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In 1737, however, another occasion offered for CHAP. Walpole to effect his object. A farce, called the Golden Rump, abounding in sedition and blasphemy, was brought to him in manuscript, with the hope that he might give a considerable sum to purchase and suppress it. Walpole paid the money, but immediately proceeded to extract the most objectionable passages, which he laid before several members of both parties, asking them, whether such a system should be suffered to continue. Being promised their support, he brought in his famous Playhouse Bill, under the form of an Amendment to the Vagrant Act. It declared, that any actor, without a legal settlement, or a license from the Lord Chamberlain, should be deemed a rogue and vagabond. To the Lord Chamberlain it gave legal power, instead of customary privilege; authorising him to prohibit the representation of any drama at his discretion, and compelling all authors to send copies of their plays fourteen days before they were acted, under forfeiture of 50l. and of the license of the House. Moreover, it restrained the number of playhouses, by enjoining that no person should have authority to act, except within the liberties of Westminister, and where the King should reside. This last clause appears to have been Sir John Barnard's first proposal.

*

The Bill passed rapidly, and, as it would seem,

*See Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 516. Tindal's Hist. vol. viii. p. 350.; and Baker's Biographia Dramatica, Introduction, p. xlii.

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CHAP. without any division, through both Houses, but XVIII. not without some very strong opposition, especially a celebrated speech from Lord Chesterfield. All TURE. parties agree in representing this effort of his oratory as one of the most brilliant ever yet heard in Parliament. It contains many eloquent predictions, that, should the Bill be enacted, the ruin of liberty and the introduction of despotism must inevitably follow. Yet even Chesterfield owns that he has "observed of late a remarkable licentious"ness in the stage. In one play, very lately acted (Pasquin), the author thought fit to represent the "three great professions, religion, physic, and law, "as inconsistent with common sense; in another (King Charles the First), a most tragical story was brought upon the stage, - a catastrophe too re"cent, too melancholy, and of too solemn a nature, "to be heard of any where but from the pulpit. "How these pieces came to pass unpunished, I do "not know; if I am rightly informed, it was not for "want of law, but for want of prosecution, without "which no law can be made effectual. But, if "there was any neglect in this case, I am con"vinced it was not with a design to prepare the "minds of the people, and to make them think a "new law necessary!"

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Such an insinuation could not fail to have weight out of doors; and still more adapted to popular effect was the name he gives the proposed licensing department, as "a new Excise Office!"

But the following plausible arguments might have CHAP. misled superior understandings : : — "The Bill, my

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Lords, at first view, may seem to be designed LITERAonly against the stage; but to me it plainly ap

pears to point somewhere else. It is an arrow "that does but glance upon the stage: the mortal "wound seems designed against the liberty of the press. By this Bill you prevent a play's being "acted, but you do not prevent its being printed. "Therefore, if a license should be refused for its being acted, we may depend upon it the play will "be printed. It will be printed and published, my Lords, with the "upon the titlepage. "what is forbidden.

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refusal, in capital letters, People are always fond of LIBRI PROHIBITI are, in all

"countries, diligently and generally sought after. "It will be much easier to procure a refusal than "it ever was to procure a good house or a good "sale; therefore we may expect that plays will "be wrote on purpose to have a refusal: this "will certainly procure a good house or a good "sale. Thus will satires be spread and dispersed

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through the whole nation; and thus every man " in the kingdom may, and probably will, read for "sixpence what a few only could have seen acted, "and that not under the expense of half a crown. "We shall then be told, What! will you allow an "infamous libel to be printed and dispersed, which

you would not allow to be acted? . . . If we

agree to the Bill now before us, we must, perhaps, next session agree to a Bill for preventing

TURE.

CHAP. " any plays being printed without a license. Then XVIII. "satires will be wrote by way of novels, secret

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"histories, dialogues, or under some such title;

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" and thereupon we shall be told, What! will you "allow an infamous libel to be printed and dispersed, only because it does not bear the title "of a play? Thus, my Lords, from the precedent "now before us, we shall be induced, nay, we can "find no reason for refusing, to lay the press "under a general license, and then we may bid "adieu to the liberties of Great Britain.”

Yet, however ingenious this reasoning, it has been refuted by that greatest of all controversialists - Time. The Bill has passed, and a hundred years have rolled away; yet still we are not a people of slaves. The liberty of the press stands more firmly than ever. The stage has lost its disgraceful personalities, not its salutary satire. No genius has been checked, no freedom violated, and the powers of the Lord Chamberlain's department have been exercised with less reference to party than almost any other in the state. sounds well, to say that an honest Government need not fear invective, and that a wicked Government ought not to be screened from it; yet experience shows that no merit can escape detraction; that scoffs, not arguments, are the weapons of the stage; that a lower and less reflecting class is there addressed than through the press; and that, even without reference to ministers, some precaution is required to guard religion from pro

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faneness, and Royalty from insult. It is probable, CHAP. therefore, that no future Legislature will be in- XVIII. duced to forego this necessary control, and that, LITERAalthough any abuse or mal-administration of the power should be jealously watched, the power itself should be as eagerly protected.

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