There is no question here of giving the theatre any larger
liberties than the press and the platform, or of claiming larger
powers for Shakespear to eulogize Brutus than Lord Rosebery has
to eulogize Cromwell. The abolition of the censorship does not
involve the abolition of the magistrate and of the whole civil
and criminal code. On the contrary it would make the theatre more
effectually subject to them than it is at present; for once
a play now runs the gauntlet of the censorship, it is
practically placed above the law. It is almost humiliating
to have to demonstrate the essential difference between a censor
and a magistrate or a sanitary inspector; but it is impossible to
ignore the carelessness with which even distinguished critics of
the theatre assume that all the arguments proper to the support
of a magistracy and body of jurisprudence apply equally to a
censorship.

A magistrate has laws to administer: a censor has nothing but his
own opinion. A judge leaves the question of guilt to the jury:
the Censor is jury and judge as well as lawgiver. A magistrate
may be strongly prejudiced against an atheist or an anti-
vaccinator, just as a sanitary inspector may have formed a
careful opinion that drains are less healthy than cesspools; but
the magistrate must allow the atheist to affirm instead of to
swear, and must grant the anti-vaccinator an exemption
certificate, when their demands are lawfully made; and in cities
the inspector must compel the builder to make drains and must
prosecute him if he makes cesspools. The law may be only the
intolerance of the community; but it is a defined and limited
intolerance. The limitation is sometimes carried so far that a