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the Act of the Long Parliament in 1641 shall be repealed, and the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.
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