AYOT ST. LAWRENCE,
14TH JULY 1910.
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.
THE SHEWING-UP OF BLANCO POSNET
A number of women are sitting working together in a big room not
unlike an old English tithe barn in its timbered construction,
but with windows high up next the roof. It is furnished as a
courthouse, with the floor raised next the walls, and on this
raised flooring a seat for the Sheriff, a rough jury box on his
right, and a bar to put prisoners to on his left.
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