The sovereign is not supposed to enter the Lower House--Charles I. was the only monarch who broke this rule--and thus, in days before debates were published at length in the papers, the Crown had no means of ascertaining the doings of the Commons save through the medium of this letter. The need for this one-sided nightly correspondence no longer exists, but the custom still prevails, and adds one more to the already multifarious duties of the Leader of the House, though nowadays it is occasionally delegated to some other Minister, or to one of the Whips. To-day Press and Parliament are mutually dependent. A great newspaper proprietor who was recently asked which of the two he considered to be the most powerful, found some difficulty in replying. "The Press is the voice without which Parliament could not speak," he said. "On the other hand, Parliament is the law-making machine without which the Press could not act." The question of their relative power and importance must be left to the decision of individual judgment and taste. "Give me but the liberty of the Press," said Sheridan in 1810, in answer to the Premier, Spencer Perceval, "and I will give the Minister a venal House of Peers, I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons, I will give him the full swing of the patronage of office, I will give him the whole host of ministerial influences, I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him to purchase submission and overawe resistance; and yet, armed with the liberty of the Press, I will go forth to meet him undismayed; I will attack the mighty fabric he has reared with that mightier engine; I will shake down from its height corruption, and lay it beneath the ruins of the abuses it was meant to shelter!"[456] [456] Hansard's "Debates," 1st series, vol. xv. SOURCES AND REFERENCES Adams, W. H. D., English Party Leaders and Parties. 1878. Alison, Sir A., Life of Lord Castlereagh. 1861. Anson, Sir W. R., Law and Custom of the Constitution. 1897. Arcana Parliamentaria, or Precedents concerning Parliament, by R. C. of the Middle Temple, Esq. 1685. Ashley, Hon. A. E., Life of Lord Palmerston. 1876. Ashwell, A., Life of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 1880. Atlay, J. B., The Victorian Chancellors. 1908. Bacon, N., Historical Discourse of the Laws and Government of England. 1760. Bagehot, W., Biographical Studies. 1881. Bagehot, W., The English Constitution. 1872. Bagehot, W., Literary Studies. 1879. Barnes, T., Parliamentary Portraits. 1815. Barrington, Sir J., Historic Memoirs of Ireland. 1833. Barrington, Sir J., Personal Sketches of His Own Times. 1827. Barrington, Sir J., The Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation. 1833. Barrow, J. H., The Mirror of Parliament. 1828-41. Barry, Rev. A., Life and Works of Sir Charles Barry. 1867. Beaconsfield, Lord, Life of Lord George Bentinck. 1852. Bell, J. B., Biographical Sketches. 1808.