CHAP. talent; and the Lord Chamberlain exerted his almost XVIII. dormant privilege to forbid it. Gay was more LITERA than recompensed for this disappointment, through TURE. a subscription so liberally filled by the Opposition

as to gain him nearly 1200l., while the Beggar's Opera had only brought 4007.; so that, as Johnson observes, "what he called oppression ended in profit." Other writers, having no such reputation as his to hazard, were restrained by no regard to it. Scurrilous personalities, low buffoonery, and undisguised sedition took possession of the stage, and the licentiousness of morals under Charles the Second was now exchanged for the licentiousness of liberty. The necessity of some curb to these excesses became evident to all parties. In 1735, Sir John Barnard brought in a Bill to restrain the number of playhouses, and regulate the stage; nor did there appear at first a single dissenting voice; but on Walpole attempting to introduce a clause to enlarge the power of the Lord Chamberlain, Barnard declared that he thought that power too great already, and the Bill was dropped.

In 1737, however, another occasion offered for 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,

The Beggar's Opera first appeared in 1728, and Polly in 1729. Baker's Biographia Dramatica, vol. i. p. 186.

+ Life of Gay. See also Spence's Anecdotes, p. 214.

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but immediately proceeded to extract the most ob- CHAP. jectionable passages, which he laid before several members of both parties, asking them, whether such LITERAa 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 licence 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 licence 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 Westminster, 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, without any division, through both Houses, but not without some very strong opposition, especially a celebrated speech from Lord Chesterfield. All parties agree in representing this effort of his oratory as one of the most brilliant ever yet heard in Parliament. It contains many eloquent predic

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

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CHAP. tions, that, should the Bill be enacted, the ruin of liberty and the introduction of despotism must inLITERA evitably 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!"

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 misled superior understandings: :-"The Bill, my "Lords, at first view, may seem to be designed

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only 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

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press. By this Bill you prevent a play's being CHAP. "acted, but you do not prevent its being printed. "Therefore, if a licence should be refused for its LITERA'being acted, we may depend upon it the play will "be printed. It will be printed and published,

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my Lords, with the refusal, in capital letters,

upon the titlepage. People are always fond of "what is forbidden. 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

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agree to the Bill now before us, we must, perhaps, next session agree to a Bill for preventing any plays being printed without a licence. Then "satires will be wrote by way of novels, secret "histories, dialogues, or under some such title; "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

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CHAP. "now before us, we shall be induced, nay, we can "find no reason for refusing, to lay the press "under a general licence, and then we may bid "adieu to the liberties of Great Britain."

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