ART. III.-THE LITERATURE OF POLITICS:-THE REPORTER AND LETTER-WRITER.

LITERATURE, in its historical application to the treatment of human affairs in general, seems to have formed itself, spontaneously, into three principal departments, successive in date, as well as distinct in purpose, and constituting the provinces, respectively, of the Chronicler, the Compiler, and the Commentator. In the special subject of Politics, these functions may be conceived as represented under the same conditions of development, by that tri-unity of the newspaper -the Reporter, the Correspondent, and the Editor.

Of this triple division of labour, the names are familiar in our own journalism. But the things themselves-which they indicate rather than designate are these, as yet, equally definite? Are they comprehended (all, at least) in the relative destiny and the proper duties appertaining, actually and ultimately, to each of the offices? To explain the confusion, and note the imperfections, suggested in these questions, would, assuredly, be a service no less invaluable than it seems urgent toward the improvement of our public or political writing. It would be invaluable, not only for the reason that such writing is the chief instrument by which the affairs of a government like ours are to be conducted, its abuses corrected, and its powers controlled; but also because such writing, composing, as it does, the principal reading of the generality of our people, would be turned, by an easy improvement in manner as well as matter, to educate, instead of corrupting, the public taste. The need of this reform is a point upon which we do not dwell. The parties peccant would, most of them, recognize it themselves; and those who do not would be little profited, as the writer would be little pleased, by a resort to critical stricture, which is apt to be the more invidious the better it is deserved, and irksome in proportion as it is easy.

Besides, the object we propose has by no means so adventurous a scope. We shall be concerned with only one or two of these functionaries at all; and should the condition of these, or either of them, as at present practised among us, be incidentally laid bare a little in the prosecution of our purpose, surely we are not to blame that they prove a satire upon themselves. That purpose, then, is to give our readers some account of a new method of parliamentary reporting, invented several years ago in France, by one of the first political writers of the age-we mean M. de Cormenin-and described in the work* of this author which we had the pleasure of intro* Livre des Orateurs, part i, chap. 7.

ducing to our readers in a late number of the Review. It is so immeasurably in advance of anything of the kind in operation elsewhere, that it appears to us of the first importance to have it fundamentally understood and instituted adequately, at the outset, in this country.

The new form of political writing in question, which is already established, systematically, throughout France, is termed by the inventor, Compte-rendu-literally, Account-rendering. This would be both awkward and ambiguous English. To avoid both it and the inexpressive neology of the foreign original, we have thought it of peculiar consequence, in the circumstances, to suggest, if possible, an equivalent, at once significant, mono-epic, and already naturalized. As best combining these properties, we venture to propose the word Synopsis, for the art, and Synopsist, for its practitioners. The appropriateness of the term will be best judged of from the nature of the thing.

The method is not to be comprehended, satisfactorily, from de Cormenin's own exposition. He is mainly critical, after his general manner; he instructs much less than corrects, by his amusing caricatures of the partisan exaggerations of the press. He was, in fact, addressing himself, more immediately, to a community where the Synopsis had been in full operation and generally understood; and thus was naturally led to apply himself to its abuses chiefly. For us it would be necessary-were it only to relish his unrivalled sarcasm-to begin with studying the uses of the method. But to learn the uses, the nature, of an institution, we must always remount, if possible, the stream of its history, long or short; we must examine the situation from which it emanated, and ascertain the determining exigence which gave it birth. In applying this fundamental rule of inductive philosophy to the investigation of the Compte-rendu, or Synopsis, we must go back, in strictness, to the primitive forms of oratory-to the theory of eloquence in general; of which the eloquence of the political press should be classed as but a species.

The ancient orator-Demosthenes or Cicero-haranguing in the Agora or the Forum, debated the laws and discussed the public business, foreign and domestic, in the immediate presence of the people--then and there the political authorities of the state. This is our conception of the primitive and the proper province of popular eloquence. Now the people, wherever they possess this power, and to the extent that they wield it, must continue, according to the degree of their accessibility and intelligence, to be so addressed and appealed to, in some shape or other. This is inherent in the relations of things; and whatever is so, may, indeed, be still diverted, dissembled,

divided, even dissipated; but can never be entirely extirpated, nor permanently suppressed. Thus the ancient functions of the popular orator have nearly all disappeared; only, however, to take other forms, one or more, in obedience principally to the circumstances just indicated, namely, breadth of territory and grade of civilization. The earliest of these transformations would be necessitated chiefly by the multiplication of the citizens beyond the capacity of a general assemblage. The natural remedy would be deputation; and thus the popular orator dwindles down to the parliamentary debater.

Afterward, with the slow growth of intelligence and public spirit, and also with some experience of their legislative agents, the people would again desire-not more perhaps from the principle of prudence, than an instinct of curiosity-to have the proceedings of their delegates (as of the orators of old) submitted to their immediate inspection. But this is physically impossible. From the contention of this moral desire with this mathematical necessity there results, through the instrumental concurrence of the press, the office of the Stenographer or Reporter; who may be conceived as a sort of speaking-trumpet to the parliamentary debater a supplement, serving, in some degree, to restore him to the pristine footing of the popular

orator.

But it is merely in some degree, and a degree extremely inadequate. The trumpet is too commonly but a leaden pipe, conveying the city sewer and the country ditch-water as contentedly as if they were rills from the classic fountains of Helicon or Aganippe. We invite the reader's attention to the admirable criticism of this subject in the work already referred to, (chapter on the Reporter.) He will be astonished that an expedient, chargeable with such accumulated imperfections and abuses, could have come, not, indeed, to obtain currency in the infant state of the representative system, but to maintain, of mere custom, in the comparative maturity of that system, its credit with an enlightened public. He will be astonished, we say, unless he should be philosopher enough to recollect, that the tentative advances of mankind vibrate, in all things, from extreme to extreme; until, by the mere inertia of the intellect, (called, in our day, its "march,") the contrary vagaries subside, in diminishing oscillations, to what the Peripatetics so well termed the golden mean. The office, of the Reporter has been such an extreme; of which the inaccessibility of a whole people to the national councils was the impelling opposite.

There ought, therefore, to arise in time an intermediate institution, which should tend to exclude the grosser abuses and to satisfy the real exigences of the two situations respectively. The process of spontaneous improvement would be accelerated in this case peculiarly;

for the abuses in question are of a nature to be reciprocally promotive of each other, and thus to precipitate their common exposure. For example: the honourable gentleman who would hardly venture upon the forbearance of a popular assemblage of his constituents, taking advantage of the sufferance secured him by the "rules of the house," is often instigated, by the office of the Reporter, to a mischievous and wicked waste of the public time, money, and patience. If of the class called "spouters," he dilutes his few grains of sense, or (what is more perhaps to be regretted for its exemplary value) his unmingled nonsense, in an ocean of verbiage, which he knows is presently to overspread the land, as the measure-the liquid measure-of his parliamentary efficiency and oratorical genius; and if below even the capacity of a stringer of words, he has still a resource in the reporter, by whose ministry he may (for a consideration or a compliment) be set forth, in borrowed plumage, before his constituents and the country, an orator, as well as the best of them. Such is the effect upon the Representatives.

Upon the Reporter himself, on the other hand, there is manifestly a reaction correlatively pernicious. The raw material, which he is thus the occasion of stimulating, quickly crowds and gluts the market. At last the staple of what he has to reproduce will come to be subject to the hard alternative of being either forged, if readable, or oppressive, if genuine.

Now so monstrous a burlesque as this upon men's most serious affairs would at last burst the cerement of the most indurated habitude. The public mind would come to feel, even long before distinctly conceiving, the following plain and practical truths:

1. That the parliamentary speaker should address himself to the merits of the question and the understanding of the assembly immediately before him; not to his constituents at home, or to the country at large-their partisan passions or national prejudices.

2. That the object of deliberative eloquence being to ascertain utility by discussion, not to precipitate action by excitement, the legislator should eschew the silly surplusage of declamatory forms, appropriate or pardonable only in assemblies purely popular; and, disdaining vulgar embellishments, should be ambitious of no other. than the oaken ornament of true dignity, which is woven from the blending of loftiness of thought with simplicity of language, and is the meed of clearness of exposition and propriety of expression.

3. That the reporter, on his part, only serves, while fostering the contrary of all this, to pour it, confused or counterfeit, upon the newspaper-reading public; thus leaving in effectual ignorance of the course of affairs, not only those who have the taste, while paying the bill, to

revolt at the dish, but also the smaller number who may have the stomach to swallow it.

4. And, in fine, that all the busy public care, or indeed are concerned to know, on ordinary occasions, of parliamentary speeches is, simply what has been said in substance. It really matters little how, or even by whom, save as such circumstances may be found of use to characterize the tenor and effect of the proceedings, or may lead to correct and remedy the grosser incompetencies of the speakers. These distinctions arrived at, the consequence would spontaneously be a new functionary of the press, destined directly to supplant the discredited system of parliamentary reporting,* by furnishing the public with the full substance and signification of the debates, in a compendious, clear, and consecutive form; and, indirectly, to react upon the representative body itself, with an influence as salutary as that of the Reporter has been quite the reverse.

Nor are the advantages of such an abridgment less certain. Let "honourable members" but know that the laborious tinsel of their amplification is to be stripped off, and its trailing drapery docked unpityingly; that they are to appear (if at all) before their constituents and the public in the contemptible nakedness of their confronted assertions, identical or contradictory, as chance may have willed it: let this be understood, and we may be sure that attention will soon be turned from the motley rhetoric and the superficial area of the speech, to its logic and matter. Those who have nothing of the latter ingredients to offer, will then be prudently resigned to move (in the allusion of Curran, and the words of Livy) to the tune of pedibus ire in sententiam. Men of stronger natural parts, but without that "fatal facility" of expression termed flippancy, will usefully apply their industry, and restrict their ambition, to the study of the subject and its statistical elucidation; while the men of general knowledge and speaking ability combined, will also rise, quite naturally, to their legitimate level, and obtain, in the conduct of public affairs, a salutary preponderance of authority and effect. Thus would all things be restored to their places.

Now, this grand agent of parliamentary discipline, this "new organ" of popular instruction as well as information, is the Compterendu of M. de Cormenin; of which we have endeavored thus to trace the analytical history, as alone adequate to put the reader in full possession of the nature, the province, and the prospects of an institution, in this country so peculiarly important, and as yet so new. Yet not new entirely. France was naturally the first to conceive * It is not meant to deny that the Reporter will always remain useful for special occasions.