A hundred years ago the path of the Pressman was not so smooth as it is to-day. Up to 1840 the publication of debates was undertaken at the risk of the printer. In that year Hansard published the report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, in which a certain book was referred to as "disgusting and obscene." Stockdale, the publisher of the book in question, took the matter into Court and obtained £600 damages for libel. The House retorted by summoning to the bar the Sheriffs of Middlesex who had tried the case, and reprimanded them for their contempt of its privileges. After this Lord John Russell took the first opportunity of introducing a Bill rendering all publication of speeches and documents, if by the authority of Parliament, matters of privilege not amenable to ordinary law. A member of Parliament cannot, however, claim privilege for publishing or circulating the report of any libellous speech made in the House, though he is, of course, protected there for anything he may say. The suggestion that privilege of Parliament should protect members from being proceeded against for writing and publishing libellous articles was discussed in November, 1763, and finally relinquished by a large majority.[453] [453] Walpole's "Memoirs of the Reign of George III.," vol. i. p. 261. The subject of reporting cannot be left without some mention of that official amateur reporter who sits upon the Treasury bench and prepares his nightly précis of the day's parliamentary proceedings. Amateur reporters there have always been in the Commons from the days of Sir Symonds D'Ewes and Sir Henry Cavendish[454] to the present time; but there is only one upon the floor of the House whose duties have ever been officially recognised. [454] In the heyday of parliamentary corruption, when a critical division was impending, Sir Hercules Langrishe was asked whether Sir Henry Cavendish had as usual been taking notes. "He has been taking either notes or money," he replied, "I don't know which." In accordance with a custom of many years standing the Leader of the House of Commons writes a nightly letter to the sovereign, whenever the House is sitting, giving a brief _résumé_ of the debates. This letter, often composed somewhat hastily during the course of an exciting debate, is at once sent off in an official dispatch box to His Majesty, and is subsequently filed in the library at Buckingham Palace.[455] The practice dates from the reign of George III., who required George Grenville, then Leader of the House of Commons, to provide him with daily reports of the debates relating to the contest between Parliament and John Wilkes. [455] On one occasion, in the hurry of dispatching his nightly missive, Lord Randolph Churchill accidentally enclosed a quantity of tobacco in the box which he forwarded to Queen Victoria, much to Her Majesty's amusement.