POSTSCRIPT.--Since the above was written the Lord Chamberlain has made
an attempt to evade his responsibility and perhaps to postpone his doom
by appointing an advisory committee, unknown to the law, on which he
will presumably throw any odium that may attach to refusals of licences
in the future. This strange and lawless body will hardly reassure our
moralists, who object much more to the plays he licenses than to those
he suppresses, and are therefore unmoved by his plea that his refusals
are few and far between. It consists of two eminent actors (one
retired), an Oxford professor of literature, and two eminent barristers.
As their assembly is neither created by statute nor sanctioned by
custom, it is difficult to know what to call it until it advises the
Lord Chamberlain to deprive some author of his means of livelihood, when
it will, I presume, become a conspiracy, and be indictable accordingly;
unless, indeed, it can persuade the Courts to recognize it as a
new Estate of the Realm, created by the Lord Chamberlain. This
constitutional position is so questionable that I strongly advise the
members to resign promptly before the Lord Chamberlain gets them into
trouble.