ord . For extreme verbal accuracy, which may or may not be a virtue in the eyes of the historian, the advantage lies with the plan adopted by Congress; for correct interpretation of spirit, the
advantage lies with the press reports of Parliament. Incidentally , Hansard is of consuming interest, the Congressional Record is deadly dull The opposition of legislative bodies to having their proceedings reported seems inherent, certainly in their early history. The same hostility that long persisted in the English Parliament, Godkin found in Hungary during the revolutionary period .
“ Whether from the jealousy of the government,” he writes, “ or the apathy of the Magyars, no printed reports of the parliamen tary proceedings had ever yet (1832 ] been published , so that the people remained without any intelligence of the sayings and doings of their representatives, except such as was afforded them by rumour or hearsay . To supply this defect, Kossuth resolved
to devote the time, which would otherwise have been wasted in idle listening, to carefully reporting everything that took place, and circulated it all over the country on a small printed sheet .” And again similar conditions led to similar results. Kossuth found that “ the importance of the proceedings which then occu pied the attention of the diet caused it to be read with extraor
dinary eagerness," and he therefore " rendered it still more
attractive by amplifying, and often even embellishing the speeches. The Cabinet , however , soon took the alarm , and al
though the censorship was unknown to the Hungarian law , pro hibited the printing and publication of the reports.” Kossuth, however, was not to be thwarted and he quickly collected a group of young men who, as secretaries , wrote out large numbers of the journal which circulated in manuscript
throughout Hungary . After the diet closed, he reported the meetings of the county assemblies , - a proceeding that angered
the Government who stopped the journal at the post office, but
could not stop its circulation by messengers among the villages.58 68 E . L . Godkin , The History of Hungary and the Magyars, pp. 305 -306 . This account is apparently based on E . de Langsdorff, “ La Hongrie en 1848 Kossuth et Jellachich ,” Revue des Deux Mondes, 1848, new series, 24 : 252- 279 .
