Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and majestic shadow thrown across the page of history?  As the pious Catholic studies his Acta Sanctorum, so should the constitutionalist love to pore over the ipsissima verba of Parliamentary gladiators, and read their resolutions and their motions.  Where else save in the pages of Hansard can we make ourselves fully acquainted with the history of the Mother of Free Institutions?  It is, no doubt, dull, but with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of Hansard’s Debates is better than the incongruous chirpings of the new ‘humourists.’  Besides, its dulness is exaggerated.  If a reader cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not Hansard’s.  But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to pass unchallenged.  Since when has it become a crime to be dull?  Our fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause.  We are ashamed, but without ceasing to be dull.

 [Footnote A:  March 8, 1902.]

But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market.  ’Things are what they are,’ said Bishop Butler in a passage which has lost its freshness; that is to say, they are worth what they will fetch.  ’Why, then, should we desire to be deceived?’ The test of truth remains undiscovered, but the test of present value is the auction mart.  Tried by this test, it is plain that Hansard has fallen upon evil days.  The bottled dreariness of Parliament is falling, falling, falling.  An Elizabethan song-book, the original edition of Gray’s Elegy, or Peregrine Pickle, is worth more than, or nearly as much as, the 458 volumes of Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates.  Three complete sets were sold last Tuesday; one brought L110, the other two but L70 each.  And yet it is not long ago since a Hansard was worth three times as much.  Where were our young politicians?  There are serious men on both sides of the House.  Men of their stamp twenty years ago would not have been happy without a Hansard to clothe their shelves with dignity and their minds with quotations.  But these young men were not bidders.

As the sale proceeded, the discredit of Hansard became plainer and plainer.  For the copyright, including, of course, the goodwill of the name—­the right to call yourself ‘Hansard’ for years to come—­not a penny was offered, and yet, as the auctioneer feelingly observed, only eighteen months ago it was valued at L60,000.  The cold douche of the auction mart may brace the mind, but is apt to lower the price of commodities of this kind.  Then came incomplete and unbound sets, with doleful results.  For forty copies of the ‘Indian Debates’ for 1889 only a penny a copy was offered.  It was rumoured that the bidder intended, had he been successful, to circulate the copies amongst the supporters of a National Council for India; but his purpose was frustrated by the auctioneer, who, mindful of the honour