Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/267

 French Reports of Parliamentary Debates 257 The available documents are of two kinds. They assume two different shapes, as they did when they made their first appearance at the time of Barrillon's embassy. Some are mere journals, or rather abstracts of the journals ; others are real analytical reports of the debates. The documents of the first kind are the " Feuilles-Journales du Parlement ", drawn up every third day, and frequently alluded to in letters sent to France. In some volumes of the Correspondance Politique, in which it would be vain to look for detailed reports, one comes across a number of such documents, which consist but of a bare enumeration of the principal matters dealt with in both Houses.' Their value, on account of their being so dry, is to us next to nothing. They give us, in fact, nothing that we could not find in the official journals. They were not so devoid of interest when other means of information were wanting. For a long while the news in the gazettes was still shorter ; and as to the reports in the maga- zines, they were issued some time after the debates had taken place, and, moreover, gave an account of the most important debates only. But the growth of the daily press in the second half of the eigh- teenth century soon made it rather purposeless to send the " Feuilles- Journales du Parlement " to Versailles. Count du Chatelet on De- cember 9, 1768, wrote to Choiseul: " I send you with this letter the journals of Parliament for the present week. I did not send them before, because there is nothing in them which you could not find the next day in any gazette. It is an article of expenditure which I found established by my predecessors, and which I always feel sorry to keep up, though it does not cost much." ^ Choiseul answered: " The sending of the journals of Parliament is an old custom with which you are free to do away if you don't think they are of any use." ' In the following volumes of the Correspondance Politique we find no more of those " feuilles-journales ", but only abstracts of the debates, " precis des debats ", with which they were before intermingled. The latter, of course, are the more worthy of attention. By them only can we be supplied with fresh information on the debates of the British Parliament, which may fill up a gap, or help us to point out 'For instance, in vol. 412, ff. 5-6, 41-42, 50-51, 66-67, 76-77, 83-84, 94, 102-103, 134-135. 138-139, 149-150, 160-161, 194, 226-227, 243-244, 248-249, 252-253, 258-259, 320-321, 339-341, 342, 386-387, 401-402, 411-412, 419-420. Something like a report will be found, in a few instances, in Bussy's letters to Cardinal Fleury (c^ the letter dated February 17. 1741, which gives an account of the sitting held on February 24. when Walpole's dismissal was demanded). 2 Vol. 482, f. 103. ' Note in Choiseul's own handwriting on Count du Chatelet's letter.