ABSTRACT
John Hatsell (1733–1820) served the House of Commons at Clerk’s Table as its Clerk in active service from 1768 to 1797. He published his magnum opus under the series title Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons. This work required 20 years to complete, from 1776 to 1796. Hatsell’s first thesis suggested a minimal standard for new procedures: they need not be tethered to history. A proposed ‘rule to go by’ might be taken, arbitrarily, as rationally or irrationally grounded and was as good as any other. Hatsell’s second thesis imagined an encounter with the blank page. This thesis set benchmarks by which legislators might measure their progress along the pathway to acquisition of parliamentary competence. Hatsell’s second thesis, unlike the first, elevates the importance of code-writing as an essential skill. Skills acquired in writing inventory of prescriptions could be employed to inform members where the assembly stood in managing issues through successive ballots. This became increasingly important as the fiscal-service state matured delivery of goods and services in the last third of the eighteenth century.
