not confined to condemned theatres. Not long ago a West End
manager allowed a prohibited play to be performed at his theatre,
taking his chance of losing his licence in consequence. The
event proved that the manager was justified in regarding the risk
as negligible; for the Lord Chamberlain's remedy--the closing of
a popular and well-conducted theatre--was far too extreme to be
practicable. Unless the play had so outraged public opinion as to
make the manager odious and provoke a clamor for his exemplary
punishment, the Lord Chamberlain could only have had his revenge
at the risk of having his powers abolished as unsupportably
tyrannical.

The Lord Chamberlain then has his powers so adjusted that he is
tyrannical just where it is important that he should be tolerant,
and tolerant just where he could screw up the standard a little
by being tyrannical. His plea that there are unmentionable depths
to which managers and authors would descend if he did not prevent
them is disproved by the plain fact that his indulgence goes as
far as the police, and sometimes further than the public, will
let it. If our judges had so little power there would be no law
in England. If our churches had so much, there would be no
theatre, no literature, no science, no art, possibly no England.
The institution is at once absurdly despotic and abjectly weak.


AN ENLIGHTENED CENSORSHIP STILL WORSE THAN THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S

Clearly a censorship of judges, bishops, or statesmen would not
be in this abject condition. It would no doubt make short work of
the coarse and vicious pieces which now enjoy the protection of