, high, and virtuous acts be immortal. BOURCHIER, Lord Berners (Preface to Froissart). Mere Parsimony is not Economy, It is separable in theory from it; and, in fact, it may, or it may not, be a part of Economy, according to circumstances. Expence, and great expence, may be an essential part in true Economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no power of combination, no comparison, no judgement. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection. The other Economy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgement, and a firm and sagacious mind. BURKE (Letter to a Noble Lord-Works, viii, 31). THE nature, extent, and value of the books and documents which are printed at the public charge are so little known; the stolid caprice which has usually governed their distribution, or their uphoarding, is so Vol. II. 39 BOOK I. Chapter IV. Public Historio graphy and Pub lic Printing. BOOK 1. Chapter IV. graphy and Pub little open to general observation; that some details on Public Historio- this head may chance to be of direct and immediate lic Printing. utility. Obstructions to students, from want of access to documents for which the Public is heavily taxed, have exactly synchronized with complaints from printers and warehouse-keepers that present disorder and future peril were accruing from the weight and bulk of those very documents in store. It is within my personal knowledge that these two classes of facts have continued to co-exist for years, without ever suggesting to the official mind that the easy remedy for both was an act of simple duty. Distribution of the Parliament ary Papers. Any account of those printed public books and documents, the judicious distribution of which would be but a proper return to the Public for the cost of their production, may fitly begin with the papers of Parliament itself. At present there is much outcry,-fashionable but foolish,—about the dulness and inånity of the 'blue books.' A few smart sneers at the thousands of wearisome pages which every body pays for, and nobody reads, are usually amongst the earliest utterances of a newspaper fledgeling. Three classes of persons, indeed, it must be admitted, have solid grounds for their depreciation of our parliamentary literature. One class is in the predicament of the worthy justice who complained that nothing so much embarrassed a man in discharging judicial functions as the hearing of both sides. It is obviously a much easier thing to dash off a glib article on "Limited Liability," or on the "Treatment of Criminals," based on the current table-talk of the day, than DISTRIBUTION OF PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS. 611 BOOK I. Chapter IV. graphy and Pub lic Printing. it is to digest a body of evidence in which the question may be presented in fifty points of view, as it shapes Public Historioitself to fifty different observers, with ranges of vision as diversified as those of the eagle and the mole. Men of another class know well enough that veins of information both many and rich are to be found in the blue books, by those who will dig deep enough, but they think also that the fewer the partners, the more profitable would be the digging. And thus we have recently had proposals that, as a rule, nothing should be printed of the proceedings of Committees or Commissions of inquiry but the bare Report; all minutes of evidence and papers being carefully preserved "in an office at Westminster."1 A third class consists of persons who appear to be themselves incapable of any lively interest in questions of education or social progress, and who are annoyed that there should be so much noise made about such things. Persons of this calibre accordingly, when asked how a reduction could best be effected in the excessive cost of public printing, reply that the best course would be to lop off the "Reports of the Committee of Council on Education, and those about Schools of Art and Design," which appear to them to be particularly flagrant instances of wasteful expenditure. And this is said in the face of an improvement in schools and teaching, under the energetic action of the Committee of Council and of the Poor Law Board, which forms one of the most striking and most pregnant of the social phenomena of 1 See Minutes of Evidence, etc. of Select Committee on Printing (Houses of Parliament), 1 Aug., 1855. 2 Ibid. BOOK I. Chapter IV. graphy and Public Printing. The moral worth of Blue the day. Even the one fact that, whereas, a few years Public Historio- ago, it was the lamentable experience of our "Workhouse schools" that two thirds of their inmates, on the average, left them to lead lives of profligacy, beggary, and crime, and that at most but one third were wont to gain an honest livelihood,-of late, by dint of viBook literature. gorous exertion to train fit schoolmasters, to elevate their position, and to give them the command of improved school machinery and discipline, that experience has been precisely reversed,-two thirds of the pupils, instead of becoming the pests of society being now the winners of their daily bread by honest industry;- this one fact, it might well be thought, would be worth a heavy printing bill for its dissemination over the length and breadth of the land. Undoubtedly, it would be easy enough to point to ponderous volumes which are scarcely worth the paper they are printed on. But those who have taken any pains to acquaint themselves with the parliamentary books, know well that these form the exception, not the rule. On very many subjects, extending far beyond the ordinary province of legislation, the best information that is extant is to be found in these contemned "blue books". But hitherto very little has been done to ensure the systematic dissemination of the stores they contain. The Select Committee which was Report of Mr. appointed, in 1853, "to inquire into the expediency of mittee on Parlia- distributing gratis, under certain regulations, a selection from the Reports and Returns printed by order of the House of Commons, amongst the Literary and Scientific Institutions and Mechanics Institutes, throughout the Tufnell's Com mentary Papers, 1833. BOOK I. Chapter IV. Public Historiography and Pub United Kingdom" &c. found, in the course of its investigations, ample proof that papers which in one place are unvalued and wasted, are in another prized and lic Printing. sought for; that on questions of great public concern, the experience even of neighbouring towns has often been mutually unknown,' although recorded in parliamentary reports, from the want of methodical facilities for their distribution, and in spite of a very general desire to receive them. The Committee also found (as might have been anticipated,) that the question, in the precise shape in which it had been put before them, failed to meet the public requirements in this matter. The terms of the reference, with curious infelicity, suggested only the claims of institutions offering little or no security for their permanence, and passed over those of other institutions to which Parliament itself had The inquiry of secured a durability, at least as certain as that of the municipal bodies with which they were allied. But in framing their Report the Committee corrected the oversight, and whilst judiciously recommending a selection of only such reports and papers for distribution to the institutions named in the order of the House, as would be certain to possess interest in the several localities to which they were sent; they proceeded to advise "an exception to this rule with respect to Free Public Libraries.... Wherever such Libraries are established, Your Committee recommend that, upon application from the managing body, the Parliamentary papers should thereupon be sent to them, free of all charge, imme 1 See, for example, the Evidence of Dr. Lyon Playfair, in Report, etc. on Parl. Papers (1853), 142, Q. 1580. 1853. |