Between 1760 and 1800, reporting on speeches delivered in the House of Commons in newspapers and periodicals increased dramatically. In Imprison'd Wranglers: the Rhetorical Culture of the House of Commons, 1760–1800, Christopher Reid analyzes how being imprisoned in print affected orators and oratory in Parliament. Reid's book is important for anyone interested in the history of Parliament, but it is especially important for scholars of the history and criticism of rhetoric.
In section I, “The Speaking Chamber,” Reid analyzes the constraints and affordances that characterized St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster. He draws on the construct of the “geography of the communicative event” (25), distinguishing between “rhetorical place” (the physical scene of speaking) and “rhetorical space” (the political scene). That members of Parliament (MPs) spoke from their positions at the benches, rather than at a podium, emphasized conviviality among equals in a place with an atmosphere of a gentleman's club. Reid's analysis of an exchange between the Younger Pitt and Charles Fox demonstrates a talented orator making effective use of this space. Pitt, exploiting the proximity on the bench of John Jeffreys Pratt, turned toward Pratt and referenced Pratt's father as an embodiment of aristocratic virtue, gesturing in a way that allowed Pitt himself to bask in the reflected light of his praise of the senior Pratt. Thus Reid effectively decodes the spatial references of the Parliamentary Register's account to recreate the scene.
The space of St. Stephen's also encouraged members to see the House as a “place apart” (33), with press and public admitted by invitation only. Reid traces how members’ understanding of themselves as an exclusive “public” was challenged during the period. The challenge came from the press, which was itself responding to readers’ cravings for accounts of the debates. The role of the press in the rise of a bourgeois public sphere has been well documented since Jürgen Habermas, but Reid fleshes out how these changes manifested in MPs’ oratory.
In section II, “Out of Doors,” Reid shows how reporting practices shaped readers’ reception of performances in the chamber. Some reports attempted to replicate performances, describing speakers’ emotion and gestures, while others offered relatively cold summaries. Some interjected commentary; others separated criticism from description. MPs attempted to exploit the increased publicity their oratory was receiving. Complaining that press accounts were inaccurate, MPs tried to ensure that the version published in the Parliamentary Register reflected what they actually said or wished they had or privately published in their speeches. “Never before or since has a reading public been solicited with so many competing accounts of what has been said in the House” (96).
These efforts at image management took a literal expression in the rising market for prints. Reid relates how Charles Fox had Joshua Reynolds depict Fox holding bills that he had recently guided to passage in a portrait. The rising interest in visuals also sponsored satirical portraits. Reid has a lively analysis of James Gillray's caricatures of Pitt and other MPs. Richard Brinsely Sheridan attempted to prompt a Gillray satirical caricature of Pitt's foreign policy by offering a tempting word picture in a speech. The strategy worked, though Gillray had the last word as he portrayed Sheridan unflatteringly in the same cartoon.
In section III, “Making a Figure,” Reid shows how classical, especially Roman, rhetoric was a source of inspiration and preparation for elites who sought to cut a public figure in Parliament. He focuses on Viscount Althorp, whose education at Trinity College, Cambridge emphasized declamation in the context of republican values. He compares an MP's maiden speech, typically preceded by much practice and angst, to the donning of the toga. Althorp's first speech went well enough, but Reid references failed first performances that traumatized the MP into silence from the bench for the rest of his career.
Classical rhetoric provided both more and less than an MP needed. Reid quotes Chesterfield's dismissal of the Ciceronian ideal that the orator must command wide learning. However, Reid also points out that the topical method of classical invention was less helpful in an eighteenth-century context in which arguments were increasingly based on technical warrants.
Similar tensions between ancient and modern values surface in “Where Character Is Power,” a chapter in section III. Perceptions of character always contribute to persuasion, but as Reid notes, paradigms of character change and can be contested. In the House, the landed gentry's claim, founded in Roman values, of a principled independence from party and special interest was criticized as self-indulgent by Edmund Burke on behalf of the New Men. Burke argued that alliances were the basis for good governing. Reid's emphasis on the importance of “candour” as a trait that transcended party is especially interesting. But candor is associated with a polite, Christian man of sensibility, not the Aristocratic, magnanimous, stoic Roman. How to reconcile these tensions? Finally, Reid's rich analysis of the debate in the House in 1772 over the conduct of Lord Clive, aka “Clive of India,” shows that while appeals to honor and manliness dominate the debate, MPs’ “manly tears” were also persuasive. These tensions made me wish that Reid addressed how the transformation from an ethos characterized by traits associated with a heroic honor culture to those of polite, bourgeois commercialism that historians of rhetoric find in the eighteenth-century theory actually played out in practice.
Imprison'd Wranglers is a perceptive, well-researched, and most readable analysis of the rhetoric that characterized debate in the House of Commons during a transformative period in the history of bourgeois democracy. Reid takes seriously the trope of his subtitle in setting forth the material and political conditions that shaped the “rhetorical culture” of the House of Commons in midcentury. These conditions include an examination of how the design of the speaking place of St. Stephen's influenced debate, how the increasing demand for transcription and dissemination of speeches influenced reception, and how members exploited the broadcasting of their words to shape public personas. Politically, the oratory in Commons was shaped by the values underpinning the rhetorical education MPs received and the aristocratic values that members held. Reid's book, then, should be of interest to anyone interested in the history of Parliament, but it is especially important for scholars interested in the criticism and history of oratory.
