I have high judicial authority for the statement that in spite of this rule the position of a member of Parliament in the matter of libel is not impregnable. He is quite safe, not only as far as words spoken in the House are concerned, but is not responsible for their publication in the newspapers, or their subsequent appearance in "Hansard." "Hansard," however, is accustomed to send to each member a report of his speech, leaving to him the option of revision. If the proof be not returned within a few days it is assumed that no correction is desired, and the speech goes down to posterity in the form it was handed in by the reporter. When a member has revised his speech the fact is intimated by a star. It is herein the distinction in the matter of legal liability is established. A member having voluntarily revised his speech is assumed, by the fresh and independent action taken outside the House of Commons, to have assumed a liability he would otherwise have escaped. An action would lie against him, not for the speech delivered in Parliament, but for the publication of the libel under his revision, and upon his authority, in a widely circulated periodical. _Verb. sap._ [Sidenote: A PRECIOUS VOLUME.] A glance over any volume of "Hansard" shows that it is only the new or inconsiderable member, whose speeches are not likely to become the texts of subsequent debate, who is at pains to revise reports of his Parliamentary utterances. Old Parliamentary hands like Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Chamberlain are, in the first place, too busy, and, in the second, too wise, to commit themselves to the task. Mr. Chamberlain once suffered from yielding to the temptation to secure an accurate report of his deliverances on important political questions. In 1885, on the precipice below which unexpectedly lay the fissure in the Liberal Party, Messrs. Routledge brought out a series of volumes containing reports of the speeches of some six or eight statesmen on questions of the day. It was an "authorized" edition, the various contributors revising their speeches. At this epoch Mr. Chamberlain was the risen hope of the Radical Party. His vigorous argument and incisive invective were directed against the Conservative Party, its history, ancient and modern. It is from this little volume that Mr. Gladstone, in his speech at Edinburgh just before the Winter Session, drew the citation of Mr. Chamberlain's indictment of the House of Lords. It was not the first time it had been remembered. But Mr. Gladstone's joyous discovery sent it trumpet-tongued throughout the English-speaking world. It is this compilation that rescued from the obscurity of daily newspaper reports the happily conceived, perfectly phrased, and now classical similitude drawn between Mr. Gladstone and a mountain.