The Lord Chamberlain's action in withdrawing the license: for all
public performances of The Mikado has excited a good deal of hostile criticism and ridicule. We have never approved of the existence of the censorship on plays, holding that censorships on every kind of writing and speech do more harm thati good, and are not so effectual for their purpose as a prosecution under the ordinary law in exceptional cases. But if the dramatic censorship of the Lord Chamberlain's Depart- ment is allowed to exist at all, we are bound to say that it is justified more or less in its present action. We think that instead of imposing total prohibition, it might have requited a modification of the title and scheme of the play. But that some alteration, or failing that, suppression, was necessary we are quite sure. We ourselves have a national faculty for ridicule, and apply it to the highest themes as a genuine instrument of criticism without lose of respect for the persona or things criti- cised. The degree of ridicule a man allows himself to use is sometimes even a measure of his sense of the security enjoyed by the object of his criticism. It is enough to Pay that the Japanese, with their highly cultivated instinct of reverence, do not think in this way. It is useless to argue about their feelings in terms which apply only to our own. International good manners require that we should meet their politeness, which we dare say would make them tell us that there was no offence in The Mikado, by carefully removing every appear- awe of offence.
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