DRAMATIC CENSORSHIP.
OUR rulers at one time enforced a licensing system to check our tippling propensities ; and they still enforce a licensing system to prevent the growth of a taste for plays abounding in obscenity and sedition. The wisdom of the design is equalled by the efficiency of the instrument which they have selected for carrying that design into effect. As a reprieved convict makes the best thief-taker—as a reformed rake makes the besthusband—so has it been discovered that the imagination of GEORGE Coamax must form the best filter through which to strain our dramatic compositions. Our system of taxation is admirably adapted to advance those views of morality to which Ministers are attached. It enables them to give efficacy to their theories—to make assurance doubly sure ; in short, it enables them to curb the less amiable tenden- cies of our nature, by denying to the labourer the power of mis- applying his hire. In proof of this, we may observe, that Govern- ment is seen to oppose no obstacle to the acquisition of money, on the score of morality alone, though it does to the spending of it. Government permits people to become rich by bubble com- panies—by fraudulent bankruptcies—by gambling—by pandering to the vices of the wealthy. Government, in fact, has never at- tempted to narrow any field of industry, save that which the honestly industrious are disposed to cultivate. But though Go- vernment does not interfere with the accumulation of wealth, or with the mode in which the wealthy may spend their means, it steps benevolently in to decide not merely what portion of their earnings the poorer classes shall retain, but how they shall spend it. As a reason for refusing to allow the public to judge of dramatic exhibitions, Sir ROBERT PEEL says, that little reliance can be placed in the public taste. We are not aware, that any dramatic exhibition would venture on grosser indecencies than the ELLENBOROUGH melo-drama furnished to the frequenters of St Stephen's ; and we are quite sure that no indecencies, on any humbler stage would draw such a crowded house, or be welcomed with such unqualified pleasure.. But, however that may be, no one can deny, that in the middling and humble classes of society, the regard for the decencies of life is becoming daily stronger ; nor should it be forgotten, that the class to which the legislators, who instituted a dramatic censorship belonged, indulged, at the time of its institution, in indelicacies of conduct and expression from which the vulgar of the present day would shrink. And yet we are gravely called on to submit to the restraint of those preservatives of decency which it seemed fitting to those persons to devise. On public grounds, we are sorry that Sir ROBERT PEEL should lend himself to such abuses, or give currency to the arguments on which he rested their defence. He weakens incalculably the weight of his authority when the theme is more worthy of him, and strengthens those habits of public cant and hypocrisy from which he, as much as most men, has suffered.
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