although in their private
lives some of them had not borne the very best character. A capital
story is told of Mark Supple, an Irish reporter of the old school, who
was employed on _The Chronicle_. One evening, when there was a sudden
silence in the midst of a debate, Supple bawled out: 'A song from Mr.
Speaker.' The members could not have been more astonished had a
bombshell been suddenly discharged into the midst of them; but, after a
slight pause, every one--Pitt among the first--went off into such shouts
of laughter, that the halls of the House shook again. The
sergeant-at-arms was, however, sent to the gallery to ascertain who had
had the audacity to propose such a thing; whereupon Supple winked at him
and pointed out a meek, sober Quaker as the culprit. Broadbrim was
immediately taken into custody; but Supple, being found out, was locked
up in a solitary chamber to cool his heels for a while, and then having
made a humble apology, to the effect that 'it was the dhrink that did
it,' or something of the kind, was set at liberty. But the reporters at
the period of this unjust and foolish exclusion--for it was successful
for a time--were a very different class of men; and Sheridan told the
House that 'of about twenty-three gentlemen who were now employed
reporting parliamentary debates for the newspapers, no less than
eighteen were men regularly educated at the universities of Oxford or
Cambridge, Edinburgh or Dublin, most of them graduates at those
universities, and several of them had gained prizes and other
distinctions there by their literary attainments.' It was during this
debate that Sheridan uttered that memorable and glowing eulogium upon
the press which has been quoted in the first of the present series of
articles.

It has been shown that at one time the church was the profession which
most liberally supplied the press with writers; but now the bar appears
to have furnished a very large share, and many young barristers had
been and were reporters. The benchers of Lincoln's Inn endeavored to put
a stop to this, and passed a by-law that no man who had ever been paid
for writing in the newspapers should be eligible for a call to the bar.
This by-law was appealed against in the House of Commons, and, after a
debate, in which Sheridan spoke very warmly against the benchers, the
petition was withdrawn upon the understanding that the by-law should be
recalled. From that time to the present, writing in the newspape