her that
they might decide whether their representative had done his duty by
them, and yet strictly to interdict them from learning, on trustworthy
authority, what he had said or how he had voted? The absurdity however
appears to have passed altogether unchallenged. It is highly probable
that among the two hundred members of the House of Commons who voted for
the third reading of the Triennial Bill there was not one who would have
hesitated about sending to Newgate any person who had dared to publish
a report of the debate on that bill, or a list of the Ayes and the Noes.
The truth is that the secrecy of parliamentary debates, a secrecy which
would now be thought a grievance more intolerable than the Shipmoney
or the Star Chamber, was then inseparably associated, even in the most
honest and intelligent minds, with constitutional freedom. A few old
men still living could remember times when a gentleman who was known at
Whitehall to have let fall a sharp word against a court favourite would
have been brought before the Privy Council and sent to the Tower. Those
times were gone, never to return. There was no longer any danger that
the King would oppress the members of the legislature; and there was
much danger that the members of the legislature might oppress the
people. Nevertheless the words Privilege of Parliament, those words
which the stern senators of the preceding generation had murmured when a
tyrant filled their chamber with his guards, those words which a hundred
thousand Londoners had shouted in his ears when he ventured for the last
time within the walls of their city; still retained a magical influence
over all who loved liberty. It was long before even the most enlightened
men became sensible that the precautions which had been originally
devised for the purpose of protecting patriots against the displeasure
of the Court now served only to protect sycophants against the
displeasure of the nation.

It is also to be observed that few of those who showed at this time the
greatest desire to increase the political power of the people were as
yet prepared to emancipate the press from the control of the government.
The Licensing Act, which had passed, as a matter of course, in 1685,
expired in 1693, and was renewed, not however without an opposition,
which, though feeble when compared with the magnitude of the object in
dispute, proved that the public mind was beginning dimly to perceive
how closely civil freedom an