‘Paper and print requisite for printing 1,000 copies’
The publication of the Journals of the House of Commons marked a waterÂshed moment in the development of parliamentary science. The founding of the project may be traced back to the seventeenth century.
William Hakewill (1574-1655) served in Commons and authored works on the subject of parÂliamentary procedure in the first half of the seventeenth century. Hakewill noted the ‘want of a proper Provision for safe preserving’ the Journals. Commons should commit itself, he argued, to a means of keeping ‘all their Records to Posterity’.11 The project came up again in 1698; by this time, Commons had made some progress towards document preservation. The House of Commons had the foresight to order preparation of duplicates in manuscript of its Journals to that date.Nicholas Hardinge served the House of Commons as its Clerk from 1732 to 1748. The House tasked him to explore ‘the Expediency and Utility of printing the Journals’. Hardinge’s appendices duly related his findings as to the ‘State of the Condition of all the Journals now in his Custody’. The Clerks of the House of Commons were responsible for maintaining the journals - in their manuscript format - from the accession of Edward VI. Significant gaps in the extant manuscript journals were discovered. In addiÂtion to clerical lapses, pages were found to be ‘almost illegible, and others in some parts Destroyed, or defaced by Mildew’.
Mr. Samuel Richardson, Printer, being called before your Committee, delivered in an Estimate of the Experience with regard to the Paper and Print requisite for printing 1,000 Copies of the Journals; which EstiÂmate appears to be grounded on the preceding Calculation of Words.12
Multiplication of copies in different locations advanced the goal of record preservation. The House of Commons hoped to achieve this through printÂing and distributing copies of the journals, conceived as a set of ordered spines, and ‘not to exceed Thirty Volumes’.
Publication of the Journals delivered 26,537,603 words that divulged the day-to-day operations of the House of Commons over a span of nearly two centuries. Hardinge was fascinated with this calculation and recorded, in the Journal, that he had ordered ‘Mr. John Grover, One of the Clerk’s in Mr. Hardinge’s office’ to deliver ‘to your Committee the whole Account of such Computation’.13The committee’s resolutions (both of which the House approved) were not limited, however, to multiplication of copies, taken as a goal in itself. ‘Committees appointed to search Precedents’ would require printed JourÂnals, in multiple copies, and formatted uniformly. Journals ‘ill written, and without any indexes’ had been found (in 1742) to be an impediment to searches for Precedents going back ‘before the Year 1685’.14 The committee recommended finding aids, including ‘a proper Preface and Index [in] each Volume [and printing] a general Preface and Index to the Whole’.15 The Preface and the Index to the Journals represented a self-conscious effort to position the work of the House of Commons within political society and articulate its purposes as a legislative body. This effort connected members’ technical talent with the body’s aspirations.
Commons envisioned this project as a means of storing - for future retrieval and exploitation - patterns of data arising assignable to members’ behaviour. Hardinge conceived of Journals of the House of Commons as a finding aid that would enable members’ ready access to a gigantic 26-million- word knowledge base. To facilitate journal-using, Commons found itself reasoning backwards from the future. When a procedural issue arose, what would a future generation expect a storehouse of historical data to disclose? By the time Hatsell launched his book-length publication project in 1776 with Cases of Privileges he assumed that the journals would facilitate a committee’s search for precedents of proceedings.
Although the print ediÂtion included an index at the conclusion of each volume, Commons was not satisfied with the format of these finding aids. It was not until early in the nineteenth century (more or less, after 1803) that members of the House of Commons had access to regularly published volumes of the journals of the‘This John Milton deserves hanging’ 35 House, each of which included a consistently organised index at the concluÂsion of each volume.
The journal-using function - making parliamentary experience accesÂsible when precedents were sought - was not the only purpose Commons took seriously. Commons also viewed these ordered spines as a learning aid designed for an audience beyond the 558 members of the House of ComÂmons. To weigh this alternate use of its proceedings, Commons priced the print runs of 600 or 1,000 copies. The Committee’s recommendation for a printing of 1,000 copies was approved ‘in order to provide a Number of Copies to be sold to future Members at moderate Prices’. At 600 copÂies, a few hundred would remain in inventory if all members of the House received a copy ‘at a publick Expense’. Commons also considered whether the journals might be supplemented by including ‘useful and instructive Reports, and other Papers... though not entered in the Journals’.16 The Committee did not make its understanding of this alternative use entirely clear. One must assume that a new member might gather experience, if only vicariously, by paging through the volumes he had acquired.