The reporting of the debates even of the House of
Commons. is becoming so bad, that to get a respectably accurate version of any considerable speech, it, is necessary to consult two independent reports, and weigh the conflicting versions. "A-Puzzled misled by a false version in the Times of. Ur. Gladstone's answer yesterday week to Earl Grosvenor's question, whether Mr. Glad- stone would lay the proposed Scotch and Irish Reform Bill and the Redistribution of Seats Bills on the table before or after the second reading of the Franchise. Bill, emote to Tuesday's Times to ask whether Mr. Gladstone's " unquestionably " meant that he would first carry the second reading, or that he would first pro- duce the supplementary Bills. The 1Ymeaxplained on Wednesday that its own report had given the " unquestionably " precisely the wrong bearing, making it an assent to the, prior production of the other Bills, instead of a blank refusal to produce them. On this point the Daily News was right, But there were many other blunders ie. the reports of the same debate. The Dines, for instance, omitted altogether the characteristic opening of Lord Ceanborne's- speech,—" The right honourable gentlemen opposite appeared to wish to strengthen their moral natures by appealing to them to have confidence in the Govern- ment ;" and the Daily News, on the other hand; omitted his equally characteristic epithet for Mr. Gladstone's expression about the working class being "their own flesh and blood'," which the noble Lord termed "sentimental rant." Till this session the
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