Yet we cannot mention Magna Charta without recalling how useless such
documents are to a nation which has no more political comprehension nor
political virtue than King John. When Henry VII. calmly proceeded to
tear up Magna Charta by establishing the Star Chamber (a criminal court
consisting of a committee of the Privy Council without a jury) nobody
objected until, about a century and a half later, the Star Chamber
began cutting off the ears of eminent XVII. century Nonconformists and
standing them in the pillory; and then the Nonconformists, and nobody
else, abolished the Star Chamber. And if anyone doubts that we are quite
ready to establish the Star Chamber again, let him read the Report
of the Joint Select Committee, on which I now venture to offer a few
criticisms.
The report of the Committee, which will be found in the bluebook, should
be read with attention and respect as far as page x., up to which point
it is an able and well-written statement of the case. From page x.
onward, when it goes on from diagnosing the disease to prescribing the
treatment, it should be read with even greater attention but with no
respect whatever, as the main object of the treatment is to conciliate
the How Not To Do It majority. It contains, however, one very notable
proposal, the same being nothing more or less than to revive the Star
Chamber for the purpose of dealing with heretical or seditious plays
and their authors, and indeed with all charges against theatrical
entertainments except common police cases of indecency. The reason given
is that for which the Star Chamber was created by Henry VII: that is,
the inadequacy of the ordinary law. "We consider," says the report,
"that the law which prevents or punishes indecency, blasphemy and libel
in printed publications [it does not, by the way, except in the crudest
police cases] would not be adequate for the control of the drama."
Therefore a committee of the Privy Council is to be empowered to
suppress plays and punish managers and authors at its pleasure, on
the motion of the Attorney-General, without a jury. The members of
the Committee will, of course, be men of high standing and character:
otherwise they would not be on the Privy Council. That is to say, they
will have all the qualifications of Archbishop Laud.
Now I have no guarantee that any member of the majority of the Joint
Select Committee ever heard of the Star Chamber or of Archbishop Laud.
One of them did not know that politics meant anything more than party
electioneering. Nothing is more alarming than the ignorance of our
public men of the commonplaces of our history, and their consequent
readiness to repeat experiments which have in the past produced national
catastrophes. At all events, whether they knew what they were doing
or not, there can be no question as to what they did. They proposed
virtually that the Act of the Long Parliament in 1641 shall be repealed,
and the Star Chamber re-established, in order that playwrights and
managers may be punished for unspecified offences unknown to the law.
When I say unspecified, I should say specified as follows (see page xi.
of the report) in the case of a play.
(a) To be indecent.
(b) To contain offensive personalities.
(c) To represent on the stage in an invidious manner a living person, or
any person recently dead.
(d) To do violence to the sentiment of religious reverence.
(e) To be calculated to conduce to vice or crime.
(f) To be calculated to impair friendly relations with any foreign
power.
(g) To be calculated to cause a breach of the peace.
Now it is clear that there is no play yet written, or possible to be
written, in this world, that might not be condemned under one or other
of these heads. How any sane man, not being a professed enemy of public
liberty, could put his hand to so monstrous a catalogue passes my
understanding. Had a comparatively definite and innocent clause
been added forbidding the affirmation or denial of the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, the country would have been up in arms at once. Lord
Ribblesdale made an effort to reduce the seven categories to the
old formula "not to be fitting for the preservation of good manners,
decorum, or the public peace"; but this proposal was not carried; whilst
on Lord Gorell's motion a final widening of the net was achieved by
adding the phrase "to be calculated to"; so that even if a play does not
produce any of the results feared, the author can still be punished
on the ground that his play is "calculated" to produce them. I have
no hesitation in saying that a committee capable of such an outrageous
display of thoughtlessness and historical ignorance as this paragraph
of its report implies deserves to be haled before the tribunal it has
itself proposed, and dealt with under a general clause levelled at
conduct "calculated to" overthrow the liberties of England.