friend of the press--who, by the way, is said to have spent more than
£50,000 in bribes to venal scribblers in the course of ten years--had
completely changed his views, and had nothing then to say in its favor.
A resolution was passed which declared it breach of privilege to print
any of the debates, and announced the intention of the House to punish
with the utmost severity any offenders. Cave, however, was not easily
daunted, and, instead of publishing the speeches with the first and last
letters of the names of the speakers, he adopted this expedient: he
anagrammatized the names, and published the debates in what purported to
be 'An Appendix to Captain Lemuel Gulliver's Account of the Famous
Empire of Lilliput, giving the Debates in the Senate of Great Lilliput.'
This system was continued for nine years, but, after an interval, Cave
reverted to the old plan. He had always employed some writer or other of
known ability to write the speeches from his notes, and generally even
without any notes at all, so that the speeches were often purely
imaginary. In 1740 Dr. Johnson was employed for this purpose, and he,
according to his own confession, had been but once inside the walls of
the Parliament. Murphy tells the story and gives the names of the
persons who were present when he made the avowal. It occurred thus: A
certain speech of Pitt's, which had appeared in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, was being highly praised by the company, when Johnson
startled every one by saying: 'That speech I wrote in a garret in Exeter
street.' He then proceeded to give an account of the manner in which the
whole affair used to be managed--this happened many years after his
connection with the matter had ceased--and the assembly 'lavished
encomiums' upon him, especially for his impartiality, inasmuch as he
'dealt out reason and eloquence with an equal hand to both parties.'
Johnson replied: 'That is not quite true: I saved appearances tolerably
well, but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of
it.' These speeches were long received by the world as verbatim reports,