Let me now tell the story of the Committee in greater detail, partly as
a contribution to history; partly because, like most true stories, it is
more amusing than the official story.
All commissions of public enquiry are more or less intimidated both
by the interests on which they have to sit in judgment and, when
their members are party politicians, by the votes at the back of those
interests; but this unfortunate Committee sat under a quite exceptional
cross fire. First, there was the king. The Censor is a member of his
household retinue; and as a king's retinue has to be jealously guarded
to avoid curtailment of the royal state no matter what may be the
function of the particular retainer threatened, nothing but an
express royal intimation to the contrary, which is a constitutional
impossibility, could have relieved the Committee from the fear of
displeasing the king by any proposal to abolish the censorship of the
Lord Chamberlain. Now all the lords on the Committee and some of the
commoners could have been wiped out of society (in their sense of the
word) by the slightest intimation that the king would prefer not to meet
them; and this was a heavy risk to run on the chance of "a great and
serious national drama" ensuing on the removal of the Lord Chamberlain's
veto on Mrs Warren's Profession. Second, there was the Nonconformist
conscience, holding the Liberal Government responsible for the Committee
it had appointed, and holding also, to the extent of votes enough to
turn the scale in some constituencies, that the theatre is the gate of
hell, to be tolerated, as vice is tolerated, only because the power to
suppress it could not be given to any public body without too serious an
interference with certain Liberal traditions of liberty which are still
useful to Nonconformists in other directions. Third, there was the
commercial interest of the theatrical managers and their syndicates of
backers in the City, to whom, as I shall shew later on, the censorship
affords a cheap insurance of enormous value. Fourth, there was the
powerful interest of the trade in intoxicating liquors, fiercely
determined to resist any extension of the authority of teetotaller-led
local governing bodies over theatres. Fifth, there were the playwrights,
without political power, but with a very close natural monopoly of a
talent not only for play-writing but for satirical polemics. And since
every interest has its opposition, all these influences had created
hostile bodies by the operation of the mere impulse to contradict them,
always strong in English human nature.