We have ready to our hand the
machinery of licensing as applied to public-houses. A licensed
victualler can now be assured confidently by his lawyer that a
magistrate cannot refuse to renew his licence on the ground that
he (the magistrate) is a teetotaller and has seen too much of the
evil of drink to sanction its sale. The magistrate must give
a judicial reason for his refusal, meaning really a
constitutional reason; and his teetotalism is not such a reason.
In the same way you can protect a theatrical manager by ruling
out certain reasons as unconstitutional, as suggested in my
statement. Combine this with the abolition of the common
informer's power to initiate proceedings, and you will have gone
as far as seems possible at present. You will have local control
of the theatres for police purposes and sanitary purposes without
censorship; and I do not see what more is possible until we get a
formal Magna Charta declaring all the Categories of libel and the
blasphemy laws contrary to public liberty, and repealing and
defining accordingly.
PROPOSED: A NEW STAR CHAMBER
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.
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