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)

 

---

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

Orwell on a debased political language

Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.  One cannot change this all in a moment, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.[1]

Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946)

 

 

---

[1] George Orwell, Why I Write (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2005), p. 120. Orwell adds “Fascism” to the list, too (p. 109).