The British Parliament: A Dickensian Retrospect

I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery.  I make a respectable income of it.  I am in high repute for my accomplishment in all pertaining to the art, and am joined with eleven others in reporting the debates in Parliament for a Morning Newspaper.  Night after night, I record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify.  I wallow in words.  Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.  I am sufficiently behind the scenes to know the worth of political life.  I am quite an Infidel about it, and shall never be converted.[1]

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

 

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[1] Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 626 (See Chapter XLIII).