As late as the year 1747, Cave, the proprietor and editor
of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, was brought to the bar of the House of
Commons for publishing an account of a recent debate, and only obtained
his release by expressions of humble submission and the payment of heavy
fees. The awe, however, which his humiliation and peril had been
intended to diffuse gradually wore off; the keen interest which was
awakened by the ministerial changes at the beginning of the reign of
George III., which have been already mentioned, naturally prompted a
variety of efforts to gratify it by a revelation of the language
concerning them which was held by statesmen of different parties; and
these revelations were no longer confined to yearly or monthly
publications. More than one newspaper had of late adopted the practice
of publishing what it affirmed to be a correct report of the debates of
the previous day, though, in fact, each journal garbled them to suit the
views of the party to which it belonged, and, to quote the words of the
historian of the period, "misrepresented the language and arguments of
the speakers in a manner which could hardly be considered
accidental."[13] The speakers on the ministerial side in the debates on
the Middlesex election had been especial objects of these
misrepresentations; and, at the beginning of 1771, one of that party,
Colonel Onslow, M.
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