admission that strangers _are_ present whilst the House is sitting,
whereas it is a parliamentary fiction that they are _not_. If a member
in debate should inadvertently allude to the possibility of his
observations being heard by a stranger, the Speaker would immediately
call him to order; yet at other times the right honourable gentleman
will listen complacently to discussions {84} arising out of the
complaints of members that strangers will not publish to the world all
that they hear pass in debate. This is one of the consistencies
resulting from the determination of the House not expressly to recognise
the presence of strangers; but, after all, I am not aware that any
practical inconvenience flows from it. The non-reporting strangers
occupy a gallery at the end of the house immediately opposite the
Speaker's chair; but the right hon. gentleman, proving the truth of the
saying, "None so blind as he who will not see," never perceives them
until just as a division is about to take place, when he invariably
orders them to withdraw. When a member wishes to exclude strangers he
addresses the Speaker, saying, "I think, Sir, I see a stranger or
strangers in the house," whereupon the Speaker instantly directs
strangers to withdraw. The Speaker issues his order in these
words:--"Strangers must withdraw."

C. Ross.

_Strangers in the House of Commons_.--As a rider to the notice of CH. in
"NOTES AND QUERIES," it may be well to quote for correction the
following remarks in a clever article in the last _Edinburgh Review_, on
Mr. Lewis' _Authority in Matters of Opinion_. The Reviewer says (p.
547.):--

"_This practice_ (viz., of publishing the debates in the House of