The awe, however, which his humiliation and peril had been intended to diffuse gradually wore off; the keen interest which was awakened by the ministerial changes at the beginning of the reign of George III., which have been already mentioned, naturally prompted a variety of efforts to gratify it by a revelation of the language concerning them which was held by statesmen of different parties; and these revelations were no longer confined to yearly or monthly publications.

More than one newspaper had of late adopted the practice of publishing what it affirmed to be a correct report of the debates of the previous day, though, in fact, each journal garbled them to suit the views of the party to which it belonged, and, to quote the words of the historian of the period, "misrepresented the language and arguments of the speakers in a manner which could hardly be considered accidental."[13] The speakers on the ministerial side in the debates on the Middlesex election had been especial objects of these misrepresentations; and, at the beginning of 1771, one of that party, Colonel Onslow, M.P.for Guilford, brought the subject before the House, complaining that many speeches, and his own among them, had been misrepresented by two newspapers which he named, and that "the practice had got to an infamous height, so that it had become absolutely necessary either to punish the offenders or to revise the standing orders."[14] And he accordingly moved "that the publication of the newspapers of which he complained was a contempt of the orders and a breach of the privileges of the House, and that the printers be ordered to attend the House at its next sitting." The habitual unfairness of the reports was admitted by the Opposition; but the publishers complained of evidently felt assured of their sympathy (which, indeed, was sufficiently, and not very decorously, shown by its leaders inflicting on the House no fewer than twenty-three divisions in a single night), and, relying on their countenance, they paid no attention to the order of the House.

A fresh order for their arrest having been issued, the Sergeant-at-arms reported that he had been unable to execute it, by reason of their absence from their homes; on which the House, not disposed to allow itself to be thus trifled with, now addressed his Majesty with a request that he would issue his royal proclamation for their apprehension.

And Colonel Onslow made a fresh motion, with a similar complaint of the publishers of six more newspapers--"three brace," as he described them in language more sportsman like than parliamentary.

Similar orders for their appearance and, when these were disregarded, for their apprehension, were issued.