Blue-books, the name popularly applied to the reports and other papers printed by parliament, because they are usually stitched up in blue paper wrappers. Some departments, however, issue their proceedings in drab, and some in white covers. The practice of printing, and to some extent publishing, the proceedings of the House of Commons, began in the year 1681, when disputes ran high on the question of excluding the Duke of York from the succession to the throne. It was stated that false accounts of the transactions were circulated, and, as a remedy, Sir John Hotham moved that the votes and proceedings of the House be printed. The motion after considerable discussion was carried. The documents printed by the House of Commons accumulated gradually in bulk and variety, until they reached their present extent. In 1836 the House adopted the practice of selling their papers at a cheap rate, and has since that date gradually increased the facilities offered to the public for acquiring parliamentary papers. These are now issued at the following rates: Single paper blue-books, &c., one halfpenny per sheet of four pages, except in particular cases where special prices are charged. For the sum of £20 annually a subscriber may obtain all parliamentary papers published during the year. If the papers relating to the daily votes and proceedings of the two Houses be excepted, a reduction of £3 is made in the cost. The papers of the House of Lords and the House of Commons may be obtained by annual subscription for £10 and £15 respectively. Since August 1886, under the authority of the President of the Board of Trade, a most useful journal has been issued each month (6d.) by that department. It contains in addition to its official notices much valuable information from British, colonial, and foreign sources relating to the trade of the world. In 1898 were issued under the superintendence of Her Majesty's Stationery Office: Papers and Bills of the House of Lords, 326; Bills of the House of Commons, 327; Reports and Papers of the House of Commons, 571; Papers by Command, 674. The chief contents of these papers at present are the votes and proceedings of the House; the bills read in their several stages; the estimates for the public services of each year; the accounts of the expenditure of the moneys voted in the previous year; any correspondence or other documents which the ministry may voluntarily, or at the demand of the House produce, as connected with a question under discussion; reports of committees of inquiry appointed by the House; reports of commissions of inquiry appointed by the crown; and annual reports by the permanent commissions and other departments of the government, stating their proceedings during the year. The blue-books of a session, when collected and bound up, now fill many thick folio volumes. Nothing can seem more hopelessly chaotic than those of a few sessions huddled together unarranged. It deserves to be known, however, that they are all printed according to a peculiar sequence, which enables the whole papers of a session to be bound up in such an order that any paper can be found by consulting an ample index in the last volume. A précis of the contents also is now usually given at the beginning of each blue-book. In any library where the blue-books are preserved and properly bound up, the most trifling paper of any session may thus be found with ease; and it need hardly be said that with much that is useless or unimportant, there is an enormous mass of valuable matter hidden in the blue-books.
An important treasury minute having reference to copyright in government publications was issued August 31, 1887. It stated that while the larger proportion of official publications 'should not, with certain exceptions, be restricted in any form whatever' in their reproduction, a stringent veto would be placed upon the unauthorised publication of charts and ordnance maps, and literary or quasi-literary works—e.g. the Reports of the Challenger, the forthcoming state trials, the Board of Trade Journal, &c.—The official books of foreign governments corresponding to our blue-books are designated by the colour of their covers. The principal are: France, yellow; Germany and Portugal, white; Italy, green; and Spain, red.