cks on him in Parliament reached a pitch of violence seldom equaled in that always outspoken assembly, until Walpole was finally overthrown. The general public was keenly interested in the contest, and any periodical able to report the debates would see a great increase in its sales. Cave and his staff--some said primarily young Johnson--thought of a way around the ban. An article appeared in which the grandson of Lemuel Gulliver described a voyage he had recently made to the land of Lilliput, once visited by his famous grandfather. He discovered that the Lilliputian Parliament was debating issues very similar to those in London, and that opposition members such as the Urgol Ptit were hurling blistering attacks against Sir Retrob Walelop. He had brought back a shipload of reports of the debates of the Senate of Lilliput, which the Gentleman's Magazine thought might interest its readers during the unfortunate absence of reports of the debates in their own Parliament. Throughout his life, Johnson was no friend to the preservation of official secrets. "The time is now come," he was later to write, "in which every Englishman expects to be informed of the national affairs, and in which he has a right to have that expectation gratified." For instance, one burning issue of the time was the charge that Walpole was weakly allowing Spain to maintain its embargo against English maritime trade with its South American possessions, a conflict which was presently to erupt in the so-called War of Jenkins's Ear. This gives the writer of the introduction to the Lilliputian debates the opportunity to reflect on the his...
